Katamari Damacy and Gamespy Wireless on the DS

Hit quirky game Katamari Damacy will be coming to the Nintendo DS sometime in the near future, according to Joystiq. From the article: "The game is listed under Namco's planned DS titles. Squint hard at the top of the image, and you'll see it. Get that stylus ready. You're going to be pushing around a world of crap with it, soon enough." At the same time, GamesAreFun.com has information about the DS Wireless Service, which is going to be hosted partially by Gamespy.

Comments

But..

[Ghost429]

Wouldn't the Katamari pick up my stylus when it got too big?

Great gaem, but...

[Scutter]

KD is a great game, but it was *way* too short. Ten levels? It only really gets good on the last level! I'd at least like to see a "free play" level, where it's not timed and you can just keep rolling stuff up forever (or until you've rolled up the whole universe).

Re:Great gaem, but...

[generic-man]

Three of the levels have "Eternal" modes. If you get your katamari up to a certain size, you unlock "Eternal mode" where you can play the level for as long as you like.

I forget the exact figures needed to unlock Eternal modes, but it's something like 600m on Make the Moon. Once you've rolled up EVERYTHING, there's a theoretical maximum size of about 900m on that level.

Re:Great gaem, but...

[Megane]

It lasts a bit longer if you go for all items and all names. That can take a few weeks if you have a regular job, and the last few items will drive you crazy trying to find them, even with the help of Google.

And then there's the ending credits "level", in which it is exremely difficult to pick up all countries. I went for all items and all names but only played the ending credits once, and that was only after I read that it was playable and wanted to see what it looked like. It gets really hard toward the end because the camera is so far away that you can't see what you're doing.

Re:Great gaem, but...

[Ghost_MH]

900m is about as large as you can make the thing. Sadly, each of the Eternal levels seems to have a maximum size...Try as I may there seems to be a limit I cannot break in any of the three Eternal Modes. One cool thing in the Eternal Modes are the appearances of the small prince's family members. In the very first Eternal Level you can find a cousin of yours eating all the food in the family's fridge. What I would rather see in a Katamari Damacy game is a random level generator. It's not like the worlds are all that complex...I can't imagine it being too difficult for the game to randomly generate these levels.

Can the DS handle it?

[Corngood]

I have my doubts. The game takes advantage of the huge polygon pushing ability of the PS2 (loads of similar objects, very little texturing or blending). The DS is nowhere near as capable in this respect. I reckon they would even have some trouble on other home consoles, or PC.

Re:Can the DS handle it?

[SetupWeasel]

The Xbox and the GameCube can push more polygons than the PS2, which shows exactly how mech you know about video game systems.

Obviously NAMCO thinks the DS can handle it, and they have more experience with programming the DS than you or I.

Re:Can the DS handle it?

[oskillator]

"The Xbox and the GameCube can push more polygons than the PS2"

Can they? The Xbox and GameCube GPUs are relatively fixed-function compared to the PS2's, which are more like generic DSP units. Yes, the Xbox and GameCube can render a more complex scene than the PS2 at the same framerate, under certain common constraints, but the PS2 offers much greater flexibility. So, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the PS2 could push more flat-shaded polygons than either the Xbox or GC (which was Corngood's point).

As for the question of whether the DS can handle Katamari Damacy, obviously the answer is yes, if it's simplified enough. The real question is whether the game simplified to that level is going to retain the value of the original game. I'm not seeing it... but you're quite welcome to surprise me, MANCO.

Re:Can the DS handle it?

[MilenCent]

I'm pretty sure it can handle it.

1. The DS has a lower resolution. This lets 3D hardware that's slightly better than a N64 provide relatively better visuals than it did. If the game only provided 3D on one of the screens then so much the better.

2. The PS2 can't handle Katamari Damacy, in a manner of speaking. I read in the post-mortem of the game in Game Developer Magazine that the game "cheats" when the ball gets loaded with stuff, removing difficult-to-see and relatively small stuff on the interior of the ball as it increases in size. Just increase this cheating factor on the DS and there you go. It'd be less noticable on the DS because, again, of the reduced resolution.

3. Katamari Damacy isn't all that bad. The PS2 is still relatively underpowered when it comes to Gamecube and Xbox. It's still more powerful than the DS (or PSP for that matter), but see #1 above.

It's also possible that Namco could cheat, by using sprites for some objects. If the camera is not very moveable then this may work for objects not yet collected, as the game could use the DS' sprite scaling to simulate 3D to some extent.

They could also cheat by not actually allowing objects to stick to the ball and using a generic katamari model for it that just gets bigger, but a lot of the game's charm would be lost in that event. That would be a worst-case scenario for DS Katamari Damacy, I'd guess.

Re:Can the DS handle it?

[cgenman]

You are kidding, right?

Katamari Damacy didn't exactly make the PS2 cry and beg for mercy. You're talking about a field of objects and vision that while it could be cluttered it didn't exceed the amount of pushable polys by a long shot. Certainly it didn't have anywhere near as many polys on screen as, say, Madden 2004, and those were textured / lit / etc.

Plus, Katamari is a prime example of a game that could be optimized. All of the "regular" edges were rounded, almost unnecessarily so. Removing or reducing the rounded edges could reduce polycount by 50 - 90%. Likewise, with the reduced size / resolution of the DS screen it would be much easier to "drop out" things from the world sooner, from ants that stick around long after they're black dots on the regular screen to cars that you can barely see when you're giant. Katamari is optimized for such transitions, and to do so would be relatively easy. You could probably get another 50% poly savings there too. Plus the DS is running at about 40% length and 40% height resolution on each of it's screens, saving between 50% - 80% on poly rendering, depending on how they decide to use the second screen.

You can also drop the "special effect" in katamari. You know, that distance blur thing, which so many people find so annoying. On a TFT screen, it will probably be impossible to see anyway.

And if you did have to remove objects from the world, it would be relatively easy to do, and just boost the size multiplier of the remaining objects.

There are a ton of ways that you can optimise the design of Katamari Damacy down to a smaller system. This shouldn't be a problem at all.

Re:But will it be available in europe?

[fr0dicus]

They claim the code isn't in any state to convert to the lower PAL framerate. Timing-based games require some tweaking in this respect. Metroid Prime 2 with its 60hz only mode and Ninja Gaiden with its broken first person view in 50hz mode tend to support this pov that developers occasionally use as an excuse. I believe Sony insist on a 50hz mode, and would be unlikely to change policy for a third party.

It'll be interesting to watch the price

[pnice]

So we have this great game, Katami Damacy, and it made a name for itself being unique and fun. It was also released brand new for the PS2 at $19.95. You think it'll release on the DS for $19.95? Somehow I doubt it. Should it? That's a tough one to answer. Someone help me out. I want it for the DS and for $19.95 I would pick it up first thing on the day it came out...I'll still get it when it ends up costing more...but it would be a nice surprise.