Sorry, I couldn't wait for the audio commentary anymore.
LOL Wow, Bredan. You're almost as impatiant as we can get sometimes. Thanks for all the wonderful answers, but now I fear you may have nothing to talk about on the Season 2 DVD. Or I could be completely wrong and you do have something to talk about on the DVD.
God, I can't believe how spoiler ridden these questions are going to be.
For the Design Team
Granted it's mid-season, but where did the idea to
base the first half of the game on a flashback
come from?
Among the many puzzles that had be scratching my head, the winner this episode goes to
the DJ Table combination lock
. How were you expecting players to come to the solution, and what was the actual results back during test play (and maybe even now)?
What did you think would happen as far as fan reaction when you decided to
kill Sam & Max off for the second half of the game
?
For the Production Team
Lightning and rain. Nice. Zombies on the street. Even better. But that animation of the Desoto driving up the hill to the castle: Is that a scale environment or a perspective trick using the shrink and grow feature you've used in the past?
On my end, the castle's club floor took a long time to load. How big is the environment both file size wise and in scale? It looks bigger than Hugh Bliss's Retreat!
Were the various visual gags to
Resident Evil, Doom, and even The Dating Game
something that was written in or something that was added in by you guys?
How difficult was it to
animate Jesse James' hand when it went and did the whole Addams Family thing
?
I have this odd feeling that
Zombie Linclon is really the statue from the last season scaled down and retextured
. Am I right?
What prompted the strange "duel screen" driving environment for the driving game? And how difficult was it to create the suburb of Sam & Max?
For Jared and the Sound Guys
You meantioned that doing the voice for Bluster Blaster/Sinistar made your voice hurt at the end of every session last season. Was this the real reason behind the voice change?
Oh man the Desoto driving around the mountain is one of my favorite effects in the series, and it's a perspective trick, yes. We have some clever dudes working here.
Granted it's mid-season, but where did the idea to
base the first half of the game on a flashback
come from?
This is a narrative technique used in a great many stories. Try looking up "in media res" for more info. Chuck suggested that we use something like it in season 2, and it seemed to fit well here because we could begin the game with
a classic Bond-esque certain death sequence, but for once, the characters do NOT miraculously escape.
Among the many puzzles that had be scratching my head, the winner this episode goes to
the DJ Table combination lock
. How were you expecting players to come to the solution, and what was the actual results back during test play (and maybe even now)?
We hoped you would
study the poem looking for the significance, and recognize the words at the end of the lines as words from the DJ Booth. (We tried to make the words distinctive and memorable.) From there we expected it wouldn't be much of a leap to try playing them in the order you saw them in the poem. People in the playtest generally seemed to pick up on this one just fine, but admittedly it is the sort of puzzle that's easier if you're accustomed to the idea of secret passages in haunted houses being opened in some weird way (popularized in games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill).
something that was written in or something that was added in by you guys?
The process of coming up with the details of environments is a collaborative process. That said, anything that you can pick up or do complex animation with has to be specified in the design up front. The so-called throwaway gags (since they don't affect anything else) can be thought up by anyone on the project.
Zombie Linclon is really the statue from the last season scaled down and retextured
. Am I right?
Close.
We built Zombie Lincoln years ago just assuming we would need him, and then later when we had an episode about stone Lincoln, we said, hey, let's just scale up the zombie and detexture him.
What prompted the strange "duel screen" driving environment for the driving game? And how difficult was it to create the suburb of Sam & Max?
Our technology was just set up to have both sides of the street, but the camera for the game only allowed you to see one because of the game we were trying to make. John Drake cleverly rigged it so that if you drive across the center divider, it would switch the camera so you could see the other side.
You meantioned that doing the voice for Bluster Blaster/Sinistar made your voice hurt at the end of every session last season. Was this the real reason behind the voice change?
Yes. But also it's fun to mix things up now and again.
study the poem looking for the significance, and recognize the words at the end of the lines as words from the DJ Booth. (We tried to make the words distinctive and memorable.) From there we expected it wouldn't be much of a leap to try playing them in the order you saw them in the poem. People in the playtest generally seemed to pick up on this one just fine, but admittedly it is the sort of puzzle that's easier if you're accustomed to the idea of secret passages in haunted houses being opened in some weird way (popularized in games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill).
I was never good at memory games/puzzles, and I was looking for the token
book-that-is-really-a-lever on the fake bookcase instead of the Resident Evil style strange lock system
We built Zombie Lincoln years ago just assuming we would need him, and then later when we had an episode about stone Lincoln, we said, hey, let's just scale up the zombie and detexture him.
So... one day someone said something to the effect of
"I have this hunch that sometime, somewhere, we are going to need a model of a zombified version of Abraham Lincoln."?
Was this on the topic of Sam and Max, or just out of the blue?
Brendan's just pulling your leg about that one. The real story is:
Zombie Teddy Roosevelt was a character originally built for Season One, but cut at the last minute. For 203, it was easy enough to change one president to the other.
None, really, since as far as the game is concerned, Sam's hat and tie are all part of Sam, just connected, basically, by an invisible link. It's a different issue with something like Jurgen holding the bottle of malt liquor, which is a separate object, and is only animated along with his hand whenever someone tells it to... this is why you need to be careful about hiding it when the character is done using it, otherwise, the way things are set up, it'll just float there until you tell it to do something.
In hinesight, I think someone meantioned that in the commentary in Season 1, which is why you guys rarely show other characters giving Sam & Max items on screen.
It's a different issue with something like Jurgen holding the bottle of malt liquor, which is a separate object, and is only animated along with his hand whenever someone tells it to...
Which leads to a glitch if he is holding it when he retreats to his hideout.
What kind of job did you have to do to earn that title?
Question for the Design Team
There have been a lot of praise so far about the use of the one thing you've been most critiqued about: Revisiting locations. How does knowing you've turned what most people don't like into something that is not only creatively entertaining but also not as seemingly boring as was once implied?
There were three puzzles that had me scratching my head, but I figured out both of them.
The more impressing one was finding out Superball's birthday.
It was probably the most difficult to deduse, too. What was the initial design with that puzzle as far as leading the player towards the solution?
I found out when I talked to Grandpa Stinky and then later when I talked to Ms. Bosco that the answer was in the time cards.
Why was the stinger ending the big bang and not Sam & Max going back through the portal for Bosco's body?
I think the second one would have been funnier.
Question for The Sound Guys
What kind of research did you as far as the
mariachi
music?
For Grandpa Stinky,
what other kinds of voices did you try out before arriving to the one that is in the game? It was so perfect, that I couldn't help but ask, mostly because I'm curious on if it was nailed on the first try.
Question for the Production Team
There were a lot of sight gags that where missed out
because of how the time machine would block being able to view them.
What where some of the gags that you put in that we may or may not have noticed?
Why was the stinger ending the big bang and not Sam & Max going back through the portal for Bosco's body?
I think the second one would have been funnier.
While I'm not a designer, I can probably answer this one. By and large, the stingers aren't directly important to the plot. If the two had been swapped, there is a possibility that people might have missed that important detail. Plus,
you couldn't very well rescue Bosco's body after it had been destroyed in the big bang
What kind of job did you have to do to earn that title?
The field in question is vast and lucrative. However, it is incredibly competitive. Even though I have been a Telltale employee for a while, I had to go through the interview process just like all the others who were aspiring to break into this line of business.
I believe it was my ability to pop in from behind objects and instantly zip in to invade people's personal space that cinched the deal. But in the end I can't take all the credit, after all, it runs in my blood and I'm comforted in the thought that my great-grandfather can smile down (or up) on me and see that I have followed in his footsteps.
How many people did you lose thanks to the concept of screwing around with time paradoxes? There are already some people on the forums whose heads are about ready to explode from over-thinking, so I'm curious how many writers were lost in the process.
Did you guys really make it so that the Soda Poppers were the season villian from the start?
That seemed like a real sudden left turn in the road, but the exposition explaining it all did make sense.
And also,
did you guys plan to kill them off simply because of how much hate you guys got over the characters?
From a writing stand point, there were a lot of continuity issues that were handled rather nicely. How many heads exploded double-checking that nothing was forgotten
(excluding the Superball Employer thing)
?
Was the tunnel the visual manifistation of the area in episode 105's text adventure ending? Just curious.
Whose idea was it to
make Jurgen's monster the bachlor party stripper
? And if it wasn't Steve Purcell himself, what was said person on at the time?
I cam to figure out the
Cake of the Damned puzzle at the end
by accident. How were you hoping players would end up figuring out that puzzle on their own?
Production Team
There's a poster missing of the 7 deadly sins in the office. What happened to it?
How were you able to pull off that switching effect with Peepers in Sybil's office?
It seems like a lot of the animation and environments have improved in volumes! In retrospect, what is the team most proud of as far as this season's technical acheivements go?
There's a total of 14 rooms for this episode!
How much of a challenge was that?
Sound Guys
The tunnel music had a very nice Monkey Island feel to it. Was that done on purpose?
Why no song for the ending credits this season?
With such a HUGE cast for this single episode, what was the biggest challenge as far as voice recording and directing are concerned?
Jared and Jullian, what are each of your own personal favorite tracks you've recorded this season? Any memorible script recording sessions this season as well?
From a writing stand point, there were a lot of continuity issues that were handled rather nicely. How many heads exploded double-checking that nothing was forgotten
(excluding the Superball Employer thing)
?
One. And
what makes you think we forgot the Superball Employer thing?
by accident. How were you hoping players would end up figuring out that puzzle on their own?
Assuming you mean the very end:
During their reveal the Poppers say that the worst thing Sam & Max did was keep the mariachis from showing up for their birthday. The mariachis have been in every episode this season, but hadn't made an appearance. If you talk to the Poppers during the snowball fight, they mention their birthday. There's been a tar sample in your inventory the whole game, and you've got a recipe book to make a cake using tar, an ice cream truck, and you need to blow out a candle.
If you got no music, then that's a bug -- there's awesome R&B music playing over the credits. If you mean no lyrics: it would've interfered with the dialogue in the vignettes during the credits, it would've piled more work on Jared (since he's the singer) in an episode that's already huge & music intensive, and also Dave G's a lot better at writing poetry & song lyrics than I am.
my question: did you use any ideas off what people said in the forums? and what ideas?
and
did you base anything on what people said. I just remember in the commentry last time they were saying about people guesing correctly who the bad guy was in season 1 so you would try to make it seem like the person wasn't...
8D
first, how was it that you guys were able to make so many more locations in episode 5 than in the last few episodes (all 4 street locations open, 4 new episode locations, 6 diorama locations, new driving game, and a few others too) did you guys use any tricks to pull it all off, or did you just spend more time on this episode than you did on the others
second, was the reason that there are only a few generic repeating lines in stinkys diner? was it because you ran out of time to record the dialogue for all the usual clickables in stinkys?(i think i only counted 3 lines... the first about him always looking at the decor in this place, the one about wizzer, and "Must look at decor")
third, how much work went into setting the sun in sam and max's world... (how hard was it to change the world to night)
also, how come there were not as many intermediate act puzzles (puzzles between acts) in the rest of the season, like the puzzle to get out of sams personal hell... or the puzzles to break sams hypnotic thrall in culture shock... i have a personal fondness for sudden unexpected (trapped in a box) puzzles that we have to immediately solve
whos idea was the posessed desoto (and who came up with the awesome police lights for it)
finally a suggestion in the form of a question... can most (if not all) of the season 3 episodes leave us with semi-cliffhangers and pick right up where the previous episode left off?... i absolutely loved starting episode 205 at the exact same point and with (almost) the same exact set of items i left 204 with (and being able to use those items again)... i honestly have no clue.. but i would assume that not too many people are selectively playing episodes anymore, and they are already starting to become less and less self contained
second, was the reason that there are only a few generic repeating lines in stinkys diner?
I think that was done to make fun of people who can't resist clicking on the same object not once but twice or three times, for five episodes in a row.
I think that was done to make fun of people who can't resist clicking on the same object not once but twice or three times, for five episodes in a row.
I thought it was for space, since by that time in the game, the dialouge trees were saverely pruned down to just "Click and talk" actions instead of the "Click and pick what to say" route.
I just discovered a line of Sam's that surprisingly falls in sync with the River Styx/Sewer BGM. I don't know my music trivia as well as Timmy or the Maimtron, but I have to ask. What was that line from and was it part of maybe an abandon'd song for the episode?
And so you know what line I'm talking about, it isn't the
That was probably an accident, since we have no way of syncing game events with the environment's background music! Also, dialog was recorded for 205 before environment music was written
another question... i think this is for jake cause he did the title cards, right?
i noticed something when watching all the intros in a row... why do sam and max have a different animation at the end of the 201 intro... as opposed to the animation they have through the rest of the season (the pointing guns animation) were you going to have them do something different in each intro like you had in season one... and it just got old? or was it just cause you liked that animation so much?
also... the the handles on the door to the hell reception area... from the reception side the handles are silver, but from the bullpen side... the handles are gold... who missed that one
They don't do their cool pose in Ice Station Santa because there wasn't time to get it in -- nobody noticed that there should be a cool pose there until it was too late! We briefly toyed with doing a new animation per opening there, but the one we settled on for 202 ended up being iconic enough to just go with it.
Comments
For the Design Team
Granted it's mid-season, but where did the idea to
Among the many puzzles that had be scratching my head, the winner this episode goes to
What did you think would happen as far as fan reaction when you decided to
For the Production Team
Lightning and rain. Nice. Zombies on the street. Even better. But that animation of the Desoto driving up the hill to the castle: Is that a scale environment or a perspective trick using the shrink and grow feature you've used in the past?
On my end, the castle's club floor took a long time to load. How big is the environment both file size wise and in scale? It looks bigger than Hugh Bliss's Retreat!
Were the various visual gags to
How difficult was it to
I have this odd feeling that
What prompted the strange "duel screen" driving environment for the driving game? And how difficult was it to create the suburb of Sam & Max?
For Jared and the Sound Guys
.... yeah, that's about it for Jared so far...:p
This is a narrative technique used in a great many stories. Try looking up "in media res" for more info. Chuck suggested that we use something like it in season 2, and it seemed to fit well here because we could begin the game with
We hoped you would
We expected people would ask why we didn't do it sooner.
The process of coming up with the details of environments is a collaborative process. That said, anything that you can pick up or do complex animation with has to be specified in the design up front. The so-called throwaway gags (since they don't affect anything else) can be thought up by anyone on the project.
Close.
Our technology was just set up to have both sides of the street, but the camera for the game only allowed you to see one because of the game we were trying to make. John Drake cleverly rigged it so that if you drive across the center divider, it would switch the camera so you could see the other side.
Yes. But also it's fun to mix things up now and again.
Didn't expect to be that close on the
So... one day someone said something to the effect of
Bad Pun!!
What kind of glitches and bugs happened when you guys tried to make certain elements float like
Which is why I used that specific example.
Question for the Design Team
There have been a lot of praise so far about the use of the one thing you've been most critiqued about: Revisiting locations. How does knowing you've turned what most people don't like into something that is not only creatively entertaining but also not as seemingly boring as was once implied?
There were three puzzles that had me scratching my head, but I figured out both of them.
Question for The Sound Guys
What kind of research did you as far as the
Question for the Production Team
There were a lot of sight gags that where missed out
While I'm not a designer, I can probably answer this one. By and large, the stingers aren't directly important to the plot. If the two had been swapped, there is a possibility that people might have missed that important detail. Plus,
The field in question is vast and lucrative. However, it is incredibly competitive. Even though I have been a Telltale employee for a while, I had to go through the interview process just like all the others who were aspiring to break into this line of business.
I believe it was my ability to pop in from behind objects and instantly zip in to invade people's personal space that cinched the deal. But in the end I can't take all the credit, after all, it runs in my blood and I'm comforted in the thought that my great-grandfather can smile down (or up) on me and see that I have followed in his footsteps.
How many people did you lose thanks to the concept of screwing around with time paradoxes? There are already some people on the forums whose heads are about ready to explode from over-thinking, so I'm curious how many writers were lost in the process.
Was that shot in the office's cube-farm and break room?
Who was that with the thick 80's facial hair? Didn't recognize him from any of the convention videos, but he kind of looks like Jared...
The Design Team
And also,
From a writing stand point, there were a lot of continuity issues that were handled rather nicely. How many heads exploded double-checking that nothing was forgotten
Was the tunnel the visual manifistation of the area in episode 105's text adventure ending? Just curious.
Whose idea was it to
I cam to figure out the
Production Team
There's a poster missing of the 7 deadly sins in the office. What happened to it?
It seems like a lot of the animation and environments have improved in volumes! In retrospect, what is the team most proud of as far as this season's technical acheivements go?
Sound Guys
The tunnel music had a very nice Monkey Island feel to it. Was that done on purpose?
Why no song for the ending credits this season?
With such a HUGE cast for this single episode, what was the biggest challenge as far as voice recording and directing are concerned?
Jared and Jullian, what are each of your own personal favorite tracks you've recorded this season? Any memorible script recording sessions this season as well?
Yes.
I'm not sure what you mean, "how much hate you guys got?" Nobody ever mentioned not liking them on the forums.
To clarify: I'm not saying that said person was on Brendan. I'm saying that it was Brendan's idea.
Assuming you mean the very end:
If you got no music, then that's a bug -- there's awesome R&B music playing over the credits. If you mean no lyrics: it would've interfered with the dialogue in the vignettes during the credits, it would've piled more work on Jared (since he's the singer) in an episode that's already huge & music intensive, and also Dave G's a lot better at writing poetry & song lyrics than I am.
Can't speak for them, but hearing Roger L Jackson record the dialogue for
and
did you base anything on what people said. I just remember in the commentry last time they were saying about people guesing correctly who the bad guy was in season 1 so you would try to make it seem like the person wasn't...
8D
first, how was it that you guys were able to make so many more locations in episode 5 than in the last few episodes (all 4 street locations open, 4 new episode locations, 6 diorama locations, new driving game, and a few others too) did you guys use any tricks to pull it all off, or did you just spend more time on this episode than you did on the others
second, was the reason that there are only a few generic repeating lines in stinkys diner? was it because you ran out of time to record the dialogue for all the usual clickables in stinkys?(i think i only counted 3 lines... the first about him always looking at the decor in this place, the one about wizzer, and "Must look at decor")
third, how much work went into setting the sun in sam and max's world... (how hard was it to change the world to night)
also, how come there were not as many intermediate act puzzles (puzzles between acts) in the rest of the season, like the puzzle to get out of sams personal hell... or the puzzles to break sams hypnotic thrall in culture shock... i have a personal fondness for sudden unexpected (trapped in a box) puzzles that we have to immediately solve
whos idea was the posessed desoto (and who came up with the awesome police lights for it)
finally a suggestion in the form of a question... can most (if not all) of the season 3 episodes leave us with semi-cliffhangers and pick right up where the previous episode left off?... i absolutely loved starting episode 205 at the exact same point and with (almost) the same exact set of items i left 204 with (and being able to use those items again)... i honestly have no clue.. but i would assume that not too many people are selectively playing episodes anymore, and they are already starting to become less and less self contained
I think that was done to make fun of people who can't resist clicking on the same object not once but twice or three times, for five episodes in a row.
Ohh!! Good news!
I thought it was for space, since by that time in the game, the dialouge trees were saverely pruned down to just "Click and talk" actions instead of the "Click and pick what to say" route.
I just discovered a line of Sam's that surprisingly falls in sync with the River Styx/Sewer BGM. I don't know my music trivia as well as Timmy or the Maimtron, but I have to ask. What was that line from and was it part of maybe an abandon'd song for the episode?
And so you know what line I'm talking about, it isn't the
i noticed something when watching all the intros in a row... why do sam and max have a different animation at the end of the 201 intro... as opposed to the animation they have through the rest of the season (the pointing guns animation) were you going to have them do something different in each intro like you had in season one... and it just got old? or was it just cause you liked that animation so much?
also... the the handles on the door to the hell reception area... from the reception side the handles are silver, but from the bullpen side... the handles are gold... who missed that one