nah look at many topics in Wii U specs forum and find these two spamming it up with that tripe and the topic is lost. it's their fault ESP a MODERATOR who is supposed to set an example.

This IS the topic, ryudo, if you dont like it, stop spamming off topic, and go to another topic.

And when did i say edram was used for rendering or rasterizing?
i was marely talking about memory bandwidth and latency in separate topics, i never did a direct comaprasion between the two, the mentioning of the deffered rendering was due that the technique requires a g-buffer and g-buffers are very well known to be very hungry on memory bandwidth
here
https://hacks.mozill...ferred-shading/
"
Deferred Shading
Deferred shading takes a different approach than forward shading by dividing rendering into two passes: the g-buffer pass, which transforms geometry and writes positions, normals, and material properties to textures called the g-buffer, and the light accumulation pass, which performs lighting as a series of screen-space post-processing effects.
// g-buffer pass
foreach visible mesh {
write material properties to g-buffer;
}
 
// light accumulation pass
foreach light {
compute light by reading g-buffer;
accumulate in framebuffer;
}
This decouples lighting from scene complexity (number of triangles) and only requires one shader per material and per light type. Since lighting takes place in screen-space, fragments failing the z-test are not shaded, essentially bringing the depth complexity down to one. There are also downsides such as its high memory bandwidth usage and making translucency and anti-aliasing difficult.
"
 
Crytek also has a mentioning about the memory bandwidth problems with deffered rendering(the tchnique requires g-buffer)
http://wccftech.com/...andwidth-gains/
"
Crytek Shares a Secret Method for Utilizing Xbox One eSRAM’s Full Potential – Resulted In High Bandwidth Gains[/size]
Recently, GamingBolt published [/size]a snippet of their interview with Crytek’s US Engine Business Development Manager Sean Tracy. Talking about utilization of CryEngine with tiled textures, Tracy talked about the role of Xbox One eSRAM in saving ‘big’ bandwidths, and shared a secret method that the Ryse development used to unlock Xbox One eSRAM’s full potential. He said:[/size]
 

“CryEngine has a unique and novel solution for this and was shipped with Ryse. One of the problems when using Deferred Shading is that it’s very heavy on bandwidth usage/memory traffic. This gets exponentially worse as overlapping lights cause considerable amounts of redundant read and write operations. In Ryse our graphics engineers created a system called tiled shading to take advantage of the Xbox One.”
“This splits the screen into tiles and generates a list of all the lights effective each title using a compute shader. It then cull’s light by min/max extents of the tile. We then loop over the light list for each tile and apply shading.”

This technique helped the developer a lot in optimizing Ryse: Son of Rome on Xbox One as it resulted into high bandwidth gains and allowed the development team to use just a single compute shader for lighting and culling.

“In practice this made for the biggest bandwidth save we could have hoped for, as just reading the Gbuffer once and writing shading results once at the end for each pixel. Only a single compute shader was used in Ryse for light culling and executing entire lighting and shading pipelines (with some small exceptions for complex surfaces like skin and hair).”

 
"
 
So, if xbox one esram high memory bandwidth of 200GB/s can even have problems with the bandwidth requirements of the deffered rendering, then how could wii u edram could handle the bandwidth requirements of the triple 720p buffering+gbuffer+intermediate buffes with less then xbox one esram memory bandwidth?
 
And yea, i already know that gpu have their own tiny memories like lovcaql data shares, texture caches and such, thats precisely why i told shy guy that 500GB/s of memory bandwidth is not an overkill for the gpu at all
here
http://developer.amd...nsform-part-ii/
"
Why to use Local Memory?
Local memory or Local Data Share (LDS) is a high-bandwidth memory used for data-sharing among work-items within a work-group. ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 series GPUs have 32 KB of local memory on each compute unit. Figure 1 shows the OpenCL™ memory hierarchy for GPUs [1].

Figure 1: Memory hierarchy of AMD GPUs
Local memory offers a bandwidth of more than 2 TB/s which is approximately 14x higher than the global memory [2]. Another advantage of LDS is that local memory does not require coalescing; once the data is loaded into local memory, it can be accessed in any pattern without performance degradation. However, LDS only allows sharing data within a work-group and not across the borders (among different work-groups). Furthermore, in order to fully utilize the immense potential of LDS we have to have a flexible control over the data access pattern to avoid bank conflicts. In our case, we used LDS to reduce accesses to global memory by storing the output of 8-point FFT in local memory and then performing next three stages without returning to global memory. Hence, we now return to global memory after 6 stages instead of 3 in the previous case. In the next section we elaborate on the use of local memory and the required data access pattern.
 
"
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"
So, if each local data share on an amd  hd 5000 gpu can have as much as 2TB/s of memory bandwidth, why an edram with 500GB/s of memory bandiwdth would be an overkill?
thats precisely why i told shy guy that 500GB/s of edram memory bandwidth wouldnt be a problem for the gpu to handle.

You are making the mistake of thinking bandwidth is the only solution, when your quote itself states '/memory trafficking'.

Nintendo uses low latency for its deferred rendering. Nintendo doesnt need high bandwidth, to send over massive piles of data that build up during latency waits, because there is no waiting on latency. The wii u is also not as powerful as those systems, and doesnt need to trafic a fraction of what GCN does.

Also, that bandwidth is operational bandwidth, it is used specifically FOR calculating each pixel. Yes, you are still confusing operational bandwidth, with what the edram does, which is store and transport. The very fact you keep making quotes ABOUT OPERATIONAL BANDWIDTH, and then referencing it to a storage pool is proof of that.

Ok well I agree on PC. I haven't played a game that does shooting with the wiimote very well in a situation where you have to run and gun. I thought the wiimote was excellent in RE4 but that was largely because you stop when you shoot. What games have done it well for running and gunning? And how did they deal with problem of turning the screen to aim? Cos that's the part where the wiimote seems inherently inferior to a control stick or mouse.

Red steel 2 was the one that figured it out.

They did it by having multiple user customizable turn boxes.

The inner box, was where you could free aim without the screen moving, the second box, would be a slow turn (The speed of which was customizable) the outer box was the line past which high speed turning would activate (Speed of high speed turning was also adjustable). All three box sizes, their length, and height, were customizable by the user, as well as the speeds each activated.

Allowing for stuff like this:

"
I dont know where the problem is Megafenix. The eDRAM in WiiU is rumored to be between 35 and 70 GB/s as much i heard. Thats enough. You dont need 500 GB/s... that would be an overkill. And if you remember correctly, Shin'en said in the interview with HD WARRIORS, that bandwidth is not the bottleneck of todays GPU's. Latency is the real problem, and that the WiiU is great at latency.
"
 
that wouldnt do since g-buffer for defered rendering requires lots of bandwidth, and while shinen commented of bandwidth not being a problem on modern hardware, they were refering to the RAM not the Edram.
https://dromble.word...he-wii-u-power/
"
When testing our first code on Wii U we were amazed how much we could throw at it without any slowdowns, at that time we even had zero optimizations. The performance problem of hardware nowadays is not clock speed but ram latency. Fortunately Nintendo took great efforts to ensure developers can really work around that typical bottleneck on Wii U. They put a lot of thought on how CPU, GPU, caches and memory controllers work together to amplify your code speed. For instance, with only some tiny changes we were able to optimize certain heavy load parts of the rendering pipeline to 6x of the original speed, and that was even without using any of the extra cores.[/size]
 
"
 
The comment is not refering to the gpu memory and as you know every gpu has their own memory called vram and the wii u edram is basically that, system ram is for other stuff. The bandwidth requirements depend on which techniques you use, if you use forward rendering then you dont need that much memory bandwidth but it costs you lots of processing power, with deffered rendering(confirmed by shinen on fast racing neo) you save up lots of processing power but requires much more memory bandwidth, its a trade-off
here
http://jcgt.org/publ...02/04/paper.pdf
"
The size of the surface attribute buffer—the g-buffer—is typically 16 to 32 bytes per visibility sample in optimized high-quality real-time systems. The DRAM bandwidth consumed in writing this buffer, then reading it for each light pass is signifi- cant, even with only a single light pass. For example, a screen with a four-megapixel display, using four 24-byte samples per pixel at 60 Hz, would consume 46 GB/s of bandwidth, assuming only one lighting pass, just for the uncompressed g-buffer write and subsequent read. Thus, in practice, either anti-aliasing or pixel resolution (or both!) is often sacrificed to maintain high frame rates on economical hardware. This is perhaps the most serious issue with the technique, as low visibility sampling rates confound simple solutions to efficiently rendering partially transparent surfaces, edge anti-aliasing, and higher-dimensional rasterization.
 
"
thats just an example with one light pass, even xbox one with 200GB/s of sram bandwidth has troubles handling the framebuffer and using a g-buffer(ryse of rome for example which is 900p), 70GB/s of edram bandwidth are very short for wii u edram to handle triple buffering 720p+g-buffer+intermediate buffers in games like fast racing neo and other games as well
 
As for 500GB being an overkill, no it wouldnt, actually gpus from amd hd4000 to current ones can handle terabytes of bandwidth and i have the proof just under my pocket.

First off, I never said bandwidth was not important, stop trying to put words in my mouth to make your broken arguments look better, I said there are 3 important factors to ram performance, and you generally only get to focus on 2 in the real world. A design with two high performing peices to that factor will always outperform a design with only one high performing factor like bandwidth which you are obsessing on, like the 360 edram had, will suck because of having crappy latency and low capacity.

Fast racing neo, and every engine nintendo uses on wii u is a deferred rendering engine, and Nintendo has been heavy on multipass since the gamecubes tev, which was an 8 pass, and the wii's was 16 passes. Your quote is about a forward rendering engine. Your quote also heavily relies on bandwidth because its about a system design where you have to travel across a high latency bus to get the data. The lower the latency, the more often you can send data, instead of having to wait. Most engines are designed around pc gpu's, the latency is horrible, they have to wait many cycles every time, so they need to send as much data as possible at one time to catch up when they get an opening. Although I shouldnt have made this explanation, as it will only confuse you because you still dont understand the difference between operations bandwidth and transportation bandwidth.

The wii u edram, like the cube and wii before it, is designed for minimal to no waiting on latency. When you can constantly send data whenever you want without having to wait, you dont desperately need super high bandwidth to play catch up.

You are still confusing operational bandwidth with bandwidth for transporting/holding data. The ram attached to the logic on the wii u gpu has very very high operational bandwidth as well. It cant be used to transport data across and between the system. Its operational bandwidth. Its for operations. That is the ram and the bandwidth your quote is tlking about, the 32Mb edram is NOT THAT. The wii u's edram doesnt render the image or rasterize it, it does NOT do calculations per pixel, thats the simd engines job, and it has its OWN MEMORY attached to the logic for that purpose. the Edram pool just holds the finished product, a 3.6 Mb image, for 60 fps that image needs 216Mb/s X3 thats 648Mb/s in bandwidth, to move that data, Half a Gb. those high operational bandwidth operations talked about in your quote, are handled by the rops and simd engines, which have their own memory attached directly to the logic, then they SEND the FINISHED product, to the edram, which any part in the system can access from there. The edram is a bucket, its a scratch pad, it does NOT do render operations. Your quote is talking about the bandwidth required to do render operations, like per pixel lighting calculations. That has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EDRAM.

well, in the interview with hd warriors you can clearly read that shinen mentioend they need 16MB for 1080p with double buffering, and recently they did mention they are using 3 720p framebuffers on fast racing neo but they did not say it takes 16MB, in fact a 720p framebuffer on wii u edram, according to shinen, takes about 3.6MB for each of them

 

here, you can confirm that on their twitter
https://twitter.com/...639073798500353
 
"
Shin'en Multimedia ‏@ShinenGames  1 de jul.
@eubank_josh Even having all three buffers in EDRAM would be no problem as they are only 3 x 3.6Mb of 32Mb.
 
"
 
Thats about 10.8MB of edram for the triple buffering with 720p buffers, so, what they use the rest of the 21.2MB of edram(not to menion that there is another tiny edram of avout 2MB and 1MB of sram according to the photo)?
well, just keep reading and you will see that they also use edram for the g-buffer(you need this bufer to store the lighting information of the deffered rendering), intermediate buffers and other stuff

I remember that twitter conversation.

Those things are all true, but they are made possible because of the higher capacity of the wii u edram, not because MS pr made a fake claim to a 256 Gb/s bandwidth that they couldnt use for anything they were trying to insinuate, and that we should use that as a basis for the wii u's bandwidth, which is what you constantly come back to say.

Your reasoning is that the new console must have better bandwidth than a half truth claims ms pr made about the 360, ignoring the fact its the Capacity and latency that are far, far, far more important in this case.

People keep saying the music's out of place but I just can't see it. Out of place because he's "spitting lyrics" in a future dystopia? 
 
 
 
I think the song's dope and don't think it's out of place, at all.

I dont care for it, but its not like Im screaming about it, its the same level of I dont really care for it as any of the songs in Xenoblade that Didnt blow my mind.

Does sound like it would fit right in on a Neo LA radio station though. It would be a cool Easter Egg if they made the singers of the game NPC's that were musicians in NEO LA.

Actually what
 
actually what shinen mentioned is that 16MB of edram on wii u is enough for 1080p with double buffering
http://hdwarriors.co...ined-by-shinen/
 
"
Manfred Linzner of Shin’en:
‘Wii U eDRAM usage is comparable to the eDRAM in the XBOX360, but on Wii U you have enough eDRAM to use it for 1080p rendering.[/size]
In comparison, on XBOX360 you usually had to render in sub 720p resolutions or in mutliple passes.[/size]
Even if you don’t use MSAA[/size] (MultiSample Anti-Aliasing) [/size]you[/size] already need around 16Mb just for a 1080p framebuffer (with double buffering). You simply don’t have that with XBOX360 eDRAM. As far as I know Microsoft corrected that issue and put also 32MB of Fast Ram into their new console.[/size]
We use the eDRAM in the Wii U for the actual framebuffers, intermediate framebuffer captures, as a fast scratch memory for some CPU intense work and for other GPU memory writes.[/size]
Using eDRAM properly is a simple way to get extra performance without any other optimizations.[/size]
 
"
 
the xbox 360 edram+ROPS and other components had an internal bandwidth of 256GB/s, the bridge between the gpu and the edram was limited at 32GB/s

 
 
So obviously the wii u edram has more than 256GB/s otherwise the porting wouldnt be so easy, right now speculation goes for 563.2GB/s or more, not to mention that if xbox 360 10MB was barely enough for the 720p with double buffering and wii u 7.1MB of edram is enough to hold 720p with double buffering then clearly the wii u edram must pack much more bandwidth

The picture you posted blatantly shows you are wrong. In fact, its in the last part of the text you quoted.

The 360 did not have 256Gb of bandwidth to the edram, the edram had 256Gb of bandwidth to itself, and the rops, on the daughter die, across a bridge, from the rest of the system, if anything else wanted access to that edram, it had to cross the bridge at 32Gb/s for the request, and back again, waiting on the added latency of crossing the bridge to the daughter die. The 360's edram didnt have enough capacity, so it had send the framebuffer in over chunks, the latency was horrible, and the bandwidth sucked because there was a 32Gb a second bridge between the edram and the system.

Its not bandwidth that makes the wii u's edram smoke the 360's, its the fact it has 3x the capacity, is within immediate access of the entire system instead of gated off on a duaghter die, and so it had none of the latency.

There are 3 factors that affect the performance of ram, you want all three to be as high performing as possible, but realistically, you usually can only get to choose two that will be high performing, bandwidth is just one of them. Capacity and Latency are just as important, and depending on the situation, can be far more important than bandwidth.

Shinen uses that Wii u edram to store 3 720p framebuffers for fast racing neo (And thats only using half of it, and already over the 360's capacity a time and a half). The 360 couldnt dream of doing that even if its bandwidth on that edram and rops was 500 Petabytes. It doesnt the capacity, and it has too much latency.

Here guys, this will make up for the music in the battle video.

Nice.

PS4 is Schwarzenegger
 
Xbox One is Stallone
 
PC is Norris(!)
 
Wii U is Van Damme
 
That is how I see things but don't ask me for my reasoning:p

Youre Van Damme right.

holy shiznet at the new music download. Makes up for the videos music.

It sounds as Criterion speeks only about the CPU in this interview, maybe i'm wrong. I wonder what kind of a performance boost can the eDRAM give to the whole system?

Well, Shin en uses it to store 3 720p framebuffers, to completely eliminate screen tearing.... And has like half of it still left over to use with a bunch of other stuff.

Well its just sad no developer off the record or anything has stood up for the Wii U instead of letting the underpowered status hover above it. I would like to before Wii U is replaced see one third party dev try and fully take advantage of the system and its capabilities. Not just graphics I truthfully dont care if a game is 720p but push to system and what it can do. I always thought the eDRAM was being underused. Sad that is the case. I wonder if project cars will even release also betting that fast racing neo will look better.

Criterion has.

'The difference with Wii U was that when we first started out, getting the graphics and GPU to run at an acceptable frame-rate was a real struggle. The hardware was always there, it was always capable. Nintendo gave us a lot of support - support which helps people who are doing cross-platform development actually get the GPU running to the kind of rate we've got it at now. We benefited by not quite being there for launch - we got a lot of that support that wasn't there at day one... the tools, everything.

There's a switch in our build pipeline that says 'use PC textures' and we flipped that and that was all. I can take no credit for that, it was literally ten minutes' work... we are using PS3/360 geometry. It's just the textures we upgraded.

Tools and software were the biggest challenges by a long way... the fallout of that has always been the biggest challenge here. [Wii U] is a good piece of hardware, it punches above its weight. For the power consumption it delivers in terms of raw wattage it's pretty incredible. Getting to that though, actually being able to use the tools from Nintendo to leverage that, was easily the hardest part.

When they first looked at the specs on paper a lot of developers said, 'Well, you know this is a bit lightweight' and they walked away. I think a lot of people have been premature about it in a lot of ways because while it is a lower clock-speed, it punches above its weight in a lot of other areas.

So, I think you've got one group of people who walked away, you've got some other people who just dived in and tried and thought, 'Ah... it's not kind of there,' but not many people have done what we've done, which is to sit down and look at where it's weaker and why, but also see where it's stronger and leverage that. It's a different kind of chip and it's not fair to look at its clock-speed and other consoles' clock-speed and compare them as numbers that are relevant. It's not a relevant comparison to make when you have processors that are so divergent. It's apples and oranges.

So every developer/publisher making a game for wii U has decided not to take advantage of it hardware? Would you say Wii u setup would be easier to use than 360? There are some publishers that have had like all of their games release on wii U is the eDRAM enough to so Wii U can do more than what last gen offered? Just as anaexample the lego games?

Pretty much. You need to understand, most of the people who do these ports, are not the teams who made the games, they dont really know much at all about the engine, or how it worked, even on the 360. They are tiny, usually only a handful of people, port teams, they simply mess with a few things, usually by turning things off, until the game runs 'acceptably' on wii u, because they arent alotted the time, or have the know how, to do much of anything else.

The few exclusives the wii u has, do use the edram, however no 3rd party game was ever given a fraction of the budget to work on production values to match what they were given on ps360, so although something like ZOmbie U, technically had far superior lighting and modeling than similar 360 games, its hamstrung budget meant repeated assets, and quick dirty work.

Criterion used the wii u hardware well, but they were the actual people who made the game, and the engine, so they knew how to change it to maximize performance on the wii u. And they did, it beat the ps360 versions hand down. Better texture, better lighting, and it could do things the ps360 versions couldnt dream of like alter the world on the fly, change traffic density, turn it off, on, at will, instantly.

They arent using it, because they dont care.

I remember Shin en says they use about 16Mb for three 720p frame buffers so there is no screen tearing, and have tons of room to use the rest to preload a bunch of stuff, archive a bunch of stuff, use it as a cpu scratchpad...

The Wii u's edram design is a lot different than the 360's, the 360's was on a seperate daughter die with the rops, it only got its full bandwidth with the rops on that die, any other interaction, access or sending data, had to cross the 32Gb/s bridge, and a lot of latency, to get the rest of the system.

THe wii u's is embedded on the same substrate with the rest of system, so it gets its full bandwidth without having to cross a bridge, and doesnt have any of the added latency that comes with that.

The publisher incumbents who decide what games get made, and where, simply dont want the wii u to be a player in their game.

I REALLY want this though.
no-50-new-3ds-xl-faceplate.png

EDIT: Not 1:1 but a good indication of how images look between the models.

wpid-wp-1409450345239.jpeg

Something ive found out on my own, the New XL has a higher motion rate for the top screen than regular new 3ds.

In 2d and 3d mode the new 3ds has poor processing of images when there is camera pans or just whenever a high contrast image is being moved. It spoils some of the games (not all) and blurs objects and looks like a trail effect.

With new XL there is almost none of that and images stay in focus, if this wasn't the case then the bigger screen would be easier to notice it.

Really, thats the first ive heard of that. Would love to take a look at the two, except, well, I cant because noa are butt sniffers. If I saw it, it might go aways to making me not feel so bad about being forced to get the new xl and its horrible 92 ppi screen.

Since the game has a fully fledged online its comparable to MH3U on Wii U so in your opinion is MH4 better/not as good overall?

I'm picking it up as soon as I finish my backlog.

I miss the under water battles, but seem to be fairly alone in that opinion.

But thats tri/3u's only real pro against a tsunami of superiority coming from Mh4. My opinion is 4 is a fantatstic improvement for the series, and over 3u, which was a great entry itself and a huge improvement over the base tri, which was great, but so small for a mh game, even compared to non G MH entries, in both single player and online, Mh4 dominates 3g, and I put a LOT of time into 3g.

I never mentioned the copy I played the most was the PAL version from when we knew the game was not coming to the US. I played it on a CRT using Homebrew channel at the time and never had framerate issues for XB. I know I played the US version at least once but don't recall any difference.

All versions suffer constant frame rate fluctuations during large battles, and compounded by using ether attack effects heavy characters like ricky melia or fiora. It doesnt drop frames it just slows down, If you didnt notice it, you just didnt notice it.

I would've thought regional standards would be one of the easiest hurdles for emulation to cross.

Its most likely because the builds or bios are different between localizations.

Was... Was he shooting at a topless chick escaping from a fire?

Chrono trigger was re-released on ds, so it will work on 3ds, it was also released on the wii's virtual console, so it can be played on wii u through wii mode.... Oh man, just thinking about this explanation seems like its going to be huge..

Its the the basic battle system Makoto Shimamoto went back to to base the xeno battle system off of.

Enemies are on the field, so its not random battles like FF or other JRPG's, some enemies just wander around, some actively try to hit you, when the player character comes into contact with an enemy, a battle starts, so you have control over whether you battle or not.

The battle system runs off a system called the 'Active Time Battle' system, or more specifically a custom version of Hiroyuki Ito's ATB made exclusively for chrono trigger, outlined by director Akihiko Matsui, and designed mostly by lead battle planner Makoto Shimamoto, who had... Issues with the design philosophy of the ATB and squares battle systems. He thought it was nonsensical to use football and formula 1 racing for design inspirations to an rpg. He thought the players lining up in a straight line on one side, and the opponents lining up on the other side (Like a football play beginning) was silly, and lacked potential for increased strategems, peices should be all around the board, and have different attack shaped, like chess, not stay in fixed lines with only attack 1 or all. And so we had the ATB version 2.0, which was used in chrono trigger, and ONLY chrono trigger. As soon as Shimamoto left, square devolved back to 'football' design of lining up characters facing off with each other, for the battle system.

So, when in battle, enemies still move around in real time, (but the player cant, however the characters go to their battle positions somewhere on the field (Which is generally different for each fight, making the strategy for each fight different). The players have a 'time bar' that fills up according to a speed statistic (Which increases with level) when the bar fills up, that character can act. The enemies also run off of this system, however the player can not see their speed bar.

When one of the party members bars is full they have three choices, a normal attack, which attacks one enemy, with a chance to do a double damage critical hit based on a percentage determined by the player characters critical stat, or a 'tec' where the player could use special skills, that could affect more than one enemy, or had certain element attributes that some enemies were weak to. These Tecs had various hit boxes to them. Some went out in a straight line from the player to the selected character, hitting all other enemies in the path. Some were an area of effect around the selected enemy, that would hit nearby enemies, some were an area of effect around the character, hitting enemies near the character... You get the idea. Since the players characters were in different places for each battle, and the enemies moved, this made using certain skills, with basic timing a strategic act, you would wait for enemies to line up, or get close together, before using a certain tec. Tec's costed MP points to use, if you ran low on mp points, you couldnt use a tec until you restored them using an item like an ether. To use a tec, you select the 'tec' option that was below attack on the menu. Another, larger menu would appear, with all that characters available tecs, and you selected the one that you wanted. Hands would appear pointing at the enemy the player selected, and the player can cycle between enemies with the d-pad. Multiple hands would appear over other enemies if they were in, or moved into the tecs area of attack.

When you use certain groups of characters, they will learn that they can combine their moves, to form larger more devastating attacks, or big ccures and buffs, combining two characters moves for a double tec, or three characters moves for a huge triple tec. You simply had to wait until both or all 3 characters had their speed bars filled, so they could act at the same time.

The third option the player had was to use an item, which would open up another menu with every item the player had, and the player has to cycle through to find the item they want, to cure, or restore mp, or provide a buff. I generally didnt use the items unless I absolutely had too, typically only using them to restore mp after battles... Partly because Cycling through all that garbage is clumsy, and partly because Im a pack rat hoarder who collects billions of items but doesnt want to 'waste' any by using them.

Winning battles awards experience points, get enough points and the character levels up, increasing their stats, so they have more health, do more damage, have more mp, and sometimes learn new moves.

By exploring and finding chests, or buying from stores in towns the player finds, you can buy new swords and armor that bolster the players stats, resulting in more damage, and better defense. A third item called an accessory can also be equipped, further enhancing stats like doing more damage, or giving new skills like being able to see enemy health, or the ability to counter attack. Chrono Trigger is REALLY good at this, big on rewarding players with cool stuff for finding secrets, and upgrading already cool stuff further by considering how time travel 'works'.

Thats the basic gist of chrono triggers battle system, the precursor to Xenoblades. Now I will detail how Xenoblade wii improves on this foundation.

In Xenoblade Enemies are also on the field, except now they have better AI, and respond to certain stimulus, its no longer touching enemies that starts a battle, some will attack when they see the player cross their line of sight. So you can sneak around behind them. Some will attack if they HEAR the player, so running behind them wont work, but you can sneak past them by not running. some respond to the use of ether. Some enemy types will come to the aid of their buddies if you attack them, so you may start out fighting one enemy you can take, but quickly attracting a hoard you cant handle, (There is an option to try and get the attention of only one enemy and draw it away from its friends) If the player wants to get the jump on an enemy, or fight an enemy that wouldnt normally fight them, either because they arent aggressive, or they are scared of the player because the player is a much stronger level than them, the player can select enemies with the trigger buttons, pressing L or R until the desired enemy is highlighted, and selecting the fight command from the selection bar at the bottom of the screen by highlighting it and pressing a. What level the enemy is, and what their ai routine is (Sight, sound) is displayed above enemies heads. Even the starting area has wild life that is far beyond the starting parties capabilities. Makes for fun risk reward experiences. You can try sneaking past them to try and get later game level goodies early, (Sometimes you can) or you can back when you are more powerful and explore areas you couldnt get to before because the enemies were too strong.

Unlike Chrono trigger normal attacks are now done automatically as long as you are close enough to the enemy to hit them, because having to push a button to do a normal attack for this kind of battle system is redundent and silly. Its a waste of time, why WOULDNT you attack when you are close enough, and are able? Having to push a button just for that would be redundant and a waste of time. The speed of how fast your player makes normal attacks is dependant upon that characters stats (The player has ways to adjust these stats, to build characters who can attack very rapidly)

In xenoblade, the player can now move during battles in addition to the enemy, allowing for more strategy. So now you can position yourself to line up enemies for moves that attack all enemies in a straight line, like the monado buster. On top of this, whether the player is in front of, to the side, or behind the enemy also matters. Some moves inflict status ailments if done from the side, or do more damage from behind etc. However, while it may look like the battle takes place in real time in videos, the way it plays is still the active time system. What matters is where you and the enemies are, the moment you PUSH the button to activate the attack, not where you and the enemies are when the attack animation happens. For example, when you use the monado buster, shulk goes through a cool sword powering up animation, and then a huge sweeping strike, where the enemies are when the strike hits doesnt matter, its where the enemies were the instant you pushed the button to start the attack. So, if three enemies are all lined up when you push the button, then wander off, those three will all get hit wherever they are. But if three enemies are outside of the line in front of shulk, and then wander into the attack animation, they wont get hit. Its not real time. Its not an action rpg.

Special moves in Xenoblade are called arts. They function a LOT like techs in Chrono trigger, having certain areas they effect, like a straight line, a cone, a circle around the player etc. Unlike chrono trigger, the time bar is not applied to the character itself and when they can act, but to each individual art. When you use an art, you have to wait for it to fill up, or 'cool down' before you can use it again. This puts a lot of the battle tempo under the players control, making battles much faster and less drawn out. On weaker enemies, you can blow all your arts one after the other until the enemy dies. On older rpg systems, that same enemy would take five minutes or more as you have to wait to use your moves one at a time. On stronger enemies, blowing all your arts at once may take off a decent chunk of health, but would leave you without any options besides auto attack until your moves cooled down (And draw lots of aggro). To use an art you simply use the d-pad to select the desired art from the hot bar at the bottom of the screen and push a. Special moves can be leveled up, and switched in and out of the hot bar via the menu when not in battle.

Each character has a 'super move' that has to be charged to use. Most moves charge by hitting enemies with normal attacks, although some characters are unique. This move is the big circle in the center of the hot bar. For shulk, when it is full, this activates the monados over drive, and the blade glows brighter, a little longer, and smokes more, and activates the monado menu, which changes shulks normal moves in the hot bar for his special monado moves, where shulk can either buff his allies by allowing them to damage Mechon that other party members normally cant hurt, or by giving them ether armor, or attack with things like making the monado blade super huge and doing a big smash attack.

CHaracters can gain the attention of the enemy, or 'aggro' by doing lots of damage, or attacking a lot, or doing fancy moves. This is denoted by red rings around the character, the more red rings, the more the enemy is really mad at that player. Enemies will concentrate on characters that tick them off. THis can be used to draw attacks toward characters with high defense and a lot of HP (Reyn) Or characters with high agility who are hard for the enemy to hit. THis can also be used to keep the enemies from attacking the player, or more fragile members of the party.

Shulk can see the future and has visions. This will activate (Even when shulks not in the party) when an enemy does a move that will kill, or do a lot of crippling damage to the attacked character, it shows in black and white with distorty special effects, the move that happens and what it does to the atttacked character. A bar above the enemy will then display how much time is left until the event occurs. The player can attempt to change the future in any way they see fit. They can try to heal the targeted character so that the move doesnt kill them, they can try and get the attention of the monster away from the character, so it attacks someone else who wont be killed, they can try to knock the creature over, seal its special moves, use a monado shield, kill it, etc. etc. etc.

Each character in the party has 'tension' or their morale, represented by their battle portrait, getting owned will reduce their morale, depressed characters get hit easier, have a harder time getting clean hits on enemies, or even hitting them, and deal less damage, going up to these players and pressing B will give them a pat on the back and some motivation to get out of their funk and get their head back in the game. WHen characters are doing well, and kicking butt, their tension raises, until they are 'really feeling it', and flames erupt behind their portraits. When like this characters hit for more damage, have higher accuracy, and are harder to hit.

Occasionally, when the player does something cool that other party members like, they will comment on it, or when they see an attack coming to your character, they will warn you when this happens the 'b' button icon appears in the middle of the screen with a shrinking ring around it. Time it so that the shrinking ring is the same size as the ring around the 'b' button icon and press the b button, when successful the player will deal more damage, or dodge the enemy attack, and get several boosts, temporary stat boosts, a tension boost, and a boost to the unite guage.

The unite guage is the blue bar above the player portraits and hp, and consists of 3 parts. It is generally filled by beating on enemies, or taking hits, using certain arts, and succeeding at the parties shout outs with the 'b' button. When you, or someone in your party loses all their health, they collapse and cant fight anymore. You can spend a section of the unite guage to revive the fllen character (or your party can revive you) If the player character falls and their is not a single full section of the bar, the player fails and starts over... from the last landmark they were nearby, with everything they had the moment they died, typically no more than 30 seconds away from where they died, vastly reducing frusteration, lost time, and encouraging exploration and expirimentization, and getting into tough battles.

When all 3 sections of the unite guage is filled, the player can perform Xenoblades version of the triple tec, teh chain attack. THe player gets to choose a move from each player. Choosing moves of the same color icon, does bonus damage, increasing the multiplier each time the combo is kept going. Super attacks are 'wild' in that they can continue the combo from any color, and any color can be played off of them. This can result in AMAZING amounts of damege. If your characters have a high affinity (They know each other well) they can continue the chain attack if the player succeeds in the 'b' button timed press. The higher the affinity between party members, the more likely the chain attack can go on, and on, and on, and on.... Meaning you can loop across all characters multiple times. However each art can only be used once during a chain attack, after you use it, it goes dark and you cant use it again during that chain attack (Making it more difficult to keep those combos going.) With a clever selection of arts for each character, and smart use of the super moves 'wild card' ability, you can keep combos going for extremely brutal damage.

Unlike Chrono trigger, there are no battle items like potions or elixers in Xenoblade. Item management was not fun, and not strategic, it was boring, time consuming, and tedious. So they did away with it. The party heals rapidly when not in battle, with all characters being at full health after a couple of seconds, and all status ailments being cured. This means you dont have to spend time doing invintory on all your garbage, and stopping what you are doing to go get butt balm to continue your journey. It also means they can put more challenging battles in the game, since winning a battle means the party will be at their peak and ready to go again. A great move that streamlined a lot of irritating unnecessary nonsense that typically weighs down rpg's.

Status effects play a large role in Xenoblade, but ill only really get into two. the first one is the combo of break and topple, because its super important and one of the first things you need to make sure you dont miss. Certain moves cause a status effect called break (They generally have pink icons) when an enemy is afflicted with break, they can then be knocked over by using a move that has topple (Generally the green icons) toppled enemies take 50% more damage, and lose thier defense. This means enemies that you normally cant damage, can be damaged if you topple them (Frusteration avoiding hint for the beginning of the game)

The other one, is much later in the game, but can be a subtle surprise if you ignore the tutorial, it is called spike damage. Spike damage is either damage, or a status effect done by the enemy (or the player) when certain conditions are met. Usually its just being nearby the enemy, but their are other variations, such as spike damage being dealt when the enemy is hit with an auto attack, or spike damage being dealt when the enemy is toppled. This needs to be overcome by either using armor that alters spike stats, negating spike damage, or using special moves to seal spike damage. Spike damage can quickly consume your party without you noticing. if you suddenly find your party wiped out, or down a lot of health, and you are sure you were kicking butt, its probably spike damge.

This seems like a lot, and its just the fundamentals (I havent even gotten into character skills, or skill linking between characters as they get to know each other, or gems) but its rationed out over a considerable amount of time, and introduced with tutorials you can then look up at any time with excellent detail.

Xenoblade X is heavily based off of Xenoblade, which was based off of chrono trigger, bu I cant even really go into detail about the enhancements made to the new system, because really im still processing it... And likely will be until a couple dozen hours into the new game (And likely more), which is something I love.

But if you get the hang of chrono trigger, you will have a basic working framework of how to get a handle on the more complex Xenoblade X.

Chrono Trigger is also a pretty good barometer for whether or not you might enjoy xenoblade X. It doesnt have the amazing scenery porn, but its environments are a lot more intimate than the grid based and squarish design looking jrpg's like FF and its imitators, and exploring was a huge factor.

If you find yourself interested, intruiged, wanting to know what happens next, or interested in finding whats in this place you discovered, or getting caught up in the adventure at all while playing chrono trigger, despite it being an old snes game, you will LOVE the Xenoblades.... Cant really say how much youll like other jrpg's though... Chrono trigger never was much like other jrpg's of its time, or after its time... Until Xenoblade.

which is not good for me... outside of the original xenoblade is there a game out now available for Wii U or 3ds that I could purchase that would ease me into this game?

Chrono trigger

Hard to imagine how it would be. You surely need twin sticks for a shooter. Ok you don't NEED twin sticks but it's definitely the optimum method.

??? Wiimote IR >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dual analog for shooters. Dual analog is garbage for shooters, its slow, imprecise, and clumsy, which is why console shooters have such awful overbearing auto aim. Wiimote and nunchunk and kbm is far superior to DA.

I noticed that a lot when playing the Spyro trilogy. I always assumed it was just a really bad kind of LOD.
 
By the way, since you seem knowledgable on the emulation scene. Can you give a similar summary of PCSX2? Has that seen any improvements like Dolphin?
I used to use that a while back but its performance was hugely varied depending on the game. FFX worked a dream, which no longer matters as I have it on Vita, but FF12 had a lot of framerate issues.

Yes, although not the extent breakthroughs dolphin has made, the ps2 is a.... fickle machine compared to the gamecube/wii. They recently aquired a much improved debugger, which is helping immensely on finding the problem with broken and poorly performing games, and they have made a lot of progress towards 64 bit compatability.

as for ff12 PAL versions of the game still seem to have trouble, with performance dropping around groups and wendigoes. NTSC versions seem to be able to reach full performance and up to 200%/300fps with Wait Loop Detection mVU Flag Hack and MTVU on tri and quadcores.

What about MacBook Pro 2014? 2.6 Ghz Core i5, 16GB RAM. Graphics is Intel Iris, which I haven't heard of (1536 MB)

16GB of ram? That your work macbook?

Iris is the hd5000 integrated series, I dont have hands on experience, but from others 5100 was a small improvement from the last 47XX, but 5200 was a pretty big improvement, although I remember some issues with it, dont know the status. With all the recent improvements to the emulator, my gut says you should be pretty pleased with the performance and IQ you should be able to get. Might as well try it and see. And there really just arent enough osx users, so if you do encounter any problems, the community would love it if you could give a report.

http://code.google.c...ary&cells=tiles

Thanks for that 3dude. So question for those that played the original one on the Wii... how does the combat differ. My NNID is gamer1984 same as my username. I am going to be hitting up the RPG experts on this forum so please add me when this game released becuase I never played one before but am up for this challenge.

Its heavily based on Xenoblade.... But after watching the translation, feels like its about 100X more in depth.

Do you think I have any chance of running a wii game with my Macbook Air 2014?

The cpu is fine and dandy, but those intel integrated graphics might be a problem. I know the 4000 barely made the dolphins minimum specs, I dont know how much better the HD5000 is.... But Im guessing with the recent improvements to dolphin, and the i5 and hd5000, it should be pretty good.