Detectiveland has rooms and inventory and mobile NPCs. But this only make it (very) parserlike. It just doesn’t have a command prompt. But what if versificator2 did have an optional command prompt? If Detectiveland, or a game like it, had a command prompt it could be entered in ParserComp as a regular parser game.
This is true. You could stick a VERY simple two-word parser on the front of the game as it stands without changing much. To make it passable for most parser players these days, I think, you’d need to implement synonyms, disambiguation, verbs with prepositions and indirect objects, multiple commands…
I’m going to release the engine after the comp closes, so if anyone wants to have a go at this, they’ll be able to. But other than as a technical challenge, I don’t really see why they would.
Our computers are not running programs but “simulating” running programs. I get it.
Sorry. I’m one of those elderly people who still says the DVR is “taping” my shows.
I’m excited to see so much enthusiasm!
With regard to parser games vs. parserlike games:
Many games support a world model without actually using a parser, and in that way are parserlike. But it’s specifically the typed, command-prompt parser - and its illusion of infinite choice, which doesn’t exist in parserlike games - that I want to support with this event.
The vast majority of IF events and game jam events - IFComp, Spring Thing, IntroComp, Ectocomp, Global Game Jam, Ludum Dare, etc, etc - welcome parserlike games. Parserlike games are more accessible to authors and uninitiated players alike - which means that, in large scale game dev events, more parserlike games are written than parser games.
This is why I wish to reserve this single event for parser games only.
I’ll open a ParserComp thread with more details in Competitions once IFComp has closed.
Another ParserComp? I’m very excited! Though I won’t start planning anything out yet; going to wait for the theme this time…
Good call. 
I have a great idea for a theme! “Terminators.”
I am too. I’d like to try to review, again, if nothing else.
Somehow, no.
Oooh awesome! There’s going to be another Parsercomp this year? Super excited!! I can’t wait (and I for one am really glad that there’s a competition just for parser games, please keep it just as it is!)
You are more than welcome to start your own TextAdventureComp that does not require text string parsing. I might even prefer it to ParserComp! (Though, you might be satisfied by Robin’s Year of Adventure?) But I agree with Carolyn’s motivations to keep her comp specifically about IF works with un-enumerated text input (that may or may not also be “adventure games”). That is a uniquely interesting user interface and it’s worth keeping that flame alive.
I don’t know … there could be some interesting games about end of line characters, or the dividing line between night and day (been done I think), or the end-of-transcription indicator in a piece of DNA.
Yes, for the first ParserComp, whose theme was “Sunrise.” Terminator Chaser by Bruno Dias and Terminator by me. So well, some inside baseball there I guess (the Schwarzenegger connection seems particularly apposite).
I rode the Terminator pun really hard in my game’s description, which made me seem especially unclever when someone else used the same pun much more lightly.