@carlos82 It's not an irony lost on us, but there are sensible business reasons for why Nintendo is doing this. Mostly, we took a little issue with the box this article seemed to put us in, as though we were either lying or making excuses for Hex Heroes - that's at least how the comments seemed to be interpreting things. And thank you for the well wishes
There seems to be confusion about what is and isn't a direct port (speaking strictly indie games). Of Switch's current lineup, only 3 are direct ports: World of Goo, Human Resource Machine, and Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (which is making its console debut on Switch).
Little Inferno will feature multiplayer as a Switch exclusive (this means it's not a DIRECT port), Shovel Knight is launching with its new campaign, Fast RMX has different content than NEO.
How Nintendo decides what to include on its console is up to Nintendo, and can involve a myriad of reasons such as previous rapport (as in the case of Tomorrow Corporation's games, which have typically been Nintendo darlings).
Obviously it's not a hard rule, but it's not something Nintendo hasn't been secret about, so we're perplexed by the "not necessarily wise" line about us discussing this in our recent post. The update wasn't about the nuance of ports, so we didn't feel necessary to go into Nintendo's specific decisions.
Hey there! Regarding the technical difficulties we've had with Hex Heroes, a lot of it had to do with the way our worlds were built. As you can see, worlds are composed of hexes and resources that users can harvest. Few game worlds are done this way - foliage is usually just decorative where ours can be harvested. Hex tiles also contain individual information such as which enemy is occupying them, which is important for combat and other facets of the game.
As you mentioned, world size is a part of it, and AI as well, but many people underestimate too how taxing split screen multiplayer is. Hex Heroes supports up to 5 players, so that's 5 different cameras the game is rendering to, one of which is a bird's eye view of the map. For every camera added, that requires the game to be rendered again and frame rates begin to drop dramatically.
For a small group of devs like ours, tackling a 5 player game is no small task, and while we terribly regret that development has taken this long, in the words of Miyamoto - “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”
Comments 6
Re: Hex Heroes Developer Outlines Nintendo Switch eShop Curation Policies
@carlos82 It's not an irony lost on us, but there are sensible business reasons for why Nintendo is doing this. Mostly, we took a little issue with the box this article seemed to put us in, as though we were either lying or making excuses for Hex Heroes - that's at least how the comments seemed to be interpreting things. And thank you for the well wishes
Re: Hex Heroes Developer Outlines Nintendo Switch eShop Curation Policies
@NintySnesMan Thank you
Re: Hex Heroes Developer Outlines Nintendo Switch eShop Curation Policies
@NintySnesMan The odds would be incredibly slim (and nonexistent for Hex Heroes), but thanks for your interest!
Re: Hex Heroes Developer Outlines Nintendo Switch eShop Curation Policies
@carlos82 We're the developer, see our above post.
Re: Hex Heroes Developer Outlines Nintendo Switch eShop Curation Policies
There seems to be confusion about what is and isn't a direct port (speaking strictly indie games). Of Switch's current lineup, only 3 are direct ports: World of Goo, Human Resource Machine, and Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ (which is making its console debut on Switch).
Little Inferno will feature multiplayer as a Switch exclusive (this means it's not a DIRECT port), Shovel Knight is launching with its new campaign, Fast RMX has different content than NEO.
How Nintendo decides what to include on its console is up to Nintendo, and can involve a myriad of reasons such as previous rapport (as in the case of Tomorrow Corporation's games, which have typically been Nintendo darlings).
Obviously it's not a hard rule, but it's not something Nintendo hasn't been secret about, so we're perplexed by the "not necessarily wise" line about us discussing this in our recent post. The update wasn't about the nuance of ports, so we didn't feel necessary to go into Nintendo's specific decisions.
Re: Hex Heroes Still Coming To Wii U, Dev Hints At Nintendo Switch News
@ThanosReXXX @Kroko
Hey there! Regarding the technical difficulties we've had with Hex Heroes, a lot of it had to do with the way our worlds were built. As you can see, worlds are composed of hexes and resources that users can harvest. Few game worlds are done this way - foliage is usually just decorative where ours can be harvested. Hex tiles also contain individual information such as which enemy is occupying them, which is important for combat and other facets of the game.
As you mentioned, world size is a part of it, and AI as well, but many people underestimate too how taxing split screen multiplayer is. Hex Heroes supports up to 5 players, so that's 5 different cameras the game is rendering to, one of which is a bird's eye view of the map. For every camera added, that requires the game to be rendered again and frame rates begin to drop dramatically.
For a small group of devs like ours, tackling a 5 player game is no small task, and while we terribly regret that development has taken this long, in the words of Miyamoto - “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”