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I wouldn't personally make a game without dialog pacing, dramatic dialog, and theatricality, because that's how I enjoy games. People who skip dialog annoy me, because all I can think is...THEN WHY ARE YOU PLAYING?

I used to be an awful person to play video games with because I used to FORCE friends to sit there and read every bit of dialogue. I would of course give the option to skip a cutscene or a piece of dialog in a game I designed. I see pacing and theatricality all too little in AGS games and it leaves me wondering...why? Why not put in that extra effort to do these things? Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's tedious. But it's so SO rewarding.

Well, okay, I see it a lot more than I used to.

Wow, there are some insanely great entries here. I'm surprised to see no Christmas-y stuff, though.

Went for something resembling a matte painting from an old black and white movie.

Frankly, i find the inability to process the fact that tintin or TIN-TIN, has no potential as a movie created as all these franchises, before you even see the movie, a bit pathetic.

I am an ass, that is true. But we're talking about objectively good films. Tintin is a movie taken by a big studio, under a big name, and rebooted to the public. As every other film, it captures only those that mistakenly see the movie as something great. All the movie wants to ultimately do is make money. And that way they will sacrifice everything that the comic was good for. One of the few successful movies happens to be Batman. I can make a list of very bad movies that have been designed EXACTLY IN THE SAME WAY, and yes, sorry that I'm being in the ass in the process to have you see that well the majority of films is just to milk your wallet.

Look at the superheroes films. I mean. They are bad. Very. Spiderman isn't even funny!!! If there's one thing I liked about Spiderman it's that it Spiderman was a cynical bastard. And instead I get an emo douchebag.

I frankly care couldn't care less about realistic movement and other effects. Effects don't make a good movie, effects just enhance the entertainment. I mean, it looks very good, but well, that still doesn't put a smile in my face.

Also Tintin and Transformers have in common the following:
-They are both familiar franchises somewhat a bit forgotten when the movies were out.
-They both have Spielberg (OMG PLOT TWIST)
-They both hint a sequel , in fact THEY TELL YOU RIGHT IN THE FACE.
-They both try to destroy already fantastic TV series.
-They both have a plot where it changes every 2 seconds, showing they are trying to cram up so many things as possible.


SECRET FAWFUL: Please don't consider me an ass, this is just my honest opinion. I am not trying to insult anyone, but this attitude towards these films, makes me go :/
I'm afraid though that I'm willing to stand my point, regardless.

Fair enough. I think the movie and comic are good for their own separate reasons, actually. I actually find the animated series the most lacking in a sense of worth. I read the comic for the adventures, but also for a piece of the time period, as well as Herge's artwork, which is some of the finest, smoothest artwork I've ever seen. It has a huge impact on my own artwork. I could stare at a Herge comic all day. In fact I read Tintin 75% FOR THE ART. So coming from that standpoint, how could I POSSIBLY want to even look at the movie?

Well, I'm interested in and excited about the movie for entirely different reasons. For one thing, I'm extremely interested to see what Spielberg does with another adventure property. I love Spielberg's films and style and the look of his films and I really can't think of one I didn't like even in recent times except War of the Worlds. I wanted to see him get the CHANCE to take a crack at Tintin, especially as Herge gave him his blessing. I was hoping for a return to form and inventiveness for Spielberg regarding memorable fast-paced action sequences. I'm also incredibly interested in performance capture and think it presents a lot of exciting possibilities. Unlike most, I don't hate Zemeckis for using it, and even if it didn't work under his helm, I respect that he kept TRYING. I don't care if he failed. Failure is required for success. I don't get the uncanny valley problem, nor do I care about it. I don't even understand it. I also wanted to see Peter Jackson and Spielberg work together, and Moffat is an incredible writer. Everything I've heard makes me think this movie will deliver what I want: a Raiders-esque action flick that doesn't give you time to breathe. I don't want time to breathe with this movie. Shrug. I don't even want a backstory. I want Spielberg-action set pieces that I can walk out of the theater remembering, and I want performance capture that much closer to gaining respect.

I like ideas that don't fully work. I like it when people fight for those ideas and fight to get them to work. Motion capture is getting a lot of the same fire rotoscoping got back in the day, and rotoscoping has turned out in some incredibly quality work. Oh, and I wanted to hear John William's take on Tintin as well. Honestly, I could say this stuff about any property. I can say I'd love Spielberg's take on Batman or Scooby Doo or Heart of Darkness, etc. and a John Williams score to accompany. Because the plain fact is, I would enjoy seeing how it turned out, whether it worked or not.

As far as the animated series, I enjoy it, but I don't see a great deal of worth in it. It copies the comics to the letter, doesn't give me anything new or exciting to look forward to, and I would much rather look at Herge's original artwork on the still page than see it animated by people who aren't him. I credit performance capture at least because it's trying to take it as close to reality as it needs to be. Tintin in its purest form is a slight exaggeration of reality. It's not really a cartoon as much as it is a CARICATURE, and that's why it's perfect for performance capture, because performance capture works best as only a slight exaggeration of reality. Performance capture also works best with caricatures, not with cartoons. Gollum, emaciated and grotesque, is only a slight exaggeration of a sickly, thin, small human with more goblinesque features. A real actor could never play Gollum that close to the vest without becoming severely ill and in grave danger. Gollum is too much of a caricature to be portrayed accurately enough by an actor. I think the same goes for Herge's characters, who are all caricatures, sometimes to the point of being generalized, semi-racist figures. But yeah, I've rambled on enough.

I don't get the connection between Tintin and Transformers. Oh and it's Tintin, not Tin-Tin. And, well, I like that performance capture is being used to explore new ways of camera movement and cinematography. I don't really get the complaints against performance capture. Yeah, it's not hand-done animation. Yeah, it's relying on people's movements and not on cartoon exaggeration. And what of it. Tintin shouldn't be over-exaggerating reality anyway. He never did in the comics. Sure, the comedy was cartoon, but the movements and actions weren't.

What's a bad movie for you can be a great movie for someone else. It doesn't make them stupid. If you say so you're an ass.

Well, despite that, here are a couple links to some of the soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIE4eK7uYaQ
I don't know it is for sure, but the "main theme" or most recurring theme in the soundtrack occurs with greatest volume starting at 2:20 of this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdLkB4IABu8
This is my favorite piece of the soundtrack though. I think this one takes place during the flashback of Red Rackham's pirate ship battle. The music doesn't really START until 60 seconds in on this track.

@m0ds: No. But the soundtrack is by John Williams, so I'd argue it's way better.

@Snarky: That's a fan animation. Just mentioning that in case anyone thinks its actually from the film.

Found a bug on the Steam version: when you walk down to the fourth floor in the Highrise from the sixth, if you click on the fourth door to open it as you're walking down from the sixth floor, the main character stops midway there on the fifth, makes the "open door" animation, and then the door on the fourth floor magically opens on its own.

Congrats! So happy to see this got finished!

Mark, you promised me you wouldn't tell anyone about the explicit dildo puzzle in Ravenwood. Curses. Now I'll have to tell everyone about the scene where the giant banana robot impales the busty female Godzilla monster...from behind. Over and over.

Spoiler

DISCLAIMER: This never really happens. Please don't fire me, sir, like you did with all the others.

[close]

That 1930s cartoons idea sounds awesome and terrible in equal measures.
How would you get good puzzles out of something so anti-logic?

I don't know, but it never hurt anyone to try. If you watch old Mickey Mouse shorts by Ub Iwerks, like Plane Crazy, you'll see that a lot of solutions were like solutions to puzzles, only they worked in terms of altering the environment or npcs around Mickey in radical ways to achieve goals. Popeye used strength and would probably be a bit of a Ben from Full Throttle sort in finding solutions, but at the end of the game, he'd face something so impossible the only solution could be spinach.

If people had trouble figuring out the mechanics of a game that requires you to think like a cartoon (Sam and Max Hit the Road did it well), then of course you could have a easy beginning or "tutorial" segment that eases you into the right frame of mind. In Sam and Max, we know we'll have to find some radical solutions to puzzles as soon as we see Max rip some papers out of a cat's stomach. This gives us the information about what kind of game we're dealing with.

Yeah, I admit I really kind of threw it together as a concept, composition, and painting, but I wanted to get an excuse to practice and experiment. Congrats to oraxon!

More pirate adventure games? I'm up to here with them. Make something else!

Take me to the lands of Vikings, sword and sorcery, Heavy Metal, the Old West, 1930s cartoons, spies, Universal horror, monsters from outer space, ANYWHERE BUT PIRATES.

Don't give anyone any ideas. You trying to kill me, man?  :o

Enchanted Forest Orchestra - Not a new idea, but I was inspired by NiGHts and Disney.

EDIT: Worked on it a bit more. Final now.

I love the cartoony graphics, although something like Ralph Bakshi's style would've been more appropriate. I will agree that the third Larry game is the best, and I hope they get that far, because I'd love to see how it would look in VGA.

I just wanted to drop in and say I think your project is fantastic and gorgeous, and I would hate to see it die. If there's anything I can do to help you guys out, let me know.

"How to save adventure games" by Secret Fawful.

Stop making watered down, wussy games I can play in my sleep, made for Dave Grossman's mommy in law. Give me so much challenge I have to take out a pencil and a pad and take notes. Grow a pair of balls and quit playing it safe or I'm going to come down to some of these studios, most likely Telltale, and kick every ass in the entire place until they make some real damn adventure games with real damn puzzles and real damn heart instead of cold studio-exec run robotically-made turds so I can feel like I'm playing a real damn game.

I don't play the classics because of nostalgia. My eyes don't glaze at 3D adventure games because of nostalgia. I play the classics and spit on the new stuff because the classics did things right and the new stuff is so bland and forgettable I could take a dump on the cover and forget which game it was. The Last Express should have been the next step in revolutionizing what adventure games can do, but that game tanked, so hooray, we're stuck with an unevolving genre that spits out the most mundane crap I've ever seen. Eat me, Back to the Future the Game.

Do I sound mad? Well, that's because I AM.

Quest For Glory II VGA and Trilby's Notes. I also have a soft spot for Al Gurbish and The Mystery of Haunted Hollow since they were the first two AGS games I ever played.

8/17/2011: Updated first post with the final main character and a character synopsis.