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I was just reminded about this by the hint suggestions thread, but has anybody noticed that Max's auto-hints are way more likely to occur immediately after scripted events? It's like there's a standard timeout, but it doesn't get paused or reset when you trigger an important scene so by the time you're out he immediately tells you what to do next. I'll have to move the slider down to zero for future episodes.

People aren't dumber now, they just have a lower tolerance for bad design. It's easy for creators to be blind to the difficulty of a problem they're presenting to a user. Most people seem to agree that the majority of problems stem from missed items, or interactive objects. To the artist those items may appear obvious, especially if the scene was created without it to begin with. But to the end user it could be blended it in like camouflage.

I agree, most of the time it can be boiled down to a missing item.

I'm more pissed that their firmware updates removed my ability to play Blu-ray and DVD movies. I can still play games (for now), and it happened right after a firmware update, so it's pretty obvious it was their patch that screwed video playback. They refuse to support rolling back to previous versions, or providing the latest version of the firmware as a single download to correct problems with corrupted delta patching. In general, I find the way Sony has behaved is unethical. They don't care that they break systems, and they want to charge $200 to fix something without giving their customers the ability to try to fix it themselves. Another issue is with the stability of flash in the web browser. The PS3 used to be amazing because with updates it had the most current version of flash and was able to play video on practically every site. But then some browser patch was released and it crashes so often it's not even worth even launching the thing. Consoles have just slid into this dystopia of consumer rights. As a paying customer I just want to enjoy my games without worrying that the next firmware update will brick my system or remove a feature I found essential.

Yeah I'm not taking it personally, especially anything to do with my arguments. Another interesting point of view on piracy is Brad Warwell's (Stardock). His basic outlook is that people need to stop developing games targeted at people who aren't interested in paying for them. Certain demographics are less likely to pirate a game, and even though they may not be the largest markets, if you budget and scope according to their scale you're less likely to be burned by rampant piracy.

I'm not getting into a flame war over something so stupid. You need to chill out.

Yeah the last part has timing. If you even just wait . Anyways my problem was that I couldn't see , which basically led to repetition to the same lines of dialogue about 20 times.

Let me be clear, the first sentence was the only quote from Valve. I do think there's no excuse for being behind the curve, whether it's software, music or video. If you're a leading content creator, there's no reason for you to be less interested in the future of your medium than a bunch of teenagers creating the next big thing.Anyways, they weren't just talking about convenience of digital distribution. Gabe has specifically brought up proper internationalization and release scheduling with countries that regularly pirate games. I believe Russians were their example of under-served customers. Also, don't fuck Valve, you angry little man.

At the last reel right now.

You guys missed Portal in your music list. Baba Yetu is a great song, as mentioned.

Yeah I'm not sure if i toggled it accidentally later on, but maybe the 5th time I started up the game Steam prompted me to enable the GPU. Maybe there was a steam hotfix, or it was previously enabled, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm having no problems now. I'm keeping it at level 6 quality just in case.So far I'm enjoying Episode 2 more than the first.

Steam prompted me to get out of power saving mode and my performance was boosted greatly. Not sure how I got in that mode to begin with, but that might have been an issue. Hoping that the Steam release for episode 2 is at 12 pst, 'cause I can't take running on Valve time much longer.

Right now it's also driving video on demand, as publishers are being forced to compete with online streaming sites. Hulu wouldn't exist without people uploading videos to stream sites. A lot of my friends have stopped downloading MP3s in favour of playing videos from youtube. It's a bit crazy, but never underestimate the value of convenience. As Valve is fond of saying, a pirate is an under-served customer. The difficulty is keeping pace with consumer expectations. There's no excuse for being behind the curve.

Loss-less compression can bring down video to a manageable size. I think the pendulum has swung a bit too far into in-engine cut scenes. It doesn't need to jump to some Pixar quality video with blatantly different models and props, but it can be in-engine with a really high quality setting. Allowing the developers to reuse in-game assets, and comfortable animation tools. As for resolutions, something with a crap-ton of post processing at a low resolution can look a lot better than something with high resolution and real-time settings. Like Thrik said, it can be done gracefully. Anyways, I ran through the game at level 5 quality and it looked great. Can't wait for the next episode.

I've had it at 5 for a while now and it's been better. (Had to go all the way down to 1 800x600 to get through that intro though) I'll try bumping it up to 6 later today.I said it in the TT forums, but you guys should try pre-rending more of those advanced cut scenes. They're probably the most likely to fail since they're effects heavy, and I was surprised to see how crappy they felt when i was at 800x600 with level 1 quality. Maybe there's a question of keeping the player in the moment by maintaining a constant level of quality, or maybe it's a question of size of video vs compressed scripts. But honestly it'd look a lot better, and probably avoid a lot of crazy bugs like this.

For some reason I'm having major issues with the penal zone. I ran ToMI on max settings on my macbook pro 17" without any problems, but the framerate on Sam & Max is horrifying. I've tried bumping down the resolution, but it's still pretty janky. Also, twice in a row I've crashed out during the opening cinematic (after knocking the ape into the rift). I ran file verification using steam and it all checked out. I don't want to have to run through that tutorial again, and there are no save points so it's kinda frustrating. Edit: apparently there's a thread about this on the TellTale forums. I hope bumping down the graphical settings is a workaround, but it's a bit disheartening to see that 4 people crashing at the exact same time and supplying crash dumps is still considered "uncommon".

http://supererogatory.tumblr.com/post/596092270/created-on-2010-05-11 I know they're just trying to save domains for future prospects, but I can't help but laugh at Activision.

So I just got this game with the Steam Play pack. After burning through Monkey Island, I think I may want to wait for a few more S&M episodes to be released before I get into this season. I still have a Season 1 DVD kicking around somewhere, should I start with that, or should I ignore it and start with the newest one?

I'm not sure what the actual breakdown in numbers is like, but you guys talk about software development as if it's the dominant industry, and in reality I think the majority of work is not in creating a product. It's not just finance most developers seem to be working either for internal IT at banks, government, telcos, oil companies and other globalcorps or at contracting companies that build applications for said globalcorps. It may be different in certain regions, and my experience may tend to trend towards large corporations as I've worked out of Toronto and New York, but honestly it seems to be the most typical world wide other than a few hubs like the Bay area, Austin or Vancouver. There are a few companies making money off software licenses, but if anything the industry is trending further and further away from that every year. Even middle market and small market companies are buying services like SalesForce over desktop native applications. Most libraries are either open source or owned by big companies like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. I keep trying to steer away from making this a downer thread, but when it comes down to it software engineers are basically car mechanics of the future. We've got a skill that is essential for day to day business, most people don't understand it and are skeptical of, and a little knowledge is worse than none at all. It's widely mismanaged all across the board. I just wanted to say that the games industry is not unique in it's problems, and my constructive advice to anybody thinking of software in general is to make sure you're prepared for those challenges everywhere. Try to find a job at a company that treats you well, but understand you're not likely work any place more than 5 years in a row and you may move on from your dream job and have to take some grunt work to pay the bills. Also, become a contractor because management will think twice about asking you to work extra hours when they have to justify the billable hours.

Wow UHS is actually really good.

I did 4 weeks of without a day off, then was transfered to another project trying to meet a deadline. I managed to get a couple weekends off, though ended up still working about 10-12 hours a day. Only to be transfered to another project that was trying to meet a deadline. It was shitty, but on the other hand, everyone that wasn't being transfered to a project in crunch was being laid off. That cycle ended up lasting about 8 months.That's not super typical, but what is typical (especially in the financial industry) is a crunch around every 4 months somewhat in sync with the quarterly cycles. The idea being that a lot of companies don't know their IT budget over a longer period than a quarter.

Don't get me wrong, there are good jobs out there, but I was stepping in to mainly counter the line of thinking that the games industry is unique in it's crunch and burn cycle. I think it's important for people to know that the problem is common for the entire profession and that if you're truly interested in programming you need to be prepared for it's ups and downs. There are good companies in all fields, I just wanted to say the bad ones aren't unique to game development. Jeff Green and Shawn Elliott used to touch on this in the GFW podcast. Games journalists are fond of talking about how shitty and high pressure their job is (especially during conventions), but for most of them it's their first real job. People who are new to work seem to think it's their own unique hell. Sure the games industry has it's problems like EA Wife, and Infinity Ward. But remember the games industry only has Bobby Kotick, the rest of the world has people like Dick Cheney and Steve Jobs.

Not all places suck, but there's a definite trend that way. Just take what people any position say with a grain of salt when they claim they have it the worst. I know people in games wanting to work on web apps, people in web apps wanting to work on low level systems and people on low level systems wanting to work in games. The important thing is that you find something that you want to do every day, and then the extra bullshit that follows in the development world will be a little more tolerable. Keep in mind that your job isn't your hobby, and you can continue to play games even if you're doing something unrelated.But whatever you do, stay clear of internal IT for a company that doesn't deal with technology. Every quarter you'll be ducking budget cuts, and nobody senior to you will know anything about computers.

I'm not missing the point, I'm just saying that it's how things are all over as a software engineer. If someone is seriously considering getting into the games industry, so much that they're going into programming at school, then they should be prepared for the same problems everywhere else. In my opinion, keep your eye on the prize, and if you're going into development, focus on games. Otherwise you'll end up settling for an equally crappy job writing an accounting system.

So apparently TTG is following the traditional adventure game logic of combining everything in your inventory with everything else. Not only is the game compatible with Steam Play (thank you), it's in a bundle with the new Sam & Max for an insane price lower than either individual game. http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4327/ Glad I ended up waiting, 'cause I already own ME:SE on my iphone.