Now you guys are just complaining for the sake of it. Sound and texture quality is good enough and suit the game perfectly. Yes, there has to be a size limit for downloadable games, because with the industry's current mentality of bigger is better, things quickly get ridiculously huge (<genitalia joke goes here).
Also, do not forget the demo is actually the full game. I know I would never download a gigabyte demo, which is why I rarely get demos in the first place. Most people I'm sure are okay with a 200megs trial they can turn into the full game by entering a simple code.
With that said, I'm curious to see how the WiiWare version is made to fit the 40MB limit.
Now you guys are just complaining for the sake of it.
Believe me when I say, I have more important things to do in my life than complain for the sake of it. We're just discussing our opinions on an aspect of the game. Don't poop on our opinions!
Sorry, I wasn't pooping on anyone's opinion, even though I still think it's silly. I can't see how Tales could benefit from higher res textures, this isn't Gears of War. The game looks great as is, thanks to its stylistic approach and efficient 3D engine, and I don't really see how much improvement higher bitrates can bring to human voice.
Sorry, I wasn't pooping on anyone's opinion, even though I still think it's silly. I can't see how Tales could benefit from higher res textures, this isn't Gears of War. The game looks great as is, thanks to its stylistic approach and efficient 3D engine, and I don't really see how much improvement higher bitrates can bring to human voice.
We're in agreement on the graphics issue. As for the compression on the voices, as has been pointed out, some people notice it and it's quite glaring to them. Others don't really notice it.
But for those of us that do notice it, you can't tell us that we're imagining it. For us, it's problematic. Some people don't notice lower bit MP3s as well. I'd never tell them they're silly or wrong.
btw. you're all LucasArts-Fans right? What's going on when you're playing Dott, MI3, Hit the Rouad or whatever? Are you getting ear cancer?
I was playing The Dig (1995) and CMI (1997) the other day, and I thought the voice quality on these games outranked ToMI.
This is 2009. How is it that games that are over 10 years old have better sound quality?
I think it has to to with the recording process. Back then, the sound samples probably didn't had to be compressed as much as now.
Fans thrive for perfection cause they love and care for the franchise! Is that really so bad?
Look, I've come to an opinion on this. Telltale should increase the quality and size of the download, and those with slow internet connections can by the hard-copy instead. I think this would work for everyone.
Yeah, that's fair. We've all been waiting HOW long for a monkey island game? Almost a decade? Those of us with a bandwith limit (FYI me included) will just wait another year or two for it to come out on DVD. Oh yes, excellent idea! I find NOTHING wrong with the game. NOTHING!!!!! It's absolutely perfect! The graphics are outstanding, the music is great, and voice quality? I have no idea what you guys are complaining about! It sounds fine to me. Besides, as I said, I don't want to wait for the DVD just to play the episodes. I'd rather it be smaller! That way I can actually ENJOY it THE DAY IT COMES OUT!
Like someone else said, it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. It's not Gears of War or Oblivion. I love monkey island. The simple fact that LucasArts and Telltale cared enough about it to bring it back is reason to celebrate! Pop a champagne if you drink, run around the streets screaming about the monkeys if you don't. Let's not bicker over the little things.
Less than 4% of the countries in the world have great internet.. for the rest of us in the world.. we appreciate what TellTale does to keep file sizes down!
Where did you get this information or did you just pull it out of monkey's &#%?
Well in some third world countries they might have that crappy or not internet at all but they also wont be buying any 35$ games either...
I'll seed it myself if they put it on torrent etc... and for free if they put better sound in the game next time. If it is a problem with Wii or some other crappy system make a special gimp version for it.
Refering to the comment about CoMI, the game engine used 22.05Khz WAVE files, which had a bitrate of 352kbps for Voice and 705kbps for Music. Music alone is 350MB and Voice is 324MB. So the quality is much higher than that of ToMI. Although Tales uses the OGG format which can preserve more quality at lower bitrates however the bitrates used tend to be a little on the low side although much improved from other TTG.
Or just make 2 version for the people with crap connection and for the people with better connection got here 20mbit download and 100 mb is like 1 minute then for downloading.
South Africa is one of a relatively small number of countries with a decent percentage of affluent people yet horrid Internet connectivity. I can think of two other countries on that list: Australia and New Zealand.
The 4% number sounds pretty unbelievable to me. Much of India and China have very good Internet connectivity, you can probably get 20% of the world's population covered right there. (Maybe only in urban areas, but that's where most people live, too.)
Europ and North America put together are good for over half a billion people with access to high-speed Internet access. That's around 10% of the world's population right there. And I haven't even begun to mention places in South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East that are also quite well connected.
Suffice it to say that even though bandwidth constraints are a legitimate concern for many people, there's also a substantial market of people who do not have this problem.
Maybe the solution is two downloads? A huge one for those who want the utmost quality, and a smaller one for those with bandwidth constraints?
As for Telltale's bandwidth costs, that's a red herring. You can buy bandwidth for pennies in the US. They could colocate a server with essentially unlimited bandwidth usage for a few hundred dollars a month, perhaps less. And as people have pointed out, BitTorrent is a perfectly viable distribution method (the game works in demo mode without a serial number/activation, so no, that would not facilitate "piracy".)
Seems to me some people are more interested in problems than solutions.
Really is it. It must be my crappy german localization then.
and btw: just because the bitrate is higher it is no proof that it actually sounds better.
On Wave it does, plus Wave is always better for Vocals (well anything really), it would be good if they used Lossless but I doubt that would happen, if you can somehow send me the German voice bundle file I'll examine it and compare it to the English version to see if there are any differences.
As for how it sounds, that's subjective. I have pretty sensitive hearing, but this game sounds fine to me. That doesn't mean everyone else has the same experience.
Personally, I mainly notice video artifacts. And maybe that has to do with my video card, although I actually went and BOUGHT a new video card (GeForce 9400GT) just to play this game.
If a larger download would mean better graphics, I'd go download it. If it doesn't, or if no larger download ever gets made available, I'm over it. The graphics look very good already, even if I do notice some curves are a little jagged here and there.
It can't be that much of an increase in size if they heighten the bitrate from 32k(?) to, say, 128k? What are we looking at here, 100 megs extra?
I'm no expert! :P That's why I'll accept any good reason why they're keeping it at a low bitrate. As far as I can see, there aren't any revealed to us yet.
The voice quality is certainly better than previous Telltale episodes but it still couldn't be called "good". Elaine and the Marquis are the primary victims this time around, with distortion/clipping evident on most words.
There's 30MB of voice data in the first episode, so doubling the bitrate would add 30MB to the download. I find it hard to imagine there's anyone who would download a 180MB game but not a 210MB one.
The audio quality was really my only complaint with the entire game (And even that was not unbearable). I have to admit though, When I first fired the game up and played through the boat scene, I stopped to check my audio settings because the sounds were so flat.
Seriously there is none. Are you sure your sound-hardware is okay?
If you can't hear it, it doesn't mean others can't hear the problem.
And Im sure that the problem is in the game since other games sound just fine. And if that statement is true that the sounds only take 30mb im not surprised since they have to be heavily compressed to fit in such a small space.
Have telltale crew commented on why they use such small audio files?
If you can't hear it, it doesn't mean others can't hear the problem.
And Im sure that the problem is in the game since other games sound just fine. And if that statement is true that the sounds only take 30mb im not surprised since they have to be heavily compressed to fit in such a small space.
Have telltale crew commented on why they use such small audio files?
The Telltale folks are frustratingly silent on this issue, which I'll admit, does give it a certain mystique. I may begin to formulate conspiracy theories as to why this is the case.
I also just looked at the size of the game files (in the "Pack" subfolder), and sure enough, the voice file is only about 30 mb. It sure is admirable that they can squeeze a huge amount of dialog into that little file... but geeze, no wonder it sounds less than perfect.
You know, in total, as in all five episodes, it should be roughly 1GB.
That's plenty big enough for any other game, so why is it a problem here?
Actually, I'd expect a typical DVD game nowadays to be 1.5-2 gigs, and that's without the asset overlap that episodic games have (each episode includes the same Guybrush model, etc., that wouldn't need to be duplicated in a full release).
But for this game, I don't see any sacrifices made for this size. It's a cartoony adventure game. It doesn't hinge on realism or graphics, and I can't imagine what details they could have added that wouldn't have actually hurt the art style. There's only so much you can reasonably do with a texture in a game that's deliberately cartoony. Characters were relatively low poly, but appropriately so, and they still looked great. And I never once thought that sound quality suffered.
I just don't see what exactly they could have done to the game that would bring it up to 400 megs that would actually improve the game.
I was just thinking about the episodic format again and there's a real problem. Now that we saw Flotsam in chapter one, we all expect similar new locations in chapter 2. However in Sam and Max the main location is used over and over, leaving small space for new locations. I'd imagine that Guybrush will go back to Flotsam and might go to a small island here and there. Now if only Flotsam took 188mb, how can other places fit in properly? This is sometimes done by disactivating the locations that were open before. I think this is the biggest disadvantage of episodes, especially because it doesn't matter if we have episode 1 installed. Each episode has its own content. So if they put Flotsam in episode 2 or 3 again it will take space of the already 188 compressed mb of the new episodes.
While I don't mind Flotsam, the thing that made the Monkey Island series so great was to find new locations and exploring these. I didn't like this "hub" system in Sam and Max either. Telltale should offer all people to download the new environments so that new episodes can easily access to these instead of adding the content to each individual episode.
An example would be to download the Flotsam files to the computer and when a new environment comes out to merge these with the already downloaded file. This would be very practical, because for new episodes they could easily revisit older locations without compromise.
South Africa is one of a relatively small number of countries with a decent percentage of affluent people yet horrid Internet connectivity. I can think of two other countries on that list: Australia and New Zealand.
Really? My NZ broadband connection is fairly decent, managed to download the game in about fifteen minutes, and no problems with caps etc. Pricing isn't too horrible either.
I would download any size as long as the whole season fits on one DVD afterwards. With a singlelayer DVD by 5 episodes this would be 0.94GB. But you don't need this much, i just would wish that textures would be delivered in a higher resolution and the sounds would be less hard compressed.
Actually i played the game with intention only at 800x600 because due to different texture quality it felt more all of a piece this way.
Eh, if they boost it I could care less really. If it improves the quality of the voice acting, which works for me as it is, I wouldn't say I wouldn't welcome it.
Steam is always making me go through huge downloads of 4-8 gigs. What's 300 or 400 megs total? Can't complain at all. But I will say... I love how quick these episodes download. So If I could just have my cake and eat it too that would be great.
If i had to choose i would prefer a better quality of the game than some goodies, this could also be watched online, but as i said you don't need this much space at all. And even if, there do exist double layer DVDs as well.
no one cares about room for new locations in different episodes?
What's that got to do with it?The new locations will come in the later episodes they won't be in this this, we just want Telltale to boost the Audio Bitrate on both Vocal and Music files.
Don't forget that the DVD is going to have 5 episodes, plus extras. There is only so much they can pack on there...
so you think the special features are going to run 3-6 gigs? That's a lot of special features.
Every episode is going to be like this due to the limits of the Wii and Nintendo being to stupid to raise the cap size or come out with a hard drive. It's just another way Nintendo shoot's themselves in the foot.
Comments
Hmmm... That sounds promising, and where shall I find this stunning physician??
I want someone who doesn't hesitate to take any unnecessary measure
Flotsam Island. Just head towards the shrieking.
Also, do not forget the demo is actually the full game. I know I would never download a gigabyte demo, which is why I rarely get demos in the first place. Most people I'm sure are okay with a 200megs trial they can turn into the full game by entering a simple code.
With that said, I'm curious to see how the WiiWare version is made to fit the 40MB limit.
I think if you're playing with a blindfold and earplugs it might be ok. Plus that's a good way to improve drastically the difficulty
Believe me when I say, I have more important things to do in my life than complain for the sake of it. We're just discussing our opinions on an aspect of the game. Don't poop on our opinions!
We're in agreement on the graphics issue. As for the compression on the voices, as has been pointed out, some people notice it and it's quite glaring to them. Others don't really notice it.
But for those of us that do notice it, you can't tell us that we're imagining it. For us, it's problematic. Some people don't notice lower bit MP3s as well. I'd never tell them they're silly or wrong.
I was playing The Dig (1995) and CMI (1997) the other day, and I thought the voice quality on these games outranked ToMI.
This is 2009. How is it that games that are over 10 years old have better sound quality?
I think it has to to with the recording process. Back then, the sound samples probably didn't had to be compressed as much as now.
Fans thrive for perfection cause they love and care for the franchise! Is that really so bad?
Yeah, that's fair. We've all been waiting HOW long for a monkey island game? Almost a decade? Those of us with a bandwith limit (FYI me included) will just wait another year or two for it to come out on DVD. Oh yes, excellent idea! I find NOTHING wrong with the game. NOTHING!!!!! It's absolutely perfect! The graphics are outstanding, the music is great, and voice quality? I have no idea what you guys are complaining about! It sounds fine to me. Besides, as I said, I don't want to wait for the DVD just to play the episodes. I'd rather it be smaller! That way I can actually ENJOY it THE DAY IT COMES OUT!
Like someone else said, it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. It's not Gears of War or Oblivion. I love monkey island. The simple fact that LucasArts and Telltale cared enough about it to bring it back is reason to celebrate! Pop a champagne if you drink, run around the streets screaming about the monkeys if you don't. Let's not bicker over the little things.
Where did you get this information or did you just pull it out of monkey's &#%?
Well in some third world countries they might have that crappy or not internet at all but they also wont be buying any 35$ games either...
I'll seed it myself if they put it on torrent etc... and for free if they put better sound in the game next time. If it is a problem with Wii or some other crappy system make a special gimp version for it.
Refer to my post, the voice quality on Curse at least IS better than Tales.
Really is it. It must be my crappy german localization then.
and btw: just because the bitrate is higher it is no proof that it actually sounds better.
The 4% number sounds pretty unbelievable to me. Much of India and China have very good Internet connectivity, you can probably get 20% of the world's population covered right there. (Maybe only in urban areas, but that's where most people live, too.)
Europ and North America put together are good for over half a billion people with access to high-speed Internet access. That's around 10% of the world's population right there. And I haven't even begun to mention places in South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East that are also quite well connected.
Suffice it to say that even though bandwidth constraints are a legitimate concern for many people, there's also a substantial market of people who do not have this problem.
Maybe the solution is two downloads? A huge one for those who want the utmost quality, and a smaller one for those with bandwidth constraints?
As for Telltale's bandwidth costs, that's a red herring. You can buy bandwidth for pennies in the US. They could colocate a server with essentially unlimited bandwidth usage for a few hundred dollars a month, perhaps less. And as people have pointed out, BitTorrent is a perfectly viable distribution method (the game works in demo mode without a serial number/activation, so no, that would not facilitate "piracy".)
Seems to me some people are more interested in problems than solutions.
On Wave it does, plus Wave is always better for Vocals (well anything really), it would be good if they used Lossless but I doubt that would happen, if you can somehow send me the German voice bundle file I'll examine it and compare it to the English version to see if there are any differences.
Personally, I mainly notice video artifacts. And maybe that has to do with my video card, although I actually went and BOUGHT a new video card (GeForce 9400GT) just to play this game.
If a larger download would mean better graphics, I'd go download it. If it doesn't, or if no larger download ever gets made available, I'm over it. The graphics look very good already, even if I do notice some curves are a little jagged here and there.
I'm no expert! :P That's why I'll accept any good reason why they're keeping it at a low bitrate. As far as I can see, there aren't any revealed to us yet.
edit: Sam & Max is the same as Full Throttle for Voice.
There's 30MB of voice data in the first episode, so doubling the bitrate would add 30MB to the download. I find it hard to imagine there's anyone who would download a 180MB game but not a 210MB one.
If you can't hear it, it doesn't mean others can't hear the problem.
And Im sure that the problem is in the game since other games sound just fine. And if that statement is true that the sounds only take 30mb im not surprised since they have to be heavily compressed to fit in such a small space.
Have telltale crew commented on why they use such small audio files?
The Telltale folks are frustratingly silent on this issue, which I'll admit, does give it a certain mystique. I may begin to formulate conspiracy theories as to why this is the case.
I also just looked at the size of the game files (in the "Pack" subfolder), and sure enough, the voice file is only about 30 mb. It sure is admirable that they can squeeze a huge amount of dialog into that little file... but geeze, no wonder it sounds less than perfect.
Actually, I'd expect a typical DVD game nowadays to be 1.5-2 gigs, and that's without the asset overlap that episodic games have (each episode includes the same Guybrush model, etc., that wouldn't need to be duplicated in a full release).
But for this game, I don't see any sacrifices made for this size. It's a cartoony adventure game. It doesn't hinge on realism or graphics, and I can't imagine what details they could have added that wouldn't have actually hurt the art style. There's only so much you can reasonably do with a texture in a game that's deliberately cartoony. Characters were relatively low poly, but appropriately so, and they still looked great. And I never once thought that sound quality suffered.
I just don't see what exactly they could have done to the game that would bring it up to 400 megs that would actually improve the game.
While I don't mind Flotsam, the thing that made the Monkey Island series so great was to find new locations and exploring these. I didn't like this "hub" system in Sam and Max either. Telltale should offer all people to download the new environments so that new episodes can easily access to these instead of adding the content to each individual episode.
An example would be to download the Flotsam files to the computer and when a new environment comes out to merge these with the already downloaded file. This would be very practical, because for new episodes they could easily revisit older locations without compromise.
Really? My NZ broadband connection is fairly decent, managed to download the game in about fifteen minutes, and no problems with caps etc. Pricing isn't too horrible either.
Actually i played the game with intention only at 800x600 because due to different texture quality it felt more all of a piece this way.
Steam is always making me go through huge downloads of 4-8 gigs. What's 300 or 400 megs total? Can't complain at all. But I will say... I love how quick these episodes download. So If I could just have my cake and eat it too that would be great.
What's that got to do with it?The new locations will come in the later episodes they won't be in this this, we just want Telltale to boost the Audio Bitrate on both Vocal and Music files.
so you think the special features are going to run 3-6 gigs? That's a lot of special features.
Every episode is going to be like this due to the limits of the Wii and Nintendo being to stupid to raise the cap size or come out with a hard drive. It's just another way Nintendo shoot's themselves in the foot.