How about a new Wii tech discussion thread? (Games Analysis)
- Thread starter DeadlyNinja
- Start date
Dead Rising, Far Cry, Dead Space, the Call of Duty games, the RE light gun shooters, Silent Hill and Conduit. Ugly stuff. Everything that tries to do realism looks like ass at this point compared to the other platforms. The only games that have impressed me are the ones that go a surreal direction, like Mario Galaxy / New Mario Bros and Madworld for ex.
I still wish they'd just dumped backwards compatibility and stuck a ATI X1600 in the Wii. Imagine what that could do with 480p. It would probably match the other consoles in graphical detail because of how much less pixel area there is. It would have feature parity. None of this gimpy TEV + T&L retro nonsense.
I still wish they'd just dumped backwards compatibility and stuck a ATI X1600 in the Wii. Imagine what that could do with 480p. It would probably match the other consoles in graphical detail because of how much less pixel area there is. It would have feature parity. None of this gimpy TEV + T&L retro nonsense.
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I'm not so sure about the value of modern architectures. Instead of spending die area on more operand precision and features, you could spend it on increasing the width of the existing architecture, giving you more throughput in the same budget ultimately.
The problem we're having is that Nintendo did neither. They didn't go wide. They didn't go feature-rich. They didn't try to find a cool balance in between. They did nothing.
OTOH all of the best Gamecube games have been "remastered" for the Wii (Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Resident Evil) or have seen sequels that at the very least scratch the same itch (Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem ...). As such full Gamecube compatibility doesn't provide much of a benefit anymore.
The problem we're having is that Nintendo did neither. They didn't go wide. They didn't go feature-rich. They didn't try to find a cool balance in between. They did nothing.
OTOH all of the best Gamecube games have been "remastered" for the Wii (Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Resident Evil) or have seen sequels that at the very least scratch the same itch (Zelda, Mario, Fire Emblem ...). As such full Gamecube compatibility doesn't provide much of a benefit anymore.
Another interesting consideration is that Nintendo chose to go natively BC with GC, which meant the next generation of tech would need to be non-natively compatible (unless entirely custom hardware again). Perhaps their thinking was in part that the successor to Wii would be powerful enough to emulate both Wii and GC, giving them a high degree of freedom in creating a platform that would be BC with all previous Ninty consoles.
I get the feeling that those "remastered" games are just very quick ports considering the hardware is fully Gamecube compatible. They just rework the original a bit so it can run in Wii mode instead of GC mode, allowing for internal saves and a nice startup sound, and throw in a somewhat functional control scheme that usually makes me yearn for a Cube controller. What hardware is there to exploit anyway really? I've tried quite a few of the Cube-to-Wii games and none of them looked tangibly improved.
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thundermonkey
Newcomer
I can give you everything realistic, but Silent Hill and Metroid Prime 3. A realistic style can work, if you know the limits of your system. If you can't rely on shaders to add detail or flair, you need great texture artists. Both of those realism oriented titles have that. Neither of course are at great PS3/360 realistic level, but I can say they both compare favorable to shitty PS3/360 realistic titles.
DeadlyNinja
Veteran
Hey, check this out. This is for WiiWare. Take a look at the crazy compression Shin'en's claiming for this game.
The uncompressed sizes of the assets used in Jett Rocket:
* 245MB Textures
* 160MB Geometry and shaders
* 140MB Music
* 73MB Sound effects
* 8MB Fonts
* 3.5MB Particles
* 500kB Script code
* 151kB Localization
More than 600MB compressed to 40MB
Here's what the final product looks like.
Remember, this is WIIWARE.
It's like those tiny 64K PC games except this is bigger and looks more fun. They're doing all shaders and stuff from Mario Galaxy. It also runs at 60fps.
The uncompressed sizes of the assets used in Jett Rocket:
* 245MB Textures
* 160MB Geometry and shaders
* 140MB Music
* 73MB Sound effects
* 8MB Fonts
* 3.5MB Particles
* 500kB Script code
* 151kB Localization
More than 600MB compressed to 40MB
Here's what the final product looks like.
Remember, this is WIIWARE.
It's like those tiny 64K PC games except this is bigger and looks more fun. They're doing all shaders and stuff from Mario Galaxy. It also runs at 60fps.
Well they have 50% more processing power for both physics/AI and graphics, over 250% more usable memory and over 200% more memory bandwidth. Certainly not enough to take things to another level, but enough for very noticable improvements surely. A general lack of focus on graphics is the reason for no real improvement since GC IMO.
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Well, in that case they should have stuck more memory and a dual PPC into the darn thing too. The thought of it is very nice though
But really, like Teasy said, a bit of interest from developers and a bit of guidance/enforcement to implement it from Nintendo's part would help a lot in first place.Leave it to the Germans to really show us what can be done on the Wii, as we are pretty well aware of Germany's engineering tradition. *Thinks of Crytek* It's funny, Jett Rocket's textures look like they came directly out of Super Mario Galaxy. I know Shin'en develops pretty much exclusively on Ninty systems. Perhaps some technology/assets were licensed out? If not, some pretty mad props to them for arguably outdoing SMG in some ways. However I think I might have found my new graphical muse for the Wii from Shin'en: Fun! Fun! Minigolf!
Don't think I've seen a Wii game make such good use of the hardware, as for this kind of setting it's perfect, and I'm most impressed by the dynamic shadows They are a bit "eh" in trying to achieve the soft look but for the Wii, they might just be the best I've seen. As for everything else, it looks great, Shin'en really has their hardware down even with a few LOD and framerate hiccups. Maybe this is how Far Cry Vengence could've looked assuming more realistic characters, and of course more aggressive LOD in order to tackle a larger environment, but with the same set of graphical features. Even if you can't do the exact same things as the Xbox natively, sometimes you can achieve just as nice results using different methods. Please, enlighten me, where is the Wii getting the capability to render so many shadows at once? Is it possibly a CPU based implementation, since obiously the CPU wouldn't have too much to do in a game like this?
Don't think I've seen a Wii game make such good use of the hardware, as for this kind of setting it's perfect, and I'm most impressed by the dynamic shadows
They are a bit "eh" in trying to achieve the soft look but for the Wii, they might just be the best I've seen. As for everything else, it looks great, Shin'en really has their hardware down even with a few LOD and framerate hiccups. Maybe this is how Far Cry Vengence could've looked assuming more realistic characters, and of course more aggressive LOD in order to tackle a larger environment, but with the same set of graphical features. Even if you can't do the exact same things as the Xbox natively, sometimes you can achieve just as nice results using different methods. Please, enlighten me, where is the Wii getting the capability to render so many shadows at once? Is it possibly a CPU based implementation, since obiously the CPU wouldn't have too much to do in a game like this?
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You're right, they are just ported with the same assets, they don't look any better. I was thinking more about how they make the Gamecube versions obsolete and what that means for the value of that particular feature to consumers, though apparently you'd disagree.
I guess the overall point was that if Nintendo felt motivated to go through the trouble of putting out these Wii versions, it would not be a big leap to expect "real" ports even onto an overhauled Wii architecture (ala God Of War Collection). These are all ongoing franchises where it's worth fostering a new audience that might buy the sequels, without spending a full budget up front to create a whole new game. It would be more expensive to do it if the Wii architecture diverged more, but at least the same motivations would apply.
I was talking to a used game store salesman the other day. I noticed that the N64 was $25 and Cube was $20. He said that Wii's backwards compatibility has made Cube almost worthless, unsurprisingly. They also had no used stock of Cube controllers because people aren't selling and/or are buying them up quick for their Wii. Of course this isn't really any indication of whether people are actually using the Cube mode. I think Wii has a userbase of mostly "fitness" and "casual" gamers honestly. I think it's developed a rep as a console not intended for the "usual" console games as PS3/360 do those games better.
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Read this http://www.google.nl/patents?id=7pMOAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Its not that heavy (especially if you only pick a subset of the environment to produce shadows) and automaticly includes selfshadowing.
I wonder what he would charge if the Wii wasn't GC compatible at all. I'd rather pay 30$ for a used GC to play GC games and have a true next gen Wii w/o bc.
Why do you suppose shadows, especially self shadowing are so under utilized except in a few select titles on the GC then? I've noticed a few Wii titles trying to push the effect like Fun Fun Minigolf as well as Endless Ocean as being the only games that come to mind when it comes to pushing that much. Suppose it's memory heavy (wouldn't be an issue on the Wii then)? All the pieces to the puzzle to making a properly decent version of Far Cry for the Wii are here now..............this form of shadows (accept with no self shadowing), using bumpmapping for the water surface a la Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy with added refraction. Bump and gloss mapping where it counts. I'd leave out normal maps though. Memory shouldn't be a constrain at all, especially with texture compression. I'm sure the Wii could meet those needs. Goddammit it kills me
Man I'd love to have a proper FC with Wii controls. Vengeance controlled so well, but just looked and ran like ****. Maybe Crytek will bring Crysis to the Wii And yes I'm familiar with "Wii-sis". I'd try it out if I had a Bluetooth adapter.
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My guess would be that no matter how much time they spend on optimizing for that hardware, it will never compare to the other consoles. So why bother throwing money and time at it? Does the majority of the audience even notice or care? That seems to be what Nintendo has proved with the Wii: it will sell as long as it finds a niche, graphics don't matter much. They probably learned that from their portables.
I bet MS and Sony wish they were selling millions of units of ~9 year old technology at $200. I also see that some of N's first party games are still at $50 even after being out for years now. Moneh MONEH!
I bet MS and Sony wish they were selling millions of units of ~9 year old technology at $200.
I also see that some of N's first party games are still at $50 even after being out for years now. Moneh MONEH!
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Pearl Harbor Trilogy by a Swedish developer.
http://legendo.com/new-teaser-video-for-pearl-harbor-trilogy-–-1941-red-sun-rising-for-wiiware™
http://legendo.com/new-teaser-video-for-pearl-harbor-trilogy-–-1941-red-sun-rising-for-wiiware™
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Not sure you got the correct terminology here
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