Most 'productive' authors on IFDB

The bulk of my games were written between 2003 and 2005 when I wrote 37 games, just over an average of one per month. I think a lot of the reason for this crazy burst of activity was because I’d just come across Adrift after years of thinking the IF scene was dead and buried and I wrote game after game as if my life depended on it. I slowed down quite a bit after this, though, probably a little burnt out, and then later I pretty much stopped writing games altogether.

Now, 37 games in 3 years is certainly a ridiculous amount but quite a few of them were fairly small games that didn’t require much in the way of writing. At one point on the Adrift forum we used to have a mini comp running every couple of months and I tried to enter every one going so that worked out at quite a few games, none of which were very big or complicated. Most of them probably took a few days to write, if that. I also tended to be a lot less bothered about testing my games, often doing the testing as I was writing the game, fixing bugs on the fly, and provided the game didn’t crash or blow my computer up, I considered it fine and I’d go straight onto the next one as soon as I finished the current one. That kind of approach backfired on me a few times and so my approach to game writing changed over the years and I used to spend a lot longer testing them before they were released, which obviously meant that I wasn’t writing games at such a pace.

These days I’m a lot more careful. I’m sure there will still be bugs in my work in progress - it’s a big, very complicated game and they’re always the worst ones to make bug free - but hopefully they’ll be pretty minor ones and nothing like the ones that plagued some of my earlier games.

16 Likes

Great to hear that you haven’t stopped altogether! I look forward to playing whatever you’re working on.

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It’s mostly finished now (subject to testing) and hopefully should be entered in the Parser Comp.

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If you’d like to do data explorations like this in the future, you might enjoy setting up an IFDB dev environment, following the instructions here: https://github.com/iftechfoundation/ifdb

That will allow you to run query-docker.sh and run SQL queries against the IFDB database. For example, this SQL query will generate the data you want:

select author, count(*) from games group by author
order by count(*) desc limit 100;
MariaDB [ifdb]> select author, count(*) from games group by author order by count(*) desc limit 20;
+----------------------+----------+
| author               | count(*) |
+----------------------+----------+
| Unknown              |      292 |
| Anonymous            |      206 |
| David Whyld          |       62 |
| Max Di Bello         |       54 |
| D.B.T                |       53 |
| Paul Allen Panks     |       44 |
| Andrew Schultz       |       41 |
| Jack Lockerby        |       35 |
| Porpentine           |       35 |
| Emily Short          |       34 |
| Ryan Veeder          |       34 |
| Marius M�ller        |       26 |
| ClickHole            |       25 |
| Josep Coletas Caubet |       24 |
| Andrew Plotkin       |       23 |
| Laurence Creighton   |       23 |
| Larry Horsfield      |       23 |
| Richard Otter        |       22 |
| Gunther Schmidl      |       22 |
| Admiral Jota         |       20 |
+----------------------+----------+
20 rows in set (0.042 sec)
5 Likes

Is this case sensitive? I ask because I saw those numbers and thought, “hey, I have around that many games.” There’s 22 on my profile page, but some are uppercase and some are lowercase. I suppose I should standardize…

5 Likes

Thanks, this is great as I hope to extend my programming skills.

However, I wonder why there are so big discrepancies between your list and my list?

On my list all authors have the same or more games than on your list. also, Chandler Groover is not on your list. Any idea why?

1 Like

My count of 16 is missing these six games of yours:

  • Cragne Manor
  • Swigian “Mathbrush (as Rainbus North)”
  • 77 Verbs “MathBrush (as Prismatik)”
  • Scarlet Portrait Parlor “MathBrush (as Prismatik)”
  • Indistinguishable “MathBrush (as Prismatik)”
  • Untie “Mathbrush (as Alex Ellis)”

The IFDB schema for tracking authors by profile is quite annoying to work with. Here’s a query I whipped up that extracts the first profile ID from each game, and groups by that.

select count(gameid), authorid, users.name
from (
    select id as gameid, regexp_replace(authorExt, '.*{([^}]*)}.*', '\\1') as authorid
    from games
    where authorext is not null
) x
join users on authorid = users.id
group by authorid
order by count(gameid) desc
limit 20;

And here’s the result of that:

+---------------+------------------+------------------+
| count(gameid) | authorid         | name             |
+---------------+------------------+------------------+
|            60 | yuvlh7ssoeyppejb | David Whyld      |
|            53 | ba3os41g5oq3h2we | Bishopofbasic    |
|            42 | 4onqcn9pq2wtd3vb | Emily Short      |
|            42 | 40ru852yszsizxsv | Andrew Schultz   |
|            38 | nmzzzfyfjujdpttw | Porpentine       |
|            36 | sewum1c69z4rchuz | Ryan Veeder      |
|            33 | 4j9mqiszjkljq4fm | Marius M�ller    |
|            30 | dciqbymh070d4kh3 | CMG              |
|            28 | l7nybtdj5tduhnj5 | Caleb Wilson     |
|            25 | xrln6pdkzzbje6r3 | Zarf             |
|            23 | xg39lszxmx4tbsvd | Lazzah           |
|            22 | a8pgjfvaziwe6biz | Richard Otter    |
|            21 | nufzrftl37o9rw5t | MathBrush        |
|            19 | vn8m54bbscyvoupx | Strident         |
|            19 | lxogyqnxnhz3p1s9 | Jota             |
|            19 | 46rwcv2xfc1m2tom | Stephen Granade  |
|            19 | 3edajdozpgy9u1a  | Sam Kabo Ashwell |
|            19 | v632t6mt3gxv1kdv | dutchmule        |
|            19 | z9m9tk5vp94967uq | DB               |
|            18 | 9oroihp7b8x5frym | Norbez           |
+---------------+------------------+------------------+

Note that your count is still off by one due to Cragne Manor, but it matches otherwise.

3 Likes

I’d have to dig into individual cases, as I did with @mathbrush, but for Groover, it’s something similar to MathBrush. The author for many of his games is listed as “Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games”, and a few collaborations (with Tom Lento and Frank Stockton).

CMG results
MariaDB [ifdb]> select gameid, title, author from (select id as gameid, title, author, regexp_replace(authorExt, '.*{([^}]*)}.*', '\\1') as authorid from games where authorext is not null) gameauthors where authorid = 'dciqbymh070d4kh3' order by author;
+------------------+---------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| gameid           | title                           | author                                |
+------------------+---------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| jdmlt99bhvcg8p0b | HUNTING UNICORN                 | Chandler Groover                      |
| jwj9zj64g3pcckoc | Down, the Serpent and the Sun   | Chandler Groover                      |
| xf5y04yekcrqtnc  | Toby's Nose                     | Chandler Groover                      |
| oe1ttzjxlidq4hst | creak, creak                    | chandler groover                      |
| 2cuwjlvpybg8oaf0 | Midnight. Swordfight.           | Chandler Groover                      |
| he48oknsigqu6xk2 | Taghairm                        | Chandler Groover                      |
| jf2vkpcdktr0ts44 | Tailypo                         | Chandler Groover                      |
| aynqilyjkha55aoa | Open That Vein                  | Chandler Groover                      |
| wy0nsr4khifcdm27 | Rape, Pillage, Makane!          | Chandler Groover                      |
| ybxxoxn4i4jqv0a  | What Fuwa Bansaku Found         | Chandler Groover                      |
| afy6ej5cn9hof20m | Three-Card Trick                | Chandler Groover                      |
| 4n85273pyxnb7rbw | Skull-Scraper                   | chandler groover                      |
| 25kq81lxm8iefgjg | Mirror and Queen                | Chandler Groover                      |
| 52qxb0gl1h2xbmq4 | The Queen's Menagerie           | Chandler Groover                      |
| vhud0bjh6zdz702z | Bring Me A Head!                | Chandler Groover                      |
| tpzgvit55wh7mtvf | left/right                      | chandler groover                      |
| yutkd9u0oeog4br1 | Eat Me                          | Chandler Groover                      |
| 60mhm9p6w9q1oaau | little                          | chandler groover                      |
| 72jyveuvgwa4wkz8 | + = x                           | Chandler Groover                      |
| 7sm86je6i381j40l | The Crocodile Who Would Be King | Chandler Groover and Failbetter Games |
| 4o8tp96v8nei7hrn | Codename: Sugarplum             | Chandler Groover and Failbetter Games |
| rm1pw2n0mhosyyc  | The Rat-Catcher                 | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| ihq5kdug133ckswf | Cricket, Anyone?                | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| pkxou7n2q2zqh2qw | My Kingdom for a Pig            | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| gik2pahj5s22uwcy | Por Una Cabeza                  | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| cef7jagmw41spnx3 | Paisley                         | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| mhe686tjzov1pre  | Caveat Emptor                   | Chandler Groover, Failbetter Games    |
| rf543a6d55ftcxfk | The Griffin and the Minor Canon | Frank Stockton, Chandler Groover      |
| h3p9ae9gw92w91x  | JELLY                           | Tom Lento, Chandler Groover           |
| zqhgvzv0y2l2o23q | Deus Ex Ceviche                 | Tom Lento, Chandler Groover           |
+------------------+---------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
2 Likes

It is quite common that a game is not tied to the author’s profile - heck, I just found one of my own games missing that today. But it is great to have the opportunity to query in many different ways.

So @mathbrush idea that upper and lower case matters is not the case then?

2 Likes

No, that doesn’t matter. This query seems to yield the same results:

MariaDB [ifdb]> select lower(author), count(*) from games group by lower(author) order by count(*) desc limit 20;
+----------------------+----------+
| lower(author)        | count(*) |
+----------------------+----------+
| unknown              |      292 |
| anonymous            |      206 |
| david whyld          |       62 |
| max di bello         |       54 |
| d.b.t                |       53 |
| paul allen panks     |       44 |
| andrew schultz       |       41 |
| jack lockerby        |       35 |
| porpentine           |       35 |
| emily short          |       34 |
| ryan veeder          |       34 |
| marius m�ller        |       26 |
| clickhole            |       25 |
| josep coletas caubet |       24 |
| andrew plotkin       |       23 |
| laurence creighton   |       23 |
| larry horsfield      |       23 |
| richard otter        |       22 |
| gunther schmidl      |       22 |
| admiral jota         |       20 |
+----------------------+----------+
1 Like

@Warrigal What’s a type-in?

3 Likes

A ‘type-in’ is a game that you typed in from a listing in a book or magazine. They were normally written in BASIC, as nearly every home computer had BASIC built in. There are many dialects of BASIC for different computers, hence a BASIC program for an Apple II would not run on a TRS-80, and vice versa, unless it was modified. This led to all the unofficial ports that @8bitAG alluded to.

Type-ins were normal fare in the late 1970s and 1980s. It started to die off in the 1990s as 16-bit computers became more popular and magazines started including cover tapes or cover disks instead.

For those of us that were brought up with home computers during this period, it was how we acquired most of our games software (as software was really expensive back then) and helped us learn programming by seeing how someone else wrote stuff. The games listings were often accompanied by articles that explained how the program worked.

The UK home computer craze came a little later than in the US. They had much cheaper computers targeted at the mass market, whereas the earlier American computers were targetted more towards hobbyists. As a consequence, the best type-ins tended to come from the books and magazines published in America. The ones published in the UK tended to be slapped together fairly quickly and the programs weren’t properly tested or proofread.

6 Likes

Interesting, thanks!

3 Likes

So let me get this straight.

The magazine would print the literal source of the game. Then folks who wanted to play it would hand key the entire thing into their computers at home, just so they could compile it and then play it? How did one ever know if there was a bug in the game or if they simply screwed up the data entry? Really small games? Really small font? Really efficient code? All the above???

Tell me I misunderstood something, because that is bonkers.

9 Likes

Yep thats exactly the kind of thing I was doing in a distant past. I went to the American Discount Book store in the city and got myself magazines like Creative Computing, BYTE, Dr. Dobbs. (that was before I learned it was generally cheaper just to get a subscription and get the magazines mailed to me). Most often programs in BASIC were published, but other bits and pieces of code in other (also assembly language) came up from time to time. Games I keyed in were often of the “Adventure” category: I remember typing in Lost Dutchman’s Gold, Pirate Adventure (and some other Scott Adams games), The Oregon Trail, and a whole bunch of games published elsewhere. There were even entire books dedicated to such things: BASIC Computer Games - Wikipedia for example.

As for finding out whether I typed it in correctly, well… Just run the game and see if it crashes :stuck_out_tongue: . At least in BASIC it was generally not blowing up your computer if you typed something wrong. If I typed something wrong in assembly language, I generally ended up resetting the computer because it got stuck…

Especially the Scott Adams game were kinda neat I thought. Essentially using a little “engine”, and all the adventure stuff was stored in data statements in the code. So once he got the engine working, all he had to do is describe a new game in data statements to get a new game out the door…

6 Likes

Your sheer incredulity is making me feel very, very, old. :slight_smile:

As Garry says, magazine and book type-in listings were commonplace in the 1980s. A regular feature of most computer magazines, there were even dedicated magazines of listings and partworks (episodic magazines) designed to teach programming concepts through games and utility listings.

How did you know there weren’t bugs in the listings due to your error or the error of the magazine? You didn’t. You simply had to check your listings against what the magazine had printed. If it matched and it didn’t work then you either had to go in and fix the bug yourself (learning valuable BASIC/programming skills in the process) or wait for a few issues until hopefully they printed a correction!

As well as the magazine listings, there were some great computer books out there whose games live as long in the memory of many UK gamers as commercially published tape & disk titles. e.g.

7 Likes

As Onno said, that’s 100% correct, except that all BASICs in those days were interpreted. There was no compilation step. You just typed it in, saved it and typed RUN. Hey presto! Of course, you usually made a few typos along the way and the program wouldn’t run as expected or it would crash. That’s when you had to search the listing to find out what you’d done wrong, fix it and try again. This was how you became familiar with BASIC.

And sometimes there were errors in the original listing. If it was from a book, that was just tough luck. If it was from a magazine, the good magazines would print corrections in the following issue or the one after that or even 6 months down the track.

I can’t believe that there are people on here who have never typed in a BASIC listing. Sheesh, I’m showing my age.

EDIT: Oops, I leap-frogged Strident’s response.

7 Likes

Those Usborne books are an interesting way of squashing games to fit small computers (and the inefficiencies of Basic), as a lot of the descriptive content is in the book and not the actual game. If you only had the game and not the book it would probably be a much worse playing experience.

I don’t know if other type-in games depended on external content like that.

5 Likes

I especially remember this one: Byte Magazine Volume 05 Number 12 - Adventure : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive One of my favorite magazine issues of all time. Devoted to the adventure gaming theme. I still have it somewhere in my archives, gathering dust…

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I figure you’re referring specifically to Mystery of Silver Mountain and Island of Secrets, each a book? Those were the only two I saw that worked that way. In both cases, the adventure itself, when you got to it, was the least fun part of the experience. They were so spare, it was really hard to connect them to the books.

I typed in the whole of Island of Secrets twice and it didn’t work either time. I eventually found a copy someone else had typed (that worked) on another copied floppy. This was an exception, though. I think every other BASIC type-in I ever did worked for me, or worked after a tweak.

-Wade

5 Likes