games/mini-comps/no-inventory/I-comp.txt

Subject: Winners of the I-Comp announced!
Date: 05 Mar 1999 16:02:06 PST
From: "Michael Gentry" <edromia@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction

"FINALLY", chorus the howling masses, "the moment we've been breathlessly
waiting for for like WEEKS is finally here!!"

Yes, it's finally here. The results of the InventoryComp, or InvComp, or
I-Comp. The envelope in my hands is practically on fire.

For the benefit of the roughly 99.8% of you out there who have absolutely no
memory of this comp whatsoever, the point of I-Comp was to write a
functional game with absolutely no inventory whatsoever, by whatever design
mechanic you could conceive of. My more-or-less exact words were: "If, at
any point, I can type 'I' and get a response other than 'You are
empty-handed', your game will be disqualified." This turned out to have some
bearing.

So, without further ado, here is the exhaustive list of every single game
that was entered into the contest, ranked from lowest to highest score:

3RD PLACE:
"Downtown Tokyo, Present Day" by John Kean, aka Digby McWiggle.
It was brought to my attention that DTPD, previously released, had already
achieved the lofty goal of inventorylessness, so I checked it out and
sonuvagun he was right. I only gave him third place, though, because the
other two contestants did go through the trouble to put out some original
code, and also because he rendered my entire comp largely pointless. Nice
try, though, Digby. Located at
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/tokyo.z5 .

2ND PLACE:
"Camping!" by Gunther Schmidl.
A minimalist one-puzzle, one-room, one-joke game that neatly buttonhooks my
anti-inventory stricture by a clever play on my exact wording of the rules.
I know I said that entries would be judged by their cleverness, but if I
went around congratulating everyone for being a smart-ass I wouldn't get
anything else done. It was pretty funny, though. Located at
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive/camping.z5 .

1ST PLACE:
"Annoyed Undead" by Roger Ostrander.
A short but enjoyable little adventure by a newcomer to the world of Inform.
The PC is a vampire who wakes up after a millennium-long nap only to
discover that someone has built a cathedral on top of his crypt; hence the
title. Inventorylessness-ing factor: you can't touch anything directly
because it's consecrated and thus deadly to the flesh of the damned, which I
thought was a pretty clever trick. Funny in that Unkkulian/Zorkish sort of
way. The puzzles were straightforward but did stump me briefly, which is
just about precisely how long I ever like to be stumped by anything, so that
was all right. I don't recall stumbling upon any bugs, per se, although
there were numerous objects that were described but did not actually "exist"
in the game world; implementing most of them as scenery objects would fix
this minor issue up easily. All in all, a fine first-time offering, one that
I wouldn't mind seeing polished up and even expanded upon. Bravo, Mr.
Ostrander. Located at ftp://ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive/undead.z5 .

Thanks for entering, everyone. Good night!

-M.