Starlink And Dark Souls Porting Studio Virtuos Shares Switch Development Advice

To me the key to Panic Button's success is they actually seem like they WANT to port games to the Switch. A lot of AAA games will never be possible on the Switch like Madden and COD because their developers couldn't ever dream of downscaling graphics on their precious 4K compatible projects these days.

That's interesting.

Sounds like there's a pretty slick online system for automated testing (can think of a few games that might've skipped that step, eh hem)

Can we get these guys to port that Mobile Agito Final Fantasy game that would be marvellous on the switch since most mobile free to play games seem to be doing well on Ninty's platform?
I'd love to see an online Final Fantasy game for the Switch

@JaxonH Good thing Nintendo got decent online for something

Ok,now fix the audio on Dark Souls please

Switch is a portable console because it's got so many ports.

"Don’t try to force what worked on other platforms"
Like the buttons layout for menus?

Keep on the good work. (Starlink is the best looking game I played on switch and runs really good, LA noite had a bit o pop up but was a good port overall)

"Don’t try to force what worked on other platforms"

The Switch is capable of running current games in 720p. That's a fact that's been proven time and time again.

LA NOIRE IS AWFUL framerate is so bad and the game it’s self is pretty lame.

I must say though dark souls is a masterpiece

I wasn't a fan of Dark Souls and returned it to Amazon. Swapped it for Diablo 3 now there's a port!

@sandman89 LA Noire is built based on the PS3 architecture which is super weird. Any port of that game was going to have some problems.

One of the few big 3rd party games I haven't picked up but that was mostly because of timing of release. If it would have kept it's original release window I had plenty of time to dedicate to it but now I'm buried so it will have to wait. With that being said, by all accounts this is a good port and I'm glad to see some solid 3rd party developers step up their game. It makes getting more games easier to get ported since you have this studio and Panic Button able to make good port for the system as they are understanding the hardware.

Guess it just means you're either a developer that wants to spend the time knowing the ins-and-outs or time is money and you just want to get to the buck. Decisions decisions, not all developers are created equal.

I also have an advice: https://youtu.be/ZXsQAXx_ao0

Love having LA Noire on Switch. Third platform I've played it on, and still just as fun. Starlink is also fantastic, and it feels like it was built first with Switch in mine. This studio seems to have found their niche.

I have LA Noire and Dark Souls, both games are well ported.
Dark Souls I didn't have any issues with it and played in both handheld and docked model without problems.
LA Noire was also good but it had a few slow mo at some points of the game but overall it was nothing that could make it say it is a bad port.
Missing from their list only Starlink that I'm waiting for a discount on the eShop as I don't want the physical copy (even though it's really cool to have the aircraft).

@RootsGenoa Hahahaha! Zing! ...Exactly! DS looking at you.

Interesting article.

Playing Starlink and that's a pretty good port

This whole article could have directly sent to the creators of wwe2k18 which was a horrible port. Cool read though.

All I can really understand is "try to work ahead of time and use the tools at your disposal instead of waiting until the last minute and shipping a wreck."

But it's enough. I love their work.

Wow that advice is a bit insulting. Hang a "no" on this one. No dev goes into the switch thinking something from a PS4 will work put of the box , no matter how portable the code, on a switch. It's the reason when a team is asked ,"will this work?" That you see a lot of heads shaking no. When a port is executed for switch, the first thing that is done is to see how corners can be cut. How do we adjust for half the memory. How do we buy back cycles beyond just changing assets and render resolution. Lastly what optimizations for x86 have to be rewritten for the switch risc architecture. All the other cert stuff is standard fair and not really not saying anything different than the last 2 generations of working with Nintendo or their competition. If you want to give advice panic button maybe you should discuss the process of doing all of this in a cost effective way that doesn't make some executive shake their head and cringe. Especially since most engines don't come with a "make for Nintendo" button.

@sandman89 I play LA Noire and it runs like heaven. We must have different Nintendo Switch consoles.

@Kosmo
Threading is the process you use to separate the workload onto multiple CPU cores (so they can do multiple things at once).
Deferred vs Forward rendering are 2 different approaches to lighting a scene based on either applying lighting to each model separately or to the scene as a whole once it's already been rendered to screen.

At this point, I’m convinced that Panic Button are involved in some form of dark sorcery or blood magic. It’s the only feasible explanation for the things they’re able to do.

That’s not a complaint. Keep up the great work. We appreciate your (probably literal) sacrifice.

@Dezzy Damn, thanks a lot!!!!

....reading all the comments discussing "Panic Button's" statements....laughing....I sometimes wonder how anything functions in the world.

@sandman89 L.A. Noire runs like garbage on everything less than a 1X though....which is terrible considering it's a last gen game (and ran badly then too.) Chalk it up to typical Rockstar/2K and the fact that the real developer, Team Bondi was pretty much bankrupt and under litigation by the end......amazing game in a lot of ways, but it's been rough for a decade.

Dark Souls port is very good, audio aside. Now port Dark Souls 2!

Panic Button does a very awesome job getting as much as they can out of the Switch to get ports to work. They make compromises that make sense. But, too many people are beginning to look at them as the default option for any game that devs can't be bothered with instead of a team just wanting to get certain games on the platform.

@ThanosReXXX
It might seem obvious, but it really isn't sometimes. When you're trying to optimize, it can be very tempting to just do MORE of the things that usually work, because you know the Switch is less powerful.

@Pod Could be, but they specifically mentioned "Don’t try to force what worked on other platforms".

Mind you, I was only kidding of course, because that general statement is rather obvious, seeing as it's not an Xbox or PS4, so as such, you shouldn't treat it in a similar manner, obviously.

@ThanosReXXX
I know, I know. And I kid too. The satement is obvious, but he likely speaks from experience of actually trying many of the usual approaches at first.

@Pod Yeah, I'm sure he is. Although they'll try to speak in layman's terms, some assumption will more than likely creep into what they have to say, and as such, some of what he states could come across as obvious, while it is perhaps simply intended as either honest or more of a "thinking out loud" statement.

Both LA Noire and Darksouls are decent enough ports, but in my opinion Panic Button seems to be the better of the two. This studio made some strange designs in both Noire and Dark Souls. Slow-motion slowdowns instead of skipped frames in Noire, too compressed sound in Dark Souls. OK its good that Dark Souls file is so tiny, but why not include something like optional high-res sound dlc? Switch has huge ram compared to PS3/360, so no expl. why the sound need to be so compressed, other than to keep the file small. But I think its the wrong way to go about it, few should have any problem fitting an extra GB file in a game this small.

Companies like these two have proven time and again you can get a LOT out of the Switch, but that it does indeed take effort to do so. Effort that a lot of other studios are seemingly unwilling to put in.

Panic Button are doing great work for Nintendo Switch, they're living legends.

So far the best looking game on the Switch has been Wolfie 2

Man, I really hope they release a patch to improve the sound quality. That's seriously the only thing that's keeping me from buying the game.

@Ryzaerian
Ehr, this article's about Virtuos, a chinese developer who has ported LA Noir, Dark Souls and made Starlink for Switch, as opposed to Panic Buttons who made mostly Bethesda FPS and recently Warframe...

@HollowGrapeJ
Different developer here, but it's ok.

@NEStalgia
I guess commenting is faster than reading

@berga89 I know, I'm not talking about them.

@Zelda79 The Virtuos Games should consider not giving useless advice.