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Forums - Nintendo - DigitalFoundry: Mario+Rabbids Battle Kingdom A Superb Switch Tech Showcase!

900p is a more than worthwhile tradeoff for visuals this lush. The lighting in particular is gorgeous. Quality of pixels > quantity of pixels, I say.

Also nice to see another Switch game using high quality AA. Take note Nintendo.

Barkley said:

I'd say 3D World is almost a better looking game then Odyssey

No, just no. Not even close. Odyssey easily beats 3D World in pretty much every graphical department, from lighting to textures to effects.



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Pemalite said:

Nah. 20FPS is a dogs breakfast. No thanks. You do have allot of panning of the map, 20fps would look juddery. 30fps is the minimum, 60fps would be ideal.

You also don't need allot of subpixel geometry or draw distance to take advantage of a higher resolution, it's been 20~ years where I have been gaming on PC at a higher resolution than this game, games weren't always as complex and well presented as Battle Kingdom.

Keen to see what Ubisoft does with the Snowdrop engine going forward on Switch, if this game is any representation of what to expect, then expect some good things.

This console generation could be a "Battle of the game engines".
Frostbite vs Snowdrop vs iD Tech 6 vs Unreal Engine 4 vs CryEngine 5 vs Unity vs Source2. So great not having 99.999% of games using Unreal Engine 3.

20FPS is sufficient for turn based games, it's perfectly playable with that amount of information since you only need to do the bare minimum to represent animations ... 

@Bold That may be so but I said, "best use case for higher resolution is in place of subpixel geometry and larger draw distance" so I assume the engineers at Ubisoft know what they're doing when they did a cost vs benefit analysis on the frametime impact with higher resolution and I think they've made the best possible technical decisions regarding Battle Kingdom ... (now personally speaking I would've wanted this game with more prettier graphics at the cost of running at 20FPS) 

With that being said Snowdrop is impressive but I still think Ubisoft's main engine is still going to be AnvilNEXT since D3D12 will allow them to make more aggressive improvements to the engine architecture all around ... 

I think CryEngine, Unity and Source 2 have already lost in the race of high performance/high end graphics before this generation even began ... 

Crytek can't keep up in engine technology development anymore since their recent financial struggles ...

Unity obviously has no desire to target AAA games since the developers behind the engine utterly refuse to raise the baseline when they target for highest possible portability so that comes with severe technical trade-offs ...

Valve hasn't kept up either with Source 2 and in fact I think they've fallen behind the most out of the bunch since they aren't making AAA games anymore and they have the least amount of employees too. (Heck, the only reason why I think they're even hiring technical expertise at all is to maintain their current games.) Have Valve even made the transition to physically based rendering with their engine ?! It's a shame on Valve to leave the AAA game industry for digital content distribution. It says a lot that we're currently more impressed with Ubisoft's offerings rather than Valve's LOL ... 



3D Indie developers pretty much have to use Unity or Unreal 4. All the other engines cost an arm and a leg. But maybe that's why so many 3D Indie games suck. 



fatslob-:O said:
Pemalite said:

Nah. 20FPS is a dogs breakfast. No thanks. You do have allot of panning of the map, 20fps would look juddery. 30fps is the minimum, 60fps would be ideal.

You also don't need allot of subpixel geometry or draw distance to take advantage of a higher resolution, it's been 20~ years where I have been gaming on PC at a higher resolution than this game, games weren't always as complex and well presented as Battle Kingdom.

Keen to see what Ubisoft does with the Snowdrop engine going forward on Switch, if this game is any representation of what to expect, then expect some good things.

This console generation could be a "Battle of the game engines".
Frostbite vs Snowdrop vs iD Tech 6 vs Unreal Engine 4 vs CryEngine 5 vs Unity vs Source2. So great not having 99.999% of games using Unreal Engine 3.

20FPS is sufficient for turn based games, it's perfectly playable with that amount of information since you only need to do the bare minimum to represent animations ... 

@Bold That may be so but I said, "best use case for higher resolution is in place of subpixel geometry and larger draw distance" so I assume the engineers at Ubisoft know what they're doing when they did a cost vs benefit analysis on the frametime impact with higher resolution and I think they've made the best possible technical decisions regarding Battle Kingdom ... (now personally speaking I would've wanted this game with more prettier graphics at the cost of running at 20FPS) 

With that being said Snowdrop is impressive but I still think Ubisoft's main engine is still going to be AnvilNEXT since D3D12 will allow them to make more aggressive improvements to the engine architecture all around ... 

I think CryEngine, Unity and Source 2 have already lost in the race of high performance/high end graphics before this generation even began ... 

Crytek can't keep up in engine technology development anymore since their recent financial struggles ...

Unity obviously has no desire to target AAA games since the developers behind the engine utterly refuse to raise the baseline when they target for highest possible portability so that comes with severe technical trade-offs ...

Valve hasn't kept up either with Source 2 and in fact I think they've fallen behind the most out of the bunch since they aren't making AAA games anymore and they have the least amount of employees too. (Heck, the only reason why I think they're even hiring technical expertise at all is to maintain their current games.) Have Valve even made the transition to physically based rendering with their engine ?! It's a shame on Valve to leave the AAA game industry for digital content distribution. It says a lot that we're currently more impressed with Ubisoft's offerings rather than Valve's LOL ... 

Valve has not released Source 2 yet.
The only game that currently runs on Source 2 is DOTA 2, which was ported to Source 2.
Valve is currently in the process of porting CS:GO to Source 2, so we may get to see some of the new features, but it will still be a port.

Valve have stated that they are currently developing three VR titles, so hopefully we can see the full power of Source 2 if they ever come out.



caffeinade said:

Valve has not released Source 2 yet.
The only game that currently runs on Source 2 is DOTA 2, which was ported to Source 2.
Valve is currently in the process of porting CS:GO to Source 2, so we may get to see some of the new features, but it will still be a port.

Valve have stated that they are currently developing three VR titles, so hopefully we can see the full power of Source 2 if they ever come out.

@Bold Doesn't matter if it's publicly released or not, in fact most internally developed engines don't see the light of day for licensing ... 

Also, just because the games using the said engine are ports is not an excuse to not take full advantage of the engine itself ... 

You can have both a rerelease and significant graphical upgrades so don't go welcoming Valve Corporation's technical incompetence when we don't lower the standards for other publishers ... 



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It's kinda surreal for a Rabbids game of all things to be a graphical showcase. Imagine if you told someone last year this would happen.

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Super Mario 3D World ALMOST gets to this level at times, but falls short because of the system it's on and some lack of polish. I almost want to say that 3D world is better because this game's camera is fixed very strictly and it's draw distance is god awful.

3D World also has a pretty restrictive camera and short draw distance. 

Still, Kingdom Battle comfortably exceeds 3D World graphically. I mean let's compare...



curl-6 said:

It's kinda surreal for a Rabbids game of all things to be a graphical showcase. Imagine if you told someone last year this would happen.

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Super Mario 3D World ALMOST gets to this level at times, but falls short because of the system it's on and some lack of polish. I almost want to say that 3D world is better because this game's camera is fixed very strictly and it's draw distance is god awful.

3D World also has a pretty restrictive camera and short draw distance. 

Still, Kingdom Battle comfortably exceeds 3D World graphically. I mean let's compare...

That's true. I wish both had a better camera.



curl-6 said:

900p is a more than worthwhile tradeoff for visuals this lush. The lighting in particular is gorgeous. Quality of pixels > quantity of pixels, I say.

I think 900P is fine for docked mode, it's inline with what to expect on the switch.
It's still not 1080P though which I would like to be the minimum... With a preference for 1440P, but expectations and all that.

fatslob-:O said:

20FPS is sufficient for turn based games, it's perfectly playable with that amount of information since you only need to do the bare minimum to represent animations ... 

Disagree.
I had my fill of 20fps games during the Nintendo 64 era. You will not ever make me go back. ;)
But this isn't a 20fps game anyway, so the point is moot.

fatslob-:O said:

 

@Bold That may be so but I said, "best use case for higher resolution is in place of subpixel geometry and larger draw distance" so I assume the engineers at Ubisoft know what they're doing when they did a cost vs benefit analysis on the frametime impact with higher resolution and I think they've made the best possible technical decisions regarding Battle Kingdom ... (now personally speaking I would've wanted this game with more prettier graphics at the cost of running at 20FPS)

I would much rather they cut back on a few effects and met the native 720P display. That is what I want personally.
If you don't agree, then that is fine as well, but you won't change my mind on this front, I haven't enjoyed less than 720P in decades, handheld or not.


fatslob-:O said:

With that being said Snowdrop is impressive but I still think Ubisoft's main engine is still going to be AnvilNEXT since D3D12 will allow them to make more aggressive improvements to the engine architecture all around ... 

Indeed Snowdrop is impressive. Getting it to run to such a degree on the Switch's hardware has proven that... And not only that, but managed a nice presentation.
It will be interesting to see how more complex games run on the Switch using Snowdrop.

AnvilNEXT is basically the Ass's Creed engine, I would rather Ubisoft focus all their efforts into one engine to rule them all, just like EA with Frostbite.
Then the engine can have a larger development budget and development focus.


fatslob-:O said:

Valve hasn't kept up either with Source 2 and in fact I think they've fallen behind the most out of the bunch since they aren't making AAA games anymore and they have the least amount of employees too. (Heck, the only reason why I think they're even hiring technical expertise at all is to maintain their current games.) Have Valve even made the transition to physically based rendering with their engine ?! It's a shame on Valve to leave the AAA game industry for digital content distribution. It says a lot that we're currently more impressed with Ubisoft's offerings rather than Valve's LOL ...

I was merely listing out engines that are competiting with each other, rather than talking about any technical merits.

We haven't really seen what Source 2 can do anyway, it does have a very good development pipeline that is significantlly better than Source, so that's a plus.

Valve needs to build out development studios, that is something they have needed for a long time, they did have a dedicated developer working on Left 4 Dead, but closed them down...
And have often contracted developers like Gearbox and Hidden Path to lend a hand in development.

Maybe Valve has become complacent? Who knows.





www.youtube.com/@Pemalite

Pemalite said:
fatslob-:O said:

20FPS is sufficient for turn based games, it's perfectly playable with that amount of information since you only need to do the bare minimum to represent animations ... 

Disagree.
I had my fill of 20fps games during the Nintendo 64 era. You will not ever make me go back. ;)
But this isn't a 20fps game anyway, so the point is moot.

Yeah, even for a game like this, 20fps is too low IMHO, it would look choppy and shit. 30fps was the right choice. 



sc94597 said:
Pemalite said:

Doesn't matter if it is a Handheld or not. The Switch is orders-of-magnitude faster than a console from 2002.

This game is not even High-Definition which for me is simply unacceptable. - And it still gets performance drops on top of it.
Now docked... I am happy with a 900P resolution, that's great and is probably better than what I would expect considering handheld mode it is not even HD.

And for a more apples to apples comparison, the PS VITA ran its games at 540p, 

Actually most Vita games are running at sub 540p resolution.