   Text Adventure Competition
  Please visit our official thread on thegamecreators.com for more information!For some of us, the worst part of making games is developing the media. Did you ever feel like your game would be fantastic if you didn't need to make the models, sound effects, music, and all of that other stuff? Wouldn't it be great if you could just write the story and through your words, captivate an entire audience? Or what about story development? Not many would argue that a game's conceptual design is incredibly important. But some people struggle with coming up with great ideas, and/ or expressing those ideas in a game.That's where Text Adventures come in. In this competition, you'll be tasked to create the best text adventure your brain can muster, and you'll be pitting it against other aspiring game designers who are vying for the same great prizes. Along the way, we're hoping your project will help you learn new things about writing great stories, and push you to develop your good ideas into fantastic ones.What could I win?We're giving away one copy of Dark AI to our grand prize winner, supplied by The Game Creators. We're also discussing other potential prizes with various companies, so keep an eye on this thread in the weeks to come to see what else we might be giving away!What Is a "Text Adventure?"A text adventure is a PC game wherein the player navigates through a world by reading segments of a story, and then selecting a path or action from a list of options supplied by the software. Some text adventures use basic variables to offer players items, weapons, etc. to utilize during play. Most text adventures fall into one of two technical categories: The option list adventure, and the parser adventure. "Option list" adventures have a menu of options wherein a player can select an action from a list of choices (such as, "1. go east, 2. go west" and the player presses one or two, or presses the corresponding number and then presses enter). "Parser" adventures allow the player to type in commands, such as "open door," "go north," "eat apple," etc., and the software can detect specific segments of code that is entered into its entry line. These are far more complicated to create and implement, and thus they will score higher.The contest will be scored entirely on four qualities: originality, story development, writing ability, and technical design. Originality depicts your title's general uniqueness, both in story and software design. Story Development rates how well the game projects the story from start to finish... you'll earn more points if your story is fluid and easily understood. Writing Ability depicts how well the game is worded and points will be decided based on grammar, spelling, proper word usage, etc. Last but not least, Software Design rates how well your actual program runs from a technical standpoint. Did you use a list system, or a more complicated parser system? Are each of your subroutines and functions linked together properly? Make sure your final game doesn't have any bugs to score high here.Scores will be based on a 10.0 point system. You'll earn a maximum of 10.0 points for each of the four categories, and a minimum of 0.0. Each of these is then averaged out and rounded to create your final score. In other words, if you earn 9.1 on originality, 8.5 on story development, 7.3 on writing ability, and 5.2 on software design, your total score would be 7.525... rounded to 7.5. The participant with the highest score wins the contest. In the case of a tie, the judges will convene and decide on who should win the tie. All results and scores are final.- RULES -* Files may not be larger than 5mb in size, including any and all media used and the executable files combined. Using winzip or some other compression system to pack more media into an entry is prohibited and will result in the entry being void upon receival.* All entries must be capable of running on Windows XP* Any non web-based programming language may be used (no Java, html, perl, etc.), but installation cannot be required by your software. We strongly suggest DarkBASIC Professional, DarkBASIC Classic, and Play Basic. Along with the executable file(s), any and all source code that was written for the project must be submitted to verify you actually coded the game. No text adventure fabrication software may be used.* All games submitted to this competition must be fully compiled. Submitted source code that is not compiled will not be judged. * There is no length requirement for this contest, although you should try to keep your game relatively short to play so that it can be judged fully and fairly. Try to introduce the judges to your best features early because they may not have time to play through the entire game if we receive a large number of entries.* Media: only 2D static images in bmp or jpg form are allowed. They can only be used to enhance aesthetics and may not be animated, or act as an integral part of gameplay. Music and sounds can be included but must be wav, mid, midi, or mp3 format. Media will NOT effect your presentation's score whatsoever,* Copyright Law: Any media used in this contest must be made by you. Otherwise, proof of permission to use said media must be presented (even for freeware games), including the author of the images/ music and some form of contact information, albeit a website address or e-mail address. Any entry that does not meet this standard will be void from participation.* Input: Input must be from the keyboard only. The game may not utilize a mouse or any other input device, with the exception of main menu navigation, wherein a mouse may be used, but no input device other than the keyboard can be required for gameplay.* All entries must be submitted and recieved by our judges no later than 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on August 2nd, 2006. The winner will be announced on August 11th, 2006 at 12:00pm (noon) Eastern Standard Time in a new thread on the Game Design board. Runners-up will also be announced at the same time. The contest officially begins on June 2nd.* Prizes: one (1) copy of Dark AI, supplied by TGC, will be awarded to the declared winner on August 11th, 2006 when the winners are announced. Keep checking our contest's official thread for prize updates as we'll be actively searching for more prizes to offer our #1 winner and the runners up!* Submission: Submit your entry by either posting it to the  official thread using the upload function, or by e-mailing the final project to me at Maximus_PT1@yahoo.comWhat if I want to be a judge?If you'd like to be a judge for this contest, just send me an e-mail and let me know. Please note that judges WILL NOT be allowed to enter the contest, so keep that in mind when writing me.   
  What have you got against Java? Java isn't exclusively "web-based" there's no reason to exclude it just because people have often used it that way.(also, I suggest investigating the "Show Preview" feature)   ;  No text adventure fabrication software? There goes my entry, written in TADS3.   ;linkify;Quote:Original post by KattaNo text adventure fabrication software? There goes my entry, written in TADS3.And mine written in Inform [wink]   ;  Why disallow things like TADS, while allowing things like BASIC? They're both HLLs.   ;  Sounds fun.  I might enter.  Although if I win I dont think I will keep the prize.  C/C++ works for me.Whats wrong with perl?  I can see that it might require installation, but I bet it is possible to wrap up in a small directory.   ;Quote:Original post by Will FQuote:Original post by KattaNo text adventure fabrication software? There goes my entry, written in TADS3.And mine written in Inform [wink]Good point; why should somebody have the pedantic task of reimplementing a parser when high-quality parsers already exist that will enhance the quality of any entry?This to me seems similar to, say, allowing somebody to use C++ but no STL.   ;  I'll try to answer each of these one-by-one.  First off, sorry for the poor HTML... I copy and pasted it to this thread from the official TGC thread before I had to leave for work and didn't think to read it through.  I always assumed  was the command because that works &#111;n every other forum I visit.  But now for the serious stuff...<br><br>As far as languages are concerned, we said "no web-based languages" because we don't want submissions where we need to go view a website.  All entries must be executables and cannot be compressed using winzip, winrar, or some other third-party compression tool; 5mb limit is very strict.  If you're using a compiler like DarkBASIC that compresses the data into &#111;ne executable, that's fine.  But we'd we'd much rather you used a C or BASIC derivative because that way we can look at the source code for the technical aspect of the score.  Also, this is a TGC contest, so of course I'm obligated to plug DarkBASIC and Playbasic (which might end up being &#111;ne of the prizes), and those are the preferred languages.  If I can find a judge who knows other languages, then we'll include those.<br><br>We don't want people using fabrication software because this is a coding challenge almost as much as it is a writing and design challenge.  Developing a good (or great) parser is pretty challenging for some programmers and those are the people that the technical aspects of this contest are focused toward.  We're mostly targeting this contest toward TGC members (who use the DarkBASIC line of programming languages/ compilers), but I thought it would be nice to offer it to gamedev users as well and expand entries to include other languages.  But to keep from making my head explode, we're limiting it to certain languages and denying the use of fabrication software.  All entries must be submitted with source code or they will be rejected.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience... maybe next year we'll expand the contest to include more languages and make the prizes more universally-usable.  Please feel free to come talk to us &#111;n The Game Creators forum if you have any other questions (I'll be swamped and might not be able to respond here every day).<br><br>PS.-  Any entries that aren't e-mailed directly to me need to be posted &#111;n the TGC forum in our official thread to be counted.  I know this is annoying, and I'm sorry, but we're going to be swamped with entries and I can't spend a lot of time going around gathering them.  Sorry!;Quote:Original post by Maximus_PT1We're mostly targeting this contest toward TGC members (who use the DarkBASIC line of programming languages/ compilers), but I thought it would be nice to offer it to gamedev users as well and expand entries to include other languages.  But to keep from making my head explode, we're limiting it to certain languages and denying the use of fabrication software.Am I the only person that finds it amusing that DarkBASIC is being plugged, but Inform is disallowed?Just so you are aware, It is entirely possible to create an executable file with Java; your reason for disqualifying it is fundamentally ignorant. J#, included with Visual Studio 2005 Standard, produces EXE files that will run on any sufficiently updated machine running Windows XP.On the topic of parsers, Infocom literally spent years developing their parser. which went through six different versions; and you are expecting, within the short space of time of a contest, for somebody to develop a complex parser worthy of high techincal marks? In your words:Quote:Did you ever feel like your game would be fantastic if you didn't need to make the models, sound effects, music, and all of that other stuff? Wouldn't it be great if you could just write the story and through your words, captivate an entire audience? Or what about story development?So why require contestants to write a parser?[Edited by - skjinedmjeet on June 1, 2006 7:08:52 PM]