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What time zone is this based in?

A topic by Emma McCaw created Jul 14, 2023 Views: 467 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 3
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I am interested in joining the game jam, but I am wondering what time zone this game jam is held in. I am currently based in eastern Australia (AEST).

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I believe itch should automatically adjust the start date and time to your time zone, as the countdown timer is universal.

Thank you, Keita.

Submitted (5 edits)

It should but I am curious about the specifics because I’m in NZ & and when I first viewed the countdown about 30 minutes after the theme announcement the value was something like “2 days 4 hours”.

And I have encountered/observed time-zone/countdown-related oddities on other occasions.

Oh, actually, looking again, I see “Submissions open from July 21st 2023 at 10:00 PM to July 24th 2023 at 3:00 AM” which is clearly more than 48 hours.

Re-reading the Rules/FAQ, in answer to “1 ‧ How long does the jam take?” it states “48-hours, you’ll have to develop and submit within the date and time listed above.”

But I seem to recall in other years the rules more explicitly stated/clarified that the countdown period is longer than 48 hours but “your own” countdown is 48 hours from when you start–but regardless of when you start, your submission has to be made by the global site countdown deadline (which is shown as your local time on the page or in UTC when shown within the hover tooltip).

I also seem to recall this was done to make the potential “Jam Start Time” (& related end time) more convenient for some time-zones (e.g. in terms of what day of the week & what time of day it falls on).

While I kinda understand the motivation for doing things this way, I do find it gets kinda confusing–especially when most jams have a single global 48-hour long, 48-hour countdown and it’s easy to not notice the Kenney Jam countdown doesn’t work the same way (AIUI).

Main thing is, I guess: Don’t accidentally submit a project that you’ve actually worked more than 48 hours on! (Due to mistakenly thinking the Jam Countdown is Your Countdown but you started immediately when the Jam Countdown started.)

Host

I'm not sure what you're on about but you'll have to start and stop development exactly within the time that's displayed on Itch.io for Kenney Jam, it doesn't work any other way. If you submit your game past the deadline you unfortunately won't be able to participate.

Submitted

I’m not sure what you’re on about

FWIW, TL;DR: The jam countdown was longer than 48 hours (went from “2023-07-21 10:00:00 UTC” to “2023-07-23 15:00:00 UTC”), i.e. 53 hours.

I assumed the duration being longer than 48 hours was intentional and thus confused the jam with a different jam which does have a longer duration intentionally for the reasons originally described.

Thanks for running the jam, the assets & your other contributions to the community. :)

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The general joke we've been making is that the extra four hours are so you have time for Unity to start up xD

Submitted(+1)

The timer is universal, and as it shows you, it will start at this time, for me it's not the best because it starts at midnight.

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3am for me in the US so probably wont be able to participate or have enough time to complete something.