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Chris Keegan - Technical Director, Climax
Ok. You’re making a top secret PS3 game right now. How much better is PS3 than PS2?
Put it this way, had PS3 existed in 1998 it would have been the most powerful super-computer in the world. PS2, in comparison, has never been higher than the top 30. PS3 is roughly 250 times more powerful in raw processing terms than PS2. And that’s not including the power of the RSX.
So games will be that much better then?
It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid. With the extra computing horse-power comes a not insubstantial downside, namely that writing code efficient enough to take advantage of it has become an order of magnitude. It requires programming skills that only the very best developers have, and they’re kept locked away in dark dungeons. Fortunately Climax maintains a bank of genetically engineered uber-coders, awaiting the dawn of just such an era of games development.
What will the new machine allow you to do that you couldn’t of doing on PS2?
We’re talking about more physics, more characters, more detail, more gorgeous graphics. Much more expansive worlds filled with detail and, importantly, things to drive your car into and shoot and bound up and over.
So that means I have to buy a new TV to get the most out of PS3?
You can probably get away with only onebut I tell you, this dual HDMI interface is a bit of all right, fully digital signal all the way to your plasma or projector is a beatiful thing. Crisp, colourful, high contrast – black will finally be black, not some cloudy grey. Beautiful. Well worth the investment.
The Cell processor runs at 3.2Ghz. My PC is faster than that, so why is the Cell such a big deal?
These days, even Intel has stopped shouting about the clock speed of their processors. It’s now fairly well recognized fact that it’s not clocks, but what you do with them. And in the case of the processor you have nine processors working at the same time counting up FLOPS, and eight of them are hardcore fast processors designed for delivering hardcore math-intensive features like rendering and physics.
Tell us about RSX. What does it do?
That’s the kick-ass poly-pusher. It’s your GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI’ed badboy plus a hefty bit on the side. RSX is what’s going to blow you all away – you thought those movies at E3 looked good? You wait!
And what’s a Teraflop anyway?
FLOPS are really, really boring but lots of them equal great games. A FLOP is a floating point operation - basically an operation which adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides two numbers. A KiloFLOP is a thousand such operations, a MegaFLOP is a million, a Giga Flop is a billion (PS2 had roughly seven of them) and a TeraFLOP is a gazillion (or a trillion - 1 with 12 zeroes).
So what are ‘shaders’ and multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines?
Shaders are boring, but remember those programmers that Climax keep secreted away in dungeons? Well those guys love shaders. Shaders are short programs that describe the properties of surfaces, they make things shiny or matt and definethe way they interact with light sources. The goal of us as developers is to put the artists in control of powerful shaders so that they can create stunning and creative artwork. That multi-other ‘parallel obfuscating widget’ thing gives you an indication that there’s a lot going on at once and that it’s very flexible. Which means prettier games.
Why seven controllers?
That’s an odd number. It is indeed an odd number. But the answer is another boring one, I’m afraid. The wireless controllers use Bluetooth and there is a limitation in that standard that means only seven slave devices can be active at any one time. Hence seven controllers.
If they’re wireless, won’t I disturb a game on my next-door-neighbors PS3?
Because the PS3 uses Bluetooth, rather than Wi-Fi, there won’t be any problems with clashing with other PS3 devices. Bluetooth operates in a number of different modes but I’d imagine Sony would use a low-power mode, which would provide enough range for a typical living room use but not enough to send the signal through into next door.
And the PSP connectivity - does this mean I’ll be able to stream video from my PS3 over 8o2.11 on my PSP?
That’s certainly possible given the PSP’s support for 8o2.11b, which should be capable of delivering video suitable for the PSP’s resolution. It’s clearly Sony’s intention to provide this sort of functionality for the PS3 and PSP.
Sony have been blabbing about ‘photo realism’ for years. Are the graphics of PS3 finally there?
We’re getting closer certainly, but I’d stop and ask the question: Is photo-realism really what we’re aiming for? I want to see the same creativity in games’ visual style as we see in films. Look at Sin City and you begin to realize that the quest for photo-realism is a throwback to the days when the hardcore technologists ruled the roost.
Making PS3 games - easy or just a bit scary?
Making PS3 games is going to be a massive challenge that will break many small developers but at the same time this is an exciting time to be in the games industry and creating games to make jaws drop. Who wouldn’t call that their dream job?
