Road Redemption was a crowdfunding success story back in Spring 2013, tapping into nostalgia for Road Rash and offering chaotic bike racing action. After some early stumbles it recovered to start out as an early access PC title in Fall 2014, though progress towards a final release since then has been a little slow.
Earlier this week it then looked like the Wii U version was rather doubtful, as the studio outlined its release plans for PC, Xbox and PS4 before posting the following in response to backers.
Hey guys, here is some clarification on Wii-U. Anyone who backed for Wii-U can definitely choose to receive a PS4 or Xbox One copy instead when those versions become available (or Steam version now). We have definitely not ruled out a Wii-U release, however due to the current complexity of the game and the weak hardware of the Wii-U, it will take a tremendous amount of optimization to make it happen. This would have to happen after PS4 and Xbox One versions are complete.
It seems that this message wasn't quite on point - the language certainly put the Wii U iteration in some doubt, if not ruling it out completely. Jason Tate from DarkSeas Games has now issued an update to Eurogamer which is more positive about an eventual Wii U version, even mentioning use of the GamePad for multiplayer.
What yesterday's communication meant to do was shed a little more light on our development process.
It's easier to optimise our PC version of Road Redemption for Xbox One and PS4. We benefit from each of those optimisations as we make further optimisations for Wii U. Our goal is to for Wii U owners to have the exact same experience as their PS4 and Xbox One brethren.
That is all we were trying to say, and I apologise if it came off as unclear, curt or offensive to Wii U owners.
We are still actively pursuing Wii U development, and we're very excited to take advantage of the second screen for a splitscreen-free local multiplayer experience.
It does seem to be a case of miscommunication, though a number of unhappy Kickstarter backers - not keen to switch their chosen platform from Wii U - may have prompted a rethink for the developer.
In any case it seems to be on track once again for Wii U, albeit we have a wait on our hands.
[source eurogamer.net]
Comments 42
Yeah... the first statement definitely was not well worded to appease Wii U owners. It surprises me when people (and even more so companies) put out poorly worded statements. It isn't like a speech where they can't hit backspace — all it takes is a few rereads before you publish your statement.
The outrage is kind of justified when they've taken forever to keep people in the loop, especially where the WiiU version is concerned.
Pelikan13 is just as bad with his updates on The 90's Racer. Both games were promised to be out around 2 years ago and yet here we all are, still waiting.
Well, that makes me happy. I look forward to playing this! On my Wii U! Here's hoping it'll be a good game for that matter.
Well they already gave me a Steam code instead of a Wii U version and they probably lost me as a customer even if it does come to Wii U
It's amazing how much of a far cry both statements are to each other. The first says "your console is weak", while the other considers PS4 and Xbox One users "brethren". This situation is frighteningly evocative of how much the "wars" in "console wars" is taken seriously - publishers and execs are the ones fighting, whereas the players are like civilians who want to think of other console users as their own siblings.
I hope this is the truth, and not just a reaction to negative backlash.
Wii U owners have been strung along with false promises and fading commitments from too many developers over the last four years.
Oh please!! They are doing exactly the same thing others did.
Slightly Mad kept saying the same thing about Project Cars up until the very last minute. They kept telling us "how beautiful" the game was shaping up on the Wii U. What hog waste.
This is just the political way to go about it.
Meh, I've seen this before....
Project Cars for Wii U, anyone?
What I don't get, is that if these guys know they'll face problems when porting the game to Wii U, why even make it an option?
Yes again, as others have stated, many times in many threads. WTF is 90's Arcade Racer!?
I did wind up biting the bullet and bought a PS4 last October just for certain racing games that the Wii U is lacking in. But I will purchase any racing game on the Wii U before any other system if it comes out and is good (sonic racing transformed was one I purchased on the Wii U instead of PS3).
@RobNYC1977
@Luna_110
Cause they want that moolah.
Once they're swimming in cash, then the backtracking begins.
They're like politicians- they'll tell you whatever you want to hear to get your money/vote. But once they have it all those promises start falling by the wayside...
Riiiight. I feel another project cars situation coming on. Either put up or shut up. If they put the game on wiiu I'll buy it, but if they start backtracking they can go on the blacklist with slightly mad studios.
Let's be honest. This is a PS2 quality game. It isn't an optimization problem, and if it is, your team is freaking terrible! Must be the sloppiest code in history.
This is an issue of you guys not knowing how to program for dedicated console hardware, and pretending you were something more than lightweight PC developers that used a pre built engine made for PCs. The only reason you are releasing to PS4 and Xbox One, is because you lucked into a console generation with hardware indenticle to PC hardware that runs the same prebuilt PC software engines. You guys don't know how to write a game and engine from scratch for any console specific hardware. You are probably trying to get your bulky Unity mess onto the Wii U as is, or by running it through some auto optimizations.
Do the work and write the game from scratch.
At least Project CARS was a HUGE and beautiful game. They were losers as well for backing out on a Wii U version, but at least their excuse seems a little more valid in light of this decidedly arcadey download-only game that should run on just about any hardware available.
@RobNYC1977 90's Arcade Racer is for all intent and purposes a love letter to Daytona USA from the Sega Dreamcast:
@TheRealThanos
And I do <3 me some Daytona from Sega. (actually Nashcar: Unleashed is very Daytona too, but this game is a different nuance of the genre I feel.
Cool. Can't put Shovel Knight in there and then don't bring it to Wii U anyway.
@RobNYC1977 How so? The cars and tracks are clearly "Daytona-ish" and he mixed it up with a little Virtua Racing, hence also a Formula One car, and the first car that you see in the video is from the old Sega rally. The music is also inspired by Daytona.
Just look up some interviews with the creator of this game, Pelikan13. He has actually said it himself as well. It is a mix of all the classic arcade/console racers with a Daytona look and feel. That is probably also the reason why some of us are really waiting for this game to arrive...
Well well. As long as they're gunning for it.
I know the Profiler, a tool in later versions of Unity, has helped us at Moped Games a lot with optimization, so maybe it's do the same for DarkSeas.
@TheRealThanos
I'll butt in here and say that the guys with Project Cars had no more technical reasoning for not making due on their promise of a Wii U version than these guys do.
It's the same case of not having made sure during development that some assets and systems are kept in the ballpark of what is reasonable for the target hardware.
@Pod Perhaps you misunderstood and reading back my own comment, I should also have elaborated.
What I said stands, though. Because Project CARS is around ten times more complex in physics, vehicle handling and environmental rendering (real weather among them) in comparison to this simple arcade type game, so yes, there DEFINITELY was more validity to their statement, even though they are still first class A-holes for going back on their promise.
@Pod To add to that, Project CARS' development was largely influenced by its community, whereas Road Redemption was made with no such interference.
The community of Project CARS demanded a level of realism and option sets that the Wii U simply wasn't capable of. Even the Xbox One and PS4 versions of that game aren't entirely up to scratch and had to suffer some frame rate dips and resolution downgrades in comparison to the considerably more polished PC version.
I have a PS4 and Wii U. If they cancel the U version I wont buy either, just like Project CARS.
Stop being a mouthful and biting off more than you can chew.
Looks pretty decent actually! I'll probably getting the Xbox One version if any.
Bad news is this won't come out on Wii U. Either they're lying about the Wii U version or by the time they get around to it the Wii U will be dead anyway as its on its way out.
Good news - it looks dreadful. We can all just stick with Drive Club Bikes or indeed Road Rash 2 on the Megadrive.
@jbopatrick
You want them to put in the most effort for the machine with the smallest userbase and shortest future? Never going to happen.
@jbopatrick @electrolite77 Who can even blame them now? But they should've never promised it in the first place.
The game doesn't look that good indeed, but it gets good reviews on Steam though and userreviews there can get pretty harsh sometimes.
Sometimes I think if companies were just honest without being rude or insulting in the first place, most of these things wouldn't happen. There would be a small minority of drama queens that would make some noise online, but most of us would just accept it and move on.
It does look super fun! I would definitely get this for Wii U if a decent port gets released. I think the poor shadows and lighting make the game look less polished, but I am still very interested in this.
@TheRealThanos Slightly Mad's excuse wasn't valid. There were 3 reasons for no Wii U edition:
1) Sales would not cover development costs
2) Dev team had a huge job on their hands fixing and updating Project Cars on other platforms
3) Project Cars 2 was in development.
Slightly Mad would not admit their resources were tied up elsewhere. Otherwise Wii U backers could rightfully claim back their money.
If Wii U was a success story Project Card would've arrived in 720p60 with alot of the next gen features intact, bar the more demanding effects which could of course be faked...
@liveswired No offense, but you misunderstood: I said they had MORE validity to their claim that the game in its latest version wouldn't run on Wii U, whereas Road Redemption has no such complexity and as such should be perfectly able to run on the Wii U. There's even an Xbox 360 version, so that says enough.
And besides, this whole article has been somewhat nullified by the latest article concerning this title, in which the developers seem to be doing some backpedaling to calm down the angry mob:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/04/road_redemption_developer_says_its_still_actively_pursuing_wii_u_development
@liveswired And as for Project CARS: if the Wii U would have been wildly successful, they might have saved their earlier version especially for it, but the current version with the advanced tire model would DEFINITELY not have been able to run on the Wii U's hardware. It's way too CPU intensive. You can see the other two consoles struggle at times with all these things, and then there's the dynamic weather and all that.
I was fortunate enough to have been able to try the game out because a colleague of mine was one of the beta testers/early adopters on PC, and even in the earlier stages I was wondering how this was going to translate to consoles.
As a console gamer primarily, I was glad that they announced this game was coming to consoles and to Wii U especially, but I let my enthusiasm cloud my common sense because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew there would always have to be quite a few concessions made to get this to run on any non-expandable hardware, which (obviously) is what a console is.
So even though I was angry and disappointed, I wasn't completely surprised that the Wii U version got cancelled, and besides that I wasn't really impressed with the Xbox One and PS4 versions, especially after having played the PC version, which looks and feels MILES better.
Haven't bought it, though. I wanted this on a console and I'm not a dedicated PC gamer, so I passed on the first game. Maybe I'll give the second one a chance, but I'll wait and see what they'll be able get out of consoles with that one...
@TheRealThanos
I get the part where the game is a lot more complex, and the textures and effects take up a lot more graphics memory.
Ten times the complexity of Road Redemption is probably stretching the truth, but I'm with you.
Naturally, on part of Project Cars, it was never a promise to any paying contributors that it would hit Wii U, so they really didn't owe anyone anything in that regard.
Would the game be possible on Wii U if they really felt like doing it? Absolutely, but not having built the game in Unity or ground up for the Wii U really means a LOT of work would have to go into it, and nobody really expects that of the devs.
@Pod Well, maybe not ten, but compared to Road Redemption at the very least 5 times, and that is no exaggeration. Also, the complexity was not so much in the graphics department; these have been scaled down on the other consoles as well. The complexity was in physics, car handling, tire model (highly advanced suspension physics and "tire to road" behavior) and real time weather conditions. A lot to take in for an enclosed box, especially for the Wii U, since the game itself is quite CPU heavy. To get the most out of it on PC, you need a high end machine, which is far, FAR superior to any console on the market right now.
(I'm no PC elitist, mind you, but those are the technical facts)
Most videos that you may have seen from it, are from the PC version and it clearly shows that it was already a very ambitious game to port to consoles to begin with, which is why I honestly think they should have just stayed on PC instead.
To illustrate my point, here's a PC vs console comparison video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZfCkRvhkg0
And this is a video from an early build (2013), already looking miles better than the final console editions, and later versions only got more and more advanced both in physics and in graphics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6j9pFdNeqE
In the description of the video you can see what kind of hardware that's running on.
So, in closing: No, the final version of this game would DEFINITELY not have been able on Wii U, considering the struggles that the other two consoles already have maintaining a steady frame rate and so on.
Only the older build (before they switched to the more advanced SETA tire model) could have worked on the Wii U, but I suppose they simply deleted/replaced that for the version that was ultimately released.
@TheRealThanos
I very much doubt that the physics simulations on their own are so advanced that they wouldn't be able to run on the Wii U, and that if they were, whether it's really a question of necessity or just possibility that has taken them there, but I'll take your word on it.
In the end I am still quite unsure what they managed to really achieve with that game, but then I am not a car enthusiast.
My point in the first place remains the same, however. You never have much of a technical excuse to not release a game on a platform you say you will release it for, as it has always been the case that there are disparities between versions. As you say yourself, the excuse is usually a question of money, which is of course still completely legit.
@Pod If you're not into it and have no idea what kind of data goes into such features, then I can understand that it is more difficult to get this message across.
I understand the whole technical part of it to a certain point, and having seen the calculations and the hardware they were done on, I honestly doubt if the Wii U could have handled it.
The physics engine combined with the SETA tire model (and you can't separate the two, since they are intertwined and rely upon each other) is quite extensive and would have to be seriously compromised to squeeze it onto the Wii U. Not to mention dumbed down quite a bit. If you take into account that the demo I linked to needed a PC that runs rings around a PS4, it isn't all that difficult to understand that in its current form it really wouldn't have been possible to shoehorn that into the Wii U, with only around a quarter of the horsepower needed available.
As to the reason of it, it was indeed necessity: they wanted to make the racing sim to end all racing sims and have the most accurate car handling to date, a goal they have largely achieved (not completely, but that is another story) and the community has been quite active and vocal as to what they wanted to see in this racing sim, so they demanded that high level of realism.
I could go into detail, but I understand it's not your thing, so I won't bore you with that part.
As you will probably understand by now, I myself am indeed a racing enthusiast, so I'm always looking into things like this and I was hoping for this game to arrive on consoles in its original form, but from having played and followed the PC beta development, it became clear to me pretty soon after the official console announcements that it was either going to be a hell of a difficult job or something entirely impossible. I was still stoked back then and convinced they could somehow succeed, but like I said the Xbox One and PS4 versions aren't even entirely up to par, so to me the console version has failed and doesn't really offer a whole lot more than Forza or Gran Turismo, games they wanted to beat on the two respective platforms.
On PC they did deliver, but sales have been somewhat modest, because this is a really deep and extensive sim that is truly only for the purists. There's even a couple of professional racers that use Project CARS in a simulated environment to train in between seasons:
http://www.isrtv.com/project-cars/pro-driver-testimonials/
http://www.autoevolution.com/news/le-mans-racer-training-with-project-cars-for-real-event-video-90756.html
So that should tell you something on what they achieved with it. If it was a lousy sim, then these well known race drivers wouldn't be using it. The developers also used them for feedback during development, which is documented on the Slightly Mad website.
And you can always look up PC reviews on YouTube. It scores quite high with racing fanatics, which is yet another reason why it is such a shame that it didn't translate too well to consoles...
@TheRealThanos
That's all very interesting. The graphical side doesn't really interest me, as I am a visual designer and not as such a technician in the field, but the physics and interaction I'd want to know more about. If the aim really was to do a high-profile simulation of physical cars, more so than an interesting visual side, then I get how you'd run into a lot of calculation situations where numbers would run wild.
@Pod Well, maybe this will be an interesting read for you as well, then:
All the details about the advanced SETA tire model used in the game.
http://www.wmdportal.com/projectnews/inside-project-cars-seta-tire-model/
@TheRealThanos
Very interesting. Though I don't really get much of an impression of how many floating point operations per second this actually adds to processing.
How many updates per second are the three simulations run at?
@Pod I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to tell you that. This is about as far as my knowledge on the topic of Project CARS goes, but if you go to the site you could search the forum for more answers.
What I do know, is that to run the full game on your PC, you need a heavy gaming rig with considerably high specs, which you can see if you check the specs underneath YouTube vids with maxed out settings. None of the current consoles can match those.
Other than that, all I know is that it was all very advanced and revolutionary back then and that was also one of the reasons why all the race drivers that they used were so enthusiastic about it.
@Pod Here ya go:
http://www.wmdportal.com/ - main site
http://forum.wmdportal.com/forumdisplay.php?23-C.A.R.S. - game forum
Hope you find what you're looking for.
@TheRealThanos
Thanks a bunch, I'll read up on it.
@TheRealThanos lol. No offence taken. Yeah, I believe the angry mob forced the backtrack...
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