[Shifty Geezer]

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[SG79]

Had posted this in another topic, and forgot about this one existed. The mere fact that the revisions go beyond having less enemies on screen at a time does make it a very different experience (noted at the end).

There are areas that are literally empty in the NGS2, particularly chapter 14, that are obviously aren't tech-related. In fact, a lot of it seemed to be motivated to get a lower rating in Japan (the original had a Z rating, basically AO in the ESRB), especially that NGS1 remains a considerably bloodier game. In higher difficulty co-op mission modes, NGS2 mimics the original's experience far closer by throwing tons of enemies at you. Problem is that some of them are virtually impossible to beat.

For those wondering, the final NGS2 version does have more enemies and a smoother frame rate than the demo. Still, I have taken personal issues with some of the design revisions (particularly chapters 2 and 14 *11 in NGII*).

The good part is that it's a less buggy game and smoother, even though it's significantly easier. Mentor difficulty in NGS2 is my view the most balanced out of the two versions.

[SG79]

Originally Posted by obonicus

The subway-worm boss tunnel fight, is that gone because of technical reasons or because everyone hated it?

Underground area in South America. Yes, it's gone because it was a particularly broken boss fight as were the two armadillos (replaced by a "new" boss). In fact, the entire area is gone in NGS2.

Lots of examples of revisions made, most for the better, some for worse.

Especially with NGS1 barely maintaining its frame rate with 3 enemies onscreen.

There are more on screen at any given time in that game, and it ran just fine In fact, that game maintained an overall most consistent frame rate than either NGII version. The only notable slowdown instances I've noticed were in the mission facing Doku, Alma, and Marbus and the Hydra fight on VH and MN modes.

To be perfectly honest, I still like the look of that game better. Perhaps because of the art direction and higher poly count on characters.. it still looks prettier to me. Game-wise, I still prefer that one and the Xbox NGB by a long shot.

...with reduced polys on backgrounds as well.

The "underground" chapters post chapter 14?

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by SG79

Underground area in South America. Yes, it's gone because it was a particularly broken boss fight as were the two armadillos (replaced by a "new" boss). In fact, the entire area is gone in NGS2.

He means the New York Subway in Chapter 3.

[SG79]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

He means the New York Subway in Chapter 3.

Oh, thought there was some confusion because that's still there. Not as broken, but certainly easier.

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by liolio

Edge library should allow to "cull the hell out" of these many encounters greatly reducing the pressure on the RSX. For me it has more to do with design choices by the dev team.

That is what I'd call a supposition as we have absolutely no information regarding SPU usage in NGS2. Yes there's the EDGE to aid with RSX's limited vertex capability, but as seen in most third party games, it's still far from parity even to the 360 games with tiling. NG2 is a game that went sub HD to avoid tiling for maximum vertex performance. I'm not sure even guys like Naughty Dog or Santa Monica would be able to match that with all their coding tricks on PS3 and this is Tecmo we're talking about. Some lowly Japanese game company that is far from the best tech in the business. At this point, I believe it's pretty safe to assume that when it comes to vertex processing, PS3 is simply no match for 360 at least for majority of third party developers.

However you do have good pixel shader with RSX regardless of its vertex performance. And it's something that's equally available to every game developers. The way NGS2 turned out to be is related to nothing more than tech limitation of PS3. But unlike your average 'lazy devs' Team Ninja just did with whatever they had available with pixel shader to make it prettier.

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by Alucardx23

but in the article you say that Ninja Gaiden 2 is targeted for maximum performance on each console, but on 360 isn’t this has to do more with a developer decision of pushing more vertex shaders than pixel shaders?

Yes you're absolutely right. You have choice with unified shader structure of Xenos. As for the 'maximum performance' it's all in relative terms. The vertex processing is a clear advantage 360 has over to PS3, and NG2 is a game that almost abused it. (along with ridiculous amount of alpha textures) On PS3's side, it hit its maximum because they added stuffs with whatever resource left in PS3.

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by SG79

Underground area in South America. Yes, it's gone because it was a particularly broken boss fight as were the two armadillos (replaced by a "new" boss). In fact, the entire area is gone in NGS2.

IMO, removal of the two armadillos boss battle is more to do with tech limitation of PS3. That particular part is extremely alpha heavy especially when it goes berserk with all the fireworks. Having two of them doing that would be absolute nightmare for RSX. (With IS gone in NGS2 it would be even more nightmare for players to deal with them )

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by SG79

There are more on screen at any given time in that game, and it ran just fine In fact, that game maintained an overall most consistent frame rate than either NGII version. The only notable slowdown instances I've noticed were in the mission facing Doku, Alma, and Marbus and the Hydra fight on VH and MN modes.

To be perfectly honest, I still like the look of that game better. Perhaps because of the art direction and higher poly count on characters.. it still looks prettier to me. Game-wise, I still prefer that one and the Xbox NGB by a long shot.

You do sometimes see more than 3 enemies later in the game, but that was when the background is nothing more than surrounding walls. It's usually capped at 3 unless you're in some arena battle with strictly controlled environment. Overall, the game exhibited considerable amount of screen tearing even with so little going on.

They did reduce the poly counts on Hayabusa in NG2 from NGS1, but it definitely went back up in NGS2, it's at least on par with NGS1 version if not more. The enemy characters are more or less the same in poly count especially the spider ninjas that are just identical between NG2 & NGS1. They just added more bumps in NGS2.

[obonicus]

So, wait. Do you think the removal/reduction of IS ninjas in NGS2 was more due to technical reasons rather than gameplay design?

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by obonicus

So, wait. Do you think the removal/reduction of IS ninjas in NGS2 was more due to technical reasons rather than gameplay design?

Absolutely, IS scam in NG2 was overly abused to the extent that its alpha overdraws would make even 360 to crawl.

[SG79]

Could be, though it was without a doubt the most complained about gameplay design choice in NGII alongside the archers in MN. I remember the flood of topics about them last year among many others... the game managed to push so many buttons that it had you wondering whether it was ever play tested

However, the rocket launchers did cause slowdown immensely on Mentor and MN in NGII... at times below 20Hz. Then there is the infamous slo-mo stairs sequence and there are less enemies to deal with in NGS2 and bodies disappear.

Speaking of crawling, ironically the most hotly debated choice among fan (the purple "haze" instead of gushing blood) does cause that during UT's as enemies get dismembered en masse in missions (try it with the flail)

[obonicus]

Hmm, interesting. Do you think, then, that if the technical hurdles were made equal we'd see the exact same game on 360 and PS3?

I'm just thinking that there's a whole Itagaki vs. Hayashi Team Ninja politics there, too. And as I said, NG2 wasn't nearly as well-received as NG1, and it does feel like NGS2 tried to be closer to NG1 (though that may just because they're using an engine designed for NGS1).

[SG79]

Originally Posted by obonicus

(though that may just because they're using an engine designed for NGS1).

Not quite, it's actually a hybrid engine made from the NGS1 and NGII engines so it's essentially a "new" multiplatform engine. Hayashi said that they took complaints from players to heart but who knows:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=24388

H: I answered a question earlier today about what engine Sigma 2 is running off of, and Sigma 2 is running off of a hybrid of the engine from 2 as well as the engine that we had created for the original Sigma on PS3. So, yes, it's more difficult to port from Xbox 360 to PS3.

But just in terms of having to have to basically split the memory going from Xbox 360 to PS3, [this] to us was a rather easier thing to do because it wasn't like taking that one bucket full of memory and then having to have to figure out how to split it so that it goes appropriately into each slot that PS3 is basically providing us.

We kind of had a way, or formula, that was already almost figured out by the time we knew that we we're going to move on to PS3, and it was an easier method for us, because we had both the engines that we had worked on for the previous Sigma as well as Ninja Gaiden 2.

So, do you currently have a multiplatform engine that covers the Xbox 360 and PS3, or are you still working on different technologies across the current generation?

YH: Yeah, as a result, yes, we can say that we now have that. It's available to us, yeah.

They recently had a posting for programmers to work on a multiplatform game, so could be the next DOA or NG3.

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by obonicus

Hmm, interesting. Do you think, then, that if the technical hurdles were made equal we'd see the exact same game on 360 and PS3?

I'm just thinking that there's a whole Itagaki vs. Hayashi Team Ninja politics there, too. And as I said, NG2 wasn't nearly as well-received as NG1, and it does feel like NGS2 tried to be closer to NG1 (though that may just because they're using an engine designed for NGS1).

There really is nothing about NGS2 that can't be done on 360. In fact, they could probably add more alpha effects (blood, explosions) on top of it. In terms of theoretical shader performance, RSX & Xenos are roughly equal with Xenos being just more flexible with its unified structure. And you've got EDRAM for free MSAA and alpha as well.

Then again, we don't know what Team Ninja did with SPUs. They maybe used for geometry culling, lighting, post processing etc. Even if that's the case, 360 should still be able to pull off something similar as there's nothing crazy going on, unlike NG2 that seems almost impossible on PS3. (direct port of course)

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by SG79

Could be, though it was without a doubt the most complained about gameplay design choice in NGII alongside the archers in MN. I remember the flood of topics about them last year among many others... the game managed to push so many buttons that it had you wondering whether it was ever play tested

Any problem with NG2 is because they abuse it. Having 5 IS ninjas spamming relentlessly is one things, seeing archers or rocket ninjas in every platform you need to jump onto is just fXXXing ridiculous. I'm pretty sure NG fans wouldn't mind having these exploding projectile spammers every once in a while.

[SG79]

Originally Posted by MazingerDUDE

I'm pretty sure NG fans wouldn't mind having these exploding projectile spammers every once in a while.

They can be dealt with some patience for sure. Archers are actually a bigger pain in chapter 11 on Mentor and MN in NGII. I personally stopped at Mentor pre-patch last year and called it quits. Problem is that on Mentor and MN, projectile spamming is on full force from the get go (right at Chapter 1). Add insult to injury, the slowdown and glitches are more prevalent there too. Of course, there is an invincibility glitch but that's no fun

What makes matters worse is that in NGII and NGS2, IS's detonate on contact (be it on floor or Ryu). There was more leverage and smarter design with the original game, that's for sure. Even standard enemy AI where enemies blocked, parried, got out of harm's way, and even interrupted attacks but never felt unfair. Master Ninja in NGB and NGS were sadistically hard at times but a lot of fun.

In both NGII's, that mode isn't fun much. Even with the revisions, NGS2 has magical one grab and you're dead setups and two hits often kill you. Of course, enemy HP is through the roof and did I mention that the girls are a bit weaker for that mode?

[liolio]

Originally Posted by MazingerDUDE

That is what I'd call a supposition as we have absolutely no information regarding SPU usage in NGS2. Yes there's the EDGE to aid with RSX's limited vertex capability, but as seen in most third party games, it's still far from parity even to the 360 games with tiling. NG2 is a game that went sub HD to avoid tiling for maximum vertex performance. I'm not sure even guys like Naughty Dog or Santa Monica would be able to match that with all their coding tricks on PS3 and this is Tecmo we're talking about. Some lowly Japanese game company that is far from the best tech in the business. At this point, I believe it's pretty safe to assume that when it comes to vertex processing, PS3 is simply no match for 360 at least for majority of third party developers.

Well yes . Overall I get your point SPU culling or not (even it looks likely to me as they reworked the engine).

However you do have good pixel shader with RSX regardless of its vertex performance. And it's something that's equally available to every game developers. The way NGS2 turned out to be is related to nothing more than tech limitation of PS3. But unlike your average 'lazy devs' Team Ninja just did with whatever they had available with pixel shader to make it prettier.

Well the more I think about it the more I give credit to your analysis but I would not limit it to technical considerations as it looks like the team tried to reach a bigger audience the NG2, it happened that technical considerations matched pretty well "marketing ones" in this case

[Statix]

I'm sorry, but I personally found that the Ninja Gaiden 2 comparison article Digital Foundry did to be very inaccurate with the writer putting forth the assertion that the 360 hardware has many graphical capabilities that the PS3 cannot handle. The writer mentions the greater vertex capabilities and polygon-pushing power of the 360, and how the PS3 would be unable to handle it. Yet many of the comparison screens shown in the article itself totally contradict this argument of the 360 version having superior polygonal detail, with many shots showing greater polygon detail in both the environment and the character models on the PS3 side:

(More polygonal detail on the PS3, exemplified by the lamppost.)
360: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/a..._360_1.jpg.jpg
PS3: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/a..._ps3_1.jpg.jpg

(Look at the difference in detail in the leaves/foliage on the right edge of the screen.)
360: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/a..._360_1.jpg.jpg
PS3: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/a..._ps3_1.jpg.jpg

EDIT: And some other screenshots clearly comparing character models and polygonal differences:

360 and PS3: http://www.gameswire.net/comparisons...360_stack.html

360 and PS3: http://www.gameswire.net/comparisons...360_stack.html

The difference in polygonal detail in both the models and environment are clear in many of these screenshots... in FAVOR of the PS3 version.

I don't buy it that the person who did the comparison came up with the argument that the 360 has too much vertex capability for the PS3 to handle, because all he used to prove his point were comparison screens from a specific cutscene, a cutscene in which many werewolves were repeated over and over through the clever graphical trick of polygon instancing (the repeating of polygons or models without needing the performance to render each polygon separately)... not really a proof of overall "greater polygon performance" at all. Perhaps the instancing/character-repetition code wasn't working or performing as efficiently in the PS3 iteration, so they had to scale back the number of characters in this one particular cutscene. Still, I don't see this as proof that the PS3 version being inferior in terms of overall polygon performance, because the many of the screen comparisons don't bear this out. The writer is trying to make the argument that the 360 version is better in some ways, and the PS3 in some ways, but I think it's extremely lopsided in almost all areas except for some transparency/alpha and blood effects being scaled down on the PS3 version (and this one particular cutscene the writer mentioned with the many werewolves being repeated).

EDIT: (regarding number of enemies on screen)

Originally Posted by Digital Foundry

The most obvious thing to note is that the Xbox 360 game is capable of throwing far more enemies at you, though there can be a performance penalty. Ninja Gaiden 2 revels in throwing seven or eight opponents at you at any given point (though it can go higher) while the PS3 game is more strictly limited to six or fewer in the same situations.

This also appears to be a very inaccurate statement shortchanging the PS3 version. The writer claims that the PS3 version is more or less strictly limited to around 6 enemies on screen, while the 360 version can handle "far more enemies." Here's a video that shows the PS3 version handling 12 enemies on screen at a time (with perhaps some slight slowdown, although it's difficult to ascertain in the video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA7Runk_lSc

[assurdum]

I'm not so sure about the easy approach of ngs 2 on the 360 hardware...light, rendering of shadows, specular maps...tecmo said to prefer ps3 hardware in its recent quote and ngs 2 show clearly that adding even a resolution boost and a good polish of the engine. Said subhd 585p with more enemies and overdraws impossible on the ps3 (we talking of 585p) but to reverse 720p 2xAA with more light, self shadowing and pixel shaders easy on the 360, not seems give justice to the work of the ps3 hardware. IMHO. And let me do a little OT to criticize eurogamer analysis: probably I'm paranoic, who know, but for the most of the tech analysis I have notice a tendency to bias everything about ps3 hardware, a maniac research of its limits in every game; don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad thing but I don't understand why 360 game not have the same treatment. I'm not refer to MazingerDude, to be clear, probably the only shows the same approach on both hardware.

[Dr. Nick]

Originally Posted by Statix

This also appears to be a very inaccurate statement and once again shortchanging the PS3 version. The writer claims that the PS3 version is more or less strictly limited to around 6 enemies on screen, while the 360 version can handle "far more enemies." Here's a video that shows the PS3 version handling 12 enemies on screen at a time (with perhaps some slight slowdown, although it's difficult to ascertain in the video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA7Runk_lSc

I think you missed the video portion of the article where they compared similar situation across consoles and it still ended up showing more enemies on the 360. The problem with this comparison is that there are so many variables at play between the two versions. There is also a different design philosophy at play. It would have been great and I was partly hoping for a like for like situation between Sigma2 and NG2 even after the removal of blood but that didn't happen. The two games are different which makes a comparison very hard to do.

I will say based on what is known about both of these systems what he did say in the article is more sound than most of the stuff you will hear about the games. They might have tried to not get the Z rating in Japan but NG2 got an M rating over here in the US and tolerable ratings elsewhere. Why not turn on the blood for people over here? They made changes with previous NG's for different territories why not do the same with this game especially when you have people complaining about its removal? Why when your cut scenes are limited to 30fps do you remove extra models? Nobody is playing these scenes I understand but why not leave them the same. They are pretty much the same just with less models in them now. It would have been really impressive if they got the old stairway scene working at 60fps and would have been a way to stick it to the director of NG2 that they managed to do everything that the 360 did only much better. Why didn't they try to do that? If everything was designed like for like just with more polish and balanced gameplay and the other extras including things that the PS3 is good at no one would think twice about Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2’s technical superiority but they ended up removing or toning down things that the 360 is believed to be good at and the PS3 not so good at they locked cutscenes at 30fps. (I think old Team Ninja should have done the same thing though for cut-scenes and used the extra power to make the cutscenes look better. They kind of needed it) In the end the game is still more polished on the PS3 so it is the better version between the two but there were somethings in the NG2 that people could question if the PS3 would have had a easy time pulling off at the same quality.

We might get the new Team Ninja side of the story since they seem more willing to talk the tech stuff but we won't be getting that from the old Team Ninja. They didn't bother doing it even when they were given the chance to when they did the Softimage casestudy.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Prophecy2k

This I can't possibly concieve since none of us have any idea how much SPU utilisation the NGS2 code has. And you say that even if it has some, the 360 could probably replicate it? I'd really like to know how? Since using the SPUs on PS3 would imply pretty much maxing out the RSX, and so i'd imagine it would likely be close to doing so on Xenos (at the PS3 version resolution with same AA). So without Xenos what else can the 360 use to do the job of the SPUs on CELL?

I gather that it was the implication of using Cell to help out RSX with certain loads such as culling and feeding data to the VS units, which it should be clear that it is needed (from developer comments and presentations). That they're capable of doing post-process effects at a lower resolution (at higher precision) shouldn't be taken for granted because RSX is naturally faster at it. The use of doing said effects on the SPE's is a matter of balancing frame render times. You'd get that idea from the KZ2 docs out of GDC even.

For instance, RSX will be able to do post-process effects much faster, but they're trying to keep within 33ms render time. Offload the extra work to the SPE's in parallel whilst the other work is being done so in the end everything will be done on time. It ends up being a win because the brunt of the serial work (post-process calcs) has been taken care of. But this is highly simplified and isn't the scenario in all games.

[liolio]

Back to my rant about vertex shaders
Ninja gaiden renders @1120x585 which is 655,200 pixels, NGS 2 @720p which is 921,600 pixels.
The 360 deals with only 70% of the pixels the ps3 deals with or the other way around the ps3 deals with a pixel shading bigger of 40% (as Alstrong pointed).
Disclaimer: gross logic is to follow
X= ps3 vertex load Y=ps3 pixel load
A 360 vertex load B=360 pixel load
B=Y x 0.7 // X+Y=A+B => X + Y= A + 0.7 Y
We can't say that xenos has 30%more resources to deal with vertex load. In all likelyness Y>>X B>>A and A>X. Dealing with 30% percent less pixels may free multiple times the resources actually used by X to deal with A. I feel iffy about it, I can't see some extra 10k or less polygons monsters/encounters consuming those extra resources if we consider only the vertex load.

I read again Epic presentation about the gore effect to try to find answers. I actually had a tough time because I don't how each effects affect perfs. The presentation is here
First, the meshes and how they "split". Epic went for a data driven model to save performances. I think it's the sae for Temco (ie body are not randomly chopped).

Originally Posted by Epic

Undamaged mesh with no overhead
Gore mesh with additional information
Completely independent of the undamaged mesh
Pre-cut with all gore pieces separated
Full freedom to hand-model cuts and guts
Can use different/additional textures and shaders

Basically the engine switch to the more complex mesh went needed. If I understand properly they trade RAM for better perfs most of the time. IN NG2 I don't how many time "dismembering" happens but I feel like it's more often (extra insight on the game welcome). Overall Temco would make a clever move by using this tricks as even if there are more characters on screen I'm not sure that you see that many different model at a time.
sum-up:
Gore cost memory and perfs (both on CPU and GPu side) in a variable ratio depending on how you handle it.
It may have an extra cost if the engine keep a bunch of pieces around and you can interact with them both on memory and CPU side I guess (I'm not sure that actual rendering of some/many limbs is that much of a concern perfs wise has models/meshes and textures are likley to stay in RAM anyway).

Then come this:

Originally Posted by Epic

Many different techniques used in combination:
Projected blood decals
Screen-space blood splatter
World-space particle effects
Surface-space shader effects
Fluid simulations
Morphing geometry

That's for Geow and some may not have equivalent in NG2 (or are only used in Geow for really specific scenes).
I enlightened those that seems relevant to me. I' not sure I understand properly how this work but from my understanding it looks like a mixed bags in term of workload.
For decals CPU have to decide where they are (tied to a mesh or a static object) and their evolution then on the GPU side it looks to me like extra texturing and shading and a fair amount of alpha to coverage (hence Mazinger dude take on bandwidth and Edram).
Particles are well particles.
Overall I would not want to go in details I may not understand or misunderstand and I'm sure some members could extrapolate for Epic presentation more than me more accurately.
Overall gore effects seems to stress the an engine and a systems in pretty various from muy low level understanding.
I'm still not sold on Mazinger Dude conclusion even if I can see some truth to it. Overall I'm in lost in the middle between design choices to reach a wider audience? memory and badwidth constrains (extra memory for some effects vs extra memory for the frame-buffers, lot of alpha to coverage)? In the end I would not a pretty bad use of CPU resources especially on the PS3 (which may translate in no SPU culling, bad instancing as some one pointed, particles not done on cell, etc, etc.) Actually I lie I'm in the dark and I do not think that the game make the best use of available resources no matter which system you consider which make comparison on resource utilization even more iffy.

End of the rant

[MazingerDUDE]

Originally Posted by Statix

The writer mentions the greater vertex capabilities and polygon-pushing power of the 360, and how the PS3 would be unable to handle it. Yet many of the comparison screens shown in the article itself totally contradict this argument of the 360 version having superior polygonal detail, with many shots showing greater polygon detail in both the environment and the character models on the PS3 side

The difference in polygonal detail in both the models and environment are clear in many of these screenshots... in FAVOR of the PS3 version.

Yes, there're parts with added geometry on NGS2, but there're far more with reduced ones.

http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/N...cuction_01.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/N...cuction_02.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/N...cuction_03.jpg

These are rather subtle changes done with extra care and added shader details, but there're tons of examples like these across the entire game. I picked the most obvious ones to put up at DF, it'll take almost forever to cover every single details in the game. The Colosseum crowd scene is not just a cut scene, the part is actually a background for boss battle in that chapter. So is the cave scene with tons of removed objects.

The set of foliage shots has got nothing to do with the poly count as it's just a 2D texture. In fact 360 version should be more heavy on GPU with overdraws as it displays more on what's behind.

This also appears to be a very inaccurate statement and once again shortchanging the PS3 version. The writer claims that the PS3 version is more or less strictly limited to around 6 enemies on screen, while the 360 version can handle "far more enemies." Here's a video that shows the PS3 version handling 12 enemies on screen at a time

The scene was artificially set up by gathering ninjas from 3 sections. You won't see more than 6 in each section where 360 version could easily throw 50~100% more at smoother frame rate. And this is only place in NGS2 where you can gather so many as in other places, following ninjas will just disappear when you reach the next section. (this could be game breaking, so they sometimes add barrier to block you from moving any further without killing them all)

[Shifty Geezer]

Okay, new proper tech thread for DF. I've spliced out the latest NG2 tech talk from the old DF thread, although I didn't do a particular exacting job, so don't be surprised if your highly relelvant and insightful post hasn't made it across!