Thunder Monkey
Banned
PS360 is still lower than where PS2 is now, but it's not behind where PS2 was at ~6 years. PS360Wii is also way ahead of PS2GCNXbox LTD and still running up the lead.
You calling me a liar?
PS360 is still lower than where PS2 is now, but it's not behind where PS2 was at ~6 years. PS360Wii is also way ahead of PS2GCNXbox LTD and still running up the lead.
Then why did Sony and Microsoft focus exclusively on graphics for their current gen consoles? It's cool to say things like a word of mind but believing it is true and should be the norm is something else. Nothing was done to improve gameplay and other elements (maybe online? and even that) before Nintendo had released the wii for 4 years.I agree with this post entirely.
Graphics are not everything and some people need to learn that.
I don't care about fucking graphics. I just want stable frame rate and less loading times.
call of duty 4 modern warfare graphics is enough for me to feel content.
BigTnaples said:Most of the benefits of next gen wont cause devs costs to go up.
Thats not really how it works. Games(or programs) aren't really getting any more complex, the assets are. An executable for an next-gen game will be identical to one this year.Sadly, completely wrong.
The more complex and feature-rich your program, the greater the chance some random combination of events/operations will cause it to malfunction. Validation by the team and test time within QA will inevitably increase.
Also, however much V/RAM a system has, the impetus will always be to fill it in order to provide the maximum return - developers will always be bumping their heads against the ceiling. The only difference a higher ceiling makes is that it takes more stuff to reach it (more complexity, more time, more cost) and there's further to fall when something goes wrong.
There are no short-cuts. A 1000 piece jigsaw is always going to take longer to complete than a 200 piece one if the picture is basically the same.
Time/space/feature budgets will always need to be observed and the higher the level of quality demanded as standard the more money it will cost to deliver that. You want movie-quality imagery, be prepared to pay movie-quality rates for your staff and equipment.
And ultimately that expense is always going to trickle down to the consumer.
Thats not really how it works. Games(or programs) aren't really getting any more complex, the assets are. An executable for an next-gen game will be identical to one this year.
Whats getting more complex are assets and shaders. If Epic is anything to base off of, the next generation will be all about effects(shaders) and they generally require minimal troubleshooting. BigTnaples is correct in that most of these newer effects won't do much to raise budgets.
Assets are really gonna raise budgets.
You've never dealt with parallel programming. Scaling across many processors, dead lock issues, etc are not exactly easy to program even for experienced developers.
iamshadowlark said:Thats not really how it works. Games(or programs) aren't really getting any more complex, the assets are. An executable for an next-gen game will be identical to one this year.
You calling me a liar?
Clear said:Assets aren't always passive, they have a direct influence on the complexity of the task at hand. If you have double the number of verts in collision mesh you have an increased number of possible points where your AI/NPC entities can get snagged. This needs validation within an implement->test->evaluation cycle.
Similarly, you double the number of entities operating within your new more complex mesh (because you have the CPU/GPU resources to handle them now) you have an exponential number of corner cases to deal with where object<->object collision resolution may or may not square with your new and more intricate environment mesh without ugly clipping or trapping.
This is what most people are missing. All the extra resources doesn't mean you have to make the graphics on the cutting edge of technical developement, you can put all those resources to use improving IQ, framerate, and draw distance/count.
This is what most people are missing. All the extra resources doesn't mean you have to make the graphics on the cutting edge of technical developement, you can put all those resources to use improving IQ, framerate, and draw distance/count.
But they won't.
More powerful HW can also be easier to develop for, if better tools are provided.
This is what most people are missing. All the extra resources doesn't mean you have to make the graphics on the cutting edge of technical developement, you can put all those resources to use improving IQ, framerate, and draw distance/count.
under the current metric of how games get reviewed and how metacritic plays a role in whether a studio gets funding, then they do have to make it cutting edge. They have to play catch-up to the big guns because reviewers are using games like uncharted and gears and crysis as the new demarcation for good graphics. Why aren't developers making wii-style games (like mario galaxy) for the xbox or ps3, then using the left over resources to deliver it to us at 60fps with 4xaa and all that other iq stuff. Because that's not how it works, it's never been how it works, and it's not going to work like that next generation.
You can count the number of triple A studios that build tools for, and are developing the cutting edge of rendering tech, on one hand. That is not a metric you use to judge an industry as a whole. The vast majority of studios will see the new specs and see that they are able to extend their resource budget in ways they haven't been able to since 7 years ago. If their goal is to go bankrupt and sell an empty game with pretty graphics that's ok too i guess?
Look at Risen, Diablo III, WoW, DOTA 2, Portal, Minecraft, Trials, and many other games. Do they look like BF3, Crysis, Gears, or Halo? No. Do they still sell exceedingly well? Yes.
You have to have some hook to get people to buy and fund a game it does not have to solely technical rendering based.
yes, because every studio has the same reputation of Bliz, and Valve behind them? And xbla games have a completely different set of standards then retail games. Comparing apples to oranges here. How many XBLA games are made with ut3 and cryengine?
Well yes, yes I have. But parallel programming isn't exactly new. Its been what 7 years or so?
They are retail games, played by humans. That's like saying any game sold on steam is junk, regardless of whether they were backed by some huge publishes. They still move a huge amount of copies. Plenty of games on XBLA use UE3, the most recent of which is Hybrid. UE3 is loved by smaller devs because many problems of dev are already solved for them, all they have to do is pay a fee, which may or may not be less than the money/time it would take to build an engine from scratch.
And that link only shows 5 games for XBLA/psn as a platform.
Yes and some will argue that it's still in it's infancy.
Game have gotten considerably more complex this gen. That won't stop all of a sudden next gen.
I agree with this post entirely.
Graphics are not everything and some people need to learn that.
Sadly, completely wrong.
The more complex and feature-rich your program, the greater the chance some random combination of events/operations will cause it to malfunction. Validation by the team and test time within QA will inevitably increase.
Also, however much V/RAM a system has, the impetus will always be to fill it in order to provide the maximum return - developers will always be bumping their heads against the ceiling. The only difference a higher ceiling makes is that it takes more stuff to reach it (more complexity, more time, more cost) and there's further to fall when something goes wrong.
There are no short-cuts. A 1000 piece jigsaw is always going to take longer to complete than a 200 piece one if the picture is basically the same.
Time/space/feature budgets will always need to be observed and the higher the level of quality demanded as standard the more money it will cost to deliver that. You want movie-quality imagery, be prepared to pay movie-quality rates for your staff and equipment.
And ultimately that expense is always going to trickle down to the consumer.
From what I know:Information is not filled in for all of the titles on there. I couldn't find a more complete source.
There are only certain things that will get more complex. This past gen we saw games get more complex on a fundamental basis(think thread scheduling, splitting up work loads among units, synchronization, etc) because of a paradigm shift. The groundwork has been laid all generation.
This gen will see simply expansions of that work on a bigger scale. It'll be alot less work on developers to direct traffic amongst the computing elements compared to this generation. There is nothing in hardware today(i.e. next-gen consoles) that will cause a major paradigm shift similar to what happened last time.
then it's not easier to develop for, it's more expensive because developers either need to build the tools themselves or they need to buy middleware.
The more powerful the hardware, the more developers will be playing catch-up with the few studios that have the funds to create the real top of the line work, or they're paying to use someone elses work. I want cheaper, less powerful consoles so that developers can focus on making their games their way and not relying middleware or liscensed engines from crytek and epic.
I agree we won't be seeing a paradigm shift like this gen, which was a big reason behind the jump in cost. I was just refuting your earlier claim that games won't get more complex when they most certainly will.
Although it is true that in order to take advantage of the hw you need to develop something that is specifically meant to run on the new HW, it is not always true that developing for a more powerful hardaware is more expansive. There are situations in which developing on a less powerful hw can be more expansive than developing on a more powerful hw. For example, let's say that you have made an engine for the xbox360, and let's say that the visuals of the engine are amazing, but the engine struggles to run at a decent frame rate at 720p. So you would need to spend additional time to optimize the engine in order to obtain a decent frame rate, and this would mean spending a lot of extra money for opimization. Now let's say that the xbox720 is so much powerful that can run the same engine at 60fps at 1080p without any problem. Then you could stop to worry about optimizing the engine, saving a lot of money.
yeah, and that's exactly epics problem, and why they're pushing for stronger hardware. I'm guessing they built middleware that's not effective for the next generation of consoles and are pushing MS and Sony, to increase specs so they don't have to optimize as much.
I'm sure there's more. Hybrid uses Source engine, BTW. Gotta say, it looks damn good running at 60fps.
It seems to me that Epic just wants a real jump in terms of power, which is what you would expect from a new generation of consoles. We saw a real jump with the xbox360, and it is normal that Epic wants to see a similar jump with the next xbox.
no, what epic wants is money and they're fronting it as if they want what's best for gamers. The stronger the next console the more people will rely on middleware.
I agree we won't be seeing a paradigm shift like this gen, which was a big reason behind the jump in cost. I was just refuting your earlier claim that games won't get more complex when they most certainly will.
Well yes, yes I have. But parallel programming isn't exactly new. Its been what 7 years or so?
Holly.................. if true.
http://images.4chan.org/v/src/1337870030972.jpg
Seems like you didn't read the post at all, maybe you should give it a try.
So... it's more complex and challenging to make a game that runs in 1gb than it is to make a game that runs in 10mb?
Holly.................. if true.
http://images.4chan.org/v/src/1337870030972.jpg
What are the chances that we get to see ps4/xbox3 at E3?
What are the chances that we get to see ps4/xbox3 at E3?
Holly.................. if true.
http://images.4chan.org/v/src/1337870030972.jpg
Holly.................. if true.
http://images.4chan.org/v/src/1337870030972.jpg