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Half-Life 2 XB-360 won't be using tiling to achieve A.A.
- Thread starter Brimstone
- Start date
Hopefully one of the ports will actually run at a good framerate. Thus far, PC -> 360 ports have been garbage. I'm hoping that they either buck the trend on 360 OR deliver something good on PS3.
*IF* they can deliver HL2 with a perfect framerate (hopefully 60), full visual fidelity, minimal loading, and absolutely NO pauses or skips...I will absolutely buy it for one of those machines. There is NO reason why either of these machines shouldn't be able to run circles around the source engine, but then again, 360 should not have struggled so heavily with the Doom 3 engine either. It seems like lazy porting and I seriously hope that doesn't occur here.
*IF* they can deliver HL2 with a perfect framerate (hopefully 60), full visual fidelity, minimal loading, and absolutely NO pauses or skips...I will absolutely buy it for one of those machines. There is NO reason why either of these machines shouldn't be able to run circles around the source engine, but then again, 360 should not have struggled so heavily with the Doom 3 engine either. It seems like lazy porting and I seriously hope that doesn't occur here.
AlanHemberger
Banned
Is there any window of when it will ship for 360? I didn't even know it had been confirmed yet. Awesome. Hopefully they'll do a good job. The HL2 job on Xbox was good considering the hardware
AlanHemberger
Banned
opengl eats assChiggs said:
It's due with Episode 2, which is due by the end of the year. But it's Valve so..
Unfortunately this doesn't sound like the best of starts for the port. I'm quite curious to see how they'll do AA without tiling - assuming it's MSAA and they're not just rendering out to main RAM? - but it sounds like they're being forced to work against the system here. It also seems like a slightly polite way of saying that MS/ATi made a boo-boo going with eDram/tiling, from Valve/Source's POV.
edit - I guess the most obvious way to do AA without tiling is to go the PGR3 route.
Unfortunately this doesn't sound like the best of starts for the port. I'm quite curious to see how they'll do AA without tiling - assuming it's MSAA and they're not just rendering out to main RAM? - but it sounds like they're being forced to work against the system here. It also seems like a slightly polite way of saying that MS/ATi made a boo-boo going with eDram/tiling, from Valve/Source's POV.
edit - I guess the most obvious way to do AA without tiling is to go the PGR3 route.
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
gofreak said:
Somehow I don't believe that one of the most fundamental design decisions both ATi/MS made with the edram/tiling was a bad decision. Methinks it's simply Valve doesn't want to modify their source engine to run in the way the 360 was designed to. We have yet to see a single full fledged ground up game developed for the system... We have ported ups, PC ports, and middleware like UE3. I doubt it's a "boo-boo" and more laziness.
bengraven
Member
I predict early 2007 on this game, unfortunately.
I really, really want this out within the year and with smaller loading times, high-resolution textures, and a steady framerate whether it be 30 or 60 fps.
Frankly, I LIKED Half-Life 2 on Xbox. It was my first experience with the series and led me to buy the Anthology edition of Half-Life on my PC, which I'm starting to get into. However, I never beat "Follow Freeman!" on the Xbox just because of the framerates.
I can't wait to start fresh. Some say the series is over-rated, but I say it's just right.
I really, really want this out within the year and with smaller loading times, high-resolution textures, and a steady framerate whether it be 30 or 60 fps.
Frankly, I LIKED Half-Life 2 on Xbox. It was my first experience with the series and led me to buy the Anthology edition of Half-Life on my PC, which I'm starting to get into. However, I never beat "Follow Freeman!" on the Xbox just because of the framerates.
I can't wait to start fresh. Some say the series is over-rated, but I say it's just right.
dalyr95 said:
360 uses MSAA. But in order to use 2x MSAA (or higher) with 720p (or higher), you have to 'tile'. Tiling means splitting up the frame you're rendering into two or more segments so they can fit into Xenos's eDram at one time.
So there's no such thing really as "tiling AA" - tiling is the means to the end (720p with AA).
bengraven said:
Not any more. MS dropped that requirement at launch, really. PGR3 rendered at 1024x600 in order to use AA without tiling. That's why people raise that question here - because Valve say they'll do AA without tiling. It doesn't mean that's how they're doing it, but it's the most obvious way.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
I'm not sure if that's the case. I thought 2x MSAA 720p buffer fits in EDRAM if you're not using FP HDR buffer - which HL2 won't be using as their HDR is done through shaders (or at least I think that's how it's done - that's why it can do MSAA +HDR on Nvidia cards, right?)gofreak said:
There was an interview with some JP developer some months ago that said that MS doesn't have AA +720p as a requirement anymore.Aryuken said:
GitarooMan
Member
Yeah, but one exception on a first party launch title doesn't mean that all of a sudden lots of games run at less than 720p and MS is making exceptions all over the place, does anything else render less than 720p?gofreak said:
All that was "dopped" was the AA requirement, which was partly due to "pressure"/reasoning from Epic (UE3, no AA). PGR3 was allowed to slip by because MS was desperate and needed it at launch, and the guys at Bizzare just couldn't get the game as they wanted running at 720p steadily. Outside of 1 exception, the requirement's never been changed.
Klocker said:
No, but I don't think they could rightly deny that option to others while giving a free pass to one of their own. And as far as I know they did not, or at least that was the word out of a report that discussed HD rendering generally with some other Japanese developers in the months after.
It's just one option to explain what Valve is saying, one with precedent. Another alternative is that they're using MS's definition of 'AA', which now includes things like blurs and DOF.
Marconelly said:
No, you need to tile if you want any AA at all at 720p. Xenos's preferred HDR format is 32-bit anyway.
See here for a table on memory footprint requirements: http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/xenos/index.php?p=05#tiled
Aryuken said:
isn't it quite likely that a relatively old PC game being ported to a PC-centric platform like the X360 would want to keep things as intact as possible? Coding to the merits of the machine almost goes against what XNA lets you do - i.e. cross development between PC/X360
Relax. Take deep breaths. It's only bad from the standpoint that the hardware was designed with the intent to achieve AA via tiling and that's all that your archnemesis is referring to. If devs are going to continue to ignore that route to AA, then you have purpose-built circuitry in the 360 that's being underutilized and could have perhaps been designed differently to be applied towards something that developers would make use of more regularly...more shaders or what have you.Aryuken said:
The 360 will still be a great game platform and I'm sure the port of HL2 will turn out fine and I'm sure evil evil gofreak agrees.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=696630
As has been stated, PGR just got a waiver b/c it was the only way the game would make launch.
As has been stated, PGR just got a waiver b/c it was the only way the game would make launch.
Mojovonio said:
not at all.
it just means that if you make your game with the 360 in mind, then you gain the most benefits. If you try to take a game designed for something else and move it over to the 360, things may or may not work out so well.
PS3's got the same type of deal in different areas.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Bebpo said:
However you got that idea, it's wrong.
It's the direct opposite. The detriment was early X360 titles weren't using tiling.
To get the best use of X360, tiling is the way to go.
As for good news, more like grey area since we don't know how well their engine will run on X360.
DenogginizerOS
BenjaminBirdie's Thomas Jefferson
Vark said:
So, how's the conversion of Oblivion to PS3 going?
Bebpo said:
Tiling is necessary to use the system as it was intended. It's not a matter of tiling being bad and wanting to avoid it - it's a matter of your implementation needing to address in a manner that acceptably minimises the costs involved. If you can't do that and have to avoid it..well, you're still using the eDram, but you're missing out on much of the intended benefit (for example, you may not using AA - much of the point of having the eDram - or you may be rendering at a lower resolution or whatever).
No technical reason why they couldn't add support for those devices, but personally, I'm excited about playing with a gamepad. They are cinematic games (somewhat) and would benefit greatly from the smooth rotation and analog character movement that a pad will bring to the table.gofreak said:
DenogginizerOS
BenjaminBirdie's Thomas Jefferson
Tiling, Anti-Aliasing, Felching. Who cares? Will the game be fun and how well will Team Fortress 2 turn out? These are the things that matter. Unless GAF is becoming a tech support forum, do any of us really care what Valve is doing to make HL2 on X360 look curvaceous and smooth?