Friday Questions
by Ron Gilbert
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016
We skipped Friday Questions in January because it was the beginning of the new year and we didn't want to set a bad precedent by actually doing something on time. It's better to expect failure and be surprised by success than expect success and be disappointed by mediocrity. Or something like that. I need to work on that quote a little.
Well, it's time for Friday questions. Post your questions in the comments and David, Gary and I will do our best to answer them. As always, only post one question per comment and don't post too many questions, we tend to tune out when a single person is posting a ton of questions.
Ready. Set. Go!
- Ron
P.S Commenting is closed.
Thanks for your question! I'll avoid going into too much detail here as I need to save some content for the blog post that I've promised to write.
I am not testing the entire game by myself, we are working with testers and will be bringing on additional testers over the course of the next few months.
Testing is going well, we are currently focusing our efforts on a cross section of the game and I am laying down the foundations so that other testers can join the team and get to work.
As for automation, Ron has previously mentioned that the game has the ability to play itself. We call it TesterTron 3000™.
(You know, food thats easy to make becasue you're too busy working 27 hours a day to eat or sleep)
Question 2: Did you guys make any wrong calls when creating the initial infrastructure for the engine that you're still paying the price?
Question 3: How longer does it take to make sure the game script doesn't allow dead ends (similar to most of LucasArts adventures) vs "not caring too much about it" (similar to Maniac Mansion, or 90% of Sierra's adventures)?
He'd do it only if he would be in full possession of the Monkey Island IP. I.e. Disney would have to sell that to him.
Especially putting an (preliminary) image of the room in, connecting exits to existing rooms and setting up walk boxes.
Afterwards the room can be actually traversed in-game.
Later objects and interactions (including dialog and puzzles) can be added/scripted.
See this article: https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/wireframing
But don't confuse that wireframe art with wiring up the room. My guess is that there wasn't any real wireframe art anymore since Mark joined the project...
(Eg. Monkey Island had piratey and Caribbean and tribal, Grim Fandango had jazz and Mexican, etc.)
My question is mainly inspired by Douglas Crockford's famous "The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System" article about Nintendo's standards and necessary censorship due to the conversion:
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html
I'm thinking 3d like in Grim Fandango or 2D like in Monkey Island 3.
In your experiendce, is it harder to make a game in 3D or in 2D?
More than half a year ago I tried to order Bad Dreams on Amazon (http://www.amazon.de/Bad-Dreams-Gary-Winnick/dp/1926513029/) but it couldn't be shipped.
In December Amazon finally gave up and cancelled my order :-(
It's also nowhere listed on http://www.red5comics.com/ !?
So my question is: Where is the best place to buy it for having it shipped to Europe?
I think there are a lot people out there who would love to make some mini games for TP.
Do me a favour and have a rat or something that I can pick up, even if it is not part of a puzzle... OK thanks.
One of the direct problems I can imagine is that you won't be able to see the sentence made out of verbs and items because your hand will obstruct it (as the text is centered and placed above the inventory and verbs). So my main question is: how will touch events be translated to the game and will the GUI need some changes because of that?
Ok I admit this is less an actual question and more a wish on my part :)
PS: David, it is pronounced like Or-Jon.
I'm tired of this clearly "shapest" attitude towards round pixels (circ-els) that is rampant in the inde game industry.
While I don't intend to boycott your game, I do intend to feel smug and self-righteous as I watch your game through a pair of salt-shaker lids.
Good day, Sirs
(Personally, I'd like to grab Meathook)
(I think MI2 takes around 3 hours to run through completely)
The reason I ask is because I did that and they said they call you... I'm freaking out.. when you answer the phone can you pretend to be my assistant? Also, if they ask, I came up with the title.. you wanted to call it "Spooky Eighties Murder Town"
I suppose the Art Book will be a somehow edited version of the blog (or an alternative version completely composed by monkeys).
Anyway – what kind of additional content do you plan to add?
E.g. sketches, cutted rooms/puzzles, Team Bios, ‘How Blog-Feedback influenced the game’, Personal Top-10-Occult-Book-Titles, etc…
Or other cool stuff you can’t talk about yet (mostly because you havn’t thought about it yet)
By the way – you don’t have the time to do an Art Book – work on the game! ;-)
In "Zak McKracken and the alien Mindbenders" the pawn shop owner says " That's the last one with transparent gloves" when you buy the wet suit. Did you add that line late in development when you realised you forgot the gloves to get NASA's stamp of approval "suited for extra-terrestrial use" ? Or did Gary not figure out how to draw a hand in a glove?
I extracted all the body-parts that Zak is constructed of here:
http:/martinwendt.de/zmk13/
Each character reuses the same (multiplexed) sprite with the same '4' colors (one of them is transparent :).
So face, Shirt, legs. You can not turn the Hands black without turning the face black as well.
Each Character has a single 'free' color. There is a reason why Michaels Shirt is 'light red' in Maniac Mansion :)
See here: http://martinwendt.de/party2.png
Or you would need new animated arms for that special case. Memory was very tight for these games on C64 (I can tell ;-). I.e. all the data you see in the link was RLE packed in vertical columns and when Zak was facing left, the data was mirrored in real time and so on.
Such an ambitious engine. I simply love it!
Can you comment about the possibility to "talk to" other playable characters and how you have handled that in your game design?
(elaborating a bit so you can skip below part for the podcast)
I imagine things get messy if you would allow the player to select both sides of the conversation. I expect you only control the current selected character. But if you can switch to the other character and start a new dialogue, how do you keep that consistent which was said just before? Or will the playable characters be non-conversational towards one another? That seems unlikely with the agents interrogating everyone, which is important for the "suspension of disbelief". If I were you, I would just remove dialogue trees and/or multiple characters from the game... just kidding!!.
By the way, in DOTT, the kids are split up and/or avoid to be in the same room (unless in cutscenes) to avoid this issue all together. In fate of atlantis, Sophia is just a side-kick to Indy which you only switched to e.g. to pull two switches at the same time or so. Not a possible murder suspect... I think controlling both protagonists and antagonists adds a whole new and interesting dimension to Thimbleweed Park. (At least new for these guys)
- How many goals ("sprints") have been successfully achieved so far?
I can think of several reasons that make such a project sound:
• your posts about the implementation details of TP are always very interesting and inspiring. I'd like to read more;
• there are examples of books about programming that use games as application domain for the code presented (just to name a couple: "Land of Lisp" and "Realm of Racket"). I'm not saying that the aim of the book should be teaching programming, but apparently these two fields go along well;
• I think your expertise and your writing style could result in a fun and informative book to read;
What would be your recommended way of getting started in game development be? Unity? Coding a Game Engine? I've settled in Haxeflixel for the time being because of ease of cross-device export and being fairly high level. As I'm a big indie game and pixel art fan I'd say it's safe to assume I'd want to start off with 2D.
I hope that it wasn't due to the comments, because some of them were actually a bit unfair, given that you presented it at a very early stage. In my opinion it wouldn't have needed too many changes to make it look more realistic. I think it might have been sufficient to hold the upper position for a slightly longer while and to reduce the lift of the face to only one pixel instead of two. Furthermore, the ears should be still.
2) Whenever I see the verb interface, I perceive it as being unpolished. The GUI from LeChuck's Revenge was much more aesthetic. If I remember correctly, you foreshadowed that it would be revised somewhere down the road. If so, when is it scheduled? I think it may be advantageous for any public demonstrations, if you polished it at an early stage?
3) A few years ago Ron wrote in his blog about how he would have made a 3rd Monkey Island game, *if* he made another one. See this link: http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland
He mentioned that he would allow (and even encourage) anyone to make fan games. Are you going to allow TP fan games as well?
1. Not sure how head bobbing could be made to look realistic, as you say, since people don't typically bob their heads as they talk, unless they suffer from aortic insufficiency and show de Musset's sign. :)
2. There are a couple of things I think could probably be improved about the interface, too. First, when the inventory has many items in it, the arrows that appear to its left seem a little crowded in there since everything else is spaced out so neatly. Secondly, the dark verb countour lines make them less sharp, which looks inconsistent with the rest of the sharp text (e.g., the white text that appears as you rest the cursor on top of things that you can interact with). I don't love the bullet points in the dialog options either. But I do think the font is an interesting choice.
1. "realistic" is relating to the look of the movement itself. Maybe it's not usual in the reality, nevertheless it appeared in some point & click games, such as Monkey Island. Therefore, I would have liked it. Moreover, it prevents the impression of an unmovable neck.
If drawing a room which has a large horizontal extent (wider than the screen), do you still use only one vanishing point somewhere near the center?
Or will there be a 'notebook' for clues such as things like the old Westwood Blade Runner game?
TL'DR Can you get the detective work 'wrong' or anything, or is it a purely linear game?
If you could make a point and click adventure game based on any movie, old or present, what movie would you pick, and why?
But now I'm back, threatening and powerful with brand new circuits, filled with hatred against David,
and I ask him: will you give the same answer to THIS question?
Longer version: I assume near the end of development of every game you have some feeling about how the game turned out (e.g. 'this one is really good' vs. 'this one turned out pretty average'). Does this feeling accurately predict the commercial and critical success of the game?
I always really liked them, so I was just curious why you added them for Monkey Island in the first place, and why you decided not to use them in subsequent games.
Cheers
https://youtu.be/_VElSIHEsK8
Matt Hansen is wearing a t-shirt with The Cave on it!
Do you feel that this takes away from part of the experience of traditional point-and-click gameplay where a player would need to first scan the screen with their eyes and then point to objects of interest with the mouse cursor?
(Being able to cycle through objects nearly eliminates all pixel-hunting in any form. I also believe that it eliminates the ability to design puzzles where the appearance of a key object is intentionally modest or seemingly inconsequential- E.g. the branch of a tree is a secret lever. The player wouldn't normally think to "click" on the branch, but perhaps the answer to a puzzle directs him to do so. I also enjoy pixel-hunting in it's purest form- finding the needle in the haystack, if you will- as long as it makes sense and is humorous...and as long as there are no more than a couple, at most, within the game. Like, finding something in the dark, or (to the extreme) finding a 1-pixel gumdrop randomly placed in the game as an achievement/trophy- I gave an example of this puzzle in a previous post.)
I would love to pay some extra cash for the collector's edition boxed copy. :)
For example do you work straight 9-5, do you work in 45 minute chunks and 15 breaks etc?... And if it doesn't count as an additional question do you listen to anything like a podcast/audio book/play an olde movie in the background or do you exclusively enjoy the deafening silence of the mundane (for pure concentration/sadism)?
(Long time follower, first time commenter. I love this blog, getting an inside to the creative process and can't wait for the game)
Where she talks about her lover.. Guy Brush back in the 1930's..
And just as the camera is panning down to her young voluptuous breasts..
It flash forwards to 1987 showing her saggy chest?
This audio:
https://youtu.be/B3l1iUUq_fE?t=37
This animation:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/79/29/fa/7929fa917a3eca9e72fc2077ad2137d4.gif
Would hexagonal pixels shake things up in your pixel-art style?