Oooh, Ben There, Dan That!, eh? Ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, didn’t it? I wonder how veritable heroes Dan and Ben get out of that one.
Shame there’ll never ever be a sequel, simply because Donationware doesn’t really bring in enough cold, hard cash to make it economically viable.
That said, Ben There, Dan That!’s ‘big number two’ Ben and I are meeting in a pub tomorrow night, and item #27 on the agenda (we have an agenda) is to discuss the vague possibility of sitting on our hands and vehemently not making a follow up to pointy-clicky smash hit Ben There, Dan That!.
Out of pure interest — because, as I said, there’s no way we’re making a sequel so get that out of your system immediately – what would you want from a Ben There, Dan That! sequel?
Already on the list:
- Smaller and tighter.
- Better puzzles.
- Marginally nicer graphics.
- More jokes about wanking less jokes about wanking.
Where do you think Ben There, Dan That! could have been improved? Likewise, what stuff did you really like, and would want to see carried over to a non-existent sequel? Now’s your chance to speak out because it turns out we have a comments section.
Please note: we’ve already had every idea ever, so any good ideas you might happen to enter into the comments section below was technically our idea first, so we’re totally stealing it.
25 people responded to this post...
Needs more cripples
Amazing.
BTTF type parody stuff where you are doing the background work to scenes from the first BTDT without being seen by your past selves. Dan’s arms disappear because of some time-paradox that you must fix. (it’s actually him with no arms in the T-Rex suit). This also makes doing the light-switches more of a puzzle.
Also, evil moustaches in wheelchairs.
I trust you to make ‘more of the same’ feel ‘fresh and original’ with witty words and that and stuff.
Too much in the way of crowbarred pop-culture reference shoved IN YOUR FACE would be a bit much. I thought you handled it nicely in the first one - MORE OF THAT PLEASE, MARSHALL AND WARD.
Does that help? I think it helps. I’m good, me.
In summary: more ‘Airplane!’, less ‘Hot Shots, part Deux!’
Walkcycles unchanged, please :D
The More Thought-Through Reply:
Really, my only suggestion is what you’re already planning on doing: tightening things up a bit. Also to keep the vast number of unique responses, but I doubt you were planning on changing that ;)
An additional point: a lot of people seem to have problems with the Sierra-right-click-to-cycle-style of GUI (in general, not just in BTDT); I’m personally fine with cycling, but since you’re in the planning stages you could consider whether a verb coin, or some other GUI, might work just as well, and please more people.
Yeah, I really like the Sam and Max interface - it feels to me like the pinnacle of pointy-clicky interactioning.
I don’t really like SCUMM bars, they feel too clunky and there’s a lot of real-estate to mouse over to get your responses, and I don’t really like the Full Throttle approach… what else is there?
Another popular one is the rightclick-examine-leftclick-interact one, but that wouldn’t suit at all since it limits the number of interactions possible (which was one of best parts of BTDT ;)).
What problems do you have with the FT verbcoin? (I haven’t played that in aaaaages so I can’t remember it too well). I’m not a huge verbcoin fan myself, but it does have its plus points, and I think a similar system would be the best alternative to the S&M interface, if you do decide to change it :) One benefit is that it would accommodate the extra Dan cursor comfortably.
I never got the hang of holding down the mouse button to select an option, it always felt weird. IF WE DID A SEQUEL, I’d look into it. Maybe there’s a whole new way that noone’s thought of yet.
Voiceover.
Also, yes please may I have another?
I wanted to Dan more stuff. He only got to help twice.
I realize that you’re guys and your primary audience is made of men, but seeing the occasional woman would be nice, instead of only two at the very end. If that’s too much more stuff to Dan, for sure.
What you’re saying is that there should be a bit where I sex women, throughout?
The first biggest cow head either of you has ever seen. Please.
[...] fellows at Zombie Cow, behind the completely fantastic Ben There, Dan That(!), have announced the news that there definitely won’t be a sequel to the adventure game. No sirree. Not a chance. And [...]
hows about a game of insult croquet? :P
To comment on the discussion between dan and MashPotato, I just want to say I agree with dan: the scroll-through is my favourite point-and-clicky-type option that people have thought up so far, with maybe the exception of right-click-left-click, which is too limited.
Although I can live with the others, too. Maybe you could come up with your own, original, never-before-thought of method that solves all problems and makes everyone happy? Come on, you can do it! You guys are smart and creative!
What I would like to see is not only using Dan more, but also in better ways: It seems like you only got Ben to refuse to use the light switch as an excuse to use Dan in a puzzle. But what I’d like to see is a scenario where it’s something that you NEED two people to solve. Like if you could ask Dan to distract someone while Ben goes and steals something - although maybe something more original and funnier than that - that was just an example.
No need to change anything. I thought the graphics were spot on for the humour, the dialogue was fantastic and the puzzles just right.
More of the same, frankly. I’ll buy that for a dollar. Sod it. A whole shiny quid. Maybe more if I’m working by the time it comes out.
Background music! Ben There, Dan That! was deathly silent for most of the game, with the exception of the menu and the cut-scenes. I was thinking of putting on some of my own music to fill the sonic void, but I figured that it would clash with the cut-scene music when I got to the next one. Good background music greatly improves the character of the game.
Yeah, unfortunately music files are massive, costly to produce and irritating if short and repetitive. I’m looking into more music for the sequel, but there’s no way it’ll be a continual loop. We’ll see what happens.
I did my best to put sound effects in throughout to fill the silence, but unfortunately on a budget of ZERO, music’s the first thing to suffer.
Dan sez music files are:
- Massive
Ah, what’s a little disk space in this day and age? If you’re really worried about it you can crunch down mp3 files to a pretty small size with only noticable (but not horrible) degradation.
- Costly to produce
Don’t you have a musical pal who you can volunteer to produce music for your game for fun, fame and free? If not, you can try finding one on the Internets.
- Irritating if short and repetitive
True.
Oh, and zero budget? Didn’t you get, ooh, at least several POUNDS in donations?
Ok, so let’s say you compress five minutes of .ogg to shit and they take 3mb each, and I somehow convince someone to make, what 20 tracks? That’s 100 minutes, and about 60Mb of pure music and a dev time of probably 6-7 months (assuming I’m blagging a friend to do it in his spare time). Also, you’re looking at a download of 80meg+ being downloaded 6000 times a month, which would rape my bandwidth something rotten ten times over.
BTDT was built on zero budget, yes. If you count my time, it cost thousands. Even if I spent all the money I’ve earned through donations on a professional musician to do music for me, it’d cover about five minutes worth of music, at mates’ rates.
Unfortunately, it’s just not feasible, I’m afraid.
Fair enough.
There is something that we all have now that we did not all have back when the old P&C games were originally around, and that thing is mousewheels. Scrolling through actions would be a lot quicker (and feel more natural) than clicking through.
That’s already in the sequel, Unless. I don’t remember coding it, so it must be a whizzy new AGS feature…!
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