Topic: Technical Hurdles

[UERD]

Kairon's recent topic about the controller accuracy got me thinking about things people were saying shortly after the Wii came out. Technical limitations, to be exact. What do you guys think?

"One-to-one onscreen movement will be impossible."

Unfortunately, everything I remember about both topics is strictly anecdotal. However, the possibility of a lightsaber-based Star Wars game and comments that some developer made about the next Zelda game seem to hint that it is not *technically* impossible at this stage.

"Wireless latency makes certain types of online games impractical"

This was mentioned as a reason why Nintendo wasn't saying much about Brawl Online- that the wireless connection introduced too much latency, that Nintendo's infrastructure just wasn't up to the task, etc. However, I recall sources that say that they've already gotten it to work on a limited basis, and the company reps have repeatedly said that they had not axed the feature yet. If they can pull it off, though, it's probably a safe bet to say that developers will be able to do high-intensity online games like FPSes and RTSes using the wireless connect feature. Which is a big reason why I hope online play with Brawl comes through.

(Speaking of which, why no leaderboard? As someone mentioned in the other thread, it seems that a leaderboard/stat tracker would be the least of their technical worries when it comes to online play.)

[Ceric]

My 2 cents on the matter is that delayless one-to-one I really don't see it happening for anything complex.  On the Wireless thing I be more worried about the pipe to the internet especially upload speeds, which are traditionally much lower then download speeds because most people could give a flip about how fast they can upload things.

The space issue is going to bite Nintendo sooner than not.  Especially with games that are downloadable content inclined.  Don't get me wrong I can see why they did what they did and I agree with some of it but I think that their should be a way to expand the storage space and have it still act like internal storage.

Also I'm wondering when we are going to start seeing the failures caused by the Wii getting so hot just sitting in WiiConnect24 mode.  It gets hotter, from what I can tell, just sitting there then it does from gameplay.

So we'll see.

[Smash_Brother]

If EA is implementing 32 player Wii online play in the next MoH game, then I think it's possible.

I'll be the first to admit that the Wii's wifi antenna sucks ass, but if EA thinks they can do it...  

[BlackNMild2k1]

What if they came out with a usb wireless antennae, do you think that might help with signal speed?
And I atleast hope they are planning a firmware upgrade this fall that allows SDHC cards to be used since 4GB cards are like $30-50 depending on where you look.  

[Ceric]

I still think that internet pipe is still the biggest bottle neck.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

No, user competency.

[Ceric]

Thats not a bottleneck thats a failure waiting to happen.

[Mashiro]

You see, the internet is a series of tubes . . .

[Shecky]

Wireless has hardly anything to do with it.  It's really all the crud in the network especially at the ends and then just propagation delay period.

For instance I'm at a conference at the moment and on the hotel wired network, from a windows laptop, standard small pings to a random google.com server we have:

Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=246
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=246
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=246
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=246

Now from the conference provided, unrestricted no nonsense network that happens to be over wireless

Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=249
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=249
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=249
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=249

I'm sure the hotel has us running through at _least_ a NAT and probably has some other gunk in there too.  The serialization isn't a big deal (we're not on a modem here) and if you don't believe me, send some larger pings... my test increased it to 4ms if you filled the MTU

[therat]

i wouldnt know why a vanilla brawl wouldnt run well over the nets. meaning a brawl with 0 weapons.. i can see how clutter like that might mess with the tubes. then again scince there wont be any servers running the game on huge t1 pipes, yeah, it might now work well at all. wait, isnt mario strikers 4 player wifi?   whatever goodnight.

[Shecky]

Thank you Ted Stevens

(the use of tubes or pipes isn't exactly a bad metaphor for data communication, however his execution and overall general delivery of any coherent thought was .... not there and misleads)

[Ceric]

Its better then Ether for this discussion.  I mean we could use that normal analogy and just say your connection to the cloud and the junk in the cloud is the real bottleneck.