itch.io

It's good to see you writing these.

I always wanted to join ShuffleComp, sort of, but I didn't want to fit a work to two songs. I wound up testing a lot of games for the first ShuffleComp, which was really rewarding. I look back on them fondly, even the ones that didn't get a commendation.

Sometimes we need a comp we enter and things didn't go great so that we can say, hey, I know a bit better what I want.

Thanks so much, Garry! This was relatively high on my list of looking up ... The first room sort-of warps to the second room. 

Also this will be useful for my test scripts.

I want to write my entry in Adventuron. Well, I've already started, actually.

But I'd like to keep a devlog for aspiring Adventuron authors. What did I learn, when, and why?

Of course, I will want to redact game-sensitive parts. So I might have

The first thing to do? Write in locations. I've redacted them during the development period.
But they are initialed, so you know which they are post-comp.
locations {
   n_l      : location "Description." ;
   b_h  : location "Description." ;
}

Now since the player warps from n to b, I disabled the connections at first. I will figure how to do that later.
The uncommented code would give an error--Adventuron's editor explains you can't loop to yourself.
connections {
   from, direction, to = [
      ## b_h,     north, b_h
   ]
}

I did basic stuff with on_startup: press_any_key and clear_screen.
I didn't bother with the Tutorial Y/N text that needs to go in ... that's later.
I also didn't bother to make the intro robust. I just wanted it there.
on_startup {
   : print "(redacted title text)" ;
   : press_any_key ;
   : clear_screen;
   : print "Submitted for the 2025 TALP competition." ;
   : press_any_key ;
}

So I wanted to check before starting this. If necessary/wanted I could hold off posting this until after the comp.

No problem on the late response--I've definitely let things drop myself!

I haven't even gotten to a couple of your transcripts that I meant to, for stuff I wrote and need to make a post comp version for. But the ones I do have helped immensely. So count this as a blanket thanks for all your support this year!

I enjoyed this. Hope you find the time to update what you want!

I remember someone who went to college in Troy and had rather mean things to say about it. "The armpit of New York," I think the comment was.

I've read about gentrification etc. and always wondered "what is the downside" and it is interesting to find more -- certainly there have been failures in Chicago too where it took a while to admit they had failed so badly they needed to start over. (Some housing projects.)

Thanks for this explanation! It's good to know it's not Twine-specific. I should probably allow downloading this locally, just in case.

Thanks! I'll look into it. I didn't try to do anything too complex, but all the same, there are a lot of unknowns with web programming in general.

Thanks for giving a look! If you can reproduce the error I'd like to know. It works OK on my Firefox, but then again I write more parser games than Twine so there's a possibility I'm missing something.

By the way, did you click Enable Scrollbars? The final screen got cut off. Which isn't a big deal -- I could click ctrl-A to cut and paste it. But it's something I've forgotten too.

It was awesome to see a "real" paradox in the Educational Jam after my own fake-paradox!

I was worried I was alone and out there in left field.

Well done! I especially liked how story mode worked, filling in the next commands to keep the sotry going but letting you edit them.

I played without story mode, then with. I think I found the slight majority of commands my first time through.

I enjoyed this a lot!
I think people who solve the final puzzle will feel very smart indeed. I saw it in an alternate form, which I don't want to spoil in the comments.

Sorry about that! I had a lot of bugs to fix and one of them was VERBS giving blank output. Unfortunately I had to rush a few things at the end.

It was one of those things where I thought "oh of course I couldn't have missed that, right?"

This is fixed in version 1.10.

Thanks, I didn't get to do all the testing I wanted with Zarf's regex script. So it's good to know I can make small updates to code misfires when needed.

However, the two bonus points I thought of last night will wait until after the comp :) ... an excuse to make a quick post-comp release!

What are the rules on in-comp updates? Is it just for bug fixes and not new content? E.g. I'd assume typos are okay to fix but adding a few new rooms should wait for post-comp.

Wow, thanks, that's very generous!

Still got a lot of cutting text down to do. Maybe I'll split it into two separate stories.

I had an idea, but I wanted to make sure it didn't run afoul of the word count.

It's something like this. You have equations on a chalkboard.

How many words would this count as?

There's a case for an equals sign being a word, or a minus/plus sign or a number e.g. x^2 is 2 words and not one.

Here are the examples.

Would line 2 and 3 be 5, or 3? (a^2 and b^2 could be 1 word or 2.)

x=2ab

y=a^2-b^2

z=a^2+b^2

I may be chiseling here but I'd like to know how much extra fun stuff I could fit in. Of course if there is any doubt I will assume these take the maximum number of words. One image or line doesn't mean much of course but there may be multiple so they could really add up.

Thanks!

Well, if there's any jam to have such an oversight, this one is it.

Oh wow! You did this by hand? That requires dedication. You're right there are other ways -- but so near the deadline, you probably didn't have the time to try anything fancy. I'm glad you pushed it out there.

Here are some tips. If you want to make the player actually type out north, you could just say...

understand the command "n" as something new.

xyzzying is an action out of world. understand "xyzzy" as xyzzying. carry out xyzzying: say "Wrong magic word.";

I may mention a few ways to do what you did, programmatically, later. It feels like being mr know it all here but I think it might be legit instructive and enjoyable. One way I thought of was writing a python script. The other involves properties in Inform 7. It's a really interesting (to me) exercise but I don't want to dump weird code on you without a warning.

Wait a minute. I feel totally, utterly, completely ripped off! :)

V bayl sbhaq avargl-gjb. V npghnyyl guvax vg jbhyq or vagrerfgvat gb svaq n jnl gb jbex guebhtu gur tnzr cebtenzzngvpnyyl onfrq ba gur grkg vg cevagrq onpx. Vg frrzf qbnoyr. V npghnyyl gevrq zber qverpgvbaf. Jryy, V guvax V qvq.

I also would love to see

qvfnoyvat gur DHVG naq ERFGNEG pbzznaqf jvgu "Abcr, gung'f abg gur zntvp jbeq!"

I enjoyed this too and also got stuck a bit on the banana. I think also one problem is (ROT13)

V nffbpvngrq onananf jvgu gebcvpny pyvzngrf naq fabj jvgu nepgvp pyvzngrf, fb V qvqa'g rknzvar gur fabj hagvy V gevrq rirelguvat ryfr.

And yes I agree once I saw it, it was clearly meant not to be hard.

I poked at the hints once when I needed the banana and Zeus did say "you have pretty much everything you need"

So I think it's just a matter of pseudocoding

(if player has sword and player does not have banana)Zeus says, "an embellishment for the sword has to be around somewhere. Search everywhere."(endif)

Thanks for answering the follow-up question I'd have had (on updates) -- it's a trivial thing, but it will be nice to slip in.

Clever and funny. Nice job riffing on the Neo-Twiny jam word requirements! I enjoyed finding all three endings. I'm glad I looked back through all the Neo-Twiny Jam entries.

(Oh, super-trivial typo, because I see pedantic: Gitfted -> Gifted)

This was a pleasant reminder that I'd been wasting my time a bit, without shaking me by the neck and haranguing me that time is valuable. It captured how I can swing from feeling like I'm doing nothing to feeling like I can't keep up the current pace, even when I know that's not helpful.

Most of us wrote 2 separate entries if we wanted to get 2 games into Neo Twiny Jam, but I'm very impressed you more or less packed 2 of them into 500 words! I really enjoyed the pictures along with the adventures.

Hooray to the callback to when computer viruses were, indeed, a very scary prospect. And for being able to change your name!

"May you find your own meaning within the story."

And I did. Maybe it's that I don't like to talk about the same sorts of things most people do, or read the same things. Or others. I thought it was really effective & the looping reminded me of much smaller things I'd waited to do or try but I said "ehh, not this time, life's okay enoguh, right?"

I'm glad I took a 2nd look through all the Neo Twiny Jam games. This was well worth it!

I think there was a really good sense of mystery about this. Having it translated from French is useful, too, because I enjoy the chance to practice my very rusty French. It reads very differently the second time through!

I'm surprised more people didn't comment on it here for the jam, even just to say nice job. That's probably just because it dropped at near the end.

(Oh, trivial typo: not would it -> nor would it.)

I'm glad I looked through this ... you've packed a lot of individuality and general thoughts into 500 words! While I don't think I can add enough to usefully review this on IFDB.org, it's entries like this that helped reenforce that, yes, it was worth going through the Neo-Twiny Jam entrants well after it was over.

Thanks, that's what I was going for -- and thanks for going across all the entries and keeping your intfiction thread going!

Impressive job staying with things and forging through! Problems like this can be really tough if you don't see the insight bit. (The problem is, now I've seen/worked through it, I forgot what it was like not to.)

Your comment makes me wish I'd printed out how people got through at the end, so they could compare it with the solution given in the walkthrough.

From someone who's had a lot of experience writing parsers, it's neat to see when people come over from choice.

Figuring out what you have to do was a good puzzle/problem. It's likely not something a more established parser author would think of doing & shows the value of new ideas and persepectives!

Also, I've been trapped in family dinners like this, too. It's no fun, even if things were much more benign for me.

Thanks for the devlog and the inspirational notes as well! And for writing the postmortem on intfiction.org too. (Maybe I missed the link to it here. I think people on itch would definitely be interested.)

I always kind of hated the trolley problem too. I'm glad to see someone kicking it when it's down.

Well, I don't know if it's down, actually. I'm just glad it's getting kicked.

Yes, without repeating! The Towers of Hanoi game is a clue.

Neevivat ng n (eryngviryl) fvzcyr fbyhgvba vf fvzvyne gb ubj fbyhgvbaf sbe Gbjref bs Unabv ner perngrq, ohg gung'f qbja gur yvar naq rkcynvarq ng gur raq.

Hmm, I should clarify that in-game. On the first level, there are 4 settings to get through:

1up 2up

1up 2down

1down 2up

2down 2up

Then on the next level,

1up 2up 3up

1up 2up 3down

1up 2down 3up

1up 2down 3down

1down 2up 3up

1down 2up 3down

1down 2down 3up

1down 2down 3down

So the object is to go through them all without hitting one twice. Flipping any switch changes it from down to up, or back. Hope this helps & sorry for the confusion!

I enjoyed this a lot. It made me glad I went through the Neo Twiny Jam after it was over. Cats are like that, aren't they?

Non-Coke and Pepsi brand soft drinks do bring back a lot of memories for me. This captured that well. There's more this did for me, but I won't spoil it here. The choice you gave was a strong one and nontrivial even if I could just save and reload to see both branches.

Thanks for the nice laugh! Coincidentally, I had just eaten a lot of toast in the past few days due to some bread I wanted to get rid of before it got moldy. Which deepened the moral dilemma in this piece.

I was amused you could click on the toast and the toaster.

I always find it interesting how Bitsy can soften the blow of tough thoughts to me. It helps me stick around to try to understand or jibe with more of them. This is a really good use of it!

It's also neat to me how this was entered in more than one jam. I don't use Itch.io much so I didn't realize you could do that. So this may also open up to me parts of itch.io I never really explored just by virtue of joining those jams!

This was really gripping! I can't say I liked the narrator, but I'd be as scared as he was in wartime. I'll say no more ... I don't want it spoiled for others. Just, for not being very long it's quite intense.

This didn't feel like my sort of entry when I saw it, but I'm very glad I took the time. Well done.

This was a stronger than expected experience for me. I'm not a long-distance runner, but it reminded me of long hikes at summer camp both where I was the first and last to finish, as well as other big long-term goals I'd achieved but maybe some friends hadn't.

I felt particularly conscious of how it was easy to sit back and know what the right choice was, but I could see myself getting careless and not making that choice in real life.

We all say we'd stick with Susan, but would we?

I played through a few times as I was curious what else would happen, and I got different and interesting endings, but all the same I'm glad you wrote the guide so we could see them all. It's something I want to come back to once I've looked at the other ParserComp entries. Who knows, I might use it as a way to take a break as I'm looking through the rest!