HugoComp 2012

All us Hugo users thought 2011’s HugoComp was a success, and now we’d like to do another one. Today is the official start date!

Again, there are no required themes, but there are suggested themes for those looking for inspiration. Considering the whole Mayan calendar debacle (that was disproved but did it really need to be in the first place?), games should have some element dealing with an apocalypse or some form of running-out-of-time. It is also highly encouraged that the game contains a “sick drop.”

Games must be submitted by the end of December 21st, wherever you are. I’ll update this thread again when I decide where you should submit it. I think Royce Odle offered to put up a page or something.

Just because several people have asked, yes, games do need to be written in Hugo, with one notable exception. After some consideration, people are also allowed to code in ZIL. The big difference is that ZIL games must also be submitted with source code.

Even though we call it a competition, everybody who finishes a game is a winner! Unlike the IF Comp were your game is likely to receive dozens of reviews, with us, it might receive as many as a handful! Still, it should be fun.

On the off chance that there are new faces out there thinking about checking out Hugo, here are some resource links:
Official Hugo homepage
Hugo forum at joltcountry.com
Hugo by Example, a Hugo code wiki

What do you mean by a “sick drop”?

Interesting. I’m not an expert on Infocom – the Infocom era was well before my time and I’ve only played two of Infocom’s games to completion – but I think Hugo seems very Infocom-like. Probably even more so than Inform.

I’m in, I think. I pretty much have an idea ready to code, just a couple details to be figured out first.

The suggestion stems out of the joltcountry forum’s recent fascination with dubstep*, so while some will probably take the suggestion literally using Hugo’s multimedia capabilities, the suggestion is intentionally open to interpretation.

  • In dubstep, the “sick drop” is the part of the song where it starts going wuh-wuh-wuh**.

** This is the best description I’ve been able to find.

ZIL? Wow! That’s right up my alley! Although I prob won’t actually write a game. Too bad, huh? I think my only semi-published game that wasn’t an example for a library was my silly ZIL example “Pick Up the DECsystem-20 and Die.” If anyone wants a copy let me know. One room, one object, a few actions can be done on the object with various results. Long live Z3!

Okay, I’ve decided to paste my ZIL example into this topic. Be warned though, it’s very silly. Here goes.

"Pick Up the DECsystem-20 and Die"
"A Very Simple and Silly ZIL Example Game"
"Written April 18, 2010 by Jayson Smith"
"Requires ZILF 0.3 and its associated library."

"First we specify the Z-code version."
"Here, ZIP means Z3."

<VERSION ZIP>

"Here is the release number."

<CONSTANT RELEASEID 1>

"Now we specify the game banner."

<CONSTANT GAME-BANNER
"Pick Up the DECsystem-20 and Die|
A Simple and Silly ZIL Example Game by Jayson Smith">

"A ZIL Program always starts with a routine named GO."

<ROUTINE GO ()
    <CRLF> <CRLF>
    <TELL "Through a time warp, you have been transported back to 1984.
    Even more amazing than that, you have entered the offices of the legendary game publishing company Infocom.
    What's more, you have just accepted a job as an implementer... Wait a minute, this must be a parallel universe.
    At any rate, you are taken to complete your final test. The company's DECsystem-20 mainframe is here.
    Just don't pick it up, or else you'll die. Yeah, definitely a parallel universe." CR CR>

    "The V-VERSION routine prints the game banner and version information."

    <V-VERSION> <CRLF>

    "Now we establish the player's initial location."

    <SETG HERE ,INFOCOM>
    <MOVE ,PLAYER ,HERE>

    "Give the player the room's description."
    <V-LOOK>

    "Here's the main loop, which processes player input and calls appropriate routines."
    "This loop repeats until the game ends."

    <REPEAT ()
        <COND (<PARSER>
                <PERFORM ,PRSA ,PRSO ,PRSI>
                <APPLY <GETP ,HERE ,P?ACTION> ,M-END>
                <OR <META-VERB?> <CLOCKER>>)>
        <SETG HERE <LOC ,WINNER>>>>

"And now, allow me to introduce the world model."

<INSERT-FILE "parser">

"Objects"

"The room where this game takes place."

<ROOM INFOCOM
    (IN ROOMS)
    (DESC "Infocom Headquarters")
    (LDESC "A large room in the headquarters of Infocom.")
    (FLAGS LIGHTBIT)>

"Now here's an object we can play with."

<OBJECT DEC20
    (DESC "DECsystem-20")
    (IN INFOCOM)
    (FDESC "The DECsystem-20 mainframe is chugging away as the implementers work.")
    (SYNONYM DECSYSTEM COMPUTER MAINFRAME MACHINE)
    (FLAGS TAKEBIT)
    (ACTION DEC20-R)>

<ROUTINE DEC20-R ()
    "This routine is one big COND. We're checking if the verb is various things, and
    taking appropriate actions."
    <COND (<VERB? EXAMINE>
        <TELL "Several large machines make up Infocom's mainframe. Within is stored, among other things,
        the source code and story files for all games, design documents, development tools, and
        other things the public will never see. If it were damaged, Infocom's work would definitely be disrupted.">)
        (<VERB? TAKE>
            <TELL "You pick the most important-looking of the machines and start to lift it up.
            At that moment, your superhuman powers, which you didn't know you had until this instant, kick in.
            You are able to lift the machine high above your head. However, the effects are short-lived,
            and it falls on your head, squishing you." CR>
            "Now we call JIGS-UP, since the player is now a pancake."
            <JIGS-UP "Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all.">)
        (<VERB? PUSH>
            <TELL "You push on the most important-looking of the machines, and finally, you get it to fall over with a resounding CRASH!
            The implementers all rush in to see what's going on. They find the fallen machine,
            and start to tell you to get out of the building right now!" CR>
            <TELL "Just then, a time warp opens up, and you jump through it.
            Now you're sitting back in front of your computer... Guess you just can't have it all." CR CR>
            <TELL "Thanks for playing this silly demo game!" CR>
            "So the player has won... or at least, reached the happier of
            this game's two endings. So we exit outright."
            <QUIT>)>>

Thanks, Jayson! (If anybody complains that such code is off-base, I asked him to paste it here so everybody could get a quick idea of what ZIL code looks like.)

Well, this year’s Open House has wrapped up (you’ll notice it says 2013 in the announcement below instead of 2012- when I started this thread, I had forgotten we had already used 2012 the previous year). Five games were submitted. None used ZIL, but we had several interested parties and a ZIL-coding fest has been tentatively planned for sometime this year.

Anyhow, if you’d like to check out the games:
http://www.joltcountry.com/index.php/features/hugo-open-house-competition-2013

“Waiting” and “Clockwork Boy 2” don’t seem to be available. Just FYI.

I just downloaded both.

Thanks, I had just deleted that folder as I hadn’t realized that the announcement was pointing to those versions (which were the pre-testing releases until I just re-uploaded them now). I’d recommend that anyone who downloaded those more than 20 minutes ago download them again.

The CB2 link also changed from a .hex to a .zip so you may need to reload that page for the correct link to show up. Thanks again.

Fek. Robb’s game is a terabyte.

Wish I’d found the time to enter & learn hugo. I still want to look at the games. Thanks for posting this.