For those waiting for Day of the Tentacle Remastered to show up on Steam, it can now be pre-ordered there as well.
Like GOG.com's Day of the Tentacle store page, Steam only lists Windows as a supported platform. Mac and Linux versions are coming, but they won't be available at launch.
That odd, faint sound you just heard? That would ATMachine's brain exploding.
LucasArts programmer of yore Aric Wilmunder has decided to make a very convincing argument for why he should be given Mojo's coveted Favorite Person Of All Time Award. From his web site:
Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Maniac Mansion, The Dig, Indy Iron Phoenix, the list goes on. I worked on all of these and had a suspicion that someday there would be interest in how these games were made. Years ago I visited the LucasArts facility in the San Francisco Presidio and brought along two grocery bags of design documents. I asked if they had an archivist and I was told that since I had kept these safe for over two decades, it was best if I just kept them together. I have met with the archivist at Stanford and these documents will either end up there or at a museum dedicated to preserving game design. Until then, I plan to release a few documents every month, and I am currently looking at using GitHub for archiving the SCUMM source code.
Then change your pants, which I'm sure are useless now.
Source: Aric's World
The folks behind Kotaku's Split Screen podcast paid a visit to Double Fine's studio to gab with Tim about the remaster of Day of the Tentacle (reminder: March 22nd!) and various other things Double Fine. A text excerpt is available, if you're ridiculous. If you're not, go listen to the hour-long conversation.
Toward the end Tim gets asked a question many of us had, which is whether Double Fine has plans to pursue additional remasters after Full Throttle. His take is that the other LEC adventures should only get restored by their respective project leaders. But since Double Fine has established the all-important relationship with Disney, I'm thinking any Moriarty or Fox or Clark or Stemmle or Ackley or Ahern who might be interested may want to start by reaching out to the two-headed baby. Won't you, guys? For Mojo?
Source: Kotaku
USgamer has published a big heaving cover story on Day of the Tentacle ahead of the game's special edition, due for release sometime this month. The article is essentially a giant interview with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman about the production of the original game as well as the effort of restoring the old assets:
At the time, [LucasArts] had an archive room. They had two full-time archivists, even in the floppy days. And there was a room full of drawers with floppy discs where the game wrapped, and even milestones in between, before the end, you would take it down to Wendy and—they're credited as being the "burning goddesses" in the credits—because they burned all the CDs. It was the burning room. They sat there burning CDs all day long. But, in the old days, there was a whole room, and two full-time positions of archiving stuff.
I feel like there was the feeling at LucasArts, because Lucas himself had that archive, the barn, and that's where all the LucasArts stuff is now, is in the barn at the ranch. So, there was that feeling of, take care of the artifacts of the thing that you're making, because you'll want them someday.
Source: USgamer
Agree or disagree? How right or wrong were they?
Source: Kotaku
I finally got myself familiarized with ScummGen, the compiler that takes C-style code and compiles it into resources used by the actual SCUMM engine (used by LucasArts for all of their adventure games from Maniac Mansion to The Curse of Monkey Island, and by Humongous Entertainment in most of their games until 2003). I polished up the ScummGen test game, Indiana Jones and the Call of Thunder.
The original team (Dominik Haslinger, Jens Doblies and Sebastien Ronsse) did the majority of the work. It was originally intended to be a much longer game, but it was cancelled. I finished up the ice cavern sequence so that it could be released as a completely playable game as I thought it would be a shame if no one got to play it. Their sourcecode was playable up to the point where you complete the mechanism in the cavern.
Here are the changes and fixes that I made to that source code:
You can download it at my itch.io page if you want to try it out. It includes the sourcecode. It doesn't include an executable though, as it needs ScummVM in order to run (and I figured I'd cut out the middle man and just let people run ScummVM on whatever system they wish to run it on). It's detected in ScummVM as Day of the Tentacle.
I mean, sure, you've seen everything that's on there, but it's the principle of the thing! An official web site for an official Day of the Tentacle upgrade exists, and damn it you're gonna go, and you're gonna LIKE IT!
STOP CRYING, I AM NOT YELLING!
Oh boy oh boy! Double Fine's released six high-resolution screenshots from Day of the Tentacle: Remastered, which you may recall as the sole remaining justification for this web site. Just look at all this justification, fans!
Day of the Tentacle: Remastered (Screenshots)The following features had been hinted at, but are now confirmed:
The release platforms are PC, Mac, PS4 and Vita. The release window is early 2016. So we'll be around until then.
Is this what Day of the Tentacle: Remastered (note the name change) really looks like:?
Probably. The attendees of Indiecade will find out for sure tomorrow, and the internet seven seconds after. For now, OH MY GOD!
Day of the Tentacle: Remastered, the reason Mojo even bothers paying for the domain and reason Gabez stubbornly refuses to bite down on the cyanide capsule under his molar*, will be improving your lives sometime in the near future. We will do our best to cover the imminent media and information dispersal, though our best isn't usually that impressive.
*Just kidding, he died in agony long ago.
The Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition PAX posters of Green and Purple Tentacle that Double Fine was giving away at the show aren't available for the general public.
However, Double Fine is giving them away in a contest, so now if you didn't get to attend PAX, you have a chance to win them. It is a beauty contest, modeled after the pet human Beauty contest in the game. Submit a video or pictures and audio to win. Contestants will be judged on best hair, best smile, and best laugh. One winner will win both the purple tentacle and green tentacle posters, signed by Tim Schafer. Runners up will win the green tentacle poster, also signed by Tim.
Hurry though, as the contest ends "Monday or therabouts" at the end of the month.
Sources inside Double Fine have revealed that the upcoming Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition will only feature new art assets.
This means that it won't be using any of the Singapore artwork created for the abandoned LucasArts Special Edition, which was rumoured to have been 80% complete at the time of its cancellation (but which Double Fine refuse to acknowledge the existence, or non-existence, of).
The new Special Edition is due out sometime next year, and will feature newly recovered higher quality audio dialogue, a team commentary, higher resolution graphics, and undoubtedly lots of other things that have yet to be revealed.
Double Fine have stated that we will be seeing more of the game before of the end of the year, which hopefully means tomorrow, but probably means December.
Source: DF Forums
Ron collected a few thoughts commemorating this occasion on his blog.
He also can't help but reference Monkey Island 3a, which is unfortunate.
Other than that, it's a good read. Pictures included!
Source: Grumpy Gamer
At their PAX booth this year, Double Fine will be selling two Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition posters signed by Tim.
This new Mojo that you guys paid for doesn't seem to be able to let me upload images, so check out the posters on the Double Fine Action News instead
It would be cool if these showed up at the company store some day, but there could be rights issues involved with that. I believe a similar legal snag has held up the release of the Grim Fandango Remastered soundtrack.
.Source: Double Fine Action News
You can find them over at the Double Fine forums. We haven't gotten any audio/visual of Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition just yet, but some of these responses - a combination of reflections about the original game and details about the remaster, will whet your appetite and then some. My personal favorites:
Are there uncompressed voice recordings from the original game? Will they be used? - d_Stilgar
Matt: Yes. There are. We found the original DAT tapes from the recording session and we’ve painstakingly gone through and re-edited the sessions to pull out high quality audio for the voice, which is what we will be using for the special edition!
Any cool discoveries (that you can talk about) this time [regarding interesting things found in the game’s data files]? Maybe Grossman nonchalantly revealing the Secret of Monkey Island somewhere? Remnants of lost puzzles? - Alfred J
Matt: We did find out one interesting thing actually, about Ben!
Spaff: Oh yeah! Whilst reading through Tim’s DOTT notebooks I spotted reference to one ‘Ruben Throttle’ - Was this Ben Throttle’s full name? I asked Tim and he confirmed it was. That’s a fun fact in and of itself, but it gets better. in 2001 or so my friend Jake and I asked Tim if Hoagie was Ben’s brother, and he said something along the lines of “how did you know that!?”. When I asked him about the Ruben Throttle thing, Tim brought up his relationship with Hoagie again and said “their mom named them both after sandwiches”. So there you go!
Eddie Riggs is clearly related to them somehow too, but maybe as a cousin or something seeing as he doesn’t have a sandwich name? Unless Eddie Riggs is a stage name, hmmmm.
I don't know about related, but Hoagie definitely namedrops "my friend Eddie" at some point...I think when looking at the horse in hallway? Oh, and I'm jazzed to hear they uncovered the original recordings. It was possibly my biggest concern, because that MONSTER.SOU file doesn't leave a lot of breathing room.
Now stop consuming everything Buzzfeed-style and go read all of the team's responses. Spaff spent a lot of time on it. >:
Source: Double Fine Forums
With the Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition just around the corner, it might be time for you to familiarize yourself with the commonly held American history myths that DOTT makes reference to.
With this in mind, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker has stepped in, and created a helpful Day of the Tentacle History Lesson for non-Americans to help you appreciate the American folklore and jokes (and puzzles) in the game.
Get reading now (although don't necessarily use what you learn in a history exam -- Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman weren't big on historical accuracy!)
Campo Santo proves that it's good for more than making absurdly promising games; it's also positioning itself as Mojo's replacement by recently siphoning Full Throttle reflections out of Tim Schafer. Those memories combined with perspectives from folks you might recognize make for an insightful retrospective on the game and its impact on Schafer's career thereafter.
Acknowledgement is also made of Tim's good fortune to see both of the game's unsanctioned sequels die on the vine, quelled threats that nonetheless motivated his departure:
One day, deep into production on Grim Fandango, Schafer noticed that the project leads on the third Monkey Island game were at work on a new project, and asked somebody what they were up to. “Someone said, ‘Oh, I think they’re working on a Full Throttle sequel. And I was like, ‘They’re wh-wh-what? Nobody told me about that!” I went and asked them, and they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, man!’ ‘And no one even asked me?” ‘Um, I don’t know… yeah…’
“I was upset about that. I was horrified. I felt so personally attached to that game; those are my characters. The idea that someone else could make a sequel to it… I was so horrified that I didn’t own it.” It was one of the reasons Schafer would leave LucasArts after making Grim Fandango. “It was fair,” he acknowledges, “I mean, they did pay me for the time. I’m not saying they stole it from me.
Stop putting your lips on that and go read the whole thing, but don't enjoy it so much that you forget that we too used to generate decent content about these games. :(
Source: The Camp Santo Quarterly Revie
The vice president of production at Disney Interactive, John Vignocchi, wants characters from LucasArts adventure games in Disney Infinity. You can help him achieve that dream, as Disney Infinity is asking fans to choose a character to make it to Disney Infinity as the Player's Pick 2015.
Simply use Twitter to tweet your suggestion using the hashtag #OurDisneyInfinity and let the powers that be know that Lucas fans are interested in more than just Star Wars.
Knights of the Old Republic II has just received a major update on Steam as it's now available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Steam OS. The update brings 37 Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud saves. Steam Workshop mods (the Restored Content Mod is now available straight through Steamworks), native widescreen resolution support, resolution support up to 4k and 5K, and gamepad support.
An employee of Aspyr, the company responsible for the ports of the game, stated on the Steam forums that they are working with GOG and Disney to try to get these changes on GOG.com as well, and that they should know more after Gamescom.
Sad news today as we learn that character actor Irwin Keyes has passed away at the age of 63. Check IMDB for a list of the actor's many credits, the most famous probably being his roles as bodyguard Hugo Mojelewski on "The Jeffersons" as well as the inhaler-dependent assassin Wheezy Joe in the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty.
Here at Mojo though, he will always be remembered as the voice of Bruno the Bigfoot, whose rescue is the primary concern of the 1993 classic adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road.
Source: The AV Club
