How I Spent A Year Celebrating Glorious Trainwrecks

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spiral's picture
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Game File: 

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome bone, welcome some. TO! The ninth and tenth anniversaries of Glorious Trainwrecks!! With my first TGF1 game in AGES!

Pre-History: https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10162
History: https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10602
Post-History: (Selected abridgement- purview README.txt in the download to see it all!)

In this game, you will re-create my own steps leading to this point in time. What is that point of time? I can't tell you. The game will. It's already there. Play it now!!

FAQ (Forthcoming Answers in Qase of people wanting to know what's up with these things)

1) How do I play a game? It doesn't work correctly because [x]!
A: Windows users: if you are running an OS later than Windows XP or so, you might have problems running the game correctly. However, Window's "compatibility" settings should be able to help you. Directions:
    I) Right click on "9thAnd10th.exe" (NOT the .gam file with an identical name- I cannot do anything to make this more distinct, sorry!).
    II) Select "Properties" on the drop down menu.
    III) Click on the "Compatibility" tab.
    IIII) Under the section "Compatibility mode", click on the box to add a checkmark.
    IIIII) Choose the OS to run compatibility mode as. Anything as far back as Windows 95 should work.
    IIIIII) Press on "Apply" or "OK", then run the game. If problems persist, repeat the previous step with a different OS selected until it works. If it still doesn't work, I have no idea what to suggest. Sorry.

Mac/Linux users: the only option is to use WINE https://www.winehq.org/.

3) I "interacted" with everything but there's still like 100 days left! What gives? What am I supposed to do except run into a wall?
A: Solution: every object outside, and every small object, only has one message to give. About half of the big objects in the house have multiple messages, sometimes even one dozen! The rest of the big objects only have one message. But they should make it obvious... If not, no harm in trying again!

11) Why is this game two days late?
A: This is covered in the game. If you need a clue: keep using the computer. And stop jumping in line!

6) I found a typo! Are you going to fix it?
A: No, implementing all the text was already very taxing (and why there's only oh so many objects with multiple lines), and I am not going to review any of it again.

10) Um, I STILL can't read anything? The text is [too small/too big/contrasting badly/off-center/anything]?
A: This is actually something I am worried about and do not have a pre-emptive solution for. However, if any of this is happening, please take a screenshot and show me- I will do my best to fix it, for you and anybody else having the same problem! Unfortunately, with this game, because of the large amount of text, I cannot do my usual of "turn all strings into active objects so that they will be identical independent of anybody's computer". So, they may easily be unreadable for other people due to dis-similar assumptions of font displays. Here's hoping it won't come to this!

12) Why is most of this post this boring FAQ and not your usual high enthusiasm for ridiculous stories with a tenuous, or rather, non-existent connection to the real events of the game, but positioned as the important facts necessary for understanding the world about to be explored, but done in such an overbearing way that without such knowledge the play of the game feels to lack something, something special, that must exist in the player for an effect to be felt?
A:

    Welcome to the year 2016. One smart dingo has appraised the facts well- they see ahead, into the future, a dire need, yes- they can be the one to fulfill it! So goes the ancient history, the known facts. But what truly is known? What we can say is that they surveyed their planes, and took what was plain to see, enduring a bit of pain.

    They left a legacy behind, a declaration, stating: "enjoy these 365 days I have granted you. But be careful, for extending the limits of what you shall be granted means the pool of time must be replenished daily for others to continue to lap from it." Historians are divided on the defintion of this divination.

    What has become of them? This is what you are about to find out- in their own paws! "Walk a mile as me, and you have walked one mile more". A common dingo saying, to those who know how to listen. Textbooks always include that one. But also: "Make sure to well use wily time wisely, for it is all you shall receive.".

    It is this journey that will now be related to you, through the power of the conventions of the video game medium. Thanks to the hard work of the Minions Never Over collective, this display comes to you at a free cost, besides those precious minutes of your life that you can give in return. Thus, timely tidings t'will twist towards truth!

    Yearn towards complete knowledge: but like all faithful teachers, you will find it impossible to, within but just one lifetime, to accomplish every thing set before you. "But, perhaps, this is the final lesson?" Yes. It is. Such are solutions proffered shrewdly by savvy animals surrounding our soulful history.

Made For: 
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Comments

Danni's picture

This game is pretty

This game is pretty relatable to how I've been feeling lately. I initially thought all the items had just the one block of text, so finding that some items had multiple pages of dialogue was a neat surprise.

These sound effects kinda take me back to years ago when I would browse the Multimedia Fusion bonus disc listening to the various sound effects in the audio library and brainstorming up the theoretical games you'd hear them in. The sci-fi sounds I found especially interesting.

spiral's picture

I'm glad it's relatable!!

I'm glad it's relatable!! Making it helped me process some of my own feelings of late, so I hope it helped you too. I think I could have done with making the multi-text more clear other than the FAQ (I might have left that one to only the text file?), but it was just too difficult tbh...

Ahh I'm glad you enjoyed the SFX so much! I really wanted to constrain myself to only use TGF1 or earlier graphics and sound effects. Obviously, I broke the former with the dingo graphic (since no klipart suited), and for the latter I expanded my range of SFX because I just could not get enough from a smaller subset. But I am happy with the results expanded to MMF2 era sfx, and I'm glad you enjoyed that too! I think like 40% of all the sounds were from the sci-fi folder b/c it's just so broad and interesting.

atuun's picture

I liked this quite a bit,

I liked this quite a bit, and found it pretty relatable too - I have a habit of involving myself with something small and the day passing by before I realize it. It's cool how you can pass through small, personal spaces (such as the home) and enormous spaces (like...space) in the same way; it's almost like reading a comic, with a bunch of panels you can read and reread at will. I found myself going to each and enjoying the charming messages (there's a bunch!) Generally, there's a strong sense of scale and time that I don't see that much in games - cool stuff!

spiral's picture

Thanks for the review! I'm

Thanks for the review! I'm glad you liked exploring it so much and reading everything :)

You know, during development, the whole "every action takes up at least a whole day or more for one sentence" felt like a silly pretense, but it DOES make sense in a way. Sometimes something that seems small at the end takes a hecka lotta time!! I think it's good that my approach to representing the passing of time was so effective. I find convincing time scales can be wonderful narrative devices.

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