Thrik

Still playing around trying to make musics. I learnt what an arpeggiator does today. Escalating Cliche - SoundCloud Can definitely relate to this too. I think employers often underestimate how important where you spend 38+ hours of your god damn time a week is in terms of general happiness. The old 'well you should be working anyway' type comment is what can usually be expected, which of course completely overlooks the fact that if you don't enjoy being at work then it'll be very difficult for your productivity to not drop. Right now I'm in what is probably the best team I've ever worked in. Fortunately we do go to the canteen for breakfast and out for lunch virtually every day, not necessarily because we need to but because we've all made an unspoken agreement that it's a good thing to do from a socialising point of view. There is the possibility that I'll be shuffled around in the future, which doesn't delight me as a prospect but I know I'd still get to see my team plenty. And in all honesty, we often just chat through Lync/Skype and have headphones on anyway. It's a shame that your team isn't this way inclined, although that doesn't mean you can't take steps to encourage them to do more than just sit at their desks during lunch. Perhaps even outright say that you'd like to go out for lunch so that you can see them more, which you might find that they're totally up for — especially if you can suggest nice places nearby to get food. I myself frequently push my colleagues to come out with me, and if they don't come I go anyway. I find that in most cases people want to join me, but I do end up being the organiser in a way, who goes to everyone's desks and says "Coming out for lunch?".

The design/puzzle document does contain a fair bit of cut content, but a lot of that was actually from years one and two. Year four was meant to have a more fleshed-out version of Hector's casino with access to another floor. There was also meant to be a much longer chase sequence between first confronting Hector and the eventual showdown at the meadows, but that wouldn't have actually added too much in terms of length because it was a relatively linear action sequence. It would have been very time-consuming to develop, hence its unsurprising removal. Shockingly, Glottis was to have his brain ripped out by Hector during this part! I wouldn't say that year three is so bad, but year four was definitely noticeably more restrained compared to the previous years in terms of non-essential dialogue and things to interact with. There may not have been any more content cut from year four than years one and two, but all of the 'icing on the cake' stuff that makes the game world feel so rich is way reduced. I'd say that it's masked extremely well and I didn't even notice until I'd played through several times, seeing it more as the story gaining momentum after the more leisurely first two years. But it shows that the developers were focused on completing what was needed and little more. The original design document called for Hector's casino to be much more filled with life and NPCs, for example. In comparison, very little from the design failed to make it into year three.

I have the original soundtrack burned into my memory so much that I could probably tell you exactly what's different while listening, in fact most people could if they listened to both versions of each track in turn. If it's something you're so curious about then surely you could do the same? Just get both soundtracks up at once and burn a couple of hours on it.

There's about 50 minutes of cutscene music in the game, much of which is orchestrated. I haven't gotten far enough to know, but I'd have assumed that most if not all of it was re-done?I did notice the orchestra creeping into the in-game music while I was playing a small section of year one. For example, the DOD parking garage music and Manny's office have had instruments redone. Of course, it's possible that McConnell used higher-quality synthetic samples for some stuff, and worth bearing in mind that various live instruments were used the first time around.

Did they? Shame, that was quite a cool and original feature. I do have a general reference of all the dialogue (triggered or not) here if it ever interests you: http://www.grimfandango.net/game-info/dialogue

I've given this a spin on both the PS4 and computer now, and I think that those with a console should seriously consider that version if they can't connect their computer to a TV. I guess that the quality of your TV is a factor here, but for me there's just no comparison: the game looks a lot better at TV-viewing distance because it hides the incongruence between the quality of 3D models, backgrounds, and cutscenes. The backgrounds are particularly striking; on my monitor I just couldn't stop noticing their low resolution compared to the 3D, whereas on my TV I'm barely noticing at all. I must say that the lighting is wonderful, and really completes what is still an attractive-looking game. Unlike Vainamoinen I have no desire to see the game's backgrounds remodelled, seeing that as somewhat comparable to Pixar remodelling everything in Toy Story when releasing it in 4K — a potentially endless debate about where to draw the line, as we've seen with Star Wars. I would definitely have liked to have seen some of their fidelity improved, but I accept that those art assets are long gone.

I got the updated Grim Fandango Network up today. Still quite a lot of content to move beyond draft form, but it's somewhat a relief to just get it out there. From looking at the traffic it seems that a LOT of people are wanting a walkthrough right now, haha. Oh, GF.

Have a think about what specifically is stopping you from getting into that tube room yourself.

Yeah, something that I noticed while putting something together recently is that I don't believe Don Copal ever actually appears in 3D. He's always a pasted-in pre-render.

They are.

None of the backgrounds have been touched, so probably not. The backgrounds seem to be the originals, compression and all. It's pretty tragic that high-resolution uncompressed versions were never stored, but by the sounds of it the computers they had took hours if not days to render each frame of pre-rendered 3D — and that was likely at the minimum size they needed (480p) to save time. They found some in high resolution (probably for promotional art), but in this kind of situation it's all or nothing. I know that I've said it before, but TVs handle upscaling 480p content a lot better than virtually any monitor you're likely to use. The compression and poor resolution is way, way harder to spot. If getting the console version is an option, this seems wise. I actually gave the game a shot on my 5K iMac and the backgrounds really do look bad. I've bought the PS4 version to play instead. Of course, I'm still grateful that the game has been released in a format that can be enjoyed for many more years. It's just a great testament to the importance of preserving high-quality master assets whenever possible, even if it's a bit more work.

Play through the entirety of Grim Fandango using the tank controls without ever colliding with anything. It'd be like the most demented and torturous rendition of those real-life toys where you have to move a metal loop around a bendy piece of metal without the two touching. If only Double Fine had added an optional huge siren and flashing red screen for when such a collision occurs.

Most of the cutscene music is orchestral, which amounts to around 50 minutes. I've only watched the opening so far, but that was definitely redone. As for the in-game music, it became apparent very quickly that the original uncompressed music was used as a base and then parts of it were remastered and/or given fresh performances. Overall, it's a very faithful yet worthwhile revisit. I'm informed that the SCUMM Revisited extractor used for the original game still works with the remastered edition's resource files. Unfortunately the cutscene music has all of the voice acting, sound effects, etc mixed in with it just like before. But the good news is that the in-game music is completely extractable, meaning that for the first time we can now listen to the entire soundtrack in high quality. The official soundtrack from before contained only a fraction of the game's music, which would likely be the case for any subsequent releases. So extracting is undoubtedly the best way of getting hold of the in-game stuff. I just hope that Double Fine somehow finds a way of getting the cutscene score out there.

Has PS+ ever launched games for free? I didn't even realise that had a precedent.

The PSN UK store said it's out today when I checked at the weekend.

I don't want to get into the poly side of this discussion, but that isn't necessarily true. I've had a number of successful (and unsuccessful) dates with women who were very much up for honest-to-god dating despite them listing themselves as 'looking for friends' only. This is just the reality of how it goes. Not every person means the same thing when they set their various options on a dating site, and that's assuming their current settings have been updated to match their state of mind and mood. Then of course, let's not forget that even when one is in a decidedly 'not interested in anything serious' kind of state, the right person can come along and blow you away. If you're on a dating site then many people will assume that you're on some level open to the remote possibility of dating and/or sex, whatever your settings. Also, men at least typically have to send a lot of messages out into the abyss to get responses, so skipping people who look and sound awesome because of a setting that is only sometimes a reflection of someone's true availability is unwise.

I think there's definitely an honest-to-god addictiveness about this kind of thing. When said games came out, I piled at least a hundred or so hours into Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 3, and Tribes: Ascend. I just got into this routine where I was putting hours into them every day and I ended up completely putting aside my other hobbies such as art, music, and web development for months at a time. In each case, something caused me to stop playing for a week or so, and just like that I almost completely lost interest in the game and barely touched it again. I can totally see how I would rack up monumentally huge amounts of playtime if that cycle were to continue. There's something about competitive/multiplayer games in this regard, because I've never experienced it with single-player games. Presumably it's some risk/reward psychology shit.

Bloody hell. I think that number exceeds my gaming time for the last 10 years.

Ah man, the polar bear boss in DKC: Tropical Freeze is brilliant! The boss levels in general are excellent, I don't think I've seen any other game so bravely have its bosses combine shitloads of moves in no particular order like this before. Every encounter plays out differently, rather than adhering to the linear sequences found in most platformers. Also, Donkey Kong is kind of an asshole here. Knocks the poor guy's ice lolly into the water and then beats him up when he's rightfully incensed.

Been continuing to mess around with putting music together. This is still rough as knackers but is about the epitome of what I can manage right now. Still, I can hear endless things that I want to change. I need to do some other shit for a few days so hopefully I'll feel inspired to move this forward a bit more afterwards. It's meant to be atmospheric game BGM type shit for a snowy level. Winter Heights - Draft 1 - SoundCloud

Skip the fucker and get Tropical Freeze. It's a much more complete and worthy successor, unlike Returns which was pretty decent but lacking in some key areas — particularly controls and absence of water levels(!!!!!). The things that did work in Returns will seem so much better if experienced as part of the vastly better overall package that is its sequel.

It's mostly the cut-scene music I'm interested in, assuming that's gotten the orchestral treatment too. The original game had it all compiled into a video along with the other audio, sadly.

They'd better include all the music in the game's data in a nicely extractable format then.

I've not looked closely enough but I think that the screenshot feature is pretty much immediate? It's just the notification that's delayed. I say this because I've sometimes spammed the key and it got all the shots in question.

I think it's more to do with the fact that people buy Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo games. They exist in a whole ecosystem of their own, with the consoles primarily being buy-in to access certain first- or second-party games. It's actually quite similar to Apple, where to a certain extent buying a Mac or an iPad is a route to being able to use OS X or iOs, and the often excellent applications exclusive to those platforms — which never reduce in price.