Thimbleweed Park Podcast #60
by Ron Gilbert
Sep 07, 2016
Sep 07, 2016
The Trump campaign is in complete disarray after a surprise Wednesday Thimbleweed Park podcast.
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- Ron
Thank you for your reply, Ron.
Nightwish did a quite good version of High hopes, BTW.
At a certain point, I've heard of 552 bugs, but I didn't understand if they are the total bugs remaining or they were just discovered during the 4 days of Pax. If it is this second one, geez, you are very eagle-eyes guys!
https://teechip.com/programer-89231#id=1001&c=F6F6F6&sid=beverage-mug
I rely on your ears!
For a large project like TP on 3 platforms, nearing shipping, I'd say getting 500 bugs in a week or 2 sounds not that unusual, particularly as the whole dev team is away at a conference, so none of them get fixed right away.
This isn't something that would end up in the bug tracker. A developer would put it directly into code and it would look like this:
// Ugly hack for PAX West 2016, fix ASAP
...
(also it will never be fixed and 10 years later someone finds this code comment and posts it on Twitter or its successor)
It's easy to assume everyone knows the intricacies of our terminology, and hard to make assumptions about what others may not know. Tell them what parts of the mock-up are final, like 'positioning mock-up'. Also often helps to actually make a mock-up look less finished, (like a sketch, or B/W or so) to make it more obvious that it's a mock-up.
(Scurvy Scallywags is a good game BTW. Give it a try.)
Nice piece of music.
http://metroworlds.com/
At least, that is what subsists of Habitat, the ancestor of Maniac Mansion, if I get it right.
It was a Sierra adventure.
No, not Leisure Suit Larry saga.
It involved a child who grew up fast, very fast, at the very beginning of the game.
Still guessing? Take a look: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2bphBN8Op2Q/hqdefault.jpg
Puzzles were logical, but the story is a bit nonsense, or surreal.
But very very amusing!!
(video by someone else)
Despite not being a plant at all, a machine like this should be located in a corner of thimbleCon
Btw, if anyone is around, i'm all in grabbing a beer. (or wine :)
P. S. Lost all my quarters to the indy pinball :/
https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-give-went2play-rights-from-disney-to-develop-a-ij-fate-of-atlantis-special-edition
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=39250.260
It seems they started working in 2009, and in jan 2014 they where still on it...
Do you know if the project is still existing?
Last update is from April, so it seems to be active!
Although not a replacement for the original it still would be interesting to have MM in DOTT style!
Btw. they use blue as skin tone for the Edisons. This must be the most colourful family in world.
Also here is the English version: http://www.night-of-the-meteor.de/en
It's funny to see how they use artworks from DOTT, having adapted the architecture of the mansion.
I don't know whether Disney would be okay with this remake, but, if they realize it, they should implement dialogs as well.
I didn't like MI4 at all and its mainly for a bad visualization...they ruined it.
About Ron Gilbert, I read that he would never make another Monkey Island without owning the whole thing, he doesn't want a license to do a "3a" game for Disney, he wants to buy Monkey Island (TM) in order to work for himself (and I agree with him). Will Disney sell Monkey Island to its creator? We will see. It would be nice to see you on board for that project.
Pizza!
Also, I'm currently playing Obduction (from the Myst makers) and they have a total of 15 achievements. Given Steam shows achievements on the player's main page for a game asa progress bar (Apparently game devs can hide spoilerific achievements though), it'd be neat to have general story progress in there. I'm 11 hours in and have 3 achievements... :-S
Any plans for Silver and Gold level achievements, so there is both a sense of "someone did something awesome" and "I'm atleastmaking progress in the game"?
Ron stated he isn't really fond of story progress achievements because he doesn't consider them as an actual achievement.
Personally I find them interesting for statistical purposes: http://steamcommunity.com/stats/MonkeyIsland2:SE/achievements
By the way, the percentage of players who prefered the classic mode is interestingly high.
I would assume that generally many gamers try a game and then never complete it. But what we can see here is, that many of those completing "Largo Embargo Complete" actually finish the game! That percentage seems quite high. (Also it helps that this version has a hint system added.)
Re classic mode: That's hard to believe. If every other player really didn't try the classic mode at all, I'm very disappointed. Maybe these 50 % who didn't even try the wonderful classic mode of Monkey Island were the same 50 % who didn't finish the first act. Can it be true that 50 % of the players were real philistines? If so, I don't want to know what a pollster would conclude, for the next presidential election, based on this.
Is this actually known?
2. I would also say that those 50% of the first two achievements are the same.
Why it's so low? Maybe some people just start the game to see if it works. Maybe some don't like this type of game or its graphics at all. Maybe some get stuck really quickly (no wonder if they didn't even find the classic button/key...).
3. LeChuck for president! (sometimes you have to choose the lesser of three evils.)
2. I agree. Some of these people may have bought the game only because there was a bargain offer. Furthermore, it's very usual that someone doesn't find time to play it, after he had bought and installed the game for emotional reasons. When I bought the Special Editions, it took a few months as well until I found time to play it. Nevertheless, I eventually played both games entirely.
3. I wouldn't be surprised if he already has a finger in the pie.
Are those Steam-achievements implemented on game level or on Steam level? So so they exist in non-Steam versions of games as well, or are they lacking in, say, the GOG or DRM free direct download versions of a game?
But I understand that it's additional (UI!) work.
Still it would be nice if you can add it (it's basically just a list to scroll through).
Aaand you can also reuse it in all of your subsequent games! Reusability, wohoo!
(Personally, I do not think achievements add anything to the game. And progress-indicating stuff like the score in Sierra games were a bit awkward IMO.)
Btw. Dark Souls 3 has the ultimate achievement: "Complete all achievements."
(and I hope the programmers know that it's actually "Complete all achievements - 1")
Achievements could be good if they motivate you to play the game again. In addition they could tell the player: "You haven't seen all places/objects, etc."
So not a big difference :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81jDCd6AuMs
"Good interview… Just ignore @grumpygamer’s glowing red eyes… He’s really not possessed." :-D
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/DavidBFox/status/774309408268353536
All PAX West 2016 interviews I've watched (or listened to) yet are pretty unprofessional. Maybe because there were primarily consumers, other than GDC. Or maybe due to the shivaree.
If you want to have better light but still having cool eyes there is some kind of ring-lights-around-camera-setup which looks great (some say creepy) when in your face.
You can see something like that here in action (though not about a fun topic, but it was the first video I've found): https://youtu.be/4rBrQKtGICU