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DF Game Club: Grim Fandango (part 3 plus devchat)

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Feb 21st, 2015
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  1. (06:58:48) Cheeseness: Heeeeeeey people
  2. (06:58:48) GameClubFan_868436 [Mibbit@hide-2F5D3335.cable.virginm.net] entered the room.
  3. (06:58:50) ***Fhqwhgod blesses this chat
  4. (06:58:52) Permafry_42: Already have a question: what are some of the unique challenges you faced programming in a 3d engine for grim compared to past 2d engines?
  5. (06:58:54) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: Thanks for joining us!
  6. (06:58:56) Fhqwhgod: HeyGuys
  7. (06:59:04) salty_horse: can I start with the questions? :D
  8. (06:59:14) bmogilefsky: FIne by me!
  9. (06:59:32) salty_horse: bmogilefsky, was Lua the first choice as a scripting language for the engine? Did you consider SCUMM?
  10. (06:59:46) Cheeseness: Apologies for being a little late
  11. (06:59:55) Sven_Q45 [Mibbit@hide-7E0ABB16.dip0.t-ipconnect.de] entered the room.
  12. (06:59:56) Sven_Q45: Hi.
  13. (06:59:57) Permafry_42: No worries cheese =D
  14. (06:59:58) bmogilefsky: 3D vs. 2D: All the tools were written for SCUMM/2D, and were integer-based.
  15. (07:00:21) Cheeseness: A relevant URL http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Mogul.pdf
  16. (07:00:33) Syldaien [Mibbit@hide-62697C31.hsd1.wv.comcast.net] entered the room.
  17. (07:00:34) somaen [Mibbit@hide-6B87D1DA.idi.ntnu.no] entered the room.
  18. (07:00:37) salty_horse: Cheeseness, cool!
  19. (07:00:40) bmogilefsky: Because if you're dealing with just X/Y coordinates on screen, and manually scaling to simulate distance from camera, floating point numbers are not needed.
  20. (07:00:41) Cheeseness: Hey Syldaien, somaen
  21. (07:00:50) Syd: Okay, let's get the stream going. Let me know when we're live.
  22. (07:01:04) Tinche [Mibbit@hide-C0457E3A.zg.cable.xnet.hr] entered the room.
  23. (07:01:07) bmogilefsky: So when I really started trying to render 3D characters in SPUTM, the SCUMM engine/interpreter, I had problems right away.
  24. (07:01:12) DF_Brandon [Mibbit@hide-D8E5003E.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] entered the room.
  25. (07:01:14) Tinche: hello everyone
  26. (07:01:25) Syd: Hey DF_Brandon!
  27. (07:01:35) saltyhorse [salty-hors@hide-DBF3B411.red.bezeqint.net] entered the room.
  28. (07:01:38) Cheeseness: Hey DF_Brandon :D
  29. (07:01:46) Syd: Has Twitch gone live yet?
  30. (07:01:48) beansmyname: I see the logo, syd
  31. (07:01:49) DF_Brandon: Howdy, folks!
  32. (07:01:50) Cheeseness: Matt did get his dates/times mixed up then
  33. (07:02:28) Permafry_42: Thanks cheese really interesting pres. and that's really interesting Bret I never realized 2d programing only really needed ints. And Hi Brandon!
  34. (07:02:32) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: I think this is a better version of that presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/hughreynolds/lua-patient-zero-bret-mogilefsky-scea
  35. (07:02:33) saltyhorse: Syd, I have problems with Twitch on my end. Pages don't load well probably due to javascript server errors
  36. (07:02:50) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: Ah, nice!
  37. saltyhorse salty_horse
  38. saltyhorse salty_horse
  39. (07:03:00) saltyhorse: bmogilefsky, did LucasArts indend for the engine to be used by many games? (Assuming adventure games "sell" and)
  40. (07:03:14) Cheeseness: salty_horse: You can try going to Twitch directly
  41. (07:03:15) flpvianna [Mibbit@81438A68.F1B7120F.163A381.IP] entered the room.
  42. (07:03:22) Cheeseness: (we don't use the Twitch chat though)
  43. (07:03:31) bmogilefsky: The next question about Lua is related... Once I decided I needed to replace the engine and tools, I figured I could cobble together most of what I needed from the Jedi Knight engine/toolset.
  44. flesk flpvianna
  45. flesk flpvianna
  46. (07:03:38) Cheeseness: Hi flpvianna
  47. flesk flpvianna
  48. (07:03:39) saltyhorse: Cheeseness, (I have problems with Twitch directly)
  49. (07:03:41) Cheeseness: Hey flesk
  50. saltyhorse salty_horse
  51. (07:03:43) GameClubFan_868436 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  52. (07:03:43) bmogilefsky: But they didn't have a scripting language suitable for adventure games.
  53. (07:03:43) flpvianna: Hi!
  54. (07:03:49) DF_Brandon: I'm hanging out with Matt, actually! I think he's gonna jump in too.
  55. (07:03:50) Cheeseness: saltyhorse: Ah, no probs. Livestreamer maybe?
  56. (07:03:52) bmogilefsky: So my choice was write/acquire.
  57. (07:03:56) Sven_Q45: I don´t use Twitch here.
  58. (07:03:58) Permafry_42: i love the sailor outfit XD
  59. (07:04:05) Syldaien left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  60. (07:04:05) flesk: Hi there, Cheeseness and everyone else.
  61. (07:04:06) salty_horse left the room (quit: Ping timeout: 182 seconds).
  62. (07:04:12) saltyhorse: Cheeseness, I'm on windows ATM and do't have it - I'll pass on the stream :)
  63. (07:04:15) saltyhorse is now known as salty-horse
  64. (07:04:18) bmogilefsky: Winston Wolff (yes, his real name) on the JK team mentioned the Dr. Dobbs article on Lua and that was the missing link.
  65. (07:04:22) Cheeseness: salty-horse: Ah, no probs
  66. (07:04:56) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, so the final engine shares code with JK?
  67. (07:04:59) bmogilefsky: At the time I don't think there was any language as well suited for embedding.
  68. (07:05:38) bmogilefsky: Yes, the GrimE engine was an unholy amalgamation of things from Jedi Knight, Outlaws, Rebel Assault, and of course the venerable iMuse system.
  69. (07:05:48) bmogilefsky: A real Frankenstein's monster.
  70. (07:06:10) Fhqwhgod left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  71. (07:06:20) salty-horse: outlaws! :D
  72. (07:06:24) bmogilefsky: JK provided Renderdroid, which was their software renderer, later adapted to also use 3D hardware, which was brand new and in several incompatible flavors at the time.
  73. (07:06:24) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: What was it like coming back to record the commentary for the remastered edition? Had you kept in touch with the others that joined you over the years, or was it a bit of a reunion of people who hadn't talked in a long time??
  74. (07:06:53) bmogilefsky: Renderdroid had an attendant set of tools for rigging characters and playing animations, but we had to modify tons of stuff.
  75. (07:07:29) bmogilefsky: (Can someone paste in the URL for the stream? Not seeing it in the club webpage)
  76. (07:07:35) Glog78 [~Oknown_an@hide-AB6A5D39.pools.vodafone-ip.de] entered the room.
  77. (07:07:38) bmogilefsky left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  78. (07:07:43) Cheeseness: DF_Brandon: I've been told that you were the number #1 Grim Fan working on the remastered edition. What was it like getting the chance to work with a game that's lauded as being one of the greatest games ever made? :D
  79. (07:07:47) flesk: http://www.twitch.tv/dfgameclub
  80. (07:07:49) bmogilefsky [Mibbit@hide-94F88040.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] entered the room.
  81. (07:07:51) Cheeseness: http://www.twitch.tv/dfgameclub
  82. (07:08:13) Syd: I was too slow, gotta wait for him to come back around now. :P
  83. (07:08:26) salty-horse: (btw, Twitch is giving me the error "Error: Could not find module jquery")
  84. (07:08:29) bmogilefsky: Thanks, I got it.
  85. (07:09:09) somaen: Hey, why is the stream using the mouse interface?
  86. (07:09:12) bmogilefsky: I was reviewing stuff I wrote up about Grim's implementation at the time this morning... Here are three good links:
  87. (07:09:25) somaen: The proper way to play is with tank controls, everybody knows that.
  88. (07:09:51) Syd: I'm just showing off the new point and click feature. ;)
  89. (07:09:51) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, speaking of things you wrote/said at the time: I read an interview where you said the lip syncing was added late in development, and you used Microsoft Speech to generate it. Was that an automated process, or did you manually tweak some of the lines? Why don't all lines have lip syncing? :) (I implemented this in Residual so I find this interesting)
  90. (07:09:54) Syd: At least, that's my excuse
  91. (07:09:57) liorean: http://www.twitch.tv/dfgameclub/popout
  92. (07:10:27) GameClubFan_874771 [Mibbit@hide-2F5D3335.cable.virginm.net] entered the room.
  93. (07:10:31) Syd: Truth is, I've always been awful with the tank controls no matter how many times I've played through Grim
  94. (07:10:38) Syd: No one wants to watch me run into walls. :P
  95. (07:10:43) bmogilefsky: http://www.grimfandango.net/features/interviews/interview-with-bret-mogilefsky http://www.grimfandango.net/features/interviews/interview-with-bret-mogilefsky-2 and my favorite: http://www.grimfandango.net/features/articles/lua-in-grim-fandango
  96. (07:10:50) Permafry_42: i really love this part
  97. (07:11:14) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Good question! Microsoft's tool was just that... A windows tool, not an API or CLI interface.
  98. (07:11:20) GameClubFan_874771: man, the Spanish localization of this game was great
  99. (07:11:31) flesk: Thanks for the links. Going to read those articles later.
  100. (07:11:44) somaen: Syd: Heh, if the mouse controls make atleast one more person complete the game, then they're worth it in my book.
  101. (07:11:57) Cheeseness: DF_Brandon: Were there adjustment made to some of the collision handling stuff? It feels like tank controls in the remastered edition aren't quite as "bouncy" as the original (but I might be imagining that)
  102. (07:12:14) bmogilefsky: My go-to toolset of the time was Borland's C++ Builder... I made something called ZombieTapper, which basically was a hand-made macro player that mindlessly drove the app controls to load up each .WAV file, type in the corresponding text, and then generate and save off the version with phonemes.
  103. (07:13:04) bmogilefsky: I'm 99% certain that someone at DF made better elevator and wall collision code. It's way less twitchy in the remaster than the original.
  104. (07:13:07) salty-horse: cool!
  105. (07:13:11) Cheeseness: I found that point and click controls let me easily spot stuff that I'd never noticed or gotten Manny close enough to notice
  106. (07:13:49) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Not all lines have lip-sync because the tool was the best phoneme recognition software 1997 had to offer... Things have improved a lot since then.
  107. (07:14:06) bgK [Mibbit@hide-54DA8C48.fbx.proxad.net] entered the room.
  108. (07:14:11) bmogilefsky: I did manually generate phonemes for all of the Rusty Anchor song lines.
  109. (07:14:12) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, so what, it didn't catch some accents?
  110. (07:14:32) DF_MattH [Mibbit@hide-D8E5003E.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] entered the room.
  111. (07:14:39) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, that must have been hard, if you're not trained in animation :(
  112. (07:14:46) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Glottis in particular has lots of very exclamatory lines that don't make a lot of sense if you're trying to look for a sentence.
  113. (07:15:19) bmogilefsky: I was very sad that the phoneme generator was English only.
  114. (07:15:26) DF_Brandon: Cheeseness, it was great; regardless of whether the game is universally considered to be the best game of all time, it was always certainly my personal favorite. It was rewarding both because I got to dig through source material I'd never seen before, and because I was helping to get the game back out for a wider audience.
  115. (07:15:54) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, I haven't even considered the localized editions :(
  116. (07:15:55) bmogilefsky: At LEC, we always had something called the "mumble chore" in actor costumes... It's basically an animation of the character saying "watermelons watermelons watermelons watermelons" in a loop.
  117. (07:15:56) flpvianna: Tell us more about those wall collision stuff in the TANK controls. Cause I never had any trouble understanding the controls in itself, it just had these issues when you're near some stuff that will make the character turn or get stuck.
  118. (07:16:07) GameClubFan_867625 [Mibbit@hide-8F3A0BE5.dyn.iinet.net.au] entered the room.
  119. (07:16:14) bmogilefsky: Previous LEC adventures made do with that, and it was very fine when there was only text rather than recorded audio
  120. (07:16:28) salty-horse: BTW, someone made a cool spanish-teaching method with Grim Fandango
  121. (07:16:40) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, so THAT's what it says! :D
  122. (07:16:45) GameClubFan_746095 [Mibbit@hide-6C478EEB.static.chello.nl] entered the room.
  123. (07:17:04) bmogilefsky: In non-English versions, we do in fact use the mumble chore. And it's used in English as well if there's no phoneme data for the line.
  124. (07:17:08) bmogilefsky: I find it really jarring.
  125. (07:17:43) DF_MattH: Hey everyone!
  126. (07:17:49) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, perhaps a fan could fix that :D
  127. DF_Brandon DF_MattH
  128. (07:17:57) Cheeseness: Hey DF_MattH! Thanks so much for joining us :D
  129. (07:17:57) Tinche left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  130. (07:17:59) liorean: Hey Matt
  131. (07:18:03) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, did LucasArts indend for the engine to be used by many games? (Assuming adventure games "sell" and)
  132. (07:18:06) bmogilefsky: I'm inordinately proud of the lip-sync to this day... It was a terrible hack that you wouldn't notice unless it's not there.
  133. (07:18:40) Permafry_42: Hi Matt! Glad you could join us!
  134. (07:18:40) DF_Brandon: Cheeseness, the collision did get some love. Most of that was done by Mark Cooke; the camera-relative stuff got a lot of polish to make it work more like modern games, and he did a lot of work to make walking along boundaries smoother.
  135. DF_Brandon DF_MattH
  136. (07:19:17) Cheeseness: Ah ha, I thought so :D
  137. (07:19:20) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, and I liked doing the guess-work to figure out how it works :) I was proud of myself when I got it working without any RE except ctrl-f searching for the phoneme table in the executable
  138. (07:19:21) bmogilefsky: Yes, someone could make a tool to allow entering phoneme data for other languages and crowd-source that. It would be great! I'm inordinately proud of the lip-sync to this day... It was a terrible hack that you wouldn't notice unless it's not there.
  139. (07:19:44) Cheeseness: DF_MattH was executive producer on Grim Remastered
  140. (07:19:54) Cheeseness: (for anybody who's not aware)
  141. (07:20:05) flpvianna: I wasn't aware! Thanks!
  142. (07:20:39) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: There was a lot of trepidation about me not using SCUMM/SPUTM because it added risk to an already risky project, but it was clear that something new was needed.
  143. (07:21:12) flpvianna left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  144. (07:21:18) Permafry_42: Does anyone know if these kids are the same voices from psychonauts?
  145. (07:21:20) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, new code factors aside, was it also risky since it was an "adventure game"?
  146. (07:21:31) GameClubFan_881445 [Mibbit@81438A68.F1B7120F.163A381.IP] entered the room.
  147. (07:21:48) bmogilefsky: I think the fact I followed the general design of SCUMM (scripting language, costume tools, etc) helped people feel that at least it would be reusable rather than special purpose. Modding of PC games was just starting to be supported officially for the first time with Doom and Quake and Unrealscript, and I was actually really hoping that people would figure o
  148. (07:21:53) GameClubFan_881445 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  149. (07:22:11) flpvianna [Mibbit@81438A68.F1B7120F.163A381.IP] entered the room.
  150. (07:22:14) bmogilefsky: ut that they could just strip the assets, drop in a new _system.lua with a new BOOT() function, and make their own adventure game!
  151. (07:22:23) Tinche [Mibbit@hide-253BF650.zg.cable.xnet.hr] entered the room.
  152. (07:22:40) bmogilefsky: You could even remix the assets that came with the game and make machinima with the characters and sets that shipped.
  153. (07:22:50) bmogilefsky: Of course, machinima was not yet a word. :)
  154. (07:22:53) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, didn't quite happen with GrimE, but there are other popular adventure game engines
  155. (07:22:54) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: Can you tell us about what an executive producer does on a remastering project like this?
  156. (07:23:57) bmogilefsky: bmogilefsky: I was insulated from the financial decisions around GF's green-lighting, but there was definitely a climate of change both in the industry and LEC at the time.
  157. (07:24:00) DF_MattH: It'a like herding a group of really smart cats
  158. (07:24:11) Cheeseness: :D
  159. (07:24:20) salty-horse: DF_MattH, it's like racing cats
  160. (07:24:27) salty-horse: :P
  161. (07:25:03) Cheeseness: A herd of beloved sanspoofs
  162. (07:25:05) bmogilefsky: I just participated in an intervew about that... It's here: http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/26/grim-fandango-came-out-at-the-wrong-time-now-its-ready-for-success/
  163. (07:25:30) bmogilefsky: I <3 Sanspoof... My favorite piece of art in the whole game.
  164. (07:26:15) salty-horse: poor Sanspoof :(
  165. (07:26:21) bmogilefsky: Permafry_42: I believe at least one of the kids is voiced by Nancy Yerdle, who did Bart and Lisa Simpson.
  166. (07:26:39) Permafry_42: really?? Cool!
  167. (07:26:49) Cheeseness: So, iMUSE
  168. (07:27:06) flpvianna: So, I'm guessing the textures in the cutscenes couldn't be re-rendered because those files weren't available... anyone care to comment?
  169. (07:27:11) salty-horse: Grim cast: www.imdb.com/title/tt0177822/fullcredits#cast
  170. (07:27:23) GameClubFan_867625 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  171. flesk flpvianna
  172. (07:27:34) bmogilefsky: Yeah, iMuse.
  173. (07:27:52) Cheeseness: flpvianna: When we had Lee join us for the first session, he said that all they were able to find were a few uncompressed cutscene frames
  174. (07:27:55) bmogilefsky: Crown jewels of the LEC sound dept, which was run like an inner sanctum inside LEC
  175. (07:28:08) Permafry_42: btw did the game have to say in the credits that it wasn't funded by the tobacco industry, like movies usually have to?
  176. (07:28:16) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: Are there plans for those uncompressed stills to be made available (maybe via the concept art browser or something?)
  177. (07:28:21) GameClubFan_107876 [Mibbit@hide-8F3A0BE5.dyn.iinet.net.au] entered the room.
  178. (07:28:58) Sven_Q45: Glottis is more than just a driver! :) Sorry for beeing so quit. Now I´m here
  179. (07:29:01) bmogilefsky: Permafry_42: Not explicitly, but the manual nodded to all the conspicuous smoking by saying something like "Of course they can only smoke so much because they're all dead... Think about it!"
  180. (07:29:30) Cheeseness: Permafry_42: I think that might be a relatively recent requirement
  181. (07:29:47) bmogilefsky: DF_MattH: Did you guys get clearance to release the puzzle design document officially? I did not see it in the special features.
  182. (07:30:16) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, on the internet, unofficial is official enough :)
  183. (07:30:28) bmogilefsky: It would actually make a really good hint system... Include the puzzle design doc, and keep pages blurred out until people give up and want the solution handed to them.
  184. (07:30:49) DF_MattH: Cheeseness: No plans right now, but I can add it to the wish list for future patches
  185. (07:30:54) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, "ok, I see there's a giraffe... how do I get to it?"
  186. (07:30:57) Cheeseness: DF_Brandon: What do you feel were the most significant hurdles you faced/pleasant surprises you had working with Grim?
  187. (07:31:01) somaen: I actually remember that notice in my manual.
  188. (07:31:11) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: It'd be great for that stuff to be preserved in a way that lets players appreciate them :)
  189. (07:31:16) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: There are some other docs I haven't seen appear, like the original game concept proposal, and the engine design doc.
  190. (07:31:30) somaen: Something along the lines of "listen children, yes, they do smoke, but consider the fact that they ARE dead"
  191. (07:31:32) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, !!!
  192. (07:32:04) DF_MattH: bmogilefsky: I think would could have, but since it is already available online we didn't
  193. (07:32:21) salty-horse: (Twitch finally works)
  194. (07:32:28) Cheeseness: Yay
  195. (07:32:35) Sven_Q45: :)
  196. (07:32:53) bmogilefsky: Tim's original game pitch was something like 3 or 5 pages... I came in before there was a story or design doc, and spent the first four months or so on the job brainstorming with Tim, Eric, Peter, and Peter. So a real pleasant way to start your career.
  197. (07:33:33) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, any thoughts on the engine changes made on EMI? Favorite feature you wish backported to GF?
  198. (07:33:51) flpvianna: bmogilefsky Cool! So, how much of the game was already planned?
  199. (07:34:18) DFOliver [Mibbit@hide-EE750ACA.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net] entered the room.
  200. (07:34:29) Wildax [Mibbit@hide-2ADC0376.retail.telecomitalia.it] entered the room.
  201. (07:34:29) DFOliver: Hi friends.
  202. (07:34:31) bmogilefsky: flpvianna: Some key characters, four years, a viewing list of noir films... Pretty much a foundation and nothing else.
  203. (07:34:34) DF_Brandon: Cheeseness: probably the most pleasant surprise was going through the archives and finding scans of all of Peter Chan's concept art. I'd seen some of it before, but we found new stuff that'd never been published before.
  204. DF_Brandon DF_MattH DFOliver
  205. (07:34:42) Cheeseness: Hey DFOliver! THanks so much for joining us!
  206. (07:34:45) somaen: salty-horse: Well, EMI has an entirely different renderer.
  207. (07:34:59) somaen: But it also drops software rendering.
  208. (07:35:00) bmogilefsky: DF_Brandon: Did all of that Chan art make it into the special features in the game?
  209. (07:35:09) DF_MattH: Hey Oliver
  210. (07:35:11) somaen: Which makes sense when I heard now that renderdroid was a software renderer.
  211. (07:35:29) Permafry_42: Hi Oliver thanks for joining us!
  212. (07:35:30) Cheeseness: DFOliver: I'll ask you what I just asked Brandon as well, what do you feel were the most significant hurdles you faced/pleasant surprises you had working with Grim?
  213. (07:35:38) somaen: Also, wasn't there a missing concept art page?
  214. (07:35:43) DF_Brandon: Cheesness: also, we got access to the original source code, and I was pleasantly surprised about how *good* the LucasArts code was. bmogilefsky is a really good programmer :)
  215. (07:35:48) bmogilefsky: Software rendering was only important for about four years or so.
  216. (07:35:52) salty-horse: :D
  217. (07:36:12) somaen: bmogilefsky: It does fare a bit better than early hw-rendering though
  218. (07:36:17) somaen: For future proofing.
  219. (07:36:19) salty-horse: DF_Brandon, I'm guessing it helps that the engine didn't have years of legacy updates
  220. (07:36:24) bmogilefsky: DF_Brandon: Aww, thanks, but we've been over this... It was a Frankenstein's monster, so really you're seeing a lot of how good the Jedi Knight, Outlaws, and Rebel Assault team were in my work.
  221. (07:36:26) GameClubFan_874771 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  222. (07:36:33) DF_Brandon: bmogilefsky: as far as I know, we put everything in the concept viewer that we found.
  223. (07:36:37) somaen: Most of the early hw-3d games have issues on modern hw.
  224. (07:36:38) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: Do you know what the story with the missing concept art page is (the game attempts to find a file that's not there)?
  225. (07:37:33) salty-horse: eep. missing word in subtitles? - "she's a firecracker"
  226. (07:37:33) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Grim was only ever designed for PC. EFMI was intended to be portable to consoles, so we totally changed the way 2D/3D occlusion worked. GF had full-screen, full res Z-buffers, which is way too wasteful in memory to be ported to consoles.
  227. (07:37:46) DFOliver: Heritage projects are awesome since they provide a look into the past and what kind of challenges had to face back then when making games.
  228. (07:37:58) DF_MattH: Cheeseness: I hadn't heard about that. I gotta look into it, but I bet it is something simple like a naming issue.
  229. (07:37:59) DF_Brandon: bmogilefsky: until now!
  230. (07:38:21) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: Here's a thread if that's helpful http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/16371/
  231. (07:38:34) salty-horse: ah, the SAFE PUZZLE! even when you know what to do it's hard
  232. (07:38:36) bmogilefsky: And even on PC, it's a stretch, and probably a performance killer. For EFMI, we quantized the buffer and made the z-buffer into flat z-regions, which was friendlier to hardware implementations, and more efficient to compress, etc.
  233. (07:39:18) Cheeseness: Ha ha, the safe puzzle isn't that hard is it?
  234. (07:39:22) Tinche left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  235. (07:39:23) salty-horse: :P
  236. (07:39:27) bmogilefsky: DF_Brandon: I was wondering about that... So you guys kept the full-res z-buffers in the GFR engine?
  237. (07:39:30) Cheeseness: It's not as hard as the axe puzzle
  238. (07:39:34) salty-horse: RESTART
  239. (07:39:49) Tinche [Mibbit@hide-253BF650.zg.cable.xnet.hr] entered the room.
  240. (07:39:54) Cheeseness: Which I still seems like it'd be much much harder with point and click controls
  241. (07:40:03) salty-horse: is it good enough? let's see
  242. (07:40:16) salty-horse: well done Syd!
  243. (07:40:18) Cheeseness: Hey Tinche
  244. (07:40:24) Cheeseness: Syd's been practicing ^_^
  245. (07:40:25) Tinche: hello
  246. (07:40:38) Sven_Q45: It´s not hard but it´s a little bit hard to uhm "grasp". Or better: Hard to grasp for Manny. :D
  247. (07:40:38) salty-horse: Cheeseness, on real safes!
  248. (07:40:40) bmogilefsky: DF_Brandon: I noticed that Olivia smokes out of the side of her head, and Manny has a cigarette floating two feet off of his hand while talking to Carla... Was that in the original? Can't remember.
  249. (07:40:47) salty-horse: cool drawer design
  250. (07:40:49) Tinche: I've been here for a while, just my internet is crapping out a lot
  251. (07:41:17) bmogilefsky: I think those were unusual cases of animation blending where different implementations could give dramatically different results.
  252. (07:41:23) Cheeseness: DFOliver: That process of going back - are there any insights into the way things used to be done in these older projects that you feel are things that people today could learn from?
  253. (07:41:27) GameClubFan_285461 [Mibbit@hide-2F5D3335.cable.virginm.net] entered the room.
  254. (07:41:31) salty-horse: Cheeseness, did anyone report the bug where you can forget the scythe in year 2?
  255. (07:41:36) somaen left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  256. (07:41:42) Cheeseness: salty-horse: I've seen reports on Steam. Not sure about the DF forums
  257. (07:42:17) salty-horse: and my axe!
  258. (07:42:46) flpvianna: How can you forget the scythe?
  259. (07:42:55) DFOliver: It's always interesting to look at rasterizer. It's amazing how much was possible without hardware support.
  260. (07:42:56) DF_Brandon: bmogilefsky: I don't know about those specific cases, but it was definitely interesting to try and figure out which bugs were from the original and which were from things we introduced when working on the remastered version, 'cause they needed to be fixed differently.
  261. (07:43:00) salty-horse: the tickets totally need a golden glow ala Pulp Fiction
  262. flesk flpvianna
  263. flesk flpvianna
  264. (07:43:11) Cheeseness: flpvianna: I think if you put it back after Glottis gives it back to you
  265. (07:43:30) bmogilefsky: (The tickets shouldn't glow because they're counterfeits.)
  266. (07:43:30) DF_Brandon: I'm pretty sure most of the animation glitches were in the original game, though some of them were masked by the fact that the game originally animated at a lower framerate.
  267. (07:43:41) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, good point
  268. (07:44:08) DFOliver: The z-buffer was a interesting case and caused a bunch of interesting issues in the remastered renderer.
  269. (07:44:20) bmogilefsky: DFOliver: That's all Ray Gresko and Steve... I want to say Williams? Anyway, they just about blew out their wrists on the assembly for the rasterizers... Ray for the 8-bit, and Steve for the 16-bit.
  270. (07:44:22) Cheeseness: DF_Brandon: These kinds of upres-ing exercises seem to naturally expose those kinds of things - gaps in meshes that wouldn't be viewable at the original res, etc.
  271. (07:44:27) Sven_Q45: When you use the scythe with the closet in year 2.
  272. (07:44:53) Sven_Q45: I´ve never used this shower! ;) I just put that thing on the floor. :D
  273. (07:44:59) bmogilefsky: Ah, Steve Ash.
  274. (07:45:05) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: Yeah that code is amazing! :-)
  275. (07:45:08) salty-horse: weird sky
  276. (07:45:24) bgK left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  277. (07:45:27) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: These days you barely have to touch assembly.
  278. (07:45:36) Permafry_42: this beach here always reminded me of riven
  279. (07:45:43) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: Different times. :)
  280. (07:45:45) flesk: I don't think I realized that the shower gives you the location of the correct tile until my most recent playthrough.
  281. (07:45:52) salty-horse: Permafry_42, yup. pre-rendered metal
  282. (07:45:59) GrimMonkey101 [Mibbit@hide-4ED45AC.dynamic.upc.ie] entered the room.
  283. (07:46:15) flpvianna: I made a comment about these yellow arrows on the forum
  284. (07:46:57) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness and DFOliver: One of my favorite things about the software rasterizing era was the economic constraints it put on modeling... The character polygon budgets were maybe 250 tops.
  285. (07:47:03) flesk: It would be neat to be able to disable all icons when playing with tank controls.
  286. (07:47:12) flpvianna: When you're not playing on point-and-click interface, they're pretty useless, and it bothered me throughout the game (I like playing on TANK controls)
  287. (07:47:15) bmogilefsky: So there's true artistry in the modelers managing to put so much character in these... characters.
  288. (07:47:30) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, if you were hoping to make the game "moddable", why were the scripts "encrypted"/"compiled"?
  289. (07:47:39) flpvianna: flesk - yeah, that's what I mean
  290. (07:47:43) Cheeseness: heh, I remember working to 700 poly budgets and it's mind boggling to me nowadays that you don't have to care as much
  291. (07:47:56) salty-horse: flpvianna, +1
  292. (07:48:08) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: It was unofficial that I wanted it to be modded. We were happier to have people write their own scripts than take apart ours.
  293. (07:48:39) Sven_Q45: When I played myself. I never found that room. :D
  294. (07:48:53) salty-horse: how much of the game's asthetic was driven by the poly restrictions? Would the game have a different theme, even, if it was made today?
  295. (07:48:54) flesk: Really love edge of the world. Such a memorable location.
  296. (07:49:12) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: But the shipped game tried to load .lua files from the hard drive before trying to fall back to the compiled scripts that are in the install directory. SO it was intended that you could either debug by putting the uncompiled one in there, or replace it with your own if you were a consumer.
  297. (07:49:32) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, that's how the patch system works, I think
  298. (07:49:33) bmogilefsky: They had to be compiled, though, so that we could fit the games on CDs.
  299. (07:49:38) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Yes, exactly.
  300. (07:49:54) salty-horse: right. I keep forgetting these constraints :)
  301. (07:50:24) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: We used that to fix bugs in QA without reburning the whole game... An A-bug could stop testing for a whole 24 hours while 45 new sets of disks were burned with a fix.
  302. (07:50:30) Sven_Q45: If there´ll be a retail version I hope it´s coming on one DVD. :D
  303. (07:50:47) salty-horse: what decided the split of the years between the two CDs? how large the years are?
  304. (07:50:54) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: We found a bunch of scenes in which the z-buffer of the background was manually altered. For example on the stairs in the beginning of the game or even in the office. What was the reasoning behind that?
  305. (07:51:05) somaen [Mibbit@hide-EADDC686.studby.ntnu.no] entered the room.
  306. (07:51:15) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: I assume it's related to either sorting or reduced memory consumption?
  307. (07:51:16) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: But if the bug was in Lua code, I could just drop in a file on the HDD that overrode only the one function with a bug and testing could continue. That was unprecedented at LEC.
  308. (07:51:43) salty-horse: yay lua
  309. (07:52:02) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: We were lucky that the years were mostly the same size when you factor out the "year zero" assets... ANimations, etc. that are used throughout the whole game.
  310. (07:52:11) bmogilefsky: So we just split it onto two disks.
  311. (07:52:30) salty-horse: Domino listening to the GF soundtrack. good taste ;)
  312. (07:52:31) bmogilefsky: I was pretty pissed when people took apart the game years later and found some giant unused audio files in the bundles.
  313. (07:52:34) somaen: Way easier than juggling floppies.
  314. (07:52:41) bmogilefsky: Sound guys. *rolleyes*
  315. (07:52:54) Cheeseness: :D
  316. (07:52:56) salty-horse: :D
  317. (07:52:57) DFOliver: Hehe... some things never changes. :)
  318. (07:53:02) flpvianna: Ok, here's a bug that bothered me, coming up soon...
  319. (07:53:21) somaen: flpvianna: The one where dom wouldn't reveal anything?
  320. DF_Brandon DF_MattH DFOliver
  321. (07:53:27) bmogilefsky: DFOliver: I think that was because there was some photoshop done on the render as well, or else we had no time to regenerate the Z-buffer to match a new render.
  322. DF_Brandon DF_MattH DFOliver
  323. (07:53:31) flpvianna: Sometimes, when a cutscene ends, you get some of the previous scene music before the game processes that you're going into a new game scene
  324. (07:53:35) salty-horse: that's a classic telltale boss fight
  325. (07:53:37) bmogilefsky: DFOliver: Our production process was obviously not airtight.
  326. (07:53:57) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky, DF_Brandon, DF_MattH and DFOliver: What are you favourite aspects of Grim? Any special moments, puzzles or characters that stand out as being special to you?
  327. (07:53:58) salty-horse: dom's just standing there
  328. (07:54:02) somaen: The bug that still bothers me.
  329. (07:54:08) somaen: Is the one used in the speedrun
  330. (07:54:19) salty-horse: Cheeseness, I love the classic 4x3
  331. (07:54:19) somaen: Where you can jump from the garage in year one, to outside the florist in year 4
  332. (07:54:23) GameClubFan_499015 [Mibbit@3BB098BD.5CEB808B.3C52A1F8.IP] entered the room.
  333. (07:54:44) DFOliver: bmogilefsky: That makes sense. Rendering the backgrounds probably took super long, so quick changes in Phtooshop were necessary.
  334. (07:54:46) Cheeseness: Bye Dom
  335. (07:54:47) salty-horse: :O
  336. (07:54:59) Sven_Q45: flpvianna I didn´t have that bug. But a similiar bug in SWKOTOR 2 in the loading screen.
  337. (07:55:00) salty-horse: so you can die without being sprouted
  338. (07:55:26) DF_Brandon: Cheeseness: my favorite scene in the entire game is the one where Glottis rips out his own heart near the end of Act 1. I still randomly think about how funny that joke is to this day.
  339. (07:55:35) Cheeseness: :D
  340. (07:55:38) salty-horse: how does the gang know where to go? are there signs to the temple? do they just feel it in their ...bones?
  341. (07:55:40) DF_MattH: Cheeseness: Brandon and I were just talking about how good the dialog is. I think that has always been my favorite part of Grim.
  342. (07:55:41) flpvianna: Sven_Q45 Right, it probably depends on the processer a lot
  343. (07:55:47) somaen: So, if the backgrounds were rendered, could that data have been used for a fully 3D (3-wall) Grim?
  344. (07:55:53) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: I love all the scenes with Dom. Especially the first in his office, because of the animation of Manny taking a slug of his booze... That was the very first time I managed to get two costumes to line up, which was a critical demo that we could have character-world interaction in our art pipeline.
  345. (07:56:01) salty-horse: Glottis is the only one without a change of clothes
  346. (07:56:05) Syd: And this is where we're ending this session
  347. (07:56:09) bmogilefsky: Awwwwww... Speedrun over. :(
  348. (07:56:11) Syd: Let me know when the outro is over.
  349. (07:56:12) DF_Brandon: Cheeseness: but I think where I fell in love the game was in Rubacava. I just loved spending time in that place, and the feeling of being this cool, moderately successful club owner with all these interesting friends.
  350. (07:56:21) Cheeseness: The stream's over, but people are very welcome to hang around in chat
  351. (07:56:25) bmogilefsky: Yeah, I do love Year Two the best in terms of art.
  352. (07:56:32) Cheeseness: Ah, Syd! I sent you an updated outro
  353. (07:56:32) flpvianna: I'm super nostalgic about Rubacava too.
  354. (07:56:33) GrimMonkey101: thanks guys
  355. (07:56:39) DF_Brandon: That was fun! Thanks guys!
  356. (07:56:40) bmogilefsky: We all hit our stride, artists got to grips with lighting, etc.
  357. (07:56:40) Tinche: great stream
  358. (07:56:43) salty-horse: thanks!
  359. (07:56:46) DF_Brandon left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  360. (07:56:47) Permafry_42: Thanks again to syd for streaming and all the wonderful guests for joining!
  361. (07:56:49) Syd: Aww, didn't notice it, Cheeseness
  362. (07:56:50) bmogilefsky: Thanks, guys, tons of fun to reminisce!
  363. (07:56:50) Cheeseness: Apologies for not mentioning you there, DF_MattH. I pre-record the intro/outro and wasn't sure if you'd be able to make it
  364. (07:57:00) GrimMonkey101 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  365. (07:57:01) Cheeseness: Thanks to everybody for joining us!
  366. (07:57:07) flpvianna: Thanks guys!
  367. (07:57:08) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: Thank you for sharing your time with us! :D
  368. (07:57:12) DF_MattH: Thanks guys! Looking forward to the next one
  369. (07:57:13) DFOliver: Thanks guys. Sorry I was a bit late.
  370. (07:57:21) Syd: Yeah, thanks to everyone that joined us! We'll be finishing the game next session. :)
  371. (07:57:22) flpvianna left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  372. (07:57:23) salty-horse: thanks guests and syd!
  373. (07:57:23) Cheeseness: DFOliver: It's all good - it's great to have you join us again :)
  374. (07:57:24) DFOliver: This was fund and interesting. :)
  375. (07:57:25) Permafry_42: Gonna go take a shower now. Cya next week everyone!
  376. (07:57:30) GameClubFan_285461 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  377. (07:57:38) Permafry_42 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  378. (07:57:46) DFOliver: See you guys.
  379. (07:57:48) Cheeseness: Grim's a special game for a lot of people
  380. (07:57:53) Cheeseness: Thanks for bringing it back to uhh life
  381. (07:57:53) Sven_Q45: Bye.
  382. (07:57:54) Syd: Bye DFOliver!
  383. (07:57:59) Cheeseness: Bye DFOliver
  384. (07:58:02) beansmyname left the room.
  385. (07:58:25) DFOliver left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  386. (07:58:29) Sven_Q45: What a day.
  387. (07:58:41) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: Thanks to yourself and Brandon for taking time out of your plans to join us as well!
  388. (07:59:26) somaen: bmogilefsky: How late in the Grim dev period was the engine itself more or less done?
  389. (07:59:32) bmogilefsky: Yeah, huge shout out to everyone at DF for the archaeology done here.
  390. (07:59:39) bmogilefsky: somaen: Done?! hahahahahahah
  391. (07:59:41) Cheeseness: Yeah, was that a moving target for scripting, or was it nailed down well?
  392. (07:59:48) Cheeseness: Ha ha ha
  393. (07:59:48) somaen: I mean, was the tail part mostly lua work, or was the engine itself always underway?
  394. (07:59:59) bmogilefsky: somaen: There came a point in time when I as fixing more bugs than I was writing.
  395. (08:00:25) bmogilefsky: I'd say it was while people were working on Year Three... And the game was roughly developed in linear order, believe it or not!
  396. (08:00:31) Syd: I gotta head out. See you all around! :)
  397. (08:00:32) beansmyname [bean@hide-66FC9128.ftth.swbr.surewest.net] entered the room.
  398. (08:00:37) bmogilefsky: So probably about two years in...?
  399. (08:00:39) Cheeseness: Thanks again, Syd!
  400. (08:00:44) Syd left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  401. (08:00:51) GameClubFan_746095 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  402. (08:00:58) Cheeseness: Ooh, linear order development is super interesting
  403. (08:01:17) somaen: I was guessing that at some point atleast the engine featureset would be fixed.
  404. (08:01:23) Cheeseness: There aren't many titles I can name that had that kind of approach, but of those that I'm aware of (like say, Another World), I love
  405. (08:01:34) somaen: and little to no extra C-functions were added to be used in Lua.
  406. (08:01:40) bmogilefsky: somaen: Lua writing was happening until the very end... Tim was doing a lot of tweaking into the very last days, and getting a lot of grief about it, including from me, because we were trying to stabilize the game and ship it and he was not just fixing bugs.
  407. (08:01:56) Cheeseness: somaen: It's tricky - at what point do you say no to awesome features if they can be added in without killing the critical path?
  408. (08:02:11) somaen: Well, the year 2 point makes sense.
  409. (08:02:17) bmogilefsky: somaen: Year one exercises most of the engine capabilities.
  410. (08:02:28) somaen: I remember from ResidualVM, that once Rubacava was completable, there was a lot fewer hurdles after that.
  411. (08:02:30) Sven_Q45: Did anyone started BOUT 2 yet?
  412. (08:02:38) bmogilefsky: somaen: Year two brought in a lot more large size Smush animations, which meant we had to do a lot more optimization then.
  413. (08:02:40) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, so you're responsible for Tim's love affair with Lua, that then went into DoubleFine
  414. (08:02:45) Cheeseness: Sven_Q45: I haven't
  415. (08:03:24) somaen: IIRC, most of the trickiness in Year 2 was in the Jazz club.
  416. (08:03:25) bmogilefsky: I was pretty unhappy when I realized how much water animation and lighthouse animation was going to be happening in nearly every set in Year Two... I didn't think P90s could handle it.
  417. (08:03:54) somaen: Ah, I was actually surprised about that piece of commentary
  418. (08:03:58) somaen: The P90 target.
  419. (08:04:10) bmogilefsky: Luckily no one is playing on incapable hardware now, but at the time we were very strict that the game had to play on "whatever was on sale at Christmas at CompUSA two years ago" to hit the largest potential market.
  420. (08:04:14) Sven_Q45: Today I got 2 rewards with the post. First I picked up my Tex Murphy reward form the German post. and then my second reward of TBOUT 2 arrived. Yesterday i got my first TBOUT 2 reward. And there will be a 3rd delivery. :)
  421. (08:04:26) somaen: renderDroid must be quite optimized, since ResidualVM can't play in software on stuff like an 800 MHz G4
  422. (08:04:42) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Tim took it to DF, but others took it to Telltale, Infinite Machine, etc.
  423. (08:04:48) bmogilefsky: Even Nihilistic, I thik.
  424. (08:05:03) bmogilefsky: I call myself the "Johnny Appleseed of Lua".
  425. (08:05:27) somaen: Ron Gilbert opted out of Lua for Thimbleweed Park though.
  426. (08:05:39) Cheeseness: Ron will be Ron :D
  427. (08:05:50) bmogilefsky: somaen: Well, Ron was long-gone from LEC by the time Lua rolled in.
  428. (08:06:16) bmogilefsky: And Ron wrote SCUMM and SPUTM nearly single-handedly, so it's not like he wasn't used to making it up as he goes.
  429. (08:06:17) Cheeseness: Squirrel looks neat though (that's what he's using for Thimbleweed's scripting, right?)
  430. (08:06:20) somaen: Did lua carry on to any of the star wars games?
  431. (08:06:45) GameClubFan_760246 [Mibbit@hide-F201E7A0.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] entered the room.
  432. (08:07:08) bmogilefsky: somaen: The jazz club was difficult because of the sheer number of characters on screen. Peter Tsacle was adamant that it needed to feel busy.
  433. (08:07:26) somaen: Most of which could be static 2D stuff though
  434. (08:07:35) Cheeseness: I tried to reach out to Peter Tscale to invite him to join us, but wasn't able to get in touch :(
  435. (08:07:45) somaen: Indeed, I noticed in the remaster that atleast one of them is.
  436. (08:07:56) GameClubFan_760246 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  437. (08:07:59) somaen: By switching modes, and noticing that some of them didn't change at all.
  438. (08:08:19) bmogilefsky: somaen: I don't know, I was gone very soon after GF shipped.
  439. (08:08:34) bmogilefsky: somaen: I was only lead prog on EFMI for 4-6 months, I think.
  440. (08:08:47) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, you're not in the credits on mobygames
  441. (08:08:56) somaen: Oh, didn't actually know you worked on EFMI
  442. (08:09:13) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, oops. you're in Additional Programming
  443. (08:09:29) bmogilefsky: somaen: I do know they experimented with new scripting ideas for Obi-Wan, but they did not catch on, and Kevin (co-engine programmer on Grim, founder of Telltale, tech lead on Obi-Wan) recanted, obviously, when he founded Telltale using Lua.
  444. (08:09:45) Cheeseness: Obi-Wan?
  445. (08:10:26) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Yeah, I don't blame them for not crediting me higher than that... I was out of there pretty early. GF burned me out, and EFMI was not a game that I was in from the first day of design like GF... I didn't have the heart to pour into it like Grim, I was tapped out.
  446. (08:11:00) Cheeseness: How long were you at Lucas for, bmogilefsky?
  447. (08:11:22) bmogilefsky: Yeah, Obi-Wan: http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox/star-wars-obi-wan
  448. (08:11:31) Cheeseness: Oh. That'd be why I never heard of it
  449. (08:12:00) salty-horse: ugh
  450. (08:12:01) salty-horse: I played that
  451. (08:12:03) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: I think it was about 3.5 years total.
  452. (08:12:06) salty-horse: (warez)
  453. (08:12:43) bmogilefsky: But remember that I worked at (then-called) Lucasfilm Games in high school, during my junior and senior summers, as a tester.
  454. (08:13:08) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: Ahh! That'd be why Giantbomb says you were there from 1988 to 1999
  455. (08:13:24) somaen: So which SCUMM games are bug-free thanks to you then?
  456. (08:13:28) bmogilefsky: So technically when I returned and was hired for Grim, I was actually still in their records as an employee, and in fact my employee number was 17... Insanely low.
  457. (08:13:31) Cheeseness: Yeah, which games did you test?
  458. (08:13:37) Cheeseness: Nice
  459. (08:14:00) bmogilefsky: Lots of them: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/bret-mogilefsky/credits/developerId,1675/
  460. (08:14:15) Cheeseness: Nice
  461. (08:14:18) bmogilefsky: You can see from that list I had adventure games in my DNA
  462. (08:14:47) bmogilefsky: somaen: My first day at Games I was put on Secret of Monkey Island.
  463. (08:14:50) Cheeseness: You got a special thanks on Brutal Legend as well
  464. (08:14:51) somaen: Hey, FM Towns english playtesting.
  465. (08:15:05) somaen: That means that you're one of the few that knew of that version.
  466. (08:15:32) Tinche left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  467. (08:15:33) bmogilefsky: The "thanks" credits are usually due to me helping people in my role in DevRel/DevSupport at Sony.
  468. (08:15:42) Cheeseness: Ah, interesting
  469. (08:15:50) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, could you choose which games you wanted to test?
  470. (08:16:01) bmogilefsky: Although I definitely gave some of my last true game-oriented code to Paul Du Bois... Can't remember if that was while he was at Infinite Machine or Double Fine... But I think he said it's still in use!
  471. (08:16:49) bmogilefsky: somaen: Yes, the FM Towns was rare as a sasquatch or unicorn... ANd I was one of the few people they'd hired who knew how to finish Zak from the earlier shipped versions. SO I was on the Towns version.
  472. (08:16:58) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: No, they chose which games.
  473. (08:17:39) bmogilefsky: It was a very different time... Testing was actually a great way to get into pro game development back then. Not so much now.
  474. (08:17:58) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, what's your programming background prior to Grim?
  475. (08:18:25) salty-horse: FM-Towns is a Unicorn, because the games are pretty
  476. (08:19:01) bmogilefsky left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  477. (08:19:20) bmogilefsky [Mibbit@hide-94F88040.hsd1.ca.comcast.net] entered the room.
  478. (08:19:51) bmogilefsky: but early home computers put way more emphasis on accessible programming with BASIC, etc. So I learned BASIC on the Commodore PET and 64.
  479. (08:20:07) bmogilefsky: That was my first experience, I think maybe I was 11 or 12?
  480. (08:20:19) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, I missed your sentence before "but early home computers"
  481. (08:20:48) bmogilefsky: Oh, I said before GF I'd just finished my undergrad Computer Science degree at UC Berkeley
  482. (08:21:21) disharmonic left the room (quit: Quit: Leaving).
  483. (08:21:37) disharmonic [disharmoni@hide-15A5B135.dsl.dyn.forthnet.gr] entered the room.
  484. (08:21:48) bmogilefsky: My first experience of adventure games was in 5th grade or so, when they wheeled a Commodore PET up in front of the class, started up "MISER",and read room descriptions, then had the class take turns suggesting commands to type in.
  485. (08:22:29) bmogilefsky: So a very social experience, very huge impact on me because without any pictures, it was still so clear in our heads and possible to solve puzzles.
  486. (08:22:42) bmogilefsky: And it was a special time for the whole class, very bonding.
  487. (08:23:01) bmogilefsky: Anyway, I coded here and there in high school, learned Pascal in a summer course, et.c
  488. (08:23:09) bmogilefsky: But I never made anything serious until college.
  489. (08:23:24) bmogilefsky: But I did play EVERYTHING.
  490. (08:23:26) Cheeseness: DF_MattH: You also tested at LucasArts, right?
  491. (08:23:49) somaen: I'm off, but thanks for all the insights, always nice to learn some tidbits about LA-history.
  492. (08:23:57) somaen left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  493. (08:24:00) Cheeseness: Thanks somaen
  494. (08:24:18) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, did games lead you to choosing programming as a career?
  495. (08:24:19) GameClubFan_014385 [Mibbit@hide-1FDAF05E.dsl.pltn13.sbcglobal.net] entered the room.
  496. (08:24:27) Sven_Q45: Interesting.
  497. (08:24:58) Cheeseness: Matt ended up tested Loom after sending fanmail to LucasFilm Games
  498. (08:25:02) bmogilefsky: Looking at MobyGames: Whoa, who left me in as Lead Programmer on GFR?! That should go to DF_Brandon or DFOliver!
  499. (08:25:37) salty-horse: Speaking of LOOM, don't forget Moriarty's upcoming GDC talk
  500. (08:25:42) Cheeseness: Oh yeah :D
  501. (08:25:45) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: They definitely led me to be around computers a lot. I actually wasn't sure I wanted to do programming until second year of college.
  502. (08:27:10) Cheeseness: bmogilefsky: What're your thoughts on projects like ScummVM and ResidualVM?
  503. (08:27:49) Cheeseness: To me, they've seemed like examples of how passionate people can be about games they love
  504. (08:28:08) Sven_Q45: Playtesting is always interesting. This week I tested "Fire" from Daedalic. Next week the beta of Dead Synconity. I heard the beta already has very few bugs. I hope I´ll find a few. :P
  505. (08:28:09) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: Are you kidding?! They have been the only hope I've ever had (until this year) that I'd ever be able to explain what I'd done in my career to my kids.
  506. (08:28:15) salty-horse: passionate and deranged
  507. (08:28:21) Cheeseness: :)
  508. (08:28:56) bmogilefsky: I owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone for keeping the GF torch alive, and for bringing it to more people.
  509. (08:29:09) bmogilefsky: Residual was an incredible thing to me.
  510. (08:29:40) bmogilefsky: Especially because it was essentially targeting just a single game.
  511. (08:29:44) Sven_Q45: Who is deranged?
  512. (08:29:53) salty-horse: ScummVM developers
  513. (08:29:57) salty-horse: and residual
  514. (08:29:59) bmogilefsky: ScummVM supported so many games, it's not surprising that the engineering effort would pour in with such a large payoff.
  515. (08:30:18) Cheeseness: ScummVM started with a smaller selection of projects though, I imagine
  516. (08:30:24) bmogilefsky: But Residual said something special about the appeal of Grim itself, which is very gratifying.
  517. (08:30:26) Cheeseness: (I don't know much about ScummVM's early history)
  518. (08:30:32) Cheeseness: Yeah, for sure
  519. (08:30:54) Sven_Q45: Agree on ScummVm. I like it more than dosbox. But DeFend works also fine.
  520. (08:30:59) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: Yes, but there's enough common DNA in all the SCUMM games that I don't think there was too far a stretch to expand the support from teh start.
  521. (08:31:32) Sven_Q45: ScummVm emulates Dott very good. I played it with the fastest mode and the game doesn´t bug, stuck or crashed! :)
  522. (08:31:47) bmogilefsky: That's largely due to Aric Wilmunder being the SCUMMlord for so many years... Each successive version/refinement was essentially the work of one guy, and he was very careful about ensuring it could always play the older games.
  523. (08:31:47) Cheeseness: How do you feel about Grim's "success" (it seems like it was loved by everyone except the bean counters who wanted to call it a failure)?
  524. (08:32:10) salty-horse: Sven_Q45, I forgot you can change the speed :)
  525. (08:32:34) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: The fact that anyone at all talks about it is a triumph... Think of all the games from that era that no one ever mentions or remembers.
  526. (08:32:36) Sven_Q45: I like to use it faster on some moments. :D
  527. (08:32:53) Cheeseness: heh, I don't remember any :D
  528. (08:33:35) GameClubFan_014385 left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  529. (08:33:48) Cheeseness: It just occurs to me that Grim came out at the same time as Half-Life
  530. (08:33:50) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, ScummVM's engine support didn't fit the original chronology. started with MI2.
  531. (08:33:52) bmogilefsky: Cheeseness: There was a very key review of GF at the time that validated my feeling that we were making something special.
  532. (08:33:57) bmogilefsky: BluesNews, I think.
  533. (08:34:08) salty-horse: Sven_Q45, ScummVM doesn't replace DosBox. they have different purposes
  534. (08:34:32) bmogilefsky: Yes, we lost to Half-Life in just about every Game of the Year award where we were nominated.
  535. (08:34:41) Cheeseness: There's a level of characterisation, storytelling, and attention to detail that other games of the era just didn't seem to have
  536. (08:34:44) salty-horse: with ScummVM, you can never see the original menus :)
  537. (08:34:45) Sven_Q45: salty-horse. I know. I just mentioned that I like it more. ;)
  538. (08:34:54) Cheeseness: Half-Life isn't really very compelling by comparison IMO
  539. (08:34:59) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, I have both, and GF is my GOTY :)
  540. (08:35:03) salty-horse: have/had
  541. (08:36:16) salty-horse: I remember playing the GF demo on a friend's computer because it didn't work on mine. I think it was 80MB
  542. (08:36:46) salty-horse: oh, it's not that it didn't work - I didn't have the bandwidth to download it. was on dial up and had to pay for minutes
  543. (08:36:47) bmogilefsky: We loved HL
  544. (08:37:41) salty-horse: I played JK multiplayer on the same dialup. first game I played modem-to-modem
  545. (08:38:02) bmogilefsky: In the final days before we shipped GF, Chris Purvis, Kevin Bruner and I were dog-tired, but dared not leave the office in case the game fell out of QA again. And we watched the pretty demo mode on Grand Prix Legends because we were too tired to play it. But we did pick up Half-Life, and I remember playing the first ten minutes and thinking
  546. (08:38:07) Cheeseness: I played HL1 in the middle of an FPS marathon I was having with some friends during a week's break from school. It wasn't very memorable for me
  547. (08:38:16) bmogilefsky: "Oh that's it then, adventure games are done."
  548. (08:38:24) salty-horse: was it ever considered to make grim a first-person adventure game?
  549. (08:38:24) Cheeseness: Ha ha, really?
  550. (08:38:25) salty-horse: :(
  551. (08:38:50) Cheeseness: I used to play JK with my step brother via a null modem cable
  552. (08:39:00) bmogilefsky: Because HL did such a good job of bringing story-telling and atmosphere into the first ten minutes... We'd never seen that in an FPS.
  553. (08:40:07) bmogilefsky: salty-horse: Never FPS. We did consider keeping all the room geometry and texture assets in case there could someday be a fully 3D version... But those archives are lost, and now I think it would be a bad idea anyway,
  554. (08:40:20) bmogilefsky: Fully 3D <-- Third person
  555. (08:40:21) salty-horse: Cheeseness, it was laggy as hell, and I took up the home phone. so I had to call my friend, make sure he was ready on his end, then try to connect after X minutes
  556. (08:40:35) Cheeseness: salty-horse: Ha ha, that's why we always did it locally :D
  557. (08:40:42) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, NOOOO - would have been great for the remastered
  558. (08:41:08) salty-horse: did DF ever find out what the symbol was on Salvador's beret?
  559. (08:41:13) Cheeseness: I don't think so - static camera angles are what give Grim its cinematic symbol
  560. (08:41:29) Cheeseness: An actual third person camera would change the feel of the game dramatically I thikn
  561. (08:41:34) salty-horse: Cheeseness, I meant the uprez. I like the static angles
  562. (08:41:40) Cheeseness: Ah, right
  563. (08:41:43) salty-horse: GK3 :(
  564. (08:42:21) Sven_Q45: Gabriel Knight 3?
  565. (08:42:33) salty-horse: yes. you controlled the camera in a 3d environment
  566. (08:42:41) salty-horse: AND point and clicked to interact
  567. (08:42:57) salty-horse: it wasn't very comfortable
  568. (08:43:02) salty-horse: you could make characters move out of frame
  569. (08:43:12) salty-horse: and had to "chase" them with the camera to move long distances
  570. (08:44:27) bmogilefsky: One game people forget about from the time was Blade Runner.
  571. (08:44:35) Cheeseness: I never played that
  572. (08:44:36) bmogilefsky: I think it was horribly underappreciated.
  573. (08:44:53) salty-horse: I have that too
  574. (08:44:59) bmogilefsky: It was very innovative, in that it had multiple branching and overlapping storylines leading to multiple endings.
  575. (08:45:10) bmogilefsky: Very, very difficult to design/execute something like that.
  576. (08:45:13) salty-horse: exchanged myst for PSX in the store for Starcraft, Blade Runner, and something else
  577. (08:45:18) Lightkey: uh.. so I was making dinner, finally caught up with the log
  578. (08:45:22) Sven_Q45: Blade Runner? The graphics and "special effects" were great for that time! :)
  579. (08:45:27) Lightkey: bmogilefsky: Nancy Yerdle? you mean Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith? I don't see either in the credits
  580. (08:46:38) bmogilefsky: Hm, maybe I'm misremembering. I do know that Manny's first reap was the same guy who voiced Yosemite Sam at the time.
  581. (08:46:43) salty-horse: Blade Runner had voxel models
  582. (08:46:50) salty-horse: someone is working on that for ScummVM
  583. (08:46:53) bmogilefsky: "Cut the yap! I want something cheap where I can get some rest and that's it!"
  584. (08:47:11) Cheeseness: Ha ha
  585. (08:47:30) Lightkey: oh, the gnome
  586. (08:48:07) salty-horse: bmogilefsky, here are screenshots from my residual development of fonts and lip syncing: http://i.imgur.com/2tEbBrq.png http://i.imgur.com/Kdm7r6O.png
  587. (08:48:07) Cheeseness: As much as I love Grim, I think Thief might be my favourite game from 1998
  588. (08:48:13) Lightkey: and anyway, thanks for being such a good sport, almost on Ryan Gordon's level of story telling :-D
  589. (08:48:20) Cheeseness: IMO Half-Life's got nothing on that game atmosphere wise
  590. (08:48:42) Cheeseness: Lightkey: Did you listen in to the Cast yesterday?
  591. (08:48:42) salty-horse: I stopped playing Thief at the zombies
  592. (08:48:50) Lightkey: Cheeseness: yes
  593. (08:48:52) Cheeseness: <3
  594. (08:49:03) salty-horse: what Cast? link
  595. (08:49:11) Cheeseness: The archive isn't up yet
  596. (08:49:29) Cheeseness: We had Ryan Gordon on SteamLUG Cast yesterday. Old episodes are here: https://steamlug.org/cast
  597. (08:49:32) Lightkey: I tried to get in some suggestions but they were not picked up ;-P
  598. (08:49:35) salty-horse: oh, that
  599. (08:49:38) salty-horse: I saw on twitter
  600. (08:50:02) Cheeseness: Lightkey: Ah, sorry! I tried to keep an eye to chat, but it's easy to end up getting distracted
  601. (08:50:33) Lightkey: I meant more in addressing him, he ignored me :p
  602. (08:50:34) bmogilefsky: Lightkey: I guess I am misremembering... I'm looking up the voices, and they had big voice careers, but clearly no connection with the Simpsons.
  603. (08:51:17) Cheeseness: Oh, ha ha. I don't think he was able to look at the chat a lot either
  604. (08:51:19) Lightkey: (like how he once said of Postal Plus that the game may be "dirty" but the engine is the most cleanest he ever saw, "when <name> writes code, the heavens open up and angels sing"
  605. (08:51:22) Lightkey: )
  606. (08:52:24) Cheeseness: That was Quake 3 that he was talking about being perfect, I think
  607. (08:52:37) Cheeseness: I can't remember who specifically he was talking about though
  608. (08:52:40) salty-horse: I'm transitioning to a Typing of the Dead stream, and then sleep. Thanks for everyone for participating and answering my q's
  609. (08:52:43) Lightkey: yes, and I tried to make him remember of Postal
  610. (08:52:48) Lightkey: because he clearly forgot
  611. (08:52:53) Cheeseness: Thanks for coming, salty-horse. Post those images in the thread! :D
  612. (08:53:17) Cheeseness: Lightkey: We can ask him on Twitter ^_^
  613. (08:54:52) salty-horse: Cheeseness, yeah yea, I remember
  614. (08:54:58) salty-horse: :)
  615. (08:55:12) bmogilefsky: I'm signing off until next week. Thanks for hosting me, this has been great!
  616. (08:55:21) Cheeseness: Thanks very much again for joining us, bmogilefsky. It's been a pleasure :)
  617. (08:55:29) Cheeseness: Looking forward to next week
  618. (08:55:37) bmogilefsky left the room (quit: Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client).
  619. (08:56:05) Sven_Q45: Cheeseness I do! Cuz next week is my birthday. :)
  620. (08:56:14) salty-horse left the room (quit: Quit: Leaving).
  621. (08:56:15) Cheeseness: Woo \o/
  622. (08:56:23) Cheeseness: Happy early birthday
  623. (08:56:48) flesk: Ended up missing most of the stream. :(
  624. (08:56:51) Cheeseness: On that note, I'm going to wrap up the chat log. Again, thank you to everybody who joined us, and the thread is here, leave some comments http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/16384/
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