Return to Monkey Island

[OzzieMonkey]

Yeah, I think the idea of #MonkeyIslandMonday is to share little teases of the game in varied forms, not just to show the chapter screens. In fact, I hope they don't reveal the others, because I like the surprise of discovering what they are while I'm playing. As cool as it was to speculate on what they meant with Tales, I think this time I'd like a little bit more mystery. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by OzzieMonkey

[BillyCheers]

I'm always a bit torn apart. On one hand, I'm happy about every detail that we get (and really like everything so far!), but on the other hand I fear to have too little surprise in the end . The trailer has already shown us so much!

E. g island overviews or something like that would be a bit too much to me, I think (even the name of the first part kind of is). 

I could of course avoid this thread and further postings, but... okay, let's be honest: I couldn't. 🥲

[Garystu]

6 hours ago, fentongames said:

"It's official! Chris Pratt is the new LeChuck!" etc.)

Its incredible that they got Chris Pratt for both Guybrush and LeChuck! I guess that settles it forever, the two are brothers in Pratt.

[KestrelPi]

Yes, I think we can be pretty confident they're not just going to show 10 different chapter title screens. 😄Especially since the wording from devolver is:

 

 

It would sorta be an anticlimax if next monday they post 'And here's the second cool thing we're gonna share... another chapter card!'

If I were to predict some of the things they miggght share:

 

A sneak peak of how the dialogue/inventory/UI/controls work???

Some more of the music?

More animation stuff?

 

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by KestrelPi

[ThunderPeel2001]

13 hours ago, Remi said:

For the chapters, here's a short comparison video I put together...

 

 

 

If I'm not mistaken, that was the Amiga version of SOMI?

[ThunderPeel2001]

7 hours ago, BillyCheers said:

I'm always a bit torn apart. On one hand, I'm happy about every detail that we get (and really like everything so far!), but on the other hand I fear to have too little surprise in the end . The trailer has already shown us so much!

E. g island overviews or something like that would be a bit too much to me, I think (even the name of the first part kind of is). 

I could of course avoid this thread and further postings, but... okay, let's be honest: I couldn't. 🥲

 

Yep. Thankfully I've forgotten a lot of the trailer already and haven't really mentally analysed it. I really want to go in as fresh as I was for Monkey 2, 3, 4 and 5... (Monkey 1 might be the only time in my life where I read about about something and then it exceeded/matched my expectations.)

Edited July 12, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Remi]

15 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

If I'm not mistaken, that was the Amiga version of SOMI?

 

Aka the only version, EGA be damned.

[Vainamoinen]

50 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

If I'm not mistaken, that was the Amiga version of SOMI?

 

From the musical perspective, that's the autoritative version. They even got Chris Hülsbeck to remix it back in the day – the dude that composed all those awesome Turrican tunes. 🥰

[KestrelPi]

4 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

From the musical perspective, that's the autoritative version. They even got Chris Hülsbeck to remix it back in the day – the dude that composed all those awesome Turrican tunes. 🥰

While I have great fondness for the Amiga music as it's the first one I played, as I listen to the themes with fresh ears I still think they're slightly held back by the 4 track limitation. I think it's also missing a few tunes? It's definitely managed better than in MI2 though, where a lot of times the music is just gone, or really quite mangled on the Amiga trying to crunch it into 4 tracks. Hard to knock it though, because I found it very inspiring at the time.

[demone]

Honestly, at this point, I'm happy just knowing the release date and waiting. At this point, the most it will be is five months and we've already waited almost 3 and 1/2 months from the time of the official reveal. 

 

Listening to Dominic's interview with Laura last night was the last tease I needed. I felt like a kid again with how excited I got hearing Dominic talk about Return. He sounded so genuinely excited and happy with the game and the story in particular; the way he described the themes of the game being actually very deep and meaningful, and even a little emotional at times, is all I needed to hear.

 

That is what Monkey Island means to to me; plenty of funny and outrageous characters, puzzles, and interactions, but layered on top of a story that is, at its core, actually pretty serious and spooky, and even tragic at times, with some depth. That's the impression I got from the trailer, so it's awesome to hear that those themes will indeed be throughout the game.

 

Not saying I still won't eat up every tease they send, but I would also be perfectly content waiting with just a release date. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by demone

[ThunderPeel2001]

5 hours ago, KestrelPi said:

While I have great fondness for the Amiga music as it's the first one I played, as I listen to the themes with fresh ears I still think they're slightly held back by the 4 track limitation. I think it's also missing a few tunes? It's definitely managed better than in MI2 though, where a lot of times the music is just gone, or really quite mangled on the Amiga trying to crunch it into 4 tracks. Hard to knock it though, because I found it very inspiring at the time.

 

No missing tunes that I can recall (they added an awful one for Stan in the VGA CD release -- perhaps you're thinking of that?). I don't the music was limited by the Amiga's 4 channels at all. I think it may have been originally written with 4 channels in mind?

 

On an Adlib card from the day it sounds like it has the same number of channels? I wonder if that was on purpose?

 

 

[demone]

Getting closer and closer lol

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by demone

[KestrelPi]

1 hour ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

No missing tunes that I can recall (they added an awful one for Stan in the VGA CD release -- perhaps you're thinking of that?). I don't the music was limited by the Amiga's 4 channels at all. I think it may have been originally written with 4 channels in mind?

 

On an Adlib card from the day it sounds like it has the same number of channels? I wonder if that was on purpose?

 

 

 

It was definitetly limited by the four channels in places. For example the main theme has flute harmonies that just don't exist in the PC version. And hear how much The Journey struggles to fit in the marimba part.

 

I'm not thinking of the Stan theme, though incidentally I don't mind the MI1 CD theme at all. I know it's not by the big 3 but I'm still quite fond of it. I think it's massively underrated. Has a particularly nice B section.

 

But you are right there aren't any missing tracks in the first game, I misremembered that. Still, some of the ones that are there are harder on the ears than I remember.

 

 

[OzzieMonkey]

1 hour ago, demone said:

Getting closer and closer lol

 

I'm so glad Ron's still talking about the game on Twitter. Still probably a good idea to avoid posting on his blog about it, but it's nice to see that he's not completely discouraged from sharing in general.

[madmardi]

1 hour ago, OzzieMonkey said:

I'm so glad Ron's still talking about the game on Twitter. Still probably a good idea to avoid posting on his blog about it, but it's nice to see that he's not completely discouraged from sharing in general.

Yea, it’s nice to see that he’s excited and still wants to share

[Thrik]

9 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

No missing tunes that I can recall (they added an awful one for Stan in the VGA CD release -- perhaps you're thinking of that?). I don't the music was limited by the Amiga's 4 channels at all. I think it may have been originally written with 4 channels in mind?

 

On an Adlib card from the day it sounds like it has the same number of channels? I wonder if that was on purpose?

 

 

I might be mistaken but I believe the audio was made using an MT-32 which supports 8–16 tracks, and then other mixes were essentially derived from that.

 

The MT-32 itself was specialist/enthusiast equipment really, so few would have played it that way back in the day, and the shipped game needed an optional add-on to use one.

 

However it’s a very nice way to play it nowadays, which ScummVM and DREAMM support as long as you can obtain the sample files.

 

 

[KestrelPi]

The other thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that it sounds to me like the amiga version is using a few tricks to get around the track limitation where possible.

 

So for example on the LeChuck Theme:

 

 

I actually hear 5 layers here - a trombone, an occasional harmonising trombone, a organ layer, a bass line and a bass drum

 

The harmonising trombone gets cut out a lot at weird moments so I suspect that is sharing a track with one of the other layers (sounds like the organ layer to me) to give the illusion of more layers than there are.

 

The organ layer itself sounds like either they used a chord sample, or they're using modulation to create the illusion of chords where actually it's just a fast arpeggio, like is done in a lot of tracker/chip music. I can't quite tell which here.

 

So I'm definitely hearing 'a more than 4 track tune that has been fairly well adapted to squeeze itself into 4 tracks' here, rather than one designed for 4 tracks in the first place.

 

That said, back in the early to mid 90s I thought that the Amiga MI1 soundtrack was the definitive version for anyone that didn't have access to fancy soundcards.

 

I'm not sure I feel as strongly about that now, as the old FM synth now admittedly have a certain nostalgic charm, but I think it was clear by the time that MI2 rolled along that the Amiga sound hardware was no longer keeping up with the needs of the soundtrack:

 

 

 

[KestrelPi]

Afterthought:

Also important to note that with Amiga when we say 4 tracks what we really mean by that in implication is 4-sample polyphony. A sample might be a chord in order to fake higher polyphony, but you're only going to hear 4 samples at once. So if you listen to some of these tracks which have Marimba parts on amiga, if they do marimba trills with them on the same track, you can hear the samples cutting each other off as they move quickly from note to note, while that's less of an issue with someone using a soundcard on PC because while the marimba part might be on only 1 track, even cards in the fairly early 90s tended to have at least 8 note polyphony (I think the Adlib had 9-voice polyphony), and so their notes could overlap. I just listened to an Adlib emulated version, and indeed while sometimes you hear samples getting cut off by the polyphony limitation, it happens much less frequently than it does on the Amiga.

 

That said, I'm not personally fond of the Adlib sounds, I think they have a bit of a mushy sound, and the amiga sounds mooostly hold up well to me in comparison.

 

After-afterthought:

 

Feel pretty lucky we don't have to worry about this stuff any more. ESPECIALLY since hardware limitations on audio have been a concern up to and including Tales.

Edited July 13, 2022 by KestrelPi

[s-island]

They brought in Chris Hülsbeck to do the MI1 music conversion for the Amiga port. The MI2 port plays variations of the MT-32 MIDIs with a common sample bank so there wasn't as much care put into that one.

[KestrelPi]

38 minutes ago, s-island said:

They brought in Chris Hülsbeck to do the MI1 music conversion for the Amiga port. The MI2 port plays variations of the MT-32 MIDIs with a common sample bank so there wasn't as much care put into that one.

That's true, but I think also the nature of the music itself. It was more layered, more going on so even if they had got someone to convert them specifically I feel like the difference would have been more readily noticeable (and of course the Amiga version of MI2 has quite a lot of missing music)

[Vainamoinen]

Things they could show in Monday tweets:

• More character/design reveals (like Herman Toothrot; also, if you think there's going to be a Monkey Island without cannibals, think again).
• Voice actor reveals (so who the F voiced the big L?).
• video from voice recordings/booth (Dom finally screwing a woodchuck tongue twister up).
• Maps or at least parts of maps. This would be a gameplay reveal as well, because if there's an overview map with multiple islands displayed, we'll likely have a choice of a few islands to go to.
• Music reveals, video of live instrument recordings, demonstration of iMuse-esque sequences/segues.
• they show us how the flashback sequences work and how they're embedded in the game.
• the new swordfighting mechanic, explained.
• a UI reveal (verb coin or bust! (yes, I know: "What's a verb bust?". You'll see.))
• video of that one Tim Schafer visit I just made up, the one where he tells Dave and Ron who's boss and what they did wrong.
• certain spectacular fan art pieces, because those also "make ReMI special".
• confirmation of ongoing FIGS voiceover work.
• a release date.

[OzzieMonkey]

10 minutes ago, Vainamoinen said:

Things they could show in Monday tweets:

• More character/design reveals (like Herman Toothrot; also, if you think there's going to be a Monkey Island without cannibals, think again).
• Voice actor reveals (so who the F voiced the big L?).
• video from voice recordings/booth (Dom finally screwing a woodchuck tongue twister up).
• Maps or at least parts of maps. This would be a gameplay reveal as well, because if there's an overview map with multiple islands displayed, we'll likely have a choice of a few islands to go to.
• Music reveals, video of live instrument recordings, demonstration of iMuse-esque sequences/segues.
• they show us how the flashback sequences work and how they're embedded in the game.
• the new swordfighting mechanic, explained.
• a UI reveal (verb coin or bust! (yes, I know: "What's a verb bust?". You'll see.))
• video of that one Tim Schafer visit I just made up, the one where he tells Dave and Ron who's boss and what they did wrong.
• certain spectacular fan art pieces, because those also "make ReMI special".
• confirmation of ongoing FIGS voiceover work.
• a release date.

I think maps are a given at some point. A release date is definitely imminent. BIG yes to finding out who's voicing LeChuck (I read an article where the journalist just assumed that when Ron said they were recasting that Adam Harrington was back, but...please no. All due respect to the actor, he was fine, but you need someone more...Boen-y.) I might be a bit dense here, but what is FIGS? UI is also probable. We also don't know how many of these there'll be, will it be the predicted 10 that lead up to Talk Like a Pirate Day for release, or will it only be a few, like 4 for the month?

[s-island]

1 hour ago, KestrelPi said:

That's true, but I think also the nature of the music itself. It was more layered, more going on so even if they had got someone to convert them specifically I feel like the difference would have been more readily noticeable (and of course the Amiga version of MI2 has quite a lot of missing music)

With all the loading and disk swapping between screens, most of the imuse stuff must have fallen apart. Hard to sync the transitions from outside Woodtick to the boats when you have to replace disks going to and fro.

[KestrelPi]

4 minutes ago, s-island said:

With all the loading and disk swapping between screens, most of the imuse stuff must have fallen apart. Hard to sync the transitions from outside Woodtick to the boats when you have yo replace disks going to and fro.

Perhaps - I always assumed it was more to do with space. The game was already on 11 floppies on Amiga, and they could probably save a bit of space making woodtick silent and getting rid of some of the other things they did.

 

They definitely had some disk swapping going on during scenes where iMUSE instructions/transitions were in use, but maybe they felt that the effect would be lost for woodtick anyway. Weird to think how much disk swapping I put up with before I got the hard drive.

[AndywinXp]

1 hour ago, s-island said:

With all the loading and disk swapping between screens, most of the imuse stuff must have fallen apart. Hard to sync the transitions from outside Woodtick to the boats when you have to replace disks going to and fro.

Nah, it probably would have worked fine anyway given how the iMUSE "clock" works internally, I think that issue might have lied in the fact that they needed to resequence 2 hours of music for what essentially was a 4-channel tracker and find a different way to embed layered transitions inside of those files. Something which (if true) ultimately just wasn't worth the hassle.

 

Another theory could be that they only ported only a part of the iMUSE system with the essentials, given that the original works very closely with some variation of the standard MIDI format and, again, they had to deal with a 4-channel tracker.

 

EDIT: Also, being that there was no built-in synth engine in the Amiga (I think?), each of those music pieces had to be shipped in a self-contained way (samples+sequence), and it probably occupied too much space

Edited July 13, 2022 by AndywinXp