Would GTA V be possible on Wii U?
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The low NPC's was the same on the 360/PS3 build. For me, I never expected much more than a competent port of the 360/PS3 version, and it seems they did that with a few upgrades sprinkled in, and a slightly better framerate. So far, it seems like Watch Dogs is a parting gift to those gamers who did actually buy their games on Wii U.
That's all I could have asked for honestly. This is what can happen when the developer makes a good honest effort.
And financially they won't be rewarded for their efforts, they will be punished. Unless they're looking for a loss to offset sales elsewhere, releasing 3rd-Party software on the WiiU isn't financially viable.
Yep, pretty much. I think there will be the argument that perhaps if Ubisoft had made more effort on the Wii U ports, they would have sold better. Obviously with more time and effort, better results were obtainable with the more modern Wii U GPU and extra memory, Ubisoft simply wasn't interested in dedicating the needed resources for the Wii U build. As a gamer, I think that's crap, but from a business perspective, I totally understand it, seeing as how even great ports were unlikely to ever sell that well. Watch Dogs was always destined to sell very poorly. Being six months late and still at full price, it will be lucky to sell even 100k copies in its lifetime on Wii U. Still, I give the Bucharest team credit for their efforts, and they gave Wii U gamers the opportunity to play a genre that has limited options on the Wii U, and it seems that its a very competent build of the game. Ubisoft gave the Wii U gamers a good parting gift, that's the way I see it.
Ok, last post in this thread. After a bit more playtime I've noticed that there are the occasional fps dips driving in and around the city, nothing that makes the game unplayable at all, but tbh I'm amazed at how well it runs overall on a cpu that takes up the same of die space as an intel atom, and the off-screen play feature makes this worth owning for me.
Yea, Im looking forward to testing it out myself. Considering both Watch Dogs and GTA on 360/PS3 dip to 20fps at time when driving around the city, I expected no different on Wii U. Like you said, the CPU is pretty modest, so expecting a locked 30fps is pretty unrealistic. Looks like the textures were upgraded similar to how NFS MW texture upgrade. Wii U is no PS4 or X1 in terms of performance, so even a modest upgrade over the 360/PS3 build is fairly impressive.
Has your view changed now given Watch Dog's poor performance?
Im sure as hell not buying it. Ubisoft Bucharest should be embarrassed by this port. As far as GTA being possible on Wii U, I still think it is. It would probably required a ground up rebuild to run well, but I still feel its possible. Heck, Scarface The World is Yours was a pretty good open world game on the Wii, honestly, it had more NPC's running around than Watch Dogs does. Obviously the graphics were pretty dated, but the world felt surprising alive for a Wii game. Its a shame, I was really hoping that Ubisoft would give Wii U gamers a reason to miss them, but unfortunately, all they did was reaffirm us that their games aren't worth buying. Not on Wii U anyway, their games have been good on other platforms.
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Agreed. GTA is more than cars and running around so comparisons with WATCH_DOGS and other open world driving shooting games are not really commensurate with the massive world of GTA V which includes all forms of transport.
So specifically, what compromises would have to be made? Serious question, I don't know because I haven't played GTA since the PS2 days. The number of NPC's is brought up quite a bit, but the number of NPC's in Watch Dogs looks even more scarce than they were in Scarface on Wii. Even the size of the world is pretty irrelevant since the game just streams in new content as needed. Again, I have played the newer GTA's so I am probably missing some pretty hardware demanding aspects, but that's what I am looking to better understand. So far, these games just look like prettier versions of the same open world games from past generations.
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How 'aware' of the player and environment are the NPCs in Scarface? Because in WATCH_DOGs they are very aware of their environment and the player. If you follow NPCs and don't maintain a distance they can become spooked and occasionally completely freak out.
The same is true of modern GTA, especially GTA V. The NPCs (walking or in cars) are very aware of the environment, each other, vehicles, the player(s) and interaction between all of these. The AI combined the Euphoria animation engine will be demanding CPU cycles and that's before all the control, physics, ballistics, explosions, streaming, rendering.
This is true but streaming isn't a magic bullet. The Wii U has more available RAM than 360 and PS3 which has got to ease the burden on RAM use and streaming, but equally streaming a world when you're mostly at ground height is easier than having to stream a world where you can fly up a 1,000ft and see far, far into the distance. Furthermore, all versions of GTA V require a hefty install to HDD from which to stream and even then the PS3 version (possibly 360 too) is streaming from the disc in parallel with the HDD.
Streaming is demanding on I/O.
@DSoup
Im sure the NPC's in Scarface were relatively stupid by comparison, but still, we are talking about the entire game running on a single PPC750 750Mhz processor, compared to a three core processor clocked nearly twice as fast with better cache. Are all the NPC's pretty intelligent in Watch Dogs? Or is it only the ones that are part of a particular mission? If its only mission based NPC's that notice you following them, then that's not really all that impressive. Your right about streaming assets though, I didn't factor in the addition of flight to these games.
Im sure the NPC's in Scarface were relatively stupid by comparison, but still, we are talking about the entire game running on a single PPC750 750Mhz processor, compared to a three core processor clocked nearly twice as fast with better cache. Are all the NPC's pretty intelligent in Watch Dogs? Or is it only the ones that are part of a particular mission? If its only mission based NPC's that notice you following them, then that's not really all that impressive. Your right about streaming assets though, I didn't factor in the addition of flight to these games.
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All of the NPCs in both GTA V (360/PS3/PS4/XBO) and WATCH_DOGS (PlayStation 4 - I've not played old gen versions) are very aware. In terms of old gen GTA V, I've only played this on PlayStation 3 and that has a single core PPE. I don't know but the SPUs do not seem well suited to branching AI routines, particularly given the limited amount of local storage and the number of things on screen in which to create interactions for the AI to react and counter-reaction and so on.
Exactly, this is the type of work a tri core PPC750 based processor would be much better at. So it doesn't make sense for the AI scripts to totally bog down the Wii U but not the PS3. Short pipeline with lots of cache should be great for AI scripts. Besides, from the video it doesn't seem like NPC's are what's causing the low framerate. In the scene where the game dips to 14fps, its definitely the action going on that's causing the dips.
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Against the in-order 3.2Ghz PPE in PlayStation 3? Yeah, I'd certainly give the edge for AI to Wii U's CPU but then GTA V is also running some very nice physics and animation with we know the SPUs are incredibly adept at. The nice thing about delegating all this stuff to the SPUs is you're off-loading data not contaminating cache with AI and game logic and physics and animation and multiplayer and streaming and audio.
And these are related. AI means animation, animation means physics.
I've not seen the video and I can't view it from where I am. By action, do you mean explosions and shootouts and bullets? More physics.
Yea, its a shootout scene with cars exploding when the framerate is at its worst. Even when just running around though, the framerate is typically in the mid 20's at best. I suppose the vsync comes with at the cost of a few fps. The PS3 has awful screen tearing, you can see the tears very clearly in the graphics comparison video, there is tons of tearing right in the middle of the screen on PS3, no tearing at all on Wii U.
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