Official Nintendo Fanboy Smugness & Gloating Thread

[Bubba]

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?

Hmm... Lots of shader based effects and some fairly heavy calculations for deforming the grid I believe. And a decent resolution there too... Probably do-able on the Wee, but it would require a significantly different implementation.

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?

Not wanting to speak for Jeff and Giles on this one, but I'd imagine that without decent (DX9+) shaders then this one is a no no. Could the effects be accomplished in another way? Yeah I'd imagine so. But not on such a weak CPU'd machine...

Cheers

Bubba

[Samus]

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.

I realise how the low quality vids seen around E3 can fool people, but after seeing high quality pics and movies, how can anyone say stuff like that or be disappointed in the visuals of SMG or even Excite Truck is beyond me. Picture this with silky smooth 60fps and very fast gameplay:



And here's a link to a new SMG vid that shows the Galaxy and the surroundings pretty nicely. Looks like everyone here is playing for the first time, yet they're doing pretty well - except for the guy who's fighting the "tennis" boss (in a couple of other vids this was done in a matter of seconds). It's nice to be able to see the amazing robot boss in the distance as well as the other asteroids and planets where you can go. In the end of the vid (around 7:20 forwards), in the place where the giant balls and the "Bullet Bill's" are coming out from the holes, the action looks amazing. Beautiful stuff.

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...

What do you mean by inaccurate? Do you think it jumps all over the place by itself? It moves how you move it. The accuracy "problem" is not in hardware as seen in many videos of Metroid, Zelda and maybe most clearly in the "shooting demo". Just look at the difference between a good player and a bad player, simple as that.

A good example of this is in the 1up podcast part 2 (around 6:10) where the girl aims very accurately with the bow in Zelda even if it's the first time she plays the game. You can even hear that they are in fact applauding the precision during the action! If you can't be bothered to search, I can dig you a couple of different MP3 clips to compare as well. Maybe you also missed the page 27 of this thread where I posted a good clip of Red Steel - it showed more clearly how the controller was used and how well it reacted to movement in good hands.

[Snakey]

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.

Since you like those two shots so much I'll point out some stuff you've completely failed to notice.

In Sunshine, Mario has short sleeves. They're gone in Galaxy.

In Sunshine, Mario has a belt. It's gone in Galaxy.

If anything, they've cut down the poly count.

Plus, compare the amount of stuff going on in that Sunshine pic, compared to the Galaxy one. Apart from Mario, there's fuck all going on in the second pic.

Sunshine looked fucking lovely. So does Galaxy. But I'm not convinced there's a big jump in poly count.

Mario Galaxy is happily trotting along at 60fps.

Are you sure it's not 30fps? Impossible to tell from the videos, but I'd say it was.

[Jamesac]

Note to self- kill everyone before they make my head explode.

Wii games look fine. Do they look as good as the PS3/360 stuff? Nope, but they look good anyway.

The Wii-stick works great. It takes a second to get used to it or oriented and then you just do, without really thinking about it.

That is all.

James

[Snakey]

Well said

[Anders]

Note to self- kill everyone before they make my head explode.

I'll help.

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Wii's classic games to be priced less than US$10

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060607-7009.html

[Kemper_Boyd]

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

Yes but Shadow of the Colossus does a lot more than that one effect,
point to any Cube or Wii game with similar overall graphics. I was just
showing that you can't really point at it as evidence of better graphics
hardware.

I posted the link to the Shadow of the Colossus post to show that a
great developer can do all kinds of interesting things with 'old' hardware.

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'.

I've looked at a lot of the games and honestly there's nothing there that
made me think they must have new hardware. The games do not look
much better than the latest Gamecube games, and nothing you've
described there is beyond the capabilities of the Cube. At best I think
it looks like a turbo Cube.

Snakey, as usual, makes some good points about the comparison.

[Bubba]

I realise how the low quality vids seen around E3 can fool people, but after seeing high quality pics and movies, how can anyone say stuff like that or be disappointed in the visuals of SMG or even Excite Truck is beyond me. Picture this with silky smooth 60fps and very fast gameplay

Average . Seriously though - have you played any of the burnout games? Even the original 2 don't look vastly different from this.

What do you mean by inaccurate? Do you think it jumps all over the place by itself? It moves how you move it. The accuracy "problem" is not in hardware as seen in many videos of Metroid, Zelda and maybe most clearly in the "shooting demo". Just look at the difference between a good player and a bad player, simple as that.

A good example of this is in the 1up podcast part 2 (around 6:10) where the girl aims very accurately with the bow in Zelda even if it's the first time she plays the game. You can even hear that they are in fact applauding the precision during the action! If you can't be bothered to search, I can dig you a couple of different MP3 clips to compare as well. Maybe you also missed the page 27 of this thread where I posted a good clip of Red Steel - it showed more clearly how the controller was used and how well it reacted to movement in good hands.

Yeah, fair point. Ish . I'll be interested to play and judge this one for myself though...

Cheers

Bubba

[Samus]

Average . Seriously though - have you played any of the burnout games? Even the original 2 don't look vastly different from this.

Yeap, couldn't bother much with the third one though. Anyways, being in the same ballpark in arcade style visuals than the BO series is a good thing in my book rather than awful or at best average. Even more seriously, I think there's a significant leap in visuals between BO1 & 2. Visually ET looks like it belongs roughly in the same level than the latest BO games combined with the draw distance of OR2. That's very good stuff in my book.

I'll be interested to play and judge this one for myself though...

Same here mate, same here. Looks very promising so far, though.

Note to self- kill everyone before they make my head explode.

Wii games look fine. Do they look as good as the PS3/360 stuff? Nope, but they look good anyway.

The Wii-stick works great. It takes a second to get used to it or oriented and then you just do, without really thinking about it.

That is all.

James

Agreed, but imo you need to chill out on the killing stuff. What's the problem in discussing all this over and over, maybe you don't see the point but obviously at least a couple of us here do.

[Atty]

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

Yes but Shadow of the Colossus does a lot more than that one effect,
point to any Cube or Wii game with similar overall graphics. I was just
showing that you can't really point at it as evidence of better graphics
hardware.

I posted the link to the Shadow of the Colossus post to show that a
great developer can do all kinds of interesting things with 'old' hardware.

Yeah. I agree. It's amazing what the PS2 is managing to produce at the moment. I was just pointing out that Shadow of the Colossus' incredible graphics come at a fairly hefty price.

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'.

I've looked at a lot of the games and honestly there's nothing there that
made me think they must have new hardware. The games do not look
much better than the latest Gamecube games, and nothing you've
described there is beyond the capabilities of the Cube. At best I think
it looks like a turbo Cube.

Snakey, as usual, makes some good points about the comparison.

Well, I dunno, to my eyes there is a definate improvement in looks over the current lineup of cube games, even if it's not colossal. I'd personally be surprised if anything as pretty as SMG ever appeard on the Cubie.

Are you sure it's not 30fps? Impossible to tell from the videos, but I'd say it was.

I'm sure I read it was doing 60fps, but I could be wrong.

[zbandito]

I think I had read 60fps as well. I also think the lighting could be an entirely different method, and that might be just as big an impact as poly count. That said many games look just like GC games and not a big jump ahead. But I think Ninty knows they must make some improvements in their hardware to be taken seriously. But fillrate is in a way a much simpler problem to solve than some of the other things that distract from suspension of disbelief.

[grue]

It's so funny talking about pixel pushing in this forum of all

[D.J.Fudge]

who's gonna win the console war?

The kids have decided

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/n ... te_4556883

[Nixie]

who's gonna win the console war?

The kids have decided

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/n ... te_4556883

Its in the playground that these things are decided after all.