Sounds good to me. But there are a lot of authoring tools around that already do all the lexical analysis, parsing and pattern matching for you. You don't need to write something from scratch, unless you really want to.

Hi there! 

Firstly thanks for your interest. 

Unfortunately yes it does seem, from your description, that the game falls just outside of what ParserComp itself classes as an eligible game. I know when I wrote te the rules that I had to be clear and have a definition in mind. So ParserComp itself defines an eligible parser game as:

"To be eligible for participation in ParserComp your game must have text input, a text parser system and text output as the primary mechanism of control." 

Now, if the game allows free-text entry as well alongside the numbered options ("get ball and put ball in box" for example) then I would be happy to stretch the rule; but if its purely number selection then I'm afraid not. 

Hope that helps and sorry to be the bearer of bad news. 

Adam 

Not a problem, these things happen! 

Have you managed to submit now? Is everything ok? 

Adam 

Under the rules of the competition, the game must be previously unpublished, so I'm pretty sure that would rule it out.

For testing, you can ask at https://intfiction.org/c/playing/beta-testing/24

For the game with cartoon images, that would be okay to enter in next year's competition, providing the primary input is via commands entered on the keyboard. Clickable images should be considered an option. You must be able to play the game without needing to click on images. The fact that it only runs on a DOSBox emulator doesn't matter, but it will restrict your audience. Windows executables tend to rate very poorly in IFComp and I imagine the same will prove to be true in ParserComp. Have you considered Adventuron? That encourages graphics and runs in a browser, so it is multi-platform.

This is just my impression. Adam has the final say.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your interest and considering entering ParserComp!

As per the response from Garry i'm afraid that, yes, we would class this as previously released.  The only scenario I can envisage where we could be flexible is if a game was released and then later was so heavily re-worked as to essentially be a new game, and even then it would need careful consideration.

Hope your game design goes well, look forward to reading about it in IntFiction etc

Thanks

Adam