Official Nintendo Fanboy Smugness & Gloating Thread

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:35 pm 0

The way I would put it was there was nothing I spotted that looked
like a dead give away of more advanced graphics capabilities.

Certainly Zelda and SMG look as good as the best Cube games, and
maybe there's a few more polys or generally higher res textures that
a turbo cube with a bit more memory might be capable of, but that's
very subjective and a demo is bound to show the nicest looking levels.
It's also the sort of thing where measurement often proves the eyes
to be wrong as I've seen from profiling.

Nothing made me think 'new GPU', they videos look like what I'd expect
from a 2006 Cube game from experienced developers.

Anyway I'm nabbing some new videos from IGN and will report back
if I see signs of new GPUness.

Darkflame · Post by **Darkflame** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:42 pm 0

Mario Galaxy was the only thing that said it to me.

Mario has more polygons if you look closely, and they are putting that luminance shader effect everywhere.
Get a close up of Mario in Sunshine and Mario in Galaxy and you can see theres actualy quite a jump.

Now, it of course, could be argued that Sunshine wasnt pushing as much as it could do on the hardware.

Also, I think its likely Smash Brothers shows graphics above the cube too.
Allthough the composite FMV/Realtime trailer dosnt make it too clear.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:44 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:The way I would put it was there was nothing I spotted that looked
like a dead give away of more advanced graphics capabilities...

...Nothing made me think 'new GPU', they videos look like what I'd expect
from a 2006 Cube game from experienced developers.

Agreed, there's nothing there that looks like a giant leap forward in the game world as seen in Lost Planet or Gears of War. To me, SMG just looks better and nicer all round than most other games around, certainly from the previous generation. I think that's much to do abt the polish of it all and the great art style, which is what matters most in the end, imo.

Darkflame · Post by **Darkflame** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:46 pm 0

How can galaxy be made better withen the same art style?

Its easy to point to other games genras and styles and say "these look better". If your looking at shear volume of detail on the screen, then all sorts of cube games beat SMG.
But you gota compare like for like.

You cant say Galaxy looks worse then Gears of War, thats just silly.

*shudders at the thought of bump mapping extremness in mario*

Of course, I'm not saying that the Wii could do GoW.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:50 pm 0

Darkflame wrote:How can galaxy be made better withen the same art style?

Its easy to point to other games genras and styles and say "these look better". If your looking at shear volume of detail on the screen, then all sorts of cube games beat SMG.
But you gota compare like for like.

You cant say Galaxy looks worse then Gears of War, thats just silly.

*shudders at the thought of bump mapping extremness in mario*

Of course, I'm not saying that the Wii could do GoW.

For one thing by adding bigger & more complex environments / characters? That's the perspective from where I was comparing these two. And if you look to the previous page I compared like for like from a different perspective, SMS Vs. SMG.

Darkflame · Post by **Darkflame** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:51 pm 0

Bigger enviroments? dunno...could easily be one huge seamlessly loading map for all we know. (like Wind Waker)

Or did you mean the island density of the planetoids?

I think that's really scewed to the game play issue.

As for characters.
Well, Mario at least looks silky smooth for the first time.

Actually, thinking about it..I wouldn't be surprised if GOW characters have less poly's precisely because of the bump mapping gets rid of the nead for a lot

Kemper_Boyd wrote:
Samus wrote:You should see some other stuff around the net right now re Wii and the megaton powers it will have
Not the stupid 'the real Project Reality' stuff? The person who wrote
that is a fucking moron.

You should see the ones about the "secret flap" hiding a 3D Projector.
Seriously.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:55 pm 0

Darkflame wrote:Bigger enviroments? dunno...could easily be one huge seamlessly loading map for all we know. (like Wind Waker)

Or did you mean the island density of the planetoids?

I think thats really scewed to the gameplay issue.

I didn't mean anything specific by that, just answering your question that there are indeed many different ways of improving this (and any other) style of visuals. Physics can play a big part in that also, no matter what genre or style.

Marius · Post by **Marius** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:04 pm 0

I've never been into "realistic" graphics, I prefer my graphics cartoonish, like Wind Waker, so new consoles with "photorealistic" textures and gazillions of polygons are very uninteresting.

The new Mario on Wii got me giddy in a way not even Gears of War, Oblivion or HL2 managed and I find the graphics to be absolutely gorgeous.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:11 pm 0

I like all kinds of visual styles, but I feel the same way than Marius about SMG.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:15 pm 0

Comparing Sunshine from 2002? to Galaxy in 2006 is a bit silly. You should
compare with the best new Gamecube games.

Darkflame wrote:Mario has more polygons if you look closely, and they are putting that luminance shader effect everywhere.

That 'luminance shader effect' is no big deal. Look at this:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost. ... stcount=18

Particularly this link from that page:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/doc ... 3dwa90.htm

Fairy shader - Shodow of the Colossus - PS2

As I said Gamecube, 2006, experienced developers... what? They can't
even match the PS2?

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:25 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:Comparing Sunshine from 2002? to Galaxy in 2006 is a bit silly. You should
compare with the best new Gamecube games.

Same style of game, what, Chibi Robo? Show me a game of abt the same style so we can have a look. I seriously doubt you can find anything that rivals the overall look of SMG? But yeah, it doesn't really matter because you might see things from a different point of view. I just look at the overall style and look of the game, not how many polys or shaders something is pushing.

As I said Gamecube, 2006, experienced developers... what? They can't even match the PS2?

Marius · Post by **Marius** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:34 pm 0

From my point of view, the current generation of consoles are more than powerful enough to create the kind of graphics I love, so I wish they would try to flex their creative muscles instead of arguing as to which upcoming console is the most powerful.

Like I've stated before, my PSP is gathering dust while my DS is almost too hot to handle

Atty · Post by **Atty** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:38 am 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:Comparing Sunshine from 2002? to Galaxy in 2006 is a bit silly. You should
compare with the best new Gamecube games.

Darkflame wrote:Mario has more polygons if you look closely, and they are putting that luminance shader effect everywhere.
That 'luminance shader effect' is no big deal. Look at this:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost. ... stcount=18

Particularly this link from that page:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/doc ... 3dwa90.htm

Fairy shader - Shodow of the Colossus - PS2

As I said Gamecube, 2006, experienced developers... what? They can't
even match the PS2?

To be fair, Shadow of the colossu ran at a decidedly wonky sub-30fps framerate, while Mario Galaxy is happily trotting along at 60fps.

The Wii isn't breaking any new ground, technically, but there does generally seem to be greater usage of slightly more advanced texturing and lighting effects (Bloom, for instance), some quite sexy particle effects (MP3 charge beam, Mario kicking up dust) and just a vaster sense of scale to thngs and a feeling of extra 'polish'.

It's not even remotely within the same realms of technical aceness as the engines being used in the latest 360/PC games, but it definately represents a clear step up from the current bunch of Cubie Games.

zbandito · Post by **zbandito** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:54 am 0

So then, Geometry Wars 2 -- would it be possible on Xbox1, or GC, or Wii? GW1 looks quite a bit different compared to it, but GW2's probably not really pushing the 360 hardware right?

What about Neon; it's predecessor was on GC, and aside from a higher fillrate/resolution is there anything going on that GC can't handle? Pixel shader and vertex shaders, I guess, but where does that really come in? How different does it look or perform, and could the effects not be accomplished any other way?

Bubba · Post by **Bubba** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:15 am 0

Shadow of the Colossus, while a technical tour-de-force made me feel ill due to it's appauling framerate.

I've always stated that the Wee's graphics are poor in comparison to the others, but that it shouldn't matter - it's not the point.

However, stupid statements like "bump mapping in mario is t3h evil!!111!" is... well... stupid

The technical features used to bring graphics to life in games are just techniques. They don't regulate the general art style of the game. The Mario style doesn't appeal to me, however the new Zelda (while not a patch art-wise on TWW) looks far more interesting.

Having watched loads of vids around E3 of Wee titles, gotta say I'm unimpressed graphically. They ranged from down right awful to mediocre at best. We're talking Xbox + a little bit. But (probably) without the HD outputs that even it had. Would be interested to check out the actual specs - I expect, as Kemper has said that we're looking at a slightly increased clockrate gamecube, maybe with some extra functionality tacked on. Although probably not shader based, as I believe the original architecture of the artx chip in the GC is sufficiently different to a modern shader class card that it would be difficult to implement and still keep 100% backwards compatibility.

Although the thing that really worried me about the wee was a recent video of metroid which showed the pointer being hideously inaccurate, and jumping around all over the place. Hopefully this is just early code, but I think this "weemote replacing the mouse for FPS" talk is looking increasingly silly. From what I've seen so far it simply doesn't have the accuracy to do this...

Cheers

Bubba