You have a point. I nearly forgot to change the version number when I updated during the comp. But if the author forgets, it’s not the reviewer’s responsibility – just like any other mistake. And reviewers noting what version they played could encourage authors to be more accurate in their version numbers.
Well, technically, there’s way to find out, even if the author forgets…the serial number at the top is of the form YYMMDD. It’s probably too much for the reviewer to remember this, but if they are keeping transcripts to mark down a full review, it’s something they can recheck.
I doubt this shifts responsibility to the reviewer, but it does provide the author a way to check the transcript for which release was played, even if the author forgot to square things away.
I don’t know if other IF languages have a time-of-build tracker like this, but it is a nice stopgap–and anyone who actually tinkers with the banner text deserves to risk losing this information. Or probably knows another way to find it.
Ignoring any arguments about fairness/cheating (because I disagree with them entirely) it seems to me that there is also a pragmatic reason not to keep this rule.
There might be people that are so vehemently opposed to the rule that they would not enter a game (and apparently, will refuse to even vote) in any competition which uses the rule. So if it stays in force next year, it’s possible it may mean fewer games, and fewer judges. Which is a bad thing.
It’s worth noting that the people arguing for the rule seem (to me) to be rather less passionate about their position.
My personal feeling is that the benefits of the rule far outstrip this potential downside, but I don’t think it’s been mentioned before, so I thought I should bring it up.
It’s come up. I don’t take it very seriously.
I don’t think it really affects the basic motivations of authors to enter the comp, and it seems to have improved the comp experience of most authors. If authors decide to release their games out of comp instead, it’s not as if We the Community lose anything: the game’s still there. The author, on the other hand, stands to lose exposure and reviews. For this to work as a credible argument, you’d have to say that authors would get so pouty about the rule that they’d decide not write games at all. This seems like a little bit of an overreaction to what’s basically a change in administrative procedure.
As for judging: I do think that a better job could be done of making things clear to judges. The comp site’s set up so that the ongoing process of updating is very visible, but the current version and update history of a game is not, and nor are the rules for how judges should treat updated versions. (This is presumably because there aren’t really any, and judges are free to do as they see fit; but it would be good if it were clearly laid out somewhere where they’d be seen by everyone.)
In the last two or three years, there always have been authors saying they will never enter the competition again, because it does not allow them to post updated versions in a timely manner.
I think it’s worth noting that while the majority prefer the rule, a good portion of the voters (a full 39%) dislike it. If even half of them decline to enter or vote in the IFComp next year, that’s a significant hit.
In addition to your “half” assumption, you’re also presuming that the people who voted on this poll were people who would have entered or voted anyway. I don’t think the poll as it stands really tells us much about how the rule affects (or doesn’t) the number of participants.
I seem to fail in understanding.
Are we talking about games or judges?
Authors have expressed how the updates are going to make their games better. Me and Andrew Shultz stated quite frankly that our games will benefit a LOT from the will to update them when the iron is still warm. Also Deirdra Kiai has said something about updating her game, even if it is almost perfect. In the end, only time will tell if our modifications will make a better game, but no inComp updates would have meant maybe no update at all.
And I thought it was about games.
More good games? Yay!
Less judges… uhm, well?
One concern I thought of: If I’m playing online and I save, will updates disrupt my save files? (Or whatever there are instead of save files when you play online?)
If it’s a z-machine game, save-files aren’t compatible at all across revisions, played online or not. I think (?) maybe (?) that’s true for Glulx as well. Not sure about others.
For that, some kind of grandfathering archive would do the trick.
(apologies if I’ve misunderstood the question)
I think one solution would be for the website to have links to all versions of a game, with dates clearly marked. Maybe not all on the main page, but if each game had its own page the update history could go there.
You’re definitely right about glulx. My question is more about what goes on under the hood and with the URL.
I assume that, if I take down the file I’ve currently got for The Coming of the Mirthful Messiahs and replace it with a different version in which the description of the tragicomedy mask states that it’s one of the Three Sacred Objects of Mystery, anyone who goes back to that URL will not be able to open their old save file.*
So the question is, when the author updates the game, does the URL that I was playing at start to point to a new file? Would I have any way of continuing to play the old version online? Obviously, if I’m playing off-line and I have a save file, I can just not download the new version, but that might not be the case online.
However, it may be that the number of people who play online and save their games is vanishingly small.
*And in fact, I just found a bug. Fortunately, no one who is not COMPLETELY INSANE will need a save file.
You’re not to worry. Save I’ve missed something outside this forum, the only potential author for next year’s comp who has expressed any objection to the update rule has been, eer… me! And I’ve clearly stated (twice) that I had, and still have, the firm intention to enter, so no entry has been lost. [emote]:)[/emote]
So far it seems that only my votes have been missed this year, which, given the amount of voters, hasn’t caused any noticeable difference in the results. Again, next year I’ll be an entering author, so I couldn’t vote anyway. That means that, in the worst case scenario, we have lost one judge this year (me) and perhaps (and I can’t take it for granted) another one for next’s (David). My guess is that probably more judges are being lost for not having enough time for playing due to real-life demmands, so I sincerely don’t think our so vehement, passionate, overrreacted, two-person dissidence could actually threaten in any way the benefits derived from the new rule. [emote]:)[/emote]
Other than that, concerning things that have been said in the other thread but I prefer to mention here to make this post make sense as a whole (sorry for any inconvenience! ^_^') :
I get the message, and of course, I apologize. On making lame jokes about un-deadlines I just pretended to expose my disagreement in a friendly way (which would have been unfortunate even if my pooor english hadn’t ruined it all in the first place [emote]:lol:[/emote] ). Sorry again!
Jason McIntosh, for example, said explicitly that not being able to update his game was why he wouldn’t enter the IFComp again.
I haven’t gone so far as swearing off the IFComp or anything, but I remember how much I wanted an update rule when I entered in '09. Because the goofy writing turned some people off (granted, there are probably a lot of assumptions behind it that the game was actually intending to build off of in the first place), some players just quit when they hit the >CLIMB TREE error in the first room of Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort, assuming the whole game was a mess of unimplemented whatnot when, instead, >CLIMB TREE actually HAD been implemented, but was being blocked by a silly and totally easily fixable synonym error.
If we were to lose judges for the new rule, then it already happened this year. The rule was stated as the comp began, so any offended judges who wouldn’t vote under the new rule have already omitted themselves. I think we’re safe.
That’s an interesting comment, particularly in light of the massive drop in voters this year.
I personally disliked the rule this year, and I think it will make the competition a more grueling and less pleasant experience for me. Thus, I personally hope that it goes away. However, it is successful at increasing the quality of games produced by IFComp, and for that reason, despite my personal dislike, it should probably stay.
I didn’t update my game (Beet the Devil) during the competition. There’s a basic reason why:
I didn’t have the energy. The competition took place during a fairly hectic time for me personally and professionally. I was able to block away time leading up to the competition in order to work on it, and I worked on it like crazy, but there was a great deal of relief in knowing that, when October 1 rolled around, everything was out of my hands and I wouldn’t have to sweat it any more.
Except that it wasn’t. That came as a shock. (If there were any advance warnings about this rules change, I missed them entirely.)
Problems definitely materialized with my game*. But I couldn’t find it in myself to rewrite code, rewrangle my testers, and pull things together when I had “known” that I could give it a rest and stop worrying about it once my code was uploaded. I kept an eye out for reports of any game-breaking bugs**, but I didn’t spot any, so I let everything go.
On the flip side, I would absolutely have done competition updates on One Eye Open if I’d had the opportunity. But with OEO, I went into the competition knowing I had bugs, knowing where some of the bugs were, knowing exactly how to fix them, and knowing that I didn’t have time to retest the areas. I was far too afraid of introducing a new A-level bug to fix any of the remaining B or C-level bugs with only a couple days left. As a result, I cringed every time someone mentioned the problem with the fan in my reviews.
Additionally, for all of my “I knew exactly where the OEO bugs were!” above, I didn’t fix any of them. We have a whole list of bugs and plans for fixing them, but we have no post-comp release. And, given the during-competition chance, I believe that I would have fixed those bugs and a superior version of OEO would be available.
So - I didn’t feel particularly positive about the change this year, and I wish it hadn’t happened. And I’m not very happy about it as an author, because it will make the competition experience dramatically more stressful for me. But I think it’s probably a good thing and I won’t complain if it sticks around.
[size=85]*Starting from day 1’s realization that I hadn’t credited my girlfriend by name as a playtester after she stayed up all night to help me sort out a particularly ugly bug. Dani, I’m really sorry about that.
**Ironically, when Spatch came over to play tonight, he promptly found a game-breaking bug. Sigh.
[/size]
Carolyn – was the thing where
if you stay in the room with the brussels sprouts while you’re boiling them, the guard in the hall never seems to leave
a bug?
Carolyn, it sounds like a lot of your stress occurred this year because nobody knew there would be this particular rule change, and you couldn’t plan or block time for it. That’s fair enough - all authors were in that boat. However, I expect that next year, the authors will be told in advance whether or not the rule will be in place, so being surprised won’t be an issue.
It remains logical that anyone would want to have their game in the best possible shape before the comp starts, for their own sake, and should probably view the ability to change things as a safeguard against undetected bugs rather than an extended development period. Six weeks isn’t much of a bonus on top of the theoretically infinite amount of time an author can spend on their game before making the decision to enter the comp.