aspro said:

Would you guys use this feature? link

Only in Finland.

robio said:

I don't know why Carmack even bothers commenting on consoles or handhelds. It's not like he really develops for them. A couple of his games have been ported but unless I'm forgetting about something he's shown more interest in mobile games than anything other than PC's.

Good point.

robio said:

On that Tekken Wii U article they talked a lot about the custom features like drawing on your character, ad there was something both funny and sadly accurate:

For instance, you can draw on your opponents face if you beat them in a match, and whatever you draw there may stay on their character for up to a year. In the video above, someone draws a goatee and rosy cheeks on Kazuya. I'm betting that in real life, we'll be seeing a lot fewer goatees, and a lot more cartoon genitalia.

Yep.... that's get ready to see a cock drawn on the side of Kazuya's face.

For a year?

Dvader said:

I still dont drink it.

That aspect is the one I dont get, I dont mind drinking in a party atmosphere but the I am sad let me drink it away I dont get or I don't need. I can handle my sorrow just fine.

The one time I sorrow drank I ended up drunk on a bus stop bench, then pissed against the side of a UK equivalent of Wallmart, dressed in a tuxedo. Then I crashed into some wheelie bins and got carried home by two strangers.

I'm happy for Double Fine. They made Psychonauts, they should be making the profits from it, and own the rights.

About the Wii U controller....is anyone really upset that it won't be able to handle more than 2 at a time? I've always thought the whole 4 controller thing was an overrated feature, and a gimmick. Sure, there's been a few games in the past it came in handy for, but for the most part you really don't need more than 2-player multi-player on the same console. Especially these days with online multi-player.

Its certainly never been a system selling feature....PS1 outsold N64 by a large margin with only 2 controller ports, and PS2, the best selling console of all time...also only had 2 controller ports, and outsold Gamecube, Xbox, and Dreamcast COMBINED.

edgecrusher said:

I'm happy for Double Fine. They made Psychonauts, they should be making the profits from it, and own the rights.

About the Wii U controller....is anyone really upset that it won't be able to handle more than 2 at a time? I've always thought the whole 4 controller thing was an overrated feature, and a gimmick. Sure, there's been a few games in the past it came in handy for, but for the most part you really don't need more than 2-player multi-player on the same console. Especially these days with online multi-player.

Its certainly never been a system selling feature....PS1 outsold N64 by a large margin with only 2 controller ports, and PS2, the best selling console of all time...also only had 2 controller ports, and outsold Gamecube, Xbox, and Dreamcast COMBINED.

It supports one Wii U controller and 4 Wii remotes at the same time.

It supports 2 Wii U controllers at the same time, but the controller comes with the console and is not sold separatly so I guess you would have to bring your wii u controller to a friend who also had a wii u for those sorts of 2 player games. I don't think many games will support this anyway.

You know there will be Wii 2 controllers on ebay and shit.

I don't remember the Ice Cavern looking like that...its been a long time.

Videogamer said:

TimeSplitters 4 in development for next Xbox and PlayStation.

Microsoft is gearing up to announce the successor to the Xbox 360 at E3 2012, and Crytek is already developing a new TimeSplitters game for the next generation of consoles, VideoGamer.com can reveal.



Specifications for the new machine have not been finalised, but Crytek is using Microsoft's DirectX 11 as the current basis for next-generation development. Tessellation, multithreaded rendering, and compute shaders are the three headlining features for DirectX 11.



The Crysis 2 developer says that Microsoft will announce the existence of a new Xbox within the next 12 months, hinting that an E3 2012 reveal is likely. Crytek believes that Microsoft will announce and launch its new machine ahead of rival Sony, though the developer is also investing resources into next-generation PlayStation development.

The information was detailed to VideoGamer.com by a high-ranking industry source at Crytek, who stated that TimeSplitters 4 is currently being demonstrated internally, is being built with CryEngine 3, and was being shown privately in video form at E3 2011.



Crytek UK, who produced the other three games in the series as Free Radical, is still handling the development.



Both Microsoft and Crytek declined to comment.



The source reports that the graphics on TimeSplitters 4 are noticeably improved over current generation technology, with the DX11 tessellation effects allegedly having a huge impact on the visuals. Crytek believes that the game - and CryEngine 3 itself - will be seen as the cornerstone of next-generation development.



Crytek has invested heavily in DirectX 11 development primarily to focus on the new consoles, with the upcoming DX11 patch for the PC version of Crysis 2 being used internally as a benchmark of anticipated hardware trends.



As for the game itself, the new TimeSplitters is reported to focus on the series' branching paths and exploratory nature, with sandbox-style gameplay elements a big priority. The current goal is for levels to feature multiple routes that lead to the same overall conclusion.



Speculation about TimeSplitters 4 has been running since 2007. Since its initial announcement the game was even pegged to be a Wii-exclusive before languishing in development hell and being put on hiatus in 2009.



What does this mean for Halo 4, then, which was stated as an Xbox 360 game during its E3 2011 reveal?



Crytek has also recently announced that the CryEngine will support Nintendo's upcoming Wii U hardware. "Crytek's support for Wii U is definitely going to happen," said CEO Cevat Yerli.



Younger gamers might not be aware of the TimeSplitters series. 2005's TimeSplitters: Future Perfect was the last game in the franchise, and 2000's TimeSplitters was a well-received PS2 launch title, but the highlight of the series is undeniably 2002's TimeSplitters 2.



Crytek snapped up Free Radical in 2009 after the studio was forced into administration following the lacklustre critical and commercial performance of its PS3-exclusive shooter Haze. The Nottingham-based studio was rebranded as Crytek UK.



Crytek UK's last job was to handle the multiplayer portion of Crysis 2. "Whether it has enough mettle to compete in the long-term is another question - and one that will be tested over the coming months - but from this initial glance it certainly seems like there's enough in Crysis 2's multiplayer to at least tide people over until the autumn," I wrote in VideoGamer.com's 9/10 Crysis 2 review.

So, as I know literally nothing about direct X, any version. I hear Wii U uses direct X 10, so will that cripple the hardware when the next 360 and PS4 come out with DX11 support?

GAF says:

Not really,


Any game made for the PS4/720 should easily be scalable down to the Wii U. Which was not the case for the Wii.


i don't know why people keep overlooking this.


i guess they'll keep on overlooking this until Wii U continues getting multiplatform support after the PS4 and 720 come out.


even if the PS4 and 720 are based on DX11 parts, there is little to nothing that those parts can do that 770 chipsets can't also do. it'll just be a matter of scaling things down enough that it runs on the Wii U. it can share the same engine, and tools and so forth. it conceivably would just need toned down shaders, geometry and texture sizes.


the API changes of DX11 were more about standardising things that were already possible (computing on the GPU and tesselation etc). that won't really be an issue with a fixed hardware design like the Wii U will have.


or to put it another way, does anyone think that UE4 won't run on DX10 parts?

Agnates said:

Non-microsoft consoles don't use directx. What matters is hardware support for certain features like a particular version of pixel and vertex shaders, tesselation, or whatever else tends to come alongside new directx versions, but of course can work even outside directx with open gl or whatever else. Still, ingenuity goes a long way. An example of that is Crysis 2 which still doesn't have even DX10 support on PC yet has all the graphical features Crysis 1 DX10 had, like godrays. In any case, DX10.1 has all the DX11 features, but not on the same level, so downports could still happen, just as DX10+ games are ported down to the DX9 level hardware of the current consoles. Unless the PS4 and Nextbox are delayed enough to catch some brand-new technological jump, I don't think WiiU will have problems getting multiplatform games, unless it bombs completely. Most new technologies revolve around lighting and shadowing complexity, physics complexity, and other such things that you can tone down without much effort and keep the overall look and gameplay intact since the rest things are using the same old normal mapping, high resolution textures, high complexity geometry, etc, that we've been seeing already. With all systems outputting in HD the field is evened out further.

Thanks for that. What is this tesslation I keep hearing about?

edgecrusher said:

About the Wii U controller....is anyone really upset that it won't be able to handle more than 2 at a time? I've always thought the whole 4 controller thing was an overrated feature, and a gimmick. Sure, there's been a few games in the past it came in handy for, but for the most part you really don't need more than 2-player multi-player on the same console. Especially these days with online multi-player.

Not a big deal to me. I did enjoy Mario Party with 3 or 4 people in college, and my kids play Wii Party with their friends now, but those are the only times I've experienced a time when I used more than 2 controllers at a time. So I think I can do without.

Well it depends on the game. Maybe everything is relatively low detail so it doesn't switch things except when they're too far away to notice. Or maybe the levels are made with twists and turns so that your view past a certain distance tends to be blocked and you miss the changes. Or maybe the depth of field blurs everything right to the detail switch. Etc. But tessellation can be used to extreme effects with near pre-rendered CG quality, with super smooth surfaces and all sorts of detail on everything including characters, their accessories, buildings, roads, the whole environment, without crippling performance due to how dynamic it is so that everything out of view or just a little further away dynamically shifts to an appropriate level of detail that isn't obvious to the eye. So, I don't think clever programming could make up for this kind of extreme usage situation that may well become the standard in a few years. WiiU hopefully can support it to an extent, probably not fur such extreme situations (I don't think anything less than the most top of the line and overclocked systems with multiple GPUs can run some extreme tessellation tech demos well) but I think ports are a given regardless.