ThimbleWeed park in 640x480 on a Commodore 1942 CRT

I couldn’t resist trying this out!

Some slight shimmering - not sure if this is because:

  1. Thimbleweed Park really doesn’t want to run at 64x480 (doesn’t scale that low but full-screen does work)
  2. Windows 10 doesn’t want to do 640x480 (no option in drop-down)
  3. The Nvidia card with the custom 640x480 resolution is doing some down-scaling
  4. The DisplayPort to VGA adapter is trying to downscale.

Still it is playable… and so retro.

[)amien

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A really nice idea that brings back a lot of memories. :slight_smile: Thanks for sharing!

Hehehe. Neat! I always keep a CRT around to play my old consoles. I am a big fan of the Mattel Intellivision (and home-brew programmer too) and once in a while I launch the console on my 32" Sony Trinitron television set. Now, that’s a glorious picture – best of breed from a long forgotten age.

I must admit, I never considered hooking up my PC to the TV to play Thimbleweed Park (or any of my old adventure games) for extra retro-pleasure. I think I may just have to. :slight_smile:

dZ.

Looks great! Are the dialog lines legible?

Against all odds, an authentic 4:3 CRT display is still incomparable, if you want to play a point & click game! Unfortunately, I don’t have one any more - only a ten-years-old 4:3 tube TV, predestined for old consoles.
Then again, my eyes are more grateful when I play on a modern LCD device.

Takes me right back to the days when it felt like there were little creatures living inside your monitor instead of…you know…flat projections.

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CRT TV’s won’t typically do 640x480 VGA resolution - the Commodore 1942 is a bi-sync that does usual 15KHz 480i TV plus 31.5Khz VGA. Would be interesting to see if you could get it running on a regular TV tho.

There are HDMI to Composite converters, so it might work, too. Though it may result in a letterboxed signal.

I should add a Prefs option to play floppy disk accessing sounds when the game loads data.

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No joke, I was actually kind of missing that! You have the one from the post credit scene already so…

Me too. :slight_smile: After asking (on Twitter or in the blog?) for a floppy sound, I thought that we would hear that sound every time the game is loading data… :slight_smile:

Damn it, OK, I’m going to add this.

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Hm… I would love to see this feature in the game and the other TWP fans will stone me to death for the following, but: Instead of adding new little features and stuff like this, why don’t put the time for the work into the ports and a brand new game from Ron Gilbert? (I’m talking about the features that are not necessary for the game itself like the floppy sound or the pixel perfect mode.)

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What makes you so sure that´s not exactly what he´s doing? Asking for a friend…

Adding little stuff to the game now might be easier than starting a new game from scratch?

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…especially when it comes to some few sound effects. As we know, some new ports are already in the works. And, he can not start a new game project until he has “opened” the TWP Arcade. :wink:

Because doing this takes 20 minutes, doing a new game takes 2 years.

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Well, Ron said that TWP sales were not enough to start working on a new game right now, so I think that it makes sense to add new stuff & embellishments to the existing game, assuming that this wouldn’t postpone the ports.

I should hope that with a stable engine and mature production pipeline, that the next game would take less time than the first.

dZ.

You’re right. 1.9 years.

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Well, you see, it’s not all so bleak. Thank God for little favors. :slight_smile: LOL!

dZ.

The problem is, that adding new features could introduce new bugs or even break the game at a place where you haven’t thought about. So the “20 minutes” could be “one day” or more. (But of course I don’t know your/Ron’s code… :))

Yes and no. That depends on the stuff you add. :slight_smile: And you could add new stuff nearly forever, because everyone has new ideas. If we look at TWP, Ron had already added a lot of new stuff or is planning new stuff. A good example is …

… the arcade. Adding a floppy sound might take 20 minutes. But then there is the Arcade, the Ransom-swear-DLC, …

He could use the time to work on new prototypes, fix bugs, polish the ports and do more ports or other things that generates (more) money for a new game.

Beside that, I read on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/grumpygamer/status/888181180922642433

I don’t want that Ron ends up with a occupational burnout…

/Edit: Just to clarify: These are just suggestions and thoughts. I would love to see an open Arcade. :slight_smile: