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PS3 games list & SPE usages

D

DrXym

Member
MikeB said:
Activision is a lot like EA; they simply make multiplatform games to get the most out of their investments. Obviously, the PS3 is included in most of their productions thus far, so maybe they're more comfortable than others with the system's complex architecture. Those who are tend to praise the console's potential while admitting it's very difficult to work with, and that's exactly what Activision is doing here. Well, we certainly can't wait for those "next four or five years," that's for sure.
Click to expand...

EA already appear to be getting their PS3 middleware into shape. FIFA and NBA08 are 60 fps, suggesting they're at least partly over the hump supporting it in a decent way.

I expect Activision and Ubisoft also have substantial tools & middleware teams who are presumably doing the exact same thing in-house too.

I expect in the next year that there will be little or no difference between most cross-platform titles. It's even possible that we might see the 360 as suffering by way of comparison.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
An interview with IBM's lead Cell architect:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15981

A snip

"I'm sure you're aware, that there's some criticism from game developers in terms of ease of use. Do you think that that's just a learning curve thing, or do you think that there are hurdles that the Cell presents, compared to what they have been familiar with?

Anything besides a single-threaded processor is going to be more difficult. Whether it's a large symmetric multi-processor, or heterogeneous type of structure the Cell is, it presents more challenges. And, to get some of the efficiencies that we have in Cell, we are expecting the software programmer to be a little more structured in how they design work.

It's sorta like, I had an analogy that, you know, in the old days you might, if you're doing a plumbing job, you might go to the plumbing store -- you might have a local store -- and you'd say, "OK, I'm can go to the store because it's really close, and get a thing..."

And then over time, you might get a plumber coming out, so then he'll put a van, and it's not too far for him to go to his truck and get some supplies. But then as you move forward, and say, "Oh, I've got a big project to do, and I gotta go to my Lowe's or Home Depot that's nearby," you really need a shopping list.

You need to put together all the stuff you need to get to get your work done. And it takes more up-front planning to get that kind of work done. And that's kinda what the Cell is, it's the structures that are requiring people to do a lot more up-front planning.

Whereas before, I wouldn't say they were lazy, they didn't need to worry about that kind of structures. So it's forcing people to be a lot more structured in their work, and it takes more time up front. So there's some adjustment to that, and tools needed, to make that more efficient."
 
Nizz

Nizz

Member
MikeB said:
Some encouraging comments from Activision, but 4 to 5 years? I really don't think it will take this long, as most 1st and 2nd parties are already tapping into a good deal of the enormous additional performance potential regading their leading PS3 titles (R&C Future, Uncharted, Killzone 2, Final Fantasy XIII, etc). I don't think 3rd parties can afford to stay behind for this long with regard to enhancing game engines. They will start to look like incompetent in consumer eyes and nobody wants their company to be viewed as such.

Activision: PS3 "Most Advanced Gaming Platform"
http://www.psxextreme.com/ps3-news/2030.html

We don't expect every developer to love the PS3, but we do expect a wee bit of effort. There has been a lot of whining concerning Sony's new platform - it was the same way with the PS2 - but the whining has lessened over the course of 2007, and more developers are seeing the light. One of them (who wasn't "whining" to begin with) is Activision, who threw Sony some respect a few days ago.

Speaking at last week's Web 2.0 Summit conference in the U.S., Activision chairman and CEO, Robert Kotick, told an audience member that he thinks the PlayStation 3 is the "most advanced gaming platform available." At the same time, though, he had to add something we all knew was true- "few game developers were building products that take full advantage of the console's powerful, multicore processor." On the other hand, Kotick said the future was bright; all this would change in "the next four or five years." (quote source: *****)

Activision is a lot like EA; they simply make multiplatform games to get the most out of their investments. Obviously, the PS3 is included in most of their productions thus far, so maybe they're more comfortable than others with the system's complex architecture. Those who are tend to praise the console's potential while admitting it's very difficult to work with, and that's exactly what Activision is doing here. Well, we certainly can't wait for those "next four or five years," that's for sure.
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It's claims like this that reassure me a bright future with PS3. I can't deny that right now it can be rough to be a PS3 owner. Reading about people's experiences with games, particularly multi-platform games, but being frustrated in "said" game not being released yet on my system. Stranglehold, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Orange Box. Or how exclusive (at least timed) games like UT3 are delayed. Hopefully soon, there'll be a turning point in development on PS3 (which may be happening sooner than I think) where things'll turn around for the better. Great job with the thread also :D
 
M

MikeB

Banned
I have now added the following comments with regard to Uncharted: Drake’s fortune:

"We are utilizing all SPUs in Uncharted for AI, animation and lots of other systems. We are however just starting to tap into the power of the Cell. In future games I can promise even more utilization of the Cell which will result in more of everything, including game play."

Source: Ars Technica
 
A

acabado

Banned
MikeB said:
2883708070095088590S425x425Q85.jpg


Deferred Rendering in Killzone 2
Click to expand...

Very interesting and also some new shots,at least for me.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
MikeB said:
I have now added the following comments with regard to Uncharted: Drake’s fortune:

"We are utilizing all SPUs in Uncharted for AI, animation and lots of other systems. We are however just starting to tap into the power of the Cell. In future games I can promise even more utilization of the Cell which will result in more of everything, including game play."

Source: Ars Technica
Click to expand...

More quotes added for Uncharted:

"As far as the Cell processor is concerned, we're actually using about a third to half of that right now, so there's still a bit of untapped potential there."

" I would say number one thing is animation, and the fact that the Cell processor has so much raw horse power that you could just throw more and more at it and it doesn't break a sweat. Our animation system is very complex, and we layer on dozens of frames of animation so you have that fluidity of movement where Nathan Drake can be running across a courtyard, stumbling over a rock as he's ducking under a hail of gunfire, reloading his weapon and rolling into cover, and all of these animations can happen simultaneously. "

Source: GameSpot
 
V

-viper-

Banned
Valve on Half-Life 2 (PS3 Version):

"With the PS3, we can’t exactly say what power cap we reached, since no developer really knows where the boundary is for the PS3. We can tell you that in terms of the whole game together on the PS3, we are not even using the SPU’s and it is purely built on the graphics card and Cell. We’re still optimizing for PS3 more because we can, which can explain the slight delay to you. But no worries, everything is going smoothly to put down any rumors"

Source: PSU
 
D

danwarb

Member
-viper- said:
Valve on Half-Life 2 (PS3 Version):

"With the PS3, we can’t exactly say what power cap we reached, since no developer really knows where the boundary is for the PS3. We can tell you that in terms of the whole game together on the PS3, we are not even using the SPU’s and it is purely built on the graphics card and Cell. We’re still optimizing for PS3 more because we can, which can explain the slight delay to you. But no worries, everything is going smoothly to put down any rumors"

Source: PSU
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But, Valve aren't handling the PS3 port.

As for the lists in the OP: Oblivion does use the SPE's for stuff and FNR3 took a number of little hits with crowd geometry, lighting, AA, motion blur and some very occasional slowdown.
 
B

Busty

Banned
danwarb said:
But, Valve aren't handling the PS3 port.
Click to expand...

Doesn't mean that they aren't going to comment on it. Just because EA wanted to do a PS3 version and Valve treated the whole affair like a red headed step child with a lisp doesn't mean that they aren't going to have their PR department (the intern with the lazy eye) talk about a product that bares their name.

danwerb said:
As for the lists in the OP: Oblivion does use the SPE's for stuff and FNR3 took a number of little hits with crowd geometry, lighting, AA, motion blur and some very occasional slowdown.
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt that a game like Oblivion, that barely taxes the 360 in any meaningful way, is using any of the SPEs.

And after the infamous crowd screenshots (they looked like badly animated 2D crowd from a PS-One era WW(F)E game) from the PS3 version of FNR3 it's clear that it's not using any of the SPEs either.

I think it's a solid educated guess to say that the majority of the third party multi format games on the PS3 don't use any of the SPEs at all. Hell, even John Cormack commented on it!
 
M

MikeB

Banned
@ Busty

I agree with you with regard to FNR3, although EA did win a VES award for 'Outstanding Real Time Visuals' regarding the PS3 version. The boxers certainly received a significant upgrade compared the 360 version, but there was less effort made with regard to the background environment. Of course in a game like this, like in a Rocky movie the emphasis should usually be placed on the foreground character fights.

IMO combined with the additional 'Get in the Ring' first person perspective option, this IMO makes the PS3 version the better version, but that probably has nothing to do with SPE usage. Like someone stated above I believe EA started to do a little SPE processing with Fifa 2008, but it's clear they haven't tried anything ambitious yet and maybe they never will, so I am not expecting their PS3 versions to outshine the XBox 360 versions like the hardware should technically be capable of.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
@ danwarb

With regard to Oblivion could you be a bit more specific, what "stuff" are you referring to exactly? I've heard rumours that Oblivion may make some minor usage of the SPE(s) through some 3rd party middleware, is that correct? Who's the source?
 
S

spwolf

Member
Busty said:
I seriously doubt that a game like Oblivion, that barely taxes the 360 in any meaningful way, is using any of the SPEs.
Click to expand...

Ehm, whip out your copy of Oblivion and wonder how did the game get 9.x+ ratings with standard 10-20fps.

If that game came out tomorrow, it would be killed by critics who all became fps whores very recently.
 
T

theBishop

Banned
spwolf said:
Ehm, whip out your copy of Oblivion and wonder how did the game get 9.x+ ratings with standard 10-20fps.

If that game came out tomorrow, it would be killed by critics who all became fps whores very recently.
Click to expand...

yeah... i was gonna say, if that frame rate is "not taxing the 360", i don't know what is.

i'm sure they could've optimized it to run smoother.
 
P

PistolGrip

sex vacation in Guam
spwolf said:
Ehm, whip out your copy of Oblivion and wonder how did the game get 9.x+ ratings with standard 10-20fps.

If that game came out tomorrow, it would be killed by critics who all became fps whores very recently.
Click to expand...
Lair singlehandledly killed Motion controls and frame rates for reviewers!

because it came out on the PS3

I doubt Oblivion (an already made game) uses the SPUs for anything intentional.
 
R

-Rogue5-

Member
I'm very curious to know how many cores the 360 version of the Orange Box used. If it uses all three (doubt it), and the PS3 version runs just as well on only the PPU, I'll be very impressed.

Actually, I'm very interested in seeing what, if any, improvements could be made by assigning the SPUs to specific tasks... A lot (not all, but most) of the devsquotes say that they just handed out data on a priority basis across ALL the SPUs... I'd imagine that if you gave specific tasks to each SPU and then used the PPU to less specific tasks you could get much better quality on those SPU tasks...

...but I'm guessing there is something hugely difficult about getting each SPU's task to render/calculate in sync with other less strenuous SPU specific tasks.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
I have added the following comments with regard to Uncharted:

"The PlayStation 3 has a lot of power. When we started Uncharted we were really ambitious and had no idea what the PS3 would give us. Once we got the first devkits, we realized quickly that we could do everything we had planned to. The three main points for me are the Cell, Blu-Ray and the hard drive. We’ve been using the Cell for pretty much all our systems: rendering, particles, physics simulation, collision detection, animation, AI, decompression, water simulation, etc … and to give you an idea of the power of the PS3, we're using only 30 percent of the Cell processor.

In terms of Blu-Ray, we just couldn’t have made Uncharted without it; with Uncharted we have almost filled it (91 percent). We're also using the hard drive to pre-cache data from the Blu-Ray disc. That allows us to stream up to 12 streams for sound, load level data super fast and more importantly to stream textures constantly to guarantee high-res quality on the screen. "

Source: Ars Technica

Well worth a read:

Getting technical with Naughty Dog co-president Christophe Balestra
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thu...-naughty-dog-co-president-christophe-balestra
 
M

MikeB

Banned
More Uncharted:

"Basically, in Jak I we had somewhere in the vicinity of 300-350 animations for Jak and everyone was really happy with the fluidity of his movement and the response. In Uncharted, Drake has got more than 3500 animations and the difference is we're now taking the cell processor and we're taking say two dozen of those animations, like we've got his running animations, flinching animations, reloading animations, rolling animations, just dozens of animations all at once being layered on top of each other and then the cell processor recreates on the fly the single frame of animation that you need to be able to play the game at that moment and the fact we can just dump more and more work on that processor and its SPUs just means we can free up our CPU to do more general purpose tasks. "

Source: PALGN

http://palgn.com.au/article.php?tit...&id=9225&sid=5db1d6cb976b9f83b3117b523fc629c3
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Cross platform game development seems to be well improving, for example DiRT as well as Call of Duty 4 (I believe) runs better on the PS3 than it does on the XBox 360, some interesting comments from the developers behind Kane & Lynch :

Developing for PS3 is "fun"

"It's a new platform for us. It's our first PS3 game. It's a challenging platform to develop on, but it's also one that has a lot of potential that's just waiting to be unlocked as people get to know it better and as developers get more skilled at utilising the machine."

When asked what exactly makes it a challenging platform to work on, Heiberg pointed towards the way the PS3's CELL processor works and said that game code "ends up being rather different" compared with Xbox 360 and PC versions of the same game.

He said: "The Xbox and the PC are very similar. They are just two very powerful CPUs and you can make it through your threads and be sure that it's going to run reasonably OK. The PS3 doesn't have many general purpose CPUs like a multi core system has on the PC side. It has a CELL processor which is itself a pretty powerful processor, but if you're really going to get something out of it you're going to have to utilise the SPUs on it, which are small special purpose units that you write little programs for doing whatever you need to get done.

"Those are not just standard threads that you just spawn like you do on a PC. You have to really think it through and identify areas in your game that will benefit from this and isolate that code and make the cuts so you can transfer the minimal amount of data to and from those units and get the most processing power out of them."

He added: "It's a very different approach. The code ends up being rather different than it is on the Xbox and the PC. You can start with something that's pretty much the same and then you try to run it on the PS3 and it doesn't run very well. Then you start to optimise it and optimise it and you get further away from where you started but you really start to unlock some of the potential of the PS3."

"Well obviously it's something that requires a bit of resources and special effort, which costs money", he said. "But on the other hand it's something that I think most developers are rather keen on getting into because it's a new fresh system and it's an interesting architecture. Development wise it's fun. It brings back a lot of memories from college and university. In many ways it's a fun architecture to work on but definitely one that's also going to cost you some money because you need to write special purpose code for it."

http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/07-11-2007-6830.html
 
M

MikeB

Banned
More intersting comments from Insomniac:

"The amount of action we're able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second really dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second," said Hastings. "What's most exciting is the way things are headed right now I think we'll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from the first to second."

Looking ahead, he was equally as optimistic: "We're already seeing a big leap in what people are able to do with the PS3 now compared to a year ago, and we're going to see just as big a leap between now and the end of 2008," said the Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer. "I think we're going to continue seeing major leaps each year in what people are able to do with the machine for at least three or four more years."

And how are future games going to look better? It seems it's all down to the use of the much talked about PlayStation 3 SPUs, which until now haven't been fully used by developers.

"The tech and gameplay teams have moved tons of things over to the SPUs that used to run on the PPU," said Hastings on the improvements made to Insomniac's game engine. "Collision and physics are entirely running on SPUs now, which allows us to put much more on the screen at once than we were able to with Resistance. Moving more and more code to the SPUs is an ongoing process and I think we'll continue to see major benefits from this for several more years."

http://www.virginmedia.com/games/gamingnews/news-story.php?storyid=16411891
 
D

danwarb

Member
-Rogue5- said:
I'm very curious to know how many cores the 360 version of the Orange Box used. If it uses all three (doubt it), and the PS3 version runs just as well on only the PPU, I'll be very impressed.
Click to expand...
That'd be much more than impressive. The PPU in CELL is on its own less than 1/3 of the 360s CPU at full tilt.
 
T

tanod

when is my burrito
MikeB said:
"The amount of action we're able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second really dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second," said Hastings. "What's most exciting is the way things are headed right now I think we'll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from the first to second."
Click to expand...

So, basically Resistance 2 is going to look like Crisis on medium settings at 60 fps. ;)
 
S

spwolf

Member
tanod said:
So, basically Resistance 2 is going to look like Crisis on medium settings at 60 fps. ;)
Click to expand...

i think the main point is that once you built your engine for PS3, everything else is just gravy :D
 
K

kitch9

Banned
My mates sister is a freelance graphics designer, and has worked for a number of major dev studios on some really big titles.

He's well into his 360, and she said he'll want a PS3 by the middle of 2008, as some of the games see's seen look amazing, and are a league ahead of anything we've seen so far. Some are unannounced titles, and she won't tell me what they are as she could get sued.

The concencous appears to be that if they are going to port they should go PS3 to 360 and not the other way round. The 360 can run code will less optimisation from the PS3, but the PS3 really struggles with code from the 360.

The 360 prolly will always have better textures if devs don't introduce streaming to all their engines, as its simply a matter of ram, but she reckons we are going to see effects on the PS3 that can't be done anywhere else. Sony are making great efforts to spread the love, and pass on knowledge from their first parties.

We'll see.
 
P

PistolGrip

sex vacation in Guam
MikeB said:
More intersting comments from Insomniac:

"The amount of action we're able to put on the screen at 60 frames per second really dwarfs what we were able to do a year ago at 30 frames per second," said Hastings. "What's most exciting is the way things are headed right now I think we'll see just as big a leap from our second generation engine to our third as we did from the first to second."

Looking ahead, he was equally as optimistic: "We're already seeing a big leap in what people are able to do with the PS3 now compared to a year ago, and we're going to see just as big a leap between now and the end of 2008," said the Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer. "I think we're going to continue seeing major leaps each year in what people are able to do with the machine for at least three or four more years."

And how are future games going to look better? It seems it's all down to the use of the much talked about PlayStation 3 SPUs, which until now haven't been fully used by developers.

"The tech and gameplay teams have moved tons of things over to the SPUs that used to run on the PPU," said Hastings on the improvements made to Insomniac's game engine. "Collision and physics are entirely running on SPUs now, which allows us to put much more on the screen at once than we were able to with Resistance. Moving more and more code to the SPUs is an ongoing process and I think we'll continue to see major benefits from this for several more years."

http://www.virginmedia.com/games/gamingnews/news-story.php?storyid=16411891
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Sounds really good. Resistance 2 will be insane.
 
T

the_id

Member
spwolf said:
why? Insomniac has big team... they work on several things at time...
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They can bring it out next year. But i think most PS3 fans love resistance. I for one want Resistance 2 to come sooner but i also want it to be the best game ever on the PS3!!! i don't mind waiting longer so Insomniac can add more polish to an already polished game.
 
T

tanod

when is my burrito
the_id said:
They can bring it out next year. But i think most PS3 fans love resistance. I for one want Resistance 2 to come sooner but i also want it to be the best game ever on the PS3!!! i don't mind waiting longer so Insomniac can add more polish to an already polished game.
Click to expand...

Resistance didn't stop them from putting out R&C this year. R2 in 2008 or bust.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
danwarb said:
That'd be much more than impressive. The PPU in CELL is on its own less than 1/3 of the 360s CPU at full tilt.
Click to expand...

It's not as simple as that, the Cell does have dedicated higher speed low latency XDR RAM to work with, the CPU does not have to share RAM bandwidth with the GPU. This may well be a significant XBox 360 bottleneck, we have heard of IBM tests demonstrating near 100% efficiency while testing SPE performance, I haven't seen any tests regarding how the Xenon is implemented in the XBox 360.

Also one SPE processor is currently fully reserved by the OS, it's unknown to me if this would take some workload off the PPE in comparison to the XBox 360 design where similar features draws performance from one of these 3 cores.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
kitch9 said:
The 360 prolly will always have better textures if devs don't introduce streaming to all their engines, as its simply a matter of ram, but she reckons we are going to see effects on the PS3 that can't be done anywhere else. Sony are making great efforts to spread the love, and pass on knowledge from their first parties.
Click to expand...

I agree that extended streaming will be crucial for future game engines and push much further than they currently do and higher capacity discs (Blu-Ray) and a default harddrive certainly is a huge PS3 advantage in this regard. With regard to the XBox 360's potential, I think the limited size of its EDRAM may well result into developers making sacrifices, even an exclusive 1st party game like Halo 3 with an extremely high development budget is only rendering in 640p while also lacking AA. Other games like COD4 (XBox 360, ported almost identically to the PS3) and Oblivion (luckily only the XBox 360 version) are only even 600p.

However hundreds of megabytes of RAM is a lot to work with on a games console lacking a bloated inefficient operating system and if your game is efficiently designed. So it may take some time before the publishers see the need and thus for developers to implement this like is the case with regard to SPE usage by various cross-platform games designers.

Ratchet and Clank is truly awesome, best looking game I've played so far (texture streaming + extensive SPU usage makes this possible) and is already certain to be on my top 10 all-time favourites list when I beat finally the game together with my girlfriend!
 
J

jax (old)

Banned
MikeB said:
Ratchet and Clank is truly awesome, best looking game I've played so far (texture streaming + extensive SPU usage makes this possible)
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I'm sorry but its not the best looking game by a mile. Some of the textures (close up in the spaceship)..etc are appallingly last gen (why didn't they model the furniture for that shot?), instead it had an crappy bump map. There's way too many instances of this in game.

I still think Gears of War is the best looking next gen game (haven't played COD4 or AC).
 
D

Dahbomb

Member
He's well into his 360, and she said he'll want a PS3 by the middle of 2008, as some of the games see's seen look amazing, and are a league ahead of anything we've seen so far. Some are unannounced titles, and she won't tell me what they are as she could get sued.
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Unannounced PS3megatons lying in wait? God of War 3?
 
M

MikeB

Banned
@ Jax

Although I agree Gears of War looks mighty fine on the XBox 360, I am more impressed by Ratchet & Clank on the PS3. I like the color scheme better and it's amazing to fly around a level and look at the dinosaurs down below and in the distance. IMO Gears never amazes that much, the Beserker I liked best (although you can't damage it with ordinary weapons), but I was dissapointed you couldn't actually fight the coolest looking boss in the game which apparently you can fight in the PC version (which I haven't played). The end game boss was very dissapointing for me, IMO the many non-bosses in Ratchet are way more impressive than that one. Overall the game seems far more polished to me.

Overall on a tehnical level Gears is very good though and pushes the XBox 360 very well, the things I didn't like about that game was more related to game design (crunched running seems so unnatural to me as a physical therapist, kicking dead bodies as if they are made of paper), bad acting, very weak storyline, annoying parts like the light gun tank section.

I know Epic made a big deal of Gears with Microsoft watching over their shoulders, as if they wouldn't be able to recreate the game on the PS3, maybe contributing to the raving reviews the game received, but:

In reply of Epic's hyped wild claims, Heavenly Sword dev: "I wonder what's so impressive in GOW that RSX could not do." and "once devs will start to use SPUs to speed up RSX things will start to be even more interesting"

Mark Rein (2007)=> PS3 UT3 Graphics Better Than Gears Of War and UT3 runs better on PS3 than Gears on 360
 
B

Busty

Banned
spwolf said:
why? Insomniac has big team... they work on several things at time...
Click to expand...

Well they have Resistance 2, an as yet untitled PSN project, and whatever else the current 'R&C' team might be doing if not helping on Resistance 2.

I wonder what the 'Ratchet and Clank' team will be doing after Future Tools of Destruction? While another sequel to R&C would be great, I would like to see Insomniac perhaps try another new IP. Not neccesarily in the same genre, just something new.


Jax said:
I still think Gears of War is the best looking next gen game (haven't played COD4 or AC).
Click to expand...

I respect your opinion, but Gears was 'reached and breached' some time ago in the graphics race. With Crysis now out it simply washes away all competition. On the horizon the likes of Killzone will move everything up a notch as well.

I suppose one could argue that Gears is without a doubt the best looking UE3 game but considering the arena like scope of something like Unreal3 that still maintains the look and feel of Gears with much larger environments it's not surprising that as the engine evolves we'll the see Gears get surpassed graphically speaking.


Dahbomb said:
Unannounced PS3megatons lying in wait? God of War 3?
Click to expand...


There is no doubting the size and scope of Sony's first party development operation and that we've heard relatively little of what Sony have planned from all their worldwide studios so I would say that unannounced megatons for the PS3 are a definite.

The real quesion isn't the 'if', it's the 'when'.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Busty said:
I suppose one could argue that Gears is without a doubt the best looking UE3 game but considering the arena like scope of something like Unreal3 that still maintains the look and feel of Gears with much larger environments it's not surprising that as the engine evolves we'll the see Gears get surpassed graphically speaking.
Click to expand...

Agreed, the environments to explore is much smaller and linear in Gears of War. The first thing I wanted to do was jump outside the building at the start of the game to explore, sadly enough I couldn't even jump, it did give me an immediate feeling of being caged.
 
A

Arkham

The Amiga Brotherhood
Busty said:
Well they have...an as yet untitled PSN project.
Click to expand...

R&C Racing!

Or, "Resistance & Clank Racing".
'Cause you know that's where he ended up... Defending the Zuni from the Chimera.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
BTW, is there clarity with regard to UT3 on the PS3 being 30 FPS locked or will they aim higher considering (AFAIK) an earlier demonstration ran at higher framerates? Is Epic just locking the game to 30 FPS for the game to become more similar to the XBox 360 version (not wanting to upset the huge XBox 360 install base in the US, maybe considering earlier comments)?

IMO regarding Gears, with Boomers saying "Boom Boom" like a five year old I think the game was primarily aimed at the younger audience. I loved Unreal Tournament on the PC before, but I don't really understand the raving US reviews for Gears (mostly lacking to comment on the game's negatives). It's a good game overall, but IMO the game lacks depth even compared to Rainbow Six Vegas on the 360 (Judging from the demo I played from XBox Live).
 
mckmas8808

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
kitch9 said:
My mates sister is a freelance graphics designer, and has worked for a number of major dev studios on some really big titles.

He's well into his 360, and she said he'll want a PS3 by the middle of 2008, as some of the games see's seen look amazing, and are a league ahead of anything we've seen so far. Some are unannounced titles, and she won't tell me what they are as she could get sued.

The concencous appears to be that if they are going to port they should go PS3 to 360 and not the other way round. The 360 can run code will less optimisation from the PS3, but the PS3 really struggles with code from the 360.

The 360 prolly will always have better textures if devs don't introduce streaming to all their engines, as its simply a matter of ram, but she reckons we are going to see effects on the PS3 that can't be done anywhere else. Sony are making great efforts to spread the love, and pass on knowledge from their first parties.

We'll see.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Who does mates sister work for now?
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Regarding R&C: TOD, I didn't know the cutscenes were rendered in realtime like in Resistance! I shot a nano-swarm just before entering a cutscene and there it was inside the cutscene, impressive!? So much going on at once later on in the game seemingly without dropping any frames, wow has Insomniac's engine become solid! Can't wait to get my hands on Resistance 2! :cool:
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Haze will probably make it onto this list:

"Its strengths are obviously that is has a lot of processing power. Its weaknesses are that its processing power is locked away at the moment. But everyone's going to hit that wall across all platforms at first.

But as people continue to make bigger and faster games, this will change as the technology isn't scaleable anymore because everything's going to be multi-core. It's not going to be two or four processors; it's going to be 64. And everybody is going to have to learn to make software for that and that's the big challenge that everyone faces.

Developers are looking for skills that you can't get off the shelf anymore. Our best developers at Free Radical have leant those skills at the company, not anywhere else. "

Source: CVG May 2007
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Some more info with regard to Final Fantasy XIII and Versus:

"- Kitase side (FFXIII-centric?) -
Kitase: The Blue-Ray's disc space and the PS3 HDD's standards has helped us a lot in terminating (mostly, if not absolutely) loading times.

Kitase: Just like how 7 was a huge improvement from 6, the improvement between 12 and 13 may be big too.

- Nomura side (FF Versus XIII-centric) -
Nomura: There's definitely a lot of work need to done on making PS3-quality graphics. We can render very small details now so (when character designing) I have to draw a lot more than usual, like the clothes' fabric material to the very way of how it's sewn.

Nomura: "Versus" is taking time being developped because the team is trying to explore the whole specs (of the PS3). Our programmers were asking, "is it okay if we program it as a PS3 exclusive? If you're thinking of porting it to other consoles, we might have to change the specs to follow suit the others." And I answered, "PS3 exclusive, of course."

Nomura: The staff just showed me how it looks to fly with an airship while in the World Map (for Versus). It's been awhile since I last saw something "FF-ish". The map looks very realistic but we're trying to see how we can 'shrink' it a bit. It's so huge that I couldn't even tell the very first town.

Nomura: The first drafts of the scenario was shown to our staff members; some said it's "too long", the others said it's "too short". After some brainstorming, I think we should have a thick enough volume for this game. But thinking this much of volume is going to be shown through the PS3's graphics, it got me shivering."

and

"Reports from N4G and Siliconera are saying that at the recent Square Enix fiscal meeting Square Enix said that development of the engine has become stagnant. This is not true, but a mistranslation. Google Translator mistranslates it as well, likely the source of their translation.

In the report on the fiscal meeting by impress.co.jp they speak of recent earnings from, and sales of, recent Square Enix games and only mention the white engine momentarily in the report. There is no further word on Final Fantasy XIII or development of the engine outside stating that development is NOT stagnant. This obviously means development of the white engine is still ongoing and going smoothly. It is likely of no worry that the engine is still being worked on as improvements to most game engines are continuous up to their games' completion."

Source: ff-xiii.net
 
B

BlackGoku03

Member
-viper- said:
Valve on Half-Life 2 (PS3 Version):

"With the PS3, we can’t exactly say what power cap we reached, since no developer really knows where the boundary is for the PS3. We can tell you that in terms of the whole game together on the PS3, we are not even using the SPU’s and it is purely built on the graphics card and Cell. We’re still optimizing for PS3 more because we can, which can explain the slight delay to you. But no worries, everything is going smoothly to put down any rumors"

Source: PSU
Click to expand...
Oh Lord. Maybe they should be using the SPUs.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
In part 3 of the Insomniac gametrailers interview they call the SPEs to be the core of the system and following games will become even "a lot" better. They also talk a little about how they are sharing their knowledge with 3rd party developers:

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/4572.html

IMO Resistance was the most impressive launch game, beating any other PS3 or XBox 360 launch games. And Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune as the most impressive Next Gen games currently available.
 
R

RavenFox

Banned
PC Gaijin said:
Shades of Saturn again: devs didn't code for the dual SH-2s on most ports either.
Click to expand...
The Saturns dual Hitachis was a programming mess[The original layout I think did not even call for a second chip]] and is no way comparable to Cell and is spu's.
 
S

Septimus

Member
In that part 3 video they also say that Resistance used about 10% of the SPU power while Ratchet used somewhere under 50%.
 
M

MikeB

Banned
Septimus said:
In that part 3 video they also say that Resistance used about 10% of the SPU power while Ratchet used somewhere under 50%.
Click to expand...

Makes you wonder what Resistance 2 will be like, doesn't it? Resistance tapped the Cell's SPEs like no other PS3 launch title did, in combination with texture streaming (taking better advantage of the storage available on Blu-Ray) I think Resistance 2 could become the most advanced FPS released on any platform (maybe they are going to top Killzone 2).

Would be interesting to know how much UT3 taps the SPEs.
 
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