PS2 fanboi topic: is this thing finally coming into its own?

[Vince]

london_boy
NON-sense! Good graphics are never too late!


Grall,
Just saying that good PS2 things came a little too late.

WTF? You just contradicted yourself in the SAME post, within TWO sentances on a VERY shallow argument.

So, good graphics are never too late... unless their on PS2?

Dude, Time to pull the cock out of your ass, stick it in your mouth and STFU.

 

[London Geezer]

london_boy
NON-sense! Good graphics are never too late!


Grall,
Just saying that good PS2 things came a little too late.

WTF? You just contradicted yourself in the SAME post, within TWO sentances on a VERY shallow argument.

So, good graphics are never too late... unless their on PS2?

Dude, Time to pull the cock out of your ass, stick it in your mouth and STFU.

NOW NOW..... its a minor u're probably talking to... u dont want him to have nightmares do u....

 

[Vince]

NOW NOW..... its a minor u're probably talking to... u dont want him to have nightmares do u....

Jesus forgives me, I have done what is necessary.

 

[London Geezer]

well at least he's quiet now... maybe thats the right approach with him!!! yay we found a way to make little monkey shut up!!!


to stay on topic.......


i really wonder what FF12 will look like.....

FFX-2 looks pretty much like FFX, but i heard they are going to use a whole new engine for FF12... let's leave FF11 for the moment, thats another world altogether

 

[Grall]

What I wanna know is when the FF series starts to, A: be slightly less linear than a train-track, and B: goes back to a pure fantasy scenario instead of this techno-magic mix sh!t we've been forced to put up with since FFVI. I didn't like it then and I certainly don't like it any more now.

*G*

 

[Squeak]

Speaking of compression, you spoke in the past of using the MPEG2 processor to do texture (de)compression, with the exception there were some issues involved. What exactly is the problem here?

Can't say that I remember exactly what you're referring to... but anyway, the big issue is that you need to write a fair bit of code before you have a system that can utilize IPU effectively. And the chip does have a speed limit so you can't just use it all over without any considerations. However... IMO at least, the returns are very worthwhile.
But do note that this opinion isn't shared by everyone, as most devs don't bother with the chip at all.

That’s curious, because this: http://www.stampede.org/~lethal/mips/docs/gsuser_e.pdf PS2 EE overview from Sony talks about the IPU as if it is a texture compressor/decompressor just waiting to be used.
It would seem a bit odd to waste precious die space for something that could easily have been put on a separate chip, unless it has another purpose than just decompressing movie streams?

 

[Logan Leonhart]

FF should stay a mixture between technology and magic, IMO. Games that are based on magic on the whole tend to be too childish. Linearity is a great direction for games. It reinforces the strenght of a story, makes events much more focused and help to draw you in much more.
This I WANT MY 100% OPEN GAMEPLAY!!!!! thing is merely a fad IMO, that is not as worthy as some may think it is.

 

[marconelly!]

Anyway, which companies/games are expected to make a big showing at this year's E3?

I really hope we see the next game from the team responsible for ICO. It would be about time.

MGS2 now an OLD PS2 game performed and maybe even looked better than the XBOX port

Actually, there's no need for maybe. It unquestionably looked better. Many effects, and even textures, were ruined in the Xbox port.

I'd have to agree and disagree. J & D's water looked worse than many N64 games' water presentation.

Water is about the only thing that SMS has over J&D. Pretty much everything else that I can think of, starting from twice the framerate to visibly more complex geometry and particle effects, is better in J&D though.

 

[Grall]

Logan, did you ever play FFIV? (In the US, it was called FFII.) If not, I kindly suggest you stfu.

Childish, indeed! Silliest thing I ever heard. *snorts with derision* FFIV was the best FF game I've played so far. It didn't have pretty graphics that's for sure (were close to NES standards actually, particulary in the map view), but the gameplay was there! Gameplay-wise, it totally kicks the pants off the later FFs! Had most excellent music also by the way.

FFX and most all of the later FF games differs by not really having much of a difference between the characters except the weapons they hold in their hands and the hats on their heads. You can get magic on all your characters, pretty much any character can learn any spell, etc. FFIV, you had your big heavy-hitting melee chars, your ranged combat ninja and a black and a white mage. Later FFs, it's just a buncha guys with different names. FFX seems to go back towards the older formula somewhat by re-introducing black and white magic, and only one character seems able to summon monsters (just like FFIV). I've played too little to really know how the game works, so I'm not sure yet. If all chars can get big phat magic, I'm gonna tear out my hair in anguish!

As for the stupidity you spewed about linear gameplay being god's gift to mankind, I got one word for ya: BAH!

FFX is so freaking linear in the first two and a half hours I've played it, it feels like I'm reading a fscking book for crying out loud! After the first boat trip the guys gets off at this ruined village. I go left in the first intersection. A movie plays and there's a buncha stupid, boring chit-chat with more of that awful voice acting. What happens next, do I get to explore the right branch also? NO, the character gets to bed without me getting to say anything about it and wakes up again the next morning! WTF!!!

The game's just full of that kind of bull. So far I haven't been able to make a single choice of my own, hell even the map in the corner of the screen has a goddamn red arrow pointing me in the direction I should go! This is just plain rediculous.


*G*

 

[London Geezer]

i have final fantasy 10 and yes its linear yes its a souped up pretty version of any of the post-ff6 games but what the hell, as u play the game u get more and more into it, i'm on my 120th hour and yes, i have yuna, auron and tidus hitting for 99999 hp all the time (which might sound a bit silly to some people, but what the hell its cool thats what damage break was created for) and even then there's still so much i have to discover... the monsters arena is just great with some of the big bosses which are really cool....

its linear but after a certain point (very late in the game) u do get the airship and u do get to wonder around aimlessly if that is what u want.... thats what i did, i have finished the game once or twice just to see how it really ends, but now i play on my 120-odd hour save game maxing up my characters and getting all the monsters...

the only other game i spent so much time on must be kingdom hearts.... i soooooooooo wanna get strong enough to be able to beat the ice titan and most of all SEPHIROTH!!! he looks soooooooooo cool in kingdom hearts....

 

[Squeak]

FF should stay a mixture between technology and magic, IMO. Games that are based on magic on the whole tend to be too childish. Linearity is a great direction for games. It reinforces the strenght of a story, makes events much more focused and help to draw you in much more.
This I WANT MY 100% OPEN GAMEPLAY!!!!! thing is merely a fad IMO, that is not as worthy as some may think it is.

Have you ever played Exile or Elite?

 

[archie4oz]

Heh, dunno what the trouble is with PA being more widely available.

Well for one, they're rather expensive... The logic analyzer alone that they use is on the order of a $100,000 (or so I've heard). Throw in the super-beefy PC to handle the data, I/O and data storage (it can generate obscene amounts of data in seconds), plus an engineer to help you out with deciphering the data... Go figure...

I am still partial to the idea of running MP3 decoder on it, but I never got around to trying to write one.

You might want to fool around with Tremor (Ogg Vorbis integer decoder). One of my old coworkers was messing around with it recently and said he'd gotten it up and running on the IOP after fiddling around with it as a side project. I've run it on the DC audio controller (and that's a 45MHz ARM7). Plus you can avoid any possible licensing issues with Ogg...

From what I know, it's around 4-8% of cpu. Not a lot really. Couldn't say about Dolby, maybe Archie could tell more about that.

Dolby Digital or DPLII?

Well, controller libraries and a few other things are in there. When loading it's also used as read ahead buffers yeah. There could be other things, I guess (in our case we still have a lot of it free...).

IP stack...

PS2 EE overview from Sony talks about the IPU as if it is a texture compressor/decompressor just waiting to be used.
It would seem a bit odd to waste precious die space for something that could easily have been put on a separate chip, unless it has another purpose than just decompressing movie streams?

Well it is "waiting" to be used, some do some don't (the don'ts far outnumber the do's)... As far as on-die/off-die goes, off die would be bad as that would require more pin-outs on the EE, more motherboard complexity, wiring, signalling issues, additional latency, etc. pretty much increasing costs. Considering that goes completely against the whole philosophy of an SoC, and the IPU is pretty insignifigant in terms of gate cost, going 'external' would be rather senseless...

Anyways... Here's the pic that Simplicity was mentioning about the PA

Old one...

New one

 

[Guest]

frickingg Square gets the best stuffs.

 

[Fafalada]

From what I know, it's around 4-8% of cpu. Not a lot really. Couldn't say about Dolby, maybe Archie could tell more about that.
Dolby Digital or DPLII?

If my meager sound knowledge memory serves me right, DPLII is practically free to begin with? Either way the question was going about DD5.1...

IP stack...

yeah that one gobbles IOP memory quite fast from what I remember.

Thanks for the tip on MP3 btw. Btw, I never took note of DC's audio controller being that general purpose, interesting.

PS2 EE overview from Sony talks about the IPU as if it is a texture compressor/decompressor just waiting to be used.

Just like VU0 is a standalone micro code unit just waiting to be used and it still rarely sees much in terms of utilization. Like I said, it can be very usefull, but it isn't trivial to put to use.

 

[Grall]

Are you using it?

*G*

 

[Fafalada]

Hmm... which one?
VU0 micro or IPU?

 

[AbbA]

After Burnout2, I don't succeed to imagine how GT4 will be....!!
VU0+VU1+IPU and PATH3 pushes to its limit...!!!

 

[Grall]

Faf:

I was thinking IPU, but now that you mention it, I'll extend my question to include both! As I remember it, the screenies we saw of your game a while ago had some pretty impressive texturing.

I understand the IPU won't allow more textures per frame, but at least it allows a greater diversity of textures to be stored in memory... Does it unpack straight to GS on-chip memory, or to main RAM?


*G*

 

[Fafalada]

Well, I was teasing a bit with that one. I think I already mentioned it here before that we use VU0 micro for a few things, mostly physics related.
And yeah, we use IPU also, 32mb gets awfully tight awfully fast, so it's good to have it.

I understand the IPU won't allow more textures per frame, but at least it allows a greater diversity of textures to be stored in memory...

Which can in turn mean higher resolution maps too, as long as you're not bandwith limited to begin with.
It's possible to set unpacking to go directly to GS memory, however that kind of setup will be more limited by speed of IPU itself, so a scheme with decompression 'cache' in main memory will usually work better (particularly for the most obvious IPU use, texture animations).