Bayonetta Dev Talks PS3 Version Problems

[SinisterDeath]

But, as it has been said many times before, it does nothing to make game developing easier and everything to make it harder.

ITs only difficult for those developers who are stuck in the PC mindset.

Really? I had no idea. Thank you for enlightening me, for I am an ignorant child who knows not of what he speaks.

At least you admit it. Thats +1 respect points to you.

None of what you stated changes the fact that 3 cores are less than 6 "SPEs", and thus less complex.

Less Complex is a plus, but its not always the best thing out there.
Each console has there strong point.
Pound for Pound 360 and PS3 are near identical in power.
360 has the edge on 'general computations', and PS3 has the edge on floating point calculations.

Why can't the standard be easy? With the costs of development increasing so much recently, why should a console manufacturer demand that the developers spend more time trying to figure their machine out than the rival console(s)?

Dude, the point I was making was that the PS2 WAS not easy to develop for. but it WAS the standard!
The Point is, Being the 'standard' Has nothing to do with being 'easy', its all about which console hit the market first, and is able to maintain that edge!

You really couldn't make that out of what I typed?

PC guys, yeah, who are always on the forefront of technology.

Yes, Obviously they are on the forefront of technology, BECUASE THE HARDWARE CHANGES EVERY 3 MONTHS!
Consoles? The hardware virutally stays the same through out its lifespan. It sitll has the same Ghz, memory, GPU, chipsizes mayget smaller, more energy efficient, produce less heat, but they stay the same.
Can you imagine the guys who made Crysis, to still work on a 'PC' from 8 years when the PS2 was released? Course not.

Never-mind that Epic had similar problems with the Unreal Engine 3, and now id are having trouble with Rage. They're just stupid PC guys who have never EVER dealt with consoles.

Again, UT3 was made for PC First. The code was made for the PC/360. You can not easilly port a game from the 360 to the ps3. IT does not work that way. You can go 'down' from 6 cores to 3 cores, easilly, but you cannot go up from 3 cores to 6 cores easilly. That is the point.

360 works like a PC. You throw 'code' at the CPUs like on a PC.
On a PC, because every PC is going to have different CPU's, Memory, speed of the memory, GPU memory, GPU speed.. the program has to be able to operate where the 'hardware' decides how to do the operations. The Ps3 the developers have to tell the CPU how and where the operations take place.

To put it simply, on the 360, the PHYSICs, or the AI can take place on any of the 3 cores.
On the Ps3, it don't work like that. You have to program the AI or the Physics to work on one of the PPEs, or the CPU. Or both. So going from ps3, where everything is split up '7 ways' (1 general CPU and 6 SPEs) you can take 3 of those PPEs and move that over to one of the cores on the 360, Then take the other 3 PPEs and move that over to the other core on the 360.
and *GASP* guess what happens?
You now have a game that is far more optimized becuase it only uses a % of each core! its using them efficiently!

Going from PC/360 coding to PS3 though, don't work nearly as well. The architecture automatically splits that code up and distributes it depending on workload between those 3 cpus.
The PS3 cell
does.
not.
operate.
that.
way.
They have to manually change the code to work correctly.
This takes long. So they take short cuts.
Also, the SPE's aren't as good at certain types of calculations. AI being one of them. So theres certain things you put on the general CPU, and others you can put on the PPEs.

Look, no one said it was impossible, but why does it have to be harder? What benefit is there? There has yet to be any proof of any such benefits within the game world. Supercomputing perhaps, but that does not help game developers.

ITs not that its hard, its just it goes against the 'PC' mold, Where its not about optimization for one system, its about getting it to work ont hat system.

PC Developers AREN'T EVEN OPTIMIZING VIDEO GAMES ON QUAD-CORE CPU'S YET!
Why? Cause they are lazy! So yes, PC designers have no right to slam the PS3 with its 'multi-core' technology! Half of the early PS3 Ports were so shitty, they didn't use any PPEs at all, they put everything on the PS3s 1 general CPU!

PSX, the games started out rather meh. Then they got better and better... You basically went from top down mario style games, to full blown 3D... Then we got Final Fantasy 7/8/9 which is basically the pinacle of PSX graphics!
Why? Because as the programers got better at the console, they were able to use more and more of the power to its full potential! They learned more tricks.

Same happened to the PS2. The orginal PS2 games looked no better then the FF8/9. Then we got Shadow of the Collosus, RE4. Those looked great. Theres always limitations when you first learn a new 'platform'.
Its like web comics.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/9/7/

Things change, they evolve.
They may do one thing in one game, only to find theres a better more efficient way of doing it. Every year developers are constantly learning new, easier, faster, and more efficient ways to do the same thing.
Naughty Dog making Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is already giving away there 'secrets' for free to help developers make games on the PS3. And you can Not deny that Uncharted looks flippin awesome.

Why have there been no such complaints about the 360? Because, while there may be issues, the tools are there and the hardware is pretty standardized. What sort of positives does the PS3 provide that warrant it being more difficult to develop for? Honestly?

Becuase they are the stanard? They launched a year early? Developers backed Microsoft for there early launch? They already have worked on it a year in advance? Its a familiar architecture as the PC? And PC is the standard?

Right, but why have to work with the pointless SPEs? Not one single thing has been said about any sort of benefits to working with the Cell over the 360's CPU.

The PPE's are anything but pointless. Every good looking functioning game on the PS3 uses the PPE's. Those shitty ones?
They used its 1 central general purpose CPU.
If anything hte PS3 teaches, or rather forces you to be efficient with your coding. Teaches you to split up how processes are processed.
If you can do that 7 ways, you can do it 4,3,2 ways.

Almost no Game developer is making games optimized for Quad Cores, yet they are at the 'forefront' of technology. They don't like change. No one really does. And if you listened to the nintendo E3, they use that word I've been trying to think of but had to substitute for change over and over again. As they say, if it aint' broke don't fix it.
If you don't have to learn a new method, why?

I do appreciate you trying to put everything into layman's terms for my vast ignorance though.

I'm suprised you could type layman with out giggling.

 

[Starke]

All I will say is, you can not blame the developers. Sony designed the PS3 to be a **** to program for. So this is the result. You want to cry and blame someone, blame sony.
Why would you make something harder to do? Sure you may be able to make more awesome buildings on the moon, good fucking luck getting there though. Same principle. End result may potentially be more awesome but it is not worth the time and effort required.
So, you guys can keep trying to brag about your oh so unimpressive exclusives. Because lets face it, most multiplatform games are only worth playing on the 360.

Or the PC...

Still there's an element of this that defiantly strikes me as a "be careful what you wish for" kind of situation for them. They wanted to encourage exclusivity for the PS3, and they got it. Its just not the exclusion they were hopping for.

(No offense to PS3 fans intended.)

 

[DemonCrim]

wow i was looking forward to this game but this is ridiculous I have both systems and now i'm refusing to bu either version if the company was gonna do a half ass job on one copy of the game then y not just release it on 360 they are just making themselves look like idiots cause they don't want to put in the effort into fixing up a game thats gonna bear their name.

 

[Carnagath]

I don't see why I should be bashing a console because some devs are in too much of a hurry to churn out games that don't work like they should. If Crytek is apparently doing such an amazing job at developing an engine that is fully adaptable to the capabilities and quirks of every different platform in the market, then the rest can do that too. Unless they just want to release half assed pieces of shit and cash in however they can. Or unless they are incapable of it, in which case there are other jobs out there one can do, so bye bye.

 

[headshotcatcher]

Wait, platinum games? Isn't that what the japanese people were calling the rape games now?

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

/snip

It's not so much that there are more processors in the PS3 but the task they do. If it were just a PPC or x86 chip with 6 cores then the complexity everyone speaks of simply wouldn't exist.

Cell chips excel at simple mathematics run in parallel which is awesome for supercomputing task, AI, graphics and physics simulation. The remainder of a game engine is usually built with complex (often fudged together from old code) mathematics that run once, optimising this for parallel processing is a very big task and needs a different mindset to gaming before hand.

The 360 and PS3 aren't even close in raw power terms if the code is done well the PS3 requires less passes at a task and has a higher efficiency, with the well structured maths the code is more useful. The problem is that many tasks are simply not suited to parallel processing and making them fit is really hard and these days most the parallel tasks in windows games are taken care of by Directx so people don't have the practice.

The other option is to programme for the controller instead of the PPE's but then you have a pretty slow PowerPC and the PS3 is so far behind that it's not funny if you do this.

 

[lSHaDoW-FoXl]

Oh my, I could've sworn the problem would've been -

'In PS3 her boobs aren't big enough!'

Sounds unlucky, I own a PS3 but I can't really say I care too much since I simply don't care about the game. To me it seems more like a game where you stroke your control stick more then the controller. Aw well, perhaps time will prove me wrong.

 

[superdance14]

That's a weird train of thought.

"We did are best to develop for both platforms, even though we made one version and threw the other at someone else to make. Don't blame us."

 

[OnceandFutureGamer]

I certaintly see what you saying Sinister, but unfortunantly i had to look over the wall of text to find the point. Well put and well said but its going to be automatically pickd to pieces by ppl reading it. seeing it as unconnected paragraphs and not something that ties in as a whole...hence some ppls confusion on what you actually trying to say. Great post however

 

[DigitalSushi]

Heh. And I thought one of the selling points of the PS3 was its superior hardware.

Which is purposely harder to program for.

bunch of lazy developers not being able to do their job of developing

I can agree somewhat that this was a cock up, which is surprising as they are former Capcom code monkeys. But they're not the first dev team to say this. Valve and Factor 5 also expressed the difficulty they had with the hardware, for example. Even John Carmack, the guy your favourite devs pray to before they go to sleep even had problems. Oh well.

I've never understood why it was made harder to code for. If it's a technically better machine I can understand it being more complex but surely you'd go for both quality and ease of use?

I can sort of see their point that they want the games to improve in quality over time, but that just seems to pick on the early adopters which have to be at least considered the core market and their most loyal supporters.

It was a poor design choice. Basically their idea was that it would filter out the crap, and like you said, game graphics would progress over time. That's a poor excuse, because the devs should be free to make the games look as well as they can program, and 8 years into the product cycle chances are no one is going to base their purchases based on how much prettier Uncharted 3 (for example) is to Resistance: Fall of Man.

And graphical fidelity progresses over time anyway with every console! Look at God Of War 2 compared to some of the earlier titles on the PS2, or Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube compared to some early titles.

Kaz Hirai should have kept his mouth shut, and all would have been well.

Call me a conspiracy nut but I feel that the PS3 was designed from the ground up to be architecturally different from anything else before to make it difficult to code for on purpose.

Think about it, Sony make something so different and take a stranglehold over the market with a machine that is difficult to port out of, developers would only make games for the PS3 then... unfortunatly for Sony, the consumers had other ideas, and now the PS3 is the "slave" platform as opposed to the "master" platform.

 

[jamesworkshop]

bunch of lazy developers not being able to do their job of developing

.

Call me a conspiracy nut but I feel that the PS3 was designed from the ground up to be architecturally different from anything else before to make it difficult to code for on purpose.

Think about it, Sony make something so different and take a stranglehold over the market with a machine that is difficult to port out of, developers would only make games for the PS3 then... unfortunatly for Sony, the consumers had other ideas, and now the PS3 is the "slave" platform as opposed to the "master" platform.

John Carmack is way ahead of you on that one. may 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFUw29U4J8

 

[DigitalSushi]

John Carmack is way ahead of you on that one. may 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFUw29U4J8

Thanks for the link James, I'll check it out in a bit. I've probably come across some form of the argument though, its probably how I came to my opinion!.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

John Carmack is way ahead of you on that one. may 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFUw29U4J8

Thanks for the link James, I'll check it out in a bit. I've probably come across some form of the argument though, its probably how I came to my opinion!.

Aye, and just to prove you aren't a nut, here's Gabe's take on it.

3:00 onwards

 

[VanityGirl]

Heh. And I thought one of the selling points of the PS3 was its superior hardware.

Is is, but have you forgotten what a Sony rep has said about the PS3?

"We want the hardware to be difficult to write for, that way developers don't unlock all the potential early on."

And yes, they really did say that. It's on the forums.

 

[traceur_]

Well that's unfortunate. Good thing I have a PS3 and a 360.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Aye, and just to prove you aren't a nut, here's Gabe's take on it.

3:00 onwards

Hell, how old is that video? Still talking about Vista by the Longhorn codename? (Also, prophetic, the codename of the OS being named after a cow?)

 

[Goldeneye1989]

Edit: On a different note, what I despise is that everyone tries to put the blame on honest, hard-working developers that have to put up with a shittily thought-out console design.

When you say your going to do something, you do it, you dont say oh no it's to hard and then say well, the ps3 is far to hard to program for..... can i still get my money now?

No if you say, i cannot do it, you dont, or you dont get paid for the full price. It's the same as saying "sure ill park your car, give me 5 bucks (or whatever)), then coming back im sorry i dont know how to drive stick so i left the car half parked in, half in the middle of the road, time to give my 5 bucks please"

 

[VanityGirl]

I remember. Never understood the logic behind such a decision, and it sure is backfiring with the power still not accessible after several years.

It's just an excuse Sony used for making an overly complicated system. Some of the reps of Sony are almost legally retarded anyway, so I generally just laugh at anything they say.

I do feel bad that Bayonetta might be poo on the PS3 though. Makes me cry on the inside.