Forum > Gaming Discussion > Call of Duty Modern Warfare REFLEX Edition: Launch trailer Page 5
Call of Duty Modern Warfare REFLEX Edition: Launch trailer Page 5
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Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:12:37
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cod4pclower.jpg

Interesting bits here but tons more at the link (end of post)

Q: WTF was up with the first screen shots?

A: I was severely disappointed with the screenshots that were released as they did not do a good job of showing the public just how good the game looks on the Wii. I mean come on! There were bugs in those screenshots for crying out loud.


Q: Tell us more about the new "scope aiming mode".

A: I think Activision briefly mentioned that cod4wii has a new scope aiming mode - this is actually my favorite new feature of the game. It's basically an emulation of how PC aiming works, and you're going to notice a huge improvement in how precise your aim is. (You can enable this for ADS with any weapon, not just scopes.)

There is a daunting number of tweakable control options, so we created six "presets" to use as starting points. You'll choose a preset when you start the game. The "marksman" preset is designed to make the controls feel as much like a PC shooter as possible. Hope you guys like it.

Q: Can we hear more about the control options?

A: All of the actionslot commands (everything that was on the dpad in the xbox version) are now activated with a single "inventory" button. You hold the inventory button, then select which actionslot command you want by using the analog stick. We're not doing a grenade select thing - too slow. Frag grenade and special grenade each have their own button. You can map either grenade to a gesture if you like, but putting a grenade on a gesture means you can't cook the grenade.

The button customizer is pretty flexible (you can assign most commands to gestures, or even to a "twist-button" if you like) so you shouldn't have much trouble finding a button config that works for you.

You can lean side-to-side using the Nunchuk. You have to go to the options menu to enable this, it's off by default.


Q: Does MWii look better than WAWii or about the same?

A: MW looks better, hands down. This includes lighting, textures, animations, particle FX, characters, and the hud/menu system - all have seen some pretty big improvements this time around.

Q: How long have you guys worked on the Wii version?

A: Can't discuss that specifically. Obviously we don't have the luxury of near-unlimited development time, like some studios. But this game wasn't made overnight, and we had the time and resources we needed to put together a killer port for you guys.

Q: Can you tell us about gun rotating?

A: It's purely cosmetic (no effect on gameplay), but you can now rotate your gun left and right by twisting the wiimote. So if you want to hold your uzi "gangsta style" you can do that.
It's pretty cool. You can turn it off if you don't like it. All weapons twist except for a handful (javelin, etc). Some twist more than others.

Q: You guys seem excited about this game. Is it coming along well?

A: If it seems like there's a lot of positivity on our end, it's because there is. Everyone on the team is totally stoked about bringing this game out, especially since it had to stay under wraps for so long. We spent the better part of the past year combing all of the forums for feedback on world at war - we fixed everything we realistically could, added new features where they were called for, and focused on bringing an undiluted cod4 experience to the wii. This port got some serious love from the team and it shows.


Q: Can you give us some insight on how the graphics have been improved over CoD:WaW Wii?

A: The biggest graphical improvement is in the lighting and shadows - both are HUGELY improved since the last game, and I think the lighting is some of the best on the wii. Character shadows in particular look really good. We've added some new special effects like environment-mapped reflections on scopes and water surfaces, motion blur, sunlight transitions for time-of-day changes, and the same nightvision and flashbang effects as the xbox. You'll also notice an overall higher level of quality on the animations, characters, weapons, particle fx, and textures, and the framerate is more solid than it was on world at war. The game looks really good.

Q: Are the blood effects, splattering on the walls and the ground, the same as the original version?

A: The splats are there, but they won't stay on the walls as long as on the original - there is a performance issue when you just leave dozens of blood splat decals hanging around. The initial blood splat when the bullet hits the guy is really noticeable though - it's actually a bit more gruesome than it was in the original.

Q: How are the controls different from COD:WAW?

A: The main thing is that there is a lot more customization possible. I personally did the controls for this game, among other things. I gave you control over everything I thought would be useful, and most options are sliders rather than preset values. Your main categories are aim styles, camera turn speeds, sensitivity controls, deadzone proportions, button configuration, and then some miscellaneous options. Each of these catergories has 4-5 tunable options in it. You can set almost everything separately for whether you are firing from the hip (normal fire) or aiming down the sight (ADS), and there are additional parameters for when you are using a scoped weapon, a turret, or the ac130.

Q: What is the Marksman preset all about?

A: The Marksman preset is special. Marksman is designed to make the game feel as much as possible like a PC shooter when you aiming down the sights - "precision aiming" is turned on, and the gun stays in the center of your screen while you are in ADS.


Q: What is Precision Aiming?

A: Precision aiming mode is brand new for this game, and as far as I know, no other Wii games are using anything like this. I'll spare you the math behind it, but basically, with precision mode OFF, where you are pointing your wiimote determines how fast the camera rotates. If you point at the edge of the screen, the camera is going to rotate pretty fast until you move the wiimote back toward the center of the screen. This is how it works in WAW and most 3d wii games. People have gotten used to this. But you end up in a lot of situations where the camera just keeps spinning, or where you overshoot or undershoot your target. Precision mode fixes this - instead of moving your wiimote to turn faster, you move your wiimote to point directly at THAT point. It is very much like how aiming with the mouse works on PC shooters. Gives you a much finer degree of control over where your camera goes.

That probably didn't make much sense, but just check it out. You can enable or disable it independently for scopes and ADS. I personally think that someone who really masters precision aiming has a huge advantage over the people who don't use it.

Q: I heard you can lean now.

A: It's off by default, but if you enable it, you can lean side-to-side with the nunchuk.


Q: Isn't that going to unbalance the game?

A: No. Leaning has been in the PC versions of call of duty for years, and it definitely hasn't unbalanced anything. We just brought it over from the PC without changing any of its functionality.

Much more, including online talk here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=371684&page=23

Thanks to J-Rock Happy

Edited: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:22:53

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Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:03:55
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If I get a copy of MW2 it's going to be on the Wii. For all the faults of The Conduit I had no complaint with the controls whatsoever.

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Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:25:15
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aspro said:
If I get a copy of MW2 it's going to be on the Wii. For all the faults of The Conduit I had no complaint with the controls whatsoever.

This is a port of the first Modern Warfare.

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Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:04:29
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World at War Wii is still full price.  hope it goes hobo-price soon so we can play it ... then we'll know if we want to play this

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Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:17:04
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Yodariquo said:
aspro said:
If I get a copy of MW2 it's going to be on the Wii. For all the faults of The Conduit I had no complaint with the controls whatsoever.

This is a port of the first Modern Warfare.

Hmmmm. Well if it's hobopriced then I'm there. I'll have to think about this one if it's full price.

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Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:38:42
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bugsonglass said:
World at War Wii is still full price.  hope it goes hobo-price soon so we can play it ... then we'll know if we want to play this

Firstly you have to play it on an SDTV where it can look pretty decent for the system, on HDTV it doesn't hold up unfortunately. Then you have to tweak the hell out of the controls in the options, read my thread for reference and get used to the ADS lag. The movement and aiming controls are great, unfortunatly because its WW2 the guns all have huge recoil which spoils the pinpoint accuracy you can get in Conduit. Also the ADS, down sights mode is laggy compared to MOHH2.

The Wii version got an 83/100 on metacritic which is only a fraction less than the other versions, because of online modes.

But it may not be a good indiction of REFLEX's port quality as the interview sounds like they've improved everything. I hope it isn't full price, I've been wanting to get the 360 version but that is still effing full price and I do prefer IR shooting.

When I play 360 shooters I love the graphics but keep being bothered about the waffling aiming.

aspro said:
If I get a copy of MW2 it's going to be on the Wii. For all the faults of The Conduit I had no complaint with the controls whatsoever.

I would have got the wii version too because of IR aiming. Developers don't seem to realise that there is a segment of the market who would do the same. There are a couple of FPSs that have sold over a million on Wii so far. Treyarch say that this port and even WaW port was done by like 25-30 people so its not like a huge investment if they are using assets from the big brother versions and still reaping rewards out of it.

I think IWard are obviously the sticking point here, Treyarch have made their COD games for all platforms, whilst IW just ignore the Wii.

There are all sorts of weirdo rumours about how IW are putting shackles on REFLEX, in terms of changes, name and media released.

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Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:03:38
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You know, the gun and the street signs look good in that screenshot. Everything else, though...

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Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:08:13
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Foolz said:
You know, the gun and the street signs look good in that screenshot. Everything else, though...

I think that summarizes it LOL

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Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:59:42
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Foolz said:
You know, the gun and the street signs look good in that screenshot. Everything else, though...

That's a screen of the PC game on low settings.

Treyarch say that it looks similar to what the Wii version will look like. The screens of WaW were ass too but the game in motion looked pretty good.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:35:09

Cool stuff, one of the developers is posting on GAF.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=371684&page=27

So, when's the part where people remember that Black was an intensely structured scripted experience with brain dead AI?

As someone who bought and played CoD: WaW for Wii, I can tell you why MW looks "like a PSP game" on Wii. It's Modern Warfare for the PC downscaled. Every bit of Geometry in the HD versions is essentially replicated in the less powerful Wii version, almost nothing was removed. I would like to see any developer come up with highly detailed Black Like Texture work in SD with open environments and 60 FPS gameplay with all that Geometry in a Wii title, much less in such a short turnaround time. Hell, even the HD consoles couldn't do MW in full HD!


Wish more people recognized this. You can get a lot more graphical mileage out of your game when you have the luxury of designing it around the hardware you're releasing it on. Cod4 obviously was designed for hardware much more powerful than the Wii, and when you downport it, there is only so much you can do without altering map geometry, reducing the number of AI chars, and making other unpleasant changes to the design and playability of the game.

We were forbidden contractually from making any content-based changes to the game - not that it would have been a good idea, anyway.

It sounds like infinity ward or activision? don't want this game to get in the way of modern warfare 2. I can't believe they won't approve a trailer or even some decent screens. Crazy. I just can't get my head around it. It makes no sense.


Ultimately it's up to Activision PR, but IW has a very large say in how anything with "Call of Duty" on it gets promoted. I'm told that more press material is "coming soon" but they've been saying that for quite a while now.

How much leeway were you given in regards to re-working original assets? Were the textures simply down-sampled from the original release or were new textures created?

We weren't allowed to make any substantive changes to the look of the game beyond what was required to make it work on the wii. The artists could have created new assets only if they looked effectively the same as the originals.

Originally Posted by Lone_Prodigy:
Ignorant me thinks that all you need for a Wii port is essentially like dialing down the graphics options in the PC version. Shadows? Off. AA? Less/off. Number of corpses? Low. Textures? Low.

This is why I'm not a dev.


We were able to simply downsample assets in some cases, but new asset pipeline techniques were required in a lot of situations. Purely downsampling only gets you so far. You have to realize that the data for each level (this includes textures, animations, map geometry, audio, scripting, characters, props, particle fx, UI, etc.) had to be shrunk from around 80mb on the xbox 360 to around 25mb on the wii. If all we did was simply downsample everything to the point where it fit in memory, the game would look more like star fox on the snes than call of duty 4. In some cases, we had to come up with programmatic ways to get similar graphical fidelity with less texture memory. In other cases, we were able to stream higher-res assets off of the disc, but then you run into the problem of how the game knows what to stream in, and when to stream it such that you don't get texture pops, audio stutters, and things like that. So each level had to be retrofitted with triggers to tell the game what to stream in, and partitioned into chunks of coherent stream data. Then there had to be a balancing act to keep from exceeding the wii optical drive bandwidth. We had this same problem with all asset types, not just textures. Memory management tasks like this took up a huge amount of time, and had to be done individually for each SP and MP level.

Other than memory restrictions, CPU time was the other main bottleneck. Even running the absolute lowest quality assets, a huge amount of CPU time is tied up in level scripting, AI logic, line-of-sight traces, and everything else central to a first person shooter. When everything first fit in memory, the game ran at about 2 frames per second, and hundreds of engine optimizations had to go in to bring that up to 30. Cod4 runs with 32 AI at times (safehouse, heat, and the bog are the worst cases), and each one is calculating animation matrices, doing geometry traces, and running thousands of lines of script - every single frame. We weren't able to reduce the number of AI without significantly changing the gameplay, and so other elements of the engine had to be re-engineered to maintain an acceptable framerate. Building off of WAW for the wii gave us a head start, but a lot more engineering and optimization had to go into this project to raise the quality above what it was last year.

I know it's easy to look at some screenshots of the game and dismiss it as a phoned-in port, but try to realize the sacrifices that had to be made to maintain the original cod4 content and gameplay - it's a lot more complicated than just turning the "good graphics" knob all the way down. There is a reason you don't see more ports of 360/ps3 games to the wii that don't try to substantially change the game in some manner.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:34:20
^ The only concern I have when graphics look relatively poor isn't that I particularly care so much about visuals, but that it's usually an indicator that the rest of the game isn't that great, either.  If the visuals are toned down for high and consistent frame rate and better gameplay, I'm behind it all the way.

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:21:48

The developer has responded to my post:

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
I had problems with the ADS mode in WaW which I felt was very laggy, especially compared to the down sights mode in Medal of Honor Heroes 2.
The only reason ADS felt laggy in WAW is because the gun model was restricted from moving all the way to the edges of the screen. We did this in response to focus test feedback, where people wanted the gun to stay close to the center of the screen, but I now regard this as a bad idea. MW now has a slider called "ADS Reach" which controls how far you want the gun to move across the screen. Guys like you will probably want it most of the way up. Guys like Gilby, who keeps telling me he wants his point of aim locked in the center, will probably want it all the way down.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
The movement IR controls were fine, fast and accurate although you could have dialled down the recoil for accuracy sake.

The recoil settings on the guns are there largely as a balancing measure. Some guns are supposed to be harder to aim than others - this is just part of the game design.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
I guess the texture pop up was a problem, in some levels you could hear the system streaming textures off the disc and visibly see it happen in front of your eyes.

There are texture and model pops on the xbox360 too. It is impossible to get rid of them all, although we tried.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
It could have been crisper and more detailed too and the frame rate could use solidifying.

When you make things "crisper" - by turning off vertical filtering, for example - you get people complaining about "jaggies." Texture resolution is as high as we could make it while still fitting in memory. If we increased it, we'd have to take that memory from something else, and that something else would then look worse, and people would just be complaining about that instead.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
when the hell are we going to get to see some new media, in particular videos of this game in action?
I. Don't. Know.


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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:42:57

More interesting stuff:

And I know the screenshots suck, but the game looks a lot better than that, and it will have to speak for itself when it comes out

fact: cod 3 was literally ported to the wii by two guys, using ps2 assets. I'm not even exaggerating. So cut us a break on that one.

Do those screenshots look bad? Yes. Does the game itself look bad? No. I'm not defending those screenshots, because they aren't accurate in the first place. No, I don't know why Activision released them. No, I don't know why they don't release new media already. But at least let the game come out before you dismiss it out of hand. The press's impressions of the graphics at the Gamescom demo were all positive, which should at least give you a hint that the game looks a lot better than those screens suggest.

Originally Posted by Haunted:
edit: hot damn @ the "2 people ported WaW Wii" comment. That's like a fourth of the size of the Okami Wii team!

Cod3. Not WAW. Not that WAW was well-staffed either, but it was a step above what we had for cod3.

Originally Posted by AceBandage:
Actually, it was CoD3, not WaW.
But yeah, Okami was also kind of a quicky port job (Capcom wouldn't even give RAD assets to the game for a long time).
Really is amazing how third parties expect Wii owners to just lap up this crap... but I guess that it is just free money.
You have to remember that cod3 was a launch title, and industry wisdom at the time was that the wii was going to be a flop. I wouldn't blame a publisher for not putting massive development resources on a port for a system not expected to sell well. Also, we already had the big red one engine working on the gamecube, and the amount of work needed to update that engine for the wii wasn't anywhere near the kind of work needed to downport the cod4 engine for WAW. There also wasn't a need for a separate wii art team to crunch the next-gen assets. The powers that be have since learned somewhat, and have been more realistic about staffing the wii team since the relative success of WAW.

Originally Posted by GDGF:
Could you tell us how large the team was this time, fyzxwhyz?

Also, could you tell us the general attitude of the people working on the team (did they enjoy working on the project, or were they wishing that they were working on a HD game...and if they were wishing they were on another project would you say that attitude is common for developers put on a Wii project, port or not)

We could get a hell of a lot settled on ongoing debates if the latter question was answered, actually.

It fluctuates. I don't know if I can give you a figure as to what the size of the team is. Everyone was pretty stoked to work on this project - it brings it's own set of rewards and challenges. People on the wii team could work on the HD projects if they wanted, but they choose not to.

Originally Posted by Ormberg:
Also, is there any ideas about actually writing a Wii engine for CoD? To me it seems like a no brainer, but I'm no executive game boss handling the monies WinkWink

Cod4 Wii, like all call of dutys (except maybe the portables) runs on a heavily modified quake 3 arena engine. That engine was itself a descendent of Doom and Wolfenstein 3d. (There are still references in the code base to slime and lava damage lurking around.) That's almost 20 years of development, optimization, and iteration on more or less the same piece of software. It's been the backbone of dozens of successful games. Most of the kinks were worked out long ago. It's fast and easily adaptable to new hardware. It also makes it easy to share tech with other projects using the same engine. You give all of that up when you start from scratch and create a new engine.

Obviously there are some advantages to creating an engine ground-up, but the drawbacks of giving up our existing tech are huge.

Originally Posted by Ormberg:
While I do understand using a well known engine, how much has been put into work making it Wii-specific?

Massive.

Originally Posted by Ormberg:
Since the new CoD games are getting new a engine (or so I assume, do correct me if I'm wrong)

It's the same core engine that evolves from one title to the next.


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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:24:55
I wish I cared enough to read all that GG. Nyaa ( I read some)

Sounds like you did a great job asking questions.
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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:19:52

Dvader said:
I wish I cared enough to read all that GG. Nyaa ( I read some)

Sounds like you did a great job asking questions.

That developers really saved that thread which is the first post with ass screens, then 30 pages of bitching and screen comparisions with other games. I posed a few new questions today, hope to get a response.

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:29:31
Originally Posted by gamingeek:
Can I ask, how does the lean feature work? I haven't played COD on PC so I was wondering if it worked like Medal of Honor Heroes 2 on Wii. You use the nunchuk but is it analogue lean like in that game?
No, it's a little different. You are either leaning fully left, leaning fully right, or not leaning. There is no in-between. Once you tilt the nunchuk more than about 30-40 degrees in either direction, you're leaning. Tilt it back upright and you stop leaning. Functionally, leaning is the same as the PC versions of cod4, where it is mapped to the Q and E keys by default. Leaning is turned off by default, so you'll have to enable it from the options menu if you want to use it.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
Also have you considered using the rotate-the-remote-to-zoom sniper method that that game used? It was suprisingly accurate and responsive.
Cod doesn't have adjustable-zoom scopes.

Originally Posted by gamingeek:
When I was talking about ADS mode, what I like is when the screen is frozen and you can shoot anywhere on the screen as quickly as you physically can, without being restricted by having to wait for instance for a slow cursor, or gun animation to catch up. Is that what the Marksman mode is?
Oh, what you are talking about is camera lock. If you hold down the A button (A by default, anyway) the camera will stop rotating, so you can just focus on pointing the cursor where it needs to go.

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Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:30:46
"Cod doesn't have adjustable-zoom scopes."

/all interest gone.

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Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:46:09

Uh guys, someone posted this:

http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/action/callofduty4modernwarfare/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-51823950&pid=970125&page=0

Then the Treyarch developer responded on GAF

Originally Posted by Anony:
that's an interesting prospective
i'd asked fyzxwhyz to comment, but it seems like he hasnt replied there, probably cuz it would get him into trouble
Yeah, I can't comment in detail on this. Suffice to say that IW controls what happens to the call of duty franchise, and that they have a lot of weight to throw around based on their past successes and on the astronomical sales projections for MW2. I'm sure they get a large cut of whatever money MW Wii makes, and thus have a personal stake in the game selling well. But even by the most optimistic projections, MW Wii will bring in pennies compared to whatever MW2 makes. I'm sure that any decision to be made regarding MW Wii began with the question: "Is this potentially going to hurt MW2's sales?"

As for Treyarch's part, we put together the best quality port we could, and we're all proud of the results. It's our hope that the Wii shooter audience will find the game and enjoy it, one way or another.

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Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:22:38
^Epic post over there.  I can't think of a more dysfunctional relationship than the one between Treyarch and Infinity Ward.

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Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:19:08
I got to say that I back Treyarch, as they dont seem to be doing anything wrong on their side and they get stuck with the donkey work of porting the stuff IW either cant or wont, not just to wii but to last gen consoles too.

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