Japanese developers comment on X360 development
- Thread starter Confidence-Man
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scooby_dooby
Legend
Wow, Enchant Arm is barely fitting on TWO dvd's, NOT counting pre-rendered movies! That's not a good sign for first generation games.
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""The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim. We're not counting in the pre-rendered movies, and we're already in this situation. So we've got a bit of a headache. We're trying to come up with various solutions, such as compressing the data. The Xbox 360 allows data to be read from the hard drive, so there shouldn't be much stress when it's used [compared to playing from DVD]. The memory is another point in terms of transfer speed. The Xbox 360 comes with 512MB of main memory, which is very helpful. But on the other hand, the transfer rate from DVD-ROM is about 7MB per second at slowest. So if we go by simple calculation at that rate, it'll take 60 seconds to fill up the 512MB [when playing from DVD]."
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They also point out the read spead IRL on the DVD drive is as low as 7MB/s. That's about 20-25% of the HDD read speed.
They also point to the HDD as making life much easier, going so far to say there's not much "stress" when using the HDD but streaming off DVD is harder.
It seems to me a HDD might have negated some of the problems associated with not using a next-gen media storage. At least dev's would have a swap file they could use to uncompress audio/videos to without having to store them in RAM.
No HDD standard combined with no next-gen media format might be what lets PS3 games really stand out as far as quality goes.
However, it remains to be seen what read speed the blu-ray comes with, if it's the base 1.5x, 54mbps, then I really wonder how they are going to use 15-25GB of data with such low read speeds.
It's like you increase the content 4-fold, and reduce read speeds by 3-fold(vs 12x DVD), doesn't sound like a good recipe for performance.
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""The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim. We're not counting in the pre-rendered movies, and we're already in this situation. So we've got a bit of a headache. We're trying to come up with various solutions, such as compressing the data. The Xbox 360 allows data to be read from the hard drive, so there shouldn't be much stress when it's used [compared to playing from DVD]. The memory is another point in terms of transfer speed. The Xbox 360 comes with 512MB of main memory, which is very helpful. But on the other hand, the transfer rate from DVD-ROM is about 7MB per second at slowest. So if we go by simple calculation at that rate, it'll take 60 seconds to fill up the 512MB [when playing from DVD]."
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They also point out the read spead IRL on the DVD drive is as low as 7MB/s. That's about 20-25% of the HDD read speed.
They also point to the HDD as making life much easier, going so far to say there's not much "stress" when using the HDD but streaming off DVD is harder.
It seems to me a HDD might have negated some of the problems associated with not using a next-gen media storage. At least dev's would have a swap file they could use to uncompress audio/videos to without having to store them in RAM.
No HDD standard combined with no next-gen media format might be what lets PS3 games really stand out as far as quality goes.
However, it remains to be seen what read speed the blu-ray comes with, if it's the base 1.5x, 54mbps, then I really wonder how they are going to use 15-25GB of data with such low read speeds.
It's like you increase the content 4-fold, and reduce read speeds by 3-fold(vs 12x DVD), doesn't sound like a good recipe for performance.
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Sounds very positive. Lots of good things said. Two points that stuck out for me.
I don't understand why the development environment is needed to facilitate this. I can reuse code. Heck if I want I can pop online, grab other people's code and drop it into mine. I've heard often software developers don't reuse code but I've never understood why, nor why XB360 should facilitate this where current gen doesn't.
Already on two DVDs and that's before prerendered movies?! I'd have thought that very uncommon, but this raises early questions as to whether DVD is enough for next gen.
scooby_dooby said:
http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/1UP/zds_pmoore_x360_assassin_1500k.zip
... Assasin demo for XBOX360,watch the first frame of video /dashboard/ and 452.73 MB exe file loaded up,it takes .. 70 seconds !!!
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It certainly would be nicer to have only 1 disc for the game, but HD-DVD drives are the opposite of the mature, inexpensive and fast DVD drives. The size is nice, but that's quite a bit of cost. A 1x HD-DVD drive would max at 4.5625 MB/s which is a good deal slower than the slowest 12x DVD performance.
The tech is just not mature enough for a late 2005 launch, IMO.
The tech is just not mature enough for a late 2005 launch, IMO.
Karma Police
Regular
If MS put a HD-DVD drive in the X360, why do you think that it would only be a 1x drive? Please explain.
Because there are no HD-DVD drives out there, so I assume that getting 2-3 million of them made and in X360s by the end of the year would force them to use the simplest version of HD-DVD drives. Besides, even if they got a 2x drive, it would still have half the theoretical bandwidth of a 12x DVD drive.Karma Police said:
I'm not too up on HD-DVD news, though. Do we know there will be 4x drives by the end of the year?
scooby_dooby
Legend
joe75 said:
wow, that's an impressive demo! At first I was like "real time my ass..." then he stops the camrea and starts panning around...NICE!
but ya....brutal load times....
Ain't that the truth! Due to the nature of launches a LOT of titles look like ports :
I guess the good news is the console is powerful (they ain't complaining about power!), and they are speaking, very roughly, of the need to create visuals in the ballpark of pre-rendered movies. 10x increase in poly's is about one would expect in a next gen console (that means the hardware scaled to 2x performance quicker than every 16mo). The bad news: this is expensive and time consuming. I think Epic is the only team not complaining much about price... but then again, they have reason NOT to complain and to spin it as, "Well, it is onlu ~20% more expensive with out tools"
In many ways this is surprising. Not the hassle part, but the "Ease" part. Like they note the sound and CPU systems are completely different from a PC. The GPU has its own API and is radically different in some ways (+ new features not on the PC), there is a unified memory system, the HDD is not standard, widescreen is the typical output, and PC's are a sea of compatibility nightmares. I don't see where the word "ease" can really fit ANYWHERE in there without some killer tools.
To me it says a lot about development tools if the word "ease" can be used in this regards is shocking in many ways. I would rather hear about "some hassles" than "complete rewrites and rebuilds of a game from the ground up".
I guess in some ways I had assumed MS was migrating away from porting with the use of the PPC tricore setup. While it will be harder to port than early on in the Xbox life, it sounds like devs are optimistic and that is good. I like my PC titles... that is why I am a PC gamer
A few notable developers have spoken negatively lately (although some positive as well... but the rule of 1 negative downplays 10 positives stands), so hearing more devs say they like the tools and that it is developer friendly is good.
A semi-related news piece, but not worth a new thread due to limited info in the news is Taiwan developer's feelings.
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/NewsSearch.asp?DocID=7C5EF53CDE5C320C482570690046CB7A&query=XBOX
mckmas8808
Legend
Can't say that I haven't been saying it for months now.
scooby_dooby said:
I am not reading that on the site. Where did you get that entire quote? What I see is
Curious where the other comments are from. Anyhow, the HDD vs. DVD numbers presented are REALLY unfair (kind of like the 130MB speed... of the HDD interface which is not representative of the drive itself):
Here is the issue: A 12x DVD has a 17MB/s transfer rate, but that is the outside edge of the media. So I would not doubt the 7MB/s number. Yet on the other hand we are comparing that to *maximum* HDD transfer rate. Hard drives are also CAV (constant angular velocity) devices, so that would need to be taken into consideration.
Without hard numbers on the 20GB 5,400RPM Laptop HDD (which will be slower than a 40GB or other larger drives) or the 12x DVD in the 360 it is hard to compare real world scenarios, but on face value we cannot compare the low end of the DVD to the high end of the HDD.
For those wondering about why a 16x drive was not chosen for the 360, they are louder and are more prone to issues. e.g.
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html
Some good information there, also http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cd/constSpindle-c.html
A dev here noted that even if you had the space you would want the information compressed. Why? It speeds up load times. Whether you have a 10 second load time or a 40 second load time (like many PCs have, even with their large HDDs) compressing the information on the storage medium and decompressing it in the system saves bandwidth across the board.
So with a 2:1 compression setup you could cut your 10 and 40 second load times in about half (about 5 and 20 seconds, respectively) AND save system resources.
And here is the kicker: Most Console developers have been doing this... forever. I know this was a common technique on the N64 and the current gen consoles use it as well. IMO it seems developers who have a HDD, like PC devs, are the ones NOT using such techniques. Why? Because they have a HDD and it makes life easier for development... but that has not improved load times.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Acert93 said:
Wha tthe hell? Well they've changed their article, what I quoted is what was there this morning, I ceryainly didn't write that stuff.
The article used to be about twice as long as it is now, and my quote was the last paragraph on the page.
Maybe MS bitched?
Acert93 said:
yup, but since HDD speeds to not fluctuate, and assuming the ~35MB/s sustained throughput you mentioned in the other thread (thx btw) what we can say is that the DVD offers read speeds in the range of 20%-45% of the HDD.
Although it seems to me that seek times, and random access would be almost as iportant to load times as overall throughput, since usually a game loads many files, not just one or 2 big ones. What are the numbers there? A HDD must decimate a DVD-ROM in terms of seek times....no?
Acert93 said:
From Software are strictly a console dev are they not?
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I'll vouch for Scooby here. It was definitely longer and it definitely had that quote about the choice of DVD. As my earlier quote shows even the part I quoted was slightly changed by the time Acert quoted it. And there's a lot of wordage gone missing from the original. Which is a shame as it was an interesting read, pretty balanced and generally optimistic.scooby_dooby said:
scooby_dooby
Legend
Ya, it's wierd.
You can look in this thread, 3rd post they referenced the same 2 paragraphs I did.
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=369692&page=1&pp=15
I wonder if anyone saved the full version....man if only I could read japanese!
You can look in this thread, 3rd post they referenced the same 2 paragraphs I did.
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=369692&page=1&pp=15
I wonder if anyone saved the full version....man if only I could read japanese!
joe75 said:
Holy cow, Batman! The graphic is amazing! The load time is pretty shitty.Any software in development, tuning usually occurs last, so I expect the load time not to be that bad. However, the plain old DVD drive might cut the life span of the x360 short. However, maybe that's MS plan. They want to shorten the life span of the console, so that Sony can't (wouldn't want to) compete. If I was a betting man, I would wager that MS will release xbox 720 way before Sony will release PS4. By then, the HD war should be over...eh, let's hope so.
PS Edit for typos...
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scooby_dooby said:
HDD are CAV as well. Without an real world performance numbers it is hard to compare, but I do know this: HDD frequently fall short of their maximum potential. Further the size a HDD makes a big difference. e.g. a 74GB Raptor is 40% faster than a 37GB Raptor. Both have the same RPM and Cache, but the platters make a difference.
Hence reading around and seeing that 20GB and 40GB Laptop drives have the same maximum sustained transfer speeds, the question is 1. how does that play out in real life and 2. what is the minimum?
Yet without any solid performance numbers or explicit details on either of the Xbox 360 components I cannot say. I am just noting that it is not an easy apples-to-apples comparison at this point.
Yes, a HDD has much better seek/latency performance. On the other hand we are talking about streaming ahead of time. 12ms and 120ms are but a drop in the bucket when you are streaming data that wont be used for another 5 seconds. This is the type of task where latency can be masked.
As for data chunks that can be an issue. But on the other hand this is one reason why a lot of console games take more room--they have blocks of contiguous data. This is not as effecient for space but it speeds up load times.
I don't see any PC titles on their website. I have never played one of their games, but I wonder how their load times are?
Anyhow, I am not saying a HDD is a bad thing, that it does not have benefits, or that it cannot speed up load times. It can. But if PC development--OR Xbox development!--are any indication, when you compare Xbox titles to the GCN or the PC to the consoles, it is fair to say that a HDD does not magically make load times faster. In general, I think it would be fair to say that load times are very marginally affected by the presence of the HDD because many devs don't optimize. So any theoretical advantage has been frequently been wiped out by reality. Sad, but true.
That said some devs have expressed butting "if" tags that use the HDD for caching is possible and we will be seeing HDD only games it seems.
I know the HDD thing bugs you scoob, but look at it this way: For many reasons the HDD will be a success (I already have posted on this). The lower price point means two things: First is that more people will have Xbox 360s. Larger install base means more developer support, more developer support means more games, more options, and potentially more GOOD games. Second is that it allows MS to be aggresive on the price front which keeps them in the console business. I doubt investors would have approved of another 4B loss... I know they would not. That is why MS has set 2007 as a profitable date. Competition is good for the market, therefore MS cannot continue subsidizing features, like a HDD, that do not have cross platform support.
And in all of that the HDD is still going to be used with Live and games are going to use it. If Xbox1 was any indication of the "benefits" of a HDD, pesonally I would say "GOOD RIDANCE!" But for me I see the potential of expanding the gameplay experience so I am a little dissapointed as well... yet realizing the MOST of the things I want, like online content, is still gonna happen. So the impact is really minimal in many ways.
Some devs are mad, but as this gen showed us you have to ask WHY. The HDD really has not been this savior in terms of improving the end product... it makes their life easier, but it does not improve the product. To that, all I can say is use the HDD if you want, and if that is not good enough convince Sony or Nintendo to get a HDD as standard.
HDD data transfer speed does indeed fluctuate A LOT across the disk (it's a CAV device after all, with more sectors on the outer data zones of the disk). 3.5" HDDs can be about 50% slower on the innermost zone compared to the outermost, it's a little less on 2.5" devices since the inner/outer zone diameter ratio is slightly less when considering the center hub on 2.5" drives is smaller compared to 3.5" drives.scooby_dooby said:
A cheap 20GB 2.5" HDD is certainly not going to give 35MB transfers across the entire range of the span, that goes without saying.
