All the pixels and flaws really bugged me, but thankfully Hermna Toothroth was pretty awesomely designed along with the rest of Monkey Island, so when I got to that point I started to actually enjoy the game real good.
I think LeChuck's short arms (and really poor arm-swinging animation) along with Stan's new look is really cheap. Just running into Stan seemed to slow the tempo in this game for me. Looking at him made me feel bad. (Whats with the tiny body and the giant head which is obviously a caricature of someone?) Listening to him was just annoying. It makes me sad, cause Stan was my favourite character back in CMI.
why was listening to stan annoying if you liked him in curse, it was the same voice.
I noticed quite a lot oddities. Besides those pixel bits:
- Some parts are in-animated, eventhough they are animated in the classic view. The fireplace in Meat Hook's for instance.
- Stan walks through Guybrush when going to the Sea Monkey.
- The Sierra like "death sequence" somewhat kills the joke when it doesn't appear exactly like it looked in old Sierra games.
- The eye movements in the Navigator's closeup looks very strange.
- A basket in the Voodoo shop became a chest, but is still referred to as a basket.
- Blocky clouds at the cannibal village.
- The directions on the compass are out of order. I wonder if this was done on purpose. The classic resolution is too low to read this for comparison.
- LeChuck punching Guybrush has some really blocky graphics.
- The order of dialog line selection differs from classic view in some cases. For instance "I'm Guybrush Threepwood. Prepare to die!" appears at the bottom.
- No Sam & Max idol.
- The savegame percentage feels awfully off. Parts 2 and 4, which are significantly shorter than parts 1 and 3 count the most percentage.
- George Lucas (bridge keeper) using "the force" has a different sound than those in the Star Wars movies.
- The water under the boat is in-animated.
- The recipe is printed on the Melee Island PTA according to the inventory icon.
- In the Ship's kitchen, all the compartments and pots have no handles for some strange reason.
- The picture frames at the store show just about nothing, while there clearly are pictures in them in the classic view.
- Climbing the far ladder at Hook Isle looks really weird.
Some other interesting stuff, I noticed.
- There are a whole bunch of alternate lines recorded for the Monkey Island price "$59.95 + tax" incluning XBOX points, but only the original seems to be played, eventhough the game is much cheaper now. Oddly enough, among all those recorded lines, there is no 8,99, which is what it costs in Euros.
- There are alternative takes for all the insult replies which doesn't seem to be used in the actual game. There is the regular one where Guybrush' tone sounds quite convinced. And there is the alternative take where he sounds rater unsure.
- There are several lines recorded which actually don't appear in the actual game. Some of them don't appear at all. Some of them are dialog options which actually are never spoken out loud. For instance, the keelhaul description, where Guybrush says "I got the point.", no matter which option you choose.
- Other occasions of this seems commenting the monkey which you have to lure with bananas. It seems like an old bug in the original game. The monkey only has a hotspot in conjunction with the "give"-verb. There is no hotspot otherwise, although scripts for other actions seem to exists. Apparently a bug they could have fixed.
- There are several more uncritical old bugs which are all unfixed, except for one I noticed: You can't get duplicated of the ghost key.
- Guybrush indeed refuses to put more than one coin into the grog machine.
I think the problem with Stan is that is dialogue wasn't written with voice in mind and so it comes across as a fast tempo.
ok, but i think if they went with a new faster voice for the SE it would stupid because it would be different with no explination to the slower voices in the other games.
Some(most) of Guybrush's pre rendered animations look really bad.
It's funny, I'm taking every oppurtunity I get to bash this game. And before I bought it, I was expecting to like it so much, I would be the basher-hunter.
Cursor movement
The always-visible cursor that only turns the tip when you get near the screen border is a nice idea, but when you actually use it you realize that it just doesn't work. You focus on the big circle and wonder why it appears have a live of its own instead of following your directions. Static cursers may be oldfashioned, but they work much more predictable.
Do you sincerely believe this is a problem? It's the most unnoticable thing ever and it's better than having the cursor invisible when it's all the way to the right or bottom!
Verb selection
I know that you can't let XBOX users travel all the way across the screen just to select a verb, so I understand the decission to use Sam & Max style controls with cycable verbs. The thing is, if you want to do that you can't just put all the verb actions in there. That's as if they had put all verbs that textadventures understand into MI. You have to reduce the number, otherwise people will have to cycle through actions for so long that they'll forget what they wanted to do.
You said you are playing on the PC version. You can use shortcuts such as U for use and P for pick up et cetera...
In the XBOX version you don't cycle through the verbs! Each verb is assigned to a d-pad direction. It won't even let you cycle through loads of verbs.
Matching animation speed.
This is not a problem that you'll find only in SOMI:SE, but here it's particular visible. When you decide on a framerate for animation, you should stick to it all through the game. Moving a 5fps animation over the screen at 50fps will at best make the walking animation unbelievable and in the worst case make the animation totally detached from the background.
Would you rather the screen flickered as it scrolled? I know I wouldn't. You either have flickering animation which is painful on the eyes or more animation frames which takes up a LOT of (unnecessary) time on the artist's part.
As much as I agree that there are things I would have done differently. I can't say that these are any of them unfortunately. These are not a problem to me and I genuinely believe they couldn't be done any better!
Well, actually they qouldn't be able to add more frames (also note that Guybrush is pre rendered, so it wouldn't take much time.)
What he meant was that Guybrush's moved in 30 FPS, but the animation was only 5 frames long. So he's saying that he would have preferred if Guybrush moved at 5 FPS as well. Hope you get what I'm saying...
The absolute worst part to me was the opening exchanges between the watchman and Guybrush, awfully paced and stilted, wether changing the subtitile speed to as fast as possible by going into classic view sorted this or if it just improves as you play I don't know. The verb table's rubbish but the hotkeys do the job, it's all worth if for the new sound and some of the animations really are beautiful, even if Guybrush's hair is dire. But all this discourse is just natural when you tinker about with a classic
Grog puzzle on 360 was really awkward, I switched to classic mode to complete it, I wasn't fond of opening inventory, selecting Use with d-pad, selecting the full grog, reopening inventory, selecting empty mug, and then finally hitting use.
Same here, its the same problem we try and get Telltale to learn, if you cant do it better, dont do it at all or change it.
The old UI well yes i takes up some screen, but i like it 100 times better, the new UI is really a hassle, someone here did a mockup with it at the button taking even less space, it looked really nice, it just not cool the way they did it. When i had to use alot of verbs, i always changed back to the old version because its so much easier / better / simpler.
To add to the big list above, try walking to the right while on the ship. You'll walk ON TOP of the side of the ship. If you switch back to classic view, you can see this was really just more floor, but for some reason for the special edition they decided to draw the edge of the ship here.
Overall, it's just disappointing how crummy some things look. And the interface is just awful - trying to do the grog puzzle is... umm, not good.. I'd rather they just remake the entire game instead of trying to build on top of the original (that is, not change anything, but not be 100% constrained to the limits of 20 year old technology). They could have offered the original as a bonus (maybe for beating the game) rather than force the swapping mechanic.
Is there a way to delete my save games, while in the game or do I need to delete them outside of the game through the folder the save games are stored in?
Filesize has to be insane as the audio is damn good quality along with all the PNG artwork for multiple resolutions. To be honest, I'd rather have a large uncompressed game than an over compressed game, in the end, it's us who'll be seeing/hearing the better quality.
My biggest problem was with speech, they pause for a few seconds after each line, it makes the talking sound really alien and weird
It's been said that you can change the text subtitle speed for this, which the speech triggers are based on (at least on the PC version), which eliminates this problem.
- There are alternative takes for all the insult replies which doesn't seem to be used in the actual game. There is the regular one where Guybrush' tone sounds quite convinced. And there is the alternative take where he sounds rater unsure.
You get these "unsure" versions of the lines if you use the wrong comback with the insult: for instance if you replied "How appropriate, you fight like a cow," to "My sword will skewer you like a shish-kabob."
By the way, how were you able to access the game's audio files?
By the way, how were you able to access the game's audio files?
Fortunately, the game isn't encrypted at all. The voice acting isn't even compressed. The music is, though.
For details and ripping instructions, see here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=199164
The thing that is bugging me the most now is trying to delete save games, when i try to delete them from the folder they are stored in they still remain in the load menu of the game but dont work, but the slots are still taken up. The only way to remove them from the load menu is to remove the bin file, but this will remove all your save games, there is no way to delete just one, i think they should update the game to ad an option to delete from the main menu of the game.
The thing that is bugging me the most now is trying to delete save games, when i try to delete them from the folder they are stored in they still remain in the load menu of the game but dont work, but the slots are still taken up. The only way to remove them from the load menu is to remove the bin file, but this will remove all your save games, there is no way to delete just one, i think they should update the game to ad an option to delete from the main menu of the game.
Couldn't you copy the specific file to another folder, delete the bin file, and then move the copied file back over?
No, it seems it requires the bin file to see any save games, i have tried deleting te bin, then adding my save files back, it cant find any, all save slots are empty, if i start a new game a bin file is created but i still cant see any of my save files, i really hope there is a way to do this or at leated an update released to delete in the game instead of goin through folders.
Comments
why was listening to stan annoying if you liked him in curse, it was the same voice.
- Some parts are in-animated, eventhough they are animated in the classic view. The fireplace in Meat Hook's for instance.
- Stan walks through Guybrush when going to the Sea Monkey.
- The Sierra like "death sequence" somewhat kills the joke when it doesn't appear exactly like it looked in old Sierra games.
- The eye movements in the Navigator's closeup looks very strange.
- A basket in the Voodoo shop became a chest, but is still referred to as a basket.
- Blocky clouds at the cannibal village.
- The directions on the compass are out of order. I wonder if this was done on purpose. The classic resolution is too low to read this for comparison.
- LeChuck punching Guybrush has some really blocky graphics.
- The order of dialog line selection differs from classic view in some cases. For instance "I'm Guybrush Threepwood. Prepare to die!" appears at the bottom.
- No Sam & Max idol.
- The savegame percentage feels awfully off. Parts 2 and 4, which are significantly shorter than parts 1 and 3 count the most percentage.
- George Lucas (bridge keeper) using "the force" has a different sound than those in the Star Wars movies.
- The water under the boat is in-animated.
- The recipe is printed on the Melee Island PTA according to the inventory icon.
- In the Ship's kitchen, all the compartments and pots have no handles for some strange reason.
- The picture frames at the store show just about nothing, while there clearly are pictures in them in the classic view.
- Climbing the far ladder at Hook Isle looks really weird.
Some other interesting stuff, I noticed.
- There are a whole bunch of alternate lines recorded for the Monkey Island price "$59.95 + tax" incluning XBOX points, but only the original seems to be played, eventhough the game is much cheaper now. Oddly enough, among all those recorded lines, there is no 8,99, which is what it costs in Euros.
- There are alternative takes for all the insult replies which doesn't seem to be used in the actual game. There is the regular one where Guybrush' tone sounds quite convinced. And there is the alternative take where he sounds rater unsure.
- There are several lines recorded which actually don't appear in the actual game. Some of them don't appear at all. Some of them are dialog options which actually are never spoken out loud. For instance, the keelhaul description, where Guybrush says "I got the point.", no matter which option you choose.
- Other occasions of this seems commenting the monkey which you have to lure with bananas. It seems like an old bug in the original game. The monkey only has a hotspot in conjunction with the "give"-verb. There is no hotspot otherwise, although scripts for other actions seem to exists. Apparently a bug they could have fixed.
- There are several more uncritical old bugs which are all unfixed, except for one I noticed: You can't get duplicated of the ghost key.
- Guybrush indeed refuses to put more than one coin into the grog machine.
ok, but i think if they went with a new faster voice for the SE it would stupid because it would be different with no explination to the slower voices in the other games.
It's funny, I'm taking every oppurtunity I get to bash this game. And before I bought it, I was expecting to like it so much, I would be the basher-hunter.
Do you sincerely believe this is a problem? It's the most unnoticable thing ever and it's better than having the cursor invisible when it's all the way to the right or bottom!
You said you are playing on the PC version. You can use shortcuts such as U for use and P for pick up et cetera...
In the XBOX version you don't cycle through the verbs! Each verb is assigned to a d-pad direction. It won't even let you cycle through loads of verbs.
Would you rather the screen flickered as it scrolled? I know I wouldn't. You either have flickering animation which is painful on the eyes or more animation frames which takes up a LOT of (unnecessary) time on the artist's part.
As much as I agree that there are things I would have done differently. I can't say that these are any of them unfortunately. These are not a problem to me and I genuinely believe they couldn't be done any better!
Thanks for sharing though
What he meant was that Guybrush's moved in 30 FPS, but the animation was only 5 frames long. So he's saying that he would have preferred if Guybrush moved at 5 FPS as well. Hope you get what I'm saying...
Same here, its the same problem we try and get Telltale to learn, if you cant do it better, dont do it at all or change it.
The old UI well yes i takes up some screen, but i like it 100 times better, the new UI is really a hassle, someone here did a mockup with it at the button taking even less space, it looked really nice, it just not cool the way they did it. When i had to use alot of verbs, i always changed back to the old version because its so much easier / better / simpler.
Overall, it's just disappointing how crummy some things look. And the interface is just awful - trying to do the grog puzzle is... umm, not good.. I'd rather they just remake the entire game instead of trying to build on top of the original (that is, not change anything, but not be 100% constrained to the limits of 20 year old technology). They could have offered the original as a bonus (maybe for beating the game) rather than force the swapping mechanic.
Controls suck.
And the animations suck because it's the same animations from the original, they just changed the sprites.
My biggest problem was with speech, they pause for a few seconds after each line, it makes the talking sound really alien and weird.
Still, I like the update, and I hope they do it with more Scumm games.
http://www.scummbar.com/tx/games/mise/concept/77_gh-deck.jpg
Check out that screenshot for insane detail, that's why we like large file sizes...and the beautiful audio of course
It's been said that you can change the text subtitle speed for this, which the speech triggers are based on (at least on the PC version), which eliminates this problem.
I believe that was taken straight from the game data files, probably scaled, but either way that's what's in the download.
Ah yes you're right, that's me being lazy when reading the thread below.
http://www.lucasforums.com/showpost.php?p=2650630&postcount=235
This picture is definitely from the game files however, looks fantastic to me.
http://www.jither.net/media/images/woohoo.png
You get these "unsure" versions of the lines if you use the wrong comback with the insult: for instance if you replied "How appropriate, you fight like a cow," to "My sword will skewer you like a shish-kabob."
By the way, how were you able to access the game's audio files?
For details and ripping instructions, see here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=199164
They did draw an additional close-up that wasn't present in the original game: Spiffy the dog!