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

[DeadlyNinja]

I know there's that other thread about Wii doing Doom 3, but the discussion is too limited. I want to start a new thread to talk about all the games with interesting tech behind it. The Wii is actually getting some interesting games (tech wise) now and I thought it would be cool to analyze it and compare it to whatever you want instead of just Doom 3.

IGN just unveiled High Voltage's new Wii game Gladiator AD. Check it out. I honestly thought this game ALMOST looked like a game from the 2 HD consoles, minus the HD.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/986/986261p1.html

IGN is unveiling another High Voltage game tomorrow.

 

[brain_stew]

I'm damn impressed with the texturing and bloom, by far the closest the Wii has come to matching the HD consoles. You'd never get such high resolutuon textures on the GCN, so they're clearly making good use of the extra 64MB of GDDR3.

That shot and the one you posted are the two nicest imo. Really show off the excellent (for Wii at least) lighting and texturing.

 

[Mobius1aic]

HOLY DAMN

Maybe this is a dedicated Wii gamer's chance to get a real 3D fighting game, not to mention one that's like Soul Calibur? (with weapons and what not). Very nice looking. Now we know why Roman/Greecian and other Classical era looking objects appeared in the Quantum 3 tech demo that first premiered just over a year ago. I'm thoroughly impressed. I like how in the IGN article they mention that they are trying to "fill in gaps in the Wii library". I LOL'd so hard at that statement, I couldn't agree more, and I hope that their endeavors are as successful as the effort they've been putting forth on The Conduit as well as Gladiator AD. Can't wait to see what they got for us tomorrow! I almost want to say this game actually looks beyond what the Xbox could do though their is the obvious lack of self-shadowing. I like the color pallete as it's very complimentary to the setting.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I love how the cloth actually looks like cloth. It's -- strangely -- one of the first things I noticed about his game and many HD games too. Best part about it is High Voltage doesn't release bullshots at insane resolutions with 99999999999x AA.

obvious lack of self-shadowing

I've guessing the lack of a vertex shader is what's hindering the Wii's ability to do shadows.

 

[Mobius1aic]

I love how the cloth actually looks like cloth. It's -- strangely -- one of the first things I noticed about his game and many HD games too. Best part about it is High Voltage doesn't release bullshots at insane resolutions with 99999999999x AA.



I've guessing the lack of a vertex shader is what's hindering the Wii's ability to do shadows.

That's what I was getting at though HVS did say Quantum 3 had the ability to do self-shadowing, probably not worth the cost though. Though it must be mentioned that there is self-shadowing in the new Overlord game for the Wii.

 

[Nano]

They may not have self-shadows simply because the game is in its early days. Could well be implemented later, they have a lot of potential given the type of environments they're rendering. The platform is plenty capable without a VS unit.

Anyway, we can tell there are going to be some really impressive materials in this game, expanding on all they established with Quantum 3 and its flagship FPS.

 

[sfried]

Looks like they have much better artists this time around.

I wonder how the gameplay will match up, as fighting games is something few developers could get right.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Here's High Voltage's next game, The Grinder.

I think Gladiator AD looks better, but this game is pushing 65+ enemies on screen, and is still very early in development.

Kerry: We call the technology our Imposter and Instancing system. We are able to take a single enemy and replicate him over and over again. Along with the replication, we can also scale, color, and otherwise modify each instance. This allows us to get an unprecedented number of unique enemies on screen at once at a fraction of the cost to do it otherwise. During our in-house testing, we have been able to see up-to 65 enemies on screen at once. These were initial tests… [Smiles]

I wonder if they're talking about 65 of the same enemy on screen, or could they do multiple types of enemies at once. I know they don't mean 65 different unique enemies.

They may not have self-shadows simply because the game is in its early days. Could well be implemented later, they have a lot of potential given the type of environments they're rendering. The platform is plenty capable without a VS unit.

Yeah, why is that? I remember some of the early SSBB screens didn't have shadows, while some of them have shadows.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Here's High Voltage's next game, The Grinder.
...
I wonder if they're talking about 65 of the same enemy on screen, or could they do multiple types of enemies at once. I know they don't mean 65 different unique enemies.

Presumably it's standard instancing, with duplicates of several models. This compares with the technique of Demon Chaos with '65,000' enemies on PS2. As long as they get the transistions to blend nicely, it should be convincing.

 

[Nano]

Yeah, why is that? I remember some of the early SSBB screens didn't have shadows, while some of them have shadows.

Well, if asking about potential given the environment, they have a lot more scope being smaller areas to render. A lot more shader/lighting tech and higher resolution assets can be pushed in the scene compared to larger scenes with multiple rooms, or the extreme - an open world. Wii type hardware has shown great shadowing capability whether on its predecessor GC (RSII & RSIII) or in new titles like Overlord.

As for missing assets, its very natural for some effects to have not been implemented yet early on. Could be a matter of time (stage in development) or current performance.

 

[sfried]

New trailer showing off silky smooth framerate and solid animation.

 

[Mobius1aic]

New trailer showing off silky smooth framerate and solid animation.

I don't know if it's IGNs bad compression, but the lack of AA hurts my eyes Xo

But the game does look amazingly good and detailed, look at the texture resolutions on the armor The combat looks blocky though, almost JRPG like, I was hoping for something faster and more frenetic. Oh and I must say that their water animation is superb when that gladiator is walking out to the arena at the beginning. Also I must note that the higher number of enemies on screen in the Grinder is much like Gladiator ADs crowd scheme. I'm sure they both go hand in hand. Either way I must applaud how amazingly realistic and detailed Gladiator AD looks. Stunningly impressive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't know if it's IGNs bad compression, but the lack of AA hurts my eyes Xo

I noticed the severe jaggies on the Grinder pics. A count reveals the obvious - a 4:3 anamorphic widescreen framebuffer, stretched horizontally.

 

[Mobius1aic]

I noticed the severe jaggies on the Grinder pics. A count reveals the obvious - a 4:3 anamorphic widescreen framebuffer, stretched horizontally.

It's got to be the video, the screenshots look alright.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This screenshot exhibits horizontal scaling. Which is what you'd expect. The transmission format for widescreen and EDTV is 4:3 aspect anamorphic which would look squashed displayed in native format. The other solution is to render a 640x360 screen and have the TV scale it to fit.

 

[Iron Tiger]

It's so rarely that we get shader or texture aliasing artifacts in a WII game, so I won't even complain. I'll just be thankful that the RAM is finally being put to use.

 

[Nano]

Nice spruced up trailer compared to the original.

As rough around the edges (excuse the pun) the game is at the moment, I continue to be stunned by the complexity and properties of those materials. I know the platform's capabilities, but simply no-one else even attempts this.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Did you mean to link this?
http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14350710/gladiator-ad/videos/gladiator_trl_extremeviolence_52609.html

Personally, I don't think games look good when the texture resolution is too high without sufficient mip levels. The shimmering and sparkling is distracting. I was just playing something on PS2 that was an egregious offender here...maybe one of the DMC games.

 

[Nano]

Did you mean to link this?
http://wii.ign.com/dor/objects/14350710/gladiator-ad/videos/gladiator_trl_extremeviolence_52609.html

Personally, I don't think games look good when the texture resolution is too high without sufficient mip levels. The shimmering and sparkling is distracting. I was just playing something on PS2 that was an egregious offender here...maybe one of the DMC games.

Kinda, but the original links were updated :smile:

I still think there's a lot to be done, looking quite messy right now. But below that the shaders are impressive to me.

 

[DRS]

I've guessing the lack of a vertex shader is what's hindering the Wii's ability to do shadows.

Actually it has what is called dual transform. You can transform vertices to both eye space and shadowmap space in one go. The shadowmap is precalculated by hardware by putting the cam at the light's position and draw the model(s) or entire scene. It can also be used to perform projective texturing and (flash)light projection.

Looks like they have much better artists this time around.

Yeah, that grinder game looks a bit darker. Perhaps a bit more comparable to Doom's normal mapping