When I made another Monkey Island • Hacker News Board

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#121

Post by mrob » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #13

Sharlin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I have the special edition and after about ten minutes of playing I switched to the original graphics and music and didn't really look back. They really have aged quite well, even though of course they look much blockier on a 24" TFT compared to the original 15"ish CRT experience...

Which is kinda strange because the "pixel" art of those days was never intended to be rendered as blocky pixels, but designed to make use of the CRT's softness.

Arguably true for the EGA versions (when played on real EGA hardware), but the VGA versions used a 320x200 resolution, which was line-doubled to 320x400, and displayed on monitors sharp enough to be usable at 640x480. The pixels were obviously blocky.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#122

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

I find it interesting that sequels in gaming are way easier than in movie business: game designers don't have to deal that much with stars ageing or dying, and voice actors are far easier to replace than on-screen ones. Though with deepfake technology this might be changing.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#123

Post by rideontime » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

aunty_helen wrote: post #112

bnralt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate I looked into responses to the announcement (on YouTube, Reddit, various forums), and didn't find any example of a "fan mob that it's starting the hate." Just about all of the top responses were extremely positive. I only found a small minority of comments saying they don't like the art style, and they're all pretty tame. For example, sorting by controversial…

Youtube has definitely been running sentiment analysis and down ranking any critical comments. Go to any music video and read the comments, it’s like everyone was given a lobotomy. It’s scary tech censorship. I would take the wild go f yourself days of YouTube comments over this v1 matrix toxic positivity world any day.

Maybe people just don't respond to music videos with a lot of negativity? Not every comment section needs to be "balanced."

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#124

Post by pizzabearman » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

I feel like monkey island one and two was basically a very advanced "book" with basic animated illustrations. But you could still fill in a lot with your own imagination with the graphics of that time. Skip forward to any of todays games and they are way way closer to a movie then a book. Just like when any book is made into a movie there is a lot of hardcore fans that have a different mental model of their book and don't want it overshadowed by a movie. It is easy to avoid and not watch the "movie". I will be very happy to see a new game by Ron based on what he feels is his vision and not what the public wants.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#125

Post by Beldin » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

ricardo81 wrote: post #43

hitpointdrew wrote: post #42

I love this post. I know a decent amount of indie devs, I also have done some hobby game development myself. I see this alarming trend of devs and small studios that are, what I would call, hyper engaging with their players. I get it, the players are important, you want to sell the game, you want people to play it. But, the entitlement and feedback I have seen from some players is just ridiculous. Most players don't…

Seems to be the case with many resurrected franchises, Star Trek coming to mind. As a kid in the 80s/early 90s, games and series like these caught my imagination. They were fun. Probably fun, interesting and inspiring in different ways to different people. Agree if we listened to everyone's refined version, we'd end up with a different game for everyone. In the end it's only meant to be entertainment.

In all fairness: there is a difference between the original creator coming up with his/her own beloved continuation of a beloved project, and a soulless money grab by leveraging name recognition with an existing fan base. Irrespective of who is doing the soulless money grabbing (corporation, original creator, etc).

Return to Monkey Island comes across like the former (so far), various Trek and Wars continue-spinning-off-quels more like the latter.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#126

Post by foldr » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #113

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #73

It's a bit ironic that he says he was not really a fan of Day of the Tentacle's "Chuck Jones" art style, when the screenshots for his upcoming Return to Monkey Island are all very specifically that 90's-infused Chuck Jones style - multiple skewed perspective lines in a scene, extreme avoidance of curves (rendered instead as polygonal outlines, so to speak). The art style for his new game is rather ironically nostalgi…

I replayed Secret of Monkey Island this weekend and was really struck by what a ramshackle, distorted place Melee Island is. It is an accurate cartoon caricature of slapdash architecture on sinking ground. Here's the very first place Guybrush is controllable in: https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island... https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island... Look at those walls. Not a ve…

> 640x480 grid

320x200. We could only dream of 640x480 with 256 colors in those days!

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#127

Post by seba_dos1 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

YakBizzarro wrote: post #74

About the art, I think another perfect example is Grim Fandango. It was the first Lucasarts 3D adventure, at a time when the 3D (late '90) was a graphically inferior solution to 2D. However, they exploited the low polygon number, to give a special character to the models, like paper dolls. So the heresy of moving from 2D was instead a conscious artistic choice, strictly linked to the then-modern technologies.

...and then Escape from Monkey Island utilized the same tech as Grim Fandango, but without those stylistic choices that made Grim Fandango's graphics work so well :)

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#128

Post by alanfranz » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

Biganon wrote: post #95

rob74 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere . I mean, just look at this screenshot: https://www.adventurecorner.de//uploads/images/games/monkey1... Parts 1 and 2 had this effect on me, with part 3 the magic was mostly gone unfortunately. If Return to Monkey Island manages to recapture some of that, I don't care if it's pixel art or whatever else...

I've been thinking about that quite a lot, but with Zelda games. I've come to the conclusion that the old games feel beautiful and mysterious and nostalgic because I played them as a child . I'm no longer a child, life is no longer the same. It's not necessarily worse, it's just fundamentally different. I will never blame Shigeru Miyamoto for that, it would be absurd.

I did play Life is Strange when I was 36. The story wasn’t so great, but the atmosphere? Just great.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#129

Post by technovader » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

Ron you really should not be bashing your oldest most hard core fans.

Monkey Island 2 is a masterpiece. The 2D hand drawn style and animation are a huge part of it.

I'll take any Monkey Island sequel, but if you take a closer look at say the Tales of Monkey Island sequels, you'll see what people are worried about.

Monkey Island 4 was TERRIBLE. Fully 3D and tank controls. Tales of Monkey Island was great but completely ruined by terrible tank controls.

A proper Monkey Island games needs to be 1. Point and Click 2. Have excellent puzzle design and structure 3. Ideally 2D hand drawn art and animation 4. Least important, Pixelated style like MI2 or Loom

People who are critizing the trailer are worried we're getting another Tales of Monkey Island or Monkey Island 4.

As long as you nail #1 (proper point and click controls) I think you will still make a better Monkey Island sequel since Curse of Monkey Island

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#130

Post by seba_dos1 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

technovader wrote: post #129

Ron you really should not be bashing your oldest most hard core fans. Monkey Island 2 is a masterpiece. The 2D hand drawn style and animation are a huge part of it. I'll take any Monkey Island sequel, but if you take a closer look at say the Tales of Monkey Island sequels, you'll see what people are worried about. Monkey Island 4 was TERRIBLE. Fully 3D and tank controls. Tales of Monkey Island was great but completel…

What do 3D games have to do with this though? The new game is very clearly not 3D.

Also, while Escape was absolutely atrocious, Tales wasn't so bad. It wasn't point'n'click, but unlike Escape it actually had reasonable controls.