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curl-6 on 27 November 2014
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fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

I'd definitely contend the shading point, Watch Dogs on Wii U is very flat in that department, whereas NFS U had reflection mapping on wet roads and such, plus NFS runs at a higher screen resolution, higher framerate... the gap is actually pretty major.

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As I understand it, the Wii U version didn't really get "extra time", it was put on hold for a few months so that the crew could assist with the higher priority versions, so in the end it didn't get any more dev time than the other versions.

Both Watch Dogs and Need for Speed Most Wanted had screen space reflections even though it was used more sparsely in Watch Dogs but this technique does not impress me one bit when you consider that the only things you can reflect on a near perfect specular surface are the objects in that frame. In other words this technique fails to reflect objects that are not in the camera therefore if a ball is out of a frame the orthogonal perfectly specular surface will not be able to capture an image of the ball and it's also not computationally expensive when shading is already applied to the object so the only you have to do left is a lookup towards an object that is orthogonal to the reflective surface to apply the reflections.

The other reasons why I think the shading in Watch Dogs is above Need for Speed Most Wanted is because it's also applying subsurface scattering and SSAO. 

The WII U version may have been put on hold but finishing the last gen versions also counts towards helping the WII U version in the end since the additional experience the team gained can potentially better help iron out the technical kinks such as bugs or performance dips in the future. 6 months is a lot of time to improve the older build so I don't think it's fair to go all out crucifying the dev team with extreme prejudice when there are other factors at play. Sure you can say that the the results from them were below average and that they did overlook some things but describing them as lazy when they are at their chairs pushing out code left and right for 8 hours a day for 6 months is sort of off mark. 

WD uses far less reflection mapping than NFS though. Most surfaces are flat and lifeless. It also appears not to use HDR lighting at all, (save for what looks like a very cheap fake effect when you leave a dark tunnel and everything is white for a second) while NFS employed HDR to strong effect. Add in lower screen resolution, lower texture resolution, and a lower framerate, and WD on Wii U isn't even in the same league as Need for Speed. Texture filtering also appears worse in WD, though this could also just be a combination of lower screen resolution and inferior AA.

I don't recall ever calling the WD Wii U team "lazy", but they certainly could have done better. Even compared to other Wii U multiplats, the porting here is of a substandard quality, though to be fair, since it was doomed to flop, Ubisoft probably decided not to commit the resources needed to produce a strong port to avoid losing money. So it could be more the fault of management than the actual coders.