SpaceJase said: KBG29 said: All of these games had to go with a theme to thier look because they could not have a lot of differant textures, this is why MGS three is only in the jungle. Now with the Blu Ray and the ability to stream textures devs will be able to eat away at the disk like their is no tommorow filling it with a gigantic amonts of textures. Gigantic amounts of textures also means gigantic amounts of development time. Every texture requires man hours to optimise, tile etc. Talking purely in terms of textures is wrong anyway. You need to think in terms of shaders - multiple layers of different filters - opacity, specular diffuse and so on. Shaders take a lot of time to get right. Having 7x more shaders means 7x more man hours. I'm sure that the extra space available on blu ray will prove some worth before this generation is out - probably only to a handful of games though.

 I just wanna say you word that perfectly SpaceJase. You first build the texture. No matter what resolution it will run at, it needs optimized. So the actual total number of textures is what will cost the most. However what yo usay about the number of shaders is wrong. Bump-mapping, is a normal map, or multipul normal maps, computer generated from a complex 3D model. So actually most of the added shaders only add a little bit of render time. While the true texture count. (complexity of a game's detail, not resolution) is what will effect cost the most.

Kwaad said: I just wanna say you word that perfectly SpaceJase. You first build the texture. No matter what resolution it will run at, it needs optimized. So the actual total number of textures is what will cost the most. However what yo usay about the number of shaders is wrong. Bump-mapping, is a normal map, or multipul normal maps, computer generated from a complex 3D model. So actually most of the added shaders only add a little bit of render time. While the true texture count. (complexity of a game's detail, not resolution) is what will effect cost the most.

 

Cheers Kwaad. I don't work in 3D games but I do do a lot of 3D viz work. To me a bump map is just a greyscale image but I am aware that the real time guys do things differently and your nomal map explanation sounds about right.

Anyway, just to expand my point a bit further. As systems become more powerful shaders require ever more work on the part of the develper.

Let's take a dirty, blood smeared window that you might find in an FPS game like Doom 3 as an example. I reckon there would be 3-5 different texture maps / filters to create that one shader - diffuse, specular, refraction, reflection and maybe bump. At the risk of repeating myself, that is a lot of work! Of course larger storage allows for more shaders but what people fail to take into account is that it's not just a case of going out and taking a snapshot of a window - hours need to be spent in photoshop to get everything coming together just right. Couple that with the need to keep the art style consistant accross the whole game and you start to get an idea of just how much work is involved here.

I'm glad you brought up the difference between texture detail and screen resolution. It would, of course, be perfectly feasible, if a bit illogical, for a 1080p game to use low res texture maps and a 480p game to use high res ones (albiet the detail would only be apparent at close range).The point being that screen resolution only has an influence over texture detail and does not dictate it.

Poseidon said: Come on, a good number of people bought the HD-DVD drive because it was also hyped by Microsoft, and countering people who said that HD-DVD might fail. And you mean to tell me people wouldn't have a problem giving back their HD-DVD drives and HD-DVDs for far more less? I want an honest answer from you, if Sony had done this, would you be jumping all over them?

I remember a spokesperson of MS stating - this was more than 3 months before the release of the HD DVD drive by the way - that they considered HD DVD the superior choice, but that Blu-ray winning the war was a possibility actually taken into account by MS and that they would - grudgingly - offer a Blu-ray drive in this case. This doesn't exactly fit my definition of hyping a product to begin with. So if I had bought such a drive, I personally wouldn't have a problem of course should this happen. If Sony had done this, I probably wouldn't have a problem, either. Honestly ^^

 

Poseidon said: And I agree, if Blu-ray flopped, then that would be it for the PS3. But unlike Microsoft, Sony at least have backed it, are backing it, and will be backing it, whereas Microsoft's real intention was probably just to give Sony a hard time and start another format war. People want to put Microsoft in a better light than Sony, when they are almost on the same wavelength when it comes to spouting bullshit; you mean to tell me there is a difference between Microsoft's crap and Sony's shit?

I personally don't think there is much difference between MS and Sony, but I do think that in this case MS has acted smartly because they don't offer that many targets for criticism this way.

And as for MS not backing HD DVD as much as Sony are backing Blu-ray, it appears true at the moment, but according to my knowledge MS and Broadcom have recently developed a hardware/software reference design for HD DVD playback that was given to Chinese manufacturers to flood the market with cheap HD DVD players. I'm not sure when this is going to happen and what impact it will have on the format war, though.

The PS3 will have a great comeback in 2010 when MS starts their next XBox. Then Sony will regain the advantage of the lowest common denominator.

wii_are_better_than_ said: Actually, the PS3 isn't much more powerful at all. In fact you could argue that the 360 is more powerful. Wait for a price drop for the PS3 if you absolutely must have it.     edit- and welcome to the forums.

Well you're just dead wrong. Kanomi on a number of occassions spacifically stated they need the PS3 engine to run Metal Gear Solid 4. Eventually we will see games on the PS3 that could never be done on the 360. Yeah we haven't see them yet, but that's because taking true advantage of the PS3's cell processor is difficult for game developers. Eventually the gap between the PS3 and 360 will be bigger than was that of the 360 and PS2 (which really wasn't that big of a gap at all).

Christopher_G2 said: Eventually the gap between the PS3 and 360 will be bigger than was that of the 360 and PS2 (which really wasn't that big of a gap at all).

Yeah, I mean compare God Of War II to Gears Of War... not a big gap... right Christopher_G2?

 

Hell the only hurdle the PS3 needs to Overcome is getting their games out.The 360 has NOTHING on the PS3 other than the numbers of console sold(not really that much of an advantage either being out a year ahead of time)the number of games the 360 has is a selling point but Microsoft has maybe 4-5 great games and of those maybe 2 are AAA status while PS3 right now has about 3 Great games only 2 of those being AAA games with a year head start thats no big deal. The Games "coming" this year for the PS3 are outstanding at least 4 or 5 more Great games all with the possibility of being AAA games.The 360 has Halo to rely on selling systems other than Gears of War those will be the only "system sellers" for the 360 and perhaps Forza 2 .the PS3 has and will have "Resistance,Motorstorm,Virtua Fighter 5(if you like fighters) Lair,HEAVENLY SWORD,Warhawk,MetalGear4,PSHome and Little Big Planet...After aall the negative press the PS3 has got you can see intrest starting to boil.As to exclusives going Multi Platform it is terrible I don't speak for everyone but it makes me want a game like Devil may cry or Assasin's Creed less now that they went Multi Platform now my PS3 will only do what th 360 can for those games and thats just not good enough when it could have done more.The other thing it shows is the lack of confidence the developer shows in the ability of it's game to move system or be relevent for the long haul.I know they want to make money but if your game is good enough it will make you money on 1 system and your game will probly be better for it.