The Idle Thumbs Podcast Episode 11: Diplomatic Pouch

[I came from Kinjuju]

As soon as we find out where Chris is going we need to petition them to also hire Jake, Nick, Sean and Scoops. I don't see any flaws in this plan.

[Forbin]

  I came from Kinjuju said:

As soon as we find out where Chris is going we need to petition them to also hire Jake, Nick, Sean and Scoops. I don't see any flaws in this plan.

Unless they've already hired Nick.

[twmac]

Ah fuck, not again.

Congrats Chris.

On an aside, Montreal is one of my favourite Cities in the World, it is why I keep coming back here.

[Schazzwozzer]

Just heard the news. Best of luck to ya, Chris. Very exciting time, no doubt. Wherever you end up, I hope we're able to follow your career to some degree. I expect great things. Mostly moon sims.

[Sean]

I can't speak for Jake or Steve, but I sure am gonna miss Chris "Gunga-Galunga" Remo when he heads off to

  Reveal hidden contents

GUNGAGALUNGA

.

[pabosher]

  Vanaman said:

I can't speak for Jake or Steve, but I sure am gonna miss Chris "Gunga-Galunga" Remo when he heads off to

  Reveal hidden contents

GUNGAGALUNGA

.

Omg confirmed

[Forbin]

  Vanaman said:

I can't speak for Jake or Steve, but I sure am gonna miss Chris "Gunga-Galunga" Remo when he heads off to

  Reveal hidden contents

GUNGAGALUNGA

.

Well he's got that going for him, which is nice.

[Tibz]

aww not again ;_;

man i was so happy when thumbs came back it was looking like we might get to live happily ever after.

[Nappi]

Yes. Congratulations and fuck you Chris on your new job at the games industry.

Also, 'Where have all the cyborgs gone?', indeed..

[syntheticgerbil]

Petition? Huh?

Why don't you guys just ask on the forums really nicely?

[Drath]

*Rips up my giant multi-8.5x11"-paged poster of Chris Remo's face that hangs over my bed*.

You were the chosen one!

[Cult of Jared]

So chris is leaving for some super-mysterious game company.

Has he ever read Watchmen?

How does he feel about squid?

[elmuerte]

  Drath said:

*Rips up my giant multi-8.5x11"-paged poster of Chris Remo's face that hangs over my bed*.

You were the chosen one!

The chosen one?

AbjonhoHTW8

[Roswell47]

  Forbin said:

Unless they've already hired Nick.

OH SHI-

[xir]

Adam Cadre's Varicella does some interesting stuff with conversation pieces, and yes, it's a text adventure

http://adamcadre.ac/if.html

Quote:

"It's like juggling 24 things, eight of them being axes, and eight being live kittens."—Jennifer Earl

That's a good quote. There's was a great puzzle in an IF Comp game about a decade ago where you had to communicate with someone who spoke a different, fictional, language. you had to decode the grammer and nouns and verbs by demonstration, pointing, and other gesticulations. Pretty great.

Infocom's detective games had you ferreting out morsels of info with threats, lies and interrogation. But does information become an invisible item in your inventory? Scrying games through the lens of games can be a little distracting.

The idea of conversations as mazes is pretty accurate. Even storytron, I see more as a neural network, with weights and nodes that open and close passages in the maze. It's less transparent. A neural network would be more granular and hyper, but could still be viewed, plotted, as a mechanical maze. If anything, it's those "good" and "bad" brownie points that frustrate and the idea of "winning." Binary choices are a bit blase as well. I'm all for black boxes, let the narrative feedback tell you, not the mechanical feedback on an inventory screen. Alas, people like being boxes of stats.

Conversations are mazes. Hard to escape.

P.s. what's the thing Akira has?

[Cult of Jared]

  xir said:

There's was a great puzzle in an IF Comp game about a decade ago where you had to communicate with someone who spoke a different, fictional, language. you had to decode the grammer and nouns and verbs by demonstration, pointing, and other gesticulations. Pretty great.

Oh man, verbal puzzle. Something I hadn't even thought of. That sounds, uh, hard as hell. I have enough trouble with English.

That question (which on reflection was scattered, shitty, and unclear), was trying to ask if there are any mechanics that replicate the feeling of a conversation while avoiding a branching narrative tree. For example, while the dragon age gift system is pretty dumb, picking a gift does resemble fishing around for a conversation topic with someone you just met. Any such system would have to be decoupled from narrative beats, like the dragon age system is.

Also, Steve's game "The art of Betrayal: revenge of the dialog tree" sounds miserable. Maybe this kind of this is strictly not possible with current technology.

[Forbin]

I remember hearing that Douglas Adams worked on game about Starship Titanic that had some interesting conversation AI. I never actually played it though.

[Patters]

  xir said:

P.s. what's the thing Akira has?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_effect

[syntheticgerbil]

  Forbin said:

I remember hearing that Douglas Adams worked on game about Starship Titanic that had some interesting conversation AI. I never actually played it though.

I've almost unanimously heard it was nothing short of terrible (well, outside of Adventuregamers) in the way it works, which is the main reason I have owned the game for almost 7 years now yet have never been tempted to start playing it.

Even if you do think it's amazing, it's definitely not anywhere on the level Steve was talking about. From what I can tell through reviews, it works significantly worse than Facade, which is not really anywhere near the pinnacle of possibilities (or much to gush over in my opinion).

Edited August 4, 2010 by syntheticgerbil

[Forbin]

Hmm, it'd be interesting to hear from someone who has played it though. That was a strange era of software.

[syntheticgerbil]

This seems to be a more balanced overview:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/titanic/titanic.htm

But then again, I just realized JustAdventure had given it a D, which is somewhat odd for them as they seem to give everything a near perfect score in fear of accidentally offending the few remaining mediocre adventure developers from ever making a game again.

[xir]

Well, natural language parsers with mics (Molyneux's Milo) could be interesting.

[Moelman]

I am late to the party, but I will be sad to see the thumbs go. This episode had me cracking up on the bus and getting weird looks as usual. Congrats Chris on the new job! Hopefully this hasn't been asked since I didn't read this thread but when can you say where you'll be working?

Fuck Chris.

[mikemariano]

  Moelman said:

Congrats Chris on the new job! Hopefully this hasn't been asked since I didn't read this thread but when can you say where you'll be working?

August 12th: That's when 2K Boston announces Bioshock 5: Bioshock on the Moon with lead designer Chris Remo.

That's a long development time for Bioshock 5, though. I wonder who's working on Bioshocks 3 and 4?

[MrHoatzin]

Oh, man, I am way behind on the podcasts and then I accidentally stumbled into this thread with its numerous Fuck You Chrises (Fucks You Chris? Fuck Yous Chris?)...

Idle Thumbs seem fated never to be constant for any length of time. It is a miracle this site has held up for any time at all, actually. But, hey, whatever! Congrats on your vague new job!