Rogue Squadron: a game that looks great today.

ken_masters

Newcomer
(Rogue Squadron II)

Hey guys, don't u think that this game, dated from 2001, looks great today (at 480p)? There are games with best graphics, but it's 7 years old!! Factor 5 was a great job, with no doubt.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It was a great game no doubt, the GC was a decent piece of hardware. I was amazed when I played Star Fox back in the day, I thought the GC had some of the best looking titles early on last generation.
 
Hey guys, don't u think that this game, dated from 2001, looks great today (at 480p)? There are games with best graphics, but it's 7 years old!! Factor 5 was a great job, with no doubt.

I think they where the best looking games for the GC hands down. Never got upclose look at the games except for a small TV where they looked really really good. It's this thing with lots of ships flying around, green/red/blue bloomy laser shots flying everywhere and lots of smooth edged objects (TruForm?).
 
One of the few games that really pushed that system, even more impressive was that it was a launch game. Too bad most of the crap on the Wii looks no where near as good :LOL:
 
One of the few games that really pushed that system, even more impressive was that it was a launch game. Too bad most of the crap on the Wii looks no where near as good :LOL:

Basically, to people saying there's no hidden power inside the Wii, you're wrong. It's called a "gamecube" and perhaps "two gamecubes scotch taped together". That's the hidden power inside the Wii. We barely see anyone using the Gamecube, let alone the other one they scotch taped onto it. Well, there was Mario Galaxy, but that's about it.
 
Basically, to people saying there's no hidden power inside the Wii, you're wrong. It's called a "gamecube" and perhaps "two gamecubes scotch taped together". That's the hidden power inside the Wii. We barely see anyone using the Gamecube, let alone the other one they scotch taped onto it. Well, there was Mario Galaxy, but that's about it.

Wii games can look great, all we have to do is look to Gamecube titles to prove that like Rogue Squadron, Resident 4, and Super Mario Sunshine. And of course we now have Super Mario Galaxy to prove that the Wii can spam shaders. It's just going to take some consumer demand and developer effort to make more visually stunning games. I really want to see what Factor 5 is planning.
 
I hope they improve (they can) becouse many games out now for the system looks beyond ugly IMO especially on a large TV.
 
It is sad that hardly anyone has been able to match RS even on the Wii. Factor 5 really needs to get off its ass and make a Wii engine based off of the RS technology. It amazes me how a game that launched with the GC has held up this well.
 
Basically, to people saying there's no hidden power inside the Wii, you're wrong. It's called a "gamecube" and perhaps "two gamecubes scotch taped together". That's the hidden power inside the Wii. We barely see anyone using the Gamecube, let alone the other one they scotch taped onto it. Well, there was Mario Galaxy, but that's about it.

Exactly.

Imagine to see a game two times the texture quality of Rogue Leader and lighting and particle effects of RE4. The problem is if this will be a business for the developers, the casual gamer don't needs better graphics than Mario Kart ;)
 
Yeah it looks great. Nintendo was lucky to have Factor 5 to showcase their hardware.

I just don't like the gameplay much. I also have a hard time targeting in space with the starry backdrop and grey TIEs, That orange reticule that somewhat solves the problem is just kinda dumb in general (from a gameplay standpoint, it was neat in the movies).
 
A copy/paste.


First off, lets point out that Nintendo is being very conservative in it's 6 to 12 million polygons/seconds rating, as the developer Factor 5 who is developing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is already doing 12 million polygons/second, and the developer claims they are only using 50 percent of Gamecube's power. Factor 5 indicated they could get 20 million polygons/second per second with all effects. Effects stands for texture layers, and not polygonal lighting.

Two videos of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron running on Gamecube at cube.ign.com available here.
Here is information on Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, and the Gamecube as provided by Julian Eggebrecht (President) of Factor 5, and was originally presented on the forum at this german video game site: Maniac Online.

• Both videos run in real-time and only use 50% of the hardware.
• The X-Wing model is the original model used by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), for special effects in the Stars Wars film and includes ILM's textures and shaders. The X-Wing alone is comprised of 30,000 polygons and the pilot has 4000 polygons!
• Both demos run at a constant 60 fps, double buffered, true color, and with full screen anti-aliasing and deflickering.
• The surface of the second Death Star from the film was rebuilt accurately at 1:1 ratio. The simple shapes on the Death Star surface have up to 300 polygons. Every element has a 512x512 true color texture. You can see 25 of them in the demo. There are 70 Tie Fighters and X-Wings onscreen. So, there are like 200,000 polygons at 60 fps with up to 8 light sources along with gloss, dirt, and bump maps. (Note: that number and type of light source can have a huge effect on the polygon rate)
• Texturing allows all these effects: (alpha, bump mapping, gloss mapping, specular highlights, etc.) in the same cycle. It can do 8 layers in a single pass. (It has been previously reported that Julian said single "cycle", but that is not possible since Flipper has 4 pipelines with one texel unit per pipeline)
• The 2 MB frame buffer is a render buffer - when a frame is done, it is then sent to main memory. When being sent to main memory anti-aliasing and deflickering is done.
• The 1 MB texture cache is automatically filled during rendering, as the T&L engine triggers the swap. Textures that are used often can be "locked" into the cache.
• A-Memory is for audio but can also be used as a buffer for other items that don't need the speed of main RAM.
• The 2 MB on-chip frame buffer contains only the data for the current frame being rendered, and the z-buffer. Double/triple buffer is stored in main RAM, because the video DAC gets the image data directly from main RAM. To render an image, polygonal data is sent to the T&L unit, which loads/swaps textures in automatically into the texture cache. Textures are decompressed during rendering, so uncompressed textures never take up memory.

Specs are one thing, but it was the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron videos that Nintendo showed proves it has quite an amazing new console. This one game looks outstanding, and it is still very early in development.

A side note on Factor 5 is that they will be providing the sound tools for Gamecube development. The software is called MusyX and you can find details on it here.
 
I just finished playing this game for the first time(boy was that last level a bitch). It does look really good. Factor 5 really knows their way around the hardware they program for. I was really pleased to see a Battle of Hoth level that let me trip up AT-ATs with a Speeder like in Shadows of the Empire on the N64, that's really fun. I see Factor 5 did audio commentary for the game which is something I really admired when they did it for the Naboo game on the N64(IIRC they were the first to do videogame making of extras). And this time they even included a video documentary.

And wow according to Wiki Rogue Squadron 3 has even more enemy ships on screen. It's hard to imagine more stuff flying around on screen than what was seen in the Battle of Endor level.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I just finished playing this game for the first time(boy was that last level a bitch). It does look really good. Factor 5 really knows their way around the hardware they program for. I was really pleased to see a Battle of Hoth level that let me trip up AT-ATs with a Speeder like in Shadows of the Empire on the N64, that's really fun. I see Factor 5 did audio commentary for the game which is something I really admired when they did it for the Naboo game on the N64(IIRC they were the first to do videogame making of extras). And this time they even included a video documentary.

And wow according to Wiki Rogue Squadron 3 has even more enemy ships on screen. It's hard to imagine more stuff flying around on screen than what was seen in the Battle of Endor level.

RS3: Rebel Strike is indeed better looking, although it has its fair share of fluctuating frame rate. Plus some levels were real stinkers gameplay-wise (endor speedbike level).
 
One must understand that for most of the games on the Wii and their intended audience, the incentive to provide high level graphics is nil as it adds to development costs when in the end it won't matter, people will buy it anyways just because it's a party game. I really do hope though that Factor 5 has something really cool up their sleaves, and I've heard some rumors about Free Radical making a Timesplitters 4 either exclusively for Wii or a built completely for the Wii version.
 
RS3: Rebel Strike is indeed better looking, although it has its fair share of fluctuating frame rate. Plus some levels were real stinkers gameplay-wise (endor speedbike level).

I remember the Endor speedbike level being fun, although after the miserable on-foot missions, I probably would have considered a late-era Acclaim title fun.
 
how timely

the Wii while interesting has become (for me) my Gamecube box and Rogue Squadron is in the machine right now (I just purchased it this week). It does indeed look amazing in progressive scan as does, Wave Race and Metroid Prime.

I even went as far as to buy a Gamecube for my office (no component though :( ) so I can have a diversion from work while the kids are on the Wii and 360. I never owned one before so now I'm catching up.
 
This game always made me wonder why more Cube games didn't have better graphics, especially self-shadowing. BTW, Gun of all games--a cross-platform title that clearly has the PS2 as the basis--is I think the only other 3rd-party title to use the technique.
 
Back
Top