Nothing is gonna change that, and yes, developers will have the freedom to put as much extras COUGH*crap*COUGH on the Bluray versions of the games as they want. YAY!
cheaper to re-use data on the disc
Blue Dragon will ship on 3 DVDs.
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cheaper to re-use data on the disc
I would have loved either HD-DVD or Bluray in my x360. It makes sense that eventually the media will be filled or could be used innovatively. However both of those techs are really 2007 techs were supplies will eventually be adequate and the first generation components are adequate for game playing.
This isnt really an either or proposition cause... I've been playing my x360 for a year now and been enjoying the games. Im about to go into my second Christmas with the console... playing the games not waiting on supplies and shipments. I have not been sitting there like "if this had bluray it would have been bigger... yeah!"
Lets just wait and see how Blue Dragon plays over three DVDs versus imagining problems. It still a GAME after all... you couldnt be troubled to put in the next DVD?
This isnt really an either or proposition cause... I've been playing my x360 for a year now and been enjoying the games. Im about to go into my second Christmas with the console... playing the games not waiting on supplies and shipments. I have not been sitting there like "if this had bluray it would have been bigger... yeah!"
Lets just wait and see how Blue Dragon plays over three DVDs versus imagining problems. It still a GAME after all... you couldnt be troubled to put in the next DVD?
london-boy said:
That is because PS2 and PC gaming are very much alive saying no to premature death? What happens when we move to multicore and dx10 assets?
scooby_dooby said:
That is because the assets are held back by PS2 era of gaming?
GTA2
4mb : 350mb installer
GTA3
40mb : 2,500mb scooby's words
GTA4
512mb : 32,000mb?
scooby can you backup that DVD is enough with a quote from developers other than MS?
scooby_dooby
Legend
You mean other than the fact that GTA4 is launching simultaneously on xbox360? Is that not proof that DVD is adequate for next gen GTA?
There are quotes directly on this forum from developers saying they bottlenecks are NOT disc space, but rather throughput and transfer speed. I'm not going to dig them up though.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
I'm not in any way trying to debate DVD vs BD, but I would like to point out the fact that a developer will work with what they have. Of course they'll target 4 - 9 GBs, if that's what they have to work with. But to claim that that alone is proof that something different could not or would not have been done with a different target size in mind (even with the same hardware), is a bit of a logical leap I think. DVD will have to be adequate for the next-gen GTA. On a related note, considering the transfer rate penalty hit taken with DVD9, DVD5 might have to adequate, given GTAs streaming nature. By the very necessities dictated by the situation, it is, of course, "adequate." The situation being missing a potentially huge portion of the gaming market.
scooby_dooby
Legend
I'm not claiming it's proof that nothing different could have been done, simply that it must be 'enough' for Rockstar's vision of their game. After all, they could always make GTA a PS3 exclusive if it impacted the game that signifigantly.
I'll be interested to see if GTA does come on one disc, or multiple, and what specifically BR actually enables them to do differently, but only time will tell.
I was wondering if we could return to the point london-boy made here.
The very first console RPG that I ever played was "Skies of Arcadia" for the Dreamcast, which impressed me so much that I soon became a fan of the whole genre, and now RPGs are by far my most played 'type' of games. So, because my console-rpg history is relatively young in comparison to some of the veteran gamers here, I apologize if I don't know what I'm talking about, but for every single multi-disk RPG that I've played, the experience from disk-to-diskwas seamless. The game world, personalities, side-quests and mini-games carried over from disk-to-disk. It seamed to me that the only reason I switched disk was due to the story progression of the main plot, and not because of environmental reasons. So I'm not sure I understand why that would be a concern.
Futhermore, I'm not sure I understand why a 'free-roaming' game like Grand Theft Auto, if it were to appear on multiple disks, would be an issue either. Again, it would seem that for a game like GTA, you would be free to roam the game world at your leisure on either disk, since the world would be duplicated on each disk. The issue would be the storyline. I'm not sure how long a typical GTA main plotline is, but as long as you were still able to do the everyday stuff you do in a normal GTA game, why would it matter if the main story required you to switch disks? It just seems highly unlikely that any game would be designed or approved that required you to "switch islands" or areas or whatever everytime you needed to go to that location.
Can any veterans (or young'uns for that matter) name a game in which the 'physical' game world was split across multiple disk, such that if you wanted to go back and forth between areas, you had to change disks?
Oh, and Beyond3d is a fantastic site, looking forward to posting on here more often.
Nevermind,i see the troll posts have been erased.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
Ok, I see now. When I originally read your statement, the way you stated "adequate" seemed to imply that DVD was enough for what they wanted to do, and not that it has to be enough for what they want to do. We will probably never know what BD could have done differently for them. I seriously doubt they'll take the time to truly explore each systems capabilities in any but the most trivial of ways. I hate this multi-platform "lowest common denominator" thing most large 3rd parties do. The lowest common denominator actually being neither the PS3 nor the 360, just simply what they can get accomplished on each easily, and even then things get screwed up. As it stands now its like we have to prioritize which aspect of a game is most important to us when deciding which version of a multiplatform game to buy. Do you prefer greater crispness? Then go with this version. But if you want a better frame rate, go with this version. However, if you prefer a more robust online experience go with this version. Blah... But I digress, I'm getting off topic, and I could rant about that all day... And actually having the consoles to be able to choose which version to buy isn't exactly a "burden."
EDIT
Hmmm... what exactly is the topic being discussed here? It seems like the original post is so ambiguous that multiple topics could be discussed and still be related to the original post. Is there a particular focused point of discussion?
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Speaking of GTA....
This may be the wrong thread or off-topic, but I feel my question is somewhat related to the point under discussion here.
Do we need, or want, a bigger GTA game? With San Andreas, Rockstar proved they could do a massively sized game. But GTA-style games still seem to suffer from limited interactivity in certain respects. So shouldn't we go for a more interactive experience within a massive game environment? I think everyone is assuming that Rockstar is planning to outdo themselves and create something bigger than San Andreas, but I personally hope that they create a much more expansive, intimate, single city, and add more layers of complexity to the interactivity of the game world. Would disk space be an issue if this is the route they took? And I confess, this is coming from someone who dabbles in GTA games for momentary thrills, but has never managed to actually finish one.
This may be the wrong thread or off-topic, but I feel my question is somewhat related to the point under discussion here.
Do we need, or want, a bigger GTA game? With San Andreas, Rockstar proved they could do a massively sized game. But GTA-style games still seem to suffer from limited interactivity in certain respects. So shouldn't we go for a more interactive experience within a massive game environment? I think everyone is assuming that Rockstar is planning to outdo themselves and create something bigger than San Andreas, but I personally hope that they create a much more expansive, intimate, single city, and add more layers of complexity to the interactivity of the game world. Would disk space be an issue if this is the route they took? And I confess, this is coming from someone who dabbles in GTA games for momentary thrills, but has never managed to actually finish one.
Very good point osalunde and welcome to B3D. Some would argue that Bluray allows for both of your gameplay criteria to be met whereas to do that on DVD would require brute force compression techniques. I think Rockster hit it on the head when he reminded us that devs themselves love large storage mediums but the real problem is RAM and transfer speed... how much ram do you have for your vertex and texture data? how quickly can you get that data from the storage device and into the RAM? I think those may be bigger constraints at this time than the BluRay issue.
A better GTA would be more valuable than a bigger one for sure. Large worlds like Oblivion can lose focus for all but the most die hard and/or time flush individuals.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
I don't know if that's on topic or not (I don't really know what the "topic" actually is, the OP was 1 line), but I think that's a pretty valid question and relates, in part, to the 3 DVD, space issue, discussion. How much space does adding interactivity take up? For things like additional dialogue for the city’s NPCs, I think we can safely say that would take up a non-trivial amount of additional space. But what about something like destructible environments? Greater detail and destructibility with the car models? Improved physics, group AI and individual AI. How much space does that type of data actually use?
Interesting, i would say that nobody has still explain how can rfom fill more than 20GB of data.
the game looks slightly longer than geow (12/15 hours from what i've read and it seems slightly harder on standart setting).
Is there a lot of fmv in rfom?
this should be an interesting topic for the technical section, how data redondency hit br storage capacity if you don't use the hdd properly?
Considering how cheap DVD's are to manufacture now, I'd assume so.
Well, considering the largest GTA game, San Andreas only took up 2.5GB on the Multi PAL version, I'd say there's nothing to worry about. They could triple the amount of space used and still fit in nicely. A very big misconception seems to float around a lot that GTA: San Andreas was this massive game that took a whole DVD9 already.
Blackjedi, Gradthrawn
These are all good points to consider. As it relates to the space/storage issue, my thinking here (influnced by casual thread readings of B3D, so I could be wrong) is that, as you guys alluded to, ram is the ultimate check on vertex and texture data. Gears of War seems to have no trouble streaming what I assume to be high amounts of texture data (since vertex info doesn't take up much space, correct?) at least in a seamless fashion, so more storage space plus advanced streaming capabilities would certainly be ideal - and I can recall at least one Unreal3 demo where they showed off the "whole world" at once, as if to suggest their streaming techniques could potentially work in a non-linear game type.
Do we even know for sure that Blue Dragon is linear? I know that we are assuming that it is because it is a JRPG and because the environments appear to be on 'paths', but maybe the world is far more open-ended than we believe it to be.
Anyway, I guess I fall into what would be the most common sense, and thus safer, camp - while I would have loved more storage on the 360, I'm not sure if the lack of more storage will manifest itself as a negative in any substantial way. And, I thought that a more shader-centric philosphy (sic) would also help alleviate space issues, but I may be confusing issues.
These are all good points to consider. As it relates to the space/storage issue, my thinking here (influnced by casual thread readings of B3D, so I could be wrong) is that, as you guys alluded to, ram is the ultimate check on vertex and texture data. Gears of War seems to have no trouble streaming what I assume to be high amounts of texture data (since vertex info doesn't take up much space, correct?) at least in a seamless fashion, so more storage space plus advanced streaming capabilities would certainly be ideal - and I can recall at least one Unreal3 demo where they showed off the "whole world" at once, as if to suggest their streaming techniques could potentially work in a non-linear game type.
Do we even know for sure that Blue Dragon is linear? I know that we are assuming that it is because it is a JRPG and because the environments appear to be on 'paths', but maybe the world is far more open-ended than we believe it to be.
Anyway, I guess I fall into what would be the most common sense, and thus safer, camp - while I would have loved more storage on the 360, I'm not sure if the lack of more storage will manifest itself as a negative in any substantial way. And, I thought that a more shader-centric philosphy (sic) would also help alleviate space issues, but I may be confusing issues.
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