There was a consistent amount of this just plain wrong view - he claims to be a journalist ... here i don't question his information as RAW info goes, in the end it's still a rumor, I will explain the context behind it and correct it, however if rumor-wise true it should be months outdated, unless he stated he has a steady source which seems too good to be true, but i do not agree with his subjective coloring of the comments around when he provides the info. This has come to amount that i feel many people have taken. I belive he's lack of technial background is the cause of these assumtions - i am here to correct him - not make him a hard time.
The idea of small bits of information at a time is solely to make the thread interested, to increase anticipation, to make hype - there is no reason to without information - but i agree with this idea for the sake of it since, while people might hate it, i do welcome it however this cannot go on with the inaccuracy he's spreading by doing these poems around the bits of info.
There is too many instances for me to go back and reply on here - it's would be a big freaking job to analze all that - while i do have like 50 neogaf posts bookmarked, i won't search through all of em now until i am accepted at the forum to reply directly (since i just drag-dropped the # link with only number in the title) ... which may take another few weeks and i hope before E3.
It would be very good if somebody would take a minute to forward this information to the WiiU thread at neogaf to correct the assumptions of many people there, I know some of the tech-gurus stated some points and one-statement explanations but things get burried in the ever increasing pages of discussions, I know certain individuals know this whole thing im going to explain and i would be glad if they even improve on it or correct;
I have no online friend that i can contact this moment that can post on neogaf. So ... kind of a let the bottle in the sea. See what happens.
There are several posts (i think 3 big walls of text - i will find them now and link them below at the end for convenience) that i made here on wiiu forums for some users who did not understood how engines-hardware works in the big question of "optimizations".
Some infos concerning the padlets
In a v4 dev kit context, with third-party involved, ports & titles using inhouse engines (not really tailored for the Wii U), the system hasn't the capacities to render 1 720p complex content on the TV, and 2 480p intricate scenes at the same time, with a good enough framerate. The "v5" dev kits won't change this situation. And i really don't think that with first-party, it will be a totally different outcome.
Now, 1 light 720p content (a ranking list, a 2D map, etc.) + 4 480 not ultra detailed with to-the-roof poly count titles, well, the hardware may handle that (i'm talking about rendering capabilities here, not streaming possibilities).
I took one(there are many) of these examples here - you can see that he has information - but you can clearly see the inaccurate subjective view he makes around that - based on his beliefs and experience - which is not optimal should i say - but that's all right he doesn't do it on purpose i suppose.
In my opinion he is being a bit too broad and rough on the whole thing - and some fundamentals are also inaccurate.
In a v4 dev kit context, with third-party involved, ports & titles using inhouse engines (not really tailored for the Wii U), the system hasn't the capacities to render 1 720p complex content on the TV, and 2 480p intricate scenes at the same time, with a good enough framerate. The "v5" dev kits won't change this situation. And i really don't think that with first-party, it will be a totally different outcome.
BLUE: 3rd party ("inhouse?") engines have zero disability to achieve same or better results than first-party engines. This is common misconception - why first party engines seem to be better is simply because nintendo's standards require tons of polish - Retro studios is a great example of that(above standard). Completely wrong assumption - In proper context the term "tailored" would indicate specifically the term "software optimizations" - which in this context he puts is wrong - this is because of the fact that there is no natural technical or physical barrier limiting any software from achieveing the features and exploiting the full potential power of the hardware.
These terms are just legal distinction between engines (imaginary).
If there are some features/capabilities/resources that are locked to 3rd-parties and only available for nintendo, that i do not know of in past - these are artificial barriers made on hardware-level and have nothing to do with software optimizations - distinctions between the 3rd-party engines are purely down to the software skills of the developer and software technology(code) used. Developers like Gearbox, Vigil, aren't going to push the hardware to it's limits - this should be expected from Crytek, Epic, Id Software. From my knowledge the most likey to suck out the resources should be Id Software because code quality and technology is a personal cause of John Carmack - Tim Sweeny too but Gears of War is a poor demo, Rage is also a poor demo to an avreage user, it doesn't show what the IdTech5 engine is actually possible. (Big topics i don't want to repeat and get into detail right now - the problem is memory, RAM is the biggest bottleneck!)
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RED: these are all variables dependant on many software factors, developer decisions and hardware specification, first is he certain that the uPad resolution is 480p; Second ... the term "complex" is a poor indicator and poor representation of actual capability of the hardware, too many unknown variables.
The whole context of "complex" is based on some unknown developer, unknown engine, unknown tests (a whole range of different GFX elements, polygons or pixels or animation ... all of them together?) - there is no basic idea provided of the target test that were considered "complex".
The whole code quality and optimization of the "complex" benchmark that resulted as such is also unknown and judging by the fact that bigger and high-profile 3rd party studios rarely leak out - I speculate these just have to be some fairly early benchmarks done by mediocre developer who's leak was obviously from a source of questionable technical background to begin with. By the time the rumor gets out - who knows how many non-tech and "journalist" types have relayed the information - not to mention the unnecessary twisting that is created by the poetic writing of the releaser of the information who is actually in direct touch with the interested community.
Third; the test is the worst case scenario, max complexity on tablets is not necessairly practical for all games; depends on the game and purpose. My subjective opinion is that i would rather be as light as possible on the tablets without much activity on it, menu's, info, HUD stuff, scope reticle, dialog text, could all be trivial things that could be done on the tablet controller while leaving most of the resources for better graphics and post-process on the main TV screen. This is solely developers decision who will they balance the workloads - i do not believe there is any hardware-limitation that would hamper the developer who want the most on the main screen. Developers claiming these shouldn't get ahead of them selfs - such conclucion making is ridicolous.
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PURPLE: This statement is invalid because it's based on previously invalid assumption - it seems like the source has information that v5 kits won't have a spec buff for certain, that statement would have worked if separate on it's own - but given the context used indicates that this pertains to the software side - the writer has not indicated he means the hardware - if he means the hardware, then there is no problem and the statement could be valid as a rumor solely about the v5 kits hardware - even if the accuracy of the rumor is wrong and the hardware would get better, it is still valid, because this on it's own is correct, given the previous statements would be correct. You can understand if you try to take the statement separate ... having that in mind what i told you of the "this situation" he's talking about above.
But I can detect what he is thinking - he thinks there won't be any "nintendo/software optimizations" done on the kits that would magically enable developers their engines to work better. This is the very common and widespread misconception and misunderstanding how the whole technology works - I alread explained this in this forum and it's a big topic so i will link the posts below - reading those will further explain why is this wrong.
All optimizations are SOFTWARE wise and are done by the developer of the engine and developer of the game (if a dev uses licensed 3rd party engine it depends on both, licensor releases codebase builds that the licensee updates, if the licensor has crap software, the licensee will have to fix it him self to his own knowledge and software skills or live with it)
http://thewiiu.com/t...__20#entry72948
http://thewiiu.com/t...__20#entry73089
So if you read those linked posts you should have in mind that consoles have luxury of letting developers access the hardware directly - PCs do not have this. Blame GPU vendors and microsoft.
If the hardware improves on the v5 dev kits - all engines, first-party or third-party, will be able to benefit from it.
If the SDK / API software improves on v5 kits - all engines, first-party or third-party, will be able to benefit from it.
HOW does a hardware spec bump affect the performance of game engines is ALL DEPENDANT on the EFFORT put in by EACH INDIVIDUAL studio and APPLIES solely for their specific engine. It will not affect all of them exactly the same, depending on reality how software is built, becuase all of the different engines are done by different programmers with different skills, different methods of programming, different efforts, different time spent, different philosophy of what is "great" or "enough", different tools, .... different optimizations will come off that .... he with the best software wins. Maybe some studio has a stupid bug and the hardware buff might even produce negative resutlts - not to mention the script-language (high-level) code quality which can equally make the game laggy if improperly used.
Much of these problems is unheard by people and gets fixed before it leaks into the drama-riden media. That's why they don't like early leaks, because those are all fixable problems and work in progress. Nobody bothers educating the audience and the media that would result in understanding and zero negativity - it would be practically impossible, it's an astronomical idea. That is the ultimate reason why early engine demos are behind closed doors and NDAd - those that understand the tech obviously won't be making dramatic negativity up about the "bug right there" , media is not let in either, mainstream media has no idea bout tech except the editors personal PC hardware, years and practice experience.
I think it's practically stupid for nintendo to lock-down stuff for 3rd party devs, that's what they would need to do if ideamans assumptions really came from that - all in all - little chance that will be the case - that would be an ARTIFICIAL locker and should NOT affect the validity of my explanation.
If this artificial resource locking is some usual practise then i terribly apologize for exaggerating the wrongness of ideaman's claims - but that still does not invalidate what I explained above.
The only such mixed restriction is the OS memory(RAM) that I understand clearly - but, a bit of thinking, that in my opinion that OS memory should also not be available for first-party devs like Retro Studios since i mean ... that would invalidate the technical reason behind this restriction - they obviously have to have OS running in order to keep the device functioning. This restriction would then been total nonsense. On the other hand - if there are some restrictions there are probably very minor in regards to first-party and 3rd party. Keep in mind what i told in the beginning, nintendo puts TONS tons of polish in their games, that gives time programmers to optimize their software, such software optimizations are done with low level languages that take much more skills, the more low-level it goes the harder it is exponentially. This OS RAM restriction therefore applies to all game developers, so it should not be mixed with the "artificial locking".
Master programmers like Id Software pretty much bypass and overwrite large portions of API and driver stuff. Carmack and many programmers are pressuring the PC GPU vendors to get rid of these limitations and the standardization of unifed memory, without turning PCs into consoles - there, here's your primary reason of the PC gaming downfall - piracy is such an excuse.
Optimizations (in this case)- the term primarly relates to the software modification in low-level language (eg.: assembly)
Optimization is any modification of logic that makes it work better. I do not work for construction, metal work, I am a college programmer and when in this gaming scene i use it primarly for software and not hardware. For hardware it's normally a "spec bump" or an "upgrade" or a "fix".
Software optimization is normally not called as fix or upgrade bacuse it doesn't do anyting new or correct, because nothing was wrong before hand, the optimization referes to something that works, but afterwards it works faster.
A bug is an error, that piece of code was not working, and when a modification is made it works, that is called a fix.
This major basic inexperience of understanding the technology background and how games work as well as terms - makes you harder to understand rumors. There was also a big post i made here how people might take a rumor negatively because they do not have experience, or to fail to see the scope of what rumor might be indicating.
That was in the "nintendo optimized wiiu for UE4" which i think i posted before regarding a similar point ... another one of those journalist-type of "report-style" writing that gets out in a totally different context that is supposed to and what really happend. Again already explained here ... below is the link to that post again.
http://thewiiu.com/t...__20#entry65891
I think i've heard that they actually teach journalists to twist the message in order to make the statement be as a reportive news bulletin ehm somethin ... whatever - in the effort that would "sound more professional" and "understandable to audience" - that actually makes the whole thing wrong. Ah i hate that, i don't read much of those mainstream type of news gamesites. Find the news i need for my self.
IF you have read all of this ... you can now understand that if these "over 1 TFLOP" rumors are true - it's going to get a lot better than what we hear with those inaccurate context. It's all much better.
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And you should know when you compare a PC-hardware benchmarked demo (pc game) with the console GPU of the same target-spec requirement demo - the same demo would require less resources on the console to run the same on PC. That's all because of what we know from before that PCs have this huge overhead (wasted resources) of locked-proprietary unoptimized API software, drivers, OS (windows codebase is terrible in quality - linux is lightyears ahead)
A rough calculation .... like 40-60% of the performance and resources the PC hardware has is wasted in fin air (heat) - I don't want to exaggerate right here or be too optimistic but my "guts"(actually mind) tells me it can be over 60% and beyond. Shock! Yep. The waste is the performance lost to overcome heavy abstraction, and very wrong ways of programming, yes the GPU reaches 100% activity but that activity is lowered significantly by going through multiple layers of code before it reaches the engine and then the game ...
So much more in detail could be explained but i think i did a good job ... software is delicate, one mistake anywhere can hamper the entire game and you cannot see where the problem comes from. The way these things works it will be 99% certain the the DEVELOPER is the CAUSE ... not the WiiU, not nintendo. If that would been the cause, then all engines would get similar symptoms (that would make all of the big devs publicly speak about it too)
If the hardware is fine - it's all about the software, and all about the game developer, i believe nintendo will make their SDK and API as good as possible - the fact they desperately need 3rd parties, and the fact that historically they've always produced better quality code.
Remember , if something is buggy in the API, in the console world you are welcome to bypass it --- problem solved (but you have to know how to replace it with your own code ... manually and takes all the skills you have
That's why you see those little developers whining around in the industry complaining about the devices, it might be genuine but not necessairly in all cases ... they might rely on the APIs beause they don't have much idea to make their own code 
he goes out and sas "ahh that API sucks" ... and all drama breaks loose in the media which has no idea to begin with, the deadly cocktail of a stupid developer + media = misinformation that gets hammered in avreage peoples heads, confusion spreads.-------------------------------------------
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My opinion on the rumor if we modify the context:
So if the purple text would mean hardware-wise, then I do not agree with it - how can the source possibly know what hardware changes will come in next dev kits, how can he assume nothing will change in better, what is the reason of another dev kit then.
The purpose of the next dev kit is obviously a better version of the previous one. I agree not necessairly to beef it up but to fix and improve hardware quality, this goes to another level, making hardware more reliable is another process that i do not think dev kits are You can see that nintendo optimizes their hardware great, the failure rate has been very low historically, the optimization process actually goes beyon release of the final console and into the life cycle (eg. x360 die shrinks, motherboard updates - x360 was some really crappy piece of hardware at launch), those are PCB and die revisions (optimizations - same term can apply here, but i don't tend to use it as it is prone to confusion as i explained) that do not break the compatability with the software. This can come after final dev kits.
Therefore dev kits are specifically intended for major changes.
Coupling of all what we heard from NAMED developers that the "hardware is constantly changing" and "nintendo is listening" - then you could obviously expect the hardware to going to improve and change more than you might assume.
If nintendo is listening as it was said - then you can assume then whatever EPIC said "we want 512 MB more ram" was accepted. As i noted in the linked post there is no cooky "optimization" nintendo done that magically made the all migthy (sarcasm) UE4 engine to work bettar! Whatever nintendo did, is either hardware or software(API/SKD) will benefit everyone. But if the actual real optimizations that is the work of every developer, aren't done properly, it's all game developer's fault for a crap result.
The term "optimized" is used wrongly there, it was a spec bump, and my detective work is that the journalist-typen who made that statement, failed to understand that it was probably EPIC just plain old simple pressuring nintendo for hardware bump as Tim Sweeney said that in public many times.
These are all poins for better - as the times goes it's only going to be better and better and better.
All we need to do now, the detectives, is to prove the existance of the V5 Dev kit, if there is no more kits than V42, then don't be concerned, it might be already great, and remember what i said, ideamans info can be months outdated(by the time he got info and by the time the slowly progressive poems get out), and it might be actually V3 dev kits he's talking about, the numbers might be mixed, who knows.
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PINK: This is pure and baseless speculation, based on pre-text and doesn't make contextual sense at all.
Now that I spent so much time typing and looking at his info ... even my eyes opened how damn confusing it is. Try to separate the statements and read them on their own, independently, then try to put them back again, it doesn't make sense at all. I don't want to blame him like that, thanks for the info (not that i analyzed it) - but as far as the opinion goes it's a fairly bad one.
You can see how the PINK is total contradiction of BLUE.
If we dissect the statements:
In BLUE his perception means that the first-party engines are automatically better than 3rd party engines. (should be wrong)
But in PINK, he's following thinking contradicts, now for some reason first parties won't have any edge over 3rd.
Not only is he wrong as a whole, he's wrong in his own thinking as well. Double fail. Sorry no offense.
Also disregard the "inhouse" there's another wrong terminology there --- he obviously means "unoptimized 3rd party"
and the "ports and titles" ... by it self is already so confusing.
Just looking at the whole thing ... it's an usual example of how people think that hardware would magically affect software. No, software has to be written for the change, devs have to rewrite code and adapt to the changes constantly, that's every day process until the final dev kit, and even after the dev kit ... after nintendo is done, the games are representations of the effort.
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If a 3rd party developer does proper amount of effort and optimization - it can get same or better results as first-party nintendo-quality games. Problem is, there are not a lot of them, nintendo is the one of the top standard makers. And they're proud of it.
I didn't explain anything new here - I just hope more of you might have better understanding. ... somebody has to do it.
EDIT: A note to the gamesindustry.biz "weak" article that probably isn't even worth mentioning ever again, ... it's highly possible that how it was worded, it's a late april fool rather than a developer ; that took some time to spread because you know USA is far-negative in timezone that's why the "delay". I refuse to belive even if there is still a 1% possibilty, that that would be a developer, that's beyond stupidity, unless they took source from a 14 year old console gamer, even a PC script kidde would know better.
Edited by Stewox, 24 April 2012 - 04:24 AM.
