OzzieMonkey

If they want, they have a plot point right in front of them that's primed for exploring: we already know there are 2 Guybrush Threepwoods thanks to Tales and Kathryn Krebbs wanting revenge on the wrong one, with Q as their middle name. I saw a theory somewhere that suggested maybe a voodoo spell inside a Hall or Mirrors at the carnival causes one of the reflections to become real and that one goes off to be in Curse/Escape/Tales while the OG Guybrush stayed behind and had a very different life, perhaps one that involved framing Krebbs for mopery on Wirthling Shores and embarassing her husband in a creepy karaoke contest

They're really dancing around the chronology and how the other games fit. I wanna know which games I need to count in my marathon 😆

Hi all, if you've seen my posts in the Return to Monkey Island topic, you'll know that I've managed to figure out a possible way to replace the MT32 recordings of MI2SE with the remastered tracks in order to play them in classic mode. @Scummbuddy recommended that I create a new topic for some discussion on this. UPDATE: I've fixed all the issues that were listed below with a lot of editing and adding loop markers into the encoding of each file manually. While I'm at it I figured I'd build an SFXOriginal.xwb with the remastered sound effects too, so when that's done I'll upload everything to my Google Drive and post a link. Here is my own modified version of @Bennyboy's XACT template for repacking the music. It already has the newly built MusicOriginal.xwb file that you need to replace the one in the game's datafiles. I would love it if people could test it out because I have run into some issues and was hoping that others on this forum who are a bit more technically minded might be able to figure out how to fix them: So far, the tracks and transitions seem to play in the right locations, but there are a number of locations where the track doesn't loop to the right spot: Island hopping screen on Dread's ship Stan's Rapp Scallion To make it easier for everyone I've also attached a save file where you can test those spots I mentioned above. savegame.001

So I mentioned before that I really wished we could play MI2 with original gfx and remastered music, basically lamenting that it wasn't feasible with the Ultimate Talkie and that I couldn't mess around with the SE's wavebanks in a way that it would work in Classic mode....welll, scratch that, cause I've cracked it! Basically, for those not in the know, the SEs pull music from wavebanks, which are essentially a data structure that stores .wav files and uses a respective cue file to make the music play in game. Both classic mode and SE mode have one (MusicNew.xwb/CuesNew.xsb and MusicOriginal.xwb/CuesOriginal.xsb). I thought that initially you just needed to swap the names around of each file, but that resulted in a totally silent game...boohoo me. I discovered, thanks to Benny's brilliant template for the program responsible for creating wavebanks (XACT), that you could rip the SE music from the game (using Benny's MI Explorer), create a new wavebank, then put the SE music in the ordering that the MusicOriginal.xwb file uses, and with the correct compression and other settings, save a new MusicOriginal.xwb that would overrite the one in the SE and trick it into playing SE music in both modes. Voila! Remastered music over classic graphics. Now in case this has all given you as much of a headache as it has me, I don't mind sharing this new file I've created for those who are curious and don't want to do all this messing. I won't post anything yet in case there are some legal issues with doing so (though I don't believe there is, considering this is pretty much exactly how the CURSED soundtrack of MI1 was put into the SE of that game and you still need to own a copy of the entire MI2:SE for this to work, I'm merely supplying one file) .

While we might have to agree to disagree on the voices, I totally understand your position on the first SE. I don't mind the new art, it was really just the bugs and lack of polish to some of the backgrounds that prevent it from being the definitive version it could have been. As I understand it, the first SE was mostly developed in secret and wasn't given any sort of a budget (I suspect mainly for the voices and remastered music) until they had enough of a working build to formally pitch to the higher ups at Lucasarts. MI2 on the other hand had a full budget thanks to the succes of the first one which is why it's such an improvement. I would love to see them go back and fix up the backgrounds, add the interface from 2 and implement more customization options that the DOTT remaster benefited from (old gfx with new interface/music, voices in classic mode, etc) and address some bugs (it really annoys me that sometimes, but not always, you gain control of Guybrush before he walks off screen from the Lookout at the beginning, bypassing the Part One title screen and bugging out the interface until you talk to someone in the SCUMM bar). Heck, do it before RMI comes out while the hype is at its peak. However, I respect that these fixes may mot be enough for you, but I think it would be a good step in the right direction to making it a more viable option for more people (like me haha). There are some things I'd like to see done with MI2:SE, though not as major as the first one. There are some transitions that were recorded but not implemented (the cue where the coffin gets lifted into the Voodoo Lady's, for example, or the whole buildup music between Largo taking LeChuck's beard and Guybrush going back to the Voodoo Lady; it kinda just fizzles out and fades to the voodoo theme without that big crescendo) and of course the opening credits really should be there in remastered mode (and I still have no idea why it wasn't done). Beyond that, some tightening up of the Rapp Scallion resurrection to be more in time with the music cues and some proper mouth animation on him would be good. Again though, I get the feeling that this would require more money put into patching than they might care to bother with, and I don't know how much ability the fan community has to fix things beyond graphics thanks to the MI explorer. The transitions and bug fixing seems like something that would need to be done with access to source code, but I don't know nearly enough about game development to know for sure.

Thankfully I've had uni assignments to keep me busy and since it's Psychology that means a tonne of research papers to dissect (yay! 🙄) I pop in here when I've got writers block or between classes. The trimester is wrapping up now and I'm finishing up my last major assignment, so soon begins my descent into madness as I scramble to look for distractions to contain my excitement and anticipation for more content to discuss.

The Mojo staff have officially started ripping themselves off. 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛💛🖤 💚💚🖤💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

For now I'm happy to have the Ultimate Talkies but my god that would be awesome! I do think it'd be cool to have the original scans for MI2 though, but yeah keep the original sprites, I find they're more timeless than background art. What I would love to do is find a way to swap out the music in classic mode of MI2 with the SE music so both modes have remastered music. I tried creating a new wavebank file but to no success (the game was dead silent in classic mode). It's a shame the Ultimate Talkie of 2 can't do this because the intricacies of how it handles the iMuse transitions was beyond the scope of that project and not compaitible with ScummVM in its current form. Does anybody know if that's possible? I know the person who made the Cursed soundtrack for 1 created a wavebank to use in the SE so they might know, but again 2 is way more complicated because of iMuse.

Dude, your passion and enthusiasm is infectious, I love it! 100% agree on the community memories, I joined pretty late around the time Tales was announced so I've only gotten a mere taste of it, but I stuck around in the shadows and with everything that's happening recently it really feels like the world of Mojo has made a comeback, and I'm here for it!

What a tease https://twitter.com/devolverdigital/status/1524947239302578176?s=20&t=mDkw0o5mmYrh-CBkpSJkEg

This is the best I could do

Ooooh right that makes way more sense. Thanks for that clarification.

Well, we now know that he's got 10,000 bugs to fix. Any game devs in here who can offer some insight into how many bugs usually get fixed per day on a project so we can predict the release date?

Yep, listening to those clips, he's growing on me more and more as a potential LeChuck. He actually sounds a lot like Boen normally does as SIlberman. He's also of similar age, but not retired yet. If they don't get him, I'm sure whoever they do get will do a good job.

I might be remembering wrong, but didn't she cast the original MI voices in the first place with Curse? Or was that Darragh O'Farrell? EDIT: Nevermind, I checked her IMDB page and she was the dialog editor/senior voice editor.

I looked him up, and there's a great clip of him as Eggman in this video I think he could do it, there's definitely some Boen depth in his voice and if he turned the piratey-ness up to 11 I think he'd be great. They already got him for Thimbleweed Park, why not this?

Intresting. To me, it looks even more like a chef in that image. There's a clear seperation in tone between the top and bottom of the head that looks like a white hat on top.

If you squint and turn your head it looks like a bunny...or is that a chef?

Yep, as Ron said "It's not 3, it's not 6, it's Return to Monkey Island. It defies numbering" (which I'm still very boggles as to what that means but nontheless excited to find out).

I just read a comment on Ron's blog that is the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen. It's too long to post here, but I'll show you the opening paragraph so you get the gist of the bullshit that's coming from this person: "Sorry Ron, but you can't make whatever game you want to make! When you release first entry in series, it's not your game anymore, it also game of fans, not in terms of authorship, but in terms of belonging. Fans buy this game and sort of own it. 1st game sets standards and expectations. Then when sequels comes out they set even more standards and expectations and of they are not done by you but fans loved them, because sequels met their expectations, it is not your game anymore even more than before, it's collective game, which belongs to you, other authors which was accepted by fans, and to fans. Consider fans as your investors or producers, who pay you! You can't simply do whatever you want without majority of investor's or producer's approval!!! if majority of your investors or producers say they don't like art style, then you should abandon this idea and make something that would please your investors and producers or fans!!!" I can't believe someone thinks that creators owe fans anything just because they consume the content. That's not how this stuff works, it's so selfish and entitled. I just....grrrrr! I'm just mad now.

E3 is cancelled, but Summer Game Fest starts on the 9th of June. Devolver always have a big showcase there, so I think a peek at the game there is pretty much locked in. Having said that, we don't even know how close the game is to coming out. Maybe they'll drop a trailer tomorrow and it'll be out in 2 weeks, or it won't be finished til December. I'm inclined to think it's closer than we think though because they were doing voiceover and music recording when the announcement dropped, which is generally the last thing to be done, and Thimbleweed Park was released around 2-3 months after voices were added in. All I know is that I'm craving more.

Damn, so true. The only thing putting me off was that he was calling the other guy Stan.

That really works in favor of the whole "kid in a theme park" theory. He's dressing the part, not just of a pirate, but of an adult. It goes hand in hand with the questionable authenticity of his beard.

Surely you can't have a Monkey Island game without Stan or the Voodoo Lady right? Right?! Nah, it's gotta be the monkey, maybe referencing the fact that there won't be any monkey wrench puzzles.

That's reeeally stretching the definition of a Mojo-centric word. No wonder I didn't get it.