Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’m not sure that’s true. They said they were actually very successful in their efforts to recover source assets. It may be that re-rendering was a lot more work than just pushing a button like we think and they decided it wasn’t worth cutting into the budget in other ways since the backgrounds largely hold up pretty well.

More than the aspect ratio or even the resolution, I think they would have benefitted the most from being rendered in 24-bit color without all the nasty banding and dithering. Especially for a game with so many noirish, dark scenes the extra colors would have helped.

Well I’d imagine one would simply use an old version of the software to load the files. But it might not be render and go. They might have to relight and set up shots again in a way that could make it hard to get the exact same look, or at least require some effort to do.

I’m speculating here, but it’s probably safe to assume there’s at least some significant amount of work that would go into it beyond render time or else they would have.

For purposes of this post, I should explain what I mean by certain terms. I’ll use a cutscene as an example of the steps of the process:

working files—> renders—> final cutscene movie file

working files: Any files pertaining to 3-D models, textures, materials, lighting, animation, and scene information. Essentially the building blocks of the cutscene.
renders: Rendered image files, created from the aforementioned building blocks. Each image file is one frame of the cutscene.
final cutscene movie file: Combines all the frames into a movie. Usually adds compression to save space (since otherwise the movie file would be huge), though this depends on the settings used.

Game-making techniques from 1998 are outside my realm of knowledge, but I think the process was essentially the same even back then.

Frogacuda - 28 January 2015 06:37 PM

I’m not sure that’s true. They said they were actually very successful in their efforts to recover source assets. It may be that re-rendering was a lot more work than just pushing a button like we think and they decided it wasn’t worth cutting into the budget in other ways since the backgrounds largely hold up pretty well.

According to Vic at Double Fine, they did not recover all the original renders for the backgrounds. Also, he uses the term “renders,” so he probably means they found a few (but not enough) rendered image files of the backgrounds that look ever-so-slightly better than the in-game ones, which may have been compressed to ship on the game disc. He doesn’t specify if they have the working files or not (from which the original background renders were made), so it’s possible they do or they don’t. Either way, a complete set of working files are what they’d need to make major upgrades like re-rendering 1440x1080 versions.

For the cutscenes, Brandon at DF explains that they recovered some cutscene renders that weren’t yet compressed and so had fewer artifacts and less color banding, and thus looked a little bit nicer. Brandon doesn’t specify the resolution, but I think what Double Fine found might even still be just 640x480 rendered image files because those renders would have been targeted for use in the original game. Those uncompressed renders would have been the second-to-last step in the process before the final cutscenes that shipped with the original game. (See above: working files—> renders—> final cutscene movie file.)  So I don’t think we know that Double Fine had the working files from which to create re-renders in the case of the cutscenes, either. They just made less compressed videos with the rendered images they had.

And yes, even if all the working files exist, there could be complications with running old software (I believe the original team used Softimage on Silicon Graphics machines), fixing any broken texture and material references, etc. These hurdles could be overcome, but as you and tomimt say, a re-render may not be as easy as it sounds.

Polygon has done one of their great, in-depth articles about the behind-the-scenes process of the remaster. It covers how the deal between Disney, Sony, and Double Fine came about, and how some assets like the sound files were recovered.

I was wondering, was any ResidualVM code used? Often, re-released on GOG use ScummVM or even Dosbox, so I was wondering if that was the case here.

I’m playing this, along with my son, on the PS4. We’re a good chunk of the way into Rubacava. For me it’s bringing back lots of memories. I had forgotten how stylish and gorgeous the gameworld is. (We’ve encountered one minor graphical glitch so far.)

The dialog is funny and character-revealing, and occasionally even poetic. I remembered the open mic sequence where you hear the reference to dancing the grim fandango, and got to hear it again. Some of the achievements are related to getting deep into the dialog trees. The achievements section tells you whether others who are playing the game also found that achievement. Some of the achievements we’ve acquired are extremely rare—though that might be because the game just released and other gamers are doing a quick playthrough their first time through.

Some of the puzzles are tough, though I remember a few solutions, which helps. I confess to consulting a walkthrough occasionally.

Is anyone else playing the PS4 version?

Becky - 30 January 2015 07:38 AM

Is anyone else playing the PS4 version?

I’m also playing that version, game looks great on TV, I do ended up using the black borders, Didn’t liked the stretched to fullcreen look or the drawed borders it had at first. The achievements deep in the dialogue trees are a nice touch, another incentive to listen the great script. I agree that it is bringing a lot of good memories, it’s been years sice I played this.

Is it possible to make Manny run using the point and click controls?

Antrax - 31 January 2015 01:37 AM

Is it possible to make Manny run using the point and click controls?

It is yeah. You double click. On mac though it doesn’t always work which is frustrating so I have to hold shift.

bokkie - 29 January 2015 01:57 PM

I was wondering, was any ResidualVM code used? Often, re-released on GOG use ScummVM or even Dosbox, so I was wondering if that was the case here.

They have full access to the source code so they didn’t need to use ResidualVM in this case as they could update the code as needed to make their own executable.  They did enlist the help of Tobias Pfaff, the programmer who made Grim Mouse, the modification of ResidualVM that gave the original Grim Fandango point and click controls.  However, anything he helped out with would have been with the original code and not ResidualVM code.

But residualvms engine already was more advanced than their own grime engine, so it wouldn’t be weird to use that as a starting point. Higher resolution was already possible for example.

I love DF but I’m really disappointed with this remaster. Besides the character model changes and some lighting additions, there is no additional changes. No 16:9 resolution, same exact backgrounds, and to make things worse, I experienced some graphical bugs and gameplay bugs that were not in the original. Such a shame for such a classic game. It deserves better

Dont forget: the game wasnt available in any modern distribution. This remake doesnt offer much in the way of differences, and it doesnt really need to.. its more important that its available to buy. And any new distribution likely wouldv resulted in some glitchyness that they’ll have to iron out. A straight digital port wouldv looked worse, and cost the same on steam/gog.