Thimbleweed Park Podcast #66
by Ron Gilbert
Mar 04, 2017
Mar 04, 2017
The podcast hailed by critics and historians as pointless and of no real value, it's Friday questions!
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- Ron
I don't dare think....
I will add that to my Voight-Kampff test list.
So... given my sloth-like speed in playing these games, it will be a long time until I know who made translations and all the stuff in the credits... ahah
But this time I will not ask for any help!
Ahem...Zak have you added my adress?
I gotta say, the game looks great based off the video. Looking forward to release day!
The longest one, but it's worth it.
Gffp: there's a little hope for you: maybe the translators names are in the opening credits ;-)
I laughed at the answer about the David's mustaches and his influence, ahahah!
OK, time to sleep for me.
Have a nice Sunday to everybody!
SEE YA!
Rumours say he is still editing that... one...
https://www.facebook.com/despecialized/ (see Google docs link).
Well, at least that's what I've heard :-)
You can also do it every 2 years with 6 months vacation, what a life!
https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/837701858906951681
Overall time can be 1 year and half.
..... if the game would be as complex and long as Thimbleweed Park!
https://youtu.be/C2M4hndQ9pY?t=575
It's always convenient having magic as fallback to explain everything in your game world :-)
Do
Ir seems I missed an important adventure game.
Do you think I could play and finish it before the 30th?
You could play it before but only with use of walkthroughs I guess.
https://youtu.be/RZeGaZUJOqc?t=3h2m18s
No magic there, just big pockets.
Here is another one: https://youtu.be/UAvuZsflglw?t=3h13m58s
But the oldest example I know (maybe the inspiration for all of that) is this one: https://youtu.be/AivZSC9J3Rs?t=31s
Too bad there is no special animation but I'm sure he is deploying some Atlantian magic tricks here :-)
https://youtu.be/1IBUfXq0nbk?t=8m8s
It fit inside the trousers and then... it disappears :-D
Back in 1997, CMI featured great artworks, even though the style differed extremely from the predecessors. It's a pity that the color depth and the resolution are so low, though.
Guybrush really seems to have timelord pockets.
The list of items which wouldn't fit in real life is pretty long in the Monkey Island games. Also fire and liquids in open mugs are no issue. And quite a few animals too.
http://lifehacker.com/watch-the-original-star-wars-trilogy-as-it-was-before-g-1747927284
According to previous answers to this very question: maybe, after the release, there could be porting to other consolles. But at the moment, the game will be released for win, Mac, Linux, xbox one.
On the 29th, everything is ready and Ok.
Microsoft cert has been acquired; Steam and GrOG are ready to open the download.
What do you do?
1) stick to the monitors waiting for the first download statistics, eating your nails.
2) pizza, beer, and free burps, among the team members
3) a travel on Katmandu, in isolation, to relax and purify your Karma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcJ1Jvtef0
The title is pretty long, to be a nowadays adventure game. So I wouldn' t worry about its lenght being short, Filippo. And if I can read a meaning between the lines, there's the will to make a new game after this one. After more that two years of working together, they have better efficiency now to create such a product, so a new point & click adventure would take less time, probably a year and a half. For now let's wait for TWP, and hope it goes well :-)
I found an interview with David Fox on YT today where he talks about Zak and that the game did way better in Germany than in the United States whereas Sierra ruled big time in the US. Being from Germany I can say I never warmed to Sierra adventures myself nor my friends - we found them terribly frustrating and not funny at all but we loved all of the SCUMM Adventures.. The stories and the humour definitely point-and-clicked with us so to speak. A lot of times my friends and I spent the weekends at my place and played Zak, Indy 3 or Monkey Island and had a terribly good time. Today none of my friends nor even me actually play computer games anymore - I tried some but it just never worked with me like the SCUMM games did. I can tell you that 10 copies of the game will sell to my friends who learned about TWP by me and are as excited as I am to revisit this kind of game. I wish you all this is becomes a common pattern and the game will sell very good - at least to my impression you will be able to reach people who aren't regular gamers.
Gotta tell you, it was really frustrating back in the 80s to know we were making (what we thought were) superior games to Sierra's and they never sold anywhere as many copies in the US as Sierra's did. Maybe people who started playing them just felt comfortable with their style of gameplay, just like people in Europe felt comfortable with our style. Who knows?
To be fair to Sierra, they made some excellent adventures later on. But on the whole, most Sierra adventures made me feel uneasy, like I had to do everything exactly right.
A little parallel timeline:
1987: Larry I -- Maniac Mansion (both full of dead ends)
1988: King's Quest IV -- Zak McKracken (still very dead-endy)
1989: Larry III -- Indy 3 (by this time, LucasArts has got the hang of it)
1990: King's Quest V -- Monkey Island I (need I comment?)
...
1992: King's Quest VI -- Indy 4 (both superb -- Sierra is learning)
...
1996: Larry VII -- Monkey Island III (finally, Sierra has learned how to avoid dead ends)
So it took Sierra seven years longer to learn how to avoid unwinnable states.
With the sales, I think Sierra had simpler, more focused marketing and aimed at very specific and large audiences/markets that already existed...
Like "King's Quest" was for the general adventure/fantasy fans, "Space Quest" for sci-fi/parody fans, "Police Quest" for the cop/detective fans, Leisure Suit Larry for the perverts, etc.
And they usually had very simple, self-explanatory names and artwork you "got" straight away.
While LucasArts was sometimes a bit more out there, with odder names and more niche audiences... like naming a game "Grim Fandango" and aiming it at the Aztec/film-noir fans. Or "Loom" aimed at fans of distaffs that use music to create magic. Or "The Dig" that was so mysterious that you didn't even know if it was a game.
The longest running LucasArts game series with the most sequels was the one that followed the Sierra formula the best, Monkey Island... i.e. Pirate Quest 1-5.
It felt like Sierra asked "what might sell well?" and made games around that, while LA made amazing games first, and then asked "how do we sell this?"
It's like comparing the Beatles and the Beach Boys...they provided each other creative stimulus, but in the end The Beatles were the better band, and so was LucasFilm/Arts the better studio ;-)
I wouldn't really compare Zak McKracken with the Sierra games of the time. While Zak McKracken has only obvious dead ends, Sierra became very mean with Larry 2 and 3, which have many dead ends the game doesn't even tell you about in any way. Missing some minor detail at the beginning can lead you into a dead end at the end of the game, so you played for hours and no way to know you're playing and unbeatable game. That is the worst kind of dead end a game can have. LucasArts never did such a mean thing.
Almost. Indy 3 is actually the worst designed LucasArts adventure, imho. While there are no mean dead ends like in Sierra games of the time, there are a number of things to miss which makes progress in the game much harder, sometimes to a point where a wild guess is the only option.
Larry 6 didn't have dead ends either. Even dying doesn't count anymore, since you can always continue, just like the death (or humiliation in some cases, which presumably leads him to suicide) never happened. Full Throttle took a similar approach, ie. dying possible, but not ending the game there.
It is also worth mentioning that Indy 4 has quite a few ways to die, which do lead to a premature game over.
For the same reasons you wrote: if you miss something, the game become harder to finish, but not impossible.
Besides, you can choose an "adventure way" or a "Fighting way".
It was an innovation, at that time.
If you didn't explore enough early you have to pay the price and e.g. have to fight later more, which is great IMHO.
What's bad about the design of Indy3 is that there is a lot of save scumming involved when trying to beat the bad guys the intelligent way (e.g. guards in castle or soldiers at borders, it's a lot of guesswork!).
Thats a(n alternative) fact :P
I'm sorry, but Zak McKracken has an ENORMOUS dead end where "[m]issing some minor detail at the beginning can lead you into a dead end at the end of the game" which you said might be a prerogative of Sierra games.
In the intro you dream about a map. You wake up and you say "I should make a map of the drawing I saw". Well, I never took it as a hint, just random commentary, so quite late in the game, when you are told you can teleport but you need some kind of map to focus on, I had no way of drawing that map. I had to start from the very beginning, quite frustrating.
Oh, and the most difficult puzzle was the one on Kinshasa, (ex) Zaire, were the three men make the strange "dance to open the head". The difficulty is that the dance is performed only once. And if you don't figure out that the dance is important to open the Mars face, you are lost.
Well, unless you have a big memory or write down the movements order...
Use CashCard with Shaman.
Give CashCard to Shaman.
Am I wrong?
1. You cannot give him the CashCard the first time (he wants to trade).
2. Afterwards you can pay him as often as you like and they will dance. It just costs measly $1000 (vs. $75 club) per dance, lap dance not included
Well, I've learned a new piece of information about Zak McKracken... thank you!
But I'm also the one who burned his instructions to build the navigator in Monkey Island, so when I got to the cannibals I had nothing to offer them. I remember being totally stuck, and my friends were giving me hints more and more explicit until one of them said "give them the recipe you found in the ship!", and I said "I don't have it, I burned it while in the ship!" and they were surprised you could actually do that.
Fortunately they corrected that one in later versions :P
(btw. you can always buy back what you have sold, e.g. you can sell the blue crystal for $250 and then buy it back for $550; what a bargain!)
Maybe it is also the delay in development. Europe trailed a bit behind and the C64 got gaming out of the hardcore geeky subculture over here, where home video gaming probably was already more diverse in the USA. The C64 was the first gaming device for a lot of people, who would not have access to PCs for a long time.
"Today none of my friends nor even me actually play computer games anymore - I tried some but it just never worked with me like the SCUMM games did."
"At least to my impression you will be able to reach people who aren't regular gamers."
I second all you wrote, and in particular identify in those three paragraphs. You really took the words right out of my mouth there.
Furthermore, I promise to promote Thimbleweed Park among children and teens, in order to let a new spark born into themselves, the spark of the Real Adventure Games, Again (RAGA) !
I'm planning to play it with my 3yo daughter for two reasons. The first one is, I want her to get hooked to adventure games. The second, but most important one, is that I won't have time to play it otherwise :P I'll have to translate her whatever they say, but we'll see how it works. I can't wait until she learns to read so she can play Monkey Island by herself.
I mean, The Lion King? Bambi? Those were quite traumatic, I don't think a pixelated dead body can be worse :D
There are no realistic images in the game, it's only a matter of comprehension.
For that reason, I really think that the game is suitable for every age.
I agree with you in terms of Disney movies. The earlier ones have relatively tolerant age ratings and might have traumatized many many children over all these decades. That's the reason why I won't show my children any Disney movie before they are at least 6 years old. In my opinion, Disney movies (and fairy tales in general) are unpedagogical anyway.
I watched Star Wars for the first time when I was about 8 years old. It wasn't any problem for me back then. I even liked it, but nonetheless I'm glad that I wasn't even younger back then.
By the way, back in the 19th century, german children were educated with the Shockheaded Peter (German: Struwwelpeter). It's hard to believe this nowadays, seeing the brutal contents of this book! This happens to the thumb-sucker, for example: https://nicolaalter.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/daumenlutscher.jpg
And the boy who refuses to eat any soup dies of starvation, eventually:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/H_Hoffmann_Struwwel_18.jpg
Fortunately, this kind of education is classified as outdated nowadays!
One thing I got from hearing older people tell their stories, and how they perceived their own childhood, something that MANY people nowadays don't have knowledge of I'm afraid, reveals that many of these stories were tongue and cheek anyways, and most importantly, kids got it as tongue in cheek.
They were told in a way to scare people about the dangers of conforming to ones self indulgences, and giving insight and learning the value of some things in life, like hard work, being truthful, eating well, whatever.
And least not forget, the frailness of life in yesteryear, given the diminished commodities, technological and medical improvements, and all around threats to life in general resulting in first hand consequence if one was not careful in some ways, lead to people creating these stories in the first place, since ancient times. "Kids" were treated with more maturity and they learned these lessons knowing the difference between the inherent lesson and the horror elements. I highly doubt that there were many cases of people cutting off young kids limbs in germany for the sake of stopping thumb sucking...
Of course, we can context the lessons in there, or the validity of such lessons, but we now have our own, and I believe future generations will view ours also as ancient and "socially inadequate".
But, I guess we sometimes fail to give credit, and see the "humanity" in which these lessons were passed on, because they take them for full face value. So, in our eyes, what used to be laughed about due to the horror nature of it all, yet at the same time respected because of the lesson, is now seen as taboo. I can only imagine what a future generation will think about how we view porn, religious and political intolerence, sexual intolerence, etc etc.
And yet, kids are even more exposed to porn, unrelenting violence. and all around lack of human value and empathy towards each other, no matter how many pixar movies they are fed while growing up.
For me, and I might be wrong, its a case of parents over-protect their kids, something the kids themselves are REALLY aware of, and take advantage of in many cases, so grown ups can feel good about themselves, yet the kids have access to every sort of misinformation about life and how to treat one self and others in general.
It is in fact a paradox, and one that I believe many people aren't fully aware they are participating in.
I might be wrong, who knows, but this is something I often think about, specially dealing with students of young age, and how i see their behaviour change in front of their parents, in order not to "shock" them.
Bottom line is, it is not the horror stories that i think we should protect our children from, but the lack of insight to understand what these stories, or any story, can teach, as a lesson in life, specially the hard ones. Because, protecting them or not, life happens anyway to each and every one.
Back to the topic of gaming, what I love about adventure games is also that, how they taught me empathy through the dialogue and interaction in a story that I was taking part in, and of coarse, the more "real" to me and less contrived, be it nihilistic sometimes, and heartfelt in others, the better I would get involved in a story.
Sorry for the long rant.
Anyway, I know my daughter won't understand all of the story, but for her it's just watching something happen. We hear stories and watch movies together and she tries to follow, she might not get all, but she's very interested in how stories develop, so... I'll play TWP with her.
I agree with both of you. At the end of all days, it depends on the way how you confront your child with a book or a movie, and, how the child deals with it. Of course, it's part of education to let the child gain experience. I didn't mean that a child should be packed into wool and be protected from any exterior influence. But, I still think that a child can be too immature for some books or movies. And, as a parent you have to make sure that your child doesn't become angst-ridden.
For example: If your child isn't aware of the differences between movies and the reality, it can over-interpret fantasy elements which are neither realistic nor pedagogical, such as ghosts or zombies. I don't see any pedagogical reason for telling your child a ghost story. And, a child doesn't benefit at all from being afraid of ghosts or zombies.
- Franz Kafka
(sorry for mistakes and inaccuracy, I'm writing by heart and translating into english)
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/monkeyisland/images/1/16/Stan_vessels.gif/revision/latest?cb=20120508160429
It says "Nehme" for take, but it should be "Nimm". I compared with online screenshots from DOTT and there you have a very good reference of the 9 verb translation,
Cheers
Alexander
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/release_date#comment
Search for Boris.
Really looking forward to March 30!
Unfortunately, I missed out on the questions podcast, but I thought I'd try my luck now anyway:
- Do you guys use an engine like Unity when writing the game?
- What is the predominant language used?
- Is the scripting language used in the game one you devised yourselves or some public product?
Cheers!
Diego
Just kidding.
Engine is custom, written in c/c++
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/engine
(HINT: There are other interesting blog posts showing some evolution of engine and tools)
Scripting language is http://www.squirrel-lang.org/
AFAIK it has been mildly extended to suit Agent Ray's needs.
Would you like to know more?
Check this out:
http://thimblescript.wiki/thimblescript
...
No wait, that's not what I meant :-(
And if you haven't already, i recommend to install this script by the famous nor treblig™ to keep up with all comments:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/17661-thimbleweed-park-blog-fixes
I want to buy ten copies of the game (ok, maybe five). Having no experience with Steam, GOG or similar, do those platforms somehow support to buy multiple copies, or even peovide a way to donate games to other people? The last time I bought a game was still in the era of physical discs. What is nowadays the easiest way to actually buy multiple copies? Is buying boxed versions the only option?
You can send such gifts to email addresses and then the recipients can redeem those games via links on their account (they will be prompted to create an account on GOG/Steam if they don't have one already).
You can also add such gifts to your Steam account if you don't want to gift them immediately. On GOG you can send them to your email address first and resend them later to your desired recipients.
Have a good time! ;-)
Only problem is that you have to buy them one after another, i.e. you cannot buy multiple copies in the same transaction.
One of the topic was: "The pixel-style graphic. It might not appeal to young people."
My answer: "The high-quality graphic DOES NOT make a high-quality game. If so, Minecraft would not have had the success it has. And since 2010, it entertains children and young people, despite of its pixel graphic. Because it has a winning concept, the ability to create whatever everywhere. That's make the game so appealing among children.
In Thimbleweed Park, is the overall game that will be winning: the humor, the adventure, the problem-solving method that encourages the player to resolve the puzzles."
Hey, we should organize a petition for Disney to sell back the IP rights for Monkey Island back to Ron (if he can afford it!)
I just wanted to point up that such a petition for Disney has already been made, more than once.
I apologize if I offended you, it wasn't my intention.
I guess I should be more laid back about sarcasm...perhaps it was a bad day ;-)
Thanks for extending an olive branch...it takes a noble person to do that!
I will pay more attention in the future, promised! :-)
Before commenting on someone else's English skills I'd like to see how you perform in Italian.
Also, tongue-in-cheek does not always translate well in writing. In any case, Zak was a decent man and clarified his tone, and for this I commend him ;-)
But having this effect in Tron only in special places was a great artistic choice!
- Assets are low res in 3 different modi, but designed to fit well in 720p. The lowres 3DS screen may force some corrections to the display window.
- No powerful HW, only 96MiB usable RAM
- Probably low overall sales compared to other platforms
- Pointless to write about that, but since i already typed it i could push the "add comment"button instead of just closing the tab.
But Ron stated at the beginning of this project it would be interesting to try TWP with VR!
Also, TWP is not a first person game. First person games are most suitable for VR. Perhaps Terrible Toybox will release a first persion adventure game one day. Let's wait and see!
Ok, it also needs a lot more effort than back in the days :) I guess asset loading must be altered heavily. And the shaders have to be cut/rewritten to comply to OpenGL ES 1.1. And lots of other magic i don't want to think of. Ron will not pay anyone for that. And that's pretty reasonable.
Only option: open source the engine and someone™ will port it eventually (also to your washing machine). Like ScummVM or doom, it would be the new benchmark for backporting wizardry ^^
There is already a prototype: https://twitter.com/Liquidream/status/839238613799940100 :-)
Really nice prototype!
I mean, if you're competing in the football (soccer) simulation or shoot-em-up market, you just can't release a 3D game with low-polygon models. OF COURSE you're gonna be compared to the latest games and fail.
But if you're offering a football game whose focus is shifted from simulation to pure fun, like Kopanito All-Star Soccer, then who cares if it's not realistic 3D. You cited Minecraft as an example, that's the same deal - it's a completely new gameplay that doesn't need realistic graphics to work, and it was a success for that reason.
So, a game like TWP will have its appeal anyway, not to mention that retro-style is quite fashionable these days.
And let's talk about children. My daughter doesn't care at all if it's just a bunch of pixels, that guy there is Aladdin and she's guiding Aladdin and that's all she needs, she loves when I fire up my RetroPie and let her play SNES. Does it care, for her, that she can see the "real" Aladdin in all his 1080p glory when we watch the movie? Not at all.
So, saying that pixel art will be a problem for TWP would be like saying "a black and white movie won't appeal to anyone". Tell that to Clerks!
Anyway I don't find this b/w - color analogy really fitting. Colors in Winnick-Ferrari-Navarro art is splendorous, and color range can count on all the 16 millions of colors and beyond (shading effects...)
It's like all the modern figurative art when it was staring at the reached boundaries of the imitation of real. Then the subjective elements of re-presentation become more important than they were in the past.
http://www.audacityteam.org/copyright/
Just the name "Audacity" is a trademark.
Thanks to kickstarter, thanks to the adventure genre, thanks to these amazing guys doing their job at top level. I wish I had the opportunity to attend the 1976 madison square garden Led Zeppelin concert or a Queen concert but I think i got lucky enough to play lucasfilm games when they came out, yes!
by clicking on my name's link, you'll find a Thimbleweed Park web site page, for italian normal users, and a nice countdown for OCD users (like me).
The purpose is to spread the word.
Oh, wait...
If you like, I can give you the file, so you can translate it in your primary language, and spread the word in your world's corner.
Tr. Hi Herculeo, it's been a long time, several months and years since me Arto, Zak and many others from all over the world come here on the blog, we are just kidding among ourselves. Our finnish friend was kidding about the fact that the page done by Zak is a translation of the original one (with a wonderful/anxiogenic counter) :-) There's no malice. I think that also Victor himself didn't want to be offensive.
Yep, nothing malice, only trying (obviously failing) to be funny.
So, even if we don't like the game, we would never complain 'cause we have had enough fun here :-P
https://www.gog.com/game/thimbleweed_park
d'Orlando il sito e de' suoi bravi amici
sviluppatori già d'una gran mole
d'opre d'ingegno belle ed efficaci,
di personaggi lieti e con parole
che fanno assai sorridere ed audaci.
Di non capire può accadere a ognuno
il contesto in cui una battuta è scritta
basta una frase nel tono opportuno
ed ecco qui svanita la maretta!
the site by Roland and his capable friends
developers yet of a large group
of good and beautiful works of wit
with funny and brave characters
that speak words that make us smile.
To not understand the context of a joke
it can happen to everyone:
a line with the right tone it's just enough
to let the bad mood slip away!
(Applause)
Besides addition, it would add a great addi**c**tion, too! :-D
Ransome is drawn by Octavi iirc - but are there more characters not drawn by Gary ? (what about the man in the post office ("George") and Madame Morena?)
One of the reviews says TWP will be the best adventure ever... maybe. If you consider that among gamers/magazines and historians "The Secret of Monkey Island" is considered the best game ever, it has all the elements and potential. Plus (I already told that anyway) the fact that Twin Peak 3 is coming too, what a year come on... memorable.
I've updated my web page.
On this weekend, they are in Boston, for PAX East.
Maybe, on next week, the team will choose some testers.
Will the game sell on "hard" formats (like DVD)? I'd like to offer it as a present. Also, not sure if you can really do such a thing on Steam (that is, buy it for someone elst to download without knowing their Steam account name)
Thanks!
MMM
I'll miss the podcast terribly.
Will it be possible to ask some questions later in the year.
I missed most of the date, 'cause i've no PC at work.
Well we got some, but not for privat use ;)
Maybe it will be transformed in a sort of forum, who knows.
So far this has been an incredible additional value, but I don't take this kind of direct communication with the creators for granted. When done right, it is an extra both sides benefit from in the creation process, but at some point the game has to move out and stand on its own.
If there were another project however...
BUT he needs to update it first:
- It doesn't show comment timestamps.
- No comment counts on archive page.
- Commenting seems to be completely disabled at the moment.