Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse

[miffy495]

Hey, I'm 22. I don't get curmudgeon status until at least my mid-30's.

I tried to be as nice about it as I could. I really don't mind direct control. If I were the kind of person that would be turned off by it entirely, I would have missed Grim Fandango. To anyone who missed Grim Fandango for that reason, fuck you. Seriously. Still, I do feel that the click and drag analog stick that Telltale uses is irritating, and the WASD keys keep getting me stuck on geometry, as I mentioned. I'm still playing the game, and I really do understand why the controls are the way they are, but I would still like to have an option somewhere for click-to-move. I'm sure that it's probably just the case that it would be too time-consuming to add it in, and I'd accept that as a reason, but it can't stop me from wishing I could control it the way that feels natural to me, can it?

[brkl]

"Move where I click" wouldn't work because they would have to redo the entire game so that every part of the floor you can move to is always visible. This way they can be a lot of more creative about the scenes.

Yeah, I switched over to gamepad control and never looked back, which makes me wish I had bought it on the PS3 because the gamepad is just not very comfortable ergonomically on the PC.

[Garple]

Bein' all defensive

Hey, I said, "just teasin.'"

:grin:

well you can always make me pay for my transgression in GTA next week.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah, I found that too. My issue with the sound was that the music was inconsistently balanced; in some scenes I had to turn it way down to the lowest notch to be able to hear the voices, but in others it was so quiet as to be almost inaudible.

This has been a complaint of mine since the first episode of Season 1. It's quite annoying that they can't seem to get this right. I generally always have to turn down the background music in order to be able to hear what everyone is saying (haven't done it with Season 3 yet, though) -- which usually causes me no problems -- until a musical number suddenly erupts. Yes, the big central focus, everyone singing - choreography, animation, but I couldn't hear it because it was classified as "music" in the soundmix. Utterly retarded. Hint to TT: Musical numbers count as dialogue!

In the Devil's Playhouse 1, lots of dialogue was just plain missing for me. No idea why. Not a word could be heard (unless it was REALLY low and I just didn't have my speakers turned up?).

[thorn]

I've played a bit more today and I think the biggest issue with the sound volume is General Skunkape's voice. It's about 20% louder than any other character's, meaning that I either struggle to hear Sam, Max and Superball or my ears get blasted with shouty ape. I ended up sitting there with my hand on the volume knob, spinning it up and down to keep things at a healthy volume.

[JTTalker]

I've never encountered any problems with the audio in TT games, but I always use headphones. Are you all like the old people at the nursing home that yell about how the commercials are too loud then complain that they can't hear when the show comes on? I didn't know you guys were that old. I'm a hip youngster.

Well, I do know you have to complain about these things to fix them. I just like ridiculing people. But seriously, I haven't encountered any problems.

[MrHoatzin]

shouty ape

lol

[Erkki]

Are you all like the old people at the nursing home that yell about how the commercials are too loud then complain that they can't hear when the show comes on? I didn't know you guys were that old. I'm a hip youngster.

What? Are you saying commercials aren't too loud? It depends on the channel probably, but many channels seem to make commercials way louder than shows.

[ThunderPeel2001]

What? Are you saying commercials aren't too loud? It depends on the channel probably, but many channels seem to make commercials way louder than shows.

Yes, they definitely do. It's very annoying.

Maybe I'm

Edited May 13, 2010 by ThunderPeel2001

[miffy495]

At least as far as movies go, you aren't imagining things. Speaking from the projection/presentation side of things, people who make trailers tend to rely on the fact that most projectionists will just start shit and walk away. My theater not being automated, I need to stay in the booth until after the advertisements end, and this means that I'm there to tweak the volume for both. There are at least 2 units on the volume knob between trailers and the actual movie in order to keep the two sounding about the same in the theater. If you don't have somebody hovering over the volume knob, the advertisements are much louder than the movie.

Anyway, Sam and Max. Enough of me being

[Nappi]

The last Sam & Max episode I played was Moai Better Blues and I didn't enjoy it very much. I'm so glad that, encouraged by the Scoggins deal, I still decided to purchase this season. Penal Zone was fresh! The actual beginning (after the spaceship part) was the best thing ever. This is probably my favorite Telltale Games episode yet.

The city was fantastic and it felt great spending most of the episode in an ordinary setting. I really hope Sam & Max will not spend the next four episodes in space or whatever.

[brkl]

Moai Better Blues is probably the low point of the season it's on, so that's understandable.

[Forbin]

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?

[Jake]

My advice is to play the new ones first and then if you like them, go back and check out the old stuff. The first season is, in my opinion, really well written, and has some clever stuff in it (especially in the second half), but it's a lot more rough and its "this is our first try at this!" nature shows pretty clearly. As a first impression you're probably better off with the newest season.

[lobotomy42]

I just finished the Penal Zone. It was fantastic! By far, the best Telltale episode yet. The psychic toys change the experience up in a surprisingly substantial way. Plus, the future-vision allows the game to play with form and make some clever meta-jokes as well. I was really impressed with this one!

[Forbin]

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".

Edited May 17, 2010 by Forbin

[brkl]

New episode tomorrow. Candidate's Thesis due noon Thursday. This is bad.

[miffy495]

I've gotten back to my replay of all the earlier Sam and Max games after the Penal Zone got me up for more. Just finished Night of the Raving Dead. Really enjoying the earlier stuff now. It's been long enough that I've forgotten how to do everything, so it feels really fresh. I think I'm actually enjoying the games more the second time through.

I didn't know the next episode was out tomorrow. Totally psyched and ready to get into the game now. Booyah.

[Jake]

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".

Try kicking graphics quality down to 6, which kills realtime shadows. Some Macs seem to be really eating our shadow implementation, and we're working on it.

[MrHoatzin]

Try kicking graphics quality down to 6, which kills realtime shadows. Some Macs seem to be really eating our shadow implementation, and we're working on it.

I wish there was a more granular way of tweaking the quality, for the geeks. I went looking for an ini file and didn't find one.

[Garple]

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.

[juv3nal]

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'll find out when I get home tonight (I think the next ep. comes out tonight?), but there better not be an extra charge because I was pretty sure I paid for the whole season.

There shouldn't be any code input since I was never given a code to input when I got the first one.

I'm guessing it won't prompt you to download though just because I haven't seen anything do that yet unless you count patching type updates. It's possible if you fire up the first episode it may prompt you, but I don't think going into PSN will do it. You probably need to navigate over to the 'new stuff' section and find it to download it.

[miffy495]

Is there a time that this is set to come out? I'd really like to get it on my laptop before leaving for work tonight...

[Thrik]

I'd forget about it. Past releases have had delays and you're best off saving yourself the frustration. You don't want to be one of the TTG forum obsessos going mental because it's five hours later than announced.

[Forbin]

Try kicking graphics quality down to 6, which kills realtime shadows. Some Macs seem to be really eating our shadow implementation, and we're working on it.

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.