Friday Questions

Do you guys see virtual reality or as a feasible platform for a game like Thimbleweed Park?

Why is the glass broken on the picture?

Hi Masters of Adventure Games!
1 question: Preordered the Special Collectors edition by paypal last friday.
Will i receive the signed copy, or was it just kickstarter limited? My own fault i heard too late about this game. Thanks!

Do you think the game would have been accepted by publishers if they were approached first rather than Kickstarter?

I love the way this game looks and all your decisions seem to make a lot of sense and the product is managed in an excellent way. But anyway:

-What would have happened if the budget was much higher?
-And hypothetically: What would it be like if the game had much simpler graphics and no voice over and no special case animations, just like Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken: How much could the scope (amount of puzzles, rooms, etc.) be expanded?

Unlike when the classic adventure games being released, everyone is now on the Internet and can use google. Does this change how you design puzzles to encourage people to not just google anything that seems remotely difficult? There's definite joy in figuring it out yourself, but people are impatient.

Will you (as a team) do another point and click adventure if Thimbleweed Park turns out to be a (commercial) succes? If not, then what are your plans for after the release?

See it als 1 question: I  like your combination of Classic and newest Technology (e.g. pixelated graphics, but fine Lightning). How Important is this Topic for you? How intensive is your work regarding this? How do you decide, whats "allowed" and not regarding the credibility?

Does the game keep all the scripts and rooms in memory all the time or does it swap them out like Scumm did?

How did you decide on resolution? Normally Games in this style are done in 320*200 so in a 16:10 aspect ratio, yours though is 320*180 with an active area of 128 pxs high. Any specific reason of why go with a 52 px Inventory bar or was it just from a gut feeling? :)

How, exactly, do magnets work?

What kind of background music/sounds are you guys adopting (if any) while programming/designing/working?

I love your games Ron! Is there a chance this will hit the PS4 someday? Thanks!!

Did you put a lot of Easter eggs to find?

Are you interested in bringing Thimbleweed Park to the new Apple TV?

Do you ever get an idea during any stage of development that for whatever reason it had to be dropped, cut etc that you just can't let go of?

How the Linux port is going?
How the game will be played with a gamepad on the Xbox?

When a player gets stuck, how do you deal with it?  I love point-and-click games, but sometimes you only have one thing left, and you got on the wrong track, and you're just going everywhere, clicking everything on everything,  and then it feels like work.

What is the most valuable programming language you know?


P.S.  I need another manic mansion sequel before I die

How will you be implementing the  precision cursor accuracy shown so far, such as in the occult bookstore video, on mobile platforms?

i.e.: How will I click my teeny tiny book on a touchscreen?

Why does Ron Gilbert do, what Ron Gilbert does?

what is your favorite actual park in the world?

How many story ideas did Ron and Gary toss out before settling upon this detective story? Were there any other close contenders?

When preparing a product like this for a massive international audience, how do you (or do you?) have any way of making sure the writing (jokes, names, overall plot points) are 100% original and have not popped up in some other form that you have never even heard of? And is there any extra stress to make sure the jokes and dialogue really *pop*, knowing MILLIONS of people are going to be reading what you write?

What did you think of that early 1990´s Maniac Mansion TV-series?

Why do you think that Broken Age raised more than 3Million dollars, while Thimbleweed "only" 630k, in their respective Kickstarter campaigns?

Any updates on the strategy being used for the Linux version? I remember you were wondering what would be the best strategy so it would run on all distros.

How's the Xbox version coming along? Will it be digital only or any chance of seeing a boxed version just like Mighty No. 9, Shovel Knight etc.?

If you're already going to be making a mobile port AND an Xbox version, could you pretty please put the controller support from the Xbox version in the mobile versions?

This way we could possibly play on Android TV, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, OUYA, etc...

When are you going to announce the voice cast? Are we going to hear familiar voices from previous games of Lucas?

How detailed will the sound design for this game be? Is it going to be music-oriented and rather minimalistic in the sound effect department  like the Monkey Island games or will more ambient, atmosphere building sounds be present?

So back in the day, how did you guys handle making a timeline and progressing through the workload of refinement and polishing of the different areas of the game on the way to production -- as opposed to now, where you've divided the work up into a set of distinct logical "sprints"?

Ron (mostly, I think...): What's your favourite one-liner joke that you have written?

You have mentioned sprints and your last post was about sprints.

Does this mean you are doing Agile development? if that's the case, are there things you do like about Agile and what don't you like about it?

If none of the above is relevant then move along, this is not the question you are looking for =)

Apart from main theme do we get to hear Steve Kirk’s work before game is published and is there any chance of getting him to write a blog post also?

What are your top 5 adventure games of all time and what kind of ranking would you be pleased with for Thimbleweed Park?
(eg. best adventure game ever or hopefully somewhere in the top 20 or top 10, etc.)

Are you using 3rd party or in house developed engine for the game? Is it some kind of SCUMM? Tell us about the language, dev environment and all this cool stuff... :)

Will there be a Commodore port (Amiga or 64 or both)? If not planned yet, please do!

How many "Thimbleweed Park" units do we need to buy to make you write "Thimbleweed 2: Ransome's revenge" ?

What for a kind of music Style will be the music of "Thimbleweed Park": More classical, rock, pop, jazz. Is the music more acoustic Instruments or electronic, synthetic Sounds (like in the past). What is the connection between the music and image and story?

In terms of puzzles, difficulty, and humor, would you say that Thimbleweed Park is more similar to Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken?

Guys, if you had, say, 20pct more money would you have:

A) made the game 20pct larger
B) made the game 20pct quicker (i.e. release sooner)
C) made the game 20pct better (for some metric of quality)

Do you Agile up what needs to be done in a sprint or do you assign broad tasks to team members and let them be independent?

Who tells who what to do?

Back in those days you were FORCED to downscale your mental image of the art to meet the impositions of the limited old technology.
(low resolution, 16 colors, limited lightning and animations...)
Today it is different: you seem you DON'T need some of the capabilities of new technology (we never need extreme resolutions in this game, on the contrary low-res is a specific stylistic choice).

So, is the "PERFECT adventure game" possible nowadays? Or is there something you would like to do, but you can't do that beacuse of technological limits? What is your "impossible dream" in adventure gaming?
Thank you for your time.

Art assets question: How do you decide on the size (eg pixels) for objects? Do you create them bigger than you need? Or do you use a script to import them as the size they should be?

Thank you for answering and no probs if you skip over them. :) (Love the question time, btw) *thumbs up*

Whats the best platform to play thimbleweed?

I know that you are using a Mac to Code it, but what Platform  do  you prefer to Play it?
iPhone, iPad, pc (Mac, Windows, Linux) Xbox, ...

Ron: Are you still maintaining the puzzle dependency graph, and if you do, has it changed a lot since last time you showed it here?

Can't remember if it has been asked already:

Will there be a map to travel between locations in the game?

How long before or after release will the engine be made free software?

Will there be supernatural phenomena in TP?

Will your engine support the inevitable Thimbleweed Park Special Edition, and do you already have the high-res artwork?

You can pronounce my name as BO-BE.  Like Bobby with a long 'o'.

What VCS are you using?

What's The Secret of MThimbleweed IslPark?

Lose a lung/kidney or lose the ability to work in the games industry?

Since you're bringing TP to Xbox One now: Do you plan to include some especially creative/funny/obscure achievements that maybe go beyond of just having to beat the game? What do you think about achievements in general?

How could you assert that the difficulty level is ok for an experienced adventure gamer from the eighties and nineties? Are you classifying puzzles by difficulty? Or any other parameters?

Are you going to track and show the player status? Percentage of completed puzzles, time spent on each puzzle or any other stat?
Will we have a 120% puzzles solved with hidden games or puzzles?

What do you think about the Handmade Hero coding series?

Question:
While playing Zak McKracken™ or Maniac Mansion™, I really appreciated that every character had his own personality and abilities, each of them was able to do something that other don't. Will be the same in Thimbleweed Park? (I hope so! :-) )
Thank you!

Who would win in a fight? Ron, Gary, David or Mark?

What brand of cigarettes does agent Ray smoke?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Where do babies come from?

Has anyone of you ever played a real escape game and if yes, did you win?

Will there be a "win game" shortcut, e.g. Ctrl-W?

Are you people as psyched about new Star Wars as I am? Are you even Star Wars fans, or is it more an "fun stuff I reference in games because the extended family is involved" ?

For the iOS/Android touchscreen version of the game, is the user going to have to drag the cursor around and tap, or will theybe able to simply touch a verb then touch the object?  I ask because the re-release of the first 2 Monkey Island games, when played in Classic mode, required you to drag the cursor around with your finger, instead of just tapping, which was rather tedious.

If interested in recreational game creation, what programming language to you suggest?

How did TP come about? What was the spark that started it all? When did you come up with the name?

I apologize if this is already known, but I am interested to know what the final resolution will be, for the main game window and the GUI separately.

I'm curious to know because the game seems to be trying to maintain that old nostalgic look, and can that be achieved if the game is in high resolution?

Did you contact Michael Land, Clint Bajakian, or Peter McConnell for Thimbleweed Park?  How come they're not involved?

Have you considered logging all user actions so that, after finishing the game, the user could watch a complete replay of how he solved the game?

Just curious: will different areas/stages be set in different times of the day?  In other words, will certain stages be set during daytime and others in the nighttime (like in Monkey Island 2, where Phatt Island is set in the daytime, while Scabb Island is set in the evening)? Thanks!

If you had an unlimited budget for voice acting who would you cast in the roles of Rey, Reyes, Ransom, Franklin, and Delores (sp)?

Who will be the unlucky soul to have to QA test all 3,563 of the answering machine messages that backers will be submitting?

How will the game scale to different resolutions? Any kind of filters?

Are you developing the game on your own single Mac or do you use some kind of cloud server where you can log in and start programming from anywhere on the planet even from Mêlée Island? What kind of cloud system would you recommend?

Some information regarding the pledge upgrade? ;-)
Pretty please?

The stories of MM and MI 1+2 are very enjoyable and but also quite simple and "shallow". The premise of TP gives the chance to tell a deeper and darker story like the ones in "The Cave".
So my questions are, will the story be more like "The Cave" regarding the characters, their backgrounds and their dark sides, and is there a personal connection to one of the characters? Will there be a McGuffin like the secret of Monkey Island?

Edward Snowdon. Hero or traitor? What's your opinion on that?

Is it possible to upgrade a pledge (and receive a higher tier reward) that was made on Kickstarter by using the "Support Us" page?

You’ve mentioned in earlier interviews that in Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken many characters were somewhat based on real people, is this the case also in TP or are all characters fictional only?

When designing puzzles, do you take into consideration # of rooms needed to walk?

Your favorite adventure games other than the ones you have been involved with?

Is there progress on giving kickstarters and paypal backers the ability to up their pledge?

I recently watched an interview in wich Mr Gilbert states that puzzles shouldn't induce players to try to solve them trying random solutions.
My memory went back to when I was a kid, I didn't know english yet (I'm from Italy) and I was banging my head against the "monkey wrench puzzle" in MI2. Because of the translation ("Scimmia", just "Monkey"), the puzzle was basically impossible to solve.
Have you considered this issue while making puzzles for Thimbleweed Park?

How are you dealing with the time difference involved with Trans-Atlantic collaboration?

Some music related questions:

What is the plan on what the music will sound like? Dou you plan to use some kind of software retro synthesis which is run on the device we play the game on, so that the music sounds like Adlib or Roland (MT32)? Or will you use "presynthesized" music using one of these close to real sounding instrument databases. Or will you even use real instrument recordings? Do you plan on using something similar to the iMUSE system to generate a dynamic soundtrack?

In my oppinion a big part of the wonderfulness that made the old Lucas Arts games was the great music. I spent a large amount of my savings as a teenager on a Roland SCDB-15 soundcard to get the best possible music experience, so I admit I am a bit geeky when it comes to game music.

Thank you for answering my questions!

Where does the name Zak McKracken come from?

What is the status quo of the Park Arcade games?

Who is responsible for them?

Will there be clones of some arcade classics, such as Pac-Man, Pong, Space Invaders, Tetris or Donkey Kong for instance? Maybe a pinball, too?

I know you like your verbs, but do you take extra time to create puzzles especially for verbs that could arguably be eliminated/replaced?

{ Explanation:
There are few use cases where Open/Close couldn't be used interchangeably (meaning, you rarely would/could open the same object twice in a row).
Also, GIVE could be replaced altogether by USE, since USING an object with a character could be like giving it to him/her.  Do you try and come up with scenarios where you actually would want to USE an object on a character, like: USE TASER GUN ON UNRULY PATRON, where yield different results than GIVE TASER GUN TO UNRULY PATRON).
...USE BLACK "BLACK MAGIC" MARKER ON GROCERY CLERK.  Player: "The magic only works if I draw on him when he's asleep."
...GIVE BLACK "BLACK MAGIC" MARKER ON GROCERY CLERK. Clerk: "No thanks, I already have something to write with."
...USE BLACK "BLACK MAGIC" MARKER ON SLEEPING CLERK.  Player"[scribble scribble scribble]  ...  Hmm...That kind of looks like a...whistle."

In addition, PUSH/PULL is kind of a weird one, too.

Do you try to come up with scenarios when designing puzzles where these cases will be used- and used more than just once?
Do you make it a point to make use of verbs in original ways when designing puzzles?
Or, do you not give it too much thought and just like including PUSH/PULL, OPEN/CLOSE, USE/GIVE, to give the illusion of a more interactive world- where even though nothing might HAPPEN, you can still write funny dialogue responses.
}

Any good puzzles or puzzle mechanisms that were so out-of-place that you couldn't use it in a game?  Any instances where you included leftover puzzles from a previous project?

Why didn't you choose to treat the music the same way like the visuals, i.e. stick to chip tunes and use all that is possible today: more voices, stereo, more sounds, effects? (Visuals: stick to pixels, use more pixels, more colors, add parallax, lighting, etc.)