All-Star Fruit Racing Has No Online Multiplayer On Switch And It's Unreal Engine 4's Fault

Such Switch.

Much port begging.

Wow

And yes, Nintendo players are B-series players. It's been a fact for 20 years now.

N64 proved it.
Gamecube proved it.
Wii proved it.
WiiU proved it.
Switch is still proving it.

i'll wait for a review... this does not look appealing.

...How did they not know if people will want online multiplayer or not?
I think they wasted money on the Switch port. It's the one platform with Mario Kart. At least A Hat in Time dev had enough sense not to try to push their hat-based platforming shenanigans where Mario beat them to the punch.

Excuses excuses, very bad excuses. I know they're an indie dev, but they clearly need some PR training. I'm sure EPIC has hundreds of indie devs using UE4 and wanting to do online, I bet that have an entire department for dealing with them.

And no money was wasted on buying this game.

Are people really disappointed by this?
They mentioned it themselves, they can't beat Mario Kart.

@Menchi187 Xbox and PS are the B-series, PC is the master race. They're the dregs that play Call of Duty with controllers and say there's no difference between 60 and 30 FPS (or that 30 is more "cinematic", whatever that is supposed to mean). Going down to console from PC when I was testing a multiplat was always painful.

Nintendo is the oddball that does its own thing and has been "dying" at least since the SNES era. It's fun to read aol posts from the 90s, they're very much like yours. Can't wait for Atari Lynx to slay GameBoy! Oh wait.

Also no one really wants this on Switch. People got excited for it at a con, but after they went home they went back to playing Mario Kart instead.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe all the way...

Eh, is the lack of content going to be reflected in the price? I don't want to hear that this is as expensive as other versions. But yeah who cares, Mario Kart.

@SmaggTheSmug Just because I'm pedantic, the reason they might say that is because all movies are projected at 24fps, so strictly speaking it is closer to what you'd see in a cinema. No beef though, I have a Switch, PC and a couple of Xbones <3

@SmaggTheSmug Everyone is B-class compared to the PCMR

Although this sucks, I cant help but feel bad for the developers in the long run.

@Jacob1092 That was actually an excuse by devs I believe from Order 1886. Same as letterboxing the top and bottom of the screen. The true reason was that Sony wanted them to pump out the graphics as much as possible since that game was supposed to be a showcase. The result was that letterboxing was needed to render less and that the game couldn't run above 30FPS. Also had a shoehorned in part which used the PS4 trackpad everyone quickly forgot about. But yeah, "cinematic".
Now you have games looking much better and running at 60 on PC compared to consoles. Just look at Shadow of War and how ugly and sluggish that game is compared to Steam/Windows Store version...

Their apology and explanation was way more detailed and real than we’ve heard from a developer in a long long time. And for that I do appreciate the effort.

2018: 100% graphics, 0% gameplay/functionnalities

No amount of explanation will make the audience care about why a feature is NOT present.

But if it makes them feel better to vent about this, then I gues they can. It's just a shame that this is "their story" now. I mean, this is the first time I hear about this game.

I don't play online, so if they had told the story that they focused on local, I'd be happy. Them spending time on online AND talking about not getting it to work means I now don't know what to expect at all.

Alright fine. But that doesn't mean we'll obviously let the Unreal engine folks get away with it. People should raise a voice and talk to them about it. Maybe some action will be tak- oh who am I kidding. This is 2018. Who'll listen 😒

@SmaggTheSmug @Jacob1092 It's also a really bad excuse. A game running at 30FPS will look far more jittery than a film at 24FPS, because the films are rendered with blur to make 24FPS look smooth. No such luck with games - 30FPS on super crisp visuals is super noticeable to me, borderline unplayable at times.

EDIT: And regardless of the reasoning... it's still on the Dev. They're the one that chose the tool set/development framework. They likely would have been better off skipping Switch entirely because their current development framework doesn't support Switch, and revisit the topic for their next game.

@Swoltacular didn't take long to get some Muppet call developers lazy

something doesn’t make sense here. they don’t really give a reason why except “no switch ue4 titles use the net”. ue4 definitely has network support for the switch, it’s a full featured platform as per epic. also given their first blurb, about having to write in the multiplayer support after launch, this means they screwed up. you always always always start with multiplayer when writing an unreal game. if not, you end up in a situation where it’s “rewrite all the things” because now you have to make all your functions call the server instead of the local client. this sounds like their screw up and not epics. also if fortnite rumors are true then it has network support

@roadrunner343 except their engine of choice does support network on the switch: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/launch-your-game-on-the-nintendo-switch-with-unreal-engine-4-16

“After launching early support for Nintendo Switch development in February’s Unreal Engine 4.15 release, Epic is proud to announce fully-featured native support for the popular platform in Unreal Engine 4.16.”

Think they made the right call here. If your not certain your online multi player can't for whatever reason compare to mk then you're sure to lose. Willl judge this game on the single player when it comes out

@tekknik I would assume the developers know more about the engine than I do. A marketing page stating it "Supports" something is not the same as the specific version of UE the devs are using supporting the specific features they need. I'm not a game dev, so I can't really speak too much more intelligently than that =)

Regardless, I don't think that changes either of our points. My opinion is the blame still falls on the developer, as it's their job to ensure the use the best tool for the job, and they have the resources on hand that know how to take advantage of those tools.

I wouldn't play this instead of Mario Kart anyway

@SmaggTheSmug @roadrunner343 Don't get me wrong, I'd never say 30fps was ever better than 60 I think anyone who'd make the excuse that 30fps is better is either doing so out of ignorance or tribalism. 60fps is just better. Not totally necessary, but definitely better. At least for me anyway.

They went about this all wrong, they should have handled it how Ntineod would have handled it - it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Dear parents, worried about your kids playing online with scary strangers? Had enough of your kids in the back of the car complaining because their online Switch game doens't have online in the car? Well do we have the game for you. No Wi-Fi to worry about. No strangers talking to your kids. No voice chat. No text chat. No using up your phones data to create a Wi-Fi hotspot so your kids can play Switch games. All Star Fruit Racing the 100% offline safe-for-kids and your sanity racing game. Buy it now!!!!

It's called spin. And while the above may be drowning in my usual NY sarcasm, it's pretty much word for word whatever Ntinedo says when they put out a Switch game without online support or voice chat.

Sell it cheap, aim it and kids and kids parents. Know your market.

Honestly, why even port it if they are going to (accurately in my opinion) admit they don't stand a chance against Mario Kart?

Frankly I am sick of this mentality from developers. Like @Menchi187 said, developers see Nintendo players are second class gamers. B-tier players, whatever you want to call it, less important.

Maybe they should try to make a product that can actually compete instead of whining that they'd lose out to a first party title.

@Heavyarms55 I'd blame Nintendo to be honest. Every platform I listed has been hamstrung by Nintendo's design choices that impede developers. Everyone always shouts "Nintendo is different and trying to innovate" which means nothing at the end of the day if the cost of "innovation" is no games, no support or lackluster support.

I'm pretty sure Crazy Justice is the first game to use UE4 and have online multiplayer on the Switch. Not out yet though.

@Menchi187 I am frankly sick of the "no games, no support" argument. Nintendo doesn't need to be like the other platforms and share 90% of the exact same library of games. At this point PS4 and Xbone are basically the same product.

Wii U is the only system you can legit call out for lack of games. A system that went weeks even months without a full price release. But every other system had plenty of good titles with reasonable consistency, just not the same library that was on the competitors. You can fairly point out that that difference didn't always do well, but they did have games.

@Heavyarms55 You literally just proved my point. You said "they're different" and yet the cost of that is lower quality performance, features, visuals, support, everything.

You mean to tell me that they hired a qualified engineer in an engine that literally supplies full source was unable to port the networking functionality that already exists in engine to the switch.

Um I'm calling BS on this. As someone has had to do similar work with engines like phyre engine to the Xbox one. This shouldn't have taken very long or a very experienced network engineer to do this. Case in point unreal engine 3 is not supported on switch, but the rocket league guys were able to port it themselves. Don't blame the engine for the incompetence or lack of experience of your team. Your team is to blame and your team needs to fix it. If my team of 10 engineers can get game of similar scope and porting graphics, online, and console specific features in 6 months back when Xbox one development was a nightmare and achievements were done through spread sheets, then this is something they can tackle.

I don't even like working with unreal and here I am defending it from this nonsense.

Well, like @tekknik said, Crazy Justice is an UE4 game ( https://www.fig.co/campaigns/crazyjustice/about ), and has online, with cross-platform, so I don't know exactly what the devs from this game meant.

@Menchi187 would you like a hug?

@Menchi187 - guarantee you if they went the power piss race with the other two people would still buy the system for the Nintendo games. It'd be GCN all over again.

"No one buys non-nintendo games on Nintendostation X." Same mantra, same posts. Rinse, wash and repeat.

@gloom true but it has resulted in alot of negative feedback from what i have seen.

@roadrunner343

> so I can't really speak too much more intelligently than that =)

Reading some of the other people's comments, yours is one of the more intelligent comments here, precisely because you (same as I) are aware of what you don't know.

@Menchi187 true. Many of the publishers sourced N64 ports out to cheap teams, with the most talented programmers and development teams working on the easier to develop PS1. If I was a programmer back in the 90s I would've loved the challenge of the N64, because in the right hands it was a generation ahead.

@LucBL @tekknik What part of "create the online mode from the scratch" are you guys not understanding? No where in that support article did I see anything about online multiplayer. 3DClouds said if a dev wants to/can put in the time and money into developing their own online architecture, they can get it working in UE4. From what they say, they don't have the funds. I'm taking then at their word. If they cut local multiplayer, then I'd like to know why.

@roadrunner343 I have to.agree with you that the dev sound have know what they were getting into, but getting on as it's "their job to ensure the use the best tool for the job" is harsh. They aren't going to jump to a new game engine just to get online multiplayer working on Switch.

@Pahvi even if that was the case. You either extend the contract or put someone on your team on it. It's a lot of work porting an engine and even more work to start cutting out features.

I think for the most part their work would deal mostly with Nintendo Network related hand shakes, the actual connection and communication protocol is pretty straightforward and easy to figure out.

They dropped the ball. Badform to blame the engine.

@GumbyX84 It's not harsh, it's the reality of the situation. I'm not suggesting they completely swap engines. I'm suggesting they know the tools they are working with so they can intelligently make these decisions in advance and communicate accordingly. Especially given that it sounds like UE4 does support Switch networking. As I said previously, I'm not a game dev - you should read @NotSoCryptic's response #36 for a game dev perspective - but I am a web platform developer. It's on me to select the correct language, framework, etc... when planning a new project. If I'm looking to build a highly portable, cross platform web app, there's a good chance I'm going to be looking at Java/Ruby/Python/Javascript and their existing frameworks/libraries rather than using something like C or C++ and then blaming the language for not supporting the features I want.

@Menchi187 Performance and graphics, yes, and Nintendo's online systems have always lagged behind, but Nintendo games have much better features and just the best exclusive IPs in generals.

Besides, the GameCube didn't lack for 3rd party support nor performance. It just didn't have online play (aside from a few LAN enabled titles) or a built-in DVD player that caused it to finish behind the PS2 and X-Box.

As for the Wii, the sales speak for themselves. It had exceptional 3rd party support. They just tended to release (often excellent) Wii exclusive titles instead of some of the multiplatform hits. Plus, some of the multiplatform games it did get, despite the lesser graphics, were actually better on the Wii such as "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed," "DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 & 3," and some of the FPS ports. The Switch is currently following in the Wii's footsteps with the added advantage of slowly gaining more and more multiplatform ports that don't have to be downgraded as much as they did on the Wii and Wii U.

So that makes me ask some questions. Firstly so what if another dev hasn’t done it? It’s not like you’d get access to their code so you’d still need to implement the feature. Secondly did they even attempt to engage Epic? They make it sound like Epic may be uninterested in talking but it doesn’t read as though they actually tried to get the support. Maybe if devs aren’t doing multiplayer on Unreal 4 they’d have found that Epic would be super keen to get a nice small project out there demonstrating its possible.

Seems like weak reasoning although their earlier failures to identify that the customer would want multiplayer to me shows they’re lacking a bit in the leadership department.

@frogopus I’m definitely not saying developing online is easy, I just think their reasoning is a bit weak and seems to be trying to offhand some of the blame or reasoning to the tools and support than just outright saying they either aren’t resourced for it or failed to design their game for it because they misjudged the market. In particular the bit about where they speculated Epic wouldn’t give them the support they needed without it sounding like they tried to seek it. The fact others games are or aren’t doing online in the Switch should be largely irrelevant as to whether this project implements it unless they can show some actual reason why it wouldn’t work with Unreal 4.

@Menchi187 Pahahahaha yeah. Whatever.

"It costs too much. The interest isn't there. We're a small team and don't have the manpower. Just play the steam version of you want ___. We couldn't compete with ___. We're going to wait until the install base grows. The Switch can't handle ___."

I'm so tired of hearing these kinds of excuses from developers. When am I going to hear something like this:

"It was expensive but we found a way in the end, even if it meant we had to sell our kidneys. The interest wasn't there so we thought about how we could develop that sector, how we could create that interest or bring it over from other platforms and we made it work. We're a small team and we didn't really have the manpower but we took our time, everyone studied and worked in their own time and we did all that we could to meet our goals for this game. We wanted this version to be on par with the other versions so we made it happen. We probably can't compete with ___ but that doesn't mean we aren't going to try. We'll play on our strengths and pave the way for our game. The Switch didn't have the raw power to run the game the way we originally created it so we got innovative. We made it from the ground up for the platform and the result was breathtaking."

Just once I'd like to hear a true success story from a developer that took the risks, that never gave up despite all of the barriers they came across. I'd like to hear about a developer that made it happen, that struck gold and that laughed at the competition and the naysayers when people saw that they managed to create something truly amazing from their passion, enthusiasm and dedication.

I know I'm speaking of ideals here but still...I can dream...

@NotSoCryptic @roadrunner343 The game was originally written for a different platform. They didn't say they would have online multiplayer (unless I missed something). It was assumed by the public to be included. When it was found out it wasn't, they complained. 3DClouds explained why and with a valid reasongl (money and development time). Based on what you'd are saying, they shouldn't release the game because they don't have multiplayer.

@Findonovan95 Really? Why did they have to sacrifice to keep you happy? Be realistic.

@Smigit Reread the article. They did:

There are no games supporting online on Switch that run on Unreal Engine 4 -please correct us if we are wrong- (Rocket League does but it uses the previous UE version, they have their own online architecture and a budget that we can only dream about) so what should we do: spend a lot of time and money trying to create the online mode from the scratch knowing that noone has done it before and knowing that we would need to ask continuos support to Epic (which is not garanteed since we are not Bethesda, for instance) or release the game without the online section and do this investment only and only if we are sure that time and money spent were worth spending?"

@GumbyX84 re-read what I said. In one of my first posts, I suggested it may have been better to not release at all. That's a matter of opinion, I'm not going to argue and say what they should or shouldn't do.

What I will argue, is that they communicated poorly and put out a bad excuse. Portability is something at the forefront of every developers mind, even if they are working with another platform initially. That's why I have issues with the "it's not our fault, it's the engine" excuse - it's still their fault. If they want to come out and say they don't have the time, skill, resources, etc... To port, that's fine I guess, but blaming the engine is a bit weird.

I also disagree that they should be excused because they never formally announced multi-player. When a port of any software is announced, it's completely understandable and expected that consumers will assume its a port of the software in its entirety, unless explicitly stated otherwise up front. There would be no reason to assume otherwise. Regardless, that still doesn't make too much of a difference - people can (and should) still voice their concerns about lacking multiplayer even if it is announced up front.

One thing I will agree with - @Findonovan95 is a bit off his rocker. This is a business. If a small Dev doesn't have the time, skills, interest, etc... and the public isn't interested in your title, of course you should consider not launching on that platform XD Definitely shouldn't be selling kidneys to raise funds or working obscene hours and unnecessary sacrifices.

@GumbyX84 I'm telling you as a developer that saying it was written for another platform when the point is to port the game to another, is a completely meaningless and redundant statement. They honestly probably had no engineers on this project and hoped their scripters could do the bulk of the work through blueprints. I've seen this before.

As a result the game is then technically written for switch. The reason, epic ported the engine to switch which is why the game is on the platform to begin with. They hired someone to do multiplayer and only set it up for every platform except switch. The reason, incompetence in management. Also a common thing in the games industry and I've seen many games delay hard with a year long crunch to make 3 month windows. Windows that force teams to take short cuts and release buggy products.

So basically you're missing my point. It does not matter what platform the game was released on. Someone took a shortcut, because they justified not having a feature for the reason of: Because Switch and Mario Kart. Then said unreal doesn't support online on switch, look at everyone else.

Here's how that should have gone down. Consult with epic on when those features will be available. Integrate beta changes if they are available soon. If those changes don't fit your schedule, have an engineer port the existing ps4/Xb1/steam functionality to the switch.

Phyre engine when I did my port to xb1 had zero code written for it to run on that platform. The game in question was originally a ps3 and vita exclusive. Ps4 was pretty simple to move over. Xb1 had no code. No network, no direct x support, no configurations for wwise in place, no achievement async calls, no party support, nothing. We had to go into source and rewrite anything that wasn't platform independent. So a function call for invite friends needed to have it's functionality changed to use the xb1 functionality instead. There are minor differences, but server and peer to peer really didn't change all that much. Just the xbl and pan related stuff is where things get a little screwy.

Saying the engine doesn't support it is a cop out and placing the blame on someone other than themselves. They are game developers, in an era where parity in releases is expected and demanded. Any reason or excuse they make at this point is producer bs and they need a community manager to clean up their mess. This isn't acceptable and switch users should be angry.

@GumbyX84 yeah I read it. This statement does not sound like they sought Epics help, it sounds like they acknowledge they would need help but didn’t seek it because they didn’t feel they were big enough to be worth Epics time.

“we would need to ask continuos support to Epic (which is not garanteed since we are not Bethesda, for instance)”

If they’d actually spoken to Epic and found that they wouldn’t get anywhere they would have worded that differently. They assumed Epic wouldn’t be responsive so didn’t bother.

That’s fine, they may not want to be dependant in a third party but again this seems to be something that’s doable, they’ve just decided it’s not a priority. The toolset etc seems largely irrelevant to what seems to be the underlying reason if they don’t have the staff or they don’t believe the financial payoff will be worthwhile.

They can just be honest and say the truth, instead of blaming Epic for functionality that is actually there.

They just don't want to pay for online servers to support Online, since they are insecure and don't know how well the game will sell on the Switch.

[rolls eyes] The over use of fruit imagery seems like the devs figured out how to make a cart racer but failed miserably at figuring out how to create a compelling IP with memorable characters.

Wouldn't it make more sense for these guys to talk to other developers at other companies who might be interested in the engine to extend their branding/characters into a new role? The engine itself looks better than Little Big Planet racing and looks to be as good as or better than Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing ...

The overabundance of fruit just seems to take a page from Fruit Ninja, Candy Crush, Wreck-it-Ralph, etc.

I know this isn't the point ... but I wouldn't be interested in this due to the art style being a complete annoyance.

@GumbyX84 what mode needs to be created? I am an unreal engine dev, none of this makes sense. networking in unreal is called replication. you run the unreal server and connect a client to it, flag your variables and functions as replicated and call things correctly. that’s the extent of things on unreal’s side. if they’re complaining about having to run servers then welcome to game dev