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"I don't trust #XboxOne & #Kinect 2.0, it's always connected" as you tweet from your smartphone - irony 0_o
Groucho said:
You sir, are grossly underestimating the work which goes into a game engine, which has nothing to do with the platform, and the power of the X360's proximity to PC development when you're talking about "crossplatform". Killzone 2 was likely rewritten from the ground up for the PS3 (as opposed to being based upon Killzone 1) -- Unreal was almost assuredly not rewritten (not even close) for the 360, simply because the 360's architecture is so much closer to the PC, from the game engine persepctive. There is a downright titanic savings in not having to rewrite your tools pipeline alone, let alone all the mechanisms which comprise a game under the hood. Implying (as you are) that it took 4 times as much manpower to get the visuals of KZ2 to be superior to GeoW2 is absolutely ludicrous. A significant portion of the GeoW2 team was probably working on improving visuals specifically for the 360. I wouldn't be surprised if Guerilla's engineering (and art) depts actually spent less time on their visuals, than the detailed texture/shader work took in GeoW2. KZ2's visuals are better because the platform allows for a rendering technique that greatly enhances the ability of artists to use lighting, amongst other things -- not because the shaders were better, not because the textures were better, etc. etc. In other words, it probably took *less* time to get KZ2 to look better than GeoW2, not more -- thanks, in part, to the hardware architecture they were working with. The rest of the team was almost unquestionably devoted to developing the single player game (scripting, physics, object management and actions), the networking and multiplayer components, the toolchain (a downright huge amount of work without middleware), etc. -- all of which the GeoW2 team likely leveraged from previous iterations of the Unreal Engine easily. On top of all that, Guerilla produced Killzone Liberation (PSP) during that timespan as well -- and I'm pretty certain they did not use the same PS3 engine/tools/etc. They likely leveraged the PS2 Killzone engine for it, but it would have still required a decent amount of reworking. In an entertainingly ironic twist, your implication that overall manpower is the reason that KZ2's visuals are generally considered (by reviewers) to be superior to games like GeoW2, suggests that you can always get a linear work speedup by increasing the number of workers on a project. As if the workflow of a large engineering project were... embarassingly parallel. You are, in an indirect manner, suggesting that, since the PS3 has a significant amount more parallel horsepower than the 360, it will inevitably be more powerful in any application -- when in fact, the parallelism comes in handy at certain points in the game engine pipeline, and not in others, which is why you get "we're only using 60% of the available power" comments from developers. Back to game development, there is a very large iterative, effectively serial, component, when it comes to toolchain development (and other elements, but tools is a great example), and the Unreal engine has had eons to develop in this area. Developing a new toolchain, in parallel with a game engine, requires a *lot* more horsepower-over-time than you would need given many years of slower development. As I said, the your "man-years" line of reasoning is totally backwards. Any professional game engineer in the console industry can, and would, tell you so. Why on earth do you think middleware (like the entire Unreal engine, which is extremely advanced after long years of development, especially with regards to tools) is so popular these days? Think its mostly just a wash, buying (really expensive) middleware licenses, as opposed to doing the work yourself? |
Thank you your detailed response. For the simplicity of our discussion my usage of man-years works was simplified, otherwise we would be here writing 100 pages essays on this subject.
Your writing indicates that you have software programming knowledge. Are you a student or a practitioner of Computer Science? I certainly agree with you that much of the engineering foundation done in Unreal Engine I would carry forward to UE2 and what was accumullated in UE2 would find home in UE3. So through the entire history of UE, EPIC probably invested well over 100 man-years into the engine.
Where I disagree with you is the assumption Guerilla work on KZ2 engine did not benefit at all from their prior engine work because they told us that they built the engine from scratch. EPIC told their customers that they built UE3 from the ground up for the next gen systems too. Surely this was the first engine they had to seriously deal with multiple core CPUs. So a lot of things had to be rearchitectured in addition to implementation of new effects. But did this mean that the huge amount of research knowledge from prior years were thrown out? Definitely not. In the same way EPIC benefited from prior engine work, Guerilla did too for KZ2.
It seemed that Guerilla put a lot of work into making deferred rendering work well in their engine. Some engine builders claimed that this rendering techniqe boosted rendering performance up to 50% over traditional foward renderers. From what I understand, the early version of UE3 only did deferred shadow rendering. Did Gears II engine used more of deferred rendering than just shadow? I don't know. Certainly Guerilla's work had shown the performance benefit of this technique.
I am not sure I understand your comment about tool chain require a lot more horse power overtime. But speaking of the amount of work on tools, surely EPIC has to polish their engine tools much more so than Guerilla simply because EPIC sells their engine. Guerilla just use it in house.
Please notice that I compared the amount of man-years work for KZ2 and Gears I because EPICs did not release public information on team size of Gears II (which I assumed got a boost in size due to the success of Gears I).
With my man-years discussion, I merely wanted to point out that had KZ2 took 200 man-years instead of 400-500 it would be much more impressive. For what it is now, people are impressed but it does not help the case of "the PS3 being much more costly to develop". No matter what kind of argument you bring forth, it is still in the end a much more costly game to develop for compared to just about any 360 game. And certainly it does not help the case of "PS3 being a bigger and efficient graphics powerhouse". Does KZ2 look better than RE5 (a multiplatformer)?
At the end I am happy that KZ2 did not go the way of Too Human. It's graphics accomplishment will certainly help their competition (both on PS3 and 360) move forward.
| CGI-Quality said: ^ In a matter of speaking, YES Killzone 2 does look better than RE5 and just about anyone who has played it will tell you it does. |
I have played neither, but my impression from public opinion is that RE5 is about par with KZ2 having a slight edge visually. Color is much more vibrant in RE5. Regardless of what Gears or KZ developer tell us. I believe the diversification of color on screen does affect engine performance, at least in terms of memory consumption. So it is a trade off developer choose to make in many instants. It just happen to fit well with the excuse of "oh our game world is dark.".
I tend to believe KZ2 has the edge over RE5, but the fact many people even brought up comparision between RE5 and KZ2 should tell us the graphics edge for PS3 is not there yet. We have a multiplatformer that is on the same visual level of an exclusive game with 400-500 man-years of work.
Dude the article was poor. I stopped reading at later Xbox games didnt look much better than Halo.
Just so you know Halo 2 destroyed the looks of Halo. You only have to look as far as character models for that.
Dont be so biased next time.
Halo 1
Halo 2
See. Both are from cutscenes and you as you can see, Halo 2 eats Halo 1 alive. A massive improvement. This is why your fanboyism in your OP is unbearable.
| CGI-Quality said: ^ In a matter of speaking, YES Killzone 2 does look better than RE5 and just about anyone who has played it will tell you it does. |
Killzone 2 has good visuals, but are so nothing special thses days, it seems very tine and barren in level design, and textures are mediocre overall
This is the worst game to "prove" PS3 power with, Uncharted looks a lot better and far more detailed
Everyone needs to relax. There is little real proof of massive gaps on either side.
If people want to talk about real gaps then muse on the likely gap by 2010 between PC and PS3/360, which should be much bigger than any gap between the two consoles!
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
| Reasonable said: Everyone needs to relax. There is little real proof of massive gaps on either side. If people want to talk about real gaps then muse on the likely gap by 2010 between PC and PS3/360, which should be much bigger than any gap between the two consoles! |
Of course.
It is the only real assumption you can make, consoles will never beat the PC world.
BTW, the gap between 360 and the PS3 is pure fanboyism.... sigh....
Evan Wells (Uncharted 2): I think the differences that you see between any two games has much more to do with the developer than whether it’s on the Xbox or PS3.
Sardauk said:
Of course. It is the only real assumption you can make, consoles will never beat the PC world. BTW, the gap between 360 and the PS3 is pure fanboyism.... sigh.... |
Too true.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
Neither console is nearing its peak. If someone were to make CGI clips using specs of both consoles maxed out, and played them right next to each other, the differences would not be noticeable because they would be so small.
The 360 could easily make a game on par with Killzone 2, with plenty of room to go. Sure if they wanted to have everything uncompressed they'd have to use multiple discs, but oh well. If the PS3 had the 360s specs KZ2 would not look any worse than it does now. It's absurd to think either console comes close to being maxed out. It's simply not true.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if you dig in a ps3 site or in a post from a PS3 "aficionado" you know what to get.
And I truly believe their not lieing they really see it like that.
As someone said neither systems can be praised for top of the line graphics as mid-price PC in 2009 put both to shame.
So... talk about the games and Live and PSN, that's the main thing consoles have, not graphics, FFS!
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