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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Killzone 2 VS Gears of War 2 through the eyes of a programmer

@Blazin For sure :D And it was only that much because of the engine creation. Killzone would have been much cheaper if they had an engine at the start ^^

@Jetri Would you happen to know what makes the PS3 architecture better suited for differed rendering engines? If it's even better suited at all?



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@OP: good post. I'd add (but that's really included in artistic choices) that two other things that somehow make GoW2 look worse are a not very natural crossbreed between realistic and artistic environments and excessive machismo in characters' characterization (forgive me for this calembour ), although not to the level that makes me impossible to take Master Chief seriously
But as you showed, characters aren't so good in KZ2 either, in gaming we're still far away from realistic faces and skins, and the best examples fall sadly into the dreaded Uncanny Valley. But this one is a current problem of every platform.



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MikeB said:
Have you even looked into how the Killzone 2 game engine operates? Killzone 2 cannot be done in a similar manner with the Unreal engine.

Yes, I agree Killzone 2 has better designed assets, but also higher quality assets, higher quality graphics and audio.

Trees? Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and Uncharted have great looking trees.... But it would have been out of place in this world created for Killzone 2.

Killzone 2 provides a high level of destructability, amazing lighting (hundreds of independent light sources on screen at once and even implements some raytracing effects), realtime generated cutscenes, advanced movie techniques like full screen motion blur where every pixel has a direction / speed, audio well above anything the 360 can provide technically, etc.

Sorry, but Killzone 2 is technically well above what Gears of War 2 provides apart from just better designed assets.

 

Of course it can't be done in a similar manner with the Unreal Engine, it is a different engine. However, it is my educated guess that a very similar version can be done on the Unreal 3 Engine with the effort that was put into Killzone 2.

As far as assets, that is entirely a matter of personal preference. What you consider to be quality may not be considered to be as good by others. Personally, I think Killzone 2 has a fine art direction, but I also believe that some of the assets in MGS4, GoWII, and Uncharted are higher quality. No one game is the king in every single category, and honestly, it doesn't have to me. Killzone 2 is impressive enough as it is.

Personally, I would have like to have a few scenes with nice vegetation and trees, just because they're in a war doesn't mean you can't stop and smell the flowers! 

Although Killzone 2 does have an interactive environment, quite a few of the destructions are actually prebaked and depending on what you do, it will break in one of several pre-designed ways. This is not true for the whole game, just parts. Killzone 2 doesn't have raytracin, it has raycasting, something which a few games have. Raytracing is a whole different ballpark.

Killzone 2 uses full screen motion blur very well, but it's been features in dozens of games already. It is not new, although it is nice that they added their own technique to make it look a bit different.

That's fine, you're allowed to have that opinion. I think Killzone 2 looks great. Not as great as you think it does, but still great. 



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Euphoria14 said:

@jetrii

I have heard that outside of a few games like a Gears of War, the Unreal 3 Engine doesn't work too well on consoles. It caused issues with many games like LO, TLR and ME to name a few, like texture pop-in, slow down, massive load times, etc...

Let us just say EPIC or any other company for that matter tried to recreate KZ2 with the Unreal 3 Engine, do you think it would even run on either console? If it would run, do you think it would run at a reasonable framerate or that it would have a giant amount of technical issues?

A lot of developers did have some trouble with the Unreal 3 Engine. Even Gears of War 1 had some nasty texture pop-ins during the multiplayer gamers. Silicon Knights (Too Human) even went as far as suing Epic Games on the claim that they provided a faulty engine. However, I think that developers are getting the hang of the engine on multi-core machines. PS3 version is a tad behind, but it's still a great engine as demonstrated in the PS3 version of UT3. 

As for your question, I answered it a long time ago. I think it would run without as much stuff going on at the same time, but the textures would probably be a tad sharper thanks to the extrea memory.

@ChronotriggerJM

The Playstation 3 is a complicated machine to work for and it seems that a few developers want to handle it their own way. The Cell architecture certainly leaves room for a lot of creative engines, but they can be difficult to implement. However, the Xbox 360 also has quite a few engines for it. I wouldn't say the PS3 is better suited for custom engines, but Sony's first party developers do seem more skilled than Microsoft's.

@Alby_da_Wolf

Yea, we are still far away from very realistic faces. However, a wise man once said that realistic graphics are boring, surrealistic graphics is where the industry is heading. 



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Great job! I found it informative and entertaining. It probably helped in that I have no particular interest in either game as I lived through the high resolution uber-violent games a few years back on the PC and in my dottage I'm quite happy with pure fun things like running around the course in MK Wii.

It does serve as a reminder that budgets, programming time, disk space, memory, and available talent are all finite quantities and the developer must constantly make choices.

Like the classic decision process in battleship design where the three elements; speed, firepower and armor protection had to be balanced. Each could only be increased at the cost of another. More armor causes less speed and takes away tonnage that could be used to upgrade guns etc. The designer must balance graphics vs animation vs number of things happening vs framerate vs gameplay vs cut scenes vs longer storyline vs more gameplay modes and options etc. etc. He also has to do all this at a realistic cost that makes a profit and meets a reasonable schedule to get it out the door. The longer a game takes, the more it costs and the longer the time before any revenue is produced.

We all know games that, in our opinion at least, did a great job with the choices made and games where the game fails because inadequate attention was paid to some element. A beautiful game with poor gameplay will fail. A beautiful game with great gameplay that only takes two hours to beat will fail.

Your article makes it all the clearer why those games that are well balanced in all areas are to be applauded. It also makes it clear that two games can both be excellent even if different and comparisons based on nothing better than personal opinion are at best pointless and at worst just another platform for immature pettiness and fanboy hysteria to show its ass.



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@ jetrii

Killzone 2 fatures very smooth animations which are only enhanced by the use of motion blur. The game does do a very good job of having a lot of particles and action on the screen at the same time. Also, Gears 2 and Killzone 2 are different games. Killzone 2 is suppose to be an intensive immersive battle while Gears 2 is suppose to be much more intimate. The Unreal 3 Engine would probably sweat trying to acomplish what Killzone 2 acomplishes.
Yes and apart from what you mention and I mentioned before, there are many major differences in game engine technology and design. For example the realtime ragdolls and enemy behaviour where enemies grab parts and are being pushed exactly where they are being shot. Or online Gears of War 2 has many issues with its small environment 5 vs 5 (max) matches. Killzone 2's online is technically far more complex and impressive. Regarding memory the PS3 has technically a big memory advantage over the 360 due to the default inclusion of a harddrive in every console and the storage capability of Blu-Ray disc. The PS3 is all about streaming data rather than loading the bulk of data into memory in one go (like early PS3 games such as Motorstorm 1 and Resistance: Fall of Man did apart from the 7.1 audio).



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Grampy said:

Great job! I found it informative and entertaining. It probably helped in that I have no particular interest in either game as I lived through the high resolution uber-violent games a few years back on the PC and in my dottage I'm quite happy with pure fun things like running around the course in MK Wii.

It does serve as a reminder that budgets, programming time, disk space, memory, and available talent are all finite quantities and the developer must constantly make choices.

Like the classic decision process in battleship design where the three elements; speed, firepower and armor protection had to be balanced. Each could only be increased at the cost of another. More armor causes less speed and takes away tonnage that could be used to upgrade guns etc. The designer must balance graphics vs animation vs number of things happening vs framerate vs gameplay vs cut scenes vs longer storyline vs more gameplay modes and options etc. etc. He also has to do all this at a realistic cost that makes a profit and meets a reasonable schedule to get it out the door. The longer a game takes, the more it costs and the longer the time before any revenue is produced.

We all know games that, in our opinion at least, did a great job with the choices made and games where the game fails because inadequate attention was paid to some element. A beautiful game with poor gameplay will fail. A beautiful game with great gameplay that only takes two hours to beat will fail.

Your article makes it all the clearer why those games that are well balanced in all areas are to be applauded. It also makes it clear that two games can both be excellent even if different and comparisons based on nothing better than personal opinion are at best pointless and at worst just another platform for immature pettiness and fanboy hysteria to show its ass.

 

 

Awesome post especially the final paragraph.



@jetrii

That is right, I just saw that you did answer it. My bad.

I also agree that UT3 ran great on the PS3. It is one of my favorite shooters.

 

That is all the questions I had. Thank you for taking the time to answer them.

Much respect.



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Euphoria14 said:
@jetrii

That is right, I just saw that you did answer it. My bad.

I also agree that UT3 ran great on the PS3. It is one of my favorite shooters.

 

Yea, it's a good game. In an interview, Midway actually announced that it was coming to the Xbox 360 a short while after the PS3 version was announced. They retracted the statement but the damage was done.  I was originally planning on getting it for the Xbox 360 but gave in to the PS3 for the user mod support.

Glad I could answer your questions.



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Grampy said:

Great job! I found it informative and entertaining. It probably helped in that I have no particular interest in either game as I lived through the high resolution uber-violent games a few years back on the PC and in my dottage I'm quite happy with pure fun things like running around the course in MK Wii.

It does serve as a reminder that budgets, programming time, disk space, memory, and available talent are all finite quantities and the developer must constantly make choices.

Like the classic decision process in battleship design where the three elements; speed, firepower and armor protection had to be balanced. Each could only be increased at the cost of another. More armor causes less speed and takes away tonnage that could be used to upgrade guns etc. The designer must balance graphics vs animation vs number of things happening vs framerate vs gameplay vs cut scenes vs longer storyline vs more gameplay modes and options etc. etc. He also has to do all this at a realistic cost that makes a profit and meets a reasonable schedule to get it out the door. The longer a game takes, the more it costs and the longer the time before any revenue is produced.

We all know games that, in our opinion at least, did a great job with the choices made and games where the game fails because inadequate attention was paid to some element. A beautiful game with poor gameplay will fail. A beautiful game with great gameplay that only takes two hours to beat will fail.

Your article makes it all the clearer why those games that are well balanced in all areas are to be applauded. It also makes it clear that two games can both be excellent even if different and comparisons based on nothing better than personal opinion are at best pointless and at worst just another platform for immature pettiness and fanboy hysteria to show its ass.

This is probably one of the best posts I've read. Very nice, I enjoyed reading it.

 



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