[DigitalFoundry] Experiência de uma Third Party com o WiiU

Working with Wii U
Now that the game was up and running on the console we could start developing features that would use the new controllers and make our game stand out on the platform. But soon after starting this we ran into some issues that the (minimal) documentation didn't cover, so we asked questions of our local Nintendo support team. They didn't know the answers so they said they would check with the developers in Japan and we waited for a reply. And we waited. And we waited.

After about a week of chasing we heard back from the support team that they had received an answer from Japan, which they emailed to us. The reply was in the form of a few sentences of very broken English that didn't really answer the question that we had asked in the first place. So we went back to them asking for clarification, which took another week or so to come back. After the second delay we asked why it was taking to long for replies to come back from Japan, were they very busy? The local support team said no, it's just that any questions had to be sent off for translation into Japanese, then sent to the developers, who replied and then the replies were translated back to English and sent back to us. With timezone differences and the delay in translating, this usually took a week !

Getting the game to run at its target frame-rate is a part of the development process that is less interesting in this context as it follows the standard pattern. Get the game running, optimise the code (CPU and GPU) and if it still won't perform, cut back on features until it does fit.

As far as the CPU optimisations went, yes we did have to cut back on some features due to the CPU not being powerful enough. As we originally feared, trying to support a detailed game running in HD put a lot of strain on the CPUs and we couldn't do as much as we would have liked. Cutting back on some of the features was an easy thing to do, but impacted the game as a whole. Code optimised for the PowerPC processors found in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 wasn't always a good fit for the Wii U CPU, so while the chip has some interesting features that let the CPU punch above its weight, we couldn't fully take advantage of them. However, some code could see substantial improvements that did mitigate the lower clocks - anything up to a 4x boost owing to the removal of Load-Hit-Stores, and higher IPC (instructions per cycle) via the inclusion of out-of-order execution.

On the GPU side, the story was reversed. The GPU proved very capable and we ended up adding additional "polish" features as the GPU had capacity to do it. There was even some discussion on trying to utilise the GPU via compute shaders (GPGPU) to offload work from the CPU - exactly the approach I expect to see gain traction on the next-gen consoles - but with very limited development time and no examples or guidance from Nintendo, we didn't feel that we could risk attempting this work. If we had a larger development team or a longer timeframe, maybe we would have attempted it, but in hindsight we would have been limited as to what we could have done before we maxed out the GPU again. The GPU is better than on PS3 or Xbox 360, but leagues away from the graphics hardware in the PS4 or Xbox One.

This was surprising to hear, as we would have thought that they had plenty of time to work on these features as it had been announced months before, so we probed a little deeper and asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them? My only thought after this call was that they were struggling - badly - with the networking side as it was far more complicated than they anticipated. They were trying to play catch-up with the rival systems, but without the years of experience to back it up.

El Buga escreveu:Acho que é bastante óbvio que não é bem assim, senão não teria tanto desenvolvedor indie lançando no eShop e vários relatos positivos.

A Shin'en disse no Twitter: "We developed our tech directly for Wii U, so we had no porting issues."

Os problemas foram de port, talvez se criasse um jogo novo o processo fosse diferente.

What happened next?
Well, we eventually released our game and it was generally well-received, so the management sat back to see what kind of sales figures we would get for all our efforts. Without going into detail it would be fair to say that the numbers we were seeing were less than impressive. In fact we would be lucky to make back all the money that we had invested in making the game in the first place, and although the management publicly supported the Wii U platform, it is unlikely that we would ever release another Wii U title.

But what about the rest of the world? How had other development studios faired? The story of what happened next is pretty well documented in the gaming press, but I'd like to highlight some interesting points that have been on my mind recently. Firstly, third-party support. Do you remember all the hype surrounding the Wii U launch? All those third parties showing videos of existing games that they were going to bring to the Wii U? Whatever happened to a lot of those games?

After the initial flurry of game titles a lot of the studios quietly backed away from their initial statements and announced, with minimal press, that they were in fact not going to make a Wii U version. The reasons behind a particular title not appearing on the Wii U are all pure speculation, but I personally think that a combination of:

Previous development experience using the toolchain and hardware put off development teams from making another title on Wii U.

The technical and feature support from Nintendo were lacking for third-party studios. There was a feeling internally that if you weren't a first-party development studio, you were largely ignored by Nintendo, as we were superficial to their profits. Internally developed titles would save Nintendo and we were just there to add depth to the games catalogue.

The sales figures for the Wii U console were not looking that good soon after launch. There was a lot of confusion in the general population around the launch as most people thought that the Wii U was some kind of add-on to the Wii, they didn't know that it was a new console. This lack of awareness probably contributed to the console not getting off to the start that Nintendo would have hoped and put off studio from developing on the hardware.

Nintendo also fell victim to bad timing. A few months after the console launched the next-gen hype train stepped up a gear as Sony announced the PlayStation 4, with Microsoft joining the fray a few months later. Don't forget that many of the larger studios would have known about the hardware months before it was announced, well before the Wii U hardware actually launched.

So, these larger studios had a choice. Would they develop a port of an existing game to a console with limited capabilities and limited market penetration? Or put their teams to work on developing new features and concepts for the "real" next-gen consoles that were going to be launched that year? When you look at it this way, the choice isn't that hard.

Desenvolvedor de Ping 1.5+ (Wii U, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS e Android). Tudo bem que Ping 1.5+ não é nem de longe um jogo que force o sistema ao limite, mas o desenvolvedor anônimo do artigo da DF falou que até um joguinho "hello world" era difícil de fazer rodar no console, então...

El Buga escreveu:O que eu acho realmente importante é que tudo isso foi aparentemente resolvido, e nesse ponto acho que teremos que discordar.

El Buga escreveu:Discordar sobre o que realmente importa. Mesmo que o começo tenha sido ruim, se foi resolvido então ótimo. Também choveu crítica sobre o PS3 no começo e isso mudou, não? Então, eu acho que o importante é resolver, antes tarde do que nunca.

Apesar de que este artigo sugere que a mudança não data de agora: http://www.edge-online.com/features/indies-on-wii-u-why-working-with-nintendo-is-easier-than-you-think/

“A few years back the only support we could get was actually being able to self publish on the platform, and very little PR and marketing help. That has changed and improved since then.”

Então, ainda temos relatos bem discrepantes. O que não está fazendo sentido é: porque os desenvolvedores AAA estão reclamando enquanto os menores têm grandes histórias pra contar sobre trabalhar com a Nintendo?

Cada hora um fala uma coisa diferente.

niddo87 escreveu:Infelizmente no mundo corporativo, isso é quase que uma premissa. Me diga uma empresa que nunca teve nenhum tipo de problema com terceiros, sejam clientes, colaboradores, consumidores ou que tenham qualquer outro tipo de vínculo com ela.

Não sou desenvolvedor e por isso não posso dizer a quantas anda o suporte da Nintendo para com os mesmos. Mas dá pra ver que ela começou com o pé esquerdo. Nesse último parágrafo, onde se fala da rede online da Nintendo, não restam dúvidas que está anos luz atrás dos concorrentes, principalmente quando se trata do seu portátil (3DS).

Uma coisa que não entendo é que ainda não vi nenhum relato de "pornografia" (ou pedofilia) no Vita... Não sei até que ponto acredito nessas história de 3DS "fantasmas" aparecendo com fotos "proibidas". Só sei que manchou a imagem da Nintendo e agora sua rede no portátil é mais capada do que nunca, o que é terrível para nós, consumidores. Espero que um dia ela (a Nintendo) possa melhorar isso. Até lá, só nos resta esperar.

niddo87 escreveu:Infelizmente no mundo corporativo, isso é quase que uma premissa. Me diga uma empresa que nunca teve nenhum tipo de problema com terceiros, sejam clientes, colaboradores, consumidores ou que tenham qualquer outro tipo de vínculo com ela.

Não sou desenvolvedor e por isso não posso dizer a quantas anda o suporte da Nintendo para com os mesmos. Mas dá pra ver que ela começou com o pé esquerdo. Nesse último parágrafo, onde se fala da rede online da Nintendo, não restam dúvidas que está anos luz atrás dos concorrentes, principalmente quando se trata do seu portátil (3DS).

Uma coisa que não entendo é que ainda não vi nenhum relato de "pornografia" (ou pedofilia) no Vita... Não sei até que ponto acredito nessas história de 3DS "fantasmas" aparecendo com fotos "proibidas". Só sei que manchou a imagem da Nintendo e agora sua rede no portátil é mais capada do que nunca, o que é terrível para nós, consumidores. Espero que um dia ela (a Nintendo) possa melhorar isso. Até lá, só nos resta esperar.