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Naughty Dog: "We’re probably only using 30 or 40 per cent of the power of the PS3"

Kittonwy

Banned
JCreasy said:
Would you guys be totally opposed to the second Uncharted having a different characters?

They could pull a Final Fantasy where each sequel gets a new cast.

I say this only because Drake and that girl (whatever her name is, I'm sorry, she's pretty forgettable), were kind of bland to me.

Plus, the series is called Uncharted, making it easier to bill anyone they want in the sub-head, even a new more exciting character . . .

Nathan Drake is going to be the main character, so I kind of doubt it and I don't really want them changing casts all the time, it really doesn't work well and having the same main character throughout works great for continuity, I'm sure they'll add new characters though, I thought Elena and Sully were great and I really hope they keep them.
angry.gif
 
JCreasy said:
Would you guys be totally opposed to the second Uncharted having a different characters?

Prolly safe to say that Nathan, Elena and Sully will return.

I'd expect the story to be self-contained (ie. you don't have to play the 1st game to understand the 2nd) but there will be little references to the 1st game here and there for fans.

It's also possible Naughty Dog will take a page from Gears of War 2 and have some of your Uncharted trophies have some sort of impact in the sequel.
 

Kittonwy

Banned
tanod said:
If they wanted to continue the Indiana Jones motif, they'd just put Drake with a brand new cast of characters and near-zero continuity between the games. Serialized episodes

I think they were looking at things like National Treasure and Diehard as well, having a recurring cast should be out of the question, all of the characters were really charismatic.
angry.gif
 
Draft said:
Wow, and these guys basically are the best technically on the system?

That sucks hugely. I spent $500 on hardware that is at best being used to 40% of its potential. When are they going to get to 80-90%? Another 2 years? Stupid thing will be $200 then.

Fuck that. What a gyp.

So how much money have you wasted on your "gaming rigs" over the years? :p

Seriously, how can people on a hardcore gaming forum can be this obtuse about A) developing for a closed system and B) developers using arbitrary estimations for leveraging said systems. Its only been parlance since ohIdunno, the dawn of consoles?
 

FirewalkR

Member
I don't care much for this percentage talk. Are they talking about the percentage of time the cores are actually doing something? Are they factoring in all the time that each core is waiting for synchronization? And besides, whenever you develop a new technique that uses the same amount of cpu time to do much more stuff than before, all these numbers go out the window, because it's all in how you use it (like so much else in life).

Nonetheless, and as I said before, I firmly believe that as soon as we get our eyes on the next ND game, GoW III and quite possibly Heavy Rain, even the likes of KZ2 and Rage (which for me looks awesome everywhere, race, fps, wherever) will be surpassed.

Come fast GC, I'm waiting!!
 

MCD

Junior Member
http://www.naughtydog.com/jak1/20Questions.htm

Q) What percent of the PS2’s power are you using?

A) People think of systems as glasses and ask: “how full is the glass”. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. Any developer who gives you a “percent of system used” answer is blowing smoke. The truth is that every developer uses 100% of the systems power on every game. Some just get more out of that 100% than others. And game after game, we ALL get more out of systems than we did on the previous title. Think of it this way. If the system is a glass, some developers pour in rocks till the glass overflows and then call it quits. They would claim that they use 100% of the systems space. And it is true that no more rocks fit. Some will even put in a rock too many and the game plays slow or runs funny. But there is still some space left for smarter developers. They pour pebbles into the cracks left by the rocks, and they get more into the glass. Then they call it 100% full. But some Developers will then pour in sand, to fill the cracks between the pebbles. They get even more out of the system, yet it is still just 100% full. Some developers go the extra distance, and they pour in water. Then the glass is truly full, right? Sure, but just for this title, because some of the rocks can be replaced with pebbles that do the same thing, if you work hard at it. And some of the pebbles can be made into sand. And some sand can be pressed to water. No developer ever gets a glass filled with only water, no developer has that much time, so no developer truly fills the glass. We just get more and more out of the 100%.
 
%100 SPE usage would mean the SPUs are always doing something, which is practically impossible. To say that 'this game only uses 30-40%' is useless. For all we know the highest any game is ever going to get is 50% SPU usage.
 

Rhindle

Member
It's kind of interesting the cycle they've gone through with their messaging.

In 2006, it was all about potential and untapped powa of the PS3.

Then that sort of went away in 2007, and they just talked about having the best line-up etc.

Now, as of E3 2008, we're back to talking about potential and untapped power.
 
Draft said:
Wow, and these guys basically are the best technically on the system?

That sucks hugely. I spent $500 on hardware that is at best being used to 40% of its potential. When are they going to get to 80-90%? Another 2 years? Stupid thing will be $200 then.

Fuck that. What a gyp.

A big part of the blame is limited game development time. Most devs don't have unlimited amounts of times to study and use a machine at its max capacity during an average game development cycle. As they release more games, they are able to keep learning and improving on the hardware. It doesn't help that the PS3 is complicated and hard to work with.

It isn't anything new. Even the jump from Crysis to Crysis Warhead shows that they are able to have the game be less taxing on the machine while still looking better. Just having more time to work on it.
 
Rhindle said:
It's kind of interesting the cycle they've gone through with their messaging.

In 2006, it was all about potential and untapped powa of the PS3.

Then that sort of went away in 2007, and they just talked about having the best line-up etc.

Now, as of E3 2008, we're back to talking about potential and untapped power.

Yeah..it's totally like the same message that they gave with every other system they've made. Go figure.
 

Kittonwy

Banned
I think the message is that they still have a lot of room to improve on what's already considered the best tech on the PS3.
batman.gif
 

Jinfash

needs 2 extra inches
70dlat.jpg


telling the fanboys exactly what they wanna hear, fueling the fire of system wars... how pathetic.
 
Rhindle said:
Then that sort of went away in 2007, and they just talked about having the best line-up etc..

Naughty Dog was talking about having the best line-up? Uncharted kicked ass, but thats a little presumptuous don't you think? I might go as far to call it down right uppity!
 

Kittonwy

Banned
MrTroubleMaker said:
interesting


that would be cool

I don't think they're big enough to do that being a studio with just under 90 people, and I think working on one game at a time gives them more focus and allows each IP to really shine instead of having to constantly juggle two IPs. I do think the Ratchet IP suffers a bit because of that.
 

DJ Sl4m

Member
Kittonwy said:
I think the message is that they still have a lot of room to improve on what's already considered the best tech on the PS3.
batman.gif

Of course, it still made me chuckle though.





ItAintEasyBeinCheesy said:
PS3 has magical power percentage measuring dongles.

Now THIS I believe!!
 

Kolgar

Member
Sounds like deja vu all over again.

Oh, well. I'm not going anywhere. If PS3 multiplatform games do eventually begin to outclass everything, I guess I'll be around to look surprised.
 

thuway

Member
YAWN to all the bickering in this thread over semantics and PR spin. The only definitive conjecture we can extrapolate from the quote is this:


Uncharted 2 will look better than Uncharted 1.
 

JCreasy

Member
Kittonwy said:
Nathan Drake is going to be the main character, so I kind of doubt it and I don't really want them changing casts all the time, it really doesn't work well and having the same main character throughout works great for continuity, I'm sure they'll add new characters though, I thought Elena and Sully were great and I really hope they keep them.
angry.gif

Well, can we at least get more detail in the character design?

example: http://kotaku.com/5033318/resident-evil-5-ps3-gameplay
 

deepbrown

Member
Draft said:
How is it good? Why can they only use 30%? Doesn't that seem awfully low to you? Like, less than a third of the systems resources are available? The rest are locked away by an incredibly complex architecture that even the greatest coders in the business can't understand?

How does that even happen? Someone designed the thing. It wasn't found in an Antarctic ice flow or the bottom of a Mayan temple. Why is the hardware so mysterious? Isn't there like... a manual?
Uh...the same has happened for every console since the begining of time. Espcially Playstations. They grow with the developers. it also extends the Playstations lifecycle. If the graphics can continue to improve year on year, the console has depth and can "artificially" extend its lifecycle. Eg. compare GOW2 to an early PS2 game.

Plsu you sound like you have no idea of the PS3 architecture, or even development and console history. How could you say "doesn't it have a manual." Sheesh.
 

Elbrain

Suckin' dicks since '66
Kittonwy said:
I think the message is that they still have a lot of room to improve on what's already considered the best tech on the PS3.
batman.gif

I want to see that improvement because Uncharted was already awesome looking.
 

Cosmozone

Member
Jinfash said:
telling the fanboys exactly what they wanna hear, fueling the fire of system wars... how pathetic.
It's the truth, though. Every platform offers room for improvement for the software it's running. Maybe it's a too obvious truth... and applicable to every console, of course. Statements like that mean to me that the developers have o much ideas left about how to improve their software, and that's a good thing.

Edit: Oops, kind of beaten
 
Ugh, another "X says only Y percentage of machine Z being currently used" deal.
Games look better as each gen progresses. News at 11.
 

Jinfash

needs 2 extra inches
Cosmozone said:
It's the truth, though. Every platform offers room for improvement for the software it's running. Maybe it's a too obvious truth... and applicable to every console, of course. Statements like that mean to me that the developers have o much ideas left about how to improve their software, and that's a good thing.

Edit: Oops, kind of beaten

it's PR, it's biased, and it's coming from 1st and 2nd party devs... of course it might be true, actually it's kinda obvious. these kinda statements only carries weight when they come from 3rd party devs when they're developing a title exclusively for a console due to its power/tech and not the power of moneyhats.
 

pswii60

Member
Perhaps they could have used that incredible amount of remaining 'power' to eliminate the nasty tearing in Uncharted.

Really though, these guys know how to make really nice looking games. The water effects in particular were incredible (especially the bit where you're going upstream with barrels flying towards you)
 
For the first time, I was able to play through the game as a baddie. The pirate with the shaved head and tattoo. When you're aiming next to an object, the camera pulls you in way close and the attention to detail is amazing.
 
I'm on my 3rd playthrough of Uncharted and have not once seen any screen tearing. Then again the only time i've ever seen screen tearing in a game was on Chessmaster Live and that's because you can cause it on purpose so maybe I'm just not "trained" to see this crap.
 

Diablos

Member
If it has all this untapped potential, even without a dedicated scaler, can't they figure out a way for it to do 1360x768? Smh
 

BeeDog

Member
SuperSonic1305 said:
I'm on my 3rd playthrough of Uncharted and have not once seen any screen tearing. Then again the only time i've ever seen screen tearing in a game was on Chessmaster Live and that's because you can cause it on purpose so maybe I'm just not "trained" to see this crap.

You should be glad you have the screen-tearing-filtering ability. Uncharted tears a lot, which is the game's only negative in my book.
 

deepbrown

Member
pswii60 said:
Perhaps they could have used that incredible amount of remaining 'power' to eliminate the nasty tearing in Uncharted.

Really though, these guys know how to make really nice looking games. The water effects in particular were incredible (especially the bit where you're going upstream with barrels flying towards you)
If they could have in the time pswii60 they would have done. Do none of you people know how development works and how they get out more of the percentage? You refine your engine throughout development, but you also add a bunch of shit in that means you have to further refine your engine. Shit...just take his comment at a technical estimate level to say that their Uncharted 2 engine is much improved - they're doing exactly what your asking - can't you see that?
 

[Nintex]

Member
I remember the "patch" that developers were waiting for that would enable more features on the Xbox 360 GPU and developers that said that the Wii games at E3 2006 didn't run on "Broadway/Hollywood" but on GameCube hardware instead. They didn't expect to be stuck with GameCube hardware though...

"We're only using 30% of it's power", if that's true than Sony needs to get some better coders to work on better engines and fast. Even SEGA Saturn games at least used 50% of it's power(one of the CPU's).
 
_leech_ said:
Carmack says a lot of things.

And funnily enough, he's often right.

Naughty Dog should shut up until they're ready to deliver the goods, I'm sure when Uncharted is running if someone put a resource monitor on the PS3 it wouldn't read "30/40%", sure they might find ways to optimize or improve but to bullshit about some POWER LIMIT just turns developer conferences in to Dragon Ball Z.
 

deepbrown

Member
[Nintex] said:
I remember the "patch" that developers were waiting for that would enable more features on the Xbox 360 GPU and developers that said that the Wii games at E3 2006 didn't run on "Broadway/Hollywood" but on GameCube hardware instead. They didn't expect to be stuck with GameCube hardware though...

"We're only using 30% of it's power", if that's true than Sony needs to get some better coders to work on better engines and fast. Even SEGA Saturn games at least used 50% of it's power(one of the CPU's).
Uh...you don't know what you're talking about. ND are the best in the business...and are experienced with the PS3 - that's why they can say they see 60-70% more/performance increase and...another team that creates a lesser game cannot and say they've reached 100%

They're already getting a whole bunch more out of the PS3 than most other developers, so if they're to say they can get even more out, who are we to doubt them? This is why it's much more believable for ND to say this, than for Valve to diss the PS3 - one developer has looked, the other hasnt.
 
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