Oh the days of overpriced memory cards, and how we hated them. But they were perfect for this.
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I'd be highly surprised if this in fact mattered at all or is relevant. I would think the PS4-OS handles its game-saves through its own user-management system that has nothing to do with what is perhaps the underlying OS or filesystem. It would be daft to use (and constrain yourself) to a very simplistic filesystem. The game-saves and OS should and most likely has its own abstraction layer.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Phil's use case was hardly something I would rage against the PS4 save-file management system about. SInce: a) there were at least a couple of ways around it that would have solved his problem, and b) the most obvious solution would have been for the developer of the game to just let him save multiple saves within the game itself.
Outside, of people sharing their gameplay progress between themselves (which actually gets more complicated and more of an issue with say online MP games, where it would directly impact other gamers and not just you), I can't think of any legitimate reasons one would need to be able to transfer saves between different PSN users.
You are right, there are a few ways around it. To be fair though, the only reason why I actually had a USB-stick in hand, was because the PS4 requires one to copy your save-file at all (whereas the PS3 had a simple option for it). A USB-stick isn't exactly widely used anymore, not by me anyway, so it was with a bit of luck that I had access to one.
As for legitimate reasons why one would want to transfer saves between different users... well, there are a few reasons I can think of:
To perhaps counter the argument from a different angle... why disallow game-save copying if any of the perceived disadvantages (i.e. cheating) can be easily avoided/managed by the system if done right? It just seems like they didn't even think of possible uses in the first place, therefore they left out a feature that people actually used on the previous console.
It's not a big deal, sure. But it wouldn't have been a big deal either to implement what is essentially a very simple feature.
As for legitimate reasons why one would want to transfer saves between different users... well, there are a few reasons I can think of:
- wanting to take your game to a friends PS4 and continue story-play through there.
With online play etc, this might have lost its appeal, but it's still something I do on a regular basis. I have my set of games that I play with someone, so instead of having to take the whole console, it would be easier to just take the game (assuming a physical copy) and a copy of the game-save. This might actually still work, assuming you add your PSN account to a foreign PS4 - although I must say I am hesitant to do that due to the online purchases and me not wanting to give an untrusted PS4 access to my library/purchases or password. - demonstrating certain aspects of the game to visitors without it impacting your progress
Done this quite a lot to be honest. Sometimes you just don't want to risk breaking your hard fought progress. I.e.: This happened one time when I let my young cousin play a game where he quickly used up all ammo and health-packs, making the game-save next to useless. Unfortunately, not all games offer the ability to have and manage multiple game-saves within the game. Alien: Isolation is one of them.
To perhaps counter the argument from a different angle... why disallow game-save copying if any of the perceived disadvantages (i.e. cheating) can be easily avoided/managed by the system if done right? It just seems like they didn't even think of possible uses in the first place, therefore they left out a feature that people actually used on the previous console.
It's not a big deal, sure. But it wouldn't have been a big deal either to implement what is essentially a very simple feature.
maybe the PS4 do have very different system compared to PS3. When you explained that Trophies wont be a problem, maybe it works fine on PS3 but will bugged out if PS4 do that?
on X360, when you copy savegame with more achievement, you are granted with that achievement. I think on my XBL i have a bunch of achievement unlocked at the same time due to this :/
on X360, when you copy savegame with more achievement, you are granted with that achievement. I think on my XBL i have a bunch of achievement unlocked at the same time due to this :/
You might be right that the PS4 does it differently. Since the copying of game-saves are blocked pretty consistently, it's pretty hard to test or prove otherwise. On the PS3 at least, I am fairly certain that I have copyied save-files in the past among users without receiving the trophies I unlocked during gameplay. This was also one of the reasons why GTA4, that introduced trophy achievements at a later time, more or less forced you to replay the game to get the trophies. Some trophies of course are handled different than others - level trophies for instance I think have a dependency. I.e. if I start playing a game at chapter 10, unlocking the chapter 10 trophy will probably trigger chapter 1-9 trophies as well. I would expect all other trophies to be event based and only to be unlocked as they occur.
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Deleted member 11852
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I would be surprised if Sony eschewed core user permission and management functions of their native filesystem and wrote a high-level replacement predicted on a single BSD user account. Not only would this be an unnecessary use of Sony's time and resources, this approach would be bad for both security and performance. Think about it: an entire extra layer of metadata for all files on the HDD is wasted RAM, wasted CPU cycles and wasted I/O cycles. An application looking for local data means an app asks the high-level Sony API which asks the native filesystem which because it's not filtering using user permissions passes everything back to Sony's high-level API which then sifts through that data and passes the sifted data back to the application.
You just need user and group permissions for the UI and apps to know what is visible to which users and which users/apps can read and write what. Nobody is running a multi-user realtime relational database with individual user permissions on PS4. Probably.
As someone who works in SW development, nothing is simple. And you always have to weigh how important the feature is vs what you could spend your resources on instead.
I would rather Sony spent there resources bring PS1 and PS2 emulators to the PS4...
Yes I wan those too. It boggles my mind why they didnt do it yet. At least PS1 emulation shouldnt involve too much work
Strangely, PS2 emulation would probably be something that'd get me to buy a PS4. The games I liked back then just haven't had upgrades, so there's value in playing them 10+ years later.
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Deleted member 11852
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I gave away most of my PS2 games long ago but I kept a few gems like the GTAs, Bully, Okami, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus - all just waiting for decent PS2 emulation on something. It's probably pretty good on PC by now I've just not tried for about six or seven years.
I don't necessarely disagree... But as someone who works in SW development as well, i can not help but be surprised at some of the lack of rather simple features. I'm not talking about features that take months or years to develop (like emulation), but fearures that could be realized with a bit of foresight and planing. The fact that they havent, IMO, sometimes make me wonder where the focus is or if they even consult real gamers to think of ways on how their system, their OS or the interaction to network features might be convinient and ergonomic to be used etc.
Agreed. Thankfully, software emulation and OS features are two completely different fields, requiring different skillsets. One is not dependant on the other. My criticism is more directed at their lack of foresight in regards to certain features.
I dont think the 'high level meta data' would be avoidable to be honest - because there is data that extends beyond a simple user and group information that is important to game saves. The USB stick feature goes partly that way in demonstrating why - you can copy files to a completely foreign filesystem, yet the files still hold specific information on which PSN account created them, so that they can not be used under a foreign one when they are copied back or to a different PS4. This and other information that is also most likely relevant to synching to PSN that goes beyond a simple timestamp flag i would guess. So one way or the other, the OS needs to handle more than just raw data. Why not add also user/account information to the mix if part of the work is already required and necessary?
Adding critical meta data and building that logic into the PS4 OS/XMB isnt all that complex. Since it's a closed system, i wouldnt be that concerned about security as long as the PS4 OS/XMB handles everything. Using your filesystems permission rights system is nice, but handling it on your own gives you more options and ways to control your data. I'm just guessing here really, one way or the other i have no way of knowing what they are ultimately relying on, but simply using the native filesystem IMO seems a bit too simplistic?
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Deleted member 11852
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It's not a complicated problem, it's just a data registry issue but it's code that the team need to write, test and maintain for the life of the platform. But again, why? Sony certainly don't have developers to spare and in a console, which is forever performance-bounce, you're looking to remove unnecessary layers not leverage them in. What is the benefit for writing your own software layer to manage which data is accessible to which user? What can't they do with BSD file permissions now? We know from the hacks that it uses BSD file permissions for management.
What's changed since PS3?
with the spec of PS4, isnt the emulator need to be pretty good in multithreading? dunno it will be hard or not.
PCSX2 on PC generally prefer faster clock than more core counts. But it is already very light, even FF X is smooth on my 3 or 4 years laptop that a bit slower than Surface Pro 2.
PCSX2 on PC generally prefer faster clock than more core counts. But it is already very light, even FF X is smooth on my 3 or 4 years laptop that a bit slower than Surface Pro 2.
There is no need for SCE to write a new emulator, just to port the one they got for Vita, PS3 (and Windows and Android?) to the PS4. That skill set is pretty comparable to the skill set of adding OS features.
Because the files we are talking about (game-saves) are not exclusive to the native filesystem, but can be copied either to the cloud/psn or to external mediums while data coherency must be guaranteed.
These things aren't really performance crucial. Game-saves are loaded/fetched either through the OS api when needed by the game application or when synching to PSN occurs.
I would think a lot has been learned since the PS3 or even PS2. My above citicism towards not being allowed to copy game-saves from one psn user to another for example demonstrates what changed between PS3 and the PS4. On PS3, game-saves seemed to be handled directly by the app itself (the PS3 os didnt care where a save originated from, it was up to the app itself to check it), while on ps4, it seems pretty clear that there is an additional layer that is handled by the OS.
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Deleted member 11852
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Extended file permissions are preserved just fine in most modern fileystsems.
Unfortunately you can't rely solely on modern ones if you want to remain compatible with legacy hardware...
I'm not saying the native filesystem permissions are not used at all by the PS4 OS, but that the overal demands of what features they are offering exceeds the capability of it, making an additional layer a pretty obvious thing, especially where game-saves are concerned. You want to keep information like psn account (but not limited to, because a PSN account is not required for game-saves), perhaps even PS4 id (which ps4 system was the game-save created on), game id (which game with which version/build created the save), timestamps for creation, modify, synching etc (that can not be altered by an external entity/device). These are all specialized flags that the PS4 OS would want to track in order to manage saves properly while they are used by apps, synched with PSN or copied/restored to external devices.
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Deleted member 11852
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And the PS4 only supports USB devices with file systems that support extended file attributes. Naturally the cloud storage does as well.
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