Thyroid

Monkey Island 2: SE

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But neither of those original games are running at 2 frames per second at all. How on earth would Guybrush get across the screen on a 7 frame walk cycle if he were only allowed to use 2 frames per second to do so?

Because he's just a sprite that's moved across the screen by the game engine... right? I wouldn't mind knowing the fps of those old games, actually. (Note: FPS != refresh rate.)

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scummvm seems to indicate they're running at 15fps, but don't know if I'm seeing it right. Even if I am, there's no telling if the old games did actually run at 15fps (i thought it would be 18fps or something).

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As a big fan of MI2 I'm much more worried about what seems to be re-interpretation of the original rather than just giving it the "hi-def" treat.

Have a look:

100301mi2sescreensdinky.jpg

100301mi2sescreensdinky.jpg

Look at the backgrounds and compare. In the original it looks like a tube made of concrete and steel. Guybrush's rope is winded around exposed metal.

In the new one it looks like a natural cave. The exposed ends of the metal mesh got replaced by tree roots.

With the twist end in mind it looks like a big faux-pas, weakening the ambiguity of the finale

whether the amusement park is real or a spell by LeChuck

.

What do you think about this?

PS:

If my english sounds a little clunky, please consider that it's not my first language.

I'm from germany and reading the forums for many months already.

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Ouch, that's certainly worrying. And Guybrush's expression is just shit.

Why must you break my heart, SE team...

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Yeah, that's come up a bunch of times. Maybe they'll just gradually change it? It starts out as a bunch of roots, and then slowly changes to steel?

And yeah, I really dislike Guybrush's expressions and face. That's my main beef with this SE. Here's hoping they fix 'er.

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And yeah, I really dislike Guybrush's expressions and face. That's my main beef with this SE. Here's hoping they fix 'er.

Just like they did with the MI:SE... No wait.

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scummvm seems to indicate they're running at 15fps, but don't know if I'm seeing it right. Even if I am, there's no telling if the old games did actually run at 15fps (i thought it would be 18fps or something).

I did some tests and it seems that MI1 and MI2 run at about 6fps. My tests weren't amazingly scientific, however (I just put the walk cycle sprites into an animated gif and played with the number of frames per second until it roughly matched what ScummVM looked like).

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This is exciting! Now, I must pour through the rest of the first one. This is sadly one of the many great PC games I missed upon their release. I'm trying to catch up now.

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I did some tests and it seems that MI1 and MI2 run at about 6fps. My tests weren't amazingly scientific, however (I just put the walk cycle sprites into an animated gif and played with the number of frames per second until it roughly matched what ScummVM looked like).

Heh, you're probably right. I only checked how often the engine was being updated. the animations are probably running at lower speeds.

I wonder why LEC keeps releasing the SE screenshots side-by-side with the classic version's? It only leads to comparisons which, really, isn't in SE edition's favour.

I ain't buying it for the graphics though... I'm more interested in listening to the developer commentaries (oh who am I kidding - I would buy it even without them). Hey, you think maybe the commentaries will touch on the subject of concrete walls turning into a natural sinkhole?

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I'm also reading Guybrush as having a bit of a beard in the original art that I'm just not seeing in the new shot given for comparison...

...Maybe it's just me?

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It's mentioned in the conversation with the bartender at the start of the game.

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Resolution matters as a higher one means the figures have to "travel" a bigger distance to get to the same place. Thus it looks more jittery than in a lower res if you keep the same animation grid for both.

Well that's the thing nowadays, unless you are doing pixel art in it's native environment, resolution has almost become a moot point since almost everyone has the tools to work big and save out their animations small. I'm not saying the original Monkey Island art team did, because this article you linked to is fully correct, but I think it didn't impact the original team as much at the time since they still made more than enough frames for their animations. And for 1989 in video games, it was outstanding.

My main point is that the I think the original team gave enough frames for a typical limited modern animation crew to work with in a video game at the highest possible resolution, but screwed it up completely by making bad poses and drawing badly.

Maybe a lot of people are expecting the fluidity of something like Worms 2 and Armageddon? While that looks nice on a simple worm, it can be hard to achieve for much more complex characters, so I can understand when most people don't.

Wait, so we are in agreement. My problem with the animation in MI:SE isn't technical (Namely, that it doesn't have enough inbetweens, although that would be one way to solve the issue), it's that I felt it doesn't convey movement effectively. Your mileage may vary, of course, but for me it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Yes I agree fully. I was not at all happy with the animation poses created for the first SE, among other things. I was no champion of that game. I guess this is just my personal experience, but my thing is that I've seen enough animation with low frame count that moves wonderfully just by having great poses that fill in all of the blanks and knowing when to hold or reuse the key drawings at the right time, which is pretty much the cusp of traditional animation in the first place.

Just imagine remaking Quake II, adding high poly models but keeping the same low res textures. That's not far from what Lucasarts did.

I don't think this is a good analogy though. Animating in 3D and 2D are very different outside of making poses and keyframes, especially in a 3D video game where you are supposed to be allowed to see from any point of the camera at any time and make sure the characters look nice from all angles. The textures don't really impact the animation or the poses, no matter what resolution or polycount the final animation is output at, but it would certainly look nicer to have higher resolution textures no matter what.

(Note: FPS != refresh rate.)

Look, I'm just going by the standard native environment that traditional style animators are taught and deal with, classically being 24 (film) and modernly being 30 fps (NTSC TV), so even if the game were running on 15 -18 fps like Jayel said, that's still the equivalent of a regular 2s animation on 30 fps, since again it's not often many people are animating on 1s, even constantly, unless they have a Disney budget.

Again, refer to the sprite sheet. If you roughly count the timing on most of those animations, especially the special ones, none are working even close to 2 fps. It's impossible for me to know exactly what rate everything is running at without seeing some sort of timeline of exactly what frames are doubled up or reused.

I did some tests and it seems that MI1 and MI2 run at about 6fps. My tests weren't amazingly scientific, however (I just put the walk cycle sprites into an animated gif and played with the number of frames per second until it roughly matched what ScummVM looked like).

This is wrong. I think you didn't know what native fps you were working in, but I'm not sure.

So you put the 6 frame walk cycle in? Even though I knew beforehand there was no way that Guybrush is performing 2 steps (the full 6 frame walk cycle) in one second, I went ahead and tested this in Flash. If I test the six available walk cycle frames displaying one time each, evenly spaced out at 5 repeated frames per sprite each in a 30 fps native environment, you get the walk cycle running at half speed or less than what it is in the game. Way too slow. My best guess without seeing how it's actually set up in the game and trying to recreate it myself is that it the loop repeats 2-2.5 times per second (I think it may be exactly 2 times), making the frame rate (for the walk at least) 12-15 fps.

I can even make a swf for you if you want and send it to you. The lower frames per second you have, the slower your animation will perform. Again, almost nothing in Secret of Monkey Island is performing at 2 fps, if anything even is (I think even the guy that has 3 frames slowly rocking back and forth on the barrel that Buemba mentioned earlier is running even faster than that). I'll give you that it's possible many animations in the game are performing at 6 fps, but it's certainly not Guybrush's walk cycle or his special animations. And it's especially not LeChuck's death scene. If you were to put all of the frames for that animation running at a rate of 6 fps it would be ridiculously slow.

As a big fan of MI2 I'm much more worried about what seems to be re-interpretation of the original rather than just giving it the "hi-def" treat.

(pictures)

In the new one it looks like a natural cave. The exposed ends of the metal mesh got replaced by tree roots.

With the twist end in mind it looks like a big faux-pas, weakening the ambiguity of the finale

whether the amusement park is real or a spell by LeChuck

.[/Quote]

Yikes, I can definitely see what you mean by that (besides both Guybrush and Elaine being very ugly), but it is worrying they didn't understand that Guybrush blew a hole into a modern day concrete sewer. Tree roots?! How did they get tree roots?! I always assumed those were the steel girder bar thingys that are inside every chunk of structural concrete. I must stay positive...

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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My best guess without seeing how it's actually set up in the game and trying to recreate it myself is that it the loop repeats 2-2.5 times per second (I think it may be exactly 2 times), making the frame rate (for the walk at least) 12-15 fps.

I understand you, but that's not what I saw.

I can even make a swf for you if you want and send it to you. The lower frames per second you have, the slower your animation will perform. Again, almost nothing in Secret of Monkey Island is performing at 2 fps, if anything even is (I think even the guy that has 3 frames slowly rocking back and forth on the barrel that Buemba mentioned earlier is running even faster than that). I'll give you that it's possible many animations in the game are performing at 6 fps, but it's certainly not Guybrush's walk cycle or his special animations. And it's especially not LeChuck's death scene. If you were to put all of the frames for that animation running at a rate of 6 fps it would be ridiculously slow.

Here's a 6 frames-per-second Guybrush (the dot represents a second - it's not perfect because I couldn't give a frame 0.1666666r seconds).

guybrush-6fps.gif

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Yeah, that takes roughly double the time to finish as it does in game. If you count a second while watching a gameplay video, it's hard to see because things are moving around, but basically 4 feet forward get in for most, if not all characters I've seen so far. I'm counting even one second with Guybrush and LeChuck talking during gameplay and I'd say even people talking (especially in all of the different expressions in 2) are usually running at roughly 12 frames per second, I think.

Maybe it would be easier for you to tell if you took a special animation of some character doing something still and comparing it to how it is in the game?

I was looking at this video where there's a lot of stuff going on:

If you put together the part where LeChuck stabs the voodoo doll from here at 6 fps, it will mostly likely end in double the ttime, assuming you pick a part where no frames are being held:

http://sdb.drshnaps.com/objects/17/784/Sprite/MI2LeChuckSheet.png

Also LeChuck's walk cycle is easier to see since he walks across the screen slower. So if you count 1 second while he moves between rooms in the video, you'll see he only gets about 2 (or slightly more) feet or arms forward per second since LeChuck's 6 frame walk cycle is basically him lunging himself forward once each time. He's walking half the speed of most of the other characters I've looked at, but at double the amount of frames per step. So you may want to check that out instead.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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This looks better than SMI:SE, but I don't think its possible for this game to excite me anymore.

I was pretty excited about the first remake, and looking back I'm not sure why. I mean, I know WHY... it's because I'm a huge Monkey Island dork. I have big blown up prints of the first two game's cover art in my room. But with hindsight I should have expected to be disappointed.

Yeah, some problems with the first look like they're being addressed here: the character models actually look great (except, weirdly enough, for Elaine and Guybrush), for instance. But there were a couple problems in the first that I don't expect to go away in the second; problems that are inherent to the idea of a remake in the first place.

1) The original backgrounds were already so damn good. The SE team knows this, and are obviously trying to change as little design as possible. As a result, however, the new backgrounds look like someone put an oil painting filter over Steve's originals and called it a day. Yeah, that's harsh... they look nice enough. But when backgrounds like these move from extreme low resolution to extreme high resolution without anything added, I can't help but be more enamored with the originals. (side note: the only background in SMI:SE that I actually liked better than the original was outside the SCUMM bar, with the addition of ships in port. That was pretty)

2) Voice acting. I love the CMI cast. Love 'em. I was shitting my pants in anticipation of hearing Dom in SMI. But what actually happened, when I played the remake, was that the voice acting took so much away from every line. These games weren't written with VO in mind, and there's no way to hide it. Admittedly, a lot of the lines are funnier with the lens of nostalgia, but I honestly believe that voice over also detracted something... or at least, emphasized how awkward some of the lines are read out loud.

So yeah. I'm pretty pessimistic, I guess.

One way this game can't possibly disappoint me, however, is that it's the only way I know I can get several people to play Monkey Island 2. Greater exposure to one of the greats is always a good thing.

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One way this game can't possibly disappoint me, however, is that it's the only way I know I can get several people to play Monkey Island 2. Greater exposure to one of the greats is always a good thing.

This is the best part. No matter how you do a remake, the old fans will find reasons to take issue with it, but the fact that new people will be playing the game is just fantastic.

Personally, I like that they're not being as slavish about recreating the original this time around.

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One way this game can't possibly disappoint me, however, is that it's the only way I know I can get several people to play Monkey Island 2. Greater exposure to one of the greats is always a good thing.

The developer commentary with Gilbert, Schafer and I think Grossman isn't exciting? Nor the art viewer? :)

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Personally, I like that they're not being as slavish about recreating the original this time around.

Are they matching animation frames up with the original again, like last time? If that's indeed the only way they can incorporate the neat back-and-forth old-to-new switch function, then I guess its worth it... but I question the benefit of having shiny new graphics and twenty year old level frame rates.

EDIT:

The developer commentary with Gilbert, Schafer and I think Grossman isn't exciting? Nor the art viewer? :)

Ok, that's kind of exciting. The commentary, I mean.

I don't know anything about the art viewer. I guess I missed that bullet point.

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I went to quote a part of your post to reply to, and it had changed. You were trying to sabotage my post, and make me claim to be a moron!

Sly.

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Hum. It's an improvement, but it's still lacking in the beauty of the originals. Also, the voice over work in the previous SE (barring a few exceptions) was utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly, utterly atrocious. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The makers seemed to think (unbelievably) that, "Hey, this is a funny game - let's give everyone a really stupid voice! That will make it funnier, right? Yeah!". I don't these SE's are what the makers dreamed of playing when they were younger (NOBODY who played the original ever wished he looked like he did in the first SE, "more hair, surf dude, dorkier - that's better!").

Still, I'm glad they're being made and I will most definitely enjoy the commentary (WOW, are we lucky to have that!). And, on the plus side, the developers do seem to have heard the complaints about the first game, so maybe things will be better here. (The backgrounds are already a gigantic improvement - just not as beautiful as the originals.)

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(The backgrounds are already a gigantic improvement - just not as beautiful as the originals.)

I'd be very, very surprised if anyone can outdo Peter Chan and Steve Purcell, especially in a Monkey Island game. But they did a very good job, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. I think the swamp, especially because of the water, will look great in their painterly style.

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I'd be very, very surprised if anyone can outdo Peter Chan and Steve Purcell, especially in a Monkey Island game. But they did a very good job, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. I think the swamp, especially because of the water, will look great in their painterly style.

Actually it's one I like the least so far...

swamp1.gif

swamp2.jpg

It looks so washed out compared to the original and really highlights what I'm talking about: Technically impressive, with no real beauty.

I tried to restore some of the balance from the original, with limited success:

swamp3.jpg

Still, it's very nice that they've tried to be as faithful as possible.

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Youuu...just made everything darker. Are you trying to add stronger colors instead? That's the only thing I miss.

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