Gamecube Under-developed ??

[Bohdy]

It seems to me that graphical advances are not becoming apparent in most new gamecube games.
PS2 and Xbox are both advancing at a steady rate, making better use of whatever resources they have.

Particularly, the Gamecube's shading capabilities are being largely unused. If it weren't for certain dev's (like out harrow-broken friend) and EAD's high profile efforts, they would still be unused.

Why do games from the average joe developer not impress on the Gamecube? Don't they get code samples and such?
Should Nintendo have included a (G)HLSL ? Why aren't there more skilled or adventurous devs on the gamecube?


This is a worrying trend.

 

[Ozymandis]

I think that in general the Cube is lacking a bit as far as third-party "big" exclusives go when compared to the other two systems. These are the games that usually push the envelope. And Nintendo themselves seem more concerned with framerate than visuals; of course the average Nintendo title's art style is very simplistic so I'm not sure how much they could really gain.

 

[Rodéric]

NINTENDO should licence Factor5 engine and make it part of the NGC's Dev Kit

That would rock...

 

[Riddlewire]

There are just too many platforms, so the Cube doesn't get the attention it needs. I agree that it's capable of far more impressive visuals, but all of the major publishers have completely bought into the 'multi-platform' style of development. So most games on the market are of the "Compatible with All, Optimized for None" model. The Cube is in an unfortunate position. The PS2 has an undeniable customer base, so nearly every game will be featured on it. The Xbox and PC are similar in architecture, so a high-end version of a multiplatform game can be developed in conjunction with the PS2 version targetted for those two systems. The Cube, while certainly powerful, is often left out in the cold with a version that features bits and pieces of the other two designs. That's if it gets a version of the game at all. There are an alarmingly increasing number of PS2/Xbox/PC games out there that the publishers call Multiplatform. It looks like Nintendo is going to have to do a little better with their platform evangelism.

 

[Cyborg]

Its mainly due to its strong japanese support and its weak western support. Xbox's showcases all come from american/european developers with the exception of TECMO's team ninja. PS2's best graphics are from konami and naughty dog, rest is subpar most of the time.

Gamecube still has a few showcase titles from japan, resident evil 4, FFCC which uses the shaders nicely for a low budget game at square.

But yea, factor5 seems to be the only ones pushing the little flipper to its maximum potential for shaders.

 

[Fox5]

I was thinking something along this earlier, when reviews were calling the graphics of Knights of the Old Republic lack luster, I was thinking "boy, I wish the average gamecube graphics were that bad....."

 

[zurich]

I was thinking something along this earlier, when reviews were calling the graphics of Knights of the Old Republic lack luster, I was thinking "boy, I wish the average gamecube graphics were that bad....."

Not lackluster, inconsistent Very nice shader effects in the game used everywhere (models, lighting, BM, water, etc), but the models are fuuugly in cutscenes!

Still better than the vast majority of Xbox games.

 

[Tagrineth]

Don't forget Retro Studios. They may not have used any shaders, but they damn well did max out the Flipper in some areas.

 

[Fox5]

Not until they get bump mapping in they haven't!
Besides, I don't think I ever recall metroid prime having slow down, and many of the textures needed work, and the enviroments aren't THAT impressive. I think the average person would perfer a nicely textured square room than metroid prime's enviroments, what with their unrounded edges on tons of stuff.(seriously, why are the rocks and stuff any shape you could possibly know the name for? I mean, rocks aren't perfectly round, but they generally are rounded)

 

[Tagrineth]

Fox5, normally there isn't slowdown, but fire the ice beam a lot in a longer room, or better yet fire the Ice Spreader, and then immediately follow with regular ice shots.

 

[Fox5]

I don't think that necessarily means it is pushing the system too hard, it could just mean that they didn't bother optimizing that since how many people are going to do that? Or just one thing being done there is too much for the system to handle, but I'm sure there were plenty of places for them to improve upon metroid prime.

 

[Tagrineth]

There are some parts of Prime I consider far more impressive than the rest, but I don't quite understand what you mean when you say they aren't THAT impressive.

The geek in me still loves the thin tunnel in the Chozo Ruins with all the pipes and wires on the walls and lots of mist sprays as you go through it... 8)

 

[akira888]

Technically the GameCube does not have "shaders" in the Xbox, GeForce 3+, Radeon 8K/9K sense of the term. It does however have many very nice blend modes in its fragment processing unit which allow it to create effects similiar to what you could do with a "shader," far more than the PS2's "16 Voodoo2's" GS will ever do.

 

[Tagrineth]

the PS2's "16 Voodoo2's" GS will ever do.

Nope, it's 16 Voodoo Graphics's. Voodoo2 has two TMU's per pixel. GS doesn't even have one.

 

[overclocked]

Is it really that easy to compare?

 

[akira888]

Nope, it's 16 Voodoo Graphics's. Voodoo2 has two TMU's per pixel. GS doesn't even have one.

Ah, true, I even still have that V2 card (pretty sure it was an 1998 STB) with two texel processors. And that is what always disturbed me about the PS2 GS. In a system obviously optimized for small (by 1999 standards) triangles why would you need 16 pixel pipes which all need to raster from the same triangle? Why not add more render modes (true multitexture rather than multipass as well as dot3 would be a good start) over fewer pipelines? Not to mention better mip-map selection, better texture filtering, and some HW texture decompression. (and CLUT doesn't count) Oh well.

What's ironic is that the VUs are actually very good transformation units (albeit slow today of course). It's just too bad none of that ingenuity and flexibility could have made its way over to the rasterizer.

 

[marconelly!]

Technically the GameCube does not have "shaders" in the Xbox, GeForce 3+, Radeon 8K/9K sense of the term. It does however have many very nice blend modes in its fragment processing unit which allow it to create effects similiar to what you could do with a "shader,"

I believe people from Factor 5 have went on record saying that they have utilized some yet undocumented features of Flipper which allowed them to write and run actual shaders on the hardware. I'm not 100% sure but I think I've read that right here on this forum, several months ago.

In a system obviously optimized for small (by 1999 standards) triangles why would you need 16 pixel pipes which all need to raster from the same triangle? Why not add more render modes (true multitexture rather than multipass as well as dot3 would be a good start) over fewer pipelines?

I'd like to know what developers think about this? Is that a part of design philosophy (speed over features) Does the existence of more pipelines allow for easier multipass rendering which basically evens out with 'true' multitexturing support with less pipes? Is there any kind of advantage to the 16 pipelines approach (maybe rendering tons of transparencies over each other like in MGS2 and such?)

 

[Bohdy]

Technically the GameCube does not have "shaders" in the Xbox, GeForce 3+, Radeon 8K/9K sense of the term. It does however have many very nice blend modes in its fragment processing unit which allow it to create effects similiar to what you could do with a "shader,"

I believe people from Factor 5 have went on record saying that they have utilized some yet undocumented features of Flipper which allowed them to write and run actual shaders on the hardware. I'm not 100% sure but I think I've read that right here on this forum, several months ago.

Well Factor 5 (and our harrow-broken friend) seem to have no problem with calling them shaders, if you have seen their Gamasutra article.

That is another thing, how difficult is it to program the Gamecube version of Shaders in comparison to the PC standard PS?

Do dev's read Gamasutra? Thomas Engel goes into quite some detail that should be of help to anyone looking to make a good GC engine.

Looking at the more impressive releases, and the reported ease of use, it is sad to see the system not having its potential used by developers before it is superceeded by its sequel.

I also think that if the effort spent programming some of the better example of the PS2's power were spent on Gamecube, it could top the best of the Xbox. If it was spent on the Xbox, we would see some very nice things.

 

[Fafalada]

Technically the GameCube does not have "shaders" in the Xbox, GeForce 3+, Radeon 8K/9K sense of the term.

:?
So which part exactly disqualifies GC's combiner as shaders and qualifies GF3+ one? The NVidia logo?

 

[akira888]

So which part exactly disqualifies GC's combiner as shaders and qualifies GF3+ one?

Very good point, Fafalada. Sorry.

I shouldn't have placed GF3 on that list; most of the effects you can do on a GF3 you can do on earlier GForces and Radeons. I guess the answer to whether or not or particular chip has any given feature should not be determined neccessarily by "scanning the silicon" but by whether the feature can be implemented with only a reasonable handicap of other functionality. The exact process used to derive output is more or less irrelevant so long as that criterion is met.