User:Dswxyz

Hi. I'm David Welbourn.

I've done a handful of things related to Interactive Fiction over the years, but I'm probably best known for my collection of verbose walkthroughs.

I've also written a handful of Speed-IF games, authored a silly game called Cheeseshop, beta-tested some games, converted the DM4 from PDF to HTML, coded up many many rooms on ifMUD, am a contributor to Baf's Guide, wrote one review for IF-Review, assembled the list of eligible games for the XYZZY Awards for a few years, wrote the beginning of The Fox, The Dragon, and The Stale Loaf of Bread for IntroComp 2005, ...

... and I'm helping out with this IFWiki. Of course I am.

To-Do List

Oh, there's just TONS of work to do. You just don't know.

• Make game pages for every IF Comp game and every Speed-IF game.
• Start a IFWiki Projects category or page and populate it with projects to work on. In particular, there should be a project for each of the following IF languages: ADRIFT, Alan, Hugo, Inform 6, Inform 7, Quest, TADS 2, and TADS 3. There should also be a cross-system project (I have yet to come up with a nifty name for it) that works towards comparing bits and pieces of the languages.
• Much more work needs to be done with the Social issues, Game help, Undesirable features, and similar categories.
  • Some game help pages I'm itching to write: ivy, well, horse, match, banana, feather, egg, tree, chasm.
• Add How It Begins and IFIDs to as many game pages as I can. All the pages relating to IFIDs and the Treaty of Babel could do with more info too.
• I still need to create more Feature Theme templates.
• Likewise, there needs to be more Feature Articles, and they too should cycle. Although not as capriciously as I envision the Themes would. A Feature Article should ideally be there for one to two weeks. But I wouldn't mind if the Theme changed every time the Main Page was refreshed. Some care will need to be taken to allow the Feature Article to co-exist with, or be co-opted by the BIG IMPORTANT NEWS items that we sometimes have in the heavy border boxes.
• Go through all the Erins pages and fix the game references to IFWiki standards. Also, make sure every game that was either an Erins winner or finalist, those games' pages must properly report their Erins statuses.
• Maybe create Erins templates that cluster awards together.
• Cover art
  • IFDB is displaying some lovely cover art that I'm sure could be used on IFWiki as well.
  • Finish adding the cover art to Christopher Cole's games. (NOTE: His homesite seems to have disappeared Nov/Dec 2007. Hopefully this is only temporary.)
• Go through the ADRIFT games' pages and add ShadowVault download, walkthrough, and review links where appropriate. Report to David Whyld any problems found.
• Go through the AIF games' pages and add aifcommunity download, walkthrough, and review links where appropriate. Report to A. Ninny any problems found with his AIF list.
• More game lists. In particular, we should have game lists for games that feature time travel, vampires, and zombies.
• Also, I'd like to have a template at the bottom of a game page that lists succinctly the game lists that that game is listed on. Possibly overkill, but would provide a way to find another game with that common characteristic.
• Real people in IF games: Need to start making a set of pages that list as succinctly as possible which games feature famous people like Edison, Jesus, Shakespeare, Mother Theresa, or Justin Timberlake (just to name a few). I don't want an individual page for each of these people, but there should be something.

Semi-relevant News in My Life

Eep. My monitor esplode

• My home computer monitor had a catastrophic failure last night, so I'm gonna be necessarily absent from IFWiki (and everything else computer-related) until I get a new monitor. (Typing this from the public library.) Hopefully you'll all be able to get along without me for a bit. Hey, it even might be better without me for a while, eh? I like the new stuff already. I'll be back when I can. -- David Welbourn 13:00, 10 August 2007 (EST)
• Yay, got another monitor on the cheap. I'm back on the air. More or less. -- David Welbourn 11:51, 11 August 2007 (EST)

Moving

• I'll be moving from one city to another sometime during the month of October 2007, so there may be some downtime for me when my phone line, ISP, and computer aren't all in synch. -- David Welbourn 20:14, 9 October 2007 (PDT)
• I'm currently online only from the library; I expect my phone to be rerouted tomorrow, so my appearances here will be spotty. -- David Welbourn 10:56, 28 October 2007 (PDT)
• I'm having crazy problems getting online at home. My new ISP, Bell Sympatico, managed to misrecord my address, postal code, phone number, and not include any access codes in the installation package. The agent I talked to this morning claims I'll have access by Thursday or Friday. We'll see. I'm getting a mite tired of running to a library for a mere hour or so of 'net time every day, during library hours, of course. -- David Welbourn 10:42, 19 November 2007 (PST)
• Latest news from Bell Sympatico: my "due date" is November 30th, midnight, and I won't be able to log on before then because of my "move request". Bell originally gave the wrong address, wrong postal code, and wrong phone number to Sympatico, and only Bell was permitted to update that record, and that's being interpreted as a "move". Of course, the way I see it, I've been denied proper 'net access for a month. -- David Welbourn 14:30, 27 November 2007 (PST)

Good News and Bad News

• Thanks to nothings, Gunther, and other ifMUDdizens, I have a new hard drive installed in my machine and should be able to start tackling some of my more ambitious projects soon -- except that I got clobbered by a bicyclist on Thursday night, spraining my right wrist/hand, so I'm doing everything with only my left hand. It's gonna be difficult signing the rent check this month. Computer stuff will have to wait a little longer, ubfortunately. -- David Welbourn 09:56, 27 September 2008 (PDT)
  • Very much belated, that "sprain" last year was a fracture. My wrist was in a cast all during IF Comp 2008, so I didn't play many of the entries at all. Even though it's all healed now, it still doesn't feel quite right. Some very mild soreness has persisted, alas. But at least I can type two-handed and use a can opener again. All the important stuff. :) -- David Welbourn 04:24, 27 September 2009 (PDT)

Links

• Key & Compass - David Welbourn's IF Index Page.