The Game Developers Conference 2006 Thread (Part II)
- Thread starter Amir0x
- Start date
seanoff said:
Hrmm, thats what the stupid world and time date site said... I will investigate...
ok....
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DefectiveReject
Banned
We got a full video last year, so maybe this year too, Iwata allowed IGN to have one I think?
I expect well get a Rev demo, playing Zelda, and some confirmed 3rd parties and titles for launch period?
I expect well get a Rev demo, playing Zelda, and some confirmed 3rd parties and titles for launch period?
TekunoRobby
Tag of Excellence
Yeah that's completely cool, I like the difference in opinion and I don't mind at all that someone thinks its mind-blowing good. In fact I even understand that viewpoint and share in their enthusiasm. I just feel that some people are just glossing over what was presented and not critically evaluating what was shown. Of course IGN isn't guilty of this, I'm merely speaking of some forum opinions and maybe some in the press. Is that good or bad, who gives a shit to be frank. The important part is Sony actually showed something of importance running on the PS3 and that's a major step forward from what they've been doing the past year.SolidSnakex said:
Speaking of the demonstration overall I just think it was a real mixed bag. However I will still stand by my statement that some random parts were PS2 caliber graphics because to be blunt that's the fucking truth (it really varied: environments, textures, models too but that might be stretching it). Other times some of the effects and post processing were above and beyond what's been shown on the 360. The Motorstorm demonstration was probably the greatest example of what I felt. On one hand the terrain deformation and the physics interaction was mind-blowing cool meanwhile the models and the textures were terrible, especially how the tires were always halfway into the ground. A mixed bag but overall rather positive, especially at the end of the demonstration where it showed the full effect of the deformation. I guess I'm a bit more jaded because I have a much deeper understanding of what goes into the development process than some journalists. Overall I don't get the negative reaction to what I thought; I've always been a huge supporter of all platforms which has always been glaringly obvious on this forum. Who gives a shit what system it is, show me the games.
I'd like to say something real quick: I enjoyed how the usual crowd got into a real hissyfit and of course its the same group of people who weren't even there or seen the press and are just chiming in to defend the honor of their company or some ridiculous bullshit. Fuck them, they need to go outside and enjoy life.
element said:
I think the question was more "how does it compare to what we've seen to date on 360?". Not a hypothetical "could this be done on 360?".
It's becoming pretty clear where Sony sees PS3's strengths, and from the sounds of things, they did a good job illustrating that. Reading the reports, it seems they focussed on scale and/or simulation as hallmarks of PS3-focussed titles - which makes sense in the context of Cell being PS3's key differentiator. I can only rely on textual descriptions, but I don't think we've yet seen a 360 game offering the level of physical interaction described in Motorstorm, or the demo from that SCEE London game. Comments about Warhawk and R&C reminded me of that developer Kikizo quoted, talking about one of PS3's advantage in throwing a lot more stuff around at once. (And on R&C, while it was a non-interactive demo, Insomniac is certainly one developer who has NOT BSed us to date..I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt for now). It's one thing to talk about modelling detail/lighting etc. and how that compares to stuff seen to date, but it's fairly evident that Sony sees PS3's real, (differentiating) strengths elsewhere.
This isn't to say, indeed, that 360 couldn't handle what was shown yesterday - most of the above mentioned titles are early afterall, and certainly wouldn't be tapping all of Cell's power, so I'd greatly hesitate to suggest that. But the question is - if and when it does start matching the apparent technical sophistication of some of the stuff shown yesterday, where will PS3 be? One wonders further how much more the bar will be raised given that these are early results on hardware that is supposedly difficult to tap..
TekunoRobby
Tag of Excellence
PS3's strength is the Cell and not the GPU.
I can personally vouch for these guys. I had a nice chat with them after the event.gofreak said:
TekunoRobby said:
Agreed. And in fairness to Sony, it's something they've highlighted from day one. Not to downplay the GPU at all - it's more than up to scratch - but as far as the real differentiating factor over other systems goes, that mostly is down to Cell (and maybe Blu-ray to a lesser extent, depending on how things pan out). And I think it's encouraging we're seeing manifestations of that already.
TekunoRobby said:
Did you wring any new info out of them?
R&C was realtime, yes?
element
Member
One thing they did say during the Warhawk demo was they weren't programming in assembly, so they aren't really 'pushing' it yet.
I think Sony is doing a better job sweating the details then Microsoft, because it is the details that people are going to pick up on. How trees move, if there are people on the street who don't walk like robots, just things that people didn't have time or thought about doing before.
element said:
Yeah, I noted that. They seemed happy with the results they were getting without having to go low-level, but then I know some devs ARE going low-level to do what they want to achieve, at least for some stuff, and it really makes me wonder how much better things will get going forward.
Also interesting if Warhawk is using 4xAA, which also suggests they're not exactly stressing FB bandwidth with post-processing or whatever.
TekunoRobby
Tag of Excellence
Yeah definitely, the GPU is no slouch. In fact when doing a few certain things it certainly leaves a good impression. This system has major legs and I believe the Cell is going to have the largest influence in that.gofreak said:
Yeah, the Getaway was a great example of that.element said:
MrPing1000
Member
there won't be any video feeds but http://www.joystiq.com/ had an updating text record of the sony conference, best place to be i guess, that and irc
element said:
Nice, look forward to it
Wollan said:Could some attendents please make a scetch or photoshop job of how the PS3 hud looked like?
It might be difficult, because apparently there were transparent overlays and such. Could be hard to express that in a sketch.
element said:
It's from the PS2 version but that's not important:
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/136/926722_20050517_screen001.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/136/926722_20050517_screen015.jpg
Pics from the Sony conference!
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0603/23/news077.html
Small, but better than nothing :lol
Heavenly Sword/Havok demo:
Car demo:
Motorstorm:
Warhawk:
R&C:
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0603/23/news077.html
Small, but better than nothing :lol
Heavenly Sword/Havok demo:
Car demo:
Motorstorm:
Warhawk:
R&C:
I love looking a new pics like these from a show. Man do I love new hardware.gofreak said:Pics from the Sony conference!
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0603/23/news077.html
Small, but better than nothing :lol
Heavenly Sword/Havok demo:
Car demo:
Motorstorm:
Warhawk:
R&C:
I'm really hoping that Motorstorm turns out to be everything we saw in that E3 demo. Being a racing freak at heart just makes me so excited for that game. I love the small details in games, and that dirt and enviornmental interaction is truly the stuff that makes me giddy.TekunoRobby said:
It's not that, it's just incredibly hard to believe a realtime demo released in march would be significantly worse looking than a demo of the same game released months ago in september. It's also hard to believe Deano who's a reputable B3d member and is involved in HS would be outright lying. I mean Deano's word is they've only added since e3 to HS and the e3 demo was realtime with postprocessing added to it, yet some say the GDC demo was ps2 caliber? Again this just doesn't jibe I mean the duck and fish demo, which are not even games just simple tech demos, are extremely impressive with cg'ish geometry lvls aboove pretty much any title outhere and advanced physics and animation, it's hard to believe full games with far bigger budgets would be far behind these.
We also have word of sustained applause over games like warhawk, how is that possible if it was underwhelming and inferior to TGS(as tgs was better than e3, imho)?(Though from my understanding, iirc, Naughty's lendt insomniac the engines in the past, and they may not be that hot when it comes to doing it on their own. Still the TGS realtime demo, and sustained applause response suggest it can't possibly look worse... we'll see. I know those small pics look quite impressive, though still hard to tell the details.)
Here's what I'd like to know...
Were the demos at least a step up from what we've been seeing on the XBOX360 thus far? It sounds as if 360 could have handled any of them, but whether or not it HAS handled anything similar is more of a concern. I don't care about all this "console war" BS, but I won't deny that the 360 hasn't impressed thus far and is not where I want next-gen visuals to be. I'm hoping for very large leaps over the next couple years.
At the very least, I'm hoping for high framerates on PS3. Obviously, those demos were a bit early, but I really hope the developers realize that one of the biggest problems with 360 software thus far is the framerate. It isn't acceptable. At all. Damn near every great looking game on the machine has a framerate that drops below 30 fps fairly often while also suffering from tearing. That's garbage.
Hopefully both machines will start delivering games that don't chug like an old PC game...
I'm not so sure about that...
Let's wait and see what other JP developers have to offer first. The biggest thing to me is that they seem to care about framerates and the overall presentation far more than Western devs. A game with a bunch of bells and whistles that suffers from a bad framerate, bad menu transitions, akward animation, and all sorts of other similar problems is less impressive to me than something that lacks those features but suffers from none of those issues. The little things go a long way and Japanese games more often deliver in that area. It's been this way for years and we've already seen some proof that it may happen again (DOA4 and RR6 - 60 fps with superior presentation and polish).