Its been 3 and a half years and NOW there understanding the Cell?!

[Twistedpixel]

Reasonable said:

Twistedpixel said:

Arguably the PS2 centric developers would have had it easier as well because they're used to programming graphics effects in software on the PS2 in a more CPU like fashion. It was stated that it was easier than developing on the PS2 however in the PS2s case there was no convenient and easier Xbox variant at the time of release for most titles and the PS2 had greater time on market before the Xbox even released. Many PS3 exclusives shared the flaws of the multiplatform games but there was no convenient Xbox 360 version to compare against. In this generation multiplatform developers had to struggle to get their games up to speed and this accelerated forced learning curve is likely the major source of the complaints.

I'm basing my comments on video docs from Naughty Dog on moving from PS2 and PS3, and they made it sound like a slog to me!  From what I've read it sounds 50/50 to me.  Developers coming from a PC background would be far more familiar with advanced graphical techniques but would find the console architecture weird while developers coming from a PS2 background would probably find the basic architecture less of a pain but would have to learn a whole heap of new techniques.

Mind you, having watched the docus on ND, played Uncharted (which was very solid but had some obvious screen tearing, etc) then looking at Uncharted 2 I have to admit ND are clearly very, very good developers in terms of what they ramped up on, building a whole new engine and set of tools from scratch in the process.

Remember Naughty Dog would have had access to the Cell CPU since late to very late 2004, they were amongst the pioneers on the CPU architecture. They broke ground before most people, so you would expect that for any architecture paradigm shift the early birds would bear the brunt of the load and problems.

Developers on the PC make a game which has a completely different look and feel to a game made say for the PS2. The PS2 games were in technical terms a lot more complicated even if they were not as technologically sound as the PC games. One start example is the contrast ratio. PC games tend to be bright and have quite a wide contrast between different colours, light and dark and this can show off the aliasing. They tend to look a little clinical whereas console games tend to by stylised, dimmer and lower contrast to hide the aliasing.

The difference between the two fields convergence is that there are tools and engines to help utilise shaders and other effects however changing the programming model to suit the consoles does infact require a lot of work. Shaders work like a pair of gloves in many cases, you just slip them in. However the programming model is something which has to be learnt and relearnt over the course of the generation.