Genra

WingNutZA

Seconded!

---

If I had a hammer...

kNZA

Runna

cubabit

cubabit

cubabit

Hey and thanks for calming down. And you do realize i wasn't the guy you where posting at before right? It's all good man.

Also too I was just exposing the weaknesses and also displaying how most companies actually whine when they don't have what is present in other systems. Hey man if you can get this thing humming then more power to you. I only bad mouth it because no one has explained who they are going to use the streaming idea of the blue ray in conjuction with the SPEs to actualy over come the problems of less ram.

The simple choice would be to just lower textures or some thing else to make it all fit al the 16 bit day arcade conversions. I'm not sure if the current batch of hardcore players would be ok with that ya know?

No hard feelings yet if you know some thing I don't feel free to post it ight. I don't have time to play around with the programming side of the PS yet i have a host of programmers to speak with that know their stuff.

No hard feeling guy... we got off to a bad start!

Runna

I have to call you on your '360 is more like a PC' comments.

Aside from the connection with M$, the 360 is LESS like a PC than the PS3.

Both use processors based on PPC - never used in windows PCs.

360 uses a unified memory architecture unlike PCs which use a discrete system/graphics memory architecture like the PS3.

The 360 has a special frame-buffer RAM pool which PC GPUS do not contain. Its GPU was specially designed for the console unlike the RSX which is almost straight off of Nvidia's shelf.

I guess you could say the DVD in the 360 makes it more like a PC but that is a pretty weak connection.

kNZA

mcderek3000

PS I think Ubisoft has already done that once in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

mcderek3000

mcderek3000

Games in the past were strictly linear, full of FMV and divided into levels with individual assets. Games of today are mainly open world, re-use assets, in-engine cutscenes and the majority of space requirements are from high-resolution textures and high-quality dialogue. The 2-disc solution is no longer as feasible.

Overall the problems with the consoles are what we have been hearing from developers for a while now. PS3 once again has difficulties with its unusual architecture and the X360's use of DVDs may trouble it in the future.

mcderek3000

TheIrishNinja

I don't remember selling my hobby project. It's not a source of income as much of a source of something to do when I have time. Most people that use my hobby project seem to just use it to put porn in Quakewars / LineageII / etc. Soon I'll support Second Life, so I'm sure artists like you will make unicorns raping people or worse. I don't care what artists do with my application in regard to content at least. I'm currently working as a contractor, and never plan on selling my hobby work. Thanks for asking.

Actually you can 'talk to the RSX' outside the hypervisor in PS3Linux. However I clearly can't work on that after working on the PS3, but plently of other people are working on it. Today blitting, and tomorrow a functional T&L system at least. OSS projects run at their own pace. This is doubly true when you must reverse engineer as you go.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I just see you bad mouthing hardware you don't seem to understand. If you're bitching about the 256MB video ram limit then the only problem is the limits of your own talent. If you want to work on any console you're going to have limited ram. At best on the Xbox 360 you can rob some memory from the game process to get a little more video memory, but not enough to make a huge difference. Otherwise you wouldn't have room for AI, sound buffers, data structures, etc. You know 'the game'. Trust me when I say it's a solved problem when even gamebyro works just fine. ^^

Mongoosekun

functioningbadly

I think those guys have chosen a platform for those epics though... so far it's the PC and xbox 360.

Runna

@TheBard: You don't play online games do you? Do you have a MS live account... didn't think so so both of us are lucky! Talking tech is sorta like talking to foot ball fans...LOL They only really want to talk trash. Also if this was real life I doubt he would be even saying what he just posted. This is a post board he has no clue who I am... and no I'm not silly enough to do a blog...LOL

For the most part I like some of the gamers here because they really are gamers. Talking trash is fun any ways. You guys take stuff too serious. Now if I sent this guy over a cliff then hey say some thing , I was just messing with him. Really you shouldn't talk junk if you can't take it.
Hey he wanted it and I brought it? I treat people how they treat me it's only fare.

Runna

Reduser

OmegaKulu

So... um...

We are porting it to the PS2 and Wii because, well, we didn't realize that we were building the game for the DS.

Mact

Reduser

TheBard

diktafunk

On another thing I have to give major credit to Epic though on their Ut beta! Color me impressed. I went out side of the geometry and the engine is even more tweaked than before! It almost looks like they are using a BSP editor for static meshes! They are not but it looks like it! I can't wait for the next engine revision to drop! Man this stuff is getting pretty good. Plus too their art is looking a lot better this time. Back on subject though...

I've been thinking about the whole SPE thing and the idea of voxels and pixel shaders along with particles.
I wonder what they could do with an idea like that right now? It seems the cell is going to need some really new thinking for it to be fully used. The reason why I ask is z brush lets you work with a retarded amount of polygons and you can even store your colors in a single polygon. If your mesh is dense enough it actually works better than UV maps. I mean if they could some how use this approach they could for go the whole texture thing almost. Hmmmmmm I'll have to talk to some people about that at work tomorrow. I doubt it if it can be done in game though. It if it true then that would solve the problem of having a UV map all together. Hell if some one could get a .ZTL file running in a game engine just to do some bench marks that would shed some light on the whole thing.

I bring up pixologic because no one believed in what they where doing way back when it was a great idea yet people just could not figure it out. Now ever one uses it, from the movies to video games to traditional artist. I love new tech just like any one else but really things will have to change drastically for them to make the cell shine. It's good to see people still got hope for it but really sony needs to talk to their people and tell them to stop trying to crap any thing and every thing on to this system. It ends up making every one look bad, yet SONY will be left holding the bill when all the dust settles.

Runna

I mean really I was talking about some thing totally different then this guy then he just comes on here and tries to insult me on an old thread too, that just pissed me off even more. If I wouldn't have look up who was talking about blue ray seek times then I would still be pissed. He it was a mistake from the looks of it on his part. No one wants to talk about the memory problems on this thing...

Runna

wahlumsurfer

Seriously guys, WTF?

TheBard

Runna

@TheIrishNinja: Read the comments dude... he came out trying to act like just because I did graphics I was under him or some thing. Then to find out he was actually posting to the wrong guy... He was trying to post at Immortal...LOL just look above.

Is this one of your friends or some thing? Next time you send him here tell him to pick the right post to talk about.

That guy doesn't have a chance with my girl. Also too you know how it goes when people talk shit.

Runna

Genra

TheIrishNinja

1. Console will ALWAYS be inferior to PC, because they need to make the cost appealing, and it's not upgradeable.

2. "next-gen console" is relative to what CONSOLE that come before it, and improve upon that. (eg. xbox/ps2, NOT PC)

3. HD-Gaming is only apply to MS and Sony for their way of saying "looks better than your 480i TV" PC does not apply(you have the crap 800x600 and the uber 1600x1200 or higher)

4. 360 is build with more resemblance to PC so it benefits from it, but still not on par with PC in anyway.

5. PS3 have their share of problems, but in the end, it is a console, it's not aiming to replace PC in any way.

It doesn't matter if it's a 360 or PS3, a comparison between a console and a PC is like laptop VS PDA, the comparison does not work in the perspective of cost, actual hardware or performance.

OmegaKulu

What's the absolute latest they can ship to still get in on Christmas? And how much can they fix in a day 0 patch?

GenericKen

I mean really it's like the electric car vs the gas one... millage, torque are still problems. Hey you may not understand that either yet you have to admit that certain problems will still exist even though this chip excels at others even though it has been beaten already. Like I said before it would have been great if it would have came out on time but due to it being late and relying on known technologies like the GPU used in current PCs, it makes it awful hard to believe that this chip in it's current form was a good idea. Maybe the next cell will be better because I'm sure after all the law suits plenty of people will have input on what they like and what they don't. Man am I glad i don't have to deal with that side of the equation.

Runna

The PS3 looks nothing like a mac? What made the macs such a power house was the AltiVec tec stuff. Thats not even in this PPE for the cell either. Right now there is a point in making a definitive statement. Other people got HD gaming right it may be on the PC but even the xbox 360 got more right than the PS3 so far. You didn't see the snes or the genesis doing what the neo geo did because even though they where two different systems functions and ship almost always operate the same when it comes to physics. There is a logic in how you set up a system. If you are trying to just making prettier games then cool but if you are really trying to do what can be done on the PC then you will have some problems. The bad thing about it is there has been no word on how the battle is going. I'm hoping like every one else that IBM shows us how to get the most out of this thing before intel shows us how it's done.

Even if you used the streaming idea would you not need more bandwidth to pull that off? That is what I'm pointing at here. Blue ray is great but is it as fast as ram? Does the PS3 have some magical HD that is faster than ram? Where is all of this crap going to be stored so that each peace can be added to the next?

Runna

OmegaKulu

In terms of programing, PS3 right now looks more like a mac in developer's eye with the cell's architecture. The problem with RAM is still in question, we don't know if it is the actual hardware architecture or the programing. Yes, it COULD be really that it just doesn't have enough RAM, but this is still unknown. Yes, the cell is a huge downfall for PS3, but PC programing didn't get where they're at today in just over 2 years of time. Theres no point making a definitive statement.

OmegaKulu

Runna

"What this means for gaming on the PS3 is that, no, there will never be a game that truly taps the "full potential" of the Cell BE, because that full potential can only be tapped by certain types of data-parallel HPC workloads. The data-parallel portion of a game will always be better suited to the PS3's NVIDIA-designed GPU."

[arstechnica.com]

It's old news though and I'm sorta tired of waiting for a programming methodology that works.

A General Purpose Conclusion from MR.Blachford:

Cell will not magically accelerate a general purpose system, it will require considerable work to get the best out of it. It's not even clear if anyone actually intends to build a desktop system using the Cell after Apple went off and got some "Intel inside".

The Cell designers have deliberately produced a simple design in order to get around the heat problems complex designs now suffer [HPCA] . This has allowed them to produce a processor with 9 cores while the rest of the industry is shipping just 2. On top of that they have also been able to boost the clock speed.

In order to create this kind of system and get around the rising power consumption problems the industry is facing, the Cell designers have produced cores with a relatively simple architecture. In order to do this they have removed some common features which while useful are not critical to performance.

The resulting simplicity will impact performance in some areas but a combination of higher clock speeds, new compiler technology and smart algorithm selection should largely get around these problems.

The SPEs will be particularly sensitive to the type of code running as they are more "tuned" than conventional processors. In these cases it will be important to allocate the correct type of code to the right processor. This is why the PPE and SPEs are different.

the full thing is here...[www.blachford.info]

And now for the real problem.. talking to the RSX which SONy won't even let you do in the linux port.

Memory:

* 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
* 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth:

* Main RAM: 25.6GB/s
* VRAM: 22.4GB/s
* RSX: 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
* SB: 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

In normal HD environments you have some thing like this...

GDDR4 at 1.1 GHz clock speed
* Total bandwidth 115 GB/s on GDDR3
* Total bandwidth 140 GB/s on GDDR4

If I remember correctly.

So do you see what I mean here? That is on a r600. now the Ps2 could hide behind it crazy bandwidth for that time as a reason for why it was thought to be powerful, yet the cell is looking more and more like the media processor that it is.

Hey keep hope alive... There is a problem right there... unless you like your HD games looking slightly compressed or watered down on the other HD system... yeah i'm talking about the PS3. If they prove me wrong then won't we all be so happy!

You guys should stop using the wiki really any one can edit that crap. It's like letting people add stuff to the religious book of your choice.

Runna

camsauce

I don't read the wiki man... you guys swear by it no wonder you still believe in it(the cell). Hey what ever floats your boat.

Also too how are they not equal? The chips are barely custom and these where not built from the ground up for these platforms they are merely alterations of what available. You know that was actually done to make it easier for developers that have pay large amounts of money for tools and other things that work perfectly for a give card or API.

You are assuming I have programmed the thing...LOL I do my home work as a hardcore gamer you should have already. I really don't see how you guys can just say hey the GPUs in the console are not even comparable to the ones on the market. I mean hell you are acting like they are using voxels or some thing. The tech they have in front of us right now is directly comparable. If it's not then explain why since you understand why they arn't.

-Enlighten me-

Runna

OmegaKulu

BY IMMORTALZ AT 10/13/07 06:38 AM

@TOCATL:

Not really. The 360 is a PC with a triple-core PowerPC based CPU and a DX9.0c + some DX10 GPU. It has a standard DVD drive, a USB port interface, a bluetooth wireless stack...

Programming for it is nothing new. PPC used to be king before x86 (still is in some apps). The 360's reliability issues have nothing to do with the basic system design. It was/is a manufacturing defect due to too much cost-cutting from Microsoft's part.

A PS3 on the other hand, has a completely new CPU micro architecture that was designed for CPU+GPU operation and then changed to work with a discrete GPU at the last minute. It has a Blu-Ray drive, which is entirely new (bad seek times are one of the biggest problems on new drive tech - it makes streaming off the disc a difficult proposition).

While the rest of the PS3 hardware is the usual fare (802.11 based wireless, USB etc etc), the core design is entirely new tech, which forces devs to learn a lot of new ways of programming things for it. This situation will continue for a couple of years at the very least. Exclusive devs have the luxury of having to deal with one and only one beast - but the PS3 isn't selling very well and they need to sell those games to make money to make the next game.

It's a sort of a vicious circle. :

Now show me where My name is in that post? your a smart kid right. Do you see runna any where in there?
I'm fine with blue ray and I'll be fine with what is going to super seed it pretty soon.

Really man say your sorry and I'll give you a free pass... people make mistake but now we know how you feel about all those artist your making you app for... shame on you....LOL

Runna

Runna

Just what I though another student trying to act like he knows the answer to the PS3 problem and still holding on to the hope that the cell is the greatest thing since sliced bread...LOL

I'm grilling you because you need to wake up. Hell did you are some one else get the PS2 audio emulated on the PS3? I mean damn man your not taking credit for what some one else did in an open source project are you? I hope not.

Stop posting at me ok... do your self a favor along with you career and just leave it at that ight?

WOW man post any thing with some mistakes in it and people think they can walk all over you when they can't even get a pay check for what they are doing. Really man all you had to do was post your little comment on the seek times that no one was talking about in the first place then i would not be writing you these post. Really what where you trying to prove? Are you mad at people in the industry because you can't get in? Trying to insult me on the low won't help will it? You will get in there when you have shown that you are good or either get really cool with some one already their.

Please show me with my own word where I posted about seek times are did some one tell you that over IRC...LOL if so you sir are a fool. It's bandwidth from the RSX to the cell... hell you can't even fix your own PC from over heating! Sorry to get so nasty with your but really I did nothing to you man and you pick the wrong person ok.

Runna

I didn't even bother to fully read all your new posts, since you seem kind of crazed or troubled. If you want some PS2/PS3 middleware -- I'll sell you some. I'll double the price just for you. ^^

Mongoosekun

As for the AC, I was a bit shocked to hear that the problems listed are at the top of the scale. The AI seemed really flaky.

There's an article I read through this morning about the game on BBC news One.

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Patient

Kill him Mr. B!!!

isoo

Runna

Really I hop he gets to see what hell it is when you claim to be able to do some thing and it gets hit with a delay like this.

Runna

It's not a big step, and it might not even be a step, but if it is a step, it's a good one.

A-Rude-Hero

isoo

You know how it goes either you make it happen or either you get packing. Why do you think I have so much free time? my work is done dude... Why the hell are you posting here you have madd stuff to fix and make. Which delayed game are you working on?

Oh yeah my girl probably looks way better than yours any way...LOL so stop with the gay shit ight? Girls love the artist as long as they are str8...LOL

Runna

Runna

I'm an artist yes and you are the programmer well tell us how the fuck you would fix the problems at hand? I mean grad student thesis papers won't hell ubi soft right now or will they? All this talk about breaking the program up is great but really is this using the IBM compiler or what? We both know C is not very friendly to multi cores so what are you using? A variant of C on the PS3? I mean tell us all why we keep seeing this happen? You got the inside scoop?

Seriously your a programmer and I know you love the tech yet take a step back kid... is a solution even possible at this point? Your trying to tell me epic, valve and a whole list of other guys are having trouble yet there is not a problem here.

But you know what their is one ray of hope. If you are the guy working on ID tech 5 with john I will give you props because they already have their tech working on the PS3... So it is possible but really I'm not sure what they are sacrificing either. Maybe there is away but really how do you make up for the lack of ram really... Believe me it won't be over my head. Just give it a try.

Runna

What's your point? All PS3s have HDDs, but 360s don't -- so it's still better for the PS3 side of the argument. My point is simply people need to learn the difference between a max seek and actual seek time. Using a single layer on BD makes seeks faster, and at the same time using more on the DVD makes them slower than single. Then given caching / compression / etc the BD is still better off. I don't really know what point you try to make other than you're on drugs with the rest of your comment.

My example was a reference to the game demo mixing 512 audio voices on a single SPE. The PS2 VU reference was about emulating DSPs to provide next generation audio on a device that was built before the standard was even a draft. That's very impressive if you don't know. Normal maps are a solved problem, which has nothing to do with seek times.

I don't go around telling people I know the names of every shade of pink. You shouldn't make up facts about programming. It really is that simple. Artists are fine -- some of my best friends are artists that even work on Microsoft projects, but people that make up bullshit should be expected to be called out on it. Please go to rehab. ^^

Mongoosekun

Runna

That's where the differentiation is made. [en.wikipedia.org]

isoo

NEWSFLASH:
.
.
The name isn't Al-tair [al.tayr] (the bird), it is Al-ta'ir [Al.ta.ir] - both words come from the Arabic verb "tar" [flown] (past tense).

Alta'ir does indeed mean "The flying one/thing".
Guess we have learned something new!

isoo

the other half is going back to the game's code and streamlining it, which is better overall for the game. Less code = simpler system = easier to fix bugs and harder to create them. The only downside is that new bugs will arise from the code being re-written, which could delay it further.

Problem 2 is an entire programming problem and the programmers will need to make sure memory is handled properly EVERYWHERE. A considerable challenge.

Codexx

Shteve

@bobbiac:
Your option 3 isn't an option since games currently can't be run in the HD-DVD drive.

RykinPoe

Actually in this case the Blu-ray seek times are better than the DVD9. Please go back to your photoshop cube until you understand why [not] using extra layers causes the seek range to skew. Silly artists. Now tell me why you need 10k vertices for a map mesh again. ^^

Mongoosekun

Actually we were able to emulate audio hardware designed and released after the PS2 with the VU units for example. If you have that much extra processing power lying around there are many good uses. You should see what a single SPE can do for audio now. Also for physics and graphics geometery it's pretty damn nice among other uses. Regardless of what Ubisoft says you can crunch AI on it as well with the right design from the outset. Don't burden that poor PPU. ^^

Mongoosekun

It sucks they split the release as East / West on Heavenly Sword still. It is very nice to have gobal releases with one disc being the same in every region -- censored editions aside. You also don't have to worry about people forced into importing if they want both of the major 'game' languages. ( English / Japanese )

@Kanti:

Actually, Valve likes to bitch about PS3 development. That might be due to the fact they have to outsource it. If it's not D3D and Microsoft SDKs they're totally lost. It's kind of funny. ^^

Mongoosekun

valkyriex

sauvage

iToke

firesign

Gates is (mis)quoted as saying "640kb ought to be enough for anybody." What seems to be less well known is that he denies ever saying that.

Melting_snowman

Really though,
360: localization or *gasp* a second disc.
PS3? Read a book and/or learn things. You're programmers, you'll figure it out.

Seems like both scenarios aren't going to be that big of a problem.

brello

Fast-forward (as well as rewind) to a 2005 before the 360 was released and you hear the same company state that since developers aren't using an entire DVD for today's games ("today" being the PS2 and Xbox 1 generation) so there's no reason to worry about future games.

'Nuff said.

incredibilistic

Solution: you can start by putting at most two audio tracks per disc. May I suggest, perhaps, English and French? Everyone else can read the damn subtitles.

Or, you know, make a different disc for Germany than for France (and Spain or whoever else you are doing a audio track for)

Not that this should be my problem, or delay my region's release, as I freaking live in North America. Put out the damn English version.

I wonder how much this is going to delay release. as much as the PC version was delayed?

*shrug* anythings better than releasing a incomplete or half-finished game.

Akin

Athest

[www.us.playstation.com]

I'd say that's probably a good, official source, sadly. :(

I miss the days when nearly every game came out when it was scheduled to. Sigh.

Lethal_Dosage

Spew

NumberONE

Using the HD DVD drive is an idiot decision in the making

take a bow

roker

slyzxx786

have the 5 languages be a free update from live.

or 4 languages sinceyou'll probably want english.

presto117

I post here for fun really. Thats why you see so many LOLs. Until you star talking about better ways to do HD uvs or painting normal maps in real time I won't be too serious on here since most of you guys are gamers. Tech stuff isn't welcomed here.

Hell the joking nature of kotaku is the reason why I come here.

Runna

Runna

Truth.

In the end, each system will kick ass with different kinds of games.

Aside:

I was shocked at how clear your writing became in this post! ^^

kNZA

Runna

...

just kidding!

wfrantic

Shiryu

@Kato: yes there are plenty of tards yet hold up... the lastest delay seems to be cause by a developer that did not want to compromise what they have already made. I think this is ubi's last shot to get sony to come help them...LOL I think SONY openned up a bag of worms by publicly telling people they where helping epic now they will have to hold every ones hands when it comes to coding this thing, yet it is there own fault. Good tech sorta just works when you right code for it. I wonder if nuaghty dog can fix this one?

Runna

As I explained, the SPEs are the new part of the Cell.

The PPE is almost identical to 1/3 of the 360's CPU.

kNZA

"...they really had no idea how to program for the PS3 in the first place..."

I think you are not understanding the complaint about memory.

-----------

The PS3 has 512MB of RAM.

The RSX GPU has 256MB.

The Cell CPU has 256MB.

They are separate and those numbers never change.

--------
The 360 has 512MB of RAM.

The CPU has access to up to 512MB.

The GPU has access to up to 512MB.

The total never exceeds 512MB.

This flexible approach allows different games to allocate memory differently. If a game is huge in computation and AI, you can offer the CPU more memory. If a game is huge in textures and graphic data, you can give the GPU more.

That is the second major advantage that the 360 has over the PS3.

The first is the much larger General Purpose CPU capability (3 cores vs 1).

Weaknesses obviously include smaller storage medium and lack of standardized HDD.

Once the game is in memory, the 360 has more power.

kNZA

Runna

There is actually one strong similarity between the Cell and the Xenon/Xenos CPU:

The Cell's "PPE" is a PowerPC based CPU. There are 7 SPE cores attached.

The 360 CPU is a 3-core PowerPC based CPU. Each core is almost the same as the "PPE" but just a little more powerful.

Hence, if you ignore the SPEs, the 360 has significantly more processing power than the PS3.

Flame away!

kNZA

PS3 nice floating point performance, great for server function and processing video at HD frame buffer sizes.

Bad for shader performance once you get into the real HD texture resolutions. Remember shader require multiple passes.

No matter how much FP power the cell or the RSX has they will need more memory if Ubi is going to really do an HD game. the xbox is simply the better choice since it has the ram right now.

Hey go and look up some thing called a frame buffer or better yet go check out a real tech site and see how much better the real HD GPU are. If it wasn't for vista there would be more code running on the G80 and the r600 than the cell right now due to the fact it can almost handle real programs now!

If some thing doesn't make sense then tell me... other wise you just look like a dumb ass. 256 +cell does not equal good... The magic bullet has always been known in every tech before it came out. I mean really intel has already ran into these problems with test chips.

@Shah: Oh I forgot I supose to use WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Runna

"Option 2: Base Game on DVD, LAnguages d/l the languages to the HDD."

The most sensible comment in the entire thread!

Fuck the Core!

Hear me developers?

The Core is for casual gamers and Kenny. You will lose like 10 sales if you require HDD for caching/downloading.

Seriously, FUCK THE CORE!

M$ has already given their blessing to "HDD required" games. Don't be afraid, do it!

kNZA

I had a lot of faith in this game, but more and more it seems like these guys don't know what they're doing. If the 360 textures get scaled down or models get less polys so FIVE LANGUAGES can fit on the disk, well, I'll have to buy the PC version, I'm sorry.

Kato

To be fair to RageKage (?) The order would go "learn manderin chinese quick", "learn english quick",......~~...... "learn spanish quick", and so forth. French wouldn't make it until like # 10.

But BOBBIAC had the right idea, Offer the language for DLC to the HDD, but that would screw the 360's with no hard drive, and like someone said, maybe the languages have something to do with the ingame expieriance.

nettokun

That is a really dumb comment.

Gears of War is a linear game.

It is a PERFECT candidate for a second disk.

It also has a multiplayer component which could easily be held on a second disk.

The whole point here is that a game which allows free movement and back-tracking is a poor candidate for multiple disks.

kNZA

From what I heard the power PC chip in the cell is even less powerful than the one in the xbox 360. And yes it(the PS3) does use a version of the power PC family. This has been know for a while now. For this chip to even do the magic you are hoping for you would need crazy bandwidth from the disk media which it doesn't have. Or at least it would need a nice interconnect for the cell and the rsx... or maybe if they just put the damn rsx in the cell and pack some sram in there with normal Gddr on the PCB. You see what I did there right...

The quicker you understand this problem the less you will be frustrated by delays.

@penhalion:
I don't think these guys are reading your post man. We have been saying this for a while minus the LOLs. This reminds me of the good old voodoo days when nvida came out swinging. Those guys though that voodoo could actually beat those guys just by throwing more chips on the system too yet those where real cores. Have you heard of any thing thats going to help dev lopers find the magic bullet? I mean I have not seen any thing displaying how the cell can make 256 megs looks like 600-1024 megs? FP a side that does nothing for some one who actually wants to show more than one thing with real HD texture on it.

The only thing I think developers are learning is that this console should have certain type of games. I mean it can have assissin's creed yet it will be like the old 16 bit days verse the arcade maybe...LOL sorry but I could not resist. This whole situation is only going to get worst as time goes on. the only thing that can save the PS3 is compression and lots of it!

Runna

[www.gamepro.com]

quote from link >>>
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"If you happen to be a PS3 Cell chip, stay the heck away from Valve's Gabe Newell because he doesn't like you very much. Correction, he STILL doesn't like you very much.

In fact, during an interview with U.K. rag Edge, Newell made it clear that he thinks Sony's entire next generation console is "a waste of everybody's time."

"Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There's nothing there that you're going to apply to anything else. You're not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they've created. I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution," Newell said.

I don't think they're going to make money off their box. I don't think it's a good solution."

--Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve

Right now, Newell's correct: Sony doesn't make a dime off the PS3 because it's selling the console as a loss leader, and plans to make its money back off licensing for popular games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Square Enix's Final Fantasy IP. That said, when one your biggest Japanese franchises jumps ship to the competition because of high development costs attributed to the PS3's architecture, it doesn't help matters (Monster Hunter 3 is now Wii-exclusive).

Newell, whose Orange Box Xbox 360/PC compilation received rave reviews following its launch earlier this week, has long been a vocal critic of Sony's PS3 strategy. Earlier this year he asked Sony to scrap the PS3 and start fresh with a "do over." "

badsectors

Norellicus

Im just not convinced on the PS3 anymore, from what i read a while ago the PS3 was going to be the killer system and looking at the specs a year ago it really did look like something special but it turns out to be an incredibly badly designed machine that is ahead of its time in some aspects of its technology but stoneage in connecting that technology together. It makes me laugh even more when i read about the sony/nvidia union, you see when the PS3 was in development it was initially going to be controlled by 2 cell processors but when sony discovered the cell is so poor at producing graphical operations they went to nvidia but it was too late in the development of the PS3 for nvidia to make a custom chip for sony so instead they gave them a geforce 7 series based chip and from what i hear not a very good geforce 7 series chip, i hope someone writes a book about this one day as it will be such a fascinating read.

skfras

Candlejack

Seriously; how many of them buy games? Or make games?

But if a game has been originally written in Spanish and has good voice acting, I'm all for it. I can read subtitles.

Not to mention that I wouldn't start down the "More than..."-path, unless I was Chinese. :)

Melting_snowman

Really there is a reason why these PC video card have so much ram... it's because they are trying to pimp real HD gaming here and with all the shaders going the amount of ram needed goes up to.

Come on guys it's not that hard really. Hell ati has an HD video decoder and the GPGPU cards will actually crush the FP preformace of the cell.

So there stop acting like you know what I'm talking about by telling I don't know what I'm talking about. Also too if you have more info then post it.

Runna

Why they need five languages is beyond me... most products I buy here in the EU are nearly always targetted at three language groups. You get your English, Dutch and Danish versions, your French, Spanish and Italian releases and so forth...

Walshicus

Nothing is funnier than a real fan boy...really they should make a movie about it or some thing.

Also too the LOLs bait people to post like your self... my job is done here!

Runna

miguelin

"How broken would GTA: San Andreas have been if you had to put in a new disk whenever you finished all the missions in a particular city? How dense are you?!"

Obviously, genius, a muliple disc approach may hinder sandbox type games. If you actually think about all te other ypes of games, you may relize tat mot games have no impact byusing multiple discs. Of course, if you can't think of games beyond GTA, I can see why you resort to calling people dense.

SXGlory

I was blocked unfairly.

Why oh why didn't microsoft just let developers put games on HD-DVD! I reccon they've shortended the lifespan of the 360 by half simply because of this. Equally though, Sony's memory model and cpu choice has done the same to the PS3.

I predict that neither console will be able to support the kind of games us developers want to create in about another 3 years! For the 360 it's going to be 7 disk nightmares and on the PS3 it's going to be feature compromise city!

penhalion

[en.wikipedia.org] says it's supposed to mean "the flying one", I had a suspicion it's usually just used to mean "bird", though, so thanks for confirming that too.

KRIGBERT

I've always thought games like that should be done in the native language and given subtitles. How fucking annoying is Andy Fucking Serkis in HS, Christ!

Just stick it in Aramaic or whatever the language would be and put subtitles on, I think it adds to the game myself, makes it more cinematic.

I remember playing Shinobido in Japanese with subs, really enjoyed it. Played it in English and it was full of hideous Americanisms. Ninjas don't say "Cool"

PS3 version does need fixing though, I think that is actually a more serious problem, a language can be trimmed to make seperate SKU's, that's quite common, but you can't give the PS3 more RAM, it just can't happen.

Malefic

However, having played the hell out of the Hitman series, there are things that happen in Assassin's Creed that make me cringe. You should get jumped by everyone if you run into a crowd. You should get spotted if you're wearing white and on the roof carrying weapons. And then jumped.

Scuba Steve

Having Arabic as my native language - I can tell you that "Al" in Arabic is the same as "El" in Spanish or "The" in English.

AlTair : The Bird.

Depending on the position of the word within a sentence and what prefixes are attached prior to it, the "L" in "Al" sometimes becomes silent. So Altair becomes A-Tair --> with emphasis on the first letter following the article. To indicate this, the letter is written twice, thus "A - TTair".

_______
I'm still not sure why Ubisoft chose AlTair. It doesn't specifically allude to birds of prey (eagles/falcons) - just birds. The word "Nasr" or "Saqr" are more befitting IMO. - [en.wikipedia.org]

isoo

See, the problem is that the only PowerPC element in Cell is woefully underpowered for anything of serious use other than acting as an arbitrator for the SPEs. The programmers HAVE to learn to use the SPEs efficiently. Which is why it's effectively a new uarch.

@TheBard:

Exactly my point.

I sorta rambled on in my previous comment and forgot to close it with what I was trying to say :P

ImmortalZ

Wow. That explains why Heavenly Sword runs in about about 1/2 the playtime of Gears - because BluRay offers more space.

Rotmm

You can use your newfound wisdom ONLY for the PS3. Nowhere else. On the other hand, the development for x360 and PC are very much alike. If I had to learn new stuff, I would only invest my time to learn something I know I can use universally.

TheBard

They replaced the original, PPC based Cell with something else?

It's PPC offspring, just like Xenon. Just souped up with some SPEs, which seem mostly useful for curing cancer, instead of gaming.

Hardly completely new, just badly thought out, like the Emotion Engine was. Remember, it was *three* times as fast as Xbox when it came to floating point operations, makes Cell's 1.5 times as fast as Xenon seem rather pedestrian, doesn't it? And what good came of EE's massive floating point performance?

Melting_snowman

KRIGBERT

Also, as long as we're being geeks discussing languages - is anyone else annoyed that they didn't spell the original character's name as "Attaër" or something that actually resembles the Arabic?

KRIGBERT

Not really. The 360 is a PC with a triple-core PowerPC based CPU and a DX9.0c + some DX10 GPU. It has a standard DVD drive, a USB port interface, a bluetooth wireless stack...

Programming for it is nothing new. PPC used to be king before x86 (still is in some apps). The 360's reliability issues have nothing to do with the basic system design. It was/is a manufacturing defect due to too much cost-cutting from Microsoft's part.

A PS3 on the other hand, has a completely new CPU micro architecture that was designed for CPU+GPU operation and then changed to work with a discrete GPU at the last minute. It has a Blu-Ray drive, which is entirely new (bad seek times are one of the biggest problems on new drive tech - it makes streaming off the disc a difficult proposition).

While the rest of the PS3 hardware is the usual fare (802.11 based wireless, USB etc etc), the core design is entirely new tech, which forces devs to learn a lot of new ways of programming things for it. This situation will continue for a couple of years at the very least. Exclusive devs have the luxury of having to deal with one and only one beast - but the PS3 isn't selling very well and they need to sell those games to make money to make the next game.

It's a sort of a vicious circle.

ImmortalZ

Not enough disc space? Digital download it! Memory issues?....lol, never! What kind of controller scheme do you prefer?....take your pick!

Cell9song