Something to watch: SMI:SE -> CMI graphics
Just for you peeps who don't keep an occasional eye over at the mixnmojo forums, I'd just thought I'd point you to this little project. The modders have cracked SMI special edition quite quickly, and even now are already coming up with their own replacements for the graphics - among them there's at least one hair fix for those who didn't like the hair gel look. However, this one caught my eye: an attempt to redo all the characters in Bill Tiller's Curse of Monkey Island cartoon style. It'll be interesting to see how far this goes and if it does get released; there's already a small number of characters being tested in game. Should be very suitable for those of you who didn't quite like the artistic approach taken by the stock game.
Check it out here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=199258
Its still early days, but here's a few of the tasters released:
Check it out here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=199258
Its still early days, but here's a few of the tasters released:
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Comments
I think it will look really nice when it's done.
Correction, Curse had the best background art. The character art was by far the worst (well the SE Guybrush design was horrible as well, but if you think about it they were trying to make him look more like his Curse counterpart, so Curse is still to blaime).
I'm assuming you're running XP. If your game crashed during the cutscene that starts after shooting the loose cannon, where LeChuck is holding a voodoo cannon ball, you can fix that by going into your dxdiag configuration and turning off hardware sound acceleration. Go to Start, Run, "dxdiag", go to the sound tab, and I believe to get CMI to work you can either turn the acceleration off completely or leave it on the setting just before off.
If you already have CMI, as might as well play it. Who knows, you may get used to the visual style after a little bit. And the voices are great, the music beautiful, the writing top notch. It'd be a real shame to miss out on such a great game after judging only the first 5-10 minutes.
And, yeah, not playing CMI because you don't like the character design is a serious serious mistake. It's one of the best adventure games ever, and a worthy sequel of the first two games. If you played through EMI, you played through it despite being the worst game in the series and not really worthy the name Monkey Island (imo). Playing through CMI despite the character design should be a lot easier to stomach than EMI.
I'm not a big fan of the Guybrush character design, but the rest is actually quite good. Wally looks more or less exactly the same as he did in MI2, for example. They only had a huge make-over for Guybrush to be honest. Either way, Curse is one of my favourte adventure games ever - and I'd probably rate it above SOMI, had it not been for the nostalgia SOMI brings me. Remove the nostalgia of SOMI, and Curse would be the second best Monkey Island to date.
Now back on topic?
And since when is it possible to "correct" somebody's opinion?
And I really really really don't like the style for EMI.
With MAGIC! *Waves hands*
I HATED Curse, and it by far had the un-best graphics and character design of MI3-5. It was well not-polished and the humor was insanely not spot on.
*MAGIC!*
Sorry, I loved Curse..I loved the music, the animation, the character designs, the voice casting, the EVERYTHING. Well, I hated how the ending was hacked off. But the game was full of awesome. I also like the fact there are a few things that you can miss through the first play through.
The other characters look good to me, and some of them are awesome (great LeChuck)
I'm inclined to agree, although I am not entirely sure about his face, but that might be off due to the hair. I fully agree on the design of the other characters, though.
Still, I would love to see the completed redesign in CMI style. Fingers crossed that Lucasarts does not kill it as copyright infringement...
As far as I'm aware, you simply drop the modded files into the correct place in the game directory. Once there they will take precedence over the default files stored in the .pak file; the modded files won't overwrite anything so you don't need to back up files. To remove, you just delete the files and it will revert to the content in the .pak file.
That's the jist I got of it from reading around: I've not tried any SE mods myself yet. If you've added modded content to any of Valve's Source games, I think its a similar system to that.
It seems the problem the modders had originally was cracking into the .pak file, but now that's done, it seems the underlying stuff is very versatile for modding work.
And on a different note; does anyone else really like the character design of Herman Toothrot in the SMI:SE?
What happened?
You raised my hopes, and dashed them quite expertly! Bravo, sir!
According to the NOTICE on the forums, something that contains good news, too.
EDIT: I just saw the "UPDATE: I've just been recruited to a secret project, you guys will love it."
My guess would be that Lucas told him: IF you're doing that already, then do it FOR US and we pay you money for it, but at least WE will then be the ones who the fans like.
With Steam's upgrade-ability I can just see that happen.
That's way too optimistic, my guess would be that some secret fangame project recruited him.
Of course, it would be absolutely non-LucasArtsy to do that, but so is releasing an SE of a classic game and handing out their top-franchise to another company. Maybe it's just wishful thinking here, but since his work was up there with a professional production, it might just as well be true. Although, since he's okay with someone else continuing the project, I'd say it has something to do with a certain sequel.
I never found him ugly - I just went "That's Guyrbush? Well, OK."
And I actually liked him in fifteen minutes. And all the other characters as well... I never thought they were ugly, just cartoony.
Though I kind of reacted negatively to SE... But that's a different topic