Gameinformer developer survey
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Teasy said:
You don't want to map buttons to movements all of the time though. Sometimes that creates bigger problems, as mapping a button to a movement means the player cannot move that direction unless they want to hit that button.
Take Splinter Cell for instance. You could map the nightvision to a controller tilt.
However, doing so means that no matter what happens, the player cannot tilt the controller unless they are wanting to toggle the nightvision. Since most missions only have you toggle the nightvision a couple of times during an entire hour long mission you would be expecting the player to not tilt his hand, even for comfort reasons, for the duration.
Humans aren't meant to keep body joints locked in place for long periods of times, it causes cramps.
So, if you were a smart developer you would try to avoid mapping buttons to movements if those buttons are rarely used during gameplay. You wouldn't want to play a racing game where tilting the controller up changes camera views because it would mean you could never tilt the controller up while playing the game, unless you are one of those goofy people who changes views all the time in mid race.
RancidLunchmeat said:
If the game is running at 30 FPS on the PS3 and 360, how much slower could you make it to work on the Wii, and still be enjoyable?
And it's more than the CPU, it's the full system.
Not even taking the GPU into consideration, if I am making a multiplatform game, and that game will appear on the PS3 and 360, then my game would be designed to make good use of a multicore 3.2GHZ CPU, 512MB of RAM, and at least 22.5GB/Sec memory bandwidth.
I wouldn't say it would make full use of either system, but I would expect requiring at least 80% of those specs as a bare minimum to make my game work on both systems equally. To get that game to work on the Wii I would probably have to make some significant redesigning of how the entire game works, scaling back or completely removing a lot of content. There comes a point where I would have to ask myself if the game I would end up with is the game I wanted to make, and if the extra time and effort was worth the returns.
After all, if the Wii is the second system for most people as so many like to believe then they will have access to the full game as it was intended on the PS3 or 360, why would they want to buy a cut down or heavily scaled back Wii version?
SOME game types the controller can justify the scaling. The controller does have some very interesting options for certain types of gameplay. But, there are types of gameplay which really don't make a lot of difference or a lot of sense on the Wii controller, and if the controller can't be used as a significant advantage to the gameplay then a scaled back port of a game would be nothing more than a noticably inferior version, and how well would that sell?
Acert93 said:
I am talking about the game design and balancing, one thing that should happen is the game get easier, in fact if you see some RS or MP3 videos you will notice that the AI is much more agreesive it is overall better and enemys are much faster, if a port to still good is needed to rework the controls, AI, animation or (meybe) even level design that may give enought to devs think it is to hard whatever the specs it does indeed have.
If you pick RE4 with the wii controls you probably would kill any guy long before he is even close to you so those things would need to be reworked (or you could just put them to die after 5 headshots, not very fun IMO), which may be hard enought to do a port.
Also it does not even say it is only from next gen games (althought I also presume they are talking about next gen), anyway I think that games that arent CPU intensive may get a port for wii (from a tech POV), even if with very downgraded gfx.
Powderkeg said:
That didnt depend on the kind of game, I mean a UT07 besides gfx and some physics doesnt seems to be much more intensive on the CPU than UT04, in fact the Wii CPU is supossed to be able to do ~6gflops that it is what is marked in the presentation from the other thread.
On the other side you have games like AssasinsCreed (what I call a true next gen game IMO) that I guess it uses much more of the CPU.
Powderkeg said:
no, i'm not saying it will come with a GC controller. i'm saying though that the GC controller will be very common among the wii userbase. when taking into consideration that this 'specialized' controller is as commonly found and as cheap (or cheaper) than the system's default controller when sold separately, is required to play GC legacy titles and people rarely stay with just one console controller (1st purchase for a new console - a memcard and a 2nd controller) i think we can safely assume the GC controller will be fairly common among the wii userbase so that devs would not have to worry so much of that. just in my opinion, of course.
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Speaking of control interfaces, In most games I find much of the controls redundant and could be mapped inteligently depending on the situation. ie: jump when a log is at your feet or at a cliff (windwaker) and duck when there is a whole at your feet (windwaker) these types of controls I would expect in Wii titles anyway regardless of the controller because it simplifies the interface to the user which is Nintendo's philosophy.
In other games this is more difficult when things like different
"goggles" (nightvision etc)
weapons
amo
cameras
special moves
etc
But intefaces can always be accomodated even if a stub menu is needed to reach the specific desired function. It might not be as fluid/fast to do as it is on 360 or ps3, but it is possible.
Tech-wise as I stated earlier, much of what has been shown up to this point is last gen type games with more spit and polish. Nothing that could not be toned down to Wii or ps2 for that matter. Sure it would probably lose some fx and perhaps some content (enemies on screen etc) but the game should be able to make its way to Wii mostly intact.
Remember even though Wii does not have 512 to work with (and most likely has a fourth of that) it still has 3-4x what GC had and is based on a similar architecture. Consider what the best devs got out of gc and compare those results to what has been shown so far in next gen and I don't think it's a stretch to assume that for the most part, next gen games could be ported to Wii.
Others have brought up if the game doesn't take advantage of the Wii interface then what's the point as most would just buy the version for ps3 or 360. Well to that I say not everyone will have all three systems and if I had just enough money for a Wii and MGS4 was coming to it, I'd be excited to have whatever I could get even if it didn't use the controller in any innovative and fresh way and looked a generation behind the ps3 version. I would hope the game could stand on its own without the extra graphic polish (assuming it looses a great deal in the port)
In other games this is more difficult when things like different
"goggles" (nightvision etc)
weapons
amo
cameras
special moves
etc
But intefaces can always be accomodated even if a stub menu is needed to reach the specific desired function. It might not be as fluid/fast to do as it is on 360 or ps3, but it is possible.
Tech-wise as I stated earlier, much of what has been shown up to this point is last gen type games with more spit and polish. Nothing that could not be toned down to Wii or ps2 for that matter. Sure it would probably lose some fx and perhaps some content (enemies on screen etc) but the game should be able to make its way to Wii mostly intact.
Remember even though Wii does not have 512 to work with (and most likely has a fourth of that) it still has 3-4x what GC had and is based on a similar architecture. Consider what the best devs got out of gc and compare those results to what has been shown so far in next gen and I don't think it's a stretch to assume that for the most part, next gen games could be ported to Wii.
Others have brought up if the game doesn't take advantage of the Wii interface then what's the point as most would just buy the version for ps3 or 360. Well to that I say not everyone will have all three systems and if I had just enough money for a Wii and MGS4 was coming to it, I'd be excited to have whatever I could get even if it didn't use the controller in any innovative and fresh way and looked a generation behind the ps3 version. I would hope the game could stand on its own without the extra graphic polish (assuming it looses a great deal in the port)
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RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
Powderkeg said:
I missed the part of your earlier statement that included RAM. Hufinpuff pointed it out to me, that makes sense in terms of providing an obstacle.
<shrug> I happen to think that's exactly what will happen, which is why I don't see the wii selling in three years. I think developers will map button controls to movements, despite how unintuitive doing so might be. As you mention, there are types of gameplay which don't make difference or sense on the wii controller. Are you expecting those games to simply not be available on the wii? Or are you expecting that they will be available but with a haphazard control scheme as I mention above?
RancidLunchmeat said:
Both. Some games will go to Wii, no matter how the control scheme is worked out. Need for Speed games will certainly be made for the Wii, although I have trouble picking any control scheme that would work well with the controller. I suspect most will simply not make it to the system though, especially if the cost vs. expected sales doesn't justify the port.
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Powderkeg said:
From what I've seen:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13259
it seems most publishers are scrambling to get content onto Wii as the expected potential sales/userbase is looking quite good for Wii.
EA is already on board for 4 titles this year.
I agree these games being ported are probably not going to any great length of time to fully exploit the potential of Wii and will not until the userbase (and 3rd party sales) justify it, but it's looking like a great start for them!
Powderkeg said:
Agreed - years down the road there may be games which technically could not be produced on Wii but I'll hold judgement until those titles come out or devs show this difference in ports.
Aside from these titles though, the concept of Wii is simplicity so I suspect some of these games would either be changed significantly (sonic) or just not ported at all.
However I do not think the technical limitations of the machine will translate to less titles and in fact it's probable it will have more available titles due to dev costs, but this will mostly come down to the userbase per region.
TheChefO said:
The problem there is they are all looking at first year sales only. Launch and maybe the 6 months after.
The question is, what happens after that? Developers and publishers will need time to get an accurate idea of the demand for the system itself, the demand for 3rd party games (3rd party games tend to sell poorly on Nintendo consoles), and what kind of games sell well on the system. I doubt they would have a really good idea of what to expect from the system until around mid-2008, and until then they are all just trying to make guesses based on internet forum buzz.
The problem with that early strategy is that internet forum buzz is rarely indicative of the actual market. For example, everyone on the internet knew that Enter the Matrix was a big steaming pile of poop, but the game had extremely high sales when it was released.
Powderkeg said:
Agreed and overall I'd say the "safe bet" system to develop on at this point is the 360 for it's current and projected userbase (based on software and system price), but that does not mean devs will not or should not take a chance at establishing "simpler" games with new ip on Wii. The development cost differnce between Wii and 360/ps3 alone is reason enough to say "what the heck" and give it a shot. While I agree no one knows with certainty how the market will shape up in 3 years but there does seem to be a good profit margin possible ith Wii that is a bit more of a question mark on 360 and even more so on ps3. Basicaly I look at Wii at this point as a low risk potentially high reward development prospect in the same vein as a "We Love Katamari". While it is possible to put this kind of title on ps3 or 360, at this point in time if it were to come out on ps3 or wii it would either get ignored or rediculed because it "doesn't look next gen" while it would be at home on Wii because their userbase will not be expecting bleeding edge graphics.
For the bigger blockbuster AAA games I expect devs will want to make the biggest return on their investment possible and IF it isn't an absolute PITA, it makes sense that they would attempt to port the game to Wii regardless of it's potential "downgrades".
Powderkeg said:
Obviously a developer wouldn't map a button to a single movement such as up or down though. If a developer really wanted to map something like nightvision to a controller movement they would use a specific movement. For instance a quick up and down motion, something you would not do during normal use (mouse-look). Not that I would neccesarily map something like nightvision to a controller movement anyway.
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scooby_dooby
Legend
darkblu said:
Pure speculation. I see absolutely no reason to believe the majority of Wii owners will have a GC controller, especially if Nintendo has any intention of increasing it's marketshare. Developers certainly can not assume this will be the case when porting their games.
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scooby_dooby
Legend
hupfinsgack said:
Nope, not talking about degrees of freedom, sorry. We're talking about inherent difficulties when porting a game to Wii from PS3/X360/XBOX/PS2.
Before calling my point rubbish, maybe take the time to understand it?? Just a suggestion.
The only point of counting buttons is to show the complexity of today's games, games like GRAW use every single one of the 16 buttons on the controller, I would think that porting that to a system with only 7 buttons will be quite hard.
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