The Nintendo Wii is a home video game console released on November 19, 2006. The Wii's main selling point was the innovative use of motion controls that its signature Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers allowed for. It became the best selling home console of its respective generation of hardware.
Let Jett Rocket explore the beautiful planet of Yoroppa and find out why it has been attacked by the evil 'Power Plant Posse'. Ride the ocean on your Jet Boat, parachute from giant cliffs, speed through arctic regions on your Jet Snowboard or skyrocket with your Jet Pack.
Just be Jett Rocket in this epic futuristic full 3D Action-Adventure!
Jett Rocket supports 4:3 and 16:9 screen modes, PAL (576i), NTSC (480i) and EDTV/HDTV (480p) and runs in super-smooth 60 frames/sec. Jett Rocket will be available exclusively via Nintendo's WiiWare service.
#5
Edited by Al3xand3r
(7574 posts)
- 3 years, 2 months ago
It reminds me of The Maw on XBLA/Steam. It's actually from the developers of Art of Balance, another game on WiiWare:
They know their hardware, that's some good shit and rivals most 3rd parties' retail "efforts". They also have a golf game on WiiWare and made the Nanostray games on DS and Iridion games on GBA, both are retro shmup franchises. Their tech always is great but the gameplay often suffers. Apparently both Iridion and Nanostray are pretty bad games while Iridion 2 and Nanostray 2 are good.
Hopefully they don't fuck this up and wait to get it right on the sequel, I want it to be good, more 3D platformers please :-)
#10
Edited by Al3xand3r
(7574 posts)
- 3 years, 2 months ago
Shame standards progressed further than the N64's tiny with low color depth textures and midi music then, otherwise they'd be able to make a huge game!
40MB is way too tiny nowadays. But I agree it's plenty enough for great games as WiiWare has plenty of those as long as they're priced according to content.
#12
Edited by Al3xand3r
(7574 posts)
- 3 years, 2 months ago
The limit is still 40MB, Nintendo doesn't want people who don't have an SD card unable to get more than a few games at a time. Though I suppose they could at least increase it to 50MB, and then let the occasional developer have a little extra space if it's really needed for the game, and isn't that much more.
NE: How did the team manage to technically pull off such graphics, especially considering the file size limit on WiiWare?
ML: First of all we developed a custom ’shader’ system which supports all the hardware tricks you can do on the Wii. So we could realtime preview all those Wii shaders in our 3D application. That was a big help to cut down iteration time and to test as many effects as possible.
As you may know the Wii graphics hardware has no pixel shaders like the PS3 or XBOX360. Nonetheless you can achive stunning results when you wrap your mind about the special abilities of the Wii. One thing the Wii we can do very well is to combine many textures very quickly. So we designed our materials like you would create layers in ‘Photoshop’. An important addition was that many textures were realtime generated and feed back into the shaders. With this techique we were able to create stunning materials without wasting megabytes on giant static and animated textures.
On top of that we use many different techniques to allow stuff like reflective and refractive materials, softed shadows, animated ocean waves and spray, grass, heat waves, etc.
Finally the 40Mb limit on WiiWare isn’t a big problem. We were used on the DS to create games in 4Mb. You just have to use different approaches then used in most retail games.
And yet the big boys of the industry seem oblivious to most of that and give us sub-PS2 quality Wii titles which are barely textured, nevermind having multiple layers, bump maps or other shader-like effects like reflections, refractions, and whatever else is possible as Nintendo, and now even WiiWare indies, show.
#21
Edited by Al3xand3r
(7574 posts)
- 3 years, 26 days ago
Gameplay trailer. Definitely impressive for a WiiWare game (ie, less than a measly 40MB, yet it shames most third parties' efforts)! Added to the OP as well.
#22
Posted by Willy105
(4663 posts)
- 3 years, 26 days ago
Size has nothing to do with graphics, unless they are in 2D. 40 MB is a very large amount of space to work with. It's just that most developers tend to waste that space with stuff like voice acting or pre-rendered videos.
#24
Edited by Al3xand3r
(7574 posts)
- 3 years, 26 days ago
@Willy105 said:
Size has nothing to do with graphics, unless they are in 2D. 40 MB is a very large amount of space to work with. It's just that most developers tend to waste that space with stuff like voice acting or pre-rendered videos. "
40MB is a tiny amount of space to work with. Size does matter and has a ton to do with graphics. 3D graphics include a ton of 2D stuff called textures. Sound takes up a lot of space too. This has been explained before, in page 1 if I'm not mistaken. Here's exactly what comprises Jett Rocket according to its devs:
Originally Posted by wsippel: The uncompressed sizes of the assets used in Jett Rocket:
245MB Textures
160MB Geometry and shaders
140MB Music
73MB Sound effects
8MB Fonts
3.5MB Particles
500kB Script code
151kB Localization
More than 600MB compressed to 40MB. German engineering...
As you can see, most of the size is first due to the graphics (416.5 MB) and second due to the sounds (213 MB). Only 651 KB is the code, text, etc! As you can also see, the game would have been impossible in this form without the superior compression techniques they have employed, due to the size limits.
#25
Posted by Marzy
(671 posts)
- 3 years, 26 days ago
Really does look fantastic, in my opinion. It reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy mixed with Pilotwings and Wii Sports Resort, which I all love. The visuals looks gorgous and if it plays anything like Galaxy, then it may even end up being my favourite WiiWare game, so far.
#28
Posted by Emilio
(3378 posts)
- 3 years, 22 days ago
@Al3xand3r said:
" @Willy105 said:
Size has nothing to do with graphics, unless they are in 2D. 40 MB is a very large amount of space to work with. It's just that most developers tend to waste that space with stuff like voice acting or pre-rendered videos. "
40MB is a tiny amount of space to work with. Size does matter and has a ton to do with graphics. 3D graphics include a ton of 2D stuff called textures. Sound takes up a lot of space too. This has been explained before, in page 1 if I'm not mistaken. Here's exactly what comprises Jett Rocket according to its devs:
Originally Posted by wsippel: The uncompressed sizes of the assets used in Jett Rocket:
245MB Textures
160MB Geometry and shaders
140MB Music
73MB Sound effects
8MB Fonts
3.5MB Particles
500kB Script code
151kB Localization
More than 600MB compressed to 40MB. German engineering... As you can see, most of the size is first due to the graphics (416.5 MB) and second due to the sounds (213 MB). Only 651 KB is the code, text, etc! As you can also see, the game would have been impossible in this form without the superior compression techniques they have employed, due to the size limits. "
Woah, that nuts!! I want to make games for WiiWare. :( If there are any third parties out there listening, I can make your company millions in profits!! I promise!
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