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.
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, and also code up a way so they'll rotate automatically or come up at random. I hate that it just sits there until I can be motivated to add a new one.
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.
Finish adding the cover art to Christopher Cole's games.
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.
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)

Links

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