Smash and grab with a trombone: Questions for CrowbarSka
 

MOD EDIT: The first 20-odd posts in this thread were moved from here.

Hi Matt, welcome! Can I ask you some questions here?

I want to know how New 'n' Tasty caters to my needs specifically. How are you capturing my childhood nostalgia in a manner I find acceptable? And how extensive is the custom loincloth interface?

They hired a guy who broke into your house, stole all your old photos from that period and will put it as a bonus for 100%-ing the game

I do not find this manner acceptable.

Oh come on, they even kidnapped your best childhood friend and forced him (by torture) to tell them every memory of you so they can somehow include it in the game. What I mean is... they really try, could you just give them a break?

Go for it!

How are you?

What's your name?

I really can't tell if Varrok is trying to be funny here.

Whatever he's trying to do, it isn't working.

All right, here's a question. In those scenes where it is applicable, do some animated story scenes transition smoothly into gameplay without cuts or ripples? I can think of a few times where they managed to do this in the original (the opening, for example) and there are a few others that could have had the same treatment if the technology had been up to it (such as Barrel Ride).

Great, thanks! How are you?

I'm Matt. :D

That's a great question, but actually something we're still working out! There may be some limitations on lower-end hardware which make completely seamless transitions difficult, but we'll try to minimise any nasty cuts wherever possible, of course.

We may be able to have a different system running for high-end hardware which gives a much smoother transition but unfortunately I can't give you a definitive answer on that just yet. Sorry!

Ok :) I don't know if you ever talked about this before, but I'd like to know something about New 'n' Tasty's gamespeak!

Good, knowing that you answered my question :)

That would be nice. It'd seems kinda awkward to cut features due to tech limitations.... in a remake, which's goal is to enhance graphics

THAT'S NOT EVEN A QUESTION



Oh. Could you tell us on which engine the game runs at current time? If that's not classified

Does that mean that there might potentially be differences between versions of the game on different platforms?

Why are you procrastinating? Ask the damn question, for god's sake!

Not sure I can say much about it, but feel free to ask, and we'll see!

I agree, but the flipside of the coin is that enhanced graphics come with their own technical demands! We're doing everything we can to improve on the original given the hardware constraints. I should stress that it's a little too early to say anything concrete about this particular part of the game right now.

We use Windows 7 while developing it, and the game runs right inside the Unity editor (the software we're using to build it). It'll be running on all the target hardware though, of course.

It's a possibility, but as I said above, please don't assume this is definite!

If, hypothetically speaking, there were differences, you could expect them to just be technical differences under the hood that control how data can be loaded in quickly enough, so I don't think it would be anything that affects gameplay or quality.

Who are you?

Ok thank you! I watched the trailer but I actually can't understand Abe's and mudokons' words because I'm not English-speaking and I'm not very good in listening. Will the new gamespeak be much different from the Abe's Oddysee's one?

I joined the team after they built the demos for the trailers. As far as I know those were early recordings so it's quite possible they will be re-recorded.

What was it you had difficulty with, specifically? The characters' accents? The words spoken? The quality of the recording?

I have a question!

I'm not sure if it's been asked before, but what will you be doing in terms of sound effects for paramites and scrabs? Will they be like the ones in Munch's Oddysee, or like they were before? I think you'll know which one everyone would prefer :P

*splits questions for CrowbarSka off in to their own thread*

The title makes perfect sense to me. But then, I'm currently experiencing cabin fever on top of an actual fever, so my sense of humour is a bit more off than usual.

I can't understand Abe's and mudokons' words :)

Did you understand the "Hello" and "Follow me" in English in the previous version?

I think he's asking about how it's different. And it is different in the video. It's not a simple 'Hello' and "Hello" response; the other mud responds "Hey there, Abe". In that sense it's more like MO. That said, it's probably not a good idea to draw too many conclusions from the one video, as I'm guessing the audio was recorded specially.


So, to reiterate AiN's question: Is Gamespeak going to be significantly different? Will it just be different audio or will changes affect the gameplay as well?

As it currently stands, GameSpeak will function similarly to the original game. It's such an integral part of the game, I think it might be too much of a deviation to change it. The basic mechanics of using GameSpeak to interact with other characters will remain intact. We have talked about streamlining it in some ways, but that's to be decided.

That said, we are also looking at having variations on lines like you heard in the trailer. Again, it's still work in progress so I can't say for sure exactly how that will work. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this though.

I think just a few randomly selected variants of each line would be enough to keep things varied. The Natives should sound different to the Scrubs, though.

I'm not too fond of the variation in the GameSpeak

Having the fixed "Hello" and "Follow me" never felt repetitive to me. It was simple and efficient, it was a tool. In stressful situation you did not have to wonder if whatever Abe said was what you wanted him to say or if you pressed a wrong button. I like to have total control on my characters, if I want him to say "Hello", Abe has to say "Hello" and not some random greeting.

Also the way the game is designed it's better to have lines of the exact same length otherwise you'll risk up ending in frustrating situations where the random line Abe spews is one of the long ones and you are loosing valuable time in a time critical puzzle.

An other point is that this simple GameSpeak is one of the elements that people remember the most about the games. How many times did I not have to describe Oddworld as the game where the aliens go "Hello, Hello, Follow Me, Ok" and have people replying "oooh now I remember that game". By adding variation in the GameSpeak you will loose the "unique" and "memorable" aspect of it.

I share Xavier's opinion about this, if somebody asks me

I doubt CrowbarSka has anything to do with the JAW website, but I can't think where else to put this request.

Can y'all please remove the floating 'Made in creative UK' banner from the website? Put it fixed somewhere at the top, so it's not hovering over the text and getting in the way.

So basically Xav and Varrok want the game dumbed down because something that petty is too much to handle? Great!

I suppose I have a question, although it's probably to secret to be answered if the answer is a yes: since New 'N' Tasty is sort of a partial remake and given the fact that you now have a little leeway to change bit from the original, is there scope to expand upon the wider universe of Oddworld? Perhaps alluding to some more of the history in game? I always thought there's so much background fluff in the Oddworld universe and even the fans who've been dedicated to playing and finding most of what's out there probably don't know more than a smidgen of everything the franchise has to offer.

What are you saying here? That they should add stuff just because they can?

I have a differing opinion to Xav and Varrok, but I want to hear CrowbarSka’s thoughts on the matter before starting an inevitable fight on the subject. Maybe we can all agree to that, hmm?

Nah, just go ahead and share your opinion. After all he said he'd like to hear our thoughts on this matter.

Okay, so.

I think that modern incarnations of GameSpeak need to have variation. This goes for New ‘n’ Tasty and any future Oddworld games that use the mechanic.

The reason I think this is because that’s exactly how real human speech works. People aren’t robots that always use the exact same terms when interacting; we change our tone, our wording, our pace, everything. It’s dependent on the situation, our mood, etc.

Abe’s Oddysee used a single phrase for each command because of (I’m guessing) the limitations of the tech at the time. Multiple audio files would fill up extra space on the disc, and putting in code to randomize the audio would have been difficult to pull off in-engine with everything else going on.

This had the side-effect of creating a very recognizable, nostalgic game mechanic, you’re right about that. But I take issue with the idea that expanding on this now would alienate people looking out for nostalgia – I think keeping the original lines and also having new, diverse dialogue would add depth and realism to the game without people throwing up their hands and saying “they changed the audio, this is terrible!”. The original game will always be memorable for its Gamespeak, but I think most people playing NnT would understand why there was new dialogue.

Your concerns about how the audio clips’ length could interfere with gameplay aspects is an interesting point, and one I hadn’t thought of. However, I think there are some easy ways to mitigate this. The first would be to limit the maximum length of these audio clips and then ensure that the puzzles can still be solved with that length in mind. The second would be to be aware of when certain puzzles rely on short Gamespeak times and specifically code these events to only use shorter Gamespeak clips. I think the first of these would work on its own, but the two together would be a great solution.

I wouldnt mind variations in speech, but when im running three mudokons above a paramite pen, i dont particularly want to have to wait around for abe to finish saying 'could you just hang here for a while?' And then wait for a response like 'yeah, i guess so'. By the time they have finished abe would be torn to shreds by paramites!

We do not walk with fixed steps as in a grid in real life, still I prefer the fixed length steps and jumps of AO to the total freedom of, for instance, a Mario game. The point I'm trying to make here is that GameSpeak is a GamePlay mechanic and should work accordingly, not try to be as close real speech for the sake of it.

If they go the variation way it would be nice to have some kind of "nostalgic" option somewhere where we can (de)activate it and play only with the original GameSpeak.

^This.

If you want to boil it down to just game mechanics then you could strip out an awful lot. That doesn’t necessarily make it a better experience though.

Oddworld has always been about creating living, breathing worlds. The creature design mantra was “it needs to look like it came from a mother”. Keeping things simple for the sake of game mechanics doesn’t mesh well with that mantra, especially when you also consider that New ‘n’ Tasty is all about breathing even more life into a classic game.

Regarding a “nostalgia” mode, it’s something I wouldn’t mind seeing. It seems to keep cropping up in these kinds of discussion.

I agree with Manco - Having a more varied gamespeak would help with increasing immersion, despite the old, simple "Hello, follow me" of the old games both working well and being iconic. Simple gamespeak fitted well with the more "static" style of the old games, but may not fit so well with the newer, more dynamic style of N'n'T where the camera scrolls and the background moves and has stuff going on in it (if that makes sense).

Also, a "nostalgia mode" is a good idea and perhaps a good compromise, but I wonder how much effort it'd take to implement just to give the devs more freedom to increase N'n'T's features without upsetting old fans too much.

Well, making an option to disable any non-standard greetings isn't really that hard. And everyone's happy. I like it.