Gameinformer interview of Darkness: Technical Talk

[spdistro]

GI: What do you like about working on the PS3? How about the Xbox 360? Will there be any major differences between the two versions?

Högdahl: So far the two versions look pretty much the same – quite unsurprisingly, since we use the same shader source code and content for both platforms. They will be identical gameplay-wise. There will only be very minor cosmetic differences, such as the PS3 will have better quality video for the in-game TVs and on the Xbox 360 we have a bit more room for textures in memory.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Anyway to post the full article? or atleast a larger peice of it? I recall it being closed to special members but come on... only one question + answer. lol
I'm dying to know what else was said.

 

[Hardknock]

GI: What do you like about working on the PS3? How about the Xbox 360? Will there be any major differences between the two versions?

Högdahl: So far the two versions look pretty much the same – quite unsurprisingly, since we use the same shader source code and content for both platforms. They will be identical gameplay-wise. There will only be very minor cosmetic differences, such as the PS3 will have better quality video for the in-game TVs and on the Xbox 360 we have a bit more room for textures in memory.

I wonder if this will quiet some fan persons up. Probably not

 

[spdistro]

GI: Darkness TV is a cool little feature. Will it have any direct uses in gameplay, or is it just for added flavor?

Matthies: I like to think of the TV as the logical progression of making a realistic world. Just like in real life, if you enter someone’s apartment there ought to be a TV, and that TV should have channels and work as a real TV. We might utilize it to give game-specific information to the player, but its main purpose is simply to breathe life into the game. Also, it is always nice to have the option of taking a break from the action and watch a classic.

GI: Are you considering using Darkness TV for a commentary mode, like in the PC version of Riddick? If not, you should.

Andersson: That’s actually a great idea. We’ve of course been talking about doing commentary for Darkness as well, but it would be great to use TVs scattered throughout the game instead of just boom-boxes as we did in Riddick. Since I’m a coward, I want to wait until we get to read some reviews and instead release the commentary as downloadable content. If we did video, I guess that would mean that we would need to contain ourselves a bit and not record 7 hours of commentary like we did in Riddick, or the download would get humongous.

ingame tv content will be compressed for the 360 due to space available on dvd compared to space on bd on ps3, the reason for the ingame tv to be of better quality in ps3 as in the first post.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I wonder if this will quiet some fan persons up. Probably not

Who said that multiplatform games wouldnt look pretty much the same?

ingame tv content will be compressed for the 360 due to space available on dvd compared to space on bd on ps3, the reason for the ingame tv to be of better quality in ps3 as in the first post.

Thanks for those quotes. I always do enjoy commentary and bonus material. The game in screens really does look pretty nice. Im interested in those darklings the most though, like what kind of things they will be able to do. Any quotes on that?

 

[Hardknock]

Who said that multiplatform games wouldnt look pretty much the same?

Well I've always maintained that it would be a wash, but quite a few people were saying the PS3 would allow for higher framerates, more AA and AF, better textures (due to blu-ray), yadda yadda yadda... Most atleast stated the PS3 would have the 'edge' on multiplatform releases. What's surprising is that we now may have a real possibility that the 360 could have the edge graphically. Developers have stated that the 360 has the better GPU aswell as more memory for textures. Time will tell I guess....

 

[Skrying]

Interesting. I thought that more texture memory would actually be a fairly big deal, that is an actual graphical enhancement because you can therefore spend more on textures.

 

[Acert93]

HD FMV? Meh.

Xbox 360 having higher resolution textures? This would be inline with Starbreeze Studios GPU comments, but it really is the wrong focus. The REAL question is: Are you gonna turn on AF for crying out loud?!

Hypothetically if the PS3 version have high levels of AF and 1/2 the texture resolution and the Xbox 360 had 2x the texture resolution but little to no AF... I would probably take the PS3 version.

On a technical note, I wonder what is the biggest factor in regards to texture size on the PS3: The extra OS size, buffer bandwidths in GDDR3, XDR texturing penalties, a little of each, or other?

 

[patsu]

Well I've always maintained that it would be a wash, but quite a few people were saying the PS3 would allow for higher framerates, more AA and AF, better textures (due to blu-ray), yadda yadda yadda... Most atleast stated the PS3 would have the 'edge' on multiplatform releases. What's surprising is that we now may have a real possibility that the 360 could have the edge graphically. Developers have stated that the 360 has the better GPU aswell as more memory for textures. Time will tell I guess....

Hardknock, I'm one of those people who believe we will see noticeable differences between PS3 and Xbox360 games, exclusive or otherwise. My reasoning stems from...

For exclusives: The dev team's marketing and technical focii will naturally differentiate the products (like how Apple Pages is different from MS Word).

For cross-platform: For the most part, the game will look and play the same on both PS3 and Xbox 360. However in the early days, the PS3 version may trail the Xbox 360 version. On one hand, the codebase will lean towards the original development platform (say Xbox 360). On the other hand, the later release will have more time for bug fixes and improvements. This will most likely lead to notiecable differences (like current gen).

As next-gen matures, expectations will be set regarding platform dominance or genre. Devs will likely improve on the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions differently to compete better with other games on the respective consoles.

The outcome may have nothing to do with the underlying technology so to speak. But I agree with you that time will tell.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

texture

H
On a technical note, I wonder what is the biggest factor in regards to texture size on the PS3: The extra OS size, buffer bandwidths in GDDR3, XDR texturing penalties, a little of each, or other?

I feel for PS3 to have good texture memory it must have XDR use because VRAM is 256MB only. If code has not so much changes then code will only have standard GPU 256MB VRAM and this is not so much for textures.

 

[_phil_]

I feel for PS3 to have good texture memory it must have GOOD artists

Fixed.

 

[Acert93]

Fixed.

While I fully agree good artists is more important in regards to end product, they are not directly a solution for a smaller memory footprint, especially for a multi-platform game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'd assume it's a simple matter of 512 MB (sans OS) available directly to Xenos, whereas on PS3 devs have to approach the matter sightly differently, and in cross platform don't care to bother to, so are more likely to stick with 256 MB. Obviously XB360 isn't going to use all 512 MB for textures, so you might be looking at something similar to 350 MB on XB360 versus 200 MB on PS3 (accounting for framebuffers).

 

[_phil_]

If you could compare the texture set of (old example,still the reasonning is valid) Return to castle wolfenstein ,and ,say ,Sin or Nolfe2 ,you would see that detail to memory footprint ration can vary from up 3 times the efficiency...

 

[ZiFF]

This game does not look too hot anyway.

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/720/720196/the-darkness-20060721014034971.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/720/720196/the-darkness-20060721014030377.jpg

 

[Titanio]

Well I've always maintained that it would be a wash, but quite a few people were saying the PS3 would allow for higher framerates, more AA and AF, better textures (due to blu-ray), yadda yadda yadda... Most atleast stated the PS3 would have the 'edge' on multiplatform releases. What's surprising is that we now may have a real possibility that the 360 could have the edge graphically. Developers have stated that the 360 has the better GPU aswell as more memory for textures. Time will tell I guess....

Your post encompasses many things not covered by that Högdahl's comments.

There has not been much bickering about The Darkness or other multiplatform games as far as I can tell. Multiplatform games always look similar. Which platform will have "the edge" (however insignificant) will vary depending on the developer's requirements as we have seen from comments to date (others have said PS3 will have that edge, however small, also).

Resourced exclusives are a different matter entirely, and that's where more debates about differing platform capability are more relevant.

 

[Jesus2006]

Hypothetically if the PS3 version have high levels of AF and 1/2 the texture resolution and the Xbox 360 had 2x the texture resolution but little to no AF... I would probably take the PS3 version.

Absolutley

On a technical note, I wonder what is the biggest factor in regards to texture size on the PS3: The extra OS size, buffer bandwidths in GDDR3, XDR texturing penalties, a little of each, or other?

Guess the PS3 version will simply have to load textures more often (which should not be too much of a problem thanks to the HDD), whereas the Xbox will be able to hold them longer in memory. Btw. texturing from XDR should not be much of a penalty, so i guess it's relly because of the way the engine was made that they do not support this at all.

 

[inefficient]

Will a mediocre game sell more copies on 2 platforms than a decent game can sell on a single platform?

I guess in first gen games you will be able to get away with this because your mediocre game is only slightly bellow par. But once the gap increases, lazy multiplat games will start to look really bad.

Not claiming that Darkness is such a game. But those screenshots do look pretty uninspiring.

 

[Powderkeg]

Will a mediocre game sell more copies on 2 platforms than a decent game can sell on a single platform?

A mediocre game can be a major hit on 2 platforms with the right name and marketing behind the game.

For example, Enter the Matrix.

 

[Deepak]

A mediocre game can be a major hit on 2 platforms with the right name and marketing behind the game.

For example, Enter the Matrix.

It wasn't a mediocre game, it was a lot WORSE.