Grim Fandango being remastered for PS4 and Vita

[Brannigan]

When I was a kid, Ted Turner was obsessed with colorizing old films.  My first viewing of a lot of classics was the colorized version, because seeing them on Turner owned stations was the only way to watch them at all.  Weirdly enough, a massive pushback and near legal standoff over colorizing Citizen Kane was one of the things that slowed down, and almost stopped for awhile, the colorization of classics. 

 

And this concludes today's episode of random shit I don't need to know, but do. 

http://youtu.be/Hx8uZ5R3EGA?t=4m43s

[SecretAsianMan]

http://youtu.be/Hx8uZ5R3EGA?t=4m43s

 

I was trying to find a clip from Family Guy of Ted Turner saying he's colorized the moon, but that works too.

[Brannigan]

Duke Phillips is much better

 

I mean..  ALL HAIL DUKE, ALL HAIL DUKE

[SiN]

Yeah, I'm crazy excited, but there's no real indication as to what they're going to do (yet). That said, a lot of "remastering" going around, and not "re-releasing" so that seems encouraging.

 

My guess as to what's going to happen:

• Gameplay bugfixes.
• Redesigned controls and "modernized" interface: Relative-to-the-screen (not character) based movement, and contextual use/examine popups for the objects. Of course, there will be an the option to turn these off.
• Newly modelled and animated characters.
• Re-rendered cutscenes at higher resolution and better compression.
• Here's the big one: re-rendered, widescreen background art. Assuming they have the original assets, and they're in a reasonable state, this doesn't seem unreasonable. It would be crazy to release a non-widescreen game with upscaled 640x480 backgrounds on a modern console.

 

Things I don't think will happen:

• Any kind of changes to voiceovers, storyline, puzzle design, etc. 
• Making the backgrounds real-time. I imagine a lot of the background art was created to be viewed from a fixed perspective, so a lot of set design-esque tricks were likely used.

 

[tegan]

By the way guys, keep in mind that you'll almost certainly be able to play this on the totally affordable and kind of awesome looking Playstation TV if you want to play it on a console  but don't want a PS4.

[thorn]

You mean the one with the last scenes "accidentally" xeroxed over because Schafer hadn't finished writing it?

 

Does anybody have a copy of that around? I didn't hold onto one, and then it got taken down.

 

Yup, that's the one. Apparently I can't attach files to a PM. Send me your email address in a message and I'll email it to you.

 

hope all the DLC is included. 

 

Huh?

 

 

Am I the only one in the world who likes the original Grim Fandango controls? Almost no UI overlay, the ability to easily run in a straight line across screens even as the camera changes angles wildly!

 

I don't mind the controls; I just hate the way that you can be running in a straight line, then suddenly veer off to the side because of some invisible obstacle or corner.

 

 

 

Also, what's wrong with Glottis' mouth?

 

 

 

 

[syntheticgerbil]

I want to get a gold trophy for properly chanting with the sea bees.

[Merus]

Also, what's wrong with Glottis' mouth?

 

He has a very big one that stretches across his face, so the animation needs more frames in it for it to look good. At that point, it's probably easier to just give him a polygonal mouth; he already clashes with the world as a big orange demon, so it hopefully won't look jarring compared to the skeletons.

[Ben X]

Yeah, I'm crazy excited, but there's no real indication as to what they're going to do (yet). That said, a lot of "remastering" going around, and not "re-releasing" so that seems encouraging.

 

My guess as to what's going to happen:

• Gameplay bugfixes.
• Redesigned controls and "modernized" interface: Relative-to-the-screen (not character) based movement, and contextual use/examine popups for the objects. Of course, there will be an the option to turn these off.
• Newly modelled and animated characters.
• Re-rendered cutscenes at higher resolution and better compression.
• Here's the big one: re-rendered, widescreen background art. Assuming they have the original assets, and they're in a reasonable state, this doesn't seem unreasonable. It would be crazy to release a non-widescreen game with upscaled 640x480 backgrounds on a modern console.

 

Yeah, Residual fixed the gameplay bugs and iirc added camera-relative controls to their version, so that should be a given.

I hope they manage to retain the original character animations. Thunderpeel's Grim Fandango Deluxe fan project managed to (before enthusiasm dwindled and left it in limbo). I also hope they have all the original assets for cutscenes and backgrounds so they don't have to recreate stuff.

Like I said, though, widescreen would require more than just adding to the original background artwork (which presumably was created to the in-game ratio, so there wouldn't be widescreen originals) or creating whole new widescreen backgrounds - if they want to avoid weird invisible walls in a load of scenes, they'd have to create new walk boxes etc, which may be going further into it than they intend to.

I like the way Glottis' mouth animates, it's just when he opens it wide and you can see the gaps through to his body that it looks iffy.

 

I hope whatever they do, they also release a debugged, future-proofed version with no other changes. Then they can go crazy with the HD version and it won't matter if certain stuff is inevitably lost in translation.

[SiN]

I also hope they have all the original assets for cutscenes and backgrounds so they don't have to recreate stuff.

 

Honestly, I don't think they'd have announced this remastered version if they didn't have the original assets.

 

Think about it: Sony/Disney would be crazy to make such a high profile announcement over a 640x480 upscaled, letterbox game. 

And Double Fine would be crazy to sign a deal where they had to recreate all the assets. (and even if DF proposed that, Disney/Sony would be crazy to actually fund it!)

 

Like I said, though, widescreen would require more than just adding to the original background artwork (which presumably was created to the in-game ratio, so there wouldn't be widescreen originals)

 

My understanding is that the scenes were created in 3D modeling package (3ds max, or something) and a camera was pointed at the scene to be rendered. So unlike a painted/drawn background, more than *exactly* what was required for the scene was built. Think of it more like a film set, and less like a painting.

 

If that's the case, making them widescreen isn't a huge stretch, especially if you need to re-render them anyway.

[Ben X]

All good points!

 

I still suspect that they'd have to muck about with camera position and walk boxes etc to facilitate WS, though. I'm not saying they won't do that, just that it's a large enough undertaking that I won't be surprised either way.

[Erkki]

Are walk boxes that tough? I guess changing old ones could be a source for bugs, but adding some doesn't sound like that much work, unless the pipeline of getting them in there is really difficult?

[SiN]

It's not technically challenging, but it is time consuming. And Grim has a lot of scenes.

[Roderick]

Yeah, but that's kinda the whole game! We're not talking about a huge amount of systems that need to be replaced, it's all 'just' a bunch of linear if/then states. I think they'll be able to do this properly and it won't be exorbitantly time-consuming or expensive.

[SiN]

Yeah, agreed. It's small potatoes compared to the usual game development code & art tasks.

[Salacious Snake]

I love Grim Fandango. When it came out, I was in my first year of college, and I pulled an all-nighter in my dorm room to complete the game in one go. (Previously in the same day, I played through the second disc of Curse of Monkey Island, coincidentally.) I never applied that kind of zeal to school work, which is probably why I flunked out the next semester.

 

Grim Fandango fully absorbed me. It's a wonderful thing, and I'm very excited to play it again. And this time I won't get stuck on those fucking beavers for so long.

[Apelsin]

Question is how big of a remaster this will be? Has there been any mention if this is just basically a compatability patch?

[Thrik]

I think we just spent the last two pages establishing that we have no god damn idea.

If you watch Double Fine's Grim Fandango retrospective (My site is in it!) it seems that even they aren't quite sure yet and are actively seeking feedback and indications of what the community wants to see. Presumably Schafer is poring all over this thread RIGHT NOW.

[melmer]

You should contact him! For reals.

Who was making the fan HD upgrade? That's a forum member isn't it

[Roderick]

Tim, if you're reading this GET BACK TO WORK YOU VAGRANT

[Udvarnoky]

I'm leaning toward this being more of a compatibility upgrade with a few bells and whistles thrown in that are inspired by the various fan efforts over the years - anything lower level seems like it would be too massive an undertaking for Sony to cut the check for. 

 

I think a lot of what they'll be able to do will depend on if they can get access to the original assets.  In theory, being able to get into those 3D environments in the source tools again will allow them to re-render their angles in widescreen, and hopefully uncompressed versions of all the cutscenes exists as well.  I suspect an awful lot of resources would have to be preserved for them to be able to actually recreate those FMVs with any kind of ease and thereby make them properly widescreen, so I'm not going to be surprised if we end up with windowboxed cutscenes.

 

I don't see an easy way to dramatically improve the game's resolution, either.  Surely they can't get away with increasing it too much without having to repaint every single texture, which seems a task beyond reason, although I have no idea what all those environments actually look like "raw" and uncensored.  Would simply re-genning those backgrounds in super-res look okay, or reveal that they only look any good at the target resolution?  And is it as easy to re-render them as we're assuming at all?  Did they touch them up after?  What about the effects, like the water in Rubacava?

 

I'd like to believe that the original audio assets still exist, too.  Imagine uncompressed voicework and perfect fidelity McConnell?  Yes please I'll take twelve.

[Roderick]

Uncompressed Tony Plana would be akin to sex in my ear.

[Ben X]

Who was making the fan HD upgrade? That's a forum member isn't it

 

It was/is Thunderpeel! Is no one reading this thread properly?!

[feelthedarkness]

I hope/kind of assume they'll do what they did with the Monkey Island HD special editions, which is to try and fix and polish, but let you run the original as well? 

[Jake]

I thought this video showed that Grim could go widescreen without much change to the underlying structure. It means Manny never walks off screen since the camera would cut at 4:3 edges, but I think that would be totally fine. I don't notice it in the video.