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UP AND ADAM posted:I want more aimless hubworld bullshit in the next one. 
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Nov 3, 2021 00:01
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 08:16 |
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do you think that Sam was, at some point, Dogen-shaped? or is the curse of Being Small And Having No Neck reserved for male members of the Boole family? The way Compton looks like seems to indicate the latter, but a Dogen-shaped young Sam is a powerful concept.
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Nov 4, 2021 20:34
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The Boole men are friend-shaped. Sam is not a friend. 
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Nov 5, 2021 01:13
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Sam is not a friend to animals, but she is definitely a friend to me.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:02
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Dareon posted:The Boole men are friend-shaped. Sam is my friend.
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Nov 5, 2021 07:01
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Sam is pretty cool.
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Nov 5, 2021 08:30
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Someone give this game some drat awards
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Dec 24, 2021 21:14
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The game was good.
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Dec 25, 2021 00:43
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Resurrecting this thread because a physical edition for PS4 and Xbone has been announced. Only a collector's edition so far that includes an exclusive physical copy of the first game for PS4/Xbone as well as bunch of other extra stuff.
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Jul 7, 2022 17:14
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I'm honestly shocked there was never DLC announced for this game (and presumably now there won't be since I'd think the Collector's Edition would include either the DLC or a pass to get it if it wasn't ready yet). We never did find out what the gently caress is up with Otto.
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Jul 8, 2022 01:14
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I'm hoping Otto is a dlc/game 3 hook. Hes too... functional..
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Jul 12, 2022 17:51
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This past week, I was randomly contacted by someone asking if I still had copies of any of the original Psychonauts pre-release material (when I was younger I had a fan site...). It turns out that this person has been dissecting the Psychonauts codebase and creating modding tools. Checkout this figment finder they made: https://twitter.com/ScrungusCrungus/status/1608530771425492993?cxt=HHwWgoDQkduN09IsAAAA They've been documenting their work on twitter: https://twitter.com/ScrungusCrungus And mirroring some of it in an easier to read form here: https://jillcrungus.com/projects/psychonauts/blog/ Their projects are on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/scrunguscrungus I particularly like this cool Boyd rant generator that they made: https://jillcrungus.com/projects/psychonauts/boydrant/ It'll be fun to see what becomes of their work.
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Jan 5, 2023 14:14
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Since this topic got a bump, I found just the other day that another pre-release of the first game was also released recently (2021) on Hidden Palace. https://hiddenpalace.org/Psychonauts_(Dec_17,_2004_prototype) It’s older than the press release that I dumped years ago, but I no longer have an original Xbox to try this older build (and I guess Xbox emulators aren’t a thing).
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Jan 5, 2023 14:31
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moosferatu posted:This past week, I was randomly contacted by someone asking if I still had copies of any of the original Psychonauts pre-release material (when I was younger I had a fan site...). It turns out that this person has been dissecting the Psychonauts codebase and creating modding tools. That would have been so useful back in the day.
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Jan 5, 2023 15:10
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Looks like the development documentary is finally released I loved the Broken Age doc back in the day but 22 hours of people talking feels like a big lift atm luckily the covid stuff only seems to start around ep 29 of 32 so it's not all watching screencaps of zoom
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Feb 10, 2023 19:31
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Just saw the email as well. I'm really looking forward to watching it. Hopefully I can swing episode 1 tonight.
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Feb 10, 2023 20:11
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as a San Franciscan one side effect of watching the previous doc is I would start seeing people like Greg Rice around town and think "what is that guy famous from?"
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Feb 10, 2023 20:52
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The Broken Age documentary was somewhat easier to watch, when it released one episode a month. (Which I guess this did as well, for people who kickstarted P2? ) I guess I'll treat it as background podcast listening. Thank you for the link!
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Feb 10, 2023 23:04
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Megazver posted:The Broken Age documentary was somewhat easier to watch, when it released one episode a month. (Which I guess this did as well, for people who kickstarted P2? ) supposedly releasing the Broken Age documentary as it happened caused some drama for the devs, so they decided to wait until it was all done. but boy it's been a while! I still haven't technically finished Psychonauts 2, gotta get around to that soon to reclaim those precious gigs from my harddrive
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Feb 11, 2023 03:31
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I’m on episode 14. So far it’s just been fascinating to see how far off the original level concepts ended up being from the final ones and I’m excited to see the journeys they go on to get to the final versions.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:54
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Sivart13 posted:Looks like the development documentary is finally released Yeah, thanks for posting this, I've been watching it too and I wouldn't've known about it otherwise. I can't wait to see how they get from their first "Viking" concept of Fullbear's brain to what we ultimately got. Also made me start a second playthrough of P2. Ain't no game so fine as a Double Fine.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:12
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I also think one of the most coolest, most heartwarming things is (spoiler for the documentary but not the game itself necessarily) one of the documentary camera operators pitches a game for their hackathon, and afterwards becomes a design intern while still shooting the doc. I’m 100% sure that his hackathon game becomes the Compton Boole brain.
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Feb 15, 2023 21:35
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zzMisc posted:Yeah, thanks for posting this, I've been watching it too and I wouldn't've known about it otherwise. I can't wait to see how they get from their first "Viking" concept of Fullbear's brain to what we ultimately got. Yeah. The evolution of both the Helmut Fullbear levels and the Bob Zanotto levels was remarkable. I feel bad for the dude that originally got stuck with both, but at that stage in the development, they hadn't quite figured that the best way to get anything done was to give it to Emily and let her figure it out. It also helped explain why the Compton Boole level (while entertaining) seemed so thematically out of place.
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Feb 15, 2023 21:40
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Hah I haven’t even met Emily yet I don’t think where I’m at so interested to see what happens there.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:21
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EricFate posted:I feel bad for the dude that originally got stuck with both, but at that stage in the development, they hadn't quite figured that the best way to get anything done was to give it to Emily and let her figure it out. Yeah Emily was a force. I basically binged this whole series over the past week, made it my evening viewing every day. Such a fantastic look into the ups and downs of game development. Spoilers for some major events that start brewing around episode 15 or thereabouts: Everything that went down with Zak bummed me out and I can't help but feel like he was made a bit of a scapegoat. Obviously the team was frustrated at his management, but I just didn't see the criticisms that people made like, at all. To me he always came across as very open to feedback and easy to talk to, and I never felt like he dismissed anyone or shut anyone down. I don't know if I just misread him completely or if the documentary failed to convey that properly. Even the scene where Anna brings up the combat AI, which was framed as an example of her own unhappiness, he makes a pretty solid argument and engages with her constructively. And he was supportive of James' efforts on the original Bob Z level - it was Tim who actually shot that down. I also didn't think the process seemed that different once he was removed, it was still small teams with representation from multiple disciplines, each assigned a level, and they come up with concepts and pitch them to the higher-ups, except now it's just Tim. One of the complaints was that design had been trampling art/programming, but even early on many of the ideas came from others. And I think that dynamic was down to how small the team was at the beginning, anyway - much of the early episodes is just Zak and Tim sitting and brainstorming. Obviously what the gently caress do I know, though - only what 2PP chose to show me. I get he needed to be let go but I really felt for him, especially since they kept taking potshots at him afterwards. I also think Tim shares some responsibility... At the start they talked about Zak's practicality keeping Tim in check, but by the same token Tim was needed to keep Zak in check, to not lose sight of the heart and soul of the game, and he was too hands-off those first couple of years. By the time they realized it the frustrations had been festering for too long so it's understandable that letting him go was deemed the only solution. But just feels like it didn't necessarily have to go down that way I guess. I thought the moment where he sort of breaks the 'rules' so to speak and straight up asks 2PP what they thought of the situation seeing as they'd been talking to everyone was really sad. Anyway, yeah. Great documentary of a great, great game.
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Feb 15, 2023 22:34
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I got up to episode 22 last night. I kind of agree that Zac doesn’t come across to me quite as bad as the others at Double Fine felt. I can see how they feel like thier feedback is always shot down, and apparently there were issues with decisions that needed to be made getting kicked down the line, and I can see that being grating to people used to having more agency in their work. I think in a way Double Fine kind of needed some of what he did - the gameplay feels a lot better in psychonauts 2 - but it seems like it was past time for the creative/narrative/character stuff to rise to the fore, and they’re running out of time to fit that in the schedule so it would feel like they’re never going to get to that stuff. Of course, I know the game’s gonna get quite delayed from where they’re at. There are things I saw Zac do I thought were good - you mentioned the time he asked the documentary crew for what they’d seen, and I saw him trying to reassure teams that the negative critiques were part of the process and not like, ‘you aren’t doing your job, you’re gonna get fired’, and, though it was far too late, I appreciated the acknowledgement that throwing James at Helmut and Bob Z as they did wasn’t fair to him. There are things that are not as good - defending mental energy / explaining health mechanics, and I don’t think we see him taking onboard someone’s objections or ideas, he’s usually refuting them. Though that could be a trick of perspective as the documentary gives us a certain view. Ultimately I think he brought important things to the game, but it’s now time for other things to come to the fore, and he didn’t pivot. It’s been really interesting to see how this thing got made, the ups and downs and failed ideas and successful ideas.
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Feb 15, 2023 23:28
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I'm on episode 15. Super fascinating. Given what i've heard about the development of the game, i'm expecting some big stuff coming up in the next few episodes. I also think it probably isn't fair that they handed the first two levels to the newest/most junior level designer. Seems like they put him in an impossible situation, I think he actually handled himself really well so far all things considered. I also wonder...why did they film all this and release it? Surely that made the development process much harder with cameras around all the time? It's not like they were getting an extra X million dollars from the publisher or Netflix or something. Does Tim just really like having a documentary as a historical record? Don't get me wrong, I think it's amazing, but for the people involved it must have made everything more difficult.
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Feb 15, 2023 23:50
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Just out of curiosity, do QA show up at all or get mentioned much? Either way the idea of being filmed working in something creative makes me stressed just thinking about it. One of my co-workers had an interview at a company that, as a subscription benefit for their hardcore fans let them watch the artists at work. In the interview they said "don't worry, we offer psychological help as a perk" and didn't seem to see why that didn't perhaps didn't sell him on the role.
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Feb 16, 2023 00:05
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frogbs posted:I also wonder...why did they film all this and release it? Surely that made the development process much harder with cameras around all the time? I guess I'd ascribe the standard Tim Schafer rationalization: they thought it would be cool, so they did it. It probably made things harder but they finally finished it in the end by the skin of their teeth because that's the only way they finish anything. This stuff all ultimately dates back to the Double Fine Adventure pitch where they were planning to make a relatively small game so filming an associated documentary seemed like not a big deal. They managed to make a bigger game and therefore a bigger doc so at that point since the 2PP crew are basically on staff maybe it's not so tough to just keep them filming through a bigger project. EricFate posted:It also helped explain why the Compton Boole level (while entertaining) seemed so thematically out of place.
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Feb 16, 2023 00:32
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Sivart13 posted:I really thought there would be a simple easy google answer for this but I've come up empty. Yeah, I watched Double Fine Adventure as it came out and really enjoyed it. Oddly when I sat down to play Broken Age it didn't click with me at all :-( The documentary for that was part of the kickstarter, maybe the documentary for Psychonauts 2 was part of the Fig crowdfunding campaign? I can't imagine they thought it would take ~5 years though. That's...so much time to film. Also, one thing i've picked up on during the documentary. Most folks don't have laptops in meetings, wonder if that's a company thing?
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Feb 16, 2023 07:18
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Tunzie posted:I saw him trying to reassure teams that the negative critiques were part of the process and not like, ‘you aren’t doing your job, you’re gonna get fired’ Yeah, maybe this is part of the incongruity in my case, because I got the sense that he was very cognizant of and sensitive to his team's feelings and how they might take the criticism which I read as good management. But I suppose if he really was ultimately only ever refuting their concerns it doesn't matter if he was doing it with a smile and a pat on the back. I think part of why that whole sequence made me feel pretty bad is that we didn't get any closure. I wish we'd gotten an exit interview with him (understandable that we did not) just to hear his thoughts about how it went down, and I wish I knew how he feels about the project nowadays. When the game came out I know he retweeted some stuff about it so hopefully he's at least proud of his contributions. thebardyspoon posted:Just out of curiosity, do QA show up at all or get mentioned much? Not really. In the lead-up to release they're doing a lot of bug squashing but DF's own internal QA lead only shows up like a couple of times (I'm actually not sure if they have a dedicated QA team other than him), and we hear or see nothing of any external QA. So 99% of it is from the perspective of the people fixing the bugs, who are also finding bugs on their own.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:51
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Sway Grunt posted:Not really. In the lead-up to release they're doing a lot of bug squashing but DF's own internal QA lead only shows up like a couple of times (I'm actually not sure if they have a dedicated QA team other than him), and we hear or see nothing of any external QA. So 99% of it is from the perspective of the people fixing the bugs, who are also finding bugs on their own. Huh yeah, just looked up the credits for Psychonauts 2 and only the QA lead is credited. Guess they outsource a lot of it and had MS internal QA working on it too for the latter part of development. Surprised they don't have at least a couple internal people but I guess they are only working on a game at a time and that's the point of outsourcing.
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Feb 16, 2023 13:11
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thebardyspoon posted:Huh yeah, just looked up the credits for Psychonauts 2 and only the QA lead is credited. Guess they outsource a lot of it and had MS internal QA working on it too for the latter part of development. Surprised they don't have at least a couple internal people but I guess they are only working on a game at a time and that's the point of outsourcing. For what it's worth, i've only played Psychonauts 2 for about 20 minutes, I had to stop because I got stuck in the level geometry :-( Also, one question from the documentary about game development. All the editors in Unreal seem very visual, are most things node based? If you're setting up character dialog, or even enemy AI, can you do all that visually or are you going to be expressing most of that in actual code?
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Feb 16, 2023 17:52
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I’m now at the pandemic episodes and, ugh, it’s hard to watch this now. My wife and si recently started the Scrubs rewatch podcast which started in March 2020 and every once in awhile there’s an extended segment about dealing with it, which is totally justifiable, but we just have to skip past because a) we went through it, everything being discussed we went through and dealt with and litigated over and over and b) it’s like revisiting trauma. Thankfully since this doc is post-edited and wasn’t done in the time it didn’t spend a ton of time on “wow this is such a weird time and look how hard it is to adapt.” They’ve moved to the game progress segments pretty nicely.
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Feb 20, 2023 18:44
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frogbs posted:For what it's worth, i've only played Psychonauts 2 for about 20 minutes, I had to stop because I got stuck in the level geometry :-( This happened to me a couple times as well. I lost ~15 minutes of game time in the library brain level... very frustrating. Anyway, I picked it up in the recent steam sale, and have now finished. Pretty good, especially for a sequel, especially after all this time. I assume the general player reaction was the same. Although I did benefit from playing with all the patches/updates. Aside from the geometry, the "dark thoughts" mechanic was kind of a bust. Also INCREDIBLY disappointed you can't jump into orbit around the brain in the collective unconscious.
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Feb 23, 2023 02:21
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Sway Grunt posted:Everything that went down with Zak bummed me out and I can't help but feel like he was made a bit of a scapegoat. Obviously the team was frustrated at his management, but I just didn't see the criticisms that people made like, at all. To me he always came across as very open to feedback and easy to talk to, and I never felt like he dismissed anyone or shut anyone down. I don't know if I just misread him completely or if the documentary failed to convey that properly. Even the scene where Anna brings up the combat AI, which was framed as an example of her own unhappiness, he makes a pretty solid argument and engages with her constructively. And he was supportive of James' efforts on the original Bob Z level - it was Tim who actually shot that down. Yeah, I ended up feeling a little bad about the whole thing. Obviously we're only seeing a small window of the actual development time, so it's hard to really judge. What I got out of it most is that some people's communication styles really, really don't work for some people. What can sound like constructive but supportive feedback to one person can sound like harsh criticism to others. I definitely see how Zak's management style couldn't work for some people, but also see that Tim's more chaotic style has it's downsides, and resulted in the exact same development process as the first game. All in all I hope that everyone involved, Zak included, as well as the many people that left can feel proud of the game. Sway Grunt posted:In the lead-up to release they're doing a lot of bug squashing but DF's own internal QA lead only shows up like a couple of times (I'm actually not sure if they have a dedicated QA team other than him), and we hear or see nothing of any external QA. So 99% of it is from the perspective of the people fixing the bugs, who are also finding bugs on their own. That was one weird thing about the doc, they seemed to imply that most, or all or the testing was done by friends of the studio? frogbs fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Feb 24, 2023 |
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Feb 24, 2023 06:25
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I wanted more of a fun hub to match the cool levels, but I wasn't upset with what we got. It was just a very novel hub in the first game, with secrets, incremental changes, and interactions with the different kids and your growing powers would have different effects and prompt different lines. It's been a while, but I remember not getting as much of that from 2.
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Feb 24, 2023 15:05
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frogbs posted:That was one weird thing about the doc, they seemed to imply that most, or all or the testing was done by friends of the studio? I launched the game briefly to take a look at the credits and there's definitely a lot of names under the "Testers - Friends & Family" header. But there's QA/testers listed for some outside studios and Microsoft as well. UP AND ADAM posted:I wanted more of a fun hub to match the cool levels, but I wasn't upset with what we got. It was just a very novel hub in the first game, with secrets, incremental changes, and interactions with the different kids and your growing powers would have different effects and prompt different lines. It's been a while, but I remember not getting as much of that from 2. Questionable Area was amazing though, one of the best levels in the game. I think they matched the first game's hub in that area specifically, but maybe needed some more such interactions in Green Needle Gulch. edit: I agree about the incremental changes now that I think about it, not sure there was anything in this one like the bulletin board in P1, for example. Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Feb 24, 2023 |
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Feb 24, 2023 17:26
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I really liked the hub as well, though I might have been particularly happy with the progression of things because I sort of just assumed that the entirety of what was available to you outside of the brains was just going to be the interior of the Motherlobe you start the game off in.
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Feb 24, 2023 21:34
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I really wish it didn't lock you out of the starting area once it's nightfall.
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Feb 24, 2023 21:50
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