Shin'en interview: Wii U hardware, company goal, WiiWare/eShop, Jett Rocket 3DS

[Deleted_171835]

Nano Assault Neo
- Online leaderboards, 'survivor' mode, local two player.
- Uses the 'C-Engine', an engine Shin'en has used on around 17 games.
- 100mb download size with 5.1 LPCM surround sound audio.
- Loading times almost reduced to zero. Remaining memory used as a cache.


eStore/Digital
- Made profit on WiiWare, but felt the market was too small. Feels the 3DS eStore is a sign of Nintendo taking digital more seriously.
- Feels Nintendo is "listening to feedback", including from developers, had no restrictions from Nintendo in terms of size, content and gameplay for their digital titles.


Wii U Hardware/Tech
- Hardware avoids "typical bottlenecks", such as RAM latency and the GPU is "quite open"

When testing our first code on Wii U we were amazed how much we could throw at it without any slowdowns, at that time we even had zero optimizations. The performance problem of hardware nowadays is not clock speed but ram latency. Fortunately Nintendo took great efforts to ensure developers can really work around that typical bottleneck on Wii U. They put a lot of thought on how CPU, GPU, caches and memory controllers work together to amplify your code speed. For instance, with only some tiny changes we were able to optimize certain heavy load parts of the rendering pipeline to 6x of the original speed, and that was even without using any of the extra cores.

- Hardware has good optimization potential, and components well balanced.
- Have had no problems with the CPU/GPU combination. Feels they're a "good match".
- Nano Assault Neo using a few tricks that are not possible on current generation hardware. States the modern Wii U GPU is capable of effects that can make Wii U games look better than any game on current generation hardware.
- Audio DPS used for 3D audio and lowpass filtering.
- Excited to see what developers do with the hardware over the years.



Design/Company Philosophy
- Big focus on framerate. Always aim for 60fps.
- Enhancements made to the C-Engine for one game can then be used in other games on other platforms.

For instance, FAST – Racing League on Wii had problems to maintain solid 60fps when having two players splitscreen. For that case we added a CPU based Occlusion culling system. Since then every game we do can use that system, no matter if it’s on 3DS or Wii U. As the complete engine is powered by an own designed scripting language there are no boundaries. New code and modules are exposed to the script and then they can be freely used.

- Enjoy independent, smaller working versus larger, contractual working. Allows for full ownership of properties and engines, and full control of project direction.
- Happy with their relationship with Nintendo.
- Developing Jett Rocket for 3DS. Hoping to release it in the next few months. Planning another Wii U game, to be announced early next year.

http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/11/03/shinen-mega-interview-harnessing-the-wii-u-power/

 

[Langin]

Hmm sounds great to me!

Shin'en isn't my favorite company around, but I think the might be right!

Man that shitty golf games all around the world.(Soccer is worse though)

Also Soulx, did you write the stuff in key words down? I see you have kept it simple(No offense of course, I like to read texts in this style! ;D)

 

[Cyan]

at that time we even had zero optimizations.

that means developer can more and more release games without optimization and checks, and it will still run fine.
on old platforms, they needed a lot of memory optimization due to memory and data size constraint, now they don't care or can omit it "user won't notice", right?

maybe developers are still optimizing their code, but I felt over the past 20 years they often care less than the old games. (graphically for example, on 16bit they cared for the details, on 32bit all was plain ugly 3D just because they could make 3D and forgot about 2D, lot of flashy video with less story etc., they could make great game in 1MB, now they need 4GB+ because there are space let's don't care)

/rant?

Well, it's great that WiiU is easier to develop on, and Nintendo is pleasing the developers and listening to them now.
Maybe we will see more diversity.

 

[Bladexdsl]

damn the wiiu sounds like it's going to be a beast! now get some games on it!

 

[Guild McCommunist]

damn the wiiu sounds like it's going to be a beast! now get some games on it!

Yeah, I mean if a console can pump out Nano Assault Neo without many corners cut, it's a powerhouse!

Otherwise, um, whoopie?

 

[Rizsparky]

Cool, now give us a release date for Nano Assualt EX!

 

[Deleted_171835]

Yeah, I mean if a console can pump out Nano Assault Neo without many corners cut, it's a powerhouse!

Running at native 1080p at 60FPS rendered twice on both the television and the controller with effects that the devs have said aren't possible on current consoles. Your ignorance is showing here.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Running at native 1080p at 60FPS rendered twice on both the television and the controller with effects that the devs have said aren't possible on current consoles. Your ignorance is showing here.

But it's also Nano Assault so when it's a game people give two shits about I'll really applaud.

Sorry a week without GBAtemp and a week after that without power means I need to fill my "snide asshole" quota rapidly.

 

[EZ-Megaman]

Running at native 1080p at 60FPS rendered twice on both the television and the controller with effects that the devs have said aren't possible on current consoles. Your ignorance is showing here.

Isn't the gamepad just streaming what's on the TV, so it's only being rendered once?

 

[Deleted_171835]

Isn't the gamepad just streaming what's on the TV, so it's only being rendered once?

It has to render the image on the TV (1920x1080) and then render the image on the controller (854x480).

 

[Gahars]

So this is The Shin'en?

There's a worrying lack of haunted hotels and murderous rampages.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

What happened? I thought you two made up?