Grumpy Gamer

Stuff and Things and Monkey Island

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:31:46 -0700

I'm pretty good at keeping secrets. I'm so good at it people actually send me death threats. If you have a secret, you can tell me. I won't tell anyone. Go ahead. I'm listening.

Over the past few months, I've been the vessel for a couple of very exciting secrets and it's been really hard to not give someone the nudge-nudge-wink-wink-don't-tell-anyone, but I couldn't. Not these.

The first is the re-release of The Secret of Monkey Island. Several months ago I was invited to LucasArts to get a sneak preview. Very cool.

Hopefully this will open up the pure pleasure that is Monkey Island to a whole new generation of gamer that knows only how to use a console controller.

The second secret is that TellTale is doing an episodic version of Monkey Island. I had the great pleasure of spending a few days with Dave Grossman, Mike Stemmle and the rest of the TellTale crew getting my head into Guybrush Threepwood again.

I am very exited for both of these games. It's strange and humbling to see something you created 20 years ago take on a life of it's own.

This next year is going to be very interesting. Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer all have games coming out. Someone check the scriptures. Might be a good time to start hording canned goods.

About a year and a little more ago, as I began designing the uber-awesome DeathSpank at Hothead Games, I played all the way through The Secret of Monkey Island to refresh myself on the puzzles and dialog.

I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but I don't spend my evenings playing through Monkey Island. It's probably been 15 years since I sat down and really played it.

Much like the experience of watching the Maniac Mansion Speed Run, it bought back a lot of memories and little tid-bits of facts, so I started keeping notes and in celebration of all things Monkey Island, I thought I'd share them.

Before we begin, a couple of points:

1) Some of this I've written about before, so I apologize if I'm wasting your time.
2) I was playing the VGA version that was released after the original EGA version.  The original original version used 16 colors and the inventory was text only.
4) These are only "some-what" in order.
3) You may disagree with me on some of these, and that's perfectly OK.  My life is forever intertwined with this game and some of these are more reflective than anything else.
4) It's been almost 20 years.  My brain is full.

If anyone has specific questions about Monkey Island 1 or 2, feel free to ask them in the comments or send them to me. If the answer contain interesting information or fuels a good story, I'll add it to this list.

Someone please turn off the lights, and I'll start the projector.

The very small "hot spot" areas are very annoying today but they were accepted back then; they were even considered a good thing. It's called Game Play! It would be hard to make an adventure game today where players were forced to hunt for small objects.

Most people know you can hit the period key to skip a single line of dialog, but I'm surprised when I run into people that don't know why I chose the period key. It seems obvious to me: a period ends a sentence.

While Insult Sword Fighting is one of the first things people think of when they hear Monkey Island, I thought it seemed little tedious (but fun) as I played though it again. There is a point where you say "I get it", but your still forced to go though the motions again and again. If I was going to do Insult Sword Fighting in a future game, I'd make it more free form allowing the player to be clever and construct their own sentences.

During the early stages of the Monkey Island design, we would watch old Errol Flynn era pirate movies. One thing that stood out was during the fights they always taunted each other with insults. I knew we needed to have sword fighting in the game - it was about pirates after all - but I didn't want to introduce any action game play and the old pirate moves provided the perfect solution.

Back in the late 80's, the mere thought of a scroll wheel on a mouse would have been crazy talk, but today I found it hard to break the habit of trying the scroll the inventory with it.

You only have to follow the shop keeper to the Sword Master once, after that it's just automatic. That was a good design choice. No point in having to solve the same puzzle over and over.

Scene behind the walls of the governors mansion seemed a little long. The original plan was to have real game play and puzzles, but the game was feeling too big and we need to cut stuff. This gag was perfect, and in some ways better then making the player solve more puzzles. Never be afraid to edit you game down if it needs it. It will often be better for it. Except this went on too long.

"Ahoy there, Fancy Pants" is my favorite throw-away line ever.

Back then, the randomly generated forest was cutting edge technology. Disk space was at a premium. Everything had to fit on 5 floppy disks. Sierra would ship games on 8 or 10 floppy disks. That was always a sore point for us.

I like the way you meet Otis, Sword Master and Meathook during regular puzzles, then hire them later. Builds a sense of friendship before they are needed. They aren't just three random people you meet for the first time while look for a crew.

The circus tent could have been more utilized. Bit of a waste for one puzzle and the Fettucini Brothers didn't add much to the story. That said, this was one of the first screens ("rooms" as we called them) where we used the SCUMM system's exclusive scrolling screens for dramatic effect. Tim was the programmer on this room and he spent a lot of time getting it to scroll at just the right time to revel the tent. I also like that the dialog choices are shown up up-side-down after Guybrush is shot from the cannon. Doing that pushed the SCUMM system to utilize multiple fonts. We didn't have that feature before this gag required it. Guybrush being shot out of the canon was also foreshadowing for later when he needed to be shot out of the canon. OK, come to think of it, this was a pretty useful room.

Touching the parrot puzzle was a little lame and linear. I remember being rushed and we couldn't think of anything better. The game was feeling good and long already, so I just punted on this puzzle.

UI for having to open and close doors independently from walking though them was obnoxious. You'd never do this in an adventure game today, but like pixel hunting, it was accepted.

Something I added to the Humongous Entertainment adventure games was the cursor changing into a big arrow when you hit the edge of the screen and it was an exit. Monkey Island would have benefited from this. I was so used to it from the Humongous games that I'd scan the screen expecting to see it over exits.

OK, I'm going to admit that I was completely stumped by the grog puzzle. I finally went and looked it up on the internet. That's a damn good puzzle. I found several puzzles would give me pause because I'd remember some previous unimplemented version of them and it would throw me off track. My brain is filled with a lot of old adventure game puzzles, most of which never made it into a game. DeathSpank actually has a couple of puzzles ideas that we talked about for the original Monkey Island.

Stan's Grog machine was one of three interesting lessons was I given about trademarks and copyright during the production of Monkey Island. Originally, I wanted the Grog Machine to be a Coke Machine, baring that, I wanted it to look like a Coke machine. It originally had the "Coke Wave" on it, but said "Grog". The Lucasfilm legal team came back and said it was too close to the real trademarked Coke Wave. I tried to argue Parody to no avail. We kept changing it little by little until legal was satisfied it didn't look too much like a Coke machine.

Getting stuck on the Ocean floor is one of my favorite puzzles because the solution is so obvious most people overlook it. The other puzzle I did in this same vane was in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game where Indy has to have faith and just walk over a ledge. Players that had faith and just clicked on the other side of the crevice had no problem. Players that fiddled around and clicked on other stuff, ignoring the advice, always fell.

I forgot about the ladder to get the pirate flag for the soup. I kept focusing on Meat Hook's tattoo, which was something we talked about during the early design.

I had wanted the time you spent on Monkey Island to feel more like a RPG, which is why you had top-down view. As the game progressed, I slowly scaled back those plans, but we were still left with these very cool maps. I love maps. For me a game design always starts with a map.

The key to the Monkey Head used to be called a Q-Tip(tm), but in my second legal lesson of the project it was changed. According to our legal advice, it would have

DeathSpank Interview

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:58:45 -0700

RPGCodex just published an interview I did about DeathSpank. Best to go check it out before their servers go down. I also said something I probably shouldn't have, so OMG, now you have to go read it.

I've also come to the conclusion that one of the pillars that holds up game design is post-it notes. Computers are great tools if you want to order books or keep track of your recipes, but there is nothing better than printing out a big map and covering it with post-it notes.

"Why are there no post-it notes in that section!?!"

"Quick, someone put some post-it notes over there. Damn-it! We're making a game here!"

The Last Temptation of Watchmen

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:25:37 -0700

I just saw the Watchmen and that, ladies and gentlemen was a damn good superhero movie. They were flawed, broken and damaged. Watchmen is the Last Temptation of Christ of superhero movies.

April Fools' Day #5

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:56:05 -0700

Five years running.
100% April Fools' Day Joke Free.
Join the crusade.
Spread the word.
Resist the temptation.
Be strong.

DeathSpank Tidbit

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:25:42 -0700

As some of the more astute web surfers and GDC going elite have noted, it was unofficially announced at GDC that DeathSpank is no longer episodic.

Yes, it's true.

"So", you're probably saying, "Does this mean when I buy DeathSpank I'll just get all the episodes at once"?

"No", I would reply. Then I would backtrack a little and hedge my bets and say "Maybe" or "Kind of, but not really".

DeathSpank isn't a very patient guy. He would never be able to play though one episode after another. He'd just run in and play them all at once. He's that kind of guy. He also gets impatient if someone doesn't die fast enough.

So what we did was take all the story, puzzles and fight'n and weave them into one larger game. The overarching story is the same, but the world is larger, more open, more compelling and completely load-less. You can walk from one end of the vast world to the other and never see a load screen or camera cut.

We do these things because we care.

Twitterish

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:52:53 -0700

Since some people have compared a couple of my most recent posts to twitter tweets, I figure I should just create a twitter account. Two actually. You can follow rongilbert if you want to know things like what I had for breakfast, or you can follow grumpygamer if you want to know things like what I had for breakfast.

Monkey Island Shoes

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:01:45 -0700

One of the many people I pay to surf the web looking for stuff about Monkey Island forwarded me a link to these ultra-cool shoes.

I'd run down the store and try and buy a pair, but I'm sure something this cool is sold out.

Maybe Kohl's has them.

I am Lost

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:05:33 -0800

OK. So. I can't figure out if Lost is the most brilliantly constructed and crafted TV show in all of history or the most jumbled mess of random plot elements a bunch of drunk writers can come up with. I suppose my inability to answer that question is the answer itself.

Top Scientists Agree on DeathSpank

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:12:05 -0800

After consulting top scientists, we have been informed that DeathSpank is just too awesome to be contained solely in North America (yes, top scientists really do use the word awesome). Based on this Nobel-powered advice we're going to be looking for some European retail distribution and/or co-publishing partners for DeathSpank; the game already being hailed as "Too Awesome for just North America".

Given that 68% of Grumpy Gamer readers are from Europe I figured I'd see if anyone had a short list of favorite publishers to contact.

Post here or contact me. Top Scientists. I couldn't say it if it wasn't true.

LeKohl's

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:56:59 -0800

Several people have emailed me saying the music in this commercial is from Monkey Island, specifically LeChuck's theme.

I've listened to it several times and it's hard to tell because I keep getting distracted by the great savings at Kohl's