Patch Notes
Apr 04, 2017
In the continuing series called "Hey, let's make a video game", I thought I'd take people through all the patch notes and talk about what happened, why it happened and how we fixed it.
Note that these patch are for Steam Build 1309.859 only, the GOG versions will be up tomorrow and the Mac App Store and Xbox a few days after that. You can see the build number by looking in the lower right of the Options menu.
We group post launch bugs into three categories.
1 - Game breaking bugs that render the current game unplayable.
2 - Bugs that cause issues (or even crashes), but reloading the autosave fixes it.
3 - Small feature changes to keep players happen or avoid confusion
4 - Everything else.
If the bug is level 4, it just gets moved to fix next rev. For these patch (live patches) we want to make safe and easy changes, because they are not going though a full cycle of testing. These are emergency fixes only. In a few weeks, we'll do a major rev with all the little things change (and maybe some new content) and it will go through a full testing pass.
But for the live patches, we want to change as little as possible.
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Don't read any more if you don't want the game spoiled.
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Level 1 bugs.
Ransome's Cheese
If you picked up the cheese in Ransome's fridge, and then tried to put it back, the cheese would disappear, making the game unfinishable since the cheese was needed for a later puzzle.
This ended up being nothing more than a bad copy/paste error, where the wrong object was pasted into the line that made the cheese visible again. It was missed because none of the testers thought to put the cheese back. It's the type of bug TesterTron™ won't find, because it's never going to be smart enough to solve the whole game, and get stuck because it has no cheese.
Rathole Cheese
If you put down the cheese by the rat hole, and then picked up the cheese, the rat hole was untouchable.
Text update after more information from David Fox
For the bug where picking up the cheese from the rat hole caused the hole to become untouchable, this had to happen during the 1/10 of a second when the rat stopped by the hole and saw the cheese to when he went over to the cheese a few pixels away. If you picked it up at that moment, the hole would already have been made untouchable. You did get the cheese but could never put it back there again. That's why it was hard to catch.
A Street Dime.
The dime needed to make the call to free the trapped agent is randomly placed. One of the places is on A Street. But... A Street is blocked off and a WC-67 tube is needed to solve the puzzle. If Ray goes to the store and gets the tube, then walks into the alley and gets captured, there is now no way to get to A Street and get the dime since she has the tube. If Reyes had been captured, it would have been OK since Ray has a cellphone (that won't work in the sewer).
The captured agent puzzle is one of the first puzzle we did, close to 2 years ago. The pigeon sisters used to be out on the highway, but we moved them to Main Street late in the project, and we never thought about that dime on A Street. It's pretty rare situation, since the dime had to spawn on A Street (1 in 4 chance) and then you had to get captured while holding the tube. It just never came up in thousands of hours of testing. Since the dime puzzle was created so long ago, it was out-of-mind for us as well.
Disappearing Robot Tube
If you used this one specific tube you had on the robot in Chuck's work shop, it would vanish.
There are a lot of tubes in the game and a lot of places to put them. We tried to create a "system" to deal with them, but this one tube was not flagged correctly, so it would vanish from your inventory. Solution was just to tag it. Again, just a rare situation not caught in testing. You had to work pretty hard to be in the situation where you had that tube and the robot head.
Radio Station
The puzzle chain that happens around the radio station is very complex. You have to switch between three characters to solve it and Cassie (the DJ) is walking around the whole time. There were several places, where if you interrupted the sequence, or the sequence interrupted something you were doing somewhere else, it would break. All these were issues that had to happen in exactly the right frame, so it ended up being pretty rare. None of them resulted in unplayable games and could be solved by just quitting and loadings, but they were ugly enough to fix.
Most of the 1-frame issues are a result of this being a new engine, now that I see what is happening "under the hood", I can make system changes to prevent them, but that is a larger issue than can be address in a hot fix.
The Hat Bug
This was a bad one, and the one that messed up the most players. If you are wearing the pirate hat, and then try to give it to the comic book salesman, the hat vanished. Unfortunately, it was need for a puzzle at the end of the game.
When you give an item to someone, it runs through this complex chain of code, querying objects and actors along the way seeing if the object is givable, if the actor wants it, if the actor holding it wants to give it a way, etc.
That chain is correctly followed for the hat... unless you're wearing it when you give it away. In that case, the code just gave the hat to the NPC without running though the correct query chain. Had it gone though the query chain, it would have failed and not been given away.
What makes this bug so dangerous, is the comic book salesman is looking for something "valuable", so it make complete sense to try and give the pirate hat to him, and what looks cooler on your head then a pirate hat. Perfect bug storm.
The correct solution would be to send the hat give through the query system, but for a hotfix, this was too much code, so if you try and give the pirate hat to an NPC, it won't let you.
Level 2 bugs
If an agent is stuck in the sewers, you have to look up a phone number and call the Sheriff for help. If the Delores flashback happens while an agent is captured, Delores can call the number and get help sent... from the past! It's a funny bug, it doesn't break anything, but we decided to fix it. Now, if you call the number from a flashback, nothing happens.
There were a few places where an NPC actor was moved to the circus for Ransome's flashback and not returned where they came from, and then not inited correctly. Most of these show up if you do things a extremely out of order. Quick fix to force them back.
If you call the bank before visiting, you get a black screen and the game appears to hang. Overriding the cut-scene (ESC) fixes the issue. This is because the banker might have moved to the circus for the Ransome Flashback (it's ransom), so he was in this special room called the Void. The fix was to init the banker when the phone call happens.
If an actor was on a ladder, and the engine teleported them somewhere, they stayed in their ladder animation until they got on a ladder, or one of many other events reset the animation. For example, if Ray was on a ladder, then Reyes talked to the Sheriff at the Vista, there was a scene where Ray should up... but she was on the ladder. Easy fix to just reset the animations in the four places that happened. There is a better, more proper fix, but we're hotfixing, so that was just 4 lines of new code.
If you used the hotel card key in the pigeon van, the game would crash. It was accessing a variable that didn't exist. Quick fix, 1 line of code.
The phone uses 4 digit numbers, but the security pad uses 6 (and they both use the same programming code, so if you used the security pad by the cabin, the phone now thought it needed 6 digits. It didn't break the game, but made calling backer phone numbers imposible.
There were a couple of places where gates would open and close. The internal flag to show the gate was open was set when the gate got to the open state, which could take a few seconds. If the player switched character while the gate was opening, the flag never got set. The multitasking threads that are opening the gate are "room local", so they get killed when you leave the room. We solved this by wrapping the opening animation with an inputOff(). It was the quickest thing to do for a hotfix.
When Franklin creates and walks through his portal, if the Cassie/Radio cut-scene happens at that very moment, the portal was gone on the other side. We added a safety check for the portal not being there and creating it.
Level 3 bugs
There was a big where if the Kid in the hotel was standing close to the drinking fountains, but so was a playable character and they were 1 pixel closers, it would fall into some code with a null pointer. We now trap for the null pointer.
If you were exchanging the bottle for the nickel, if you hit ESC at just the right moment, you would have two nickels. It didn't break the game, but was confusing.
If Chuck's favorite number was 1, then a dialog to guess it got very confusing. Nothing broke, but players thought it had.
For the puzzle for getting the map from Natalie, many players didn't realize that if you messed up, the puzzle was reset to a new answer. We fixed that by making it clearer that the answer was reset, and also calling attention to the radio.
We added the key mapping screen to Options Help. We just forgot to add this. Dumb mistake. It's english only right now, we'll translate it for the next rev.
F5 now brings up the Options screen. I was tired of hearing people complain about this. :-) You also can now remap the skip dialog key. And the mouse scroll wheel now scrolls the inventory. Ctrl-O now brings up the Options so O can be remapped to verbs.
We also fixed a bunch of typos.
One of our big challenges was for players who had Level 1 bugs and their savegame became unplayable. We added code to the postLoad() routines that detected the bad state and corrected it. So, for example, if you gave away the pirate hat, the loadLoad() code would realize that and magically put it back for you. Same with the dime. Not a lot of people were affected, but if they were, this patch magically fixes it.
It may seem like a lot of bugs, but it's pretty much par for the course. We spent a lot of time testing and there are (literally) thousands of things to test, so it's not unexpected when a few fall though, especially ones that a really rare.
This group of testers is one of (if not the) best I've ever worked with. When these bugs started show up, everyone jump on Slack and the testers ninja reproduced them and we fixed them.
Some of these bugs are 1 in 10000 odds, but when you have 2 or 3 times that many people playing, they become a 100% chance of happening to someone.
Stay safe out there.
- Ron
I'm having some fun with an adventure game again!
I want to mention that when I won the radio competition I had no idea where to go to collect the tickets. Also I would like esc to bring up the main menu rather than f5 personally.
Cheers
Andrew
It's good that there are patches these days. But I wonder, are the bugs appearing in this first version of the game similar (on number and category) as the ones present in the released versions of the LucasArts games?
And what about sound panning errors? Also not game breaking, but quite distracting.
And with the WC-67 tube issue, he/she could drop it just like the notepad.
Will you make a blog post about deleted content? Most apparent it is with the betamax tape (quite some effort for nothing in the end). And the vault and the pub are present in the wireframe world, also hinting that they were cut in the main part.
Also I wonder, are there reasons that you can walk in the garden of the town hall and behind the occult book store?
And what was it about the broken pay phone ringing? I don't get it.
*SPOILER*
My doofus moment was failing to realise that when SR returned to the con, his tools were right there in the room in plain view, so I didn't need SR to be in the room when Delores arrived. Having Franklin there seems to keep SR in his room, so when I got Delores up there, both F and D refused to enter because they didn't want to see SR being sick. So I sent Delores back down, and when I had her return to SR's room, it was already open. Not sure if that's a bug or not...
*END SPOILER*
Regarding being able to walk in areas where there's not much point, that's a staple of point'n'click - if the actors are only allowed to walk in the important or necessary areas, then it blunts the encouragement to explore (at least I think so). I think a lot of what bugs me about most more modern titles is the way they tend to lead the player around by the nose, telling them what to do and how to do it. "Red Herrings" are part of the charm of this era of adventure gaming and I feel TWP would feel lessened without them.
The ringing vandalised payphone? Maybe it's a holdover from something that didn't get added, but whether that's the case or not things like that add a lot to the mildly unsettling atmosphere..
The ringing payphone is intentional... it is unsettling, isn't it?
But the most unsettling thing, in my opinion, is Reyes temporary abduction and forced-while-unconscious laying on the table.
What are they doing? Why? Who is the other person?
Creepy.
As to the other person, she's from a shop in the town ;)
The game was very stable for me, I didn't run into any game breaking bugs and it only crashed once with Franklin (the one described above).
Great work!
https://abload.de/img/11ikh4.jpg
https://abload.de/img/280j1l.jpg
https://abload.de/img/3bnjir.jpg
Just kidding. ;-) To be honest... I have never seen a game support like this. Thank you. Keep up the good work!
I keep hitting '1' to pick the first dialog choice out of habit.
I had zero crashes and no real show stoppers during my playthrough on 10.11.6, which was nice.
I remember a couple of glitches, like, missing textures [bank background, diner logo off {btw. the hard dithering doesn't fit to the other scenes which primary utalise banding, which looks way better}, ...], some weird starting animations, pushing characters into positions [at the elevator], some odd mixing/volume issues [primary when more characters tried to talk], some unsharp textures (filtering), audio sounds too sharp and compressed [I ended up adjusting a.o. soft dry lows and mids.], some A*(?) issues in the laser scene, typo/missing square on the map, at some point stuff was taken away from the inventories [i guess by intention but it felt weird without feedback], Dolores did not talk to her dad but it was marked in his notes ... and some more.
It felt like a solid V1.0 but not a V1.1 yet. Overall (it has its ups and downs) it's a great adventure, thanks a lot!
Oh, it certainly was a bug that I wasn't able to activate & utalise Chuck's Robby.
1) Increasing the audio quality. There's some fab music (fun bass in Quickie Pal) and nice voice acting in the game but the audio lacks in terms of quality.
2) Slowly scrolling background clouds because clouds are free, when moving they look more real and add life a scene.
3) Going for a more consistent look. I liked the scenes with banding and no or more subtile dithering the most (there are some exciting colors in the game).
Classic sentence ON means you have the sentence line directly above the verbs. OFF means the sentence will follow your cursor position.
If it doesn't work try to install the latest version.
That sodding "spitting contest" puzzle though - what sadist came up with that? ;)
After updating through GOG all went fine. BUT -no paranoia here- I think that I found a couple more.
--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<-- SPOILERS --8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--
1. Chucks lucky number not ticked on Delores list after find it
2. Secret room not ticked on Franks either after entering it and do the spell..
--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<-- SPOILERS --8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--8<--
These are new bugs? already reported bugs? Or are just dependencies on the flow
I'm really enjoying the game. Thanks again!
For Franklin's secret room being ticked, it looks correct in code. I'll add a ticket for a tester to confirm.
There's also a bug in the telephone directory: sometimes you call a backer number, the green check-mark does not appear immediately. It will appear if you change pages and go back, or if you exit the directory and return. It appears to be purely a display bug, since the state of the call is properly recorded.
-dZ.
There's something that bugged me, though it's not a bug per se, if you catch my drift. I had trouble navigating Delores up the stairs by the library to her room in the Mansion mansion because I would always trigger the flashing head icon bar instead of moving Delores to the next destination (up those darn stairs). If somehow the area that the mouse can hover over that triggers the 'move over here' action could be, I dunno, bigger or something (extending well beyond the character shifting buttons) it would be great. Really tiny issue though, obviously. (I managed to get Delores up there after running up and down the stairs multiple times, usually, so it's not like I can't get her up there.)
I played as a Casual Gamer for the first playthrough and now I'm looking at these posts and comments and realising just how much must have been cut out of the Casual Gamer experience. Looks like Hard Mode is where it's at - I'd better get cracking on that!
1) The cut scene showing the last page of Ransome's joke book flying away doesn't clearly show the page getting stuck on the antenna. It's ambiguous if you should be trying the trampoline or walking around the rest of the circus to find it. Also, if you happen to miss or accidentally skip the cut scene, there's no in-game clue where you should be looking.
2) Agent being "blacked out" and seen on the coroner's table. Nothing seems to actually trigger this, I just loaded a save and couldn't play as that character for a bit. I don't know if this is a relic of a cut puzzle or if it's just intended to be environmental, but it felt like I was at a dead end because of missing inventory objects for a while. Not a satisfying element to the game having no discernible way to progress, and not having any clue that I could switch back to that character eventually.
3) Pay phone ringing at some point. Same deal, unclear if it was a cut puzzle, but the phone rang, but I couldn't do anything to answer it, so I kept walking back into that screen hoping for the phone to ring thinking it was necessary to answer in order to progress.
4) Opening scene, the character says something about being able to smash the light with the rock before reading the note to turn the light out or examining the light and finding it can't be unscrewed. Character jumped to the conclusion of having to smash the light before discovering it couldnt be extinguished "normally".
5) Being able to find the chainsaw before the dialog gives you the clue.
6) Several instances where an NPC's name is known before talking to the person and getting their introduction.
These are mostly nitpicks on what is otherwise a beautiful game. Great job keeping the spirit of adventure games alive. I hope you'll continue making them, they are truly an art form that should continue to expand and develop.
just finished the game yesterday night and things really start coming together in my mind. At first, I also felt it was a bit annoying that the playable characters had mostly the same lines, that they could not talk to each other but were all working together to a common goal. There are even some reviews mentioning this as "cons". But it began to dawn on me when I found Chuck's first notebook and everything is explained neatly near the end of the game. Players realized it was "meta" but everybody has to figure out what that really means and how the surveillance cameras double that in the game (in literary theory, you would call it a "mise en abyme").
I am glad I read that review about the "badly designed" first chapter because it really gave me a hint about how intricately you thought out every aspect of the game's story. Seeing what people don't understand at first sight and where they suppose logical gaps really invites you to think about the non explicit things.
"What is wrong with Thimbleweed Park?" - It would have been so much easier to hide behind your famous name and come up with some more "satisfying" trivial end but you had the courage to really take this original idea of yours to the most logical consequence.
Personally, I experienced the end of MI2 as the most mindblowing final scene ever in a game. I still keep wondering about its beautiful ambiguity (which would have been lifted in the third part and is rivalled since yesterday by TWP). It's a kind of writing that asks for the exact same thinking as do adventure game puzzles. The more you think about it, the more rewarding it gets.
Really happy TWP seems to sell well (I backed it and bought it also on GOG, that makes three more copies to get). I hope you will be able to run your own small studio of gifted people (as you said somewhere you would like to do) so you can make new mindblowing games.
*SPOILER*
Underneath the office by the PillowTron300(tm) door
*END SPOILER*
and I noticed that the slot was roughly the right shape and (relative size) for an Atari cartridge (such as the one you picked up at the beginning, but unfortunately disappeared on the bus)...
I broke the hotel elevator :P I don't know if it has been fixed or not, but if not, here's how to reproduce it. Bring a character on the lobby and another character on the 12th floor. Call the elevator with e.g. the character on the 12th floor, and while they're waiting for it to come, switch to the other character and call the elevator before it reaches the 12th floor. The elevator changes direction but the lights and sounds begin to work strange. Switch to the other character and call the elevator before it reaches the lobby. Keep doing this game as long as you feel (notice how the light and sound pattern begins to be more and more syncopated), then call the elevator from the lobby and wait. It reaches the lobby, the doors open, BUT the lights disappear and you hear another one or two "ding" sounds... and if you try to enter the elevator, it says "the doors are closed". If you call the elevator again, the "upwards" light turns on, you hear one or two "dings" and the elevator opens again (even if it was already open) and everything's back to normal.
So, basically, the elevator went underground.
Questions:
1. Is it possible to find all 75 'Specks of dust' in Casual mode?
2. Is the agent abduction scene in the alley happening in Casual mode only? I'm unable to trigger it in Hard mode. Confused.
2. Yes, but not after you've gotten the map and showed it to the Sheriff.
Anyway I was just curious whether allowing an "incomplete" ending was a deliberate design decision (punishing the player for not paying enough attention) or a small oversight. After all, being in the wireframe does not automatically delete the upper reality, you still need to destroy it so one would expect to still be able to select another character.
Something similar was done by Ron even in Double Fine's The Cave.
Who knows what the man itself would say about it :)
The devs missed out on giving a "Free Willy" achievement for that...
Do you need more information on that one? If yes, what do you need? :)
Then in my room I've picked up another stationary there and made the phone call.
I might be wrong but I think sharp pixels worked on CRT monitors because CRT monitors performed the blurring automatically. But today it doesn't work. Low res is great, sharpness is not, imho.
I prefer my crisp pixels. :)
Actually the first thing I do when playing this kind of games is switching off all kind of filters and I'd never play a game of this kind which doesn't allow you to disable this filter. It just feels wrong.
No problem on having an option for that, though.
It allows you to add postprocessing shaders to almost any game.
Before: https://i.gyazo.com/2123ac5e490f28fc232d5151464ab74d.png
After: https://i.gyazo.com/d8e619c0006065dfea7104726f4d43fd.png
I am replaying the whole game with this thing on :)
One thing I did notice towards the end on hard mode though...
* Spoilers **
Once Dolores is tasked with finding the wireframe model, when you exit Chuck's office & back into the corridor of the ground floor factory, the blast door that was blown off with the C4 is suddenly back in place. Although more cosmetic than anything else perhaps, it did feel a bit daft from a continuity point of view.
* End spoilers **
Looking forward to whatever you (hopefully) create next! :-) Cheers.
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/exploring_delores5
In the (after-glitch) wireframe model doors are not animated, so it makes perfect sense that the previously blasted one appears closed..
This was on a 27" iMac from GOG.
Making and shipping a game is all about trade-offs. If anyone has learned anything from this blog, I'd like it to be that.
You could also spawn dust only above a certain screen position to prevent UI blocking its access.
Ever heard of Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar? It's coming out soon :-) (he claims himself it's more than 20 years of development)
i've seen all 3 now.
* SPOILERS *
Mr. El Paulo in the bank is receiving these nasty phone calls so I figured I'd try to call him just to try it out. I did find "El Paulo" in the phone book but when calling him, a handsomely voiced German chap called Keller answered (Guten Tag herr Keller, if you are a backer and reading this!). So I thought that mr. El Paulo's phone number was glitched with a backer's phone number. Which it probably was? It wasn't until later I noticed "Safely first savings" in the phone book and was able to complete the task.
* SPOILERS END HERE *
I love that you went through the extra effort of fixing the game state when a save game is loaded from a bugged state. It seems to be far more common to just invalidate old versions of save games or to not handle them at all, leading to potentially weird game state. Both of those can be very frustrating for players. Kudos for fixing!
-dZ.
https://twitter.com/kamborio/status/847912324467961857
As you already advise about the spoilers, here it goes.
The puzzle that frustrated me the most was figuring out that Franklin had to use the telephone to call the bank. All other puzzels where done and I spent 2 hours trying everything to get the bloody key.
During the frustration I was trying to move very fast between places trying things, and that happen, so I think it is a multithreaded issue where I clicked too fast to enter the elevator.
On a side note, I loved the game, thank you for making it. I hope this is to Terrible Toybox what Maniac Mansion was to LucasFilm: the first of many good adventure games to come.
The worst for me? The multiple characters. I don't think they are that bad but I would have preferred it as a first person adventure game with just one character. Maybe the next one? ;)
From London with Love.
...a first person adventure game with just one character...
UNQUOTE
You have just perfectly described my worst nightmare in terms of game style :D
In SCUMM games, you could press f8 for that.
are you going to publish any info on the file format (at least those ggpack files)? To get some modding going on etc.
Thanks,
Harry
(I guess it's a backer item, e.g. a red herring)
I guess it's not a bug. But I find it strange that the characters can not talk to each other by the user's decision. Especially when they share inventory intems and are not supposed to be friends with each other.
Example is Ramsome give to Ray the wallet only for goodness?
Even so it is beautiful game.
There are 4 characters in the game which can easily talk to each other. Those alone are 6 different talk-to combinations if you ignore having an initiator (24 combinations if you would have one normal character more; 16 combinations if you differentiate who initiated an conversation).
Depending on the state of the game (which part; which puzzles have been solved and how far etc.) there is a lot to be considered, a lot of dialog to be written and scripted, a lot of lines to be recorded and a lot to be tested.
So this decision is understandable.
Maybe when they do another game with maximum two playable characters they would do it (similar to Sam & Max), but otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't do it in the future too.
BUT: Since you are playing all those characters you can just imagine some conversation between them!
For some reason Feds didn't appear as active game "objects" so I'd assumed that Ransom didn't *beeping* want to talk to them at all - least giving them evidence for free. Why would he? He'd made an extra effort to put a "no feds" sign to his gate. Very odd.
Then after I don't even know what (maybe solving some very minor puzzle somewhere) I could suddenly hand out the *beeping* bloody wallet right to them, ugh.
The second place where I'd stuck was the missing page. I probably overlooked it flowing up so I searched for it *beeping* everywhere. Plus I had no idea that Dolores would be a sufficient assistant. Why would she even go to that stinking dump again?
The last big stucking point was having the SF guy's door - everyone refusing to enter! At least Ransome could have the stomach to snitch the kit behind the vomiting SF guy. He should have been to used to it :). I thought it'd been a timing issue. Again, nobody was aware that Franklin is there and Franklin also lacked a reason why he should zap the door (the lock actually, the door is probably not an electric device by itself - that confused me as hell).
Never mind, a superb game. Even though I'd prefer a "standard" not-so-meta-a-who ending :).
Regarding patches, "some new content" and stuff...
Do you think it's possible to add a library book into the game with all the dev posts (and comments) when doing the major rev or maybe as a DLC?
I think it would be funny to "read about the game dev" when playing the game. And also the game itself would fully represent the hole journey from Kickstarter up to the game release!
Thanks in advance.
Wonderful, beautiful and exquisit.
Thanks to the dev team and the backers. Was a beautiful trip that woke up lots of lovely memories from my past.
In the beginning i often was slowed down by staying in a scene and listening to the music for some more. At some point i was wondering if there could be headphones and a walkman/portable radio (they could need batteries, nah, the best part about the mobile phone was that no recharging was required) for a character in order listening to the so far collected music.
@keyboard input
qwertz/qwerty issue for Give (needs z instead of y)
Btw. the mouse steering is great but would it be possible adding direct control via cursor keys (+cmd/alt/shift) too? For the walking moments when your hands rest next to the touchpad.
@Aracde
You know, I was trying really hard getting into the Arcade *1, getting Franklin out and opening from the inside, smashing the windows (hey, i got a brick and Randsome), finding a secret access through the sewer, entering through the background graphics of A-Street, trying out positions on the map, finding a inverse TRON access via Pillow Tronics, using the modem line and the robots head in order to unlock a security mechanism, ... but nope. This could have been a nice contest for people submitting some simple Arcades games (I don't know how practical it would have been with implementing/debugging.).
*1 The moon was another place i was really looking forward going to in the game. It shines so wonderful and bright in a couple of scenes (graveyard, trailhead, Nickel News). There definitely should be a point&click adventure including going to the moon (and our solar system). I also wanted to climb into the Laserdisc Chalet. I mean, with enough resources you could flesh out things quite a bit. A large part of the fun in adventures comes from getting stuck and trying to imagine possible solutions and how things could evolve.
Regarding Arcade: It didn't got finished in time for release day, but you can expect an extensive update some time later.
@Adrian
Thanks, but i don't believe you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putt-Putt_Goes_to_the_Moon
It might not be quite what you're after, but my young daughters really like it (and Monkey Island too!)
-> sorry : i postet this before but i used the wrong Topic.
Can you explain a little more detailed what are the differences in the update mechanisms? What makes Steam so smart?
Thanks.
I did lose some progress after mistakenly loading the wrong game, and I went to use an item only to discover I no longer had it, and I had to replay a little bit. Luckily it's a lot quicker once you know what to do with stuff :)
I love the mouse wheel enhancement for the inventory. It is great that you could be so responsive to user feedback.
Is the map art terrible? Yes!
Did I want it to be exactly the way it is? Oh yes!!! Because it is very similar to the map art I REMEMBER used in MI, and the logic behind TWP was "let's have it the way we REMEMBER our old adventure games back then".
So, yes, the map is par with the course, or even better, a nice birdie :)
but
The achievements Dust Appreciator, Dust Collector and Dust Hoarder are somehow broken. Got Steam and GOG Version. After playing through GOG Version now hunting the achievements in steam. Collected many specs of dust. But it does not Count and i cant get any of These three achievements.
You could try to delete Save.dat (make backup first) and either try save games with dust count below the achievement thresholds or if this doesn't work start a new game.
What was the bug patching process like in the good old days of, say, MI and MI2? Were there game-breaking bugs with the earlier shipped versions of those games? Just curious...
And, I think it has been mentioned before above, but maybe not clearly described: You can see the background hills parallax through the bank doors.
I just thought I'd report a small "bug" which turned out to be a really confusing part of a puzzle (warning: possible spoilers ahead).
At the end of the game, when you're in the PillowTron3000 room and you've re-enabled the huge fan again, calling the fan service phone number results in a "this number is not available" message from the phone system. This makes it seemingly impossible to leave the room. Due to the phone system error message I honestly thought I had just forgotten the correct service number and spent about two hours dialling the correct number (plus trying to dump it from the process memory using gdb). Well, as it turns out, there is another way out of the room, via the ladder leading to the trapdoor in the office. Unfortunately, the ladder has no hotspot of its own, and the trapdoor is not really that apparent in the room artwork (I thought it was just decoration). I felt really, really stupid, for this was the only "puzzle" for which I actually had to resort to a walkthrough on YouTube.
Two possible solutions:
1) Don't disable the fan service phone and place the service sign with the number on the inside of the room as well, for people who didn't write it down.
2) Extend the trapdoor hotspot to include the ladder.
a very minor feature request:
How about adding a "Latest" to the latest savegame in the load dialog?
Or mark it somehow differently.
It always takes me some time to find the latest one. :)
A way to name your savegames like in the old days would also help. Not too many modern games kept this tradition.
Also a "continue" button in the main menu, which would automatically load the latest savegame would be useful. Most other games have this nowadays.
"continue" would certainly be a nice thing.
And I always end in messing thing up due to the automatic reordering! :D
> A way to name your savegames like in the old days would also help. Not too many modern games kept this tradition.
In my opinion this is (mainly) related to the fact that modern games are meant to be multi-platform and on consoles it would be overcomplicated due to the absence of the keyboard.
Personally, I find useless to name savegames. Tagging them in some way would be more than enough.
Nope, he can help. But I won't tell more. Besides, this has already been mentioned a few times in this blog post as well as the comments.
one small thing that would be great if it could be included in a future update:
The option to switch off the arrows / indicators of the crosshair, which appear when hovering about objects/exits. So, you would always have the plain crosshair, like in the original MI etc., when this option is activated. :)
However, there are a couple of places where a little nudge would have helped me. For instance, at one point, having access to all playable characters at once, it was not clear which puzzles were immediate and which ones required additional progress through the game. Specifically, I was going crazy trying to figure out how to get the lawyer to read the will, or Franklyn to get to the Penthouse or out of the hotel -- but none of those things were possible without first solving the murder mystery. So I was running around, changing characters, reading their to-dos, and concentrating on the wrong thing.
Several hours later in this rut, I finally attempted to solve the murder using the TRON(tm) machines, which got the game moving along further.
I think that a little nudge, like a character pushing "don't you have a murder to solve?" or "maybe I should try to figure out who the murderer is," would have gone a long way to focus me on the most immediate parts. After all, this is done for much more easier puzzles (sometimes too aggressively), so why not on the bigger things? The game story had gone out of its way to lessen the importance of the dead body and the murder as compared to the rest of the character's stories.
Anyway, just a suggestion. I love this game, and I am getting very intrigued by the story so far! I am about to go into ThimbleCon '87 and I can't wait to see what happens next. :)
-dZ.
Yeah, I had that same issue with some of the puzzles. For example, once I finally got Franklin to the penthouse, I spent ages trying to get the (spoiler) from (spoiler). Eventually I figured out you could only do that near the end of the game. A few of the puzzles needed a sort of 'you can't do that yet' nudge.
As we know, the puzzles in Thimbleweed Park follow "videogame logic". For example , (SPOILERS)
.
.
.
.
wearing a tinfoil hat to protect yourself from laser beams,
selling a bottle because it's the only way to have a nickel.
Ok, that is videogame logic. But this only works if your game is "comedy". If your game is "drama", you can't put in those things.
Does this mean that if your game is "drama", you cannot have good puzzles? What are your thoughts on this? Can you imagine good puzzles in a non-comedy game?
I myself am in the process of creating my very own adventure game, which is going to be quite serious scifi in style. It's horribly difficult to come up with good puzzles, because all the time I have only these ridiculously humorous ideas for them. I guess horror and fantasy are also bit easier to do (puzzle-wise) because those themes are also more forgiving.
If anyone has good ideas for creating puzzles in a more realistic / serious environment, I'd be glad to hear...
Also it ruins the imagination about the specific thoughts and relationship characters have. Either because there would be that ONE tone preset by the designers or, more likely, such conversations would seem very shallow as they can hardly evolve through the game. Talk to your agent colleague should change tone/style after almost every quest or it would seem odd...
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/patch_notes#58e532ee7dce7c27290421bc
if i found a grammatical error in italian traslation? To Who i have to say?
BTW, if Telltale games can license Monkey Island and do what they want with it, why Ron can't do the same?
:-D
Tales of Monkey Island was 2009, though. That was Lucasfilm back then, and now it's Disney's property.
The people in charge now might think of it differently. And they don't seem to care that much, considering there still aren't any re-releases of Curse and Escape.
Did you actually asked Disney lately?
It's only about money. Disney is a big company focused on (and only focused on) making as much money as they can. If you pay the Disney managers enough money they will sell you the IP. The only question is: How much money is needed. (If you pay the managers enough money, they will even sell you the Disney band.)
I wanted to thank you and the whole team for this beautiful game !! And sorry for the criticisms that are made, but we fans love so much thimbleweed Park that we would like to be perfect! What then perfect it is impossible, because everyone has their own tastes and would like a little 'different ...
I liked it so much and (in addition to having already bought three copies) I am being sought to make him more publicity as possible here in Italy. Everyone knows Monkey Island and everyone is excited to thimbleweed Park when I talk to him, but the problem is that almost nobody knows about it BEFORE me talk to him ... we would like some way to make it known, even a facebook page written in Italian or trailer dubbed in Italian from spreading. I think this game, at least in Italy, has a huge potential audience, which unfortunately is not reached him nor knows him. In addition, the Italian translation is really good!
As for my personal opinion on the game, I repeat, I liked it but it could be improved.
1) The dialogues of two federal agents are (almost) always the same, the point of having two characters if they are (almost) always interchangeable?
2) The main plot (dropping the final surprise that may not like, but that is just an addition) part very well, but then gradually frays, and in the end many things are not explained and / or are inconsistent and superficial ... and that's a shame. For example, those who attack the agent in the alley? The end for me is too hasty and leaves too many doubts ... It does not even tell who killed the stranger at the bridge, which is basically the main quest!
3) Belli puzzles, but having a good five characters available, I would have put more than those in which the characters must work together (such as the puzzle of the radio station)
4) If the characters had talked more to each other it would not be bad ... Maybe so there would also have been the most logical reasons for their actions. For example because Delores would have to go to the circus to help Ransome? If he had asked him it would make sense!
Sorry if I wrote too much, a hug, even a thank you, and I hope for great improvements from the upcoming patch!
ad 4) YOU are those 5 characters. You can make up any conversation between them you like :-) (especially regarding that puzzle in the circus)
Now whilst i'm at it:
Especially in the beginning there was quite some (self) referencing. As for breaking the fourth wall, if it's not part of the concept and you use it too much, it looses its power and destroys your motivation for taking further worlds and characters serious. I also wasn't into the ending of Monkey Island 2 because it wasn't changing the perspective in wow-you-way and made you feel kind of stupid for investing your moyo into a 'fake' world. I wish things could go a little bit deeper here and there. Excluding Ransome, the characters felt a bit pale. I was more attracted to the characters in The Cave. Apart from very obvious moments, I got aware about the characters (dis)abilities after I finished game. It felt natural to me that Ray and Reyes weren't too different, they both had stuff to hide. Until the end I walked around the most with Ray and Ransome. Ransome was refreshing. I instantly pushed the mime! 'Caramel' Joe's way of saying girls made me laugh. Is there a way to escalate/break the trailer? I was trying to amplify the trailer by running from the left to the right, from the right to the left ...
The puzzles were all fine but I was missing an outstanding one, a puzzle i solved with pure joy, something unique to remember. I really enjoyed doing the radioactive thing and ending up in the hidden base. This was cool (the radar sounded great) but it was easy and the scene(s) felt a little bit wasted because you only could go there only once and there wasn't a lot to do. The radio station was very nice too and the environment looks so beautiful (oh, and the fluffy wet bluish grass in the graveyard, A street beats B street, the transparent sign in the post window ...). I wouldn't have minded more influence/interaction/complexity with the DJ, or the lab and robots.
I got badly stuck with trying getting into the Arcade. It's alright that you can't go everywhere you want but the this one felt like a must. I also got stuck getting the stub of a check in order to proceed with the game. I clicked on the check a couple of times before but somehow missed the right pixels or oversaw the needed idea/info. I finally solved this by luck/brute force trial and error. I didn't mind waiting for the elevator but it felt like a artificial bottleneck that you couldn't swap characters being inside. Getting into the convention felt satisfying and the dragon guy was fun and looking great, he made me laugh. Ransome and Franklin messing around with the devs could have been fun.
It's a great adventure, despite of its shortcomings, a 9/10. It delivers on so many aspects that i haven't mentioned yet, that it would feel like a sin rating it any lower and looking at the competition, considering a content patch ... there exist so many boring games you don't care about. It's still fun starting up TWP and walking around in the world even after you've played through the game. It feels good having this bunch of 1s and 0s on your drive. I'm looking forward to stepping into the Park Aracade (with probably all Arcades being broken or having no quarters) and, hey, please continue making (imperfect) adventures.
The ending not too satisfactory, I agree. (Same as in Monkey2).
But cmon, the puzzles were maybe the best ever. The phone puzzles especially. On par with Monkey2.
Maybe it's harder for a puzzle to stand out because they're all on a good level but i still think that there is a difference to an awesome one. As I wrote, I really like the trailhead stuff, not because it was the smartest and most complex puzzle in the game but it felt interesting and was embedded into a nice mood & atmosphere (btw. the glowing of the grass and puddle looks like the light is emitting from the grass to the puddle).
I can't remember all the puzzles I've solved in adventures but i do remember some moments where i felt like, wow, i finally got it or, awesome, this is such a cool solution, such a shrill peak was missing.
Generally there aren't so many opportunities for such puzzles. Unless you add a lot of puzzles with boxes.
Or sliding puzzles which you have to solve using the verb interface >:-)
Push is often an alternative for use with devices or buttons (e.g. radio).
In the sense of push&pull it was used e.g. with the trampoline.
It's also used on drawers as an alternative for open/close.
Verbs like open/close and push/pull (=move) sound like a no-brainer for merging.
Even the trampoline puzzle would still work since push/pull can already be applied to both sides!
I would love to see the results. :)
I did notice you used verbs very little this time: "give" is never required (because as you said you must be able to give everything with dialog). There are no "pickup" puzzles (like "pickup dog", ahem). No "close" puzzles ("close door" in monkey2 for Largo). One easy "push" puzzle (trampoline).
After all I think you can do without the verbs. But what you need to do is solve the problem that people expect the dialogs to be a substitute for "give". Even with no verbs you'll still have this problem.
For the sake of completeness: 'Give' is required for puzzles involving exchange of items between playable actors.
There is a dog, though. You can hear it barking in the streets. You just don't see it.
As is typical with criticism, it spills out in long winded posts more often than the awe that I've felt while playing. I could write a love letter to this, but it'll be more in the form of a proper review on Steam or GOG.
To get on-topic -- again, I love the verbs, but I too noticed that I wanted to use them more (varied) than the game let me. Wanted to talk to Chunk. The plant. Wanted to talk to the man-eating plant as well.
A lot of these cutesy opportunities were missed, this time around. Even for mere reminders or simple exchange of "hello to you too", I would have had my 5 characters talk to each other. Even if that means they'll say something like, "I've already told him everything I know." or some such.
I couldn't close doors. And whenever I opened doors, my character would step right through. At first, you'd think this is just -- taking unnecessary clicks away from the player, saving them the hassle of actually going through. But I like to leave doors open, just like draws, cupboards, and what not. I enjoy it when the world shows off interactivity like that. Also, maybe I am one of the few people who actually enjoy looking at the back of a door, when most people just leave it open, and they'll miss the note attached on the other side because of that.
God, did I love putting the bucket on Largo LaGrande's door. Kekekeke! :D
Also, sometimes when I just want to look at something, I learned from earlier adventures that there might be different descriptions, depending on where the item is: in my inventory or still on the ground. I can't get this out of me, it's stuck. I want to look at things *before* I pick them up! In Thimbleweed Park this almost always resulted in my character picking it up anyway. That felt so wrooong to me ;).
Picking up a bum when he's drunk ... to help him up on his feet. I tried a lot of different ways to solve the various puzzles, but still got more or less generic answers because what was doing was probably too obscure. Like filling the whisky bottle with just water, to trick him and have him give me the bloody wallet. But that is the joy of it all too. Trying to see what works and what doesn't.
The hardest parts for me? Three.
Finding out that as a ghost, you can actually operate just about everything. I was stuck on the wrong story god knows how many times and used other characters to operate the lift! AArrgh! Once I found out you can ZAP everything, from phone buttons to lift buttons and all that, I wanted to bang my head against the wall.
And I would never have found out on my own - without trying everything with everything else - that I was supposed to put toxic waste into that trophy. How.. why....? Anyway, I got a hint from a friend after trying for 2 days trying to figure out what to do.
The most frustrating part? I cannot remember how many times I tried to enter the Mansion Mansion with all the other characters, even *accompanied* by Delores, more or less, only to have them kicked out by Delores at the doorstep. :D It was so blindingly obvious to me. Use the fingerprint equipment on the button behind the painting itself. But Rey never gets to enter, and refuses to give that equipment to Delores. It was frustrating, so frustrating. And then, when I found the glass on the offiss table, I just rolled my eyes. Like, Okay, I get to do this NOW? Figures ;).
However, I've had these problems with every point and click game. What doesn't work for me, works for others, obviously. And it's always been way too much fun. I'll replay this, because I just love this! Thanks guys! <3
Leaving doors open:
That's something I like to do too, I like to leave doors open or closed as I please until some NPC goes through it and closes it.
But it isn't such a big deal. The reason they made it this way was probably so doors are closed most of the time and you cannot look into buildings/rooms (making it look implausible when there are other actor involved you should see through door frames in a real world).
> ... filling the whisky bottle with just water, to trick him ...
This would never work, he is a professional bum!
Zapping:
Doesn't he say when using this verb on wrong objects it only works with electrical devices?
Fingerprints from safe:
I had the exact same idea. Since the agents won't transfer the kit and aren't allowed to enter the mansion I had to abandon it.
"And I would never have found out on my own - without trying everything with everything else - that I was supposed to put toxic waste into that trophy. How.. why....?"
It was not a difficult puzzle I think. The reasoning goes like this: you were already eager to find a green (or colored) liquid to put in the puddle. So, once you see the green radioactive stuff, you understand you need to put it in the puddle. But then you realize you need some container. And then you scan the inventory and find the trophy.
It's all in the eye of the beholder :). But yeah, every puzzle is easy or difficult like that. These were the ones I had problems with.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9PaAqfUYlh4/UBQd60VGlnI/AAAAAAAAHI0/ZXgE6OAP-j0/s400/FarSideSchoolforGifted.jpg
Wouldn't it make sense to use such options in a way like there is a difference, a container standing on the right side of a wall, so that you need to pull it to the right (contrary to the trampoline where you had access from both sides), a close-up to a puzzle where you need to build/arrange something (pushing and pulling rotates lenses or whatever, the time clocks would have been a nice option, the idea you needed to get, was using the clock, adding some minutes three times after didn't add a lot). I think making it more obvious but also exclusive, helps making it more convincing.
The best interfaces i've seen would probably build on the ideas from Sam&Max and The Dig. For a number of reasons I don't like the flip coin implementations, i've seen so far. As verb issues with the german translation show, symbols have their cons, just don't reduce them too much, the right variety is important.
I've now played through the alternative ending and it's satisfying that you can end things this way. In context to a character's ending, i think the personal references make a lot more sense and it has a soul this way (and i'm sorry for bringing it up before).
Can you imagine lego sets for the different shops, a big one for the mansion?... I don´t know-- maybe in a near future when TP explodes worldwide and get tons of awards.
Search for "Lego" there!
But you can still use an app of your choice and bind this particular key to your right mouse button.
(on Windows I use X-Mouse Button Control for such purposes; but Logitech SetPoint will also work for such simple case)
Imho, the game would be much nicer to handle, if you could do everything just with the mouse. Especially in multiple playthroughs, I don't want to listen to every unnecessery line of text again and it's uncomfortable to have almost the whole time your finger on the "."-key while you roam around and try new things. Mapping it to the side-buttons of my mouse would be perfect.
And, to be honest, I don't really want to use some additional third-party-tool for remapping keys, but tell it the game itself. I don't understand why this is no common feature in many games still today, TP isn't the only one with this (of course pretty insignificent) letdown.
If you want to remap the skip dialog key, it's:
keySkipText: "x"
Allowing to have everything on keyboard keys is often enough since it allows me use other applications to map those keys to mouse or controller buttons. The only problem is when you want to override already mapped controller buttons (which is not easily possible), e.g. I use Y to cycle through most used verbs which works without problems since its default action doesn't interfere with verbs selection.
My first try was to use the controller stick buttons to directly map to 'Look At' and 'Use', (+ verb execution) but this doesn't work since those buttons immediately execute the current verb (-> it would be nice if those buttons could be deactivated so we can remap them!).
The only one thing I had to change (as I've already mentioned) was when playing with a controller. Going down to the verb section all the time would have been very cumbersome otherwise and I don't think I would have kept playing with this input method (which makes me pity console players who don't have any other options).
(btw. I cycle through 'Use', 'Look at', 'Pick up' and 'Give' [for alive actors that is])
Key bindings for next/previous actor would be nice too :-)
Option 1:
Hold down left-button to get the character fast following the cursor around.
Double-click to execute the highlighted verb.
Right-click skip the Dialog.
Option 2:
Hold down left-button to get the character fast following the cursor around.
Click(!) wheel mouse button to skip the Dialog.
Right-click to execute the highlighted verb.
Well, I just finished it going back to complete each character's tasks, and it at least feels more "complete" this way, even if the ending is the same. :)
If you give the map to the sheriff while one agent is still in the sewers (can happen if you don't pick up the map from the copytron right away and get abducted in the meantime), the act-3-start cut-scene will trigger without that agent. (In my case Reyes). You will still hear his lines and can even select dialog options but don't see him. If you then exit and re-enter the vista, he's standing there but can't be controlled.
After a while the remaining agent begins to wonder where the other one may be, and you can control both again. But they'll still (both) periodically complain about the other one missing.
I don't think the hat-laser puzzle was much of a solve, though. I was walking around with it on when the laser room came up, but there was still one more step to do. Granted, it made figuring out what to do a lot easier, but that doesn't qualify for me as an automatic solve. In the former, there's knowledge the character has that you, as the player, don't that solves the puzzle for you. In the latter, it's a bit of luck and the character reports an observation that helps you, the player, solve the puzzle.
We had a long design conversation about this, if I'm remembering the outcome, it was because playtesters would go to Ricki and talk to her and there was no conversation option, so they assumed she didn't want it and completely abandon her as a option, then wonder hopelessly.
That's was a common issue in the design, and why it's different from putting the image on the poster in MI. In this case, they thought they were design the right thing (talking to Ricki), and when it didn't work, they assumed she was the wrong person. It's really hard to undo an assumption a player makes once they make it.
The concession we made was you had to look at the missing tube and look at the t-shirt before the dialog option would appear.
No solution was perfect, so we chose the one where the least number of people would be confused and frustrated.
This was an on going issue in play testings, where players would talk to someone when they needed to give an item and give up when the option wasn't there.
I can see no solution apart from the drastic one, i.e. changing the dialog system so that you can only talk to people ABOUT something. I.e. you need to always click the topic first and then the person. (No multiple choices at all.) But of course the humor in your case comes from reading the available choices, so it wouldn't work for you.
Thanks again for the explanation.
I am a little over 6 hours into the game now according to my saved game's thumbnail. However, I have run into a problem which may be a bug. According to Nickel News, the luck number is 9. When typing the key in to decode the will, I don't get an option for no first digit or for first being digit even, specifically zero. Or perhaps I got it all wrong?
PS: Other than that, all the to-do lists are complete except for the last 7 specs of dust and what are probably the final objectives of the act: escaping to the afterlife, getting into the factory, and doing whatever the characters are supposed to be doing there.
I mean, in Monkey2 I had to "stick Kate's leaflet on wanted poster" without any hint at all (maybe the hardest puzzle of all time), and now in the grand finale of Thimbleweed Parks you solve two major puzzles automatically?
:-D
By the way, I noticed a little misspelling in Reyes's notebook: 'Finde die Papier der Leiche (Hotel?).'
"Papiere" would be the correct spelling, just as it's spelled in Ray's notebook.
Do you have a murder suspect and know where that person may live?
After all these years of hoping for another adventure game by these developers, I'm not in time pressure.
I assume that he didn't use the term "Ausweis", because you only have a passport and a driver's license in the US, so, technically speaking, using the term "Ausweis" would have been unrealistic.
"I hope I'll get the job!" was mistranslated into "Ich habe die Stelle!". It should be something like: "Hoffentlich bekomme ich die Stelle!"
And another minor one is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADGz7S0wug&t=1063
Instead of "a-reno" he put "lein" to a noun, but here it is "Schlüsselchens". Should be "Schlüsselleins" to be consistent.
Seeing that Boris translated 16.000 lines during his spare time, the German translation is nonetheless good.
Your work is great, anyway, my congratulations to you.
It brought me 30 years back, to thinking about the puzzles all day, trying to understand them, or just playing running around with the characters in all rooms, trying strange things, hoping to find some new clue I've been missing.
Thank you a lot!
The whole team pulled that off and the result confirms it: if good artists work together hand in hand there is nothing better.
Who's with me?
thank you all for the great game. Haven't had that much fun with an adventure for a loooong time.
Also, a little problem: I've finished on hard and gotten most of the achievements. Now I'm trying to get the rest of them, but they don't register anymore. E.g. I still need to push over the mime, but whatever I do, no achievement. I tried on casual and on hard... nothing. This is on OSX, by the way, but I played a large part of the game on this machine and never had a problem. I've also played on two Windows 10 machines, also no troubles there. It only started today.
Worst of all, I phoned some 50 numbers from the phonebook today (which is a little tedious even if some are fun) and it didn't register them! Argh. The game shows the green checkmarks, by the way. But Steam is oblivious and only shows the around 40 calls I already had before.
Thanks again and keep going please. We need more games like this. Too bad they take so long to make. :)
Also, what OS are you on?
I sent that mail to support as well. Curious as to what happens here.. :)
Order as long everything's in stock!
First I got to say that the whole process of development has been really enjoyable for me (specially because I´m a software developer myself). Being able to see how the game grows and the team solved problems and shared them with the community was awesome... it really built up the excitement and expectation, which with the game now finished I can say that it didn´t fail to deliver at all. In fact, I think it is much awesome than expected, and I expected it to be very awesome indeed!
Maybe it is me being nostalgic, but it really felt like finding a game from the old days you never played before. Only that better. Much better!
The story telling is brilliant and very well written. The characters are great and the jokes very funny! Specially the old times references!
The music and FX are amazing! And what can I say about the animations? Simply mesmerizing.
I am also impressed by the amazing and complex game you guys pulled being such a small team. I can´t imagine how hard you worked.
So thank you very much and congratulations to Ron, David, Gary, Jenn, Mark, Octi and all the team!
By its context, I think it was meant to say, "Come home, come to me," but the "come" (in English) was not translated and then read by the actress as "come" (in Spanish), which is the imperative form of "eat."
LOL! My wife and I were staring at each other... "Did she say... What did she say??"
(By the way, Spanish is my first language.)
dZ.
"Come home, come to me." => "Ven a casa, ven a mí."
Perhaps also "Vuelve a casa, vuelve a mí." ("Vuelve" means "return.")
I am not really sure how to log a bug request for that. XD
The difference with this game is, that since it's a modern P'n'C adventure it's also a killer simulator.
They want to appeal to a younger audience too :-)
You eat/smoke the shit and then, lets say your experience differs, more flashy, very focused on one aspects, which helps you to recognise something you otherwise wouldn't have seen/felt/found. Could be nice for dialogues too and it could appear to older and younger audiences.
And if you take that Poopsi™ (which resembles some drink which is a copy of another drink) into Chuck's workshop:
BOOM: Coke and strippers!
No idea about Poopsi™ but i was wondering if you could (mis)use Ransome's candy dispenser (if the electromagnetic wave would have been strong enough [enhancing it via a puzzle]) in the Park Arcade.
One question though... What was that security camera scene with Agent Ray on the coroner's table all about? And who was the person with the coroner? If I remember correctly at some point that scene just happened when Ray was off somewhere, presumably safe, and I was walking around with Reyes somewhere, in the hotel perhaps, and then she was in the coroner's office afterward. Maybe a bug?
Maybe a cutscene of Reyes waking up in a dumpster somewhere would have been in order. The way the disappearance is done now feels like there's something missing. It's supposed to convey a sense of mystery by not showing you everything but what a lot of players seem to be getting instead is "is this a bug?".
I read somewhere that the disappearing character's journal gets a new entry about blacking out but I missed this on my playthrough. The journals don't seem to get new content after the game's first scenes, so by the time the coroner cutscene came I'd already stopped reading them.
If the agent finds the experience traumatic enough to write down, he/she could also have said it aloud for the benefit if the player. But once again, this is a very minor thing. I found the cutscene fun. A little extra mystery. And it didn't confuse me, I'm just complaining on behalf of other people I've likely imagined.
I didn't use the notebooks etc. anymore after seeing they are used as ToDo lists. I wanted to do this myself.
So I figured that the scene with him on the table at the coroner's office is actually a flash-forward. Something that will happen in TWP2, maybe?
The agent just can't remember anything of it, not even that this wasn't the place he was right before.
Because the first time something like that happened in the game, we were in control of the character and got a cutscene showing the abduction and it was clearly there to initiate the agent rescue puzzle sequence.
The second time we only learned the agent had been abducted after the fact, they didn't react at all to it having happened, and there was seemingly no point to it. Aside from adding intrigue, it had no perceivable effect. There was no puzzle, no payoff. I was expecting that agent to turn out to be a robot or have some device implanted in her. Some people thought the other person with her was a clone. Others have said it was the tube lady.
"The journals don't seem to get new content after the game's first scenes, so by the time the coroner cutscene came I'd already stopped reading them."
The journals are always being updated with new goals. It just takes a while before any appear. They also shake to catch your attention when new stuff is added.
I did read somebody write about seeing such an entry on the Steam forums. Maybe that entry doesn't even exist in the game. I have no idea anymore, but it seems that I didn't miss any information while playing after all.
They are great, but I'm glad I didn't watch them before: too spoilery for me :-)
And so much dust... dust everywhere...
I've also rewatched Ray's trailer: Very interesting indeed!
https://youtu.be/HnjqcITQ6wY
I have a small UI suggestion. I think it could be highlighted more when a new character becomes playable. I know the face symbol in the upper right flashes a bit. But it does flash very often, especially every time you return from a close-up scene where character switching was disabled: after looking at the notebook in your inventory, looking at the map or at library books for instance. I got quite used to it and it does not really attract my attention anymore that the character choices may have changed. I figured out that I can play Delores when I wanted to switch between Ray and Reyes (same with Ransome). I think either a more highlighted flashing/wiggle for thew character choices or/and the removal of the flashing effect after returning from closeup screens could help.
Thank you so much for this awesome game!
I think to have found a dead-end bug.
--- SPOILER ALERT ---
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I'm in part 4.
I entered ThimbleCon '87.
Delores is talking to sexy Riker, and he told her that he wants a hamburger.
Well. During part 3, I already bought a hamburger from S&D diner (Ransome did it), but now that I am in part 4, Ransome did not have the hamburger in its inventory anymore, nobody else has it, and worst thing, if I return to S&D Diner and talk to Sandy, the option "I want a hamburger" is no more in the list of dialogue option.
It's a bug or it's normal? Should I get a hamburger from another location?
I ask here, just to know whether I have to replay from a saved game before purchasing the hamburger in part 3, or not.
Thank you!
I gave it to Delores :-)
Alright, I can continue...
Sorry, really sorry for my post.
I've been stuck without the rathole for days, but I thought it was intended and need to solve something else. I was sure I neede to get Ramson out *spoiler here* since I was sure it had to him the one to go up the antenna and the one needed to get the last hotdog. But I couldn't manage to solve what was left for him to get out. Yesterday I saw your tweet about the new GOG version/patch and instlled it. Finally I was able to scape the circus.
If my memmory serves me well, I think I didn't get the cheese too fast. I think I picked it up after I picked up the popcorn. As soon as the rat dropped his popcorn and I picked it up I Picked the cheese. Maybe it was the other way arround, picked the cheese and then the popcorn. I don't have a saved game prior that point :(
So happy to continue the game, and not being stuck any more (for now) :D. I'm enyoing so much the game, I missed you so much :P
I noticed that Frankly doesn't have any default double-click actions most of the time. Also, sometimes the default actions are reversed as compared to the other characters. For instance, for everyone else, you "look" at a door when clicking, and you "open" the door when double-clicking; but for Frankly, you "walk to" the door when clicking (which causes him to go through) and you "look" to the door when double-clicking.
This feels awkward and inconsistent and forces me to re-adjust my clicking and double-clicking impulses (with plenty of errors!) whenever I switch characters. It's a bit annoying.
It would also be nice to have "Zap" be a default double-click action for things like the TV, elevator buttons, door locks, computers, phone, and other electronic devices, where it makes sense. I think you probably intended the discovery of the "Zap" verb for electronics to be some sort of puzzle, but it is a common game mechanic you have to do for the rest of the game. It just forces me to drag the mouse (or in my case, my finger on the trackpad) back and forth to first click the verb and then the device.
All this clicking and re-clicking feels much too close to a 1980s tedious mechanic, which I thought you were trying to correct.
By the way, I just decoded the Will and found the Book Of The Dead. My wife and I felt so smug and clever when we figured those puzzles out. Some of the puzzles are very easy and a bit lame (and sometimes have too many hints around pushing you towards it), but some are very clever and make you think. Nonetheless I find them all very fair and logical.
I've gotten stuck a few times (for several hours!), and I have reverted to trying anything with everything randomly, but (thankfully) it never helped. Eventually, when I become unstuck it is truly due to some detail I missed, a final epiphany of plot or character understanding, or a particular puzzle I hadn't done first. This is as it should (although I could have used some hints in those). I hated those old adventure game puzzles that could only be solved by some illogical random combination of items or circumstances. Bravo!
-dZ.
I can understand the usability thing with 'Zap'.
But since you are using a touchpad there shouldn't be a keyboard far: You can press 'a' to select 'Zap', no need to move the cursor.
1. After the safe is open, closing it and pulling the painting won't cause the green light to stop flickering. I don't believe this is true before the safe is first open.
2. Specks of dust sometimes appear behind the UI in hallway in front of Chuck's office.
3. Ron, Gary, and David still appear at ThimbleCon after everyone has left, probably because they are implemented differently with all the randomness and all. I recommend this not be fixed.
#2. Dust gets regenerated every 15 minutes, so if you don't see it in a room, or can't pick it up, just come back later.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4nschen_klein
Which also mentions the use of the song in the movie.
But DAMN it's in the middle of the night, and I have to shut down the stereo every single time I dial the phone. God that's annoying. The touch tone is louder than ANYthing else in the game XD. Love the game, that aside! :] Back on it!
In reality, you wouldn't hear them that loud, since you wouldn't put the receiver that close to your ear while dialing. Would be quite a silly stunt with the cell phone anyway.
Thank you so much! Everybody involved, thank you Ron, thank you David, thank you Mark, thank you Gary! Much love to all of you!
I wish this would be a place where I can freely talk about the ending of the game. Because it makes me want to talk about it. So, I've put a few thoughts here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/569860/discussions/0/133261370000608062/?ctp=2 ), and I am Jammet there as well. It's marked as spoiler and everything. I'm going to play again soon. Need to think about the ending for a little while. But I have to say, I was really, really surprised. :)
ALSOOOO
Way to kill it on making an old school adventure game. Been looking, waiting, and hoping for something like this for years. While I did enjoy Broken Age, it didn't recapture the magic of what I most loved about old LucasArts games. So far, this TOTALLY has. I absolutely love it. And apparently, the rest of the world is pretty universal in their praise too (congrats on the metacritic scores!). Really great stuff!!
Honestly, I really hope you continue to just make adventure games. It may not make you Assassin's Crap (I mean Creed) rich, but I have to imagine it's satisfying and it's making a ton of people like me grin ear to ear. I'll back your future point-n-click adventure games in a heartbeat if you do more. I love the quirky sense of humor that has such an absolute charm to it, because it's not pretentious and just doesn't care. You can tell this comes from a small team with personality and it has the unique touch that an artist or author brings to something: it feels like a person or a small team, not a major corporation. Honestly, it really is art.
So, please, encore! Actually, I'd love to see you make another game in this spirit but treating it as a progression of SCUMM. Moving forward to the 1992 art style if you had high res available, but maintaining this spirit. Being true to the old school style like this, but continuing to modernize it in the RIGHT way. 2.5D Parallax is perfection for this genre.
My only complaints thus far are quibbles and I recognize they are entirely budget, not talent, related: I wish every verb actually worked instead of being for show (IE clicking "look at" on something and having it talk to. Or not having certain options even work on certain things). Also, some areas are packed with interaction, and others are overly sparse. I realize not everything can be packed and that would actually get annoying, but there have been a few areas so far where I felt like obvious things I would want to look at and have some funny witty dialgoue come in weren't open to interaction.
PS if you ever got the rights to Monkey Island 3 I would literally crap my pants.
** SPOILER ***
Reminding him about the food will make him sick again, and cause him to run up to his room.
** END SPOILER **
*SPOILERS*
Hi, I threw the bottle I found by the highway into the dumpster and can't get it back. Currently it seems that I definitly need it to get a nickel and solve the map puzzle.
THANK YOU Terrible Toybox!
A bittersweet ending, but a terrific experience overall.
But now don't be strangers... :)
Just finished the game and it was a great classic adventure game.
BEGIN SPOILER
It reminded me of this movie! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809
END SPOILER
The puzzles weren't that hard. And it got easier towards the end. But a nice throwback experience. Or maybe I'm just older.
Please make more Terrible Toybox adventure games!
Thank you! You really created a game that would fit between MM and MI1/MI2.
SPOILER ALERT
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104692
The movie and the game start with a different story, but share a big part of the finale.
SPOILER
Cheated on the TV in the hotel and the toxic forest. I was weak.
END SPOILER
Great to see you get very positive and much press coverage - even my local newspaper had a story about TWP. Plus excellent online reviews - very, very good (+ deserved).
Is there one thing I did not like? Not really - maybe I would like to have had a better map. It stood out quite much from the rest of the game's art style, imho. An overview map closer to the one from SoMI would have been great. But this is not even nitpicking but dust-collecting :-)
Awesome game - looking forward to my signed box which will take it's well deserved spot on my shelf.
I'm stuck in level 2. I can't copy the map as I gave Wille my dime. The Dime is needed to make a copy of the Map.
Any suggestions?
may be try to recycle the glas-bottle at quickie-pal...that shoudl "generate" some cash
I think, it's also very unusual that there is no company logo anywhere. (Like in Maniac Mansion, but still)
I experienced a minior bug. As Dolores I already found the layer at ThimbleCon, so he's not in his booth anymore. Then I called him (6175 - blah blah you'll find me at the TimbleCon Cosplay booth ...) and then there was a new ToDo in my list "Find Lawyer in ThimbleCon". It's not a big bug, but it really confused me and to be sure I reloaded an old safegame.
The first message was "I am preparing for ThimbleCon" and then I did not call is Answering Machine anymore. I already found him, we all met at the Mansion mansion and then he said, we'll meet in the tomb again. I called him again and the answering machine said "you can find me at the booth...".
That led to me having "Get Lawyer to read uncles will" checked but "Find Lawyer at ThimbleCon" was still unchecked!
See here: http://imgur.com/a/Lpe17 It does not make sense and is confusing. That's what I meant.
I only got stuck for real once, when I missed Chuck's key to his office. It appears that I’m not the only one https://youtu.be/qz5aeo9SjpQ?t=18m39s. Maybe you should consider giving it a different color.
Anyway, once again thank you for a great game.
/Kim
Damn that was spooky :)
I finished the game in normal mode yesterday!
Now I can read all the past 11-days-messages safely :-)
Awesome, really.
I'll write something in the near future.
SEE YA!
I plan to play it in casual mode during the weekend.
Thanks Ron, best 20$ I've spent since DOTT.
Is there really nothing I can do ?
Bret
Bret
You can install GOG Galaxy if you want to keep games automatically up-to-date.
1 The" cheese" bit with Ransome.
2 I didn't see the spell book in the occult bookstore
3 I didn't realise I needed to use both characters to distract Natalie.
4 I missed the toxic forest
Apart from that I think I completed all the puzzles.
The game was good, I felt the design of Thimbleweed park could be better. What about some real houses to explore. I felt it could have a waterfall "twin peaks" style. I think it could have had a more varied jazz theme music.
Some of the puzzles were clever, such as floor 10 of the hotel. I was originally wondering why there was a tv on the floor, and why I needed a room plan. Why does the elevator malfunction going to the penthouse ? Of course it is funny when this is answered.
I don't think it quite has the atmosphere of monkey island, but this is a really great game still.
The ending felt a little rushed and I am not sure it tied up all the lose ends.
Still the puzzles and beautiful art work make it well worth while playing.
Thanks
Bret
England
ad 1) I hope it wasn't because of the bug, but if so it's been now fixed for all future players.
ad 2) You didn't go all the way up? :-) Hm, I can't really remember any hints which could tell someone to find such book in the first place if someone didn't fully explore the bookshop.
ad 3) This was a great puzzle!
ad 4) Do you mean specifically using it with the puddle? Then you are not the first one I've heard.
It was also great that after learning about the ghosts you could actually see them :-)
I'm sure we both missed some eastereggs. I hope you finished all characters at the end?
Yes I finished all characters, it seemed obvious to me that Delores becomes the most important character, and the other characters need to complete their quests before moving to Delores.
I think the idea of the adventure game trying to simulate "free will" was clever. I think a lot of the game dealt with this. The phone book were you can call whoever you want, and the hotel where you can visit any floor you want. It was very clever that part of the game and shows the logic of programming. I felt the game developers invested a lot of time with that part of the game. The use of phones was particularly clever and innovative. A gamer knows when he reaches the end of the "world" the programmer has created for him/her, and it is not an infinite place like the real world.
1 The cheese puzzle. I found this the worst part of the game, I think Ransome is a great character, but I'm not sure he fits in that well with the logic of this particular game, which should be a murder mystery. It didn't work because I tried to use the cheese with the stage in the circus but nothing happened, so I thought I had exhausted this possibility.
2 I went up the ladder but didn't see the book, perhaps because of the colour? Maybe my fault upon reflection.
3 It was a great puzzle yes, but I think I tried to use the radio in the town hall and nothing happened which made me think the possibility was exhausted, similar to above.
4 Yes, I mean using the radioactive waste with the puddle. I suppose you wouldn't realise it would make footprints. On the other hand, you do see people walking about which may be a sufficient clue. This was the hardest puzzle of the game and borders between being reasonable and unreasonable.
I thought it was clever when you enter the hotel room and find the blue teddy that was given to the kid. We don't find out how that got there? I think there was more scope to develop the game as a straight murder mystery. It seems maybe the ending was changed owing to time constraints.
I don't want to sound pretentious or critical, this is still the best puzzle game made so far. Its just 25 years later, because of the advances in computing the bar needs to be raised. I think the town should have had normal residential homes, like Laura Palmers house in twin peaks etc. Perhaps the art could more have invoked the American Pacific northwest. I do realise that the team who built the game was small.
Bret
ad 1) I would have liked to do more stuff on the circus grounds (in 1987). Maybe some puzzles were cut.
ad 4) It was suggested to show wet footprints right after the puddle, similar to the later glowing ones.
For Ransome some Rube-Goldberg Machine would have been more fitting - or rather a rude Goldberg machine... - perhaps one meant to hurt the rat once one found its hole, which then fails and solves the puzzle accidentally in a peaceful way, which would result in a tirade of beeps. He spent so much time at the circus that he could have come up with all kinds of crazy ideas to solve everyday problems.
I think I missed the puddle puzzle as I was trying to free Franklin from the hotel so he could zap the battery. I felt this was the only source of electricity in Thimbleweed park. I thought this was the way to move the tank out of the way of the door.
Bret
Since its the first rat hole by the stage entrance, the rats won't walk further than the first hole somehow, and therefore other holes become useless as well!
I searched the whole game 1000 times when i finally decided to ask the internet. The answer was exactly what i was afraid of. A bug..
To bad i have overwritten all the usable saves before the bug appeared, and so now maybe i am stuck forever.
Is there an update coming out for the Xbox One soon? or do i have to play the game all over again?
I would have love to do it again, but i am afraid my vacation is now over :-(.
Xbox Play Anywhere doesn't seem to be implemented yet, and AFAIK it's not possible to copy save games from/to Xbox One so you cannot really get the savegame fixed. I'm afraid you have to wait for the update or play the beginning again.