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.

I know you're the game-maker guy, but I personally disagree with this. In third person games, the environment tends to be the star, especially if you're considering pulling the camera further away from the character as mentioned above.

Low poly environments works with games like Half-Life because of the high texture detail, but environmental detail is one of Munch's major failures. If you aren't going to improve the polys of the environment, then you're going to have to re-texture the whole thing hardcore.

I think you misunderstand me; my comment was in regard to the character detail level seeming out of place with the world. With the camera further away, the characters doesn't seem to be overly detailed because they are a small portion of the screen.

Retexturing the levels is something we can do, and indeed, are in the process of doing.

To Rayrockslots (and others): They're not HD-ifying the game for us. They're doing it for the hordes of people who've never played Munch before, who had no idea what it was supposed to be. People like that will likely appreciate the upgrade and enjoy it far more than we will.

The majority of the people buying Munch will be new to the franchise so i feel JAW should spend as much time as they can revamping it so that people who buy the game dont just think that oddworld is a crappy series and then ignore future games. Munch needs to bring in a lotta new fans and in it current state it defienently wont. Dont rush it just to speed up developent of Abe Hd, we all want Abe Hd but we dont want people thinking oddworld is crap because then eople wont buy future games!!

I like the bounce sound.

Leave. Now.

Ah, okay. As long as the levels are re-textured, I'm game.

Revisiting the Storm Circle issue, would it be within your do-ability to keep the rain falling after you activate it? It makes slightly more sense than my former suggestion of having it rain for five seconds then stopping, and could provide a nice change in atmosphere. Maybe this is just me, but I love rainy levels in my games.

Put some rain ripples on the water, show the spooce engorging. Would be lovely.

If I can figure out a way to modify in level scripts it may be perfectly doable. I just need to find out where they're kept, how they're triggered, and what control, if any, I can exude over them.

That would be wonderful. Some lightning flashes and soft thunder rumbles too.

I wonder how sligs feel about the rain. On one hand, they're a swamp-dwelling people, so it stands to reason they love moisture. On the other hand, it probably has adverse effects on their pants.

Oh man that sounds sex.c, on the issue of sligs and rain, if sligs are anything like slugs, then they require moisture, but not excess moisture, or they would drown through their skin. The may have to seek solitude in heavy rain.

Slig One: Awww man the rain. I'm gonna get wet!
Slig Two: Just like yo Momma
Slig One *shoots Slig 2*