They also said that developing for the PS3 was a waste of resources because you gained nothing that could benefit other platforms. In other words, "make it worth our while ."
Money is a hell of a drug...
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They also said that developing for the PS3 was a waste of resources because you gained nothing that could benefit other platforms. In other words, "make it worth our while ."
Money is a hell of a drug...
Of course, betan misinderstanding a post and adding a snide comment as a bonus, I'm shockedgimped as in purposely destroying, like in this case adding a blur filter just to make one version look worse, I've never known a dev to do that.
So, your dev friends are proud of their work only to the extent that they would refuse to add extra processing for the purpose of making it look worse, but not gimping their work via other means like limiting resources etc.?
I'm sorry it's indeed my bad, I didn't even consider anyone was taking this blur filter conspiracy seriously. Not implementing MSAA is a slightly different story though. In an unrelated matter, I also remember the days where people claimed it was free or even was very easy to implement.
So... let's see. I count six samples for Tiling, and two for antialiasing. You were saying?
Yes, the "good old" days when forward rendering was still used. MSAA was so easy
Sadly with deferred rendering you no longer can enable antialiasing by a single API call or force antialiasing active from your display control panel. Standard MSAA implementation just doesn't work with deferred rendering. Post process filters for antialiasing are actively being developed by several companies and researchers. It was a really good thing for PS3 that Sony recently included an optimized post process AA technique in their SDK. GPU based post process AA techniques such as Lucas Arts DLAA take only 1.5ms on Xbox 360. Having a technique like that as a part of Xbox SDK would at least improve the baseline. No developer would opt for a blur filter like this (Portal 2) if they had a better looking and faster option already available.
SedentaryJourney
Regular
Are you saying that Source is now a deferred renderer?
I believe he's speaking in general terms, now that deferred seems to be the current choice for bleeding edge engines.
IMHO Valve would be better served writing an entire new engine than trying to shoehorn Source into a deferred renderer. They'd need a custom AA solution for PC, too.
EDIT: Also, sebbbi's last game IIRC was trials, which was fully deferred. (please correct if I'm wrong)
IMHO Valve would be better served writing an entire new engine than trying to shoehorn Source into a deferred renderer. They'd need a custom AA solution for PC, too.
EDIT: Also, sebbbi's last game IIRC was trials, which was fully deferred. (please correct if I'm wrong)
SedentaryJourney
Regular
Hmm, makes you wonder then where the difficulty is in supporting MSAA for the 360.
(((interference)))
Veteran
I really have no idea why they couldn't just have gone with tiling and 2xMSAA, the extra geometry processing cost could hardly have been that much given how simple the environments are in Portal.
It's pretty clear that Valve only put much effort into the PS3 version this time around.
It's pretty clear that Valve only put much effort into the PS3 version this time around.
Lucid_Dreamer
Veteran
They had to put effort into the PS3 version. Valve didn't do any game on the PS3 before Portal 2! But, they did do previous games for the 360.
I don't understood why the 'simple' MLAA implementation means necessary put more offert on the ps3 ... surely ps3 could have more attention, they are even its first work on the ps3, by the way 360 version I see in DF has less dips in fps where ps3 dramatically down on 20 fps... possible a simple bizarre choice of filter destroy the job of valve on 360? 
It isn't the first game on 360 which use bizarre blur filter vs not AA on the ps3, there are a lot of examples in my mind...
It isn't the first game on 360 which use bizarre blur filter vs not AA on the ps3, there are a lot of examples in my mind...(((interference)))
Veteran
They had to put effort into the PS3 version. Valve didn't do any game on the PS3 before Portal 2! But, they did do previous games for the 360.
Yes, I said that earlier, the X360 version of the Source engine hasn't seen much improvement since the Orange Box back in 07, but they put some effort into getting it running well on PS3 (since unlike the 360 if you don't put the effort into the PS3 version, it'll run like crap like EA's port of the Orange Box did).
They had to put effort into the PS3 version. Valve didn't do any game on the PS3 before Portal 2! But, they did do previous games for the 360.
Yeah, I reckon for the original source stuff they saw they could reasonably effortlessly port their PC code to the 360, but the PS3 would be too difficult for them (who knows just the development environment by itself was too much too ask). But then now for the PS3 version they actually hired someone who used to work at Naughty Dog, so with not only basic knowledge of porting something to a Linux style environment but coming from one of the best first party teams out there, it was obvious the PS3 version was going to be at least half-decent. That they bothered to hire someone with that experience of course was no doubt partly motivated by the Steam on PSN deal.
That is at least my theory.
Source on 360 has improved significantly since 2007. In L4D1/2 it received the same upgrades to water rendering, lighting and shading that the PC version did. In Portal 2 it also gets the significant upgrades to the shadow system, all while supporting more portals and running better than Portal 1 in more complex environments.
The only thing it hasn't received in that time is motion blur and AA.
Yes, but doesn't that just mean they have been able to port the updated PC version of the Source engine relatively effortlessly to the 360 all that time, only stripping features where performance wasn't good enough rather than optimising the 360 version of the engine to make it good enough?
But since 2007, nothing has been stripped. 360 version of the Orange Box didn't have motion blur or AA either, and the blur filter was added in L4D1, which nobody complained about for almost 4 years.
They spent significant time looking at and developing a solution for the broken gamma curve on 360, and researching the best multiplatform development practices. I doubt their philosophy is to just port it and leave it.
I'm not saying that they could or could not have easily added tiling or AA to 360, just that they haven't taken a lazy approach to console development in the past, and indeed with other aspects of the 360 version of Portal 2.
Not use tiling?
They are sub HD so they can fit the framebuffer in eDRAM without tiling.
Both of those games are far more demanding than Portal 2.
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