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grenideer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WRUNyQiNtQ

Discuss.

Posted on 2006-10-25 22:30:18

choris

The lines have been drawn. HD-DVD vs Blue-Ray. PS3 uses Blue-Ray, bigger capacity; and you know what, who cares!

(1) Up to 50 gigs on a disc now, and they still refuse to put the god-damn things in mini-disc like cases to protect them from anything not made from feathers.

(2) Why the hell do we need 50 gigs for a game. Is there any chance that 7/8 of that space won't be filled with video?

(3) Who asked for a new console anyway? Console wars are bad for the game industry. Here's a new idea! Don't come out with a next-generation console until you can actually make a profit on the console itself. The way it is now, it's like they're selling microwaves at a loss and trying to make up the money marking up Hot-Pockets. What goods a microwave if I can only afford to buy a hotpocket every few months.

(4) Profit!

Posted on 2006-10-27 01:14:33

grenideer

I never scratch my discs and I can't argue with #4 so I'll talk about the others.

The answer to #2 is actually the solution to #3. I forget exactly what the number was but apparently Sony stated that they wanted the PS3 to last 10 yrs (? it's probably less). Anyway, the 50 gig capacity may not be easily reached today but in a few years time it might become more evident. And all the level and asset data take up a lot of the space so as assets get more complicated and levels get longer I can see the need for more disc space. The final burn of Resistance weighs in at about 18 gigs.

Anyway, Hot-Pockets aren't worth more money. And since I promised that this post 'contained no ham', I hope we're talking about the Broccoli and Cheese kind. ^_^

Posted on 2006-11-03 00:58:21

Interference22

I HAVE scratched discs and I can tell you that the experience is not a pleasant one.

From what I can tell, the part of the disc that data is written to is near the top, so scratching the top of a CD is pretty much guaranteed to fuck it up royally in a way that no amount of polishing will fix. I lost CD 1 of Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines thanks to that. However, I was very fortunate to find a shop selling a pristine copy for £2: less than the price of a sandwhich. It's buggy, but I love it. Especially the ending.

On another point, it seems Sony are tacking things onto the PS3's specs just so they can say it's super-powerful, without really considering whether it's even necessary. I for starters, it has several processors. Has it occured to Sony that nobody actually knows how to sucessfully USE several processors at once in a beneficial way in software design yet? As far as I can tell, most of the launch titles will utilise just one processor because no-one has the first idea how to do otherwise. The Sony ideology is emphatically thus: don't play smarter, just play with the same old stuff only in larger quantities.

As for 70 gigs: you do the maths. By the time games are developed that use THAT much storage space in a manner that makes a better gaming experience, we'll be buying the NEXT-next generation consoles.

Posted on 2006-11-03 19:10:46

grenideer

Man I always wanted to get Vampire the Masquerade despite hearing it was buggy - the developer closed immediately after releasing the game. Anyway, good story and good atmosphere is what I look for in games like that. I was never a fan of the rpg but you think I would still like it?

As for your 70 Gig comment? Really it is 50 Gigs. I don't really agree with you - I believe developers can find a good use for the space if they want. I don't think developers on XBox will have trouble without the extra space, however. So while the extra space isn't a bad thing, it won't be that much of an advantage in the immediate future.

As far as your multiprocessor comment - I'll simply say that you are wrong. I've read articles about how no one knows how to program the SPUs and no developer is using them in current games and that is just factually incorrect. Don't believe what some random journalist writes. Certainly I am sure that a lot of develpers weren't in a position to specialize SPU code until late. And in general launch titles won't benefit from specialty programming as much as later titles. But the SPUs help and ARE in fact being used by developers (Resistance uses all of them, btw). The advantage gained in more complex systems isn't immediately seen, either, so more power will be squeezed from the PS3 later, as is the case with all consoles.

Posted on 2006-11-04 01:00:35

Interference22

Actually, my quote on the processors came from an interview with Gabe Newell, the Half-Life bloke. He was saying that while working with multiple processors wasn't impossible, they'd have to throw out an enormous chunk of their existing coding know-how and effectively work completely from scratch to develop software to take advantage of the multi-processor setup. Effectively many developers are in something of a panic: nobody has the first idea how to smoothly translate an existing engine to use more than one CPU without chucking out the majority of it's code. Not being able to build on existing work is going to mean an initial increase in development times while coders go through the initial trial-and-error stage of determining what works and what doesn't.

On another note, Vampire Masquerade is damn funky, plus the community for it has made a patch that virtually fixes all the problems with the retail version (the only serious issue in the pre-patched version was the game crashing mid-way during an area transition). On top of that, it's dirt cheap now - so buy it!

Finally, I'm still not so sure about using all that capacity to it's fullest. No game yet has even troubled 10 gigs, let alone five times that; not even the mighty Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which has one huge tonne of speech and texture files. To create something that turly used 50 gigs to the fullest would require a herculean effort under current development techniques.

Posted on 2006-11-05 18:25:57

grenideer

No game yet has even troubled 10 gigs

Resistance is 18 gigs. A lot of that is the 45+ maps. Also, all languages are contained on a single disc. If you wanted to play in Japanese, you can. This requires multiple versions of the audio files. Sure, this isn't a necessary feature but it's damn cool and helps the developer out a lot when burning the discs.

What Gabe Newell is talking about makes sense, but to me it's a bit obvious. On a new platform, the PS3, you quite obviously need to write a new engine to get the most out of it. Also, rather than thinking of it as having to write to support multiple processes at once, think about it as being able to send out batches of jobs at some point in the frame and getting them back later, but in between you keep the game running. The SPUs can basically crunch numbers for you in the background while you do something else. It's not extremely easy but it's also not as complicated as people make it seem. At least not to get a modest benefit.

I think I might buy Vampire the Masquerade then. ^_^

Posted on 2006-11-05 20:36:48

Interference22

Crikey, all languages on one disc? Won't that mean it takes longer to burn a single disc due to the increase in data to transcribe? Regardless, that doesn't seem all that good a use of space. Remember when the first CDs began rolling in for data storage? The up side: space to stick digitised speech in games. The down side: shitloads of pointless full-motion video.

I think what Gabe was getting at was that even *new* engines are built on *some* currently existing code: for instance, the Doom 3 engine started out life as a stripped down Quake 3 engine, the Half-Life engine began life as a modded Quake 1 engine. What he postulates is that even THAT won't be possible due to radically different architecture at the foundation level. Developers will have to begin development with a completely clean slate. Worse, cross-platform development between multi processor (PS3) and single processor units (ie. most PCs) is going to be a royal pain in areas.

And yes, buy Vampire. Snag the right patch and you'll be fine. Shame Troika went under: they made a masterwork.

Posted on 2006-11-08 20:23:32

Troupe

Arcanum is truly the greatest masterwork of Troika (although I bought Bloodlines the day it came out and very much enjoyed it, as well). If you've never played Arcanum, I urge you to do so immediately.

With regards to the 50gb issue, I wonder how much of that space will actually be used efficiently, and how much of it will be occupied by unoptomized and uncompressed versions of the same data. For instance, your soundtrack might be on mp3, but now that you have all that extra space you decide to be super hip and include all the .wavs! This doesn't actually make a noticeable difference in sound quality (especially on TV's), but it sure takes up a hell of a lot more space. Similar things could be done with image data, and I feel like the extra space might only result in laziness on the part of the programmers.

Posted on 2006-11-12 16:11:52

choris

Okay PS3 came out, anyone know anybody who actually bought or even tried to buy one? I don't.

Posted on 2006-11-19 01:51:06

mcgrue

Not a single one.

Posted on 2006-11-19 17:42:38

Interference22

Not only is it not out in the UK yet, but I'm planning on getting a Wii instead. I'm putting my trust in Nintendo to bring me something new and exciting, my only hope is that it's well founded.

Posted on 2006-11-27 19:49:55

grenideer

I know a bunch of people who waited in line and got one. I also know a couple people in miami who bought one when best buy had small follow-up shipments. I went to a poker game and saw them playing Resistance - it was cool!

Posted on 2006-12-03 21:01:36

Gayo

Everybody who bought one sold it on ebay. I'm not sure who bought those, though.

And there are lots of people who know how to effectively utilize multiple processors! ...it's just that they all design high-speed numerical algorithms for use in astrophysics and fluid dynamics and shit.

Posted on 2006-12-03 22:12:34

Code

Who could possible want more than 20GB to tell a story? Square Enix, that's who.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JDs5dqGsIw
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/710/710761p1.html

I don't want to spend $650 just to play one game, but sadly, I know I will.

Posted on 2006-12-09 15:28:18

Gayo

Quote:Originally posted by Code

Who could possible want more than 20GB to tell a story? Square Enix, that's who.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JDs5dqGsIw
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/710/710761p1.html

I don't want to spend $650 just to play one game, but sadly, I know I will.


He said who wouldn't be using it entirely for FMV, so that doesn't count.

Posted on 2006-12-10 13:57:06

BlueStar

this is sort of appropriate, since it involves japanese:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_nIuyei9Kw&mode=related&search=

Posted on 2006-12-11 22:01:52

miky

Well, who really cares about 50 GB games and a Cell processor? Not very many programmers know how to use it right, and the games cost so much.

And about the Hot-Pocket remark, if Hot-Pockets cost a lot and microwaves cost a lot more, then he wouldn't get the microwave because he could only buy the Hot Pockets that he would use it for a little bit.

Posted on 2007-02-19 22:13:33

grenideer

SPU coding will become more and more common and the games cost just as much as the 360 titles.

Nothing in this post is really relevant to the success or falure of the PS3. Bluray is just a single bulletpoint, and one that Sony has in its favor vs. Microsoft, but it won't mean much in and of itself. To criticize the extra space is pointless though.

The PS2 was more difficult to program for than the XBox. I'm not saying developer friendliness isn't important but it's not going to be ther deciding factor either.

Posted on 2007-02-26 20:33:13


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