Season 2 DVD Audio Commentary Questions List

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Zeek

FOR THE PRODUCTION TEAM INVOLVING 203'S TRAILER

Who did the German translation? And how much of it was purposely mistranslated?

I wrote the English text for the title cards, handed them over to lead animator and former German resident Andy Welihozkiy to translate to German (without a keyboard that supports umlauts), which I then translated back into English using the Mac Dashboard language translator, babel fish, and just faking it -- trying to find the result that sounded most clumsy. All of it was mistranslated on purpose.

[Zeek]

Originally Posted by Brendan

Sorry, I couldn't wait for the audio commentary anymore.

LOL Wow, Bredan. You're almost as impatiant as we can get sometimes. Thanks for all the wonderful answers, but now I fear you may have nothing to talk about on the Season 2 DVD. Or I could be completely wrong and you do have something to talk about on the DVD.

[Zeek]

God, I can't believe how spoiler ridden these questions are going to be.

For the Design Team

Granted it's mid-season, but where did the idea to base the first half of the game on a flashback come from?

Among the many puzzles that had be scratching my head, the winner this episode goes to the DJ Table combination lock. How were you expecting players to come to the solution, and what was the actual results back during test play (and maybe even now)?

What did you think would happen as far as fan reaction when you decided to kill Sam & Max off for the second half of the game?

For the Production Team

Lightning and rain. Nice. Zombies on the street. Even better. But that animation of the Desoto driving up the hill to the castle: Is that a scale environment or a perspective trick using the shrink and grow feature you've used in the past?

On my end, the castle's club floor took a long time to load. How big is the environment both file size wise and in scale? It looks bigger than Hugh Bliss's Retreat!

Were the various visual gags to Resident Evil, Doom, and even The Dating Game something that was written in or something that was added in by you guys?

How difficult was it to animate Jesse James' hand when it went and did the whole Addams Family thing?

I have this odd feeling that Zombie Linclon is really the statue from the last season scaled down and retextured. Am I right?

What prompted the strange "duel screen" driving environment for the driving game? And how difficult was it to create the suburb of Sam & Max?

For Jared and the Sound Guys

You meantioned that doing the voice for Bluster Blaster/Sinistar made your voice hurt at the end of every session last season. Was this the real reason behind the voice change?

.... yeah, that's about it for Jared so far...

[mikew]

Oh man the Desoto driving around the mountain is one of my favorite effects in the series, and it's a perspective trick, yes. We have some clever dudes working here.

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by Zeek

Granted it's mid-season, but where did the idea to base the first half of the game on a flashback come from?

This is a narrative technique used in a great many stories. Try looking up "in media res" for more info. Chuck suggested that we use something like it in season 2, and it seemed to fit well here because we could begin the game with a classic Bond-esque certain death sequence, but for once, the characters do NOT miraculously escape.

Originally Posted by Zeek

Among the many puzzles that had be scratching my head, the winner this episode goes to the DJ Table combination lock. How were you expecting players to come to the solution, and what was the actual results back during test play (and maybe even now)?

We hoped you would study the poem looking for the significance, and recognize the words at the end of the lines as words from the DJ Booth. (We tried to make the words distinctive and memorable.) From there we expected it wouldn't be much of a leap to try playing them in the order you saw them in the poem. People in the playtest generally seemed to pick up on this one just fine, but admittedly it is the sort of puzzle that's easier if you're accustomed to the idea of secret passages in haunted houses being opened in some weird way (popularized in games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill).

Originally Posted by Zeek

What did you think would happen as far as fan reaction when you decided to kill Sam & Max off for the second half of the game?

We expected people would ask why we didn't do it sooner.

Originally Posted by Zeek

Were the various visual gags to Resident Evil, Doom, and even The Dating Game something that was written in or something that was added in by you guys?

The process of coming up with the details of environments is a collaborative process. That said, anything that you can pick up or do complex animation with has to be specified in the design up front. The so-called throwaway gags (since they don't affect anything else) can be thought up by anyone on the project.

Originally Posted by Zeek

I have this odd feeling that Zombie Linclon is really the statue from the last season scaled down and retextured. Am I right?

Close. We built Zombie Lincoln years ago just assuming we would need him, and then later when we had an episode about stone Lincoln, we said, hey, let's just scale up the zombie and detexture him.

Originally Posted by Zeek

What prompted the strange "duel screen" driving environment for the driving game? And how difficult was it to create the suburb of Sam & Max?

Our technology was just set up to have both sides of the street, but the camera for the game only allowed you to see one because of the game we were trying to make. John Drake cleverly rigged it so that if you drive across the center divider, it would switch the camera so you could see the other side.

Originally Posted by Zeek

You meantioned that doing the voice for Bluster Blaster/Sinistar made your voice hurt at the end of every session last season. Was this the real reason behind the voice change?

Yes. But also it's fun to mix things up now and again.

[Zeek]

Originally Posted by Brendan

We hoped you would study the poem looking for the significance, and recognize the words at the end of the lines as words from the DJ Booth. (We tried to make the words distinctive and memorable.) From there we expected it wouldn't be much of a leap to try playing them in the order you saw them in the poem. People in the playtest generally seemed to pick up on this one just fine, but admittedly it is the sort of puzzle that's easier if you're accustomed to the idea of secret passages in haunted houses being opened in some weird way (popularized in games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill).

I was never good at memory games/puzzles, and I was looking for the token book-that-is-really-a-lever on the fake bookcase instead of the Resident Evil style strange lock system. Shows what kind of video games I play.

Didn't expect to be that close on the Lincoln question, so that surprised me a little.

[ShaggE]

Originally Posted by Brendan

Close. We built Zombie Lincoln years ago just assuming we would need him, and then later when we had an episode about stone Lincoln, we said, hey, let's just scale up the zombie and detexture him.

So... one day someone said something to the effect of "I have this hunch that sometime, somewhere, we are going to need a model of a zombified version of Abraham Lincoln."? Was this on the topic of Sam and Max, or just out of the blue?

[Chuck]

Brendan's just pulling your leg about that one. The real story is: Zombie Teddy Roosevelt was a character originally built for Season One, but cut at the last minute. For 203, it was easy enough to change one president to the other.

[Brendan]

That's not entirely true. In fact, we started with Ninja Teddy Roosevelt, but then decided zombies were marginally cooler, so switched him at the last moment.

[ShaggE]

Whichever version transpired, that's still hilarious Speaking of which fictional incarnation of a deceased president is cooler, I'm going to have to cast my vote for a Pirate Warren Harding

[Chuck]

Good choice, but never underestimate the coolness of Chimpanzachary Taylor and Orangu-Taft.

[ShaggE]

:O Well played, good sir! If I were wearing a monocle right now, it would fall right into my sherry.

[Tester Scott]

Originally Posted by Chuck

Good choice, but never underestimate the coolness of Chimpanzachary Taylor and Orangu-Taft.

Bad Pun!!

[Zeek]

Not as bad as the pictures they just painted in my head.

[Dangerzone]

must... resist.... urge to make homie-g-clinton joke

[Zeek]

Call me slow, but the GameTap Trailer for 204 was the first time I've noticed Sam's hat coming off. 204 also seems to have a lot of floating object judging from both trailers.

What kind of glitches and bugs happened when you guys tried to make certain elements float like Sam's tie or even Bosco himself?

[Jake]

None, really, since as far as the game is concerned, Sam's hat and tie are all part of Sam, just connected, basically, by an invisible link. It's a different issue with something like Jurgen holding the bottle of malt liquor, which is a separate object, and is only animated along with his hand whenever someone tells it to... this is why you need to be careful about hiding it when the character is done using it, otherwise, the way things are set up, it'll just float there until you tell it to do something.

[Zeek]

In hinesight, I think someone meantioned that in the commentary in Season 1, which is why you guys rarely show other characters giving Sam & Max items on screen.

[Murray the Chao]

Originally Posted by Jake

It's a different issue with something like Jurgen holding the bottle of malt liquor, which is a separate object, and is only animated along with his hand whenever someone tells it to...

Which leads to a glitch if he is holding it when he retreats to his hideout.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Murray the Chao

Which leads to a glitch if he is holding it when he retreats to his hideout.

Which is why I used that specific example.