Rumour: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth May Be Coming to Wii U After All

Day one buy. I've already sunk fifty hous into it.

I got the N3DS version of Rebirth so hopefully they will manage to port it also to handheld but if not then WiiU for sure.

Btw, if you already have the WiiU version, will the Afterbirth be distributed as a DLC, or separate game?

Well we won't be seeing it here in Australia, so I'll stick with pirating it.

Would be nice if NZ and AUS got rebirth anytime soon...

So someone finally taught those incompetent morons how to port a Newgrounds flash game to the Wii U? I guess we can stop claiming that the Wii U is "not much more powerful than a PS Vita".

@Vandy lol was hoping someone would say this doubt he'd apologize to the user base.

@Vandy I always thought that was a cop out. Maybe the game is unbelievably complex under the hood, but I found it hard to believe we could have a game like Smash 4 running fine, but somehow Isaac couldn't.

Now I regret buying it on the New 3DS if they can't release the expansion on it.

The developers cant' handle such a game? How can a Game like Bayonetta, Sm4sh, Xenoblade X, MK8 etc. work so fine on the Wii U (which are MUCH MORE IMPRESSIVE than the binding of Isaac) but this game can't?
How does that even make sense?

Still waiting for Cave Story 3D in Europe to the eShop as a digital title. The game has page there for a few years already, but not available for download.

The comments before make it an easy no for me (and I buy almost everything). To put it mildly.

Anyway, as an owner of all 3 systems, I can't say Isaac is anything given special placement on any of the online stores.

Two words: Hell Yeah!

@ChromXsome You cant compare the two. 2D games can be way more system taxing than everything else actually. Dont jusge a book by it cover. Think about it, next gen consoles can run The Witcher 3 at a very respectable graphical fidelity but had to gimp minecraft.

With Isaac, its the sheer number of entities on screen that can even kill the game on PC. Every single shot on screen has velocity, higth, width and animations, several enemys and gibs on screen, layers upon layers of Isaac sprites (every item its basically one more sprite on screen)`etc.

An example that killed the PC version:
Afterbirth introduced Greed mode. A single arena room mode, where you fight of several waves of enemys. Every wave of enemys counts as a "cleared room", thus adding to the charge of your active item.
The new character Lilith relys on familiars and starts with an items that doubles them for the duration of the room.
Pre patch, the item needed two charges. So every odd numbered room (or more often, depending on your other items) you doubled your familiar count. This became so ridiculous, that the PC version outright crashed because it couldnt handle it anymore. Basically, it ran out of memory. And there is nothing you can do about it than to gimp the item (which they did by doubling its cost to 4 charges)

For a console, especally the 3DS and WiiU, those limitations are even stricter. So either you gimp the game or you say "well, it isnt going to work the intendet way"

Again, dont judge a book by its cover. Just because it uses 2D sprites instead of 3D models doesnt mean its less hard to run for the hardware in question.It would actually be easier if it was in 3D, since you could just change parts of Isaacs model instead of layering sprites ad infinitum.

@Einherjar
okay... thanks for your detailed explanation. never thought of that actually.

Now, let's see if Afterbirth will actually come to the Wii U.
I doubt that it would on New 3DS, but Wii U could surely be possible.

@Einherjar "Every single shot on screen has velocity, higth, width and animations"......I'm not getting involved in the debate here, I just saw higth and started chuckling.I wish that was a word!! =)

@ULTRA-64 I write it into my naughty book of spelling errors. I havent slept all week, i blame that

@ChromXsome Lets wait and see. Maybe they are able to mess with the game that they can make up some room for stuff like Liliths familiar circus.
Disable background animations, fog, overlays etc when a certain limit is reached, idk.

Yes, yes I would buy it day one.

I've never played this before, but tempted to get it on 3DS... would you guys say it's worth getting anyway, even without the DLC?

@Einherjar: I'm not an expert but I think it's not that much about the amount of sprites on screen and their amount of variables but the amount of algorithms that are connected to the sprites. I study game engine programming and I made a little map editor which you can use to make isometric maps like in Final Fantasy Tactics. My laptop ain't the best around and it can easily render 50x50x50 maps (125.000 sprites on screen) and even rotate it with no hiccups. My rotation simply takes the texture of the sprite and moves it to its new place which it does to every single block. I can make up to 150x150x150 maps (3.375.000) before the vector says it can't hold more. Those maps can still be rendered and edited but rotation which is my most demanding method takes up to a minute. I haven't optimized rendering yet so all the sprites are always rendered even if they don't fit on the screen. The tile sprites I use have position, scale, rotation, texture, type, among some other variables.

Now in case of Binding of Isaac. You clearly never have as many sprites (it would be fun trying to dodge all the enemies ) but the enemies have their pathfinding algorithms, all the objects have collisions, etc. I'd think collisions are one of the biggest jobs for the game to calculate (not sure since I have never actually played BoI and I don't know what methods they use). In small games you can have a collision check with just the player and the amount of collision possibilities is the same as the amount of objects that can collide on screen. This would quickly become too big of a number so there are many ways to optimize collision checks. Even with small amount of stuff on screen you can drop collisions checks to 10% or so (just put some kind of percent since it really depends on situation). BoI has to check if a tear hits an enemy or wall, if enemy hits you or something else, if your item hits something (bomb to wall), etc, These checks have to be done pretty much on every frame in order to avoid miscalculations. I don't know how precise the hitboxes are. It's very easy to check if something collides when the hitbox is just a box and it doesn't demand as much but when you go to something like pixel-to-pixel precision, it's a much bigger cost.

This comment wasn't necessarily pointed towards @Einherjar. I mainly wanted to demonstrate that you can't really see the whole truth when it comes to games. Games like Super Smash Bros. don't have that much going on when you dig deeper. If you take amount of collisions for example, you mainly have max. 8 characters, some items, and the stage itself.

@Einherjar Seems to me they don't make efficient use of the available memory if it fills up like that. If it is because of the amount of different layers stacked on each other, then they should come up with a more efficient way to overlap sprites than by just adding layers.
There are hundreds of bullet hell shmups with a crazy amount of entities onscreen, that run perfectly fine on older hardware, like Ikaruga on GameCube, so it must be possible for capable programmers.

I think you need to talk about development team size and programming lanuage used and how much time was spent on optimisations.

@Snader I think @Late put it in better words than i ever could.
Its not only the sprites themselves, but also all the background work.
Thats what i meant with bullets having velocity, height (happy @ULTRA-64 ? ), size, color and several other effects.
Say you end up with an army of familiars that copy your shot type.
Your shot type is homing + spash damage + explosions on impact and the sprites for it vary in sice depending on distance traveled. Also, they are shot at a high arch.

For every shot, there is a calculation for velocity (which takes into account where, how and if you moved while shooting), its height and width changing, thus needing to change the hitbox constantly, enemy detection due to homing capabilities, a colision detection for every bullet on screen to calculate splash damage and a velocity calculation for what to send flying where and when due to explosions. And that for every bullet on rapid fire. Not to bring status effects into the mix.

For bullet hell type games, its a lot easier. There, shots dont change and have mainly one property: If in contact with the player = the player dies. Plus maybe a simple predetermined movement pattern.

As for sprite layering, well, one of the games main gimmics is, that every item you pick up is visible on Isaac at the same time, with certain items overruling others.
The game features so many items, that creating a sprite for every possible combination would simply be impossible. The MegaMan X games did the same thing for their armor system btw. Only when you had the full set of armor, the game used a new single sprite for it. Everything else was layered. They could disable it completely, but imo, that would get rid of one of the most fun things about the game.

Well I got it for the 3DS so I'd prefer it there honestly.

I'll get it, it's a great game even if the devs program lazy.

make it happen!!
WiiU FTW!

Might get it if you can enable and disable the expansion on the fly. I've heard some bad things about it on PC and I haven't even beaten all the bosses in vanilla.
Also, great discussions by @Einherjar and @Late. The dev was kind of a dick to people but systems based games like BoI, Minecraft, and to an extent Fallout tend to be more intensive than highly scripted ones like Smash and Bayonetta.

Graphics alone do not signify how system intensive something is. Supercomputers actually often have weak or nonexistent graphics cards because they often times aren't needed for intensive calculations.

@Einherjar no I'm not happy, we shoud use the new word now you've invented it!! We should be looking down from our higth horses on the masses.......

@ULTRA-64 Youre a freaking Goomba

I'll buy this on day one even though I know it will be unfinished and buggy.

Definitely!!

@Moon

Yes.

The version released on the New 3DS is Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, which is an expansion/remake of the original. There is a ton of content to see in BOI Rebirth alone and you can play it for hundreds of hours.

It's one of only two New 3DS exclusive games, so I'd say if you have a New 3DS (and don't mind the filthy content), get Isaac.

Oh, and I'll probably get Afterbirth for Wii U if it does end up coming to the system.

I haven't gotten the main game yet as i would prefer it on Wii U but i want Afterbirth too. This makes me buying the game far more likely.

I got the 3DS version so I am really hoping it'll come there as well if this rumor is true. I can't see them not doing it tho. It seems to me like common sense to add it there too. Also, I have enjoyed this game very much, it's so fun!

@UboaNoticedYou The best examples regarding "Graphics =/= Hardware hunger" is and will always be Dwarf Fortress.
The game does not even have graphics and its can literally melt your CPU if it runs long enough without crashing.

In regards to afterbirth: I personally love it.
Greed mode is a fun timewaster that is even more "pick up and play" in nature than the rest of the game. There are a lot of new and fun Items and combinations and the new Rooms (L shapes for instance) give it a lit more variety.

But you cant disable it. The only time i can remember an add-on that could be disabled that also just added stuff was XCOM-Enemy WIthin.
For Isaac, it just adds a lot of stuff. As for people saying it makes the game harder, thats a clear yes/no.
Sure, certain aspects get harder, but others can get way easier. Its a rogue like. It all depends on a dice roll pretty much. Overall, it stays the luck dependand, unfair mess it is

@Vbreeezey @shaneoh You can make a UK NNID and change the region to UK and buy it from that shop. I'm in NZ and that's how I got it.

@Einherjar Why do other games with similar graphical fidelity and complexity (such as Mario Maker) run smoothly even when there's tons of action happening on screen?

@stipey I use the eshop cards from EB games. Would that still work

@donniedarkenson Mario Maker is really no contest. Level geometry is static, enemy AI is as basic as it can get, hit detection is straight forward, physics mechanics are fixed and non variable.
And it has nothing to do with poor optimization really. Actually, the game runs extremely well. But it bloats up memory data with certain playstyles.
The best example would be Minecraft really, as it suffers from similar problems. On the outside, the game looks as basic as it can get, and played in short bursts, there shouldnt be any problems.
But if you build to much complicated stuff, like tons of Redstone automations (or mods), load to many chunks, traverse too quickly etc the game might run out of memory, because every thing you see ingame, every block or every sprite in Isaac isnt just graphics, but an instance with severa hundret things that need to be checked at the same time.

Lets compare placing a block in Mario Maker and Minecraft.
In Mario Maker, you have a very limited amount of assets. The game checks for the X/Y coordinates you place the block in and assigns the item ID to it. And for most blocks, thats actually it.
A solid ground block for instance has nothing more to do than being solid from every angle. A brick is solid from sides and cheks Marios status when hit from underneath and plays the proper animation (breaking and erasing or bopping).
When you place a block of Dirt in Minecraft, the most basic block, it has X/Y and Z coordinates, it has to check for the tool the player uses to remove it, needs to change from grassy to tilled when a hoe is used and than constantly check for water, crops, water levels, crop growth, sunlight etc.
It has to check every side constantly for surrounding blicks, block updates etc because unlike Mario Maker, it isnt static once build and running.

And thats the key point here: Mechanics that arent static are more complex.
In both, Isaac and Minecraft, there is a sheer endless way of configuring things. Isaac has insane amounts of shot modifiers that the game needs to check and calculate, Minecraft blocks all have various instances and states they can be in, they have to check for lighting etc while in Mario Maker everything you can use has a very limited and basic amount of static functions.

@Vbreeezey I don't think so

Tyrone can be such a troll. Either way, if it comes, it'll shut up all of those negative people who claimed it couldn't work on Wii U anyway. Actually, no, it won't because nothing will.

Cool. I'll buy it. I put an unbelievable amount of time into the regular Wii U version.

@stipey
I'm a cash guy, so ordering from overseas is off the books. Had a prepaid card once, and the fees they charged were astronomical and not worth it.

@stipey how much did it end up costing using visa/ whatever you used?

I would buy both in a heartbeat. I love Binding of Issac on Wii U AND N3DS so far, the option to play on the bus combined with the glorious visual of feces on the big screen is just too tempting. That said, I've got like, an hour or so on the PC version. It's fun, I just don't find myself playing it on that platform much. It seems like kinda of a weird fit. Here's hoping Afterbirth can catch the Nintendo fans up with some DLC, eh?