Weird. I've never seen the '1m20' format. Every time I've ever used the 'link to timestamp' function it's returned '80s' instead, and I've never had a problem with it working before now.

+Gazillion for fixing spooce and possessing. Spooce don't even fit with the story, why the hell would Abe suddenly need to collect magical-infinitely-regrowing-green-things to use the key ability he used dozen of times in the previous games?

For the record, I haven't finished MO yet, but due to the combined negative effect of everything stated here, I became very disappointed from this game; other than the FMVs, the game feels like a half-assed fan game. (And since I've been DYING to play it for years, it made me even more disappointed). I agree with pretty much everything said here.

I presume this time around there won't be any SoBe machines.

In regard to changing the camera angle, this is what I mean:

at the moment it looks sort of like image 1; the camera is fairly low, obfuscating a lot of the work and the floor, making it hard to jump anywhere.

Image 2 shows how I think it should look; deeper viewing angle with a slightly more zoomed out camera means that you can see just as much of the world, but also have the luxury of being able to look in front of you too.

Abe has four fingers!

Screw you, Japan!

I've never actually played Munch (was going to buy the oddboxx until I heard of the PS3 versions and am waiting for those!), but I have watched a lot of gameplay videos.

Not sure how the camera worked on Xbox or PC but would there not be an option to have the camera controls on the right analogue stick, to rotate left and right? On a lot of games, moving the camera stick up or down changes the zoom. For example, if we move the stick down the camera could become closer and parallel to the ground, whereas moving it up would make the camera zoom out and become high angle, like the second image Glitch posted. This would satisfy people wanting precision jumping, and the ability to get in close and look at the HD models :)

Whether they are possible to implement or not, I fully agree with everyone on;

-changing the sounds to be more like AO/AE (paramites, scrabs, footsteps, portals, mudokon voice pitch etc. This could help drastically with atmosphere too)

-changing Abe's jump back to a realistic jump, with ledge grab

-reducing the amount of spooce and not requiring it for possession

Someone mentioned about there being no fall damage too. Providing there are no levels where you have to jump from a really high ledge to progress, I think it'd be great to add a new animation that if you fall from too high, Abe or Munch crunches into the ground like in AO and AE.

Lastly, would there be any chance of removing the cartoony stars which appear when a character gets hit? I don't know if there was actually any blood in MO, but it would up the tension a lot I feel if there was blood akin to being shot in AO and AE. Nothing too gory of course!

I 1000000000% agree about having less spooce in the environment and less spooce actually needed. Could we get a whole new model for the spooce as well? It just looks stupid :-/ at least make it glow or something do it looks sorta special.

I agree about the stars as well, maybe new animations to show that there dazed and a bit wobbly???

I think what most of us, as the hard core fans of the series would like to see is something that clearly bridges the tone and atmosphere of the first two games into the tone and atmosphere of Stranger.

It needs to be set on the same planet - it's the same world, the same dark stories are being told. Dark and Dingy, mysterious and atmospheric. Noir. Grit. They're all some of the things we loved about the first two games which Munch's Oddysee just lacked completely.

Oddworld was a beautiful place. The artwork within the games locations were beautiful. They picked up again with Stranger's Wrath so let's get it back !

• Darker Atmosphere
  
• Replace the SoBe Vendors with Sekto Springs Vendors. Water is the healthiest health up of all!
  
• Make the Mudokons seem more pathetic. When the Sligs beat a Mudokon in the first two, you felt really sorry for them. I really didn't want my Mudokon's to die in the first two games - in MO, I personally didn't care.
  
• Get rid of all the cartoony stuff. Similar Sound Effects to the first two games and Stranger if at all possible - it'll help with the atmosphere. I don't know if new music - or even re-using AO AE and SW music - is too much to ask. But a man can dream!
  
• Wild Fuzzles look and act like Strangers Wrath Fuzzles.
  
• Hiding in the Shadows?
  
  
• Bolamites chillin' in the Raisins Cave and Clakker Porn Magazine on the desk in a Glukkon's office. I rest my case.
  

I really LOVED a lot of the things in MO. Getting to see the Mudokon Villages etc. really was great - it would just be a lot nicer if they tied in better with the other games so yeah. My main gripe is atmosphere.

We're really making you guys work for your money... apologies.

Edit: Also, yeah. Does it HAVE to be just Fuzzles in Vykkers labs? I mean, surely you already have a tonne of live ammo CG Models and behaviours programmed... (I'm just being picky, throwing ideas out there now.)

Abe's Exoddus, opening FMV. Bigface. Speak. Irritating.

I love the hell out of this idea, and not just because it's my name.

If you loved it that much you'd posrep me like it was going out of fashion.

A lot of the ideas are above are completely game changing. Remember that they only have a small team in place to overhaul models and textures, nothing else. As much as I would like to see them implode the current version and build it back up from scratch, it's just not going to happen.

Overall my advice to JAW is to take a good look at the previous Oddworld games (which I'm sure they have already done extensively) and redo as much as their limited resources allow to get MO as close to AO athmosphere as possible. There were 2 fundamental problems with MO.

1. It felt and played like an N64 game on crack.
2. It didn't fit into the established universe at all.

So change textures, change sounds, take out every single cartoony/weird thing you can possibly butcher out within your boundries. Try fleshing out the world as much as you possibly can. The examples I very much agree with and think could be implemented:

The sound effect of the portals in AO/AE did the job just fine. The portal sound in MO always bothered the hell out of me.

I love this idea but I have doubts about its implementation. As far as I'm concerned you can completely rip spooce from the game and throw it away. It's a stupid concept and is one of many things that has anoyed me while playing. Spooce locks are completely useless as you can just regrow spooce as much as you like. The entire mechanic is flawed right there. It's like being able to just regenerate coins in Super Mario.
However, like I said, it might be very difficult to take spooce completely out of the game. But if it's within the realm of possibilities, for odd sake take it out.

Seconded. Part of improving the atmosphere and all that.

Changing this might be difficult since many levels are built around this jump and certain puzzles get harder or easier (or downright impossible) if ledge grab was put in it's place. But I agree that if it's possible, please do it. But don't do it unless you've played trough the entire game using it lest you want the wratch of the Steam forums when they run into an impossible puzzle because of it.

There was blood and gore (in all it's pixel goodness) in AO and AE. Plenty of it. Hell in the first few screens of RF you cross a meat grinder where the meat is literary flying all over the screen.
There was plenty of gore planned for MO as well. You were able to toss sligs into grinders and out of 10 story windows. I see no reason to keep blood out of this game this time around.

I have another suggestion btw. I remember a big gripe I always used to have in MO was that Abe and Munch (when in his wheelchair) move around like they've injected themselves with caffeine. Munch could win the special Olympics no problem at all. Please fix their walking speed.

I'm sorry to say that this guy has the right idea. Not only do we not have the time, we also don't have the tools required to make a lot of changes that we would otherwise want to make, such as changing level data.

Ledge grabbing would likely have pretty far reaching implications and would require animations, level changes, code changes, and perhaps even new sound assets.

Spooce, as god awful as it is, is here to stay I'm afraid; it's tied in to too many aspects of the game, to the point where taking it out would take such a stupidly long time that we may as well be remaking the game from the ground up.

We will be doing our best to sort Munch out to the best of our abilities, and to the highest standard we can attain within a reasonable time span. However, at the end of the day, time spent on Munch is time not spent on AbeHD, and although I want to see Munch improved to the point where it's a solid, fun game, I think that time would be better spent working on AbeHD.

Ultimately that will be more rewarding for you guys and us than rebuilt Munch game.

To be honest I think making an HD version of MO is a complete waste of time all together. The gameplay is flawed at the base and no amount of shiny new graphics will fix that. I understand that it's a marketing thing though, so I agree with Glitch. Do it, but spend as little time on it as possible so there's more time to spend on new and important projects. Abe HD will be the real relaunch of the franchise. It's important all effort goes into that.

There weren't any wild Fuzzles in MO. They were all a captive variety bred specifically for testing purposes.

Irritating, yes, but not actual speech.




As for spooce; can they be remodelled in to something better than a puffball growing out of the ground? Perhaps a flower-shape, or something more fungus-y.

Puffballs are perfectly fungus-y.

Oh? I thought there were some wild ones chilling nearby the Mudokon Fortresses. My mistake.

I'd like the spooce shrubs to be remodelled. They look cartoonish and cheesy.

Also I have to agree with Havoc. It would be better to concentrate on Abe HD rather than wasting time on MO. Improving MO graphics and leaving current gameplay and locations is like painting a rusty bucket car.

Yeah well, the rusty bucket car in this case is supposed to attract attention for the brand new shiny Ferrari BMW that's coming up right behind it.

If so, let's just hope JAW know their own limitations well and finish what they've started (All this reminds me of OWI's overly ambitious plans and numerous unfinished projects in the past).

Also I doubt that an "old rusty bucket" is a good option to attract people to a "shiny BMW". People may get disappointed with the "rusty bucket" and ignore the "BMW".

True, but every photo I've ever seen of them just looks like they're fake. Like they've been created by a production designer with no imagination whatsoever. And Spooceballs equally so.

Make the industrial facilities look like facilities, not a bunch of mechanical platforms and random junk.

I agree that, if possible, the spooceshrubs could do with a new model, or at least perhaps a more muted, darker texture.

Yes, they are an in-game collectable, but they are supposed to be a part of Oddworld plant life that the characters are aware of. Contrast this to typical game collectables (coins or whatever) that are pretty much superficial for the player, and not considered a physical part of the character's world.

I just feel that the spooceshrubs are so bright and abundant that not only do they not look like a natural part of the environment, it also somewhat ruins player immersion. Instead of being able to appreciate the aesthetics of the landscapes (I actually think MO has a pretty decent colour palette consistent with the older games) the player's eye is constantly bombarded by bright green blobs. At some points, the levels look more like a maze of green balls than they do an Oddworld forest, etc.

If they could be changed to blend in with the environment a bit more- not to become invisible, just so that they look like a natural part of the landscape- I don't think people would mind the whole concept of spooce as much. If it looks like it belongs in Oddworld, people will no doubt accept it as being a part of Oddworld. If every spooceshrub screams in your face for attention as they seem to now, they become annoying! I think having several different models to increase variety would help greatly too.

On a separate note, I know Glitch has said that environment geometry might not be able to be changed. If it can however, check out the video below at 29.45- The door opens and disappears into the floor, but there isn't actually a space for the door to fit into!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcKn69hOvrE

Just do the storm circle thing and I'm fine.

Exactly.

I agree. I think the entire series would be better off treating MO as the misstep that it is, and moving on. It was a crap game. It should be left alone.

I'm still waiting to hear back on my petition to remake Legend of Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.

I was glad it became available on the PC, because I had never played it. But remaking it HD is indeed too much - the game was bad, whereas Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus, although old, still stand the test of time as fun and atmospheric (specially the first one).

Having read that, I really loved MojoMan220's idea of minimizing and hiding Spooce, and the whole idea of ledge grabbing, but since it's not a possibility, here's some of the ideas that I really agree with / would love to see in the remake:


I think if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's obviously that the "boings" and all of the other cartoonish sounds in the game need to go. For me, this is everything from the sounds of Munch walking, Munch in a wheelchair, Munch falling down, Munch jumping out of water, Munch bouncing off of walls, Abe bouncing off of walls, Abe sneaking, the sound made when someone jumps into a well, the sound Fuzzles make when they move, the sound of Fuzzles responding to Munch, the average Slig's gunfire, the sound of a Mudokon being upgraded, the sound of Spooce being collected...ugh. So, yea lots and lots of sounds that, in my opinion, do not fit Oddworld. I probably missed some, and maybe I'm being too picky on some. But, primarily the first ones mentioned, if those were to be changed I think that alone would make a massive difference in the game.


These other changes I don't think require new animations or whatever it is you're limited to. I know you guys are restricted, but I thought these seemed pretty reasonable:

And then these ones seem a little more far fetched, but would be so amazing if possible!

If JAW could make a good amount of these changes happen, I think MO would feel almost like an entirely new game. Thanks for asking us our opinions and desires, I really respect that!! I'll get back to you with my own ideas when I think of some.

As reiterated above, changing/adding sound, be it part of the soundtrack or dynamic, would make a huge difference. Vykkers Labs never felt scary to me, and it should. You just got abducted and violated by two scalpel-wielding sadomasochist octopoids, and far worse things are happening all around this place. You should feel like you're in constant danger of being caught and dragged back to the operating table.

I'd like to cite the medical levels of Quake 4 as a good example. Here, the strogg carried out some brutal, bloody, and generally fucked-up experiments on humans. The walls were caked with dried blood, you heard the distant, agonized screams of multiple victims and you could only imagine what horrors they were enduring. It felt like an animal testing lab, which was made all the more fucked up by the fact that the animals were your race.

Simply put, good sound design isn't that hard, but it can make or break the atmosphere. I think tweaking the sound design in Munch as a whole would make it about 50% better.

At the moment it's not a case of won't change it; it's more a case of can't. The plugins used to make Munch don't work with today's version of 3Ds Max, and although we can get hold of the version they do work with, that version doesn't work with modern operating systems.

Obviously this means that we need an older PC on an old OS. It's getting to the point that where the amount of prep we would need to do for big changes would negate the changes we could make because of the time taken.

If that's true, how is it possible to HD-ify the game at all?

It's not. He's been pulling our leg this entire time.

By upgrading the characters, audio, textures, menus, etc.

Most companies just tend to tweak textures slightly and up the output resolution. We are trying to do as much as we possibly can.

Won't it look wierd to have high-poly characters in a low-poly world?

I have a suggestion.
Maybe make the bone powder kegs look like actual barrels instead of just wrapping a barrel texture around a sphere.

I read the comments and I agree, swapping the sounds is easy and would be the best possible option. A few extra suggestions:

- Make the players spoocecount regenerate over time.
- Make spooce rarer but more valuable.
- Focus on making the controls usable

As for players, autosave often.

It depends on the game style. In a first person this would certainly be a concern, however, in a third person, when characters are further away from the camera, not so much.

Saying that, if we take for example Half-Life 2, the character models in that are comparatively high poly (about 8200 for Alyx) compared with the brush based levels, which are generally very low poly blocks. The characters don't look out of place because of the props and texture detail on the blocks themselves.

Overall it's all about texel density; if the texel density of the new textures is matched with the general poly count of the new models, it doesn't stand out as much as you would imagine, and, because it's a 3rd person game, it stands out even less to start with.

Leave it alone. I don't know what position you guys are in but leave Munch be and focus on Abe HD. I think everyone here will agree that MO was not the Oddworld game we wanted as part 2 or the oddworld quintology, little tweaks will ultimately not satisfy us fans. The only way is of course to start from scratch. If you not in a position to do so then keep moving forward until you are. Personally I believe tweaking MO is a waste of time i'm sorry to say. Chances are most people who play it will be people who've played it before. Occasionally thinking "Oh they changed that" and I honestly do not think it's worth all the effort you'll go though to do it.

You guys are great, love your games, but this is my honest opinion.