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

[Aenra]

i love how he writes! I smile everytime i read these 'entries'

 

[LESS T_T]

Auto play mode~

(No, it's not like , it's testing purpose)



http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/tester3000

Spoiler

TesterTron3000

In Friday's podcast, I mentioned that I'd implemented an autoplay mode for Thimbleweed Park, where the game could play itself.

I can't remember if it was for Last Crusade or Monkey Island when Aric Wilmunder and I wrote the first autoplay scripts for the SCUMM games and they were invaluable.

Aric and I were in Chicago at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) where Lucasfilm Games was showing their latest wears. CES was a loud, noisy, crowded spectacle of a show that would - at least for games - be replaced by E3, a new loud, noisy, crowded spectacle of a show.

Lucasfilm Games had a booth with several PCs connected to monitors, keyboards and mice, and we would stand around and ask passers-by, "Would you like to see Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island?" Lucasfilm Games was small back then and everyone pitched in. Designers, Programmers, Artists, we were all expect to stand around for 8 hours and demo the latest games.

It was grueling.

Demoing adventure games is especially hard. They're about thinking and pondering and enjoying a good conversation. They don't demo well.

So, Aric and I got to talking about implementing a self-play mode, where we could just stand around at the booth and the game would play itself and you could take over if someone wanted a demo. Most people are happy to just watch a game being played, even if completely randomly, so this would take a lot of pressure off the poor person on booth duty. Some movement, even random movement, was better than a idle screen with a completely still and slowly pulsing crosshair cursor. The arcade games called this attract mode.

Aric and I spent the evening in our hotel room banging out SCUMM's first autoplay mode. It wasn't sophisticated. It randomly picked an object in the room and then randomly picked a verb and then did that. It didn't need to be smart, it just need to do something that looked interesting.

We would later expand on the autoplay scripts, and they would use inventory items with other items and even do rudimentary dialog choices. All with the unblinking precision and determination of rand().

During Monkey Island, I would leave autoplay running overnight and the next morning I'd come in and see where it crashed, or got stuck in a walk box gap, or be amazed at how far it got just picking random objects.

Autoplay was great for finding "one frame bugs", where you'd click on something and then something else one frame later. They are the kind of bugs human testers don't find, but robots do.

So last week I implemented testerTron3000, the autoplay script for Thimbleweed Park. Much like the fist SCUMM autoplay scripts, it just randomly picks stuff and does stuff to that stuff.

It's already found several bugs and it's amazing how far it gets when I check it in the morning. It keeps a log of every action it preforms and the time it did it.

At the 30 second mark, I pressed the 'f' key and put the game into fast mode. Please keep in mind this is all wire frame art and no where close to final.

Still a lot of changes to make, like limiting the amount of time spent in each room, not always leaving a room and next click after entering. These should still happen, just not as often as they do. What I've always found important in these autoplays is not to guide them too much. The inclination is to have them run a test plan, but the whole point of these is to just randomly do shit we haven't thought of. You can guild the autoplay in the right direction, but let it do it's thing.

Here is the code:

 

[Kz3r0]

I tend to prefer text adventures and

Here it is, Graphic Adventures are called like that to distinguish them from Text Adventures, Exactly as Action Adventures were called like that to distinguish then from the more puzzle heavy predecessors.
It's just a technical thing, the only legit way to consider Adventures as a genre is in a historical framework, if you choose instead their defining features you just end up with Myst like, Sierra like Lucas like etc..
On a side note this is why the first FPS had puzzles and platforming sections, because they were the heirs of both arcade gaming, Donkey Kong etc., and computer gaming, mostly Graphic Adventures, it's inevitable that a new genre carries from the predecessors until it becomes its own thing.
Last but not least, MRY's definitions are totally laughable, how about Blade Runner?

 

[Cazzeris]

Awesome news: Mark Ferrari joins the development team as the main background artist.

http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/mark_ferrari

So my dream team on the art development side of Thimbleweed Park is a reasonably short list, consisting mainly of people we've worked with in the past on a number of our graphic adventures, in particular artists who were instrumental in making the SCUMM games around the time we created Maniac Mansion, Loom and Monkey Island.

At the very top of the list is Mark Ferrari and we're amazingly excited to announce that he is now part of Team Thimbleweed and will be doing most of the backgrounds. Mark was the background artist for the incomparable Loom and was also responsible for the stunning backgrounds on Monkey Island 1. Mark might truly be the most talented background artist I've ever worked with.

It's hard to contain our excitement of having Mark on board.

Here is one of the tests he did for the entrance to the circus Ransome lives in. It's a long way from being done, but you can see where he is going with it.

Keep in mind that this is just a initial samples he did for us and (although they might not look like it) are still wireframes. Ron and I are still working to determine the final nuances of the graphics and although we'll be showing off a number of examples, most are still placeholder art, we'll let you know when something's actually final, we promise!

As one of the premier environmental artists in the gaming industry, during our tenure at Lucasfilm/Lucasarts Mark's early work with us is considered legendary. In the 80's he managed to stretch the look of 8 bit color palettes with innovative dither techniques, lighting and layout. Mark also developed a truly unique approach to color cycling/palette shifting unlike anything seen before or since.

Remember, this isn't animation in the traditional sense, rather it's all being done by just organizing and changing palette registers in sequence. At that time we didn't have the computing power necessary to just make it an animated .gif... This was mind blowing stuff!

I first met Mark at, of all things, a science fiction and fantasy convention being held at the San Jose Red Lion Inn (shades of ThimbleCon). Everyone was talking about some guy in the art show who drew amazing stuff in colored pencils... I took a look at Mark's work and was amazed, they practically looked like oil paintings done in prismacolor pencil.

Being the art director of Lucasfilm Games at the time had its perks and I was immediately introduced to Mark. My memory's a bit fuzzy, but I don't think Mark really had any computer experience at the time. In those days I invited candidates out to Skywalker Ranch for lunch and an art test working on an IBM PC in dpaint.

To say Mark was a natural at computer graphics would be an understatement, he was constantly breaking new ground, first on Loom and then on Monkey Island. As with most of the art staff from those days, Mark remained friends with Ron and I over the years.

Having Mark on the team will move the art more in the direction that will end up being half way between Maniac Mansion and Monkey island as he'll be taking over finalizing most of Thimbleweed Park's background art development. We haven't completely finalized the look, and this is a little different from the Kickstarter art, but we like where this is going.

In any case... welcome to the team Mark, it's great to be working with you again!

Head on over to Geekscape for interview with Ron and I.

- Gary

I fucking loved Loom's backgrounds...; even more than MI's.

 

[Jaesun]

His artwork is fantastic. Glad he is on the team. <3

 

[covr]

 

[tuluse]

This is great news. Can't wait to see what this team makes.

 

[MRY]

The new art is amazing, LOOM's backgrounds were fantastic. The weird thing is, I feel like the art change makes the entire project feel different. Before it felt squarely in the vein of Zak McKracken / Maniac Mansion. Now it feels like something else. Funny what a few pixels will do.

 

[taxalot]

I am very happy that the art is getting improved. Low tech lo-fi is good enough, but when it makes your kickstarted game look like something an AGS amateur developper would be ashamed of releasing, it's a different matter.

 

[Cazzeris]

Ron has posted another significant update. This time he's talking about the dialogue trees:

Spoiler

Dialog Puzzles

I don't know why we started calling them "dialog puzzles", they aren't really puzzles, they are more "dialog trees", but "dialog trees" just doesn't have the same flair that "dialog puzzles" does, or maybe it's just me, but I'm going to call them "dialog puzzles".

Maniac Mansion didn't have dialog puzzles. I often getting quizzical looks when I say that, followed by "Yes it did!" and I follow with "No it didn't." and they retort with "Are you sure?" and I come back with "Yeah, I think I would have remembered that."

Zak didn't have dialog puzzles either, nor did LOOM™. Dialog puzzles at Lucasfilm first appeared in Last Crusade and I like to think of them as version 1.0.

For readers that aren't sure that I'm talking about, you might want to check your browser's url. If you came here looking for information on the invasive plant called Thimbleweed, you've probably come to the wrong place, but bear with me, this might be interesting...

Dialog puzzles are really nothing more than a list of choices in the form of dialog for the player to say, or more specifically, for the player to make the main character say. You begin a conversation by doing a TALK TO. The main character usually starts off with a line of dialog, then the other character says something, then the player presented with three to five choice of things they can say.

You choose one of them and that takes the conversation in a new and you end up with some more dialog choices. The dialog trees are typically only a few levels deep and often return to a top node. Choices you've already made often disappear (but not always).

Dialog puzzles in the Lucasfilm adventures were invented to break up long cut-scenes. If you have two minutes of information to get across and you break it up with the occasional choices from the player, it can turn a long slog through dialog into a joy.

The dialogs in Indy were 1.0 because we were really just feeling our way around, trying to understand the rules. Noah Falstein wrote most of the dialog in that game and I thought he did a great job of starting to figure all this out.

But it was Monkey Island where the dialog puzzle really started to shine. A lot of that credit goes to Dave and Tim for being such good and funny writers, but also because we were starting to figure out the rules of what made a good dialog based on the experience with Indy.

I always felt that a dialog should make retrospective sense. Meaning, when you got done with the tree, you should be able to print out the dialog, read it and it should feel like a real conversation, which gets me to one of the most controversial issues with dialog puzzles: You are having a conversation.

The choices in the dialog tree should be lines of conversion, you select them and the main character says them and this moves the conversation forward. It is through the act of having that conversation that you make the choices, the choices do not elicit conversation.

"It would be swell if you could loan me some gas for my chainsaw, fine sir?"

...not...

Ask about getting gas.

In the first example, you're having a conversation with the goal of getting the gas for your chainsaw. In the second, you're telling the game you want the gas and it builds a conversation around that. I inherently dislike the second. It's boring and it takes away the single greatest thing about dialog puzzles: being able to tell four jokes at once.

Someone can say something to Guybrush and then the player sees four funny responses and they read down them and (hopefully) laugh at each one. They don't need to select it, they just need to read it. You can do a lot more character building that way and tell a lot more jokes.

I could go on and on about dialog puzzles. I have a whole list of rules for structuring them that I'll try and dig up at some point and post, but I know what you're thinking: "What the hell does this have to do with Thimbleweed and how do I get it out of my backyard?"

Patience, Grasshopper

I still haven't decided if we're doing dialog puzzles in Thimbleweed Park. It's not that I don't want to - I really want to - but they are massively time consuming to write and implement. Having them increases the dialog in the game by a factor of ten. You're no longer writing one conversation, you're writing ten of them and that doesn't even include that we have five playable characters.

If we do them, the dialog could end up being somewhat generic, with only special lines here and there for the different characters. It doesn't take much to make them feel special, but it's completely unrealistic to expect that all five characters will have completely different conversations without the dialog trees becoming very thin, which might be OK. It's an odd creative problem.

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.

In SCUMM all the dialog puzzles were hand coded and it was a pain. For DeathSpank I came up with a script format called Sassy that helped a great deal, but was just a little too wordy and programmery.

Last year, I went to a great talk at GDC by Jon Ingold about 80 Days and was impressed and inspired by the simplicity of their scripting format.

Last week I played around with our dialog system and spent some time figuring out a format for the scripts and implemented it in the engine.

Here is a sample I crapped out as a test:

:ray_first_meeting
!talked_to_sheriff = YES
sheriff: Howdee. The name's Sheriff Crook, local sheriff of Thimbleweed Park.
I don't remember calling the feds-a-renos.
That's what you are? Feds?
Hard to miss the goverment issue suits.

:main
1 Damn straight we're the feds. -> crap [showonce]
2 Cut the Mayberry crap, we're taking over this case. -> crap
3 How long were you going to let that body rot in the river? -> rot
4 I'm agent Ray and this is... uh... my partner. -> hi
5 Know any place that serves good pie? -> eat [once]
5 Know any place that serves good meatloaf? -> eat [once]
5 Know any place that serves good hamburgers? -> eat [once]
5 Know any place that serves good hotdogs. -> eat [once]
5 Why don't you shut the place down? -> shutdown [once]

:eat
!++asked_about_food
sheriff: You could try the Diner down the street, but no one eats there...
pause 0.5
sheriff: *whispering* Botalisium. [asked_about_food == 1]
sheriff: *whispering* E. coli. [asked_about_food == 2]
sheriff: *whispering* Plague. [asked_about_food == 3]
sheriff: *whispering* Butylated Hydroxytoluene. [asked_about_food == 4]
-> main

:shutdown
sheriff: Why would I do that? I get a 5% law enforcement discount.
-> main

:rot
sheriff: The river is so chocked full of chemicals from the old pillow factory...
...it's better off there than in a tub of formaldehyde.
sheriff: {chuckle}
-> next

:crap
!sheriff_hostility++
sheriff: Whoa... hold your horse-a-renos, no need to get snippy.
-> next

:hi
sheriff: Nice to meet you, agent-a-renos.
-> next

:next
sheriff: Looks like you heard about our little murder-reno out by the bridge.
reyes: There nothing 'little' about murder, sir.
pause 0.5
ray: *sigh*
Ignore him... he's new.
pause 0.5
sheriff: No sense in wasting everyone's time-a-reno.
This cut-scene is starting to get long and it's only going to get longer.
Let's find the coroner and get you on your way.
{face_front}
Wrestling starts at eight.
reyes: I hope he's talking about on TV
exit

I like writing in pure text, I don't like fancy tools or clicking a bunch of UI to add nodes. I like to copy/paste and reflow large chunks of dialog with ease.

So, there are two things I don't know.

1) I don't know if there are going to be dialog puzzles in Thimbleweed Park.
2) I have no idea how to get Thimbleweed out of your backyard.

- Ron

tl; dr: Basically, he wants to implement proper dialogue trees (or dialogue puzzles, as he likes to call them), but it'd be too much work for him since there are five protagonists to work on. He's aware of the cool jokes you can implement with this feature, but thinks that all the programming work is too time-consuming to let him write all those responses and the budget isn't substantial enough to hire witty writers like the ones that worked in the Monkey Island series. If he decides to finish the game without the "dialogue puzzles", then he'll implement fully scripted conversations and Maniac Mansion's style of interactions.

People in the comment section are happy with this because of the MM's vibes.

PS: Also there was an update where a puzzle was discussed. Check it out to read some bits about Thimbleweed Park's puzzle design!

 

[Cazzeris]

A bit more work from Ferrari's desk has been revealed, and this time is "almost finished" stuff!

The whole update here

QuickiePal

by Ron Gilbert
Jul 16, 2015

W00t! Time for a video. It's been a while and I enjoy making them just about as much as your enjoy watching them.

We got one of the first final rooms from Mark Ferrari™ in the game a few days ago and we're dying to show people. We've also been doing some work on lighting using shaders and magic. It's first pass, so there will be a lot of tweaks and changes, but it's looking really promising.

All the inventory icons are still temp art, so ignore them. I SAID IGNORE THEM!



We started out with a quick wireframe version of the QuickiePal, just so we could get a sense of how the room fit into the overall game, how wide it should be and other very basic layout issues. It's not worth spending too much time on the wireframes since we want to have the freedom to cut or completely redo the room without any loss of work. As soon as you've invested time in something, it's hard to throw it out, even if it's the right thing to do.

One of the changes we made as the move the building over the right so when you entered from the left, you weren't immediately at the building. It feels less cramped with a small parking lot.

After it had been in the game for a couple of months, Mark took a quick pass at a tight layout in black and white. He likes to work in black and white so he doesn't spend valuable time on trying to figure out colors. Hopefully we can get Mark to do a post on his process. It's all bla-bla-pixel-bla-bla-vanishing point-bla-bla to me.

After the black and white had been in the game for around a month, Mark went on to the final stage seen in the video. We take these small steps so we're sure of everything before too much time in invested. Mark spends a lot of time on color and light, so making changes to the black and white version is quicker.

There will be a polish pass on all of the final rooms, but that won't happen until everything is in the game, probably around January.

- Ron

Why are you still looking at the temp inventory icons?

http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/quickiepal

 

[Jools]

A bit more work from Ferrari's desk has been revealed, and this time is "almost finished" stuff!

The whole update here

QuickiePal

by Ron Gilbert
Jul 16, 2015

W00t! Time for a video. It's been a while and I enjoy making them just about as much as your enjoy watching them.

We got one of the first final rooms from Mark Ferrari™ in the game a few days ago and we're dying to show people. We've also been doing some work on lighting using shaders and magic. It's first pass, so there will be a lot of tweaks and changes, but it's looking really promising.

All the inventory icons are still temp art, so ignore them. I SAID IGNORE THEM!



We started out with a quick wireframe version of the QuickiePal, just so we could get a sense of how the room fit into the overall game, how wide it should be and other very basic layout issues. It's not worth spending too much time on the wireframes since we want to have the freedom to cut or completely redo the room without any loss of work. As soon as you've invested time in something, it's hard to throw it out, even if it's the right thing to do.

One of the changes we made as the move the building over the right so when you entered from the left, you weren't immediately at the building. It feels less cramped with a small parking lot.

After it had been in the game for a couple of months, Mark took a quick pass at a tight layout in black and white. He likes to work in black and white so he doesn't spend valuable time on trying to figure out colors. Hopefully we can get Mark to do a post on his process. It's all bla-bla-pixel-bla-bla-vanishing point-bla-bla to me.

After the black and white had been in the game for around a month, Mark went on to the final stage seen in the video. We take these small steps so we're sure of everything before too much time in invested. Mark spends a lot of time on color and light, so making changes to the black and white version is quicker.

There will be a polish pass on all of the final rooms, but that won't happen until everything is in the game, probably around January.

- Ron

Why are you still looking at the temp inventory icons?

http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/quickiepal

I'm loving the backdrops' art style. The characters, not so much, to be honest. Still, d1p.

 

[Cazzeris]

Yep, Gary will have to work a lot if he wants his art to be on par with Mark's.

 

[Tigranes]

Quickie Pal is probably a Qwik-E-Mart ripoff, but combined with bumfuck nowhere American diner style looks suspiciously like some long-standing blowjob buffet store.

 

[Jools]

Quickie Pal is probably a Qwik-E-Mart ripoff,

Ripoff or pop-reference? Which is better and why? DISCUSS!

 

[mindx2]

This is truly the anti-Broken Age game! Every time I see all those verbs I get excited and want to play now! It seems like Gilbert looked at Shafer's work and said, "Pa-leeze, this is how you do old-school adventure you San-Fran hipster!"

 

[Jools]

This is truly the anti-Broken Age game! Every time I see all those verbs I get excited and want to play now! It seems like Gilbert looked at Shafer's work and said, "Pa-leeze, this is how you do old-school adventure you San-Fran hipster!"

Let's hope they remember to implement the corresponding keyboard shortcuts, as per the old Scumm games. I would die, without those.

 

[Jaesun]

I am SO loving the art for this. This just keeps getting better and better each update.

 

[Jools]

I am SO loving the art for this. This just keeps getting better and better each update.

I've totally set that quickiepal backdrop as my mobile's lockscreen.

 

[Blackthorne]

Goddamn, I love seeing the art and work on this game. I'm glad there's people out there who like this too, 'cause I'm getting real sick of single-celled organisms shouting about HD at me all the time.


Bt

 

[Infinitron]

trololololo

 

[Jaesun]

Actually, I was quite surprised it still used the "classic" Adventure Game interface.

 

[LESS T_T]

Now, trailer without Xbox logo in it:



http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/xbox

According to Ron's comment, the interface for consoles are not even designed yet. So that's K&M interface.

 

[buzz]

You really gotta wonder, is there an actual audience on fucking xbox for games like Thimbleweed Park and Wasteland 2? I mean, why the fuck do they keep promoting this shit on xbox out of all consoles? You'd think the nintendo or sony audiences at the very least will appreciate this kind of games more, given their experience with the story drenched games or turn-based stuff like Fire Emblem.

 

[Cazzeris]

Well, I was already quite annoyed with the planned port for the tablets; but for the fucking consoles too? 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...