Shadow Puppeteer Publisher Suggests Installing Directly to Wii U Memory, Imminent Patch Planned for External Drive Issue

Those of us with the white Wii u and what was an adequate amount of memory at the time, until Nintendo's massive update shortly after the console's release ate it all up, don't have internal memory to use.

I guess that was the start of the Wii U's fall from grace.

I think it was my review of this game that initially kicked all of this off. I think I was one of the first published reviews for it and basically slaughtered the game for it's horrific performance. The devs were really confused by my experience, later it turned out it doesn't work well with an external hard drive. I had to do an update review and video. What a day's work that was!

Edit: The game's actually a decent co-op game (when it's installed on internal memory)

Actually iirc Runbow has the same issue. There are some random hiccups that literally kill you, specially in the Bowhemoth.

"The slowdown certainly doesn't make the game unplayable in any way"

It's borderline unplayable at best.

It's a shame this game isn't that great from the few Wii U reviews I've read. The videos made it look decent. Can it be saved by future patching? A lot of the issues reviewers have stated is that it's very unpolished.

@zool adequate? Most of us filled it on the first day. I have at least 300GB on my first wii u

@Humphries90 Aren't these slaughtering reviews really unfair and damaging then? Considering that most people won't play the game on an external drive.

All of the reviewers ARE probably playing from external HDDs, so all people like @Silgeach are seeing are the framerate spikes, and the criticisms because of that. Could we end up being responsible for hurting their sales by spreading misinformation?

Credit for highlighting the problem with external drives BEFORE they released. That'll probably help them to patch it sooner But maybe we could help the devs by stating more prominently what you've said in comments.

"The game's actually a decent co-op game (when it's installed on internal memory)"

Just because of the slower read-rate of external HDD's, the poor dev's will now have optimise their whole game! In order to run on a less performant device than the Wii, (the Wii is not very powerful in the first place, which is why not many games look this good). Hence I hope you added a disclaimer at the start of your "slaughtering" review, so it does not hurt them unfairly?

Wii U has been out for over 3 years now, and with all the stability updates Nintendo has never given us the option where to DL games. How hard would that be, it's done on PC for maybe 30 years. We all know it should be there.

I was going to write about how it must be the debs fault, not Nintendo, as after 3 years I've never heard of this happening with any other game before, but if this has happened in the past then that's even more reason for Nintendo to give us the option where to downliad. It's not hard, just have 1 pop-up question box - would you like to DL this to internal or external storage? They could even have a box at the bottom - do not ask me again, do this for all future downloads. So so simple, yet so so useful. Having a 32GB system but 28GB sitting there empty b/c everything goes to the external as an unchangeable default is just stupid.

I'm OK with the system launching like that, but it should have been updated by now.

@rjejr I agree, and I think it's a shame that we all jump to the assumption that it's the Dev's and the game's fault.

They've mentioned this definitely happening with Deus Ex (a big game), but I guess we don't see this often, since as soon as the dev's realise, they must really panic and optimise the game further in a patch ASAP, before everyone slaughters them.

@Arthurial I don't think the review is unfair to be honest. It's still an oversight that they and Nintendo are responsible for. Don't get me wrong, as soon as the issue and solution was highlighted I immediately updated the review and published a follow up video showing my findings after switching to the internal memory. A "before and after" if you will. I then changed my verdict on the game from "Stay well clear of it" to "It's a decent co-op game if you have it stored internally"

I'm a small time reviewer so not too many people will see it, just be glad the devs did so they can quickly patch it up.

The game's over 2GB so I think there will be plenty of people having it on an external hard drive.

This is my Youtube channel if you'd like to find the videos on it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ShXRxocB0gv0mb8KAk3rQ

@Humphries90 thanks I'll check it out And don't underestimate yourself!

I'm using an external SSD (which is actually faster than the internal memory), so I'm probably good to go

@Humphries90 You'd think the devs and testers would check these things first! Considering the Wii has notoriously little memory it would be reasonable to assume a high percentage of Wii U owners may be using HDD.

@liveswired The dev kits might behave slightly different with these kind of things. And the devs can't really test it with retail consoles, because there's no way to get the game on there before it's released.

@Arthurial Regardless, journalists aren't technical know it all's with lots of experience. Journalists are like the majority of the unwitting public.

The issue lies with the developer not testing properly and should've issued a disclaimer for gamers using HDD until a patch is released.

I would imagine considering the Wii U's tiny memory many gamers will Infact be using HDD. Despite the variation in speeds, there are many external HDD's and SSD's that are faster than the budget SSD Nintendo slapped in the Wii U...

@livewired That's true, and I would've thought so as well.

Interestingly one of the devs replied to this reviewer and apparently Nintendo QA didn't pick this up either, which surprised me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvXCc5_zoHA&feature=iv&src_vid=7Cw8fj7u6YE&annotation_id=annotation_1067443181 - @Humphries90 is that you?

If people have good SSDs I guess they might be OK, but I don't know the data-transfer speed through the USB port. Maybe it can be faster than internal memory.

So for those of us who have had an external drive on the WiiU for years, since the most it has internally is a pathetic 32GB, how exactly do we install this to the internal memory besides just moving it after it's installed?

Hahaha. Wii U USB drives fail yet again.

@bofis If you don't turn the external drive on )or connect it) it will automatically install to the WiiU internal drive. I often forget to turn mine on, then wonder where all my game icons are and get reprimanded by the system on connection.

I guess I'll download to the system itself then.

Hold Your Fire (my Wii U game) was dinged tremendously by Destructoid because the game didn't load all the content from the reviewer's external drive (mind you, he wasn't using a drive with a separate power supply so that might also be the reason).

It is a lot harder to support external drives than people think because we need to be familiar with every type of setup there is (virtually impossible). I wish I could force an install on the Wii U system memory but that is currently impossible.

I'm still looking for a fix for this issue and have promised free content to make up for it but currently have not solved it. I'll just say that it is public knowledge that many Wii U games can run weird on external drives, so when doubt use system memory or use a supported drive recommended on Nintendo's website.

@Arthurial I'm also a Wii U developer and had my game dinged by Destructoid because it didn't load all content on an external drive (albeit, the reviewer's drive was unsupported). It was like he was playing another game!

I wish the Wii U would allow us to force an install (at least temporarily) to the Wii U system memory.

Smaller developers are unable to test every possible configuration, so your best bet is to use Nintendo's external drive recommendations or (most recommended) use the Wii U system memory.

I'm still beyond frustrated with Nintendo over this.

@liveswired As far as I know, this is a Nintendo issue and developers can't test every possible configuration or setup. A lot of indie Wii U games won't load correctly on some external drives and many developers don't know this until the reviews bring them up. It has something to do with the drives not loading all of the game's code correctly or delivering content at a slow speed.

I have told people to install my games on their system memory until I can find a fix. I still haven't found one and I think it is a fault of the Wii U itself (at least the system software).

@Humphries90 Actually, as a Wii U developer myself, I can tell you that we do not encounter hard drive issues often until the reviews release. Plus, it is harder for smaller devs to literally test every configuration. If Nintendo would allow developers to force an install to the system memory to be safe then it wouldn't bother me. I really think this is more a Nintendo issue than a developer issue because I've never been able to fix the issue where my games might run differently on some external drives than they do on system memory.

@Arthurial Indeed that is me!

@zool, You're kidding right? 8 gigs was not adequate memory at the time, the 360 was getting around 100-200 gigs of memory and a year later we had up to 500 GB to 1 TB. 8 gigs is anything but adequate, I just bought a PS4 and all of these immense update sizes feel trivial knowling I have a good 100 gigs left after my saved games. Unfortunately disks being installed to the hard drive really do take up system memory, but the performance benefits are there. Try playing GTA V on a PC off of a flash drive, that's somewhat relative to how slow playing off of an optical disk is.

I must have just lucked out. I bought a random drive and stuck it in a cheap enclosure when I bought my WiiU 2 years ago. 450GB of installed games later everything runs perfectly, never experienced any issues or performance problems with any games