When I made another Monkey Island • Hacker News Board

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#191

Post by babyshake » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

ffhhj wrote: post #76

the_af wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Star Wars prequels simply weren't good for storytelling/plot reasons, not just visuals. The characters weren't interesting, or even worse, were universally reviled like Jar Jar. The main character (both as a kid and as a teenager) was annoying as hell. The story didn't mesh well with the established Star Wars movies, like that thing with midichlorians that was thankfully played down in subsequent movies. For some…

Lucas planned Jar Jar to be revealed as the Sith Lord in the second movie, that's why the character is unlikeable, but it would have been an interesting plot twist and would have made the first movie rewatchable since he place many little clues. Authors shouldn't be scared to develop their vision, and then create something to please them that will suck anyway.

The prequels weren't exactly full of shocking plot twists that weren't clearly telegraphed or just shown on the movie poster (young Anakin with the Darth Vader shadow). I don't think Jar Jar was ever going to be evil.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#192

Post by babyshake » Tue, May 03, 2022, 11:00 PM UTC

nu11ptr wrote: post #22

I have incredible memories of playing MI1, and to a lesser extent, MI2 (never finished - no Internet back then and these games were tricky). I think it is very cool he is getting to make the game he wants, and I do the same with my development work (it is always for me, if someone else likes it...bonus). I'll reserve judgement until release, but I personally don't like the art style...but who cares, I'm probably not…

You never finished MI2??? Don't get spoiled, but you should definitely finish it.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#193

Post by agency » Tue, May 03, 2022, 11:53 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…

Thank goodness Ron Gilbert has you to tell him what a proper Monkey Island game needs to be.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#194

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, May 03, 2022, 11:56 PM UTC

technovader wrote: post #175

Sharlin wrote: post #10

"When you have fans like this, who needs haters?"

He's being a baby here. There's a proper way to take criticism from a passionate fanbase of 20+ years. IMO the criticism is absolutely justified, just from looking at the screenshots and trailer.

The way my mind understands this as actions across the passage of time:

1. Ron created the games back then

2. People played the games back then. Some people absolutely loved the games and had a profound impact on them

3. 20+ years of life happened to Ron and those who played and loved the games. During that time, great distortions occur: nostalgia, rose-coloured glasses, older memories become shinier memories

4. Ron decides to make sequel based on who he is now

5. Step 3 causes fear of the ruin of a legacy and tainting of protected childhood memories (cough Star Wars cough). This is the present.

6a. Game is released

6b. Some hardcore fans love it, some hardcore fans hate it. As it ever was.

And specifically to this comment:

>There's a proper way to take criticism from a passionate fanbase of 20+ years.

There's some kind of ridiculous level of entitlement in dictating how an artist should take criticism. Were I to have any say in it, I'd dictate this:

Fucking ignore it and be true to your own creative vision. After all, that's the same way the magic has been created previously.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#195

Post by danielodievich » Wed, May 04, 2022, 12:08 AM UTC

Wait there is a new Monkey Island game ()...

Growing up in Soviet Union and getting 100% games pirated through floppies, I played Monkey Island (funny), DoTT (funny ^2), Gobli[i|ii]ns, Space Quest (!star trek?), Gabriel Knight (scary!) and many other adventure games with fervor only lightly diluted by doing other things like programming.

My command of English wasn't so good. And being behind a (slowly falling apart) iron curtain, the cultural references were often completely over my head. I didn't understand half of the jokes in Monkey Island, I didn't get all the Star Trek references in Space Quest although I do now, and I was completely unsure what was the deal with the Cherry tree and Franklin (oh wait was it Washington) joke in the Day of the Tentacle, but I rolled with it. Doing it all made my english so much better, and so profit!

But those games were still amazingly awesome and I'll be getting the return of Monkey Island sight unseen!

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#196

Post by technovader » Wed, May 04, 2022, 12:15 AM UTC

agency wrote: post #193

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…

Thank goodness Ron Gilbert has you to tell him what a proper Monkey Island game needs to be.

You're being sarcastic but it seriously sounds like he needs a refresher course.

We didn't wait 20 years for this.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#197

Post by practice9 » Wed, May 04, 2022, 12:22 AM UTC

the_af wrote: post #159

practice9 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old art feels, in a way, more realistic. One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals, and you feel more immersed. (suspension is disbelief has a positive effect here) When graphics become HD or closer to photorealistic they are starting to trigger an uncanny valley effect.

> One underappreciated aspect of low definition graphics is that your mind can interpolate the visuals Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics . That said, my mind also interpolates the newer version of Melee Island, because it's cartoony and "abstract" enough, and so I also like it.

> Yes, what Scott McCloud calls "closure" in Understanding Comics.

Exactly! I forgot about reading this book, but it was very insightful.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#198

Post by syntheweave » Wed, May 04, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #96

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…

Reminds me a bit of games like guacamelee [1]. There are a bunch of new or newish games that use this "vector style" ... I always thought this is used mostly out of convenience since it is cheaper/faster to animate with tools like Spine or Dragon Bones. 1: https://www.drinkboxstudios.com/games/guacamelee-super-turbo...

Originally the style in gaming came about through two related influences:

1. Flash and its status in the 2000's as the tool every animator cut their teeth on. Flash makes it easy to paperdoll things with scenegraph relationships, though it has no skeleton system per se; if you animated the doll by hand and set up your assets proportionately you were good to go on making games with character creation, visible equipment etc.

2. Texture memory limitations imposing limits on keyframe animation in mobile games. This led the larger mobile companies circa 2010 to build out proprietary systems that would get the most out of relatively small textures and make them modular assets for everything - UI, animations, backgrounds, collision bounds, FX etc.

Spine, Spriter, and Dragon Bones basically followed up as third-party versions of those proprietary tools. Now it's taken root as a definite style; even modern TV cartoons are using these setups, although they have more complex dolls with more keyframes. "Puppet" animation basically does the things that animators used to do by tracing model sheet drawings and it lets them go a lot faster, hence you can pull off 2D shows with detailed characters and still have it look crisp and polished.

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#199

Post by a_e_k » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #186

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...

> What was special about the first two Monkey Island games (at least for me) was the atmosphere. Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations. It was unexplained and unmentioned (though an easy headcanon might be that everything you do there takes place during a single night) but it has a huge effect on the aesthetic feel of the game world. The other thing that evoked the sense of adventure was th…

> Same! First of all I LOVED the “eternal night” in some locations.

Playing it as a tween, it evoked this feeling of one of those rare special nights where I got to stay up way past my bedtime on a warm summer night at an amusement park, fair, circus, camping, etc. (Where the twilight and temperature is perfect after the day's brightness and the heat has broken.)

Re: When I made another Monkey Island

#200

Post by inDigiNeous » Wed, May 04, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #133

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.

Thimbleweed Park was imvho a "meh" game. I hope the new monkey island can improve on that. OTOH I am now playing "The Captain" which is a modern take on point&click with beautiful pixel art and a few new things, and I feel it filled my need for a good monkey island already.

Yeah for me it was pretty meh also, main problem being too many puzzles that required items from all around the map to be used in another location that might have been on the other corner of the map where you got the item from.

Also just too much plot, so many characters and their background stories, how can you care about all of them..

Still very excited about the new Monkey Island, hopefully they don't over trick all the things in it ..