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The journey to Nintendo Switch

factorio.com

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Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#151

Post by k12sosse »

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…

Wasn't PUBG originally an Arma3 mod?

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#152

Post by AgentME »

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…

The modern Battle Royale mode evolved from multiplayer mods for Minecraft and then ARMA made shortly after the 2012 movie Hunger Games which provided the essential ideas all together (elimination, lots of players, must explore a huge map for items).

I think Minecraft can't be overrated as a vehicle for experimentation in multiplayer modes. Not only did the game have a huge modding and multiplayer community and have support for large player counts and maps, but it's unusually easy to create for and the game itself has no built-in structured competitive multiplayer gametypes, which means there's tons of demand for people to make gametypes from scratch and there's no built-in code for how matches work that needs to be worked around for new ideas to be attempted. Many other online games have specific ideas of how matches work built-in that reduce the demand for brand new gametypes and could make implementing a gametype where matches work differently daunting.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#153

Post by absolutelynobo »

yeputons wrote: post #133
RicoElectrico wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it occur had they used UBsan on debug builds?

No doubt. For starters, UBsan does not check for any invalid memory access. In my C++ course, I require that the code runs correctly under 5 different compilers (GCC, LLVM Clang, Apple Clang, MSVC, Intel C++ Compiler Classic) on 3 OS (Ubuntu, Windows, macOS) in Release, Debug+Valgrind, Debug+Sanitizers modes, and students still get UB quite often. Extra reading: http://evan.nemerson.com/2021/05/04/portability-is-reli…

Why even write C++ at that point? Wouldn’t changing over to Rust save you at least a couple of those steps?

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#154

Post by bobthepanda »

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…

Procedural generation was supposed to be big and exciting.

If done incorrectly, though, procedurally generated quests or dungeons feel boring and soulless.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#155

Post by krzyk »

SpacePortKnight wrote: post #86

Factorio's official requirement for x86 is a dual core 3.0Ghz processor & yet it's able to run on Switch which has a very weak 1Ghz quad core cortex-A57 ARM CPU. How is this possible? I would imagine CPU requirements to be more or less same across any resolution / operating system. This is what makes Nintendo Switch interesting to me. It's CPU is even less powerful than an Raspberry Pi 4. Even midrange android smartp…

I wonder if they could release a Pi 4 port or finally a mobile version (controls will be troublesome).

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#156

Post by freemint »

Johanx64 wrote: post #108
SpacePortKnight wrote: post #86

Factorio's official requirement for x86 is a dual core 3.0Ghz processor & yet it's able to run on Switch which has a very weak 1Ghz quad core cortex-A57 ARM CPU. How is this possible? I would imagine CPU requirements to be more or less same across any resolution / operating system. This is what makes Nintendo Switch interesting to me. It's CPU is even less powerful than an Raspberry Pi 4. Even midrange android smartp…

Switch can't run Doom "just fine", it downscales down to 360p frequently and chogs between 20-30fps. It's barely playable. Mind you, Doom is one of the better optimized games of this gen. And running it sub~60fps on with all settings turned down to ultra low is a sin. Factorio is pretty well optimized too, however the factory size Switch can handle are on the - can launch the rocket - scale. This is but a small fract…

If it does i do not notice Doom down scaling in the first 3 hours of game play.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#157

Post by mejutoco »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #73
afterburner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's always been Nintendo's thing, hasn't it? Cheaper, less powerful consoles, but focus on iconic gameplay

Not always, the N64 was more powerful and more expensive (Game carts) than the competition. So was the GameCube (It was more powerful than the PS2).

Maybe the cpu was more powerful (honestly idk) but the low memory of the N64 limited the textures and video features (never saw any video in an N64 game) in the games (see how flat texture-wise the textures of Mario64 are).

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#158

Post by antifa »

deergomoo wrote: post #79
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!

> Gamecube and prior was roughly comparable to the competition It gets forgotten about because it didn’t sell all that well and because the tiny little 1.8GB discs kept most of the multi-platform blockbusters off it, but the GameCube was significantly more powerful than the PS2 (though not as powerful as the Xbox).

There was an amazing effort post back when G4TV forums existed explaining why GC was on par or better than xbox using examples like Rogue Squadron and technical details. The main issue was that third party games didn't exist or were low effort ports to GC.

I wish I knew how to find the text of that post. The G4TV forums seem erased from history.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#159

Post by pjmlp »

absolutelynobo wrote: post #153
yeputons wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt. For starters, UBsan does not check for any invalid memory access. In my C++ course, I require that the code runs correctly under 5 different compilers (GCC, LLVM Clang, Apple Clang, MSVC, Intel C++ Compiler Classic) on 3 OS (Ubuntu, Windows, macOS) in Release, Debug+Valgrind, Debug+Sanitizers modes, and students still get UB quite often. Extra reading: http://evan.nemerson.com/2021/05/04/portability-is-reli…

Why even write C++ at that point? Wouldn’t changing over to Rust save you at least a couple of those steps?

Tooling, libraries, OS vendor support, IDEs, work force availability,...

Many of us write C and C++, because we have to, not because we want to.

Rust will eventually reach there, however many of us want to deliver a product, not build an ecosystem from scratch.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#160

Post by bspammer »

pdntspa wrote: post #85
candiddevmike wrote: post #18

> Now, the final startup time when the game is installed on internal storage is 70 seconds, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe I don't notice this with other games but that seems like a really long time.

How does a game like Factorio take so long to load? The game assets themselves are like megabytes. What is it doing?

A comment from the developer on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/xlufvr/friday_fac...

> The majority of time spent starting the game is preparing the images from disk into a format that the GPU can use. The images on disk being compressed and or not the exact format that GPUs want. Now, what that time on switch is spent on… I don’t know for sure but I would guess something similar.

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