Personally, I think it would be good if everyone calmed down.
Yes, the frame-rate is choppy. This is somewhat due to the Wii, but may also be due to coding. (As many good looking Wii games have smooth frame-rates.) The voices are highly compressed, due to WiiWare file size limits.
As far as people making grandiose slams on the Wii (if you bought one you're stupid, it's a piece of crap, it should have been on XBLA, etc.), your fanboyism appears to be showing. Someone somewhere decided to put it on WiiWare. Compaining about it won't change that. And they're not just going to cancel it.
Frame rate issues will probably get sorted out eventually
I guess there is Hope.
I would be fine with the graphics and sound if it played smooth. I am still going to finish the game, and more then likely I will get all the Episodes on Wii. it is just annoying that there is this issue on a console.
Might be worth for you scrapping the Wii, it will save you more time for PC, it will avoid unhappy customers, as we say here, either one does it right or not at all, and having a game lag on console, its unacceptable by any standarts.
Might be best to just refund Wii owners and scrap it on wii
Anyone having the skills of moving verb wheel and that inventory over into a screenshot of Tales of Monkey Island, im sure it would fit PERFECTLY!
I hope that doesn't have to happen. Wii owners like me missed out on the lovely pre-order PC special edition just to play it on wii, and as such will be severely dissapointed.
It would be better if they could release each episode in two parts, at half the cost, although that wouldn't work properly. I am personally fine with the wiiware version from what i've seen of it, and i think that alot of the problem is down to owners of high-powered PC's sneering at the shortcoming's of the wii. Sure, it's a noticeable downgrade, and annoying for us europeans who are paying twice as much, but the quality doesn't seem that bad, definately not any worse than the PS2 EFMI graphical bug wise anyways.
That said, a reduction in the prices of future wiiware episodes would help soothe the pain ;-)
Graphics and textures I don't mind. Sound does matter though, and I'm getting the impression there's not much that can be done. That's a shame. I'm glad to hear there's hope in regards to the lag issue, though.
I'll still purchase future episodes on the Wii, because I support Telltale and the way they've brought back adventure games.
Graphics and textures I don't mind. Sound does matter though, and I'm getting the impression there's not much that can be done. That's a shame. I'm glad to hear there's hope in regards to the lag issue, though.
I'll still purchase future episodes on the Wii, because I support Telltale and the way they've brought back adventure games.
I just wish that, if they had to go with a Wii release, that they'd gone with a Wii disc rather than Wiiware. From what I can tell, a lot of the problems with the game aren't the fault of the Wii itself, but the 40mb filesize limit on WiiWare.
I'll still purchase future episodes on the Wii, because I support Telltale and the way they've brought back adventure games.
I don't think I'll be buying the rest of the episodes - unless I hear significantly different feedback here from anyone willing to buy the next episode when its released for the Wii.
I don't think I'll be buying the rest of the episodes - unless I hear significantly different feedback here from anyone willing to buy the next episode when its released for the Wii.
Me. The wiiware version does not suck, infact it is the best I ever seen in a while. I havent experienced any sound or visual glitches that wasnt in at least another wii telltale title, so that isnt the game's fault. I dont know why trolls complain about it, oh yeah, they just hate the wii they're mad that it is so far the number 1 console there is so far.:mad:
Me. The wiiware version does not suck, infact it is the best I ever seen in a while. I havent experienced any sound or visual glitches that wasnt in at least another wii telltale title, so that isnt the game's fault. I dont know why trolls complain about it, oh yeah, they just hate the wii they're mad that it is so far the number 1 console there is so far.:mad:
It is kind of a sub-par port, but I would still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a PC that can run the game. I have both versions and have played through it on both with no trouble, the sound and occasional framerate hiccups are a bit annoying, but it's tolerable, for me, at least.
Anyone having audio issues, like pops and cracks during gameplay, should check their audio config in the Wii settings. I had somehow accidentally set the audio to 'mono', and was experiencing VERY poor audio. Once I put it back to 'stereo' all my audio problems went away, except for maybe the compression artifacts in the voiceovers.
Yeah, the game has some technical issues. Yeah, it's because of the WiiWare limitations. But I'm still enjoying it just as much as I would a smoother, less laggy version.
Wii bashing is pointless. The Wii was obviously not made for power, just innovation. This has been pointed out many times, too many times, and should probably stop. I'm sure that there are reasons for WiiWare file limitations, reasons we may never be aware of.
It's not Telltale's fault, it's the shitty Wii's graphical capabilities that are at fault. They should just release TOMI on 360 and PS3, it might actually work properly.
Oh still release on PC. PC is best console by far. Even though it's not a console.
Wait, people still play the Wii? I thought that novelty died out. It's lost HUGE popularity in Japan, to the point where the 360 and PS3 are outselling it.
I made a thread about this in the support forum thinking it might be a problem with my game or system but since it seems the problem is universal I am pretty upset about it.
I don't know if it varies system to system but when I played it it was terrible. Parts of scenes would hang and I would just get audio. The terrible graphics and audio alone I could deal with, but the hanging and the lag and the constant loading make it impossible for me to play it any more. It's a shame because I was really looking forward to this and I am uncertain if it is worth it to buy it over again on the PC.
I really think they should do something about this. There has already been at least one fantastic adventure game released for the wii on disc so the hardware can't be blamed and they knew the size limits going into it so that can't be blamed either.
It's not Telltale's fault, it's the shitty Wii's graphical capabilities that are at fault. They should just release TOMI on 360 and PS3, it might actually work properly.
Oh still release on PC. PC is best console by far. Even though it's not a console.
Wait, people still play the Wii? I thought that novelty died out. It's lost HUGE popularity in Japan, to the point where the 360 and PS3 are outselling it.
I'm a big fan of the Monkey Island series, but I'm also a Mac user.
I actually got myself 500 Wii points in advance in order to get these games. But after reading what you guys think about it, I think I'll wait.
But WHAT am I wating for? The day I get a PC, the day it gets released for Mac or the day a better Wii version is released?
Check out Crossover (Reported to work) or bootcamp, or parallels. I know for a fact that it works if you just slap a windows XP on your computer (granted that it's an intel machine)
But as far as I know Tales of Monkey Island isn't OUT in Japan.
And again, the MACHINE selling a lot doesn't have anything to do with people playing the Wii. What their argument is would be game attach rate, especially for Wiiware titles.
Playing devil's advocate for console bashers isn't likely the best idea, but the lack of logic on the side of those on the "right" side is annoying me.
Wait, people still play the Wii? I thought that novelty died out. It's lost HUGE popularity in Japan, to the point where the 360 and PS3 are outselling it.
People still play wii, I still play wii. Wii sales are still beating xboxes and ps3s combined last I checked
Stop bashing nintendo, people. Sure, the file size is limiting, but every company makes stupid choices.
Examples:
Apple - Switching to intel, rendering old software useless.
Microsoft - Releasing vista too quick
Youtube - Limiting videos to 10 minutes
Lucasarts - (If I need to tell you what they did, you shouldn't be here)
Nobody put a gun to telltales head and made them port it to wii. If a console can't handle a game, that's that. Don't release a game that is hardly playable and charge $10 for 1/5th of it.
The wii is my only way of running Tales of Monkey Island, as it isn't playable in OSX. (I don't blame ANYONE for that) And I must say, I am extremely disappointed that this game is poorly ported.
People still play wii, I still play wii. Wii sales are still beating xboxes and ps3s combined last I checked
Indeed they are, and with MH3 on the Japanese horizon [with a choice of it being budded with a Japan exclusive Black Wii] then Wii sales will continue to outsell the other consoles over there, lie it has done for most of the last 3 years. Excluding, of course, the handhelds, which are KING over there. :cool:
No excuse for Nintendo forcing Telltale [and other devs] compressing reasonably small games into tiny messes with the 40MB limit, though [or whatever it actually amounts to on the Wii, I wouldn't know, I avoided it for the PC version].
i downloaded and played the whole game yesterday. I don't understand the hate of a lot of people here, yes there are frame rate problems but they are far from unplayable. I was completely satisfied with this download and I am excited to play the next chapter on the wii as well
Maybe I am missing something, but it does NOT run this smooth on my Wii
If only it would run that smooth then I would be a happy camper! I get lots of video and audio lag... sometimes the voice goes into a loop for 5 to 6 times saying the same word over and over.
But as far as I know Tales of Monkey Island isn't OUT in Japan.
And again, the MACHINE selling a lot doesn't have anything to do with people playing the Wii. What their argument is would be game attach rate, especially for Wiiware titles.
Playing devil's advocate for console bashers isn't likely the best idea, but the lack of logic on the side of those on the "right" side is annoying me.
I wasn't really commenting on anything about the game attach rate etc., just informing Fury that the Wii is still outselling the PS3, 360 in Japan.
I would like to apologize to TellTale. I loaded up the game when I got home from work today, and I don't know if it was a fluke or maybe my wii needed a "reboot" last night, but ToMI was completely playable tonight. It was still a little choppy frame rate, but the 2-4 sec load time in the middle of scenes were not there.
I look forward to playing this game again now, and I am sorry for stating that it was unplayable
But I must say, I'm a little pleasantly surprised to see it coming from you, the individual who claimed "the DS has roughly the same processing power as a toaster[.] The engine and all of the game [Tales] assets would need to be completely remade to work on the DS's lame dual-ARM architecture."
And "An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even."
I promise I'm not trying to start anything. I'm just saying, those were strong words.
An iPhone uses ARM, though a different flavor (DS: an ARM 9, and an ARM 7; iPhone: an ARM11). So maybe it's the DS's dual-ARM that's lame, not ARM itself. But either way it seemed like some mighty strong emotionally charged disparaging words. Clearly the DS is no powerhouse. There'd be no way it could run TMI as is. But still. A toaster?
And regarding the Wii, that the iPhone is more powerful seemed odd to me. So I looked it up. Not that I didn't take your word. It just surprised me. Wondered in what way the iPhone is more powerful.
I've found message boards where random posters claim the iPhone is more powerful than the Wii. But I personally can't find any hard evidence. Of course, I don't work at TellTale, so you might very well know better than I Yare. But some evidence would be nice.
Because from what I've seen, the Wii processor runs faster than the iPhone's. The Wii has a dedicated GPU, whereas I can't see that the iPhone does. The Wii outputs in 640x480 whereas iPhone does 320x480. The iPhone has 128 MB RAM, whereas the Wii only has 88MB RAM with a 3MB texture memory and frame-buffer (holy smokes that's small).
So it seems like the Wii 'wins' in processor and resolution, and the iPhone 'wins' in memory.
So, I dunno. Not trying to start anything. Just didn't want that statement to be put out there without exploring it.
Clearly the XBox360 and PS3 are way more powerful. But, again folks, for better or worse (depending on what systems one has, I suspect has much to do with which option we think is true) the game is on PC and WiiWare. I personally see no need to hate on any of the systems.
And back to the game....it's great guys. Even with the tech issues, it's great.
I am going to try playing in interlace and not progressive and see if that makes a difference on my system. Because, though I don't love the compression, it's the choppiness that distracts me the most.
I do hope now that the "play from SD card" option is available, Nintendo will eventually raise the 40mb cap. It may not happen in time for TMI Season 1. But hopefully down the road. I mean, even a 100mb cap (one-fifth the total internal storage capacity...holy guacamole the Wii has very little internal storage...I wonder if Nintendo didn't expect this downloadable game thing to take off as much as it has) would be welcome.
And regarding the Wii, that the iPhone is more powerful seemed odd to me. So I looked it up. Not that I didn't take your word. It just surprised me. Wondered in what way the iPhone is more powerful.
The extra RAM is really what makes the difference. Of the Wii's 88 MB of RAM, a not insignificant chunk of that is always being used by the OS and is unavailable to developers. The Wii's RAM is also split into two separate banks, each of which has different read/write metrics and you can't really spill from one to another if you need to.
As I said before, everything in computer science is about striking a balance between a small memory footprint, or having blistering fast algorithms. When you are limited in file size and memory footprint, you spend a lot of processing time decompressing things, deciding what needs to be loaded in memory at the moment, streaming things on/off the disk, and so on. If you have more memory, you can use cheaper (or no) compression, spend less time worrying about how much stuff can be loaded, hit the disk less frequently, memoize calculations, and other awesome stuff.
A little bit of RAM goes a huge way in letting you use faster algorithms. It's more important than a faster processor, IMO.
It is strange that Nintendo decided to low-ball the Wii's memory so much. If the processor is like the scientist doing math, and memory is like the chalk-board that he/she uses when doing the math...why make the chalkboard so small. It's like a bottleneck, isn't it? 88MB with 3MB for textures, whereas the PS360 both have 512MB. I get that Nintendo wanted to keep costs down. But even 256MB would, I suspect, make a huge difference.
Anyway, I know you guys are trying to make the best products possible. And TMI is great so far.
I came here looking for info on the PC version after being severely disappointed from the WiiWare version. The game seems fun, but the limits are just unacceptable.
After reading Yare's responses, I will no longer be buying the PC version or any Tell Tale games in the future. If you treat customers by blaming the equipment they use, when you knew damn well what those limits were, it's your own fault for releasing an inferior product.
Good luck, and maybe you will learn from this mistake.
After reading Yare's responses, I will no longer be buying the PC version or any Tell Tale games in the future. If you treat customers by blaming the equipment they use, when you knew damn well what those limits were, it's your own fault for releasing an inferior product.
I'm sorry you feel that way. We needed to release on the Wii, so we also needed to make it work as well as our time and budget constraints allowed. I certainly didn't intend to "blame" anybody for the hardware they use.
I'm kind of sad to see so many people not bothering with the game at all now. I'm wondering if maybe I'm being a bit too particular. The gameplay is still there, it's just the dressing that's somewhat messy. I've confused myself as to how I feel about this Wii port now. I'm disapointed, but extremely happy. I get to play the game now, and that's all I really wanted. It may be me coercing myself into thinking there's been a change, but after changing my Wii's settings to 480i and Stereo, I seem to have improved things. We'll see if I'm crazy or not later.
Concerning the iPhone, another way to think about this is the amount of "resources per pixel" available. The iPhone is responsible for 153,600 pixels where as the Wii is responsible for 307,200 pixels. There's a lot of work that goes into each pixel, and the Wii is outputing twice the content, requiring twice as much work and consuming bigger textures, geometry databases, etc. So in the end, the iPhone needs to do less work, yet has similar resources to the Wii.
I've found message boards where random posters claim the iPhone is more powerful than the Wii. But I personally can't find any hard evidence. Of course, I don't work at TellTale, so you might very well know better than I Yare. But some evidence would be nice.
I am not sure if it is more powerful, since it is hard to judge but my personal guess is both are equally powerful. Lets look at the spec. The wii has a power pc processor roughly at the speed of a G3 and a graphics processor which is around the speed the stuff you were able to get 7 years ago on the PC side.
The IPhone has a samsung ARM which probably is around the same speed as the G3, but has clearly more ram (128MB while the wii has 88MB), the integrated graphics processor
is either a power vr SGX520 (7 MPolys/s, 250Mpx/s)
or a SGX530/1 (14 MPolys/s)
the biggest question here is how good the graphics processor on the wii is Nintendo is tight lipped regarding it.
But since it is very close to the gamecube and that one had following specs
40 (peak) MPolys/s, the wiis should have 60MPoly/s with additional shader functions.
So the wii is more powerful in the graphics departement but the rest is up to par or superior on the iphone. Nintendo aimed rather low on the specs for the wii.
But the biggest problem the devs really faced here, is the Nintendo imposed 40 mb limit for wiiware!
And I stand by them. The Wii and DS are extremely underpowered and their popularity doesn't remove the hardware limitations.
The extra RAM is really what makes the difference. Of the Wii's 88 MB of RAM, a not insignificant chunk of that is always being used by the OS and is unavailable to developers. The Wii's RAM is also split into two separate banks, each of which has different read/write metrics and you can't really spill from one to another if you need to.
As I said before, everything in computer science is about striking a balance between a small memory footprint, or having blistering fast algorithms. When you are limited in file size and memory footprint, you spend a lot of processing time decompressing things, deciding what needs to be loaded in memory at the moment, streaming things on/off the disk, and so on. If you have more memory, you can use cheaper (or no) compression, spend less time worrying about how much stuff can be loaded, hit the disk less frequently, memoize calculations, and other awesome stuff.
A little bit of RAM goes a huge way in letting you use faster algorithms. It's more important than a faster processor, IMO.
Having limited hardware capability doesn't preclude the DS from having an excellent library of games. I could give a crap about the iPhone and its games since it's not primarily a gaming device and doesn't have anywhere near as expansive a library of games of different genres. Graphics and power aren't everything in gaming, it's how the specs they have are utilized to make the best games possible (gameplay). Other developers seemed to have no trouble making great-looking and fun DS games despite the "lame architecture."
Loving the zomg!specs a little too much...and maybe sipping some haterade on the side?
^ If they didn't port it, they'd barely make up for development costs. Though why wasn't XBOX Live arcade chosen? Controls?
Controls probably paid a large part, but, correctme if i'm wrong, but it is getting a releaseon Xbox live next year. It'll probably be like Sam& Max save the world, in the respect that it will be alltogether.
Having limited hardware capability doesn't preclude the DS from having an excellent library of games. I could give a crap about the iPhone and its games since it's not primarily a gaming device and doesn't have anywhere near as expansive a library of games of different genres. Graphics and power aren't everything in gaming, it's how the specs they have are utilized to make the best games possible (gameplay). Other developers seemed to have no trouble making great-looking and fun DS games despite the "lame architecture."
Loving the zomg!specs a little too much...and maybe sipping some haterade on the side?
Ah, but if the console is underpowered in comparison to the other consoles out there, porting becomes a nightmare, i would imagine. The whole structure of the game would have to be reworked. That's the reaason the wii doesn't see too many multiplatform releases shared with PS3/360 (take COD:MW2 for example. COD 5 sold very well on wii, but due to hardware limitations, porting it to wii would take a sgnificant amount of development time, and budget and as such was not faesible. The same can be said about Resident evil 5)
Comments
Yes, the frame-rate is choppy. This is somewhat due to the Wii, but may also be due to coding. (As many good looking Wii games have smooth frame-rates.) The voices are highly compressed, due to WiiWare file size limits.
As far as people making grandiose slams on the Wii (if you bought one you're stupid, it's a piece of crap, it should have been on XBLA, etc.), your fanboyism appears to be showing. Someone somewhere decided to put it on WiiWare. Compaining about it won't change that. And they're not just going to cancel it.
I guess there is Hope.
I would be fine with the graphics and sound if it played smooth. I am still going to finish the game, and more then likely I will get all the Episodes on Wii. it is just annoying that there is this issue on a console.
I hope that doesn't have to happen. Wii owners like me missed out on the lovely pre-order PC special edition just to play it on wii, and as such will be severely dissapointed.
It would be better if they could release each episode in two parts, at half the cost, although that wouldn't work properly. I am personally fine with the wiiware version from what i've seen of it, and i think that alot of the problem is down to owners of high-powered PC's sneering at the shortcoming's of the wii. Sure, it's a noticeable downgrade, and annoying for us europeans who are paying twice as much, but the quality doesn't seem that bad, definately not any worse than the PS2 EFMI graphical bug wise anyways.
That said, a reduction in the prices of future wiiware episodes would help soothe the pain ;-)
I'll still purchase future episodes on the Wii, because I support Telltale and the way they've brought back adventure games.
I don't think I'll be buying the rest of the episodes - unless I hear significantly different feedback here from anyone willing to buy the next episode when its released for the Wii.
Me. The wiiware version does not suck, infact it is the best I ever seen in a while. I havent experienced any sound or visual glitches that wasnt in at least another wii telltale title, so that isnt the game's fault. I dont know why trolls complain about it, oh yeah, they just hate the wii they're mad that it is so far the number 1 console there is so far.:mad:
It is kind of a sub-par port, but I would still recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a PC that can run the game. I have both versions and have played through it on both with no trouble, the sound and occasional framerate hiccups are a bit annoying, but it's tolerable, for me, at least.
I actually got myself 500 Wii points in advance in order to get these games. But after reading what you guys think about it, I think I'll wait.
But WHAT am I wating for? The day I get a PC, the day it gets released for Mac or the day a better Wii version is released?
No need to wait! The game plays perfectly on Mac using CrossOver Games.
Wii bashing is pointless. The Wii was obviously not made for power, just innovation. This has been pointed out many times, too many times, and should probably stop. I'm sure that there are reasons for WiiWare file limitations, reasons we may never be aware of.
Oh still release on PC. PC is best console by far. Even though it's not a console.
Wait, people still play the Wii? I thought that novelty died out. It's lost HUGE popularity in Japan, to the point where the 360 and PS3 are outselling it.
I don't know if it varies system to system but when I played it it was terrible. Parts of scenes would hang and I would just get audio. The terrible graphics and audio alone I could deal with, but the hanging and the lag and the constant loading make it impossible for me to play it any more. It's a shame because I was really looking forward to this and I am uncertain if it is worth it to buy it over again on the PC.
I really think they should do something about this. There has already been at least one fantastic adventure game released for the wii on disc so the hardware can't be blamed and they knew the size limits going into it so that can't be blamed either.
Last week's console sales in Japan.
Research is your friend.
Check out Crossover (Reported to work) or bootcamp, or parallels. I know for a fact that it works if you just slap a windows XP on your computer (granted that it's an intel machine)
And again, the MACHINE selling a lot doesn't have anything to do with people playing the Wii. What their argument is would be game attach rate, especially for Wiiware titles.
Playing devil's advocate for console bashers isn't likely the best idea, but the lack of logic on the side of those on the "right" side is annoying me.
People still play wii, I still play wii. Wii sales are still beating xboxes and ps3s combined last I checked
Examples:
Apple - Switching to intel, rendering old software useless.
Microsoft - Releasing vista too quick
Youtube - Limiting videos to 10 minutes
Lucasarts - (If I need to tell you what they did, you shouldn't be here)
Nobody put a gun to telltales head and made them port it to wii. If a console can't handle a game, that's that. Don't release a game that is hardly playable and charge $10 for 1/5th of it.
The wii is my only way of running Tales of Monkey Island, as it isn't playable in OSX. (I don't blame ANYONE for that) And I must say, I am extremely disappointed that this game is poorly ported.
Indeed they are, and with MH3 on the Japanese horizon [with a choice of it being budded with a Japan exclusive Black Wii] then Wii sales will continue to outsell the other consoles over there, lie it has done for most of the last 3 years. Excluding, of course, the handhelds, which are KING over there. :cool:
No excuse for Nintendo forcing Telltale [and other devs] compressing reasonably small games into tiny messes with the 40MB limit, though [or whatever it actually amounts to on the Wii, I wouldn't know, I avoided it for the PC version].
If only it would run that smooth then I would be a happy camper! I get lots of video and audio lag... sometimes the voice goes into a loop for 5 to 6 times saying the same word over and over.
I wasn't really commenting on anything about the game attach rate etc., just informing Fury that the Wii is still outselling the PS3, 360 in Japan.
I look forward to playing this game again now, and I am sorry for stating that it was unplayable
I agree Yare. Here here.
But I must say, I'm a little pleasantly surprised to see it coming from you, the individual who claimed "the DS has roughly the same processing power as a toaster[.] The engine and all of the game [Tales] assets would need to be completely remade to work on the DS's lame dual-ARM architecture."
And "An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even."
I promise I'm not trying to start anything. I'm just saying, those were strong words.
An iPhone uses ARM, though a different flavor (DS: an ARM 9, and an ARM 7; iPhone: an ARM11). So maybe it's the DS's dual-ARM that's lame, not ARM itself. But either way it seemed like some mighty strong emotionally charged disparaging words. Clearly the DS is no powerhouse. There'd be no way it could run TMI as is. But still. A toaster?
And regarding the Wii, that the iPhone is more powerful seemed odd to me. So I looked it up. Not that I didn't take your word. It just surprised me. Wondered in what way the iPhone is more powerful.
I've found message boards where random posters claim the iPhone is more powerful than the Wii. But I personally can't find any hard evidence. Of course, I don't work at TellTale, so you might very well know better than I Yare. But some evidence would be nice.
Because from what I've seen, the Wii processor runs faster than the iPhone's. The Wii has a dedicated GPU, whereas I can't see that the iPhone does. The Wii outputs in 640x480 whereas iPhone does 320x480. The iPhone has 128 MB RAM, whereas the Wii only has 88MB RAM with a 3MB texture memory and frame-buffer (holy smokes that's small).
So it seems like the Wii 'wins' in processor and resolution, and the iPhone 'wins' in memory.
So, I dunno. Not trying to start anything. Just didn't want that statement to be put out there without exploring it.
Clearly the XBox360 and PS3 are way more powerful. But, again folks, for better or worse (depending on what systems one has, I suspect has much to do with which option we think is true) the game is on PC and WiiWare. I personally see no need to hate on any of the systems.
And back to the game....it's great guys. Even with the tech issues, it's great.
I am going to try playing in interlace and not progressive and see if that makes a difference on my system. Because, though I don't love the compression, it's the choppiness that distracts me the most.
I do hope now that the "play from SD card" option is available, Nintendo will eventually raise the 40mb cap. It may not happen in time for TMI Season 1. But hopefully down the road. I mean, even a 100mb cap (one-fifth the total internal storage capacity...holy guacamole the Wii has very little internal storage...I wonder if Nintendo didn't expect this downloadable game thing to take off as much as it has) would be welcome.
And I stand by them. The Wii and DS are extremely underpowered and their popularity doesn't remove the hardware limitations.
The extra RAM is really what makes the difference. Of the Wii's 88 MB of RAM, a not insignificant chunk of that is always being used by the OS and is unavailable to developers. The Wii's RAM is also split into two separate banks, each of which has different read/write metrics and you can't really spill from one to another if you need to.
As I said before, everything in computer science is about striking a balance between a small memory footprint, or having blistering fast algorithms. When you are limited in file size and memory footprint, you spend a lot of processing time decompressing things, deciding what needs to be loaded in memory at the moment, streaming things on/off the disk, and so on. If you have more memory, you can use cheaper (or no) compression, spend less time worrying about how much stuff can be loaded, hit the disk less frequently, memoize calculations, and other awesome stuff.
A little bit of RAM goes a huge way in letting you use faster algorithms. It's more important than a faster processor, IMO.
It is strange that Nintendo decided to low-ball the Wii's memory so much. If the processor is like the scientist doing math, and memory is like the chalk-board that he/she uses when doing the math...why make the chalkboard so small. It's like a bottleneck, isn't it? 88MB with 3MB for textures, whereas the PS360 both have 512MB. I get that Nintendo wanted to keep costs down. But even 256MB would, I suspect, make a huge difference.
Anyway, I know you guys are trying to make the best products possible. And TMI is great so far.
After reading Yare's responses, I will no longer be buying the PC version or any Tell Tale games in the future. If you treat customers by blaming the equipment they use, when you knew damn well what those limits were, it's your own fault for releasing an inferior product.
Good luck, and maybe you will learn from this mistake.
I'm sorry you feel that way. We needed to release on the Wii, so we also needed to make it work as well as our time and budget constraints allowed. I certainly didn't intend to "blame" anybody for the hardware they use.
I am not sure if it is more powerful, since it is hard to judge but my personal guess is both are equally powerful. Lets look at the spec. The wii has a power pc processor roughly at the speed of a G3 and a graphics processor which is around the speed the stuff you were able to get 7 years ago on the PC side.
The IPhone has a samsung ARM which probably is around the same speed as the G3, but has clearly more ram (128MB while the wii has 88MB), the integrated graphics processor
is either a power vr SGX520 (7 MPolys/s, 250Mpx/s)
or a SGX530/1 (14 MPolys/s)
the biggest question here is how good the graphics processor on the wii is Nintendo is tight lipped regarding it.
But since it is very close to the gamecube and that one had following specs
40 (peak) MPolys/s, the wiis should have 60MPoly/s with additional shader functions.
So the wii is more powerful in the graphics departement but the rest is up to par or superior on the iphone. Nintendo aimed rather low on the specs for the wii.
But the biggest problem the devs really faced here, is the Nintendo imposed 40 mb limit for wiiware!
Loving the zomg!specs a little too much...and maybe sipping some haterade on the side?
Controls probably paid a large part, but, correctme if i'm wrong, but it is getting a releaseon Xbox live next year. It'll probably be like Sam& Max save the world, in the respect that it will be alltogether.
Ah, but if the console is underpowered in comparison to the other consoles out there, porting becomes a nightmare, i would imagine. The whole structure of the game would have to be reworked. That's the reaason the wii doesn't see too many multiplatform releases shared with PS3/360 (take COD:MW2 for example. COD 5 sold very well on wii, but due to hardware limitations, porting it to wii would take a sgnificant amount of development time, and budget and as such was not faesible. The same can be said about Resident evil 5)