Kickstarter for a new Tim Schafer adventure game project

[Stupot]

I thin with their newly revised budget plan they might well just write their own engine.  I must admit I thought 'It would be cool if they used AGS' at that point in the interview, too.  But they have better options now that they are rolling in our money and love.

[selmiak]

so 100$ is the lowest amount to finally get a boxed version you can put in your shelf?
Or buy it twice?!

[Eric]

So my guess is they will try and use SCUMM again.

One of Schafer's video answers during his Reddit session yesterday led me to believe that they would steer clear of SCUMM. But the actual question involved SCUMMVM, so maybe I read too much into it.

[Jared]

After programming for Journey of Iesir, I've realized how limited AGS really is. Not to sound like I'm bashing it, but they are definitely better off using a more professional engine that doesn't limit nearly everything they want to do, or simply just program the whole game from scratch.

My initial reaction to this comment, for whatever reason, was "You crazy, AGS can do anything!!!"

And theeeeen I thought back to customising the inventory GUI in Vohaul Strikes Back and realised that it's definitely untidy in certain spots. In order to allow the player to use a right click option AND to be able to look, touch and lick every inventory item I had to write of extra, lateral thinking code (Including a handler for every right mouse click in the game, IIRC...)

AGS can be funny like that. 90% of the time you're thinking "Man, I can't believe how easy this is!" but when you come up with something you need to mess around with it does feel like you begin coding entirely from scratch and it can be tough to test on top of that... so you're probably right that Schafer and Gilbert will almost certainly go with something else, even if its fine for rough-and-ready pseudo-programmers like myself..

[Ali]

Yes, it's easy to see how we would benefit from them using AGS, but it's hard to see how it would benefit them.

[Eggie]

They could take part in the Guess The Movie topic?

[Greg Squire]

One of Schafer's video answers during his Reddit session yesterday led me to believe that they would steer clear of SCUMM. But the actual question involved SCUMMVM, so maybe I read too much into it.

I found Tim Schafer's video response here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzP0F_QkmD4), so yeah it does appear they'll be steering clear of SCUMM.  He said they'd rather write they're own system than take a chance on getting sued by Lucas.  I thought they might try and license it from Lucasarts, but this makes me believe otherwise.

[Snarky]

The funding has crossed $3M :o, with a few hours left to go. They're doing some sort of livecast of the countdown soon, at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/double-fine-adventure

[Stupot]

Thanks for reminding me, Snarky.  This is all quite exiting.  I think it will be a while before 3M is achieved again on Kickstarter.

[Wesray]

Wohoo - that was fun! Final result $3,335,265. Adventure games are dead? Don't think so! Of course I totally got caught up in the spirit and raised my pledge to 110$ at the last minute. What can I say, the special edition box and t-shirt were too enticing. The next few months are going to be interesting!

[Eric]

Don't forget the $110,000 raised through the premiums offered at Double Fine's website. Brings the final up to almost 3.5 mil.

[Wesray]

That's true. Of course Kickstarter keeps a small percentage of the money they raised, but it's a huge success any way you look at it.

[Eric]

I am thankful for it because, after I'd donated, I saw that someone in the comments wrote, "They should just make it with AGS, which is free." And I said to myself, "Hey, what's AGS?"

[Stupot]

@Eric That's cool. Glad to have you around. You've already been more productive in less than a month than I have been in over 5 years.

The live finale was pretty compelling viewing.  Lots of shoes on heads and Tim was even a little choked up at the end, I thought he was going to start bawling.  Now, let's just hope the game is good.

[Construed]

It makes me sick that an already rich guy gets 100x more money than he needs to make a game which by his art shown and grim fandango doesn't look too promising.

[Eric]

grim fandango doesn't look too promising.

This is among the craziest things I've ever heard.

[Construed]

Lol, its like taking a bunch of default 3d cubes/cylinders/nurbs, drawing a childish smiley face in paint and slapping them on the default cubes/cylinders/nurbs as a texture.



I mean really lol?

[Secret Fawful]

[Construed]

I mean you know I feel kinda bad for voicing my opinion about it being I know a lot of you are attached by nostalgia kind of like I am with QFG which has terrible graphics, it just makes me sick to see some fatass getting paid 3.4 million dollars to sit on his ass and do what we do for free every day.

[Secret Fawful]

I don't know where you get the idea Tim Schafer is rich. What game made him rich? It wasn't Psychonauts, or Stacking, or Costume Quest, or Sesame Street....was it Brutal Legend? The game had pretty disappointing sales in comparison to mainstream titles- not terrible but definitely not enough to make Tim Schafer a billionaire fatcat. As far as doing what we do every day, I don't know anyone around here besides Mark Lovegrove and Dave Gilbert who runs or plans to run a professional video game company. Because that's what Tim Schafer does. This is a smaller project, and you forget Ron Gilbert is also working on a separate Double Fine game that didn't use Kickstarter. Not to mention the fact that they probably have unannounced projects that they put money towards, or the fact that they always got backing from publishers for their previous games. It seems like you're assuming Schafer is a rich fatcat just because he's getting so much exposure, and because he rose such a huge number in his fundraiser, but he's not getting exposure because he's rich and can buy it, he's getting it because people respect his creativity and his output. He got so much from the fundraiser because people love his work and want to see him succeed. Simple as that. He didn't expect any more than 400k, and he didn't ask for more than 400k. He has no reason to give the remainder back when people WANTED HIM TO TAKE THE MONEY AND USE IT. As an adventure game fan, I don't see any reason for this to "sicken you". Tim Schafer is the lead of a small company, and this 3.4 mil is barely a scratch compared to the budgets most professional games require nowadays. He's not the devil.