Strangely, my game appears in the PunyInform list. I would not consider this “published” in any way as it’s only a very early beta I shared with the StarDot community for initial feedback. It is absolutely not ready for publication (and quite frankly may never be) and should not be entered into any competition.
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Well, back to the drawing board.
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Let us investigate thoroughly before concluding that there are not enough PunyInform games. There might be more Puny games listed on CASA?
To avoid confusion about the status of my game and to avoid people wasting time playing and voting an early beta (on the rash assumption that anyone is interested), I’ve taken the beta down for now.
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I apologize for the confusion and any grief we caused you.
Does anyone know if Stefan Vogts (@8bit_era) game: “The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor” was made with PunyInform? It was published by Zzap64 in 2022 and was apparently made with Inform:
https://solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C10092/Ghosts+of+Blackwood+Manor%2C+The.html
There are probably more games we need to add.
EDIT: I will send him a message here now.
Just asked him on the Puny discord. I think I found another one as well.
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No problem. I should probably refrain from releasing public betas anyway.
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His Twitter account shows that it was made with PunyInform and published in 2022 from this picture. this also fits with the CASA entry.
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If anyone can add this to IFDB, it would be great as I am really busy these days. Thanks!
We already tagged Stefan here and on Discord, so maybe we shouldn’t duplicate our earlier misstep and wait for him to get back to us? He haunts both places fairly frequently, so it shouldn’t take long.
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Also, someone just added the other game I was eyeballing, so that should take us back up to 5.
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This competition isn’t really about me arbitrating individual decisions. If it fits in the rules, it goes. When you had 5 before, the competition was on; when one was taken out, it stopped. Now it looks like 5, so it’s on, unless one of them is also withdrawn or misclassified. Whatever the current state is when I make the polls, that will count.
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Fair enough. We can work with that. Thank you.
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**About the retro category, this is the original proposal:
Inspired by Mathbrush “C64 parser game” example, I propose “Best retro IF game” . So that would include any game published to run on a retro machine such as the C64 but also Atari ST, Amiga, Spectrum, Apple II etc.
How should we tag it? Should we make a new “retro-machines” tag?
EDIT: I have started to tag the games belonging to the retro award with “retro-machines”, at least based on my intention when I proposed the category. I just think it is a shame if the category is won every year by an Inform 7 game with pixelated graphics. That wasn’t the intention with my proposal. I will make a post once I am done.
We can always change the tag back to just “retro” but currently a lot of games are tagged “retro” on IFDB though they cannot run on retro machines but may just have retro graphics etc. The category proposal was not intended for such games (but Mathbrush has the final say).
On CASA I have found the following 2022 retro category games, in addition to PunyInform games:
- 6 DAAD games: :: CASA :: Games - 2022 - DAAD (8 results)
- 1 Quill game: :: CASA :: Italianate
- 3 PAW games: :: CASA :: Games - 2022 - PAW (4 results)
- 3 assembler games for Spectrum: :: CASA :: Games - 2022 - Assembler (3 results)
Could someone please put the missing(?) titles on IFDB?
Note that only a few Adventuron games can run on retro machines. That depends on how the game was made, wheres I think almost all puny-inform games will run perfectly on Commodore 128(?) and can be converted within a minute using Ozmoo online to a C64 disk image.
I also think it would be unfair to accept all Inform 6 games as many in theory can be played on C64/128 but in practice many are completely unplayable as they are sometimes 100 times slower (I’m not exagerating ) than a standard Quill game. I played A Bear’s Night Out on a C64 and it was in my opinion practically unplayable.
So for this year, perhaps just a statement in the poll that the game must either have been played on a retro emulator or real machine unless it is a PunyInform game which will run well almost for certain? I mean, in ParserComp, the “Puny-games” could easily have been converted to C64/128 but the authors did not know about IFDB Awards at the time.
Any thoughts?
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I think that asking Brian to police an author’s stated game platforms might be a bit much. Ultimately, authors choose how their titles are categorized, and also choose whether their titles are listed at IFDB. Perhaps an author has deliberately chosen not to post a game there. I don’t think that Brian should be asked to investigate each case. He is doing a lot as it is.
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I’m in the let the chips fall were they may crowd. If someone notices a game listed for the retro poll that shouldn’t be, they can point it out and it can be removed. If retro fans want to increase how many games are considered, they’ll do precisely what we’re already doing, correcting tags and adding missing entries. Honestly, having an annual awards like this might help create some consistent incentive for both authors and specific communities to take an interest in maintaining their entries on IFDB. Think of it like spring cleaning, but not in Spring…
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Also, heard back from Stefan on the discord.
Ghosts of Blackwood Manor was under development in 2022, and was originally to be released for a kickstarter that shipped in December, but things got delayed and it won’t be sent to production until late January or early February. Due to this delay, it is no longer a 2022 release. (But we’ll be sure it makes it to IFDB for 2023!)
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Unless something has changed in IFDB policy the last year or so where I wasn’t paying attention, the norm on IFDB is actually that other people than the author list the games on IFDB. The games are not actually on the IFDB, there are just links to the author’s own pages etc.
I agree that @mathbrush has a lot on his plate but there are a lot of people around him to help - I don’t see why somebody into the retro community couldn’t either be a co-organizer for that small part or just a “consultant”. I think people around here can be trusted for such a small task if they have a passion for retro games. I prefer someone else to take the task but I could be such a “consultant” if no one else wants to. There are a lot of people over at CASA who knows a lot about this stuff. Around here, the most active, would probably be @Warrigal as I know he does a lot of work for CASA but @pinkunz also seems very engaged and perhaps @8bit_era might be interested (sorry if I forgot some)? It all depends on who Mathbrush trust - after all, it is just “consulting” and if Mathbrush doesn’t like the answer, then he doesn’t have to follow the advice. EDIT: Or discussion here might be fine?
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We currently have 5 games on IFDB, so, assuming nothing changes, PunyInform is still in the game, so to speak: Search for Games
Just a fan and ally, whether they want me or not. 
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