| gebx said: Sorry if my fan goggles are blinding me but let's compare PS3 leadplatform game = Good port to 360, nearly identical performance 360 leadplatform game = poor port to PS3 and launch delays... Now I'm confused.. are developers using the PS3 as lead console because its better? or because they know the 360 can handle anything on the PS3? Seriously why choose the stronger console as lead when a) the 360 technically shouldn't be able to handle any games that uses TH3 c3LL, and b) the console is in last place? |
While I do think the PS3 is a much stronger platform for gaming, I don’t think this game is proof in itself.
Proof would be when a traditional Multi Plat provider chooses to make a game for the PS3 only, or uses a different engine or any number of things because they simply can’t provide the same gaming experience on the 360. Then you can make the argument, but I digress.
Forget the console wars for a moment, and to answer your question (as a software developer)…
If you want to maximize a computers utilization when making multi plat software, you start by designing for the strongest, and then porting to the lower platforms. It’s a lot easier to take things out, and have it look right, then to just “stuff things in there” because you have the power to do so.
A few examples in gaming.
You can always down sample a texture, You cannot add what is not there if the texture is already lower quality then you can handle
You can place all the trees in a forest exactly where you want them, and then remove x number of trees to make the slower platform perform to your liking. So for example, if you start out with 400 trees, and remove 100, the forest will still look right, just less busy. If you start with 300, and then stuck 100 more in because you have the power to do so, it will look unnatural.
If you define some pathing for an RTS, it’s easy to reduce the sophistication of your algorithm to remove CPU utilization, it’s a lot harder to tack on some logic after the fact that makes the pathing better.
I could come up with many more examples, but you get the idea.
