19th December 2005, 3:11 AM
Quote:I understand that the Revolution would not be capable of outputting over 480p, and the Xbox 360 is and does for Kameo. As Kameo is right now, made for the console with 512MB of RAM, the textures to take advantage of it, and a multicore CPU, I still say the Revolution could not outright run Kameo. It just makes sense there would have to be some degree of downgrading somewhere.
You don't know for fact that Kameo could be done on the Revolution, you just don't so I'm going to ignore what you said there. I'm not saying it can't for fact (though it seems very likely), but how can you say it could? You don't even have any Revolution games to compare. All you have to go off of is a quote from a Nintendo representative saying that the graphics will be on par with Xbox 360 and PS3. How is that any different than a Microsoft rep saying that Xbox 360 will be graphically on par with PS3?
If you could make a game on 360 with normal resolutions you would have tons of resources to pull from, but the system is not designed to do this. 3 central CPUs are there to increase worlk load, the extra RAM is there to hold the giant texture files - it's an HD machine. It requires more work on 360 dev kits to make a game run smoothly on normal resolutions because it's not what the system was designed for but if a developer chose to do so, they would have a much more impressive game as far as polys and effects, number of textures and models and A.I. and physics off the charts. But at the cost of HD content.
For example HD television signal needs huge amounts of info which is why you can only get it through satelite, microwaves, super high density DVD (HD-DVD) or optical networks. Even though the data streams are huge, it can only hold a few channels (except for microwaves which can be pulled in directly from the air through an HD reciever antenae). You could pump in a *huge* amount of normal resolution TV channels but once you start talking about native wide 1080i you just took a huge chunk of data off your stream. This is why when you order HD packages from cable companies who have optical networks you can only get about 20 of them at max as compared to the 500+ at normal resolutions, they just cant fit it all in without upgrading their networks.
Looking at the screenshots of Kameo from the GC version and comparing them to the 360 you can clearly see that it's the same game. There are some props and areas around the level using more polygons and this is expected as the 360 can display more polys than the GC. The downside is, once you try to display 150 million polys or more (in widescreen 1080i signal) you just lost more than half your resources, You can even find the same problem with HD-tivo - gone are the days of recording 2 days of shows and playing them back, we're back down to a few hours at best.
You can get any game to run on any system. You can get PDZ to run on an SNES, it would boot the rom but it wouldn't even be able to display the title screen and probably crash or run at 1 frame an hour. But if the systems you're transfering to have atleast a similar architecture, a bus of equal size or buffers, etc the game will run fine with only minor tweaks needed. When Rare left Nintendo the first on their list of projects was get to know the XBox hardware, so they ported Starfox Adventures to Xbox. After some minor tweaks, the game ran fine. They did the same for PDZ and Kameo and it was able to run fine. Then MS said scrap the XBox plans, we're moving to 360. So Rare, again, ported their games to a new hardware type and with a few tweaks it ran fine. They then based the builds they have of the games (in their near complete stage) and starting adding on with 1080i textures and display which quickly ate up all the system resources even though we're talking about converted GC games. So if you were to take Kameo and slap it a Revolution it would NOT run fine UNTIL they did some tweaks. Swap out the textures files for the same textures at normal res and tell the game how and why it should communicate with the new processors and whoosh, Kameo on Revolution.
You need to keep in mind that Kameo was basically at the 60% mark on GC, it reached around 90% completion on XBox and was finished up during 360 development. That means 90% of the game was based on XBox/GC hardware and would be extremely easy to port to Revolution as long as you swap out those texture files. Animations, models, levels, sound files, etc etc would all be the same. You may find frame rate hiccups but those are easily curbed.
It's extremely confusing to look at something with much higher numbers and be told that the benefits are only for resolutions. Believe me I know, ever price an editing station versus an HD editing station? You can have a workstation that's ungodly in the amount of power and storage it has yet it's just barely above what a normal editing station can do because everything in that station is going to handeling the HD content smoothly which means multiple core CPU's (or networked CPU's, I saw one using over 20) and massive amounts of RAM *JUST* to edit HD video.
So now that I explained that, to the quote tags.
Quote:Confused? I wasn't comparing the Xbox and GC versions. I thought you were suggesting that the GC version looked as good as the 360 version.
I was, but not that it looks as good. That's why I mentioned that the 'sea of orcs' was also in the GC version (you were talking about how the 360 can do 'better animations and better draw distance which is not true). It was a little trick they wanted to show off even back in the GC dev days. As I said, the GC version, when compared to the 360 version, is the same game with a different texture pallette and less glitz and props and overall lower polys (and of course normal resolutions) but the game is still comparable.
Quote:LOL, you're ranting about something I didn't say. Read my post again, and carefully. I said they are mostly on par, meaning they are about equal. As for the Resident Evil 4 comment, I said that it is no less impressive than, for example, Ninja Gaiden. Feel free to check it for yourself, and please don't misquote me or put words in my mouth. OB1 did it and it was very annoying.
I play lots of games. When I made my comment I thought back to all the play time I've put on: Halo, Halo 2, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Fable, Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 3, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Panzer Dragoon Orta, F-Zero GX, Resident Evil Remake, Resident Evil Zero, Resident Evil 4, Project Gotham Racing, Project Gotham Racing 2, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay...
Yes, I have played many games on both systems and that is how I came to my conclusion that they are mostly on par. So comeback from leftfield and let's continue this...
How am I in left field? You said that "there are no GC games that look better than XBox games, they look equal". Ninja Gaiden does not look anywhere near as good as RE4, you cant possibly think that. You say that no GC game looks better and I say that the Prime series, Resident Evil remake, zero and 4, WW and TP look better than anything available on the XBox. Prove me wrong.
Quote:It takes a stronger system to bring all those effects together.
I think we've been down this road before and we came to a stand still as far as our impressions go for next-generation games. I think Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, and Project Gotham Racing 3 look next-gen, and not possible on current generation systems as they are. The Xbox or GC would not be capable of bringing everything that the 360 does together; the phenomenal lighting, the noticeably higher polygon count, the HD resolution, the rich textures, the particle effects, etc. It's only going to get better.
That being said, the Xbox 360 simply has more resources for developers to work with. I simply don't understand how you can make the bold face claim that Revolution games will for fact look as good 360 games, even on a standard TV. You have nothing to support your arguement other than a comment made someone from Nintendo. On the other hand you have the stark contrast in their hardware specs to indicate that they systems are for fact not on par.
I explained most of this already so you have an idea of what HD content does to hardware, but you are completely wrong that it takes a stronger system to achieve particular effects. Real time lighting is something you can do on N64 it doesn't 'get better', how it interacts with shadows or reflects off of texture maps has nothing to do with the power of the system and everything to do with the time the developer is willing to take on the game. You mentioned HD textures and richer textures like they're two different things as well. The fact is that every piece of hardware that has ever been has something special about it. SNES could do hardware scaling and rotation, Genny could not. The N64 could display fully anti-aliased graphics in high resolution, the Saturn/PSX/PS2 could not. These are not things that require more power but difference in design. It's that difference that makes the hardware unique and sets it apart from competition. But dont think for a second that there weren't any Genny games that had scaling and rotation or Saturn and PS2 games with anti-aliased textures. Effects are something that simply make the hardware have a visual difference. For XBox 360 the 3 main ones that come to mind are HD (nur), really awesome smoke effects and really awesome bluring effects. PS3 may go a route that says our system will have really awesome fire and explosions or be built with the idea of awesome wind dynamics, the companies choose what effects to pump up based on what they think the consumer is going to go for. It has nothing, not a single thing, to do with being a more powerful system or not. The 3 games you mentioned were developed on the XBox, yes, they can be played on an XBox if you convert the texture files and tweak the games - certain effects may be disabled, there may be a need to cut down the number of polys on screen in certain locations, but the game's would look so similar that you would need to do side by side comparison shots to spot the different versions.
Quote:If I didn't picture you as a full grown man adorned in Nintendo apparel huddled in the middle of all his Nintendo consoles then I might take you seriously and be a little hurt.
I am a full grown man (wearing a Zelda shirt) and my Nintendo consoles are in the living room (but the 64 is in the bedroom so wife and I can play DKR inbetween our rabid sex acts) But I was not trying to 'hurt' you, I was making a simple point - what are you defending? You're certainly not defending a game's studio or particular game series, you're just telling people they should like what you like, a large corporate structure that funded the development of a hardware console to attract third party development. I have about 25 years of history, characters, game series, libraries, consoles, directors, producers, writers, composers, artists etc etc from one company that i'm defending against people like you whenever your type pops up to preach the benefits of your opinions. You have nothing to defend except your own pride in the hopes that people will like what you like and agree with your opinions which is definitely not going to happen when you construct such sentences that exclaim your ignorance of how video games are made and is definitely not going to happen on a Nintendo message board. All Nintendo fans have had to deal with your type, a few decades ago you were telling me how much better Sega is, then you told me that I need a 3DO or Neo Geo and ditch that Nintendo. Then you told me how absolutely fantastic the PSX is and how lame the N64 is and now you've attached yourself to the newest latest and greatest contender in the video gaming arena which had mild success in Europe, pretty good success in America and is totally lost on the Japanese, enter round 2 with second gen hardware and now it's even more important for you to spread the word and get people interested in the newest machine that (aside from Rare's games) holds absolutely no interest for me. When Microsoft decides to get out of the home console market you will invisibly absorb a new product from a new console manufacturer and you will make sure it's not affiliated with Nintendo because it might compromise your stance on gaming that people should like what you do. I could have my ears surgically altered to resemble Hyrulian features with a Virtual Boy strapped to my face with duct tape while blowing the entire Jontoh Pokemon League and I still would not be as sad as you.
Quote:Your conclusion that that difference only lends itself to HD output sounds more hopeful than it does as a technical analysis. I think you need to chill out. As far as I know Nintendo doesn't hand out a "Rabid and Blind Defender of the Big N" award.
1.) You need to do homework on HD technology.
2.) i have won that award every year for 15 years straight. They tried to hold a similar award ceramony for XBox fans but most of the nominees didn't show because of 'FCAT's' and the ones that did show could only produce cognitive word strings such as "I'm drunk", "I'm sorry I puked in your refridgerator" and "Halo Party at Dan's!" - after the cancellation it was reformed in to the "Semi-Annual Microsoft Fanboy Finals" in late 2005 but was cut short after Microsoft noticed a trend in current demographics of no one giving a rat's ass.