HappySqurriel said:
Probably I took a couple of courses that were related to low level programming when in university, and have done some work in embedded systems, and I am fully willing to admit that I don't know a lot when it comes to what makes one processor architecture better than others. MikeB frustrates me because he cites benchmarks where the Cell processor outperforms a 6 year old Power4 processor when performing the fast fourier transform and thinks that is (somehow) meaningful, even though he doesn't know what a fourier transform is. Quite a few hackers have been working constantly for months to reverse engineer the Wii to understand it in order to provide information for homebrew development and they don't have much concrete information. They have been able to confirm a few details (like the Broadway processor's bus supports 128bit transfers to the L2 cache, which the PowerPC 750CXe doesn't) but there are more questions than answers when it comes to the Wii. With all of this somehow MikeB (a physical therapist by trade) knows exactly what the Broadway processor is and what it is capable of. Certainly, Nintendo didn't put the R&D into the Broadway processor that was put into the Cell processor, but I think that it is highly likely that Nintendo ensured that their processor was as powerful as it could be given the constraints of price and energy consumption. |
Really though to be honest regarding Wii performance, our perceptions have moved on so even if the Wii produces a fantastic looking game for its specifications which blows away Xbox 1/PS2/GC games we still probably wouldn't be moved as we've all seen much better.
The problem with using The Conduit, is the developers make it look hard to achieve the results like they're really struggling to push it and it kinda shows. So technically they're doing some really good stuff but they're shooting themselves in the foot a little with their artistry. They could use that engine and do much more it seems, just simple things like colour choices bringing out the aliasing, using complicated wall textures when they could have used a simple but good pattern and spent the resources elsewhere etc. Simple things which a developer like Valve would do as second nature really, but then again im comparing one of the best game development companies in the world to them.
So no, The Conduit looks good but its just not a graphical showpiece. Check out the Ubisoft Petz:Dogz game, thats artistry done well. They probably spent far less effort to achieve those results (Remember they are the developers from Assassins creed IIRC)
Tease.
