Next-gen Cross-Platform Strategy [2020]

[Deleted member 11852]

It wasn't limited space that kept turned developers off from carts, it was cost. The risk was simply higher because carts cost more, and the larger the ROM size, the more it would cost.

Did you read the link to the article with devs saying [lack of] space was a major issue in N64?

PlayStation and Saturn has games literally gigabytes, e.g. multiple CDs. FF VII came on three CDs, FF VIII and IX came on four. Impossible on N64 without compromising the vision they had for the games.

 

[see colon]

Did you read the link to the article with devs saying [lack of] space was a major issue in N64?

PlayStation and Saturn has games literally gigabytes, e.g. multiple CDs. FF VII came on three CDs, FF VIII and IX came on four. Impossible on N64 without compromising the vision they had for the games.

Was there a developer quote in there? I only remember conjecture from the NG writer saying the blurry textures were from a lack of space, which may be true in some cases, but N64's texture cache and Nintendo's own policy of forcing texture filtering were also to blame for that. And yeah, some games like the Final Fantasys are full of FMVs and speech that would have to be reworked on N64, but a 2 disc game like RE2 had a release on 64, FMV's included, so it isn't like there's no precedent for that. Also, other than cost (and a deal with Sony), what would stop Square from releasing FFVII on N64 as a multi cart game. It's obviously financially non-feasible, but on a technical level it could have been done.

Regardless, N64 had super fast storage and a general hardware advantage yet failed to create games that were unthinkable on PS1, with it's slower media and lack of memory. Arguing that some games required CDs because of the space still sort of proves that point. So if we can agree that a huge speed advantage can be mitigated by a storage size advantage I fell like all this talk about next gen storage might just end up for nothing

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Was there a developer quote in there? I only remember conjecture from the NG writer saying the blurry textures were from a lack of space, which may be true in some cases, but N64's texture cache and Nintendo's own policy of forcing texture filtering were also to blame for that.

Not a quote, the article was the culmination of talking to people in the industry about N64. Here are Squaresoft talking about why FF VII didn't come to N64:

Hironobu Sakaguchi, Producer and executive vice president, Square Japan: "The biggest problem was, of course, memory. Based on our calculations there was no way it could all fit on a ROM cartridge. So our main reason for choosing the PlayStation was really just because it was the only console which would allow us to use CD-ROM media."​

And yeah, some games like the Final Fantasys are full of FMVs and speech that would have to be reworked on N64, but a 2 disc game like RE2 had a release on 64, FMV's included, so it isn't like there's no precedent for that.

A few games could were able to do that. Most could not. PlayStation had massive operative space operas spread over two discs like G-Police and Colony Wars. The scope of these games just wasn't possible given the limitations of cartridges.

Also, other than cost (and a deal with Sony), what would stop Square from releasing FFVII on N64 as a multi cart game. It's obviously financially non-feasible, but on a technical level it could have been done.

See above. Many of the FMVs would not have fit on a single cartridge at the capacity they were available at. Back then video encoding was in it's infancy and even at the best quality MPEG-1 could deliver, at best it was VHS resolution and almost always at lower framerates, often 15fps. The compression and bitrate options were limited.

Jst to be clear, I'm not interested in debating whether N64 use of carts was sensible from a technical or marketing perspective - only that this choice precluded some games from being released on the system.

 

[Xbat]

The point I was trying to make wasn't about just the storage it was about maybe there would of been more gameplay differences if Nintendo had 600MB storage and the speed advantage.

You know so the speed advantage was actually impactful loading 8MB fast is not the same as loading 600MB fast.

How long did it take the CD ROM drive in PS1 to load 8-64MB of data?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

How long did it take the CD ROM drive in PS1 to load 8-64MB of data?

PlayStation's CD-ROM drive had a 2x data read speed of 300KB/s and the console only had 2MB RAM, with a 1MB frame buffer.

It would explode if it tried to read 64MB of data But ~220 seconds (three-and-a-half minutes) to read 8MB of data.

 

[Xbat]

read speed of 300KB/s and the console only had 2MB RAM, with a 1MB frame buffer.

Ok so the real thing is how fast can you fill your RAM. I think the N64 had 4MB of RAM or 8MB if you had the expansion pack thingie if I remember correctly.

My maths says PS1 would take ten seconds? Also 8MB in 27 seconds am I making an error here or missing something?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Ok so the real thing is how fast can you fill your RAM. I think the N64 had 4MB of RAM or 8MB if you had the expansion pack thingie if I remember correctly.

This is very much a simplification. Look at it like this, why is it that Witcher 3, installed on a fast 3GB/s SSD does not take 4 seconds to load on a very powerful PC?

It's because the data you're pulling from disc is not how the game data needs to be in RAM. The data just the start how the game engines builds the world so the player can move through it. Most games begin pulling data and almost immediately the CPU begins working on bits of data, creating tables of NPCs, AI, paths, building physics tables etc. This is relatively slow process so the engine is not reading one massive stream, it's reading, unpacking, generating tables, reading, transforming, moving data to the GPU, reading, computing - and doing this hundreds if not thousands of times for all of the smaller elements of that comprise the base assets for everything in the game needs to render and allow you to control it.

This is why your HDD/SDD isn't just solidly on for a few seconds, it's flashing crazily and indicating - vastly more than the flashing can convey - tens/hundreds/thousands of individual read-stop-read-stop-read-stop-write-read-stop I/O actions.

 

[Xbat]

Yes and that's why my 970 isn't much faster than my 860evo. I assume that's what Cerney was hinting at improving on next gen?

It's like what I was trying to get through to psman it's not the massive read speed that makes the difference otherwise my 970 would perform much better than my 860.

 

[chris1515]

This is very much a simplification. Look at it like this, why is it that Witcher 3, installed on a fast 3GB/s SSD does not take 4 seconds to load on a very powerful PC?

It's because the data you're pulling from disc is not how the game data needs to be in RAM. The data just the start how the game engines builds the world so the player can move through it. Most games begin pulling data and almost immediately the CPU begins working on bits of data, creating tables of NPCs, AI, paths, building physics tables etc. This is relatively slow process so the engine is not reading one massive stream, it's reading, unpacking, generating tables, reading, transforming, moving data to the GPU, reading, computing - and doing this hundreds if not thousands of times for all of the smaller elements of that comprise the base assets for everything in the game needs to render and allow you to control it.

This is why your HDD/SDD isn't just solidly on for a few seconds, it's flashing crazily and indicating - vastly more than the flashing can convey - tens/hundreds/thousands of individual read-stop-read-stop-read-stop-write-read-stop I/O actions.

Exactly what I heard from my friend and he told me one way to accelerate all of this is to have menu in 3 D.

And for this part the more powerful CPU will help a lot.

And this patent is probably to help reduce the initial loading and transformation of data.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20200016488.pdf

Find by gofreak on era

It basically talks about a metadata system for describing different modes in a game, some of which are standardised and have a common data layout between different games that the OS handles, and some of which may be proprietary to one game and handled by the game engine. The shortcuts bypass the game menu to simply drop the user into the game as configured by the metadata. Or, if a menu is absolutely necessary for a particular mode, it seems there's a possibility of a lightweight menu being interactable immediately through the shortcut, rather than having to wait for an in-engine menu. Basically the user can 'explore' the game through these shortcuts before actually committing to launching the game, and then once they do, the the game can be launched knowing what the user wants to do and bypassing the games own menu and config screens. It also talks about the possibility of preloading certain components of a game when the user starts interacting with these OS-level shortcuts, to expedite loading once the user actually launches the game.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yes and that's why my 970 isn't much faster than my 860evo. I assume that's what Cerney was hinting at improving on next gen?

Maybe. I/O is a big bottleneck on current gen consoles but so is the CPU and GPU. If PS5 is reading x GB/S then devs still have the same problem as on PC in being able to use that data. Nextgen consoles will likely be UMA again so part of the problem of moving data between CPU and GPU RAM pools won't exist, it also potentially makes use of compute for data processing/generation [during loading] an easy win because with UMA you don't have the overhead of moving data back and forth between RAM pools - indeed you can have the CPU do what it's good at and the GPU good at what's it's good simultaneously on one set of data.

Unless Sony boost PS5's overall ability to do the heavy lifting, it won't change things. Sony (and Microsoft) can augment decompression with an on-the-fly realtime solution bringing savings there. But UMA architectures also come with disadvantages, we saw with PS4 that high GPU bandwidth to RAM had a disproportionate impact on the CPU. Sony would need to get things like that under control.

In October Mark Cerny did say to Wired game installs and data will be organised differently on PS5, with less reliance on large files and more "fine-grained control" of data more suited to their SSD. This sounds like games will be packaged very differently on PS5 which may negate some of processing tasks associated with long-load times. Similar to how PS4 game downloads and blu-ray installs are organised very differently so you can start playing even after only installing a small amount of the game. The key is making the tools easy for devs to use.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

As an example, Horizon Zero Dawn did not implement flying because of streaming limitations. This was stated by guerrilla themselfs.

Again, that isn't HARDWARE limiting GAME PLAY.

That's a developer choice to limit game play in order to achieve a certain level of graphical fidelity. As other's have stated there was nothing preventing them from making HZD with flying by reducing graphical detail a bit.

Again, hardware (in the vast majority of cases) limits how much graphical fidelity you can have, it doesn't really limit the type of game play you can have.

There are, of course, exceptions. Claybook has a certain level of physics modeling that directly impacts the gameplay. But even in that case Sebbbi was able to go from thinking it required a certain level of hardware at the start (not possible to port it to NSW) and then later discovering with some work he could greatly reduce the hardware requirements (so it could run on NSW) for the exact same game.

And even then, you could still have a game with the same gameplay with but much lower granularity (larger physical particles for physics simulation). The visuals would obviously suffer, but that's graphics and not gameplay. Gameplay might be rougher operating on larger particles/voxels but it would still be the same game play.

Or to put it as I've been saying for a while now WRT the next gen consoles.

• I doubt we'll see new forms of game play that don't already exist or couldn't be done on current gen hardware.
• What we'll see is greater graphical fidelity (this includes physics in most cases) or more convenience in games.
  • AAA developers may or may not take this opportunity to incorporate game play elements that INDIE developers are already doing because graphics are secondary to gameplay for Indie developers. As opposed to AAA developers where game play is secondary to graphics (HZD, for example).
    • And just so people don't think I'm saying HZD game play isn't good, it is. But as you said above the HZD developers obviously limited game play (flying) in order to have better graphics.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

I doubt we'll see new forms of game play that don't already exist or couldn't be done on current gen hardware.

I shared an article where PSU states that the SSD tech is abit overhyped on forums so far.

 

[chris1515]

Again, that isn't HARDWARE limiting GAME PLAY.

That's a developer choice to limit game play in order to achieve a certain level of graphical fidelity. As other's have stated there was nothing preventing them from making HZD with flying by reducing graphical detail a bit.

https://fr.slideshare.net/guerrillagames/horizon-zero-dawn-game-design-postmortem

HZD prototype with flying gameplay

Again, hardware (in the vast majority of cases) limits how much graphical fidelity you can have, it doesn't really limit the type of game play you can have.

There are, of course, exceptions. Claybook has a certain level of physics modeling that directly impacts the gameplay. But even in that case Sebbbi was able to go from thinking it required a certain level of hardware at the start (not possible to port it to NSW) and then later discovering with some work he could greatly reduce the hardware requirements (so it could run on NSW) for the exact same game.

And even then, you could still have a game with the same gameplay with but much lower granularity (larger physical particles for physics simulation). The visuals would obviously suffer, but that's graphics and not gameplay. Gameplay might be rougher operating on larger particles/voxels but it would still be the same game play.

Or to put it as I've been saying for a while now WRT the next gen consoles.

• I doubt we'll see new forms of game play that don't already exist or couldn't be done on current gen hardware.
• What we'll see is greater graphical fidelity (this includes physics in most cases) or more convenience in games.
  • AAA developers may or may not take this opportunity to incorporate game play elements that INDIE developers are already doing because graphics are secondary to gameplay for Indie developers. As opposed to AAA developers where game play is secondary to graphics (HZD, for example).
    • And just so people don't think I'm saying HZD game play isn't good, it is. But as you said above the HZD developers obviously limited game play (flying) in order to have better graphics.

Regards,
SB

If you think it is a bit... The new technology will help AAA teams to do design the game as they want without parrying down graphics a lot not a bit. Same for CPU we will probably go back to games with better physics for example this gen was not stagnant from this point of view but a regression.

Same we will see game design not around the streaming limitation. It will change things a lot in term of pacing for example.

The PS5 storage speed is hundreds of time faster than the PS4 storage I/O and with an order of magnitude better latency probably. It is able to fill the entire memory of the PS5 in less than 3 seconds depending of RAM size.

I shared an article where PSU states that the SSD tech is abit overhyped on forums so far.

You share an article about an indie dev which doesn't have devkits of Xbox and PS5 saying they think it will change nothing. And this not a PSU article but a gaming bolt article.

EDIT:
https://gamingbolt.com/eastshade-interview-soak-it-in

Probably not the team which will push the hardware. All GamingBolt article are like this because the team with devkits and signing NDA will not answer.

 

[PSman1700]

You share an article about an indie dev which probably doesn't have devkits of Xbox and PS5 saying they think it will change nothing.

Offcourse, every report that indicates anything less then uber must be wrong, eh.

You know, we had a PS5 game being shown apperently, it doesn't live up to all the hype.

Edit:

The arcticle your sharing actually mentions that PS5 SSD wont change all that much aside from loading times, same about the CPU. This might be because well, next gen games are going to look better, more assets etc.
Besides that, you can't replace RAM with a fast SSD, not even the magical PS5 can. Even DDR will be faster, let alone fast GDDR6 memory or HBM.

 

[chris1515]

Offcourse, every report that indicates anything less then uber must be wrong, eh.

You know, we had a PS5 game being shown apperently, it doesn't live up to all the hype.

Again wait when he asks dev what they want in the next console and they said SSD, he asked to AAA teams, the teams pushing the hardware. Godfall is a game by a little team and they showed gameplay at least.

Wait the reveal and you will see if games don't live up the hype. Same for Xbox Series X wait E3 when we will see gameplay.

 

[BRiT]

Wasn't that gameplay from a PC version?

 

[chris1515]

Wasn't that gameplay from a PC version?

Maybe they did not say anything.

 

[chris1515]

https://fr.slideshare.net/guerrillagames/horizon-zero-dawn-game-design-postmortem

HZD prototype with flying gameplay

 

[Scott_Arm]

The question is when the cpu, gpu become the bottleneck and how much that limits what can be streamed in.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If you think it is a bit... The new technology will help AAA teams to do design the game as they want without parrying down graphics a lot not a bit.

It's still the same tradeoffs. AAA game developers will continually be more limited than Indie game developers because they need to focus so much on graphics in order to sell games.

AAA developers will continue to say they couldn't do X thing due to Y reason, meanwhile Indie developers will happily do all of those X things combined with Z things and A things and whatever because hardware isn't the limitation for them that it is for AAA developers (graphics).

That doesn't change until we have infinite power, infinite amounts of memory, and more importantly infinite amount of labour (man hours).

I guess it'll also change when graphics hit a wall. IE - when they can't make something more real than reality, I guess.

Hell, Deus Ex came out in 2000. There is still basically nothing that matches it. The recent games in the series are but a shadow of that game. Why? Graphics became the focus rather than game play. And even that wasn't doing anything new WRT gameplay compared to games that came before it. It just did it better.

Regards,
SB