toblix

Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

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I'd imagine size is the biggest factor. Lots of people (including me) will be playing S&M on high resolutions like 1920x1080, especially on the HD console releases. I don't know how many long cutscenes there are, but even a minute of HD footage could set you back at least 100MB — unless you compress it so much it's obviously a video.

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Plus the shift from in-game to pre-rendered is always obnoxious and obvious. I just wish stuff was more optimized all around.

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Pre-rendered video used to be cool, a treat even, but I think somewhere around 2001-2002 it started wearing out it's welcome as realtime stuff started looking better and better.

I agree with Kingz and Thrik, it tends to just look tacky now. Not only is the resolution change jurring but also, add that a lot of new games play at 60 fps and then a prerendered video sequence stuck between scenes at 30 fps just comes off weird these days.

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Well, it can be done gracefully — see Uncharted 2 for a good example. Of course that's all well and good for them with a billion gigabytes of Blu-ray to fill. :tmeh:

Much harder on the PC I guess due to the huge variation in settings and stuff. Perhaps use a separate set of videos for each graphics setting! :spiraldy:

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This may be easy enough to look up, but I'll just ask it here instead. If I paid the $35 on the PS3 for this, it will just let me download the next episode right (no extra charge, no input of a code or something)...and will it prompt me to download when I log on to the PSN store once the new episode is released? It doesn't really matter because I usually check the PSN for updates once a week but I'm just curious.

I don't know quite how the messaging or actual path works, but you should be receiving the whole season, as they're released, one ep at a time. I don't know if the store updates your PS3 automatically or if you need to check once a week, but .... somehow you have them :)

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That's weird. No notification email, but I'm downloading the episode right now from Telltale's website, so I guess it's available. Either way, I've got it in time, so I'm plenty happy. Will start playing during downtime at work tonight! Whoo!

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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.

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I'm absolutely loving this episode. The use of film reels to break up the structure is brilliant and it's an insanely creative episode. The plan is to beat the game before sleeping tonight. Man, Telltale, never fucking change. This season is a thing of beauty.

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And finished. That was pretty damn rad. I got sorta stumped twice, but eventually fumbled my way through. Awesome to see early versions of

Santa and Jurgen

in the episode. The only complaint that I really have about the whole thing is again due to the controls. Especially during the In the Tomb reel, Sam would often not even seem to try to go the direction I was telling him to. I'd be holding W to try to get him to walk forwards and he'd be shuffling along to the right or something stupid like that. It was most noticeable when going around the

stand that had the Devil's Toybox on it

.

Also, damn the cliffhangers this season. I guess after (ToMI spoiler)

killing Guybrush

Telltale has really got a taste for ending the episodes with a flourish of suspense. I'm starting to wish I didn't play these games the day that they come out so that I'd have less time to wait between episodes.

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I dreamt that I played the game last night and it ran much smoother than The Penal Zone with all the bells and whistles.

Between houses, no internet anywhere but at work, no computer set up yet, etc.

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Well, it can be done gracefully — see Uncharted 2 for a good example. Of course that's all well and good for them with a billion gigabytes of Blu-ray to fill. :tmeh:

To tell the truth, I didn't find the scenes done that gracefully in Uncharted 2, their only real merit being videos I could actually skip as opposed to the in-game stuff that was forced on me. All of those were recorded from the in game engine anyway, the only reason for them being prerendered was to easily change the lighting scene to scene.

Also it helps that Uncharted 2 runs at 30 fps, just like it's cutscenes.

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I'm absolutely loving this episode. The use of film reels to break up the structure is brilliant and it's an insanely creative episode. The plan is to beat the game before sleeping tonight. Man, Telltale, never fucking change. This season is a thing of beauty.

Seconded. At first, I didn't understand what was going on with the film reels, but once I did, I loved it. It seems Telltale is going all out to change up the formula this season. I love it!

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I dreamt that I played the game last night and it ran much smoother than The Penal Zone with all the bells and whistles.

Between houses, no internet anywhere but at work, no computer set up yet, etc.

Assuming you downloaded Mac 302 after 6pm pacific time (you'll have version 1.0.1.25 instead of 1.0.0.25), your Mac performance should be... real... and not the hobbled insanity that was episode 301. We'll be updating Mac 301 soon as well.

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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.

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Man, I thought the structure of the first episode was great, but this one ups the ante even more. Man. So great. I love the things Telltale is doing here! I am so glad they exist. :3

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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.

Don't semi-recent MacBook Pros have two different GPUs? Mac Steam can prompt you to switch to the better (but more power-hungry) one, and we didn't know they had that flag until 302. So, if you're in power-saving mode, it should always warn you now when launching a Sam & Max game.

Man, I thought the structure of the first episode was great, but this one ups the ante even more. Man. So great. I love the things Telltale is doing here! I am so glad they exist. :3

Thanks :) Me too... obviously

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I have only played this one for an hour or so, but so far so awesome!Still very fresh! Fantastic start for the new season. :tup:

Assuming you downloaded Mac 302 after 6pm pacific time (you'll have version 1.0.1.25 instead of 1.0.0.25), your Mac performance should be... real... and not the hobbled insanity that was episode 301. We'll be updating Mac 301 soon as well.

Seems to run much better now with my Macbook Pro (the one with two Nvidia chips). Everything is pretty smooth with graphics quality set to 6 but 7 is a bit too much. Did you guys already figure out how to get the realtime shadows thing working on Mac or is it still in the making?

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To tell the truth, I didn't find the scenes done that gracefully in Uncharted 2, their only real merit being videos I could actually skip as opposed to the in-game stuff that was forced on me. All of those were recorded from the in game engine anyway, the only reason for them being prerendered was to easily change the lighting scene to scene.

Also it helps that Uncharted 2 runs at 30 fps, just like it's cutscenes.

Well by gracefully I just meant transparently. I didn't even realise that's what they were doing until after I'd finished it — I just assumed it was all rendered in-engine. I wouldn't want the cutscenes to be more detailed or anything (beyond LODing) as that generally looks a bit lame.

Metal Gear Solid 4 pulled a similar trick a number of times, where they had so much detail packed in it ran too slowly on the PS3 so they recorded it at a lower frame rate then sped it up. That would solve problems like mentioned above where S&M's cutscenes alone run quite badly but the game is OK, but as I say not ideal on the million-configurations nature of the PC.

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Thanks :) Me too... obviously

Of course! Good work deserves praise and merits pride. I can only hope any games I work on in the future are as well-crafted and well received. O:

And now I must play more of this game!

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Don't semi-recent MacBook Pros have two different GPUs? Mac Steam can prompt you to switch to the better (but more power-hungry) one, and we didn't know they had that flag until 302. So, if you're in power-saving mode, it should always warn you now when launching a Sam & Max game.
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.

Am I stretching to say there's a bit of an homage to Last Express?

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At the last reel right now.

Timing based puzzles with constantly repeated dialogue need to die and never come back. This is worse than LeChuck punching me around the ship.

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Yeah that last reel was a bitch. There's an item interaction you may be missing that it took me fucking forever to find. Mildly spoiler-ish hint to follow:

Think about ways you may be able to swat your toys out of the air. Think of an indie game title to figure out the rest.

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Does anybody know how to close the Mac version if you can't get to the main menu? I was in the Tomb asking about the curses and selected

Benny's curse

which was grayed out (although I'm pretty sure I hadn't talked about that before) and it brought up a new speech menu with no items and no way to go back. CMD+Tab and other usual stuff didn't work and I was forced to slam my keyboard until it activated Voiceover and I got sent back to the desktop.

I don't understand why I can't go to the main menu anymore during cutscenes or speech sections. They could have just have left out the save/load part.

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A friend informed me that my posts in this thread make me look like the stereotypical 15-year-old fanboy. Looking back now, I can't disagree. And it makes me feel dirty. ):

But hey! I just finished the game and it was awesome!

In an effort to sound less like a raving fanboy, however...

At the last reel right now.

Timing based puzzles with constantly repeated dialogue need to die and never come back. This is worse than LeChuck punching me around the ship.

I agree, I'm not a fan. I actually thought the ending was altogether pretty weak, though Sameth and Maximus'

death by stupidity

made me giggle.

Overall, with the crazy structure of the story and the excellent writing and the return of

Jurgen (who will probably always make me laugh because he's so fruity)

(does this need to be spoiler-tagged? probably not, it's just the name of a returning character, but whatever...), it was pretty fantastic. Can't wait 'til episode three!

Biggest surprise for me was how much I liked

Baby Amelia Earhart

(another returning character). I wasn't really a huge fan the first time around.

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