Well, I think it would be sadder if they made it so that level was the minimum requirement, just for the sake of a joke, preventing lots of people to play to begin with.
Especially when people upload videos for everyone to see.
The Ring Joke is hilarious even without the Shadows. And it's optional.
I loved ToMI when I play it with my down below requeriments Computer and I love this game even without the infamous Real Time Shadows lurking every where. I'm playing it in 6 and in a smaller resolution than my screen and runs just fine.
That say it, I just change my computer because I could and because somehow I knew my old computer cannot handle this game even with the lower settings. If I couldn't change the computer, I would try anyway, and, if it was playable, I would praise it anyway...
And, someday, I would buy a 4Quad Helicopter with a Massive Screen, so I could play Telltale Games in the max resolution (And work with my digital paintings) for 5 years without change it (And then another 5 years playing Telltale Games, and working in my digital paintings, by lowering the resolution and quality settings and without changing the version of Photoshop =P). Mark my words.
Now I'm thinking about, don't mark them. I need a cintyc first...
@Ben
You somehow forgot the PC version which makes it four platforms.
@Avistew
But primary you want to to play the game instead of watching a video someone playing the game for you, at least not if it's for the first time.
I suspect that things got more demanding due to the PS3 and that S&M shouldn't look like crap compared to the other titles there. I think that the current gfx engine is too demanding, a) for the gfx quality it offers and b) for an adventure game generally.
For a) i hope that over time TTG will be able to optimize things, so that that the needed performance will be reduced again or that at least you'll get further enhancements for free. Personally i would be hard pressed saying that TTG are well looking games per se. Each game has its high and lows and features scenes which are beautifully done and where you enjoy walking around as well as stuff were you think, oh no, can't be.
As for b) i would love seeing more ressources invested into aspects like story/dialogues/riddles instead of increasing the gfx with each release. You also can make pretty nice looking things without any shader voodoo at all if you're just strong and consistent on the art side.
As i said in another thread already, Bone2 with higher res textures would already be enough for my gfx needs in adventures games these days.
Yep, but i suspect the engine has evolved on Win as well, so...
Our engine hasn't just evolved on win, it's made of win...
i would love seeing more ressources invested into aspects like story/dialogues/riddles instead of increasing the gfx with each release
Both aspects are important to us. Besides the graphical improvements, we have some new animation tech that allows for more expressive faces. Not to mention a fancy new dialog scripting system that gives our designers and writers much more power.
We do want our games to look good, and hopefully we have succeeded at least somewhat in that regard. We also want them to run well for as many people as possible, and this is an area where we could probably stand to improve. But rest assured that we also want to tell stories. Much of our technology is focused towards this end.
The best example is the Diamond Ring joke that relies on the real-time shadows.:(
Wow- what?! Can you explain a little more what you mean? I run with my graphics as low as it can get because I am too lazy to mess about with them so just shove them there and play the game. So I had no idea I was missing out on anything. In fact, I didn't pick up on any difference between the levels. It automatically started with one graphics setting (forgotten which) so I've seen it briefly on a higher level... but I didn't pick up on anything amazingly better. Hmm, has anyone got a selection of screen grabs illustrating the difference?
I think it looks amazing btw. Yes, even on setting 1. My jaw dropped a few times with 301.
I was pleasently surprised when I played the demo and noticed the gfx have improved quite a bit. Improvement in gfx is never a bad thing in my book.. as long as you're not going to recycle the character models anymore, been there seen that (TOMI pirates)..
YouTube can do better than explain. You don't get this scene on graphics settings lower than 7.
I use something around 4 myself, so always appreciate it when people upload vids like this.
Wait a minute... Is this scene at night? I haven't finished episode one yet, but this scene has already happened in my game, and it was daytime... That's weird.
I don't get this, i'm trying this game and i have to lower the graphics to mid range when i have a cpu that is capable of handling this game on full graphics.
AMD Phenom II X2 550 (3.11 GHz), 4 GB RAM (800 bus), Win 7 Ult 64, nVidia GeForce 9400 GT (1 GB). I have to lower to 5 to avoid lag.
Just run it on 5 or 6 then. Since you claim they look bad, you won't notice a difference. I run season 3 on 5 in 1680x945 res and it looks fine to me. It could be that the games have compatibility issues with my laptop card, because I can run more demanding games on higher settings (ex: Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 1+2, Dragon Age). No biggie, the games still look nice. I didn't really notice anything at 9 anyway. Probably just better shadows and such (which are damn pointless anyway).
I wasn't aware that the year 2008 was old. And it still makes little sense that I can run better looking games at higher settings, such as Left 4 Dead 2 with its fancy pants shadows and its HARD RAIN. Incidentally, that game has engine issues with all the new stuff piled onto it too.
Really, older hardware isn't the issue when the game has older-looking graphics than said hardware. Really, though, I don't have much of an issue with it even though I sound like I do. I just like to argue things. :P
(I honestly just believe it's an issue with laptop card compatibility. A LOT of games have that going on. Though it could be that my manufacturer hasn't released a driver update since Left 4 Dead 2 came out.)
i don't have a laptop and i'm not complaining that the game looks bad, its curious that i have more than what it is suggested to have and still can't set to full. is there a way to disable that film grain its very excesive in my opinion?
With videocards? Yeah, 2 year is old.
Not to mention you have an "M" card.
Also, you can hardly compare Source and the TTG engine. Of course Source does better for the same graphics. It's also only been finetuned for years at massive expenses to be sold to other developers. TTG can't do that. Same with the Unreal Engine. Or CryTeck.
Give another custom engine and comparrison is more valid...
Well, sadly, I don't have one. I'm not a big PC gamer. All I know is that this game shouldn't be running as bad as it is at high-end settings depending on the requirements stated by Telltale. Like I said, though, I DO know of custom engine issues with a lot of laptop cards. You don't need to point that out. To be fair, no one uses Source other than Valve really. Well other than Source Mods, which I don't really think count. Point is that it's nowhere near on par with the Crytek or Unreal engines.
Vampire: Bloodlines. Although that's a really unoptimised modified early-beta piece of Source, so it's ridicilously heavy (yet it's a better game than Valve ever produced IMO).
A good example would be your earlier mentioned ME2. Look at ME1. It looked crappier, and yet it was more demanding. Of course ME2 ran with Unreal Engine 3 while the first didn't...
Actually, they both ran with the Unreal Engine 3 according to the INTERNETS (Wikipedia). Also, I've never heard of Vampire: Bloodlines. Regardless, 1 game hardly counts when all other games made with the current model of Source are all VALVE developed. It really isn't meant to be mass marketed like Unreal or Crytek, and there ARE optimizations issues. Left 4 Dead 2 has a TON of them, yet it still runs better than Sam & Max Season 3 and Tales of Monkey Island.
They do? I thought ME1 used a heavily modified UE2. Oh well... It still runs worse than ME2, even though I am above ME1 min. requirements and below ME2 min. requirements .
Try Grand Theft Auto IV.
I've never seen a worse optimised PC game (although they are out there, obviously).
Yeah, it bit Troika a bit though since they needed to ship the game to make money, but couldn't because Half-Life 2 HAD to be the first Source game, and that was pushed back due to the theft of the source code of Source.
Oh, I know about GTA IV, that and Saints Row 2 are a mess. This game isn't anywhere near as bad as THAT.
OH I JUST REMEMBERED ONE. I can run Street Fighter IV (which uses a custom engine) just fine on mid-high settings on this thing. I was kind of surprised.
Since I put the effort into it and not even sure if anyone has seen it, here's a link to the thread which I posted comparative screen shots between the ipad and a mid to low-high end video card on settings 1 and 9.
One thing that seems to be better than I've seen in other games is the range of expressions and natural movement of the models Season 3 SnM has over other high production games. Even mass effect 2, which had great textures and decent models for the characters still seems to have a less natural feel than Telltale's animated dog and rabbit
One thing that seems to be better than I've seen in other games is the range of expressions and natural movement of the models Season 3 SnM has over other high production games. Even mass effect 2, which had great textures and decent models for the characters still seems to have a less natural feel than Telltale's animated dog and rabbit
I'll go for that, only time I find it odd is when anybody other than Sam is directly interacting with Max, he just looks so adorably impossible.
It is no mystery that Telltale's engine is not as efficient as those used by the bigger players in the games industry. Optimizing a game engine takes a lot of time and effort, and I doubt that Telltale has enough resources to tune their engine to the same degree as the big companies can.
It looks like Telltale introduced a lot of new graphics-related functionality during 2009 and 2010, so I'd bet that there hasn't yet been time to fine tune these a lot.
i have to lower the graphics to mid range when i have a cpu that is capable of handling this game on full graphics.
In my experience the CPU doesn't matter nearly as much as the GPU. You have a powerful CPU which I think should be more than adequate to run the game on full, but it looks like your graphics card can't handle the highest settings. (The 9400 is the entry-level model in the 9000 series)
its curious that i have more than what it is suggested to have and still can't set to full
Meeting the system requirements usually just means that you can run the game, it says nothing about how high settings you can use. To use the highest settings you'd have to exceed the system requirements by a fairly large margin. (And again, the GPU is usually the most important factor)
Maybe someone should do a hardware survey and gather statistics about what graphics settings people use and what graphics cards they have. I'd be interested to see the minimum requirements for running the game at setting 9.
I don't know about you guys, but with Sam & Max 301 if I tried "9" at native resolution 1920x1080 I'd get like 2 frame per second... with 302 and the same settings, it's all smooth and nice.
I love how they somehow optimized the thing, I think it's the exterior places in 302 with less high-end "lights" that fixed it.
I don't know about you guys, but with Sam & Max 301 if I tried "9" at native resolution 1920x1080 I'd get like 2 frame per second... with 302 and the same settings, it's all smooth and nice.
I love how they somehow optimized the thing, I think it's the exterior places in 302 with less high-end "lights" that fixed it.
Are you on a Mac? They did a fix for the Mac in 302 apparently.
Ok, we have JUST pushed out a new 302 build for the mac. Like just right now, so it may take a little bit for it to fully propagate to the servers.
This build should feature better performance for Macs. For those of you that had problems with 301 but finished the game anyway (either on Mac or swapping to bootcamp), could you try this new version of 302 and tell us if it fixes your problems? If this doesn't fix everything, then hopefully it will provide us with a lot of feedback so we can improve things further.
TO CHECK IF YOU HAVE THE MOST RECENT VERSION: Right click the 302 .app and check the version number. The new version is 1.0.1.25. Don't trust the version number in the wrapper, it's being stubborn and won't change.
(Click on the arrow next to his name for the link to that thread).
Comments
The best example is the Diamond Ring joke that relies on the real-time shadows.:(
Especially when people upload videos for everyone to see.
I loved ToMI when I play it with my down below requeriments Computer and I love this game even without the infamous Real Time Shadows lurking every where. I'm playing it in 6 and in a smaller resolution than my screen and runs just fine.
That say it, I just change my computer because I could and because somehow I knew my old computer cannot handle this game even with the lower settings. If I couldn't change the computer, I would try anyway, and, if it was playable, I would praise it anyway...
And, someday, I would buy a 4Quad Helicopter with a Massive Screen, so I could play Telltale Games in the max resolution (And work with my digital paintings) for 5 years without change it (And then another 5 years playing Telltale Games, and working in my digital paintings, by lowering the resolution and quality settings and without changing the version of Photoshop =P). Mark my words.
Now I'm thinking about, don't mark them. I need a cintyc first...
I personally like the graphics the only problem I've seen is a little star at the end of peoples guns which is kinda weird
*lovesigh* Cintiq... drawing right on the monitor.... *lovesigh* How I want thee...
You somehow forgot the PC version which makes it four platforms.
@Avistew
But primary you want to to play the game instead of watching a video someone playing the game for you, at least not if it's for the first time.
I suspect that things got more demanding due to the PS3 and that S&M shouldn't look like crap compared to the other titles there. I think that the current gfx engine is too demanding, a) for the gfx quality it offers and b) for an adventure game generally.
For a) i hope that over time TTG will be able to optimize things, so that that the needed performance will be reduced again or that at least you'll get further enhancements for free. Personally i would be hard pressed saying that TTG are well looking games per se. Each game has its high and lows and features scenes which are beautifully done and where you enjoy walking around as well as stuff were you think, oh no, can't be.
As for b) i would love seeing more ressources invested into aspects like story/dialogues/riddles instead of increasing the gfx with each release. You also can make pretty nice looking things without any shader voodoo at all if you're just strong and consistent on the art side.
As i said in another thread already, Bone2 with higher res textures would already be enough for my gfx needs in adventures games these days.
He was talking about new platforms.
Both aspects are important to us. Besides the graphical improvements, we have some new animation tech that allows for more expressive faces. Not to mention a fancy new dialog scripting system that gives our designers and writers much more power.
We do want our games to look good, and hopefully we have succeeded at least somewhat in that regard. We also want them to run well for as many people as possible, and this is an area where we could probably stand to improve. But rest assured that we also want to tell stories. Much of our technology is focused towards this end.
I think it looks amazing btw. Yes, even on setting 1. My jaw dropped a few times with 301.
YouTube can do better than explain. You don't get this scene on graphics settings lower than 7.
I use something around 4 myself, so always appreciate it when people upload vids like this.
*checks*
Oh! I see the difference. I don't see all of the shadows. Ahhhh.
Meh, I still don't get the joke though.
Thanks for the link though.
This might help.
Ooooh, thanks, I totally missed that.
Wait a minute... Is this scene at night? I haven't finished episode one yet, but this scene has already happened in my game, and it was daytime... That's weird.
I can play on my PC at 1920x1200 with the highest settings, 16x antialising and it looks so cool...
Now, please, we NEED a Monkey Island Season 2 with these graphics...
AMD Phenom II X2 550 (3.11 GHz), 4 GB RAM (800 bus), Win 7 Ult 64, nVidia GeForce 9400 GT (1 GB). I have to lower to 5 to avoid lag.
Card is 9600M GT, by the way.
Really, older hardware isn't the issue when the game has older-looking graphics than said hardware. Really, though, I don't have much of an issue with it even though I sound like I do. I just like to argue things. :P
(I honestly just believe it's an issue with laptop card compatibility. A LOT of games have that going on. Though it could be that my manufacturer hasn't released a driver update since Left 4 Dead 2 came out.)
Not to mention you have an "M" card.
Also, you can hardly compare Source and the TTG engine. Of course Source does better for the same graphics. It's also only been finetuned for years at massive expenses to be sold to other developers. TTG can't do that. Same with the Unreal Engine. Or CryTeck.
Give another custom engine and comparrison is more valid...
A good example would be your earlier mentioned ME2. Look at ME1. It looked crappier, and yet it was more demanding. Of course ME2 ran with Unreal Engine 3 while the first didn't...
Try Grand Theft Auto IV.
I've never seen a worse optimised PC game (although they are out there, obviously).
Yeah, it bit Troika a bit though since they needed to ship the game to make money, but couldn't because Half-Life 2 HAD to be the first Source game, and that was pushed back due to the theft of the source code of Source.
OH I JUST REMEMBERED ONE. I can run Street Fighter IV (which uses a custom engine) just fine on mid-high settings on this thing. I was kind of surprised.
One thing that seems to be better than I've seen in other games is the range of expressions and natural movement of the models Season 3 SnM has over other high production games. Even mass effect 2, which had great textures and decent models for the characters still seems to have a less natural feel than Telltale's animated dog and rabbit
I'll go for that, only time I find it odd is when anybody other than Sam is directly interacting with Max, he just looks so adorably impossible.
It looks like Telltale introduced a lot of new graphics-related functionality during 2009 and 2010, so I'd bet that there hasn't yet been time to fine tune these a lot.
In my experience the CPU doesn't matter nearly as much as the GPU. You have a powerful CPU which I think should be more than adequate to run the game on full, but it looks like your graphics card can't handle the highest settings. (The 9400 is the entry-level model in the 9000 series)
Meeting the system requirements usually just means that you can run the game, it says nothing about how high settings you can use. To use the highest settings you'd have to exceed the system requirements by a fairly large margin. (And again, the GPU is usually the most important factor)
Maybe someone should do a hardware survey and gather statistics about what graphics settings people use and what graphics cards they have. I'd be interested to see the minimum requirements for running the game at setting 9.
I love how they somehow optimized the thing, I think it's the exterior places in 302 with less high-end "lights" that fixed it.
Are you on a Mac? They did a fix for the Mac in 302 apparently.
Can you link to me the quote or where you heard of this fix? thanks.
It was in the support forum, let me find it.
Here you go (Will actually posted that in several threads but it seems to be the exact same message so I'll just link to one of them):
(Click on the arrow next to his name for the link to that thread).