Hi guys,

I wanted to share my thoughts about the last if-comp in order to help anyone who would like to participate next year. Well, i had a bad ranking but i'm glad I wasn't the last one . I'm still have a chance to grasp a little price because there were too many and the winners can only pick one, lol! yay, the belgian chocolates hasn't been picked up yet... Ok here we go:

1. First, you have to write a great story. There a list out there of things to do to win the competition and its more about writing a book than writing a game. I didn't care about my english because I was more interested in the game, that was a huge mistake. Nowadays, text adventures is more about making an interactive book. That's way there were so many CYOA. I guess the players these days are avid readers. Personally, as I player, I am more interested in playing than reading and that's why I am fan of Scott Adams games.

2. Write something funny. I think the old days where the games challenges your mind are gone. Now is about reading a story and laughing about it without really sweating. That's why judges ask for many hints, walkthrough and "helplful responses". At least, in the competitions, judges have a two hours limit. The winner himselp said it, less puzzles more story.

3. About the engine. I think hyperlinks and panels are very cool for an iphone app but for the competition is better not to use it because the judges are very sneaky about it. They preferred a more standard game. And all of the responses has to be customized, they hate automatic responses. Maybe quest is ahead of its time for these guys

4. Betatesters. I didn't have the time, so I was the only testing. But that's a suicide. I don't think I need to say more.

So, now i'm gonna try my luck with the spanish competition. Oh yeah baby! My people need me, lol! Spanish betatesters are welcome!

M4u

These are some interesting observations. They inspired me to want to know more, and I found this thread, which is actually quite recent (and Alex even chimed in about Quest):

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtop ... =32&t=6205

I agree with much of what you say m4u from my experiences last year, especially 1 and 4 (I had 3 beta-testers, but it was not enough).

With regards 2, I do not think it has to be funny, but yes, it needs to be pretty easy (partly because they need to get through it in 2 hours).

There are pros and cons to using the panes and hyperlinks that Quest offers. I would agree that some players will be put off just because it is different, but I think if you can make it good, others will be impressed. If the player can look at the compass rose rather than having to have the exits listed in the text at each location should allow a more flowing narrative. I hope to enter next years (and I am starting now!) and while I will not have hyperlinks (which distract from the text IMO) I will keep the panes.

I am thinking about putting a "How to" page on the Wiki with advice like this, by the way.

I have now written a "How to" page:
http://quest5.net/wiki/Competition_Entry

This is a great resource, and a nice central location for all the various pieces of information.

One note: I tried to download the MetaLib file, and it just showed up in the browser as some text. I then right-clicked on the link and did Save Target As... and the name I got had a .htm extension on it. I'm not sure if there is a way in the Wiki to set media types. (I was using Internet Explorer, by the way.) I did manage to get it renamed and downloaded, but I'm mentioning it in case there is an easy fix.

I have added a warning. In theory flagging it as Media should mean it gets downloaded automatically, so might be a problem with Wiki.

From my experience, it is something inherent within IE. It reads the file format and changes the extension to what it thinks it should be. We have similar problems at work where it changes .XLSX & .DOCX to .ZIP as this is how it looks to IE. I don't know if this is the same for other browsers. I did come across a 'fix' for it on a forum somewhere but as it was a server side change, I have never been able to implement it (and our IT dept won't unless it comes from Micro$oft). I guess in this case, it 'sees' it as HTML and changes the ext. (This is just FYI as it may not be the case here and I am just talking through my hat)

Anyway, The Pixie, thanks for your library. I've added it to my current WIP but when I try to use the STATS command, I get the following error

> stats
Error running script: Error compiling expression 'IsChar (obj)': FunctionCallElement: Could find not function 'IsChar(Element)'

I am using the latest 5.3 nightly( Quest530_20121109.zip) and installed it according to you writeup in the Wiki.
Is the library not compatible with 5.3 or have I not enabled something.

Also the ABOUT command prints out everything in the about attribute 1 character per line - so it reads vertically down the page instead of across.

I agree it is an IE problem, Firefox does not do that.

I have uploaded a new version of MetaLib with IsChar included, so that should work now, thanks for pointing that out.

The ABOUT command needs an attribute, game.about, that is a string list, not a string. Each string in the list is then a paragraph (otherwise each characrer in the string is a paragraph).

Thanks for the prompt fix. STATS now works as expected. I changed the game.about to a string list and it too is OK.