[The_legend_of_drtre]

I like how the article states the engine is handling vertex shaders. A feat many posters here claimed the Wii was not capable of.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by The_legend_of_drtre

I like how the article states the engine is handling vertex shaders. A feat many posters here claimed the Wii was not capable of.

Well it doesn't have vertex shaders so that would be pretty special indeed!

They're probably doing it in software (on the CPU).

[sfried]

Originally Posted by The_legend_of_drtre

I like how the article states the engine is handling vertex shaders. A feat many posters here claimed the Wii was not capable of.

I think it's more of a "shader" to TEV translator. I think many people come under the assumption that just because GC/Wii does not have any "programable shaders" under the traditional sense, it doesn't have the hardware equivalent.

[fearsomepirate]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Well it doesn't have vertex shaders so that would be pretty special indeed!

They're probably doing it in software (on the CPU).

The term "shader" can refer to either hardware or software, e.g. "This chip has 32 vertex shaders" or "I wrote a vertex shader." Obviously, they mean the latter.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by fearsomepirate

The term "shader" can refer to either hardware or software, e.g. "This chip has 32 vertex shaders" or "I wrote a vertex shader." Obviously, they mean the latter.

What I meant was, nobody is saying you couldn't run vertex shaders on the Wii - any system with a CPU is capable of that. If people said the Wii didn't have vertex shaders, they were most likely referring to the hardware implementation of them.

Obviously though if there are ways to perform similar feats on the GPU in hardware then its a moot point. Same with pixel shaders, Wii doesn't have them but the TEV can perform pretty similary to DX8 level shaders.

[DeadlyNinja]

That reminds me, can someone explain vertex shaders in simple terms? What baffles me is the point of vertex shaders. I know what a vertex is and can grasp what a shader is, but I don't understand why you would want to use vertex shader when you have pixel shaders. I mean, to color each and every single pixel sound about as small as you can get. If you can control each and every single pixel, why the need to use vertex shaders?

I'm guessing there are effects that can only be done with vertex shaders then? How about some examples?

[Karoshi]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

That reminds me, can someone explain vertex shaders in simple terms? What baffles me is the point of vertex shaders. I know what a vertex is and can grasp what a shader is, but I don't understand why you would want to use vertex shader when you have pixel shaders. I mean, to color each and every single pixel sound about as small as you can get. If you can control each and every single pixel, why the need to use vertex shaders?

I'm guessing there are effects that can only be done with vertex shaders then? How about some examples?

Flags wawing in the wind.

[fearsomepirate]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

That reminds me, can someone explain vertex shaders in simple terms?

Originally Posted by Nvidia

Examples of vertex shading effects include: matrix palette skinning, which allows programmers to create realistic character animation with up to 32 "bones" per joint, allowing them to move and flex convincingly; deformation of surfaces, which gives developers the power to create realistic surfaces such as waves and water that ripples; and vertex morphing, which is used to morph triangle meshes from one shape to another, providing smooth skeletal animation. These are just a few of the virtually infinite number of effects developers can create using Vertex Shaders.

Vertex shaders basically replace the fixed-function T&L units of the DX7 era and are much, much more flexible and powerful. They're also used in conjunction with pixel shaders for per-pixel effects that require data bout the geometry, like normal mapping.

[V3]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

That reminds me, can someone explain vertex shaders in simple terms? What baffles me is the point of vertex shaders. I know what a vertex is and can grasp what a shader is, but I don't understand why you would want to use vertex shader when you have pixel shaders. I mean, to color each and every single pixel sound about as small as you can get. If you can control each and every single pixel, why the need to use vertex shaders?

I'm guessing there are effects that can only be done with vertex shaders then? How about some examples?

Simply vertex shader need to prepare the work for pixel shader.

[Nano]

Well even though its an early demo, I was blown away. The game isn't looking amazing at the moment but I'm sure the visual quality will improve dramatically over time, but the effects being shown in the demo are exactly what I've been wanting to see on Wii hardware. Much welcome and I hope they really do push for engine licensing.

[sfried]

IGN mentioned in their podcast that High Voltage will be showing a better build of the game sometime. Hopefully they also improved their art assets by then.

[fearsomepirate]

If you look at the team's resume, they haven't done much noteworthy. I am guessing that they decided that it will be much easier for them to become a standout Wii developer than a top-tier 360/PS3 developer. Really, all you have to do on Wii is simply do two things: not make a mini-game collection and not use the PS2 or PSP as the lead platform, and you've already made one of the top 5 best looking Wii titles.

[sfried]

Originally Posted by fearsomepirate

Really, all you have to do on Wii is simply do two things: not make a mini-game collection and not use the PS2 or PSP as the lead platform, and you've already made one of the top 5 best looking Wii titles.

True that. (I've been saying this for quite a long time, it's just that devs don't want to commit and use the "2 GameCubes ducktaped together" as an excuse for their laziness.)

[sfried]

In case people didn't see, The Conduit game in action.

[ninzel]

Art work is still terrible..it looks really gaudy to me.

[DeadlyNinja]

The artwork's been terrible since day one, and the gameplay looks generic like most shooters, but the guns are very cool. I love the weird zippy blue balls that fly around and the homing (?) laser that flew in an arc. It moved too fast to show off much of anything, but I thought the guns could use better shaders. It doesn't even look like there's dynamic lighting on them.

[Mobius1aic]

Well it looks alot better in motion than in still shots, that's for sure. At least it's coming together and does look like an Xbox level game in many ways. I really admit though, I really enjoyed watching the trailer, looked exciting, even if the graphics weren't the best. Looks like a lot of fun even if it is generic. I wonder though, how close to a game like FEAR or Doom 3 do you people think the Wii could get to (full dynamic lighting/shadowing)

[mister slim]

Looks like it's more fleshed out than I thought. The earlier stuff seemed more like proof of concept while this seems like gameplay and world design is mostly developed. I wonder what's up with the little investigative orb? Seems to be hinting at some sort of illuminati/conspiracy-theory plot.

[DeadlyNinja]

Edit -- Ok, this is what I originally wanted to post -- Gyrostarr. It's by the same people who are making Conduit. This is just a WiiWare game.



This was revealed a month ago. I forgot to post it. They even have a video of it in action.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/868/868645p1.html

[Mobius1aic]

Originally Posted by mister slim

Looks like it's more fleshed out than I thought. The earlier stuff seemed more like proof of concept while this seems like gameplay and world design is mostly developed. I wonder what's up with the little investigative orb? Seems to be hinting at some sort of illuminati/conspiracy-theory plot.

That's what I theorized (and that sounds pretty badass to me!). Game looks fun at least, people I pretty sure will enjoy it immensely.

[sfried]

New interview with High Voltage Software:

Originally Posted by Dan Kaufman

The Wii has a fixed function graphics processing pipeline, so it isn't really a direct comparison and the vertex / pixel processing on the system is not technically done via "shaders". What HVS has done is find super creative ways of utilizing the fixed functionality of the Wii graphics HW to produce effects that have historically required shaders to create. This includes bump and environment mapping, end to end illumination, projected lights and shadows, interactive water, HDR, bloom, emissive materials and a host of other high end effects.

[fearsomepirate]

Interesting that he mentioned HDR. I wonder how "super creative" the rest of his methods are, since some of them are things the Cube was specifically designed to do well, and others are things I've seen on other games and talked about in detail on Gamasutra.

What's end-to-end illumination?

[denis_carlin]

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/200...age-talk-shop/

New interview with HVS

An extract:

TVGB: High Voltage has mentioned before that the Quantum 3 engine allows the use of bump-mapping, but how about normal mapping? There’s been great debate whether this technique can be used extensively on the Wii.

MC: The technique that we’re using to generate the character models are exactly the same for a PS3 or 360 game. All of our models are being built in z-brush and then we’re applying them to the lower res models. What you’re seeing in the game are normal mapped characters. The thing we need to work out is the lighting systems. The more we continue to tweak, the better it will look. I don’t know what the debates are but we are in fact running full normal maps on everything, not just characters.

EN: In the game when you run up next to a wall it clearly has it on it and that’s true of pretty much everything in the game.

TVGB: What about aliasing?

MC: Like everyone, we’re restricted to the 480p resolution that the Wii puts out. As far as dealing with that, we’re coping.

EN: There are some hardware limitations with the system and we’ve said from the start that we want the game to look as close as possible to the 360 and PS3. We can’t somehow do a pack-in that will allow us to kick out at 1080p. It’ll look as pretty as it can look within the resolution.

[kumayu]

Originally Posted by denis_carlin

MC: The technique that we’re using to generate the character models are exactly the same for a PS3 or 360 game. All of our models are being built in z-brush and then we’re applying them to the lower res models. What you’re seeing in the game are normal mapped characters. The thing we need to work out is the lighting systems. The more we continue to tweak, the better it will look. I don’t know what the debates are but we are in fact running full normal maps on everything, not just characters..

They say normal mapping on every things.
I guess it work like this way.....Just a guess
not really know the math abilty of wii gpu , could be wrong.

A simple diffuse bump process
Use CPU to preprocess every vertex,
IN Wii CPU
1. For ervey vertex , read vertex's tangent binormal and normal
Use those vector to convert the Light Vector to tangent space
2. Put the tangent space light vector as a vertex attribute,
like color or something.
put vec3(2,2,2) and vec3(-1,-1,-1) as a vertex attribute, too.
3. pass the new vertex to gpu

In GPU T&L unit
1. Do vertex Transformation, but no lighting,.....

In GPU pixel/Tex unit
(It has multiple texture stage can do some math....)
1.Read a texel vec3"bump" in normal map
2. mul it by vec3(2,2,2) and add vec3(-1,-1,-1)
than you get the normal XYZ in 1~-1 range.
3. Dotproduct Lightvector and Normal you get the light Intensity .
4. Read a texel, vec3"basemap" in normal map
5. Mul intensity with basemap , you get a diffuse bump normal mapping pixel.


Only two texture sampling and one MADD and one Dot product, one MUL
The math is simple enough, maybe it is possible to do it
in fixed function hardware,

The downside is the lightvector does NOT get normalize per pixel.
So the normal mapping quality may not as good as pixel shader,
but it's look good enough for most people.

If they work like this, The CPU has to do a lot of extra work,
may limite total polygon count.....
Wii cpu was not much faster than Xbox1 cpu
And Xbox has VS unit to perform the vertex job.
So, Wii maybe can do normal mapping , but the polygon count will be limited
(lower than no normal mapping game).

[tongue_of_colicab]

Wii can do normal mapping, dewey´s adventure (capcom) uses it.