.......do those of you with Wii experience think it could graphically equal or surpass the Xbox versions? While FC: V was quite bad looking, I do somewhat look at it as a proof of concept too, as much of the tech needed to run the full-breathed Far Cry is obviously shown to work, except for the water shaders, normal and bump maps. It should be completely doable since many of those effects have been implemented in various Wii titles. I guess the only issue is whether the Hollywood GPU could do the fillrates needed to get smooth framerate?
So if Far Cry on Wii was given a second chance........
- Thread starter Mobius1aic
- Start date
I've removed your use of 'lazy development / lazy developers' from the thread title. Please refrain from using it in the future, you won't do yourself any favors on a board where a lot of the posters are developers themselves. It's nothing but an insult to the people who spent years of their lives in what are no doubt the most trying projects. Have a little respect please.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Though I agree with you, I dont think you can always blame everything on the big guys not giving enough time/money/both. Some games dont only show a lack of those, but also a lack of effort (or maybe lack of skill). If I look at a game with textures not even worthy of a n64 game than I cant think anything else than that isnt only the case of not having enough time or money.
Anyway back to the topic, Ofcouse FC could have been alot better, thats kinda obvious. Red steel looked better, mp3 looks alot better so yeah I dont see why you couldnt have a good looking FC. If it would be better than the xbox version? I dont know, ask someone who knows what he's talking about that
There was a lot of chat here about Wii FarCry back when it was unreleased. Considering how Wii seems to be an awful lot like a souped up Cube, it probably still can't do much in the way of heavy per-pixel and shader effects.... But certainly it could look better than what the FarCry game does look like. Yikes.
Well I would be happy with bump map derived water effects a la Super Mario Sunshine, which in some cases, I think is more pleasing to my eye. Throw in a lesser bit of reflection mapping on the water than what FC PC shipped, make it more transparent, then use SMS's bump map water technique would make for incredibly beautiful and believable water. Far Cry and it's Xbox cousins have water that's just too glassy. Lack of true 3D dimensionality doesn't help, and even Far Cry 360 with it's 3D water model had the way too glassy and monotonous water model.
archangelmorph
Veteran
Try..
"lack of experience/available knowledge with respect to best working practices relating to developing on a particular hardware platform..?"
"lower technical requirements provided by management derrived from a small budget production schedule..?"
Our job is just like any other professional job.. If you don't put in the "effort" required to do the job well, it's likely you'll lose your job to someone who will (& that process isn't going to take an entire development schedule now is it..?)
I think you should take Graham's advise a little too..
archangelmorph
Veteran
Is your problem with the art or the technology here?
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I said I agree with Graham. But I just dont alway believe that if I look at games like cruisn' for the wii. That just looks like it has zero effort put into it and I dont believe that is due to the lack of skill or to little time or money (unless they had to make it in a afternoon and got a happy meal as pay) because even I could create models and textures better than that game has and that says a whole lot.
Probably happens more often than you think. And if you don't have a big budget, then you're constrained, too. FC Wii was most likely a port of the canned PS2 version, so they may not have even had much budget for asset creation. Textures don't make themselves.
While I agree cruisin on the Wii looks horrible. I still wouldn't knock the developers without knowing what the constraints were.
I know nothing about it, but I'd bet it was a rush job to cash in n the Wii's success.
The art could have been ousourced and frm what I've seen recently if you're not really on top of that your looking at extremly poor quality.
It would be easy to make a few bad decisions, not have someone dedicated to provide quality control on outsourced art, and end up with cruisin'.
If the publisher decides it doesn't want to spend the time or money to fix it at that point, there you have it.
Individual developers rarely make all that much difference. I have seen experienced teams where they are burned out and jst going through the motions, but that generally leads to very average product.
I know nothing about it, but I'd bet it was a rush job to cash in n the Wii's success.
The art could have been ousourced and frm what I've seen recently if you're not really on top of that your looking at extremly poor quality.
It would be easy to make a few bad decisions, not have someone dedicated to provide quality control on outsourced art, and end up with cruisin'.
If the publisher decides it doesn't want to spend the time or money to fix it at that point, there you have it.
Individual developers rarely make all that much difference. I have seen experienced teams where they are burned out and jst going through the motions, but that generally leads to very average product.
Both I guess. That and I don't like the "revamped" art style of the console FCs. The PC original is by far the superior in both design and play. I know the consoles have certain constraints, mainly graphical and memory but it's what made Far Cry what it really was and such a gem of it's time. It's amazing how well it still holds up to this day compared to newer games.
I'm fairly certain the Wii has the power to do better than even the Xbox in some aspects if the devs learned to do proper Wii tailored shaders on it. Come on, Silent Hill Origins has dynamic lighting and shadowing it and Wii games are barely using either/or except for a few notable cases.
That game is almost completely devoid of shaders, albeit some what seems to be a little bit of normal mapping on some of the Federation Marines armor. It looks great for a Wii game but frankly tons of bloom lighting doesn't impress me too much. I want to see a true technical powerhouse. Anyone seen Silent Hill Origins run on the PSP? Holy crap, it had TRUE dynamic shadowing and lighting (not the phong type lighting used in the PS2 SH games) and it runs at 60 FPS most of the time. Now that's a technical powerhouse of a game!
"Shader" is a pretty generic term. In hardware terms, MP3 has no "shaders" because Gamecube has no programmable shaders. In software terms, it has quite a few. Since you're new here, I'll key you in on something I've learned:
There are lots of shaders that amateurs like you and me don't readily notice. Bump, specular, and water effects are usually pretty obvious, but there are all kinds of things related to post filters, depth-based effects, glare, gloss, haze, ambient lighting, and so on that go above and beyond simple Gouraud + Texture. So don't assume that just because you can't identify more than two, there aren't more than two "shader" effects there.
What fearsomepirate said.
Basically I mean that MP3 is undoubtedly an example of some serious effort put into optimizing for the hardware in Wii. It's an exclusive game made by one of the best dev houses working on Wii, and the previous games were certainly showcases for Cube. Take what you see however you want.
Basically I mean that MP3 is undoubtedly an example of some serious effort put into optimizing for the hardware in Wii. It's an exclusive game made by one of the best dev houses working on Wii, and the previous games were certainly showcases for Cube. Take what you see however you want.
Anecdotal, somewhat related story: A friend of mine said, "I don't know why people think Bioshock's graphics are anything to talk about. All it's doing is normal mapping, some dynamic shadows here and there, and a water effect. There are hardly any shader effects at all."
When it gets right down to it, most people have no idea if something's functional unless they see chrome.
When it gets right down to it, most people have no idea if something's functional unless they see chrome.
Anecdotal, somewhat related story: A friend of mine said, "I don't know why people think Bioshock's graphics are anything to talk about. All it's doing is normal mapping, some dynamic shadows here and there, and a water effect. There are hardly any shader effects at all."
When it gets right down to it, most people have no idea if something's functional unless they see chrome.
While the art style was great and all, I do agree, Bioshock wasn't that impressive visually. It's graphics while some parts of it lent importantly to the game like the water, were no where near as important for the feeling of the player in the game like I think the Far Cry games have been. Then again I could be wrong.
archangelmorph
Veteran
I whole-heartedly disagree with this stance..
Your opinion. Didn't help that the media was also pretty much shoving Bioshock down our throats. We knew so much about it BEFORE we even got our hands on it and I think that really killed it for me
