Q&A With the Design Team

[Joop]

Originally Posted by Hero1

Questions for Mike. March 3rd 2004. Did you ever see that coming? What did you think of the reaction from the fans?

That's a really good question!

Hit the Road was really great, and my introduction to Sam and Max too!
So, yeah, thanks for that!

One more:
Mike, what takes up more time, coming up with answers to our questions or figuring out what to put between the quotation marks in your name?

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by BiggerJ

But can the player walk around freely in Max's first-person mode? Also, it's good to see that the future-sight power will be usuable on practically anything, regardless of usefulness - will any other powers be like that?

You can't walk around in Max mode, but you can look around. The main reason for that is pretty simple: it wasn't necessary. Max already wanders around and comments on stuff when you're in Sam mode; it'd be boring to just see and hear the same stuff, and we wanted it to feel different. There are also technical reasons -- our environments aren't designed to walk around in first person mode, but shot from third-person cameras.

And all the powers work a little differently from each other, but for the most part: you choose a power, then choose a target. The available targets change from power to power -- the things you can use Rhinoplasty on are different from the things you can mind-read, for example.

Also, another couple of questions: will the DeSoto still be evil, like it was at the end of Season 2? And what's this I hear about a map?

The DeSoto is still possessed by demons. (But don't expect that to make much difference with Sam & Max driving). What you hear about maps is that they're a great way to navigate around a city, so the new season has a city map to let you drive from location to location. Someday we'll get that open-world free-roaming Sam & Max game!

Edit 2: Is the mysterious Shadow Man who introduces the stories going to turn out to be relevant to the plot in any way?

He's the narrator; he narrates. We needed a good way to drop players (on a new platform) into a weird game even if they hadn't played the previous seasons, and since "Twilight Zone" and Plan 9 both start out with a narrator, it seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

[ttg_Stemmle]

Originally Posted by Hero1

Questions for Mike. March 3rd 2004. Did you ever see that coming? What did you think of the reaction from the fans?

Wait, did something bad happen in 2004? I've kinda blotted that out, what with the re-election of W 'n' all...

Can you believe you are working on a new Sam & Max game 6 years later?

Nope. I keep asking people to pinch me, which is getting a) painful, and b) potentially litigious.

Has your puzzle design changed at all since it is coming out on the PS3?

Nope, but we've added a few jokes.

Also I just have to take this opportunity to thank you for Hit the Road. I played it when it first came out when I was 13. I have never played a video game that was as funny as HTR. I think it shaped my sense of humour. I had such fond memories of it, I always followed Sam & Max years later. That's why I'm still here and excited the franchise is still going.

Aw, shucks. Now you've made me blush like a schoolgirl.

[ttg_Stemmle]

Originally Posted by Joop

Mike, what takes up more time, coming up with answers to our questions or figuring out what to put between the quotation marks in your name?

The quotes thing is easy... it's one step removed from putting up Facebook statuses....

Mike "Going Home to Give Charlie and Max a Bath" Stemmle

PS See?

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Winther

Now, the series is very much its own thing, and the bar you have to clear is the (extremely high) one you've set yourselves over two very well-regarded seasons. Which is more daunting? Living up to the classic, or topping your own work?

I dunno about anybody else, but I got over all my "reverence for previous classics" over the course of Monkey Island 3. (And made the process miserable by being an annoyingly possessive Monkey Island fan the whole time). Just like MI2, Hit the Road is one of my favorite games, but it was still just made by a bunch of talented guys trying to a good job, no different from anybody else. If you over-think it -- whether it's trying to live up to somebody else's work or trying to live up to your own previous work -- then you'll just make yourself miserable and most likely end up with a worse result. Better just to trust that you know what you're doing, rest assured that some people will love it and others will hate it, and the world will keep spinning either way.

Besides the move towards more over-arcing storylines, is there anything that's changed in your approach to episodic game development over the years? Plot, tech, art, whatever your area; is your way of doing things now different from when you started?

Yes.

It's harder to jump in and do simple chores or scripting because the games have gotten a lot more sophisticated. And you have to take a lot into account designing the episodes and writing the scripts, based on what you've learned from doing a dozen other games and getting feedback about what worked and didn't work from each one.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by zmally

how much crossover is there between the developers and the designers? Do any of the designers ever get involved in the programming aspects of the game, and vice versa?

There's less of that now than there used to be, since the content programmers and chore artists are doing a lot more complex stuff in the game. But the teams are still small enough so that everybody can do what he's good at doing. If you've got some programming background, or know the chore tool, you can find places to pitch in. On the Strong Bad games, for instance, Mark Darin and I programmed & did the art for the Videlectrix mini-games in the episodes that we directed. And I scripted the "strategy game" at the end of the Strong Badia episode.

And the vice-versa part is true, too: we try to get as many people as are interested involved in the brainstorming process for the designs.

I know in movies and tv shows during production stuff is added as they just sort of try stuff out, and I'm wondering, in your games, Sam & Max especially, do the programmers ever think "oooh but wouldn't it be funny if...?" and something gets added in well after pre-production?

Yeah, all the time. Some of the best gags are put in by the chore guys or the environment modelers. The games are always improved when people are contributing to a game instead of just checking off a list of assigned tasks.

And lastly at what stage are the voices recorded? I guess if everything's set in stone as to what happens it can be one of the first things done, and it'll be much easier to animate characters' faces to their voices. But on the other hand usually voices are done right near the end of the dev cycle so any changes can be incorporated into the script.

Voices are recorded immediately after the script is finished, which is the second thing to get done (after the game design). All the choreography and content programming, and much of the animation, is done afterwards.

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Lackey

How do you guys come up with puzzles? Do you start with what S&M need to do and make a puzzle to fit or is it the other way around where someone just says "I want to do something with wire hangers"?

A little of both, but mostly the first one. You try to start out with a story and then figure out ways to make it feel like the player's putting the story together, instead of just solving some obscure puzzle to get to the next cutscene.

Sometimes, though, you just want to see something funny happen, so you try to find a way to shoehorn it in.

[BiggerJ]

Are you deliberately designing power-related puzzles to be as creative as possible, exploring the full range of possibilities for each power? I'm especially interested in the Rhinoplasty power (if it wasn't just a joke by Chuck - if it was, it's still a good example). Rhinoplasty seems like such a restrictively specific power, since it would obviously only work on noses. Perhaps Sam could make something Rhinoplasty-able by modifying it by hand to look like a nose (there could be a hint like "Huh, you know, if you squint... and are several feet away... and are drunk... and legally blind... that kind of looks like a nose."). If Rhinoplasty is a real power, was that a deliberate choice to force people to think more creatively? If it was just Chuck's joke, will there be a restrictively specific power like that?

Edit: Rhinoplasty copies pictures and paintings? And I've read that Rhinoplasty may be shapeshifting. Does Rhinoplasty give Max the power to shapeshift into any picture or painting he sees? That's reminiscent of Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie, in which certain powers can only be used on special pads. Except this time, the 'pads' are natural parts of the scenery. Perhaps a puzzle could involve Sam modifying a picture, or creating one from scratch.

[Remolay]

speaking of Rhinoplasty, Max turning into a Rocket Launcher. As far as I know Rhinoplasty can only copy pictures/paintings. Why would you add a random picture of a rocket launcher?

[Avistew]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Yeah, all the time. Some of the best gags are put in by the chore guys or the environment modelers. The games are always improved when people are contributing to a game instead of just checking off a list of assigned tasks.

Originally Posted by Chuck

Voices are recorded immediately after the script is finished, which is the second thing to get done (after the game design). All the choreography and content programming, and much of the animation, is done afterwards.

I have a bit of trouble conciling these two things. I mean, you're saying that the voices are recorded pretty much at the beginning, but that programmers or animators suggest things which are added to the game... Wouldn't you have to record additional bits, then? Or are all the things they add voiceless?

[Hyperkinetic_Martian]

A related question to the one above: how long does it usually take to complete the voice recordings?

[The Highway]

Is it hard to get the voices and animation to sync?

[Secret Fawful]

Originally Posted by ttg_Stemmle

Anyone wanna dare us to bring back the Soda Poppers?

Mike "easily goaded into foolish actions" Stemmle

So you're saying most of Escape From Monkey Island came about after one long game of "I dare you"? Just kidding; after all these years it must be nice to finally Escape From Escape From Monkey Island.

Seriously, you must be absolutely thrilled having so much freedom in designing adventure games now without blood-crazed fans peering wild-eyed over your shaking shoulders, and without executives with cold, vacant expressions threatening you with a rather large pair of rusty scissors poised precariously over your honeysuckle-scented employment contract. (Aren't I a master of using adjectives to create images with words?)

So just for fun, describe the wackiest, zaniest, craziest thing from Season 3 in one obscure arcane spoiler-free word that will keep fans guessing for months.

[TheHutt]

Question: Why the logo change?

From



to



The original logo was sleek, elegant, cool. Personally, I find the added serifs at the bottom ends of "A" quite distracting and falling out of style.

[Nojh]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

Question: Why the logo change?

The original logo was sleek, elegant, cool. Personally, I find the added serifs at the bottom ends of "A" quite distracting and falling out of style.

I like it. Gives the entire logo a kind of ethereal feel, especially with the vague fog stroking on the ampersand. It also jives well with the font style used for the subtitle: The Devil's Playhouse.

[TheHutt]

the vague fog stroking on the ampersand

That's just a glow from Photoshop.

However, considering the ampersand specifically - the left side of it looks like it was cut off inaccurately.

[The Rat]

Originally Posted by TheHutt

Question: Why the logo change?

It looks more Twilight Zone-y.

[Winther]

So, I'm curious about the development schedule for episodic gaming.

I'm pretty sure multiple episodes are developed concurrently, but to what extent?
How far would you say you are with each episode right now?
Is prioritizing (with time, crew, etc) solely based on which episode is closest to release, or does the complexity of each episode count as well? If, for example, there was a technically very difficult sequence in 305, would you possibly be working on that right from the beginning?

Those questions are more examples than anything, and you shouldn't feel chained to them. Basically, I guess I'm looking for a rough outline of how this whole episodic game development works, from beginning of development to the end of the season.

[Will]

Originally Posted by avistew

I have a bit of trouble conciling these two things. I mean, you're saying that the voices are recorded pretty much at the beginning, but that programmers or animators suggest things which are added to the game... Wouldn't you have to record additional bits, then? Or are all the things they add voiceless?

Probably the most classic example of this would be the "banang" joke from 204. All that was recorded was Sam saying "banang!" and it was going to be a one-off throw away line. Then Nick Herman went through and made like 3 different chores out of that one voice line making for one of the more memorable gags.

But there are lots of more subtle things. Adding pauses for comedic timing, an expression on a character, weird stuff going on in the background. None of that is strictly affected by the script. Some of it is planned out in the beginning but a lot of it is the chore guys making things better.

[Hassat Hunter]

Q. Playing through the older Sam&Maxes and reading the "Have you tried?" lists, have you ever thought about putting those in the game (PC too) as some sort of pseudo-'achievements' (hidden until you finished your first playthrough of course) to give the player some visual representation of their thoroughness (or stimulate a second playthrough to find the missing stuff for those who didn't know of these lists (or knew, like me before I joined here))?