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When I made another Monkey Island

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Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#161

Post by Nition »

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.

Another great example of choosing an art style that worked with the limitations of early 3D is Interstate '76, from 1997: https://i.imgur.com/ro5k82Z.png

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#162

Post by seba_dos1 »

Tyr42 wrote: post #151
seba_dos1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and art at this point is mostly about choices, not necessarily about what's technically feasible. The best example is the usage of orchestral music, according to the post. Usage of real recorded instruments can still be technically challenging today if you want to do what Monkey Island 2 did with its audio via iMuse - synchronization between music and in-game events (easier) and smooth background music transitions…

One interesting innovation is in Octopath traveller. It has set up the music before the boss fights where it is ready to jump into the boss theme at any point you finish the dialog boxes. https://youtu.be/b7Zc3f8cPnU?t=215

That's one of the things Monkey Island 2 did. It also had the track seamlessly changing cues and adding/removing layers as you entered various sections of a location, had multiple transitions between the same tracks that were chosen depending on when did you trigger them and in-game events were often timed to wait for the beat to synchronize them with music. Later games with similarly dynamic sampled music that I'm aware about (The Curse of Monkey Island, MI2:SE, Portal 2 and now Octopath Traveler) did some of these things, but none of them came close to the level of complexity in the original Monkey Island 2.

Although one reason for that (other than the obvious MIDI vs. sampled one) could be that in MI2, a lot of effort went into this music system which ended up working great, but... not many people actually noticed ;)

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#163

Post by WorldMaker »

kemayo wrote: post #98
speeder wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually from what I heard they DID flesh out things. But then they made the serious error of hiring Rian Johnson AND giving him free rein with the direction of the movie. Rian Johnson already stated himself, he likes making divisive films. He also stated he doens`t like Star Wars... So he proceeded to ignore the plans that they had, and just do whatever he wanted. 1. He ignored several planned story arcs and just sh…

I do agree with you that Disney mismanaged the whole trilogy, and the fault lies with them. They very clearly went into it without any sort of plan or even a particular vision, deferring completely to whatever each director wanted to do. With minimal imposition of a plot outline, the whole thing could have gone much better, even while still leaving the individual directors to mostly decide how they got there. To my m…

> To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc.

Abrams was an Executive Producer on Ep 8 still and was supposedly in the room for all of the plot development. He personally could have avoided most of that swerve had he been paying attention. Admittedly, he thought at the time it was Trevorrow's problem because Disney didn't fire Trevorrow from Ep 9 until the "last minute", but there's a lot of interesting questions left about what Abrams even thought the "resolution" could possibly be even with Trevorrow at the helm. He was still an Executive Producer in a role that should have been preparing for the trilogy as a whole to succeed.

It takes a village to make a movie and all that, and I'm not personally blaming Abrams, though it sounds like it, I think Disney management should have been more involved too. The whole Trevorrow thing reeks of Disney management failure and bad contract planning. (Between that and the shenanigans with Lord/Miller over Solo…)

I think Abrams made the best movie for Ep 9 that he could have given the time, budget, and resources he had to meet a "set in stone" holiday release date. I think he did the best he could with what Johnson left him, and honestly I don't think anyone could have resolved Johnson's plot twists well and still have felt like Star Wars. He had good ideas in absentia, but they weren't "Star Wars".

(Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics. I also had a big issue with the "Three Billboards problem" of Poe in Ep 8. In my eyes he's unreedemably the villain of the film, and the character is entirely broken beyond repair in Ep 8. But also, admittedly, I haven't liked any of Rian Johnson's films that I've watched [inc. Knives Out; and I especially hated Looper].)

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#164

Post by the_af »

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…

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

I don't read anything Ron said as "bashing". He explains why he is not interested in making pixel art games. He is also promising you this is the best possible Monkey Island game he can make, one he is proud of.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#165

Post by gagege »

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 played MI1 for the first time last year and I can tell you it's not just nostalgia. It's just a freaking great game.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#166

Post by WorldMaker »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #120
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.

To me, Grim Fandango looked fantastic. What made it difficult to play were the cursed keyboard controls. I still did beat it, but never wanted to come back to it because of those controls. A couple of years ago, I replayed the modern remaster, and boy does the good old mouse pointer improve the game immensely.

It's hard to remember how much controls for 3D games were a wild west for so long, especially on PC. (The original Tomb Raider controls are pretty bad, too, for instance.) People act like modern WASD+Mouse Look is an "ancient" standard passed down for centuries but a lot of that was hard work in 1990s and a lot of failed control schemes that never quite worked right, even in their time. (Similarly too how relatively "ancient" the modern two-stick controller flow feels, but isn't all that old actually. Remember how the N64 named the weird yellow D-Pad the "C-buttons" in part because they thought that might be more natural for "C is for" Camera control than the dual stick position?)

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#167

Post by WorldMaker »

stuckinhell wrote: post #64

I just played thimbleweed park, and yikes what a horrible ending. I'm very worried about Monkey Island now. Some authors NEED editors. I think Ron Gilbert needs the original team to help him on what works and what doesn't. Even the original Chrono Trigger was going to be super depressing, if the original writer had his way on everything. I would have hated his version of it.

This is partly why I think Dave Grossman's deep involvement is so important to Return to Monkey Island. Ron seems best with a larger writers room and Dave by all accounts is one of the best influences he can have that is also a Known Quantity from the rest of the franchise.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#168

Post by WorldMaker »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #148
technovader wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new game isn't 3D, you're right. At least from the trailer I can assume so. But I wouldn't rule it out completely. Let's see when we actually get some gameplay. But it still feels like a major downgrade to Curse of Monkey Island or the originals. It looks like every other game, very generic style. It's lost the charm of the original games IMO. I think Ron has an opportunity to differentiate his game from all the…

"All the bad sequels"? From all Monkey Island games, I'd say only Escape could be considered somewhat bad. It felt rather uninspired compared to others, control scheme was awful and it aged the worst way of all MI games. All the rest are really great. Monkey Island series has been drastically changing the art style in its every single installment. When it comes to this new style, I find it hard to judge from still un…

If you ignore the awful controls and equally awful minigames, I think Escape is still a fun pirate tale with a lot of things to love about it. I think the plot's overall is pretty inspired about the gentrification of the pirate islands, and it's the natural progression from Curse's exploration of the same themes (which in turn those themes going all the back to things like Secret's used boat sales lot). A lot of Escape is extremely funny, too. It just has that huge grind in the middle made worse by awful controls and environments that were both too big and too densely packed with sight gags and too empty all at once.

"Somewhat bad", sure, given those qualifications of pretend the controls and their grind don't exist. But also, more inspired than many give it credit for and still "worst Monkey Island" is a relatively high bar compared to other franchises we could mention.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#169

Post by mdpye »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #150
AdvancedCarrot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of it as well is the music that comes in when you're first presented with this scene. I genuinely think this game (which I didn't discover until years later following its release) has the impact that it has for me because of the brilliant soundtrack.

That music on tinny computer speakers (if you didn't have Soundblasters at the time) was something else: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOL4q5tDDQ I think it was here on HN that I previously read a comment breaking down how the PC speaker could only play one tone at a time, but the team managed to simulate two overlapping melodies

While that sounds like an amazing technical accomplishment, I can tell you that discovering it on an amiga with a hifi separates amp and speakers[1] was definitely better. I was very lucky, but I'm not sorry! ;) The soundtrack is sensational.

1. To be fair, the speakers were intended for the back shelf of a car. It was cobbled together from castoffs found in the loft...

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