Yes. Lots of them. Every Wii game I have been involved with for starters. But I suspect you're asking the wrong question. For example we use them for character shadows (which are dynamic and are cast from lights!) but I'm guessing you mean as a sole source of shadows, environment included. I would be very surprised if anyone bothers to do that anymore, not because the Wii can't do it, but because there are better solutions in many cases.
Can Wii achieve the same level of Xbox's Doom3?
- Thread starter ken_masters
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Yes. Lots of them. Every Wii game I have been involved with for starters. But I suspect you're asking the wrong question. For example we use them for character shadows (which are dynamic and are cast from lights!) but I'm guessing you mean as a sole source of shadows, environment included. I would be very surprised if anyone bothers to do that anymore, not because the Wii can't do it, but because there are better solutions in many cases.
DeadlyNinja
Veteran
Statix, go check out some videos of Overlord: Dark Legend on the Wii. You'll see some impressive shadows in the game.
I have a question though. How well did Doom 3 run on the original Xbox? I heard the frame rate's not all the impressive. Or am I thinking of the Half Life 2 port?
I have a question though. How well did Doom 3 run on the original Xbox? I heard the frame rate's not all the impressive. Or am I thinking of the Half Life 2 port?
From what I recall, D3 ran at an almost perfect 30-fps clip on the Xbox, with very rare instances of slowdown. It's one of the smoothest, most consistent-playing games I've played on the platform, which is surprising considering its level of graphical fidelity.
Some older examples of global stencil include the original Riddick, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex: Invisible War on the Xbox. These games appeared fairly early in the Xbox 1's lifespan also, which indicates to me that the platform was well-suited to render these sorts of shadows. Yet I can't personally cite a single example of any Gamecube or Wii title that used this kind of approach for, as you said, casting stencil shadows on both the character and environment.
We're talking about global stencil shadows, right? What about Condemned 2, F.E.A.R. 2, and the new Riddick: Dark Athena game?
Some older examples of global stencil include the original Riddick, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Deus Ex: Invisible War on the Xbox. These games appeared fairly early in the Xbox 1's lifespan also, which indicates to me that the platform was well-suited to render these sorts of shadows. Yet I can't personally cite a single example of any Gamecube or Wii title that used this kind of approach for, as you said, casting stencil shadows on both the character and environment.
Indeed... I would think the dual vertex shaders helped a fair bit rather than a CPU implementation, where other processes would be fighting over processing (A.I., physics, sound etc).
Are you suggesting that these games only use stencil shadows? no lightmaps, shadowmaps, projected shadows at all?
In case you guys weren't aware, on the PC, D3 could run on video cards without pixel shaders. Even Quake 4 officially supported the lowly GF4MX. It wasn't pretty but it ran at 30 fps at 640x480. 
I've successfully ran D3 on a GF2GTS even, with double fps digits too at 512x384.
I've successfully ran D3 on a GF2GTS even, with double fps digits too at 512x384. Just in this console generation, we've seen Quake IV, Fear 1, Fear 2, Condemned 1 & 2, The Darkness, the Penumbra trilogy on PC, Riddick: Dark Athena, and maybe more.
Several high profile games and IPs coming out in the past year or two hardly qualifies as "no one bothers anymore." Certainly, the number of recent titles using global stencil shadows recently is in the single digits, which isn't a huge amount in the grand scheme of all the games that get released every year. However, the number of games that use ANY form of dynamic global shadows doesn't represent the majority either.
Regardless, the very topic of this thread is whether or not the Wii hardware would be capable of producing the level of visuals seen in the Xbox version of Doom 3. Considering the the dynamic/global shadow volumes are about one half of what made Doom 3 look as spectacular and impressive as it did back in 2004, I don't think it's unreasonable to come to the conclusion that the Wii would not have the capability of running Doom 3 with the same level of visual acuity as the Xbox 1 version did.
And no, the low-resolution pixelated, blocky shadowmaps of Overlord on Wii are not a substitute for Doom 3's multiple light sources with shadow volumes.
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You'll have to be a bit more specific with definition of "dynamic global shadows". All the games mentioned in this thread "cheat" in some way or another (by using non-shadow casting lightsources, light/shadowmaps etc. where applicable). Doom3 afaik noticeably cut down the number of shadowcasting lightsources for XBox, and they were never all shadowcasting to begin with.Statix said:
But I disgress, as far as Wii is concerned, it meets the specs you need to render volumes well - high fillrate(relative to target resolution), and enough vertex processing.
It's the other half (running the dotproduct heavy shaders) that I have doubts about transitioning well.
It's already conventional wisdom that every 3D videogame cheats or takes shortcuts one way or another with regards to its technology; that's how development and optimization goes with real time graphics on consoles. Even if you take a look at Killzone 2, there are instances/areas in an environment where a shadow may not be cast on a character model whatsoever.
What I mean by "dynamic global shadows" as it relates to the classification of a game's graphics engine, is that most of the visible game world at any given moment as seen through the player's viewpoint, has predominately shadows that are being cast dynamically on both characters and environmental structures, rather than using pre-baked lightmaps for the environment. Now, sometimes games may not stick to this model of shadowing with 100% consistency in every room; some may have 10% lightmapped environments and 90% dynamically shadowed environments; or the other way around. Sometimes, certain lights and certain objects will not produce shadows. In those situations, then we'll individually classify each game areas specifically, by themselves, rather than the entire game as a whole, and give caveats about how strictly a game adheres to its global shadowing model. Usually, games will stick to one lighting and shadow model for the vast majority of its levels, so it shouldn't be that difficult a thing to say, "Doom 3 uses shadow volumes for both characters and the environment." Maybe you'd prefer if there was an asterisk next to that description, such as, "But because of performance concerns, some objects and lights might not produce shadows."
As I said before, it might go beyond simply specs in this situation. The Xbox had several games using global dynamic shadow volumes (shadows that cast on both environmental structures and characters) as one of their main graphical "hooks" and primary form of shadowing (regardless of optimizations or "cheats" where the universal shadowing method might not apply to every object or area). The Gamecube, and so far the Wii, has had zero games in total. If the architecture is capable of doing it, then why haven't we seen it in a single in-game application? This indicates to me that one platform's architecture might inherently be more adept at rendering these kinds of shadows.
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Iron Tiger
Regular
Luigi's Mansion?
Wii has far more real fillrate than the xbox ever had. Not only does it have eDRAM, it's also great at multitexturing.
With a few tweaks I'm almost certain TEV could be useful, at least for some of the shading operations.
Normal mapping can be done with a CPU, especially with a CPU with as much bandwidth and cache (relatively speaking) as the Broadway.
With a few tweaks I'm almost certain TEV could be useful, at least for some of the shading operations.
Normal mapping can be done with a CPU, especially with a CPU with as much bandwidth and cache (relatively speaking) as the Broadway.
Still doesn't translate into actual capability. Vertex shaders are a very useful thing that the GC and Wii don't have
DeadlyNinja
Veteran
Pixelate blocky shadow maps? That's an off screen youtube video. I can't even tell the quality other than the fact that shadows and light are accurately casted on the models.
Still doesn't translate into actual capability. Vertex shaders are a very useful thing that the GC and Wii don't have
It does have hardwired transformation to make up for it. It leaves the CPU to do other things than update static geometry.
That was just one aspect, but it was one of the games that originally showcased normal maps through every environment and object. We know that GC or Wii can happily do unified lighting & shadowing in games and its fillrate is a pretty high compared to its predecessor. The memory is an awful lot bigger as well which has a big say in what's possible.
I'm sure shadows can look fantastic on Wii if implemented well, but normal mapping is pretty intensive considering the type of h/w GC & Wii has for shaders. But that also brings in factors such as what quality and resolution they would be rendered at.
Aren't 4 of those running on the same engine, and another 3 and another 2 of them? Then Quake IV is using id Tech 4. Each bit of tech going back to the 6th gen era. Perhaps it made little sense to chop and change shadowing techniques, when its so fundamentally implemented in the engine. No-one bothers may be a stretch, but there is no doubt many have long moved on.
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The point is, some games, high profile games that just released or are going to be released, are still using stencil shadows. It's not like it's some antiquated graphical technique that has utterly no use in modern game development anymore. Even though it's generally agreed upon that shadow maps are a more efficient system for this generation of consoles, because you're not constrained to low-polygon meshes, it was still a very viable solution for last generation graphics hardware (the Wii falls into this category), which is why there were more games doing it this way back then.
If this discussion is about whether Wii could run the DOOM 3 engine, then I think there ought to be serious doubts about its efficiency with rendering the multiple dynamic lights with stencil-shadow-casting properties, multiple per scene/room. We haven't seen a single Wii or Gamecube title with a similar method and complexity in its lighting and shadows. Well, then one could turn around and say, "Why not just skip stencil shadow volumes altogether, and use a less "outdated" method of shadows, such as per-pixel shadow buffers?" Well, the fact of the matter is, the game on the Xbox that could be considered the per-pixel equivalent of D3 would be Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and we haven't seen a single Wii or Gamecube game produce that level of dynamic lighting and shadowing either.
If this discussion is about whether Wii could run the DOOM 3 engine, then I think there ought to be serious doubts about its efficiency with rendering the multiple dynamic lights with stencil-shadow-casting properties, multiple per scene/room. We haven't seen a single Wii or Gamecube title with a similar method and complexity in its lighting and shadows. Well, then one could turn around and say, "Why not just skip stencil shadow volumes altogether, and use a less "outdated" method of shadows, such as per-pixel shadow buffers?" Well, the fact of the matter is, the game on the Xbox that could be considered the per-pixel equivalent of D3 would be Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and we haven't seen a single Wii or Gamecube game produce that level of dynamic lighting and shadowing either.
