UPDATE: Glorious Trainwrecks and the Klik of the Month

[kisrael]

The Klikth Day of Klikmas (Klik of the Month Klub #6) is happening tomorrow, Saturday Dec 15, 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern....

a 2 hour online game jam... come and join the fun! Holiday theme this time.

 

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Hey there!

 

So for a few months now I've been hanging out on a site called glorioustrainwrecks.com . A "Glorious Trainwreck" is a game whose reach exceeds its grasp, a game that is awful in a great way or great... it tends to be focused on using this old gamewriting tool called "Klik & Play", something that's from the early days of Windows and feels like it -- but there's no restriction on what platform you use, there's been a text adventure there recently, and I tend to use this one Java-based "Processing" environment.

 

So, every month the site hosts an event, the Klik of the Month, it meets 7PM US Eastern Time, for people to write the gamiest game they can in 2 hours. Two hours, that's it. Some cheating is encouraged, but by-and-large the goal is to bust through creative game-writing blocks and just put together something wonderfully, rhinocerously terrific. People gather on IRC and cheer each other on and ask questions and compare notes and swagger and cry. The camaraderie is great, and I think making a game is such a rewarding. Most people work in KNP, but uou could even do something in Batari BASIC (or ASM if you were THAT hard core ) though you might have to tell people how to fire up an emulator...

 

ANYWAY, I know this might seem weird and/or intimidating at the outset, especially for non-coders. But it's really a pretty friendly happening. I just completed two FAQs, one on the event http://glorioustrainwrecks.com/?q=wiki/KotM_N00B_FAQ and one on KNP itself, http://glorioustrainwrecks.com/?q=wiki/Learning_KNP_FAQ . On that site, you can also see a lot of the prior works and ongoing projects.

 

So, in short, its two hours well spent. There's great support and camaraderie, and games are... well, they occupy a great space in pop culture and the human condition. Playing games is such a human thing to do, and MAKING video games ... the ability to create a fun and interactive system that no one has ever seen before -- at the risk of sounding all high-falutin', I really find it something special in terms of human history and experience.

 

Hope to see some of you there!

Edited December 14, 2007 by kisrael

[kisrael]

Just under 2 hours :-)

[uosipa llamxew]

Wow, cool! I'm pretty familiar with KNP (and the other klik products) and this sort of thing sounds like it is right up my alley. Thanks for the link!

[kisrael]

Wow, cool! I'm pretty familiar with KNP (and the other klik products) and this sort of thing sounds like it is right up my alley. Thanks for the link!

Hey thanks for joining in!

That was fun as usual. Which product did you use for yours?

[uosipa llamxew]

I used Multimedia Fusion 2.

 

It is kind of difficult coming up with a playable game idea in such a short time, but it was pretty fun trying. I'd still be very interested if you guys decide to do a more collaborative effort in the future.

[kisrael]

(bump for The Klikth Day of Klikmas (Klik of the Month Klub #6))