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I'm gonna buy this game again on playstation. This also reminds me i haven't finished it on pc because my save keep gets deleted....
Maybe they can team up with Team Meat and some other developers and put their failed wiiware games on a compilation disc. I'd buy it.
Sounds like a ton of other indie devs which were trying their best to release WiiWare versions of their games but ultimately couldn't get the assets compressed down enough.
I'd rather them maintain their game's integrity than shit out awful versions like Telltale does.
I'd rather them maintain their game's integrity than shit out awful versions like Telltale does.
I'm glad they decided this. I would prefer no game to a shit game.
Also, those WiiWare limits are retarded. The same thing happened to SuperMeatBoy, it's too big, that's why it never appeared on the Wii.
Also, those WiiWare limits are retarded. The same thing happened to SuperMeatBoy, it's too big, that's why it never appeared on the Wii.
Shin'en should license their compression tech they use for their wiiware games. I get confused when devs have trouble with the file size limits after playing wiiware games that look like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcbjyKx_Srg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcbjyKx_Srg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
It's not viable to release it on the disc 'cause the only things selling on the Wii are dance, fitness and Nintendo games.
@patrick
Animations man. Animations.
At least i'm pretty sure that's it. In my very small experience animations are the ones that take up space. Polygons don't amount to much, and textures aren't really massive either. Machinarium is hand drawn and has a lot of animations.
Still that game is impressive with the constraints.
Animations man. Animations.
At least i'm pretty sure that's it. In my very small experience animations are the ones that take up space. Polygons don't amount to much, and textures aren't really massive either. Machinarium is hand drawn and has a lot of animations.
Still that game is impressive with the constraints.
I loved this game, not really the type of game you'd play more than once though. For sure worth it if you missed it on PC/MAC
This is one of the few games I would consider getting a tricked out, boxed 'Collectors Edition' type deal with the whole art book and bonuses. Great game, I am glad to see that they value quality and sad to see archaic limitations on WiiWare.
The size restriction can be a good and a bad thing. Obviously, if it's not designed originally for Wiiware, then that's where most indie devs seem to run into problems. Although, that wasn't the case for enhanced ports like Cave Story.
Wiiware has some great games but its a shame that it has lost Super Meat Boy, Night Sky, and now Machinarium. Hopefully, Retro City Rampage and La Mulana will still be coming out even though it seems like they've been in development for ages.
Wiiware has some great games but its a shame that it has lost Super Meat Boy, Night Sky, and now Machinarium. Hopefully, Retro City Rampage and La Mulana will still be coming out even though it seems like they've been in development for ages.
There is a difference between Machinarium and Super Meat Boy. Super Meat Boy started with WiiWare in mind. Machinarium didn't.
With Super Meat Boy, Team Meat were designing a WiiWare game, but then chose to ignore the WiiWare size limits. (This is similar to Backbone's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, where they didn't bother to estimate how big the final game would be, panicked mid-development when they started trying to find ways to cut back, and ultimately (successfully) relied on Microsoft raising the XBLA size limits.)
With Machinarium, XGen Studios were tasked with trying to port an Amanita Design PC game to WiiWare.
With Super Meat Boy, Team Meat were designing a WiiWare game, but then chose to ignore the WiiWare size limits. (This is similar to Backbone's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, where they didn't bother to estimate how big the final game would be, panicked mid-development when they started trying to find ways to cut back, and ultimately (successfully) relied on Microsoft raising the XBLA size limits.)
With Machinarium, XGen Studios were tasked with trying to port an Amanita Design PC game to WiiWare.
The hardest word to learn as an artist is "no". It must have been a really tough decision for a small team to throw away months of hard work, but I really respect their dedication to the quality of their product. This is what Valves are made of.
Oh, the size of a game is mostly bloated by textures and audio. Machinarium is a hi-definition game with high quality original soundtrack and sound effects. Most WiiWare games have compressed textures and midi quality music.
@Baines
False, Team Meat was working to have the game on multiple platforms. Sony refused first, then contract obligations with MS prevented a future release. Nintendo just simply announced the game to be on their wiiware service first, never that it was for Wiiware first. Common misconception that it started as a wiiware game.
False, Team Meat was working to have the game on multiple platforms. Sony refused first, then contract obligations with MS prevented a future release. Nintendo just simply announced the game to be on their wiiware service first, never that it was for Wiiware first. Common misconception that it started as a wiiware game.
Another sad day for WiiWare hopefully Nintendo does a turn around and things pick up for the 3DS eShop, and and WiiUware. I have the PC version so atleast I still get to play the game.
You forgot to mention the part where they said they are strongly considering bringing their new game Samorost 3 to Wii U. It's nice to see that this bad experience hasn't made them abandon Nintendo. The 3DS eShop is said to not be limited when it comes to storage space (Let's golf is 200MB while Wiiware size maximum is 40MB). The WiiWare file limit sucks, it means we missed out on a lot of great games that almost hit the service. This will have to join Super Meat Boy, and Puzzle Agent with WiiWare games that will never be.
If I remember correctly, the wii only has a 500 mb (or 512mb, not sure.) hard drive so 40mb/game sounds pretty reasonable for people who want to have like 12 games on their system (without the use of an sd card), if they put the original 360mb game on there you wouldn't have too much space left to put anything else.
N64 games had FAAAARR less to work with, the largest cart was 64 MB which only a few games used, Resident Evil 2 used one and that had a ton of CG in it. Carts were 32 MB and MOST of them were under. I'm just giving that example for comparisons sake, fact is you can make amazing games with little space.
I don't understand how Super Meat Boy needed so much space...
Frankly, I think Nintendo may have given developers too much credit (as usual) with a number like 40 MB, they clearly can't handle it.
They may as well just raise the limit, they've already given people the tools (SD card support and internal memory) to be able to download games. I don't see why Nintendo should bother trying to manage people who can't and don't appreciate being managed.
I still need to play my PC version of Machinarium...
I don't understand how Super Meat Boy needed so much space...
Frankly, I think Nintendo may have given developers too much credit (as usual) with a number like 40 MB, they clearly can't handle it.
They may as well just raise the limit, they've already given people the tools (SD card support and internal memory) to be able to download games. I don't see why Nintendo should bother trying to manage people who can't and don't appreciate being managed.
I still need to play my PC version of Machinarium...
I'm bummed it's not coming to Wiiware, but I can understand it. The Wii's 40 MB limit is ridiculously small, and it's the same reason we didn't get Super Meat Boy. Thank god for Steam and their sales, otherwise I'd be missing out on a lot of awesome indie games. Is there a limit for digital 3DS games that's been announced? Does anyone know? Because that seems like the next logical step to getting col indie games on Nintendo systems.
@Dr-Peace
....so the problem is everyone else, not the file limit....You do realize that's utterly ridiculous right? And that games are made differently than they were on the N64?
....so the problem is everyone else, not the file limit....You do realize that's utterly ridiculous right? And that games are made differently than they were on the N64?
Didn't they say, that they're now looking at putting it, on the Wii U? So all is not lost for Nintendo fans, but they should also look at the 3DS, because isn't the file size for it much higher? I think the GameLoft golf game is 250MB, which is considerably more space than WiiWare's 40MB. Which is low, but it has to be, because the Wii only has 512MB on internal memory, so that's the main thing that's holding it back!
It's the right decision for a game like Machinarium, where the charm is in the detail, and in the atmosphere created by the music. If you lose that, then you lose part of what makes the game special.
It's not like they would have made money back on a WiiWare release. Might as well push the PSN release really hard and include all that you can. Even without a single push from the marketing angle, it will sell far more versions than it would on Wii.
@Dr-Peace: Indeed, you can make amazing games with little space if you set to do so from the start. This case though is about porting an already done 300MB game down to 40MB. It's still possible to do but you'll be sacrificing the graphics and music quality in the process and the developers choose not to.
@Fr33Kye
What part of "they may as well just raise the limit" don't you understand?
The problem comes from multiple angles. Nintendo misjudgement of what small developers are capable of is one of them. The other being developers who don't do the research and waste time before they realise they can't port a game.
What part of "they may as well just raise the limit" don't you understand?
The problem comes from multiple angles. Nintendo misjudgement of what small developers are capable of is one of them. The other being developers who don't do the research and waste time before they realise they can't port a game.
@Dr-peace
No my problem is that you speak like this is some failure from third parties. Like they just failed to meet expectations and they are just not good enough, bullshit. Nintendo enacted the limit in the first place but it's third parties with the problem?
@Brainwasher
Who are you talking about?
No my problem is that you speak like this is some failure from third parties. Like they just failed to meet expectations and they are just not good enough, bullshit. Nintendo enacted the limit in the first place but it's third parties with the problem?
@Brainwasher
Who are you talking about?
You can do a lot in 40 mb if you have the talent and know how. Clearly some devs have it while others don't.
Why is anyone blaming Amanita Design for anything? They made a PC game, it ended up being popular and well received, so they looked into porting to consoles. It didn't work out for WiiWare without a reduction in quality, so they scraped that plan.
It's an understandable decision, but people act like they are personally insulted. That's stupid and childish. Amanita Design said nothing negative about Nintendo. No one needs to jump in and defend Nintendo's honor.
I used to love Nintendo, but seriously, it has so many hyper-defensive fanboys who go bat-shit at the slightest negative connotation that it's really off-putting.
It's an understandable decision, but people act like they are personally insulted. That's stupid and childish. Amanita Design said nothing negative about Nintendo. No one needs to jump in and defend Nintendo's honor.
I used to love Nintendo, but seriously, it has so many hyper-defensive fanboys who go bat-shit at the slightest negative connotation that it's really off-putting.
@JayCee:
It started with WiiWare in mind.
Machinarium was a completed PC game, where it was then decided to attempt to port it to other systems, and it ran into the limitations of the Wii.
It started with WiiWare in mind.
Machinarium was a completed PC game, where it was then decided to attempt to port it to other systems, and it ran into the limitations of the Wii.
I'm looking forward to the PS3 version. That must be some really detailed visuals and music they have.
The Wii's limited internal memory is indeed the reason that WiiWare size limits are so small. From what I understand, Wiis aren't even guaranteed to have 512mb of memory, as Nintendo allows for a certain amount of space to be defective. Of course then you have everything else using internal space, from game saves to the various IOSs to a running game...
There was a solution, but Nintendo chose not to take. If Nintendo had allowed running games directly from an SD card, then they could have easily have raised the limit. But running code directly from an SD card was seen as either too much of a security risk (for a system that had already been busted wide open and which Nintendo had proven incompetent at re-securing) or too much work. Instead, they went a different route, where "running from an SD card" means the Wii copies the program from SD card to internal memory, then runs the newly installed copy.
There was a solution, but Nintendo chose not to take. If Nintendo had allowed running games directly from an SD card, then they could have easily have raised the limit. But running code directly from an SD card was seen as either too much of a security risk (for a system that had already been busted wide open and which Nintendo had proven incompetent at re-securing) or too much work. Instead, they went a different route, where "running from an SD card" means the Wii copies the program from SD card to internal memory, then runs the newly installed copy.
Ghostfire Games (Rage of the Gladiator):
"Compared to that, 40MB is huge!(referring to making a 64KB cell phone game 3 years ago). The tough thing is to make trade-offs about what content to include. You need to always be thinking about the game size throughout the development process, and be smart about optimizing and compressing things. So you need careful planning. But if you’re smart about it, and optimize well, you can fit quite a bit into 40MB. Using these techniques, we were able to include many hundreds of hand-crafted custom animations, great-looking 3d graphics, full voice acting, 4 epic soundtracks, and a whole lot more.We really benefited a lot from the experience of making Helix, and learned many tips and tricks about how to cram a ton of content into a 40MB download."
Our hardware background for 3D games is the Nintendo DS. On this system you have to use really every trick available to make a game look good. We developed nine games on the DS and I think that was the perfect education on how to achieve a lot with little resources. All of this experience got into our Wii development.
Shin'en (Jett Rocket/Fast League):
"Our hardware background for 3D games is the Nintendo DS. On this system you have to use really every trick available to make a game look good. We developed nine games on the DS and I think that was the perfect education on how to achieve a lot with little resources. All of this experience got into our Wii development".
"Beside that, on the Wii you have a lot of design choices how to create graphic shaders. You can be very creative by exploiting certain side effects. Also we don't try to go for realism. We just try to make it look as beautiful as possible, while still being believable. Another trick we use is to generate textures in realtime to simulate effects that would otherwise not be possible on the Wii. All in all, it's quite a complicated process to bring all the tricks together but we think it's really worth it."
Over the Top Games (Nyxquest):
"In the end, the size limit works as an advantage for a company like ours. Knowing that you have a limit, makes you constantly aware that the game can’t get out of your hands and you have to focus on the content that fits on those MBs.I hope they increase the limit so we can add more quality content!"
Frontier (Lost Winds):
"There were no problems with the ~40MB file size limit set by Nintendo as the restrictions helped to concentrate the mind. In the past, a mere 22k could be a whole game, yet now most emails are larger than that."
(On Lost Winds 2) "You have to remember we are fitting an environment-based game into a strict file-size limit, which is always a challenge. We are aware of people’s perceptions of the play time of the first game, and have been able to learn a lot from our experience of developing it, and so have been able to cram even more into the space. There are significant optimizations which have really helped us to save space, and therefore add more content, and new and different types of gameplay. I don’t have a hard figure for you, as it depends on the player, but we’re confident that Winter of the Melodias will be significantly longer than the first game for any given player."
Square Enix (My Life As a King):
"It actually wasn't that difficult. I think we designed the game to fit in the memory space. It wasn't so much that we had a game and had to squeeze it down. If anything, I think the size restriction helped us. I don't think we would've had this game design idea if we didn't have the memory restriction to begin with."
"Once we had the restriction, we had... all our artists are veterans, so if you tell them the size, they'll hit it right on. And once we started making it, in the beginning, a lot of people didn't think we could fit this game in the given size, but we were actually quite a bit under. It uses a little bit of compression, and a little bit of techniques. You can fit a lot of game in a small size."
Gaijin Games: (On Bit. Trip Beat )"The size of the game is within the limits of the WiiWare size requirements, and being a rhythm/music game, we wanted to make sure that the music was of the highest quality possible. The audio is by far the bulk of the memory."
"Compared to that, 40MB is huge!(referring to making a 64KB cell phone game 3 years ago). The tough thing is to make trade-offs about what content to include. You need to always be thinking about the game size throughout the development process, and be smart about optimizing and compressing things. So you need careful planning. But if you’re smart about it, and optimize well, you can fit quite a bit into 40MB. Using these techniques, we were able to include many hundreds of hand-crafted custom animations, great-looking 3d graphics, full voice acting, 4 epic soundtracks, and a whole lot more.We really benefited a lot from the experience of making Helix, and learned many tips and tricks about how to cram a ton of content into a 40MB download."
Our hardware background for 3D games is the Nintendo DS. On this system you have to use really every trick available to make a game look good. We developed nine games on the DS and I think that was the perfect education on how to achieve a lot with little resources. All of this experience got into our Wii development.
Shin'en (Jett Rocket/Fast League):
"Our hardware background for 3D games is the Nintendo DS. On this system you have to use really every trick available to make a game look good. We developed nine games on the DS and I think that was the perfect education on how to achieve a lot with little resources. All of this experience got into our Wii development".
"Beside that, on the Wii you have a lot of design choices how to create graphic shaders. You can be very creative by exploiting certain side effects. Also we don't try to go for realism. We just try to make it look as beautiful as possible, while still being believable. Another trick we use is to generate textures in realtime to simulate effects that would otherwise not be possible on the Wii. All in all, it's quite a complicated process to bring all the tricks together but we think it's really worth it."
Over the Top Games (Nyxquest):
"In the end, the size limit works as an advantage for a company like ours. Knowing that you have a limit, makes you constantly aware that the game can’t get out of your hands and you have to focus on the content that fits on those MBs.I hope they increase the limit so we can add more quality content!"
Frontier (Lost Winds):
"There were no problems with the ~40MB file size limit set by Nintendo as the restrictions helped to concentrate the mind. In the past, a mere 22k could be a whole game, yet now most emails are larger than that."
(On Lost Winds 2) "You have to remember we are fitting an environment-based game into a strict file-size limit, which is always a challenge. We are aware of people’s perceptions of the play time of the first game, and have been able to learn a lot from our experience of developing it, and so have been able to cram even more into the space. There are significant optimizations which have really helped us to save space, and therefore add more content, and new and different types of gameplay. I don’t have a hard figure for you, as it depends on the player, but we’re confident that Winter of the Melodias will be significantly longer than the first game for any given player."
Square Enix (My Life As a King):
"It actually wasn't that difficult. I think we designed the game to fit in the memory space. It wasn't so much that we had a game and had to squeeze it down. If anything, I think the size restriction helped us. I don't think we would've had this game design idea if we didn't have the memory restriction to begin with."
"Once we had the restriction, we had... all our artists are veterans, so if you tell them the size, they'll hit it right on. And once we started making it, in the beginning, a lot of people didn't think we could fit this game in the given size, but we were actually quite a bit under. It uses a little bit of compression, and a little bit of techniques. You can fit a lot of game in a small size."
Gaijin Games: (On Bit. Trip Beat )"The size of the game is within the limits of the WiiWare size requirements, and being a rhythm/music game, we wanted to make sure that the music was of the highest quality possible. The audio is by far the bulk of the memory."
The 40mb limit is not a standard for developers to live up to. It's a LIMITATION. The same way one analog is not a standard, it's a LIMITATION. How can anyone imply that machinarium is not on wii because the developers lack the know how to compress their handrawn puzzle game into a form that meets their standard? Instead of saying the 40mb limit is bad, and that it was a mistake on nintendo's part, are we really saying that the problem is with everyone else again?
They didn't say they couldn't do it, it was almost done. They said it's state didn't meet their standards of quality.
@Hiltz
Point?
They didn't say they couldn't do it, it was almost done. They said it's state didn't meet their standards of quality.
@Hiltz
Point?
@Fr33Kye
HAHAHAHA...
You are too funny.
Look at the Wii third party support as a whole dude, if that doesn't tell you that third parties are mostly inept on Nintendo consoles compared to Nintendo, I don't know what will.
Try harder.
@Hiltz
Exactly, the smart developers that came into the development process with the limitations in mind didn't have a problem with it.
Trying to squeeze a 300 MB game that likely isn't optimized at all into 40 MB is like trying to run Crysis on the 360, it can run but not as it was originally intended because it wasn't designed for it.
HAHAHAHA...
You are too funny.
Look at the Wii third party support as a whole dude, if that doesn't tell you that third parties are mostly inept on Nintendo consoles compared to Nintendo, I don't know what will.
Try harder.
@Hiltz
Exactly, the smart developers that came into the development process with the limitations in mind didn't have a problem with it.
Trying to squeeze a 300 MB game that likely isn't optimized at all into 40 MB is like trying to run Crysis on the 360, it can run but not as it was originally intended because it wasn't designed for it.
@Baines
No it wasn't. Again, Nintendo just simply announced it being available to their platform first. Similar to how MS announced GTA4 being on 360 at an E3 several years back, but it too was going to be available for PS3 and PC. Team Meat already mentioned their development plans and hell they went through and how Nintendo jumped the gun.
@trsspidey
It isn't about talent to compress things. Machinarium uses a ton of audio, and audio is one of those things you can't compress well unless you want low quality enough to not discern it or have it as MIDI...
They already said they don't feel like sacrificing the quality of their work by cutting content and downsampling everything in their game just to make it fit.
You see the header image for this topic? You can only fit 400 of those into that small limit unless you downsample it to get grain and artifacts to reduce file size. You try squeezing that image enough so it eats up nearly a 10th of the current space it takes up and see if that looks good after.
No it wasn't. Again, Nintendo just simply announced it being available to their platform first. Similar to how MS announced GTA4 being on 360 at an E3 several years back, but it too was going to be available for PS3 and PC. Team Meat already mentioned their development plans and hell they went through and how Nintendo jumped the gun.
@trsspidey
It isn't about talent to compress things. Machinarium uses a ton of audio, and audio is one of those things you can't compress well unless you want low quality enough to not discern it or have it as MIDI...
They already said they don't feel like sacrificing the quality of their work by cutting content and downsampling everything in their game just to make it fit.
You see the header image for this topic? You can only fit 400 of those into that small limit unless you downsample it to get grain and artifacts to reduce file size. You try squeezing that image enough so it eats up nearly a 10th of the current space it takes up and see if that looks good after.
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