KickStarter Thimbleweed Park: A New Ron Gilbert Classic Point & Click Adventure

[Kz3r0]

why the fuck do they keep promoting this shit on xbox

:patriot:

 

[Jaesun]

And Ron suggests that there'll be no time neither budget to write fully fledged dialogue trees?

Sounds to me that this project's management has just reached some slightly retarded levels. What a shame...

I don't recall fully fledged dialogue trees being a part of the Kickstarter?

 

[Cazzeris]

I don't recall fully fledged dialogue trees being a part of the Kickstarter?

That's funny, I don't recall the confirmation of a console port

What I mean is that an adventure game whose development prioritizes this nonsense that won't certainly help the game to become "a classic adventure game you've never played before" over adding one of MI's nicer features is not one that is being intelligently developed in my opinion. The fact that Ron has blamed the great amounts of work he will invert in programming and design as the biggest obstacles that stand in his intentions to add such features is specially stupid considering how relatively simple are adventure games compared to most genres (also let's not forget that he got 600K+ from the Kickstarter campaign, compare that with Infamous Quests's budgets). It's obvious that he could greatly reduce those "obstacles" by ditching the useless ports and focusing in making the game even more interesting and similar to LucasArts greatest classics.

 

[Lambonius]

If the dialog isn't voiced, there is very little that is prohibitive about it in terms of cost--it's just programming time at that point, which, depending on the engine, shouldn't be all that time consuming. Adding dialog is one of the most straight-forward parts of coding an adventure game, as far as I understand it.

 

[Cazzeris]

If the dialog isn't voiced, there is very little that is prohibitive about it in terms of cost--it's just programming time at that point, which, depending on the engine, shouldn't be all that time consuming. Adding dialog is one of the most straight-forward parts of coding an adventure game, as far as I understand it.

The dialogue will be voiced in this game, but according to Ron; it's the lack of time that stops him from writing witty responses and implementing them as a "dialogue tree". Time that will probably be wasted coding all the ports and designing all the changes for the interface.

 

[Jaesun]

I AM VERY ANGRY ABOUT NO DIALOGUE TREES!

 

[Cazzeris]

I AM VERY ANGRY ABOUT NO DIALOGUE TREES!

Not exactly, it's the questionable direction that this project is taking that bothers me since I was so interested in its development. There's no time for dialogue trees? Fine, but then don't announce a console port if you want to keep offering the image that yours is a serious project that totally focuses in delivering a proper, LucasArts adventure game.

 

[Jaesun]

He is delivering 100% of everything he said he would on his Kickstarter.

What further things he decides to do with his game is completely fine with me. Hopefully it will bring in more exposure and $$$ for him, so that we can get a Thimbleweed Park II.

I just don't get the entire OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111112!!!!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!111 THIS IS GOING TO CONSOLES BUT WHERE IS MAH DIALOGUE TREESE! WELL FUCK YOU!!!!!111!!!

 

[Jack Dandy]

Didn't even back this project , but a PnC adventure without dialogue trees? How is that even a thing?

Shouldn't that kind of stuff be taken for granted in the genre?

 

[Infinitron]

Didn't even back this project , but a PnC adventure without dialogue trees? How is that even a thing?

Shouldn't that kind of stuff be taken for granted in the genre?

The Kickstarter was originally for a very retro Maniac Mansion-era Lucasarts (well, Lucasfilm back then) adventure, and that didn't have dialogue trees.

The project has evolved a bit since then, though.

 

[buzz]

Aaaaaaand we have this game's first ass-kissing fanboy , good job Jaesun.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Dialogue trees are overrated.

 

[Jaesun]

Aaaaaaand we have this game's first ass-kissing fanboy , good job Jaesun.

There is quite a bit a difference between fanboy and pointing out facts. Getting all worked up about nothing is kinda dumb, but whatever.

Since the game is not out yet, I have not played this yet. Who knows, it could be complete fucking shit, really fucking good, or just good for what it is™. Guess we will know when it comes out.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Infinitron Oh. Only played DoTT, not MM.
Guess that kinda sorta makes sense, but eh.

 

[Aeschylus]

Didn't even back this project , but a PnC adventure without dialogue trees? How is that even a thing?

Pretty much every Sierra game except for Quest for Glory + the first Gabriel Knight? All the Coktel Vision adventure games? Myst and every myst clone?
In depth dialogue trees were actually somewhat uncommon in PnC adventures outside of Lucasarts. Granted you might expect them in a game from Ron Gilbert, but it's hardly a prerequisite of the genre.

 

[Crooked Bee]

If Ron Gilbert doesn't want to spend his time on something superfluous like that, the more power to him. The game won't stand or fall in virtue of having or not having dialogue trees -- but solely in virtue of being or not being a good adventure game, with good atmosphere, puzzles, and writing.

The dialogue tree fetish should seriously go away, in adventure games and RPGs alike.

 

[Cazzeris]

Are dialogue trees a feature that can be asociated with the better classic adventure games developed by LucasArts? Yes.
Can they bring something positive to the experience? Yes.
Would it be a far better thing for Gilbert to focus on than to port Thimbleweed Park to consoles? Hell, yes.

I don't care about how important are dialogue trees, or if they really can't be taken for granted; but Ron Gilbert helped to push the genre forward with Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2, and if he is still a brilliant designer, he will certainly take advantage of all the improvements and overall "nice" things he implemented in the past and of course he should add them to this project since it is supposed to be a worthy succesor to those classics.

The fact that console ports weren't a thing that was part of those classics goes without saying. I know that videogame developments are hard to manage, but if they don't have their priorities straight in a respectable form, then I won't give a fuck about projects like this one.

 

[buzz]

You idiots still seem to miss Cazzeris' line of thought. It's not about how Thimbleweed Park HAS to have dialogue trees or else, even though ... it should've. I mean, if the main purpose of this game was just to be a complete Maniac Mansion clone, fair enough. But I see Monkey Island namedropped in the campaign just as much as MM, so I always imagined that TP will sort of mix the good parts from both types of games (no dead ends for example).

Anyway, the problem was announcing the xbox port in the first place. It's a matter of fucking principle. At least with Wasteland 2 they've had excuses (game was already mostly done and the xbox port came much later, unity is easy to port) but this is Ron Gilbert doing a fucking Xbone port out of the blue with his totes new engine and shit, and he has no idea how it's gonna work. Check the comments on his blog post:

Me too! No idea how it's going to work, but we'll share our trials and tribulations as we experience them.

We chose MS because they really liked the game and we feel they are going to support it well. That's not to say it won't come to other consoles, but MS showed a lot of love and respect for the game.

Also from the FAQ

Will you release it on consoles, Vita or the [23]DS?
We'd love to release on those platforms, but you need their permission and it involves lots of deal making and hobnobbing. When the game gets closers to being done, we'll start that process and see if there is any interest. We want to stay focused on the Kickstarter platforms.

It's just needless work that targets an extremely small percentage of this game's potential userbase. Again, what adventure games do the Microsoft consoles even have, apart from Telltale shit? At least the DS had Ace Attorney or Professor Layton or Hotel Dusk, and Sony focuses a lot more on the storyfags and atmospherefags than MS ever did. Even fucking Tim Schafer was clever enough to port Grim Fandango to PS4, which even has a trackpad on it that could solve the interface problem fairly easily.

Here we have this old-school veteran who is developing a video game with genre name that fucking tells you that YOU NEED A FUCKING MOUSE suddenly doing an Xbox one port because ... the guys at Microsoft were nice to him? And day one as well, at the same time with all the other version. inb4 game delayed because console version is not ready yet

15,6 thousand people gave him over half a million dollars out of their own pockets just because he sold them an idea he planned to make. The ludicrous thought that he needs multiple sources of income when everything TP will sell at launch is PURE FUCKING PROFIT, it just boggles my mind.

Seriously, I'm starting to get some second doubts about some of you people. Crooked Bee calling Dialogue Trees "superfluous" while literally the whole discussion was started by an XBOX ONE PORT ANNOUNCEMENT

Again, it's a matter of principles and priorities. No one gives a shit if you throw the xbox kiddies a bone, but at least don't announce that around the same time you tell us you just cut 25 rooms from the game and you're not sure you're doing dialogue trees.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I can't decide between ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ or lol as my reaction to the above two posts.

 

[J_C]

Ahahahahahah. Ron Gilbert lovers was all smug. Showing fucking Tim Schafer how do you do an oldschool adventure game. AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

 

[Arch-Vile]

If Ron Gilbert doesn't want to spend his time on something superfluous like that, the more power to him. The game won't stand or fall in virtue of having or not having dialogue trees -- but solely in virtue of being or not being a good adventure game, with good atmosphere, puzzles, and writing.

The dialogue tree fetish should seriously go away, in adventure games and RPGs alike.

Superfluous? Really?

Let's make a quick reminder of famous Lucasarts adventure games' moments that relied on this feature (massive spoilers):

- The final puzzle in Fate of Atlantis required you to pay attention to the different options, so you can trick the nazis into using that ancient machine themselves. It replaced a scripted, cinematic scene with a trial-and-error small puzzle that included player's participation. In fact, most of FoA conversations led to different outcomes depending on what your choices were, and it made the game much more realistic and "credible" than other LA's games, in my opinion.
- The multiple jokes that appeared in several Monkey Island 1 and 2 moments. They used to share the same effect in the conversation, but the hilarity of each option made these dialogues much more fun and added much to writing.
- Dead Cousin Ted, in Day of the Tentacle, gave the possibility to make the characters "talk to themselves", allowing many different conversations about each kid's objectives and personalities.
- Full Throttle's "diaper dynamo" allusion also added interaction to a situation that would have consisted on a simple, scripted sequence if it hadn't featured dialogue trees.
- Manny's first encounter with Glottis in Grim Fandango included a dialogue about him being "too big for driving", which let the player try many different responses until Manny convinced him to become his driver. It was one of the most memorable dialogues for me, and not being able to select different responses would have made it streamlined and more boring.

I think dialogue trees can add much to puzzle design and writing (hell, there's even a type of puzzle called "dialogue puzzle"), when used intelligently. Removing them is like not having inventory puzzles or reducing the number of available verbs, because they add diversity to the game's pace and development.

Excuse my terrible English.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Yes, superfluous.

You listed some specific examples of dialogue tree-based puzzles, which is nice and all. There are a lot of specific mechanics that can "add much to puzzle design," which doesn't mean a game has to implement those specific mechanics to be great. Point is, a great adventure game does not need dialogue trees and if Ron Gilbert doesn't want to implement those (and didn't in the first place), then it's just typical retarded LucasArts fanboyism to call him out on that. Not to mention the typically stupid bitching about the console port. Again, if the game is good, it's good; if not, then too bad. Neither dialogue trees nor the console port have anything to do with that. It's not game theory with a zero sum here.

Also, I'd argue there are a lot of better dialogue mechanics than dialogue trees and the latter should just go away some day, but that's maybe a discussion for another time. Dialogue trees are as primitive as it gets.

Not to mention that at least half of your examples don't require dialogue trees as such.

 

[Arch-Vile]

I don't care much about this game's development in particular (nor the console port, nor Ron's decisions), just wanted to appoint that dialogue trees implementation in some classic games certainly was something worth of mention, rather than a stupid gimmick that left no impression at all. By the way, it's not like Ron's going to adopt some inventive and innovative form of interaction in conversations for Thimbleweed Park (that update about the matter just seemed to say: "too much work for me to do it"). It will probably go the "Maniac Mansion way" of doing dialogues, and I'd say that's even more primitive than dialogue trees, so there's it.

It's not a case where fans will miss dialogue trees and will criticise the game solely based on that decision. As a Kickstarted game, I find extremely normal that backers are concerned about a nostalgia-filled game being different than their favorite games, so I don't think "blindly trusting Ron" is a particularly better position.

 

[buzz]

Point is, a great adventure game does not need dialogue trees and if Ron Gilbert doesn't want to implement those (and didn't in the first place), then it's just typical retarded LucasArts fanboyism to call him out on that.

Except he kinda does, but he says he doesn't have the money and/or time to do it:

What I do know is that I don't have the time to write the dialog AND do the system programming. One of those will have to give and that starts to run into budget issues. We don't have the budget to hire an additional writer or a system programmer. Making games is all about trade-offs.

The bitching about the console port is not stupid in insight, when the developer in question hypocritically says he doesn't have enough money/time for dialogue trees but has enough money to do a completely useless xbox port.

Again, if the game is good, it's good; if not, then too bad. Neither dialogue trees nor the console port have anything to do with that. It's not game theory with a zero sum here.

Neither verbs have anything to do with that. Or item puzzles. Or fucking puzzles at all. Or good writing. Just have a movie that stops once in a while and you have to press one or two buttons to resume it.

Seriously, what kind of stupid logic is that? LucasArts fanboyism is what funded the fucking game, do you realize that? The whole purpose of this game is masturbating the people who want a LucasArts nostalgic experience all over again. It's not supposed to just be just a "good game" because that's subjective as shit, it's supposed to be a faithful reproduction of games like Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. If I wanted Ron Gilbert experimenting with different ways of doing games, I wouldn't because The Cave and Deathspank were garbage.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Or item puzzles. Or fucking puzzles at all. Or good writing. Just have a movie that stops once in a while and you have to press one or two buttons to resume it.

Seriously, just stop and think for a moment.