@ slowmo

IMO "maximise" would be much harder on the PS3 to achieve, as it is a lot more advanced than the PS2 was. Like it will be much easier still to get the most out of a c64, as the amount of resources and potential are rather limited in comparison. On a modern multi-core PC it would be similar hard to achieve, in reality those systems have a lot more potential than especially Windows/Direct X (and most modern gaming engines) allow (apart from the horribly inefficient bulky host OS, also ever changing configurations play an important factor here).

We are far from the point at which developers will feel the need to hand optimise everything on the PS3, as with the code they have moved to the SPUs so far they still have a lot of headroom. But there are endless oppertunities to optimise for the Cell's SPUs, which of course would take an endless amount of time.

Procrastinato said: I'd just like to put in that I completely, wholeheartedly, agree with the OP. The PS3 is easier than the PS2 to develop for, without question. And um... using DMAs isn't exactly rocket science. The PS3 is not really very hard to develop for, unless the place you learned to program taught everything in Java and C#. That's frightenly true in more circumstances than you may want to believe. The number of C++ programmers who even understand the fundamentals of compiler optimization is really really small.   The 360 has dev tools that cater fairly well to those types of programmers -- which is a good thing, considering.  This fact is also the reason that writing a PS3 engine, and porting it to the 360, is a better plan than the opposite, if you're looking for high performance -- development schedules like to demand things way before they are ready, and the 360 makes it easy... almost too easy.. to get stuff working, without actually working well.  Ironic, yes. Therein lies the future of improving anything on the 360, down the road -- writing engines to work much like PS3-exclusive engines.  Not joking.  There's plenty of room for improvement, though, IMO.

Hey you actually know that ^^

 

 

**Slash** said: @snyperdud and Dgc1808 Killzone 2 came out nearly 4 years (3 years and 9 months) after the cgi demo was shown. Then adding the time to actually make that cgi movie and to come up with the ideas for it, the whole pre-production time. So from the first drawing on paper to the final release, i still say 5 years of production time

Epic games usually take a lot of time to produce, the underlying game engine of course takes time to produce for a new platform, but as the solid foundation is already there, it takes far less time and effort for creating your next game. Basically you could even re-use the same game engine again, so requiring near no extra R&D if you're not ambitious and don't want to make significant advancements.

I am pretty sure, the bulk of the development manhours were actually spend on assets production, level design, etc (what to do with all this great technology?!) with regard to Killzone 2 rather than actual game engine development. I think most of their team are actually artist and design related workers.

 

MikeB said: @ slowmo I'm sure the PS3 isn't as hard to maximise performance as the PS2 or Saturn but it is more difficult than its 2 main rivals it would seem. IMO "maximise" would be much harder on the PS3 to achieve, as it is a lot more advanced than the PS2 was. Like it will be much easier still to get the most out of a c64, as the amount of resources and potential are rather limited in comparison. On a modern multi-core PC it would be similar hard to achieve, in reality those systems have a lot more potential than especially Windows/Direct X (and most modern gaming engines) allow (apart from the horribly inefficient bulky host OS, also ever changing configurations play an important factor here). We are far from the point at which developers will feel the need to hand optimise everything on the PS3, as with the code they have moved to the SPUs so far they still have a lot of headroom. But there are endless oppertunities to optimise for the Cell's SPUs, which of course would take an endless amount of time.

I'll disagree on the grounds we will not see developers going to assembly code anywhere near as much this generation to achieve performance increases.  Also the Saturn was a parrallel processing system with extremely poor dev tools so I'd say given the hardware available at the time it was one of the most hideous platforms to develop for, perhaps ever.  At the end of the day until it happens on the PS3 we will not know.

 

@ GG okay if so prove it by the HUGE amount of DLC you WILL make for this awesome game!

Nice one Gilgamesh :]

Procrastinato said: I'd just like to put in that I completely, wholeheartedly, agree with the OP. The PS3 is easier than the PS2 to develop for, without question. And um... using DMAs isn't exactly rocket science. The PS3 is not really very hard to develop for, unless the place you learned to program taught everything in Java and C#. That's frightenly true in more circumstances than you may want to believe. The number of C++ programmers who even understand the fundamentals of compiler optimization is really really small. The 360 has dev tools that cater fairly well to those types of programmers -- which is a good thing, considering. This fact is also the reason that writing a PS3 engine, and porting it to the 360, is a better plan than the opposite, if you're looking for high performance -- development schedules like to demand things way before they are ready, and the 360 makes it easy... almost too easy.. to get stuff working, without actually working well. Ironic, yes. Therein lies the future of improving anything on the 360, down the road -- writing engines to work much like PS3-exclusive engines. Not joking. There's plenty of room for improvement, though, IMO.

 

Interesting take.  Of course, I guess as 360 has the SDK and code library (plus ready engines like U3) there is no doubt that for the average developer it will seem easier and if the results are deemed 'good enough' then nothing is going to change.

I seem to remember Ted Price from Insomniac took this stance in a previous release - that PS3 requires good code, period, to work, and in some ways enforces better coding that 360 as a result.

It is pretty obvious that not all developers will have the staff/resources to always aim high.  I mean look at all the average games running on U3 vs Epic's own titles - its obviously that no matter how open the engine is the developers who understand it at a low level produce better results every time than developers who are only using it as a toolset and don't really understand its inner workings.

The shame is comments such as those by GG, or Insomniac (or Epic and other developers) tend to be taken out of context.  It's always seen as an attack or slight rather than an opinion and is often backed by that developers take on development - i.e. some claim 360 is better because it doesn't require such rigourous code, because the SDK takes care of much of that, while others claim PS3 is better for (in a sense) exactly the same reason.

 

Gilgamesh said: Looks like all other devs that complained about the PS3 was just lazy.

They are just saying that cause they made 2 bad games on the PS2.

 

 

slowmo said: MikeB said: @ slowmo I'm sure the PS3 isn't as hard to maximise performance as the PS2 or Saturn but it is more difficult than its 2 main rivals it would seem. IMO "maximise" would be much harder on the PS3 to achieve, as it is a lot more advanced than the PS2 was. Like it will be much easier still to get the most out of a c64, as the amount of resources and potential are rather limited in comparison. On a modern multi-core PC it would be similar hard to achieve, in reality those systems have a lot more potential than especially Windows/Direct X (and most modern gaming engines) allow (apart from the horribly inefficient bulky host OS, also ever changing configurations play an important factor here). We are far from the point at which developers will feel the need to hand optimise everything on the PS3, as with the code they have moved to the SPUs so far they still have a lot of headroom. But there are endless oppertunities to optimise for the Cell's SPUs, which of course would take an endless amount of time. I'll disagree on the grounds we will not see developers going to assembly code anywhere near as much this generation to achieve performance increases.  Also the Saturn was a parrallel processing system with extremely poor dev tools so I'd say given the hardware available at the time it was one of the most hideous platforms to develop for, perhaps ever.  At the end of the day until it happens on the PS3 we will not know.

IMO it won't happen, except for the most time and performance dependent parts of PS3 gaming engines. That was my point actually, the PS3 will never really be maxed out completely, there will always be additional oppertunities to optimise.

But I think half a decade from now it will probably require more and more time and work to generate significant gains for top gaming engine developers, but the gaming engines will likely become far more optimised than for PC games as this is a console and while knowing exactly the non-changing hardware, optimising as much as you can achieve within a given development time makes good sense.

MikeB said: slowmo said: MikeB said: @ slowmo I'm sure the PS3 isn't as hard to maximise performance as the PS2 or Saturn but it is more difficult than its 2 main rivals it would seem. IMO "maximise" would be much harder on the PS3 to achieve, as it is a lot more advanced than the PS2 was. Like it will be much easier still to get the most out of a c64, as the amount of resources and potential are rather limited in comparison. On a modern multi-core PC it would be similar hard to achieve, in reality those systems have a lot more potential than especially Windows/Direct X (and most modern gaming engines) allow (apart from the horribly inefficient bulky host OS, also ever changing configurations play an important factor here). We are far from the point at which developers will feel the need to hand optimise everything on the PS3, as with the code they have moved to the SPUs so far they still have a lot of headroom. But there are endless oppertunities to optimise for the Cell's SPUs, which of course would take an endless amount of time. I'll disagree on the grounds we will not see developers going to assembly code anywhere near as much this generation to achieve performance increases.  Also the Saturn was a parrallel processing system with extremely poor dev tools so I'd say given the hardware available at the time it was one of the most hideous platforms to develop for, perhaps ever.  At the end of the day until it happens on the PS3 we will not know. IMO it won't happen, except for the most time and performance dependent parts of PS3 gaming engines. That was my point actually, the PS3 will never really be maxed out completely, there will always be additional oppertunities to optimise. But I think half a decade from now it will probably require more and more time and work to generate significant gains for top gaming engine developers, but the gaming engines will likely become far more optimised than for PC games as this is a console and while knowing exactly the non-changing hardware, optimising as much as you can achieve within a given development time makes good sense.

I'll conceed on the PS2 point a little, but not the Saturn which technically was a complete mess. 

Hmmm...A dev that have actually worked and developed a game for ps3 says it's easy and ppl say their bullshitting but a former bungie dev that never even made/developed even a single game for ps3 says somthing about the console ppl find it very credible? WTF brain damage?.