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It's not as if anyone has forgotten the game exists, but someone has to do the work. A lot of game engines have very few active developers. What's most likely to produce results: Complaining, or offering to help?

Hey all, thanks for giving DREAMM and try and for the great feedback so far! I've just released a new beta (1.0b3). Give it a play and let me know if it fixes any issues you encountered. Changes: • Added Hercules mode support for Maniac/Zak/SoMI. • Add integral scaling (Alt+I), on by default, which only stretches game screens horizontally by integral amounts. • Improved scaling logic to support 3x and 4x scaling in software to reduce jaggies and improve smoothness. • Improve overall smoothness of video updates. • The most recent configuration settings are now used for new games. • Report missing EXE files even when running from the command line. • Fix problems locating munt DLL when running from the frontend. • Fix long hangs/crashes in Sam & Max CD version. • Fix mouse wrapping at far edges of the screen. • Fix Unicode error when asking if you want to remove an entry. New beta here (it's linked above but links are pretty subtle here): https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/

I’m closing the thread. 😒

Sneak peek. Don't have time for more right now.

In an apparent second round of raising awareness, German magazine GameStar published an interview with Ron and Dave just two weeks ago. It's behind a paywall, but I have no doubts that absolutely no new information is contained for the English speaking world. The journalists have sent their questions right at the beginning of April and have only recently heard back from them. The Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are similarly crazy for the ol' point'n'click (no, seriously, I am not kidding. Tim was wrong), I guess they've gotten their "exclusives" these days also. And, seriously, these guys are all (still) happily falling over themselves to promote ReMI, and they're a bit insulted that it took Terrible T. so long to use them. There is only so much buzz you can create with the extremely limited info that they repeatedly divulge at the time, but from the looks of it, marketing for Return to Monkey Island has never stopped. The "backlash" created by really just a few people has had no effect here. If anything, the buzz is much greater around ReMI than around any other Devolver game in recent history. As has been demonstrated in this forum and elsewhere, reviving the Monkey Island brand has brought Devolver new customers, and they're likely aware of it. And come to speak of it, I haven't heard any kind of overly negative comments during the last weeks. These people are not gaining a foothold in actual Monkey Island or point & click communities. They rant in completely different communities that wouldn't play ReMI anyway – and in those Oceans of Eternal Rant, a single thread about Return's aesthetics really doesn't make a difference.

Isn't it nice that we can all share different opinions like this that are so vast in their nuance and still be really respectful to each other? Just let that sink in for a minute; how often does that happen? This is one of the reasons I find the Mojo forums so comforting, it really is filled with the friendliest people. Now to change all that with my hugely controversial opinion... ...I like Herman Toothrot the most in EMI.

Okay I've scanned in the relevant page of the most accurate one I could get ahold of, which is still not perfect but its pretty dang close. 1990: Update: The 1993 map is actually probably correct? The printing makes it look like there's some subtle differences in line weight, but I dont think there actually are - it really is just the result of the ink going on a little heavier and the color matching being different. 1993: (It's not perfectly correct; the red index numbers above the roads don't line up with the HTR box, but seems to have more of the right roads.) I've uploaded them: Scans of the left and right sides of the 1990 and 1993 map can be found here.

I bet not, even though it seems that way. There was the announcement trailer that blew up decently, then a good number of interviews that seemed redundant to us but did a good job of going wide with the news of the games’ existence, casting a broad net to scoop up more fans and get them on the same page. I suspect as we get closer to launch the rate of media will increase. I expected a trailer of some kind at the Devolver event and still expect one soonish, but don’t think there was some media blitz that got pushed back. I think the tuned in fans are just hungrier than normal people so for us it seems like starving off scraps, while for everyone else they’re just not thinking about the game much, but will be once a bigger push starts closer to launch.

I don't know how unpopular a sentiment this is, because I've seen it parroted with reasonable regularity since 1997. And it comes off as gatekeepery as it ever did. I don't direct this at you specifically, but so often over the years misgivings with CMI have been framed in terms of legitimacy, and it makes me feel like I'm in church. The ways in which the game may be a departure from what came before make for interesting discussion that I have thoughts on myself, but interesting discussion is out of season once the dreaded "authenticity" angle comes in.

It's a process where audio is processed to be in its released form, and some of the things that might be involved, for example, include applying some equalisation and compression in order to make all the sounds which were recorded across several months and in 3 studios sound like they all come from the same game. There's a -little- bit of a grey area between mixing and mastering, especially when talking about music, but generally mastering is the stage after all the volume levels and FX processing and editing has been applied, the final piece of processing that needs to be done in order to ensure that everything sounds nice and consistent.

I think it’s simpler than that even: The people who are predisposed to talk about it on their own will do that; you don’t really need to give them any more (even though they’ll ask for it). But the people who are vaguely interested (but not totally tuned in or predisposed to care about your thing on autopilot) you only get a few shots at them before they’re over saturated, before your marketing has diminishing returns. If you oversaturate too early you start hearing things like, “didn’t that come out already?” I know it’s not always true, and this might not be what they’re thinking, but I think generally it’s best to keep your powder dry and only do a few sparing attention-grabbing bursts of media until you’re ready to start telling everyone everything close to release (release date, cost, availability) or you lose people and then have to try harder to bring them back.

Well, the Bethesda Showcase invitation ticket also includes an Indy whip 👀

Well good morning Jake, I hear somebody's been playing cards with Ron Gilbert yesterd Uhm, nothing to see here.

I’m pretty sure a lot of game voice mastering is done in bulk, either a batch process that you then spot check, or literally stringing a bunch of the voice together in one long file and looking/listening to it. You don’t go and do each individual line in a vacuum, because the point is to get it all sounding uniform. So rating time-per-line isn’t going to be a useful metric.

All I ask is that the game doesn't come out during uni times. I'm gonna have assignments coming out of my butt, and I know I'll end up procrastinating to play it, which is not ideal

Ha, I just arrived here from my COMI playthrough, (finally arrived at Blood Island), so I actually read this in your voice! Oh, how my head likes to play games. On topic, I kinda love the activity in the forum lately because of the announcement of TOMI, so maybe I don't want it to come out, so we can keep speculating... FOREVER!! (That might be one for the unpopular opinions thread though.)

FWIW, I have no knowledge of whether or not a trailer exists and when said theoretical trailer will or will not be released (as evidenced by my erroneous prediction that we'd see one yesterday!). But that said, I am reasonably certain that the only reason there was no trailer yesterday is because they didn't want to show one yet. Whether it's a timing thing, they prefer a different presentation format, whatever, I have no idea. But speaking broadly, things like the audio mastering definitely wouldn't be an impediment.

I made a fanimation of @Marius's video!

I had a pretty big rant written here, where I explained once again that everything in ScummVM is *volunteer work* and if you're not okay with the direction it's currently taking you can do what I did and become a team member yourself, but even though I'm sick of the project getting crapped on for seemingly no good reason at all, I'd say this is not the place for this kind of discussions

It’s a fair point. I think it could set a nicer tone to only have positive reactions. We’ve only ever had the middle finger one previously, but I suspect the ‘nicer’ rolling eyes could actually end up being used more sincerely to unkind effect.

It’s really nice and nostalgic to see the old logo used again. With that said, I did enjoy how the gold guy was adaptable to being dressed up, turned into a skeleton, etc. 😀

We've heard you about the reactions and have updated them to hopefully make things better! Rolling Eyes has remained, but is now a neutral reaction so it doesn't remove reputation points anymore.

I think that Curse is a great game in a vacuum and it also might be the best MI when it comes to puzzle design... but it's a cluelessly terrible sequel to the first two games. It was always fascinating to me how CoMI rids MI of a few layers when it comes to its story (by mainly how it deals with MI2's ending) and how it tries to revert the characters to a "favorable from a marketing point of view" default state. For example Guybrush and Elaine are just together now again even though the problems of their relationship weren't resolved in the last game. But it's a Disney movie now, you can't have relationship issues in a Disney movie. And then you get all the returning characters, the unapologetic callbacks to the previous games, it just feels like the safe Hollywood sequel where everyone just acts very "marketable"... and that's the worst direction imaginable if you want to make something interesting. On the other hand it's a testament to the puzzle design, the art direction and the voice acting work that everything I just talked about kinda never bothered me.

When done right, yeah. I can't fully see Indy working as a shooter (he's pretty well defined as not killing everyone in sight), though Emperor's Tomb at least had the right idea (if a bit comically executed) regarding hand-to-hand combat. If the game focuses more on the puzzles and action setpieces, I'm in. Ah, who am I kidding, I'll get this no matter what.

Well an authentic Indy experience with Uncharted vibes would still be fucking amazing, wouldn'it?

Where could you possibly be going with this line of inquiry? 😅 I get it, you'd like to know whether they'll release next week. Now, that's fairly doubtful, but there are some good signs. We've been given the estimate that ReMI has 14,000 lines of dialog, now Ron has told us more than 13,000 lines are going to be remastered. He has also joked that it would be impossible to re-record the "forgotten" line about the real secret of Monkey Island, so we can assume that count is final. Larger budget productions often do voice recordings in earlier parts of the development process as they complete slices of the game. That's likely not in the budget here. So, yes, it's probably fair to assume that we're in the final stage of production. But as that includes not just audio, but also bugfixing, it's unclear what that means exactly for the schedule. A positive thought is of course that we can clearly expect ReMI to be "on schedule" for a 2022 release. And as November and December, and even the latter half of October traditionally are a release window that indies don't touch because of the dominant AAA releases ... ... four months to wait, max.

So this means that they are almost done with the dialogues, right?

Hey Benjamin, just wanted to say that this project great! What a wonderful idea and and contribution to preservation. I like that it‘s a reminder that, back then, the „experience“ of Monkey Island wasn‘t just playing the game, it was also holding a box, fiddling with the code wheel, and reading a manual.

Unsure if this is an unpopular or more of a factional opinion but... I personally view the games that followed MI2 as being the skin of the series draped over new bones. Curse took the series at face value and went down a very literal path that completely missed out on the sense of mystery and exploration the original 2 have. I don't think Curse is a bad game in a vacuum, but I do think it's a bad Monkey Island game. Exceptions being the VO and Murray.

So who thinks I'll be able to run RTMI? Or should I think about getting a new Mac?

It is at the very least quite similar to a puzzle in Infocom's game Sorcerer. Whether or not the MI4 developers had played it is, of course, an entirely different matter. I'm attaching an annotated transcript of that part of the game. (It uses Unix-style line breaks rather than DOS-style, but I hope it works.) It is, of course, a complete spoiler for that entire section. coal-mine.txt

I'm sure it was a mix of that, too. But I got a sense that if Residual (being the 3D sister to ScummVM -- supporting more than just LucasArts games by the end of its independent existence) had been very popular that it might have stayed separate. Perhaps wrongly. Either way, it was a separate project that had comparatively extremely slow development.

I'm actually kinda surprised - I really enjoyed the Mysts of Time and thought it was incredibly clever. One of my favourite puzzles from EMI in fact. Oh, and I did hear about it being based off of some other puzzle in some other game... but regardless, every time I replay Escape I really enjoy that part.

Absolutely true! I never imagined that this thread would be so fruitful – and friendly at the same time!

Yeah, you can be pretty sure that DREAMM won't introduce such changes. 😂 But that aside, I've seen maybe one ribbon on a real book (late 1800's) that was attached to the bottom. In some ways, it's more practical - the end doesn't get creased under the book, and it's slightly easier to remove it from the pages if the book is large (downwards rather than upwards). 😋 However, as far as I'm aware, book ribbons weren't even a thing in the 1700's anyway (not making an appearance until around 1850). But then, neither were grog machines or audio books-on-parrot.

The LucasArts logo was bad, but so was the rectangular big-L-big-M LucasFilm Games logo. Only the pre-1988 curved logo looked good.

I was tempted to fuel the fire by saying something outlandish like "Night Shift is the crown jewel of the LucasArts catalog," but I realized everyone would see through this puckish provocation because we all know in our hearts the studio peaked with Ballblazer.

“Fate of Atlantis is a good game” is in fact a widely-held, dare I say popular opinion. You’re safe. (And correct 😎) Love how spicy this thread is though.

It worked on my Steam Deck, which uses Proton for Windows executables, so I suspect it’d work in WINE.

Yeah, maybe Ron will just show up on this forum and post it here first, saying "Look, how about that?"

I love it too, don't worry. You're not alone. 😁

I'm both confused and saddened. I played all three paths just last year and I loved every second of it! The voice acting isn't the best, but the story and setting delivered like no other! I absolutely adore it, but maybe that's the unpopular opinion? I'm replaying CMI at the moment, but it doesn't sweep me away like FOA did last year.

Wow, multiple people dumping on Fate of Atlantis. This thread isn't messing around.

EMI certainly throws a gauntlet down in terms of puzzle difficulty. Which is strange, given that it was the final LucasArts adventure game. While the progress wasn't exactly a straight line -- MI1 and DOTT arguably had more logical puzzle design than any game after, and Loom was truly ahead of its time -- there was a general evolution toward accessibility. No wonder EMI came packaged with a walkthrough. There are these contradictory tensions in EMI that I think make it fascinating. On the one hand it is aggressively pushing "forward" (moving to 3D, adopting console friendly controls) while arguably regressing to puzzle logic aimed at an older-school player. It's a game that's brash and bold and irreverent (including toward canon) in a way that pissed off lots of series fans, yet at the same time it's also the most desperately fan-serving, with a truly staggering volume of callbacks and reprisals that stands out even in an in-joke heavy series. It's something else!

I just had the idea for a video and really had to hurry to get it done before the actual trailer shows up. PHEW.

As long as you don't sell them for profit, I don't mind.

Late last year I made some custom boxes too. As gifts for my brothers and as custom box for the Special editions of MI, inspired by Laser's custom box at the time. While it's awesome we can do this to great detail now, everyone should be warned there's scammers on eBay now using this technique to sell fake boxes for high prices. Just recently I think someone scamming a lot of honest collectors with fake sealed boxes. So I really usually add a little personal note in one of the bottom cover labels. Both designs were created from scratch, using Laserschwert's awesome poster files for most of the the artwork.

Hello @CalisDraws I have made several of the boxes in the 2 part board game box style, also called a telescoping box. The originals I have are all this style and I don’t like the folded ones so much. I have only made games for Amiga so far so no Sam and Max but below is an example 🙂 I cut hard cardboard and glue them then wrap them with the print. I made an exact size for lucasarts and a bit smaller one. if you make a new thread for boxes later it might be a better place 😊 jjjj

New version with some fixes: https://assets.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:799b14d4-5e4b-4bab-b703-5a42ad104a64?view=published * Font increased from 9 to 9,1 * margins are adjusted based on MK2 manual (I have the Amiga big box version) * Leafs are from the Symbola font * In-game on page 6 changed and in-game on page 4 has been "optimized" a bit (color and lights) * Mispellings To fix: * Spacing to be pixel perfect * In-Game images should need a graphic treatment Well I guess it could be soon the V1 ! Unfortunately I can get it pixel perfect. It stranges, sometimes on a page the left column is right but using the same parameters on the next page doesn't give the same result. Playing with some other fonts doesn't do the trick !

1990 has no 88 on it which is baffling. I have a handful of years and none is a perfect match. But I’ll scan this one in.