ideas for changing the perspective of season 3

[Dangerzone]

this was originally written for the "Places to go in Sam & Max: Season 3" thread (http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5002) but it started to become a wall of text covering several topics, so i figured it would be better suited as its own topic

anyways, these are my complete thoughts on what i want for season 3.. and some of them are major changes i am proposing, so i would like everyone else's thoughts on this....

i think it would be cool if in season 3 they make a pool of locations (i guess you could call it a sandbox world), and keep adding to it with each episode... so by the end of the season (if you have all the episodes, you have this massive world by the final episode made of 30+ locations) then update (if not all) of the locations with each episode, and have some of the old stuff come into use again in a whole new way in subsequent episodes

if we see something in one episode, and we have no use for it... remember it, and it may come into use in a later episode (like bosco's x-ray machine, and stinkys stop sign, these are perfect examples)

likewise with the inventory items... make a massive inventory box that carries across the episodes, and make it so that sam stops picking up stuff by himself... make it so that right clicking an object gives you an option to pick it up (this will give TT the opportunity to make a lot more red hearing objects) but an unaseable object in one episode, may come into use later... (sam picking up only certain random objects and not others was always a bit of a pet peeve for me)

and it may also add some play time by adding a free roam mode after the credits where you can wander around the world to see the immediate aftermath of their most recent case (maybe add a bunch of easter eggs for each episode in this mode that only happen after you complete a case) another idea maybe to activate some of these easter eggs on a timer, to have things turn on each week between episodes... so it seems that the world is still moving even after their case (and if you play the game after the fact, maybe they can have a switch at the bottom for which post-case week you want to see, maybe an option to turn it all on, but some of the gags could be multistaged)

oh... and mini games, lots of mini games... maybe even make a pool of those too, so if we have any favorite games from one episode, we can play them again... some may also be made to get harder with each passing episode

obviously.. if you do not have the previous episodes, and you start midway through the season, you will only have the locations that were opened in that episode (unless there is a earlier location that was reused, then you will only have the ability to see that location in its current state, and only use the items needed for that specific episode, not how it was when it was first introduced) this way, the new players have an incentive to play the past episodes and see the rest of these worlds

i would also like to see a major expansion on their street, maybe if the street set was composed of more locations... it would not be so bad for those who hate seeing all those locations over and over again

like have the one tv station set somehow become part of the street, but have it be set up for some different show every episode. maybe make it so they had the maimtron bring a whole bunch of places to their street... like the white house, and a big chunk of the warp building, etc.

one idea to keep all the locations organized, may be to get rid of the old "lets go to..." dialog option, and make a giant spherical world with all kinds of low res renders and paintings showing a good bit of the sam and max world, and make it so that you hit enter or click when you drive past a opened location to go to it (a lot of the locations in this giant circle can be red hearings too, leaving us to wonder which ones are real and will be eventually used)

a cool day/night cycle for the world would be cool too... make it so that as the season progresses the time of day changes (maybe even have a few jokes relevant to the time of day in the various old locations as the season goes on) i know they tried to do this in season 2... with 202 being at dusk, and 204-205 being at night, but i mean an actual progression this time (dawn, mid-day, evening, dusk, night) they can shuffle up the order, but i want to see each episode have its own unique time of day

another way to change the ambiance of each episode is to give the various episodes different weather patterns, like snow, rain, overcast, fire and brimstone, etc. simple weather changes is another way to give a fresh look to old locations

i would also like it if they added a more dynamic camera to the game, make it so that we can right click and drag the camera to move it around a bit... and also add a zoom feature with the scroll wheel (or with some keyboard shortcut for those with wheel-less mouses) so we can really explore the worlds and see all the fine detail in them (but place a limit on how much the camera moves, obviously) maybe add a "1st person" mode where we can look around as sam, (we wont be able to move in this mode) but we can look around as him to see things up close

changing the stock camera angles on the various street locations every episode may help to add more of a fresh look to all the reoccurring locations every episode as well

and maybe they can also start making the locations so that they remove the entire "3rd wall" concept, and have all sides of a location be used and have usable junk on them

basically make all the locations so that they have the benefits of a over-the-shoulder-3rd-person camera, but keep the current cinematic style with the dynamic camera above the action

anyways... those are my ideas, have at em (and if anyone has anything better, go right on ahead) i already know that most of my ideas are going to be hated, so don't feel bad if you shoot any of my concepts down

[Ashton]

I love the idea for the world pool and items that move back and forth and seeing teh results of your shinanigans (I'd love to see ending credits in all games like are in final epps of the seasons) I'd also like to see items that are picke dup in epp1 and are seemingly useless (and possibly loosable, though not destroyable) and are REQUIRED in eppisode 6 (I hate hte idea of a game becoming unwinnable, but it woudl be fun to say, you have X inventory slots, but every shelf (for example) that you can find you can leave Y items on (and these items not be seeable unles you click the shelf) this way players will beforced to keep up with their items better

Having done some (EXTREMELY) minor 3d work and code myself, I can tell you that having a moveable camera (except perhaps side-to-side or zoom) would atleast double the time for artists and animators, if not increase it 3 or 4 times every flat ofject suddenly has to be 3D (2/3 of those items ont he stree, for example, I bet are flat ofjects with a fake 3D look) If this were done the games woudl be at the rate of 1 every 6 months not 1 a month (though for a puzzle or two, or a room or two this woudl be very interesting and be quite an oppertunity for both jokes ("See Sam, I told you nobody was looking over you sholdier watching us") and for puzzles ("Hey, there's a button on the back side, little buddy!")

Though a zoom-in/zoom-out would be nice, I hate playing 'hunt the pixel' when sam ends up standing infront of a vital item/place/person and you can hardly get to it/them

As much as I find time annoying in games, it could add interesting options, such as perhaps certain characters like the "fae vampire" (cant remember his name) only being avalible at night, and during the say he's sealed in his coffin (also meaning at night you might sneak in and rifle through his coffin) While I think an hourly schedual woudl be way too inconveniant (anyone who played the older Zelda game "majora's mask" can attest to the "hourly" method being a major pain in the backside) Day/night could provide fun puzzles and make the game a little trickier (such as having to kill time untill dawn/dusk)

Just my feelings on your thoughts.

[RMJ1984]

In short i miss the not so real, straight rooms and buildings, lets go back to things like in Day of the tentacle og sam & max, why do rooms and buildings have to be 100% straight and with four sides :) we need a more wacky enviroments thats for sure :) and moveable NPC's so the game isnt so barren, now that telltale cant afford the work going into making it more detailed as in 2d.

And we need more locals that for sure, it simply gets to boring running around the same 5-6 times, unless there happens alot of changes, like in season 2 hehe.

But yeah we need a overview map like in Hit The Road, so you get of feel where locations are, and a sense of direction imo. also the idea of discovering new locations from items is also very nice, and bring back sam's box of junk icon :D

[Jake]

and bring back sam's box of junk icon :D

I knew we'd reach this day sooner or later -- the day when people on the forums request we "bring back" things that are already in the game! We're surely moments away from the forums collapsing in on themselves and creating a new star.

http://www.meltwizard.com/stuff/box.png

[tobar]

Gah, I don't immediately recognize that carpet and flooring. Waiting room in hell?

[wisp]

about the pool of locations idea: i like it, actually i had the same thoughts some time ago. the more i thought about it, the more i realised that it is not going to work with the current episodic distribution. i the later episodes you would have a huge world, but most locations would be useless to the story, because the game has to be playable by anyone that only own that single episode, so you can't have vital puzzles in them or you you have to "carry" them around with every episode increasing file size of later episode tremendously. creating this whole system just for a few easter eggs might be a bit to much.
i like the idea of the carry-over inventory however. it shouldn't be much more complicated than the system already used for the decals and you could use items from earlier episodes to solve some "bonus"-puzzles later to unlock certain...whatever.

[Randulf]

Or you can have a "collectible" item per episode. When you collect everything in a season you are treated with a steamingly hot clip of Max taking a bath.

[Ebeeto]

Hang on. I'll just destroying your ideas a little quick:

Inventory that goes with you to the next episode
It works when the items are necessary for completion of an episode, but playing episode 3 and realizing that you need a thingamabob from episode 1 in order to unleash some sweet hilarity will certainly make my toes very untingly with anti-joy. Plus, it makes way for several new ways for the continuum to mess up and bug testing would take about 2 years (including holidays)

Pool of locations
Could work, of course... But I get the feeling you'll end up going back to the wrong places all the time. With a massive amount of places to go, you'll be trying a lot of locations over and over and ending up confused, scared and half-way suicidal. Either that or you'll hear the phrase "We don't have to go back to Warp TV right now" endlessly while trying to go to the wrong location...

Interactive camera
The camera in season 1 and 2 are next to flawless. The only times they don't really work well are when the camera shifts during a walk through a room and Sam ends up spasmatically walking back and fourth while the camera angles flash so fast you'll get some bad epilepsia... But that problem should be dealt with simply by not making such weird camera shifts. A camera that you can move around somewhat freely will either feel:
A) Buggalicious, since the camera most certainly will end up inside an object and make everything look awful
or
B) Useless, since there has to be restrictions that make sure the camera doesn't hide inside Max's giant skull. That makes the camera not able to move where you want it and nobody cares.
and/or
C) The game will feel like one of those half-butted sex simulators... "Rotate the camera around the swollen head of the rabbity-thing and get a load of all the action!"

Not automatically picking up stuff by clicking them
This one should work... But it never really has in the classic adventure games. If something's supposed to be picked up, you often end up picking it up. The carbon dater in 204, for example... It lays on the ground and there's no reason why you wouldn't want to pick it up. And the ability to choose wether to interact with something by picking it up/talking to it/examining/using etc. never really worked that great. Most stuff is not edible and/or possible to talk to, and you end up never using the mouth-interaction until there is an NPC present.

On the other hand...

The mini-games, I agree with you about. It shouldn't be hard to implement more driving parts, a couple of button-mashers or even a half-tarded FPS sequence. And yes, they should be replayable from the main menu, with a high score table and everything. Otherwise, I'll be mad...

Still, I think the best recipe is to keep polishing what's already great. Adding stuff is something that must and should happen, but any tremendous changes would most likely end up ruining something that was originally good.

Thoughts?

[Dangerzone]

yeah i get all your points.. let me clear a few of mine up for you

as for the pool of locations, maybe instead of using all 3-4 locations from an episode in all the sunsequent ones, have each episode have a "main set" that will be re-visitable in future episodes, using this method may also help the developers to fill said location with objects and things that may come into use in later episodes

as for the inventory item pool, what i think we should have is a bunch of items in each episode that we can pick up and are useless (3-4 red hearing items an episode, which is not much more than they have now)... maybe have about 15-20 of these episode shifting inventory items over the course of the season

lets say in the next episode, if one of those items has a use... but you have not played the first episode to get it, then you automatically start the episode with that item in your inventory, if you have played the previous episodes and gotten all the other un-usable items from the previous episodes, then there should be a bunch of funny one liners for trying to use them in various wrong places in the current episode as well

and as for the movable camera, all i want from it is a way to look at things up close... maybe perhaps instead of a whole new moveable camera system, they can add something like a magnifier in the inventory box to get closeups of the various enviroments, i dunno... i just like to read and examine the funny things in the environments that don't end up in the various cut scenes and dialog

a perfect example of this are the various books that the characters have in hell... "unwanted visitors log" "4-letter words" "cheat codes Volume I-II" etc...

as for the not picking up of objects automatically, one of the major puzzle solvers for me is sam automatically picking things up... having to think and figure out what to collect will add a whole other level to the games

and its not like there are hundreds of click able objects in each game, only a dozen or so in each location, they can just record 2 lines for each object... one for when you just look at it, and one for if you try to pick it up (and not just have a stock "i can't pick that up" make a custom line for the various things... "its bolted to the wall, and why would i need a stuffed jackelope head anyways, other than to frighten max"

[Ashton]

I think an easy way to solve the carry-over problem would be to have sam use every item in hsi inventoy by the end of the eppisode except perhaps 2 and those will carry over to be used soemtime later for a hilarious cutscene easteregg or maybe a secret room or soemthing. Have all the Vital items per game, but let carry-overs be for eastereggs

I think the world coudl be implimented hte same way, have only hte vital areas avalible in each game, but if you carry over a location you can revisit it for an easteregg in a future epp (for example, WARP is in epp 1 (and never again) and if you play epp 2 (and 1) you can revisit the set (maybe have them have only 1 set avalible, like in Night of the raving dead) and they're constantly working on the same new content in epps 2-6) Another option would be marking vital locations with a special icon, while funny carry-overs are marked differently.

I dont think EVERY item needs a special "I cant take that" since they all ahve their custom desc, though I would like to see a pool of lines, or at the minimum ones for certain 'families' of objects, like large objects "where would I keep that?" and tiny ones woudl have "I'd just loose somehting that small", etc

I do fully agree with the minigames, there shoudl be more (perhaps also have these carry over where if you ahve the full season you can access all of them from a special menu)

I wonder how much these posts imfluence the games, if developers will, for instance, see ltos of people saying "more minigames!" and decide "you know, we should include more minigames" or if they're (at most) jsut laughign saying "screw them, we're gonna do this OUR way" (like most game manufacturers do...)

[Jake]

Gah, I don't immediately recognize that carpet and flooring. Waiting room in hell?

sybil's ... I think it might be episode-specific carpet. i just pulled the screen off of a google image search. :)

[BlackMageJ]

Being able to use inventory items on other inventory items is all I want.

Well, maybe a separate 'look' function when you right click as well as the default 'interact' left-click, but that's mainly an excuse to add even more hilarious dialogue.

[tobar]

sybil's ... I think it might be episode-specific carpet. i just pulled the screen off of a google image search. :)

Yeah the tiles made me want to say Sybil's but that carpet threw me off.

[Jake]

Well, maybe a separate 'look' function when you right click as well as the default 'interact' left-click, but that's mainly an excuse to add even more hilarious dialogue.

That's already in, and has been since Culture Shock, if you're talking about the inventory.

[jmm]

Maybe that feature can be extended to non-inventory items/hot-spots/Max

Right-Click on...
Max-> Sam: "He's my little buddy"
DeSoto-> Sam: "I love this car", Max: "You're a sick puppy, Sam"
Lou-> Sam: "Hey Lou, long time no see"

Left-Click on:
Max-> Speak to Max
DeSoto-> Max: "Where to, Sam?
Lou-> Picks up Item

[Jake]

The problem with right click to look at is, nobody uses it. It was in both Bone games, and did nothing but maybe (but probably not really) satisfy the ten people who noticed it.

[wisp]

then what do you have the tutorial for? okay, us veterans won't probably replay it, but if right-clicking would be on the feature list for the new season we would still notice it.

[Jake]

Telling someone "you can right click things" doesn't mean they'll actually do it. If simply telling someone they could do something would make them do it, the world would have far fewer user interface and functionality challenges (and a lot more dictatorships, I imagine, but that wasn't where I was originally going with this sentence...).

[BlackMageJ]

Fair enough.

I guess I'm just one of the ten people who habitually 'examines' everything in most Adventure games (and yes, I right-click on every item in the inventory)

[wildemar]

I hava also missed a Look-At feature in the games. I just like examining everything before doing anything, so I can anticipate what action might trigger an event. That way it is easier not to miss out on any of the hilarity.

That said, it did work out great with the current system, so I'm not complaining. but if you ever feel any excess comedy thumping in your heads and you don't know where to put it: Look-At.