A VERY Technical Question.

[TheWhiteBowser]

So I just really want to ask. Since we both know what a 3DS cartidge and a Wii U disc look like, do we know the maximum memory capacity of each of them. I'm looking for numbers here people.
Can anyone on this forum answer this question for me?
Firstly what is the maximum memory space on a 3DS cartridge?
Secondly what is the maximum memory space on a Wii U disc?
Thirdly and most importantly if we take these numbers and compare them does it give us clues as to if there will be restrictions when it comes to comparing Super Smash Bros. 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U because of memory space on the 3DS/Wii U?
Will the (insert number here) of memory space on a 3DS cartridge hinder what can be available on the Wii U or vice-versa?
Additionally when you compare the RAM and the processing power of the Wii U to the 3DS how do those numbers stack up and how could this effect the next smash?
So yeah like I said I am looking for some numbers here people. This thread could answer a lot of questions and clear up most people's worries of the 3DS hindering the availability of Smash Bros. on the Wii U (or vice-versa).

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

The 3DS cartridge can store a quantity of 1-8 GBs and the Wii U discs can store a quantity of up to 25 GBs.

I believe that the 3DS cartridge can store close to the limits of the dual-layered disc that Brawl was on, so you could in terms of bit quantity fit Brawl inside a 3DS cartridge without compression or reducing detail. However, this game is probably set to have more content than Brawl, so at that expense you will probably see reductions in polygon vector count, shading and other aesthetic details, regardless of whether the 3DS system could handle Brawl in the first place.

I think Brawl's music library is reported to be slightly over 1GB. If the 3DS version featured arbitrarily less music than that, I think in it's place we might not see the 3DS limiting Brawl in terms of what characters and vital features can be included.

As for the processing power, I am not sure. Sakurai did speak with concern over how some characters may not be included because of hardware limitations, and to me the characters that could be at risk for this case seem to be the Ice Climbers and Olimar.

 

[Mr. Mumbles]

As for the processing power, I am not sure. Sakurai did speak with concern over how some characters may not be included because of hardware limitations, and to me the characters that could be at risk for this case seem to be the Ice Climbers and Olimar.

I am really curious if Olimar would cause similar problems to Ice Climbers. The Pikmin just have to follow Olimar, whereas Nana actually needs some amount of AI and such. It really depends on how the engine works and such, so there is no way to know, but I am curious.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

I am really curious if Olimar would cause similar problems to Ice Climbers. The Pikmin just have to follow Olimar, whereas Nana actually needs some amount of AI and such. It really depends on how the engine works and such, so there is no way to know, but I am curious.

It's really not complex to have a single Olimar on screen, but the Pikmin themselves must have a certain amount of polish to be consistent with the rest of the game. But given the Hey, Arnold!-like appearance of Spirit Tracks Link...

I don't know much myself, but I think the real issue is that it has to do with the number of tangible objects in the game and the hardware stress in determining the collision between the objects and so forth. Put simply, the hardware stress grows in factorial fashion as more tangible objects are added.

For example, if you have two fighters on screen, you only have to make collision (and other physics) checks in terms of each other. Without cheating in the implementation, you check to see if the first character has collided with the other, and then check to see if the second character has collided with this first. This is quite simple. But then you add a third character, and now things grow more complex. You must check to see if the first character collided with the second character, and then with the third character, and so forth. As I said, this is all still simple, just more complex. But with Olimar these things grow not only more complex but also more suddenly complex. These tangible objects may get introduced on the fly. This isn't including what they may want to do with items and stages. And more importantly, remember that all of these checks must be completed within 1/60th of a second.

 

[Big-Cat]

The only possible area that the 3DS will experience particular limits is in the ram, as was mentioned in a number of interviews (implicitly) which will be a deciding factor on how characters like the Ice Climbers will be implemented. Tekken 3D had a roster of 41 characters and a movie in it so memory will not be that big of a concern.

 

[DarkFoxTeam]

The only possible area that the 3DS will experience particular limits is in the ram, as was mentioned in a number of interviews (implicitly) which will be a deciding factor on how characters like the Ice Climbers will be implemented. Tekken 3D had a roster of 41 characters and a movie in it so memory will not be that big of a concern.

Not to mention Tekken 3D used a 2GB Card on the 3DS, so if the new Smash Bros uses an 8GB then memory should really not be an issue here. With the ram being an issue im afraid the Ice Climbers may get the boot, but i am hoping they manage to find a way around that

 

[Big-Cat]

I don't think they'll get cut, but don't be surprised if they get a complete revamp in playstyle due to the limits.

 

[DarkFoxTeam]

I don't think they'll get cut, but don't be surprised if they get a complete revamp in playstyle due to the limits.

I wouldn't mind a complete revamp in their playstyle, honestly.

 

[DakotaBonez]

If you're worried about the roster size or music selection don't sweat it. Hell they would even go out of their way and design a special Quad layered 3DS disc if memory actually became an issue after toning the graphical quality down.
The real issue, as has already been stated, is the 3DS having to process multiple complex objects on screen, which, with 8 ice climbers on screen or 30 Smart Bombs would cause lag, and due to nintendo's pride in quality they would never allow a feature into their game that would make the product look bad even if it was fun, like how for fun's sake they let ya play 4 player nazi zombies in Call of Duty even though it drops the framerate to sh$#.
So sadly, yes this might end up forcing them to change the ice climbers to a single climber, which makes sense when ya think about it because in the actual ice climbers game ya only played with one climber at a time. I mean if the ice climbers are a duo why aren't Mario and Weegee? The best games are made within limitations, look at amazing titles from the past to see what I mean. Given infinite freedom and the ability to put whatever ya want in the game, which the smash series has at this point, might not always lead to good things. I mean what if he had planned for a koopaling tag team? JK
Anyway they are working on a way around this ice climber dillema and I'm sure they'll be fine.

The 3DS experience will play the same, but look different. Just remember, memory aint an issue.

 

[Mr. Mumbles]

It's really not complex to have a single Olimar on screen, but the Pikmin themselves must have a certain amount of polish to be consistent with the rest of the game. But given the Hey, Arnold!-like appearance of Spirit Tracks Link...

I don't know much myself, but I think the real issue is that it has to do with the number of tangible objects in the game and the hardware stress in determining the collision between the objects and so forth. Put simply, the hardware stress grows in factorial fashion as more tangible objects are added.

For example, if you have two fighters on screen, you only have to make collision (and other physics) checks in terms of each other. Without cheating in the implementation, you check to see if the first character has collided with the other, and then check to see if the second character has collided with this first. This is quite simple. But then you add a third character, and now things grow more complex. You must check to see if the first character collided with the second character, and then with the third character, and so forth. As I said, this is all still simple, just more complex. But with Olimar these things grow not only more complex but also more suddenly complex. These tangible objects may get introduced on the fly. This isn't including what they may want to do with items and stages. And more importantly, remember that all of these checks must be completed within 1/60th of a second.

What you have stated definitely can be an issue. However, I don't think Smash Brothers is a great example of when it would be. My reason for thinking so is that there aren't that many moving solid objects, and you can make optimizations such as KD trees for non-moving objects. Also while I can't think of an example, I have a heard time believing there aren't other 3ds games with more moving solid objects. But there again it all depends on how it is implemented.

 

[grizby2]

Well gentlemen, heres hoping we can turn down the graphics in the options menu~ (half joking)


though I wonder if just a new design in Ice climbers would change anything.
like just making them into 2D ice climbers.... or even PAPER ice climbers~

Spoiler

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

ROM doesn't really matter here. A 3ds game can be up to 8 GB which is larger than Brawl, and we know the 3ds version uses much simpler textures and character models than the Wii U version. If you merely removed the various pre-recorded movies, Brawl would be under 4.7 GB and would have fit on a single layer disc. Characters in general are not especially ROM intensive; they could include over 100 characters without running into ROM issues even on 3ds, and obviously development resources restrain them far before that.

As per RAM, the 3ds has 128 MB (along with 6 MB of VRAM) while the Wii U has 2 GB, but 1 GB is reserved for the OS so in effect the Wii U has just 1 GB of RAM. This means that the Wii U has approximately 8 times more RAM than the 3ds which is a bigger deal. Brawl was pretty tight on some limitations here (the larger character files, ZSS and Pit, were just barely under what the game could handle in terms of size), but the Wii actually has less RAM than the 3ds (if you just lump together all types, the Wii would come to 91 MB). Given that, again, the 3ds version will be using simpler character models and textures and further that they don't have to worry about porting stages, I think this will be a very solvable problem. Also, do note that RAM space is less about instances per model and more about total number and complexity of models. ICs use two instances of the same model with a few different textures. Olimar has six models to load, but Olimar himself is not especially complex and his five pikmin are all very simple. Pit has a very detailed model, lots of animations, and several articles. ZSS includes the data for armor pieces, an item that is not loaded with the common files (if you tried to force spawn armor pieces when ZSS wasn't in the battle, the game would crash). I think all RAM issues they run into, and I'm sure they'll run into some, will be solvable problems for them.

I think the bigger issue characters like ICs pose is a CPU issue since, while instancing dramatically shrinks their RAM footprint, it doesn't simplify the calculations the game has to run at all. I'll admit that I don't know enough about this to really give a strong analysis of the differences between the Wii U and 3ds, but this is a case where it's really more about the type of content than the nature of it. Remember how Melee lags in 4-player matches on Fountain of Dreams and in quad-ICs matches in general (quad-ICs on Fountain of Dreams and the game runs like garbage)? Fountain of Dreams had those reflections which were effectively more characters in the battle. Even Brawl sometimes lags with quad-ICs, especially when they all start using Blizzard. This is the exact same cause; the game is having to calculate more than the CPU can keep up with easily, and if the engine is built with the Wii U's CPU in mind, very intense matches with tons of actors (like our famous quad-ICs) may be causing the 3ds to really struggle. I would point out that ICs were the single most intense character in both Melee and Brawl, and that by mentioning them explicitly, Sakurai basically confirmed their return. He told us effectively that they've already done work in implementing them to run into this problem, and in general it would be extremely out of character for him to mention any character that was going to be cut (none of the Melee cut charcters were ever mentioned on the dojo). This indicates to me that this problem is probably far enough along to being solved that he feels confident they can resolve it (though he never promised that characters will be identical between versions, and he may make a compromise like greatly simplify or even remove the ICs projectiles), and the limitation here is either the extra development time it takes to implement them (in which case it's dev resources that would be limiting the roster, as it has always been) or newcomer character concepts that are proving unworkable on 3ds. Either way, we'll probably never really know, but either way, it isn't nearly as big of a deal as the internet has suggested before.

 

[Mr. Mumbles]

ROM doesn't really matter here. A 3ds game can be up to 8 GB which is larger than Brawl, and we know the 3ds version uses much simpler textures and character models than the Wii U version. If you merely removed the various pre-recorded movies, Brawl would be under 4.7 GB and would have fit on a single layer disc. Characters in general are not especially ROM intensive; they could include over 100 characters without running into ROM issues even on 3ds, and obviously development resources restrain them far before that.

As per RAM, the 3ds has 128 MB (along with 6 MB of VRAM) while the Wii U has 2 GB, but 1 GB is reserved for the OS so in effect the Wii U has just 1 GB of RAM. This means that the Wii U has approximately 8 times more RAM than the 3ds which is a bigger deal. Brawl was pretty tight on some limitations here (the larger character files, ZSS and Pit, were just barely under what the game could handle in terms of size), but the Wii actually has less RAM than the 3ds (if you just lump together all types, the Wii would come to 91 MB). Given that, again, the 3ds version will be using simpler character models and textures and further that they don't have to worry about porting stages, I think this will be a very solvable problem. Also, do note that RAM space is less about instances per model and more about total number and complexity of models. ICs use two instances of the same model with a few different textures. Olimar has six models to load, but Olimar himself is not especially complex and his five pikmin are all very simple. Pit has a very detailed model, lots of animations, and several articles. ZSS includes the data for armor pieces, an item that is not loaded with the common files (if you tried to force spawn armor pieces when ZSS wasn't in the battle, the game would crash). I think all RAM issues they run into, and I'm sure they'll run into some, will be solvable problems for them.

I think the bigger issue characters like ICs pose is a CPU issue since, while instancing dramatically shrinks their RAM footprint, it doesn't simplify the calculations the game has to run at all. I'll admit that I don't know enough about this to really give a strong analysis of the differences between the Wii U and 3ds, but this is a case where it's really more about the type of content than the nature of it. Remember how Melee lags in 4-player matches on Fountain of Dreams and in quad-ICs matches in general (quad-ICs on Fountain of Dreams and the game runs like garbage)? Fountain of Dreams had those reflections which were effectively more characters in the battle. Even Brawl sometimes lags with quad-ICs, especially when they all start using Blizzard. This is the exact same cause; the game is having to calculate more than the CPU can keep up with easily, and if the engine is built with the Wii U's CPU in mind, very intense matches with tons of actors (like our famous quad-ICs) may be causing the 3ds to really struggle. I would point out that ICs were the single most intense character in both Melee and Brawl, and that by mentioning them explicitly, Sakurai basically confirmed their return. He told us effectively that they've already done work in implementing them to run into this problem, and in general it would be extremely out of character for him to mention any character that was going to be cut (none of the Melee cut charcters were ever mentioned on the dojo). This indicates to me that this problem is probably far enough along to being solved that he feels confident they can resolve it (though he never promised that characters will be identical between versions, and he may make a compromise like greatly simplify or even remove the ICs projectiles), and the limitation here is either the extra development time it takes to implement them (in which case it's dev resources that would be limiting the roster, as it has always been) or newcomer character concepts that are proving unworkable on 3ds. Either way, we'll probably never really know, but either way, it isn't nearly as big of a deal as the internet has suggested before.

Very insightful post. I wouldn't have even thought about the reflections in fountain of dreams if you hadn't mentioned it. It is a really good point that rendering is what's taking up far more time then either ai or collision detection. Again something that makes sense, but I wasn't thinking of for some reason.

 

[GreenMunchkin]

Well gentlemen, heres hoping we can turn down the graphics in the options menu~ (half joking)


though I wonder if just a new design in Ice climbers would change anything.
like just making them into 2D ice climbers.... or even PAPER ice climbers~

Spoiler

As long as I can make people hate me by using chaingrabs, I don't care about appearance. :D

 

[Xigger]

Sidestepping nearly all of your questions... The main restriction of content is Masahiro Sakurai. He is firmly against counting added material as a game improvement: he looks in terms of general game design and overall balance in several aspects. He is not a fan of repeated sequels, adding content in place of redesigning, or a massive amount of content, namely characters.

That said, he is developing this game much differently than before. Brawl was mostly planned ahead of time and anything that got finished, got finished. This time around, it is admittedly making the game as he goes along. He has not decided on nearly anything at this point in development. On unproven grounds, we can only guess what direction the game takes.

 

[Pyra]

Sidestepping nearly all of your questions... The main restriction of content is Masahiro Sakurai. He is firmly against counting added material as a game improvement: he looks in terms of general game design and overall balance in several aspects. He is not a fan of repeated sequels, adding content in place of redesigning, or a massive amount of content, namely characters.

That said, he is developing this game much differently than before. Brawl was mostly planned ahead of time and anything that got finished, got finished. This time around, it is admittedly making the game as he goes along. He has not decided on nearly anything at this point in development. On unproven grounds, we can only guess what direction the game takes.

Wii Balance Board = requirement for playing as Miss Fit.
Calling it right now.

 

[Xigger]

Wii Balance Board = requirement for playing as Miss Fit.
Calling it right now.

Why didn't I think about it? The 3ds version will come with the portable 3ds balance board!