*run-off* Multiplatform development over the years... stuff

[obonicus]

I just have a problem with people saying Rockstar doesn't have great technical mindshare. The complexity involved in GTA4 or RDR, in my mind, would be monumental. There's so much more going on than just the visuals.

Let's narrow the discussion, then, since this is B3D and since elements outside of graphics are even more of a black box. Rockstar has never been known for graphical prowess, technically. Is that better? That should exclude any discussion of hidden complexities.

Whether GTA3 was a landmark title isn't important either, not unless you're standing up for the honor of your favorite developer -- instead, the question asked was: 'how come Rockstar can't come even close to cross-platform parity when they're such a top-tier developer'. Now, this is B3D, it's common knowledge that the PS3's harder to program for and more limited. So half of the reason we already know, we've heard repeated ad nauseam.

The other half of the question, though, hinges on the fact that parity isn't unachievable. Other developers have made different technical decisions and have delivered games with parity, or near-parity. This is what is left for us to discuss -- the nature of these different decisions. We don't, though, because of a lack of information, instead generally knee-jerking (often against 'lazy devs' claims) that devs are fully justified in whatever they decide, despite whatever the architectural truths of the systems they develop for may be.

My hypothesis is: that given the output I've seen from Rockstar before RDR, it's not altogether surprising that RDR PS3 is the the more limited version. To avoid circular logic (and because I haven't played RDR yet) I'm using only pre-RDR games as a basis for my argument.

So essentially, I'm not convinced that whatever compromises Rockstar chose were the right ones. I don't think that they've ever been that impressive when it comes to their graphics chops. GTA4 and its episodes were uneven on all platforms they were on and previous Renderware-based games were uneven even on their main platform. I think we'd need to know way more about why Rockstar does what it does in the RAGE engine before we extend the blanket 'dev-decision' protection to them -- 'different devs make different choices' should require a certain level of excellence (a stellar, rock-solid 360 version, for instance -- on which the jury is still out -- simply 'better' shouldn't be enough) before it's used as a defense.

 

[Neb]

Aye, in the first place, if you read carefully, none of them use the 'lazy dev' argument.

Was not sure hence why I put one safe card...

"lazy-devs" or "not optimising port"

:smile:

Not optimized enough is true at least for GTA4 launch since the DLC and now RDR perform better. It may not be caused by lazy dev though. PS3 is difficult to program, and there may be important project + money matters to address.

How much better, is there a cost to other tech/effcts/gameplay tech, pure perfomance gains?

I've seen several games where perfomance gain/visual improvement have relied quite a bit on other features being downgraded vs previous games in series for X platform.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've seen several games where perfomance gain/visual improvement have relied quite a bit on other features being downgraded vs previous games in series for X platform.

For example, Mass Effect 2 has noticeably better texture detail on character close-ups, yet as far as I know the budget per character remained the exact same.

A lot of visual improvements come down to art asset and level design efficiency, better control of existing features, more clever uses of the engine's capabilities. You can call this some untapped performance or magic sauce, but in the end it all comes down to money - money to finance developers to spend enough time working with the platform and the tools and the given game's content to get to know them that well.

Sure, God of War is surely more efficient but has nowhere near the amount content or gameplay complexity, it's a super optimized ride on a train. That's one way to spend the budget - another would be to build ecosystems and record thousands of lines of dialogue, or to model hundreds of cars realistically.

The sad part is when someone can't recognize this and blame the devs for such well-considered trade-offs. Especially when platform bias comes into play...

 

[obonicus]

The sad part is when someone can't recognize this and blame the devs for such well-considered trade-offs.

Fascinating. Should all the blame be squarely on the platform, four years into the generation? If all of the blame lies with the platform, then surely all of the merit does too?

And who establishes that the trade-offs are so well-considered, especially when we have people unhappy with the end result? This is exactly what I was referring to, this blanket 'the devs know better'. Well, I know devs, and unless game devs are a breed beyond everyone else (and nothing suggests they are)... uh, devs don't always know better, no.

 

[Tap In]

Fascinating. Should all the blame be squarely on the platform, four years into the generation? If all of the blame lies with the platform, then surely all of the merit does too?

And who establishes that the trade-offs are so well-considered, especially when we have people unhappy with the end result?

we don't criticize the devs when the PC version blows the console version away. We just understand that it's just the differences in managing the resources.

 

[obonicus]

we don't criticize the devs when the PC version blows the console version away. We just understand that it's just the differences in managing the resources.

But we do criticize them when the PC version doesn't turn out so great, even when it is objectively superior graphically to the console version.

I agree that 'lazy devs' should hardly ever be used, but that doesn't mean we have to automatically assume that every studio is filled with tech wizards, and we really don't need snarky preemptive 'exclusive devs are the bestest' posts either. Some devs are better technically than others. It's just natural, not all games look as good. And if we assume that not all devs are that accomplished technically, then we don't need to ask 'gee, why can't they reach parity', because we'll know why.

Infamous should never have been brought up, but that game just wasn't much to look at. It was fun, but it was janky as hell graphically. And Infamous got flak for it (though maybe not here). Should Rockstar games be spared flak on the basis that the devs tried their hardest or on R*'s noteworthiness?

 

[Tap In]

But we do criticize them when the PC version doesn't turn out so great, even when it is objectively superior graphically to the console version.

I agree that 'lazy devs' should hardly ever be used, but that doesn't mean we have to automatically assume that every studio is filled with tech wizards, and we really don't need snarky preemptive 'exclusive devs are the bestest' posts either. Some devs are better technically than others. It's just natural, not all games look as good. And if we assume that not all devs are that accomplished technically, then we don't need to ask 'gee, why can't they reach parity', because we'll know why.

Infamous should never have been brought up, but that game just wasn't much to look at. It was fun, but it was janky as hell graphically. And Infamous got flak for it (though maybe not here). Should Rockstar games be spared flak on the basis that the devs tried their hardest or on R*'s noteworthiness?

Examining the reasoning for all of this is a tough thing to navigate no doubt.

take Alan Wake...should I be outraged at Remedy for their engine (being console exclusive no less) not getting to 720p when a huge and beautiful game like RDR can do it on 360 w/2xAA? Nope, because I trust that they made the right trade offs for what THEY wanted to present to us as their art.

But when comparing two identical titles, at some point we have to admit either there is something intrinsically wrong with the design or the marriage of the engine and the architecture to meet certain goals that are attainable on other HW and that they, also, made the best trade-offs for their vision.

 

[patsu]

I really think they wanted to make it feature for feature EQUAL to 360 version (sans the Res or performance argument) since MOST people will never know about that

May be a product management issue. I believe most gamers are more concerned with the core performances. The PS3 gamers already cherish free online gaming, PlayTV and other platform specific features. R* is unlikely to change the picture either way.

*If* they can put in MLAA for PS3, go ahead.

take Alan Wake...should I be outraged at Remedy for their engine (being console exclusive no less) not getting to 720p when a huge and beautiful game like RDR can do it on 360 w/2xAA? Nope, because I trust that they made the right trade offs for what THEY wanted to present to us as their art.

It's your personal call, but as you can see, some are disappointed.

I think the problem there was also because people felt cheated by the promo media. ^_^

 

[obonicus]

take Alan Wake...should I be outraged at Remedy for their engine (being console exclusive no less) not getting to 720p when a huge and beautiful game like RDR can do it on 360 w/2xAA? Nope, because I trust that they made the right trade offs for what THEY wanted to present to us as their art.

It's slightly different, though. Alan Wake only exists as what it is (there is AW outrage -- fake AW outrage from PS warriors and more legitimate from PC gamers).

But when comparing two identical titles, at some point we have to admit either there is something intrinsically wrong with the design or the marriage of the engine and the architecture to meet certain goals that are attainable on other HW and that they, also, made the best trade-offs for their vision.

Sure. The PS3 architecture has myriad problems. This is practically established fact, NDAs notwithstanding. But all I'm seeing is the blame being put on the hardware architecture, rather than fairly distributed between software design and hardware architecture, as if the R* had no choice but to design the engine the way they did. And in 2008 I think that's a lot more credible argument, very very few devs could figure out multiplat titles on PS3, but we're in 2010 and we're seeing parity far more often.

 

[Toaddio]

But all I'm seeing is the blame being put on the hardware architecture, rather than fairly distributed between software design and hardware architecture, as if the R* had no choice but to design the engine the way they did.

This is par for the course for a number of posters around here. It's annoying, but unfortunately to be expected.

 

[JB9861]

Examining the reasoning for all of this is a tough thing to navigate no doubt.

take Alan Wake...should I be outraged at Remedy for their engine (being console exclusive no less) not getting to 720p when a huge and beautiful game like RDR can do it on 360 w/2xAA? Nope, because I trust that they made the right trade offs for what THEY wanted to present to us as their art.

But when comparing two identical titles, at some point we have to admit either there is something intrinsically wrong with the design or the marriage of the engine and the architecture to meet certain goals that are attainable on other HW and that they, also, made the best trade-offs for their vision.

Sure because independent efforts like Alan Wake and Infamous allow assumptions to be made on what the HW can or can't do. Especially on the first try when there's clear room for optimization.

 

[patsu]

...

^_^ Insomniac uses RSX to render and keep the SPUs for other tasks. Their games look better. Feel free to believe in what you want. But don't stop us from asking questions and digging.

Also PC graphics is a mixed bag depending on your setup. You can optimize better in a closed box. Good luck, joker454.

 

[assurdum]

^_^ Insomniac uses RSX to render and keep the SPUs for other tasks. Their games look better. Feel free to believe in what you want. But don't stop us from asking questions and digging.

Also PC graphics is a mixed bag depending on your setup. You can optimize better in a closed box. Good luck, joker454.

ND too. The use of RSX is very limited in unchy 2. About 40% more or less, only to 'draw' the picture. The remain it's cell.

 

[nightshade]

Some things which I never understood, the question may sound a bit amateurish but well..here it is:

Why is it that the PS3 ver. almost always has to play the catch up in various scenarios ?
In this case the 360 ver. has dense foliage since transparencies is one of the strengths of 360 hardware, so the PS3 ver. gets a cut in certain areas...somewhat understandable. Likewise there are also areas where the PS3 can do a more accomplished job than 360 hardware (Pixel shaders,PCF for eg) yet its never exploited for that version specifically. Surely the hardware can't be worse than the 360 hardware in every possible way imagined....there are advantages & disadvantages.Even with this, must the PS3 ver. always be the one to suffer cutbacks ?

 

[Albuquerque]

An engine that was purposefully designed and built for multiplatform use (see also: CE2) doesn't qualify for a 'bad port' in my opinion. Especially since they've quite obviously taken steps to improve performance on the affected platform, and yet still ended up with less performance when they were done.

Say whatever it is you want about R* and their code abilities, but I think I've seen enough in those screenshots and in this thread to determine that PS3 just isn't up to the task.

And as for "well, why don't they squeeze out more?" To what end? At what point do you finally say this is enough? When you're writing it in assembler? Why should a developer need to spend all this additional time for a console that didn't sell as well, is still more expensive, and has empircally proven less hardware capabilities?

Guess what? Those of you who bought the platform with less hardware capabilities got what you paid for. Move along.

 

[assurdum]

An engine that was purposefully designed and built for multiplatform use (see also: CE2) doesn't qualify for a 'bad port' in my opinion. Especially since they've quite obviously taken steps to improve performance on the affected platform, and yet still ended up with less performance when they were done.

Say whatever it is you want about R* and their code abilities, but I think I've seen enough in those screenshots and in this thread to determine that PS3 just isn't up to the task.

And as for "well, why don't they squeeze out more?" To what end? At what point do you finally say this is enough? When you're writing it in assembler? Why should a developer need to spend all this additional time for a console that didn't sell as well, is still more expensive, and has empircally proven less hardware capabilities?

Guess what? Those of you who bought the platform with less hardware capabilities got what you paid for. Move along.

Do you try to said the reason is because ps3 has less capabilities of 360 hardware? If you want a serious answer, no it hasn't and the matter it isn't so simple. Well there are thing which ps3 can do 360 not & vice versa...but again it isn't so simple. If it was worsen, not would be exist a single multi better on the ps3, simply talking (to be honest even your argue about hardware selling isn't so accurate). But you are free to believe what do you want.

 

[(((interference)))]

But we've been led to believe by a lot of other devs that the PS3 and 360 are roughly equal in what they can produce. With comments like that and games like Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 coming out you can't really be blamed for expecting platform parity, even if the capacity for it isn't there. Unless more devs decide to tell everyone that the consoles are not equal and first parties stop pushing the tech, that's the way it will remain.

EDIT: Is there are reason they couldn't go with the same approach as Just Cause 2? Seems like very similar environments and tech.. Would whatever method JC2 uses when it appears to blur strangely be a better choice than a permanent drop. There's also the issue of sticking with QAA in spite of being sub HD..

And about Infamous, wasn't that built with a multiplatform engine, and not optimised that well for PS3?

This and Joker's comments leads me to the question: if the PS3 and 360 are not equal in capabilities, should we instead be expecting more from 360 devs - as the 360 doesn't really have anything in the league of GoW3 or Uncharted or KZ2? (I would say Alan Wake, but the 540p issue makes it contentious)

That's the strange thing, on one hand we have technically stellar PS3 exclusive titles but the vast majority of cross platform titles run or look better on 360 - even those from technically adept devs.

So is there a general undestimation of the 360's capabilities and exaggeration of the PS3's?

Also, do we know what the differences are between RDR running on a 360 without a HDD versus a HDD equipped 360? I have always wondered if games cut back graphical features (eg. harsher LOD, lower res textures etc) on HDDless 360s or are the differences solely limited to longer load times? Digital Foundry and other comparisions never look into this.

If there are no graphical cutbacks when a HDD isn't present; that'd be quite the achievement on 360, as it means it looks better than the PS3 version which has a HDD AND a mandatory install (IIRC).

Is this only due to PS3's BR drive being slower than the 360's? Is it really that much slower? Especially Considering the large variances in quality and performance of 360 disc drives and the fact that the vast amounts of space on Blu-ray means you can pad it out with multiple copies of the same asset to reduce seek times.

 

[jonabbey]

These are the sort of questions I'd love to know the answer to, Interference.

Joker has talked in the past about being told not to push the 360 as far as it could go in a multiplatform situation, to avoid making the PS3 look bad and garner the kind of criticism for the developer that some are flinging Rock Star's way here.

You're right that that doesn't address single platform 360 projects, though.

I think a lot of 360-only projects do incorporate a lot of graphical features (alpha channel, most notably) that you just don't see on PS3-only projects, but those might not call attention to themselves as much as PS3 projects like Uncharted with the big budgets.

I too would love to know how many PS3 developers actually do design their file systems with redundant data on the disc to improve seek times. I know Bethesda does that for Oblivion and Fallout 3, but I haven't heard anyone else really talk about it.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Why is it that the PS3 ver. almost always has to play the catch up in various scenarios ?

For a quick and recent example, Split/Second has full 720p PS3 version vs. a significantly downscaled X360 version*. But feel free to browse through DigitalFoundry's face off features; I recall numerous cases where the PS3's advantages have been utilized, including shadow filtering quality (COD4/MW2 for example?).

But in general, the PS3 audience is still smaller - if you only count US and EU, the only real markets for western game releases, then there's still a 10 million unit gap. We know about the hardware differences, and even if general performance is similar, each and every game's requirements are different and could penalize one platform compared to the other. The actual development itself is more complicated as well, so even full parity requires a considerable effort, not to mention a superior PS3 version.

Every developer has the right to decide how important the quality and features of a port are for them. And this is where I'd like to remind everyone that there are several people at the beginning of this very thread who believe the PS3 version of GTA4 to have the superior visuals. Framebuffer resolution isn't that important for everyone, in fact I'd say that less then 5% of their market gives a damn about it.


* I'd also like to add that no X360 owner seems to be upset about this enough to fill an entire thread with irrational complaints...

 

[assurdum]

For a quick and recent example, Split/Second has full 720p PS3 version vs. a significantly downscaled X360 version*. But feel free to browse through DigitalFoundry's face off features; I recall numerous cases where the PS3's advantages have been utilized, including shadow filtering quality (COD4/MW2 for example?).

But in general, the PS3 audience is still smaller - if you only count US and EU, the only real markets for western game releases, then there's still a 10 million unit gap. We know about the hardware differences, and even if general performance is similar, each and every game's requirements are different and could penalize one platform compared to the other. The actual development itself is more complicated as well, so even full parity requires a considerable effort, not to mention a superior PS3 version.

Every developer has the right to decide how important the quality and features of a port are for them. And this is where I'd like to remind everyone that there are several people at the beginning of this very thread who believe the PS3 version of GTA4 to have the superior visuals. Framebuffer resolution isn't that important for everyone, in fact I'd say that less then 5% of their market gives a damn about it.

* I'd also like to add that no X360 owner seems to be upset about this enough to fill an entire thread with irrational complaints...

You are right about the userbase, but when we talking compared to the past generation, however the gap with the ps3 in the west it's only in the us. In europe ps3 go a lot better of 360.