WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

I'm pretty disappointed in the new Pokemon vid, too. Looks like what we saw before was just another "target render."

 

To be particular, more a PR ad than target render, I think. The showreel was to show what the game would be like, with extra graphical quality to make a good looking advert, and without any intention of demonstrating the actual intended quality of the game. It's like that Elebits trailer which was nothing like the game - not a target render but an advert for the game. A target render ought to be trying to approximate what the end game should look like, though invariably they chuck in buckets of AA and IQ filters to keep the promotional quality up there.

Of the grotty Pokemon vid I saw, I wasn't able to determine how the lighting was working. I'm not sure if it's baked on GI or some form of self-shadowing or what.

 

By the way, was it ever confimed that Wii would be using GDD3R RAM?

 

Faf, a trusted dev, said there'd be 64MB of GDDR. So there's at least a strong case for it. Personally, I consider it confirmed.

 

I thought that the RS one has supossed (for whatever that world worth in this industry) a render target.

Anyway from the images I saw for Pokemon it probably even looked bad by PS2 standards, it make me think how much power had been untapped from wii (jugding by SW:RL not much IMO) as some games (eg RS and Elebits) had proggressed very fast in the last 2-2,5 months (since final SDKs) and most of them using just raw power (eg not even the TEV or something like).

 

Red Steel's doing some pretty fancy stuff with reflections and transparencies. Other more sharp-eyed guys in the forum seem to notice some stuff they're doing with lighting and environment mapping. As far as I know, that's all got to be done in the TEV, since there really isn't anything else to do it with.

Has anyone else noticed that blocking with the sword seems to be nearly impossible? I've seen hardly any successful blocks in the new IGN videos.

 

from all the footage i've seen till now, it seems that it's mostly a matter of timing - the gesture seems to kick in (i.e. you see the blocking position) but the enemy's attack would still go through; at the same time i've seen at least a couple of gameplay footages of guys from RS' devteam where the guy would block N out of N times, each time exhibiting quite precise timing. so i'd say timing is the key here.

ps: sorry for the off-topicness of my posts lately, i'm working on it ; )

 

not accurate withthe sword blocking, in the jeuxfrance video when the developer played the game sword blocking was fine, also the game progress with your skill. meaning whne you first pick it up you will suck at blocking big time, you have to learn a new way of blocking casue it aint button pressing.

 

Althought I also cant see that, I thought that they are done via EMBM (like everything else related to environment mapping)?

 

There's apparantly no way to draw 3D graphics on the GC (and thus by extension, Wii) without using the TEV, so that statement of yours doesn't really seem all that accurate, sorry.

 

I know that, I meant use of the TEV beyond the trivial and in this case that the fxs that darkblu said are done via EMBM (?), sorry for the confusion.

BTW there are new RS videos on IGN (downloading now).

 

I have this feeling that by "trivial," you mean "everything except for self-shadowing and water effects." There's a lot more to shader/TEV work than that. I'm gonna guess that getting those outlines on the characters is a TEV effect. If you look at the top left video here, you'll see some pretty cool stuff they're doing with distorted transparencies. Also, the reflections on the floor have some kind of blending going on so that they don't look like a crystal-clear mirror image. I think there's a pretty reasonable amount of stuff going on; it's not all Gouraud-shading and simple texturing.

 

yep, what firesome says; e.g. the character outlines are prime candidates for eye-space env mapping. and the game is generally full of reflective fx - what i cannot see from those low-res videos is whether there're always irregularities/bumps in the mappings, so i can't tell when it's EMBM and when regular spherical or cyclindrical mapping. and you can't tell that from static screen-shots as they don't show if a 'bump' is dynamic or just a pre-baked detail.

btw, IGN just updated their RS-beta video set with more material - go see it! ; )

 

The sad thing is that I had faith that the original PR video was real time. It was huge blow to me. I don't even think Wii will even be capable of those graphics. Well, maybe at the end of the consoles life span.

 

Well at least this is comparable to Xbox.

 

Oh, awesome. What about the other 24 MB? Is the total still 88MB, or 104 from IGN's first specs?

 

I think development on Pokemon is not a high production cost project, the render target IMO is possible considering the overall complexity of the scenery minimal. Nintendo just wants this title out as soon as possible, its the title to kick start its online program in Japan.

Madden Wii looks nice, wish they used some better models for players. The lighting, 60fps, and very interesting gameplay makes up for it.

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/825/825443/vids_1.html

 

Anyone?

 

It's 64 +24 +3 MB, at least to my knowledge.