*Game Tech*

[joker454]

hm... Without seeing examples, I could be entirely wrong ( ), mind you

Stuff like character faces disappearing seems to hint that they just ran out of time. That's the problem with shipping games this time of year, the ship date is completely inflexible because publishers absolutely want the product on the shelf before thanksgiving no matter what. I don't envy any developer that has a late October release date that's for sure.

 

[obonicus]

Bring forth the "Bethsada lazy devs!" comments, faithful ones. Fallout 3 exerpt from gamestop:

Gamespot says "It's a shame, in light of these impressive design elements, that the PlayStation 3 version is shockingly inferior to the others from a technical perspective. Although the Xbox 360 and PC versions display the occasional visual oddity and bland texture, these nitpicks are easy to overlook. Sadly, the jagged edges, washed-out lighting, and slightly diminished draw distance of the PS3 release aren't so easy to dismiss. We also experienced a number of visual bugs on the PS3. Character faces disappeared several times, leaving only eyeballs and hair; limbs on robots went missing; some character models had an odd outline around them as if they were cel-shaded; and the day-to-night transition may cause odd streaks on the screen as you move the camera around."

It's not really news, it was reported on C&VG last week:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=199997&site=psm

 

[Gitaroo]

http://forums.gametrailers.com/showpost.php?p=16576891&postcount=44

found this, they are from IGN head to head. Draw distance seems to be about the same to me.

 

[Butta]

It looks to me like the lighting is from a completely different time of day... other than the bugs in the PS3 version I have not read any of the reviewers make a huge deal of the graphics differences (other than Gamespot who's reviews I tend to never agree with).

 

[Nesh]

It looks to me like the lighting is from a completely different time of day... other than the bugs in the PS3 version I have not read any of the reviewers make a huge deal of the graphics differences (other than Gamespot who's reviews I tend to never agree with).

Can we have a clarification of this? If the PS3 image is taken from the same time of day, there is a very noticeable difference.

So, anyone who downloaded the demo and played both?

 

[2real4tv]

I downloaded the demo and it was tearing alot

 

[zawarudo]

Never said it's becosue of res. But GTAIV at sub-HD + blur filter certainly looks blurrier than those named (above my response) 720p Quincunx games. Would GTaIV been 720p and Quincunx then it would be different most likely.

You are likely correct, but that's totally beside the point - if GTAIV couldn't even manage 720p without AA on the PS3, how do you think they would have been able to do 720+2xQAA? It's not a matter of bothering.

 

[GarretASUS]

You are likely correct, but that's totally beside the point - if GTAIV couldn't even manage 720p without AA on the PS3, how do you think they would have been able to do 720+2xQAA?

I would probably say yes that the blur filter is to also help for performance on the PS3 version as well as jaggies. But I still believe if they had taken more effort and time into the PS3 version that wouldn't have been the case. There are so many more great looking games on PS3 that have not had to resort to such things and have acceptable performance. The PS3 is better than GTA4 on it.

 

[Quarke]

I am waiting for inFamous and Yakuza 3 to see what exclusive developers can do when they focus on one platform only.

GTA4 may be hardware demanding, but it may also be restrictive architecturally speaking since the devs need to compromise to accommodate both platforms' differences.

Your statements cannot be emphasized enough. All of these PS3 development complaints have one common theme - multi-platform developers trying to shovel and shoehorn their 360 code and art assets into a PS3 development environment. When they don't have the time, money or motivation to correct the issues they resort to compromising the PS3 version by lowering the resolution, removing effects, reducing the quality of art assets, forcing HDD installs, etc. It's just a never ending stream of compromises. And then we see what can be done when a developer optimizes their codebase and art assets to one architecture.

Yes, developing sandbox games are more complex then linear games, but when you look at inFamous and compare it to GTA4 you can't help but feel cheated.

 

[joker454]

All of these PS3 development complaints have one common theme - multi-platform developers trying to shovel and shoehorn their 360 code and art assets into a PS3 development environment. When they don't have the time, money or motivation to correct the issues they resort to compromising the PS3 version by lowering the resolution, removing effects, reducing the quality of art assets, forcing HDD installs, etc. It's just a never ending stream of compromises. And then we see what can be done when a developer optimizes their codebase and art assets to one architecture.

Oh of course, you'd never see a stream of compromises on single platform PS3 games. It's not like you would ever see a game like Metal Gear 4 run at sub HD resolution. Likewise, you would never see heavily pixelated particles on Motorstorm 2 because the lack of edram means they have to render particles into a 1/4 or even 1/16th size buffer. You'd certainly never see a a game like Little Big Planet require an install. Or of course, you'd never see a PS3 lead title like Mirrors Edge ship with no msaa on the lead platform, yet enable it on the 360 version.

Nope, none of the above would ever occur because of course they are all motivated developers, while the rest of us are just schmucks who like putting out crap games.

 

[Quarke]

Oh of course, you'd never see a stream of compromises on single platform PS3 games. It's not like you would ever see a game like Metal Gear 4 run at sub HD resolution. Likewise, you would never see heavily pixelated particles on Motorstorm 2 because the lack of edram means they have to render particles into a 1/4 or even 1/16th size buffer. You'd certainly never see a a game like Little Big Planet require an install. Or of course, you'd never see a PS3 lead title like Mirrors Edge ship with no msaa on the lead platform, yet enable it on the 360 version.

Nope, none of the above would ever occur because of course they are all motivated developers, while the rest of us are just schmucks who like putting out crap games.

Do you think MGS4 on the 360 would have run at HD resolution? Would Motorstorm 2 on the 360 have been better then the PS3 version because of EDRAM? Does the lack of MSAA on the PS3 version of Mirror's Edge make it worse than the 360 version. There are design choices and then there are multi-platform compromises. COD4 renders in sub HD resolution because IW wanted to maintain a solid 60 FPS on both platforms. Did Infinity Ward compromise? No, they made a design choice. You know exactly what I'm getting at because you've probably experienced this disregard to properly optimize the PS3 port either indirectly or directly. If you want to be a multi-platform developer, then adopt the Infinity Ward or Criterion paradigm of console development. <mod edit: thank you for that thought-terminating-cliché>

 

[joker454]

Do you think MGS4 on the 360 would have run at HD resolution? Would Motorstorm 2 on the 360 have been better then the PS3 version because of EDRAM? Does the lack of MSAA on the PS3 version of Mirror's Edge make it worse than the 360 version. There are design choices and then there are multi-platform compromises. COD4 renders in sub HD resolution because IW wanted to maintain a solid 60 FPS on both platforms. Did Infinity Ward compromise? No, they made a design choice. You know exactly what I'm getting at because you've probably experienced this disregard to properly optimize the PS3 port either indirectly or directly. If you want to be a multi-platform developer, then adopt the Infinity Ward or Criterion paradigm of console development. Simply stated, If you're going to to a job, then do it right or don't do it at all.

Your original post implied PS3 versions of multi platform games suffered because they are "shoveled over" from the 360 and compromised by among other things, unmotivated developers. Magically though, numerous PS3 single platform multi million dollar titles suffer the exact same issues as multi platform games, namely sub-hd res, no msaa, frame rate issues, screen tearing, pixelated particles, mandatory hdd installs, and on and on.

Somehow when a multi platform titles exhibits these issues, it's due to being a poor port made by unmotivated developers and you feel cheated. When PS3 single platform titles exhibit the same issues as they have all year and continue to do so, the issues get dismissed as 'no big deal', 'not really noticeable', and viewed as true examples of what the machine is capable of. It's ridiculous.

Incidentally, yes Motorstorm 2 particles would not be pixelated on a 360 version because edram lets you use a full sized particle buffer. You can't do that on PS3 because the buffer lookups for blending are too slow, especially for a 60fps title. Multiple PS3 games suffer this fate due to hardware limitation, Metal Gear 4 is another one that has the same problem but it's harder to spot. Other games like GT Prologue mitigate the problem by drawing the absolute minimum possible amount of particles on screen.

The key difference here is that since the aforementioned titles are all single platform PS3 games, these issues get heralded on forums like this as "design decisions". I guarantee you though if the same games also had 360 versions that didn't exhibit these problems, then the same issues on the PS3 version would get viewed as "multi platform compromises" due to lazy coders.

 

[Betanumerical]

Incidentally, yes Motorstorm 2 particles would not be pixelated on a 360 version because edram lets you use a full sized particle buffer. You can't do that on PS3 because the buffer lookups for blending are too slow, especially for a 60fps title. Multiple PS3 games suffer this fate due to hardware limitation, Metal Gear 4 is another one that has the same problem but it's harder to spot. Other games like GT Prologue mitigate the problem by drawing the absolute minimum possible amount of particles on screen.

It may be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure lost planet on the 360 uses a half res particle buffer. Also, these problems aren't really platform specific, both consoles have multi million exclusives that have no AA, or, no AA and sub HD resolution, slow downs, or any number of problems.

 

[Nesh]

hmm? MS2 has pixelated particles?

 

[Arwin]

hmm? MS2 has pixelated particles?

Probably, although I'm not sure where. I haven't actually noticed 'old-fashioned' particles at all, though there are potentially particles in one track maybe. I probably just haven't noticed. Most 'particle effects' I think aren't in fact particles but 2d vectors? Unless the particles below are traditional particles after all and then I just haven't understood a thing about particles.

This is the best shot I have in my collection that actually shows two types of particles:

 

[TrungGap]

It may be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure lost planet on the 360 uses a half res particle buffer. Also, these problems aren't really platform specific, both consoles have multi million exclusives that have no AA, or, no AA and sub HD resolution, slow downs, or any number of problems.

It's a design choice.

At the end of the day, I would have to agree with Joker454. There are design compromises all the time, but to call a developer lazy is really doing them injustice. They could have optimize less on the 360, and call it a day and keep it at parity with the PS3. And users like Quarke would call it a great dev team, because both version looks exactly the same...and nobody would know better.

There are designs that play to the strength of each systems, it better to understand why Mirror's Edge is better on the 360 than PS3 than to call the dev lazy/unmotivated/etc.

edited:

Did anyone see this article?

Japanese Publishers Impressed with 360

 

[Arwin]

There are designs that play to the strength of each systems, it better to understand why Mirror's Edge is better on the 360 than PS3 than to call the dev lazy/unmotivated/etc.

Ok so one last time. Can you please explain to me what EA did with Mirror's Edge that made it a poster-child for leading on PS3, other than that they actually implemented some sixaxis controls in a half decent way? Did they pay Epic to optimalise the UE3 engine a little more on the PS3? Did they take the UE3 source and optimise it for the PS3 a little? Maybe they used some more textures using BluRay? The expensive third party lighting tools actually run in real-time on the PS3 and are pre-baked on the 360? Cell to do some geometry pre-processing or loads of physics? Any Edge tools used at all?

Please, tell me.

So far I can see that a current 360 game could potentially have better particles, because EDRAM does have the potential to help with that, clearly. It's not unlikely either that a game like Geometry Wars would be difficult on the PS3. Conversely something like Super Stardust could be hard on 360. The exact reasons on a hardware level would be interesting to discuss. But a game like Mirror's Edge, I'm afraid, isn't the best example of multi-platform development, other than show that it's become a marketing thing.

 

[TrungGap]

Ok so one last time. Can you please explain to me what EA did with Mirror's Edge that made it a poster-child for leading on PS3....

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying Mirror's Edge on the PS3 couldn't be better or not. I'm not saying that ME on the 360 couldn't be better or not. As there are so many thing that they could tried on PS3 or 360 to make it better. But at the end of the day, you have a budget to keep, a dead line to meet and to fight off over engineering (gold plating) the code.

So to call dev lazy or unmotivated is really like saying when the first man lunar landing was a poorly executed mission, because they didn't build a skyscraper while they were there.

 

[Nesh]

The only difference I have noticed between the two versions of Mirror's Edge is a slight and negligible difference in AA. Nothing more.

I see reports saying that the PS3 is slightly better looking and some that point to the opposite.

But this mostly indicates that there is a placebo effect more than anything else, and subjectivity defines impressions

 

[catisfit]

I remember when this thread was about multiplatform development issues. As much as I'd like to hear about publishers sales per platform, or see these "heavily pixellated" particles on Pacific Rift, can't we just get back on topic?!

From what we can see and measure, Mirror's Edge has slightly better AA on one platform, and a slightly better framerate on the other. DICE should be applauded for getting both versions as close to each other as they have, especially when using UE3. It still surprises me that they didn't use Frostbite, but when the results are as good (and similar) as this, I guess their decision is justified :smile: