**Slash** said: " ...PS3 didn't take us a long time to get up and running." O RLY? that's why it took guerilla only 5 years to finish killzone 2 eh

Good question.

S.T.A.G.E. said: **Slash** said: " ...PS3 didn't take us a long time to get up and running." O RLY? that's why it took guerilla only 5 years to finish killzone 2 eh   Good question.

 

They're refering to understanding the tech enough to get programming well on it.  5 years to develop engine from scratch, bots, SP/MP assets, etc. is nothing too shocking in perspective.  It took Epic 5 years to produce Unreal after all.  When looking at a game like Gears, as a counter point, remember its sitting on an engine with a huge number of years of development behind it.

Why do you think so many developers today are tempted to license engines like U3 in the first place?  Developing a cutting edge engine takes a lot of time.

 

Well, being easier to program than the PS2 is not a hard thing to do...

Thats good news that PS3 is easy to developer for,how ever i must ask my self does this mean PS3 is really maxed out this early in its life?

Legend11 said: Gilgamesh said: Killzone 2 devs: PS3 easier to develop for than PS2, simpler structure than Xbox 360/PC Killzone 2 devs would have you believe the PS3 is easier to develop on than the PS2. Hermen Hulst, Managing Director of Guerilla Games' has revealed some thoughts on being developer for Sony's consoles: "If you are native to PlayStation, our tech director doesn't say it's particularly difficult. It's specific, but it's not difficult like PS2 was difficult - PS2 was difficult to crack, but PS3 didn't take us a long time to get up and running." Hulst concedes multiplatform developers could have take more issue working with the Playstation 3 "because it is very different" from other consoles. Development Director Arjan Brussee added: "I actually think PS3 is a simpler architecture than some of the other consoles; you just have to have a certain mindset on how to address it. I think the Cell-based processor with the SPUs and the super high speed DSPs that you can throw all your calculation tasks at gives us a model that's way easier to program for, even for junior programmers, than the general purpose multi-core type of architecture, which the PC and Xbox 360 have." http://www.examiner.com/x-3707-LA-Gaming-News-Examiner~y2009m4d3-PS3-easier-to-develop-for-than-PS2-simpler-structure-than-Xbox-360PC Looks like all other devs that complained about the PS3 was just lazy.   So I guess the vast majority of developers that have made games for both the 360 and PS3 and claim the 360 is easier to develop for are just bullshitting us.  I guess all those games delayed for the PS3 were just lazy developers out partying too late at night or surfing too much on the net.  Hey you lazy developers, if you're reading this get back to work!

Well if you read the article, you'd see he mentioned the mindset of the developer.

Of course the PS3 is going to be harder to develop for if you try to program it like a 360. If you look at all the multiplatform games that your post is addressing, they all had the 360 as the lead console.

If you look at many multliplatform games of today, they have the PS3 lead and it all goes smoothly.

 

Garnett said: Thats good news that PS3 is easy to developer for,how ever i must ask my self does this mean PS3 is really maxed out this early in its life?

If you are a competent developer, the PS3 has always been an easy platform to develop for (something new, just takes some time to built an engine for). If the company is dependent on 3rd party middleware the PS3 has now gotten a lot more powerful and easy to take advantage of as well.

With regard to maxing out the hardware, no, the developers of the PS3's most impressive games say there's a lot of headroom to be tapped into in the coming years. In the year ahead of us some games may start to tap the bulk of CPU resources, but there will still be endless oppertunities for optimisation.

For example even 360 launch titles already tapped the bulk of the 360's resources, but there were stilll gains to be witnessed up to the release of Gears of War 2. This despite Epic claiming they already maxed out the 360 with Gears of War 1, which may have been true at the time from some perspectives, but their engine still saw gains from mainly SPU related enhancements on the PS3. PS3 development practices are far more efficient, which benefits other platforms as well.

 

I Have to say: that the article may have some truth in it even thought it took time to develop KZ2, the game was actually top notch I played it and still playing it the graphic rendering cannot be done in one go in less than 5 years. If you used another middleware then it will take less. But those guys have done exceptional work that may have taken them decades to do on another platform.

Or may be they say it easy now that they have finished the game.!!!!!

@ mero4ever

Basically what they say is that the PS3 may be difficult for some as it's different. Like English would be much harder for someone who has only spoken in Arabic.

On the other hand they say the Cell's architecture is easier to work with. Like for example the x86 architecture is one of the most horrible CPU architectures to work with, for example the PPC architecture and almost all other CPU architectures are a lot more powerful, efficient and pleasant to work with. (Sadly one of the reasons why a lot of deeper knowledge has been lost within the developer community, IBM compatibles became dominant)

For the latter point compare with cell phone vs smoke signals as a means of communication.

@MikeB

The PS3 came out in 2006.

It's 2009 now and you're till sitting here saying that the devs haven't even touched the bulk of The Cell potential.

When are all these fantastic games coming out??

@ Slimebeast

As you can't simply recompile code for the SPUs, developing game engines to take full advantage of the Cell's SPUs just takes time.

Even some PS3 exclusives didn't use the Cell SPUs during launch at all. And it's not like there's only 1 or 2 extremely powerful SPUs to take advantage of as well. If the PS3 had 24 spare SPUs to work with it wouldn't have changed much with regard to the current state of PS3 game engines (yet the CPU potential would have been far greater and thus there would have been far more headroom left to tap into).

BTW, the PS3 has only been on the market for 2 years around here. Due to being different the PS3 also launched with immature dev tools and firmware, this has meanwhile been taken care of for the largest part. The hardware was ready, but the software to a great extend wasn't.

The two most impressive console games to date:

Killzone 2 is already out, however like GG pointed out they will be able to push Killzone 3 much further.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is already out, however like ND pointed out they will push Uncharted 2 much further for this year.

"After we shipped Uncharted: Drake's Fortune we gave our programmers some time to freely explore any aspect of our engine or the hardware that they were interested in," Wells revealed. "We've been able to squeeze out a lot more of the power out of the Playstation 3, by optimizing our SPU code and parceling out more jobs to the SPUs in general."

With the Naughty Dog Engine 2.0, the programmers behind the game can "do more, do it better and do it faster". This allows for more polygons on screen at once, not only allowing for more characters on screen at once, but also more detailed models as well. Uncharted 2 also features a more dynamic lighting system."