I just wanted to let you know that Escape from Monkey Island is in the Final
Candidate stage of conversion, thanks to Jesse Spears and Phil Sulak of
Westlake Interactive for their hard work. Barring any unforeseen issues,
Escape from Monkey Island should ship in less than two weeks.
The following are the recently updated and final system requirements for
Escape from Monkey Island:
-Hardware 3D acceleration required (ATI Rage Pro, 128 or Radeon; 3dfx Voodoo
3 or better)
-G3 processor at 233 MHz or faster (333 MHz recommended)
-64 MB of Memory (96 recommended)
-8x CD-ROM
-Hard Drive with 100 MB minimum free space (500 MB recommended)
-4 MB VRAM (8 MB VRAM recommended)
-Open GL 1.2.1
Aspyr also passed along a nice little interview with Phil and Jesse from Westlake, giving more information about working on this port:You guys are very close to having a final candidate version of Escape
from Monkey Island. Looking back at conversion, what was the most time
consuming portion and why?
SPEARS: umm, if you mean which portion as in which Milestone, then getting
to First Playable.
If you mean which part of the code conversion itself took the most
time, I'd say that was a tossup between: doing the byte swapping,
getting scripts working (and all the mucking about with them to try
to figure out why they do the funky things they do), and getting all
the OpenGL/DrawSprocket setup code working properly on all possible
configurations.
SULAK: The hardest part of the code I dealt with was sound, and
specifically the MP3 music. There's a ton of music in EFMI, and most of it
"loops".
I initially used QuickTime to play the MP3 music, and that's what we
demo'd with at MacWorld San Francisco. I ended up switching to an MP3
system after MacWorld.
What was your first impression of the game?
SPEARS: Very pretty graphics. Extremely funny voice acting/dialog.
What feature(s) do you think gamers will appreciate and why?
SPEARS: The Humor. This is the first game I've found myself laughing out
loud at in a very long time :)
SULAK: The Monkey music is excellent (it's been nominated for a few
awards), so I feel all the extra work has been worth it:-)
Shiver me timbers! With all the Pirate slang, have you found yourselves
or any of the Mac beta testers started to sound like Captain Hook?
SPEARS: Yarr!
Yes, actually...quite a bit of Pirate noises from Phil, and most of
the testers seems to be getting into it too.
Oh, and Joyce (my wife) and I have adapted the phrase "That's the
second biggest monkey head I've ever seen" into many of our
conversations (insert whatever in place of "monkey head"...it works
in so many places ;).
A huge thanks go out to Aspyr's Amy Torres for the great information! If you're looking for even more on EMI, check out IMG's preview of the game. Escape from Monkey Island is available for preorder at Aspyr's site for $45, and should be ready in a matter of weeks.
