But can the player walk around freely in Max's first-person mode? Also, it's good to see that the future-sight power will be usuable on practically anything, regardless of usefulness - will any other powers be like that?
You can't walk around in Max mode, but you can look around. The main reason for that is pretty simple: it wasn't necessary. Max already wanders around and comments on stuff when you're in Sam mode; it'd be boring to just see and hear the same stuff, and we wanted it to feel different. There are also technical reasons -- our environments aren't designed to walk around in first person mode, but shot from third-person cameras.
And all the powers work a little differently from each other, but for the most part: you choose a power, then choose a target. The available targets change from power to power -- the things you can use Rhinoplasty on are different from the things you can mind-read, for example.
Also, another couple of questions: will the DeSoto still be evil, like it was at the end of Season 2? And what's this I hear about a map?
The DeSoto is still possessed by demons. (But don't expect that to make much difference with Sam & Max driving). What you hear about maps is that they're a great way to navigate around a city, so the new season has a city map to let you drive from location to location. Someday we'll get that open-world free-roaming Sam & Max game!
Edit 2: Is the mysterious Shadow Man who introduces the stories going to turn out to be relevant to the plot in any way?
He's the narrator; he narrates. We needed a good way to drop players (on a new platform) into a weird game even if they hadn't played the previous seasons, and since "Twilight Zone" and Plan 9 both start out with a narrator, it seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.
Questions for Mike. March 3rd 2004. Did you ever see that coming? What did you think of the reaction from the fans?
Wait, did something bad happen in 2004? I've kinda blotted that out, what with the re-election of W 'n' all...
Can you believe you are working on a new Sam & Max game 6 years later?
Nope. I keep asking people to pinch me, which is getting a) painful, and b) potentially litigious.
Has your puzzle design changed at all since it is coming out on the PS3?
Nope, but we've added a few jokes.
Also I just have to take this opportunity to thank you for Hit the Road. I played it when it first came out when I was 13. I have never played a video game that was as funny as HTR. I think it shaped my sense of humour. I had such fond memories of it, I always followed Sam & Max years later. That's why I'm still here and excited the franchise is still going.
Aw, shucks. Now you've made me blush like a schoolgirl.
Now, the series is very much its own thing, and the bar you have to clear is the (extremely high) one you've set yourselves over two very well-regarded seasons. Which is more daunting? Living up to the classic, or topping your own work?
I dunno about anybody else, but I got over all my "reverence for previous classics" over the course of Monkey Island 3. (And made the process miserable by being an annoyingly possessive Monkey Island fan the whole time). Just like MI2, Hit the Road is one of my favorite games, but it was still just made by a bunch of talented guys trying to a good job, no different from anybody else. If you over-think it -- whether it's trying to live up to somebody else's work or trying to live up to your own previous work -- then you'll just make yourself miserable and most likely end up with a worse result. Better just to trust that you know what you're doing, rest assured that some people will love it and others will hate it, and the world will keep spinning either way.
Besides the move towards more over-arcing storylines, is there anything that's changed in your approach to episodic game development over the years? Plot, tech, art, whatever your area; is your way of doing things now different from when you started?
Yes.
It's harder to jump in and do simple chores or scripting because the games have gotten a lot more sophisticated. And you have to take a lot into account designing the episodes and writing the scripts, based on what you've learned from doing a dozen other games and getting feedback about what worked and didn't work from each one.
how much crossover is there between the developers and the designers? Do any of the designers ever get involved in the programming aspects of the game, and vice versa?
There's less of that now than there used to be, since the content programmers and chore artists are doing a lot more complex stuff in the game. But the teams are still small enough so that everybody can do what he's good at doing. If you've got some programming background, or know the chore tool, you can find places to pitch in. On the Strong Bad games, for instance, Mark Darin and I programmed & did the art for the Videlectrix mini-games in the episodes that we directed. And I scripted the "strategy game" at the end of the Strong Badia episode.
And the vice-versa part is true, too: we try to get as many people as are interested involved in the brainstorming process for the designs.
I know in movies and tv shows during production stuff is added as they just sort of try stuff out, and I'm wondering, in your games, Sam & Max especially, do the programmers ever think "oooh but wouldn't it be funny if...?" and something gets added in well after pre-production?
Yeah, all the time. Some of the best gags are put in by the chore guys or the environment modelers. The games are always improved when people are contributing to a game instead of just checking off a list of assigned tasks.
And lastly at what stage are the voices recorded? I guess if everything's set in stone as to what happens it can be one of the first things done, and it'll be much easier to animate characters' faces to their voices. But on the other hand usually voices are done right near the end of the dev cycle so any changes can be incorporated into the script.
Voices are recorded immediately after the script is finished, which is the second thing to get done (after the game design). All the choreography and content programming, and much of the animation, is done afterwards.
How do you guys come up with puzzles? Do you start with what S&M need to do and make a puzzle to fit or is it the other way around where someone just says "I want to do something with wire hangers"?
A little of both, but mostly the first one. You try to start out with a story and then figure out ways to make it feel like the player's putting the story together, instead of just solving some obscure puzzle to get to the next cutscene.
Sometimes, though, you just want to see something funny happen, so you try to find a way to shoehorn it in.
Are you deliberately designing power-related puzzles to be as creative as possible, exploring the full range of possibilities for each power? I'm especially interested in the Rhinoplasty power (if it wasn't just a joke by Chuck - if it was, it's still a good example). Rhinoplasty seems like such a restrictively specific power, since it would obviously only work on noses. Perhaps Sam could make something Rhinoplasty-able by modifying it by hand to look like a nose (there could be a hint like "Huh, you know, if you squint... and are several feet away... and are drunk... and legally blind... that kind of looks like a nose."). If Rhinoplasty is a real power, was that a deliberate choice to force people to think more creatively? If it was just Chuck's joke, will there be a restrictively specific power like that?
Edit: Rhinoplasty copies pictures and paintings? And I've read that Rhinoplasty may be shapeshifting. Does Rhinoplasty give Max the power to shapeshift into any picture or painting he sees? That's reminiscent of Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie, in which certain powers can only be used on special pads. Except this time, the 'pads' are natural parts of the scenery. Perhaps a puzzle could involve Sam modifying a picture, or creating one from scratch.
speaking of Rhinoplasty, Max turning into a Rocket Launcher. As far as I know Rhinoplasty can only copy pictures/paintings. Why would you add a random picture of a rocket launcher?
Yeah, all the time. Some of the best gags are put in by the chore guys or the environment modelers. The games are always improved when people are contributing to a game instead of just checking off a list of assigned tasks.
Voices are recorded immediately after the script is finished, which is the second thing to get done (after the game design). All the choreography and content programming, and much of the animation, is done afterwards.
I have a bit of trouble conciling these two things. I mean, you're saying that the voices are recorded pretty much at the beginning, but that programmers or animators suggest things which are added to the game... Wouldn't you have to record additional bits, then? Or are all the things they add voiceless?
Anyone wanna dare us to bring back the Soda Poppers?
Mike "easily goaded into foolish actions" Stemmle
So you're saying most of Escape From Monkey Island came about after one long game of "I dare you"? Just kidding; after all these years it must be nice to finally Escape From Escape From Monkey Island.
Seriously, you must be absolutely thrilled having so much freedom in designing adventure games now without blood-crazed fans peering wild-eyed over your shaking shoulders, and without executives with cold, vacant expressions threatening you with a rather large pair of rusty scissors poised precariously over your honeysuckle-scented employment contract. (Aren't I a master of using adjectives to create images with words?)
So just for fun, describe the wackiest, zaniest, craziest thing from Season 3 in one obscure arcane spoiler-free word that will keep fans guessing for months.
The original logo was sleek, elegant, cool. Personally, I find the added serifs at the bottom ends of "A" quite distracting and falling out of style.
I like it. Gives the entire logo a kind of ethereal feel, especially with the vague fog stroking on the ampersand. It also jives well with the font style used for the subtitle: The Devil's Playhouse.
So, I'm curious about the development schedule for episodic gaming.
I'm pretty sure multiple episodes are developed concurrently, but to what extent?
How far would you say you are with each episode right now?
Is prioritizing (with time, crew, etc) solely based on which episode is closest to release, or does the complexity of each episode count as well? If, for example, there was a technically very difficult sequence in 305, would you possibly be working on that right from the beginning?
Those questions are more examples than anything, and you shouldn't feel chained to them. Basically, I guess I'm looking for a rough outline of how this whole episodic game development works, from beginning of development to the end of the season.
I have a bit of trouble conciling these two things. I mean, you're saying that the voices are recorded pretty much at the beginning, but that programmers or animators suggest things which are added to the game... Wouldn't you have to record additional bits, then? Or are all the things they add voiceless?
Probably the most classic example of this would be the "banang" joke from 204. All that was recorded was Sam saying "banang!" and it was going to be a one-off throw away line. Then Nick Herman went through and made like 3 different chores out of that one voice line making for one of the more memorable gags.
But there are lots of more subtle things. Adding pauses for comedic timing, an expression on a character, weird stuff going on in the background. None of that is strictly affected by the script. Some of it is planned out in the beginning but a lot of it is the chore guys making things better.
Q. Playing through the older Sam&Maxes and reading the "Have you tried?" lists, have you ever thought about putting those in the game (PC too) as some sort of pseudo-'achievements' (hidden until you finished your first playthrough of course) to give the player some visual representation of their thoroughness (or stimulate a second playthrough to find the missing stuff for those who didn't know of these lists (or knew, like me before I joined here))?
Someday we'll get that open-world free-roaming Sam & Max game!
i don't know how to feel right now... excited, or put off...
definately curious to see how that translates though
this raises some questions about your opinions on technology and your game development though. Was the point and click genre simply a matter of the development technology available at the time? or is it a more deeply rooted stylistic choice? I must say, I've stayed such a true fan over all these years because it seem your team has stayed loyal to it's fans. As graphics and rendering power has increased, so far you haven't let that change how the gameplay feels. What would an open world sam and max game play like? What's your opinion on changing gameplay between games in a series?
Q. Playing through the older Sam&Maxes and reading the "Have you tried?" lists, have you ever thought about putting those in the game (PC too) as some sort of pseudo-'achievements' (hidden until you finished your first playthrough of course) to give the player some visual representation of their thoroughness (or stimulate a second playthrough to find the missing stuff for those who didn't know of these lists (or knew, like me before I joined here))?
GENIUS! Whatever happened to the Indy Quotient in games! I need to know my gaming competence!
My next question is more general, but I am curious. What sorts of games to the designers tend to play? Is it a pretty mixed bag, or do one or two genres come up most of the time?
Probably the most classic example of this would be the "banang" joke from 204. All that was recorded was Sam saying "banang!" and it was going to be a one-off throw away line. Then Nick Herman went through and made like 3 different chores out of that one voice line making for one of the more memorable gags.
Speaking of which, on YouTube, someone claimed that the Banag! gag will be a company running gag since it appeared in Monkey Island's last chapter. Any truth to this?
You can be vauge if you want. I'm just looking for a "yes" or "no" at the least.
I noticed today that my Ice Station Santa desktop icon is a hair smaller than my Season 1 icons. This can of course lead to only one question: Will The Devil's Playhouse feature micro icons?
Is it hard to get the voices and animation to sync?
The lip sync is all auto-generated. There is one shot in episode 3 where I hand-animated the lip sync, and I think there's some parts of episode 1 where someone else did, but its few and far between.
Are you deliberately designing power-related puzzles to be as creative as possible, exploring the full range of possibilities for each power? I'm especially interested in the Rhinoplasty power (if it wasn't just a joke by Chuck - if it was, it's still a good example). [...]
speaking of Rhinoplasty, Max turning into a Rocket Launcher. As far as I know Rhinoplasty can only copy pictures/paintings. Why would you add a random picture of a rocket launcher?
Heh, it's a good thing you guys pre-ordered the game, so all your questions can get answered in a few weeks!
The Rhinoplasty is a real power, by the way. The powers all have rules saying when and where they can be used, for obvious reasons. (In case they're not so obvious: these are still puzzle-based adventure games, not free-roaming platformers!)
I'm pretty sure multiple episodes are developed concurrently, but to what extent?
How far would you say you are with each episode right now?
Is prioritizing (with time, crew, etc) solely based on which episode is closest to release, or does the complexity of each episode count as well? If, for example, there was a technically very difficult sequence in 305, would you possibly be working on that right from the beginning?
The answers to some of those questions are semi-proprietary or private -- the same reason we don't detail everything about our development process, and why we don't announce release dates until they're absolutely confirmed. The answers to the others are pretty boring.
In general, they're done as concurrently as possible, with the most lead time given to the first episode, obviously. For example, there's work being done on every episode in the season right now. As for working on something for 305 right from the beginning of the season: that's a recipe for disaster, since you'd basically be stealing time from all the other episodes. So we tend to keep the first episode as a proving ground for everything we'll want to do for the rest of the season, and keep the drastic changes in later episodes to a minimum. If there were a "technically very difficult sequence" in a later episode, we'd try as hard as we could to make it not so technically very difficult.
Playing through the older Sam&Maxes and reading the "Have you tried?" lists, have you ever thought about putting those in the game (PC too) as some sort of pseudo-'achievements'
We did basically that for the Strong Bad games; they had "awesomeness" that worked the same on PC and consoles. For the new season, we've got trophies on the PS3 but no equivalent on the PC/Mac, simply because we don't get a huge win out of doing them in game. The PC players most interested in those would be you guys on the forum, who seem to prefer the detailed "Did you try?" lists over achievements anyway, since there's a little bit more info and y'all can discuss them on the message boards. Maybe Steam's popularity will eventually make achievements more popular on the PC side, but for now there just doesn't seem to be much interest in them.
Also I own a ps3, and some of my friends are not so old school Adventure game players, so when developing it for the PS3 what are some of the things we can look forward to besides trophies for the Ps3?
Do you know if there will be a PS3 demo of the season? I would be curious to try the game on my console. Unfortunately, I had to buy the PC version because I wanted the dvd and the case at the end of the season. I got pretty accustomed to pure digital delivery, but I want the "full Telltale experience" with all the extras and a nice cover by Steve (I assume Steve will handle the cover) .
Was the point and click genre simply a matter of the development technology available at the time? or is it a more deeply rooted stylistic choice? I must say, I've stayed such a true fan over all these years because it seem your team has stayed loyal to it's fans. As graphics and rendering power has increased, so far you haven't let that change how the gameplay feels. What would an open world sam and max game play like? What's your opinion on changing gameplay between games in a series?
To be clear: there are no plans for an open-world Sam & Max game; that was a joke.
Dave could talk about the overall design focus better than I could, but basically the appeal of graphic adventures (not just point and click!) to TTG is that they're best suited to storytelling and character development, which is the company's focus. I don't believe the company is as attached to the "graphic adventure" label as much as "how do you use a game to tell a story?" The adventure game format is one that usually works well, though, and is one that most of the people in the company are familiar with and like playing.
What sorts of games to the designers tend to play? Is it a pretty mixed bag, or do one or two genres come up most of the time?
Almost half the office plays Team Fortress 2, and that got my vote for game of the year whenever it came out (2 years ago? Longer?) I can't speak for the other designers, but my favorite games tend to be RPGs, city-building or world-building games, or whenever a big story-based shooter comes out like BioShock or Half-Life 2. And Final Fantasy Tactics is the best videogame ever made.
a nice cover by Steve (I assume Steve will handle the cover) .
I really hope they don't give us a cover that's like the Wii or retail PC releases. I was really not impressed with Save the World, and while Beyond Time and Space was a good deal better...it just doesn't compare to the Steve Purcell cover.
Ok, I have a quick question: Will the basic movement and control and movement be the same for all consoles? Because I wasn't really a fan on ToMI's click and hold movement that was meant more for the Wii.
The PC players most interested in those would be you guys on the forum, who seem to prefer the detailed "Did you try?" lists over achievements anyway, since there's a little bit more info and y'all can discuss them on the message boards.
Maybe my experience with Anno 1404 influenced me, but even if that's a PC SP title it seems to be popular amongst folks getting all achievements. And they can get pretty detailed (more so than the lists on the site). Not to mention be talked about on forums (true, mostly the bugged ones, but still )
Or maybe I just try to convince you guys because I find it more convient to see it all ingame, instead of going our here browsing to the site.
Anyway, enough rambling from me, on to some more questionaries:
* Are there 'sets' from previous seasons that return, the restaurant and office (and modified street) excluded?
* With the talk of 'one game' ToMI have you guys dedicated effort into making S&M 3 possible to be played as one streamlined game in the end, or would we still be required to end the game and start the new one manually, even having all 5?
Many filmmakers have said that they can't watch the movies they've made. Could you ever sit down and play a game you've worked on? Or does the process of making them kind of burn you out on that prospect? Especially with adventure games, which are mostly very linear experiences?
Ok, I have a quick question: Will the basic movement and control and movement be the same for all consoles? Because I wasn't really a fan on ToMI's click and hold movement that was meant more for the Wii.
Hi Bone Freak,
If you've got questions about the control system for S&M:TDP, check out this thread first, and if you still have questions, post them there.
Maybe my experience with Anno 1404 influenced me, but even if that's a PC SP title it seems to be popular amongst folks getting all achievements. And they can get pretty detailed (more so than the lists on the site). Not to mention be talked about on forums (true, mostly the bugged ones, but still )
Or maybe I just try to convince you guys because I find it more convient to see it all ingame, instead of going our here browsing to the site.
Isn't the main achievement in an adventure game is that you finished it, solved all the puzzles and completed the story?
Everything else that is an "achievement" are really just Easter eggs that give a story based game some level of re-playability. The second time around you already know how to solve the puzzles, so you can go off and do anything but solve the puzzles until you've explored all the dialog options you can. That's how you're supposed to find Easter Eggs.
The "Did You Try?" lists here just give some of the pointers to things that are funny in the games that aren't required to complete the puzzles, but they're worth doing for the humour value. They're not really 'achievements' as such, and don't change the outcome of the story, they're just cool little things the designers, writers etc put in the game to make it a richer world, funnier and worthwhile playing the games for a second or third time.
Probably the most classic example of this would be the "banang" joke from 204. All that was recorded was Sam saying "banang!" and it was going to be a one-off throw away line. Then Nick Herman went through and made like 3 different chores out of that one voice line making for one of the more memorable gags.
That makes sense! I should have thought about it: I did wonder why Max wasn't saying anything.
But I get the point. There are lots of visual jokes, timing jokes, or jokes that can use the voices that have already been recorded (possibly modifying them like the banang thing) that can be made. It has to be smaller things, I guess, but sometimes these can be the best.
I really hope they don't give us a cover that's like the Wii or retail PC releases. I was really not impressed with Save the World, and while Beyond Time and Space was a good deal better...it just doesn't compare to the Steve Purcell cover.
We put some work into making sure you in particular wouldn't like those covers, so job well done on us I guess.
The 3D rendered covers are usually done at the request of our retail publisher (The Adventure Company and Atari both passed on using Steve's box paintings for the retail versions, preferring upres'd, re-lit game art renders), but we love the painted covers, so expect Steve's art to continue to grace the Telltale Store DVDs.
Comments
And all the powers work a little differently from each other, but for the most part: you choose a power, then choose a target. The available targets change from power to power -- the things you can use Rhinoplasty on are different from the things you can mind-read, for example.
The DeSoto is still possessed by demons. (But don't expect that to make much difference with Sam & Max driving). What you hear about maps is that they're a great way to navigate around a city, so the new season has a city map to let you drive from location to location. Someday we'll get that open-world free-roaming Sam & Max game!
He's the narrator; he narrates. We needed a good way to drop players (on a new platform) into a weird game even if they hadn't played the previous seasons, and since "Twilight Zone" and Plan 9 both start out with a narrator, it seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.
Nope. I keep asking people to pinch me, which is getting a) painful, and b) potentially litigious.
Nope, but we've added a few jokes.
Aw, shucks. Now you've made me blush like a schoolgirl.
The quotes thing is easy... it's one step removed from putting up Facebook statuses....
Mike "Going Home to Give Charlie and Max a Bath" Stemmle
PS See?
Yes.
It's harder to jump in and do simple chores or scripting because the games have gotten a lot more sophisticated. And you have to take a lot into account designing the episodes and writing the scripts, based on what you've learned from doing a dozen other games and getting feedback about what worked and didn't work from each one.
And the vice-versa part is true, too: we try to get as many people as are interested involved in the brainstorming process for the designs.
Yeah, all the time. Some of the best gags are put in by the chore guys or the environment modelers. The games are always improved when people are contributing to a game instead of just checking off a list of assigned tasks.
Voices are recorded immediately after the script is finished, which is the second thing to get done (after the game design). All the choreography and content programming, and much of the animation, is done afterwards.
Sometimes, though, you just want to see something funny happen, so you try to find a way to shoehorn it in.
Edit: Rhinoplasty copies pictures and paintings? And I've read that Rhinoplasty may be shapeshifting. Does Rhinoplasty give Max the power to shapeshift into any picture or painting he sees? That's reminiscent of Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie, in which certain powers can only be used on special pads. Except this time, the 'pads' are natural parts of the scenery. Perhaps a puzzle could involve Sam modifying a picture, or creating one from scratch.
I have a bit of trouble conciling these two things. I mean, you're saying that the voices are recorded pretty much at the beginning, but that programmers or animators suggest things which are added to the game... Wouldn't you have to record additional bits, then? Or are all the things they add voiceless?
So you're saying most of Escape From Monkey Island came about after one long game of "I dare you"? Just kidding; after all these years it must be nice to finally Escape From Escape From Monkey Island.
Seriously, you must be absolutely thrilled having so much freedom in designing adventure games now without blood-crazed fans peering wild-eyed over your shaking shoulders, and without executives with cold, vacant expressions threatening you with a rather large pair of rusty scissors poised precariously over your honeysuckle-scented employment contract. (Aren't I a master of using adjectives to create images with words?)
So just for fun, describe the wackiest, zaniest, craziest thing from Season 3 in one obscure arcane spoiler-free word that will keep fans guessing for months.
From
to
The original logo was sleek, elegant, cool. Personally, I find the added serifs at the bottom ends of "A" quite distracting and falling out of style.
I like it. Gives the entire logo a kind of ethereal feel, especially with the vague fog stroking on the ampersand. It also jives well with the font style used for the subtitle: The Devil's Playhouse.
However, considering the ampersand specifically - the left side of it looks like it was cut off inaccurately.
It looks more Twilight Zone-y.
I'm pretty sure multiple episodes are developed concurrently, but to what extent?
How far would you say you are with each episode right now?
Is prioritizing (with time, crew, etc) solely based on which episode is closest to release, or does the complexity of each episode count as well? If, for example, there was a technically very difficult sequence in 305, would you possibly be working on that right from the beginning?
Those questions are more examples than anything, and you shouldn't feel chained to them. Basically, I guess I'm looking for a rough outline of how this whole episodic game development works, from beginning of development to the end of the season.
Probably the most classic example of this would be the "banang" joke from 204. All that was recorded was Sam saying "banang!" and it was going to be a one-off throw away line. Then Nick Herman went through and made like 3 different chores out of that one voice line making for one of the more memorable gags.
But there are lots of more subtle things. Adding pauses for comedic timing, an expression on a character, weird stuff going on in the background. None of that is strictly affected by the script. Some of it is planned out in the beginning but a lot of it is the chore guys making things better.
i don't know how to feel right now... excited, or put off...
definately curious to see how that translates though
this raises some questions about your opinions on technology and your game development though. Was the point and click genre simply a matter of the development technology available at the time? or is it a more deeply rooted stylistic choice? I must say, I've stayed such a true fan over all these years because it seem your team has stayed loyal to it's fans. As graphics and rendering power has increased, so far you haven't let that change how the gameplay feels. What would an open world sam and max game play like? What's your opinion on changing gameplay between games in a series?
GENIUS! Whatever happened to the Indy Quotient in games! I need to know my gaming competence!
Unstoppable hugging force, etc.
My next question is more general, but I am curious. What sorts of games to the designers tend to play? Is it a pretty mixed bag, or do one or two genres come up most of the time?
You can be vauge if you want. I'm just looking for a "yes" or "no" at the least.
The lip sync is all auto-generated. There is one shot in episode 3 where I hand-animated the lip sync, and I think there's some parts of episode 1 where someone else did, but its few and far between.
The Rhinoplasty is a real power, by the way. The powers all have rules saying when and where they can be used, for obvious reasons. (In case they're not so obvious: these are still puzzle-based adventure games, not free-roaming platformers!)
It varies, but usually around a week and a half.
The answers to some of those questions are semi-proprietary or private -- the same reason we don't detail everything about our development process, and why we don't announce release dates until they're absolutely confirmed. The answers to the others are pretty boring.
In general, they're done as concurrently as possible, with the most lead time given to the first episode, obviously. For example, there's work being done on every episode in the season right now. As for working on something for 305 right from the beginning of the season: that's a recipe for disaster, since you'd basically be stealing time from all the other episodes. So we tend to keep the first episode as a proving ground for everything we'll want to do for the rest of the season, and keep the drastic changes in later episodes to a minimum. If there were a "technically very difficult sequence" in a later episode, we'd try as hard as we could to make it not so technically very difficult.
We did basically that for the Strong Bad games; they had "awesomeness" that worked the same on PC and consoles. For the new season, we've got trophies on the PS3 but no equivalent on the PC/Mac, simply because we don't get a huge win out of doing them in game. The PC players most interested in those would be you guys on the forum, who seem to prefer the detailed "Did you try?" lists over achievements anyway, since there's a little bit more info and y'all can discuss them on the message boards. Maybe Steam's popularity will eventually make achievements more popular on the PC side, but for now there just doesn't seem to be much interest in them.
Also I own a ps3, and some of my friends are not so old school Adventure game players, so when developing it for the PS3 what are some of the things we can look forward to besides trophies for the Ps3?
Dave could talk about the overall design focus better than I could, but basically the appeal of graphic adventures (not just point and click!) to TTG is that they're best suited to storytelling and character development, which is the company's focus. I don't believe the company is as attached to the "graphic adventure" label as much as "how do you use a game to tell a story?" The adventure game format is one that usually works well, though, and is one that most of the people in the company are familiar with and like playing.
No, no game is perfect but they all end up telling you something valuable about what works and what doesn't.
Almost half the office plays Team Fortress 2, and that got my vote for game of the year whenever it came out (2 years ago? Longer?) I can't speak for the other designers, but my favorite games tend to be RPGs, city-building or world-building games, or whenever a big story-based shooter comes out like BioShock or Half-Life 2. And Final Fantasy Tactics is the best videogame ever made.
Or maybe I just try to convince you guys because I find it more convient to see it all ingame, instead of going our here browsing to the site.
Anyway, enough rambling from me, on to some more questionaries:
* Are there 'sets' from previous seasons that return, the restaurant and office (and modified street) excluded?
* With the talk of 'one game' ToMI have you guys dedicated effort into making S&M 3 possible to be played as one streamlined game in the end, or would we still be required to end the game and start the new one manually, even having all 5?
Hi Bone Freak,
If you've got questions about the control system for S&M:TDP, check out this thread first, and if you still have questions, post them there.
Isn't the main achievement in an adventure game is that you finished it, solved all the puzzles and completed the story?
Everything else that is an "achievement" are really just Easter eggs that give a story based game some level of re-playability. The second time around you already know how to solve the puzzles, so you can go off and do anything but solve the puzzles until you've explored all the dialog options you can. That's how you're supposed to find Easter Eggs.
The "Did You Try?" lists here just give some of the pointers to things that are funny in the games that aren't required to complete the puzzles, but they're worth doing for the humour value. They're not really 'achievements' as such, and don't change the outcome of the story, they're just cool little things the designers, writers etc put in the game to make it a richer world, funnier and worthwhile playing the games for a second or third time.
That makes sense! I should have thought about it: I did wonder why Max wasn't saying anything.
But I get the point. There are lots of visual jokes, timing jokes, or jokes that can use the voices that have already been recorded (possibly modifying them like the banang thing) that can be made. It has to be smaller things, I guess, but sometimes these can be the best.
We wanted it to be a bit more angular and chunky to go with the Devils Playhouse logo.
That's just bad resizing/antialiasing. In real life there is a curve there.
We put some work into making sure you in particular wouldn't like those covers, so job well done on us I guess.
The 3D rendered covers are usually done at the request of our retail publisher (The Adventure Company and Atari both passed on using Steve's box paintings for the retail versions, preferring upres'd, re-lit game art renders), but we love the painted covers, so expect Steve's art to continue to grace the Telltale Store DVDs.