Lucasfilm Games Arrive for the Macintosh

By converting our adventure games for the Macintosh, we think we'll also convert a lot of Mac users into new Lucasfilm fans.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom are our second and third games for the Mac (Pipe Dream was our first).  
Soon, Mac users will also be able to play The Secret of Monkey Island.  In converting these games, we've preserved all the 
gameplay of the PC versions.  Not a scene, not a puzzle was cut.
     
In adapting the games for a new system, though, we faced a whole new set of challenges.  "What we had to do was find a 
way to make the games work using a Mac-like interface," says David Fox, producer of Loom and Indy.

"Our SCUMM system is inherently 'point-and-click,' which is what the Mac is all about.  But whenever you bring SCUMM over
to a new computer system, you have to create a new interpreter that works in that system."

Indy came first.  "With Indy, at first we created it with our standard look, the standard interface that we've used in other versions.
Then we brought it to a meeting of a Macintosh users group here in Marin County.  And we got lots of reactions."

Serious Mac users are a loyal bunch, and they want the programs they buy to take full advantage of the Macintosh's easy-to-
use interface -- after all, that's why they chose the Mac over less expensive computers.  Software developers often try out their
products at a meeting of a users group, knowing that members are sure to be vocal about what they like and don't like.

"Even though it was point-and-click, they said it looked too much like the PC version," says David.  "For example, we still used
white and light-colored letters on a black background, and that was too kludgy-looking.

"So we came up with this scheme, and Eric Johnston - the assistant programmer - did a great job implementing it.  Basically
we just changed how the bottom of the screen looked.  We put buttons around.  We put the inventory into a scrolling
interface, and made use of the pull-down menu stuff for all the important things like saving, loading, options for sound and music,
things like that.  Ron Baldwin did most of the changes in the SCUMM scripting.  Once we made those changes, people were
happy with it."

The hardest part of converting Indy for the Macintosh was that the screen is a different size from the other computers we've
made games for.  In some cases, we had to do special versions of the artwork, so that nothing important would be lost beyond
the left and right edges of the screen.  "We already had some of the rooms scrolling," says David, "so it wasn't a huge rewrite.
Every room that already scrolled on the wider screen would scroll on the narrower Mac screen, so those were okay."

With Indy under our belts, translating Loom was easier.  "My guess is that Loom in some ways might be more Mac-like
than Indy," says David.

We'd already given Loom a very easy-to-use interface.  "It was already all point-and-click," says David, "so there really wasn't
anything we had to do to 'Macify' it."

Of course, the game still had to be adapted to the different screen size.  "We had to change the size of the 'distaff' -- a magic
staff you use throughout the game -- to fit it on the screen.  And there's a window in beginner's mode that records musical notes
for you and makes the game a little easier to play.  But there wasn't any good place on the screen to keep it.  So we took
advantage of the Mac interface to make that a moveable window, so you can actually shift it around during the game wherever
you want to."

Loom depends heavily on music, not just as an accompaniment but as an integral part of the story.  "So we wanted to take
advantage of the Mac's musical capabilities as much as we could.  Apple's system 6.0.7 has a sound manager which lets us
do things with music beyond what we could do in Indy.  If you have one of the faster machines, Loom gives you music using
digitized samples instead of waveforms.  On higher-end Macs, like the Mac II series, you get four-voice music."

Initial reactions to Loom and Indy have been positive, but Mac users had one request:  "Give us more!"  So we decided to do a
Mac version of The Secret of Monkey Island.

Before starting work on Monkey Island, programmer Eric Johnston prowled around the online services.  "I wanted to see what
people were saying about Loom and Indy," says Eric.  "If they had complaints or things they'd like to see done differently,  I
wanted to keep that in mind."  Getting feedback from customers online allowed Eric to begin the project with a clear idea of
what customers wanted.

"Some people didn't like the fact that these games took up the whole screen, and they wanted to be able to see the menubar."

Monkey Island will have three different window sizes:  a full screen 640x400 resolution window which shows the menubar; a
smaller, 320x200 moveable window; and an intermediate window which accommodates 12-inch monitors.

Our customers also told us that they wanted to see a 256 color Mac game.  Now that we're using 256 color art for our PC
games, we can do the same with our Mac conversions.  Says Eric, "When we were doing Loom and Indy, there just wasn't a
strong market for color-only Mac games.  Now that the LC computer is out there, a lot more Mac users have color capability,
and it looks like it's possible now."

Although we've used the same art for Monkey Island Mac that we used for the PC version, Eric has found ingenious ways to
"Macify" it.  "I used a smoothing technique that takes the rough edges out of the art and the text, giving them a more Mac-
like look," says Eric.  "We've learned a lot from our customers, and we've made Monkey Island our best Mac game yet.  With
continuous improvements on the SCUMM system, all our games are getting better -- and we're getting more efficient at
doing quality conversions."

Monkey Island for the Mac will be released in the first quarter of 1992.