“I am sure that speed-IFy will be a more common approach, but the time given for coding was chosen to make more substantial works a realistic prospect.”
Yes, I think ShuffleComp is well-designed, and you’ve tried to cater to a variety of designers. I’m glad you have a reasonable time limit (I wouldn’t have entered otherwise). ShuffleComp also has the advantage that everyone can listen to the songs that the work is based on, and it will be fun to compare the song with the game, regardless of whether or not the game is of high quality or fun.
Note that no ass-kissing of the Comp organizer is intended with this message (but if you’re listening, Maga, I like They Might Be Giants, AWOLNation, Gnarls Barkley, and anything that Jack White is involved in. Just sayin’).
I can’t speak for Nate, but my intention is to avoid pressuring myself while hopefully producing something decent – I don’t think they’re incompatible. For EctoComp I wanted to experiment with something technical and come up with something that might be kind of fun to play, while knowing that people weren’t going to come down on me like a ton of bricks if I messed up an implementation detail (like, say, leaving the description of the ghost as “You see nothing special about the ghost”), and it turned out successful enough to be worth a more polished revision. It’s not that I don’t want to do something decent, it’s that I don’t want people coming to the game as though it’s something I’ve been working on for a year.
Then again, for the Apollo 18 +20 compilation I wrote a one-line joke. (While some people wrote some pretty major stuff.)
BTW I’m not really treating ShuffleComp any different from a compilation.
“For EctoComp I wanted to experiment with something technical and come up with something that might be kind of fun to play, while knowing that people weren’t going to come down on me like a ton of bricks if I messed up an implementation detail (like, say, leaving the description of the ghost as “You see nothing special about the ghost”), and it turned out successful enough to be worth a more polished revision.”
This raises one of my reservations about entering a minicomp and not writing a solid game. Do people play revised versions of games they’ve played during the comp? I had the impression most do not. It seems, therefore, that you get one shot at entertaining your audience, assuming only a few people play the games when the comp is over (which seems a safe bet for small comps with low expectations). Giving your best effort seems particularly important for first-time authors who may never get a second look, because their revisions go ignored.
But I guess I may be a bit off-topic here; I just wanted to follow from with Matt’s comment.
I suppose I finessed that issue for Faithful Companion by entering the revised version in the New Year’s Event, so I knew at least that it would get played on Club Floyd.
Anyway, looks like returns are in on Spring Thing: Five parser games, five non-parser. This isn’t the most parser games ever entered (all six entries in 2010 were parser-based, and that was probably true in 2005… actually Whom The Telling Changed may be borderline) but it goes against the declining trend of parser games in IFComp. And there are only three z-machine/glulx games, with another in Quest 5 and one in ALAN, and only one Twine game with the other choice-based games being HTML or chooseyourstory. Crazy!