Jake

It's bound by rule of bargo, but will appear soon.

The Meat Circus is undeniably harder than the rest of the game. For some people it was amazingly harder. I didn't have THAT much trouble with it, but I play a lot of third person platformers, and had been playing Psychonauts on a near completionist path before getting to the Meat Circus, so while it was a step up, it wasn't murderous. I have many friends who absolutely couldn't get through it without spending tons of time on it, including my friend who was one of the sound designers on the game. It was his personal nightmare for a while and he was already playing it to death. In other news, I can't wait to check out Brutal Legend. There were some discussions recorded last night by Chris and Nick and I which have me excited.

I dont think it is a tie-in. I think LEC stuck a SMI:SE sticker or postcard onto the box, as getting Ron a lego pirate ship was probably a thank you for his participation in the SE project, appearing in their videos, etc. That's just a guess, as is my guess that people are assuming way too much in the comments of his blog. I agree with Thrik that he was referring to it as his muse, not as some more 1:1 symbol. But who knows!

It's not as bad as all that. "Surprise" Sometimes a podcast goes off the rails and is killed for the betterment of mankind. People occasionally ask why. Hopefully this provides an answer. Freshly exumed from the lot out behind Chris' apartment, enjoy the moist wreckage of the Idle Thumbs Episode 36 that wasn't. Warning: May titillate or offend. Games Discussed: Dragon Age: Origins, Dante's Inferno, Research & Development, Eets, Left 4 Dead 2, Bookworm Adventures

They do. "Other People Get It" After taking a week off in silent honor of the Duke, we return. Lawsuits fly and franchises fall as they try to get you to ride around on a fake skateboard. E3's coming back. I probably have Swine Flu. Don't worry, other people get it. Games Discussed: Team Fortress 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Plants Vs. Zombies, Defense Grid, Killing Floor, Blade Runner, The Last Express, Outcast, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

I think the real issue is that at the break we felt retarded. So, we decided to not release it, or to release it separately.

Skydive to safety with Wii Sports Resort! And this episode of Idle Thumbs! "A Great Way to Have Fun" Join us as we take a safely-secured look at Wii Sports Resort, and spoil exclusive food news. A connection to the Internet is required to listen to this episode. Games Discussed: Wii Sports Resort, Dawn of Discovery/Anno 1404, Command & Conquer 4, Alan Wake, League of Legends: Clash of Heroes, StarCraft, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Castles, Castles II: Siege & Conquest, Rock Band Network, Guitar Hero Fruit Roll Strawberry Whammy

I heard it contains Peter Chan's skeleton but I think I read that in a walkthrough somewhere.

Haha since this thread is about paid avatar clothing, I was sadly talking about the latter. I would also love to sell genuine Max scalps which you could rest on your hand, draw a face on your skin, and pretend it was inhabited by Max's spirit. That would probably be harder to manufacture though.

The subtle 3D is what brings the quality up to a level which actually matches my mind's eye's opinion/memory of what that game would look like if it was higher res, though. I think part of what's a little funky about Monkey 1 special edition is that there's all this added detail where there used to be implied detail, but there's nothing dynamic added where there was only implied/imagined movement or life before. Adding that subtle swing/perspective of the camera tells my brain "yes, this thing you're seeing is actually a real space and not just a painting," which is something the lower resolution artwork didn't have to try and sell. I think that in gaming unfortunately, the requirements to properly achieve suspension of disbelief often scale up along with the fidelity of the game. As your overall game looks and behaves better, elements which used to be able to get a pass just by being representations of a cool thing need to actually be a cool thing.

Welcome to all forum news!

I guess that the concept of the little downloadable add-ons doesn't bother me at all -- I see potential and opportunity in it for fun and/or potentially subversive or expressive content -- but the fact that it's clearly positioned as a cheap cash grab does bother me. The LittleBigPlanet Sackboy add-on stuff is functionally identical to the Xbox avatar store (though it is more closed), but Media Molecule has positioned it as "awesome team-ups to make hilarious things!" instead of "ridiculous financial synergy!" and fans seem to have accepted each of the two systems accordingly (embracing the former, scorning the latter). The thing is, to me that's positioning, not format. For instance, I had a conversation at Comic-Con with Steve Purcell about making Max pelts stapled to bike helmets which you could buy and wear on your head as a sort of weird ceremonial headdress, which I consider to be in a slightly different place than buying an in-game GoW logo t-shirt or something. But, both of those two items would be purchased in the same format, through the same infrastructure. Maybe it's still horrible, but I see more value in one of those than the other, especially if one or both of them was extremely cheap or free-through-achievements. I guess for me, I am intrigued by the ideas of how someone could use the avatar store, but am depressed and made tired by how people inevitably will use the avatar store. Microsoft's avatar system is cool and extremely powerful and, I think, unprecedented -- a visual representation of yourself which you can augment with 3rd party crafted add-ons, which carries across multiple games by multiple developers and publishers. That's ridiculous. It could conceivably allow for you to dress up in a Coca-Cola costume and run through the Pepsi game taking screenshots the whole time (if soda manufacturers made games that analogy would make more sense). The fact that it's positioned as a pretty crass milk-em-dry platform which, as you said, has the potential to just tire people out on franchises and dilute them instead of boost them up, is a depressing travesty, but I find the actual system itself interesting. One of Telltale's goals is to be human beings, and all of those things which you outlined are admittedly pretty awesome. I'm sure Telltale is, on a scale of one to infinity, probably infinitely less commercial than the Big Boy publishers, but we're also measurably far away from being a benevolent two dude indie house. The number of commercially-oriented concessions and considerations is, I'm sure, a hundred times smaller than that at many other studios, but it has altered the way I think about game-making and game sales. My mind naturally tends to at least ask itself about conversion rates, target audience, expectations, platform porting potential, etc, which I would of course never ask myself before having a job at a commercial game company. I also ask myself good questions to ponder or stew on to myself which I wouldn't have asked before, like, will this saturate the market or how can this be practically improved with the resources I have (versus pie in the sky contextless "you should's"). So yeah, Telltale is definitely not commercially evil, but it is a company which makes money by selling games, and ideas in my brain definitely go through a channel of filters and meshed screens which are defined by my perceived realities of gaming as a commercial space more than they used to, instead of an unfiltered idealistic look at what is possible. It's a tough thing to come to grips with and wrangle for me, and this thread's given me a lot to think about.

I had a lot to write but it's not coming back now that I sit down to type it. For what it's worth, I'm sorry that I was a jerk in my post. I make my living creating video games at a place which is surprisingly commercial -- I imagine the reality of the situation for most who make games for their job is similar to mine -- and that reality sometimes exists in very harsh contrast to the ideas we all hold and think about and internalize as what's great about games and gaming as a medium. It's sometimes mind-numbingly frustrating, especially when those lines get blurry. There's probably more to say but it might be wishy washy and me rationalizing things I don't really want to have to rationalize or try to explain on a web forum because they're blurry and lame. If I ever meet you in person we can hang out and talk about awesome things.

Some of it will be free and you aren't obligated to buy any of it. Christ. Fuck off? Yes, fuck off. Should people stop selling dolls and action figures because you personally consider them a waste of time or money? Some people like spending money on dressing up playthings and fictional characters. Double fuck off. Be more presumptuous, why don't you? I love it when forums decide what is and isn't something a developer should be spending their time on, especially when it's related to marketing or ancillary products (most of which are outsourced or done by a wholly separate department from core development -- and most of which can have a huge impact on the profitability of the game). Whenever Valve puts out a Team Fortress "Meet the Class" video, some douchebag always posts saying "make less of these and spend more time on the game plz thx" and I want to reach through the Internet and strangle them. "People want to buy something, so someone is offering that service." How dare they. How dare they. There is bullshit DLC out there, and avatar clothing charts very low on my personal list of things which are cool about games, but some people genuinely do like it and see it as a way to express themselves online (and some of those people don't mind paying money for it). I don't get the hate for it, especially the overreaching mom-style wrist slap of "I think this is bad so I want to take it away from everyone." I work for a pretty small (but growing) independent developer. I haven't looked at the XDK stuff for the avatar store, but if it was truly quick and cheap to put content up there which would generate potential hundreds or thousands of extra dollars in revenue which we could funnel back into making better games, why would that be bad? I don't get it. (Also, people could start wearing Max's head for a hat in the SceneIt games, which is a bonus plus.)

We've used "sunglasses off" "sunglasses on" in a few meetings to discuss how to manage state changes in the engine's acting system. I wouldn't want to work on a CSI Miami game at all, but it would be pretty sweet to have a fully modeled and animated Caruso character just for sunglasses abuse.

Ah that makes a little more sense. Still seems less than ideal, but it seems like part of the problem was that I just couldn't intuitively figure out what I was supposed to be doing.

Does the jailbroken iPhone ScummVM port have the same controls as the iPhone Monkey Island SE? I'm having a lot of trouble actually playing this game on my iPhone. I had expected the cursor to go to wherever you pointed, and then touching down a second finger anywhere would count as a click action, or something. But instead, it feels like you drag the cursor around... but not 1:1... looks like there's some mouse emulation going on or something, instead of direct interaction with the cursor? Then, to click, it seems you have to precision tap right on the cursor art itself again without moving it at all. Also classic mode's art is upscaled in a non-smoothed "nearest neighbor" style, so that its pixely, but not 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, giving a lot of the art a slightly misshapen style, like when someone puts a gif on a webpage but sets the width wrong. It actually looks exactly like when I ran Monkey Island 1 on my friend's Macintosh LC, which only went up to 512x384 resolution, so instead of double-sizing (which on the original Mac ports used amoothing similar to the Mame2x filter ScummVM has), or displaying at normal size (a little 320x200 window), it just crustily squished the 320x200 window up to 512x384 and looked awesome. That said, I paid $8 and have a legal copy of Monkey Island 1 on my iPhone, which is just conceptually cool, other issues aside.

This credits sequence makes me so stupidly happy every time I see it, or even hear the music. God. I always liked Mario games way too much, but finishing Mario World and hearing that happy tune and seeing an overview of everything that went on, plus the little Yoshi epilogue, etc, etc... So good. Hopefully all have heard this excellent cover of the SMW Closing Credits theme by XOC, from this best ever Mario World cover album.

"Maybe they just like Idle Thumbs." - IGN.com

True, my mistake.

Previously on Idle Thumbs: We got a crazy cyborg mouse, and decided to foist if off on you, the readers. To win the mouse, you had to draw a cyborg. Bonus unlockable prize: Dawn of War II Steam Code. That's right, Chris realized he had one of these around as well. Whoever wins this poll gets to choose between the DoW II code, or the Saitek Cyborg mouse. Second place gets the other prize. Let's take a look at our entries: The Devil Tesla ---------- taco484 ---------- gdf ---------- elmuerte ---------- Nappi ---------- toblix ---------- Noyb ---------- Hogboon ---------- Ossk ---------- SignorSuperDouche ---------- MrBig ---------- EthanThomas ---------- IdesofMarch ---------- So... holy shit. You guys vote and pick some winners!

I think just the fact that there are sooo many buttons, and that most touch-typists can home in on them pretty quick, is the only think keyboards have going for them which other game controllers don't, and for some genres and some games, that's a reasonably important thing. RTS games, flight sim games (or even Wing Commander), or more management- or mode-switch-centric FPSs like System Shock of Deus Ex, benefit from the fact that there is a huge cluster of buttons at your disposal, and when teamed up with the precision of the mouse, you end up with one of the reasons PC games are their own thing. I'm not saying that general streamlining of UI should be avoided, but there are some games which benefit strongly from their interface being "flat" -- all accessible from the top level, instead of buried in tiers -- and a keyboard combined with some learning time is better for that just by virtue of how much of it there is. Someone on Slashdot surely appreciates this more than the rest of the world (probably too much more), as I imagine Slashdot users operate their computer in a more flat, less hierarchical way than most gamers (eg a Slashdot user probably knows all the hotkeys instead of burrowing through a two or three tiered menu, or likes to think they do). It's not a style that is appropriate for most games, but I think it totally has its place even if its a big jerk. bleh this post of mine

I'm not saying that I know what happened, obviously someone screwed up because there's 90s pixels everywhere when the whole point is that they are supposed to be not there, but jumping to conclusions and blaming a dude doesn't solve the mystery.

This series took an amazing dump on itself. It got worse at what seemed to be an exponential rate, until by the end I actually stopped reading. There's a point a few pages from the end of the final book where Steven King stops the story, and steps in to say that its okay to stop now if you're not a fulfillment-needing continuity dork. I took his advice and put the book down immediately, and still haven't read the last 10 or so pages. The first book, maybe the first three, are pretty interesting, fun and unique genre stories, but where it goes as the series progresses is so ... off ... that I wouldn't recommend bothering with the series at all. Disappointing! I've been reading a bunch of public domain stuff off of Project Gutenberg via an ebook reader on my iPhone. Lately this has included a bunch of Sherlock Holmes ("The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" anthology), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Both are recommended. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court reminded me of the Discworld books (especially the more recent "civic improvement" arcs, for obvious reasons) only written a century earlier, and more excited about passively proclaiming how awesome and capable and intelligent the American worker/craftsman is.

Well, as a long time compliance tester you could probably reasonably surmise that that achievement never failed on anyone during testing or it would have gotten kicked. That game was kicked back for less during its submission process. Sorry that it screwed up for you, though!