The assertion was, that without technical and production knowledge, we're not qualified to be in the conversation. The moment you try to sell a product to me, I'm in the conversation, and you are open to criticism. And in a commercial transaction, all the customer is going to see is excuses.
E achieved a slightly choppy 1080p framerate ( would love any more info here if anyone has any light to shed ).
I feel like that holds way more water than it ever did in relation to Xbox One: that was about figuring out how to properly utilize an esoteric CPU, while the Xbox One is straight up weaker, period. It's like claiming you're lazy for performing a task slower with a slightly sub optimal tool or something, even though you got the job done and nearly as well anyway.
Yeah, this is what I mean by needing personal experience. No way can I call someone I don't know lazy working in a field I don't have enough familiarity with, the only ones who have that right are those who actually know fully what can/can't be done and/or know the people personally, preferably both.
Firstly, no, I don't really think the lazy devs comment holds much water.. There is one large technical difference between the xbone and the PS4. Most developers are going to handle that difference by bringing down the res on the XBONE version, rather than reducing IQ and/or fundamentally changing rendering techniques just for the XBONE.
That stuff equals a large art direction change and/or a huge technical shift for what would otherwise presumably be a multiplatform engine. Its not "lazy" like not wanting to take the trash out on Sunday evening.. Believe me, if there was a make-xbone-1080p checkbox they could click somewhere.. it certainly would be clicked! duh! So frustrating to hear people imply that devs are intentionally stiffing the XBONE version..
This. Cause ( im going to be pretty high level here ) in order for PS3 to meet X360 quality visuals. You had to push some of the graphics processing onto the cell processor ( which would only work for certain graphics processing in certain pipelines as it was ). PS3 games tended to come in with a few different mindsets:
* Straight Port - They would just push the multiplatform version on the PS3, just using the somewhat underpowered GPU to match the xboxs and just using the main 2 PPC cores of the cell for CPU load. These tend to be the quick dirty early unreal engine ports that ran like shit
* Pimped out for PS3 - Usually these are exclusives ( or multiplats with PS3 as lead platform ). Usually these are very refined rendering pipelines that utilized the Cell's 6 SPUs to assist with rendering ( and/or CPU ) tasks. This is how you get awesome graphics on MGS4. let the GPU render simple geom at super high resolution, and then let the CELL help with post process effects and stuff
* In betweener - The games my studio works on are like this. Basically we start with the x360 -> PS3 dirty port, then make some general purpose job execution processes on the Cell SPUs, then push a little bit of CPU and GPU post process load to it! Its not Pimped out from top to bottom, but it def at least takes advantage of the Cell. I personally think our PS3 versions typically perform better than X360.
The PS4<->XBONE ports are different issues, and arguable, worse! Cause there are a couple options for people hoping make ANY 1080p game on XBONE ( its not even an issue with porting, but rather making ANY game on XBONE hardware ):
* Alter the entire render pipe line to fit a 1080p buffer in ESRam - the way you are going to do this is by removing render passes. Imagine cutting bump mapping or something like that. Nowadays, even a pretty barebones renderer is going to want to store 5-7+ image buffers to composite the full image. So you are asking devs to use the bare minimum or lower amount of images to composite that final image, you are asking them to remove key components that keep Image Quality up.
* Skip the ESRam! I am less sure of this one, but im pretty sure they choose to use the slower DDR3 ram to store the image buffer. But its pretty slow compared to the ESRam ( like half speed or more! ).. so maybe you will get a worse framerate. I am not 100% but I think this is how Tomb Raider
* Finally: they can get a decent framerate and their original image quality with full effects, if they just pair down the resolution of the image to fit in the ESRam. I think this is the easiest thing to do ( hence people calling devs lazy ), but its ultimately giving up the least as far as the artists vision of the game is concerned ( in my opinion ).
Firstly, no, I don't really think the lazy devs comment holds much water.. There is one large technical difference between the xbone and the PS4. Most developers are going to handle that difference by bringing down the res on the XBONE version, rather than reducing IQ and/or fundamentally changing rendering techniques just for the XBONE.
That stuff equals a large art direction change and/or a huge technical shift for what would otherwise presumably be a multiplatform engine. Its not "lazy" like not wanting to take the trash out on Sunday evening.. Believe me, if there was a make-xbone-1080p checkbox they could click somewhere.. it certainly would be clicked! duh! So frustrating to hear people imply that devs are intentionally stiffing the XBONE version..
This. Cause ( im going to be pretty high level here ) in order for PS3 to meet X360 quality visuals. You had to push some of the graphics processing onto the cell processor ( which would only work for certain graphics processing in certain pipelines as it was ). PS3 games tended to come in with a few different mindsets:
* Straight Port - They would just push the multiplatform version on the PS3, just using the somewhat underpowered GPU to match the xboxs and just using the main 2 PPC cores of the cell for CPU load. These tend to be the quick dirty early unreal engine ports that ran like shit
* Pimped out for PS3 - Usually these are exclusives ( or multiplats with PS3 as lead platform ). Usually these are very refined rendering pipelines that utilized the Cell's 6 SPUs to assist with rendering ( and/or CPU ) tasks. This is how you get awesome graphics on MGS4. let the GPU render simple geom at super high resolution, and then let the CELL help with post process effects and stuff
* In betweener - The games my studio works on are like this. Basically we start with the x360 -> PS3 dirty port, then make some general purpose job execution processes on the Cell SPUs, then push a little bit of CPU and GPU post process load to it! Its not Pimped out from top to bottom, but it def at least takes advantage of the Cell. I personally think our PS3 versions typically perform better than X360.
The PS4<->XBONE ports are different issues, and arguable, worse! Cause there are a couple options for people hoping make ANY 1080p game on XBONE ( its not even an issue with porting, but rather making ANY game on XBONE hardware ):
* Alter the entire render pipe line to fit a 1080p buffer in ESRam - the way you are going to do this is by removing render passes. Imagine cutting bump mapping or something like that. Nowadays, even a pretty barebones renderer is going to want to store 5-7+ image buffers to composite the full image. So you are asking devs to use the bare minimum or lower amount of images to composite that final image, you are asking them to remove key components that keep Image Quality up.
* Skip the ESRam! I am less sure of this one, but im pretty sure they choose to use the slower DDR3 ram to store the image buffer. But its pretty slow compared to the ESRam ( like half speed or more! ).. so maybe you will get a worse framerate. I am not 100% but I think this is how Tomb Raider
* Finally: they can get a decent framerate and their original image quality with full effects, if they just pair down the resolution of the image to fit in the ESRam. I think this is the easiest thing to do ( hence people calling devs lazy ), but its ultimately giving up the least as far as the artists vision of the game is concerned ( in my opinion ).
Firstly, no, I don't really think the lazy devs comment holds much water.. There is one large technical difference between the xbone and the PS4. Most developers are going to handle that difference by bringing down the res on the XBONE version, rather than reducing IQ and/or fundamentally changing rendering techniques just for the XBONE.
That stuff equals a large art direction change and/or a huge technical shift for what would otherwise presumably be a multiplatform engine. Its not "lazy" like not wanting to take the trash out on Sunday evening.. Believe me, if there was a make-xbone-1080p checkbox they could click somewhere.. it certainly would be clicked! duh! So frustrating to hear people imply that devs are intentionally stiffing the XBONE version..
This. Cause ( im going to be pretty high level here ) in order for PS3 to meet X360 quality visuals. You had to push some of the graphics processing onto the cell processor ( which would only work for certain graphics processing in certain pipelines as it was ). PS3 games tended to come in with a few different mindsets:
* Straight Port - They would just push the multiplatform version on the PS3, just using the somewhat underpowered GPU to match the xboxs and just using the main 2 PPC cores of the cell for CPU load. These tend to be the quick dirty early unreal engine ports that ran like shit
* Pimped out for PS3 - Usually these are exclusives ( or multiplats with PS3 as lead platform ). Usually these are very refined rendering pipelines that utilized the Cell's 6 SPUs to assist with rendering ( and/or CPU ) tasks. This is how you get awesome graphics on MGS4. let the GPU render simple geom at super high resolution, and then let the CELL help with post process effects and stuff
* In betweener - The games my studio works on are like this. Basically we start with the x360 -> PS3 dirty port, then make some general purpose job execution processes on the Cell SPUs, then push a little bit of CPU and GPU post process load to it! Its not Pimped out from top to bottom, but it def at least takes advantage of the Cell. I personally think our PS3 versions typically perform better than X360.
The PS4<->XBONE ports are different issues, and arguable, worse! Cause there are a couple options for people hoping make ANY 1080p game on XBONE ( its not even an issue with porting, but rather making ANY game on XBONE hardware ):
* Alter the entire render pipe line to fit a 1080p buffer in ESRam - the way you are going to do this is by removing render passes. Imagine cutting bump mapping or something like that. Nowadays, even a pretty barebones renderer is going to want to store 5-7+ image buffers to composite the full image. So you are asking devs to use the bare minimum or lower amount of images to composite that final image, you are asking them to remove key components that keep Image Quality up.
* Skip the ESRam! I am less sure of this one, but im pretty sure they choose to use the slower DDR3 ram to store the image buffer. But its pretty slow compared to the ESRam ( like half speed or more! ).. so maybe you will get a worse framerate. I am not 100% but I think this is how Tomb Raider
* Finally: they can get a decent framerate and their original image quality with full effects, if they just pair down the resolution of the image to fit in the ESRam. I think this is the easiest thing to do ( hence people calling devs lazy ), but its ultimately giving up the least as far as the artists vision of the game is concerned ( in my opinion ).
Some people really are asses in that regard, and then some really don't bother to think of whether it's really a nice shorthand to use even if they view it as that rather than literal lazy developers.
I guess that's something of a grey area, but that's probably easier rationalized as just being dumb: EA gave too tight of a timeline for a modern AAA RPG, and Bioware perhaps decided those resources should be spent elsewhere. So rather than pare down presentation in favor of a more diverse game world they pared down design for cheap, easy copy-and-paste. There's so many parts in the machine and so many people making certain calls that I'd sooner expect some execs making unreasonable demands and the developers just doing what they can.
I don't think Ryse versus BF4's the best comparison here, there's still the rushed development factor but ultimately it comes down to different design goals. BF4 wanted to make a large open MP shooter than ran at 60 FPS, and Crytek's SP design, despite starting similarly, has more and more become the antithesis of this: willing to toss aside even a stable 30 FPS and remotely non-linear design for a hardware pushing graphical showcase. Frostbite seems like it can look really, really damn good, and perhaps would stand toe to toe in a game with similar goals as Ryse, but BF4 didn't have those goals so it doesn't.
Making assumptions while knowing very little about a subject is one of the things humans do best. Since the early 90s I've been reading how game development is something that you have to love doing because of how much time and effort has to be devoted to it. Sleeping at the office a few hours a day, not taking a shower for days... it's not easy work.
Meh, it'd probably be more lazy (and funnily enough, probably better design) in Bravely Default to just not pad things out. They may've had some gameplay hour quota to meet and so worked to make sure that was hit rather than settling for short-yet-sweet. Padding out DOES require effort afterall, even if it's not as much as creating new content, especially if budget/time/space constraints prevent otherwise.Square is ALMOST making me believe in this
Bad cellphone ports, reusing the same tracks of the original in Curtain Call and how they padded Bravely Default, not wanting to do HD towns, re-using the same FF character for at least 3 games ...
