thorn

The magnet/door puzzle screwed me over the second time I played S&M. The first time I entered the magnet cave I simply switched all the magnets on, then got lucky because Shuv-oohl (can't believe I not only remembered that name but spelled it correctly first attempt) was behind the white door. I didn't understand the mechanics of the puzzle or the fact that the door colours and locations are randomised, so the second time around I needed to check a hint book to work out what to do.

Does Telltale no longer sell physical merch? I can't find any on their website any more. I'm pretty sure they sold the collected S&M comics a while back. I got my copy on Ebay about eight years back. It was second hand and ridiculously expensive, but I loved it.

Uhhh... 'I Have No Mouth' isn't a LucasArts game, is it? I mean, couldn't it have its own thread where I can safely ignore it?

Geoff Keighley wrote a lengthy article about the clusterfuck that was the development of the 11th Hour (via Wayback Machine). I haven't read it since, oh, 2005, but from memory all the video footage and a significant chunk of the gameplay of the third game had been completed before it got cancelled. That's probably why the video looks so old-school - because it actually is. EDIT: Scratch that. I just re-read the article and it's more ambiguous than I remembered about the state of the game when it was cancelled. Certainly Landeros was working on it and enough of it was completed to have screenshots, so I suspect that what was shown in that video does still date from the late '90s.

I didn't know that pressing Esc in the Tunnel of Love would restart it. I say that as a hint. EDIT: Weird. I just tried out that part of the game again and hitting Esc didn't do anything. Were you able to get out of the boat when the ride stopped? If not, I think you might have just hit a bug.

Actually, what I found difficult was getting the assignment papers. Perhaps it's just because I'd never played a LucasArts adventure before, but the thought of didn't even occur to me.

Can I ask how long it took you to work that puzzle out? I remember that when I first played S&M when I was about 11, that one puzzle took me weeks.

The Edisons don't want to be freed. You have to 'encourage' them in some other way.

With respect to the kite and the contract, use less video-game logic. It's a lot more straightforward than you think. And try to remember what Hoagie's overall goal is in the past. As for the teeth... well, that does need a bit more video game logic.

Nobody knows but Tim.

The peyote sequence was cut because LucasArts management insisted it was inappropriate. I'm working from memory here, but I think that the third I was talking about was cut for budget/time reasons.

I really wish Tim would/could release the Full Throttle design doc. Apparently there's a full third of the game that got cut from it.

Reading his blog, it sounds like most of them are going to be pretty low key; crop failures, diseases and fires, that sort of thing. If you're in to game coding, I'd definitely recommend his blog. He has a bunch of interesting posts about the nuts-and-bolts of how he's put the game together.

The Raiders spoof puzzle was definitely on the floppy disk version, as that's the one I had. Looking at that video though, I didn't recognise the scene; either my memory is failing me, or the animated close-up was only on the CD version. I think the floppy disk version only showed the cut scene from the normal room perspective. I threw out my last computer with a floppy drive less than a year ago. Now I can't check!

This looks really cool. I don't normally get in to Sim games these days, but I loved the original Settlers/Serf City when I was a kid and this looks like it has a similar vibe. One of his blog posts says that there will be disasters. I hope they'll have minimal effect; it always annoyed me when Sim games destroyed half your work for no good reason.

"Action Figures?" Come on, guy, those are clearly sex toys. Sorry.

Tim posted this Vine, showing them a bit closer. The quality looks a bit iffy, but I'm sure as hell going to buy them anyway. EDIT: Is there a trick to get embedded flash working on this forum?

This game has procedurally-generated landscapes, right? Does it work well?

I saw it as a fun little toy, but not really anything more. I was disappointed by the Adventurey ending, as I was expecting it to open up to a whole other part of the game right up until the point where the credits started rolling.

Wow. That was a total brain fart on my part. And yet a Youtube search for 'Man With The Golden Gun alligators' gave me that result. Goes to show that Google is smarter than I am.

I never know whether spoiler tags are needed or not. I've written up some very vague hints below. And here are some slightly less vague hints, but still not solutions: And here are the solutions, if you're really stuck: Meanwhile, hurrah that someone in this thread is playing a game that I've actually played and remember!

I've read through this thread twice and I still have no idea what Twine is. Aside from the string, of course. Anyone care to elucidate?

Actually, Nintendo either didn't care about or didn't notice the hamster. They mostly complained about the vaguely sexual stuff. It's an interesting read.

Given you're brought up my specialist subject... Well, there are a lot of different types of Neural Network. And they can all be tweaked in different ways. So it's very easy to untrain an NN if it's set up badly. Like you say, hopefully they're doing a shitload of playtesting. In any case, surely they'd only upload the player behaviour from players who were actually reasonably successful?