G71 = Rsx??

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, that's right.. I'm not with Ninja Theory, I'm with SCEE (*). Actually, I used to work with them a few years back, when they were Just Add Monsters (working on Kung Fu Chaos, and some early dev on what's become Heavenly Sword). Not working on a game.. I'm in a group that writes libraries that 1st party (ie internal teams), and 2nd party (ie people working for SCEE, like Ninja Theory) can use in their games. Oh, and our group did a couple of those E3 demos too..

(*)Opinions I share here are my own, and should not be incorrectly interpreted as the views of SCEE, SCE, or Sony Corporation.

Can you calrify what the Getaway demo was rendered on? Was it all Cell, or was a GPU used, and if so how extensively? This still seems an area people are unclear on. Oh, and we're you involved in the LOD demo? Can you give an idea of how many ducks could have been thrown inot the simulation without any slowdown?

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Yeah, that's right.. I'm not with Ninja Theory, I'm with SCEE (*). Actually, I used to work with them a few years back, when they were Just Add Monsters (working on Kung Fu Chaos, and some early dev on what's become Heavenly Sword). Not working on a game.. I'm in a group that writes libraries that 1st party (ie internal teams), and 2nd party (ie people working for SCEE, like Ninja Theory) can use in their games. Oh, and our group did a couple of those E3 demos too..

(*)Opinions I share here are my own, and should not be incorrectly interpreted as the views of SCEE, SCE, or Sony Corporation.

Oh!! Did you work on the rubber duckies? <Said with child-like innocence>

I'm guessing maybe The Gateaway, as well, and that one explosion they showed off several hundred times? Probably, NDA'd, huh? I'd love to pick you're brain on what kind of libraries you're working on -- physics, animation, or do I have the wrong idea and it's more utilization libraries? Like DMA'ing or Chaining SPEs or something? By the way, when does the ducky code go public? Didn't Sony say they'd publish the code for others, or was the developers only?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I though the LOD code was available through the SDKs. Never expected it to become generally public.

 

[DeanA]

Can you calrify what the Getaway demo was rendered on?

Wow.. L-B was spot on with his previous post! Anyhoo.. Nope.. I can't clarify, as I wasn't involved with that demo. The group I'm in did the face demo, and the exploding gas station one.. both of which were definately realtime. Even with that, I can't mention any more than has already been publically discussed by the powers that be.. (whether that's technical questions about what was running on which bit of the kit, what kit it was running on, blah blah). Not so interesting, I admit.. but that's the way employment contracts and NDA's work..

And incase you were going to ask the 2nd question mentioned in L-B's post, I'm wearing a T-shirt, and some jeans.

And I'll be glad when I'm off 'Registered' status, and can have the crud below as my signature..!

---
Opinions I share here are my own, and should not be incorrectly interpreted as the views of SCEE, SCE, or Sony Corporation.

 

[London Geezer]

Wow.. L-B was spot on with his previous post!

Dahhh-ling, voo do you fink you har talkink too?

Anyhoo.. Nope.. I can't clarify, as I wasn't involved with that demo. The group I'm in did the face demo, and the exploding gas station one.. both of which were definately realtime. Even with that, I can't mention any more than has already been publically discussed by the powers that be.. (whether that's technical questions about what was running on which bit of the kit, what kit it was running on, blah blah). Not so interesting, I admit.. but that's the way employment contracts and NDA's work..

Does that mean that you're not gonna answer all the question we'll throw at you anyway? Another tease!!!

And incase you were going to ask the 2nd question mentioned in L-B's post, I'm wearing a T-shirt, and some jeans.

Tell us more!!! j/k

And I'll be glad when I'm off 'Registered' status, and can have the crud below as my signature..!

No worries, the Reputation system will lift you up. You have about 25 points from me already, i'm sure lots of people will follow suit. Besides, Registered users can't even have signatures?!?!? Jesus...

---
Opinions I share here are my own, and should not be incorrectly interpreted as the views of London Citizens, Ken Livingston, or the Queen.[/QUOTE]

 

[rabidrabbit]

No worries, the Reputation system will lift you up. You have about 25 points from me already, i'm sure lots of people will follow suit. Besides, Registered users can't even have signatures?!?!? Jesus...

Just because he says he's someone from SCEE I'm not going to give him my rep points. Let him earn his status like anyone else by telling rumours!!!

 

[London Geezer]

Just because he says he's someone from SCEE I'm not going to give him my rep points. Let him earn his status like anyone else by telling rumours!!!

Well sometimes we don't need to see their CV or their company magnetic ID card to know if someone is genuine... Besides, he works in the same building as nAo and DeanoC and knows them too...

Now, a real question... Exactly how close are Marco and DeanoC sitting to each other? I know these Italians and they can get a bit touchy-touchy feely-feely sometimes

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wow.. L-B was spot on with his previous post!

Yeah we don't waste time round these parts.

Even with that, I can't mention any more than has already been publically discussed by the powers that be.. (whether that's technical questions about what was running on which bit of the kit, what kit it was running on, blah blah). Not so interesting, I admit.. but that's the way employment contracts and NDA's work.

Curses! I was thinking of all sorts of questions about how you were processing and rendering volumes.

 

[wco81]

Not working on a game.. I'm in a group that writes libraries that 1st party (ie internal teams), and 2nd party (ie people working for SCEE, like Ninja Theory) can use in their games.

Are those libraries only for SCEE or will SCEA and SCEI have access to them?

Also, these are not code which would be distributed with the SDKs?

I remember in the PSX days, there was some suspicion that first parties had advantages the third parties didn't because of those internal libraries. One example would be 989 sports games which had higher frame rates than competing sports games.

Given the criticism of Sony and specifically about the PS2 about the difficulty of development, is Sony going to provide better support (as in providing libraries for some common functions and features?)?

 

[mckmas8808]

Are those libraries only for SCEE or will SCEA and SCEI have access to them?

Also, these are not code which would be distributed with the SDKs?

I remember in the PSX days, there was some suspicion that first parties had advantages the third parties didn't because of those internal libraries. One example would be 989 sports games which had higher frame rates than competing sports games.

Given the criticism of Sony and specifically about the PS2 about the difficulty of development, is Sony going to provide better support (as in providing libraries for some common functions and features?)?

Wow great questions. I hope he can kind of answer these. *prays*

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Are those libraries only for SCEE or will SCEA and SCEI have access to them?

One assumes yes. There is no SCEE, SCEA and SCEI (shouldn't that be SCEJ?). They've been consolidated into Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide - SCEW, though I guess regional departments are still identified by the old nomenclature, like French Connection's UK department was identified as FCUK, which it seems, due to an unintentional similarity with a swear word, propelled FCUK into a popular trademark above and beyond that which French Connection achieved.

And I'll stop rambling now.

 

[London Geezer]

Are those libraries only for SCEE or will SCEA and SCEI have access to them?

Also, these are not code which would be distributed with the SDKs?

I remember in the PSX days, there was some suspicion that first parties had advantages the third parties didn't because of those internal libraries. One example would be 989 sports games which had higher frame rates than competing sports games.

Given the criticism of Sony and specifically about the PS2 about the difficulty of development, is Sony going to provide better support (as in providing libraries for some common functions and features?)?

Well i think it's reather easy to see that on PS2, first party games enjoyed some sort of special treatment. They were afterall the best technical showcases for PS2, sometimes by a very large margin (apart from some rare exceptions like Konami with the MGS and ZOE games or some others). Games like Jak1,2&3, Primal and many others were on average much better at exploiting the PS2 architecture than non-first party games.
I thought it was all due to internal sharing of technologies (like the agreement between Naughty dog and Insomniac) between Sony's studios and first party developers, and i suppose the same is still happening.

 

[Fafalada]

Well i think it's reather easy to see that on PS2, first party games enjoyed some sort of special treatment.

Nah, PS2 was always completely open. Argueing that Sony titles had special treatment because of in-company tech sharing, is like saying EA, Ubisoft etc. titles have special treatment compared to smaller devs.
Obviously $$$ makes sure there's no such thing as a level playing field, but hw was equally accessible to everyone at full capacity.

PS1 was not open like that early on - and consequently you were very much at the mercy of SCE library/driver writers. As a result it's possible 1st parties could have access to things noone else would get - but I fail to see how exactly that would benefit Sony, especially in PS1 days when they were still fighting to get 3rd party support.

PS3 will not be open like the PS2 either. While there's some of us that aren't happy about that, it seems that there's far more people that were moaning about wanting more abstraction and couldn't care less about trying to "step out of the box" sometimes.

 

[London Geezer]

PS3 will not be open like the PS2 either. While there's some of us that aren't happy about that, it seems that there's far more people that were moaning about wanting more abstraction and couldn't care less about trying to "step out of the box" sometimes.

Heh we heard a lot about that "fighting" between devs who wanted more freedom and the ones who wanted it easy.

People will always complain whatever happens i'm telling you. See, you're nagging already!!!

 

[DeanA]

Are those libraries only for SCEE or will SCEA and SCEI have access to them?

Well, they're just built on top of the stuff you get with the SDK's.. nothing too bizarre, so in that sense it's no different to any other company that writes a chunk of functionality to be shared between projects. And we do a lot of projects in SCEE, so it makes good business sense to share as much code between them as possible. We do share stuff with SCEA/SCEI product development though.

Is Sony going to provide better support (as in providing libraries for some common functions and features?)?

As my pseudo-signature says, I can't speak for SCEE, SCE, or Sony Corporation.. but I guess the SDK is the place that common functions & features would be found.

[corporate shill mode]
Personally, I think the libraries - at this early stage of development - are already really quite good compared with the PS2 ones (at an equivalent time in PS2's life). They'll only get better, as SCE are very well aware of the importance of developer tools. I think they've shown that by the acquisition of SN Systems, and the bundling of two (count' em) physics solutions in the SDK.
[/corporate shill mode]

Cheers,
Dean

Opinions I share here are my own, and should not be incorrectly interpreted as the views of SCEE, SCE, or Sony Corporation.

 

[Fafalada]

People will always complain whatever happens i'm telling you. See, you're nagging already!!!

At the moment I feel I have good reasons to be nagging. (I mean other then being a whiney bitch sometimes) Unfortunately I can't debate them on a public board.

 

[London Geezer]

[corporate shill mode]
Personally, I think the libraries - at this early stage of development - are already really quite good compared with the PS2 ones (at an equivalent time in PS2's life). They'll only get better, as SCE are very well aware of the importance of developer tools. I think they've shown that by the acquisition of SN Systems, and the bundling of two (count' em) physics solutions in the SDK.
[/corporate shill mode]

That will make lots of people happy

I'm more of an action guy though, i wanna see things!! I want real info!!

 

[London Geezer]

At the moment I feel I have good reasons to be nagging. (I mean other then being a whiney bitch sometimes) Unfortunately I can't debate them on a public board.

Anything to do with you not being in game development anymore? I think you... no wait you were winding me up with the whatever course you told me you were taking!!