TWIFcomp is a competition for tweet-sized interactive fiction. Why? Because the world needs more strangely-themed interactive fiction competitions and this one requires little time to write, play, and judge. The idea grew out of a thread on usenet, and seems like just the thing to take IF into the attention span-challenged future. The basic premise: write a complete game in 140 characters. Here’s an example: 43.

Congratulations to TWIFcomp winners:

1. Aaron Reed, “> by @”
2. Adam Thornton, “Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis”
3. Andrew Plotkin, “You See Chaos Here.”
4. Evgeny  Bychkov, “SHOOT YOUR EVIL TWIN…”

As soon as they send me their addresses, I will mail out their fabulous prizes.

Scores are posted on the TWIFcomp website, and a summary spreadsheet can be downloaded.

A compressed file containing all materials from TWIFcomp (including TWIFplus games) can also be downloaded.

Thanks to everyone who participated and supported TWIFcomp — now, you better start work on your IntroComp 2010 games!

– Jack

Rules

1. Dates:
   • Submission: I must receive your game (both source code and compiled game) by email by 16:00 GMT on Sunday, April 25, 2010.
   • Games will be posted to this site later that day, and voting will commence, again by email (see voting rules, below).
   • Voting will conclude at 16:00 GMT on Saturday, May 1, 2010.
   • Results will be tweeted (by @dhakajack) on Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 16:00 GMT.
   • For the tweet-challenged, results will be formally posted on this page  on Sunday, May 2, at 22:00 GMT.
2. The Games
   • Games may be a maximum of 140 characters. White space is not included in the count, but punctuation is.
   • What’s white space? Formatting characters, like space, tab, line feed, and new line (carriage return).
   • The game logic may be written in any programming language (Tads2, Tads3, Inform6, Inform7, Perl, LISP, Z80 assembler, etc.).
   • The game content may be written in any language (English, French, Klingon, Quenya, etc.)
   • The game must be interactive.
3. Game Submission Procedure
   • After extensively testing your game, send me an email (address at bottom of page) including the following:
     • Your real name
     • A short description of your work (your description may be longer than the work itself)
     • The source code for your game
     • Indicate the programming language/version in which the game was programmed.
       • It must be possible for someone else to exactly reproduce the distributed version from the source code
     • Attach a copy of your game in whatever format you’d like it to be distributed
   • Up until the submission deadline (Sun, Apr 25, 16:00 GMT) you can send updated versions of your game.
   • No more than three game submissions per author.
4. Behavior during the competition
   • There is no restriction on communication.
   • I will make a short blog post for each game, tagging it with TWIFcomp2010.  Anyone (including authors) can comment on these entries.
   • Postings that cross the line into troll-land will be deleted. I have complete (mua-ha-ha!) and unapologetic editorial control on this.
   • Each post will include at least the author’s name, a link to the playable game file, and a link to the source code. If the game is playable online (e.g., via parchment), I’ll include a link for that as well. If the author provided a description (or instructions, diatribes, etc.) it will be posted with these links. Linking to the source code rather than displaying it immediately is meant to avoid spoilers.
5. Voting
   • Authors may not vote on their own games.
   • Beta testers can vote. Like there will be beta testers. Hah.
   • A voter must vote on a minimum of three games.
   • A voter may vote only once per game.
   • Voters must base their opinion on the first two hours of game play. That should not be a problem in this competition.
   • To vote, send me an email listing the titles of the games and a rating for each game from one (painful) to ten (best. game. ever.)
6. Prizes:
   • All winners will receive an authentic TWIFcomp certificate, printed on real paper and signed by me.
   • First Place:  One roll of duct tape.
   • Second Place: One package of ramen (beef flavor).
   • Third Place: A pair of lucky dice (2d6).
   • Runner Up:  A pokemon card of my choosing.
   • Should one author occupy more than one position, they will be considered to have won the higher prize, with other contestants moving up.
   • Prizes will be distributed by surface mail.
7. Intellectual Property Nitty Gritty
   • Game content must not violate other people’s intellectual property rights.
   • All games submitted to this competition, both the source code and distribution version of the game, will be considered to be released under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 3.0 license.

FAQ

1. How can a competition about games of only 140 characters require a FAQ?  Everything requires a FAQ.
2. What is GMT?    Greenwich Mean Time.  Note that GMT doesn’t vary with daylight savings time. GMT is particularly convenient for people in Iceland, which is on GMT all year. I am not in Iceland, so it can’t be said that this is self-serving.
3. How will you count characters? My first inclination would be to do something like this:  “cat yourSource.txt | perl -pe ‘s|[\s]||g’ | wc -c”
4. What about strange accented characters and symbols? Every unicode code point is considered one character.
5. What about ligatures (conjoined characters)? Now, we’re getting exotic. Again, I’d fall back on the number of unicode code points required to form the glyph.
6. What is the definition of interactive? That’s open for debate. People can weigh their concept of interactivity in the their voting.
7. Shouldn’t white space be included? You could make a case that tweets usually include white space, or that the rules slightly favor I7 because curly braces count but tabs don’t, but 140 characters is already restrictive enough. Besides, twitter doesn’t preserve tabs, line feeds, etc. It would get complicated, trying to figure out whether something is in DOS (CR/LR) or unix (CR) text. Spaces are greatly overrated. TwitterIsAllAboutCompression. Counting white space would lobotomize the games beyond recognition. So yeah. If someone whats to run SpaceLessComp next year, let me know.
8. Do I need to include a title or byline in the game? No, but if you do, it counts towards the character limit.
9. What colo(u)r is the duct tape?  It depends where you live:  either gray or grey.
10. What about libraries? You can understand how it is difficult to make a general rule to cover libraries/include files. The intent of these rules is to establish a fair and level playing field, to give authors an opportunity to express their creativity, and to avoid restrictions beyond the already draconian length limit.  I’m afraid that if I say that all libraries are okay, I’ll get a ten character game that kicks off calls to a custom-written library the size of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. On the other hand, most of these authoring systems are built on top of libraries, and it is hard to say where the core language begins and ends. Also, people are accustomed to using library functions, and today’s optional library may be tomorrow’s core system. So, here’s what I’ll propose: You can use libraries that are publicly available on the internet, but no version that has come out after announcement of this competition (i.e, after April 9, 2010). The contest is only on for two weeks, and I don’t think many  libraries will change in that period. This stipulation will assure that everyone has equal access to the libraries and that no one has gamed the library specifically for the competition. However many characters you use in referencing and accessing the library, that would count towards your character limit of 140. For example, if your source contained the phrase include locked_doors_and_windows.lib; that would cost you 36 characters. And no, you can’t rename the library file.  Whatever the library file was called on the 9th of April 2010, that’s what it should be called in your game. Arbitrary, yes, but that rule is needed for consistency and fairness.  If you do reference a library in your game, when you email me with your game submission, please include the library file and a URL indicating its source. I must be able to find the library at that URL for it to be considered valid.  Since all games will be considered to be released under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 3.0 license, any library which is included as part of the project must be compatible with this this license. Phew.
11. Submitting ADRIFT games: Since the games are constructed in a graphic user interface, the character limit doesn’t mean a lot. However, ADRIFT can be exported as text. If you can squeeze an entire game into an *.amf file (the basic structure of the file takes up most of the 140 characters), that text file can be submitted to the comp. Please submit the corresponding *.taf file as well.