Tales of monkey island on wii is unbearable

[Gman5852]

Originally Posted by Fury

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

[natlinxz]

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.

[TookiGuy]

^ If they didn't port it, they'd barely make up for development costs. Though why wasn't XBOX Live arcade chosen? Controls?

[Ahoy De Fancypants]

Originally Posted by Gman5852

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.

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].

[[TTG] Yare]

Please quit with the console fanboy stuff.

[jayz79]

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

[kbogle24]

Originally Posted by questinghero

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.

[BadStrong]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

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.

[jayz79]

are you guys playing this on 480p? I played the whole game on 480i and did not encounter some of the problems posted in this thread

[questinghero]

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

[WedgeWalker]

Originally Posted by [TTG] Yare

Please quit with the console fanboy stuff.

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.

[[TTG] Yare]

Originally Posted by WedgeWalker

I'm just saying, those were strong words.

And I stand by them. The Wii and DS are extremely underpowered and their popularity doesn't remove the hardware limitations.

Originally Posted by WedgeWalker

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.

[WedgeWalker]

Thanks for the info Yare. That makes sense.

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.

[sirgrim]

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.

[[TTG] Yare]

Originally Posted by sirgrim

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.

[schlew]

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.

[Kevin]

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.

[werpu]

Originally Posted by WedgeWalker

I agree Yare. Here here.

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!

[LinkChicky23]

Originally Posted by [TTG] Yare

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?

[Friar]

Originally Posted by TookiGuy

^ 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.