18 Minutes of Thimbleweed Park
by Ron Gilbert
Dec 22, 2015
Dec 22, 2015
I recently sat down with Ryan McCaffrey of IGN and we played through the first 18 minutes of Thimbleweed Park.
There isn't anything in here you won't see in your first 20 minutes of playing the game. There are some mild puzzle spoilers, but no real plot spoilers. If you're the kind of person that doesn't want to see anything about the game before playing it, I highly recommended avoiding the video (and probably this entire blog).
If you want to see the video on IGN use the following link: FOLLOWING LINK
- Ron
P.S. The wrench looks like a dinosaur toy :-) .
playable preview.
ign says "hot games of 2016"
looks like we're tracking for a release in 2020... ;-)
P.S.: Please don't let Ray walk over the grass in front of the town hall. She's a FBI agent.
Thanks Ron.
Cutscenes, amazing graphics, dialogue, different characters to solve the same puzzles with...
I can't wait... Only 6 more months...
You guys are doing a fantastic job!!!
PS: I'd suggest to make the road markings half as wide. It then might look a bit more suitable for this angle of view.
Also, JUST managed to turn the toilet light on before the end of the video, close call...
Greetings from Argentina!
Diego
......and I soooooo cannot resist to watch the movie!
Otherwise it looks like you struck a very nice balance between homage to low res low color graphics, but not being stupid or fanatic about it.
I can only echo the sentiment of the other posts.
It says "This video is not available."
What does "not available" mean? ...What does "video" mean?? What does "." mean!!!
Oh boy...
But we use youtube to watch it!
PRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtThmOUgse8
Awesome job, however.
Definitely it seems a 1987 pixel-adventure on steroids, 'tough... ;)
Now I'm going to try the youtube link.
Oh, well...
The only though I had: Are there really only 80 people in Thimbleweed Park, when all those backers also will be in the phonebook? Or does the phonebook cover the whole county or state, in which Thimbleweed Park is in?
Two questions:
1. Will you implement the automatic-use of use/give when items from the inventory are drawn on the action-screen?
2. Will you implement the easy-get-out from communications by right-click and/or left-clicking on the action-screen? (by automatic choose the get-out-answer...)
Anyway, personally? I prefer the old style animation, don' t get me wrong, it is beautifull, but my brain can' t adapt to see an old style graphic, to extremly fluid animation..
now plwase guys, don't insult me...
I simply cannot "accept" at a subconscious level such a nice low-fi graphics with those peculiar hi-end effects and fluidness.
It just seems... incoherent in some way, to me. Not in a bad way, don't get me wrong. It seems out of place. Guess it's just a matter of getting used to it.
We will see how people like me and Marco are going to feel about it
I played the remstered version of MI and MI2 , and old style animation on a new graphic did not bother me at all.
P.S. Except Elaine. I did not like her voice. She was not the Elaine I imagined.
I'm not a big fan of voice-overs in old-class adventures games, so I'm not a great judge of the quality of it. However, I didn't liked Elaine either (although your observation is from a different perspective being one of the "fathers" of the game itself)...
Médames et Monsieurs,
Signore e Signori....
APPLAUSE!!!!
THAT'S WONDERFUL!
Notice the care in the details, the scrolling, gradient colors, the fireflies, the switching between characters and the color verbs, the face from one sentence to another, the references to old games, the humor, David Fox starring the sheriff, the pleasure in playing, the non-playable characters that creepy appears like Nurse Edna in Maniac Mansion....
You have realised THE perfect mix of nostalgia and up-to-date techniques.
No other to add!
Color verbs = verb colors
Face = fade
Beg your pardon (it's also half past midnight here in Italy)
Ciao!
It just like you said, it feels like I've found an old LucasArts adventure i didn't know.
The graphics are excellent to me, and please don't change the item pictures!
I stopped in the pigeon/bird brothers scene, i couldn't ruin the surprise...
Keep up the great work.
Long live pixels!
Cheers
PS: I've noticed that a lot of the times, the Sekrit Question is verified incorrectly. The first few times it happened, I thought I typed the answer wrong but then I started paying attention and it happens quite often.
Yes, the secret questions fails if it's been up to long and expires, this is to prevent spammers from reusing old pages to post comments. It's on my list to fix, but I have more important things to do right now. :-)
Ron, when will you know if you have the time to implement some fog that reacts to the character's movement?
One question, though:
Back in the day I don't remember any option to just call character B to the room you are with character A. I don't know if you have considered a feature like that. When you switch to Ray it seems like you will be clicking a whole lot just to get to Reyes, not to mention the time you will spend just to get certain characters together.
The same way that there is an option to switch among characters, there could be also one to call them. You press a given key and the character you called just shows up after some seconds. If that character cannot get there (because there is no path for him/her, or because he/she is busy), then you switch a moment to that character so he/she can tell you "I can't get there."
And that is a very non-trivial problem. A lot can happen in all the rooms between the two characters and to fully simulate it, we would have to find all the right doors and move them from room to room and make sure no condition was met.
It's actually very complicated and prone to a lot of bugs. It's much safer to just let players move them. I'm sure modern players will bitch about the lack of this feature. It seems like a lot of players just want everything to be simple and one click away. The game isn't a UI. It's a world to explore and travel around. If players should just teleport around, there is no chance to reward them with surprise. You get things for wondering around, looking and paying attention.
There are very few situation in the game where you want the two agents together. Most likely you'll want Ray at the Bank and Reyes at the Mansion (as a spoiler free made-up example).
Just kidding, just kidding. They use a narrative fix to sidestep the problem, anyway: one character is physically incapable of being more than 30 feet away from the other, so can never get more than two or three screens away to begin with.
Besides, having to manually bring the characters together will give us more opportunities to enjoy all of the background art.
http://assets2.ign.com/videos/zencoder/2015/12/21/960/07809477c455c775a22b9317fa159532-1500000-1450718520-w.mp4
One thing struck me as odd. Why does the agent not go around the water by stepping onto the street. Or are there other lines that explain that behavior and I just haven't seen those?
But I second what Soong said above... I really don't want to sound like an a-hole but I also don't want to just be a "yes man" because I want this game to be the best it could (in my eyes).
I found the fire hydrant "mini puzzle" was awkward and a bit forced and it might be better solved by one of the following:
1) Dismiss the water thingy completely
2) If the main idea was to introduce the pigeon brothers - I think it would be better if there was just a small scripted scene (few seconds) of them almost running the agent off the road, dropping the wrench and her cussing them out and then have them meeting along the road with the pigeon brothers having stopped because:
2a) They stopped because they almost ran her off the road and wanted to make sure she is OK.
2b) They stopped because they crashed into the fire hydrant after almost running her down and are totally blocking the road+water leaking.
2c) They stopped because of the signals and are in some weird frenzy with their hand on their heads running around complaining about the signals.
3) If the main idea was for a callback to these kinds of puzzles from the old-school then it might be better to have it play out similarly but:
3a) When she states that she can't get through - have the pigeon brothers shout out from their car something like "why can't you just go around it?" or something funnier and even more blatantly nodding to the old-school way of thought. that way it would be more obvious what that seemingly "forced" hurdle is all about.
3b) Make the hydrant leak REALLY catastrophic, and maybe add an animation of her actually trying to get through in vain (slipping\washed back to where she started from). also maybe just make the background be more supportive of the idea that she can't get through.
3c) Make her take out the FBI manual and check what an agent should do in such a case and have her follow the manual and not get wet.
3d) Make her a wiccan... and seriously afraid of water :)
Really don't want to step on your toes or be an a-hole because you guys rule and are doing a really great job and this really wets my appetite for this game regardless - I just wanted to give you my 2 cents (I ain't rich... would have given more).
I just want to emphasize that this thing happens near the beginning of the game so it might be more important because of the attention it will probably get from the players - if it were to happen in the middle or end I would probably not write what I did. First impressions will probably set a precedent in the mind of the player for all that will follow (even if it is a false one).
...I will shut up now... sorry
LOVE
IT!
http://imgur.com/a/3bxVx
It's a hard line to follow when you have only side and front frames. You adjust it and it looks good for some angles and then looks wrong for others. I spent weeks fine tuning it. It's something I will go back to at some point, but it's a pretty low priority item given everything else that needs to be done. This (and others) is an good example of where having more programmers on the project can really help.
It's low priority to me because it doesn't effect the game and it's not holding up production. One trap I've seen a lot of devs fall into the spending time tweaking stuff like this way to early and not getting more important tasks done.
Ron
I'm sure that you know more about how to solve such issues than me. Nevertheless I thought about it a bit: I suppose that the main difficulty is to estimate how fast the actor's distance changes. I don't know which data are available for your algorithm, but as a first approximation you could describe the proportionality between an actor's distance and her/his sprite's scaling factor approximately by using a simple tangent function as follows:
*distance = constant1 / tan(constant2 x scaling_factor)*
*constant1* would just be a linear factor (probably not bigger than 10) in order to scale the calculated distance.
*constant2* would depend on how large the sprite is displayed on the screen without using any scaling. Anyway constant2 must have a rather small value (for instance 20 degree <-> about 0,3 radian)!
Unfortunately it might be pretty time-consuming to find out the most proper values for the constants. You would need to get a feeling for their influences first.
Examples:
If you used the above equation and you got too big results at all distances in the game you would need to *decrease constant1*.
If only the farther distances, which this equation gives you, were too big, you would need to carefully *increase* the value of *constant2* instead.
I'm not sure if this would help you. Just follow both your gut instinct and your experiences! They are proven!
I am not going to answer any questions regarding the Star Wars VIII. But it's a good film, you should go see it.
I'll give you a glass of root beer...
1. Did they respond to broken a fire hydrant in a hurry?
2.Did they almost hit Agent Ray and swerve off the road and crash into the hydrant?
3.Did they hit a Pot Hole and crash into the hydrant?
Number 1 makes sense to why they are there.
Number 2 explains the crash sound.
Number 3 explains why the Wrench fell off and why the tires screeched.
Can you put a Pot Hole in the road at 5:10?
Where "we" call EDNA for a good time..
How Willy, the town bum got his hole in his pocket..
What the Blood, Finger, Facetron machines really do!
... kidding.
Note: Inside the "Town Hall" the "Sheriffs" door is misspelled, "SHERRIF"
He's one of the aliens on the box of Zak, and I found these nice pictures of him and Gary promoting ball blazer (as featured in the video).
http://www.langston.com/LFGames/
Enjoy!
Great playthrough and gives people an idea what they paid for! Very pleased with the result.
One question. The cross cursor seems not to have the feature of the SCUMM engine which had the cursor blinking in and out from a light gray to a white back and forth but is solid white in your playthrough (by the way I loved the way the cursor shows a direction when you go near an exit/enter walk area on the screen). Is this how it will be or will you make the cursor blinking?
Thanks
Demetris
p.s if you need greek translation assistance I will be very happy!
Great work.
Why creating a game engine was so important in the old days?
I mean, you created the SCUMM engine for the Maniac Mansion game. Why you did that?
The previous adventure game of Lucasfilm, "Labyrinth", didn't make use of a game engine, as far as I know.
What you were thinking this time?
1] The ease of porting to other platforms of the era (Commodore 64, Apple II, Amiga, Atari, IBM PC etc.)?
2] The ease of programming your next adventure games?
All of the above plus something more?
None of the above but something else?
I've read in "The Adventurer" issue #2, were in one of your early interviews, you say that creating SCUMM was "to get us out of the hole that we had dug ourselves with Maniac Mansion"...... I am unaware of programming (even BASIC), so can you explain me -with simple english and terminology- WHY you did invent SCUMM, if not for the above two mentioned reasons? What are the other advantage of using an engine versus completely writing the game from the bottom-up, using Assembly 6502 or C?
(I am sorry for my bad english)
and Merry Christmas!!!
:)
Thanks in advance for your answer!!!!!
- you only have to port the engine to different platforms, and all your games will automatically work. This is much faster and easier than porting each game to each new platform. For example, the exact same Monkey Island script that was used on the Amiga can now be run on modern PC's because there is a SCUMM port. No need to re-write the game.
- it can make it easier for non-progrraming members of the team (like artists) to present ideas for art, dialog, jokes, stories etc.
- makes it easier for programmers to do some rapid prototyping.
- helps enforce a "brand style" e.g. the verb list in Lucasarts games.
- makes it much faster to develop new games (common tech stuff is already handled by the engine)
- in theory, a whole game could be written by somebody with very little or no programming knowledge
Those are just a few, I'm sure Ron could list many more!
Of course in Italy it's already December 25.... Santa Claus is traveling near here. He has a lot of work tonight....
You said that you have build a new engine from scratch if I understood correctly? how much of your job with the game was to build the game engine? you will license it and you will use it to make more games?
Ah, the memories!
But it looks and feels like. This is absolutely just how i wanted the game to be like :) cannot wait to play this. Im so excited.
As for chickens, once gain, you're looking a really early dialog. Don't get too attached to any of it.