Thimbleweed Park Podcast #51

by Ron Gilbert
May 29, 2016

[INSERT FUNNY DESCRIPTION HERE]

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

You can also get the podcast directly from iTunes.

- Ron

R.C.M. - May 29, 2016 at 18:21

[INSERT FUNNY COMMENT HERE]

R.C.M. - May 29, 2016 at 18:37

The idea of Ransome being self-beeping would be pretty funny- especially if he honked his clown nose for the 'beep'ing noise!

Wluut - May 30, 2016 at 10:40

I also like the idea of Ransome hitting his nose every beep.

But I am not sure if this will be funny for longer than 5 minutes or if it ends up like something meant funny, but annoying (like JarJar Binks for example).

Voice acting will probably better if scripted.

Gnikiv - May 30, 2016 at 19:38

Quote: "annoying (like JarJar Binks..." - Hey!? Show some respect!

Big Red Button - May 31, 2016 at 08:21

I agree, that, however it will be done, they should make sure that it won't become annoying. Maybe via an optional muting.

Big Red Button - May 31, 2016 at 08:35

Though, muting would be only a compromise, of course. The default beep should actually be reasonable enough, that is not too loud or too unaesthetic.

Kevin Drum - May 30, 2016 at 21:00

I was going to make the same comment about having a clown-nose-honking sound for the BEEP.

Derrick Reisdorf - May 30, 2016 at 23:39

I like the idea- not necessarily of a squeeky clown nose sound or Ransome squeezing his own nose- but simply the honk of a clown horn instead of a beep. I think you would have to record lots of variations of the honk so it wouldn't wear too old on the player.

urielz - May 29, 2016 at 19:03

Would it be possible for the followers of the blog to get a chance to hear samples of the potential voice actors and comment which we like the most?

Randy Pratt - May 29, 2016 at 19:12

Possible future fun:

1. Have a Madlibs-like approach and let the backers record swear words which are then inserted at random into Ransome's dialog.

2. Use different language swear words in place of BEEP.

Both of which would seem to require the in-out markers that don't exist.

Or a reverse-Tourettes syndrome where Ransome ends up saying "nice" words in place of BEEPs, somehow being very obvious that they are unintended.

Cheeseness - May 29, 2016 at 20:05

I feel like beeps are inherently more funny, but performances tend to be better when they are scripted?

Thinking about Telltale's Poker Night At The Inventory, Tycho's lines are generally less interesting/funny with the bleeping turned off (same goes for Timmy Two-Teeth's lines in their Sam & Max games), but I think the timing/placement of the beeps has an impact too - gotta let a hint of that first or last syllable slip in to give the impression of a swear.

Jammet - May 29, 2016 at 20:10

I wonder if there is going to be a public demo of the game at some point. We used to have demos of games like Indy, Monkey Island, and so forth. Not sure where these demos were originally intended for, but they exist...

LogicDeLuxe - May 30, 2016 at 06:33

Back in the days, such demos were published on magazine floppies and CDs.
Except that one interactive Sam & Max demo, which was probably a press release intended to be evaluated by the magazine staff.

longuist - May 30, 2016 at 08:37

Ron stated in a comment that there will be no public demo of the game.

Jammet - May 29, 2016 at 20:16

How awesome would it be, if all the swearing Random's doing, is "beeped" out by noises. Meaning, noises that are specific to the room he is in. If he can literally stand in just about any room and throw a hissy fit, the beeping could be ...

Anything in that room! Someone coughing. Birds chirping loudly. A car horn. Anything.

e - May 29, 2016 at 20:31

Ransome suffers from an extremely rare psychological disorder known as anti-tourette. He is self-censoring!

Just have the actor read the beeps as they've been written, for beep's sake. That would work for me.

Patricio Martinotti - May 29, 2016 at 21:16

Few hours ago, my first jam-jazz rehearsal, for my studies. I'm not a natural jazz musician but a pop rock one. It was a big step. Came back to home only to know about Radiohead and Thimbleweed Park. I'm happy to think about the next january. School-break (I'm a teacher) only to read books, listen to jazz recordings, and play TWP. I love the team they're working on this game. I wonder if exists a personal TXT from Ron with the Podcast's dates. I'm downloading all of them to train my english skills. But I would love to have the exactly date of each one.

Brian Small - May 30, 2016 at 14:54

You should be able to look on the dates of the blog posts where Ron announces each podcast.

longuist - May 30, 2016 at 16:39

Follow the itunes link. There are all upload dates.
If you just want to mark a specific row use the CTRL modifier key. (if you use Firefox that is)

Nor Treblig - May 30, 2016 at 19:12

Most of the time the Podcast is recorded on Friday. Later (during the weekend) Ron edits and releases the Podcast. So the last Friday is normally the correct date, though there are exceptions.

Nor Treblig - May 30, 2016 at 19:19

This is my guess:

*Mo* 2015-04-13 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #1
Fr 2015-04-17 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #2
Fr 2015-04-24 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #3
Fr 2015-05-01 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #4
Fr 2015-05-08 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #5
Fr 2015-05-15 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #6
Fr 2015-05-22 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #7
Fr 2015-05-29 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #8
Fr 2015-06-12 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #9
Fr 2015-06-19 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #10
Fr 2015-06-26 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #11
Fr 2015-07-03 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #12
Fr 2015-07-10 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #13
Fr 2015-07-17 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #14
Fr 2015-07-24 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #15
Fr 2015-07-31 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #16
Fr 2015-08-14 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #17
Fr 2015-08-21 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #18
Fr 2015-08-28 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #19
Fr 2015-09-04 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #20
Fr 2015-09-11 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #21
Fr 2015-09-18 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #22
Fr 2015-09-25 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #23
Fr 2015-10-02 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #24
Fr 2015-10-09 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #25
Fr 2015-10-16 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #26
Fr 2015-10-23 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #27
Fr 2015-10-30 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #28
Fr 2015-11-06 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #29
Fr 2015-11-13 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #30
Fr 2015-11-20 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #31
Fr 2015-12-04 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #32
Fr 2015-12-11 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #33
Fr 2015-12-18 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #34
*Do* 2015-12-31 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #35
Fr 2016-01-08 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #36
*Di* 2016-01-19 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #37
Fr 2016-01-22 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #38
Fr 2016-01-29 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #39
Fr 2016-02-05 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #40
Fr 2016-02-12 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #41
Fr 2016-02-19 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #42
Fr 2016-02-26 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #43
*Mo* 2016-03-28 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #44
Fr 2016-04-01 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #45
Fr 2016-04-15 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #47
Fr 2016-04-29 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #48
Fr 2016-05-13 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #49
Fr 2016-05-20 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #50
Fr 2016-05-27 Thimbleweed Park Podcast #51

Zak Phoenix McKracken - May 31, 2016 at 03:11

_Do_ and _Di_ what weekday names are?

Nor Treblig - May 31, 2016 at 03:41

Oops, I used localized week names. Di is Tuesday, Do is Thursday

Zak Phoenix McKracken - May 31, 2016 at 05:32

Dienstag / Donnerstag ?

Nor Treblig - May 31, 2016 at 08:26

Exactly!

L Dimas - May 30, 2016 at 01:06

In which Ron loses his hability to headline Podcasts with a funny comment.

Roman - May 30, 2016 at 02:59

Regarding the beep...why not having the clown pushing an old style horn.. Beeeep...Beeep....

Derrick Reisdorf - May 30, 2016 at 23:43

More like a honk instead of a beep.

Roman - May 31, 2016 at 02:14

Yes indeed. *Honk* *Honk*

Milo Casagrande - May 30, 2016 at 05:12

BEEEP... I caught chickenpox at the age of 33... BEEEP awful! BEEEP!

Not sure if I prefer Ransome self-beeping himself, I think it will make it funnier to have an external beep sound like on TV shows...
Though, it might be good to listen to the end result of both approaches (or whatever approaches are considered as alternatives) before saying "that is good, that is BEEP!".

Ciao.

Mattias Cedervall - May 30, 2016 at 23:46

I hate the pathetic beep sound on TV shows! :-(

Mister T - May 30, 2016 at 06:15

Voice actors have a better flow when they say real lines and probably will have an easiert time to act serious. Nothing diminishes well written comedy more than actors who let shine through that they know they are funny.

Also in that case fragments of beginning and end of the beeped word could be heard behind the beep, which makes it more fun in the case of obscure curses.

LogicDeLuxe - May 30, 2016 at 07:00

Dr. Memory can be helpful when debugging such unreliable to reproduce bugs: http://drmemory.org/
It was helpful for me before.

Patrik Spacek - May 30, 2016 at 08:54

Once I asked Notch, If I can come for visit.

Mattias Cedervall - May 30, 2016 at 09:48

Ron beep about Gilbert Gottfried and why their 51 hamsters will cancel the game.

Tom - May 30, 2016 at 10:59

It's about beeping time you hired beeping voice actors to beeping finish this beeping game. It's so beeping far behind schedule. The code must be beeped up and full of beeping bugs. Some of us beepholes are not going to live for beeping forever.

longuist - May 30, 2016 at 17:44

Priority 2 - Must Fix

case NaN: Podcast #46 still missing. Goes too far!

BEEP

Derrick Reisdorf - May 30, 2016 at 23:48

Ron's a genius, no?
Couldn't he write some editing tool to help him create the uncensored version of the script?
Something simple, like it parses the lines of dialogue, displays a line with the word "beep" in there, and prompts the user for the word to replace it. You could also dump tags/code to mark the new word as one that needs to be beeped.
I guess it's unnecessary work. Let the actors figure it out. :)

Zak Phoenix McKracken - May 31, 2016 at 03:13

This is not a Sierra game!

Derrick Reisdorf - May 31, 2016 at 10:16

Sierra game??? Oh. I guess what I wrote didn't make sense to you.

I'm talking about a tool to create to help the developer generate an uncensored voice-acting script.
When I said "the user" will enter the naughty word to replace the *beep*, I mean the developer/programmer who is using the tool.

Zak Phoenix McKracken - May 31, 2016 at 10:39

Oh, I imagined something like an edit box where the user (=player) had to enter the bad word :-)
Like in Leisure Suit Larry:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xp9bQT78RyU/hqdefault.jpg

Mario F. - May 31, 2016 at 07:06

why the hell do i like garry's voice much more than the offending voice of ron or the nerdy voice of david? ;-)
maybe gary should do some speech books.

Daniel Wolf - Jun 01, 2016 at 03:31

Regarding the beeping: In Leisure Suit Larry 7, they had a deckhand named Peggy who's constantly swearing. They decided to script the actual swear words and have the voice actor perform them, then they beeped over them. That way, they got perfect timing. Also, the beeping typically doesn't cover the entire swear word. I definitely prefer "f<beep>ng" to "<beep>"!

To see what I mean, have a look at this playthrough starting at 15:30. Warning: Probably NSFW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsK_LMG9zT0

Tom - Jun 01, 2016 at 11:11

News flash. Disney willing to trade IP rights for MM and MI not for cash but for TWP. Ron considering the offer.... (kidding).

mr. T - Jun 01, 2016 at 13:25

Ron got busted! Nice catch there David, you must have eyes of a fox! No wonder they put him as the sheriff ;)

Ron Gilbert ✓ - Jun 01, 2016 at 13:42

David Fox isn't the Sheriff, the Sheriff is african-american..

Benoit FOULETIER - Jun 03, 2016 at 04:31

Regarding the "different Z-sort layer for the arms" thing, on Rayman Origins we had a (relatively) easy solution for that: each actor had the option to register at 2 different Zs. And then the rule was: all body part layers with a negative order is rendered on z1, positive order on z2 (I'm assuming of course you have a second order for internal body-part-sorting, on top of the actor-z-sorting)
So basically 99% of actors had z1 == z2,, so that would only register once in the rendering, but if you put a different z2 (don't remember if it was a toggle or offset from z1 or whatever), then they would simply register twice (once for each z), this way the render loop doesn't really have to care, it just sees 2 primitives and doesn't care they're actually the same actor.

Fausto Fonseca - Jun 07, 2016 at 12:40

To solve the Git issue with large binary assets we use https://git-lfs.github.com/ in our company

Carlo Valenti - Jun 11, 2016 at 12:23

*Thimble-Survey #3 (fan-made) just closed the doors!*

I hereby submit the results to the review of the scientific community.
I personally wish to thank each one of you generically speaking, but all of you in particular.

So, let's go to the numbers...

Number of surveyouers:    *11111*

First of all: *TP* or TWP?    *52%* - 48%
*Ray* or Reyes?    *68%* - 32%
*Delores* or DeLorean?    *58%* - 42%
DeLorean or *Mark Ferrari*?     16% - *84%*
EGA or *VGA*?    23% - *77%*
Point or *Click*?    26% - *74%*
*C* or Java?    *81%* - 19%
*Pizza* or gelato?    *58%* - 42%
Star Trek or *Star Wars*?    45% - *55%*
BEEEEP or *fBEEEPk*?    45% - *55%*
*Sexy doors* or pixelated corpses?    *58%* - 42%
Happy ending or *nightmarish cliffhanger*?    48% - *52%*
*Animated fog* or multiplayer mode?    *87%* - 13%
*Friday questions* or 1-day-before release?    *77%* - 23%
*Pathfinding stocastic techniques* or sub-path pre-def & snap-to?    *68%* - 32%
*Act Two* or Act Three?    *55%* - 45%
*The Pigeons above* or the dungeons below?    *61%* - 39%
Fox singing or *Gilbert proof-reading*?    45% - *55%*
*Reyes lip-syncing* or Ray lap-dancing?    *55%* - 45%
Another question or *please stop*?    0% - *100%*
*Did you enjoy this survey?    100%*

Nor Treblig - Jun 11, 2016 at 13:11

Oops, I think you posted it on the wrong blog entry.

Btw: That's quite a lot of people!!!!!
Maybe your 11111 key is stuck?

TP vs. TWP: Ron will not approve!
Where are the EGA fans :-(
When I did the survey there was only one lonely Java guy :-)
David Fox: You are lucky, but it was close! Maybe next time...

Sushi - Jun 11, 2016 at 14:55

EGA, right here!
or whatever you'd call the resolution on a C64 :)

PS. thanks to your wonderful greasemonkey plugin, I don't care in which blog entry things are posted - I won't have to miss a single one of 'em

Nor Treblig - Jun 11, 2016 at 15:47

And who needs all those colours? I mean, VGA already has more than a human eye can distinguish!

Carlo Valenti - Jun 11, 2016 at 18:29

I just posted here first, to test the asterisks - had a bad surprise last time :-)
Then I posted on the current blog post.

11111: a lot of people? It depends, I could have written 0x1F also....

I do prefer EGA over VGA, too! It's (8-bit-art)^squared, in my opinion.

Carlo Valenti - Jun 11, 2016 at 18:16

OK, now let's comment the results. I promise, I will a-septic and impartial.
Moreover, a new blog-post just happened, so who cares about impartiality?

*TP slightly won over TWP*. Then again, I understand the official acronym will be TWP. WTF, I should RTFM from TPTB.
*Agent Ray has grown more popular than agent Reyes*. That's unfair. Reyes didn't get a trailer, nor his voice in it. Moreover, agent Ray's been told to lap-dance pretty well.
*Delores won her match against the evil DeLorean*. This teaches us all (teaches me over all) that you don't need time-travelling capabilities, when you are such a lovely geek. Personally, I have a crush for Delores. I'd like to meet her one day. ...But then again, if it was a *flying Delorean*, would the outcome be the same?
*Mark Ferrari wins over the DeLorean* (again). No comment here. Ferrari rulez.
*People love VGA more than EGA*. EGA is 4 bit (more or less), VGA is 8. 4 has sharp edges, 8 is double-round. That's the reason.
*Click is better than point*. To point means to be in constant quest; to click means to use, to achieve, to rule. You males are all the same.
*C wins over Java*. Since I have to be impartial, I won't comment this. (Java s##ks)
*Pizza or gelato*. People had the most difficult decision of their life here, probably. I am close to both factions, knowing that every one has suffered a great loss.
*Star Wars is preferred to Star Trek*. The analytics from Google must have some glitch.
*fBEEEPk is preferrable to BEEEEP*. What the BEEEEP did you BEEEEP choose here, BEEEEP!!!!
*Sexy doors over pixelated corpses*. The doors were WAY more sexy than corpses. ThimbleTeam again must fix this.
*People prefer a nightmarish cliffhanger*. You know the truth behind this game? ...OK, I will tell you another time. Perhaps.
*Animated fog is a requirement more essential than multiplayer mode*. OK. No problem. Let's go like this. Be more individualistic, safe&sealed in your cloud of fog. Your business.
*Friday questions definitely wins over 1-day-before release*. This reveals the fact that no one really cares about the game. This blog alone is worth the money of the kickstarter. Keep your stinky bytes for yourself, ThimbleTeam: we just want to BLOG.
*Pathfinding stocastic techniques or sub-path pre-def & snap-to*. Still need to understand this, sorry...
*People like Act Two more than Act Three*. Yes, Act Two is better. Act Three is just lazy and unsound. Everybody knows this.
*The Pigeons above win over the dungeons below*. I hate pigeons, so tell me: do you really want to have pigeons above your head???
*Gilbert proof-reading was preferred to Fox singing*. This was difficult: what is worse?
*Reyes lip-syncing slightly wins over Ray lap-dancing*. Then again, that would have been an interesting SCA.

Everyone was satisfied with the number of questions, but I couldn't believe that everyone enjoyed the survey. This pulls tears out from my eyes: thank you, everyone. Thanks a lot.

Carlo Valenti - Jun 11, 2016 at 18:30

this also was posted here fisrt to test the asterisks!

Nor Treblig - Jun 12, 2016 at 03:05

Oh no, it's broken! There aren't any asterisks!

Carlo Valenti - Jun 12, 2016 at 06:03

Yes, but the bold characters boldly went exactly where I wanted them to boldly go.

Nor Treblig - Jun 12, 2016 at 12:31

To boldly go where no asterisk has gone before.

Nor Treblig - Sep 11, 2016 at 12:21

Oh no, it's fixed! So many asterisks!

Darkgaze - Sep 10, 2016 at 16:35

Super low volume. Not like other episodes. Please louder!!!