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I'm only up to the vehicle buggy bit in the snow, well just past that, hunting down that woman. So far, everything I've played could have been done. Again I'm not talking size or scale or graphical fidelity. Just design.
What annoys me is arguments like Oblivion could never be done on Wii? Okay so the world is huuuuge right and you can ride your horse from one end to the other right? Only that would take hours and no one can be bothered so what do you do? I guarantee that EVERYONE just hit the menu and selected from the map to warp there and faced a load time. How is that different from having a huge gameworld segmented by cleverly designed segway points like Twilight Princess does? 360 and Wii both use DVD so there is no disc capacity issue there.
It's almost like developers are forgetting the tricks of the hardware. In the past they would use perspective tricks, horizon angles, stratgically placed buildings to mask the eyeline. They would tailor create a design to the hardware to do something good, something epic. They wouldn't just fold their arms and say: can't be done.
Morrowind was bigger than Oblivion, and it was on the original Xbox. Well according to people that played both of them.
This only confirms my belief that nuclear weapons aren't nearly as doomsdayish as people say. Dropping a 15kt blast on my city's downtown area, the thermal blast barely reaches my house. Sure, I might have leukemia. A 50 MT blast on my hometown wouldn't even reach me at university, 2 hours away. You basically need an asteroid impact for anything truely catastrophic.
What about the following shockwave? Most of Hiroshima was destroyed by the shockwave and not thermal damage.
P.S. astroids are awesome, but we are missing the black hole impact!
When did this turned into an asshole conversation? Black hole, hurhur hurrrr.
Meh, if we deconstruct every game at anal levels, I guess we could have Mass Effect done in an old pong machine with vectorial graphics or some shit.
And yeah, Morrowind's gameworld was bigger than Oblivion's, but Oblivion had a random tree generator. .
But GG, there are people who like to travel horseback in Oblivion. If we go that route, we might as well have a central hub to access "stages", named like the cities. That would be shitty.
And I may have been out of the loop, but when did Nintendo release the Wii's official specs? Comparing what's known about them, that puts the Wii at roughly the same level as the original xbox (bolded by me):
Xbox Technical specificationsWii Processors:
- CPU: PowerPC-based "Broadway" processor, made with a 90 nm SOI CMOS process, reportedly† clocked at 729 MHz[84]
- GPU: ATI "Hollywood" GPU made with a 90 nm CMOS process,[85]reportedly† clocked at 243
- MHz[84]
And I still haven't seen any offering on the Wii that can match Ninja Gaiden's visuals, or Morrowind's sheer volume of content.WTF? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, this will lead to bad things. Unless someone has a polygon counter or something, this discussion is retarded.
Hehehehe. Too late.
I am ending it NOW!
Developers released Wii's specs a long time ago, so they are accurate.
Comparing the MHz of two complete different chipsets is pointless. Wii's Power PC processor does more work per clock cycle than Xbox's Intel chip. In other words, Xbox's Intel chip would have to run at a higher MHz speed to match the same processing output that the Wii's Power PC chip does at 729MHz.
The GPUs work completely differently too. If devs use the Wii's GPU the way they're supposed to, then we'd easily see Xbox's Ninja Gaiden graphical levels on Wii. Most devs don't even bother pushing Wii's TEV (Texture Environment Unit) features which both Factor 5 and Rare used to do the graphics in games like Rouge Squadron and Starfox Adventures.
The Wii also has more ram than Xbox which only has 64MB. Wii has 88MB, thus allowing for larger game worlds like Morrowind or higher graphical levels like Chronicles of Riddick.
Based on several articles that I've read, the Wii is a bit more powerful than Xbox 1, but most devs don't even come close to using all of it's features, especially when most are doing nothing but PS2/PSP ports to Wii.
Here's an article that talks more in depth about the Wii's power and how devs don't use its TEV features: The Wii has more power than you think
I agree. Mass Effect on the DS? Come on. I too have yet to see anything on the Wii that matches Ninja Gaiden Black on the Xbox. Imagining that it's possible doesn't count until a game is actually produced that does it.
Point taken. But then what's the reason behind this absence of über high profile games on the system? Because I refuse to believe this is because of the same tired argument of dev laziness. These are people that do this for a living, and I refuse to think of them as some bunch of unshaven, grungey looking slackers picking their bellybuttons and smelling their fingers while saying "yeah, we could do hi res textures, but meh".
The reason we see so many shovelware titles on the platform is because of its easiness and affordability. The cost-effectiveness curve can only get you so far before you start getting diminishing returns.
Where is this from?
I like Fedor because he always looks cool, laid back and down to earth. Watching this gentle dude you wouldn't believe the kind of beast he can be on the ring.
The article I linked to above talks about why devs/publishers don't do as you ask.
I believe it has to do with money. To do the same graphical effects on Wii as other consoles, devs would have to create that effect on Wii using its TEV unit from the ground up. This takes more time, thus more money used.
The article doesn't explain why, penis.
But you are absolutely right. I'd be willing to believe that creating custom graphics assets like shaders and shit like that would be way more expensive than using a common, already developed toolset.
Yup. In my opinion, it is a failure on the part of both the developers and Nintendo. Devs don't want to take the time and/or money to make special toolsets for Wii, and Nintendo didn't design the hardware to better use existing toolsets.
Either way, we get screwed.
Mass Effect could be done on a pong machine.
I would buy it. But seriously though, so far my experience is part 3rd person shooter, otherwise you walk about and select from 4 lines of dialogue ad infinitum. I love it and its really well done, but in design terms, yeah it could be on Xbox. As for your central hub idea on Oblivion, no it wouldn't be like that. It would be the same as my 360 Oblivion experience with a core 360. You still have load times, you would hit and area and the game would stream the environment behind the scenes as Rebel Strike or Wind Waker or Starfox or Halo streamed levels in the background last gen. Or you would simply hit a funnel point where the game would take a few seconds to load the next area like Twilight Princess. As simple as making you travel through a small canyon or between two mountains or a gate, or a dark cave. You have exactly the same sized game world, the ability to STILL ride bareback... horseback across it, just with a couple of load times in between. These are all design tricks that you can use that have minimal impact on the gameworld.
Comparing Wii and Xbox 1 specs is bogus, but developers have pegged Wii as a third to half more powerful than Xbox. Remember that GC was custom made, not screwed together PC parts. The processor was a PowerPC processor whose real clock speed was much higher than the clock number in spec sheets. Remember that Nintendo at the time played down specs and put out ral numbers while the competition was inflating shit for the press. Much like those bogus press sheets where MS and Sony tried to measure each others dicks.
The powerPC chip in Wii is suppossed to have an actual speed closer to 1gz than the number you showed. GC used superfast SD RAM which at the time had really great compression rates and speeds. And a custom graphics chip to boot. Wii has all of that and more. You should really try checking out the Julien Eggebrecht interview in the Factor 5 thread. Rogue Leader on GC pushed more polygons than any game on Xbox.
I haven't played Morrowind so I have no clue what you are talking about but the disc format is the same so there is no content problem. Ninja Gaiden looked good my friend but RE4 and Rebel Strike looked better. Only the first level on Chaos Theory looked better than anything on Cube. The rest of the game's visuals were meh.
Starfox Adventures, REmake, two Rogue Leader games, RE4, F-Zero GX. Wind Waker?
Seriously.
You should read the Factor 5 thread:
JE: Yeah, because... on the Wii, you just have to be more ingenious. But the Wii, on the other hand... I mean, think about it: it's got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things, so if people just would look at Rouge Leader, Rebel Strike and Resident Evil 4 and then say: this hardware is significantly faster than those games it should have the very minimum they should get that and then they should build on top of it.
RG: And with much more memory...
JE: Yeah, exactly, and the memory! That is a very good point. Aside from the shaders, our main limitation which we always found on the GameCube was the memory: the memory was a struggle the whole time; it was a very hard struggle. That was actually our biggest struggle. When we got the Wii specifications we were excited because we said "wow, this is actually the amount of memory which we needed"
RG: The memory problem you had before
JE: Yes, exactly, that would've been our "dream memory". (laughs)
BTW Steel, F5 said that their Wii engine could do more than their Lair PS3 engine.
And I mean, I know that no one is keeping track of that F5 thread. But did anyone actually watch the Overlord Dark Legend video in HD?
You see what a developer can do when they approach the console with the right attitude?
IGN:
"Actually, when we say it looks very similar to its Xbox 360 we mean it literally. On firing up the demo, Dark Legend's title screen featured a background FMV of fly-bys and cut-scenes which we assumed had been culled from the original game. It quickly became apparent though that these scenes had been taken straight form this Wii version, its in-game engine offering some truly stunning visuals that really haven't been done justice by the first batch of Dark Legend screenshots. "
There is an interview in the Factor 5 thread:
The level of detail that we’ve got on Wii is probably unparalleled at the moment. It’s thanks to the engine that we’re using, but it also is thanks to the techniques that we’re using, as well. We’re using a lot of instant shading, we’re doing visual calling, so when you go around corners things are added on the fly.
Plus I dont know how many of you are playing Wii on an HDTV but unless you have one with uber upscaling tech like Bravia Engine 2 or Toshiba Regza ZR.... well most Wii games wil look like this:
Rather than this on an SDTV:
I am not sure where it is from, but it is used often in Sherdog against anti-Fedor trolls, who make retarded threads to discredit Fedor. The difference is that the text reads thread starter.
About Fedor's physique......
Look at him, he is a Heveweight. But he looks like a freaking middleweight. A small guy beating the crap out of huge behemoths.
That being said, he can look scary sometimes.
Oh and Reggie has nothing on Fedor
Steel, did you see the Fedor documentary?
Wii graphics disscussion? I lean more toward steel, games like Ninja Gaiden you almost never see on the Wii, but GG brings up RE4 which is like the exception as that was maybe the best looking game of last gen. The way I would put it is, you take the entire library of the Xbox and of the Wii, compare all the games and ask someone which one generally has the better looking games and I think its easily the Xbox.
Morrowind I believed used the HDD of the Xbox to run, I could be wrong though.
"Why do developers visions always include HD graphics and not thinking about all the ways they can push the actual design on Wii and yet still have good looking graphics?"
Seems lik most of them still want to believe that things are the way they were in the PS1 and PS2 days, where advancing graphics meant a lot more than it does now. I don't know about anyone else, but there's so many games that look on the same level now, that unless something is truly just on another level like Crysis (few and far between) I don't really get amazed by visuals anymore.
Steel, the GAMECUBE itself was pretty much as powerful as Xbox. The Cube's tech specs could actually be pushed well beyond what the numbers said. Ask anyone who knows a lot about this stuff and they will tell you that outside of lacking a hard drive for data cache, the Cube could be pushed further than Xbox in many ways.
Since the Wii is based on the same tech, the Wii actually blows the Xbox away pretty good.
And no game looks as good as Ninja Gaiden? Cmon now man, we were having discussions on the GGD back when RE4 first came out as to which game looked better. Many thought RE4 did. (As do I)
Metroid Corruption blows it away. Mario Galaxy looks better (although very different style).
Throughout last gen I always preferred the Cube's graphics to those of Xbox, actually. The Cube had a really great look, almost like a newer version of the Dreamcast. It had a great balance between effects, textures, and rich color palette's. Which is why it had games that looked like F-Zero, the Metroid series, and so on.
It specialized in cutting edge console graphics while the Xbox specialized in mid-range PC graphics, in a way. PS2 specialized in having no vid-ram and no anti-ailising.