Cross platform development and choice of 'Lead system' *Spinoff*

[tha_con]

I agree with makattack, though in ordinary discussion 'lead platform' is used to mean the platform around which development is focussed, with other platforms being internal 'ports' of that game. Thus the majority of effects, assets, algorithms, would be designed around the lead platform and it should benefit. Thoguh of course, a well balanced development would have everything more or less equal for various reasons.

If a company says 'we lead on Platform X' then I expect if any platform shows an advantage, it to be Platform X.

I agree with everything except for the bolded statement.

The only reason I don't agree with that isn't because it isn't true, I just don' tagree with it because it isn't always true.

A company may create an engine from the ground up that is 'scalable' on multiple platforms, and decide to focus most of their development team on one platform specificially because of it's difficulty.

I don' t think, however, that means that platform will benefit the most. As we've seen in the past, leading on the PS3 is ultimately easier to do when moving to the 360, instead of leading on 360 and moving to PS3.

I think this can lead to multiple outcomes. In the case of BOP, both versions are identicle, because of the engine and how it was designed.

However, in the case of Ghostbusters, the results differ greatly. I think the reason the title ended up the way it did on PS3 (if it was in fact the lead platform) may be because the engine simply "scaled" better to the 360, and allowed them more foot room to render at a higher resolution, combined with the memory advantage for texture resolution, etc.

In short, I'm really trying to find out where the term "Lead Platform" became attached with superiority or equality in multiplatform development. I think that Lead Platform simply means the team is dedicating most of their resources to that specific development environment, but that does not necessarily mean that we will see better results on that platform.

Sorry for being long winded, I just am really interested in this discussion and the previous thread was closed

 

[-tkf-]

I think the reason the title ended up the way it did on PS3 (if it was in fact the lead platform) may be because the engine simply "scaled" better to the 360, and allowed them more foot room to render at a higher resolution, combined with the memory advantage for texture resolution, etc.

Then they chose a "bad" engine and did an incredible bad job on the PS3. Very few would chose a lead platform and aim for such a bad result as they did with the PS3 version.

 

[makattack]

I agree with everything except for the bolded statement.

The only reason I don't agree with that isn't because it isn't true, I just don' tagree with it because it isn't always true.

...

In short, I'm really trying to find out where the term "Lead Platform" became attached with superiority or equality in multiplatform development. I think that Lead Platform simply means the team is dedicating most of their resources to that specific development environment, but that does not necessarily mean that we will see better results on that platform.

I think the origin is partly because it seems natural for the intended platform to always be the better version. Partly because historically, it was true. Not 100% of the time, mind you. There will always be exceptions.

The reason it was true historically was a simple matter of resource management. You dedicate more resources to the teams that are developing the initial version. If you are porting a software project, you typically have fewer resources and a shorter development window. In that scenario, you can almost expect the ports to not be as good.

What's changed is, I believe, more reliance on frameworks and engines that allow for cross-platform development. This allows developers to focus on design and development within the capabilities of the various platforms. Of course, there will be design / dev decisions that can make one version "better" than the other. Even with these multi-platform development tools, you still ultimately have the same issue as when everything was bespoke.

 

[Neb]

Then they chose a "bad" engine and did an incredible bad job on the PS3. Very few would chose a lead platform and aim for such a bad result as they did with the PS3 version.

Really honestly...?


http://www.psu.com/PS3-leads-the-way-for-Ghostbusters--a006207-p0.php

The reason why Ghostbusters: The Videogame wasn’t developed earlier, he says, was because Terminal Reality were waiting for the technology to do the game justice. The PS3 was its first choice.

“...Sony and the talent were adamant that before they got involved with a Ghostbusters game, the tech had to be capable of providing an authentic Ghostbusters experience, and that required graphics and physics tech,” he told PSU.

The developer also spoke about the Infernal Engine, which is used to power Ghostbusters: The Videogame, stating that Sony’s console is ideal for such technology.

“The PS3 is a more demanding system to develop on and it is what the Infernal Engine was designed to exploit from the ground up. With the multiple SPU’s it has onboard a solid multithreaded engine design can really take advantage of that and give you some amazing results.”...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/terminal-realitys-joe-kreiner

Joe Kreiner: The Infernal Engine is designed around scaling on multiple CPUs and SPUs and the PlayStation 3 has a ton of SPUs that game developers don't typically take full advantage of, whereas our engine is built from the ground up to scale to the platform. Our engine works great on the PS3 which is relatively unique because we designed the engine for consoles originally, not for the PC. It still works great on the PC but because we took a different path than our contemporaries we get a lot better performance out of the PlayStation 3...

...I think it's more the limitations of certain technologies. For us, we get a lot of interest in our tech because we have a Wii solution that works really well, we have a PS3 solutions that works really well....

...The Infernal Engine scales across multiple CPUs and SPUs really well and it's built from the ground up to do that....

Soooo... somebody tell me what the heck is going on?

 

[holsty101]

I'm gonna guess ... TR were full of BS?

 

[obonicus]

Really honestly...?


http://www.psu.com/PS3-leads-the-way-for-Ghostbusters--a006207-p0.php






http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/terminal-realitys-joe-kreiner




Soooo... somebody tell me what the heck is going on?

Their handlers at Sony Pictures made them say good things about the PS3? Again, we're not talking about the PS3 being unable to handle Crysis at more than 540p, we're talking about an engine that doesn't run particularly well even on 360. As holsty said, the most likely response is that Terminal Reality is full of BS.

 

[joker454]

Soooo... somebody tell me what the heck is going on?

I get the feeling there was a disconnect between PR and the devs, to where PR was cashing checks that dev couldn't cash. Someone inked the deal to launch the game without properly consulting the dev leads to see the true state of where all the tech was, then the devs had a gun put to their head and had to get it all finished in time for the movie release. They scrambled to finish and this is the result. That's my guess anyways.

In any case I never believe PR anymore, they regularly lie through their teeth saying stuff that has no basis in reality. You can throw PR into the same bin as bullshots this gen, just all part of the deceit game alas.

 

[Neb]

I get the feeling there was a disconnect between PR and the devs, to where PR was cashing checks that dev couldn't cash. Someone inked the deal to launch the game without properly consulting the dev leads to see the true state of where all the tech was, then the devs had a gun put to their head and had to get it all finished in time for the movie release. They scrambled to finish and this is the result. That's my guess anyways.

In any case I never believe PR anymore, they regularly lie through their teeth saying stuff that has no basis in reality. You can throw PR into the same bin as bullshots this gen, just all part of the deceit game alas.

Seems so but it is hilarious how fast people cling to 'positive' PR giving a nod and go bersek on 'negative' PR with fists in air. Well PR back then and nowdays is hilarious aswell as reponses. :smile:

Their handlers at Sony Pictures made them say good things about the PS3? Again, we're not talking about the PS3 being unable to handle Crysis at more than 540p, we're talking about an engine that doesn't run particularly well even on 360. As holsty said, the most likely response is that Terminal Reality is full of BS.

But that alone cannot be used as basis for classing an engine as bad. It might be using advanced rendering techniques/large envirionments that tax both systems. Just an example.

I also remember this...

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...eats-console-variant-in-graphics/News/?page=2

Mark Randel: Ghostbusters will use up to 8 hardware threads accordingly. With the ability to crank up the rendering to use 100% of all the available rendering hardware, multicore support was a must to include in the Infernal Engine. For example, 6 threads can be used for game simulation, one for rendering, and one for sound. We worked in depth with both Intel and AMD to optimize for their latest CPUs...

....Physics gameplay is a focus for Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Capturing the essence of the movies, where the Ghostbusters cause mass destruction while capturing ghosts, can only be done with a highly accurate physics engine. Beyond this, ghosts throw objects at you in the game, the environment interacts with you during ghostly moments, and many of the boss fights in the game are made from objects in the environment...

...you can turn on per pixel screen space ambient occlusion. The game will perform up to 64 raytraces per pixel on the screen to increase the detail level. That is something you cannot do on the current consoles. Plus you can increase shadow map resolution and use super high resolution textures if you have the memory!...

...All versions use modern techniques and more - you'll see lots of parallax mapping, even on the PS3. Dynamic soft shadows, HDR, tone mapping, radiosity lighting, and other techniques will be used. Ghostbusters uses over 4900 unique rendering materials that could not be achieved or handled with the current "buzz" of deferred shading. Only the low overhead rendering techniques inside of the Infernal Engine can support this diverse set of material fidelity. For example, the advanced skin and hair shading of the Ghostbusters characters could not be done with deferred rendering due to the use of translucency...

Very interesting.

 

[obonicus]

Seems so but it is hilarious how fast people cling to 'positive' PR giving a nod and go bersek on 'negative' PR with fists in air. Well PR back then and nowdays is hilarious aswell as reponses. :smile:

It's called actually thinking about the issue, rather than just engaging in schadenfreude because some group you don't care for received bad news. There are many better examples of poor PS3 ports at this point. There's many different threads on this subject. Why on earth would anyone pick this port to try and make a point unless they were interested in making the PS3 look bad? Should we measure PC performance based on the Saint's Row 2 port or by Crysis?

But that alone cannot be used as basis for classing an engine as bad. It might be using advanced rendering techniques/large envirionments that tax both systems. Just an example.

I also remember this...

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...eats-console-variant-in-graphics/News/?page=2

Very interesting.

Is it? What's interesting about it?

Did you look at the Eurogamer comparison? Neither engine can hold 30fps. Again, why use this game, other than the fact that it's a particularly bad port? Why not use RE5 which is one of the best-looking multiplatform games, also with issues on PS3?

Listen, I'm not even arguing that the PS3 is more or less powerful. It might be, hell, at this point, with this number of poor ports you may as well assume it is -- even if it's not, there's effectively little difference between 'less powerful' and 'worse versions' -- it won't change the versions of multiplatform games I buy (well, except for terrible ports like this one). What I'm saying is that if we're trying to make a point about this issue, why use an engine that is never exemplary? It's an invalid as picking up Killzone 2 or Uncharted as an example of the PS3's superiority over the 360!

 

[Neb]

PC wasn't lead platform for Saints Row 2... and it would be hard to judge without roughly same settings for fair comparision. And Crysis is used to judge PC perfomance. Even if many systems had hard time handling it at the release the game had visual feedback and new never before used tech matching the system requirements. But youre saying poor PS3 port (if I understood it right) and I assume quite bad 360 port to or?

Also has there been an analysis of the tech in Ghostbusters across all platforms?

 

[obonicus]

PC wasn't lead platform for Saints Row 2... and it would be hard to judge without roughly same settings for fair comparision. And Crysis is used to judge PC perfomance. Even if many systems had hard time handling it at the release the game had visual feedback and new never before used tech matching the system requirements. But youre saying poor PS3 port (if I understood it right) and I assume quite bad 360 port to or?

Has there been an analysis of the tech in Ghostbusters across all platforms?

A brief one on Eurogamer, but no PC version. And yes, what I'm saying is that Terminal Reality is not a great dev. And that in all likelihood the PS3 was not the lead platform for Ghostbusters, either. As joker said, PR people lie.

 

[Neb]

Is it? What's interesting about it?

Did you look at the Eurogamer comparison? Neither engine can hold 30fps. Again, why use this game, other than the fact that it's a particularly bad port? Why not use RE5 which is one of the best-looking multiplatform games, also with issues on PS3?!

You need to understand that one cannot just claim bad port before really seeing what is going on techwise. Maybe the physics is taxing or perphaps it does some kind of ray-tracing or lots of POM that takes a toll on perfomance. If you know spill the beans!

And I will check that Eurogamer comparision out, sounds interesting.

 

[Neb]

A brief one on Eurogamer, but no PC version. And yes, what I'm saying is that Terminal Reality is not a great dev. And that in all likelihood the PS3 was not the lead platform for Ghostbusters, either. As joker said, PR people lie.

But would you think the PS3 version would have been significantly better than it is would it have been the lead platform (assuming it was not)?

 

[MazingerDUDE]

But would you think the PS3 version would have been significantly better than it is would it have been the lead platform (assuming it was not)?

We do see many sub HD games out there these days, but 540p is so unusually low that it's not so strange to think that there must be something terribly wrong about it. The PS3 version of GB is not only running at a lower res, it's got lower res textures, and missing tons of effects including something as basic as the amber effect. (on top of that more screen tearings too!) And most importantly, it looks just poor even if the 360 version hadn't existed. I mean ANY 540p game with unstable frame rate and frequent screen tearing is far from being an well optimized game for the system.

If all the visual assets were initially built to fit in the PS3's budget, I doubt the res would have been so low (especially on PS3 where upscaling costs extra processing & memory it's just inefficient), nor missing the basic effects. Well, maybe they'd have to cut corners to to add to the others, but in the end it wouldn't have looked as unbalanced as the PS3 version is now.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Exactly, if they really built the game based around a sound evaluation of the PS3 hardware it would be running at a good refresh rate at or near 720p. grandmaster's interview with the devs at Criterion is a good example of how to do things right. You understand the performance envelope of the target system, build your assets around that figure and it will run well, presuming you know what you are doing. Then, when you move it to the 360 it should work really well, too. Since the 360 will have more memory and unified shaders it has no problem replicating the RSX performance. I think Terminal Reality was pleased with how well their physics engine worked on the Cell, but nothing about the finished product says they began by targeting PS3 at HD resolution.

 

[patsu]

A brief one on Eurogamer, but no PC version. And yes, what I'm saying is that Terminal Reality is not a great dev. And that in all likelihood the PS3 was not the lead platform for Ghostbusters, either. As joker said, PR people lie.

May be some key tech people left half way given the uncertainty of the environment. Not everything happens according to script.

 

[jonabbey]

We do see many sub HD games out there these days, but 540p is so unusually low that it's not so strange to think that there must be something terribly wrong about it. The PS3 version of GB is not only running at a lower res, it's got lower res textures, and missing tons of effects including something as basic as the amber effect. (on top of that more screen tearings too!) And most importantly, it looks just poor even if the 360 version hadn't existed. I mean ANY 540p game with unstable frame rate and frequent screen tearing is far from being an well optimized game for the system.

If all the visual assets were initially built to fit in the PS3's budget, I doubt the res would have been so low (especially on PS3 where upscaling costs extra processing & memory it's just inefficient), nor missing the basic effects. Well, maybe they'd have to cut corners to to add to the others, but in the end it wouldn't have looked as unbalanced as the PS3 version is now.

How much overdraw are optimized games doing these days? RSX can certainly fill a 720p (1080p?) frame at a high frame rate without problems if it was only rendering on-screen pixels, yes?

First party PS3 developers use EDGE and EDGE-like things to reduce overdraw and vector processing loads on RSX, as I understand it.

Are we to assume that Terminal Reality on Ghostbusters, Free Radical on Haze (also 540p) are not doing a good job of controlling their overdraw, or are they just making strange decisions to require them to render at such low resolutions?

 

[2real4tv]

We do see many sub HD games out there these days, but 540p is so unusually low that it's not so strange to think that there must be something terribly wrong about it. The PS3 version of GB is not only running at a lower res, it's got lower res textures, and missing tons of effects including something as basic as the amber effect. (on top of that more screen tearings too!) And most importantly, it looks just poor even if the 360 version hadn't existed. I mean ANY 540p game with unstable frame rate and frequent screen tearing is far from being an well optimized game for the system.

If all the visual assets were initially built to fit in the PS3's budget, I doubt the res would have been so low (especially on PS3 where upscaling costs extra processing & memory it's just inefficient), nor missing the basic effects. Well, maybe they'd have to cut corners to to add to the others, but in the end it wouldn't have looked as unbalanced as the PS3 version is now.

I agree if anything it is probably a port from PC.

 

[-tkf-]

But would you think the PS3 version would have been significantly better than it is would it have been the lead platform (assuming it was not)?

If the PS3 was the lead platform, in our usual understanding, they could have build a game that looked as good as the undisputed king Killzone 2 or the real HD games, GT5 and Wipeout and then ported that to the other platforms.

It´s mindblowing obvious that IF the PS3 really was the lead platform they made a piss poor choice on "picking" an engine. If the PR bullshit was written on laminated pieces of rare animals it still makes it worthless PR. "8 hardware threads", oryl i got over 100 keys on my keyboard!?

It´s so damn easy, this games looks like something out of 2006, there is plenty of games out there that looks better or equal with zero of these issues, and i think that when Sony saw how shitty it looked they called for a few Ninjas to get rid of the bad developers and got a timed exclusive so they at least could get a few extra sales for those that own both platforms.

I can´t help it but i think the main reason "we" keep circling this game is the chance to finally beat the PS3 over the head again on it´s bad 3rd party history when that problem finally had become a non issue. I think it´s so obvious that the development of the PS3 version must either have gone completely wrong or the people doing the job just weren´t very skilled.

 

[grandmaster]

Doesn't the description of how threading is used above sound eerily like the way Criterion says it shouldn't be done for optimal performance?