[Wii] Optional addons allowed for Wiiware?
This is not a petition. I have no interest in the Wii version other than a scientific interest in the severity of Nintendo's limitations. I don't even own a Wii or have any friends who own one (nothing but PS3s and PCs around me)
I'm just curious because looking at it from the PC & PS3 gamer's perspective it looks quite funny. 20MB? That's 10 seconds on a normal DSL connection. Why would anybody care if it took 20 second or *gosh* even a whole minute. (Just for comparison: A minor update on PS3 usually weighs in at about 50-300MB and whole games go up to 5GB).
But maybe the limits are not as strict as we think. Maybe there's a loophole. When the PC gamers were complaining about the quality of the voice recordings (still don't think it's an issue, but to each his own) one solution that was discussed were addon packs with improved voices/textures.
That would generally work for the Wii too, but at least I don't know: What exactly are the limits for WiiWare games?
Is it an installation limit for the whole game (including all updates and optional addons)? In that case there would be nothing we could do.
Is it a download limit for the whole game (including all updates and optional addons)? Well, then at least the games could be compressed with a really efficient compression, instead of one that has to be fast enough to decode in real time. Could at least allow for a little more data.
Or (now it gets interesting) does the limit only apply to MANDATORY parts of the game?
Right now I don't even know if WiiWare games allow for updates/optional components/addons, but if any of the above are allowed to exceed the 20MB limit, that could be a solution to at least solve some of the issues ToMI faces on the Wii.
I'm just curious because looking at it from the PC & PS3 gamer's perspective it looks quite funny. 20MB? That's 10 seconds on a normal DSL connection. Why would anybody care if it took 20 second or *gosh* even a whole minute. (Just for comparison: A minor update on PS3 usually weighs in at about 50-300MB and whole games go up to 5GB).
But maybe the limits are not as strict as we think. Maybe there's a loophole. When the PC gamers were complaining about the quality of the voice recordings (still don't think it's an issue, but to each his own) one solution that was discussed were addon packs with improved voices/textures.
That would generally work for the Wii too, but at least I don't know: What exactly are the limits for WiiWare games?
Is it an installation limit for the whole game (including all updates and optional addons)? In that case there would be nothing we could do.
Is it a download limit for the whole game (including all updates and optional addons)? Well, then at least the games could be compressed with a really efficient compression, instead of one that has to be fast enough to decode in real time. Could at least allow for a little more data.
Or (now it gets interesting) does the limit only apply to MANDATORY parts of the game?
Right now I don't even know if WiiWare games allow for updates/optional components/addons, but if any of the above are allowed to exceed the 20MB limit, that could be a solution to at least solve some of the issues ToMI faces on the Wii.
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DLC for Wiiware games is permitted and several games take advantage of this.
With one of the more recent firmware updates it has become possible to download VC and Wiiware titles directly to an SD or HCSD card and launch them from them too. Unfortunately in order to launch a game from the SD card you have to have enough space free on your Wii to fit the game.
It always moves all data to internal memory.
Package data as an overlay (i.e. using the same filenames) to your standard installation. Done. It's really that simple. You wouldn't even have to patch your original installation to support it. That's the way it's done on other systems.
The thing about external storage is that it is well, external. The console maker doesn't control it. Not the speed, not the quality, not the way people mess up the filesystem and not how data is protected. And if something goes wrong, who will the users come crying to? Probably not the guy who gave him the memory card.
So, running programs from memory card can be a nightmare, so Nintendo simply didn't allow it.
So far so good. But what if you suddenly HAVE TO support it? Well, you can either rewrite your system, or you can just copy the program back to the internal storage, run it and delete it afterwards. That's apparently (I'm NOT sure about it, but that's what it sounds like) what Nintendo did. It's easy, it's secure (because you can easily verify the signature of the program while you copy it to internal memory), just slow and not very flexible.
P.S. It's good to know that there is at least some logic to what Nintendo is doing. Before, I really thought that these rules were completely arbitrary to protect people who are still using a 14.4 modem.
I understand (though could be wrong) that it's the download package size, but also the size the game takes up on the Wii internal storage. You can't 'unzip' the 40 MB to take up 200MB like a PC installation. Any decompresing is done at run-time.
Some games take heaps of blocks for savegame data (especially if you're recording audio/video on a karaoke game), but they may be disc titles only, not Wiiware I'm thinking of. There may be a savegame data limit on Wiiware titles.
At least one Wiiware game has add-ons - Final Fantasy: My Life As A King.
http://wiiware.nintendolife.com/reviews/2008/05/final_fantasy_crystal_chronicles_my_life_as_a_king
Quite how that works, I don't know, nor do I know if that situation can be utilised by Telltale to, for instance, add a 'speech pack' as a separate entity to the base game which could be subtitles-only.
But considering what Telltale have done with getting everything packed into 40MB, having one lot of 40MB for the graphics, music and sound effects, and a 2nd 40 MB for the speech would likely make for a very nice experience for all.
The other consideration is that even though Wiiware titles can now be stored on the (up to 32GB) SD card, when they are played they actually copy over to the system memory. That memory is also used for some Nintendo channels, Disc based savegame data, the operating system (?) and a few other bits and pieces. So even though there's less issue with buying lots of Wiiware titles and saving them on the SD card, there is still the issue of the small internal storage (512MB) and that any Wiiware game has to take into consideration all the other things on the internal memory... which is why it's not so simple for Nintendo to up the Wiiware size limit from 40MB to 100MB.
Cant the game be split into two 500 points sections?
Tons of resources are shared between the first and second half of the episode, that'd take way too much time and resources for too little benefit to quality.
It seems to me that if Nintendo have such a stingy limit for the games themselves, the add-on content would have an even stingier limit.
I'm pretty sure they were talking about code being patched, not necessarily the distribution.
A voice pack typically wouldn't need to patch code, just replace data files, so the usual costs and problems (QA, Certification) that you face for new releases don't apply to it. (At least they don't if the console maker has a fast-track process available in these cases).
Do you mean will the Wii ensure there's always at least 40MB left in the system memory for an SD card transfer of a Wiiware game? No, I don't believe it does.
Could have been the Nintendo designed the system to have a permanently reserved area for WiiWare games launched from SD and that would have meant that there was really no way to go beyond the limit. But if it is just allocated in the general storage pool, then there's no problem demanding additional storage for optional components like a speech pack.
However, even if this were possible first a lot more work would need to be done on making the subtitles on their Wii games acceptable. In the current state Tales of Monkey Island has saddening poor subtitles that are hard to read and disappear too quickly.
Games like My Life as a King or Mega Man 9 don't store their DLC inside the original game package. They store it in a separate savegame. This also means that the savegames need to be present on your Wii all the time, therefore practically permanently taking up the space. In order to free this, you'll actually have to delete the DLC, seeing as in most cases Nintendo doesn't allow the transfer of DLC savegames, due to an increased chance of hacking.
So, what this means is that you constantly need to redownload your sound packs if you want to replay the older episodes with sound.
Further more, I am pretty sure Nintendo puts a size restriction on DLC as well, which probably is a lot lower than 40 MB.
Yes. ExciteTrucks does.