Friday Questions
by Ron Gilbert
Mar 01, 2017
Mar 01, 2017
COMMENTS ARE CLOSED
After a long break, Friday questions are back!
Post your questions for Gary, David or I to answer on this week's Thimbleweed Park™ Podcast and we'll do our best to answer them.
One question per-comment and please try and keep them short. If you leave a long meandering question, we'll get bored and start reading twitter.
If you question relates to these final stages of the project, it will be more likely to be answered.
And as always, be nice and no wagering.
- Ron
What - the - *beep*!
2. Can't wait to play this game already
3. That's it
I reckon the available software is much more vast now than in 1987 where more stuff had to be invented from the ground up.
Will you allow to have english audio with english subtitles? That's the best way for those of us who have english as a second language.
the game is shipped with voices in English, and subtitles in English, Italian, Spanish, German and French.
I just hope, that the subtitles don't include audio cues, or if they do, that we can make them optional.
I know, that it is very helpful for the people, which need them, but it is very distracting if you don't.
For example Broken Age includes forced audio cues.
Please change from "Sorry, some berries MIGHT be delicious, but they still end hunger way too permanently." to "Sorry, some poisonous berries MIGHT be delicious, but still ends hunger way too permanently.".
During development when the three of you disagreed about design choices, how often did you win the argument, because Gary and Ron were intimidated by your mustache?
Or maybe you wouldn't necessarily want to use the same platform?
The only dead end I can see hear is that Disney discontinued in-house game development after their purchase of LucasFilm.
Good idea, I suggest a facebook/messenger group, so if someone doesn't want to share his phone number, it's safe.
You can search for me, add me, and after I'll create a group. :-)
We know Boris for the German part, but for Italian, Spanish, and French?
Thanks!
Aren't you the Italian translator?!
French translator = Hercule Poirot?
I had translated "Rube Works" game for David Fox, but in Thimbleweed Park my best contribution was spamming in the blog.
:D
I worry that i paid 150 bucks ( not signed as far as i remember) for the same thing.
The reward item is an acknowledgement that you gave 150 bucks to Ron and Gary and trusted them to use it well. It's really cool that you did that. In my opinion, we should not expect kickstarter exclusiveness or compare backer's money with final game prices too much. Of course you probably get the final game for less. But maybe you wouldn't be able to get it at all now if you and others had decided to not give 150 bucks two years ago. I am greatful what Gary, Ron and their team made with my kickstarter money.
Take a look here for official minimum requirements: http://store.steampowered.com/app/569860
That should be possible. But I recommend not to use these old OS X versions because they haven't got updates since a while (and won't get any in the future).
http://i.imgur.com/Nsjhd44.png
http://i.imgur.com/gOOvWLg.png
Great minds think alike, or what...
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxrjtzVivzoEQDUAMlGWNfA5FBfJQ0Y0tJRK2FZ38E-Qz7h-cpFCIuaE7M
I am curious: looking back with today's knowledge to the point in time where it all started, before you went on Kickstarter, would you still take the plunge to do it? Would you probably do it again for "Thimbleweed Park 2 - The Quest for more gullible crowdfunders"?
Best,
Herr Stirz
People organizing the tours, helping lug stuff at the booths, maybe even people at Microsoft that helped with the Xbox publishing process or so. Which of these people did you not expect you'd need originally?
There are a lot of programmers here, and most of them seem to be interested in how the hell you write your own adventure game engine (myself included), so a bit more detail for us fellow wannabe gamedevs would be appreciated :D
Ron, when I was young - I believe I was 11 or 12 - do you know how much time I wast...eh..needed to find the !$/%&§$!"% oil for the §&$%"!!% chainsaw in MM @C64 (years later: still on Amiga)? No? I also can't remember exactly, but it felt like a half, maybe even three-quarter of infinity. And now I am really happy to be able to tell you that it was worth every second! Otherwise, maybe, I would had have (have had? has have? sorry native German here) the time to do more social things like joining the real live or doing other crazy and dangerous stuff. So thank you so much in hindsight and I hope that the puzzles in TP will be at least as crazy and time consuming!
Thanks,
-dn (investor and proudly phone book referenced guy)
Thanks again as well for creating one of the nicest corners to hang out on the internet in the last 2 years!
;-)
A: No, backers will get all three.
Q: And what about regular buyers? Does the Licence contain all three systems?
No.
Cheers,
Herr Stirz
https://txtadv.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/twptxtadv.png
1) Why Thimbleweed park? Can you explain what's the story behind it (the idea around the name and why you choose it)?
2) Should we expect more episodes of TWP?
And what are you gonna do if the sales are bad?
My question is: Now that you have set a launch date, how long does it take for the burnout of making a game to wear off, and actually want to create something else?
What made you at least reconsider this?
IIRC, when this project started you clearly stated that the engine won't be open sourced.
But not because I don't believe in your abilities: that's because that means the game will last much longer than expected!
Do you support GOG Galaxy achievements and is there also a custom (offline) achievement implementation?
Will it be horizontal or vertical?
So please ANSWER it!!!... :D
...only if the answer to the first part is going to be a resounding YES.
Actually my brain now is too old to get in sync with other genres :D
*Steve Kirk directed the thimbleweed soundtrack
Here's wishing you all a successful launch!
Ron said cynically, that he would try to get a "real" job, if this game flops, but I presume that they will realize enough profit with this game, so that they will be able to finance their next game without doing a Kickstarter project again.
Remember the old days: over 11,000 people, from ALL AROUND THE WORLD, backed the project.
Only on TRUST.
And nowadays, every specialized magazine has very positive comments.
We can do our part, telling about Thimbleweed Park to everybody.
...
"Ron said cynically, that he would try to get a "real" job, if this game flops,"
And this makes me still a little bit sad: The people backed a (smaller) project with simple graphics and all in all a more "simpler" version. After the Kickstarter Ron and Gary made the game "bigger" (in the sense of better graphics and so on) and involved more people. So it's natural that you have a lot of additional work and more costs. So *if* TWP won't be successful, why not doing another Kickstart with smaller goals (i.e. the simple MM graphics)? The community in this blog was very kind and even contributed to the game development. And I bet when Ron and Gary are doing another Kickstarter there are even more people willing to spend more money.
But, I'm pretty sure that the game will sell sufficiently. At least, they wouldn't need a new engine for their next adventure game.
Hopefully, Mark Ferrari would be aboard again! By the way, it would be exciting to see what Mark Ferrari would create by using Pro Motion (http://www.cosmigo.com/), which he mentioned in his lecture at GDC 2016 (http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics).
I wanted to ask:
1) How many hours of play it takes to complete TWP?
2) There are hopes to have in the future also the dubbing in Italian?
3) The game has a pretty solid story yellow Agatha Christie type, or is simply a funny thing?
Grazie!!!
We know that some members of Thimbleweed Park did a full playing, to test the game, and it took approx. 9 hours to complete. And they knew what to do......
2) Did you ever regret coding that engine from scratch? It probably was half the fun of making a game for the first year, but do you feel like that classy 80:20 rule applies? And how much did it annoy you or the others in the team that were not involved in programming?
3) was it more like 90-10? :-)
4) What did you consider the biggest obstacle during development? All of you :)
If so, would a game like TWP take way less to be produced?
If so, why don't you make a new one NOW? TWP isn't even out yet, and I can't get enough of new adventure games.
I suppose that many (old) games have cheat codes because the developers used those to test their games. Max health here, no clipping there, god mode on. I've read that you prepared save games for the testers. What else is there? Can you easily strip it from the release version?
Best,
Marcel
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/10/world/creepy-clown-sightings-global/
Q. If you were create a sequel...will you build on the scale of employees if the idea of the game/world is to be bigger?
ps. i really hope you all suceed in a bigger profit from this title than you all expect. I cannot wait for release, i think i 8-bit too many p&c in anticipation :-)
Did you hold off of any jokes/storylines for the sequel ;-)?
Will the difference in size be about the percentage from MI1 to MI2?
Is there such a thing as too many rooms in adventure games?
(no seriously, I am just pulling your leg, I can imagine a sequel is probably the last thing you want to think about right now ;-) )
Too bad after "Thimbleweed World" the IP will be bought buy Disney and the third one will never be made...
?
Quite a lot stuff which is generally considered obsolete has got a source release, like Microsoft's 6502 BASIC or even stuff like the Apollo 11 source codes, so why not SCUMM?
And I don't think that Disney owns SCUMM. As we know, Ron took SCUMM to Humongous Entertainment, and as we know him, he is not the guy to be satisfied with just a license from Disney.
I think, he could very well tell us who owns it now.
AFAIK Ron *licensed* SCUMM for the Humongous games. The ScummVM team had a discussion with LucasArts about SCUMM and the rights. So Ron doesn't own SCUMM.
Thank you.
This is for inventing Maniac Mansion and the scenario and not for DOTT.
For me "use" is the chainsaw of verbs.
When I first played an Infocom adventure (which was after Maniac Mansion) I was completely lost, because I couldn't use "use" and had to find a more appropriate and fitting verb.
But here's a fun fact: in Argentinian Spanish, Coger means Fuck. We've been laughing for years now, and I feel like I had to say something when I saw some screenshots the other day. Greetings!
How do you compare the classic verb interface used in TWP with the context-menu, icon-based interface of more recent adventure games? Do you have a fundamental objection to the latter, or feel indifferent?
Thanks!
- will the various demo versions that were shown e.g. on PAX or Gamescom also be available (at least to backers, to make it more interesting)?
- would you consider a kind of anniversary podcast a year after the release to look back at development, reception of the game and such with the needed distance?
A flower breeds, yellow, so tiny, so shy!
I wonder the reason we've chosen its name:
Please answer me, Winnick: you're too on the game.
[Gary]: Among all the flowers, you know, sure, my dear,
This one has the wisdom to gracefully appear.
But since my own answer may be unorthodox,
I'm joining your question: I'm asking the Fox!
[David]: You slackers, you suckers, you both tuna head:
YOU kicked the starter, and drove all us mad!
The mistery comes from a time once upon:
Shall answer the question the one named Ron.
to answer this old and good question of mine :)
Is the Non KS boxed version the same box than KS one or just a stupid standard plastic dvd box ?