How about a new Wii tech discussion thread? (Games Analysis)

[DeadlyNinja]

There's a postmortem on Game Developer Magazine.

Sounds like that bloom issue you mentioned is pretty common with High Voltage. Their Gladiator game also features bloom abuse.

 

[Iron Tiger]

Well I got a chance to play The Conduit for the first time today. All in all I'm very impressed but at the same time I feel resources and fillrate was wasted on certain aspects.

The first thing to grab my attention was the texture detail on most surfaces when seen up close. I think it's pretty obvious S3 Texture Compression is being used however at SD resolutions I think it's a waste. However it's not even visible unless you are very close to the surface like a wall for the rasterization process to even render it, so I don't think it's really much of a fillrate hit even in large scenes, though as far as memory goes, it could be viewed as being somewhat wasteful.

Those are actually detail textures. It's an effect that blends a texture with the main texture when you get close to an object, creating the illusion of greater detail. Usually it's just random noise or grain, and not real detail like complex circuitry or anything. The first time I saw it was in Unreal Tournament, and you didn't need the S3TC texture pack to enable it.

Second, I was very VERY surprised with how far they went with the water in certain areas. It looks fantastic when it's being run with a 3D wave channel. I flat out never expected to see something like that on the Wii. However the only part of the game with water to have this I've noticed so far, was at a lull point in the action, where there were no enemies about, only some kind of organic "mine" like weapons that had to be destroyed by the ASE device, but it was incredible seeing them explode and create real time 3D waves. It just blew me away. Other parts with water I've seen running what looked to be a 2D wave system (I assume this is used for parts where the CPU is alot more occupied with other tasks).

I haven't played up to that point on my own copy, but this section was in the demo at E3. The developer told me it wasn't the greatest area to show off the water effects, because it's so dark, but they were very proud of what the engine could do with water.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Those are actually detail textures. It's an effect that blends a texture with the main texture when you get close to an object, creating the illusion of greater detail. Usually it's just random noise or grain, and not real detail like complex circuitry or anything. The first time I saw it was in Unreal Tournament, and you didn't need the S3TC texture pack to enable it.

I haven't played up to that point on my own copy, but this section was in the demo at E3. The developer told me it wasn't the greatest area to show off the water effects, because it's so dark, but they were very proud of what the engine could do with water.

I wasn't too sure about the texture thing, though I guess my hopes were shot down lol. I've never seen it done in a pre 360 or PS3 era game on the consoles at that level, I hate how Call of Duty 2 (which I think used it in a bump mapped form) and Halo 3 abused the crap out of it since it looks like it's basically the same pattern applied like tiles, and looks kind of fugly on those games as well as The Conduit. And once again, I'd really like to see how the task management is set up, especially considering the CPU is being utilized for calculating normal maps I assume?

 

[fearsomepirate]

Timesplitters 2, Geist, Conflict: Desert Storm, and the two Rogue Leader games all used detail textures on the Gamecube. Didn't Unreal 1 use detail textures?

A detail texture is not a bump map. It's just another texture layer.

 

[swaaye]

Didn't Unreal 1 use detail textures?

Oh it did. And it ran very well at "480p" on the 50 MPixels/s Voodoo1. That was a very nifty effect back in '98, to say the least.

 

[Iron Tiger]

A detail texture is not a bump map. It's just another texture layer.

I understand what he's talking about. Gears 2 uses detail textures, and also seems to apply them as normal maps up close on some surfaces.

 

[Sonic]

I believe Serious Sam used detail textures as well, even the Xbox version.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Timesplitters 2, Geist, Conflict: Desert Storm, and the two Rogue Leader games all used detail textures on the Gamecube. Didn't Unreal 1 use detail textures?

A detail texture is not a bump map. It's just another texture layer.

I was referring specifically to CoD2. It seemed to be using a bump map of higher resolution on top of a base color texture with a detail map as well. I think alot of STALKERs textures were made the same way with that "pitted" look to it that just didn't seem right and was overly consistent. However it was pretty impressive to see shadows project accurately on the pitted surfaces.

And speaking of Timesplitters 2 and Geist were they the only games on the GC to use the S3 texture compression?

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think nearly every GC game uses compressed textures. There's no reason not to. Since the discs are 1.6 GB, and there's only 1 MB of texture memory, you'd pretty much have to in order to get decent texture quality. The only exceptions would probably be PS2 ports where they used the original 4-bit textures, since S3 doesn't compress 4-bit textures.

 

[Teasy]

The 1MB is more like a configurable texture cache so its pretty big really. Though I'd agree there seems little reason not to use texture compression. Especially with the small discs and only 24MB main memory.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I just saw some brand new Silent Hill videos and they look really good. This is exactly how I imagined 2 Gamecubes duct taped together would look.

http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14325477/silent-hill/videos/silenthill_playthrough1.html
http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14325477/silent-hill/videos/silenthill_playthrough2.html

It's amazing to see the little snow flakes cast shadows. This is easily the best demonstration of shadows on the Wii.

Check out Red Steel 2. It's one of the few cel-shading games that look amazing.

I know there's an insane amount of AA in that screen, but there's also a video showing off the latest build, and I have to bow down to Ubi Soft for delivering visually. When I first saw the leaked trailer, it didn't look possible, but they've done it!

According to Ubi Soft, Red Steel 2 is locked at 85 fps! Why can't they just lock it at 60 fps, though? It would be nice to have more than 6 enemies on screen.

Here's another horror title with snow on the Wii. The first video shows off the snow horror while the second shows off HDR (according to the devs) and shadows.

Seems like Wii developers have a fetish for blending snow and horror on the Wii. There's actually ANOTHER snow horror game planned for the Wii, but the project's been on hold for a few years now, but might be revived.

 

[zed]

red steel does indeed have the best graphics Ive ever seen for a wii game, in fact puts >50% of the ps360 games to shame, though some of the screenshots look like theyre rendered at higher resolution

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it looks better than 50% of 360/PS3 games, but it shows that just because a game is cel-shaded doesn't mean it can't push a console.

Still, Ubi Soft has a history with doctoring pics. I was wondering if anyone here can tell if the motion blur you see on the bullet shell is photoshoped or could it actually be achieved on the Wii. It looks too good, too perfect. It could be just the 9999999999x AA though.

 

[Shompola]

Doesn't look much better than XIII, another UBI game. I personally think some people exaggarate on what looks good to great on WII. The bar has been set very low. What could pass as average 5 years ago, is now suddenly great.

 

[wsippel]

Doesn't look much better than XIII, another UBI game. I personally think some people exaggarate on what looks good to great on WII. The bar has been set very low. What could pass as average 5 years ago, is now suddenly great.

Hmmm....

Well, I don't think I agree.

 

[MDX]

Hmmm....

Well, I don't think I agree.

Wow... Ill have to agree with you not to agree...

That is the one big issue with a lot of people's memory when it come to comparing
Wii games to the last two, sometimes three generations. I think people tend to lump all SD consoles as being similar since they have been spoiled with HD resolutions.

I was quite impressed with the latest Red Steel 2 trailer. It looks like a physically demanding game to play. Im not sure if its a good idea to put more enemies on the screen for the kind of game it is. For that you might want to play Sengoku Basara 3

 

[DeadlyNinja]

And remember, this game runs at 85 fps to prevent slow down. I seriously doubt any game from previous gen ran at 85 fps.

 

[Rolf N]

And remember, this game runs at 85 fps to prevent slow down. I seriously doubt any game from previous gen ran at 85 fps.

I seriously doubt any game on any platform ever outputs more than 60fps over component, composite or s-video outputs, past present and future.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

And remember, this game runs at 85 fps to prevent slow down. I seriously doubt any game from previous gen ran at 85 fps.

How is running the game at 85fps going to prevent slowdown? I you suddenly have a scene that just cant be renderd at say more than 20fps how is having the rest if the game run at 85fps going to help you at that time? 85fps seems pretty useless to me. If your fps is going to drop, its going to drop.

 

[MDX]

How is running the game at 85fps going to prevent slowdown? I you suddenly have a scene that just cant be renderd at say more than 20fps how is having the rest if the game run at 85fps going to help you at that time? 85fps seems pretty useless to me. If your fps is going to drop, its going to drop.

Yes but isnt it the case that drop from 85 to 60 is less perceptible, or hardly perceptible compared to a drop from 60 to 30? Or even 30 to 20. So if the game doesn't drop under 60 there isnt a problem.