Rumor: Last Express Movie

[clone2727]

From Kotaku:

 

"I am working on a movie now that is... situated in 1914. Basically, Indiana Jones-ish you could say, but also Hitchcockian," he explained in a recent interview with MTV's Josh Horowitz. "We are scripting it. It's an idea that exists already... from another medium, and so we are making it now into a film narrative." Which medium, Josh asked. "A game, a video game."

 

Maybe this could be interesting. I always regretted not finishing this game...

[Aububuh]

Maybe I should play it now. I bought it a few months ago, died after five minutes, then started playing something else. It seemed pretty good, though.

[Kroms]

I can't find a reasonably priced copy anywhere. Want to play this so badly. It looks amazing.

[clone2727]

I can't find a reasonably priced copy anywhere. Want to play this so badly. It looks amazing.

What about this? (Though, I have no idea what country you're in)

 

I actually had to replace my copy last year. I was looking at disc 2 and noticed that half the disc was cracked. Fun.

[Kroms]

Oh man...

 

Sigh. I wish I lived in a real country sometimes.

[Gabez]

Oho!

 

A Last Express movie has been planned by Mechner for a long time... he even wrote a screenplay for it, though it was a prequel (and so not set in 1914, which the game is).

 

I love the game more than life itself, so if this happens then it is good, but I want more than a movie, a special edition and even a sequel.

[urluckyday]

Alright...so say if I was to buy this game...is there any possible way that it would work on a Windows 7 PC?

[Jeff]

Alright...so say if I was to buy this game...is there any possible way that it would work on a Windows 7 PC?

Good question, I'd be interested to hear as well. This game has been on my to-play list for quite a while now.

[urluckyday]

^Yeah, that's usually the only breaking point for PC games for me anymore now that I have a good enough PC to run higher-end games...but now it's harder to play older games...*sigh* isn't there a happy medium?

[Longcat]

There is an in progress engine for ScummVM for Last Express.

http://code.google.com/p/lastexpressengine/

 

It's far from complete, but looks promising. The game runs fine in Win XP. I haven't tried Win 7 yet since I only recently installed it, but I might have time to give it a go tomorrow and report back to you guys. My guess is that it will work.

[urluckyday]

^Please let me know!

[Longcat]

There are no problems at all running this game on Win 7, and I just remembered why:P

You can run it in DosBox. I'm playing it right now with a 3x advmame scaler.

 

Have phun.

[urluckyday]

Legit. Thanks!

[Longcat]

Np:)

[Gabez]

There are no problems at all running this game on Win 7, and I just remembered why:P

You can run it in DosBox. I'm playing it right now with a 3x advmame scaler.

 

Ooh that sounds good. My experience of DOSBox is that you need a killer PC to run it, though, because it runs DOS over the top of everything else (is that right? Has that changed?) so I could only run Magic Carpet very slowly (mind you, that was on my rubbish laptop).

 

A higher res version of TLE would be possible because the game was shrunk down to fit onto 3 CDs (and I suppose people's computer resolutions)... http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/964826898-00.jpg shows higher res, as does http://jordanmechner.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/salon.jpg

 

The soundtrack was also compressed (I have the soundtrack CD and it's better quality, as you'd expect)

 

Can you post a screen shot of the game with the filter? I'd love to see what it looked like -- presumably it only works on the characters?

[Longcat]

The filters affect the whole surface that is drawn to screen, however, these kinds of filters typically work best when colors are clearly separated and not blended. I'm not at home right now, but I'll put up a screenshot later tonight.

 

Contrary to what you believe, DosBox is not at all CPU intensive(unless you are running a CPU intensive application or game through it of course. Dosbox emulates the original DOS environment and runs the games you want through it. Since TLE is a 2D game, very much like the scumm games created at the same resolution(The Dig, Full Throttle, CMI) it should not be a problem at all to run it on lower speced devices. If your hardware can run Win 7, it can mostly definitly run TLE flawlessly. At least without resource intensive scalers.

[Gabez]

Aha, well... my hardware struggles to run XP, let alone 7... though of course that means that I can run TLE natively.

 

Good tip about Dosbox, though; a friend of mine struggled to run TLE on his Vista machine so I will tell him to give DB a go.

 

And thanks in advance for the screenshot! The whole screen, you say? Amazing.

[Longcat]

Well, I shouldn't think you would have much trouble running it through XP either.

 

Yes the whole screen, but like I said, the filters are only noticeable on surfaces with clean edges, so graphics such as rendered backgrounds are usually not affected much. As you suggested, most of the difference can be found in the sprites. It really varies from game to game. I found it helped improve GK2 a lot for instance.

[Gabez]

I guess Magic Carpet is more difficult to run because it's a 3D game... and with water reflections, and deformable terrain, and all sorts.

 

I remember seeing a higher res version of Grim Fandango which only effected the characters (because the backgrounds are pre-rendered and so stuck to 640) -- the same for EMI (It was benny's quick and easy unless my mind betrays me). Slightly pointless but quite fun anyway!

[Longcat]

Scaling games like Grim Fandango should be quite possible(and probably will be if Residual is ever finished), it's not much harder to scale a 640x480 flat image than a polygon model. The trouble in doing so is making screen coordinates match up with the game scripts I guess. Everything would be messed up if you were to simply scale up the whole thing, but I'm no expert. Hopefully one day it will be possible.

 

I think it's more likely that we'll see a GF:SE before that happens though;)