Game File: 

rott.zip

I stumbled around my midi folder looking for inspiration and pooped this one out faster than a speeding bullet.

Play the games before the triad rises.

Shift jumps.
Control shoots.
Space runs.

Yeah, I know, "Bad Games" sounds a bit harsh.
However, a new German game mag with a focus on features, essays etc. (think "Kill Screen" with a Prussian touch) is about to launch early next year. To find some sort of common focus, a topic was chosen that all writers should address - and it's just this: "Bad Games".

So, basically, I had two ideas:
The first one that came imidiately to my mind: do an interview with the humble madman who created "The Last Eichhof" back in the day, a much beloved game that is also prominently featured on your site.

Secondly, I'd like to give that whole negative "bad game"-thing a more positive spin and talk about the love for those games - obviously, this site is the first place that came to my mind. (I know about it via Jesper Juul's discussion of "para-gaming", which is what this whole endeavour could be labelled, if you like your words in an accademic flavour.)

So, what I wanted to know is the following:
Are the people who created this place still active? If so, would they be willing to maybe give some thoughts about the topic?
Or is there somebody else who would like to talk about his/her love for those glorious trainwrecks?

It would be my pleasure.

Chris aka Oozo

I've long been saying that I want an online real-time collaborative game-making tool. The other day, it occurred to me that MUDs exist, and many of them allow regular users to add new rooms and create and script new objects. So I've been looking into setting up LambdaMOO on Glorious Trainwrecks' glorious server. (I would call it "Hungry Hungry Hedgehogs MMORPG", of course.)

Is anyone else interested in this idea? LambdaMOO's scripting language is kind of programmery (as you would expect from a system developed at Xerox PARC with "lambda" in the name), and multiplayer textual game-toy-things are a pretty different animal than Klik & Play monstrosities, but I think it could be pretty interesting nonetheless.

(My research is kind of making me wish someone would write a ZZT MUD with the board editor exposed at all times, though.)

Integrating my stackless python game engine is progressing smoothly, though it's turned out to be a little bit more work than I had initially bargained for.

Big change #1 is that the game loop no longer runs as fast as possible; rather it only runs in response to external events (keypresses + timers). Obviously, since I'm going to be running this thing on a server that I share with a couple hundred other people, using 100% CPU all of the time is not the best way to go. It's actually kind of bugged me for a long while that the engine did that, so it's nice to have a fix.

Big change #2 is that a bunch of global variables containing the current high-level "game state" (ie, which board we're on, which board we're heading to next, etc) got split into a new kind of object called a Client. This was kind of bad design in the first place, but I really needed this new entity once I introduced multiplayer.

The good news is that these two big changes are done, and a proof-of-concept port of hax0r over telnet to work the bugs out should be coming soon!

I'm kind of leaning towards only supporting SyncTERM over flashterm. Advantages to SyncTERM: ANSI music support, the smiley face character works. Disadvantages: Seperate app that you'll have to download, rather than clicking a button on a webpage. The ANSI music "language" looks sort of like ZZT's music language, so you can imagine that I'm pretty hyped about supporting THAT.

Imported from Developer Diaries. Visit the link to download the game and see all old comments.

Original description:
--------------------

Based on the recent GNOME 3 power management controversy.

Made on an operating environment that allows the user to choose what they want to do when they close the laptop lid!

Why would you do this, GNOME devs? Oh, right, because you're GNOME devs!

Game File: 

black rainbow tiles.zip

Controls:
arrow key/WASD: Move
R:restart room

A small toylike game about creating colourful circles by moving over black tiles that I made in 30 minutes

(which I will not be able to participate in on the day, unfortunately. I am still keen, though, so I might just make something anyway.)

ZZT is... uhmm... crap. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You see, if it wasn't crap, it would be quite inflexible, and therefore it would be the bad sort of crap.

Because ZZT is somewhat crap, you need to pay close attention to what I'm about to say as you may break things if you don't.

The ZZT-OOP parser is just bloody weird. There's a lot you can do if you know what you're doing. But if you don't know what you're doing, bad things can happen.

Here are at least some of the snags you'll need to be wary of.

• Names of labels, objects, and flags should not have numbers in them - the parser is weird. Sadly, I have forgotten exactly how the parser deals to these, so, um, just don't use numbers.
• A label cannot go on the very first line of your code.
• #restore will restore the first zapped label from the top, not the bottom. Be wary of this!
• Comments (') are actually zapped labels (:).
• ZZT runs its program code in text form. You're right; it's not efficient.
• #cycle 1. Seriously. Just do it. Anything else will behave unpredictably when you pause / unpause. Also, if Saxxon is to be believed, the tick counter wraps around at 420.
• Speaking of pause... weird stuff happens when the game is paused! For starters, if the player is trapped, and then decides to pause, ZZT effectively freezes.
• Much like how GReg JAnson doesn't know how to spell "gaurd", Tim Sweeney spells "alligned" with two Ls.
• You have 20KB available per board. Use it wisely. (I don't know if this includes the compressed or uncompressed 60x25 board layout.)
• You also have a somewhat arbitrary world size limit which is something like 380KB. ZZT behaves horribly if you run out of memory. Even then, KevEdit can segfault while saving. Back your games up!
• You cannot #put things on the bottom row. Sorry guys.
• You have enough space for 10 flags. If you exceed this... I forget what happens. You can check if this limit has been reached by doing "#if #dosomething" (if it hasn't, do something) or "#if not #dosomething" (if it has, do something).
• To place the player in the ZZT editor or KevEdit, use F1 Z. Copying and pasting the player will result in what is known as a player clone (these can also be made using #put player and stuff like that). Player clones are necessary for a lot of ZZT tricks, but you most likely don't want to be placing these by accident.
• There are several amusing ways to crash ZZT. Avoid them when you're not trying to crash ZZT. Here are some ways to crash ZZT.
  • Spamming a scroll with lots and lots of text using a loop.
  • Duplicating a player clone onto something pushable.
  • Putting #become or #die or movement commands in a scroll, the latter of which is quite amusing.
  • Accessing (or maybe simply having) a really, really large board. Keep your code size down!
  • Having illegal tile IDs on a board (not explored).
  • Touching blinking text, a won't-crash-immediately series of illegal tile IDs. There's a reason why KevEdit doesn't let you make blinking text easily, and this is it. (I think.)
• Be wary of the stat order; that is, the order that things are processed. Some things will screw up. Pressing Ctrl-T in KevEdit will tell you what the "Stat index" of a thing is, and also allow you to add and remove stats.
  • The Koopo trick (duplicating a player clone onto a passage) has a well-known bug which will set a thing's parameters and cycle to 255. It's either based on the player clone, the duplicator, or the passage - you can look that one up yourself if you want.
  • If an object does #die or something like that, the object after it in the stat order will move according to its "direction". This even affects things which use the direction but aren't supposed to move, like transporters and laserwalls. This does not care about the following object's cycle counter. So, if something "dies" and something else randomly moves, you might need to look at the stat order.

Oh yeah, also, use KevEdit.

Game File: 

sadghost.zip

Sad Ghost is the saddest ghost! Wander the afterlife in search of meaning. Can you find it all?

(Sad Ghost is a character invented by my son)

Game File: 

WhatAnAwesomeNightToHaveACurse.zip

You have been cursed to transform into a fire exhaling, and flight capable dragon. Freaking awesome! Cause as much mayhem and destruction as you want. WHAT AN AWESOME NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE!

8-way movement = Move
Button 1 = Exhale fireball of death

The time is right... for making videogames! The Timezone Lottery Klik Jam happens on the first Saturday of every month, at a time chosen randomly by our top-of-the-line numerical hour-choosing machines. This month, it takes place at 7:00 am UTC. Whenever that time rolls around for you, you have two hours to make a game!

How can I possibly make a game in that short a timespan, you gasp? There are many game-making tools available, but the most ludicrous and welcoming of all is Klik & Play. If you want to give K&P a shot, we have a Learning KNP FAQ available, as well as some advice on making it work on modern machines.

Making games is its own reward, but it can be much, much more rewarding when you're doing it with friends. To get the most out of this worldwide internet game jam, come talk with everyone on IRC. It's a great way to share this awesome experience, and get quick help when things aren't going right. Our server is irc.freenode.net, and our channel is #glorioustrainwrecks.

After you've made your game, upload it here!

For more information, check out the N00B FAQ.

Sign up below to get a reminder email the day before the jam!

Games made for Timezone Lottery Klik Jam #9

3 games made!
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Name	Created	By	Screenshot	Comments
A Thesis about the Complexity of Simply Winning and then Loading a Winning Screen	12/04/2011 - 05:16	Louisload		1
Frank Sinatra in "River, Stay Away From My Door"	12/04/2011 - 04:14	thesycophant		10
Fire Spell	12/04/2011 - 02:31	ArmchairArmada		6