Wow, thanks everyone.
Special thanks for keeping this thread alive heh.
It was mentioned that you use a 4th render target for an ambient light term on PC and PS3, but it doesn't seem like that has made a noticeable difference compared to the 360. Do you know what's going on there (maybe done in a separate render pass for 360)? I presume WiiU uses that 4th RT as well.
This is what I got by picking some brighter brains: "Actual lighting calculations are the same with and without the 4th render target. Without it, ambient will be rendered as a separate render pass."
Joel, have you guys considered bringing the original Trine to WiiU? With that speed of getting your games up and running on the WiiU and your experience with the WiiPad, that might be a viable side project.
We have considered it but came to the conclusion that it's probably not worthwhile. We're not all that interested in working on something so old, we rather work on something new to keep things exciting, and there's also a bunch of technical hurdles we'd need to overcome. Trine is based on our old tech, and although we did squeeze a reasonable PS3 version out of it, it's not really a pleasure to work with. The only realistic option is to convert the game to our new Trine 2 tech, update the graphics, add online multiplayer (same as Trine 2 basically), and then work it out to new platforms. But this would be a massive undertaking, so truth be told I think we rather work on our new IP for 2013-2014...
(And Splot before that.)
I'd also say that the game's performance on the Wii U is likely in large part due to the fact that the port was done by Frozenbyte themselves, and because the game's been out on other platforms for a while now, they had the time and resources to really get to grips with the console. A lot of the other multiplats we've seen thus far were either simultaneously developed with the other versions, hence fighting for resources (and the bulk of those resources are going to go to the top-selling version, ie XBox360) or they're late ports by small external studios who have to spend most of their time simply getting a handle on the code they're given.
Yeah this probably plays a big part.
It is a lot harder to work on someone else's code, especially if that code is under constant changes (i.e. another team working on some other platform or features etc). Since we created our own tech we know it pretty well, and can go digging deep if need be, so that helps a lot.
Any word on it being on sale in North America this month?
Nothing concrete, but we would like to do that. Timing-wise probably the update (mid-December) timeframe would make a lot of sense... We'll see how it goes.
This will be my first purchase on the e-Shop once I get the console three weeks from now; say, is the team happy with sales numbers so far? Efforts like this must be supported!
Thanks (everyone)! We are happy with the sales numbers, it has been good. I've said this before but I've grown fond of this now myself, so I'll repeat it: the eShop has restored our faith in console downloadable games, at least to a degree.
I would love to get this, but as it'll likely never be released for JPN, I'll probably not get the chance.
No word on the Japan release - it's surprisingly difficult to get this done, the game hasn't even been released on XBLA or PSN there. We'd be keen to do it, especially if we could get some voices...
Isn't there Wii Classic Controller support as well?
Ah, yes, the game should support it.
right now it seems like there's a discount on the game on the Wii U eShop, what is going to be the regular price?
Yeah there's a -20% discount in Europe (+ AU/NZ) at the moment. Possibly we'll have it in North America later this month (we wanted to do it for launch but it wasn't possible due to certain factors). Anyhow here's the European launch discount prices (until 31.12.2012 23:59 CET, 22:59 in the UK):
EUR 13,49 (regular 16,99)
GBP 10,99 (regular 13,99)
CHF 15,99 (regular 19,99)
NOK 89,00 (regular 119,00)
SEK 109,00 (regular 139,00)
DKK 89,00 (regular 119,00)
PLN 54,99 (regular 69,99)
RUB 539,00 (regular 679,00)
AUD 15,99 (regular 19,99)
NZD 19,99 (regular 24,99)
What the hell is up with the snake in the Wii U version? The mesh looks fucked up. I mean, compare the head to the 360 and PS3 versions.
Not sure what you mean... It looks fine/the same? For example 09:20:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UinkHKJhZgM (ignoring the washed out colors) We're not particularly proud of the snake though, it's not a high point of the game...