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[Tobor]

Come on people. You know why they worked on fur shaders. Nintendogs.

 

[LCGeek]

Simply not true.



There are no latent graphics features waiting to be discovered in the GameCube. Nor is the TEV something that is a mystery still waiting to be unlocked by developers. It is nothing more than a way to setup and connect multiple passes for a material. It is very straightforward and anyone who has done multi-pass rendering in OpenGL would be able to immediately get things going with the TEV.

Actually your post is simply not true

Latent is a good word, but unfortunately you're off. The tev is capable of three primary things pixel shading, indirect texturing, and bump mapping, yet how many devs are using it for that reason? Like the poster you're quoting was said the GC API is not like DX or OpenGL so it's not like devs can just up and open use something in them that does a similar function in the TEV. M3d1on is correct about Doom3 on GC btw ID software never made a GC version because of the lack of ram.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Nintendo improving dev tools?

Their plans of taking over the world are going into effect. Soon, Nintendo will be in our schools with Brain Training, and then Nintendo will be in our wombs, teaching our kids to walk!

Spoiler

I don't have a womb.

 

[Vagabundo]

Looks like Nintendo are putting some effort into their 3rd party dev tools this time around.

Some rumours floating around this month are that the Wii dev kits are getting an gfx api upgrade, it was developed side by side with the mario galaxy engine, using it as a test case.

Demand for the dev kits is very high, for some reason nintendo does not have enough, I cannot understand why it is so hard to produce these units, what is in them??

 

[Eteric Rice]

Actually your post is simply not true

Latent is a good word, but unfortunately you're off. The tev is capable of three primary things pixel shading, indirect texturing, and bump mapping, yet how many devs are using it for that reason? Like the poster you're quoting was said the GC API is not like DX or OpenGL so it's not like devs can just up and open use something in them that does a similar function in the TEV. M3d1on is correct about Doom3 on GC btw ID software never made a GC version because of the lack of ram.

Strange, I could have sworn I read that somewhere... I must be mistaken, no surprise.

I wonder if the Wii could run it, though?

 

[Mr. Pointy]

Demand for the dev kits is very high, for some reason nintendo does not have enough, I cannot understand why it is so hard to produce these units, what is in them??

They have to grow acres of pikmin to power the dev kits. Growing pikmin takes time, especially the purple ones.

 

[LCGeek]

Strange, I could have sworn I read that somewhere... I must be mistaken, no surprise.

I wonder if the Wii could run it, though?

Wii could certainly run it, just the Doom3 thing I kept up and the ram was the real issue not power of flipper.

 

[Kafel]

Come on people. You know why they worked on fur shaders. Nintendogs.

sounds more like NINTENCATS.

 

[brain_stew]

I'm really surprised no third party middleware company has stepped upto the plate on Wii yet. There's a huge market there just waiting to be served and Nintendo don't seem to be delivering the goods fast enough.

 

[MachoInfinity]

Actually your post is simply not true

Latent is a good word, but unfortunately you're off. The tev is capable of three primary things pixel shading, indirect texturing, and bump mapping, yet how many devs are using it for that reason? Like the poster you're quoting was said the GC API is not like DX or OpenGL so it's not like devs can just up and open use something in them that does a similar function in the TEV.

I am quite familiar with the GameCube API having worked on multiple titles - both multiplatform and exclusive.

You aren't making any sense. indirect texturing and bump mapping are just forms of pixel shading. Every single GameCube game that I've worked on or had knowledge of has used indirect texturing of some form. And the only reason bump mapping wasn't used very much was due to art direction and had nothing to do with technical reasons.

Anyone writing a commercial GameCube engine in the vast majority of cases would have been an actual experienced console engineer and not someone who only knew OpenGL on desktop computers. How different or similar the GameCube's rendering system is to OpenGL is of no relevance to how much of the capabilities were utilized in commercial games.

There is no untapped power in the GameCube nor are there untapped graphical features.

 

[Vagabundo]

I'm really surprised no third party middleware company has stepped upto the plate on Wii yet. There's a huge market there just waiting to be served and Nintendo don't seem to be delivering the goods fast enough.

Considering the cheap dev kits($2k each), bundles of units sold(5mil+) and couple that with a licenced 3d engine(probably others too) we should be up to our kahunas in fps by year end.

 

[M3d10n]

Wii could certainly run it, just the Doom3 thing I kept up and the ram was the real issue not power of flipper.

Actually, that's the big question: can the Wii do Doom3, now that it has enough RAM? Nobody had the balls to "do the TEV" on *all* polygons on a GCN game.

Super Mario Galaxy does seem to use TEV effects on all surfaces (that anisotropic-ish lighting which bathes everything), but it's too early to tell if there are enough pikmins in there for normal-mapped specular on everything. The shadows are another unknown (stencil pikmins?).

It's all speculation until someone actually tries it. The Source engine looks much more likely to get a Wii port IMO.

 

[JohnTinker]

sounds more like NINTENCATS.

Coupled with the new microphone peripheral, I can happily watch my Nintencat ignore my calls for it to come to me, and instead it wakes itself to poop, and promptly goes back to sleep. Repeat this for 12 hours, JUST LIKE THE REAL THING!

 

[MachoInfinity]

Actually, that's the big question: can the Wii do Doom3, now that it has enough RAM? Nobody had the balls to "do the TEV" on *all* polygons on a GCN game.

Having 'the balls' had nothing to do with TEV usage in GameCube games. It is a simple matter of horsepower. Each active TEV stage you add increases your rendering cost.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

Nah, it's all balls dude.

 

[M3d10n]

... the only reason bump mapping wasn't used very much was due to art direction and had nothing to do with technical reasons.

The man speaks the truth.

Moving from baked vertex lighting or lightmaps to normal mapped stuff requires major changes on the art pipeline.

One can't just flip a switch on a PS2 port and have shiny bump-mapped stuff all over the place. Bump mapping/normal mapping needs light vectors to work: there aren't many sure ways to bake those into vertexes/lightmaps and simply moving all lights to Doom3-style fully dynamic ones will make any hardware (360 and PS3 included) kneel down quickly if you don't do it right.

 

[Vagabundo]

The man speaks the truth.

Moving from baked vertex lighting or lightmaps to normal mapped stuff requires major changes on the art pipeline.

One can't just flip a switch on a PS2 port and have shiny bump-mapped stuff all over the place. Bump mapping/normal mapping needs light vectors to work: there aren't many sure ways to bake those into vertexes/lightmaps and simply moving all lights to Doom3-style fully dynamic ones will make any hardware (360 and PS3 included) kneel down quickly if you don't do it right.

So when is ps2 development going to die?? We going to see it this year? Will we notice a jump in gfx on the wii for 3rd party games when the ps2 does die?

 

[LCGeek]

I am quite familiar with the GameCube API having worked on multiple titles - both multiplatform and exclusive.

You aren't making any sense. indirect texturing and bump mapping are just forms of pixel shading. Every single GameCube game that I've worked on or had knowledge of has used indirect texturing of some form. And the only reason bump mapping wasn't used very much was due to art direction and had nothing to do with technical reasons.

Anyone writing a commercial GameCube engine in the vast majority of cases would have been an actual experienced console engineer and not someone who only knew OpenGL on desktop computers. How different or similar the GameCube's rendering system is to OpenGL is of no relevance to how much of the capabilities were utilized in commercial games.

There is no untapped power in the GameCube nor are there untapped graphical features.

So I guess others devs who saying devs aren't making use of what's available are dead wrong. There's plenty of untapped power to GC/Wii or are you suggesting that all games are pushing the system equally or even in the same range graphically. Same with bump mapping cube was clearly able to do it yet most games aren't using it or using it as much as other titles have shown shown. I fail to see how you can say there is nothing to latent to the tev yet devs aren't making the most of what it could easily do. I'm willing to listen if you can explain it better, but what you're saying sounds contradictory in my mind wth the words you used.

 

[psy18]

Untapped or not, at least we know many wii devs still need to learn. a lot.

 

[ziran]

Untapped or not, at least we know a lot of wii devs still need to learn. a lot.

Exactly.

All this tech talk is all well and good, but I'm only interested in results, and if these tools help improve the quality of the 3rd party sw they can't come soon enough.

At the moment visually and inventively SMG is kicking the shit out every 3rd party game we've seen on Wii, especially the garbage coming out of Western developers, ugh...

Speech recognition from Brain Training, hurray!

Blue

BLUE

BLUE!!!!!


BLUE BLUE BLUE!!!

Obviously some people have had problems with this, but I never had a single one, nor did anyone else I saw play it.

Edit - The only issues I had with BT was Sudoku recognising 5, it would come out as a 2 sometimes, yet in the main game it was fine, and, when my writing would get really crappy trying to do the calculations quickly, but that was really my fault not the game's.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

Untapped or not, at least we know a lot of wii devs still need to learn. a lot.

[looks @ screenshot thread]

Yep.

 

[Haunted]

sounds more like NINTENBEAVERS.

fixed.

 

[M3d10n]

So when is ps2 development going to die?? We going to see it this year? Will we notice a jump in gfx on the wii for 3rd party games when the ps2 does die?

Many games (specially of the non-photorealistic kind) don't need normal mapping to look good. Using the extra RAM for higher res textures, detail maps, masked environment reflection and more specular here and there, plus some post processing can go a long way.

I'm waiting to see how long it takes until someone realizes you can do tone mapping with the TEV. It makes a huge difference.

 

[TheIkariWarrior]

If you look at things this way, Nintendo had a reason for not upgrading too much beyond the GC architecture: it was the most underutilized console in the last gen. The GPU was packed with features which weren't used by most games, either due to lack of fillrate, memory, or because most devs had a focus on the PS2 (which had a very spartan GPU) and didn't even bother. So they have lots of untapped potential there and with the Wii those problems are sorted (more RAM, more fillrate, PS2 won't be the main focus forever).

All they need to do wake up the developers and get them to do some TEV-love.

PS2 didn't have a GPU at all. the Graphics Synthesizer was just a super duper rasterizer with EDRAM. GS had no geometry engine / T&L unit or vertex shader.

There are no latent graphics features waiting to be discovered in the GameCube. Nor is the TEV something that is a mystery still waiting to be unlocked by developers. It is nothing more than a way to setup and connect multiple passes for a material. It is very straightforward and anyone who has done multi-pass rendering in OpenGL would be able to immediately get things going with the TEV.

I think that's true for the most part.

 

[Version 3.0]

There is no untapped power in the GameCube

Maybe not (I wouldn't know), but you have to admit that the vast majority of games didn't use what IS in there. That's true of any system, actually, but it seems like it was worse for the Cube. And so far, the average Wii game arguably looks worse than the average Cube game.

 

[Particle Physicist]

,...

 

[maxmars]

oh god.. text to speech would be so much better for multiplayer games than having to hear all those awful voices.

I think I read here that Nintendo was looking into that technology precisely for multiplayer games, as it's (of course) much easier to filter/censor text-based content than spoken content.

 

[big_z]

Untapped or not, at least we know many wii devs still need to learn. a lot.

I think capcom will impress us with RE, and konami seems to be exploring thw wii's power since they're using normal mapping in the water drop game.

I would love to see what starbreeze could do on the system.

 

[Wiitard]

I think I read here that Nintendo was looking into that technology precisely for multiplayer games, as it's (of course) much easier to filter/censor text-based content than spoken content.

Yes, I remember reading that too. Hopefully, it does not mean voice chat won't be an option - DS has is despite the Pedobear threat.

 

[bumpkin]

He highlighted a development tool called NintendoWare, developed by Nintendo and HAL, that emulates Wii hardware on the PC so that artists can view an accurate representation of their special effects without loading their code onto a Wii development kit.

Hmmmm, tell me more.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Konami seems to be the only company really trying visual wise. Elebits looked "okay," but it was much more physics oriented. Dewie's Adventure, on the other hand, looks very good in terms of visuals.

Hell, I wish Factor 5 would license out it's Star Wars engine. That thing could really push some nice visuals.

Despit the game itself being good or not, if Factor 5 could get that out of the Gamecube, it makes you wonder what they could get out of the Wii.

 

[bumpkin]

Konami seems to be the only company really trying visual wise. Elebits looked "okay," but it was much more physics oriented. Dewie's Adventure, on the other hand, looks very good in terms of visuals.

Hell, I wish Factor 5 would license out it's Star Wars engine. That thing could really push some nice visuals.

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/previews/gamecube/star_wars_rebel_strike/rebel_strike2.jpg

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/previews/gamecube/star_wars_rebel_strike/rebel_strike1.jpg

http://media.gamespy.com/columns/im.../take-off-and-stay-high-20041011074607432.jpg

Despit the game itself being good or not, if Factor 5 could get that out of the Gamecube, it makes you wonder what they could get out of the Wii.

The 'Cube has a lot more horsepower under the hood than the industry gave it credit for... The problem was it didn't get a big enough userbase for it to be cost-effective to focus and really milk the hardware for all its worth. It got quick and dirty ports left and right.

 

[Pureauthor]

Hopefully, next time it doesn't look like he was thrown in a dryer. : /

Ideally, a Starfox game should never have you in a position where you can see Starfox anyway.

 

[Eteric Rice]

The 'Cube has a lot more horsepower under the hood than the industry gave it credit for... The problem was it didn't get a big enough userbase for it to be cost-effective to focus and really milk the hardware for all its worth. It got quick and dirty ports left and right.

Yeah, hopefully this time with the Wii's success, it'll be a different story.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Text to speech sounds interesting, I wonder if it could be used in the Wii interface and channels, so the news, weather, etc, are spoken to you?

In a recent discussion about the Forecast and News channels that was put online a few weeks ago, they talked about how one idea was to have a random Mii act as a newscaster with text-to-speech. However, they decided it'd be pretty messed up to have one's family members reading stories about tragedies.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

Factor 5 are beasts at programing and doing graphics work I really wish they were doing something for the Wii, then we might get an idea of some of the things it's really capable of.

 

[PkunkFury]

Even Animal crossing had limited text to speech, in the jibberish you can actually hear the words that are on the screen, but you'd never be able to pick them apart if you weren't reading along. The biggest issue I see with any text to speech in games is that it will have to support multiple languages, and some will sound much better than others.. For example, it would be a lot easier to make text to speech work for Japanese than for English

 

[_PsiFire_]

This is perfect for the lazy ****tard dev's who aren't trying at all.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Eh, they need to make it easier to push the Wii's power. The Gamecube was made for that, I'm sure the Wii is the same in those terms.

 

[Hurricane_Chris]

NeoGAF technical experts unite!

 

[ChaosDent]

Even Animal crossing had limited text to speech, in the jibberish you can actually hear the words that are on the screen, but you'd never be able to pick them apart if you weren't reading along. The biggest issue I see with any text to speech in games is that it will have to support multiple languages, and some will sound much better than others.. For example, it would be a lot easier to make text to speech work for Japanese than for English

I believe that Animal Crossing just jibbers the letters together really fast. At least it isn't doing any phonetic word building.

 

[AndyMoogle]

Hell, I wish Factor 5 would license out it's Star Wars engine. That thing could really push some nice visuals.

That forest level was so gorgeous. Imagine if this was the lowest we would see for Wii games

 

[Eteric Rice]

That forest level was so gorgeous. Imagine if this was the lowest we would see for Wii games

One thing to keep in mind is that the Wii is about twice the Gamecube's power, and probably more efficient.

So if they could do that with the Gamecube, what could they do with the Wii?

 

[dfi]

One thing to keep in mind is that the Wii is about twice the Gamecube's power, and probably more efficient.

So if they could do that with the Gamecube, what could they do with the Wii?

What exactly do you mean by more efficient?

Here are the differences between the wii and gc:

* More memory, 24 vs 88. I'm not counting the 16megs on the gc because you couldn't use it for much, especially textures. The more memory means that the wii will be able to use higher resolution textures. The blurry textures in zelda tp was pretty awful so hopefully the extra memory will eliminate this problem if devs decide to take adv of it.

* Faster cpu and gpu. This means that the wii should be able to do more effects. Plus, characters and enivronments should be more detailed and have higher polygon counts.

Thats it. Nothing else is improved, besides the new controllers.

The best wii games will certainly look better than the xbox, but will come nowhere close to looking as good as ps3 or 360 games. Just gotta face the facts. It will all come down to good art direction. Which I'm fine with.

 

[maxmars]

Thats it. Nothing else is improved, besides the new controllers.

And the integrated wireless connection to the net, including the possibility to send messages to your or your friends' Wii.

And SD card support (You can count, at the moment, on up to 2 gig of space all for your app).

And Mii infrastructure.

All in all the Nintendo guys in charge of developing tools for 3rd parties have a long way ahead.

 

[dfi]

And the integrated wireless connection to the net, including the possibility to send messages to your or your friends' Wii.

And SD card support (You can count, at the moment, on up to 2 gig of space all for your app).

And Mii infrastructure.

All in all the Nintendo guys in charge of developing tools for 3rd parties have a long way ahead.

I was just talking about the graphics capabilities of wii. Of course, nintendo added other stuff to the wii, but in terms of graphics, what I stated above still stands.

 

[tHoMNZ]

microsoft sam defecting to nintendo?

 

[LCGeek]

2x the power of cube really doesn't stand if you read things that are readily available at other forums. Not to mention on a practical and probable level the graphics Wii can do now because the gpu isn't limited by ram, storage space isn't a joke, along with cpu and gpu that are beefier is going to exceed anything any developer could ever do with with the GC. Wii is a superset of GC not an OC so while things maybe similar in graphics the gc with good dev time could never take on the Wii with good dev time.

BTW the graphical abilities for Wii vs GC have changed. The fact devs are using normal mapping, which was never done in a gc game should be a clue. Ram increase, bandwidth, and fillrate increases are alone enough to differentiate between the two.

Here's a fact the best looking look PS3 and 360 games will never touch the elite tier of graphical pc games that come out for DX10. See I can make pointless troll comments too. The poster said nothing about Wii graphics being like PS3 or 360 titles yet for some reason you mentioned it, like most morons do in these topics. The point some in Wii graphical topics are trying to convey is that Wii has a lot of unused power that devs don't use despite whining about how wii lacks it in comparison to other consoles or elements of the pc platform.

 

[maxmars]

I was just talking about the graphics capabilities of wii. Of course, nintendo added other stuff to the wii, but in terms of graphics, what I stated above still stands.

I don't know, I'm not a Wii developer, I'll take your word for it although even the fine chaps at Beyond3d are still debating the issue (I just do not care much). I wasn't even actually replying to your graphics argument; it just dawned on me (reading your controller comment) that there are a lot of new APIs to be written for game developers to use.

 

[dfi]

2x the power of cube really doesn't stand if you read things that are readily available at other forums. Not to mention on a practical and probable level the graphics Wii can do now because the gpu isn't limited by ram, storage space isn't a joke, along with cpu and gpu that are beefier is going to exceed anything any developer could ever do with with the GC. Wii is a superset of GC not an OC so while things maybe similar in graphics the gc with good dev time could never take on the Wii with good dev time.

BTW the graphical abilities for Wii vs GC have changed. The fact devs are using normal mapping, which was never done in a gc game should be a clue. Ram increase, bandwidth, and fillrate increases are alone enough to differentiate between the two.

Here's a fact the best looking look PS3 and 360 games will never touch the elite tier of graphical pc games that come out for DX10. See I can make pointless troll comments too. The poster said nothing about Wii graphics being like PS3 or 360 titles yet for some reason you mentioned it, like most morons do in these topics. The point some in Wii graphical topics are trying to convey is that Wii has a lot of unused power that devs don't use despite whining about how wii lacks it in comparison to other consoles or elements of the pc platform.

I own a wii. I don't own a ps3 or 360. All I'm saying is people should be realistic about the graphics cap of the wii.

I don't know where you are getting your info, but the wii is basically an OC gc with more memory. Can you point to me to a document that states that there is a graphic feature that the wii has that the gc doesn't? If not, then the wii isn't a superset of the gc.