LucasArts Day of the Tentacle Remastered

[Unkillable Cat]

Alright, finished the game...two more times. Once for the feel, and again to hear the commentary and re-check some stuff. (The game is really short when you know what you're doing.)

# The spinning vortex spins a little bit faster in the original graphics, but it's still much slower than it spun originally back in 1993. The commentary mentions that the vortex is created using color cycling, and is not an actual full-screen animated background (as those were nearly impossible to do back then). Still doesn't explain how they managed to break the effect in this version.

# Speaking of the commentary...how come it has so many typos? 'Upset' becomes 'upsite' and another word ending in '-ution' comes out as '-uiton', just to name a couple of early-game examples.

# The point I mentioned a couple of posts ago about Dr. Fred only being off to the side instead of off-screen is true: He's off-screen in the original 4:3 aspect, but in the 16:9/16:10 aspect he's still visible. That location is the only time something like this happens, though.

# I've been paying more attention to the music - it's just flat. It's like hearing the elevator muzak version of the DoTT theme at times. The commentary touches on this, including complaints about how they needed to scale back the music at points ("It's 32 kilobytes! That's too big!") but it makes me wonder why they didn't do more for the music.

# Besides the music, the sound in general is top notch. This is probably one of the highpoints of the Remastered edition.

# While the game has tons of options available, one notable absence is text speed. This means that there come times when a monologue is cut off abruptly while the text catches up, like Purple Tentacle's 'I'll get you meddlin' kids for foiling my plans!'-speech at the end. It breaks the flow of things a bit.

# As for puzzles, there are two problematic ones (IMO). The first one is finding the keys. The only way to find them is to be really observant of the background, then interacting with an object to bring them better into view. Considering almost every other puzzle in DoTT has plenty of hints for it, this one sticks out a little.

# The second (and more problematic) puzzle is the VCR. The idea is that you record Dr. Fred opening the safe, then rewind the tape and play it back in slow-motion to see the safe combination. All of this is done with a panel of VCR-buttons. First problem? Good luck for anyone under the age of 25 to solve this puzzle as VCRs became obsolete around the turn of the century. Second problem? The button symbols are wrong. Repeat after me: STOP is a square, REC is a red circle, to point out the fact that it will erase anything previously on the tape. In DoTT the buttons have the wrong symbols, REC has the square and STOP has the circle. This screwed up everything for me and I kept pushing the wrong button. This is also the case in the original graphics, making the problem even worse. If there's anything in DoTT that needed to be changed in a Remastered edition, this is it.

# One thing that did get changed is the letter Bernard receives from Green Tentacle in the intro. In original DoTT it's just some squiggly lines, in the Remastered version you can read the letter.

# Another small thing that got changed - remember the DoTT screenshot earlier in this thread that shows the laundry room and I commented on that one note on the wall? They changed that, now it's a "Cats 4 Sale" poster.

# Maniac Mansion is included, and it's the original release. I don't know how they're emulating the PC Speaker in that game (or the game itself for that matter) but it also sounds off.

Overall, this is about 95-99% faithful remastering of the game. If you haven't played DoTT and don't own the original release, then this is a solid buy.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Documentary:


The best part: all the faggots who are constantly whining about the graphics can look at the original concept arts of the game, which show that they were very similar to the remastered graphics. So the game meant to look like this. Suck it up assholes.

Well, just saw the handpainted backgrounds, and the HD version doesn't look like it. So if it was meant to look like the hand-painted art, it failed.

 

[J_C]

Documentary:


The best part: all the faggots who are constantly whining about the graphics can look at the original concept arts of the game, which show that they were very similar to the remastered graphics. So the game meant to look like this. Suck it up assholes.

Well, just saw the handpainted backgrounds, and the HD version doesn't look like it. So if it was meant to look like the hand-painted art, it failed.

It is not the same, but it is obviously similar.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Documentary:


The best part: all the faggots who are constantly whining about the graphics can look at the original concept arts of the game, which show that they were very similar to the remastered graphics. So the game meant to look like this. Suck it up assholes.

Well, just saw the handpainted backgrounds, and the HD version doesn't look like it. So if it was meant to look like the hand-painted art, it failed.

It is not the same, but it is obviously similar.

The same could be said by the VGA. But I'm ok with both, anyway

 

[Belegarsson]

Can confirm issue with text speed. In some cutscenes where a Green Tentacle talked to a Purple Tentacle, he talked so fast that subtitles couldn't catch up and he suddenly stopped at the end of his speech. Pretty annoying.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

can't you press + to speed up text, like in every lucas arts games?

 

[bertram_tung]

can't you press + to speed up text, like in every lucas arts games?

There actually is a really annoying bug in this remaster.

If you press - to slow down subtitles, it seems like it is not possible to speed them back up. It's like that cunt Tim Schafer didn't bind the = (+) key to speed up subtitles.

I was playing around with subtitles speed when I discovered this. I tried re-installing, and my subtitles are still the slowest possible setting.

Thanks, Tim!

Edit: Well, I started a new game and it was back to default. So I guess you just need to avoid fucking with subtitles unless you want to start over. (Or don't use subtitles.... but that is sacrilege.)

 

[Taluntain]

So is anyone reporting all these bugs?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So is anyone reporting all these bugs?

To be honest...I would love to, except I wouldn't know where to report them. I didn't get the game from Steam, and I don't know where/how to get in touch with the right people...or even if they would act to quash the bugs.

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewforum/78/

 

[taxalot]

I went through it yesterday. I was pretty sad to remember all the puzzles and to completely blast through the game

I had some annoying bugs too : everything outside of the main game wouldn't save. Basically, all the unlocked art disappeared each time I ran the game and would unlock again as I went through it. Other settings also disappeared regularly.

Also, commentary was absolutely disappointing if you've seen the making of on Youtube.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewforum/78/

*checks forum*

Hi guys,

awesome work with DOTT remastered.
I noticed that there are no shadows of characters in the game.
Are you planning to add later? I think that it will improve much the game graphics.
Also a setting for the size of the hotspot’s etiquettes and subtitles would be great.

...do I have to register there?

 

[Bumvelcrow]

...do I have to register there?

Register as KodexKommentBot and post the password here. No doubt it'll be useful in the future.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Well I'm pleasantly surprised, it's like the Monkey Island remakes after all. Except: the new music SUCKS. It still sounds like cheap MIDI and in fact switching to the Old Skool graphics and music is better. Can't wait to read all the reviews by millennial dumbfucks bitching about the lack of quest compass.

 

[bertram_tung]

I think the new music has been fine with a couple of minor exceptions. Very faithful.

 

[LESS T_T]

Day of the Tentacle: Puzzle Dependency Graph Analysis: http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/day-of-the-tentacle-dependency-graph/

The Day of the Tentacle is a classic LucasArts adventure game released in 1993. Starring an irrepressible nerd, an evil tentacle and three generations of the same mad scientist it quickly captured the hearts of the adventure going public of the day. It’s a light-hearted game with a focus on exploration, narrative and humor. The creative team included Dave Grossman, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick.

While cartoonish on the surface this game is highly polished with an elaborate design and complex puzzle structure. This post will focus on the puzzle dependency graph and the way in which the puzzles are integrated into the narrative.

...

 

[Infinitron]

Day of the Tentacle: Puzzle Dependency Graph Analysis: http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/day-of-the-tentacle-dependency-graph/

The Day of the Tentacle is a classic LucasArts adventure game released in 1993. Starring an irrepressible nerd, an evil tentacle and three generations of the same mad scientist it quickly captured the hearts of the adventure going public of the day. It’s a light-hearted game with a focus on exploration, narrative and humor. The creative team included Dave Grossman, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick.

While cartoonish on the surface this game is highly polished with an elaborate design and complex puzzle structure. This post will focus on the puzzle dependency graph and the way in which the puzzles are integrated into the narrative.

...

Awesome!

SCO MRY This is what I'm referring to when I talk about the "openness" of an adventure game. The wider, the better.

 

[Sceptic]

It's an interesting analysis but I detect a couple of potentially MAJOR flaws in his thinking. Specifically at this part:

"The key thing to note here is that none of the dialogue in the narrative around these three stories makes any assumptions about what the player has done outside of the small sub-plot in question. Hoagie never mentions ‘Oh great I need this gold to get the Super Battery’, or ‘I bet I can charge the Super Battery with this Kite’. This is because the player may not even have given the plans to Red Edison before getting the Gold or getting the Kite. So they may not even know what ingredients are required or that the battery will need charging. By restricting any references in the dialogue and action to the puzzles and stories of each small sub-graph the game has avoided those kinds of “bugs” in the story."

Yeah sure maybe the designers didn't spell out the solution to the puzzle to avoid having to plan for contingencies depending on what the players has already done before... or maybe because they simply DON'T WANT TO SPELL OUT THE SOLUTION. A hell of a lot of the analysis requires ignoring this possibility, which is a very modern-game approach to things.

The other thing is that he conveniently ignores several puzzles where the branches DO intersect. He mentions the Founding Fathers as a completely separate branch independent of anything else... except of course there are 2 things you do with the Fathers, and one of them has nothing to do with Hoagie's goals and everything to do with Laverne's. He simply ignores the Fathers-Laverne sub-branch. Same with how he neatly splits Franklin and the battery as completely separate and independent branches, even though everything you do with Franklin IS part of building and charging (well, the charging part specifically) the battery.

And finally his whole "key before lock" thing I don't agree with. I didn't' actually stumble on the sweater puzzle until after I had a frozen hamster, and at that point I knew exactly why I was doing it. In any case there's nothing wrong with key before lock, as long as you can also find the lock first. And being forced into finding the key first is anyway no worse than being forced to find the lock first - especially since most games that go with the latter assume you're an idiot and won't let you get the key even if you (but not your PC) have figured it out. Being able to find the key or the lock in any order and find the other based on the first adds to the openness of the design.

EDIT: that said it's a pretty in-depth and fun analysis of the complexity underlying the game's puzzle design, which is really great.

 

[brickshot]

Hi Sceptic! I wrote the article in question. I found this thread because people were hitting my blog from here so I checked it out. Thanks for reading and commenting on it! I'd like to respond to what you said.

WRT your first comment - when I gave those examples of the kinds of cross-puzzle references which were left out of the game I wasn't trying to say that was the only reason those kinds of things weren't in there. Certainly it would make the game worse if they were dropping those types of obvious goal reminders in the dialogue (or just plain giving away the solution). What I was saying is that while it might seem logical that they could make a reference to the super-battery at those points in the game they actually cannot (regardless of how good or bad a mention of it would be) because the player may not even know about how to build it or that it needs charging.

The other thing is that he conveniently ignores several puzzles where the branches DO intersect. He mentions the Founding Fathers as a completely separate branch independent of anything else... except of course there are 2 things you do with the Fathers, and one of them has nothing to do with Hoagie's goals and everything to do with Laverne's. He simply ignores the Fathers-Laverne sub-branch.

Unless I've missed something major I think I am correct in saying that The Founding Fathers is a separate branch and it only plays into the final goal for Hoagie, not Laverne. Laverne is certainly involved in this branch since she sends back the Vinegar but doing so does not advance the player towards Laverne's end goal at all. (I'm assuming you're talking about getting the vinegar when you say the "Fathers-Laverne sub branch"). Getting the Vinegar is only a dependency of 'Get the Super Battery', it doesn't play into any of the puzzles which lead to Laverne's goal of charging her Chron-o-John.

Same with how he neatly splits Franklin and the battery as completely separate and independent branches, even though everything you do with Franklin IS part of building and charging (well, the charging part specifically) the battery.

Yes that branch does feed into the final puzzle of how to charge the super battery but the point is to look at how the sub-plots which happen before that are distinct and can be solved independent of one another. Charging the Battery has two dependencies: The Super Battery and The Kite. You can get the kite by solving all the puzzles in Ben Franklin's subplot without doing anything else. That's what I mean when I say its isolated. Likewise you can solve all the puzzles in the founding fathers subplot without doing any of the Ben Franklin puzzles. Actually charging the battery is where the two subplots come together and of course then they are no longer isolated. But I'm talking about the subplots themselves. I think this graph makes it clear: http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/HoagieDeconstructed-2.png.

Your last point about the key before the lock type puzzles is definitely open to debate. I agree with you that it never impacted the game negatively for me personally to have all these puzzles available before you know what they are for (whether you hit them that way or not). I was mostly pointing out that Ron Gilbert himself says you shouldn't have what he calls 'Backward Puzzles' and that the puzzle branch for getting the Dusty Warm Hamster is potentially full of them. There are nine puzzles which are in that branch which you could solve before getting Laverne into the basement where you learn that the hamster is actually needed.

Anyway thanks again for reading and for the kind words you said about it! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has an interest in analyzing this game to death.

 

[brickshot]

Ah of course... Sceptic, I just realized what you are talking about when you said the Fathers-Laverne sub-branch: Getting Laverne down from the tree in the first place! Yeah I did ignore that! And unintentionally. In my main graph of the puzzles I didn't include a puzzle for getting the red paint because it's just sitting around for Bernard to pick up. So I included Get Laverne Down from the Tree as a direct dependency of 'Find Super Battery Plans' since that's what allows Hoagie to get the red paint. This is correct but my mistake is that I completely left that puzzle out of the Founding Fathers sub-plot analysis and it definitely does need to be in there. I'll make an update to my blog post. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!

 

[MRY]

Can someone explain to me why the VCR's "record" button is a stop button? Is it some joke I missed or did the designers not know how a VCR worked? :angry:

 

[MRY]

So I finally played all the way through the game (again with kids, which basically always negatively affects the experience because they get frustrated with being stuck), and I'm somewhat mixed on it (as has been my experience across the board). A few thoughts:

(1) Generally speaking, in a highly zany setting like this, key-before-lock design isn't that bad because the the game invites silly experimentation and is so transparently "game-y" that you know that anything you see will require your intervention.

(2) However, I think there's a bit of a problem in that the game has several locks you see before keys that turn out not to relate to the key. A few examples:
- Hancock is cold but cannot be warmed with the sweater.
- There is a hamster wheel in the present day but it has no involvement with the hamster.
- You get a crowbar but cannot use it to open the chained door.
- You find Martha Washington sewing anything you need from a plan, and next door is a plan to Ben Franklin's kite, but you cannot give her the kite plans.
- When you get the chattering teeth the most obvious target is the horse, but he is not permissible. Conversely, if you have the dentures the most obvious target is Washington, but he is not permissible.
- When you get the cat you're told it can cause people to panic and run away but you cannot use it to cause the humans waiting for the competition to start to run away even though this would seemingly (a) remove the opponents to your mummy and (b) get rid of the tentacle barring your entry to the basement.

(3) The timing / pay off felt off on several puzzles. In particular, the twin sculptors felt underutilized (the whole thing was to get a hammer?), the pulley seems to come into play too late and too insignificantly, the IRS interaction felt disconnected from other puzzles and somewhat circuitous, the whole hamster puzzle felt shoe-horned. In general, I'd say that about a third of the puzzles seemed really good, a third fine, a third so-so.

(4) The openness is fantastic.

(5) The time-traveling aspect of it is pretty disappointing. In particular: (a) the inventory management is an unjustifiable chore that reminds me of Resonance; (b) there are too few puzzles involving timeline-changing and they didn't feel organic (compare these to puzzles in, say, an Emily Short game, where you often have a similar conceit but it is more integral) -- for example, the vacuum cleaner puzzle is way too easy and its pay off is too trivial; (c) I felt that the story sort of lost its thread insofar as nothing you're doing really relates to the purple tentacle except (to some degree) in the future and in the endgame.

(6) Cool graphics, a few decent gags, but generally the humor was weaker than in Monkey Island or even Space Quest.

(7) I liked that they did a decent job of having some of the puzzles consistent with the character: Laverne dealing with animals; Bernard doing a few tech-ish things, and Hoagie helping set up electrical equipment. Could possibly have been a bit better, but still pretty neat.

(8) I continue to be depressed by the lack of context-sensitive failure quips in pro games. "I don't wanna," indeed.

Overall, does not unseat Monkey Island 2.

 

[Mozg]

Are you too young to remember that record on a VCR was a red square and you're interpreting it as a stop sign? Or did they actually have a bug in the remake where the stop and record buttons are backwards?

 

[MRY]

Are you too young to remember that record on a VCR was a red square and you're interpreting it as a stop sign? Or did they actually code stop and record buttons backwards?

I remember its being a circle, not a square, and there is a circle next to the square (where it should be) only it seemingly functions a a stop button.

I have never seen a square record button. Am I crazy?

^
Real VCR

DOTT VCR.

 

[Mozg]

Hmm, I never actually parsed the squareness vs. non-squareness of the buttons. I just remember record being red.