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NDS Spider Man 2 DS

Sehr schick! :goodwork:

Edit: hab jetzt alles gesehn, eines steht fest: die Grafik von Nanostray ist sicher in Echtzeit, wenn Spiderman 2 schon so fett aussieht!

Und das von der Third Party! Reggie hatte Recht, Spiderman 2 scheint sich zum Must Have zu mausern, ich warte nur noch auf positive Reviews...
 
Spiderman schaut wirklich gut aus. Auch vom Gameplay ist es interessant.
 
Für diejenigen, die es sich nicht angucken können. Es handelt sich bei dem Spiel um ein sog. Pseudo-3D-Spiel. Also 2D-Gameplay in einer 3D-Umgebung. Ich persönlich finde es nicht so toll. Der Abstand zum GBA is zu gering. Erwarte von NDS einfach ein bissl mehr, d.h. zum alles auf N64 Niveau, wenn nicht drüber.
 
B0wman schrieb:
Für diejenigen, die es sich nicht angucken können. Es handelt sich bei dem Spiel um ein sog. Pseudo-3D-Spiel. Also 2D-Gameplay in einer 3D-Umgebung. Ich persönlich finde es nicht so toll. Der Abstand zum GBA is zu gering. Erwarte von NDS einfach ein bissl mehr, d.h. zum alles auf N64 Niveau, wenn nicht drüber.
Klicken, um alles anzuzeigen...

Und um den Zweiflern gleich den Wind aus den Segeln zu nehmen: Da ist nichts prerendered, alles Echtzeit.
 
Interview mit den Entwicklern:


IGN: What was your feelings when you heard that Reggie mentioned that his favorite launch title was Spider-Man 2 DS?

Karthik: Oh, I was absolutely ecstatic and shocked. That was a great way to introduce Spider-Man 2. Somehow a Reggie fan base has grown all of a sudden, and I even read on message boards people saying, "Hey, if it's good enough for Reggie, it's good enough for me, I'm going to add this one to my wishlist." That's pretty wild.

Jorge: When I read that online, I sent it out as a company-wide email, which became a string of emails going around the company about this announcement in Seattle. Personally, I didn't think Spider-Man 2 was going to get that kind of reaction, you know, I thought we made a really good game, and I didn't know what to expect from other developers. Really, we were just focusing on developing a really good experience for the player. We didn't expect this sort of reaction, but we're really happy about it.

IGN: How far along was the demo shown at the Nintendo Summit in Seattle last week?

Karthik: That was pretty much the finished game. We actually finished the game the day before the summit. I hopped on a plane with the finished build on Wednesday and the Summit was on Thursday.

IGN: Did you know you were going to demonstrate Spider-Man in front of the dozens of members of the gaming press?

Karthik: Yes, they called a few days earlier and had asked if we could demo the game at the Summit. We were very happy to do that, but we didn't know what other games were going to be shown. I was nervous as hell because I had no idea how people were going to take this, especially since we didn't know what other games were going to look and play like on the system, because it's been like radio silence with the Nintendo DS. Of course, now we know what the launch line up looks like.

IGN: So, after the presentation, what do you think the general reaction towards Spider-Man 2 was? I was pretty impressed, but what did you see from other people at the summit?

Karthik: It was really positive. People appreciated the fact that it was a new game, not a port or a rehash, that it was a fresh take on the license, and that it had a fresh look. People also appreciated the level of depth that's in the game. One editor said that games at the summit fell into two camps: either games were original but didn't have too much depth to their concept, or they were enhanced or tricked-out conversions of ideas that they've seen before, which is all cool...but he said that Spider-Man didn't fall into either of these categories. That's a nice feeling, because this was the hard road to take in development, but it was also the right thing to do to make a splash in the market.

IGN: Now try to remain as impartial as possible...how do you think your game stacked up against the rest of the titles shown at the Summit last week?

Karthik: I was actually pretty impressed with the rest of the line-up, to be honest. I didn't know what to expect, but there were some really good games and concepts there. It was hard for me to tell what games were finished, but as far as action games go, Spider-Man 2 definitely stacked up well. There was definitely a lot of variety, so it's tough to make a direct comparison. One thing is for sure though, the DS has a really great line up of titles for launch.

IGN: What about on a technical level?

Karthik: Well, yeah, take this with a grain of salt, of course, but on a technical level, Spider-Man 2 definitely seemed to shine. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Jorge: I think people were expecting to see a lot more intense use of the touch screen, because that's what everyone focused on with the E3 demos. Some of the previews I read mentioned that there were very good ideas, nothing spectacular, but that developers were starting to understand what the system can do and what we can do with it. A lot of the stuff I'm seeing is hit or miss. Some people might like it, others may not.

IGN: So, what do you think people are going to walk away thinking when playing Spider-Man 2.

Karthik: I'm hoping that people think that the DS is a very capable and compelling handheld device. Also, that the touch screen is meaningful - Spider-Man 2 uses it in a few key areas, the gameplay is not "touchscreen everywhere," the combat system relies on it, and we think we executed on it pretty well. And, of course, that they get a good, unique gaming experience and want to play more DS games.

IGN: What about people saying "Wow, look what developers can do in five months on the DS!"

Karthik: (laughs) I think talking with other developers at the Gamers Summit, they seem to be pretty impressed with what we did in five months. Luckily, our next projects have much larger schedules, and thanks to Spider-Man 2 we now have an established set of tools to pull from and build off of. So really, the pressure's on for the next round of DS games. In general, Nintendo has done a really good job with development tools so developers can do some great titles in a short period of time.

IGN: What was the toughest aspect of getting the game up and running in five months?

Jorge: There were just so many ideas on the table. I remember my first draft concept for the game had some really intense things, and we just didn't know what the system could do. When the first couple of touch screen activities were designed, we had some trouble playing them because they just didn't feel right. The thumb wouldn't register on the screen properly, for example, so we had to work around a lot of technical limitations. Thankfully those issues were resolved. Communication played a really important part of getting this project done. I think the reason we could do this game was because we work so well together at VV. We were all willing to make a really good title for the Nintendo DS. It was a crazy five months, but we did it!

IGN: So why Spider-Man? Why did Spider-Man end up being the first DS title out of Vicarious Visions?

Karthik: You mean because Tony Hawk Underground 2 DS for launch would be too predictable? (laughs) Seriously, THPS 2 GBA was a breakout title for VV, and it was something kind of unexpected by consumers. We really wanted to do something similar to that feeling, but at the same time a bit different for our DS launch title. Spider-Man was actually considered our big break-out title on the Game Boy Color. We also did Spider-Man: Mysterio's Menace on Game Boy Advance, which is still one of our favorite games. We wanted to take that to the next level. Activision has been a great partner, especially on launch platforms, because they've always given us the ball to run with it. Working on a launch title is really hard because there's so much variability, and we wanted a title that would get large visibility and a great partner to work with on such a crazy schedule...Spider-Man 2 seemed like a good fit for us.

IGN: Was it a pitch by you guys, or did Activision approach Vicarious Visions for a Spider-Man game?

Karthik: It was actually a pitch by us, as I recall. We were looking at whether we could do a Tony Hawk title in time for launch, or do something with Spider-Man, and internally we said, "Hey, Spider-Man's the one we want to go after." We went to Activision and said, "Okay, we've got an idea to bring Spider-Man 2 to the DS, but it's not what you think." And we pitched them the concept, showed them some concept AVI animatics of what we believed we could produce on the system. We kept our fingers crossed and people at Activision liked what they saw, believed in us and then let us loose on the system.

IGN: You deal with other publishers, too, so why Activision and not the others?

Karthik: I think we have good relationships with other publishers, but Activision was ready to go forward on the platform early on, much like Activision was with our Tony Hawk pro Skater 2 Game Boy Advance project. Keep in mind when we we proposed the idea to them, there was very little information on the DS, and nobody had hardware.

Jorge: A lot of publishers were concerned about price point, cost of ROMs, how the system would be received by the general public, so these companies weren't really willing to go into it as openly until they had more information. So I think the reason we went to Activision was because they trusted us and believed that we could do a good game.

Karthik: The business model, which is important to publishers, was not known at the time, so it was a high level of blind faith in Nintendo that things would work out. And what we had to go in with in our pitch was that, hey, this is going to cost more than GBA development, there's a whole lot of risk and a whole lot of uncertainty, we don't even know when the hardware's going to come out. We don't know if we're going to make money on this thing, or if we could quite hit the day. It really makes it difficult to place a bet really early on, but sometimes it can work out.

IGN: So now that you know all the answers, are you happy with them? Is this a good platform to develop as a studio's business model?

Karthik: I think it could potentially be very good. It's certainly more expensive to develop for, compared to GBA. I mean, you could potentially do GBA-like games and cheap out, but it's not taking advantage of the hardware. On the flipside, it's not as much to develop for as a console system, so that's a good thing. Hopefully what we'll see on the DS is selective, fewer titles, because we all remember that in the first few months of the GBA's life there were a TON of titles, and a lot of them weren't very good. That took away shelfspace from the good titles and made it very difficult for people to make money. What we're hopefully going to see is more innovation and more new ideas...and even new ideas on existing franchises.

Jorge: There's a lot of versatility to the hardware, with the two screens and its wireless multiplayer, stylus play. One of the best touchscreen ideas I've seen on the DS was Animal Crossing...I've played that on the GameCube, and you have to draw in places. And drawing is tough with the controller. So the hardware lends itself to some really great ideas. One of the biggest obstacles with us for creating multiplayer games for GBA was that it never felt like anyone was going to take advantage of the feature. I mean, you need two systems, two copies of the game, you needed to carry around a cable with you at all times, and you might not be in a place where you should have a cable sticking out of your system anyway.

Karthik: The install base for GBA link cables is small compared to the overall installed base of hardware, even with Pokemon. Pokemon players bought the cable, but the audience may not overlap all that much with the game you are creating for the system. Therefore, it's a small percentage of people playing multiplayer games on GBA. You end up compromising the multiplayer features because of it.

Jorge: Multiplayer is going to be a big deal on the DS, because it's just built right into the system. Pictochat right away gets you interested in linking with friends...

Karthik: And the Metroid demo is going to give people a taste of multiplayer gameplay on the handheld. And they're going to want more. That's going to be a big deal, because we can now go into a game proposal saying "We want to have wireless multiplayer." And there's going to be no question whether people are going to have the ability to play it or not.

IGN: But obviously Spider-Man 2 didn't end up with wireless play in time for launch. But what of the other DS features does the game utilize that you're particularly proud of?

Jorge: We're definitely proud of the game's look and the game's speed. It's a game that looks great and uses the touch screen for quick game mechanics that don't require the stylus. We knew from the start that we wanted to make a 3D game, but the other two features, wireless multiplayer and the microphone didn't really seem to work for the approval process. And with the amount of time we had with the game, we had to pick the right features and run with them.

Karthik: We're obviously proud that we made a great playing game that utilizes the DS' graphic capabilities. We're also proud that we chose, early on, to do this hybrid 2D/3D game design for Spider-Man 2. That was a high-risk choice, but we thought the payoff was there. The benefit to this design is the player doesn't need to manage a camera or use analog controls, which means we could strictly focus on the gameplay.

IGN: Were there any ideas you had during the development cycle that you thought you might have been able to implement if you had the time?

Jorge: There were a bunch of ideas. The team is very creative and in the period of a day while you're implementing a feature, two features are popping into your head. Like, wouldn't it be cool if Spider-Man could pick the car up and throw it, or tear it apart? We wanted to explore more things we could do with the touch screen, like radar or other in-game ideas. Once we got the game engine running it was difficult to keep the game running fast at the same time if we were doing other stuff on the additional screen.

Quelle: ds.ign.com
Link: http://ds.ign.com/articles/559/559957p1.html
 
Ist schon der Wahnsinn, was Viscarious Visions innerhalb von 5 Monaten mit "unbekannter" Hardware angestellt haben, was machen die erst wenn sie ein Jahr Zeit haben?! :o
 
Teil 2 des IGN Interviews ist online, wieder sehr intressant:

October 28, 2004 - The following is the continuation of our interview with Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance developer Vicarious Visions, the studio responsible for the dual-screen version of Spider-Man 2 due for release with the launch of the system on November 21st.

The questions were fielded by VV CEO, Karthik Bala, as well as Spider-Man 2's lead designer, Jorge Diaz. the first part of our interview can be found right here.

IGN: Did you guys have any ideas for the DS that you thought, "Great, but wouldn't the game still be good without them on a lesser system?"

Jorge: That's a great question. Yes, a lot of the ideas that we came up with are definitely possible on other systems, but they wouldn't execute as well on them. Sure, you can do a lot of stuff with the D-Pad, but when you're fighting Vulture and Mysterio and Doc Ock, and things are coming out at you, and you're touching the screen to fight back, you're kind of glad you have two thumbs. (laughs) Spider-Man 2 uses a lot of animation and moves for the main character and enemies, and moving to 3D gave us a lot more memory to store all the moves for everyone. Now you can swap textures, which is obviously something you can't do on GBA.

Karthik: Somebody at the conference asked: couldn't you have done this game with sprites on the GBA? And as I said, actually, no, because of the sheer number of animation frames in the game, the game wouldn't be nearly as smooth with all the turns and camera angles. There are 4000 key frames of animation, and we're doing interpolation between them. You can break out of one move and go into another, like web swinging and jumping out of it to web-zip to the ceiling, which I was trying to demonstrate that at the Summit. You get much faster response times this way. I think the combat experience becomes more fluid because we get a lot more "buttons" with the touch screen. That layout, or what we call the "Buffet of Moves" on the DS screen is really convenient.





IGN: Is there some sort of approval process, either by you guys, your publisher, or even Nintendo that says, "Yeah, great ideas, but why don't you just do the game on the GBA instead?"

Karthik: There's no regulation that we're aware of. It's more self-regulated, because you'll end up getting panned if the gamers ask "why is this on the DS?" If it doesn't take advantage of the system, gamers will know. Now that we understand what the system is capable of doing, we set the bar at a certain level internally, and our future titles need to go way above that. We're constantly asking ourselves things like: explain why this idea is important for the DS and why we couldn't do this elsewhere. That's a very critical design question.

Jorge: In a design atmosphere, you can always find different ways to represent the same effect in a different medium. We know how to take a console game and turn it into a GBA game or even a cellphone game, that's what we do. And we've been able to bring console elements on the GBA and make them work on less powerful hardware. When developing on the DS, we were constantly asking ourselves, "Why would you want to do this like that?" And to be honest, the answer always came back "It's going to make the game feel different. It's not going to be the same."

Karthik: I think there's value in interesting and unique gameplay. Yoshi's Touch and Go is a great example of that, where you're literally drawing "collision" on the screen and controlling the characters indirectly. That's a different kind of game, something you really couldn't do on GBA or whatever. There are a lot of ideas to be explored with the touch screen and "indirect" control. Chu Chu Rocket comes to mind.

Jorge: We looked at Internet flash games when coming up with ideas for the touch screen. Obviously the touch screen works like a mouse, so we were trying to explore what had been done there already. There was this one game we saw that had these balloons that you had to circle to get points which was amazingly addictive. Something like that would be much better with a touch screen. But we were limited with the amount of time we had with Spider-Man 2, so we're really looking forward to our future games to really get to work on these ideas we came up with.

GN: There has to be some limitations, though, as open as the system is. Did you run into any problems during Spider-Man 2's development cycle?

Karthik: I think maintaining the game's 60 frames per second was really challenging. It was an important goal to be able to hit that. You have to manage your level design and placement of enemies, optimize the code etc. Now that we understand the hardware better, there are a lot of things we learned that will make our next projects even better than Spider-Man 2. There are four megabytes of RAM on the DS, which is a huge step up from GBA, but it's still very limiting so we have to manage the memory carefully.

Jorge: You can break the game just like that. (snaps and laughs).

Karthik: I think it's really easy to reach certain problem areas during development, so you'll just have to work around problems as they come up.

Jorge: We tried to push the level of quality at all times, so it's really difficult when you want to add more polys or create certain graphical effects, but slows the game down. So we have to create workarounds that achieve the results we're looking for.

Karthik: It's funny, working within these restrictions is where true innovation comes from. You come up with this brilliant solution for a problem area. Like, for example, we needed to have a ton of animation for all the characters. We had to write a character animation compression engine and the hardware can't do "skinning," which allows you to do skeletal based 3D animation, so we had to come up with a software solution that's very fast and not taxing on the CPU. If you're doing a racing game, this wouldn't be necessary. You don't animate cars with "bones." We had to create something for our character-based games.

IGN: I noticed that many of the DS games had some load times. Is this a limitation of the DS? Why were there load times in a cartridge-based game?

Karthik: In Spider-Man 2, it was decompression. Load times are really fast, but we're compressing a lot of data and decompressing it in RAM. Streaming is an interesting area to explore with the DS in the future since it has to be done a much different way than the GBA. Load times are present in Spider-Man, but they're only a couple of seconds and not a big deal.

Jorge: Audio is an area we definitely want to improve on with our future projects. More sound clips that are streamed, for example. It's just something we didn't have a lot of time to work on. The sound and music player were coming together towards the end of the project, and we were debugging everything quickly. There wasn't a lot of time to go back and use any left over space to add some audio here or a video clip there.





IGN: Who's tools are you using for the sound and video?

Karthik: Shin'en supplied the music player and audio in the game. The folks at Cosmigo, who we've worked with in the past, worked with us on the video player. It was nice getting the video in there, with Spider-Man 2 being a movie-based title and all. Doing cut-scenes can really be cool in terms of a game's presentation, and it was definitely neat to see Metroid Prime Hunter's use of two screens for the same cut-scene.

Jorge: We like working with people who have been reliable in past projects, so it was great working with these guys again for our first DS game.

IGN: What were some of the "neat" ideas you came back from the Summit?

Karthik: Feel the Magic was just bizarre, but interesting from a design standpoint.

Jorge: I think Wario Ware is great because you get different types of events that you can use the touch screen with. There are a lot of great ideas, but I have yet to see one that stands out above all of them. Since there are so many different games, it's difficult to compare them to each other.

IGN: So when do you think we'll see something that supports the one untouched feature: WiFi connectivity?

Karthik: I think next year you'll start seeing it. It's certainly a "big thing" for the DS, and I think it's going to take some time for developers to do the backend work, the server stuff.

IGN: Do you think this is something Nintendo will be setting up, or is it something that Nintendo's going to hope developers and individual publishers will pull off on their own, a la GameCube Phantasy Star Online?

Jorge: I hope it wouldn't be up to us. Xbox Live is one of the saving graces of the system, and people are into the system because of Live. I would like to see Nintendo try something like it for the DS.

Karthik: Obviously Nintendo hasn't officially announced anything on it, so we're anxious to hear what they are doing with it. There's certainly more work involved in getting a game online. What they have done with the multiplayer wireless so far is really nice, and way better than what was done in the past. There were difficulties in multiplayer on past systems, but Nintendo's done a really nice job this time around.

IGN: Would it be possible for someone to rig up something that would turn existing multiplayer games on DS into WiFi, similar to how some programmers "tricked" the Xbox and Halo early on to play over the internet?

Karthik: I don't think so, since LAN and WiFi on the system are two different protocols. The local wireless play is great; Nintendo did a nice job since it doesn't require a lot of power. 802.11 on the other hand is a bit more power intensive, so I don't think it can easily be interchanged.

IGN: So when will be seeing the next DS game out of Vicarious Visions?

Karthik: Next year. We've already started on our second project, and there's more when people return from taking a break. We're pretty committed to the platform; we've got the tools at our disposal as well as some really exciting ideas. A lot of ideas, in fact, that were shelved during the Spider-Man 2 development. I think people will be happy with the Nintendo DS. There's a much stronger line-up of games than the GBA and a lot more exciting ideas for it.





IGN: Do you forsee a huge drop-off of development for the GBA in favor of the DS?

Karthik: Great question. People abandoned the GBC quite quickly when the GBA came out, probably because the price difference wasn't that much different. There's obviously a bigger price difference between GBA and Nintendo DS, and we're hoping they can both co-exist. We're continuing to develop for the GBA as well, and we will do that for as long as the platform sticks around. It'll benefit everyone if the platform sticks around.

Jorge: People were ready to move onto the next platform after Game Boy Color as well... (laughs)

Karthik: Yeah, the Game Boy Color wasn't that much different than the regular GameBoy. I mean, it was two megahertz instead of one. Hopefully GBA will stick around since there are still some great titles coming out for it. We'll see in six months!

IGN: What will be the sticking point for staying with the GBA?

Karthik: From what we're hearing, the GBA may skew younger, as older kids get the DS and hand their GBA to their younger siblings. Price point's going to be another big factor. The video cartridges will give owners another use for the GBA as well. Plus, the SP is still an awesome design. It's sleek, indestructible, and fits in any pocket, and I think that's an important factor.

Außerdem gibts neue Screens zu bewundern:

vicarious-visions-on-spider-man-2-part-ii-20041028041738299.jpg
vicarious-visions-on-spider-man-2-part-ii-20041028041738627.jpg
 
Lustig ist, das Sony daran mitverdient. Sind ja Rechteeigentümer vom Spidey :) Es sieht den Bildern nach aber sehr PSOne-mässig aus. Wird aber trotzdem Spass machen..
 
In bewegung schaut es besser aus, die Bilder schauen gräßlich aus.

/ajk
 
Ich bin von den Bildern positiv überrascht... hatte mir Spiderman 2 bisher nicht so genau angesehen. Hatte irgendwie schlimmeres im Gedächtnis.
 
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