DISGUST: Censorship of my post!
As a loyal Fan of Sam & Max I am recently disgusted by the removal of the informative post I made.
I pre-oredered S&M 1 & 2. And pre-ordered W&G even though the controls stink, but will work quite well with a joystick. I even ordered other merchandise from TTG.
My post showed users how to play S&M Season 1 (and other TT games) in any video mode they choose. The lack of video modes has been an ongoing problem for me and other users. See this previous topic.
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3840
I did not tell people how to steal the game. I told them how to play the games at an enhanced resolution. I just got done playing S&M season 1, Ep 1 in Hi-Res widescreen. It was quite enjoyable. I would not have played it again except to see it in its hi-res glory.
I also told people how to select any mode for Strong Bad. That post was removed. I also explained why it is harder then most people think to add proper widescreen support to S&M S1. But all this usefull info has been removed.
As a loyal customer, I WANT/DEMAND AN EXPLAINATION!
P.S. as some TTG employees are ex-Lucas Arts... I also own every Lucas Arts adventure. Purchased the moment they were in the store at full price. Heck, I even purchased the floppy versions of DOTT and S&MHTR. Then I purchased the CD talkies when I found out about them and gave away the floppy versions. No complaint about the double purchase.
I pre-oredered S&M 1 & 2. And pre-ordered W&G even though the controls stink, but will work quite well with a joystick. I even ordered other merchandise from TTG.
My post showed users how to play S&M Season 1 (and other TT games) in any video mode they choose. The lack of video modes has been an ongoing problem for me and other users. See this previous topic.
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3840
I did not tell people how to steal the game. I told them how to play the games at an enhanced resolution. I just got done playing S&M season 1, Ep 1 in Hi-Res widescreen. It was quite enjoyable. I would not have played it again except to see it in its hi-res glory.
I also told people how to select any mode for Strong Bad. That post was removed. I also explained why it is harder then most people think to add proper widescreen support to S&M S1. But all this usefull info has been removed.
As a loyal customer, I WANT/DEMAND AN EXPLAINATION!
P.S. as some TTG employees are ex-Lucas Arts... I also own every Lucas Arts adventure. Purchased the moment they were in the store at full price. Heck, I even purchased the floppy versions of DOTT and S&MHTR. Then I purchased the CD talkies when I found out about them and gave away the floppy versions. No complaint about the double purchase.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
WHO wants to know how to play Sam and Max Season 1 in 1920x1080 Widescreen?
Quick... Before I get censored again.
Thanks,
Kevin
I understand this again may not be the best venue for this question, but I feel that a wide variety of forumers would benefit from knowing the reasons why TTG is unable to host such information on their forums.
@Derrick, I would suggest that if you do think that your solution is a valid solution to the problem, it might be best to host the information on an external website such as the Widescreen Gaming Forums.
I did not post any info on how to modify the game itself. Just the preference file. And just to modify the 2 bytes that tell the video mode res. I even had plenty of disclaimers stating it is unsupported by TTG, etc.
Heck people, it is easy to do. Run the game and quit so the prefs.prop file is created. Save a copy of it. Run it again and change the video mode. Compare the 2 and you will see the 2 bytes that need changing.
The trick is in knowing what the 2 bytes mean, which is what I explained. I also explained how and why you may get graphical glitches in S&M S1. And why it is harder for TTG to add widescreen to S1 then it seems. But the glitches are quite livable knowing you are doing an unofficial hack to make the game work in a mode you may need.
But now that I am upset from the censorship and have played the games in widescreen to see the glitches that need fixing, I can say it really is not too hard to fix if they already have the mask graphics for the WII. TTG just does not want to do it, which I can understand.
Read about my and other folks problems in this thread to understand my video mode complaints.
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3840
The games are barely functional for me without hacking the video mode. I can barely see the inventory or options bar using the video modes allowed. Makes it very hard to play.
Just because you folks don't want to fix the problems, there is no reason for others not to know how to make the games meet their needs.
In the past I also complained about the loader and how the shell worked. I mentioned that even though I bought the games, I had to download cracked versions for them to be usable. This was fixed by S&M S1, Ep2 and I no longer needed cracked games.
Maybe my further squawking will make you folks finally fix this issue and let people run in video modes they want. It looks like TTG has fixed some of these issues in W&G, but time will tell.
BTW feel free to ban me, just give me my money back on all the games I purchased. They do not work to my needs without hacking in the video mode I need. I know that my post was removed by a weekend moderator and probably not a real official TTG employee, but it still rubs my fur the wrong way.
Unless we're talking 'co-founder of Telltale Games' Kevin, which would be kind of funny.
(ommited since it already got done/suggested), though admittedly I can't see where TTG would be liable, but I suppose ethically I can see them wanting to limit the amount of possible f-up were the instructions wrong/too hard to understand for some folk..
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15758
I actually had a larger explanation posted here that got removed, but did not feel like typing it all in again.
I even tried to explain why TTG does not add widescreen to S&M S1. But in my disgust over the censorship, I can no longer forgive TTG laziness in not porting the graphics from the WII over to the PC version. Even just for an unofficial version.
I have played S&M S1, Ep1 all the way through in hacked widescreen mode on the PC and the main problems have to do with the masking graphics for fades and the TV views. Not hard to fix. Then add the wall nearest the player view to the office where needed. The wall is there in Ep1, so just add it to the other episodes. That would make it quite playable in widescreen.
I do not know how the TV view masks are handled on the WII, but for the PC version, you could just leave them masking the TV view as a 4:3 screen and just expand the graphic to block the rest of the widescreen view. Same for any other mask like the dream view, etc.
I know TTG does not owe us PC users an updated S1 with widescreen, but to say it is a lot of work makes me wonder how portable their tools and graphics are between the computer/console formats. I would think they should be able to update it in a day once they are told the scenes that need updating. The hardest part would be modifying the options menu to allow for other video modes. Which they still do not do sufficiently even in season 2.
The more I think about it, it might even be quicker to just have the software stretch the mask graphics to fit the screen. Then you would not have to update the graphics except minor missing parts such as the previously mentioned wall. We already have to view the whole game stretched on a widesceen, so just stretching the masks will not look too bad.
But now I'm rambling in anger. TTG does do a fine job on their games and seems to try to work out complaints from older games into their newer games.
about a week of work to... fix the masks, give it more resolution settings... stretch and fix a few missing graphical elements (which should already have been fixed for the Wii verson) and they may suddenly get a bunch of new Season one orders in just because it can be viewed in HD widescreen now (and for only a little work)
because if telltale tries saying that making season one support widescreen is too hard.... after seeing those photos... well, then they are lazier than I thought.
The production momentum required to re-release an entire season of Sam & Max is substantial. Updating "scenes" is one thing, but ensuring that the ~2 year old Sam & Max game content is functional and presentable in the latest version of our engine across a range of personal computers is something else entirely, and no, our recent Wii and XBLA meanderings don't exactly drop right in to the PC version. It can be likened to porting Sam & Max to a new platform. That's a lot of man-hours for a small company like ours, which is already pretty swamped with W&G, the S&M XBLA re-releases, Season 2 Wii among other lovely things.
We want everything, all the time, immediately, but we gotta be patient too. Maybe some day.
That would be one of the easier parts.
Hah! It's like we don't even have feelings. Now pardon me while I recline in my huge executive chair and guffaw, cigar in-hand.
Like I have said in the past TTG is a great company that (mostly) listens to it's users. The DO NOT owe us an updated version.
If people could have read my original censored thread, they would have seen I took TTG's side. Then as my anger grew over the thread being removed, I went over to the dark side and took the position that it is really not too hard.
If TTG is looking at it from a standpoint of updating the whole game to their newest engine used by W&G, then yes, I imagine it is a lot of work. And I would not want them to do that. Would not want to loose the Point&Click.
But looking at it from the view of just updating the game using the 2.0 version they have already updated to, then a quick patch of the masks would fix up a lot of problems. Totally unsupported of course.
Part of the update problem may also be the different ways the games were released and updating all of those.
To sum things up, I just felt unjustly censored for posting info that I need to use the game as I have described in other posts. And looking at other threads, I know other users want/need this info. They can use this info knowing in advance about the graphical glitches it will create.
Maybe if I had received a private notice as to why the thread was removed, it may have defused me. But I would have still argued about my right to let others know about it.
On the other hand, I've also been on the side of writing how-to instructions to get games to work on unsupported equipment. Because some things aren't done because of market realities, but a few tweaks here and there will get something that "mostly, probably" works with my strange computers.
If Telltale doesn't want these patches on their boards, it's their right to remove them. It's probably what the company lawyers would recommend. And that's why there are other forums elsewhere. You might try to see if a search engine or something still has your post cached somewhere (by searching on a unique phrase that would have been in it), which would let you copy and paste your post to somewhere else in its original glory.
Thanks for reposting the solution, I look forward to trying it one of these days.
Telltale shut him down because they don't want untested techie bits here and there, which this guy doesn't think is fair considering all the how-to guides on Linux and Mac.
This person starts off pretty mad, but they have some good points. I can understand Telltale's position, depending on the possible effects of this sort of thing. If it can, for example, permanently break a monitor...it's hard to say that it's the best idea to keep it on their forums. But I can see this poster's point, that he's trying to actually add something to the community with his odd technical fix. He loves Telltale and their games as much as any of us.
Thank you for stating my POV in a "Rather Dashing" way.
It all started by wanting to fix some of the problems that I (and others) have been having as mentioned here:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3840
As mentioned there, in S2 I can't use 1176x664. It is soooooo close to 16:9 that it should be allowed
16:9 = 1.7777777777777777777777777777778
1176:664 = 1.7710843373493975903614457831325
Now I have found a way to do it and the side effect is that I can play S1 in widescreen along with all the glitches involved in doing so. And as another side effect I posted pictures showing some of the problems TTG would have to fix. I did not want to post shots from the TV masking problems in S1, Ep2 because some folks may not have played that far yet.
Yeah, they are quite funny.
- the following not directed at Tjibbbe -
But I take it to mean that people these days can't bother reading and understanding everything posted. Including the thread that explains people's need for this hack. Any resemblance of me to a raving lunatic is completely coincidental
The main focus of the censored thread had to do with allowing the user to pick any video mode they wanted. S1 widescreen is just a side effect. The main reason for this thread was to get an answer to why the info vanished.
FWIW, I understand TTG framing issues with the games. But people want/need to use specific video resolutions for different reasons. My reason is my TV display. Other want to run at the native resolution of their LCD monitor. That is how the picture looks best.
TTG could have made the games use any resolution and then just add sidebars or letterbox as needed to keep the framing. Oddly enough this is just what they have done for Wallace & Gromit. Of course if they had done that for S&M, you would not be able to hack them to widescreen I would have liked to see a stretch to fit option in W&G, but hey, you can't have everything.
I wonder why W&G has this great new video support? I wonder if it has anything to do with W.A.B's like myself that have pestered them for years over this issue. (W=whiny, A=... figure it out)
At least this thread and the S1 widescreen pics thread have not been removed. So now people can find the link to a way to solve their problem. Not a perfect fix, but it is better then nothing. In the future I will think twice before trying to be helpful.
Now on to playing W&G tommorow. Of course first I have to make a joystick profile. Can't stand the new keyboard controls. I play from the couch, not at the desk. I had thought about starting a thread on how to use AutoHotkey to use a joystick with W&G, but...
...
I like the sound of that. =p
cant wait to try it out, now i can actully play Season 1 again, and you have just made Telltale Games alot of money, i know quite a few people who didn wanna buy Season 1, because they have same problem.
edit: at the time of release of season 1, i owned a old school CRT monitor. But today all games gotta support 1680x1050 and above, its mandatory imo.
The rant has led to a new home for the info, and a pretty new thread with pictures. So something good came out of this thread.
Other then that, this thread can die. Except for the amusement factor. More funny tags people.
looking for pretty pic thread link....
Well maybe this thread is not going to die, I have been censored again. All the pictures of S1 in 1920x1080 have been banned. Yet again no PM from TTG as to what is wrong. The 1920x1080 pictures described the problems in hacking the video mode. It showed people actual pictures of the problems TTG says they would face in converting to widescreen.
Oooo scary info.
Well thanks for nothing TTG. I now feel bad about my recent purchases from TTG. Seeing how they don't bother fixing an ongoing problem plenty of users have had since day 1, I don't know why I bothered to support them. I am now an owner of all their adventure games + S&M book and TV DVD. And I will have to hack the video mode in all of them except W&G to make them useable for me.
Yes I understand this is a moderated board, but how is posting how to select a video mode you need to use, and TTG refuses to support, any different then telling users how to run a game on an OS that TTG does not support.
I imagine this thread will disappear soon.
Hopefully. No offense it didn't start out too bad, but now it's just like one big sad rant after the other. They told you these message boards are moderated. If they delete something I'm sure they have a reason for it, can't you just leave it at that?