*Game Development Issues*

[Mr Deap]

There's not much to critique, and certainly nothing that hasn't been done before.
1) PS3 is fillrate limited - RSX has similar fillrate to Xenos.
1a ) Lack of fillrate limits shaders - nonsense.
2) Games doesn't split well across multiple processors - been discussed to death. We have games using all the SPEs a lot of the time, and all three Xenon cores, which disproves this.
3) BluRay is slow - discussed in the older BRD threads. IIRC the difference wasn't pronounced. XB360's DVD drive runs at 12x peak, single layer. It runs at 8x dual layer, peak. Data transfer difference isn't enough to make PS3 much slower loading versus XB360. Can't recall seek times differences, but again that shouldn't severely impact PS3 even if much worse.

The rest is non-technical and mostly accepted. Few developers will max PS3, those generally being 1st party (the niggle about games being designed to be performance hogs and thus questionably being fun as a result is a low comment IMO that ignores has past power increases have benefited game design); Cell's power is used to prop up RSX in rendering the same stuff as Xenos; Ports are hard and costly and no-one likes them; as a result XB360 tend to look better as its easier to write for.

Who says it is? And officially, please use the Report Post button rather than rant.

1. Isn't there some criteria to pass validation before publishing a game? Like anti-aliasing, motion blur have to look "Next-Gen"?

The RSX have the same fillrate limit than the Xenos. Though the E-Dram negate this reasoning because no games are no blend for this generation isn't it?

Killzone 2 use deferred rendering hmm.. from what they said... Isn't that fillrate intensive & also, it is done by 1st party.

1.a I totally agree on this one.


3. How come some few title ended up using the preinstalled data in hard drive to run the games on the PS3. They aren't extra content, a good example is VF5 that also based on an arcade port of the Lindburg. If I consider the GPU limitation of the board & also a fighting game that is on a very small ring & clearly lack of AA... why the need of pre installation???

The conclusion of the main goal of the Blog seem to be mostly right with all the writing done in beyond3d forum & what we are seeing with actual games that are released right now.

 

[-tkf-]

The conclusion of the main goal of the Blog seem to be mostly right with all the writing done in beyond3d forum & what we are seeing with actual games that are released right now.

So the games that are out now confirms his blog post, is that what you are saying?

 

[Nesh]

The rest is non-technical and mostly accepted. Few developers will max PS3, those generally being 1st party (the niggle about games being designed to be performance hogs and thus questionably being fun as a result is a low comment IMO that ignores has past power increases have benefited game design); Cell's power is used to prop up RSX in rendering the same stuff as Xenos; Ports are hard and costly and no-one likes them; as a result XB360 tend to look better as its easier to write for.

Even that part is questionable. Seeing both PS3's and 360's offerings, so far around the same "kind" and amount of developers seem to exploit the consoles to the max.

The best looking 360 games come from MS studios, a few other developers that can be considered 2nd party, and some third part developers that also work on the PS3.

On the PS3 similarly the best offerings come from 1st party, second party and a few other third party devs.

Ubisoft, Epic Games, Codemasters and Squaresoft to name a few are doing great things on both consoles.

edit: Anyways I think that this blogger is more credible than the other one and the article was posted in August. Now it is almost november. Many things can change in a matter of months and some may ne having more difficulties than others. He has some good points. I dont know much about his backround and experience though.

 

[Mr Deap]

So the games that are out now confirms his blog post, is that what you are saying?

Affirmative.

I would even have the guts to point out The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion on PS3. The way they have build the game, it require less fillrate performance. Lower Antialiasing & also they got rid of normal mappings & other stuff left & right, pretty much like what they did with Colin Mcrae Dirt(removed some 3D objects & other effects).

Torture "Next Gen keyword" or I could basically say fillrate eating; high dynamic range, normal mapping, Motion Blur, texture resolution, frame render & there's more.

The Cell vs Xenon is pretty much a wash. It's far too complexe to understand which is better, but the blog clearly point out that the Cell doesn't really do better graphic since the GPU take care of the rasterization.

The Blog can have a positive or negative impacts...

You don't have to trust my word, since I'm not a dev & I don't do anything related to 3D graphic except playing games on my consoles.

 

[Nesh]

Did they get rid of normal mappings in Oblivion? I remember that matter bring bought when the game was released and people compared videos and pictires of some scene, but it was later proven that was because of different "time frames" (different lighting conditions such as angle of light). Someone who checked the game confirmed that there was normal mapping and posted a picture of the PS3 version to show it.

As for Collin Mc Rae Dirt, the only thing I noticed missing were very very few objects and that was after people were posting images to compare. Everything else seems intact with better framerates and no excessive bloom that hurt your eyes

 

[Crossbar]

http://jbooth.blogspot.com/2007/10/ps3-misconceptions-and-spin.html

For those unaware, I'm going to break it down simply and explain exactly why ports to the ps3 will never be as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will likely continue to suck.

So ports will never be good at PS3s and most PS3 exclusives suck and will likely continue to do so.

This post might come across as a lot of Sony bashing

Very possible, I´d say.

His rant reminds me a lot of the Ozmandias usual rant about the Playstation 3.
While Andre Vrignaud has a clear purpose with his FUD as he is an MS employee it is unclear to me what is objective of J Booths partly misinformed blog.
As Booth recently joined the Conduit Labs start-up one would expect him to want to keep a good relationship to Sony unless they already have an exclusive deal with MS, does anyone know any details about the projects of Conduit Labs?

 

[djskribbles]

the ps3 version of dirt also has better crash detail such as glass shards and more sparks as well as improved framerate. other than the reduced bloom, slightly less trackside detail and lower AA (i believe it uses 2xAA), i didn't notice any other differences.

 

[-tkf-]

Affirmative.

I would even have the guts to point out The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion on PS3. The way they have build the game, it require less fillrate performance. Lower Antialiasing & also they got rid of normal mappings & other stuff left & right, pretty much like what they did with Colin Mcrae Dirt(removed some 3D objects & other effects).

Torture "Next Gen keyword" or I could basically say fillrate eating; high dynamic range, normal mapping, Motion Blur, texture resolution, frame render & there's more.

The Cell vs Xenon is pretty much a wash. It's far too complexe to understand which is better, but the blog clearly point out that the Cell doesn't really do better graphic since the GPU take care of the rasterization.

The Blog can have a positive or negative impacts...

You don't have to trust my word, since I'm not a dev & I don't do anything related to 3D graphic except playing games on my consoles.

Heavenly sword uses the HD, Oblivion uses the HD, R&C uses the HD(?), Drakes Fortune uses the HD

Regarding Dirt are you thinking about this from Quaz:

other observation...
for the PS3 version of Sega Rally the vegetation is alpha blend (better) but alpha coverage in X360 version
for Colin McRae Dirt it's the reverse (PS3 vegetation is alpha coverage and X360 version is alpa blend)
strange...

Or are just making the point that 360 ports normally looks worse on the PS3? Which by all means is a old discussion

 

[patsu]

Read through the blog. I have a feeling the author has overloaded some technical terms like "fillrate" with his own intuition to make a point. So as Shifty mentioned, the technicality of it is lacking, but it does convey the notion that some X-platform developers are having trouble coaxing performance out of PS3.

I am not sure if Guitar Hero or Rock Band are graphically intensive games for Booth to make his points about PS3. It would be nice for him to cite some specific examples in his games, rather than from other games.... because the contexts may be missed even for him.

e.g., The point about Resistance repeating art assets... It could be for valid reasons like the developers simply want to save dev time. DeanoC mentioned similar reason for Heavenly Sword. Insomniac was able to overcome the same problems Booth faced, quickly deployed a full-featured game and comprehensive online platform at launch. So getting a little time saving from Blu-ray disc space seems fitting. There are also posts and measurements about Blu-ray performance somewhere in this forum. The Blu-ray drive doesn't seem slow. In fact, with a built-in HDD in every PS3, the storage/memory hierarchy should become more versatile and sophisticated further down the road. What Booth also failed to mentioned is: Resistance levels are non-repeating. Every level is varied. There is no backtracking. Even if there are repeating assets, they don't seem to be many and the variety tends to mix things up quite a bit.

There are also large games such as Lair that stream from Blu-ray. To my knowledge, Lair got shot down because of controls and gameplay issues... not load time or framerate problems.

In the end, it's probably more fruitful for Booth to anchor his article on porting games or developing cross-platform games, especially the specific issues his game faced. It would be a more useful topic since people can suggest workarounds (but then again I am not familiar with Rock band and Guitar Hero to know if they suffer from any serious issues on PS3).


EDIT: Booth also tried to generalize his points (e.g., Game code simply doesn't split well across multiple processors, ps3 will never be as good as their 360 counter parts, and why most ps3 exclusives will likely continue to suck), but it's hard to take him seriously when they are not backed up by facts. In fact, there are already counter examples to his points.

 

[PARANOiA]

the ps3 version of dirt also has better crash detail such as glass shards and more sparks as well as improved framerate. other than the reduced bloom, slightly less trackside detail and lower AA (i believe it uses 2xAA), i didn't notice any other differences.

Direct comparison puts the 360 clearly on top. http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=19853

Not that you were making a vs comment of course

 

[-tkf-]

Direct comparison puts the 360 clearly on top. http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=19853

Not that you were making a vs comment of course

Thanks, dirt is not a port afaik?

 

[pipo]

Thanks, dirt is not a port afaik?

I thought PS3 was the lead platform?

Or do I have some stuff mixed up?

 

[Nesh]

Direct comparison puts the 360 clearly on top. http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=19853

Not that you were making a vs comment of course

Clearly? They look just as good. The 360 just has higher bloom in these screenshots and thank God they reduced it

 

[djskribbles]

i agree with Nesh. plus that comparison was kind of amateurishly done by someone at NeoGAF.

 

[D3v0ur3r]

It looks to me as if the 360 has a bit more vegetation, & bit brighter. After having owned Dirt on both the 360 & PS3, I think I would have to give the nod to the 360 on Dirt. However imo the Jericho demo looked a lot better on PS3. Most obvious reason for me was it was brighter on the PS3 for me so I could see better. Not sure if it was broke down that the PS3 would be on top but just from my view the PS3 was better for me.

Didn't the PS3 version of Oblivion ship with better textures then the 360?

 

[-tkf-]

Clearly? They look just as good. The 360 just has higher bloom in these screenshots and thank God they reduced it

I didnt wonna turn it into a vs thread so i ignored the post and it doesn´t point to anything where anyone would think it was one of the things mentioned in the blog as weaknesses.

 

[warb]

It looks to me as if the 360 has a bit more vegetation, & bit brighter. After having owned Dirt on both the 360 & PS3, I think I would have to give the nod to the 360 on Dirt. However imo the Jericho demo looked a lot better on PS3. Most obvious reason for me was it was brighter on the PS3 for me so I could see better. Not sure if it was broke down that the PS3 would be on top but just from my view the PS3 was better for me.

Didn't the PS3 version of Oblivion ship with better textures then the 360?

According to Quaz51 in The Never-ending Upscale Discussion thread, Jericho is 560p for PS3 and 720p for 360.

I'm not sure about better textures, but Oblivion does have much better texture filtering on PS3.

 

[Jesus2006]

I'm not sure about better textures, but Oblivion does have much better texture filtering on PS3.

...including loading times and framerate.

 

[Mize]

These threads are pointless and a fundamental cause of f-boyism. Shun them!

 

[wco81]

If you look in the comments below the blog, nAo counters some of his arguments. Like half way or 2/3 way down. Lot of comments.