Friday Questions

I'm wondering if Thimbleweed Park is the town which the original Maniac Mansion took place... and if so will the mansion be included in the background of the game?  Seems like a lot of references to the game that got me addicted to Point & Click games.

Thanks, Tony

What music or artists do the three of you enjoy listening to and will your personal taste influence the style of the Thimbleweed Park soundtrack?

If you're already going to be making a mobile port AND an Xbox version, could you pretty please port 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...

Dear Ron,

I would like to know your opinion on why do you think Broken Age kickstarter campaign raised 3.3M, while Thimbleweed less than 700K, both having the same goal. Did you expect your campaign to have this outcome?

Do you think it is related to a different marketing strategy of the kickstarter campaign? I know DoTT had a very big fan base, but Monkey Island is way more popular, and I can't get an explanation on this.

Thank you for your time, best!

Assuming you have time what with all the working n all. What games are you playing at the moment?

Will Mark Ferrari™ write a blog post any time soon?

Out of curiosity but, since they will be mandatory for the Xbox One version, have you guys gave any deeper thought into the achievements? Are you planning for any nasty/secret/hard to attain ones?

What is everybody on the team's opinion about the verbs using "left hand" grid versus action name (ie. 'u' for use and 'o' for open)? And what are your thoughts/have they changed after the feedback from earlier this week it?

This question in mainly for Ron, although ti can be transposed to everyone involved in the development (as long as we adapt to the context).

How much do you found easier developing an old-fashioned point-and-click adventure using nowadays tools and concept? Wasn't easier back in the days when you could (needed to) cut some corner and got for a quick-and-dirty solution, rather than adopting proper "modern" programming and development patterns/approaches?

From time to time I suspect that modern programmers then to complicate things in abstracting too much the software model/engine.

I think this is for you all.
What are your expectations for after the game release in terms of copies or licences sold if any? In other words, what will make you consider the game a success?

Would you guys ever make a sci-fi themed adventure game, or do you think that has been done too much already?

Since everybody is making DLCs , would you consider making one? For example, a DLC that lets you re-play the story but from another character's point of view. New puzzles but the same rooms, assets, animations, etc.. Is this a stupid idea?

Do you guys see yourselves making any more point and click adventure games, once Thimbleweed Park is finished?

Kids today love crafting systems! Is there a crafting system in Thimbleweed Park? Can you harvest wood and ore to rebuild the park?

If money was not an object who would your dream voice actors be for Thimbleweed Park?

With the year almost over, which game do you think deserves to be awarded 2015 Game of the Year?

What were your favorite C64 games other than the ones you made, and what made them your favorite?

Why is it always night in your games? At least at the beginning.

After just replaying Maniac Mansion Deluxe edition, I kept thinking how great it would be if I could use my mouse scroll wheel to change the right click default highlighted verb/action. I read the discussion about shortcut mapping, but I rarely use them as I prefer to kick back and be a one handed mouse only player.

Thanks for bringing this form of gaming back. Any chance this can be an ongoing series?
Brad

Making a video game can be a grueling task, both mentally and physically. How do you keep yourselves healthy and sane throughout the brutal gauntlet of development, or don't you?

Did you plan for a C64 version when you started working on MI or Indy3? Put differently, why did you abandon the C64 platform for SCUMM based games in just months after releasing Zak? (My inner child is still crying over that - here's your chance to do some healing)

Gary, have you faced an inventory icon that was just too hard to draw, or looked so bad as a handful of pixels that it had to be nixed from the game completely and a puzzle reworked? I.e. what is your icon nemeses?

For everyone: is Kickstarter like having ten-thousand bosses/publishers/mothers-in-law, or is it the complete opposite? Perhaps so much freedom that you don't even wear shoes and pants anymore?

How many listeners does your famous, nearly weekly podcast have? 1, 100, 1000000? (I realy like to hear it on monday mornig before work, its like having a nice talk to collegues to get in the right groove :-) )

Do you take non-English speaking people into consideration when writing dialogue and designing puzzles that relates more to the story than "item and inventory puzzles"?

Below is a copy of a post I did regarding the same issue in the "I am just going to write" thread.


=======================================

Regarding overly long dialogues.

If the dialogues seem overly long to native English speaking people they most certainly are to non-English speaking people.

I live in Denmark. I prefer puzzles that are mainly item/inventory based. Of course we need dialogue to move the story forward. But if the story is complex with lots of dialogue with many of the puzzles "hidden" in the story they "vanish" due to the language barrier.

Danish is a small language so we never get to see movies in the cinema with dubbed sound. It's all original audio and Danish subtitles. That makes us rather good at speaking English.

Many people would say "I can easily watch an american film and not read the subtitles". But it often turns out that if you actually do watch a movie without subtitles you loose a lot of info if the plot is just a little complicated.

Yes, there are subtitles in Thimbleweed Park but they are English too. That's fine. I really like them and they make sure I understand the voiceover completely. But still. It's a foreign language.

Please make sure not to do overly long dialogues.

Can't wait to play the game. It's going to be THE game of the year!

Now that you're past the middle of the project, and the work is shifting more and more towards fixing bugs, polishing, planning and handling distribution, and other "mundane" tasks - do you ever feel, if only for a few seconds, an urge to just abandon the project? Just leave everything and go into the creative phase of another project?

Is it true that David Fox was the 6th original member of "The Beatles"?   (i've read it on an occult website)

Currently I find myself replaying Maniac Mansion after a plethora of years. Yay! I had forgotten the dead-end possibility in the game, when you misused an item for example and you couldn't end the game anymore, but you could continue playing without noticing it. Are you planning something similar for TP?

Since everybody is doing XMas specials....will there be a Thimbleweed Park XMas special...
Do we see the characters dancing around the xmas tree...or a tentacle as Santa....Does Ed get a new hamster...no wait..that's a different story...
Enjoy the holidays...

Will there be a forest?


I loved Melee Island's dark forest: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/monkeyisland/images/9/9e/Melee_treasure.png/revision/latest?cb=20120508152300

This isn't related to the game, but more for fun, what do you guys like to drink ? Microbrews ? Tequila ? Need to know if I ever see you when I'm out and about.   :)

Will the assets of the game be compressed? How? Or do you have enough discipline to net waste hours on implementing that?

Were the classic adventures also developed using the 'sprint' method
and if yes, what did the respective sprints consist of? For example, was
MI1  created by finalizing one island completely before starting work on
the next one?

Hi Ron,

Would you be able to talk a bit about the architecture of the engine? What components you have and how they interface together?

Cheers,
Thiezn

Hey Ron,

You mentioned earlier on you suck at math. Did this hinder you in any way during your career and/or game development? Do you think all game developers should invest their time into developing their math skills?

Cheers,
Thiezn

Hey Ron,

Any thoughts about the new Apple TV platform in regards to adventure games? It seems to me the remote would fit the genre quite well

Cheers,
Thiezn

Perhaps a dull question but I am curious, What tv shows are you guys watching at the moment?

Are there any animal characters in the game? Like the dog, sea gull, or monkeys from Monkey Island, or the hamster from Maniac Mansion, and so forth?

Is there going to be an option to disable the graphical inventory, and instead have the classic text inventory mode? Not that I dislike these AWESOME icons ;D.

Why not?

When the character moves further away from the camera, its sprite size needs to change at some point to reflect the distance.
How do you determine how many (and which) smaller versions of a character you need?

(Or in other words: "Is there an ideal sprite_height(distance) function in the world of pixel art?")

Are you going to answer THIS question?

There's a bit in Monkey Island 2 where Guybrush asks why adventure games cost so much, to which LeChuck replies 'scanned VGA art is very expensive". Was this actually true, or was it just a joke?

Are you coming to AdventureX next week?

Could you reveal a bit more about your development setup?

How do you handle version control? Do you have automated tests? Are you using continuous Integration or something like this?

Dear Santa,

We probably will not play Thimbleweed Park this X-mas, but maybe you can convince Ron to show us some more jaw-dropping screenshots or prepare some awesome wallpapers to cheer our desktops and minds up during that short and dark winter days...

;-)

How much time per day/week do you actually spend on the game? I usually get caught up in my work (because it is fun and i actually like what id do) and then i put way more hours than i should.

If something in a 'room' dramatically changed after certain events (elsewhere), do you so to speak "branch" early on in the room-script for the alternative or do you opt for a second realization (from the perspective of the engine) of the whole room?
For our C64 game I will do the latter and was wondering if you face such situations?

@ ron
why  Max was replaced by Tantacle in ME2SE?

Back in the old days, there were lots of -mostly technical- limitations, like disk size, graphics, memory issues etc.

Do you -nowadays- experience limitations of any kind, that actually inspire you or stimulate your creativity?

Will TP have more 'special case animations' than LeChuck's Revenge?

Thimbleweed Park is a journey into the past of graphical adventure gaming, but the genre has not really changed a great deal in recent times. How do you think adventure game creators can bring innovation to the adventure game experience (rather than just through new storylines)?

Sooo at what point after or during development will the engine be released as free software? The adventure game community needs a new adventure game engine because AGS is aging pretty badly - have a chat with Dave Gilbert about why it sucks and why yours will save his life!

You said you wanted Achievements to reflect some actual achievements. I respect that, but would like to beg you politely to add some basic achievements anyway, like "finished the game" or "finished part 1". Having a base set of achievements that help you track your progress through the game is very helpful. Also, since your friends get to see your achievements (and you theirs), it encourages people who were interrupted in playing the game to pick it back up when they see their friends advancing in it.

So puhleeeeeeze? :-)

Did you ever consider the game music and sound effects could resemble the C64/Amiga sounds?

Was there ever a room that the library staircase in Maniac Mansion led to? I've always wondered what could have been up there.

League of Legends or DOTA 2?

Did you ever successfully hunt the wumpus?

Question about "The Greatest Game of all times", Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders™ :
I had discovered some easter eggs, for example:
- if you used the blue crystal on yak and "Chew" 20 times, a new verb appear ("Poop")
- if you got the Exit VISA Code wrong too many times, you ended your game in jail
- if you pulled one of the rug corners in my room, there was a hidden trapdoor to go down into the rear room of the TPC
Do you remember other easter eggs I could have missed during these years?
Thank you

Are walk boxes exclusively trapezoids with two horizontal line segments and can walk boxes only connect at these horizontal line segments? That's what it looks like in the video. If not, how do you determine if and where two walk boxes are connected?

@ Ron Gilbert
Would you go to make a MonkeyIsland-adventure game containing just the spirit of Monkey Island without the brandname "Monkey Island"? You could name it "Rat of the Pirate", "Captain Banana " or "#uck the Chuck" for example...

Question for Gary

Can you be commissioned to do an album cover and how much do you charge?

What is Art in Games?

Will you offer glossy posters to buy with motives like i.e. the bookstore with just a small logo in the corner?  If so,  please offer affordable shipping and sign me up for a few.

You are such a great team and your results look so very good so far. Will you make another game together after this?

What will the money be used for which you earn from selling the "final" product and how much do you expect to sell due to the current feedback? Btw greetings from Germany to all of you! :)

Are there only 8 Icons in the inventory? Will be there a Scroll-Bar?

Will there be snow this winter?

I noticed you put a thumbnail of Rays head in the corner of the screen. That answered my previous weeks qauestion if you were going to add a ui element to switch beween characters. Consider this weeks question answered.

Ps: You're not not a tuna head.

I'm not sure of your plans following Thimbleweed Park, but if it leads to future point and click adventures, would you ever implement the time travel feature of Day of the Tentacle again? The ability to control three characters in three respective time zones, though still linked via the Chron-O-John, allowed for some amazing and unique puzzles which I haven't seen anywhere else.

Note that when I state to 'the time travel feature', I refer to the ability to elements such as the ability to change the environment in the past, resulting in an altered environment in the future, and transferring items between time periods for some interesting solutions.

Not sure if i should write this. Probably not...

Are the icons final yet?

meep meep and away

Did Guybrush T. had any extramarital affair? Did Elaine M. discover it?
Do these count as two questions?