Thimbleweed Park Podcast #7

by Ron Gilbert
May 22, 2015

Listen to me use math terms like "epsilon" with no real understanding of what they mean. It's time for another dynamic Thimbleweed Park stand-up meeting.

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

- Ron

Badde - May 22, 2015 at 16:16

Did you record the podcast once or several times? It listen like perfect any time ; - )

David Fox ✓ - May 22, 2015 at 16:19

Just once. We're that good :-)

Dominik - May 22, 2015 at 16:47

Hi David!
One question: Is there any chance you could someday do a blog post about how you writing a script? Maybe for a certain mechanism or something? I would be really interested in seeing something more from your work since up until now we had a lot of information about the Engine and Art but your part was "only" covered in the podcast afaik.
And thank you all for your hard work! It is amazing to see this game come together!

Dominik - May 22, 2015 at 16:56

I forgot to mention: One reason I would really like to read a blog post from you is that we have only seen demo code from Ron and I wonder how an actual game script looks like in this engine. So lots of code snippets would be appreciated! :-)

Concerning this podcast: It is awesome to listen to you three comparing this project to games that are among my all time favorites! With each post and podcast I am more convinced that this game will really be something special and can sand on it's own!

David Fox ✓ - May 23, 2015 at 21:00

I'd like to do a blog post on the code at some time in the future... I'm still learning the language and am still a but rusty (it has been quite a while since I last scripted a graphic adventure... 1989 -- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)...

hoerry - May 22, 2015 at 16:27

In case you still need to know, there's 86 inventory objects in Monkey Island.

Man from Falster - May 22, 2015 at 16:32

I hope you, in the game, will use some of the technology that we have forgotten, like casette-tape, VHS, commodore 64 or an old fashion phone-booth.... that is unless it gets too tedious. It is just that when it is set in 1987 (or such) the possibilities are endless -> Still a cold war, still Ronald Reagan, Robocop but no Simpsons.

Peter Campbell - May 22, 2015 at 18:42

Actually beginning in early 1987 The Simpsons did exist. They didn't have their famous standalone show, but they had those really weird, really awkward animated shorts on the Tracy Ullman Show.

Mattias Cedervall - May 22, 2015 at 16:42

Will Jenn (Sandercock?) be joining one of your conversations?

Zak Phoenix McKracken - May 22, 2015 at 18:07

I just heard David Fox say “Zak McKracken” (at 2'52") and I felt proud and full of joy :-D

Peter Campbell - May 22, 2015 at 22:33

Don't forget about the Zak McKracken poster in the Park Arcade room as seen on the TesterTron video =)

Benoit Fouletier - May 22, 2015 at 18:35

Octor! loving it! Is it 2 feet tall and retarded and Octor is its name and the only word it can utter, over and over again?
I hate Unity for calling its base class Object (when C# has System.Object or lowercase "object"... great job guys), I've heard of another engine calling it a Thing (yay)... a Ubisoft engine I've worked on had Actor but it always felt weird to manipulate eg a trigger and calling it an actor.
Good thing your engine is 2D and you don't have an octree because things would get confusing... or, do you? oh now I get it, you're making a 3D game after all, trying to lead us all on with you retro blog posts, how diabolical!

Ron Gilbert ✓ - May 22, 2015 at 18:37

It's actually "Obtor"

OBject+acTOR

natalija - May 23, 2015 at 03:52

I love those dynamic Thimbleweed park stand-up meetings! They're always funny and interesting!
P.S. Do you need voice actors in game ( like me :-D and others in here) or you will hire real voice actors without asking us for help?
P.P.S. Please try to fix those sckrit questions ; they are sometimes wrong or I'm getting worst in math!

natalija - May 23, 2015 at 03:57

Worse *

Brian Ruff - May 23, 2015 at 12:36

FRANKLIN'S A GHOST????

Mattias Cedervall - May 26, 2015 at 06:18

Perhaps Franklin is the dead body?

Andreas - May 23, 2015 at 15:06

Ok. Here is a question which has bothered me since forever, and is (not just) a bit off topic, but could you kindly answer it:
When you were developing Maniac Mansion, was all the work done on a C64 or did you have some fast (for that time) supercomputers at the time to do the development/compiling and testing?

Ron Gilbert ✓ - May 23, 2015 at 15:10

We had C64's that were connected to UNIX machines. We wrote, edit and compiled (assembled, actually since we programmed in 6502) on the UNIX machines, then they download the program to the C64 and it ran. From the Unix machine, we could halt, single step and examine memory. It made for a very nice dev environment.

Andreas - May 24, 2015 at 09:23

Thank you! Finally one of the mysteries of my childhood answered.

Rogerty - May 23, 2015 at 16:04

"with no real understanding of what they mean" :DD

NylonGamer - May 24, 2015 at 13:11

will there be something with "chuck" in its name like "chuck the plant"?

Geoff Paulsen - May 25, 2015 at 05:30

Oh, I hope so. I've had a RL "chuck the plant' every since I played Maniac.