Support NeoGAF

[Portugeezer]

It also has a ton more RAM than the rumoured 64MB in the 3DS. 256MB in the 3GS, touch and iPad, 512MB in the iPhone 4.

Doesn't matter TBH, as they haven't even touched a 3DS.

 

[Amir0x]

And yet somehow Halo: Reach will sell millions and Castlevania will be a success even though they are sup-30 and 'Amir0x unplayable'....

The fact that millions of people continually lower their standards and buy products with huge problems is not exactly new to Castlevania or Halo: Reach.

Also, Halo: Reach will be a success, I doubt Castlevania will be a massive success... and that has nothing to do with framerate.

I hope your argument isn't "WELL IT IS SELLING SO IT MUST BE GOOD RIGHT"

Anyway, the thread is that way -> reply in the other thread plz

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

Thank God.

 

[Jin34]

I doubt they will, they don't even care about the Wii.

I sense the iRony as Nintendo are Japanese and seems they are being overlooked by Western developers.

Hmm...?

Most devs dont care about the Wii but a lot are taking a different approach to the 3DS because it actually uses a modern architecture that works similarly to the PS360, thus Capcom and Konami downporting their console engines and getting good results.

Extrapolating 3DS support from Wii support is not a good way of looking at things for various reasons.

 

[[Nintex]]

Maybe they should get their hands on a 3DS. I have a hard time believing they couldn't get one if they asked.

I've been told that developers coded stuff on a PC and that most some teams had a single 3DS to debug/run/test their games with. :lol

 

[Instro]

Kind of a weird comment. "It wont work, but we dont actually know the specs and we havent actually been given a dev kit *hint hint*".

If there is enough interest, it will happen.

 

[Technosteve]

valve should make a portal game on the 3DS, i'm sure they can use the 3D effect to great effect, also they can sell hats for 17.99

 

[EmCeeGramr]

And yet somehow Halo: Reach will sell millions and Castlevania will be a success even though they are sup-30 and 'Amir0x unplayable'....

well if a bad thing is successful than it must be good and not a problem to anyone ever

 

[Dennis]

well if a bad thing is successful than it must be good and not a problem to anyone ever

swing and a miss

 

[brain_stew]

Below spec but Capcom had MT Framework working in a way many people here thought was pre-rendered bullshots in a few months? :lol :lol :lol

Well technically it is below spec. UE3 on mobiles has required a full ES 2.0 compliant device thus far which is one of the major reasons it doesn't work on the original iPhone. Of course, there's nothing in the Epic Citadel demo that couldn't be reproduced on the 3DS of course (outside of texture resolution) but it would require Epic to make use of fixed function units inplace of their proprietary shader code and I don't believe the last bastion of software rendering, Mark Rein, would jump at the chance to do that.

Personally, I feel this one is on Nintendo. Getting UE3 up and running on the 3DS (and yes, I believe it is possible it'd just require the swallowing of some pride, the CPU is probably the biggest bottleneck not the GPU) is one of the biggest "gifts" Nintendo could give to western third party developers. If they're at all serious about wooing third parties then collaborations with the likes of Epic are exactly the sort of things they should have been doing, no matter how incompatible the company culture is.

 

[ksamedi]

Another one of Reggies incompetencies. I would have thought that Epic was the first company you go to if you want to broaden the handheld audience in the US. I guess Reggie thinks differently.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

swing and a miss

Nah, a home run, but it seems that the other team took the ball and went home.

 

[Amir0x]

Kind of a weird comment. "It wont work, but we dont actually know the specs and we havent actually been given a dev kit *hint hint*".

If there is enough interest, it will happen.

they do know the specs, that's where he is getting his general guess about whether UE3 will work on 3DS or not from

Nah, a home run.

It's like he thinks there was any other way for people to interpret his comment :lol

 

[Lonely1]

Well technically it is below spec. UE3 on mobiles has required a full ES 2.0 compliant device thus far which is one of the major reasons it doesn't work on the original iPhone. Of course, there's nothing in the Epic Citadel demo that couldn't be reproduced on the 3DS of course (outside of texture resolution) but it would require Epic to make use of fixed function units inplace of their proprietary shader code and I don't believe the last bastion of software rendering, Mark Rein, would jump at the chance to do that.

Personally, I feel this one is on Nintendo. Getting UE3 up and running on the 3DS (and yes, I believe it is possible it'd just require the swallowing of some pride, the CPU is probably the biggest bottleneck not the GPU) is one of the biggest "gifts" Nintendo could give to western third party developers. If they're at all serious about wooing third parties then collaborations with the likes of Epic are exactly the sort of things they should have been doing, no matter how incompatible the company culture is.

Well, it would help if NoA was more than a mere marketing operation.

 

[Lonely1]

Another one of Reggies incompetencies. I would have thought that Epic was the first company you go to if you want to broaden the handheld audience in the US. I guess Reggie thinks differently.

My guess it that Reggie doesn't have the power to do that kind of stuff.

 

[Shanadeus]

"No. It's below our [minimum specifications], from what we can tell. We don't have a 3DS, so there's no way for us to verify that, but everything we've been led to believe is that it's below our min-spec. You couldn't do a game that looks like [Epic Citadel] on it, for example. Like I said, we really don't know enough about it to make a formal comment, but I think if they considered that our engine would be good on it, they would have probably talked to us about it."

So it might work, as they have no idea what the specifications are. That last part confirms that they haven't gotten a good look at the hardware and might even be a bit miffed about it.

 

[jetjevons]

If they're at all serious about wooing third parties then collaborations with the likes of Epic are exactly the sort of things they should have been doing, no matter how incompatible the company culture is.

This.

 

[Burai]

Only up to 128 usable for single apps, though.

That's still double what Nintendo are offering, not to mention that the 3DS will have it's own background overheads too.

 

[out0v0rder]

this sucks, the 3ds has buttons.

 

[brain_stew]

Heh, would be funny if they did it later on tho. What with recent developments and all

Converting an internal development platform to something that is easily deployable and understood industry wide isn't nearly as trivial as some make out. UE3 was developed as a general purpose middleware solution from the ground up and getting an internal solution like MT Framework upto par is hardly a trivial matter.

 

[wsippel]

I doubt they will, they don't even care about the Wii.

I sense the iRony as Nintendo are Japanese and seems they are being overlooked by Western developers.

Hmm...?

As far as I know, Carmack does care. They don't consider what they do marketable, but Carmack loves to tinker with all kinds of hardware, and he seems to get a kick out of very limited devices. Didn't he even code their DS game all by himself, just for the challenge? Bethesda might never release a 3DS game, and they don't seem to license their engines anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised if Carmack already had a 3DS devkit to play around with.

 

[Jin34]

Well technically it is below spec. UE3 on mobiles has required a full ES 2.0 compliant device thus far which is one of the major reasons it doesn't work on the original iPhone. Of course, there's nothing in the Epic Citadel demo that couldn't be reproduced on the 3DS of course (outside of texture resolution) but it would require Epic to make use of fixed function units inplace of their proprietary shader code and I don't believe the last bastion of software rendering, Mark Rein, would jump at the chance to do that.

Personally, I feel this one is on Nintendo. Getting UE3 up and running on the 3DS (and yes, I believe it is possible it'd just require the swallowing of some pride, the CPU is probably the biggest bottleneck not the GPU) is one of the biggest "gifts" Nintendo could give to western third party developers. If they're at all serious about wooing third parties then collaborations with the likes of Epic are exactly the sort of things they should have been doing, no matter how incompatible the company culture is.

I know about the 2.0 thing but we know that the 3DS can do all those things and rather easily, not some TEV crack your head to get shaders like the GC/Wii. It's a matter of semantics and very disappointing that something so minor is the excuse.

And good to have you back, as you can see there are still idiotic smart phone comparisons being thrown around here.

 

[yoopoo]

So iPhone has more bits than 3DS...how many more bits? 32..64 bit, 128!?

 

[Instro]

they do know the specs, that's where he is getting his general guess about whether UE3 will work on 3DS or not from

Well I was just thinking that if he knew the exact specs there really wouldnt be any guessing involved. From the last sentence it seems like hes kind of annoyed that they dont have the hardware or exact specs on it.

 

[brain_stew]

I know about the 2.0 thing but we know that the 3DS can do all those things and rather easily, not some TEV crack your head to get shaders like the GC/Wii. It's a matter of semantics and very disappointing that something so minor is the excuse.
.

No its not. It'd require a genuine re-purposing of parts of the engine. No matter the end results, PICA200's fixed function shader hardware is not the same as a generic ES 2.0 compliant fragment shader. You may argue its a better fit for the given power budget (I have done so myself) but you can't argue that it is the same.

 

[Amir0x]

Well I was just thinking that if he knew the exact specs there really wouldnt be any guessing involved. From the last sentence it seems like hes kind of annoyed that they dont have the hardware or exact specs on it.

from the last sentence it just seems like he feels if there was some information about the hardware he didn't know that would make UE3 work, Nintendo would probably be privy to those details. And since Nintendo hasn't shown any interest either, there probably isn't any secret core that will allow UE3 in its current form to run on the platform.

I really have no idea where people are coming up with these elaborate ideas about how butthurt Epic is

Epic is just ok, trust me, they're not worried if they get a 3DS dev kit :lol

 

[wsippel]

Do you just make shit up, because you can?

"We don't have a 3DS [...] they would have probably talked to us about it." - No, I'm not making shit up. Epic could have asked for a devkit many, many months ago. As a middleware provider, they probably would have gotten one. They obviously didn't.

 

[Mafro]

Mark Rein:

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

I don't get what the big deal is. 3DS specs are designed with battery life for gaming use as a top priority, unlike (say) current smartphones, where anything approaching intensive use drains the battery in mere hours.

People are going on about the iDevices running UE3, which, while neat, doesn't take away from the fact that these devices just barely run it right now and even then, only for an hour or two before you have to recharge the battery. UE3 on mobile devices is currently just a proof-of-concept sort of thing. Actual commercial releases of titles using the engine are still a few more iDevice revisions away just yet. Smartphones have the power (just), but they lack the efficiency to run this engine in a truly mobile way.

I'm really not surprised that UE3 doesn't run on 3DS. You'd be hard-pressed to run it on anything less powerful than a laptop.

 

[Celsior]

from the last sentence it just seems like he feels if there was some information about the hardware he didn't know that would make UE3 work, Nintendo would probably be privy to those details. And since Nintendo hasn't shown any interest either, there probably isn't any secret core that will allow UE3 in its current form to run on the platform.

I really have no idea where people are coming up with these elaborate ideas about how butthurt Epic is

Epic is just ok, trust me, they're not worried if they get a 3DS dev kit :lol

I think it was more that he wouldn't of minded Nintendo coming to him and asking about the engine use.Hey, if the 3DS was able to use UR engine, that would expand the business of selling it more and would probably give the engine a longer shelf life.
Once Next-gen hits, UR4 will probably be made.

 

[abstract alien]

Eh, I guess I would care if Citadel wasn't a poor demonstration. As it stands, I'm more than happy with things such as Metal Gear and Resident Evil's fidelity, and Kid Icarus too at 60fps. Perhaps I'll miss the engine once a full game demonstration is shown and everything is working nicely.

Then again, I'm not really "into" graphics for the most part, so this news probably isn't meant for someone like me.

I don't get what the big deal is. 3DS specs are designed with battery life for gaming use as a top priority, unlike (say) current smartphones, where anything approaching intensive use drains the battery in mere hours.

People are going on about the iDevices running UE3, which, while neat, doesn't take away from the fact that these devices just barely run it right now and even then, only for an hour or two before you have to recharge the battery. UE3 on mobile devices is currently just a proof-of-concept sort of thing. Actual commercial releases of titles using the engine are still a few more iDevice revisions away just yet. Smartphones have the power (just), but they lack the efficiency to run this engine in a truly mobile way.

I'm really not surprised that UE3 doesn't run on 3DS. You'd be hard-pressed to run it on anything less powerful than a laptop.

Well stated. This is one of the main reason why I don't care for this style of gaming on the smartphone side of the spectrum. Then again, maybe I would care if something dropped that was a real experience that rivaled my ds or home console.

 

[Zzoram]

Only up to 128 usable for single apps, though.

You guys think *only* DOUBLE the available RAM of the 3DS isn't a big deal?

 

[KingJ2002]

if they haven't noticed how Nintendo plays the game...


they don't make their platform for your stuff

you make your stuff for their platform



we saw that with the ds

and we're seeing it for the 3ds


either get with the winning team or take your ball and go home.

 

[ElFly]

Well, there goes the western support.

 

[Dennis]

How popular would a 3DS middleware solution be? Is there commonly used middleware engines for the DS and PSP?

Edit: Unity?

 

[brain_stew]

I've been told that developers coded stuff on a PC and that most some teams had a single 3DS to debug/run/test their games with. :lol

That's not quite as bad as it sounds as DMP offer a full PC emulator for their graphics cores so developers can play around with the chip's proprietary extensions and see the results for themselves without ever touching an actual 3DS. Of course 3DS development kits are going to be thin on the ground prior to launch, the same thing has happened with every console in the pat. At least this time developers can do most of the grunt work without having the physical hardware infront of them.

 

[Instro]

from the last sentence it just seems like he feels if there was some information about the hardware he didn't know that would make UE3 work, Nintendo would probably be privy to those details. And since Nintendo hasn't shown any interest either, there probably isn't any secret core that will allow UE3 in its current form to run on the platform.

I really have no idea where people are coming up with these elaborate ideas about how butthurt Epic is

Epic is just ok, trust me, they're not worried if they get a 3DS dev kit :lol

Because thats more fun, also because Mark Rein is a bit of a jerk.

 

[Portugeezer]

You guys think *only* DOUBLE the available RAM of the 3DS isn't a big deal?

It may be, but:

- 3DS specs are not confirmed so we can't say.
- iPhone 4 displays over 610k pixels, 3DS's top screen just over 190k pixels. Saved RAM.

 

[Vic]

Why Epic getting on-board with the 3DS is anyhow related to the west supporting the handheld?

 

[Nirolak]

Let's be clear about why Unreal Engine 3 is even on iPhone.

Have you gotten a lot of demand and stuff from people you've talked to? Some of the publishers that have worked with it?

Oh, really, really, absolutely, yeah. It kind of surprised us honestly, that we'd be talking to one of the big-tier publishers, I don't need to say who, and they're porting games and they're making tens of millions of dollars making fantastic games on iPhone. We had no idea that business was growing so fast, and they were so excited to be taking existing IPs built on our engine over to the mobile space, so we were like, "Gosh, we really need to get on this right away." That's really how we're looking at it.

Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._Capps_On_Bringing_Hardcore_Flavor_To_iOS.php

If publishers want to port their UE3 games to 3DS, then it might be worthwhile for them to look into making the (harder) engine port to 3DS as well, but considering the barren Western third party support on the system, the fact that they're not jumping right on it shouldn't be too hard to understand really.

 

[gofreak]

People are going on about the iDevices running UE3, which, while neat, doesn't take away from the fact that these devices just barely run it right now and even then, only for an hour or two before you have to recharge the battery. UE3 on mobile devices is currently just a proof-of-concept sort of thing. Actual commercial releases of titles using the engine are still a few more iDevice revisions away just yet. Smartphones have the power (just), but they lack the efficiency to run this engine in a truly mobile way.

I'm really not surprised that UE3 doesn't run on 3DS. You'd be hard-pressed to run it on anything less powerful than a laptop.

Well I think Epic is planning to release a game this winter on iPhone...

But it's not about working the GPU (or battery) to within an inch of its life. The more important point here is about production process, and fitting into a very common process and working with a very common set of tools. UE3 on 3DS would make incorporating 3DS development into many existing workflows very easy. And there is always that small risk that it might gain traction as an engine for products across other handheld platforms.

 

[brain_stew]

So iPhone has more bits than 3DS...how many more bits? 32..64 bit, 128!?

They both use 32 bit ARM CPUs.

Spoiler

I know it was a joke....

 

[Zzoram]

Why Epic getting on-board with the 3DS is anyhow related to the west supporting the handheld?

Western developers pretty much all have experience using UE3 so they'd be comfortable and quick developing with it.

 

[Amir0x]

Because thats more fun, also because Mark Rein is a bit of a jerk.

he's a bit of a jerk...why?

Just to turn this on its head, he's more of a jerk than Iwata who said word for word they decided to shaft their fans and charge more for the 3DS because the reaction at E3 was so enthusiastic?

It's just business, is my point. Iwata and Nintendo has their business, Mark Rein and Epic has theirs. Epic has not been traditionally interested in games-only portables. Maybe when they get more powerful, that will change. 3DS is not quite there yet; who knows about PSP2.

 

[seady]

Now only if their game are actually good to play and not just technically (not even artistically) good to look at. :lol

 

[Windom Earle]

:lol thread title

 

[DeaconKnowledge]

Why Epic getting on-board with the 3DS is anyhow related to the west supporting the handheld?

I would like to know this as well. Lack of Middleware solutions was not the bottleneck that killed Western DS development.

 

[wsippel]

You guys think *only* DOUBLE the available RAM of the 3DS isn't a big deal?

Mass storage, caching - that stuff. I've only seen slightly outdated datasheets, but assuming those are still relevant, at least as a comparison, Nintendo uses mass storage several times faster compared to what Apple uses. Even stuff like Plants vs. Zombies has noticeable load times on iPhone - far worse than any DS game, or 3DS demo I've seen. If you have really fast mass storage, you can get away with a lot less RAM.

 

[brain_stew]

Why Epic getting on-board with the 3DS is anyhow related to the west supporting the handheld?

Quit being facetious. The consequences of the industry leading middleware being up and running on the 3DS are obvious. Anything that makes supporting the platform easier is going to positively effect the amount and quality of third party support on the platform.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Fine by me. I've grown tired of the UE3 look that's become prevalent on the home console front.

And it hasn't helped the average game either. Probably just too many licencees at once though.