A Conversation with Kyle Balda... and Hal Barwood / Mark Ferrari / Ron Gilbert / Dave Grossman / Aric Wilmunder / Denny Delk / Noah Falstein / Bill Tiller / Gary Winnick / Graham Annable / David Fox / Brad Taylor / Aaron Giles (Updated: Sep 10th, 2023)

[cinnamon]

On 3/19/2023 at 7:49 PM, danielalbu said:

🎙️ Join me TODAY for my conversation with Academy Award nominated director, animator and illustrator Graham Annable!

 

🕹️ In this conversation, we discuss The Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Puzzle Agent, Boxtrolls, LucasArts, Telltale Games, LAIKA Studios & more!

 

⏰ Premiering in 2 hours! ⏰

 

His new book "Eerie Tales from the School of Screams" looks fun, the grickle sort of fun anyway, which I enjoy.

 

A few years ago there was a kickstarter for a limited production of hidden people garden gnome statues. I didn't get one because the cost was prohibitive for me, but it would be interesting to see pictures of how (creepy) they look in people's gardens  

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my conversation with Lucasfilm Games legend Gary Winnick!

 

📝 In this conversation, we discuss Maniac Mansion, Rescue on Fractalus, Thimbleweed Park and more!

 

⏰ Today @ noon (Pacific Time) ⏰

 

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my *4-HOUR* conversation with legendary artist Bill Tiller!

 

In this conversation we discuss The Dig, The Curse of Monkey Island, A Vampyre Story (and its upcoming sequel) and more!

 

⏰ Premiering in 2 hours! ⏰

 

 

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my conversation with LucasArts legend Noah Falstein!

 

In this conversation we discuss Lucasfilm Games, The original version of The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade & more!

 

📅 Today @ Noon (PT) 📅

 

 

Edited May 7 by danielalbu

[danielalbu]

💀 Purple Tentacle, Murray & Green Tentacle go into a bar...
Thing is, it's not a joke!

 

🎙️ Paul & I sit down for a conversation with Denny Delk, the voice behind these iconic characters!

 

Check it out:

 

Edited May 11 by danielalbu

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my second conversation with emulation wiz and former LucasArts employee, Aaron Giles!

 

In this conversation we showcase all of the new features of his new LucasArts emulator: DREAMM and we get to play a few LucasArts classics and discuss them!

 

⏰ Premiering in 20 minutes! ⏰

 

 

[Laserschwert]

These interviews are so good! But since they are really long as well, is there any chance for you to add timestamps to the YouTube description, so that it's easier to jump to a specific topic discussed?

[danielalbu]

3 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

These interviews are so good! But since they are really long as well, is there any chance for you to add timestamps to the YouTube description, so that it's easier to jump to a specific topic discussed?

Yeah, sure.

I was planning on doing that but I'm always busy editing the next interview 😛

I hope to get to it in the near future.

 

Thank you for the feedback!

[danielalbu]

📆 Clear up your schedule!

 

🎙️ Join me TODAY for my **4.5 HOUR** conversation with SCUMM legend, Aric Wilmunder!

 

In this conversation, we discuss everything From SCUMM to the LucasArts parties!
From Maniac Mansion to The Curse of Monkey Island!

 

Hear it all from the person who's credited on all of LucasArts' SCUMM adventure games!

 

⏰ Today @ Noon (PT) ⏰

 

[danielalbu]

🎉 Happy 30th anniversary to Day of the Tentacle!

 

🎙️ And what better way to celebrate this joyous occasion than with the YouTube premiere of my conversation with co-project lead Dave Grossman!

In this conversation we discuss Day of the Tentacle (of course), The Dig, Return to Monkey Island, The Legend of Monkey Island and much much more!

 

⏰ Today @ 11am (PT)

 

 

[Serge]

On 5/28/2023 at 5:37 PM, danielalbu said:

📆 Clear up your schedule!

 

🎙️ Join me TODAY for my **4.5 HOUR** conversation with SCUMM legend, Aric Wilmunder!

 

 

Well, didn't join you TODAY, but can't wait to watch this one in particular.

 

One bit I randomly stumbled upon because I did skip around a bit to give myself a teaser... Aric not being able to answer how the dialogue trees worked is totally fair, because indeed, the SCUMM tools, compilers etc. knew nothing about it. All of it was implemented for Last Crusade mostly (almost exclusively) using functionality that was there already in Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion on PC - a lot of it was even there in Maniac Mansion C64, before the tools and language really became portable.

 

The short version is: Dialogue lines are just verbs repurposed - Maniac Mansion could already clear the verbs and replace them with entirely new verbs placed anywhere on the screen (as far as I recall, that was only added after the C64 version). The intricacies of doing the setup were hidden inside a few scripts and macros (like Aric mentions), which made it look like "not verbs at all" - macros which pushed the existing verbs on a stack, cleared them, created new custom verbs, placed them on screen based on their number, and set up the actions each verb would trigger. This combined with using the existing case ... of (similar to the typical switch ... case statement) for the choices. But since macros allow literally adding to the syntax of the language, this turned into something like (EDIT: using the real syntax, since that's already visible in the VGHF interview with Ron Gilbert):

 

start-dialog
set-dialog 1 "I want to be a pirate!"
set-dialog 2 "I want to be a fireman!"
set-dialog 3 "I mean to kill you all!"

; "wait-for-dialog" is what replaced the "case" keyword - in practice it worked like built-in "wait" commands -
; allowed other scripts to run while waiting for the player to pick a dialogue line.

wait-for-dialog { 
   of dialog-1 {
      jump dialogue-about-three-trials
   }
   of dialog-2 {
      jump beat-it-kid
   }
   of dialog-3 {
      jump beat-it-kid
   }
}

dialog-about-three-trials:
    ; SCUMM code for this discussion

beat-it-kid:
    ; SCUMM code for this discussion

 

The wait-for-dialog macro, as mentioned, would wait for the player to pick a line - allowing other scripts to run in the meantime. When a verb was chosen, its number would be stored in a variable, choice. So, the end of the macro would just be case choice, leading into the following of dialog-1... lines. dialog-1, 2, 3... being constants also defined within the SCUMM scripts. So, the entire "system" was all done in SCUMM without needing to change the tooling.

 

After that, it's basically "goto's" all the way down - and to my knowledge there was never any tooling to make it easier to follow complex dialogue trees. ETA: Of course, the jumps here could be replaced with the actual response being inside the of... clauses (and in this particular case, they were) - that's up to the SCUMMlet. But jumps back to the choices within a branch after a response was finished, or back to the initial dialog choices in the conversation, etc. - would be done using jump.

Edited June 29 by Serge

[danielalbu]

Monkeys, thimbleweeds and maniacs!

 

🎙️ Join us for our conversation with the one and only, the grumpy gamer himself, Ron Gilbert!

 

 

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join us TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my conversation with LucasArts legend Mark Ferrari!

 

In this conversation we discuss Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, Thimbleweed Park and more!

 

📅 Today @ Noon (PT) 📅

 

 

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my conversation with former LucasArts employee and Hollywood writer, Hal Barwood!

 

📝 In this conversation, we discussed Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Rebel Assault II, The Dig and more...

 

⏰ Today @ Noon (PT)

 

Edited September 3 by danielalbu

[ThunderPeel2001]

I haven't watched it, but I've always wondered what he thought about the "Hal Barwood on Monkey 2" thing. (Although, actually, I'm pretty sure I asked him years ago - now that I think about it - and he said he thought it was because he had a tendency to give aphorisms about things. Why they made them so negative, I don't know!)

[danielalbu]

🎙️ Join me for the YouTube premiere of my conversation with Kyle Balda, the director of Minions and former LucasArts intern!

 

📝 In this conversation, we discuss Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, The Mask, Jumanji, Mars Attacks, Despicable Me, Minions, and more!

 

⏰ Premiering NOW!