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Mnementh on 20 October 2013

I have a question regarding the teams for developing bigger titles. My impression as an outsider of the games-industry is, that programming has less relevance today and modelling worlds/items/characters gets by far the most manpower. Is my impression right or wrong? Can you give a rough percentage of programming man-power for a big game? And how much does this differ in the beginning of a new gen to the mid?



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gooch_destroyer on 20 October 2013

 

gooch_destroyer said:
This may have been asked but oh well...Is the "Power of the Cloud" the new Blast processing? 

What's the best way in starting a small indie studio? I have some friends that are taking classes and how much money does it take to make smaller games.

Any other advice would be nice.

Thank you

I am going to skip the first question based on the way it was asked.

Starting an indie studio is only as easy, hard, cheap or expensive as those you choose to start it with. If you begin with a group of skilled people willing to work for free to get a sellable game released, on the premise that they would see a financial return upon completion, then its not so hard.

If however you find a bunch of mediocre employees who wont lift a finger until they see the green, then obviously its not going to be very easy.

How you market and approach revenue streams also directly effects how well the company does as a whole.

If I asked it a better way would you answer it?



crissindahouse on 20 October 2013

How much pizza do you eat developing an average sized game?



Raven722 on 20 October 2013

When it comes to the special functions that these consoles are bringing, such as cameras or touchscreens/pads, it doesn't seem like there are any developers who are terribly excited about them. Some are completely dismissive of them. Others are neutral. The small amount who have expressed positive feelings (from what I've seen) about them have mostly done so in a lukewarm way. As a developer, what is your own take on such special functions? Do you feel that any of the big three have introduced something in their controls that is a big deal? Do you think anything that has been shown will become standard instead of being labeled as special?



ninjablade on 20 October 2013
Nyleveia said:
HoloDust said:
Nyleveia said:
ninjablade said:

i don't agree with this, if the orginial wii was half as powerful as a 360 it would have gotten way more third party games and established it self just like the 360, but they chose only to focus on motion controls.

Tell me, when you play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, do you judge if the game youre playing is great based on how many shaders the console has? and if you do why do you consistently badmouth the WiiU which has more than both of those consoles?

In one of the previous posts you said WiiU has between 150 and 200...doesn't 360 have 48x5 for 240? Not that I think that WiiU is weaker than PS360, but curious to learn which one it is.

Oh, and thanks for answering my previous question about Cerny and unified memory...


360 has 48 shaders split into 5 vector vector units per shader, the wiiu is split differently, I can give the exact numbers but its higher than the 48 on the 360. This is of course comparing shader units and NOT ALU.

360 has a total of 240 shaders, you said the wiiu gpu has a total of 150-200 shaders, the wiiu alu blocks can only contain 20 or 40 shaders per block, so how can it be higher then 360 when you said its less then 200.



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bjoncas on 20 October 2013

@nileveia : i'm trying here to figure out which next gen car i'm gonna chose. On paper there's a car with a lot of horse power and a very good transmission, the other one is less about horse power and a more balanced and fine tuning aproach. I'm not asking which one is more capable but is there a way out there to figure out by myself on which car the pilots will be able achieve more.



Nyleveia on 20 October 2013
ninjablade said:
Nyleveia said:
HoloDust said:
Nyleveia said:
ninjablade said:

i don't agree with this, if the orginial wii was half as powerful as a 360 it would have gotten way more third party games and established it self just like the 360, but they chose only to focus on motion controls.

Tell me, when you play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, do you judge if the game youre playing is great based on how many shaders the console has? and if you do why do you consistently badmouth the WiiU which has more than both of those consoles?

In one of the previous posts you said WiiU has between 150 and 200...doesn't 360 have 48x5 for 240? Not that I think that WiiU is weaker than PS360, but curious to learn which one it is.

Oh, and thanks for answering my previous question about Cerny and unified memory...


360 has 48 shaders split into 5 vector vector units per shader, the wiiu is split differently, I can give the exact numbers but its higher than the 48 on the 360. This is of course comparing shader units and NOT ALU.

360 has a total of 240 shaders, you said the wiiu gpu has a total of 150-200 shaders, the wiiu alu blocks can only contain 20 or 40 shaders per block, so how can it be higher then 360 when you said its less then 200.

It has 48 shader units and each of those is split into banks of 5 vector units, actually more accurately these are vec4+scalar.

Wiius count when all units are divided as with the 360 is lower than the 360 but elsewhere it is not.

Again I can't give you exact details but I would advise against you running around thinking that the wiiu is less powerful than the 360, to save yourself the embarrassment.



bananaking21 on 20 October 2013

OP i have a rather odd two questions, but it just passed my mind.

anyways it looks like the future of consoles is x86 architecture due to many reasons. you said in a post before that you expect that there will be new hardware and another generation.

Q1 - do you expect that the gen after this one uses will use x86 architecture as well?

Q2- if so should we expect backwards compatibility? or should be not dream of that feature from now on?

i know an odd question, but it just crossed my mind. also, thanks for answering all these questions, you are giving us great insight on the new platforms coming, so thanks.



JoeTheBro on 20 October 2013
bjoncas said:
@nileveia : i'm trying here to figure out which next gen car i'm gonna chose. On paper there's a car with a lot of horse power and a very good transmission, the other one is less about horse power and a more balanced and fine tuning aproach. I'm not asking which one is more capable but is there a way out there to figure out by myself on which car the pilots will be able achieve more.

Both next gen systems are balanced. It's not like Sony said "put in da ram, that looks good. Now put in a hunky GPU, that'll maybe work too."



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ninjablade on 20 October 2013
Nyleveia said:
ninjablade said:
Nyleveia said:
HoloDust said:
Nyleveia said:
ninjablade said:

i don't agree with this, if the orginial wii was half as powerful as a 360 it would have gotten way more third party games and established it self just like the 360, but they chose only to focus on motion controls.

Tell me, when you play PS3 or Xbox 360 games, do you judge if the game youre playing is great based on how many shaders the console has? and if you do why do you consistently badmouth the WiiU which has more than both of those consoles?

In one of the previous posts you said WiiU has between 150 and 200...doesn't 360 have 48x5 for 240? Not that I think that WiiU is weaker than PS360, but curious to learn which one it is.

Oh, and thanks for answering my previous question about Cerny and unified memory...


360 has 48 shaders split into 5 vector vector units per shader, the wiiu is split differently, I can give the exact numbers but its higher than the 48 on the 360. This is of course comparing shader units and NOT ALU.

360 has a total of 240 shaders, you said the wiiu gpu has a total of 150-200 shaders, the wiiu alu blocks can only contain 20 or 40 shaders per block, so how can it be higher then 360 when you said its less then 200.

It has 48 shader units and each of those is split into banks of 5 vector units, actually more accurately these are vec4+scalar.

Wiius count when all units are divided as with the 360 is lower than the 360 but elsewhere it is not.

Again I can't give you exact details but I would advise against you running around thinking that the wiiu is less powerful than the 360, to save yourself the embarrassment.

actually i know wiiu is more powerful then 360 mainly cause it has more ram, i also know th wiiu is more powerful cause it has newer more efficant tech, but as black forest games said its only slighty more powerful.