About the file size...

[fco.]

How have you guys dealt with the Wii's (in)famous lack of storing capacity?
Will the episodes be shorter than the Sam n' Max ones? or have you found a new way to fit a bunch of content in a smaller place?

[jp-30]

I would say 'simple' textures, fairly low-poly models and low-poly environment modelling would help keep file size down.

[tabacco]

The textures in Homestar Runner are pretty simple. If you watch the cartoons, you'll see what I mean. That saves a lot of room :)

[Jake]

Yeah a very limited number of textures, a complete lack of complex shadows and lightmaps, and characters with simpler construction (and therefore less filesize-heavy animation) makes it possible to fit a surprising amount into a small footprint.

[Kevin]

Plus, we're bending space and time...

[DoubtedEdwardo]

Plus, we're bending space and time...
Man, you guys just keep getting cooler. I'm gonna get me a trilobite!

[wsippel]

43MB (according to IGN) actually isn't that bad, anyway - especially for a system that only outputs at 640 x 480. FMV and sound should be the biggest issues for most games, and there are ways to deal with those. Use realtime graphics instead of FMV, compress voice samples using Speex (http://www.speex.org/), and use Shin'en DSX (http://shinen.de/music/files/shinen_wiiware.pdf) to compress the music.

[jp-30]

^ To date TTG game's cutscenes have all been rendered using the in-game engine, so no FMV issues should occur.

[Jake]

Culture Shock packed down to something like 70 megs at the time (we've since been able to pack it even smaller). If you think about something like Culture Shock, and then rip out a huge chunk of the filesize spent on textures (including textures for all the lightmap based shadows on every wall) and animation (remember that in Homestar almost nobody has fingers!) you can imagine a game of surprising scope fitting in 40 megs.

[Derwin]

Wow, you guys and the current state of compression techniques rock my world! TTG wins a gold star. And a shiny one, at that.

[tim333]

Do you guys know how we're going to be able to store this stuff on our Wii? I have SD cards, which have gobs of space, but if we have to keep all this stuff on the wii's modest flash drive, it could get... unfortunate.

[Sterrance]

Hopefully a new Wii update will allow the SDcards to act like SDCards (let you play stuff directly on them) instead of just back up storage. Of course I'm not sure how powerful the actual Card Reader on the Wii is.

[BiggerJ]

I've just realized something - each game will be 40 MB and there will be five games. Thus, they'll take up 200 MB in total. Assuming buying the five-episode bundle for PC nets the buyer a free disc-based version like with the Sam & Max seasons, this means that they'll be able to put them on a CD rather than a DVD, and even then, that CD would have up to half of the disc's capacity left over, if not more. Perhaps there'll be exclusive Flash cartoons on it? They did that with the Strong Bad Sings CD (there's an exclusive hidden Flash music video on it).

[danib62]

Perhaps with the advent of wiiware Nintendo will release a long overdue USB hard drive expansion.

[RabidZombie]

I've just realized something - each game will be 40 MB and there will be five games. Thus, they'll take up 200 MB in total. Assuming buying the five-episode bundle for PC nets the buyer a free disc-based version like with the Sam & Max seasons, this means that they'll be able to put them on a CD rather than a DVD, and even then, that CD would have up to half of the disc's capacity left over, if not more. Perhaps there'll be exclusive Flash cartoons on it? They did that with the Strong Bad Sings CD (there's an exclusive hidden Flash music video on it).

Remember, it's possible that episodes could share content, yet another space saving device. Across 5 episodes, many resources would be reused (eg. wallpaper, character models etc.), so if Telltale feel it's appropriate, they could reduce the size of a whole series even more. The only problem would be whether or not such a system is possible on the Wii.

[danib62]

Remember, it's possible that episodes could share content, yet another space saving device. Across 5 episodes, many resources would be reused (eg. wallpaper, character models etc.), so if Telltale feel it's appropriate, they could reduce the size of a whole series even more. The only problem would be whether or not such a system is possible on the Wii.

The problem if you do that is what happens if someone just downloads episode 3. Then they won't have the resources that they may need from 1 and 2.

[ttg_Stemmle]

I'm doing my part by limiting myself to words of less than five syllables, and cutting down on my oft-noted digressive writing style, which, although a hallmark of my literary stank, is nonetheless something of a complication (to put it mildly) when trying to cram a rather large adventure game into a teeny tiny box.

Also, I don't want to kill Matt's vocal chords.

Stemmle

[Shauntron]

Plus, we're bending space and time...

Telltale is the legitimate front for Aperture Science.

[Seg]

About all the storage issues, WiiWare titles will act just like Virtual Console titles.

Once you buy a title, you will be able to redownload it at any time without penalty.

You will be able to backup WiiWare titles to an SD card and/or delete channels using the Wii Channel data management function. Course, you can't run from an SD card, but you can copy the game back to the original Wii console you copied from.

[dg10050]

Culture Shock packed down to something like 70 megs at the time (we've since been able to pack it even smaller). If you think about something like Culture Shock, and then rip out a huge chunk of the filesize spent on textures (including textures for all the lightmap based shadows on every wall) and animation (remember that in Homestar almost nobody has fingers!) you can imagine a game of surprising scope fitting in 40 megs.

But...but...Where's All the Data? ;)