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[Fantasmo]

PS1: One, Crash Bandicoot
Ps2: Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank.. to a lesser extent, GTA series, Bully (minus cutscenes), and God of War.
GC: Metroid Prime

They games all seem to push their respective systems beyond their limits, eliminated load times, had great framerates and effects, and never pulled you out of the world they thrust you in.

These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure there are plenty of games I'm missing.

My question is, since the ability to stream has been around for at least TEN years, why is it so many developers, especially the big names, avoid or ignore streaming like the plague?

Name your favorite streaming games, or games that you WISH streamed data, we need more of these devs!

 

[bigswords]

Good ones that I have
xbox 360: Gears of War and Lost Planet.

I dont remember Lost Planet having a load screen at all, GoW has a tiny bit of loading, but it looks ohh so delicious.

I just wished my PSP had stream loading sigh...

 

[Cormacaroni]

In the plus category, Ninja Gaiden.

In the minus category, Ryu ga Gotoku (Yakuza). Not only did it have frequent and annoying loads, the hitching when it attempted to stream every time you went around a busy corner irritated the crap out of me, marring an otherwise great game.

 

[AtomicShroom]

Mostly because it's hard to do, and most developers are very lazy. Any kind of memory leak is fatal for such engines, since you can't just flush the ram every once in a while. Your code needs to be rock-solid, especially if the player is expected to be able to finish the entire game in one sitting.

StarFox Adventures, despite its simplistic boring gameplay, was entirely streamed and looked gorgeous, too. The loading rooms were very obvious though.

 

[a Master Ninja]

Halo 2 and Gears of War did a good job of streaming. Whiners said "bu...but I see texture pop-in during cutscenes", but I'll take that over loading screens any day.

 

[AtomicShroom]

I dont remember Lost Planet having a load screen at all

Then you have poor memory. The game has plenty of loading screens, but they're amazingly short.

 

[Gorgie]

I actually didn't mind the loading in Yakuza, but for some reason, the loading in Tales of Abyss turned me off so much that I stoped playin six hours in or whatever.

Metroid Prime wouldn't be as awesome as it if there was loading screens between doors that ruin the immersion.

 

[marvelharvey]

Lost Planet

The 'briefing' screen is the game's loading screen.

Anyway, apart from the cutscenes, The Getaway was totally seamless (more so than GTA3 or Vice City) - not that is was loved too much around here.

 

[atomsk]

Haunting Ground only had that one load in the beginning.

 

[Hurricane_Chris]

In general its not that hard to do however it is something that you need to decide you're going to do at the beginning of a project. It is also something that requires quite a bit of planning and work from multiple team members so it adds considerable time to your schedule.
The problem, I think, is that most people controlling the $$ and schedules do not see the benefit of spending $$ and time on a feature that, if missing, doesn't stop users from buying a game.

 

[Bebpo]

In the plus category, Ninja Gaiden.

In the minus category, Ryu ga Gotoku (Yakuza). Not only did it have frequent and annoying loads, the hitching when it attempted to stream every time you went around a busy corner irritated the crap out of me, marring an otherwise great game.

On one hand that does suck.

On the other hand because the team wanted an insane amount of textures (so many that it had to pause to load them in time), RGG1/2 have some of the most varied texturework I've ever seen. Certain areas in both games look like real life in low-res pixel form!

I'm sure RGG3 will be without those pauses and hopefully just as much texture variety.

 

[B.K.]

I liked how they did it in Xenosaga Episode III. It was nice having no loading for battles.

 

[TheGreatDave]

ZELDA.

To be able to play a game that big without any loading is a great feat. Sure, you can tell when the fade outs last a little longer than usual, but Nintendo have managed to make the load times on the Gamecube Zelda's almost as good as the N64 ones.

 

[Gazunta]

I couldn't resist.

 

[D-X]

Jet Set Radio notably didn't load between areas

Games that should've streamed? - Sonic 2006

 

[bigswords]

The 'briefing' screen is the game's loading screen.

Well at least they bothered to disguised it. Apologies for the mistake, I was from a PC gaming, so my game usually stutters its way through.

 

[bigswords]

Then you have poor memory. The game has plenty of loading screens, but they're amazingly short.

Other then the briefings? and cut scenes and the tiny tiny brief time when u go into a cave? Gezze u got to play Valkyre profile on the PSP. It take 2-3 seconds just to load the darn inventory window.

 

[Bildi]

I really like developers that take the time to mask loading.

Ones I noticed recently are Zelda and Gears of War. Both nicely done.

As someone mentioned Haunting Ground, I'm glad it doesn't have loading as I'm kind of saving it to play it and that will make it all the more enjoyable.

At the other end: Morrowind on the Xbox. Really killed the game for me. You get killed or want to restart and you have to wait a few minutes even if you want to restart at the same spot. Colin McRae 2005 comes to mind also.

 

[Dalauz]

IIRC Mercenaries has Prefetching like God of Wars and Metroid Prime. GTA 3 series and Spiderman uses stream, from the top of my head.

also i think Gears radio comm = loading undercover. i could be wrong tho

 

[Speevy]

Even though the game had loading times from the overworld, Jet Set Radio Future had enormous stages that you could traverse from top to bottom.

 

[jerrymaguire]

Depending on how the game is structured, you might need a very well defined and sophisticated file management system in order to cater for this data streaming system you speak of. In an open world, does the system know which bit of the world to ditch from memory and which to load in and would it be able to do that in time? Please note that when QA is playtesting the game, it has to pass the oldest generation of machines as well as the latest iterations, ie, ones with really slow and dodgy seek & load times.

Also, by allocating such an area in the memory that can be loaded into and scratched constantly, the developer technically loses that part of the memory to store something more permanent - thus the game will potentially not look as good as one that loads an area in and then wipes the slate clean everytime the player enters a new area. (sorry, not able to explain that very well).

 

[virtuafightermaster]

World of Warcraft is the most amazing streaming game I have seen.

I wish FF12 is streaming.

 

[FoxSpirit]

Actually, this game is also streaming:

Yeah, GBA streaming. This made it possible to have crazy and fluid fight animations for each of the characters. Eat your heart out Golden Sun (with your crappy zoomed bosses).

 

[virtuafightermaster]

Actually, this game is also streaming:

Yeah, GBA streaming. This made it possible to have crazy and fluid fight animations for each of the characters. Eat your heart out Golden Sun (with your crappy zoomed bosses).

How is this game streaming? I actually played thorough it didn't notice anything.

 

[FoxSpirit]

How is this game streaming? I actually played thorough it didn't notice anything.

In the fights, only one character is moving. By saving the data that usually goes into animating everyone with 2 frames, the V-RAM is conserved allowing a surprisingly smooth animation for the currently animated character. And this data is loaded and discarded throughout the fight.

I often wondered why not more games use that, I mean on a catridge you could stream like crazy with those minimalistic loading times.

Btw, I think Soul Reaver on the PSOne was the first game to actively stream on consoles, wasn't it? First I am aware of, at least.