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If I Made Another Monkey Island...

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Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#71

Post by chc »

kybernetikos wrote: post #66
nsxwolf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the things he said is telling and gives useful perspective - they wanted to do more with the visuals, but were stuck with what was possible in 1990. We shouldn't elevate retro pixel art to some perfect art form. It's unlikely to be what the original artists intended, rather it was what they had to accept.

What the original artists intended may well not have been as good as what they ended up creating. As soon as you hear George Lucas say the words 'what I originally intended' you should run a mile.

That's because George Lucas is very seldom telling the truth about his intent. If you look at the things George Lucas said and wrote back then and compare them to what he says and writes now, it seems pretty clear that Lucas doesn't readily distinguish between his present ideas and his previous plans. I don't know whether he actually doesn't remember that he used to think differently or if he's consciously trying to reshape history — but at any rate, the George Lucas of today can't be relied upon for insight into the mind of the George Lucas of yesterday.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#72

Post by lobster_johnson »

Contero wrote: post #61
Aloisius wrote: post #40

I may be an odd ball here, but I cheated at Monkey Island 1 and 2. I don't like to be frustrated with a puzzle that relies on either randomly choosing inventory items or seeing some pixels that look like almost every other set of pixels on the screen and trying to pick them up. For me, what made Monkey Island great was that it was a pretty quirky comedy. I wanted to see what Guybrush would say next. Further, it shock…

I think Machinarium is a good example of how you can preserve the fun frustration of adventure games without pushing people to cheat. They would allow you to play a mini-game in order to reveal some extra hints which would push you in the right direction enough to figure out the rest on your own. In Monkey Island I would sometimes get annoyed and google for what to do out of angry frustration. It was easy for me to t…

I really liked the puzzle difficulty with Machinarium. I think I had to use the hints system once for one of the particularly difficult puzzles. Great game.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#73

Post by lobster_johnson »

egypturnash wrote: post #62

Honestly after "The Cave" and "Deathspank" I'm not sure Gilbert is on my HERE TAKE MY MONEY list any more. And him saying "MI3 will be RETRO looking!" isn't making me interested; the Monkey Island games were GORGEOUS for the time, but I don't want to go wallowing in nostalgia for something made now.

Indeed, The Cave had good visuals, but extremely boring gameplay. I understand what he was going for, but it just didn't work. Way too much running back and forth to place your characters in a certain place, and all the running took way too much time.

Deathspank was mildly amusing, but got tired very fast. It was visually flimsy and felt underdeveloped overall; it wasn't a good RPG, but it wasn't a good action game either, and it was a terrible adventure game.

Admittedly neither of those games are classical point and click games. It may well be that he's just much better at designing point and clicks than at the other game genres.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#74

Post by gavanwoolery »

lloeki wrote: post #36
gavanwoolery wrote: post #32

I have no less respect for Ron than I did back in the 90s, but I think that sometimes the veterans lose sight of what made their old games great (and this of course, is just my opinion). He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the…

> He wants to use speech instead of text While the no-talkie and partial talkie DotT are great, full-talkie DotT is absolutely awesome. > He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the rigid palettization that makes pixel art what it…

Thanks for the info! I actually only played DotT with text, so maybe I am missing the potential of voice.

Nonetheless, two things I absolutely love about text: 1) It can't be ruined by bad acting. 2) It leaves more to the imagination.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#75

Post by vacri »

egypturnash wrote: post #62

Honestly after "The Cave" and "Deathspank" I'm not sure Gilbert is on my HERE TAKE MY MONEY list any more. And him saying "MI3 will be RETRO looking!" isn't making me interested; the Monkey Island games were GORGEOUS for the time, but I don't want to go wallowing in nostalgia for something made now.

Yes, I've been burned by enough one- or two-hit wonders to not just assume the next item will be good. World of Goo was another example; they then made Little Inferno, which while continuing their trend of uniquely beautiful art, was unbelievably monotonous and shallow to play, a stark contrast to the game that made their name. XCOM was another example - XCOM remake! Take my money! How bad can it be? Well, they could strip out the strategy part of the game altogether, giving it zero replayability.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#76

Post by richardkmichael »

soneca wrote: post #10

I supported Double Fine Adventure on Kickstarter and lot of the last points of the OP refer to how Tim Schafer is managing it. But, in this case, if Ron Gilbert is making a proof of concept with this post, a MVP to check if Monkey Island 3a can be crowdfunded - or even if it is just a critique of Double Fine Adventure campaign, I am on Tim Schafer's side here. Crowdfunding is not about "give me the money and trust me…

I'm on the other side. He created the first two, which I grew up with and loved, and he didn't ask me about those at all. So I'm willing to trust him.

For me, crowdfunding is more about ensuring the actual creators receive my money and avoiding the "publisher", than it's about being able to contribute to creative process.

I backed Wasteland 2 and haven't said a single word to the developers. I've looked at the preview art and video, but I wouldn't mind very much if they hadn't release those things and just showed up with a game.

However, if they did that, and the game fell flat, I might not back another. I assume most Kickstarting companies realize the preview/updates are not "owed" to backers, but are in fact an opportunity to preview (e.g. test) with a highly engaged and invested audience, thus mitigating the risk of failure of their final product.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#77

Post by jerf »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #74
lloeki wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He wants to use speech instead of text While the no-talkie and partial talkie DotT are great, full-talkie DotT is absolutely awesome. > He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the rigid palettization that makes pixel art what it…

Thanks for the info! I actually only played DotT with text, so maybe I am missing the potential of voice. Nonetheless, two things I absolutely love about text: 1) It can't be ruined by bad acting. 2) It leaves more to the imagination.

So, my theory is that Day of the Tentacle had voice so early (as optional add-on packs for those rare systems that could use them rather than part of the base install, that's how early this was; voice packs that could fill up your meager little hard drive) that nobody involved realized that game voice acting was "supposed" to suck. System Shock is another example of the same effect. Both of those games are wonderful and completely stand up to the best of modern voice acting. It wasn't until later that voice acting really started to suck hard.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#78

Post by gavanwoolery »

arrrg wrote: post #46
gavanwoolery wrote: post #32

I have no less respect for Ron than I did back in the 90s, but I think that sometimes the veterans lose sight of what made their old games great (and this of course, is just my opinion). He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the…

I think you lost sight of what made those games great. Certainly not how they looked. Getting more skilled artists on the job, with a fresh perspective on the world, would be awesome.

Yes, bad wording on my part. I used to be in the "looks don't matter at all" camp - and there are very many "ugly" games that I have thoroughly enjoyed. However, if you look at the way our brains are wired, one of the ways that we derive "fun" is on a strictly visual level. I think that traditional pixel art is inherently "fun" because it follows rigorous guidelines that produce something most people think is visually pleasing, yet at the same time challenges the brain to interpret it (vs. something that is completely realistic). Like anything else, fun derived from visual stimulus can wear off when it becomes "ordinary" - which is why seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time is thrilling, but seeing it 100 times is considerably less so.

In other words, yes the game would be great regardless of its looks - but a visually pleasing setting only helps the cause.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#79

Post by gavanwoolery »

nsxwolf wrote: post #45
gavanwoolery wrote: post #32

I have no less respect for Ron than I did back in the 90s, but I think that sometimes the veterans lose sight of what made their old games great (and this of course, is just my opinion). He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially destroy the…

I think one of the things he said is telling and gives useful perspective - they wanted to do more with the visuals, but were stuck with what was possible in 1990. We shouldn't elevate retro pixel art to some perfect art form. It's unlikely to be what the original artists intended, rather it was what they had to accept.

I agree. :) Pixel art is not inherently perfect, and there is A LOT of bad pixel art (especially in many mobile games now days). However, there is something about pixel art that I think makes it great: it is timeless, and if created correctly, incapable of many of the flaws other art types are subject to. Polygons are very hard to work with, especially in an FPS, because players can get very close and observe every detail, and the model quickly degrades when it is close to your face - not to mention the texturing, which more often than not is completely flat, sans parallax mapping or displacement mapping. Vector art is much harder than people might give it credit for, and making "good" looking vector art is very, very challenging -- the most common problem I see is messy curves because people did not take the time to tweak the handles on their beziers. More often than not, vector art comes out looking like the kind you find in cheap Flash / mobile games. Raster art (i.e. Photoshop without limitations), often results in art that is in many ways blurry - various blurs and super-sampling tend to get over-used, and the result is very soft looking artwork (take Hearthstone as an example):

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/static/images/media/screens...

It certainly does not look bad, but many icons here lack the same crispness you would find in pixel art.

Assuming you follow all the correct guidelines (1 pixel wide outlines, no pillow shading, good dithering, small palette, cold -> warm shading, clean lines and fills, etc), pixel art can approach perfection -- because of its inherent limitations. A single vector curve can have an infinite variety of permutations, but there are only so many ways you can draw a line of pixels (the same goes for a NURBs surface or set of polygons). It is exactly this limitation that enables artists -- if you are given an infinite canvas with every color of paint in the known universe, you can kill yourself trying to perfect one piece.

Re: If I Made Another Monkey Island...

#80

Post by neworder »

Aloisius wrote: post #40

I may be an odd ball here, but I cheated at Monkey Island 1 and 2. I don't like to be frustrated with a puzzle that relies on either randomly choosing inventory items or seeing some pixels that look like almost every other set of pixels on the screen and trying to pick them up. For me, what made Monkey Island great was that it was a pretty quirky comedy. I wanted to see what Guybrush would say next. Further, it shock…

> Further, it shocks me at how bad the graphics are at some of these games after looking at them again after decades.

I played MI 1 and 2 in the early 1990s and after revisiting them after 15 years or so, my impression was exactly the opposite: "Look how well the graphics has aged!". Yes, pixels are there, but the aesthetic value of locations, landscapes etc. is relatively unaffected, it's still pleasing to watch (esp. in MI2). I think this says something about the quality of graphic design in those games.

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