München
by Ron Gilbert
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017
Had a great great time at the Munich Thimbleweed Park Fan Party. So many great people, all playing Thimbleweed Park and talking about adventure games. Thanks to everyone that came along. We even had a crappie 1980s polaroid camera to take phone with (no on wanted to be the dead body).
Looking forward to Berlin. Have a nice team inbetween!
The perfect location for an event of this kind, friendly.
Me too, I chatted with some blog users and met fans of adventure games.
Oh, I questioned Ron "When the games will come out?" ... and he answered!!
- "Soon!" :-) :-) :-)
When this picture was taken, I was playing with Ransome, it's very funny!
You don't have Phoenix Wright's trademark haircut!
It was really sad that the Stragula threw us out after 10pm, just when it became comfortable and relaxed due to having less people (and noise) around. Official opening hours are from 5pm to 11pm. *grrr*
I missed your red nose, the mustache and the shades, Zak. Almost didn’t recognize you in your bright blue suit! ;-)
Did you have the chance to play the game?
However, after having completed all items on Ransome’s todo list and being back at the diner, I decided to stop. I want to wait for the full game instead. Seeing most of Thimbleweed Park on the big screen was already too much information for me. I desperately tried not to look at it all the time, but it is just so beautiful…! :-\
I also had a blue kazoo, the T.P.C. phone bill, three crystals, the map of the dream, an ankh... and a stale bread (really stale, 1 week old) in my backpack, resting on the floor.
Can you play that one song on your kazoo which is the only song you know and with only song I mean both of them?
Looks like a lot more people had announced to come than really did in the end.
I had the feeling to leave at around 7 PM, but due to the high stream of people coming in and out, I decided to have a supper and another good beer :-)
Grog!
Oh no, wait you still need to spontaneous plan that one ;)
I was hoping to make the London event (and up the female contingent) but no longer can. Perhaps for the best, as I'd be a jibbering wally in the presence of Ron and co...
If u read this.. Sorry Ron.. It's true that the event is for TP but i wait that damn 3rd chapter from 25 years!!
Polizei, Grenadier, alte Hex and gute Nacht?
😜
(the guy with the Atari ST :D )
At least my fellow table mates made it in the blog.
It was a great evening and the demo was great and so detailed with a lot of hidden things and jokes.
Had a brief but great chat with Ron, Jenn and Boris.
I loved to see what people brought to get signed. Especially the one who had 3 Monkey Island boxes, factory sealed, which got signed by Ron.
Have a great time in Berlin and London!
[ ] ... extreme worse
[ ] ... worse
[ ] ... Ok
[ ] ... good
[ ] ... very good
[ ] ... "shut up and give me the full game!"
[X] Enjoyable by checking every nook and cranny to have more fun
[X] Immersive
Oh, and don't forget to turn the option "Toilet paper orientation" ON !!
Again, Thx Ron for signing it!
I mostly remember the *woooow* going through the crowd when you unpacked them and Ron asking, if you are ever going to play them.
(So I had my code wheel from monkey island signed instead :))
By the way, a recent interview with Ron translated to German:
http://www.gamersglobal.de/interview/thimbleweed-park
As for the release date, Ron tells that he won't announce a date as long as the game is still running through the Microsoft certification process. According to Ron, this can take a month (https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/stateofthegame4).
I think the time has come for the "coming soon" Steam page.
I'm asking because I can't imagine how you advertise a game today. How you are making the game / TWP known to the world? How do the TWP team reach people that don't know of Thimbleweed Park? And most important: Can we help Ron to advertise the game? :-)
Anyway, Ron is currently in Germany because it will probably be the most important market for TWP. It makes sense, of course. At the end of the day, no one exactly knows the chances of a game like TWP. Not even Ron knows. We can only keep our fingers crossed for the game.
At least, seeing both the number of ports (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Xbox, iOS, Android and maybe even more soon) and the popularity of Ron's earlier adventure games, it's hard to imagine that the game wouldn't sell well. As Ron mentioned in the above interview, the popularity of its creator has a big influence on a game's success. On one hand this is a sad fact, because there are so many talented game designers out there no one knows about, but on the other hand this means that TWP might have very good chances. As we have seen, TWP is listed on some 'most anticipated games of 2017' lists. This makes me very optimistic!
https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/827066791109283842
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MTgZsFKPmM
I am a big fan of the series and Lynch movies. One of the key sentence near the end is: "The gum you like is gonna come back in style!"
I think is quite appropriate for Thimbleweed Park, Ron games are our gum!
Maybe the game release on May too? Wow that would be a double event!
Thanks!
See here: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/engine
By the way, if you're interested in Jenn's documentation and the involvement of Squirrel, take a look at this site (not sure if it's up to date): http://thimblescript.wiki/thimblescript
It's exactly the same concept as with SCUMM (which used a custom but regarding functionality very similar scripting language).
I remember he said Adventure Game Studio was good for making games but he didnt wanted to use it.
There are other reasons too.
TWP was always meant to run on all kind of platforms, from desktop (for us/me old people) to (especially!) mobile platforms.
If you want to have it running smoothly everywhere you better have full control over the engine.
Since he got already a game (Scurvy Scallywags) working on mobile platforms (which is the most limited one regarding resources) and he likes being in control of the source code anyway the decision wasn't probably too hard.
AGS: It's nice for easily creating oldschool adventure games but it has its limits. One being platform support.
Also its option management system doesn't have support for 10 bazillion settings, so...
I made an adventure game using AGS, then I moved to Visionaire Studio (the same engine used to develop Zak McKracken Between Time and Space). But in both cases, I had to abandon my project.
Wadjet Eye Games released several titles using AGS!
I've played Maniac Mansion Deluxe quite some time ago. One problem was (at the time) that it used a special plugin to create the (SPOILER ALERT) flashlight effect which sadly made the game Windows only.
What? Unfinished game projects? How is this even possible!
It would be great to use SCUMM! or at least see a picture of how it was... Would there be a copy somewhere? or Mr Lucas keep it on his Ranch? hehe... maybe thats the Secret of Monkey Island... the place where the last copy of SCUMM is buried!
https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/824013210655150080
I laughed so hard when I saw Dave working at the burger joint! Gronkh didn't pick up on that one, but the circus audience finally had him drooling! :)
But, the second Gronkh video is asynchronous. :-(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dokVgI0LULs
At around 10:33, after looking at Chuck's tomb and when Ron says that the story runs much deeper than what is visible on the outside, I wondered where all this might be leading to? So here's my best projection for the future: Thimbleweed Park will be told in three parts, and we'll see Monkey Island 3a as well, and maybe Thimbleweed Park is the game that ties the previous games together. That means one day, I hope, we'll be told the ending to Monkey Island. I mean we don't see Guybrush, Zak and the Edisons at ThimbleCon, but they're all right there in the circus... wait a minute... the circus? I love the circus!
i am sure the damn walk on the *beeping* cemetery back and forth will take minutes, maybe spent hours for solving puzzles.
Please do a podcast of one of the next fan events in Europe or where they interview you or some of the team? Then all of us around the world can also be part of the fan events :) Pretty PLEEAAASE!
- Presentation: To Be Evaluated
During the demo session there was no presentation, so I can't judge by now.
- Graphics: 98%
The pixel art style is great, it fits perfectly with the purpose of this kind of games, but without the limitations of the old 80's. Smooth animations, lights effects, parallax, transparent verb interface, real-time animated inventory items, shaking verbs, cross pointer which changes depending on the exit direction, long cutscenes. It's the perfect style for a classic point'n'click adventure game.
The option to change the toilet paper orientation works real-time, too!
- Sound: 95%
Voices of agents Ray, Rayes and Ransome are clear and good, the background music is compelling (addictive), there are the little special effects like footsteps, opening doors, water, singing... and *beep* tones not annoying.
- Hookability: 90%
You can figure out what to do in a few minutes, or you can explore locations and enjoy every tiny particular of the game. You can go back and further anytime among locations, switch between characters, and play your own adventure. I initially was concentrated in solving the puzzles, then I decided to explore the far right of the initial location. Just for fun!
- Lastability: 98%
Even if it was a short demo, I know Thimbleweed Park is a long game. And with 5 playable characters, it has to be! Hours and hours of fun ahead, for sure.
Personal note: I initially was stick to the past, wished to play with old style verb interface, old classic font, and pixel purist mode. Then I tried the new one, and I definitely like the new one. It's simply more beautiful and enjoyable.
Btw. you forgot to deduct 50% from graphics score because the mouse cursor is not pulsating!!!
What score would you give the food served during this TWP event?
And did you notice the URL of this blogpost :-)
Good quality, too much for my standards but the quality/price ratio is good.
- Drinking: 99%
German beer is like italian pizza: unbeatable!!
Or like Japanese Ramen or Chinese Jianbing (If you don't know what that is, look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jianbing).
Thanks! Dark chocolate!
And it was very nice meeting you as well, Carlo =)
Cheers
Go London people, go Thimbleweed Park!
Here are two samples:
http://fontmeme.com/permalink/170205/25eb3473158b911a37a64c9a38936ee9.png
http://fontmeme.com/permalink/170205/0aef6ce1ca3174d1af58e7ed96da50ed.png
When we arrived about @7pm, the place was overcrowded with *beeping* bald and greyhaired kids, so we had to wait to get inside. Asswipes. After approximately 2 beers i was able to thank Ron for absolving my guilt (for pirating both MM & MI, hey: i was far away of the age of criminal responsibility, but still). I forgot to ask all the meaty questions i laid out precisely in my mind. When turning to the crowd who still wanted to get in touch with Ron i wished him great success in sales and made place for the people next in queue, literally in the middle of the smalltalk, without properly saying goodbye. This must have made a strange impression, sorry Ron :)
Had some nice chats about ..ehm.. point and click games. Unfortunately is missed the opportunity to exchange contacts or reach out to some of the enthusiastic italian guys (have some of you been there?) My social skills need some time to develop and the event was over so fast. Hopefully we meet again @30th++ anniversary thimblecon.
At the end i finally was able to to play the demo. Zak already mentioned some impressions, here are a few of mine:
Everybody knows how good it looks, but it also plays smoothly. From minute one it feels like home and you want to explore everything. At this point i can stop explaining, its like you want it to be.
The options menu was not fully accessible (its a demo, you don't need to quit, save or start a new game).
The help entry was present in 2 places, only one working. The first page showed the interface and briefly explained the views, like the inventory. The following 2 pages showed some professionally drawn placeholder graphics :P . I assume to eventually explain the actions: left mouse button (walk and select, doubleclick: run) and right mousebutton (default action). And how to breathe...
Please publish placeholder graphics and wireframe art somewhere sometime!!!
In the audio menu you can select the audio levels (obviously).
You will be able to change the text speed. Changing the text language was greyed out for the demo.
In the graphics menu you can adjust the screen border margin. I think this is important if you plug in a (hd)tv which can't turn off overscan.
It is possible to toggle the screenfont, verbline and verbs to classic, individually. My favorite was default verbs, but classic font and verb line. Default is great too, but i guess i'm hardwired to it. The c64 font looks a little bit compressed horizontally, maybe to save screenspace. But im not sure, maybe i remember it to be more spacious. I quess its because of the outline, which is quite thin and also lets it look less blocky.
Pixel purist mode was nowhere to be seen. I think its ok to sideload it from floppy two (,8,2), there are more important settings which need space, like the toilet paper over / under option.
After end of the demo the game said: please leave. We obeyed and left...
And sorry for prefering stinkin Joe over yer favorite playable character franklin :)
Glad that you had the opportunity to play the game, with such a crowd it could not be so obvious.
As for the italian guys present, I know for sure that two of them were at the event: Carlo Valenti and Ema.
I was already been at the Munich Event, unfortunately I couldn't be present in Berlin, too, even if I would have loved to be there.
Did you notice the boy with the black T-shirt and Ransome on it? I have seen it via twitter, I loved it!!
Towards the end, after everyone shook Rons hand (Yes, everyone! Thats a benchmark in patience and pleasantness) alot people left and there was this small time frame, yay. I'm happy that not too much of the story was spoiled.
Yes i have seen the boy, great shirt. Alot people were jealous :)
And some people was jealous of me too, because I gave the T-shirt I won to that girl who desired it so much.... :-)
Please tell us! We don't know anything!! :-)
She collected 5 or 6 tickets (mine included). My number was lucky enough to be chosen, I gave her the T-shirt, she was happy, the host mocked me "you know, italians", everybody laughed, we all had fun :-)
Even to me, the german guy of Adventure Treff, addressed me as "the italian guy", because I was wearing an electric blue jacket with a bright red tie, compared to him totally in black.
We are like the coloured rainbow inside the dark sadness... 8:()
The next event is in London, on the 4th of February.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.231944927216115.1073741829.100012018282645&type=3
Thanks to everyone organizing and attending this!
This site reports that Thimbleweed Park will be released this month, FEBRUARY 2017.
Please check it out, and report if it's a fake news, thank you.
https://www.releases.com/p/thimbleweed-park
February would be great, please make me a birthday present!
Unfortunately its not very likely...
http://imgur.com/gallery/rd0Fc
Anyway, Hoagie character is priceless! And you can listen the commentary which is very cool!
Personally, I'm currently a bit too busy for playing a game, but to know that the game is going to be released soon, has nonetheless made me a bit unpatient. :-D
Here is cloudy, at the moment.
He would have kept it secret though...
Btw, here i spot some snowflakes flying around...
Master me a blog...
blogity, blogity, blog blog bla blog...
I saw Jenn and had a nice little talk with her while Ron was busy signing old MI and ZMcK boxes. Thanks @Jenn for that.
BTW: I have to confess Ron doesn't look any grumpy at all! Though he wasn't game playing/developing or doing other game'ish stuff - so maybe it's just Grumpy GAMER!? @Ron? ;-)
All together a pleasant ambiance!
Berlin this evening was very foggy - it felt spooky a bit. Probably a nice thing to take unusual photos...
Can't wait to play it, but preferably on a C-64 or Amiga 500.
Love the graphics ! Great work !
Thimbleweed Park is a masterpiece even before its coming out!
If he added the "Toilet paper orientation" option, don't you believe he could add such an option?
Asking is for free. Try it.
Nonetheless the pixel mode in TWP interests me. Maybe I'll turn it on.
http://insertcoin.it/category/commodore-64128/
(The list of available games is limited, and the website language is in italian, but the game names are in the international language)
It's easy to install, and online you can easily find both the most famous titles and even the tapes that came with the magazines.
In particular, for italian users, here's an example: http://specialprogramsipe.altervista.org/
http://www.thegamesmachine.it/anteprime-videogiochi-pc-ps4-xbox-wii-u-app/69581/thimbleweed-park-anteprima-provato-pc-ps4/
They write: "We had in our hands a preview-code which gave us access to about 15% of the final release". I believe it means: "We have played the demo at the London Party" :-) :-)
(sorry, had to... ;)
It was a tupo.
One of the best articles on Thimbleweed Park that I have read so far.
Ron even talks about the many user contributions, like the phone book, specks of dust and the hundreds of books in the library.