For the fourth update, the games A Comedy of Error Messages (originally Elfen Maiden), Andromeda Awakening, Fog Convict, Operation Extraction, and PataNoir have been updated.
FYI, the update in Andromeda Awakening consists of a betatester being rightly credited (Joel Webster, to whom I apologize [emote]:oops:[/emote] ).
There’s is nothing more, so no need to replay it.
If you keep this up, my 2012 entry will be named A Comedy of Updates.
Wow. Andromeda Awakening has been updates 4 times, and is up to release 2. Is the author purpusefully out to confuse us?
Well, I’ve been out of a computer for one month. I would have thought it’d be easy enough to see which games have been updated, and which haven’t, but if games are changing names midway through the competition, and others fail to properly reflect the changes, and the reply to my suggestion regarding “having an updated ZIP of all the games” on the other thread having been declined… this is a fine muddle of a comp, right now.
I trust that, at the very least, at the end of the comp there will be a ZIP of all the current versions of all the games? In which case, I think I’ll wait until the comp is over to play any more IF Comp games.
So the next update of Andromeda Awakening will only change the release number to 5?
Our reality is stranger than Jacek’s fiction…
Heh. Ridiculous, I agree, but oddly enough, it would be right.
Nope. It would be wrong.
In my opinion a Release change must involve something structural about game or gameplay.
First update introduced some timed comments that would hint as to the next step of game, an aid for players on unhinted puzzles. The third updates just had a “PRESS [something]” implemented, which was something I overdid in the second release when I added a “PUSH ACROSS [something]” So: Release 2. (it was just an unlucky bad timing, as the two updates were just a few minutes one from the other… Stephen was too fast for me in that occasion)
The latest (and last) update just changes the surname of a tester.
That isn’t a new release imo. So: if you have update 2 or 4, the gameplay is perfectly the same. Release 1: the game “pre-comp”; Release 2: the game NOW (and it won’t be further modified).
Release 3 WILL have major updates to text/introduction/gaming experience/hint system/map, and that will go live AFTER the comp.
Hope this clarifies and hope this talking-out-of-the-authors-forum will not be a rulebreaker.
Hence such niceties as “2.01”. I HAVE seen released products where the version number changes just because a name was misspelled or left out, and it seems to be common courtesy from the author towards the consumer. Because like it or not, even if it’s just a single typo you fixed… it’s a change, and you made that change for a reason, and if you’re identifying the pre-change version the same as you’re identifying the post-change version, then you’re sending out the message that the change was unnecessary.
I prefer the version number, at the moment. I want to go with a history of versions. I think it’s just flat out more informative, and it’s less work than decimalizing the release number.
Since this doesn’t work:
The release number is 2.01You seem to have to do the following (or I did.)
[code]“releasenum” by andrew
The release number is 2.
Rule for printing the banner text:
say “[bold type]My game[roman type][line break]Well, not really a game. Just a proof of concept.[line break]Release 2.01/ Serial number 1337 / Inform 7 build 5Z71 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N) SD[line break]Type [quotation mark]help[quotation mark] for instructions.[paragraph break]” instead.
room 1 is a room.[/code]
Which feels totally artificial.
Or am I missing something obvious that everyone who wants to update his game should know?
Another point is that (I’m pretty sure) any change whatsoever breaks save-file compatibility. So that might be a good reason to update version numbers even if you’re only fixing a typo in the credits.