> 1. Is it possible and legal to market a packet of clue-free gamer-made maps to the players at RinkWorks?

It's not something I'd want to encourage, so I'll leave it at that.

> 2. I have an idea for writing my own game, but I do not know what programming to use or how to use it. Any advice would be appreciated.

I hate to be discouraging on *both* your questions, but this is probably not going to be easy if you don't already know the answer to this question. Programming is hard, and it takes quite a lot of time to learn it well enough before big projects become feasible.

That said, it is certainly not impossible, and there are easier routes than others. A lot depends on what kind of a game you want to make. If you're talking about an adventure game, then two reasonably viable choices are as follows:

Option 1

Use the programming language that the Adventure Games Live games are written in, which is called "Smash." Smash is a language of my own creation, designed for writing adventure games. Because it's mine, your options for actually running the games you write are limited -- basically you can run it with a program called "Rex" that you can download and install on your local system, or, if I'm interested in having your game on RinkWorks (and if you're willing to allow that), then I could install it on RinkWorks for you and others to play. This is a big "if," though -- I'm pretty demanding about the quality, scope, and in some cases content of the games I publish here. But, again, you don't have to get published on RinkWorks for Smash to be of potential use to you.

You can read more about this, learn the Smash programming language, download Rex, and more at http://www.rinkworks.com/smash/.

Option 2

Use the Python programming language. Python is a scripting language (meaning, the computer runs the code you write directly, rather than requiring a compiler to translate what you write into machine code first) that is *comparatively* easy to pick up. The advantage of writing a game in Python is that you have a lot more control about the user interface to your game. Also, because Python is an established language and growing in popularity, there is a lot of support for it out there.

The best way to learn Python is to buy the book called "Learning Python," published by O'Reilly. It's an easy read as these things go and gets you into things pretty quick. Alternatively, you could check out http://python.org/ and learn Python from the resources there. That's also where you go to download and install Python onto your machine.

Note, by the way, that "Rex" is actually written in Python, so you'll need to install Python even if you write your actual game in Smash.

All that said, if your game idea wasn't even for an adventure game, it's possible none of this will help you. In that event, let me know more of what you were thinking about.

Luck.