How do I do that? Do I do a new game listing and just show it as version 2? Since I’ve never put anything on IFDB at all, I’m not sure how to go about this. Should I let the Comp version stay, or replace it?
Also, how do I add the walkthrough? I don’t see any way to do that.
I’ve looked through all the guidelines for “New Game Listing,” but I’m not sure how to update one.
I’ll have new versions of my IFComp entry and my EctoComp entry in short order, and I’d like to have those both updated on IFDB.
I think the usual practice is to just add a second file to the “downloads” area, rather than overwriting the original one – note that the Comp organizers automatically send both the original, and the final updated version, of the game file to the IF Archive, so it’s easy to just link to those. If you have a post-Comp update, you’d need to submit that to the Archive, or host it yourself somewhere, once it’s done. Similarly, you can upload ancillary files, like feelies or a walkthrough, to the Archive and link to it in the Downloads section.
(You do need an IFDB account to edit the pages, but once you do the interface is pretty straightforward!)
I hate to be so slow, but I’m not sure how to do any of that.
Do I just use the “New Game Listing” page to do that? It says:
Before adding a new listing, please check carefully (by searching) that the game isn’t already in the database, so that you don’t create a duplicate entry.
So I just give it another name, like WHHOGG post-comp version or some such so it’s not a duplicate? And if it’s a walkthrough, somehow make clear it’s a walkthrough and not a game?
Apologies for my incompetence, but if I don’t ask I’ll never learn.
No worries - sorry, rereading your original post I think you were clear on what was confusing but I missed what you were really asking! I definitely wouldn’t do a new game listing – I think the standard practice is to add it to the existing page, so that a visitor can see all the different versions and files, and decide which ones to play. You can look at the page for my game from last year’s Comp for a random example, or just check out other games to see if there are any that you think do a good job that you want to emulate.
On the nuts and bolts side, all you need to do is log into IFDB, then scroll to the very bottom and click the “edit this page” link.
I meant random in the sense that I’d put up the links without thinking much about it, but hey, I’ll take it – from my sense of your tastes from reading your reviews, I think you’ll hopefully some enjoyment from it!
It’s good for me to get a nudge towards more recent games now and then. My focus is mostly on that marvellous period of the 90s, with forays into the early 00s. There’s still so much to play from that era (1893; A World’s Fair, So Far, Perdition’s Flames to name but a few) that I’m getting far behind on the more recent great games. (I still haven’t played The Impossible Bottle or Skybreak or even Counterfeit Monkey)
Eleusinian Miseries at least is now on a more prominent place in my games-to-play list.
I’m still dumb as a rock. For me to click “add link” I need a link, since it doesn’t allow me to upload something there. So I need to add the new version to the archive first, called something slightly different, and then link to that?
In case anyone was wondering: yes, it does hurt to be this stupid.
If you’d like, you can also host a new version at https://borogove.io/, which I’ve found to be very convenient. It’s a new service that hosts parser and choice games. It’s a good idea to also back up to the ifarchive, but I think borogove is pretty neat.
Yeah, it usually takes a few days to appear, so that’s normal - there’s an “unprocessed” directory where it’ll show up first, then eventually in the appropriate directory (maybe somebody else knows why it’s relatively slow, but I unfortunately don’t).
If you upload a new version to ifarchive.org, you can use the same name. This preserves existing URLs linking to the file. The old version of the game typically gets moved to an “older” subdirectory.
Well, it’s too late to give it the same name. I just added “postComp Version” at the end of the title.
I got an approval email with a link and added it to the game page with the “add link”, but it isn’t showing up in the upper right hand box. There are little arrows you can fiddle with by the links, but I’m not sure what they do.
And I don’t think I can add the walkthrough as I don’t have a link for it, and the only thing it appears I can add to the archive is a game. I will never have a website, because I won’t manage it, look at it, remember its passwords, or even remember that it exists.
Do you get an error message on the upload form when you try to add a non-game file? I’m asking because the archive definitely hosts various types of things in a variety of file formats, see for example the solutions directory. If something’s not working on the technical side, it could be a bug worth looking into.
Regarding the website aspect: a viable low-effort solution in such cases can be to just throw the text on Pastebin and link to that from the IFDB.
(But as I said above, the Archive should work.)