First night with the Xbox = what's up with the Cube?

[rezo]

Originally posted by Kinopio

Originally posted by Phire
Mario Sunshine looks like the N64 Mario.

oh, so you've played super mario sunshine? how is it? surely you must be miyamoto's right hand mand to have had access to the finished version of the game at this point.

let me edit what he said.


screenshotsof Mario Sunshine looks like the N64 Mario.


Now , I'll respond to it.


"I hope the game looks better once its in action. But I didn't really mind the graphics of Mario 64, so a game looking similar but to a larger degree isn't a problem to me. "

[Brotherman]

Originally posted by Gongos
Ok, now to enter this discussion,a s i have been a pretty vocal supporter of both the x-box and the gamecube, but there is a lot of system biased nonsense coming out here. The x box has had its share of beautiful games, but i think that the gameplay of the game and overall immersiveness is a strong factor in judging a system's initial offereings. And really the x-box has yet to have a strong, compelling game to clash with either Rogue leader, or with maximo. they have so far put out a large amount of ports, a horrible star wars game(obi wan), azurik, and a large number of raceing games. If anythign what i bought the box for was for some very deep, compelling games like project ego and jet set, and recently i have come to appreciate marrowind. but when it comes to x-box's visual's one could counterpoint the beauty of halo with the uglyness of azurik, or obi wan, or new legends. the gamecube has yet to put out a graphical tour de force, though i would argue that the second level of rogue was pretty damn impressive, but the attention to deatails in games like rogue squadron, or ssbm, or especially luigi's mansion so far show that nintendo is concentrating on making the little details in their games that much more apparent. Look at Star fox, when it comes out, they are going to have realistic fur on Fox, a graphical trick that has yet to be replicated on either of the big systems. the box will always have the most horsepower, that is a fact, but it also ignores the individual talents of the developers, Res evil will be beautiful because the developer will make it that good, even on "Weaker" hardware, and box will still get weak games like new legends, from less than cautious developers.

Good post. Power means nothing if the Devs. don't use it.

[Shin Johnpv]

Originally posted by Brotherman


Good post. Power means nothing if the Devs. don't use it.

this is quite true and part of the reason why i think the PS2 has alot more power just its soooo hard to get out it seems only a few devs can use it

where as with the GC (and i hear the Xbox is easy other than DirectX being shit) its quite easy to find its power (like its been said RL was made in 8 months, imagine if they spent 4 years on it like Bungie did with halo)

[Brotherman]

Originally posted by Johnpv


this is quite true and part of the reason why i think the PS2 has alot more power just its soooo hard to get out it seems only a few devs can use it

where as with the GC (and i hear the Xbox is easy other than DirectX being shit) its quite easy to find its power (like its been said RL was made in 8 months, imagine if they spent 4 years on it like Bungie did with halo)

I know what you mean. I wish devs. would spend more time making games for the ground up for X Box and GC. I also wish that Microsoft would allow devs. the freedom to go deeper into the system than Direct X. From what I've heard, devs. have been asking to be allowed to go deeper.

[Shin Johnpv]

i agree totally and i think Game Devs could do alot more alot faster being able to skip past Direct X (which IMHO is such shit its on its what 8th version and is still buggy as hell) OpenGL developed by SGI has been at Version 1.2 for years (no major bugs or probs no need for an update) though 3d labs is working with them now to develop version 2.0 to add some things


and i agree i wish there were less PS2 ports

and i wish the companies making games on all 3 at least did something to take advantage of each individual system

but thats only in a dream world i suppose

[Phire]

Ok, as for the X-Box not having the TI4600, yes you're correct, it does not, I got confused by the naming convention NVidia uses, so I do take fault for that. And also, yes rezo I wanted to say that Mario Sunshine screenshots look very much like that of Mario 64. When I said the max poly/sec was 12 million I was only going by what specifications that Nintendo.com had, so I trusted it. Unfortunatly I do not own Rogue Leader. But I will trust that you speak the truth since you are an animator. Brotherman, yes that is true, power is nothing if devs cannot use it, unfortunatly Dreamcast barely got to really shine, it could do 2D great and 3D decently. But I believe PS2 is still untapped as well, with time the programmers will learn more about it, and some more techniques. As of right now, this is my opinion on the industry: Playstation 2 has been on the market longer, it has a strong userbase, programmers therefore will be inclined to learn as much as they can. Other companies will follow because of this, and Sony has previously been a favorite with Playstation 1. If Playstation 2 follows the same path as PS1 then I believe it will dominate on the market (PS1 lasted for some 5+ years I think), Dreamcast was also pushed out of the market. This is solely my opinion though, things can change and I believe it is all up to how many companies Nintendo can get to develop for this system, and Unique games, not ports.

[gamevet]

Originally posted by Johnpv


*sigh* gamers shouldnt talk about things they only know from reading IGN

gamecube can push more than 12 million polys the number nintendo posted about the GC (this has been said many times) was BASED on LUIGI'S MANSION

also have you seen the lighting effects going on in RE theres more than just pre rendered backgrounds slapped in there

ive posted this many time this is an email i received from David Stripinis from factor 5 (the people who made Rogue Leader) in reply to my question about what RL was doing



"----- Original Message -----
From: "David Stripinis" <XXXXXXXXX@factor5.com>
To: <maya@highend3d.com>; <XXXXXX@optonline.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: Question for the Factor 5 Guys about Rogue Leader


Thanks. Actually, the number of Ties is much higher, and the number of polys is much lower. We make EXTENSIVE use of Levels of detail, so why there may be a buttload of ships on screen at once, most of them are an order of magnitude or 2 below the ultra high detail versions.

Also remember that we cull polys that arent seen. I would estimaet that at any one time you are only seeing 1/2 - 3/5 of any object, the rest faces away from the camera and is not drawn. Actual numbers are in the 12 -16 million poly / sec range.

Remember though that this is only first gen, so we'll probably be doubling that if not more by the end of the lifecycle.

- -
David Stripinis

Director of Animation | Factor 5



"Occasionally, I have moments of genius. But
most of the time I just nod along and fake it." "


people underestimate the GC too much

Great piece! I remember reading Next Gen. Magazine with the interview from Factor 5. They said that the exaust ports on the capital ships, were 150,000 polygons each. Just imagine how many polygons were used to make the whole ship. Rogue Leader is a visual masterpiece, underappreciated by many gamers. I still consider this game as a benchmark for all other games to compare to.


In a recent interview with Yu Suzuki, he stated that the Cube was the easiest of the 3 machines, to program games for. It's no wonder that Sega, and Namco have decided to use Nintendo's hardware for future arcade titles. I can't wait to see what Sega does with F-Zero on the Tri-Force hardware.


As far as Wreckless goes, Gamecube will soon be getting a port of that game. We'll see just how well Nintendo's little box handles it.


Also the estimated 12 million polygons that GameCube can push, has been stated by Nintendo, as real gaming environments, not blank test results posted by companies like Sony, using just polygon pushing numbers.

[Phire]

I forgot to ask a question. John, does Rogue leader allow you to push Progressive video? and if it does, does it cause any impact to the framerate?

[Shin Johnpv]

Originally posted by Phire
Ok, as for the X-Box not having the TI4600, yes you're correct, it does not, I got confused by the naming convention NVidia uses, so I do take fault for that. And also, yes rezo I wanted to say that Mario Sunshine screenshots look very much like that of Mario 64. When I said the max poly/sec was 12 million I was only going by what specifications that Nintendo.com had, so I trusted it. Unfortunatly I do not own Rogue Leader. But I will trust that you speak the truth since you are an animator. Brotherman, yes that is true, power is nothing if devs cannot use it, unfortunatly Dreamcast barely got to really shine, it could do 2D great and 3D decently. But I believe PS2 is still untapped as well, with time the programmers will learn more about it, and some more techniques.

Yeah Nvidia does have a weird Naming convention and they trick alot of people with that
My friend learned alot about that stuff when he hung out with some of the Nvidia gusy drunk at a bar at 2 siggraphs ago

like i said the chip in the Xbox is like a tweaked Gefore3 think of it as a geforce 3.5


again i agree the PS2 hasnt been tapped yet but then again i dont think any system has been

i also really wish companies would make games pushing the strengths of the different platforms

[Shin Johnpv]

Originally posted by Phire
I forgot to ask a question. John, does Rogue leader allow you to push Progressive video? and if it does, does it cause any impact to the framerate?

yes RL alows for Progressive scan and i actually got to experience the game in this on a HDTV and i noticed no slowdown or change to the performance at all

and i agree RL is overlooked by many gamers

to really appreciate the visuals of RL you need to watch some one else play it and see just how much is going on there in the graphics

trust me youll be amazed