Unreal engine 3 on Wii... possible?
- Thread starter The_legend_of_drtre
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Pigman BABY!!!
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Well there can be some options but most of them be a longshot.
If you use UE 3.0 you can(maybe) I guess you would need to optimize this to high latency. Your going to have to just live with the higher latency.I assume a Hollywood running 28fps it will be less of a problem.
1)Compress(into a .dol or a .lzo file) the contents of the RAM. Decompress at execution
2)scale draw distances
3)limit frames per second to 28fps(use of motion blur,repetition etc to smooth over the animation)
4)Take out everything Wii isn't capable of or does poorly
5)Optimise for use of the TEV unit.
6)Optimize the renderer for low polygon models(techniques useful for low polygon models like displacement mapping,normal maps,bump maps,hypernurbs,powernumbs,parallax maps,noise generators etc)
7)Use of memory cards or USB flash cards(512MB,1GB ect) as extra memory(yes I know the latency issue hopefully as 28fps the latency will be less)
8)scale texture color presicion at farther distances
I know there will be latency issues but the end result will be better.
1) Decompression takes a lot of CPU power which the Wii doesn't have.
2) You'll have to scale so much you can't see for more than 5-6 feet.
3) Limiting framerates isn't gonna help that much too increase graphics fidelity and 28fps will cause a lot of tearing.
4) Taking out everything of UE3 features which the Wii will leave you UE2
5) This will only work to a certain extend. Why bother optimising UE3 when you can also optimise UE2 which is a much smaller engine.
6) Displacement and paralax mapping are impossible on the Wii hardware. Normal mapping is also very hefty for the Wii as are all other effects you opted.
7) Memory cards and flash memory only do about 10-20MB/s of bandwidth which is a far cry from 4GB/s at which the memory in the Wii works.
8) Scaling to such an extend will leave you with nothing.
Wii is just too slow for UE3 and has it's hands full doing even UE2.
No.
No.
Because UE3 is far more than a graphics engine, and not all improvements need more processing power? Also, using the same engine on all platforms makes porting stuff much simpler.
Sure, but it would be sufficient for streaming music and the like, and therefore could free some RAM for more critical data.
Wii has no problems with UE2.5 as far as I can tell.
RS does a good job on Wii and a excelent one on the CPU side of things. If UE2 had been made with GC/Wii in mind (surelly it is, tech wise, a bad option for Wii) or/and if devs did know better the GPU and had more time surely that Wii would surpasse what UE2X does on XB.
The most defining graphical features of UE3 are
- per-pixel lighting with normal mapping
- per-pixel shadowing with up to 4-5 different implementations
- floating point color precision
- advanced shaders with many texture layers and instructions, for example to simulate skin shading or parallax mapping
Wii may be able to do the first and some parts of the second, but none of the rest.
And there are other complicated issues, like managing visibility, indoor/outdoor areas, skeletial animation, partcles, volumetric effects etc. etc.
So as the others have already explained, if you leave these things out, you'll strip it of it's most important graphical features and you can't really call it UE3 any more...
- per-pixel lighting with normal mapping
- per-pixel shadowing with up to 4-5 different implementations
- floating point color precision
- advanced shaders with many texture layers and instructions, for example to simulate skin shading or parallax mapping
Wii may be able to do the first and some parts of the second, but none of the rest.
And there are other complicated issues, like managing visibility, indoor/outdoor areas, skeletial animation, partcles, volumetric effects etc. etc.
So as the others have already explained, if you leave these things out, you'll strip it of it's most important graphical features and you can't really call it UE3 any more...
None better to ask this. One of the reasons why is being said that devs are trying to put UE3 on wii is because of ports, (assuming it is true) how easy/hard would be to port the art assets?
The_legend_of_drtre
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Do you find it impressive? It's the same Xbox1-level, can't-find-enough-memory-for-textures look typical of the *better* Wii games so far. It has pre-baked lightmaps, some kind of ground shadows, an extremely ugly motion blur effect... wtf? I mean, it's somewhat OK for a Wii game, but people keep bringing it up as a being "surprisingly good" for Wii.
Well the resolution and AA in those shots all looks really nice.
Well, the AA is probably of the bullshot variety, 16x off a PC. Same goes for the resolution. Have you never seen 1080p "screenshots" from God of War 2?
If that really is running on Wii then yes of course it looks impressive, IMO your crazy to think otherwise. Show me another Wii game that looks as good, show me an XBox game that looks as good (obviously something similar otherwise comparisons are useless).
The shots are 1280x720 with an insane amount of antialiasing, definitely more than 4x. Just look at the close-to-horizontal bars of the gate on the left. There are maybe five characters with what I would guess are about 2000 polygons (some of the artists maybe will correct me?), ground shadows, absolutely no surface with evidence of anything other than fixed-function pipeline shading, a bog standard bloom effect, and something like motion blur that I can't guess what it is. Again, what is so impressive about this picture?
I think the context is being overlooked here. The discussion has been very much on UE3's effects like normal mapping. If this is a Wii screenshot and it shows normal mapping, that's something 'impressive.' The actually quality of the shots is very coloured by the AA. Lose the AA and have it in motion and you get a much better idea of technical achievement. The art direction on these shots works quite well, but the technical aspect are hard to pin down to anything impressive. eg. The walls look bumpy, but that could be a static illumination map. There does appear to be some self shadowing going on which adds a lot to the image. Unfortunately after seeing quite a few tarted up AA'd high-res Wii promo shots with self-shadowing, only for it not to appear in game, I'm hesitant to think Wii's doing that! Fingers crossed they've got that lighting worked out on Wii and it'll feature prominently, as it makes a huge difference.
OMG it doesn't look realistic like GOW or GRAW.
Therefore it suxors.
Get real people, the only real thing we know is that the Wii OUTPUTS 480p tops. Who is to say it cannot internal render @ 720p and downsample?
Do we really think that the Wii is worse than the Xbox GPU simply because it does not have programmable shaders?
Therefore it suxors.
Get real people, the only real thing we know is that the Wii OUTPUTS 480p tops. Who is to say it cannot internal render @ 720p and downsample?
Do we really think that the Wii is worse than the Xbox GPU simply because it does not have programmable shaders?
Of course it can. They could render at 1920x1080 and downsample. On PS2, SnowBlind studios render a larger buffer and downsample to get FSAA.
The question is if there's enough power in Wii to do that with fancy lighting and shaders. Chances are, no, given the known specs, the best guesses, and the material shown to date for the platform. We're not even seeing MSAA in effect AFAIK, and rendering at 2-3x the resolution and downsizing is quite a rough way to get AA. And certainly not to the AA amounts shown here. These are promotional shots, and not indicative of the game on any platform. Except maybe PC with SLI'd 8800s at 32xMSAA!
You should learn to recognize lies. At least the obvious ones.
I don't think there's any point making guesses on polygon counts and such. A certain number of polygons or a certain buzz word effect doesn't neccesarilly make a good looking game anyway. As I said post some examples of better on GC/Wii/XBox.
Also note that I said if that is running on Wii..
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Wait, what are we arguing, that this is good-looking, or that this is technically impressive and proof that the Wii has graphical muscle? I am arguing on the second point; I agree on the first - it has a nice cartoony look that "works".
For similar looks on the last-gen consoles, find shots of Futurama, Conker on the Xbox, Ratchet and Clank or Sly Cooper on the PS2.
You're right, but some of the most important aspects of UE3 are the improved UnrealScript, better tools and middleware integration, and Wii would benefit from those improvements I think. Wii also doesn't seem to have a problem with highly complex particle and volumetric effects, and I doubt it has problems with the skeletal animation features UE3 offers.
After Pangya and Red Steel, I am no longer putting any stock in Wii screenshots that feature decent looking shadowing, whether it's projection of environmental shadows onto characters or self-shadowing. I understand high-res, bullshot-AA screens. They just look better on a PC monitor. This business of using a different graphics engine is starting to piss me off, though.
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