First look at this demo:

http://www.wiiusers.net/wii/news-editorials/3455-high-voltage-quantum-3-gameplay-engine.html

I tried something similar with a skilled team of A7 developers (Slin also was part of it).

We failed. Shaders and a scene with a good amount of entities slow A7 considerably down. The camera movement becomes jerky very fast and the scene management is not suited for indoors when you use meshes. Blocks are even slower than that.
You see this jerky camera movement even in the official warehouse demo of A7 or in demos of Shader gurus like BohHavok.

So you need indeed so much hacks and tricks (your own scene-management, your own shader based renderer, your own entity-database) so that you almost could just create your own engine.

If you are realistic about this topic then you have to realize that A7 is good for beginners, good for learning and a good tool for prototyping or making small casual games. But forget about comparing it to the big ones out there! Look at the price and compare again!

@Spirit:





Hey Spirit... where are the Wii-like A5-games? If so, GS could shame Nintendo with a old technology.
Spirit, you are very funny.

@frank.... what kind of video card were you testing with???!!, I have a lowly $49 nvidia 8500 and still havent had one 3dgs demo lag yet. so im not sure were it is that your coming from.

It is not my video card. Just check the warehouse demo and move the mouse!

And the other project I am talking about (from BohHavok) is rendered at his PC and saved as a video.

The lag with our own project happened not only to me. The other team-members experienced it as well.

i never had a problem with the warehouse demo but idk.... maybe i didnt scrutinize it that much.

I wouldn't create a FPS like the Conduit with any engine unless I had a team of people. Since most everyone here is either alone or with a couple people, none of this should matter, as you should not focus on these types of games.

God of war is a very art intensive game as well; and it could be done in A7. This is just lightmaps on nice geometry, reflection shaders, and general atmosphere. But don't let that give you any ideas, you will need a very large team of experienced personal because the art, not the technology, will take years to create. Think about the amount of animation that you will need to do to compete. And if you had the means to do this, you would also have the means for a very expensive engine which would give you a better workflow and a faster renderer.

If you really want to do a fps, make it an arena style game where you can re-use levels over and over again. But this has been done so many times... you'd have to think of something different. Just remember to do smaller tighter projects, then get the ball rolling and go from there. I made a mistake creating too big of a project, and had to pay for it with years of work, and it's still risky. But in the end, you learn alot no matter what happens.

Yesterday I bought the Wii for my son including the game "Brawl". This game is some kind of an arena fighting game but with an additional story mode (arcade jump and run) and tons of cut-scenes, nice animated backgrounds and detailled characters (the heros from many Nintendo games appear in this one like Metal Gear Snake, Super Mario, etc.).

I found it quite interesting how good the graphics are in this particular game. You will find some great water shaders with ripples and real-time reflections. There is some kind of metallic normal mapping shader and there are tons of effects, animated skies and last but not least: nice looking soft shadows for the characters.
Did I mention the depth of fields effect and distortion shader?

The game also uses a good amount of polygons especially in cut-scenes. Everything runs fast and smooth, no fps issues.

Brawl can be compared to a hack-and-slash game but within the range of some serious button smashing
But you're definitly right about the graphics. In comparison towards the previous version of this game (Super Smah Brothers Melee, GC) they made alot of changes. Not even did the developers improved the gameplay but also the visual quality. Those animated backgrounds are unique IMHO (AFAIK) ^^
Nevertheless, I'm trying to say that these graphics can be achieved when working with competent users but I don't think that it will run smooth on A7 when putting it all together in one animated background such as the many Brawl includes.

Anyway, it's an amazing game though thus you made a good choice Frank

Cheers

Frazzle

Thanks. But actually my son made this choice. I enjoy looking at this game but the genre is not my favourite. But I loved to do boxing or bowling with Wii sports. This is great fun.

yes, the pre-rendered cut-scenes are great, and anyone who has a wii should have smash bros brawl.

pre-rendered cut-scenes aren't much testament to a console's hardware capabilities, nor the engines being run on it. it's in-game graphics have been criticised in some cases for being simply an enhancement of melee's, and detail lacking in some cases.

mario galaxy, on the other hand, got great praise for its graphics (relative to the wii's capabilities, anyway), because it is well put together and has a nice style. people don't care about technical graphics as much as they care about good composition: mario's the only character (most of the time, anyway; i haven't played the whole game) who casts a real shadow (most if not all others -- excluding bosses -- are round drop-shadows if any), but no one's complaining.

julz