Attempting

in "Dual Transform" led to the game crashing, something about trying to write on read-only memory. A pity.

WHOOOOO
tis just a pity i coulndt be bothered to finish my one, like all my other game attempts

It could be a compatibility issue with our Flash interpreter.

We had tested all the games prior to making them available online, and there were a couple that we set the default to Javascript due to errors received in Flash.

I've changed the default for "Dual Transform" to Javascript as well, perhaps Parchment will handled it better?

Thinking that these competitions are anual is this the only one you are going to do in 2010. What makes me doubt is this a JayIsGames IF Competition.

Depending on how well this one goes, and so far we're off to a great start, I would love to do an annual IF competition such as this. :)

I couldn't play survive with either players, flash gave a trying to write read-only memory, and the JavaScript had some SWM object errors I think, around the crowdshouts at the beginning.

Our play testers were able to get through the walkthrough for Survive without error. I'm sorry it did not work for you.

Did you press [space] a few times during the black screen in the intro, or did you just give up at that point? It seems to require a few keypresses, and I think that was by design.

I also got an attempting to write on read-only memory error message. In Hoosegow, though. I was ok for the first minute or so -- or until:

(If it helps, I'm running Mac OS Leopard and Firefox.)

Hopefully these problems can get resolved, I'm really excited to try all these works!

For those getting the 'read only' error, try reloading the competition page again.

There was a setting with Leaflet (the Flash based interpreter) that might not have been set properly when we uploaded to the final directory.

Is there any way to stabilize the experience a bit? I've got Flash elements of the competition popping up from below (which can, mercifully, be closed for good), the web browser scrolling around, and then there's the IF screen, which is extremely unfriendly.

For instance, if I scroll down to continue reading the text, there's no obvious way to scroll back up. Also, the prompt is there sometime, and other times, not.

Suggestions?

I would suggest downloading a standalone interpreter if the browser experience is a frustrating one for you.

You might try either Gargoyle for Windows, Zoom for Macintosh and Unix. There are several others as well for each platform.

I am really excited by this. I wasn't able to complete my game, but I am having fun playing the entries. Is there any chance of this becoming an annual ritual? Like some kind of mini CDGC aimed towards IF?

I have a question, what is "that" (a weird old looking picture) doing in the beggining of "The Zeroeth Dimension", because we didn't put it in there. (Goes away when clicked on).

I believe Inform includes its own default splash page cover image if you don't include one when compiling to a zblorb.

If you have no cover image, then you don't need a zblorb.

Perhaps IF's are just not for me. With thousands of verbs and nouns, millions of possible combinations, all I can ever manage to get are "This is not a verb I recognize" and "You can't see any such thing".

Having much trouble in containment, can't figure out how to get down the ladder. Wording must be precise there is no room for other wording.

It would help tremendously if you would leave your game-specific comments in the comment threads directly on the competition page beneath each respective game.

I wouldn't let some of the games discourage you. True, there are a few games entered that seem under-implemented, but there are quite a few that seem to have real quality and details worked out. Not to put a finger on the scale, but check out Heavenly, Hoosegow, Fragile Shells and Party Foul.

In general, commands for IF games and their shortcuts are:
Look, l(Looks at the room, usually performed when entering a room)
Look at, Examine, x(Looks at an object, i.e. examine waffle iron)
Compass directions to move, as well as up and down.
you can open and close things that are continers.
You can attack things(many different syntaxes for this are available by default: hit, punch, kill)
You can sometimes eat things.
You can also take and drop things.

Beyond that, sometimes games have alternate syntax, but those are the big default ones.

Thank you very much, A Schuster. The game is much easier now that I know what I can -and should- do.
I'm playing Dual Transform, by the way. It would be nice if I could reload the game-specific comments without having to restart the game.

[Edit: The comments are an iframe that can be reloaded without reloading the rest of the page. Try right-clicking and select "This Frame" -> "Reload Frame". I'll see about implementing a 'refresh' button. -Jay]

Thanks Jay, I hadn't realized there was a comment box underneath the games. I just jumped in to play.

Good news IF fans!

We have fixed the "P9" runtime errors that were sometimes happening in the Flash interpreter. That should provide a much more smooth and robust gameplay experience.

Also, I've added a scroll bar to the Javascript iframe. That should help improve the browser experience, too.

Thank you very much for the scroll bar - it gets frustrating in the Flash version when I need to look at previous information and I can't.

I only played one game so far but it kept me up late last night - in my book, that means Great job! This is going to be so much fun, I too hope this turns into an annual event!

For those looking for annual interactive fiction contests, the big one is:
http://www.ifcomp.org/
This one is coming up soon:
http://www.springthing.net/2010/
There wasn't a XYZZY Award in 2009, but there are archives of past years' games:
http://wurb.com/if/award/3

And a quick web search revealed a few more. You could spend all year playing the past entries.

Jay, did you get a update on my game yet?

[Yes, I received one about 8 hours ago and put it up right away. I also emailed you back acknowledging that I did that. Check your email as there is a note about the update notes in it (you need to comment them yourself). -Jay]

The xyzzynews.com awards are alwayd for the year before, so last years awards were for 2008 games and this year's awards will be for 2009 games.

I assume there will be awards this year, but that's just a guess.

Notwithstanding the bugs in some of the games (mainly taking items that shouldn't be take-able), I'm really enjoying these.

Woo!, this is already the 4th day of the competition and things are already heating up between "Fragile Shells" and "Foul Party", keep 'em coming people!

Sometimes when I'm loading the competition page, I'll end up in a loop of the JiG and Armor Games logos. Refreshing doesn't help, all I can do is close and reopen the browser.

I am using OSX 10.4.11, playing on Firefox 3.5.7 with Flashblock enabled. I have not had this problem with any other flash games.

[Disable Flashblock then. The issue you describe never happens for me in any of the major browsers on all platforms, and I don't use Flashblock. -Jay]

I've tried about a third of the games now, and I am a little disturbed by the sheer quantity of typos and grammatical errors in virtually all of the games! What is the world coming to?

That said I'm having an awesome time playing these games so far. Brilliant job everyone!

I'll second Ottoman's remarks and elaborate just a bit. What I find (and I've played somewhat over half) is generally one of two situations:

1. A very good or potentially good story marred by technical, typographical and grammatical issues,

OR

2. Good technically, but lacking any real plot. Most of these have a very creative puzzle or a well-implemented concept, but little to nothing in the way of story.

Only a very few - and I mean far less than a handful - manage to avoid one or the other.

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