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Game Design Theory / Text Adventure Competition: The Winner's Circle!

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 19:00 Edited at: 11th Aug 2006 20:07
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First off, I'd like to thank all of our participants in our first-annual Text Adventure Competition. We all had a lot of fun judging these games, and we were pleasantly surprised by each of the entries. Even the lowest-scoring game was excellent and loads of fun, and we had a very difficult time judging each of them. We'd also like to thank our awesome sponsors for providing us with a fantastic grand prize package to offer to our contestants!

The top three games were very difficult to judge. Three of the four judges buckled down and studied the top games in great detail before finally applying a score to each of them, and it shows... the scores were pretty close. But after the averages were compiled, we figured out our grand prize winner. I'm sure you're all dying in anticipation to learn who won, so without further adieu, here's the grand prize winner and the top games in each category!

Grand Prize Winner
Melody Machine, with an average score of 8.0

Runners-Up
Snappy, with an average score of 7.7
Ninestar, with an average score of 7.3

Individual Judge Score Runners-up
Most Original Game
Snappy, with an Originality score of 9.1
Runner-up: A Text Adventure, with an Originality score of 8.1

Best Story Development
Melody Machine, with a Story Development score of 9.4
Runner-up: A Pirate's Tale, with a Story Development score of 6.6

Best Writing Ability
- TIE -
Melody Machine & Snappy, with a Writing Ability score of 8.9
Runner-up: Ninestar, with a Writing Ability score of 7.0

Best Technical Design
Ninestar, with a Technical Design score of 8.0
Runner-up: Snappy, with a Technical Design score of 7.2

We thank you all for participating in this year's competition, and we hope you all join us again the next time we host a Text Adventure contest! Congratulations to our winners, and if you didn't win, don't worry... we'll be holding this contest again in the foreseeable future, so you'll get a chance to refine your skills and try once again to take the top spot

Individual scores are listed below, in no particular order, and are put into code boxes. I did this for faster indexing, in case you only want to see your own game's score. And please don't get angry with me if you disagree with a particular score; I'm only one of many judges, don't shoot the messenger! But the idea is that you'll be able to work on any area where you didn't score as highly When the judges can agree on when we should hold the next contest, and when we get more prizes sorted, we'll post the information here in game design.

NOTE: Don't forget, your scores were rounded up whenever there was a fraction. Even if your average score should have only been 5.325, it was rounded up to 5.4. Just in case anyone says "hey, wait a minute, I earned more than I was supposed to earn!"

ANOTHER NOTE: The top three games in the contest had their scores averaged from the scores of three judges. The scores listed below are the scores awarded by the first judge who scored the game, hence why the totals are different. If you guys want, I can post the scores from all three judges... but I wanted to save some space and these should give the designers in question enough information to help improve their design characteristics

LAST NOTE, I PROMISE: Martin, you need to e-mail me as soon as you can with your full name, e-mail address, mailing address, and phone number so I can give that info to our sponsors. You can't get your prizes without doing that

A Pirate's Tale


Ninestar


When All is Said and Done


Melody Machine


Dark Knights


A Text Adventure


Snappy


Edit: I'm adding "When All is Said and Done" to this post to avoid triple-posting below


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 19:44
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Holy Frijoles! This has been exciting! I feel as though I got an "A" on my project even though I did not "win".

Matt, are you going to put links for the games so everyone can try them?

"So it goes."
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entomophobiac
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 19:50
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Some of them are already available in the old thread. You can check it for yourself. I know I tried NineStar from there, and I sent Melody Machine there as well. Will take a look myself when I get away from the horrors of work...
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 19:53 Edited at: 11th Aug 2006 19:59
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Maybe later this afternoon. I couldn't fall asleep last night so I've been up since... oh, wednesday night? lol. I'm going for a guiness book record here, although un-intentionally

Most of the games can be downloaded in the "sister-thread." Your game and two others need to be posted though. I'll get started in this post...

Here's Snappy, a top contender...

edit: Something that surprised me about the contest: Newcomers and veterans were extremely close in the scoring, and that wasn't intentional. I'm genuinely impressed with all of the games, especially Snappy (not to pick favorites)... you're virtually brand new to the community and you made a very high-quality game that came very close to taking the top-spot... I didn't see that coming hehe.


"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 20:03 Edited at: 11th Aug 2006 20:04
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Eh, I'll double post with one file here and the other in the main post. May as well get them in here now

Here's Dark Knights...


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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 20:47 Edited at: 11th Aug 2006 21:28
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entomophobiac, when I try to run Melody Machine I get the message


and when I press a key it just does the same thing again, and again... if I break out of it, or shut it down it still restarts with the same message! I have to reboot to get out of it.

There is nothing in the fonts directory for Melody Machine, is that the problem?

I downloaded it again and this time it had the file in the fonts directory... very strange.

"So it goes."
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 21:14
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That's an odd error. It's the same exact zip file I downloaded, and the other judges downloaded, and no one had a problem with the game. Maybe there was a decompression problem or something?

(still haven't gone to sleep lol)


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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 21:25
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Quote: "I'm genuinely impressed with all of the games, especially Snappy (not to pick favorites)... you're virtually brand new to the community and you made a very high-quality game that came very close to taking the top-spot... I didn't see that coming hehe."


Thank you! I am just delighted that anyone actually played "Snappy" and didn't think it sucked!

As for being a newcomer, I must point out that having a great community here helped immensely. There was one point where I was totally stuck and almost ready to give up before I got some help in the newcomer's corner.

Thank you again for making this opportunity!

"So it goes."
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entomophobiac
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 21:55
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Yes, this is most definitely a great community. And that was definitely a strange bug.

Though I must admit that the crappy ad hoc code that installed the font in the first place, while tested, continued to restart the game without ever installing the font... Which was kind of VERY odd, but a similar problem.

Hope it works ok at some point, though. The whole "necessary font" thing was definitely not intelligent, but I believed it necessary.

Idiotic...

I'll try Snappy when I get home. The score in originality definitely got me interested!
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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 22:28
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When I redownloaded it, the font was there, and it worked without a hitch. I don't know what happened the first time.

Your story in Melody Machine is very good, I love the old mystery style

"So it goes."
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entomophobiac
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Posted: 11th Aug 2006 23:50
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Jaded: Snappy starts off incredibly, I must say. Plenty of twists and turns. And craziness to boot.

Very interesting just to observe the sheer diversity in the entries. I mean, there are plenty of miles between Melody Machine and Snappy in terms of setting and storyline. But they were both contestants in the same contest, and I greatly enjoyed Snappy I must say. Especially the scalability.

I had so many scalability intentions... Like a "safe" path, where you would be in no danger at all. And a more action-oriented one. But time is always time, I'm afraid.
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Uncle Sam
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 01:40
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Congrats to the winner!

I don't know how a got such a low score, I only had a couple grammar errors, and my technical design too was good, I used a parsing method.

Uncle Sam
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 03:31
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As I've just told Entomophobiac via e-mail, I'm willing to ask the judge of each of the games to give a detailed description of their scores, available upon request. I'll be happy to provide them via e-mail if you'd like, or if you want the community as a whole to know why your score was the way it was, high or low, I'll post the judges notes here on the official thread. I know that three of us are cool with it, and I don't imagine Shane would say no either

Any ideas that any of you have for our next text adventure competition are more than welcome. We already know that we're going to allow for bigger games/ file sizes, and we're probably going to expand the scoring a bit as well, probably by including a new category and also by not rounding the scores as much, but this is all speculative right now. One of the judges expressed an interest in static 2D media playing a role, but I'm publically going to say that I'm opposed to the idea, hehe.


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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 03:42
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Entomophobiac: I think the text adventures must have been very hard to judge because of the diversity.

Uncle Sam: I think you really captured the flavor of the old text adventures in your "A Text Adventure". Your technical design seemed very good too. I don't understand how that part was scored really.

"So it goes."
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Uncle Sam
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 03:46
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Thanks Jaded.

Uncle Sam
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 03:55 Edited at: 12th Aug 2006 03:56
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They were *very* hard to judge. Not to throw stones, but scoring Ninestar was the one that caused us the most grief, hehe. Two of the judges kept changing their opinions regarding the game while scoring it and that one probably took the longest to settle on. Dark Knights caused two of our judges to argue... THAT was funny

Technical Design was based on the level of complexity, ingenuity/ creativity, and testing that went into the game's technical design. If we found bugs, or the code was hard to understand, or it was designed simply, then we scored it low. We'd score high if the game's difficulty was well-balanced, the code structure and layout was easy to navigate, and the play method was complicated. For example, Melody Machine used a simpler method of choosing a selection and that was that, but he also took care in adding special features, like a nifty combat system and cool text-based puzzles. His source was written using functions instead of subroutines, always a plus, and it was easy to navigate and had plenty of rem usage to make it easier on the judges. The technical design aspect of the contest was the biggest headache for most, if not all, of the judges and we usually ended up spending the most time on developing that score, hehe.


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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 04:44
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Thank you, Matt, for explaining

"So it goes."
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Darth Vader
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 04:48
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Congradulations everyone! I tried out ninestar and must say I am impressed! I also tried out A text adventure. I loved the way it was set out! Awesome! Now I am going to try Melody Machine to see how the winner did!
Great Competition everyone!
Ohh and a Big Thank you to Matt Rock for hoding the Compo!
Thanks Matt!


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Uncle Sam
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 05:22
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Thanks Darth, and thanks for the explanation Matt.

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Matt Rock
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 06:06
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You're welcome guys. Please enter our next competition! I want to do this one bigger and better in the future


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entomophobiac
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 11:54
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Sounds interesting. If there's just more time, I think I'll enter in future competitions as well. But time, time, time...
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Dr Manette
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 15:49
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I'd like to see a detailed explanation of how our games scores were concluded. It would help in making the text adventures better, especially if there were bugs or problematic areas. If you want, Matt, send mine (A Pirate's Tale) to the email link below...

How about a Text RPG? It could either be making an RPG Engine that includes battling, a store, and such or a full fledged game! It would be completely in text, of course.

Bio Fox...four guys, one computer, games like nobody's business.
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 17:44
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We've been discussing the potential of a Text RPG contest and we're 50/50 on it. The only thing really keeping us from doing it is that none of us are "big" on RPG's (amongst the judges I mean), although I can't speak for Shane (Shane, you should talk in the forums more lol, I know you read this ). But it's definitely something we're discussing.

Basically, we asked ourselves the following questions while scoring:

Originality: How unique is the game's general concept? How original is the story? If the player is going for realism, are they being realistic? And if they're taking creative liberties, how "creative" are said "liberties?"

Story Development: How well-plotted and thought-out is the story? Are there character archs? Is it structured how a story should be with an introduction, plot, climax, resolution, etc.? Does the author dedicate enough time to descriptive passages?

Writing Ability: How often does the author overlook spelling and grammatical errors? How well are their sentences and paragraphs structured?

Technical Design: What is the level of quality in the author's code? Do they use sub-routines and/ or "spaghetti code," or do they use well-plotted functions? Does the game utilize a listing method or a parser method, and if it's the latter, how direct do you need to be with the parser? Does the author try to implement creativity into their code, with innovative gameplay features?

Dr Manette, e-mail me if you'd like me to ask the judge who scored your game to give me any notes that he or she took down while scoring your game (and if they didn't keep the notes, I'll ask for their impressions). I've already done that for Jaded and hopefully she found it helpful.


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IBOL
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Posted: 12th Aug 2006 22:41
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hi matt,
i sent you an email request for a detailed scoring/analysis.
Quote: "but scoring Ninestar was the one that caused us the most grief"

i'd like to see why...
thanks,
bob

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http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=61670&b=8
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Jaded Gamer
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Posted: 13th Aug 2006 00:29
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Quote: "I've already done that for Jaded and hopefully she found it helpful."


I sure did, and thank you!

"So it goes."
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 13th Aug 2006 00:32
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Yahoo has temporarily locked my e-mail access while they try to figure out what's wrong with it. It looks like my problem has stumped them, lol. Seems like an odd procedure, closing down someone's e-mail temporarily, but eh, what can you do. Anyway, I should be able to respond to your e-mails later tonight. Just thought I'd let you guys know this in case you're like "woah, why is Matt not responding?"

Ento, did any of the sponsors contact you yet?


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Jeku
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Posted: 13th Aug 2006 04:58
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Congrats to the winners! I didn't have time to finish my entry.

---------------------

Matt---- you *need* to get away from free email hehehe... I happen to have a great webhost that gives me webmail & POP access--- I can give you one if you'd like. I have a bunch of domain names--- codercafe.com, gameshaven.com, and others that you can use if you'd like.

Or if you have a domain name let me host it for you where you can have an email address from it. I've done this for a few others, and I'll do this for you for free if you'd like. I just can't stand to see people using Hotmail & Yahoo


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entomophobiac
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Matt: No, they haven't. But seeing that it's sunday, I really don't think there has to be a problem because of it. You do know it's a sin to work on sundays?
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Matt Rock
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Posted: 14th Aug 2006 00:15
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I spent the entire day coding thus far... I'm going to hell!

It wasn't until very recently that I needed my personal e-mail for anything other than private stuff. As most people know I'm easily one of the worst (if not THE worst) web designer(s) on TGC, and so now I'm desperately trying to find a decent webmaster to develop my studio's website and with any luck we'll find one soon, and one of our requirements for the site is that it needs to offer e-mail for each member of the team (and the typical "support" e-mail addys). But if we don't find a websmaster and work doesn't commence by the end of this month, I should probably take you up on that offer Thanks Jake!


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Cash Curtis II
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Gmail is a good service, and free
Of course Matt Rock, it would be much cooler if you had a CashCurtis.com account. Imagine, MattRock@cashcurtis.com! Some of my awesomeness would undoubtedly rub off on you.

As for a text based RPG? - Blah.


Come see the WIP!
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Matt Rock
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lol the two people who I seem to debate with the most are fighting over who gets to host my e-mail there's something ironic about that lol.

My e-mail is finally back up (I waited around until 6:40am just to see it), but now I'm sleepy, so give me a few hours of rest and then I'll reply to the people who requested their scores via e-mail Probably some time in the early afternoon (yay long weekend!)


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Kevin Picone
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Posted: 14th Aug 2006 18:08 Edited at: 3rd Sep 2010 17:27
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Congratulations to the participants !

The winner has now been shipped with a shiny new electronic copy of http://www.PlayBasic.com. Enjoy !


New PlayBasic Learning Edition Released 24th April 2010
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UFO
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Wow, this is awesome! Why did you have to hide it in the game design theory board? I noticed the compo a week before it ended, so I couldn't join . I will definitely participate in the next one if there is one.

Just finished the prologue of Melody Machine. Its great! I love the music. It gives it a great feeling and atmosphere.


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Dr Manette
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Matt, is your email back up? If it is, I sent you an email about getting the judge's notes. Maybe you didn't get it.

Bio Fox...four guys, one computer, games like nobody's business.
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Matt Rock
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Sorry, my internet was down (UGH) for most of the day. It just randomly dropped out and Time Warner finally got around to fixing it. My net connection is cursed, lol. Anyway, I'll be e-mailing one of you tonight and one of you tomorrow. Sorry for the delay!

- Matt


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UFO
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Lol, The melody machine was the first game to have s***head as the word in hangman. That Tommy person is demented

Sorry, just had to say that


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Matt Rock
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I liked that about Melody Machine He took took the kiddie gloves off but didn't make it unnecessarily "dirty." I didn't even know it had music until UFO mentioned it lol. I played all of these with the sound off and I think the other judges did too (well, I know one of them did, I don't know about the other two judges though).


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entomophobiac
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I find it very interesting how much an end-product can stray from its original intention.

Most of my inspiration for MM came from the Hellraiser movie, but the metaplot and longer storyline could never be implemented, unfortunately. At first, the whole "text noir" comparison that I got as a commentary seemed strange to me. But when I played it through just to see what people could base that opinion on I realized something: none of the horror elements I had planned were actually IN the game...

I'm working on a very simple .PDF called "The Making of the Melody Machine," just as a small ploy. I'll post it here when it's done.
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entomophobiac
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Posted: 19th Aug 2006 13:05
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Here you go. I wrote it just for fun, and there's really not that much content to it either.

Read it if you can spare the time. Otherwise just download to delete

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