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I always forget there is this special perspective, and I LOVE it. It's one of these many elements of SoMI that feel handcrafted. Aah, it's hard for me to explain... As a developer, I look at this and think "Today, someone would say we can't produce this room. It's too expensive for for just that. Either have more top-down rooms or change the perspective so we can re-use the standard sprites.". In the Unpopular Opinions thread it was mentioned that the parts after Mêlée Island are kind of "less" than what's going on in Part 1, but the vibe this specific room gives me is the reason I find the whole game exciting. The "emptyness" on Monkey Island doesn't feel like "less developer work", but actually like a relatively empty and lonely place. Aah! I love SoMI so much 🥰

They're fighting with crates in their hands, one could say they're....boxing

I already love this ghost meme so much

Here you go

So I guess the guy from Free Etheral Delivery Exhumation (FedEx) had his day off?

Here's the FOA map (1200 dpi versions can be found HERE) : Once I've cleaned it up properly (removing the centerfold and any dirt and damage), I'll add several versions of it to the main post. Again, thanks to everybody who donated!

Speaking of outfits, I once went to a video-game character themed dressup party as Guybrush from Curse....nobody had a clue who I was...uncultured dairy farmers.

Soooo, the last few days I've been working on the MI2 cover and I'm happy enough with the current state to share it with you guys: For the inside of the booklet, I actually decided against artwork from the game and for a parchment look. It's just easier to design with all the text - and looks quite nice too, I think. Depending on whether I should make covers for the others as well, I would adopt the parchment background for all of them and maybe add concept sketches from the respective game (like Rum Rogers cottage in this one). And on one page (and the back of the cover) there's still space for nice concept art (like here the big door in LeChuck's fortress). On the inside, I would like to always put the first screen from the game with the "Deep in the Caribbean" lettering. I thought this would be fitting, since the adventure starts when you open soundtrack case. 🥰 To finish this layout, I'll need the exact tracklist you want to put on CD, @Romão (I worked with a tracklist of the double CD from CMI here). Depending on how long the tracklist is, there's still room for a small sketch. I really liked the concept art of LeChuck for this - unfortunately I haven't been able to convert it into a line drawing yet at it is a very different style. That's why I tried to trace it quickly. But since I'm not the world's gifted illustrator, it doesn't look thaaat nice. Maybe someone else here has more talent for it and feels like making one that fits better to the drawing of Rum Roger's Cottage? 😇 This is the original. As for the font of the tracklist inside, I'm not 100% sure yet. I didn't want to take a completely neutral one but rather something pirate-like. So far this is the only one in that direction that I halfway liked. But maybe someone here has a good idea. 🙂 Overall, I'm glad for any feedback and comments on what could be done differently. Either way: It's a lot of work, but a lot of fun too! (My boyfriend already asked how long i want to keep working on this ... "Monkey Island thing". Oh the blasphemy! 😅) Here are the layouts without mockup:

Reported.

No, they're two different companies. On the left is some guy from Damned Heists of LeChuck (DHL) and on the right is a ghost pirate from Undead Pirate Shipments (UPS).

To be honest...that actually sounds pretty cool! It's so wild to me that we know there's a new Monkey Island game coming out but we've yet to see the lead character (or any of the main cast) ...has that ever happened for any of the other games? I think it's gonna hit me in a whole different way once we see more familiar things that make us go "oh yes THIS is a Monkey Island game", not to imply that what we've gotten so far ISN'T Monkey Island, I don't feel that way at all, just that we've mostly seen what's new (art style, the locksmith, a judge, snowy island) and a very fleeting glimpse of the old (Murray, Melee wideshot and alleyway). It's when we start to see those characters again that it'll truly feel like we've come home. One look at Mr Threepwood is that powerful.

Awesome! What a find, it looks beautiful. So now that we pooled together to buy these maps we can do NFTs of them right? Isn’t that how this works?

This community really rubs me the right way. 😊

LeChuck likes to keep his fortress and galleon delivery staff separate. Did anyone notice that the format of that Monkey Island room is quite Big Whoop tunnels-esque? 🤔

I have to admit, something about the art really clicked for me once I did this and saw an approximately to scale character placed walking in the scene. I'm more convinced than ever that it's going to look really lovely in motion.

It's intriguing how organically that fellow fits into the EMI background. I'm willing to kick in a few bucks for a remaster with Rex Crowley character designs.

I figured it out. That ghost is trying to deliver the ReMI trailer. No wonder it takes so long. 🙄

I've never played it either, but from what I understand, the brunt of the game involves carrying cargo from one spot to another.

Interesting, he says that in the first 10 minutes they do something with storytelling that he would have never thought possible. I have to imagine that this has something to do with how they get from the carnival to telling a (somewhat) regular pirate story for most of the rest of the game. He also says that the game has stuff to say about the nature of interactive storytelling. To me this is all pointing towards the game having a really interesting kind of conceptual wrapper/device/structure that is really related to whatever's going on in the carnival. He also says, in relation to a question about the Secret: "I was working with Ron when he was working on the very first game, and I know what he had in mind for the secret then, and it has a very significant bearing on what you see in this latest game."

Here's the link to the interview with a timestamp when she asks about Return: https://www.twitch.tv/cressup/v/1501961031?sr=a&t=5079s

I love these box-carrying-ghost-pirate screens. 😄 It looks like they got lost and have to ask around where the dock is. So much determination.

Sorry if this has already been talked about – this is my first post here, although I have been lurking a lot. But one of the things I'm most interested in finding out once we see more of the game is how the heck it's gonna handle those camera perspective changes, in terms of Guybrush's look and animations. In Thimbleweed Park and the original Monkey Islands, almost all the backgrounds had similar camera angles. There were a couple of outliers here and there, and the characters did look pretty weird in those spots, but it was rarely a problem. With this game the camera perspective seems to be wildly different in every location. Of course, the game is super stylized so there's a degree to which they can get away with the characters looking a little out of place in some shots. But even still, I can't picture Guybrush looking right in both that top down shot of Melee island and also looking good in the shot of LeChuck's ship from the trailer. And I can't see how there's enough space to walk around in the locksmith shop or the courthouse without Guybrush covering up a lot of the background detail – they just seem much more zoomed in than rooms in previous games. Could they be using different models/sprites for different shots? Or weirder yet, is it possible that some of those indoor shots could be from Guybrush's point of view? I really don't see that happening haha, but Ron did say they're changing up the interface. Idk, those were some of my recent thoughts.

Loom speedrun 144fps uncapped let’s go

MI2 is safer in that respect. Both the animation where you nail Stan in the coffin and the one where you replace the flags at the spitting contest are run at 30 fps. The only place where the game sets the framerate to unlimited is when the wheel at the alley casino starts spinning. The script then lowers the framerate to make the wheel spin slower until it stops.

Christ, the meme has hit Twitter!!!!!

I hope this topic isn't drowned out by delivery ghost memes. 😅 Of course Noah will exaggerate a bit and who would blame him, but I'm confident that he wouldn't draw this much attention to the beginning part if it was just a bad segue from LeChuck's Revenge to Return to Monkey Island. We actually have a rather clear idea what those first ten minutes are about: We're starting off at the Carnival of the Damned, Ron always wanted to, and we're resolving a situation that's been left unresolved for over 30 years. But they can't just render a solution, they also immediately have to hook us onto a new story arc. The first and the latter are difficult, but both at the same time especially so. I'm so excited to see what they have cooked up!

Yeah, on his way to the trailer: "Can't stop, big news coming through!" 😅 Death Stranding... 💖💖💖

This looks awesome! The font you picked looks good but if you’re looking to mess around, you could try Post Antiqua Roman, which is the font used on the original disks and manual, if you want it to feel like an official piece of merchandise, though it might end up looking too “samey” in this context.

Yeah it’s a pretty superficial joke. 😅 The game takes you through all sorts of sci-fi and supernatural craziness, but fundamentally you are a courier, as opposed to a soldier or plumber.

I watched the VOD today and holy crap...the hype is real. I'm more hyped for this than anything in years. Now what's a guy gotta do to get a drink trailer around here?

I watched it live yesterday and had goosebumps when Noah mentioned the first minutes are going to be discussed for years to come and will probably be subject of a Master's thesis for those studying storytelling. It's fantastic to hear.

Haha, I also thought these are Leia hair buns. The gender of them is hard to read, I always thought they're a woman.

It looks like he has Leia hair buns. So I'll call him Lester. He's probably the protagonist.

SoMI Guybrush outfit is my favorite. By far. I love that it's very simple, black and white. And it makes me happy that he chose to wear something similar in EMI again. (Not disliking the others. I like the blue coat in LR, but mostly because it's a perfect continuation after SoMI, matching Guybrush new bloated ego.)

It would simply be awesome if the Guybrush sprite changed with the perspective. It wouldn't be without precedent – we had a top down view during the rope attachment scene in TSoMI, the conversation with the fisherman in LeChuck's Revenge used a more detailed Guybrush model. No idea how probable this is, but I wouldn't rule it out. The graphics and animation team's effort is definitely going somewhere, it may just not be where you'd expect it. Now for the important thing: Can we start with a "ghost guy delivering boxes to all the places" meme already? Listen, don't tell anyone, but I figured it all out. The "real" secret of Monkey Island is that the Carnival of the Damned contains a lot of doors that lead to different places and moments in Guybrush's life, past, present and future (most of them are locked though, so he'll need a lot of keys). But once he passes through such a portal/door, he'll look just like he did in the respective game, costume and body build included. That's it, that's the game. Strange, it's much more dayofthetentacly than I thought. 🐒

Well you haven‘t seen the other disastrous rounds I haven‘t posted here.

Don't mistake sheer talent for luck, Marius. 👌

I guess there's another way to settle the question of perspective. all this looks fine to me. The box looks a bit odd sometimes but usually guybrush isn't going to be hauling a box so that's fine.

Noah Falstein was doing a live interview right now on twitch, spoke about playing Return (Alpha testing). Nothing too specific but he says it's Ron's best work and the storytelling is one of a kind! He even said that the storytelling is so special that it's gonna be a topic for studies on the topic for years to come! He also said he's gonna be back playing it again soon because the VO is being implemented and he's still a beta tester. 'Cressup' on twitch!

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?

Well, to add to that and to find a purpose to this thread: - You pretty much need this to run the game well if you're not using the digital versions: https://quickandeasysoftware.net/software/emi-launcher - Vsync should be on and you should lock your fps 60 fps and preferably use 60 Hz (or just use half refresh rate vsync along with a 60 fps lock at 120 Hz, that's what I recommend but I know it might be a bit too technical for the avarage user) - dgVoodoo2 is a must, it prevents crashes and provides mostly authentic DirectX8 emulation: http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/ With dgVoodoo2 you can also increase the render resolution and add some antialiasing without messing up the scaling of the 2D elements like fonts, menus etc. As a result the game stops looking awful on your modern monitor because it's no longer running at 640x480 so the character models actually look like how the artists intended: The downside is that you have to set shadows to low since dgVoodoo2 has problems rendering them correctly. Hopefully that gets fixed in a later version and then we won't have a reason to care about ScummVM not caring. Edit: Also Monkey 4 is best played with a controller nowadays. The PS2 controller layout is pretty great so based on that you can set up a nice control scheme in Joy2Key, XPadder or any other "keyboard to controller" mapper program. Just don't use the game's built in joystick support since it doesn't work well with modern controllers. Oh and change the character movement mode to "camera relative", that will get rid of the tank controls and Guybrush will move in the direction you push the analog stick in.