Jolt Country

If you go here:



And grab "cryptozookeeper.zip" you'll be all set. I'll announce to the various IF site later tonight.

I'd like to real-quick thank a few people who might see this post:

ChainGangGuy, for being a totally awesome leading man.

Lysander and gsdgsd for being so kind to test the thing relentlessly during the first batch of years I was working on this.

Michael Fransioli and Roody for just totally going out of their way to spend hour after hour to test the complete game, playing scene after scene over and over again, as I got it all set.

Pinback, for listening to me warble about this game for over five years.

Milkunits for making four or five different haunted houses that I used as locations.

bruce, for being okay with me turning him into a 400 pound man for this game.

Flack, Mike Sousa and Taleslinger for spending a large number of nights checking fixes and scenes out this last month.

jscott, for helping me get it hosted correctly on archive.org these last two days.

Congratulations! Never do this again!!

Time to get rollin' on CZK 2?

It was fun to be a part of this.

Congrats on the new release, ICJ! :) Getting it now...

Thanks, Isxek. Much appreciated! archive.org keeps track of downloads. I sort of like that a lot!

So, in case anyone is using Linux and wants to play:

This copy of hewx should run the game:

http://www.gerynarsabode.org/Downloads/hewx.zip

I found that, to make the graphics look right for Linux, I needed to do the following through the terp:

Options->Fonts->Fixed Width-> and then any font, but with a size of 8.

The spacing on the top windows is then good. I think this would also be the case on other operating systems, if there’s too much black space around the top graphics windows. If you’d like to have the screen completely redrawn, you can always just go to >Help, and when you come out, the screen will re-draw on the next turn.

REACTIon! ALEX GRAY, EDINBURGH SCOTLAND:

"But now, far more importantly, I do want to hear about the critical reception of Crypto. I really need other people's beliefs to colour whether or not I have a good time playing this free game." -- Alex Gray

This has been.... REACTIon!! (I'm not sure if that's a positive review or negative one.)

Hi ICJ - any luck on that torrent yet? I got the game already and I'm having a few friends try it out. There's a couple of people I'd rather point the torrent link to, instead.

They've lost some of my thumb drives already.

I can't say I'll have this up all of the time, but hey, a torrent's a torrent, right? I can help seed it at nights, but I'll try to have it up as much as possible.

EDIT: Added a new link:

http://www.seedpeer.com/details/3801252 ... inux].html

Aw yeah, lookit Roody Yogurt coming correct with some fuggin torrent! Yeaaah!

In other news, Lysander wanted a zip file of all the music in the game. I can make one for the Creative Commons-licensed tunes. (There's a few that aren't licensed that way.) I'm uploading that now. Probably don't have the FTP space to have it there indefinitely, but I'll post a link and leave it up for a few days in case anyone is interested.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I can't say I'll have this up all of the time, but hey, a torrent's a torrent, right? I can help seed it at nights, but I'll try to have it up as much as possible.

http://roody.gerynarsabode.org/cryptozo ... ip.torrent

This is very nice. Thanks a bunch Roody! :D

Now I don't have to share my thumb drive! Woohoo!

Aces! I'll be on that torrent indefinitely.

I rebooted my PC and forgot to start uTorrent again. Anyway, Crypto is up to version 1.02 now. If anyone is grabbing the torrent, you need only head over to the Internet Archive and get czk.hex. You don't need to download the entire game again, the graphics and sound hasn't changed.

I updated the page here: http://www.cryptozookeeper.com -- been keeping track of websites that have mentioned the game's release, and added two screenshots.

I also tried to make it easier to describe what you need to do to play it on Linux and the Mac. I am interested in feedback if it's still confusing.

Going to try to hit up some Linux game sites next, especially since Nikos's Hugor interpreter works so well.

It's been about a month. According to archive.org, it's been downloaded 947 times. I don't know if that's good or not.

I've gotten the word out on a few blogs. I'm actually having a surprisingly successful rate there. Sites like TIGsource and Game, Set, Watch couldn't care less, but a lot of lesser-known ones have posted about it.

(GSW cracks me up, as they carried an article regarding an interview I did about Cryptozookeeper three years ago, but when I wrote them about the release of the actual game... nothing.)

I got a quote from bullseyedisc.com about getting 150 hard copies made. The price was beyond what I can afford, as-is. Keeping in mind that this pack would contain the game on DVD and a redbook audio CD filled with in-game music by Bachelor Machines.

(I made FoD and ND through Mixonic, who told me in an e-mail that they offer dual-disc DVD cases... and then ignored me in two follow-up messages asking how to order those, since they aren't on their website. Forget what you heard about this being a bad economy; businesses are back to ignoring orders again.)

So I've got a decision to make. 947 downloads in a month means that it doesn't make any sense to get a bunch of hardcopies made. Then again, what about text games does make sense? I may see if I can have the discs themselves printed in black and white instead of full color. I may see if I can get a quote for 100 instead of 150. Still deciding.

Lemme throw this out there.

I have (at least) 50 brand new dual DVD cases. If you did the layout for the case and printed them out on a color laser printer ... well, so far you're at "free". All you would need to do is pay for the 50 discs to be printed up, and then have them shrink wrapped. What would that do to the budget?

I have been deep in thought, considering your offer, Flack.

I wish I had an answer for you. I don't know if you were reading when Pinback was discussing his personal philosophy that involved letting go of the future. His philosophy got me through a very difficult time in my li- well, a semi-difficult time. It's not really that awful ever being Ice Cream Jonsey, baby.

The future that I should let go of, but can't, is 50 games in various states of disarray as I attempt to cobble them all together and make mistakes. Like if I put the wrong discs in the box, or if I put two game discs in one box and two audio discs in one box. Or if I sneeze near them or something.

I am also worried if I just do 20 and say (to myself) "Good enough for now!" And then the 21st copy sells. And I don't have it ready. And now it's this giant pain in the ass because I can't do Charlie work like assembling boxes very well.

I am now going to drop a "Remember the agreement" quote for no other reason than someone needs to type that into this BBS every month or so.

Remember the agreement......

I guess I don't know what else to say to finish this message.

So it turns out my buddy has a commercial grade CD inkjet printer. You have to buy inkjet compatible CDs with it, but with those, you can print directly on top of them. So, like this:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1935

That's $179.95 for 100, or $1.80 per CD. You could burn your game on 50, and the soundtrack on the other 50.

Like I said, you could print and cut the covers for next to nothing. Office Depot will do 50 glossy 8.5x11 "flyers" for $50. So far you're up to $2.80 per package. Then you just need some shrink wrap and you're gold. Figure in an evening of assembly and some margaritas for your helpers (after the packages are assembled).

On PayPal you can set up a free payment thing (I have one for both of my books) and you can even limit it to 50 purchases so once those are gone, no one else can order one.

What was the other place charging for 50 copies? I think we could seriously beat their price.

Well, the costs for Mixonic (who never wrote me back when I was trying to give them money, unbelievable) and their competitors to make CDs/DVDs -- that part is fairly cheap. We're good there.

I am trying to see if I can find a company to make JUST the slip cases, cut to size. I would say that cutting 50 slip cases is something I won't do. I'd mess that up pretty badly and hate the whole process.

Also, this was good news and a bit of a coincidence that I checked when I did. It's from archive.org, which is the only place to download the game from, except for that now out-of-date torrent: