FAST Racing NEO is certainly set to be one of the year's biggest Wii U eShop releases. Shin'en Multimedia has established itself as a leading 'Nindie' developer capable of producing wonderful visuals and strong gameplay, while sci-fi racing is a genre that's been long-neglected on Nintendo hardware. Though Shin'en's game is very different from F-Zero, for example, the absence of high-quality competition for this style of racer could see the eShop release gain a lot of fans.
With its approaching release we're running a series of behind the scenes 'glimpses' at the game, and in the first entry the studio's Manfred Linzner spoke about design approaches and his favourite vehicle and track. In this part Bernhard Wodok, the Lead Tools Developer on the project, provides some technical insight before showing off his favoured vehicles and track; there's even a surprise DS cameo.
I was responsible for development tools and the 3D engine.
With the improvements I made for FAST Racing NEO we were able to have 10x times more graphic objects than, for instance, in Nano Assault Neo.
So we were able to sustain our target framerate of 60fps even in 2-player splitscreen mode.
I also highly optimized our scripting VM and continuously improved the overall tools performance to shorten the iteration times.
When you first unlock "XIsle GmbH" it's a great ship. It's very fast, but not as heavy as FulCon or Bliss.
Ships like that corner very well without having to use advanced leaning techniques. Also, it's very easy to collect boost energy orbs due to the width of the ship.
The 'Kamagori City' track is a short but very intense course. You have to concentrate very hard to anticipate the movements of the giant robot spider that's stomping around the track while still trying to get ahead of the competition.
Especially in the higher speed leagues it really gives you a great adrenaline rush.
It was Martin, our lead artist, who came up with the idea of robots running around on the track. We wanted the track to feel more 'sci-fi' and dangerous. So we added tons of spaceships, challenging jump passages and other stuff, but there was still something missing.
Then Martin remembered one of the bosses from our Nanostray games. He fantasized how cool it would be to have this robot spider running around. So we got that nearly 10 year old Nintendo DS asset into the game. And despite being super low poly and with just a single 128x128 pixel 16 colour texture we knew that it was just perfect! When we finalized the game Martin reworked the whole model but for some months we just used that original DS model. It was a nice reminder how much you can do with just a few polygons and pixels.
Join us next week for another early look at some FAST Racing NEO details.
Comments 35
Wow. So an indie dev can get 60 fps in split screen for an amazing looking racing game on Wii U but Nintendo can't?
"a leading 'Nindie' developer capable of producing wonderful visuals and strong gameplay"
Visuals yes, gameplay no.
That has been their weakspot. I have several of their games and only wish they had gameplay to match the awesome visuals. I'm excited but cautious with Fast Racing. I got burnt on the last game in the series which had fiddly controls and a poor mechanic in the color dot collection.
Still, it looks awesome. If it ends up being awesome I'll be the first one to say I was wrong, and happily so. I love racing games.
(BTW, if you also love racing games and don't have Need for Speed on WiiU, you should pick it up because it's excellent!)
Nintendo should definilety hire this people, as a second, like Monolith. Give them enough freedom, finance their projects. and make them better (with the Nintendo touch).
They know how to manage the machines they are working with. At least technically they are awesome. They could even create new engines or something.
@manu0 Nintendo can't? Mario kart?
@sandman89 That's what I was referring to and that's not running at 60 fps in split screen
@manu0 is it not? Didn't realise
@manu0 mario kart 8 is 60fps split screen
It's 30fps in 4 player made which is an amazing achievement also as most games 4 player split screen like cod struggle at 22fps
@sandman89 @PinkSpider Nope, it's effectively not: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-mario-kart-8
But anyway, day one download and I'd buy it if it got a physical release to as they have put so much work into it. Can't say the same for moat third party developers though
@manu0 the difference between 59 and 60fps you won't even notice
@PinkSpider I'm talking about the effective 30 fps. I guess that's only for 4 players though and for two players it runs at 60 fps.
@manu0 Remember that it is 59 fps with CPU players, without it's effectively 60 fps:
http://www.ign.com/wikis/mario-kart-8/Technical_Features
Still waiting for a release date.
@sandman89
Mario Kart has weaker textures, models, and shaders. Lighting might be on par or better than this this. Might.
@manu0 to be honest Mario kart has to make a lot more calculations than this title will. Also an inde dev with this much technical no how is very very very rare.
@AVahne see my previous post
@the_beaver I think they should out right buy them. Let them make what they want. Could you imagine what they could do with Nintendos money behind them?
Pretty sweet.
Still hyped!
Would love to see Nintendo join forces with Shin'en for something. I don't know if Shin'en would want to be bought (that's a thing people, some indies don't want to be owned. Look at the Insomniac & Sony relationship for a prime example) as they have success on other platforms too. But Nintendo should at least approach them about being a second party developer on something, like their relationship with Platinum Games.
Maybe, as Criterion passed up the opportunity for the WiiU launch, they could get Shin'en on board for F-Zero launch/early title on NX?
I love hearing from these guys. They have so much passion. Day 1 buy.
I downloaded Xenoblade X last night, and I picked up Splatoon today, but I'm actually gonna save those for Christmas. This one I plan to play immediately!
@PinkSpider A physical release would be sweet! As a Star Wars E1 Racer fanboy, looking forward to this immensely. Day one purchase, though I remain curious as to date and price.
This AND Xenoblade in December? I've been playing the PC a lot recently, but it looks like December will be a WiiU month for sure.
Lol, one of the ships is called "XIsle GmbH"? That's funny.
In case you didn't know, GmbH is a very common German abbreviation and means "limited liability company" or "private limited company (PLC)".
@AVahne That's not really fair. MK 8 is an absolutely beautiful game, still one of the best looking games on the Wii U. Graphically it never ceases to impress me.
Fast Racing Neo is incredible though. I've of course only see YouTube videos thus far, but I have no doubt it will look fantastic on my 55" 4K Samsung. It's simply mind blowing that a small 5 man team created such a large, technically impressive game. It is superior to many big retail releases. Frankly, it SHOULD get a retail release. It's a travesty that it is an eShop only title.
@manu0 Lol. The glitch that caused 59.9 FPS or whatever has probably since been ironed out and patched since then. In tests by other testing sites proved Mario Kart 8 was indeed running at 60FPS. The fact remains that Mario Kart 8 is 60fps in two player but I believe it drops to 30FPS for 3/4P.
I would argue that the fault was with EG....
@vio It just goes to show the 'laziness' of large 3rd parties and even Nintendo on occasions.
Does this have a release date yet?
@manu0 Mario Kart 8 runs 60 FPS in 2 Player Split Screen. Just not with 3 or 4 Players...
btw, I'm not into racing games or so (except Mario Kart) but I will buy this game just to Support the developers
Shin'en your game looks astonishing - the music in this video reminds me of playing F Zero GX!
Definite day one purchase from me - this looks like the best future racer on any system since GX to boot!
Isn't it a crying shame we live in an age where people go so far out of their way to launch attacks on developers and console makers that misinformation like we see in Post #1 is so commonplace?
There is this desire to inflict negativity on Nintendo that is so strong, and irrational, that we're correcting fact and fiction over whether a game is 60fps or not because of a 59fps artifact that was found under certain circumstances over a year ago and has since been disputed and corrected.
But there are those who really, really, want to push the narrative of Nintendo's technical inferiority,...so the misinformation persists.
@cyrus_zuo I'm wondering which games you have, then. I have most of their games on nearly all of Nintendo's systems and although there certainly are some games that could have been a bit better than they were, I have always enjoyed them, so I think that the gameplay does match the graphics just fine.
It may very well be that it is simply a matter of personal taste. Maybe Shin'en just isn't the developer for you. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean that their games are bad or have no decent gameplay. There are plenty of media that have reviewed their games and nearly all of them are positive in their judgement, so that doesn't quite rhyme with what you think.
Or maybe you're just expecting too much from an indie game. In general, no game is perfect and there will always be some thing that might annoy some of us, but it would probably be impossible for them to make everyone perfectly happy. I for one am REALLY looking forward to this game. It looks beautiful and from all the play sessions I've seen it definitely has the gameplay to match...
Game makes Star Fox look awful!
@cyrus_zuo I'm also cautious about this. having been burnt by was previous game whose gameplay just wasn't fun, interesting, or deep.
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