Unreal 3 engine Wii.

[Turok]

Looking at the revised release date list for Wii,there are a number of games that could be candidates for this rumoured game. Black(net gen) Alien FPS(Sega), R6V:2.There's also a number of third person action-adventure games that could be it.
http://wii.ign.com/index/release.html

Take your guess.

Those 3 games don't even have announced platforms. As far as why it is being ported, I would assume it is being done to simply ease the porting process of whatever game. Speaking of this, didn't Gearbox try to do the same?

 

[Color me Dan]

Looking at the "Far Cry on Wii" thread and Fox5s comment.

Additionally, many devs are looking to sell their games on the wii/ps2/psp trifecta, which could cause them to design their engines for the least common denominator of all three. Say the fillrate and processing power of the psp, with the lack of features of the ps2.

It struck me as interesting, There would enormous potential for a multiplatform engine tuned for these three consoles. I know game engines arn't simply by the farthest stretch of the imagination, but if one made an engine with the iD Tech 5 way of going multiplatform (according to Carmack); through basically a series of tickboxes it could be huge! "Compile for PSP(PS2/Wii): Disabling features X, Y and Z for this platform".

 

[ninzel]

Those 3 games don't even have announced platforms.

Exactly what makes them perfect candidates for speculation of who this unknown dev is and what the game is.

 

[JacksBleedingEyes]

I think that Epics is just thinking ahead here. We have a lot o f multiplatform UE3 titles and hopefully many more in the future. By allowing devs to create ports for Wii without having to redo the entire game engine from scratch will be a huge benefit. Most development houses probably don't even bother with the Wii at all in this respect.

 

[Fox5]

Yes. I think the biggest benefits would be the support for art creation and such being (at least that's what I've heard) far superior for UE3. So that would be a big reason, I suppose. Also, if you're a multiplatform supporter, then it's easier to maintain codebases and knowhow I suppose if all your devs work on the same version.

According to what people say about Bioshock's development, the Unreal 3 tools are compatible with the Unreal 2 engine, so couldn't they just use that combo?
I doubt the Unreal 3 engine is going to run or look as good as an Unreal 2 engine (or 2.5) on the Wii.

Now, if they're just porting the toolset, that seems sensible.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Exactly what makes them perfect candidates for speculation of who this unknown dev is and what the game is.

Given that EA skipped Gamecube with Black and Burnout and has skipped Wii with the latter franchise, I see no reason to think that Black 2 will be anything but a next-gen graphical showpiece.

 

[ninzel]

Given that EA skipped Gamecube with Black and Burnout and has skipped Wii with the latter franchise, I see no reason to think that Black 2 will be anything but a next-gen graphical showpiece.

Maybe,but EA's been an early and strong supporter of Wii. What was true last gen doesn't automatically have to be true this gen.

 

[Flux]

Well if multiplatforming becomes more apparent between the next gen consoles with Wii included and PS2 - Wii porting ends, I think making Unreal 3 a reality for the Wii would be a great thing.

Maybe it's not necessarily an Unreal 3 for Wii these companies have in mind, but a built-for-Wii Unreal Engine. And I think that's a good thing. Develop it, build it with pre-made "Wii shaders" to make shaders easy to produce and implement for games, and license it out. Only thing I would fear is so many games looking the same like what has happened with Unreal 3 licensing. But good looking games is better than crappy looking ones, right? Honestly I think Crytek should look into the Wii, it's the potential for them to become a household name overnight if they can make a great version of CryEngine for Wii and make games with it. Also Crytek knows how to make efficient engines that really maximize the capabilities with the system. It's just too bad that proper CryEngine tuning wasn't made with Far Cry: Vengence.

Just think if Epic, Crytek, and even Valve jumped on board with specific Wii development...........it would be awesome!

It has to be a custom built Unreal 3 that takes advantage of the technologies that the we has to offer.Maybe they need to optimise the Wii like...

-lock framerate to 24fps
-use Nintendo's licensed compression algorhithms on textures
-use the TEV to decrease texture size more
-use a worldmap shader(throught TEV) to decrease texture size even more
-code a Shader2TEV(the cost of doing this on the TEV is very memory friendly)
-take out everything in the engine that can't be done on the Wii GPU hardware and replace them with TEV equivilent
-sync CPU cycle priorities of the programs running.(will this crash the game or speed it up?)


Question:Can the SIMD unit be used by the game program or is it only excessable through the sdk?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Given that EA skipped Gamecube with Black and Burnout and has skipped Wii with the latter franchise, I see no reason to think that Black 2 will be anything but a next-gen graphical showpiece.

Well they mostly support the Wii with crap. All wii exclusive stuff they made are shitty minigames. I had some high hopes from EA in the beginning when they said wii and DS are important, but they dont seem to want to spend any effort on the systems at all so I dont expect to see anything like a black2 on wii.

 

[Arun]

Something else I suspect they might want to port is the scripting engine...

 

[sfried]

I wish Factor 5 working on this or at least licensed some tech towards the effort (similar to how they also release DivX for XBox during the GC years), considering how they maximized GameCubes capabilities. Alot of shaders have to be completely rewritten as TEV specific functions and optimize the pipeline further to reduce memory bandwidth (via streaming in data).

 

[arhra]

I remember playing Rainbow Six Vegas on my 360 and saying how cool it would be to have this game on the Wii. Not to sure if Vegas was UE3 or 2.5, but either way, I think the game is quite viable on the system, and judging from the "real" Wii games like Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy that actually use the systems various rendering features/capabilities, I'm sure that concessions could be made to make the game work well on the Wii without comprimizing how good the 360 and PS3 versions are.

Oh and can someone confirm for me which version of Unreal tech the game used? I always thought it was using Unreal 3 but I've heard alot about it using 2.5. Also if you know it's 360 CPU core and thread usage, that would be helpful to know.

R6V was a hybrid, i believe - UE2.5 for the renderer, mostly UE3 stuff for tools/art pipeline stuff, and probably a mix of both used elsewhere depending on how well the UE3 bits were working at the time. At least, that's what i've heard/read in various places, anyway, so don't take any of that as gospel.

 

[Mobius1aic]

R6V was a hybrid, i believe - UE2.5 for the renderer, mostly UE3 stuff for tools/art pipeline stuff, and probably a mix of both used elsewhere depending on how well the UE3 bits were working at the time. At least, that's what i've heard/read in various places, anyway, so don't take any of that as gospel.

Well R6V does have the same texture load problem as other Unreal 3 games where the game will start and the textures are not rendered on the lit but not textured gray polygons.

 

[AlNom]

Well R6V does have the same texture load problem as other Unreal 3 games where the game will start and the textures are not rendered on the lit but not textured gray polygons.

That just means there's a streaming bottleneck. It's not a UE3-specific phenomena. e.g. Halo 2.

 

[swaaye]

I don't recall Unreal Engine 2 games streaming textures in like that at all.

 

[AlNom]

I'm saying it's an issue inherent to streaming. UE2 doesn't implement streaming, so obviously, you wouldn't see the issue.