August 27th was Knytt Stories' 10th birthday! To celebrate, let's make a collaborative level for this "epic" level competition hosted by Fubaka, which has a final due date of February 28th 2018. The main requirement for this competition is that levels have at least 300 unique screens, which we've already exceeded. Huzzah!

We'll be using The Cursed Gallery as a framing device. Basically, Juni encounters a gallery filled with paintings of different participants' sections, and can travel inside them. Each section can be self-contained in terms of powers, but it will be cool to link all the different sections more directly once the level starts coming together! Vegetal Gibber has already designed a beautiful main hub area that's just waiting to be populated with portals!

The level will require Knytt Stories +, so participants should feel free to go wild with KS+ stuff if they want. In particular, we are hiding KS+ artifact collectibles in hard-to-reach areas for a currently undetermined purpose. You can keep track of that using this handy spreadsheet (and leave little notes to other participants if you want)!

Some discussion is going down in the #hot-jamz channel of the altgamez Discord server, so drop by there if you want to stay totally in the loop! I get the impression the most pertinent stuff has appeared in the comments of this very page, but perhaps that could change.

So, comment or "sign up" if you're interested in participating, or even just make something, upload it, and hope for the best! Feel free to ask questions (but given the loose, last-minute nature of this event you could also feel free to provide your own answers).

I thought it’d be interesting to pick up where the Mystic Western game jam left off and make an event around Mysticism per se (actually lumpen suggested making an event, I just complained about the other jam on discord). There’s an understanding of the words mystic and mystical which implies an experience of wonder, the magical, and the occult. A mystic is someone who wields a strange power and works in unexplained ways. There’s a sense in this definition of there being unexplained mysteries that, possibly, can never be unraveled. Or of being transported to another world. But there’s another tradition of meaning for these words.

This other meaning of mysticism could be briefly but unhelpfully summarized as an immediate and direct experience of ultimate reality, a fundamental spiritual truth, or God. It refers to a type of internal experience in which one has the sense that something very important has been revealed. For William James, two elements define a mystical experience. The first is its ineffability: “the subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that tis quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.” The other element is a noetic quality: “although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.”

There’s a similarity between the two meanings, especially in terms of an underlying sense of wonder, but the noetic quality makes the latter very different from the former. If the knowledge of the former definition of mysticism is occult, the knowledge of the latter is exposed. The secrets of the former meaning have the potential to be revealed by initiation into their mysteries, but in the latter the secrets are already revealed, if ineffable. There is a sense that the truth has been in front of us the whole time, and that all we had to do was look at it the right way.

To make an event based on an ineffable and transcendent experience seems exclusive, but I hope that these experiences are not so uncommon as they seem like they should be. James claims that “personal religious experience has its root and center is mystical states of consciousness,” and William Harmless, in the introduction to his book on mystics, recounts a story about his students’ experience:

She said, “I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything. But you know- when I read these people, I think that I’ve experienced something like that. I am beginning to think that I’m a mystic--- maybe, not in the same way these people are, maybe not as intensely. But I know what they’re talking about.” There was a pause, then hand after hand began to rise. Each who spoke repeated something similar. These mystics were talking about things that they themselves had tasted, that they too had felt. I put aside the day’s lecture. We had something urgent to talk about. We talked about the culture we live in, the way our world ignores- even silences- the mystical, the way it has deprived us of words, stopped us from speaking about the mystery that runs under and through our lives. We talked about the way the mystics give us a language, a vocabulary, to begin to articulate what we all taste and feel. We talked a little about Karl Rahner, about the way he suggests that being a mystic is a constituent element of the human person, that most of are, in fact, repressed mystics.

I think also that a vast, overwhelming secular awe with the enormity of the universe and its unimaginable complexity is a feeling that approaches the mystical. After all, for an understanding that encompasses the whole universe and all of physics, it’s only a short trip over the threshold into metaphysics.

So, I see this event as an opportunity to explore games related to these ideas, or connected to them as broadly as you please. Have you had mystical experiences? Do you feel haunted by existential questions, and is your life lacking meaning? Do you have a personal religion, and is it perhaps at odds with your inherited religion?

Collab Jam 2018

Collab Jam is a chance to work together with another randomly assigned member from GT!
You may work together in any way you can agree on.

How To Join:

Suggestions:

[Specific Person] and I would like to work together

I can't / don't want to code

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.

August 27th was Knytt Stories' 10th birthday! To celebrate, let's make a collaborative level for this "epic" level competition hosted by Fubaka, which has a final due date of February 28th 2018. The main requirement for this competition is that levels have at least 300 unique screens, which we've already exceeded. Huzzah!

We'll be using The Cursed Gallery as a framing device. Basically, Juni encounters a gallery filled with paintings of different participants' sections, and can travel inside them. Each section can be self-contained in terms of powers, but it will be cool to link all the different sections more directly once the level starts coming together! Vegetal Gibber has already designed a beautiful main hub area that's just waiting to be populated with portals!

The level will require Knytt Stories +, so participants should feel free to go wild with KS+ stuff if they want. In particular, we are hiding KS+ artifact collectibles in hard-to-reach areas for a currently undetermined purpose. You can keep track of that using this handy spreadsheet (and leave little notes to other participants if you want)!

Some discussion is going down in the #hot-jamz channel of the altgamez Discord server, so drop by there if you want to stay totally in the loop! I get the impression the most pertinent stuff has appeared in the comments of this very page, but perhaps that could change.

So, comment or "sign up" if you're interested in participating, or even just make something, upload it, and hope for the best! Feel free to ask questions (but given the loose, last-minute nature of this event you could also feel free to provide your own answers).

I thought it’d be interesting to pick up where the Mystic Western game jam left off and make an event around Mysticism per se (actually lumpen suggested making an event, I just complained about the other jam on discord). There’s an understanding of the words mystic and mystical which implies an experience of wonder, the magical, and the occult. A mystic is someone who wields a strange power and works in unexplained ways. There’s a sense in this definition of there being unexplained mysteries that, possibly, can never be unraveled. Or of being transported to another world. But there’s another tradition of meaning for these words.

This other meaning of mysticism could be briefly but unhelpfully summarized as an immediate and direct experience of ultimate reality, a fundamental spiritual truth, or God. It refers to a type of internal experience in which one has the sense that something very important has been revealed. For William James, two elements define a mystical experience. The first is its ineffability: “the subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that tis quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.” The other element is a noetic quality: “although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.”

There’s a similarity between the two meanings, especially in terms of an underlying sense of wonder, but the noetic quality makes the latter very different from the former. If the knowledge of the former definition of mysticism is occult, the knowledge of the latter is exposed. The secrets of the former meaning have the potential to be revealed by initiation into their mysteries, but in the latter the secrets are already revealed, if ineffable. There is a sense that the truth has been in front of us the whole time, and that all we had to do was look at it the right way.

To make an event based on an ineffable and transcendent experience seems exclusive, but I hope that these experiences are not so uncommon as they seem like they should be. James claims that “personal religious experience has its root and center is mystical states of consciousness,” and William Harmless, in the introduction to his book on mystics, recounts a story about his students’ experience:

She said, “I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything. But you know- when I read these people, I think that I’ve experienced something like that. I am beginning to think that I’m a mystic--- maybe, not in the same way these people are, maybe not as intensely. But I know what they’re talking about.” There was a pause, then hand after hand began to rise. Each who spoke repeated something similar. These mystics were talking about things that they themselves had tasted, that they too had felt. I put aside the day’s lecture. We had something urgent to talk about. We talked about the culture we live in, the way our world ignores- even silences- the mystical, the way it has deprived us of words, stopped us from speaking about the mystery that runs under and through our lives. We talked about the way the mystics give us a language, a vocabulary, to begin to articulate what we all taste and feel. We talked a little about Karl Rahner, about the way he suggests that being a mystic is a constituent element of the human person, that most of are, in fact, repressed mystics.

I think also that a vast, overwhelming secular awe with the enormity of the universe and its unimaginable complexity is a feeling that approaches the mystical. After all, for an understanding that encompasses the whole universe and all of physics, it’s only a short trip over the threshold into metaphysics.

So, I see this event as an opportunity to explore games related to these ideas, or connected to them as broadly as you please. Have you had mystical experiences? Do you feel haunted by existential questions, and is your life lacking meaning? Do you have a personal religion, and is it perhaps at odds with your inherited religion?

Collab Jam 2018

Collab Jam is a chance to work together with another randomly assigned member from GT!
You may work together in any way you can agree on.

How To Join:

Suggestions:

[Specific Person] and I would like to work together

I can't / don't want to code

The Bedtime Jam is a short game making event, taking place this weekend (17-18 February 2018) in your time zone. It is based around the following idea:

"Start making a game in the afternoon or evening, and try to finish it before bedtime."

The jam is meant to be a more relaxed affair than 2-hour frenzies like Klik of the Month or 48-hour ordeals like Ludum Dare. You can start your game on either day of the weekend, at whatever time is convenient for you, and go to bed whenever you want to.

The jam does not really have strict rules. Here are some anti-rules:

• The spirit of the jam is to create something new, but you don't need to start from scratch. You can use as much pre-written base code as you want, or even create a modification of an existing game.
• The scope of the jam is chosen so that it doesn't take up too much of your weekend, but you can work as much as you like. You can start in the morning instead of the afternoon or evening if that suits you better. Or you can even work all weekend and submit multiple games if you really want to.
• Although the jam takes place "during the weekend", you don't need to give up and stop as soon as the weekend is over. For example, if you start on Sunday and your bedtime is after midnight, you can keep working through Monday morning. Also, feel free to expand your game after the jam ends!

The official theme of the jam can be found here. Following the theme is completely optional.