Until now, I’ve been managing my private collection of interactive fiction data as a plain text file with the scintillating name “gamedata.txt”. I originally created it to help me generate HTML pages for what is now called my Key & Compass website. And, not having the newest of computers (nor all that much hard drive space, nor fancy software), a text file was really the way for me to go. The basic design was one record per game, and a list of key:value pairs delimited by or-bars. Cheap and simple.  For example, this was (until recently) what the record for one of my games looked like:

gid:kraka02|g:Krakatoa Tuna Melt|fn:David|ln:Welbourn|yr:2002|sys:z5|evg:Speed-IF|ev:SpeedIF 10^−|vers:r2|ifid:ZCODE-2-021215-1E6E|tuid:b6fz0awms527hja0|b:2071|r:2007|wc:W+m|w:sp/sp_10-9.html#davidw|x0:b2071|rline:Release 2 / Serial number 021215 / Inform v6.21 Library 6/10

Over time, my needs evolved—I started assembling the games list for the XYZZY Awards, then became the de facto admin of IFWiki—and gamedata.txt had to evolve too.

During January, I gave some thought to the name fields: fn (firstname), ln (lastname), and sfx (suffix). About the only advantage I had from them was I could sort by a single author’s surname, but it was very poor if I wanted to record multiple authors, publishers, or porters. So I thought and thought and I kinda liked how IFDB used curly braces after author names to record their TUIDs, so if I wanted to say “Nick Montfort {as:porter}” or ‘Marius Müller {as:”Taleslinger”}’, I could.

So I abolished the (fn,ln,sfx) fields and started replacing them with (na,mult,pub,test,adap) fields for authors, multimedia contributors, publishers, testers, and adaptors respectively. (By adaptors, I mean porters and translators). Names would be delimited by semicolons, subfields would be delimited by commas, and the curly braces would enclose the subfields.

Choosing semicolons as delimiters meant that I could no longer use them in HTML-entity style sequences, so I borrowed Inform 7′s square brackets for substitutions, and so “Müller” became “M[uuml]ller”. And I had to invent [c] to mean comma in one case where it was needed in a subfield value:

na:Jonathon Rosebaugh {as:"His Imperial Majesty[c] Shortwinker the Fifth"}

Oh, and I also invented ^ to mean a non-breaking space in names where the “surname” is two or more words. “Surname” can also mean a pseudonym in its entirety, not counting leading articles.

About a third of way through editing gamedata.txt via Notepad, I got disenchanted with the curly braces. Although they were fine for readablility, I worried about parsing the darn things when all I wanted was a delimited between name-proper and name-details. So I chose a pair of plus-signs for the honour. A bit uglier, perhaps, but I thought I could live with it.

na:Ryan Stevens++as:"Rybread Celsius";Cody Sandifer

And then I realized that I had all but re-invented the ?key=value&key=value format at the ends of URLs except I’d chosen different delimiters. So that gave me a little confidence that I wasn’t completely mad.

You may be wondering what subfields I’m recording per name. Well, lessee…

• as:  For the name they chose to write as.
• aka: For another name the person is also known as, especially for ADRIFT authors where the real names aren’t as well known.
• role: For noting how the person contributed. For example, in the authors field, I might want to specify writer or programmer. In the adaptors field, I want to know if s/he’s a porter or translator.
• wna: His/her article name at IFWiki, if needed.
• pre: A bit of notation to display before the list of names.
• sfx: A bit of notation to display after the list of names.

So, all well and good. Except then I decide to chat a little about this on ifmud, and after the usual queries about why this isn’t in a database, someone told me about JSON (see json.org).

So I thought about it, and how ugly my gamedata.txt file is with respect to competitions and versions of different games and links to other sites, etc. … and so I’m moving all my IF data into a file with the scintillating name of gamejson.txt.

And when it’s all ready, I’ll let you all have a look at it, eh? And maybe I’ll make another post too.

_ missing a few AIF Comps as per Delron’s AIF comp page (2009 Christmas Micro Comp,  2002 AIF Pre-Comp (?))

_ simplfy the genre templates so we don’t have both {{fantasy}} and {{fantasync}}

_ review the Piracy 2.0 page

_ “composite room” ? “partitioned room”? } multi-room

_ //pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/ is the new official web page for the card. Zarf sez it’s okay to put on Starters page. Also, there’s a CC license on it. CC Attribution Share Alike 3.0

_ JiGcomp games are no longer “in comp”

_ JiGcomp game pages need placements

√ The Feelies //ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1321

_ TWIFcomp entries

_ training sequence

_ new Phoenix releases (9 games on ifarchive – rereleased 4 & 5 new one to go)

√ //ostatic.com/hugonomicon – maintained by Hugella

` The Man in the Rain – Feb 4, 2010, TADS 2 by Karl Adamson //bedroomcoder.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/the-main-in-the-rain-text-adventure-puzzle/

√ IceCreamJonsey ≡ Recchi

_ TWIF authors need to be credited

_ sf.net/projects/zlr (by vaporware)

√ Seattle IF newsgroup //groups.google.com/group/seattle-if

_ “synonym sickness” (see IFDB review of Myth)

_ “mini-game”

_ “Handy Kit” reimplements some of Spider and Web in I7

_ EGC Paper Chase

_ aggregate(d), composite, partitioned } multi-room

` www.inthecompanyofgrues/ is Neophyte’s blog

` saucersofmud.wordpress.com is Matt Weiner’s blog

` Matt Wigdahl’s is at //www.wigdahl.net/quern/

_ preparing to speak about IF

- – job interview-like questions

- – make a list of topics that might discuss

- – “elevator speech” (1-3 minute of exposition on a topic)

√ SF Bay Area IF Group //www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction (also at Twitter & Facebook)

_ what’s TerpEtude (Rob @ Waterpoint using it to debug his MOO Z-machine)

_ accretive PC (Varicella, Lock & Key, Spider & Web, Make It Good (?))

_ Game or story? Easy or difficult? Good for newcomers?

√ YOMIN: (vaporware’s) I6/ZIL IDE //yomin.sf.net

√ update authors of Grand Prix 2010 games that they wrote them.

√ Category:Floyd authors

_ results of JiGcomp arentyet on game pages, author pages

√ Add Ka and 43 to Short Titles

√ Add Violet to “Colours” theme

_ add links to [IFArchive]/mini-comps/gdc7 for JIGcmp games

√ Roofed takes place in 2040 (Games by years their story takes place)

√ Roofed “website” www.ghostswithshitjobs.com

_ Nitku would like the option to download the IFWiki DB (He thinks it’s just a setting in MediaWiki)

_ do game pages for PAX Speed have links to CF transcript?

_ people who participated at PAX East (panels, readings) need crediting on their pages

_ make sure PAX people’s pages also link to their PAX related blogs and pics

√ 2009 XYZZY Awards ceremony transcript

_ Speed-IF y=1/x game pages

_ Category:Inform 7 extensions

_ ADRIFT modules ??

_ T3′s old list is going

_ promote Zarf’s card on Starters page

_ more on Interpreters

_ Front page – PAX, Get Lamp, USB, Outreach

_ Grand Prix 2010 status?

_ /eblong.com/zarf/tmp/play-if-card/

√ T3 on LJ //community.livejournal.com/tads3/

√ add PAX speed game pages

√ add PAX speed game credits to People pages

√ Spring Thing? Apr 8 / 9

√ latest ADRIFT games

√ Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma was released out of speedif to IFDB

_ Meretzky is in Lobsters On A Plane

√ Find Andy Part 1 (Little Britain) by TommoHawk, 9-Mar; Ad4

√ GeoQuest by Dan Munroe Rel 4 090928 I7 //geocache-if.appspot.com/geoquest.html

_ all testers of Broken Legs must be credited on their pages

_ Post-Post-Comp results!

√ Merchandise category? Swag? — Commercial games? – Feelies, T-shirts, ADRIFT – Prizes, Golden Banana – Books?

√ move Emily’s Cheese Directory to IFWiki

√ http://www.darkweb.com/~benrg/if-decompilers/ (including Mrifk (decompiles Glx) and SCADS 2)

√ Cat:Commercial games