• 2Apr 07

  When a Dev speaks out, does anybody listen?

  This blog entry is a continuation of a thread I started in System Wars that created quite a stir. However since the original post was more of a presentation of the technical information that was found in Hastings' comments and didn't contain much in the way of my own thoughts on the matter, I figured I would take the time to expand it with a bit of commentary. For clarification purposes, I have to stress that I am not endorsing Mr. Hastings overall conclusion at all, I am only presenting an examination of the technical issues that he addresses.

  Ok, by now everyone is aware of the "10 Reasons Sony Wins" article the Chief Creative Officer at Insomniac, Brian Hastings, wrote. Well this blog ISN'T about his forecast for the future. The majority of his rant is speculative, and since he isn't a fortune teller I see no need to take much heed to those portions.

  What he is, however, is a Game developer with intimate knowledge of software and hardware. So the specific items he touched on regarding the technical attributes shall be considered true by me until another developer, university, or credible tech website presents information that contradicts his own. I realize that this will be a sore point for many, as several people have voiced that Hastings' personal & financial interests should completely void any analysis he presents. While I can understand ignoring the more subjective points he presents, I would argue that he is still capable of objectively detailing specific technical differences between the various consoles. I've heard many criticize him for making any comments at all, but I respect Brian for having the guts to put his professional opinion on the line. I also think that more developers should give their analysis on the technical capabilities of the systems, as it only serves to protect the console-makers' egos when honest comparisons are not presented to the public.

  Upon closely examining Hastings' statements, one finds that although he may be a Sony fanboy, when it comes to his technical analysis of the systems he does not simply call everything in favor of the PS3. Highly regarded professionals in science-related fields rarely falsify findings because they know that their peers will be reviewing them. With that said, let's get busy and explore the technical issues Hastings' discussed and hope that if there is any misinformation presented, his peers will spot it and provide the corrected information.

  1: Gears is the best looking game to date, including RFOM.

  Brian Hastings wrote:

  Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine's ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM.
  ...
  Sometimes people ask us, "If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn't it look better than Gears?" Well, for one, Resistance didn't support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures.

  I find it extremely refreshing that even a developer that focuses on creating games for Microsoft's main competitor, can admit that there is nothing currently on the market that looks as sweet as Gears of War. It even looks like his team may have learned a few tricks from the the guys at Epic that they can use in their own future games.

  2: 50GB of data WILL make games better.

  Brian Hastings wrote:

  As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.
  ...
  There's no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That's why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.

  Now admittidly, the usage of the word "will" in this bullet-point does introduce a bit of speculation, however this speculation is more of an educated and professional analysis of future needs based on his actual experience with game design. I think he presents his reasoning for this assumption quite clearly, in fact it's the best explanation that I've heard explaining why DVD9s may be space limited in the near future. And while he obviously sees Blu-Ray as the best solution for the increased data capacity of future games, the 360 and PC platforms will likely still prosper, even if with multiple DVDs, until there is a clear winner in the war to decide the next universal disc format.

  3: The Hard Drive MATTERS.

  Brian Hastings wrote:

  The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can't use it for the games. Or, at least, they can't use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application's storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.

  I think his explanation of this goes directly to the heart of the matter, and explains it pretty matter-of-factly. The 360 really should have included the HDD in all of it's versions, but this will not be an issue that destroys the console's viability. Devs will continue to create excellent content that does not require the HDD.

  4: 360's GPU has slight edge over PS3's.

  Brian Hastings wrote:

  The GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge.

  From all that I've read to date, this statement here is likely the most controversial. Although Hastings is conceding that the 360's GPU has an edge over the PS3's, many will say that he is understating the difference between the two CPUs. I am not qualified to make that call, so until further notice I will have to be satisfied with his explanation. One thing that his comments definitely do clear up though is the notion that the PS3 actually had the superior graphical ability. From here on out I think that debate is completely over, and now I think the debate will focus on the degree in which the 360's GPU distinguishes itself from the PS3's.

  5: PS3 has major CPU advantage over 360.

  Brian Hastings wrote:

  The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3's eight parallel CPUs (one primary "PPU" and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3's CPUs are significantly more powerful.

  This is another one of those points that I will have to take his word on since, as with the statements quoted above, no developer has officially made a statement that contradicts his analysis. I have read in numerous blogs, on countless forums, and of course from Microsoft, that the Cell is not as suited for gaming needs as the Xenon is. But I will point out that Hastings hasn't made a comment on the suitability of the two processors, just that Cell is "significantly more powerful". I would love to hear from other Devs concerning the power and suitability of the two CPUs, but until some more people in the Dev community  speak out, Hastings has the official word on the matter.

  So there you have it. I personally feel that anything disputing these points that doesn't come from another developer, a university, or reputable tech website should be ignored, or considered bunk. However if one of these legit sources does disputes Hastings' findings, then we will finally have a real discussion in the gaming world about the real abilities and limitations of both of these consoles.

  That honest and open conversation is what this generation is missing. Doesn't it seem odd that nearly 6 months after all of this gen's consoles have been released we are still mostly in the dark about the true specs on these systems? The silence from every corner of the industry needs to end. A lot of people are working to bring credibility to the gaming industry, but how can the it be taken seriously when the gaming press doesn't even investigate the main figures in the industry? Maybe Hastings' comments will open the floodgates, or at least spark a little bit of journalistic investigation! I guess, I can only hope on those fronts.

  Once we get the spotlight on the specs, we as consumers will be able to hold the devs more accountable for the quality of the games that they present (and the differences between cross-platform titles). Basically, removing the mystery from the specs will put the emphasis back on game quality where it should be anyway. As we all know, it's not the power of the machine that determines a winning console, but how the games you place inside the machine use that power.

  • Posted Apr 2, 2007 3:05 am PT
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• 12Mar 07

  Will Peter Molyneux's Fable 2 change RPGs forever?

  The short answer is: YES! At least from what I can tell so far. If you haven't seen the Fable 2 gameplay with it's new features, you have to check it out.

  Ok, now that you've watched the video; Isn't that the smartest thing you've ever seen? It just totally makes sense and really pulls you into the game. Having a dog that you control like your real dog, by training it! I love the fact that you can't directly control the dog, and I also love the fact that the dog will warn you of danger but won't just go crazy and attack like the animal companions in D&D games (NWN, ToEE, etc.).

  Other than raising and training man's best friend, they have fully intergrated the family role (not the watered down version of family life that was in the first Fable). Where as you can get married have kids, and the kids actually grow up during the game. The kids will lean towards your own alignment. The only thing better would be if there was a algorithm that could give the kid more free will to choose it's own path.

  Anyway, I'm just amazed. Peter has already shown me he was a genuis with his tech demo of "The Room", but these features in Fable 2 are looking at gameplay from less of a physical and more of an emotional perspective, and I think it has the potential to revolutionize RPGs. Yeah, I know there are already "games" where you raise and train pets, but those are all virtual pet games (not RPGs).

  Even though he failed to deliver on the promise of the original Fable, this time it's looking like he has hit the nail squarely on the head.

  So now that you know what I think. What do you think? Is this just another runaway Molyneux hype train? Or can he really deliver the next step in the RPG evolutionary ladder?

   

  NOTE: This was originally posted as a topic in System Wars, but was locked for some unknown reason, so I've decided to keep the conversation going here.

  • Posted Mar 12, 2007 1:36 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 13Feb 07

  Is censorship being tolerated here on GS?

  I have an issue with the number of threads being arbitrarily locked these days. Especially when lockings are performed due to posting outside of some "official" thread that some Mod has created and stuck to the top of System Wars or your favorite console's forum.

  Simply labeling a thread as "Official" and making it a sticky doesn't mean that I want to post in it. There is absolutely no reason that we shouldn't be allowed to post whatever we want to concerning Crackdown (or whatever current topic is labeled official and stickied), so long as we do not violate the Terms of Use.

  Some of these tactics seem to just simply boil down to abuse of power in my opinion. I think it's great that there can be an "Official" topic, but why in the world would all of the "unofficial" topics get locked simply because an official one exists? If we WANT to post in the official topic we know where to find it! Last I checked, the current ones are stickied to the top of forum.

  I mean think about it. There are tons of "Official" websites, does that mean that no one is interested in visiting an unofficial site for Neverwinter Nights or Half-Life or a site like www.tauniverse.com dedicated to Total Annihilation? No it doesn't, you know why? Because alot of times the unofficial action is the best action! Where else would we get the majority of Mods that we are currently blessed to have without these unofficial outlets. And it's the same with Topics on this board. Not everyone wants to shuffle through all the pages of one of these official posts. Many people want to cover specific subissues, or want to talk about the topic in a different light. Or in a less cluttered environment. And we should be able too.

  Yes, I already know the flawed logic of: It's bad to flood & clutter the boards with similar topics.

  That logic is flawed because if the topic is crap it will die on it's own. If it's interesting and is living on, there is a reason for it. We need the overly aggressive locking of threads to come to an end stat! And another reason is that it's just a heading, if you know that you don't want to discuss whatever it is discussing you can simply keep looking, or create a topic that interests you. While in these official monstrosities you have to shuffle through tons of actual text, just to find a decent point that you may want to address. I think I'd rather shuffle through headings anyday.

  Hey I don't have any problem with the "official" threads. I think they are a great way for people to easily find the hot topic of the moment and speak about it in a GENERIC way. However, that should not preclude those of us from posting that would like to speak outside of the sacred circle. If I want to have a more specific and nuanced discussion, is that a crime against my fellow forumites? I don't think so. And neither do most others it would appear, hence the reason nonofficial threads exists and get tons of discussion within.

  To add insult to injury however, I would have to say that 99.999% of threads get locked without notification as to why. In my estimation, this serves two purposes. One, to make the poster feel disenfranchised and powerless. The other, is to retain the anonymity of the Mod who, perhaps arbitrarily locked the thread.

  What's up with this Gestapo treatment? We know that more topics mean more work for you Mods, but forums are created for people to post in. This is the nature of the beast. We also, recognize that you guys and gals have earned your stripes in one way or another, but if we aren't violating the ToU, please cut us common mortals some slack.

  • Posted Feb 13, 2007 2:08 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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