Psychonauts box art

[Chris]

Who's Jax?

[MrChlorophyll]

The purpley/blue/whatever swirl bit is very nice.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Who's Jax?

Sorry, what?

[Chris]

Sorry, what?

You sly bastard...

[pupsti]

question: does game developing always take 4-5 years or it's just like that with psychonauts only? or is it related with the change of publisher and that the game is going to be on pc too?

[Roderick]

Naw it's just that Tim has only three more games to make (read his secret list) and he does want to keep it up until he's at least 60. You do the maths.

[pupsti]

teh secret list?

[Redwall]

http://forums.idlethumbs.net/showthread.php?t=1610

[baconian]

yeah i'm glad you brought that up again.

all us heathens who don't actually run this site should gang up and get the others to spill the beans about Tim and his brains of steel,

boing! pong! hocus pocus avion!!!

that nobody knows!

egypt! yeah!

wisdomatic! red hot juice!

sorry there. listening to captain beefheart.

anyway, we should keep bringing up Tim's three upcoming uber-games (click the link in the post above) and the issue of what the hell are they about, until the Californians tell all.

harhar.

[Moosferatu]

http://www.psychonauts.com/memory.php

Few new articles; no new info. I think there's a new picture in this one (bottom left).

[Jake]

Games usually take 2-3 years, not 4-5. Psychonauts has been in development for a long time.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

Or you can do what EA does and remake the same game every year using slave labor.

[Udvarnoky]

Geeze. I can remember back when Double Fine promised us a game for 2002. Heh. It will have been very close to five years of development when this game finally gets released. I wonder when they started working on the game? Was the design itself created while Tim was still at LucasArts? Did nothing happen until awhile after DF was formed?

Oh yeah, gotta love this from one of the magazine previews: "What's cool is your ability to choose your interaction with characters via dialogue trees. Though it's not as deeply developed as say, KOTOR, it adds a nice twist."

[Bc9b]

OK, that pisses me off. That really pisses me off.

They act like KOTR invented the thing!

[Udvarnoky]

Heh. "Great, this game's got dialogue trees, so it's almost as good as KOTOR! Yeah!"

[nsps]

Just because Tim said he had six games in mind at one time doesn't mean that those are the only games he wants to make. When he made "Who's That Knocking on My Door?," Martin Scorsese didn't have a list of every film he was going to make.

[Salka]

Besides, it kind of sounded like bullshit to me.

[Jake]

Well, in the world of console gaming, KOTOR is the most recent example of really good use of dialogue trees. Gamers will be able to immediately say "ah like KOTOR, but not as involved" and fully know how Psychonauts handles conversations between characters. Had they said "you know, like Day of the Tentacle and Broken Sword, but funnier," that wouldn't have gained them much ground as far as conveying what it's like to a casual console gamer goes.

[Udvarnoky]

They'll fully know, eh? I guess. It's still sort of insulting, though, depending on how familiar the reader is with Schafer's past work, or the classic graphic adventures in general.

[Salka]

I'm sure acknowledging the use of dialogue trees in Schafer's past games as well as in KOTOR wouldn't have been too hard. What, seven or eight extra words?

[Chris]

I don't know, it seems just as bad to say "dialogue trees, as seen in Schafer's other work". Just as KOTOR didn't invent them, neither did he.

[Udvarnoky]

True, but he does have a long history of being part of games that use them, and expertly. And, misleading or not, I'd have rathered the article reference his experience rather than the infinitely more involved!!1 KOTOR.

Of course, the point has been made, and this is just me being bitter. Pointing out KOTOR is going to strike a lot more chords with mainstream gamers than soley mentioning a graphic adventure. It just feels like a low blow. Plus I hate Star Wars.

[Salka]

I don't know, it seems just as bad to say "dialogue trees, as seen in Schafer's other work". Just as KOTOR didn't invent them, neither did he.

Yeah, but to start in to the origin of dialogue trees would have been going pretty much off topic to the article. However, mentioning Schafer's previous work with them would have been more relevant. Geez, he could have even said, "Though not as deeply involved as, say, KOTOR, or Schafer's previous work..."

That way, nobody invented the friggin' dialogue trees, they mention star wars, they mention Schafer's use of dialogue trees before KOTOR was even born, and they got to say 'Schafer's previous work' which makes them sound more educated or something. It's a win-win situation. Except that last part, that's dumb because I just made it up.

[Jake]

The answer is: it doesn't matter, and you guys are just groping for another shout-out to past Schafer games, or looking to be offended where none was intended. The KOTOR reference is fine. It conveys the intended meaning, imparts the necessary info to the reader, in very few words. Therefore it did its one and only job as a sentence in a very condensed news writeup.

[Salka]

The answer is: it doesn't matter, and you guys are just groping for another shout-out to past Schafer games, or looking to be offended where none was intended

Um, how about I'm not groping for another shout-out to past Schafer games, but suggesting that the article should have referred to them regarding dialogue trees, as well as using KOTOR as an example? Seeing as the article is about Schafer/Psychonauts and all.

I'm not 'groping for another shout-out' or anything like that at all. I'm certainly not offended by it. I'm sure these guys don't sit at their PCs and think of ways to irritate people that used to play Adventure Games. Anyway, it's a ridiculously trivial matter, and definitely not worth arguing about.