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Resistance: Fall of Man update! More of your questions answered! [Ted Price IGN blog]
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sugarhigh4242
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dark10x said:
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dark10x said:
Resistance: Fall of Man update! More of your questions answered!
Hi everyone,
Today is Gamers' Day for Sony Computer Entertainment America. We have another opportunity to show off Resistance:Fall of Man to a crowd of both consumer and enthusiast journalists. Our plan is to present a cool tech demo that helps explain what the PS3's SPUs are doing in the background during some of our larger battle scenes. Were using a Manchester, England environment where about 15 of your allies are under heavy fire from around 20 or so Chimera. There are bullets flying everywhere, explosions going off left and right - basically chaos. During gameplay I plan to pause the action in mid battle and begin stepping through the game frame by frame, moving the camera around the scene to check out lots of stuff that players will almost certainly miss when playing real time. Ill talk about the many processes we send to the SPUs where they're all taken care of at the same time (physics, navigation, collision checks, lighting calculations, special effects processing, etc). Ill also explain how running these processes in parallel simply allows us to do much more per frame than we could do in the past. And doing more per frame means more details and moving parts in the scene. Supporting these details in the game helps make the action more vivid and creates a greater sense of immersion.
Just as important though, well be showing the finished game. Yes, we've wrapped it up and it is now taking the final steps toward becoming an actual packaged game on the shelves during the launch. That's just a month away!
And now that we're finished with the game I have some more updates for everyone - updates that were the result of the final weeks of work on the game.
Update on disc size
I'm probably adding fuel to the fire by bringing up this issue again. But the debate over Resistance's size on disc has been raging for a while and I want to give you guys the final number. Earlier I gave some very specific reasons why we were over 20Gb - all legit then and now. And I've also been careful to say publicly that this size was the current size of the game whenever I brought it up. And this week on Neogafs forums the topic was brought up yet again as part of the thread on an interview Phil Harrison did.
As we moved into the final week of finishing up the game we made two big changes which dropped the size of the final disc to just over 16Gb still pretty large nonetheless. What were the changes? We removed PAL movies and further improved our data compression. It turns out that the NTSC movies (not HD, but NTSC just in case Lachamania is reading this) could be converted on the fly to look really good on PAL TVs and therefore we saved space by removing them. It's something that was a pleasant surprise. Why did we bother when we had so much space to work with? It simply saved us time when burning discs. When you're making revs every day and distributing them to a large test team, saving burn time is crucial. We could have left the PAL movies on disc and not improved compression to keep the size around 20Gb but that would have been inefficient and a little disingenuous. We dont want to pad the disc just to get it to a certain size. Whatever the game needs is what we put on the disc. Still, having a lot of space on Bluray means that were including things we wouldnt have been able to include if we had had to use dual layer DVDs: higher res game assets and more of them, HD movies, higher fidelity sounds, more dialogue, all languages on one disc, etc.
And of course, as others have pointed out in the many threads on this topic, the debate over disc size is a little silly. What really matters is whether your experience in the game is fun.
720p versus 1080p
Weve gotten a few questions about whether Resistance will be running in 1080p or 720p. In fact, AssassinX01 brought this up in his comments on my last blog.
Over the past few months we've told all of the enthusiast magazines and websites that we will TRY for 1080p. And indeed we did try. But when we began making our final discs we made the decision to release at 720p. Why? Native 1080p (versus 720p scaled to 1080p) uses much more VRAM than 720p. When we finished up a few of our bigger levels at the very end of the development process we realized that we would have had to steal VRAM from some of our characters and environments to run in native 1080p. Some of you who arent familiar with hardware in general may be asking So didnt you say you freed up more space? Well yes, but VRAM and disc space are two completely separate things. VRAM/RAM is the 512Mb of dynamic memory allocated to game assets at runtime versus the 25Gb or so of permanent storage on a single-layer Blu-Ray.
Anyway, we felt it was best to stay at 720p and that, at least while 1080p televisions are still relatively scarce, we should focus on implementing 1080p for our future games. Keep in mind too that Resistance still looks great on 1080p TVs even though its running in 720p. All 1080P TVs have a hardware scaling mechanism which scales the input signal to the TVs native resolution. In fact, much of the non direct-feed (i.e. handheld cam) footage of Resistance floating around on the net has been of 1080p TVs using Resistances 720p signal.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game also looks really good on standard NTSC (480i) TVs. I think its easy to ignore the fact that not every consumer owns an HD TV. But we made sure to thoroughly test Resistance for text legibility and overall contrast on different types of NTSC sets.
As far as the 1080p question goes, we at Insomniac realize that naysayers will have a field day with this one. Yet keep in mind that developing a launch title is a fluid process things change all of the time. Thats what makes this kind of on the edge development both fun and terrifying. Ultimately what matters though is that you end up with a game that looks, sounds and plays great. And for Resistance: Fall of Man, I believe weve succeeded.
What about video chat?
Nope, no video chat in Resistance. I think that ninjatech on the IGN boards nailed it in this thread http://boards.ign.com/ps3_general_board/b8267/129334745/p1/?7 . He pointed out that Kaz Hirais comment about video chat was not referencing Resistance but what abilities games in general will have. Ninjatech is exactly right. Resistance does not support video chat but undoubtedly other games on the PS3 will. Perhaps our future games will as well.
Now for some Q&A
Man, the floodgates have opened - there have been a lot of great questions from you guys. But seriously, there are a LOT of questions. There have also been some very good ones showing up on Neogaf as well regarding the multiplayer lobby - some of which I will answer below.
Because I know you guys don't want to read a novel Ill answer a limited number today. Then Ill post another blog fairly soon to try and answer the rest. Here we go:
totao923 posted:
"question ted, whats the limit of people per rosters in a clan???"
TP: Hey totao923. We have a pretty high limit on the number of people in a clan 200. I hope there are clans that get this big!
Arztek posted:
"Great answers, Ted. I have a question for you, Do you ever see the character's physical model in first person? Better yet, do you see the character's legs or even his shadow when looking down?
TP: Sorry Arztek. We arent supporting this. We found though that you really dont notice when playing. You should try it out and see what you think. But there IS a way to see the character youre playing play co-op with a friend! Youll be able to see your entire character from your friends perspective.
porch_monkey_15 posted:
"Insomniac has made alot of excellent ground braking games past the years but i think RESISTANCE-FALL OF MAN is going to over take all of them with its great graphics and action packed story line but im still wondering if RESISTANCE is going to be made for the xbox360 too and will it be on xboxlive to play online please write back"
TP: Hi porch_monkey_15 thats an easy one. Weve made Resistance: Fall of Man exclusively for the PS3. That means youll never see it on Xbox360 and you wont be able to play it on Xbox Live. But Resistance features a huge online multiplayer component. Weve got 6 different online modes, most of which support 40 online players at once. And you dont have to sign up for a service to play Resistance online its free!
daviddoel posted:
Do you consider the R&C franchise a platformer, or more of an action/adventure title? I know there has been a lot of debate about this subject on these boards, and I've always considered it an Action Platformer. I would just like to know your views on this, and why you believe its a platformer or not. Thanks!
TP: Hello daviddoel. Thats a question weve debated here over the years. And a lot of journalists have had trouble fitting the Ratchet & Clank franchise into any particular genre. Certainly the series has its roots in platforming Ratchet jumps and glides with the best of em. But the Ratchet games weve made so far have borrowed heavily from RPGs, shooters and more traditional adventure games. Personally, I think that because the gameplay is so varied, the Ratchet franchise fits better into the action/adventure category. This category is a lot broader in terms of its definition (though I dont think there is an official definition for any genre).
toxicity08 posted:
Will Ratchet and Clank 5 be more like up your arsenal or will it be more liked deadlocked? Will the weapons be upgradable like in the last 3 games?
TP: Hi toxicity08. Sorry, youll just have to wait and see. We dont want to give out information on the game too early. If you can wait for another few months, we should have a lot to divulge.
ANBUKaptain posted:
What do you think of the DualShock/Sixaxis setup?
TP: Hey ANBUKaptain. Ill answer each of your questions separately. First, weve all been pleasantly surprised at how good the Sixaxis feels. Its much lighter than the old DualShock and the analog sticks have a smaller deadzone. The smaller deadzone means better camera control which is crucial for a shooter like Resistance: Fall of Man.
And, which is your favorite controller that you've used?
TP: I think everyone at Insomniac would have a different answer. If you asked me this years ago, my own answer would have been the NES controller but my hands were smaller back then. These days I really like the Sixaxis, followed by the dual shock. Why? I like the size both fit comfortably and my hands never get cramped. I also think that the button layout is ingenious. Theyre all within easy reach and dont force you to take your thumbs off of the stick. Furthermore, there arent too many buttons to deal with. I get confused when a controller has buttons all over the place.
I was also wondering about your opinion on the lack of rumble in the Sixaxis is. I enjoy rumble, I think it helps the immersion of the game, do you agree with this? Do you think it's bad or good that it's not in the Sixaxis, or do you have no opinion?
TP: Honestly, I dont miss it. We used the rumble feature for our Ratchet games on PS2 but it always ended up being a lot of work for little return.
And finally, I'm not even sure you've used a Wiimote, but I was wondering what your thoughts on Nintendo's new controller are. Do you think that they made a good choice, and do you think the controller will make for more intuitive games (even if you aren't developing them)?
TP: I cant wait to try it. I didnt get a chance to check it out at this years E3. But I think its great that Nintendo is going out on a limb and experimenting with alternate forms of user input. Whether its Nintendos controller, Eyetoy or new uses for headsets, alternate user input devices are great ways to inspire unique game concepts.
Devon_Vice posted:
Are you (Insomniac) paying for and running the servers for this game? If so, in five years when nobody is really playing anymore, will you shut the servers down?
TP: Hi Devon_Vice. To answer your first question, Sony is running the servers. As far as whether or not they would get shut down if no one is playing the game I hope we never have to face that scenario!
Also, you mention TGC and how playing people in America was a testament to the online of PS3. I would ask, if 40 people were in a game and all of their upload speeds were 95bps, would the game run smooth?
TP: If youre talking about 95Kbps, yes, the game will run smoothly with 40 players at that upload speed.
How many times have you actually tested this in real world conditions with 40 people of varying speeds of broadband playing together?
TP: We do this every day between Insomniac and Sony. Weve run thousands of 40 player games with varying connection speeds. Between our testers and Sonys testers weve used many flavors of DSL and cable lines. And just to make sure the game will be bulletproof we consistently introduce artificial latency and packet loss during the test games. Finally weve tested extensively over Wi-Fi. And everything is working great!
Can we create our own rooms, or do we have to play on your servers (if individual servers is the way you go)?
TP: While everyone will be playing on the Sony servers, you can create your own customized (unranked) games. You can also mark them as private so you can have a select group of friends playing with you.
Matrix_Peter posted:
Will the final game offer Split-Screen ONLINE play, much like Ratchet&Clank:UYA?
TP: Hey Matrix_Peter. Nope, no split screen online this time.
FFObsessed86 posted:
May I ask, as the PS3 has been delayed in Europe til March, will the European version of Resistance contain any extras, bonus content etc for us poor filthy Europeans to enjoy? Or are you just gonna go hardcore on the next Ratchet?
TP: Hello FFObsessed86. Our plan is to release Resistance in Europe as it is now. Our plan from the beginning has been to create a worldwide disc one that supports all territories. Its already packed with a lot of content and some great unlockables (you will hear about these soon).
Also, will Resistance be just the one game? Or is it going to be a new franchise? Personally, I'd love to see a full blown Sci-Fi one!
TP: Nope. Resistance is the first chapter in a much larger story.
Any plans to create any new IPs after the next Ratchet game?
TP: Were always looking to create new IP. Its what we do! But because were relatively small (160 people) we have to be careful about working on too many projects at once. Therefore well wait until the time is right to start another franchise.
clintar posted:
I forgot to ask something. Watching a video of you explaining the game at TGS you sure looked to be under the weather or maybe just jet-lagged/exhausted. It made me wonder. How is it for you, going through the whole TGS showing? What's that whole thing like from a developer's perspective?
TP: Hi clintar. TGS is always a lot of fun. First theres the city itself Tokyo is just amazing. From an Americans perspective the architecture and culture are fascinating. Someday Id love to take a month and just wander around that city. The Tokyo Game Show itself is a madhouse. You probably saw pictures of how crowded it was. For developers its exhilarating to see people trying the games for the first time. And at the same time its challenging doing one interview after another especially with the time change. But I still consider us at Insomniac extremely fortunate to have had such great exposure in Japan thats thanks to Sony Japans support of our games. Whether its tiring to show our games off incessantly, it always ends up being worth it!
Warabit0 posted:
Will I be able to take a friend into online multiplayer as a "guest" similar to Halo 2?
TP: Good question Warabit0. If youre referring to split screen online, we dont support that. But if youre not playing split screen you can invite friends to join you in your online games. What you can do is first create a buddy list. This is a list of players you like playing with. The list is persistent i.e. its available every time you log in. You can invite players from your buddy list to join a party youve created. Then you can join other games with your party. You can have up to 20 people in a party. This means that you and 20 close friends could play as a team against 20 other players in ranked or unranked matches.
gofreak from Neogaf asked:
"Can you clarify at all re. the in-game buddy list? Is that leveraging the PNP buddy list from the XMB with some Resistance-specific functionality, or is it completely independent? Also, can you comment on in-game messaging to people on your buddy list - is that possible? There's some confusion over that spawning from the Eurogamer article, and whether you can actually access the XMB buddy list anymore in-game, and communicate with friends from there. "
TP: Hey gofreak. The buddy list is specific to Resistance. And we decided not to bother people in-game with messages. If you have a new message sent to you while youre in a game, you'll see your "buddy list" tab flashing when you re-enter the lobby after playing a game. The buddy list tab is where you can access your friends, ignore list, messages, etc.
Doom_Bringer from Neogaf asked :
"I haven't played a console FPS online so please answer. How are they going to handle people who team kill and talk trash? Team killers are especially a big problem cause they keep rejoining (at least in BF 1942 server I play in). Since the servers are going to be handled by Insomniac who is going to moderate them? Is there an auto-kick or auto ban featuer built in (like if a person gets a score of -4 he is automatically kicked and if he rejoins and does it a couple more times that person gets banned...)"
TP: Hi Doom_Bringer. In ranked games, friendly fire isnt enabled. This means that there wont be any team kills. Of course if youre playing custom (unranked) games you can set friendly fire to on or off. If someone is really bothering you can put them on your ignore list as well. If you REALLY dont like playing with strangers you can create private (unranked) games for you and a select group of friends. Down the road we also hope to release some tools that will help players self-moderate.
Demon_Cleaner from Neogaf asked :
"why the heck aren't they able to let the player join a running game? i mean you can do this in every damned pc shooter, even in quake 3 for the dc you were able to do this."
TP: Hello Demon_Cleaner. I know that your question was answered by someone else in the thread but its a good question so I wanted to answer it here. We allow late joins for custom (unranked) games. When you set up a custom game you can choose allow or not allow late joins. But for ranked games we dont allow it. The reason we dont allow it is because ranked games involve matchmaking. When parties arent involved, the matchmaking mechanism attempts to balance the teams based on individual players ratings. With late joins, the teams could become uneven.
But Im sure others will ask, what happens if someone drops out during the game? Doesnt that mean the teams will be uneven again? Yes, thats true it could happen. Yet we are doing our best to provide incentives for players to stay in the game and not quit. First, you will get no credits for kills, nodes taken, etc. unless youre in a game through completion. If you quit early, you get nothing (this is not the case in some other online games in which you retain credits for kills even if you quit). Furthermore, everyone has a Quits stat which shows up on their character sheet. Its kind of a badge of shame since everyone can see your stats.
And thats it for today. Great questions everyone. Ill be back soon to answer more! Thanks again for your support from all of us at Insomniac Games!
Ted
I can quote online sources in whole, right?
sonycowboy
Member
As expected, no 1080p
Rud13inJapan
Banned
Thanks..
Halo 3
Halo 3cank stoochie
Banned
no video chat. damn
plagiarize
Banned
so i was right then when i said 'I don't doubt that Resistance is too big for a DVD but i do doubt that it needs fill 25 gigs.
all sounds good apart from that.
seperate friends lists per game wouldn't be a bad thing, if you can easily add a friend from your 'general' friends list into a game list.
all sounds good apart from that.
seperate friends lists per game wouldn't be a bad thing, if you can easily add a friend from your 'general' friends list into a game list.
Yeah that makes sense. You would have a global buddy list (which would hopefully be present in some form while in-game to make it easier to get your friends in to a game) but you could also have game-specific buddies so they don't show up in your global list but you can keep track of them while playing the game. And of course if everything is tied to the core PNP user database then that's pretty slick.gofreak said:
1080p requires a LOT of VRAM, I'd imagine. That's an extremely high resolution (higher than what most people are using on their PCs, I'd say). It's obviously possible, but would require work beyond what they could handle for a launch title.f_elz said:
I wonder how it would impact actual performance, though?
There is not a single FPS on the XBOX360 at this time with a smooth, constant framerate. CoD2 is tops in this regard, but it runs on an older engine and drops whenever the action heats up. Other FPS games perform MUCH worse and struggle to hold even 30 fps (while tearing). The fact that we have a game like Resistance running at a rock solid 30 fps with so much detail and action on screen is pretty nice.
plagiarize
Banned
running in 1080p doesn't change disc space.f_elz said:
AltogetherAndrews
Member
New vids. Check out the scale of those environments.
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/748/748483/vids_1.html
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/748/748483/vids_1.html
DenogginizerOS
BenjaminBirdie's Thomas Jefferson
BOOM! Thatsa very nice! And 200 member clans!!
BamYouHaveAids
Member
That isn't a clan, that is a army. More games need clans!DenogginizerOS said:
Mark Gonzales
Banned
You only get credit in ranked games if you stay the whole game and there is no autobalance when people quit? Lame. You can't pat you stats Like In CS by doing well and then leaving so you have a good k/d ratio. I'm more concerned with no autobalance because people leave games constantly for one reason on another. You can't be playing 20 on 20 then next round its 20 on 12.
Doom_Bringer
Banned
awesome!plagiarize
Banned
was it may 04 we first saw it? i can never remember.Tieno said:
Bob Saget said:
Well, we do need clarification. I.e. where the user data for the friends list is coming from - the PNP? And why it exists in the first place (this is probably more indication of what Eurogamer was suggesting re. limited access to your XMB friends list in-game currently. Either that or they have to use their own to get in the clan support they want).
If there's limited access to your XMB friends list right now that's fairly :| but it'd be more like
if the user data for your Resistance friends list isn't coming out of the PNP. That's why they need to clarify that.Anyway, good news on the clan sizes, that's pretty nice.
Karma Kramer
Banned
The scale in those videos are awesome, but I am still a bit worried about the AI.
Also the video with the huge robot alien, had some pretty poor ground textures. Though the partical effects look really good and so do the enemies.
Also the video with the huge robot alien, had some pretty poor ground textures. Though the partical effects look really good and so do the enemies.
plagiarize
Banned
that's it's second biggest flaw. the biggest is EA's servers.squicken said:
edit: when i played an older build of this game at E3, i wasn't remotely concerned by how good the ground textures were, i was having too much fun to think to look at them.
Doom_Bringer
Banned
:lolY2Kevbug11 said:
no I changed my mind about that! go read that thread again
AltogetherAndrews
Member
plagiarize said:
May '05
Karma Kramer
Banned
plagiarize said:
Yeah the game certainly looks to play alot like Halo, and I love that weapon that you can produce a temporary shield, that you can shoot through but no one else. Pretty clever.
I hope we see some more multiplayer videos soon.
sugarhigh4242
Banned
gofreak said:Well, we do need clarification. I.e. where the user data for the friends list is coming from - the PNP? And why it exists in the first place (this is probably more indication of what Eurogamer was suggesting re. limited access to your XMB friends list in-game currently. Either that or they have to use their own to get in the clan support they want).
If there's limited access to your XMB friends list right now that's fairly :| but it'd be more like
Anyway, good news on the clan sizes, that's pretty nice.
I'm just spitballing here, but maybe when you launch a game, the PS3 list automatically sets your status to "Playing - Game X", so when your friends check their lists, they can see what you're playing.
Doom_Bringer
Banned
The Manchester stage looks awesome! So many dead bodies on ground, leaves in the air, and some thunder effects going on!AltogetherAndrews said:
awesome stuff! I don't like that other yellow stage