sibylmoon.com/parsercomp-2015/
Theme coming November 1. Stay tuned!
Honestly, now that I somehow succeeded in turning in my Ectocomp entry, I can’t wait to hear news (the theme) about this one. Am I back to writing games? 
The official ParserComp theme is:
Sunrise.
Go.
It FITS!
Lucky SOB.
I mean. Erm… It’s not like I was thinking plot in avance. Erm…
Since this is a ranked competition, does that mean the rankings of every entry will be shown, or only the top three in each category?
“Ranked” as opposed to “unranked”. Only the top three ranks in each category will be shown.
Stuff I do care about: will a walkthrough be mandatory? (Hope not)
Tangent time: if it is, and if you’re writing in Inform, the TEST command (which is good to have for testers so they don’t hit obvious roadbumps) can cover a walkthrough pretty quickly.
You just have the command
test win-game with “n/s/e/w”
and then replace / with a carriage return.
I’m quite disappointed about the lack of rankings beyond the first three. Any reason for that? For me, one of the big draws of comps is seeing how well my game does in relation to everything else.
But I don’t want walkthroughs! They spoil the fun! cries like a baby
When you turn in your first draft, it needs to include a walkthrough so that I (as the competition organizer) can verify that it’s a completed and unpolished game rather than an unfinished game. But I will not be distributing the walkthrough to anyone.
It’s a split between the ShuffleComp model and the IFComp model.
On the one hand, ShuffleComp’s commendation system seemed good for a mid-level comp, but I was personally a little disappointed not to have more data about how well my game did against the competition.
On the other hand, it takes a certain kind of person not to be heartbroken by seeing their game come in dead last, and I didn’t want anyone to have that negative experience at ParserComp.
Since I wasn’t sure how many people would participate in ParserComp, ranking the top three seemed like a good compromise point.
@ Marco–
So don’t peek at them.
I don’t stand a chance against the temptation.
In fact, it’s almost precisely the model used by IntroComp. (And Jacq has, indeed, from time to time, received complaints from authors who really really wanted to know just precisely where they came in the also-rans.)
You are never going to be able to please everybody; so it’s worth making sure that different desires get catered to by different events.
Doop. And I know this, I participated in IntroComp and everything.
Apologies to Jacqueline for flaking on crediting her.
One month to go before the first draft of your ParserComp game is due!
I’m looking forward to it and I’m pretty happy with how my game is coming along! I’ve been watching the site but haven’t seen anything new about how to officially enter, I hope I haven’t missed anything?
Sorry to worry you! You haven’t missed anything. I was sick through the entirety of December, and so I haven’t been as focused as I might have been.
I haven’t quite decided whether to accept first-draft entries by email, or via an upload link, but I should have it sorted out one way or the other within the next two weeks. I’ll put an announcement up here and at Sibyl Moon once there’s a solid plan.