we didn't do sekret santa last year cause "we forgot" and this year it falls unto me. Welcome back to "THE RETURN OF" Glorious Trainwrecks Sekret Satan 2023!

This year I'd like to start by addressing a query people have asked about the Sekret Santa event, because it seems a lot of you had this concern:

Q. I haven't finished a previous year's Sekret Santa, is it still okay for me to enter again this year?
A. It IS okay! please do not feel bad about entering Sekret Santa even if you couldn't finish a previous one.

We're all doing this for free, and it seems unreasonable to force someone to finish an overdue assignment without pay. this is meant to be fun, not a job.

if you didn't finish an old santa, then that is what happened and we must simply move on and accept it.

"ALL DEBTS ARE FORGIVEN"

I used to have a recurring nightmare where my teachers tracked me down and forced me to do all the homework I never completed. Let's not make that nightmare a reality.

Onward!

The Instructions:

Step 1: Post your list in the comments below. A short list of what you want your game to include. There are a few additional constraints to this this year, (see below)

Step 2: On 8 December, You will be told your recipient, and you will be tasked with making a game for them. You will also be invited to one of two discord servers where you can talk about developing your project without your recipient knowing! unless I forget this part! it's my first year running this

Step 3: Then you will submit your games before the soft deadline of 5th january OR ANY TIME AFTER!! I'm not the boss of you!

Additional Constraints on lists:

I noticed in recent years lists were frequently becoming longer, more complicated, and highly specific. people were treating the list like they were commissioning a specific dream game, which is not how we want this to work, or fun for the list's recipient to make something that might be out of their abilities to actually make.

Instead of enforcing rules on how much you're allowed to request, I instead wanted to just make people aware of this and determine the fairness and length of their list using their own intuition. (recommended about 4, 5, or 6 bullet points)

try and avoid requesting a specific genre, and remember to allow your recipient to play fast and loose with what you put on your list. it's their game, and you may be surprised by the end result not resembling what you had in mind! that's part of the fun!

Good luck!!!

24th of April is Glorious Trainwrecks' 15th anniversary, so let's have a game jam! We'll start two days before and go about a week after. Feel free to add games made before then as well. Participants may make games in Klik'n'Play, Knytt Stories, Construct, Clickteam Fusion, Game Maker, Ren'py, Bitsy, RPG Maker, Powerpoint, or anything that games can be made in. (Please let people know if your game requires anything special to play, though!)

SPECIAL CHALLENGES:
--Make a game in two hours
--Make a game that looks like it was made in two hours
--Make a game in a new-to-you engine
--Make a game in an older/more "basic" engine
--Make a game celebrating the LBGT+ community
--Make a game about your favorite game
--Make a game about your daily life
--Make a game about anything you want!
and most importantly of all...
--Have fun!!!

the legend of zelda: breath of the wild (2017)

"Open World" games are the current "hot" thing in video games right now. these games are vast, have massive budgets and take years to make. but I believe that they can be made within weeks, on a budget of $0.

far cry

the goal of the open-world jam is to make one of these games. what defines an open-world game? well it's very loosely defined. but here's some things
- large map with lots of points of interest
- back of the game box would describe it as "vast" or "a massive game world" or such
- a continuous space with no load times (YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT)
- lots of "collectables" and "items"

see how much of the player's time you can fill with as little effort as possible. maybe some procedurally generated content? maybe some large, sparse expanses?

FAQ:

Q: is yume nikki an "open world game"?
A: yes

Q: what if I can't make a world that big?
A: you can make it very small, it's allowed

Q: is [game] an open world game?
A: let's just say yes

Q: may I submit an unfinished game?
A: all open world games are unfinished in some way, so yes

feel free to play fast and loose with the concept. now go! out! into the world!

EDIT: It's done! Welcome, Glorious Trainwrecks, to your fourth home. Please please please tell me if _anything_ weird happens so I can look into it ASAP!

Hey all,
Just a quick note to let everyone know that I'll be moving Glorious Trainwrecks to a shiny new server in the next few days. If all goes well, the only things you might notice are:
* https may stop working or point at a bad certificate for hopefully no longer than a few minutes (I'll be generating a new certificate rather than migrating the old one)
* the server will enter "maintenance mode" once or twice and you won't be able to make new posts or potentially read existing ones - again, this should hopefully only happen for a few minutes

If anything weird happens to you during or after this process, don't hesitate to let me know - you can [url=https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/privatemsg/msgto/1]PM me on this site, send me an email drectly at if you can't log in, or for a quicker response you can hit me up on discord: SpindleyQ#2039 or uhhh on Mastodon @SpindleyQ@mastodon.social? I'll update this post with a comment once it's complete.

Thank you for continuing to be an incredible community that I'm proud to host <3

There is a hope amongst the Glorious Trainwrecks community that the BabyCastles event may introduce some of us and our games to new folks. This event is an opportunity for new folks to introduce yourselves to us!
We'd like to get to know you.

Make a game or sing a song so that we have some effort to know you by. Even if it is awkward, it's likely to impress.

Those of us who have been here for a bit should feel free to craft a little somethin to welcome the new folks. Or if anyone is inspired by something they saw at the Babycastles event or even if they are inspired by something they didn't see at the Babycastles event, they are probably still inspired and can paint that over a gameObject and post it here.

LAST UPDATED 3 MARCH 2018 @3:26 PM EST

Ok, so it got approved! Yay!
It opens on the 29th of March and will stay up for 3-4 weeks.
It's at:
Babycastles
145 W 14th St.
New York, NY 10011

Let us figure everything out!

DESCRIPTION
As a refresher, this what we agreed on before, but we can change little bits of this:

"Glorious Trainwrecks"(name tentative) is a salon style group show curated by and featuring many members from the Glorious Trainwrecks community. The games will consist of games made for a specific Glorious Trainwrecks Babycastles game Jam and older games that have been submitted to the site over the years. Based on the amount of submissions, games will be shown on as many computers as possible. Based on submissions and computers available, some computers will have multiple games on them which will change by a timer. The amount of games shown will reflect the diversity of members on the website. There will be a computer/group of computers where people can make plingpling games that can also be shown in the gallery. The show will coincide with the release of a Glorious Trainwrecks CD/Zine that will be available.
WHAT WON'T BE ON THE FORM

MEETINGS!!!!!!!
WHEN ARE WE MEETING NEXT?
Thank you to those who made it to the last meeting on short notice.
It was also a great time finally seeing what a lot of you mystery icons look like in real life! :-)

We are meeting March 10 at 7PM EST!
hop in the discord to coordinate

Also, here's the link to our Discord that we've been talking in. :-)

Here are the notes from the last meeting and for previous meetings.

ROLES
We will need plenty of help with this in NY and outside of NY.
If someone wants to make posters and such, those responsibilities will be listed here.

1. Riley - Zine
2. JP - Launcher Software
3. Everyone - Make a poster please and post it here*
4. Everyone - to make games
5. Yuxin, Flan, Josie, Blake, and Dennis - Instillation Crew

SUBMISSIONS
All submissions are due by March 14th @ 12:00 AM EST.
Please restate what you want to submit in the comments below if you want to submit something from a past event.
This should either be a game you have already made for Glorious Trainwrecks, or a new game for this event.
Also, if you can, please submit executable files (.exe) for ease of making things work on the computers that we have.
If you have something other than that, please send me a direct message.

I will provide a list and links to each game here soon.
Submit as many games as you'd like, but if something happens in regards to the launcher that we are going to make, we may need to have one game per person.

ADVER-GAME JAM
The game jam will be an Adver-Game jam where we post ads for the show inside of games that we spam to itch.io, game jolt, and new grounds.
A link to this jam should be available soon.

INSTILLATION
I'll make a quick sketch of how things may be laid out soon.

PHYSICAL GAMES
To give people a real reason to come out, we thought of some physical versions of games on this site.

Here is a short list of ones we talked about re-creating:

1. Scramble The Eggnog
2. Destroy Your Home
3. Flickgame
4. "What does glorious trainwrecks mean to you"
5. Yellow Jogger Cosplay, YOU GET IN FOR FREE
6. You Have to Put the Ball in the Cup
7. You have to put the metroid in the samus

a lot of these are documented in the google docs meeting notes

SUPPLIES
This will be a checklist for all the things we need for the event.

1. Computers - 8/100
2. Keyboards - a couple/?
3. Trackballs - a couple/?
4. Posters Printed - 0/?
5. amount of zines - 0/?
6. Cardboard for brick boxes - 0/?
7. Paint for cardboard - ✓
8. Egg nog/egg cartons/eggs - 0/?
9. egg timer - 0/1
10. QWOP Bear for kissing - ✓
11. ball for cup - ✓
12. cup for ball - ✓
13. projectors - ✓
14. screens - ✓
15. makeup - ✓

EVENTS
If we have any more events or specific things like that, we should all have ideas for things like this.
If any of you play music or anything like that and will be in the New York area when that is happening, please let us know!
Just throw out really crazy ideas for events too, like literally anything, brainstorm. :-)

1. a klik of the month klub

1. this will be a very inclusive, open to the public event
2. game engines like pling pling, flick game, klik n play, and more will be available on computers in the space
3. it should happen on a saturday and be 2 hours long
4. it should be fun and wacky, casual
5. people should post their games to glorious trainwrecks by the end of it
6. pirate kart

2. an opening event

ihavefivehat and I were talking about a comedy x music thing that could be in theme with the vibe of glorious trainwrecks
we were thinking of something kind of in the style of blue jam where the music selection is experiment is interspersed with comedy that is more in conversation with performance art to the extent where the comedy and music start and end right up next to one another very abruptly. There would be several short acts, 3-4, about 10-20 minutes each, over the course of the opening event, which would be from 8pm to 11pm and live streamed over the internet. These will be spaced out so to not distract from the instillation/games.

these are some possible people we were thinking of reaching out to soon

1. Lillyan
2. Harry
3. Lary Owens
4. dreamcrusher
5. this video isn't of his solo electric thing, but this is ihavefivehat's brother's band that he fronts
6. ???
7. we would like to have 3-4 comedians and 3-4 music acts and are looking for more suggestions

3. a closing event : talk/interviews

This is the least fleshed out as of right now, but I would like to reach out to Glorious Trainwrecks people to be interviewed at the closing.
these are all people we should try to reach out to to be interviewed or to interview

interviewees

interviewers

1. Naomi Clark
2. Frank Lantz
3. Tim Rogers
4. Mattie Brice

again, all of these people haven't been asked yet, just spitballin',
please provide suggestions in the comments or on the discord!

PROMOTION
How will we promote these things?

Everyone can make a poster and submit it here,
Information that needs to be on the posters will be posted soon, hopefully tomorrow. 8-)

The adver-game jam will also be used as a promotional tactic. 8-)

NAME
Do we want to just do Glorious Trainwrecks X Babycastles?
I like that it could be pronounced "glorious trainwrecks cross babycastles" like "street fighter cross tekken"

Here are names we came up with so far: Glorious Trainwrecks, Glorious Trainwrecks x Babycastles, Wizardcastle, Glorihorse Yellowcastle, yellow jogging babycastles, Glorious wizardcastle, "bureau of corrections, guatemala", Glorious Trainwrecks @ Baby Castles, GT: BC, BC: GT, At Babycastles, babywrecks, traincastles, glorious baby: castlewreck, traincastle babywreck, babytrain glorycastle

Please comment about all of these things below.
Thank you for your enthusiasm and participation!

UPDATE: It's been submitted, but we can still make changes if the proposal is picked up.
Thanks everyone for your feedback and involvement!

I've been involved with Babycastles for a little while now and THIS popped up.

My first idea was that a group Glorious Trainwrecks show would be pretty sick.
I gauged some interest in the Discord, and it seems as though people were pretty enthusiastic about it, so I thought I would post on here!

So, I need your help!

I figure, this should be a collaborative effort from the community to come up with what this show is.
.
.
.

UPDATED
PROPOSAL
4
FEBRUARY
2018
WHAT WILL BE ON THE FORM

WHAT WON'T BE ON THE FORM

• (maybe like this rubbing table)

BUT

Before any of this happens, we have to submit this by February the 5th!
That's in about a week!

So,

we need to nail down some specifics for the form...

A Description:
I want to make sure everyone is happy with the description that is submitted.

What games might the exhibition show?
If you want to submit a previously made game, or if you know you want to make a game for the jam, please comment below so I know who exactly is interested in this.

Events?
Does anyone have any ideas for events that may happen during the exhibition?
I thought an in person Klik of the Month could be cool. What would an opening and closing event be like?
Also, how long maybe would this be open? I was thinking maybe about a month?

When/Who can help?
If anyone can help organize things, when would you be able to help?
Also, if you are in New York or the New York area, would you be able to help set up things in the gallery?

And together we can make the world a better place! :-)

Also, if you have any question, feel free and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.

Can you believe Klik of the Month Klub has been around for TEN YEARS!? It's true! June 3rd marks the 10th birthday of this fantastic event, and even though it's been a while since the last one, I thought a traditional 2-hour game making event would be the best way to celebrate.

The official time of this event is set for June 3rd, 4pm Pacific Time.

But, if you want to make something outside of the allocated time and submit it to this event, go ahead!

Klik & Play is free to download and super easy to learn. Unfortunately, it doesn't run on most modern computers, nor will it produce games that do. If that's a problem for you for some reason, then The Games Factory might be the next best thing!

Alternatively, there are plenty of other tools and level editors around you could use to make something, such as:
Bitsy, kooltool, flatpack, 0m3ga Visual Novel Engine, 3D RAD, VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition, flickuboy, ThingLink, Boppin' Editor, Tabletop Simulator, Castles of Adventure, Sword of Moonlight, The Almighty Paintbrush, Silent Walk: RENAISSANCE, Bangai-O Spirits and Yellow Jogger Laser Platform Madness.

Want to talk to other game makers instead of working in total isolation? The traditional method is IRC, which you can connect to right here on the site or using the settings server irc.freenode.net, channel #glorioustrainwrecks.

This time around, I'd also like to try out using the altgamez Discord channel where a bunch of us hang out anyway!

When you've made your game, submit it here!

You can also use the "Sign up" option below if you'd like an ominous email reminder about the event.

SEE YOU THERE!

Ten years ago today, I started cobbling together some Drupal plugins and trying to convince my friends that it would be fun to make weird videogames. I've been having a nostalgic old time poking around at the first handful of posts, as I was trying to figure out just what the hell this place was going to be. (2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 - note, I didn't figure out how to turn on history for wiki pages for a while, but I linked the oldest available ones where possible)

(Parenthetically: I really ought to find that home video and upload it somewhere.)

Don't forget to check out the amazing stuff in the 9th and 10th Anniversary celebration event (and feel free to post some late games to it if you're feeling celebratory)!

Post your fondest Glorious Trainwrecks memories in this thread!