They did. See: Strong Bad's Cool Game 4 Attractive People. I personally prefer the full 3D like Sam & Max than how Strong Bad's game came out, not to say it was bad, but the little excess polygons around everyone's body parts did get a little distracting to me, personally.
Thanks for pointing that out. I just looked at the movies from that game on the website and it does indeed do cel-shading. It also looks pretty good, although you cannot really compare the simple characters-models in Strong Bad to the more complex characters of Sam & Max or TMI. Those models could look quite a bit better. Maybe comparable to other cel-shaded games like Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.
I'm glad to see the Telltale engine supports cel-shading already and I'd love to see a Sam & Max or TMI scene rendered using cel-shading.
Is Sly3 available on other consoles? If I buy a PS3, will I be able to play it?
Although off-topic; Sly Cooper is a series that's exclusive to Sony (they own the company, Sucker Punch Studios) If you bought a PS3 today, you probably wouldn't be able to play it because most of them have removed the backwards compatibility. However, the PS2 is only 99 dollars now.
Amazing how we can go from cel-shading to entirely other game series.
Sadly i didn't get any answers to my questions in this or the other thread but nevertheless here is another one: It has been said that the distribution size of TOMI will be more close to Sam&Max than to Wallace&Gromit. Personally i wouldn't mind it it would be closer to Wallace&Gromit if it makes the game look better but could just please make the texture resolution, at least of the main characters like Guybrush, high enough so that you don't have see all the filtering? Thanks!
Whoa! Awesome stuff there... Some of those drawings are genuinely scary , others inspire sympathy, a few are even cute. Really impressive! Oh, and lotta zombies too... (You mean... ZOMBIES?!)
How do you typically make those drawings? Do you sketch on paper first or directly on the computer? using a pen tablet? Wat software do you prefer?
Were those TMI sketches done in Illustrator? They look so clean and crisp, they could very well be vector-graphics for box-art. Actually, the background-graphics do as well.
Are you employed by TellTale or are you a freelance artist that's available for other projects once TMI is finished?
Thanks man! I usually just sketch out a line drawing of whatever on paper (i'm still getting used to drawing on a cintique, doesn't have the same feel as a pencil across paper), scan it in, then I color it and all that jazz in PS. I used to prefer painter, but have gotten fond of PS's speed. At home i use an old tablet that i've had for like 6 years, but here at work I have the opportunity to use a cintique. Some days i just prefer the tablet..
The TMI sketches were done in PS, with a good amount of selecting for clean edges.
I'm working full time at TTG as the lone concept guy. I do some freelance on the side to feed the non existent family of 9, but that gets pretty tiring.
Well, now I just feel bad for not attempting to answer your questions That generally means, we don't know, we're not at liberty to say, or this thread has just gotten bigger than anyone thought it would! Alas, let me try.
I don't know if this has been asked before but are there any plans for localised versions, german in particular? And if so, will this be done before the DVD release also for the episodes, updating already released episodes as well? I don't need it personally, but it would be great if i could share the game this way with my daughter.
I haven't heard anything about localizations yet. If not, think of how much fun you'll have translating for your daughter! You can do all the piratey voices you want!
In a maybe behind the scenes i would be curious to see how the production of Monkey Island worked, the worflow with the different stages and also finally showing off the TTG tool.
do you have any plans to shorten up the update cycles, maybe to every two or three weeks or is it more about producing more series with the already familiar update cycles or putting more work into a normal serie?
We make 'em as fast as we can. A month seems to be about our breaking point, but I'm sure we'd experiment with the sweet spot of release times for episodes if we could.
Will there be a XBLA version of Monkey Island as well or is it tied to the Wii due to some exlusive deal or is the franchise not allowed to show up on the Xbox360?
This is a little above my pay-grade, but I can say there are no announced plans to bring this XBLA right now.
Now after you worked out the hint system will we also see an increase in the puzzle complexity to also please more of the veterans and will inventory combinations making their way also into other series? Btw i read that there will be four hint grades, are these like none, low, medium, high?
The hint system doesn't give us, the designers, carte blanche to create mind-bending, spirit-breaking puzzles. Earlier I read somebody describe the MI games of old as trying to "beat" the player -- which is just about right when you think of some of those puzzles. Our puzzles are going to be pretty close to what you're familiar with when it comes to Telltale, but with some added MI complexity (which is usually pretty bizarre). Our hint system will work the same as it has in our other games, but hints might be delivered in a more organic fashion (which you'll have to play to see!)
What has changed, that after so many years of trying it finally happened that LucasArts allowed it?
I don't know -- a lot of things have to happen at the same time for a deal like this to actually come to life, so I think it was just the right time and the right people were involved.
Norman Matt sais that it will be a pleasure for him to speak
guybrush again for the german version of tales of mi and mi1 se!
As a little explaination for the non-Germans here, Norman Matt is basically the German Dominic Armato, lending Guybrush his voice in CMI and EMI... in fact, he sounds DAMN close to Dom... so... "Dom close", I guess
I applaud the Curse team for coming up with door-hinge. I know it doesn't technically rhyme, but it's pretty darn good:
The cap'n burst in, lookin' like he'd kick down the door-hinge
"We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an or-inge!"
I believe I personally gave them that rhyme. I had come up with it for a Pajama Sam game where I needed rhymes for all the primary colors for some reason.
(Seems to me Tim also called me for a rhyme for "fandango" in that same general time period....)
Edit: Chuck just walked past my desk, and he claims he came up with door hinge independently. We're going to have to duke it out.
(He also claims not to have played Pajama Sam, if you can believe that!)
Ahoy me monkey island fans! I finally preordered the game - this is my first post and i am already in the vip-area.
and i have question:
why did we have to wait sooo long for this!? xD
btw i'm also from germany and was used to the german voices, which were pretty awesome and very close to the original. And i agree, they have to get norman matt for guybrush.
i just played through CMI again with english voices - now i'm "prepared" for ToMI
It's been awhile since I played it, but didn't Loom kind of wrap up all its plot threads at the end?
No way, Loom was a total cliffhanger. Rips in the universe and all that sort of thing. And there was a sequel in development at LucasArts for a while - "Forge." Our own Mike Stemmle even worked on it.
He does have a Dom-like tone. It's kind of fun watching it in German...
I've just checked out the Spanish intro... Guybrush sounds a little TOO happy filling his journal with his tragic tale...
Edit: Maybe we should post these in Dominic's thread for him to check out.
I've just checked out the Spanish intro... Guybrush sounds a little TOO happy filling his journal with his tragic tale...
Edit: Maybe we should post these in Dominic's thread for him to check out.
I played all 3 Monkey Island in spanish, it's weird to play MI3 now in english, although it makes the experience new and fun!
OK, actually, it's my eyeballs. I didn't have a laptop or anything with me at the show, so today I'm back in the office and I just skimmed through this whole thread, all 500+ posts of it. The enthusiasm here is awesome!
I avoided replying to many of the posts I saw early in the thread, because I figured that in 27 pages surely someone must have addressed them. But it seems we've actually left a lot of questions unanswered. So, uh... well, I guess I'll try going back to the beginning again and picking out a few to actually answer.
Okay, I finally have a question. It's probably better directed at LucasArts, but they're not cool like Telltale and directly communicating with their fans. I'm hoping that as former Lucas employees and game programmers in general, you guys can answer it:
How much effort/resources would it take to port the SCUMM engine to the DS? Would it be comparable to producing one game? If it was done, would it allow easy and quick ports of all old SCUMM games to the DS? If so, how the hell has no one at Lucas had this idea already? Sell 5-10 already popular games for the price of one engine-porting development cycle. Seems like guaranteed profit.
I told my friend that the biggest thing that came out of E3 was the return of Monkey Island! His answer was, "What's Monkey Island?" to which I proceeded in answering... "Look behind you! It's a three-headed monkey!"
Needless to say, he now thinks I'm utterly insane now. It's going to be my mission, however, to show him the original when it's re-released and get him to support this movement of new monkey games!
Long Live the ghost pi--- *stab stab*
Long live the Fearless Guybr--- *stab stab*
Long live the... um... three-headed monkeys? *much applause from the dagger-wielding-primate*
On one hand, I know that if Monkey Island becomes more popular and well known than it already is, LucasArts may continue the series for quite some time again. On the other hand, if the series is popular, will they cater to the old fans or destroy the franchise in the process of trying to make it mass appealing?
The only people I trust right now with Monkey Island is Telltale.
And back on topic, I have my own question, which hopefully hasn't been asked already. In the main forum a few people were talking about night scenes and locations in TMI. So, will there be any?
And back on topic, I have my own question, which hopefully hasn't been asked already. In the main forum a few people were talking about night scenes and locations in TMI. So, will there be any?
I believe I personally gave them that rhyme. I had come up with it for a Pajama Sam game where I needed rhymes for all the primary colors for some reason.
(Seems to me Tim also called me for a rhyme for "fandango" in that same general time period....)
Edit: Chuck just walked past my desk, and he claims he came up with door hinge independently. We're going to have to duke it out.
(He also claims not to have played Pajama Sam, if you can believe that!)
Technically, there are 2 words that actually rhyme with orange: sporange and blorenge. check them on google
Another question directed to nobody in particular... but, Why did you guys choose to make it MI6 (for all intents and purposes) why did you skip 5?
Jake mentioned this as being a gag, which it kind of is, but we discussed a more serious angle as well, that basically being that the time gap creates a mental space that allows us to make ToMI instead of having to make EfMI2. If that makes sense.
I'm using ScummVM on my PC right now to bypass compatibility issues with my old CoMI, but I don't want to deal with the whole homebrew/R4/pirating stuff that would be necessary to use it on my DS. It makes me nervous. I'd much rather buy and use stable official versions of SCUMM games.
So how many of the past games have you played? (Time to prove your cred!)
I played the first two, which I co-wrote, many, many times. I am proud to say I defeated Tim Schafer by a good ten minutes the day we had the Secret of Monkey Island race (the game was in QA and we were temporarily all out of bugs to fix so there wasn't much else to do). Later on, as a private citizen of sorts, I played Curse of Monkey Island, and that was really fun for me, since it was my first chance to experience the monkeys from a strictly audience point of view. I liked it very much. And then Escape from Monkey Island I played only a year or two ago, and it was hilarious, but unfortunately by then I was over forty and I no longer possessed the patience to finish it. Fortunately, Mike Stemmle sits about twenty feet away from me so he's been able to fill me in on the details I missed. (Thanks, man!)
I don't know whether or not it has already been asked, but will there be an option in the menu for walking speed? If not, what about a run button? For example, Sam & Max Season Two had a 'double-click to run' feature. I am aware that the Tales of Monkey Island control scheme is not finalized yet, though. Some people may gawk at a run feature, but it would be there for those that want it, and everyone else could just ignore it.
PS. Nobody answered my last question, so I can assume that the Monkey Island (CMI and EMI) tradition of including a bogus option in the menu will not be making an appearance this time around. I suppose that a '2D' option that does nothing would really upset the hardcore fans of MI1-3. It would be pretty funny, though.
By the way, I am glad to hear that volume control has been split back into three sliders for Tales of Monkey Island. I missed that in Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. I am a tweak freak, so I love to have a lot of options.
Hi guys, will we be seeing any cinematic cutscenes (higher quality renders like the S&M S2 trailer) in the episodes?
I love how these look, although story always comes first to me over anything else. It's just a nicer way to immerse you into that story
Hey, Dave. No spoilers, but will there be plenty of islands to explore over the season, like how free MI2 was to explore?
And will there be a good balance of seriousness with humor, instead of just straight no constraints Marx Brothers joke after joke humor? (Not that I have anything against the Marx Bros, they rock.) (This has been asked so many times I feel stupid doing so myself, plus I almost would rather just decide for myself, but I'd like your opinion without spoilers I guess.)
PLEASE, Dave. No spoilers. Please. Not saying you would...just because you revealed LeChuck is human.....but please. If you feel the obsessive compulsive urge to post a glaring spoiler...don't...haha.
EDIT: Oh, and will Sam and Max make a cameo in TMI?
i was just thinking about MI2, and remembered that in one of the chapters, you basically have unrestricted access to 3 different islands. Is TMI gonna get that cool?
I told my friend that the biggest thing that came out of E3 was the return of Monkey Island! His answer was, "What's Monkey Island?" to which I proceeded in answering... "Look behind you! It's a three-headed monkey!"
I died laughing at this. Your response is perfect!
i was just thinking about MI2, and remembered that in one of the chapters, you basically have unrestricted access to 3 different islands. Is TMI gonna get that cool?
Surely this would balloon the download size? Can't see this happening, myself, for practical reasons.
I haven't heard anything about localizations yet. If not, think of how much fun you'll have translating for your daughter! You can do all the piratey voices you want!
Haha, I did that for the first two games, though it was for my younger cousins. It's much harder when the games have voice acting and not just text, though.
No way, Loom was a total cliffhanger. Rips in the universe and all that sort of thing. And there was a sequel in development at LucasArts for a while - "Forge." Our own Mike Stemmle even worked on it.
Argh. Yes, yes, I know. I've already been private messaged, sent to the Wiki page for Loom, and chastized in thread for this. Seriously, I am sorry that I only played Loom through the one time and that I forgot that the ending wasn't a happy one. All I could remember was that Bobbin finally reunites with his mother and flies off. I should have just looked it up before I said anything. Now even my adventure game developer heroes are stepping in to correct me.
Okay, serious story question for the writers/designers (since you all basically do both). How much character development are we going to see in ToMI? I realize that with most licensed IP's character development isn't possible, but the Monkey Island series sort of has a tradition of characters progressing from game to game. Also, with an overarching narrative I don't see how you can avoid character's changing without negating the emotional impact of major story events. I'm not saying I want happy-go-lucky Guybrush to pass through the flames of adversity a deeper, darker man, but it'd be nice if we felt that he was a slightly different man at the end of the series than the man we meet at the beginning. You guys gave me a taste of more involved stories in Sam and Max Season Two, what with the Sybil and Abe's relationship and ... okay I don't want to say much more since I don't know how to do that spoiler text thing, but you guys know what I mean. You wrote the game. I love all your work up until now, but I'm hoping in ToMI you guys really will tell us all a tale ... that's more than just a series of gags. (Though I do love those, too.)
Comments
Thanks for pointing that out. I just looked at the movies from that game on the website and it does indeed do cel-shading. It also looks pretty good, although you cannot really compare the simple characters-models in Strong Bad to the more complex characters of Sam & Max or TMI. Those models could look quite a bit better. Maybe comparable to other cel-shaded games like Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.
I'm glad to see the Telltale engine supports cel-shading already and I'd love to see a Sam & Max or TMI scene rendered using cel-shading.
Although off-topic; Sly Cooper is a series that's exclusive to Sony (they own the company, Sucker Punch Studios) If you bought a PS3 today, you probably wouldn't be able to play it because most of them have removed the backwards compatibility. However, the PS2 is only 99 dollars now.
Amazing how we can go from cel-shading to entirely other game series.
Thanks! Who doesn't love zombies???
Thanks man! I usually just sketch out a line drawing of whatever on paper (i'm still getting used to drawing on a cintique, doesn't have the same feel as a pencil across paper), scan it in, then I color it and all that jazz in PS. I used to prefer painter, but have gotten fond of PS's speed. At home i use an old tablet that i've had for like 6 years, but here at work I have the opportunity to use a cintique. Some days i just prefer the tablet..
The TMI sketches were done in PS, with a good amount of selecting for clean edges.
I'm working full time at TTG as the lone concept guy. I do some freelance on the side to feed the non existent family of 9, but that gets pretty tiring.
I haven't heard anything about localizations yet. If not, think of how much fun you'll have translating for your daughter! You can do all the piratey voices you want!
This WOULD be cool.
25? 30? It's hard to say, it's always changing. I'm coming over from WG right now, while others are jumping back and forth, etc.
We make 'em as fast as we can. A month seems to be about our breaking point, but I'm sure we'd experiment with the sweet spot of release times for episodes if we could.
This is a little above my pay-grade, but I can say there are no announced plans to bring this XBLA right now.
The hint system doesn't give us, the designers, carte blanche to create mind-bending, spirit-breaking puzzles. Earlier I read somebody describe the MI games of old as trying to "beat" the player -- which is just about right when you think of some of those puzzles. Our puzzles are going to be pretty close to what you're familiar with when it comes to Telltale, but with some added MI complexity (which is usually pretty bizarre). Our hint system will work the same as it has in our other games, but hints might be delivered in a more organic fashion (which you'll have to play to see!)
I don't know -- a lot of things have to happen at the same time for a deal like this to actually come to life, so I think it was just the right time and the right people were involved.
Speaking PURELY as a fan, I hope so. But for now let's just assume this is our only chance to return to Monkey Island and enjoy every second of it!
guybrush again for the german version of tales of mi and mi1 se!
so you have to tell the publisher
that it will be a MUST to ask him !!!
I believe I personally gave them that rhyme. I had come up with it for a Pajama Sam game where I needed rhymes for all the primary colors for some reason.
(Seems to me Tim also called me for a rhyme for "fandango" in that same general time period....)
Edit: Chuck just walked past my desk, and he claims he came up with door hinge independently. We're going to have to duke it out.
(He also claims not to have played Pajama Sam, if you can believe that!)
and i have question:
why did we have to wait sooo long for this!? xD
btw i'm also from germany and was used to the german voices, which were pretty awesome and very close to the original. And i agree, they have to get norman matt for guybrush.
i just played through CMI again with english voices - now i'm "prepared" for ToMI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&hl=de&v=r1pXHhrToLw
He does have a Dom-like tone. It's kind of fun watching it in German...
No way, Loom was a total cliffhanger. Rips in the universe and all that sort of thing. And there was a sequel in development at LucasArts for a while - "Forge." Our own Mike Stemmle even worked on it.
I've just checked out the Spanish intro... Guybrush sounds a little TOO happy filling his journal with his tragic tale...
Edit: Maybe we should post these in Dominic's thread for him to check out.
I played all 3 Monkey Island in spanish, it's weird to play MI3 now in english, although it makes the experience new and fun!
OK, actually, it's my eyeballs. I didn't have a laptop or anything with me at the show, so today I'm back in the office and I just skimmed through this whole thread, all 500+ posts of it. The enthusiasm here is awesome!
I avoided replying to many of the posts I saw early in the thread, because I figured that in 27 pages surely someone must have addressed them. But it seems we've actually left a lot of questions unanswered. So, uh... well, I guess I'll try going back to the beginning again and picking out a few to actually answer.
Sorry if I miss yours. Feel free to ask it again.
How much effort/resources would it take to port the SCUMM engine to the DS? Would it be comparable to producing one game? If it was done, would it allow easy and quick ports of all old SCUMM games to the DS? If so, how the hell has no one at Lucas had this idea already? Sell 5-10 already popular games for the price of one engine-porting development cycle. Seems like guaranteed profit.
Needless to say, he now thinks I'm utterly insane now. It's going to be my mission, however, to show him the original when it's re-released and get him to support this movement of new monkey games!
Long Live the ghost pi--- *stab stab*
Long live the Fearless Guybr--- *stab stab*
Long live the... um... three-headed monkeys? *much applause from the dagger-wielding-primate*
The only people I trust right now with Monkey Island is Telltale.
And back on topic, I have my own question, which hopefully hasn't been asked already. In the main forum a few people were talking about night scenes and locations in TMI. So, will there be any?
Oh yes.
Jake mentioned this as being a gag, which it kind of is, but we discussed a more serious angle as well, that basically being that the time gap creates a mental space that allows us to make ToMI instead of having to make EfMI2. If that makes sense.
I'm using ScummVM on my PC right now to bypass compatibility issues with my old CoMI, but I don't want to deal with the whole homebrew/R4/pirating stuff that would be necessary to use it on my DS. It makes me nervous. I'd much rather buy and use stable official versions of SCUMM games.
I played the first two, which I co-wrote, many, many times. I am proud to say I defeated Tim Schafer by a good ten minutes the day we had the Secret of Monkey Island race (the game was in QA and we were temporarily all out of bugs to fix so there wasn't much else to do). Later on, as a private citizen of sorts, I played Curse of Monkey Island, and that was really fun for me, since it was my first chance to experience the monkeys from a strictly audience point of view. I liked it very much. And then Escape from Monkey Island I played only a year or two ago, and it was hilarious, but unfortunately by then I was over forty and I no longer possessed the patience to finish it. Fortunately, Mike Stemmle sits about twenty feet away from me so he's been able to fill me in on the details I missed. (Thanks, man!)
PS. Nobody answered my last question, so I can assume that the Monkey Island (CMI and EMI) tradition of including a bogus option in the menu will not be making an appearance this time around. I suppose that a '2D' option that does nothing would really upset the hardcore fans of MI1-3. It would be pretty funny, though.
By the way, I am glad to hear that volume control has been split back into three sliders for Tales of Monkey Island. I missed that in Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures. I am a tweak freak, so I love to have a lot of options.
I love how these look, although story always comes first to me over anything else. It's just a nicer way to immerse you into that story
And will there be a good balance of seriousness with humor, instead of just straight no constraints Marx Brothers joke after joke humor? (Not that I have anything against the Marx Bros, they rock.) (This has been asked so many times I feel stupid doing so myself, plus I almost would rather just decide for myself, but I'd like your opinion without spoilers I guess.)
PLEASE, Dave. No spoilers. Please. Not saying you would...just because you revealed LeChuck is human.....but please. If you feel the obsessive compulsive urge to post a glaring spoiler...don't...haha.
EDIT: Oh, and will Sam and Max make a cameo in TMI?
Die brennende voodoo Kugel?!? Nein!!!!
I died laughing at this. Your response is perfect!
Surely this would balloon the download size? Can't see this happening, myself, for practical reasons.
Argh. Yes, yes, I know. I've already been private messaged, sent to the Wiki page for Loom, and chastized in thread for this. Seriously, I am sorry that I only played Loom through the one time and that I forgot that the ending wasn't a happy one. All I could remember was that Bobbin finally reunites with his mother and flies off. I should have just looked it up before I said anything. Now even my adventure game developer heroes are stepping in to correct me.