Thimbleweed Park Podcast #28

by Ron Gilbert
Oct 31, 2015

I don't think anything exciting happens in this podcast. It's probably not worth your time to listen to.

You can also subscribe to the Thimbleweed Park Podcast RSS feed if that's 'your thing'.

- Ron

Natalija - Oct 31, 2015 at 15:56

OK. Than I won't listen it

Natalija - Oct 31, 2015 at 15:57

Just kidding! I can't wait to listen it!!

Arto - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:13

Thanks for the heads up. I tried to listen to it, but for some reason the playback paused every few seconds.

Mattias Cedervall - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:14

Ron. who's your favorite comedian?

Ron Gilbert ✓ - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:29

Not a fan of stand-up comedy.

Sushi - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:49

[jay Leno-like voicing]: "So, I always wondered why Ron Gilbert's *stand-up* meeting podcasts are always such serious affairs.... Turns out he's not a fan of stand-up comedy! "
(Drum roll! Haha)
-sorry, that was too easy- :D

Mattias Cedervall - Oct 31, 2015 at 18:30

Oh... Thank you for your answer, Ron!

Brian Ruff - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:22

I get a chuckle out of Ron's salty language on Twitter. I think it'd be fun to spice this dev blog up with more f-bombs and s-torpedos.

Sushi - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:36

I'll just re-post something as no one is probably going to read it in the previous post, when there is such an exciting new podcast to listen to. :)
That Mark Twain rant reminded me of a joke about the English language. How do you pronounce GHOS in English?
Answer: fish! With the "f" of enou*gh*, the "I" of w*o*men and the "sh" of *s*ure
(Goldfish humour)
Reply

Sushi - Oct 31, 2015 at 16:39

Darn! *bold* doesn't work on individual letters in a word. But you can figure it out, I'm sure!

T.M. - Nov 01, 2015 at 04:27

I’ve heard the same joke but word was written as GHOTI as TI can also be pronounced as SH in words like station or nation. But if you’re interested in idiosyncrasies in English spelling and pronunciation there’s a lovely poem called Chaos by Gerald Nolst Trenité which can illustrate the issue furthermore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ3oC6sVP6k

Steven Don - Nov 12, 2015 at 20:51

I do not pronounce GHOTI at all. They are all silent letters: The GH from thouGH, the O from onomatopOeia, the T from buffeT and the I from busIness.

Estranged2 - Oct 31, 2015 at 17:13

Reverse psychology.

Dominik - Oct 31, 2015 at 18:32

Here is a whacky idea: Since obviously everybody here wants to play arcade mini-games in the Thimbleweed Park Arcade, why not outsource the task to your blog readers? Here is how this could work:

Have a closeup of an arcade cabinet with a fixed, low-res screen (for example 120 x 160), give us a mini-runtime that justs read one script and executes it, so we can play around with it, add a few basic graphic commands for the TWAC-VM (Thimbleweed Park Arcade VM) and we are good to go. All sprites must be supplied in a single sprite sheet and the VM runs at a fixed speed. Of course the VM only has 16 colors.

It would be really interesting to see what the people here could come up with!

Of course this idead just might be a bit too much over the top...

Martin Wendt - Nov 01, 2015 at 02:37

Also interesting: will there be a Commodore64 in any of the rooms? Maybe running something? :-)

Zak Phoenix McKracken - Nov 01, 2015 at 03:03

....I imagine a "nursery" room, quite dark, with Ron, Gary, David seen from the rear, while programming on a Commodore 64. Aric Wilmunder pacing back and forth all the time, and a purple slime somewhere...

...a new "baby" is getting born...

Zak Phoenix McKracken - Nov 01, 2015 at 03:06

(Nursery = delivery, more appropriate)

Carlo Valenti - Nov 01, 2015 at 16:50

My huge softwarehouse (with annexed pizzeria) could develop astonishing arcade games which will considerably increase the success of TP:
1) Parkanoid: a detective tries to defend Earth by the attack of evil baloon animals, throwing lit cigarettes to blow'em'up
2) Thimbletris: falling verbs must be put in full-row to make them disappear from the user interface - inventory icons improve each time, and eventually rule the world
3) RonG: two rectangle game-designers face each other in one amazing tennis deathmatch

Please consider carefully such contributions - and then discard them :)

Peter Campbell - Oct 31, 2015 at 19:03

I was wondering when Pep would make an appearance on the podcast =)

Btw, I must ask this for the spirit of Halloween even though there's no reason for me to think that there would be any of these in the game: Is there a Jack'O Lantern or pumpkin patch in Thimbleweed Park?

Christian - Oct 31, 2015 at 20:22

(Just out of curiosity) Why switch to FogBugz? What was wrong with the old bug tracker? Gary once talked or wrote about it that it was really efficient.

Also I think if you reduce the number of users to 2 and change payment options, you can keep this cloud database running without being shut down. At least it used to be like that.

Ron Gilbert ✓ - Oct 31, 2015 at 20:30

Yeah, it's still like that. But for some reason they got rid of per user pricing, so now adding one user can cost you $100/month. It's completely crazy. Just under 5 users and it's reasonable, go over five and it's absurd pricing.

I switched because there were a lot of features my big db didn't have, like attaching screen shots, bug resolution verification, etc, etc, plus the sorting was very limited. If I have a free week, I could add all that, but I don't right now.

Zarbulonian - Oct 31, 2015 at 22:33

Jira is a bit less crazy WRT pricing ($10/month up to 10 users, $75 up to 15, ...) Not sure it's worth it for you to migrate again, though...

https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing

Zak Phoenix McKracken - Nov 01, 2015 at 02:49

Great news in this podcast!
I can't wait to play it. The arcade machine... that's another brilliant idea from a brilliant team!

Jammet - Nov 01, 2015 at 08:40

Is there any news concerning upping a kickstarter/paypal pledge somehow?

Big Red Button - Nov 01, 2015 at 10:43

If you're really planing on keeping this font for the verbs, why not actually imitating the classic games by making the verbs' font size as small as the font size in the command line by default? In doing so, you wouldn't need to change the verbs from rendered text to images as there would be enough space. Moreover the pixels wouldn't be eye-poking to such an extent. And it would have an unadulterated retro charm.

Iron Curtain - Nov 01, 2015 at 10:48

For some unknown reason, my feed isn't updating in iTunes. Any insights why?

Ron Gilbert ✓ - Nov 01, 2015 at 11:13

Should be fixed now.

Iron Curtain - Nov 01, 2015 at 11:20

Thanks a bunch!

Iron Curtain - Nov 01, 2015 at 11:17

Okay, now it's up. I don't know what was keeping it.

z-roll - Nov 01, 2015 at 11:27

A lot of Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games had at least two fonts: the bold C64 font for spoken text and a slim font for the sentence line, dialog options, and in some cases also for verbs and text-based inventory.
Maybe Thimbleweed Park needs a second font as well. It could also be used for the newspaper articles.

Carlo Valenti - Nov 03, 2015 at 08:24

This is a new, original comment!

RC - Nov 03, 2015 at 16:24

Listening to you is always worth my time. Thanks!

Bill - Nov 05, 2015 at 17:29

I love how your podcasts have become, to me, like Marvel flims, in that after the main feature seems to be over, I wait for whatever "Easter Eggs" lurk ahead. From drawer noises to "pointless" audio level checks, it is always a little interesting to see what you have chosen to include... :P