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The journey to Nintendo Switch

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Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#141

Post by chillfox »

misterprime wrote: post #135
gbasp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch makes for more interesting games in general. Most of the games on my Xbox and PC tend to be FPS/Action games with very boring, brown and green "realistic" environments whereas games on my Switch tend to be bright and colorful with lots of 2D and pixel graphics and games in the vein of simulators, adventures, roguelikes etc.

Tangent: It's amazing that the popularity of XP to "level up" and HP to bring to zero has become. This was a new concept to me way back when Final Fantasy 3 (3 in the US, I think 6 in Japan) came out. It felt very niche and reserved for a specific type of game. Now those ideas are everywhere. What's a common new game trend since then? I can think of these: randomized microtransaction packs, online multiplayer PvP and…

Crafting is absolutely everywhere, as is some kind of level up system (attributes/skills/perks/traits/etc...).

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#142

Post by chillfox »

izacus wrote: post #124
naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

Sadly, pretty much all of the games I want to enjoy run terribly on the Switch to the point where I had to go back to my 800$ GPU to play them. Pretty much every strategy / tactics game (outside a single one: Fire Emblem) runs terribly, below 30 fps, looks very burry and... the killing blow... has crazy long loading times. You can go grab coffee while Civ6 is loading and still won't be done by the time. Quality contr…

Interestingly Civ runs fine for me and looks good handheld, but it all falls apart when docked.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#143

Post by gibspaulding »

spamalot159 wrote: post #137
misterprime wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangent: It's amazing that the popularity of XP to "level up" and HP to bring to zero has become. This was a new concept to me way back when Final Fantasy 3 (3 in the US, I think 6 in Japan) came out. It felt very niche and reserved for a specific type of game. Now those ideas are everywhere. What's a common new game trend since then? I can think of these: randomized microtransaction packs, online multiplayer PvP and…

The Battle Royale genre (Fortnite, PUBG, ect.) is the biggest new genre I can think of. The 100 player last-man-standing game mode probably wouldn't have been possible without the advancements in networking speed and infrastructure in the last 15ish years.

I was just wondering today why the BR format has taken over in recent years and I can't really come up with a technical reason for it. Red orchestra had 64 player pvp matches back in 2006 and I think Arma had similar sized game modes in that era too. I could see a BR mod for either of those, but it didn't happen (or at least take off). Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems feasible.

I think the gaming world just really latches onto tends. A few years it was survival/crafting games, before that RPG's. Good luck figuring out what's next!

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#144

Post by DerekL »

vikingerik wrote: post #105
hbn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that only really started in the 7th console generation (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) Gamecube and prior was roughly comparable to the competition, but after that the other companies were trying to outperform each other in graphical fidelity while Nintendo released basically another Gamecube but with motion controls. And it was a hit!

It was fairly true for the NES and SNES generations as well. Each used a CPU five years old by then and a RAM size that was common in computers eight years prior. Really, for only the N64 console generation did Nintendo ever try to outdo its competitors on hardware specs.

It doesn't matter how the NES compared to computers, because computers cost much more. Also, less RAM is required if the program is on a cartridge.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#145

Post by vikingerik »

hbn wrote: post #126
vikingerik wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was fairly true for the NES and SNES generations as well. Each used a CPU five years old by then and a RAM size that was common in computers eight years prior. Really, for only the N64 console generation did Nintendo ever try to outdo its competitors on hardware specs.

What was the competition though? The NES pretty much single-handedly revitalized the home console market after the video game crash of 1983 by marketing it as a toy that happened to hook into a TV (R.O.B. the Robot, the light gun, all sold together), so it didn't really have any competition. Sega ended up slipping a 16-bit machine to market before Nintendo by a couple years with the Genesis, but the Genesis and SNES…

There were also the Atari consoles. The 7800 was contemporary with the NES with slightly better specs, there was also the XEGS, and the Panther was in development at the same time as the SNES before it was cancelled for the Jaguar instead. They all flopped in the market, of course, but Nintendo didn't know that would happen while developing theirs, but they kept their hardware simple rather than ultimately overreaching like the Jaguar.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#146

Post by csense »

misterprime wrote: post #135
gbasp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch makes for more interesting games in general. Most of the games on my Xbox and PC tend to be FPS/Action games with very boring, brown and green "realistic" environments whereas games on my Switch tend to be bright and colorful with lots of 2D and pixel graphics and games in the vein of simulators, adventures, roguelikes etc.

Tangent: It's amazing that the popularity of XP to "level up" and HP to bring to zero has become. This was a new concept to me way back when Final Fantasy 3 (3 in the US, I think 6 in Japan) came out. It felt very niche and reserved for a specific type of game. Now those ideas are everywhere. What's a common new game trend since then? I can think of these: randomized microtransaction packs, online multiplayer PvP and…

- Early access. Back in the day the dev would pay you with a free copy of the game for helping with the beta. Now you pay the dev for the privilege of helping with the beta.

- Cosmetics. Tons of games have stuff you can buy (equipment, skins, etc.) to make your character look cool. Extra stuff that can be developed easily by an artist, doesn't affect game balance, and sometimes even costs real money.

- Battle pass. I've never bought one but I think you get stuff on two tracks for progression, a free track and a paid track. Progression resets and there are new tracks like 4 times a year or something. Makes people want to open their wallets for the paid track due to FOMO and "...but I already earned it!"

I think if you switch from free to paid you immediately get all the stuff on the paid track you've already progressed past. Also I think they want to charge you $10 four times a year, every time the new tracks come out.

- itch.io -- Sort of like Steam / Epic / GOG for indie developers too small to be on those sites yet.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#147

Post by mbrodersen »

TillE wrote: post #66
jvanderbot wrote: post #57

> Removing all uses of undefined behaviour is probably a fool's errand, as it would require significant changes throughout the code that would take time and come with a performance impact, all for no immediate practical benefit. So I just hunted down the undefined behaviour cases that actually broke determinism. This was easy enough, as we have plenty of tools we use to test determinism. By comparing the game state C…

Automated testing is great! More game developers should get serious about using it, even if you're not doing full coverage unit testing like business software.

Yes! Automated testing is a super power. I haven’t had a single bug in production for 5+ years because of automated tests.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#148

Post by ekianjo »

naranha wrote: post #56

If the switch proves anything it's that you don't have to pay $1600 for a GPU to enjoy amazing games. Or the other way round, if you pay $1600 for a gpu it does not mean that you'll be able to play any good games.

you dont have to pay 1600 usd for a gpu on PC to enjoy Switch like indie games. even integrated graphics will let you enjoy thousands of non AAA games these days. what is your point?

Btw Factorio runs on any kind of PC well before it was on the Switch.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#149

Post by hubblesticks »

gibspaulding wrote: post #143
spamalot159 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Battle Royale genre (Fortnite, PUBG, ect.) is the biggest new genre I can think of. The 100 player last-man-standing game mode probably wouldn't have been possible without the advancements in networking speed and infrastructure in the last 15ish years.

I was just wondering today why the BR format has taken over in recent years and I can't really come up with a technical reason for it. Red orchestra had 64 player pvp matches back in 2006 and I think Arma had similar sized game modes in that era too. I could see a BR mod for either of those, but it didn't happen (or at least take off). Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems feasible. I think the gaming wor…

From personal observation and experience, I believe the BR game mode got some traction after the first Hunger Games movie released. After that movie released, I remember all sorts of "Hunger Games" Minecraft maps appearing online. I downloaded, played and hosted a handful of these Hunger Games "last man standing" maps for family and friends to play.

After a few weeks of that, the game format grew stale, and I stopped playing HG maps. Then a few years later a whole bunch of BR games hit the scene and all I could think of was how similar they were to the Hunger Games Minecraft maps.

That's just my guess from personal experience.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#150

Post by gh02t »

foolfoolz wrote: post #139

when i’ve played games like RCT1 that can handle thousands of guests in the park, 1000s of placed items, each square customized, hundreds of rides simultaneously with real physics, it makes me wonder why factorio needs such intense system requirements for a mostly 2d production game

For one thing RCT1 was famously written in hand tuned assembly language, but the main reason AFAIU is coupling of components. Early Factorio isn't that bad, but later factories it has to constantly simulate every machine on the map all of the time because everything is running regardless of your presence and everything is interconnected. That complexity scales up rapidly as your factory expands. Games like RCT aren't as dynamic and tightly coupled, so the simulation can use a lot of simplifications to cut down on on CPU use.
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