The First Great Monkey Island Race of 2010

[prizna]

whats different about the end credits anyway? how are the credits in original mode different from the original games credits?

[GuruGuru214]

Originally Posted by prizna

Im sure youll figure out a way to let us use the SE

It's nice that you have so much faith in me, but the reality is that I have four days left to figure this thing out, and I have to spend the third day helping a friend move, and I likely won't have the second day available either. At this point, I can pretty much kiss my practice runs of Escape and Tales goodbye and just hope that my outlines get me through okay, and even then I'll still have trouble cracking this thing.

The best thing you can do if you want to use the SE in the race is to finish your own outline of the game, follow it to the letter in both versions, and give me your times. Otherwise, I may have to just work on trying to crack this puzzle in time for the December race.

Originally Posted by prizna

whats different about the end credits anyway? how are the credits in original mode different from the original games credits?

They've been totally replaced. Remember how the Secret special edition played the credits for the people who did the remake, but switching to classic mode showed the original game's credits? Now the special edition credits play in both modes, they just play in classic style in classic mode. Odds are that the credits are much longer, even in classic mode, and this is the reason that the "do something useful" text was removed.

[prizna]

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

It's nice that you have so much faith in me, but the reality is that I have four days left to figure this thing out, and I have to spend the third day helping a friend move, and I likely won't have the second day available either. At this point, I can pretty much kiss my practice runs of Escape and Tales goodbye and just hope that my outlines get me through okay, and even then I'll still have trouble cracking this thing.

The best thing you can do if you want to use the SE in the race is to finish your own outline of the game, follow it to the letter in both versions, and give me your times. Otherwise, I may have to just work on trying to crack this puzzle in time for the December race.



They've been totally replaced. Remember how the Secret special edition played the credits for the people who did the remake, but switching to classic mode showed the original game's credits? Now the special edition credits play in both modes, they just play in classic style in classic mode. Odds are that the credits are much longer, even in classic mode, and this is the reason that the "do something useful" text was removed.

ok, i see

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

The solution to the credits issue may be to start timing the SE when the "Largo Embargo" title card appears and stop timing when the end credits start and just add the length of those scenes from the original version. This probably isn't the solution we'll use, though, since there's so many other issues.

btw abou this, if we do do this, wouldnt we start timing from the "deep in the caribbean scabb island" screen since from there to were the end credits start is the same and not the "Largo Embargo" screen ?

[GuruGuru214]

Theoretically, yes, but I just chose the last identifiable point before you gain control. Anyway, if I do pull this off, it's more likely to be like "use this text speed if you play the original; add/subtract this much time if you play the special edition".

[prizna]

ok, I hope you can do it coz, I really wanna use the SE for the race.

[GuruGuru214]

The weird thing is that the majority of the problems will actually make an SE run longer, so I'm really trying to figure out how to make it so SE players aren't screwing themselves.

[prizna]

Is the hardest part to account for stuff like the wheel, nailing the coffin and stuff like that?

[GuruGuru214]

More or less. Text speed is definitely an issue, but I hope to have that worked out before I even start figuring out the other things. Once that's figured out, the way I figure it's the most fair is if I figure out each time difference on an item-by-item basis to try and come up with a similar time between my two runs, that way differences between my two plays of the game don't cause unfairness later on.

[Mandahaya]

Goodness. I am kind of experiencing a dilemma right now and I don't even know where to start. Oo

First of all: I don't really know if the way I'd be able to participate is rather ridiculous or breathtakingly nuts. The problem is, I'm gonna have to go visit my grandmother who lives about 300 km away from here, and since I'll be staying for about a week, I don't have the slightest idea when I'll return home (hence I don't know either which will be the game I have the least time for). Thing is, I *may* have to self-time my rolls of Secret and Revenge (at least those two) and try to post the results as soon as I get a wireless-lan connection. It'll also be living hell for me to play whichever game the night after coming back. For playing Tales I will definitely be using my own electronic buddy again and may possibly even get the chance to show my progress via ustream. That'll definitely be the easiest part about this entire race.

Furthermore, I also don't know how bad the lagging will be for the first games since I'm gonna have to use my dad's laptop and the last time I played Sam'n'Max on it, it ran in slow motion.

And finally, I am totally whack for really actually participating without having played completely through any of the MI games (luckily with the exception of Curse with which I experienced no issues while playing). That is, I have never even played Secret myself, managed to do about 70% of Revenge (couldn't save, unfortunately, since it worked perfectly fine until at some point it crashed), came anything but far in Escape (until the game crashed -.-) and played the first four episodes of Tales as well as the first half of RotPG. In other words: I have absolutely NO CHANCE. But I also don't give a damn about that either. :P

Questions, anyone?

[Blooglspash]

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

It's nice that you have so much faith in me, but the reality is that I have four days left to figure this thing out, and I have to spend the third day helping a friend move, and I likely won't have the second day available either. At this point, I can pretty much kiss my practice runs of Escape and Tales goodbye and just hope that my outlines get me through okay, and even then I'll still have trouble cracking this thing.

The best thing you can do if you want to use the SE in the race is to finish your own outline of the game, follow it to the letter in both versions, and give me your times. Otherwise, I may have to just work on trying to crack this puzzle in time for the December race.



They've been totally replaced. Remember how the Secret special edition played the credits for the people who did the remake, but switching to classic mode showed the original game's credits? Now the special edition credits play in both modes, they just play in classic style in classic mode. Odds are that the credits are much longer, even in classic mode, and this is the reason that the "do something useful" text was removed.

Considering all this trouble you're going through, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for you to post pone the race so you can figure all of this out.

[MusicallyInspired]

For what it's worth, if worse comes to worse for those that only own the MI2:SE and not the original you can extract the original game files (which are unaltered) from the PAK file with Monkey Island Explorer (found on the Mixnmojo Forums) and play it in ScummVM.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by MusicallyInspired

For what it's worth, if worse comes to worse for those that only own the MI2:SE and not the original you can extract the original game files (which are unaltered) from the PAK file with Monkey Island Explorer (found on the Mixnmojo Forums) and play it in ScummVM.

I think that doing this ^ and banning MI2SE from being used for official race times (unless someone intentionally wants to lose) is the most logical choice.

[Chyron8472]

Okay, I looked into it, and it's REALLY easy to extract the original VGA version of LCR from the MI2SE .pak file. Everyone who only has MI2SE (on PC) needs to do this so we can all use the original version for the race. It will make things far less complicated.

1) First, download the Monkey Island Explorer, which has been confirmed by me to easily extract files from MI2SE's "monkey2.pak" file.

2) After downloading and running the program, click "Open", then click "Monkey Island 2: Special Edition." It should automatically browse to your MI2SE game folder. click "Monkey2.pak" and click OK.

3) Click "View" then click ".000", highlight "classic/en/Monkey2.000" and click "Save File" -> "As is (raw)". Save the file to wherever you want to store the original MI2 game files.

4) Click "View" then click ".001", highlight "classic/en/Monkey2.001" and click "Save File" -> "As is (raw)". Save the file to wherever you want to store the original MI2 game files.

5) Download and install ScummVM.
Open ScummVM, click "Add Game," then navigate to the folder where you stored the monkey2.000 and monkey2.001 files. Click "Choose."

There you go!

If you want to, you can also create a Windows Shortcut to MI2 by creating a shortcut that points to the scummvm.exe file and after it also put the game's ID (usually "monkey2" for MI2)
eg. Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Games\ScummVM\scummvm.exe" monkey2

[Lennie Melvin]

I'm sorry but I won't be able to participate in the race. Very sorry

[apenpaap]

I'm playing the SE now, and I think in classic mode, standard speed +1 is about the same dialogue speed as the SE speed. And as for the missing intro and stuff, I'd say we figure that out after the race and correct anyone who has played the SE's times by X minutes.

[GuruGuru214]

All right, guys, I get what you're saying, I really do. However, I still really want to be able to use the special edition, so here's what we'll do. If I can't solve this thing in the next 17 hours, we'll do it your way.

Now, does anyone know of a good screen recording program for Windows? I'd just use Procaster, but it stops recording if my internet goes out.

And I'm sorry to see you go, Lennie. Hope you can still drop by and watch some.

[jeeno0142]

Hey there! I'm not in the race, but I have a couple of questions. Sorry if they've been answered, I just don't want to check through 22 pages...

1. You keep saying 'broadcasting', does that mean I can watch you play from my computer? If so, how? I'd like to do that to see what it's like.

2.I was just wondering, there is a button that allows you to skip cutscenes. Are you allowed to do that?

I'm just interested.

[GuruGuru214]

It's all there in the first post. Skipping cutscenes isn't allowed, and a bunch of us are putting our races up on Livestream, with our individual links posted in the first post. Most of us still have no idea when we're going to play each game, though.

[jeeno0142]

Thank you! I hope I get to watch at least one of you. Good luck to all entrants!

[apenpaap]

I just recorded the time that the beginning and ending sequences in the original and SE of Revenge take:
The beginning (from selecting a diffculty/selecting Play New Game to the Largo Embargo chhapter screen): original: 4:27 SE: 2:07 difference: SE is 2:20 faster.
The ending (from clicking the final dialogue option to Turn off your computer and do something constructive/game returns to main menu): original: 2:24 SE: 8:05 difference: original is 5:41 faster.
So if we just detract 3 minutes and 21 seconds from the times of everyone who plays Special Edition, the different start and end credits should be compensated for.