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Shin’en Working On 2nd-Generation Wii U Engine

krizzx

Junior Member
Nano-Assault-Neo-Gameplay-1-660x350.jpg

NOTE: This game was only 40 MB in size and had no optimization according to Shin'en. A far cry from what the Wii U should be capable of.

@ShinenGames Shin’en, huge fan of you guys here. What exact month can we expect your guy’s new game announcements this Fall?

— Shokio YouTube (@Shokio_YT) August 12, 2013

@Shokio_YT Well, we would love to show first images along with the announcements. So as soon our 2nd gen Wii U engine is ready icon smile Shinen Working On 2nd Generation Wii U Engine

— Shin’en Multimedia (@ShinenGames) August 12, 2013

Older comments from Shin'en:

“The Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of the current gen. It allows many things that were not possible on consoles before. If you develop for Wii U you have to take advantage of these possibilities, otherwise your performance is of course limited. Also your engine layout needs to be different. You need to take advantage of the large shared memory of the Wii U, the huge and very fast EDRAM section and the big CPU caches in the cores. Especially the workings of the CPU caches are very important to master. Otherwise you can lose a magnitude of power for cache relevant parts of your code. In the end the Wii U specs fit perfectly together and make a very efficient console when used right.”

“For instance, all of our shaders used in ‘Nano Assault Neo’ are not really optimized (Meaning there was room for performance improvement). We just used the first iteration of them because they were already fast enough. We looked later through the shaders dis-assembly and noticed we can make them 30-40% faster by better pipeline usage or better hints for the shader compiler.

As ‘Nano Assault Neo’ never had a problem running at 60fps (including a 2nd screen rendering at 60fps on the GamePad) we didn’t have to do that kind of optimizations back then. For CPU usage ‘Nano Assault Neo’ only used the main CPU core. The two other cores were almost idle, beside a few percent used for our audio thread.”

SOURCE: http://gaminrealm.com/2013/08/12/shinen-working-on-2nd-generation-wii-u-engine/

lock if already posted
 

Ein Bear

Member
Shin'en did some seriously impressive stuff on the original Wii, so I'm excited to see what they can pull off on the Wii U. Hopefully they're working on another FAST game, to fill that F-Zero gap in my heart.
 

gngf123

Member
Shin’en are pretty good at getting a lot out of not very much. I'm very interested to see what they can really do on the WiiU.
 
Was thinking of making a Shin'en thread yesterday.

I'll make a bullet-point of what we know of their upcoming game(s):

- Almost sure to be FAST 2
- Will use Tesselation, just read yesterday that the only PS3 game to do so is GT6, and on 360 Halo Reach used it in the water?
- Will be their first Online game.

Likely missing one or two.

This game will be a visual wonder if history shows and NEO was just a mere launch title with little to no optimization.
 
Come on Jett Rocket II or III for Wii U!! I love these guys and bought most of their games since the first Nano Stray (except the balancing games, not really interested in those.)
 

krizzx

Junior Member
Shin'en did some seriously impressive stuff on the original Wii, so I'm excited to see what they can pull off on the Wii U. Hopefully they're working on another FAST game, to fill that F-Zero gap in my heart.

Indeed. There games were honestly the second best looking 3rd party games I've seen on the Wii. They actually know how to program to a hardware's strength instead of just shoving stuff in and cutting off whatever doesn't fit the way they want it to and complaining about it like other devs.
 

Fredrik

Member
Loved NAN, and it's silky smooth 60fps is almost a rarity these days, can't wait to see their next game. Hoping for another shoot'em up! :)
 
I asked yesterday on twitter if they'd like to pull a Two Tribes and bring their classics to Wii U in 1080p and at cheap prices, they responded saying:

We think the original Wii graphics would look out of place at 1080p. Too blurry or pixelated. Comic style games would be a better fit.

I find that weird since FAST on Dolphin looks so good even at 720p:

 

Exile20

Member
The Wii U might not have a lot of devs working on it by the ones working on it are amazing.

Nintendo needs to treat the devs working hard on the Wii U really good.
 

7threst

Member
Those guys from Shin'en kinda make other developers look stupid if you see what they can do.

I wonder if that is a direct heritage of Shin'en coming from out of the demo-scene? Working with and around the constraints of limited recources and making something beautiful out of that.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
This is my favorite quote from them regarding the Wii U.

So all in all ‘Nano Assault Neo’ only used a fraction of the currently available resources on Wii U and looks and plays quite nice. And for the future, don’t forget that in many consoles, early in their life cycle, not all resources were already useable or accessible via the SDK (Software Development Kit). So we are sure the best is yet to come for Wii U.’
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
Gimme Nanostray 3 in 1080p but make it a strictly vertical shmup and we're talking.
 

radcliff

Member
Please be F-Zero.

They were asked in an internview if they would work on F Zero is given the chance. They said they would pass at the opportunity as they want to create their own legacy, and not work off the legacy of others.
 

Himself

Member
Been tempted to buy NAN a bunch of times, especially now that it's on sale. But Nintendo doesn't put demos up for shit. I want to make sure it's adequately fun and challenging before taking the ($6.99, I know, but still) dive. What is Shin' en's best game anyway?

Happy to hear there's some secret sauce up in that Wii U.
 

Tenki

Member
I loved NAN at launch. Can't wait to see what's next. I hope it's FAST 2.

Also they're good guys, I talked to them around launch to make some interviews and they were always willing.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
Gimme Nanostray 3 in 1080p but make it a strictly vertical shmup and we're talking.

Have you read any of the articles.

Technically, Nano Assault Neo is Nanostray 3 and it was running in 1080p. Shin'en said that it did nothing to make the game look better and that the resources were better spent on post-fx. They turned it from 1080p to 720p and used effects that actually enhanced the detail to beyond it.

I'll never understand this irrational obsession with 1080p. No matter how good a game looks at 1080p, you would be able to make a much better looking game as 720p on the same hardware because 1080 requires 2x as as much power as 720p.

We had the game also running in 1080p but the difference was not distinguishable when playing. Therefore we used 720p and put the free GPU cycles into higher resolution post-Fx. This was much more visible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZUbqHxDyBQ
 
Shin'en also said about their next game's tech:

We've gone deferred+HDR. Very simple and fast on WiiU because all renderTargets fit in EDRAM.

NAN used forward rendering because we were afraid deferred would be too slow for 60fps. Fortunately it works great on Wii U

What is "deferred"?
 

Alienous

Member
FAST x F-Zero seems like it would be an awesome Wii U game.

Hopefully Nintendo do whatever it takes to support Shin'en.
 

GDGF

Soothsayer
I like to think of these guys as Nintendo's new Factor 5.

Probably a poor analogy in the end, but it's one that pushes my nostalgia button.
 
Shin'en also said about their next game's tech:



What is "deferred"?

Simplifying, but deferred is a rendering process where basically everything is rendered to textures/FBOs (normals, geometry, depth etc.) and that these are re-used within shaders to output a final texture sent to the screen as a comination of several post-process/deferred effects such lighting particularly.

It is a very efficent way to renders thousands of light sources and other effects but because of the huge amount of texture use to create so many "layers" each frame it can bring low and/slow GPU RAM to a halt fast. If all render targets ("textures") can be kept in EDRAM then a deferred rendering engine will have very little bottleneck potentially meaning lots of really nice looking games.
 

gngf123

Member
Shin'en also said about their next game's tech:



What is "deferred"?

Deferred rendering. Basically, forward and deferred rendering are different ways of calculating the shading/lighting of objects in a scene.

My understanding of it is that in forward rendering, you pick up each object and do the calculations to find out how they will look under what lighting they are in. Meanwhile, in deferred rendering you pick up the geometry the camera can see, then calculate the shading in a second pass.

Someone else can probably give you a far, far better explanation than I can.
 
Simplifying, but deferred is a rendering process where basically everything is rendered to textures/FBOs (normals, geometry, depth etc.) and that these are re-used within shaders to output a final texture sent to the screen as a comination of several post-process/deferred effects such lighting particularly.

It is a very efficent way to renders thousands of light sources and other effects but because of the huge amount of texture use to create so many "layers" each frame it can bring low and/slow GPU RAM to a halt fast. If all render targets ("textures") can be kept in EDRAM then a deferred rendering engine will have very little bottleneck potentially meaning lots of really nice looking games.

And that's supposed to much better than what they used for Nano Assault NEO? What PS360 games used this?
 

Colonel

Neo Member
I wish Nintendo would make Shin'en there next rare! They have the tech down just like rare did back on nintendo systems and Nintendo could show these guys how to make some really great gameplay, plus there small and Nintendo likes small companys. Yes I know Shin'en has historicly only worked on nintendo systems.
 

wsippel

Banned
Shin'en also said about their next game's tech:

What is "deferred"?
Here's the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading

It's an advanced rendering technique that allows for very sophisticated lighting but requires obscene amounts of bandwidth. It's also something the Wii U should excel at for that very reason.


And that's supposed to much better than what they used for Nano Assault NEO? What PS360 games used this?
Killzone 2 and 3, Trine 2 and Battlefield 3 for example. It's pretty rare on consoles. A simpler, less memory and bandwidth hungry variant, deferred lighting, was used in many more games, including inFamous, Vanquish, GTAIV, Red Dead Redemption and so on.
 

Celine

Member
Come on Jett Rocket II or III for Wii U!! I love these guys and bought most of their games since the first Nano Stray (except the balancing games, not really interested in those.)
Ironically Art of Balance is one of their best game (with their shooters).

Also Jett Rocket II is coming to 3DS in Q3:

BQaOGg7CAAAiPn3.jpg
 
Nano Assault Neo looked great already, they could very well have used the same engine for a couple of other games before making a new one.
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
I wish Nintendo would make Shin'en there next rare! They have the tech down just like rare did back on nintendo systems and Nintendo could show these guys how to make some really great gameplay, plus there small and Nintendo likes small companys. Yes I know Shin'en has historicly only worked on nintendo systems.

i think shin'nen prefers to stay independent despite only working on nintendo consoles, its not that they wouldnt want to wrok under nintendo, but they're a studio of about 5 guys and also have no interest in expanding much beyond that, which is why its weird ppl keep asking htme ot do F-zero or waverace/1080
 

JDSN

Banned
Nintendo should hire them for a while, just so they can teach some of their less fortunate studios like Retro how to make their games look up to their standard.
 

gngf123

Member
And that's supposed to much better than what they used for Nano Assault NEO? What PS360 games used this?

Not sure about PS360, but I know deferred rendering is being used a lot in PC gaming, and has been since around 2008. Consoles are a little bit bandwidth restricted, which is a problem.

Some recent games like Metro probably do use it on consoles, but I'm not sure.

And yes, deferred rendering is better in a lot of cases. It has benefits if you have a lot of objects to render, since it picks up all geometry in one step at the start.
 

Alienous

Member
i think shin'nen prefers to stay independent despite only working on nintendo consoles, its not that they wouldnt want to wrok under nintendo, but they're a studio of about 5 guys and also have no interest in expanding much beyond that, which is why its weird ppl keep asking htme ot do F-zero or waverace/1080

They could do it, and it would make sense for Nintendo to ask them.

Teams of passionate people, who love Nintendo IPs, ought to be given a shot at making an F-Zero/Metroid/Star Fox, seeing as Nintendo is just sitting on those IPs. A team of 5 people would be perfect. Yes, leave Mario and Zelda to the core Nintendo teams, because part of the love for those series is the fact that they are almost always good, but there are tons of IPs that Nintendo owns that just deserve to have new games, even at the risk of being slightly lackluster. Star Fox, for instance, isn't a series with any esteem outside of the core Nintendo fanbase.

Perhaps not Shin'en, but I'm sure there are teams around the globe that would give an arm and a leg to just have one opportunity to make a downloadable F-Zero title.
 
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