I don't find this particular snow (from the previously posted video) very indicative of the power of the system, though. It looks nice, but we did something fairly similar (but obviously not quite as nice) in the first quarter of 2002 on a bog standard PC.Particle systems like this snow is much more impressive to me than say the stuff in the Full Auto racing games.
It would be great if it started to settle if you stood around for 10 minutes or so doing nothing. I bet Insomniac never thought to include that (why would they of course, when as little as 1% of the people playing the game would even notice it)
I imagine they thought of it and quickly tossed the idea out because it would likely cost more cpu/gpu cycles than it's worth -- certainly would be neat to see though.
You'd need to store textures for every surface. It'd be impossible I'm sure.* You could do a screen-saver mode where the snow 'settles' as you stand still, but disappears when you move, by drawing the snow covering in 2D. That'd just be silly though!It would be great if it started to settle if you stood around for 10 minutes or so doing nothing. I bet Insomniac never thought to include that (why would they of course, when as little as 1% of the people playing the game would even notice it)
[maven];884591 said:I don't find this particular snow (from the previously posted video) very indicative of the power of the system, though. It looks nice, but we did something fairly similar (but obviously not quite as nice) in the first quarter of 2002 on a bog standard PC.
We also had the snow accumulating in our textures (e.g. on roofs), but had to remove the future for the release as it caused some other problems and hogged the bus too much...
The most precious resource in the Cell, Hastings says, is the PPE. With dozens of actions unfolding onscreen, the goal is to maximize the call-and-response of the PPE and SPEs without losing any time. “When the [PPE] is sitting around,†Hastings says, “you pay a dear cost for that. Ultimately, the risk is that you don’t finish the frame loop and drop a frame within the game.†That’s a big no-no. The updates to the screen occur within a 30-hertz cycle. Miss an update and the game will noticeably stutter.
To avoid such a situation, the Insomniac programmers carefully schedule when the PPE should ask something of the SPEs and when it should expect a response. The PS3’s operating system can make such schedules, too, but not as well as the programmer can, according to Hastings. That’s because the programmers can determine, by experimentation, exactly how long a job should take. And if they manage to optimize that bit of code so that it runs faster, they can also tweak the PPE’s schedule to reflect the change and accelerate the game.
ever wonder why Resistance never drop a frame? well here is the answer from the article above
the article is well written and highly recommended.
Just want to say that I have not moved beyond the second check point in campaign mode. Went to check out MP and have stayed there ever since