Some ideas...

License To Kill

Alright well i have some pretty good ideas (i hope) for some new options for season 2.

The first would be a run feature which you could change in the options menu. Sometimes walking is way too slow as you have to go back and forth a lot in these games and when your saving the world from destruction it makes a bit more sense to be running dont ya think.

Also, it would be cool to have a hint feature for the game. Now, in Episode 6 you could ask Max for hints, which was pretty cool, but didnt make sense... why would he only offer hints in that episode, and why didnt he help you in the others? Isnt max supposed to be lovable but useless anyways? Also, the hints he gave you were a little too good as well. I mean for the unicorn he said something along the lines of "Try heating it" which was obviously the microwave. For the Tic Tac Doom game he says "Winning isnt everything, Sam" which obviously meant you had to lose to get the talisman. This made it a bit TOO easy.

What would be better is a slight nudge in the right direction. There could be a button in the bottom right corner of the screen, and a little popup could come up and you could click on the problem your having, and it would give you a slight nudge, for example: For the unicorn it would say "This is basically one of those things that show what mood your in.(lol i forgot name) Remember how they work?"

(since they work by sensing body heat) This would give the player a sense of what to do without being overly obvious like Max was.

Hope you guys liked the ideas.

Jake

For what it's worth, you could always ask Max for hints, in every episode. Any time you talked to Max in episodes 1-5, the dialog options you had were always dynamically populated based on what puzzles you had and hadn't yet solved, and you could ask Max about what you were working on. He wouldn't always give a very strong hint, but everything he said was relevant to getting the puzzle solved. In episode 6, those dialog options were moved up one level in the tree, behind a tag that said "I need a hint." It seems that with that change, people finally noticed the Max dialogues, but they were there all along.

Anyway, we like your suggestions, and many similar things have already been discussed for season 2. So, stay tuned

TrogLlama

Actually, I kind of liked Max's hints. They were just vague enough to work!

Frogacuda

License To Kill wrote: »

The first would be a run feature which you could change in the options menu. Sometimes walking is way too slow as you have to go back and forth a lot in these games and when your saving the world from destruction it makes a bit more sense to be running dont ya think.

Sierra-style speed slider would rule.

I really liked the Max hint system. I'd like to see more of that.

DrakeFox

Max's hints were good, though they might've been a tad obvious occasionally. It's a fine line to walk between giving a good hint and making a fun comment.

If there's one thing I'd like to see in Season 2 it'd be something as simple as an option for common shared config files so once I'd played episode 1, configured to run in 1024x768 window, the next episode I launch doesn't automatically run in 800x600 fullscreen till I pass the intro sequence and can fiddle with the options.

Nitpicking I know :-D

Frogacuda

The hints were optional so them being obvious isn't really an issue. I know hardcore adventure heads like to pound their head against the keyboard with frustration for a while, but it's good to make things accessible.

Best hint system I've ever seen in an adventure game was the one used in Under a Killing Moon and Pandora Directive. Bone's was similar in the way it would give you vague hints and then more specific ones, but it had some glitches and it wasn't good at handling non-linear progression like the one in UaKM.

Hero1

the hint system they used in bone worked perfectly.. you would get 3 levels of hints and you could turn the hints off if you didn't want to be tempted.. i'm surprised they dropped it from sam & max

LuigiHann

I didn't mind Max's hints in episode 6, but I was a bit disappointed that there were so few non-hint options. I'd like to have some room for purely inane, meaningless conversations with Max, just like the good old days.

Also, season 2 must include this dialog:
Max: I love maiming crooks!
Sam: You said it, Max. Crime is an invitation to the crypt.

AdamG

The Max Hint System (tm ) in Episode 6 was definately a bit too clear for my tastes. It was nice to have good help when I needed it, but sometimes after I heard Max's point of view I instantly knew what to do and it kind of spoiled it.

It's really hard to get it just right so he (... or she? ) doesn't spoil it outright, but perhaps there could be seperate questions for Max leading to two hint versions, an obscure hint and upfront hints like in Episode 6.

You don't really even need seperate questions. For example, the dialog tree could go like... (made-up situation)

Situation: There's a padlock on the door to their office building and it needs to be removed.

Sam: "How are we going to get this acursed obstruction of justice out of our way Max?"

Max: "I've never had a problem that violence couldn't solve, Sam!"

Player is still stumped, the previous hint question is replaced by a different one which results in a clearer hint.

Sam: "Maybe, but I still don't know how to open the lock. Any bright ideas little buddy?"

Max: "I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to play fizzball..."

Solution: Player needs to use wooden baseball bat that is sticking out of the dumpster in the alley on the lock to break it.