After my last post, which was fueled by the conversations in this thread on Adventure Gamers, a lot of people yelled at me for being stupid. I told them no they were stupid - possibly hella stupid - and those screenshots looked pre-rendered and I feared the game would be super outdated and scare people away. The secret answer: I was stupid, not you. Sam & Max 2’s own Mike Stemmle has written in to explain the real story behind the technology behind the new Sam & Max title:

“Actually, it’s full motion video with a toon shader; you just can’t tell from those scanned screenshots you’ve been seeing. What’s missing from those shots is the surround smell technology and the motion-captured animation of a naked midget in a rabbit costume.

Kidding.

For the record, Sam & Max Freelance Police uses an honest-to-George real-time 3D renderer. Its “so-pretty-it-must-be-pre-rendered” look is achieved via a precarious balance of shaders, bump maps, lightmaps, and a little thing we like to call sweet, sweet lovin.”

Thanks once more to Ronda from LucasArts for pestering Mike Stemmle until he finally squealed. I hope everyone is now out dancing naked in the street (possibly naked in a rabbit costume, if that’s possible).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2004 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Sam & Max News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.