Ladies and Gentlemen, here I announce the Improving Grim Project™.
We all love Grim Fandango, but we cannot deny it has its little flaws. I would like to get rid of at least some of them.
Beware though: I'm not talking about improving the graphics, since for that there is already the Grim Fandango Deluxe project.

I'm talking instead about the gameplay. Little things like the label at the bottom right corner of this screenshot:

That shows the object Manny is looking at.

Also, I would like to improve the inventory (I already have an idea for that) and the controls.
Now, that's the though part: I tried a point and click implementation but there are certain places where there is no floor on where you can click, so it's not viable.
A Tales of Monkey Island-like thing could be implemented, but is it really more comfortable?

I'm pushing the changes I'm doing in my fork of ResidualVM.

If you have any idea, do not esitate to throw it here!
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Last edited by giucam on Tue Dec 11, 2012 8:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

   

(Hi. Long-time listener..)

Regarding point-and-click: is it just an (x, z) coordinate needed? Could that potentially be found by taking the value of the background's depth buffer at the (x, y) position?

Labels are an interesting idea.. Some care may need to be taken with the label names. I can't remember Manny's comment about the object there, but I would probably be inclined to call it a "painting" rather than a poster.
It would be nice to have a sort of sentence line going there. At the moment it looks a little "debuggy" there somehow, but changing the position might help with that.

   

quote:

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Originally posted by counting_pine

Regarding point-and-click: is it just an (x, z) coordinate needed? Could that potentially be found by taking the value of the background's depth buffer at the (x, y) position?

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quote:

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Originally posted by counting_pine

Labels are an interesting idea.. Some care may need to be taken with the label names. I can't remember Manny's comment about the object there, but I would probably be inclined to call it a "painting" rather than a poster.

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quote:

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Originally posted by counting_pine

It would be nice to have a sort of sentence line going there. At the moment it looks a little "debuggy" there somehow, but changing the position might help with that.

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Meanwhile, i've worked a bit on the inventory:


My first intention was to use images of the objects, but they would need to be done, and using instead directly the models is much more complex.
_________________
I can't reap hamburger - cows are a whole other bureau, not to mention the lettuce.

http://lostsoulsalliance.wordpress.com

   

I see, so this project's mainly geared towards changing the engine to do more work with existing data.
Is it areas with no valid depth you're taking about?
Maybe those bits could be redrawn or extrapolated?
Or as a backup, can it use nearby walkboxes or something? (That's originally what I thought you'd tried, for some reason.)

   

quote:

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I see, so this project's mainly geared towards changing the engine to do more work with existing data.

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quote:

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Is it areas with no valid depth you're taking about?
Maybe those bits could be redrawn or extrapolated?
Or as a backup, can it use nearby walkboxes or something? (That's originally what I thought you'd tried, for some reason.)

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quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
I'm talking about places like this. Since you cannot see Manny's feet you cannot tell him to go back to the center of the office.

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That may be possible but honestly i'm not so sure anymore a point and click interface, even if feasible, it's the way to go. I read up a bit on the internet on why grim fandango is so good (a thing i experienced but i couldn't explain), and adding an interface like that could jeopardise that. see especially this.
_________________
I can't reap hamburger - cows are a whole other bureau, not to mention the lettuce.

http://lostsoulsalliance.wordpress.com

   

I think it could be argued that controlling Manny with the keyboard/joypad is perhaps an element that sacrifices usability for diegesis..
EDIT: and a mouse interface might actually serve to improve diegesis.

Maybe instead of giving textual overlays, it would be more diegetic to just have a cursor (EDIT: mouse pointer) that subtly highlights over usable objects, or maybe that can cause Manny to turn his head to look at it? (The body too when necessary, so he's not too owl-like, or too reminiscent of the Exorcist..)
I guess that would be a significant step up in complexity from just having an overlay on the screen though.

Last edited by counting_pine on Fri Dec 14, 2012 2:32 am; edited 2 times in total

   

mmmh, i'm not sure i understood. do you mean the mouse cursor? that wouldn't be so comfortable if you have your hands on the keyboard to mvoe manny.
_________________
I can't reap hamburger - cows are a whole other bureau, not to mention the lettuce.

http://lostsoulsalliance.wordpress.com

   

quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
That may be possible but honestly i'm not so sure anymore a point and click interface, even if feasible, it's the way to go. I read up a bit on the internet on why grim fandango is so good (a thing i experienced but i couldn't explain), and adding an interface like that could jeopardise that. see especially this.

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Showing the labels is very good idea and I would also welcome possibility to highlight all active objects on the screen after pressing a key. About the mouse controls - I would welcome this option too.

   

quote:

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Originally posted by giucam
mmmh, i'm not sure i understood. do you mean the mouse cursor? that wouldn't be so comfortable if you have your hands on the keyboard to mvoe manny.

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This is simply awesome. You've done some amazing work here, and I love seeing this game updated with some of the features it deserves; with a couple tweaks like these, this game can easily go from "one of the best games of all time" to "the best game of all time."

That said, it would be awesome if you could post some binaries (if you have the time). Compiling ResidualVM is a bit of a headache (though worth it for these new features).
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My name is Dain, and I am many things: a security officer for a Microsoft data center, a writer for iPhone Life magazine, and a passionate gaming and computing enthusiast.

   

Well, i use Linux and imho it's easy to compile ResidualVM with every distro. I also have a Windows installation, but, as you said, it's a headache and i don't have the needed tools.

That said, the inventory modifications are not ResidualVM modifications, but game data modifications, so they will just be shipped as a datausr.lab file.
_________________
I can't reap hamburger - cows are a whole other bureau, not to mention the lettuce.

http://lostsoulsalliance.wordpress.com