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[etiolate]

I have a hard time believing those graphics will be cheap to make.

 

[hukasmokincaterpillar]

There's a knock-on effect of your "two engineers" trying to muddle through a difficult/unfamiliar hardware architecture - you end up getting less efficiency out of the rest of your development resources while the engineers try to determine exactly what they can enable the game engine to do on the hardware.

Exactly. Here's the direct quote. Bold for emphasis...

"PlayStation 3, I think, is going to be cheaper to develop for than the corresponding period of PS2 development."

 

[DarienA]

DCharlie is just still mad because of how badly Sony has handled the PSX.

 

[FightyF]

I have a hard time believing those graphics will be cheap to make.

No it won't. But I'm sure the whole process will be far more painless than the PS2.

This goes across all platforms really, and it's no wonder why UE3 is getting so much attention, and that Epic will probably try to have it running on all 3 major consoles. There is renderware and such...but I've coded in UnrealScript and it's actually pretty well thought out OOP structured code. The level editor is real easy to use. I was dissappointed in the UT 2003/2004 engine, but once UE3 comes out I'd be all over it like O'Reilly on Falafels.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

I'm just happy Sony managed to kick an entire beach worth of sand in the collective Xbot vagina on Monday. After putting up with their shit for four years now, it's good to listen to them cry together™. :lol

 

[Vince]

I have a hard time believing those graphics will be cheap to make.

No, I can't wait to see McNamara's (of The Getaway) work with his new 2nd party studio. The amount of capital invested is quite large from what I understand.

 

[Pimpwerx]

The smooth aesthetics in PS2 demos like the Final Fantasy ballroom and the GT2000 cars with the specular glare impress me more than anything comparable in PS2 games.

Those damn outdated and outmoded PowerVR graphics have made you blind. Go back and look again. Then again, you're talking about "aesthetics". But even then, GT2000? Did you forget that GT3:A built on those graphics with better models and better effects? I find it hard to believe that anything in GT2000 looked better than the finished product that came out like 18 months after the demo. The FF8 dance scene is much ballyhooed, but looks like crap times ten when you go back and watch it now. I think PS2IGN still has those videos archived. They're worth a good laugh. :lol BTW, anyone forget how putrid the From Software boneyard demo was? There was a lot of junk that passed as mindblowing at the time, simply b/c it was a vast step up from the DC. Check the PS2 FAQ IIRC. PEACE.

 

[kaching]

Here's a thought or two on this. Go and look at the demos again. I think people will agree that they were outclassed or matched by games that gen, but tell me.... What did those demos show/promise? Well, i'd say they were promising much higher poly models, nice lighting effects, better possible animations. All achieved. This time from the rolling demo of , say, Killzone they are promising MUCH MUCH more.

Stands to reason that they'd do that, given that jump in processing power from PS2 to PS3 happens to also be MUCH MUCH greater than the jump from PS1 to PS2. Just based on CPU performance, if we were to liken the improvement to geographical distance, PS1 to PS2 would be like a trip from the Central London out to Ilford and PS2 to PS3 would be like a trip from Central London to Paris, France. I sure as hell hope devs are aiming to do MUCH MUCH more with that kind of improvement.

Now, whilst i think some of these things are achievable, some are going to way harder to achieve than you'd expect.

You mean to tell me that more ambitious challenges are harder to achieve?!? I had NO idea!! I guess what you're sort of saying is that it's easier to get a body from Central London to Ilford in under half a day than it is to get one from Central London to Paris. Good thing somebody stepped up to the challenge and largely made both trips seem easy peasy for those of us lucky enough to live in this time period, eh?

But "well, last time they did this and look what happened" - that's fantastic for people, but if you can't reassess the situation this time, then i guess you'd have to go back to this sort of thinking.

Who is it that you're claiming is having trouble reassessing here? The devs?

Well, it would also appese all the fanboys who are adamant that it's all real time.

Nevermind that NO ONE said it was realtime in the first place and that it required an inappropriate assumption to be made to call it realtime. Fanboys creatively, selectively interpret the facts the way they want to, even in light of proof which irrefutably contradicts their stance. I don't know why any rational, objective gamer would want devs to waste their time on such as these.

I'm pretty sure that if every dev house in Japan put the dev costs for xbox 360 and PS3 as going up, then i'm pretty sure the price _IS_ going up.

So you can believe that it's cheaper if you want or not based on who is telling you what and filter out the noise and make your own mind up.

How about you aim for better reading comprehension before you accuse me of selective interpretation:

There's a knock-on effect of your "two engineers" trying to muddle through a difficult/unfamiliar hardware architecture - you end up getting less efficiency out of the rest of your development resources while the engineers try to determine exactly what they can enable the game engine to do on the hardware. All other things being equal, reducing this burden on the engineers should help the rest of the development team become more efficient and produce a game more cheaply. I think that's what Harrison is referring to, that they've lowered the bar for overall development cost with the PS3 design as opposed to a more PS2-like design.

I'm not talking about how much it would cost to make a PS3 caliber game vs. a PS2 caliber game. I'm talking about how much it would cost to make a game on PS2-like hardware architecture with PS2-like toolchains vs. making the same game on PS3-like hardware architecture with PS3-like toolchains. It's not about the differences in power, its about the differences in design philosophy of the hardware and toolchains that potentially allows every member of the dev team to work more efficiently, so that achieving the same results on a PS3-style architecture as you could on PS2-style architecture should be easier and cheaper.

It's funny though, some of you would make great cult members.

Is that supposed to be directed at me?

 

[DCharlie]

"I'm referring to, that they've lowered the bar for overall development cost with the PS3 design as opposed to a more PS2-like design."

"I'm not talking about how much it would cost to make a PS3 caliber game vs. a PS2 caliber game. I'm talking about how much it would cost to make a game on PS2-like hardware architecture with PS2-like toolchains vs. making the same game on PS3-like hardware architecture with PS3-like toolchains. It's not about the differences in power, its about the differences in design philosophy of the hardware and toolchains that potentially allows every member of the dev team to work more efficiently, so that achieving the same results on a PS3-style architecture as you could on PS2-style architecture should be easier and cheaper.""

i've read this 20 times, and i think you are right, my reading comprehension must be really shitty.....

For the hell of it, here is what my reading comprehension skills think this is saying :

So ... if they'd stuck to a PS2 style design for PS3 development , the costs would have been higher than they are, but because they are on a new architecture this takes the base line down in relative terms to what the alternative design philosophy was.

Can you explain what the design philosophies are and why you agree with this statement think they'll be making things easier and cheaper?

 

[kaching]

Yeah, you got it. Was it really that hard to understand?

As for further explanation, couldn't you just read the interview this topic is about in the first place?

Phil: PlayStation 3, I think, is going to be cheaper to develop for than the corresponding period of PS2 development. I know that's a fairly contentious statement to make, but there's a very good reason for that. When we announced the collaboration with NVIDIA, we just talked about them making a chip - actually, they don't make anything, they're a designer, and the RSX contains an NVIDIA-designed part, which gives us fantastic GPU capabilities. But what it also gives us, and this is actually the most important bit of it, is all the toolchain and CG pipeline that comes with it, which is a very well understood development pipeline in the PC community - and, yes, in the Xbox community, frankly.

So all of that pipeline of tools and technology and plug-ins comes straight across to PlayStation 3. Plus, on the Cell side of things, IBM brings a lot of expertise and know-how to the table. Also, as you know, the PS2's EE had two microprogrammable devices, VU0 and VU1 - which were incredibly fast, incredibly powerful chips that were very difficult to program for because of their very specialist nature and the programming skills required.

Within PlayStation 3, the Cell chip, although it has a number of components inside it, they're all general-purpose CPUs. They can be programmed at a much much higher level.

GI.biz: So we're going to see people writing for those in C, rather than having to mess around with VU code?

Phil: Absolutely. Messing around with VU code... Yeah, it's true. It's not for the faint-hearted, for sure.

From: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9051

 

[Panajev2001a]

I wont address all the usual Sony Defence Force stuff in here... but i will get this off my chest...



Here's a thought or two on this. Go and look at the demos again. I think people will agree that they were outclassed or matched by games that gen, but tell me.... What did those demos show/promise? Well, i'd say they were promising much higher poly models, nice lighting effects, better possible animations. All achieved. This time from the rolling demo of , say, Killzone they are promising MUCH MUCH more. Not only have the graphical quality gone through the roof, but we've now got animation at a significantly higher level, AI that's off the scale with people reacting perfectly to each other and the environment, perfect physics and KI on every model, partical effects up the wazzo ... but for me , it's the AI routines that were what made that rolling demo spectacular. Where they calc'ed real time? I'm going to say, no, i don't believe they are.

Now, whilst i think some of these things are achievable, some are going to way harder to achieve than you'd expect. Comparing what is being promised (?) now via what ever these are (Renders? Target Visual movies? I don't care) isn't anywhere near what was promised last time. I mean, good luck to the devs, i really hope they can get AI to the level

But "well, last time they did this and look what happened" - that's fantastic for people, but if you can't reassess the situation this time, then i guess you'd have to go back to this sort of thinking.

I know this thought of yours: well, that was last two times (PSOne and PS2 tech demos), what do the tell us ?

Well, while I do not like inductive methods as not guaranteeing any truth on their own efforts, they can provide some sort of probability, some sort of trust, hope, etc...

When you started hearing about Xenon, did you question the claims their tool-set was going to be good and easy to use (even though the platform was completely changing) ? No, you did not. Why did not you question that ? Maybe you did not question them there because you had some "experiences/knowledge" of past events that reassured you . Why did you always feel depressed about Sony and that the platform would be impossible to program for ? Was it maybe because in your mind you still had the memories of early PlayStation 2 development difficulties ?

.

 

[seanoff]

I think DC is off his meds at the moment. He seems a bit more antsy than usual.

Thought the PSP may have calmed his Sony ranting but either KK ate his first born or he loves them so much he just gets disappointed when they fail to raise people from the dead and cure cancer with whatever device he buys.

 

[DCharlie]

"Maybe you did not question them there because you had some "experiences/knowledge" of past events that reassured you . Why did you always feel depressed about Sony and that the platform would be impossible to program for ? Was it maybe because in your mind you still had the memories of early PlayStation 2 development difficulties ?"

... what?

the cost / knowledge thing has to do with the quite weird claim of "Well, if we'd just stayed with the PS2 way of doing things, it would have cost you much more money than it's going to!". Kaching is certain that it's going to make things relatively cheaper - but er... i dunno, relatively cheaper against the existing option?

I dunno - it just strikes me as a very weird claim to make. We could have thrown you to the dogs again, but we didn't!

On the programmability , i'll put my neck on the line and say we'll never see Guerilla produce a game that is equal to or beyond what the showed in the demo this gen.

Nothing to do with the tools , it would just require some impressive AI techniques and i'm not quite sure that we'll get AI to that point in the next 2 years or so (or whatever the time frame was for the PS2 demos being exceeded).

 

[Gek54]

How was the AI in the Killzone video 'too' smart?

 

[mrklaw]

These days, devs do a lot of high res renders for intros, cutscenes etc - take a look at any FF game for example.

Surely devs next-gen can create the same high poly models with bump mapping blah blah, and use them in-game? Then they don't need to create the normal ingame models - only one set are needed.

et voila! games cheaper to make than for PS2!













(its possibly I may be over simplifying things just a little)

 

[mrklaw]

Nothing to do with the tools , it would just require some impressive AI techniques and i'm not quite sure that we'll get AI to that point in the next 2 years or so (or whatever the time frame was for the PS2 demos being exceeded).

I don't expect that ingame either, but thats different from the graphics being doable, which I still hold out the hope for.

The AI I consider to be scripted, to give a 'Halo cartographer' feel to it. No point IMO showing gameplay footage - Gran Turismo and MGS have shown that replay/cinematics using the game engine are far more effective in getting people juiced up.

 

[Panajev2001a]

... what?

That was my answer to your "so what if their technocal demos in the past were honest ?".

the cost / knowledge thing has to do with the quite weird claim of "Well, if we'd just stayed with the PS2 way of doing things, it would have cost you much more money than it's going to!". Kaching is certain that it's going to make things relatively cheaper - but er... i dunno, relatively cheaper against the existing option?

What is Sony supposed to do to please ya man ? I might be too easily pleased, but you are darn hard, nigh impossible to please .

PSP already showed SCE being able to design fully in-house an architecture that shows how you can rely on elegance and not only brute force to reach your goal and they also showed a much easier to develop for environment. OpenGL-like libs, very feature rich OS, easier to program for Hardware, etc...

PlayStation 3 is following that lead while also expanding a lot on the performance increase side of things: SPE's programmed at the C/C++ level instead of the NEED of working at the ASM level to do anything and the necessary Hardware features to allow compilers to do a good enough job without hand-coding every darn loop in ASM, a good tool-chain coming from partner nVIDIA (Cg, OpenGL drivers, various performance counter tools, various tools to help with Shaders' programming, materials creation, normal maps handling, etc...) which carries along also one of the best developers relation team in the industry, a graphics pipeline that is OpenGL ES 2.0 based, a new interchangeable 3D file format like COLLADA, good hardware discolusre early on and plenty of work already started for the OS (which is likely to be more like PSP's and Xbox 360's OS's than a tiny layer like the RTE on PlayStation 2 leaving to developers all the hard work), etc...

Do not you reckon that if they went exactly PlayStation 2-like in terms of tools provided, hardware organization, in terms of GPU partners (in-house and with lack of good high level API's to be used), etc... that the platform would be harder to program for hence adding ALSO to the programming costs other than the increased expenses on other aspects on the game (like content creation) which increases for all next-generation platforms ?

 

[kaching]

Kaching is certain...

Yeah, your reading comprehension is really that bad. The only other way you could say this is if you were deliberately trying to misrepresent what I've said. I am not certain, I have simply been paraphrasing what Harrison said in the interview.

I dunno - it just strikes me as a very weird claim to make. We could have thrown you to the dogs again, but we didn't!

The claim is only weird because of the way you choose to present it. He's basically indicating the ways in which they've learned how to provide a better development environment, which you seem to prefer to represent as a Machiavellian scheme to appear as the charitable overlord relenting in their deliberate oppression.

And weren't you one of several around here that were initially speculating that Cell-based architecture of the PS3 would make it HARDER to program for than the PS2? Why, by your own previous stance, would you have expected it to be a "gimme" NOT to have thrown devs to the dogs?

On the programmability , i'll put my neck on the line and say we'll never see Guerilla produce a game that is equal to or beyond what the showed in the demo this gen.

Great, how about other devs?