Porting From PC to Console Is Doing Things Backwards, Says Rage Dev

[Tdc2182]

Reading this made me realize just why thay haven't made a good game since Quake II. I'm not even a "PC gamer purist", but them saying this is like a company saying "well, we decided to make it for the Wii before porting it out to 360/PS3".

It's not at all actually.

Making a PC game is extremely difficult. It comes along with the reason why I don't think PC's should be considered consoles; because not one is the same. It's why PC gamers always have to tamper with their settings for each and every game.

While making a PC game you cannot specially cater it to a specific set of settings, it has to be completely customizable or it will only be able to be played by a certain amount of people on the purest settings. Making a console game is much easier, because you know that it will run on the exact same way it was intended on every single console.

 

[Stromko]

I don't expect that Rage will be anything special, and I believe that is why id is leading on the consoles, where purchases are made much more lightly and they'll have much easier competition. id has been doing poorly for a while and they need something to get their cash and prestige back. I very much hope that Rage is a success for them even though all the videos and previews of it haven't sparked the least bit of hope in me that it'll be the least bit compelling. If they can make some money, they can work on something more interesting down the road.

To wax apocalyptic for a bit, I honestly get the impression that we're meant to get bored of these industry games quickly, to treat them as disposable goods. A good game is like a great balanced meal, you can keep coming back to it without getting sick of it. Most of these blockbuster games are just a small piece of candy-- attractive and easy to consume, but only a short distraction before you move onto the next one.

It makes business sense. When a publisher is putting out a lot of games, why would they cannibalize their own user base by making any of them good enough that their customers would be satisfied? They only need to be good enough to make players hungry for the next one, and stand up to their competitors who are either following the same profit-motive methodology, or are small-time enough that they can't compete with these marketing juggernauts.

So I don't wonder why certain game developers make bizarrely terrible design decisions anymore, it's simply a matter of holding something back for the franchise and for the long-term interests of the industry, and they do this on all platforms including the PC. If they don't try too hard, if they focus-test all the vision out of the game, they won't have a very difficult task of selling us a follow-up that fixes a few of the holes.

If not for independent developers, I'd have no hope for gaming at all. Our best days would be behind us if not for outsiders and small studios with their own visions of what a game should be. There's also the occasional game from the industry that's really damned good. Gaming may just be a business, but without fun it would be pretty damned pointless to have anything to do with it.

 

[ph0b0s123]

The PC is 10x more powerful but you and Carmack are mystified as to why that difference in power is not being demonstrated...

I thought Carmack was smart. Bitching about the PC not showing it's potential while also stating that your next game will focus mainly on what consoles are capable of. These two things are related you know.

Carmack is pretty smart. I mean... he builds freakin' rocket ships. (I also think he's being misquoted here, but whatevs.)

The argument about PCs being "x percent" more powerful are very misleading, and are misusing raw numbers. For example, consider that a 5000HP train isn't going to win a race against a 500HP muscle car - despite the raw HP numbers being far skewed in the train's favor.

The architecture of an XBox 360 is actually significantly different in many ways from a desktop PC... the main reason applications are more readily migrated is because Microsoft controls the development environment on both platforms. The PS3 is a bit further differentiated, but not nearly as much as people think... the challenges of developing for it stem as much from the development tools provided by Sony as from the uniqueness of the platform.

Consoles are purpose built for real-time graphics/gaming - which is why PCs, while most certainly able to eclipse their abilities through brute force, aren't necessarily "zomg 50x bettar!!11one".

I am sorry, but your train to car HP analogy is rubbish as it is to do with power to weight ratio's rather than straight HP. Hence petrol heads use power to wieght as the main measure of performance rather than just HP. When comparing PC power level's people are doing it on a like for like with measures like GFLOPS, etc which are not skewed like your analogy.

And also your argument that the XBox is so different to the PC hence the disparity. The only component on the Xbox that is not found on PC's is the RISC based PowerPC CPU, the rest are PC derived components with the same architecture. There is not enough of a difference to make the argument that things just run more efficiently on the Xbox due to it's hardware. Xbox also is developed for using Microsofts XNA which works across PC and Xbox360.

The reason things run better on the Xbox vs PC is that devs have only one hardware set to program for, so can spend more time optimising the code so it works better on that specific hardware. They also program sometimes to lower levels of coding languages to wring that extra little bit of sweetness out of that specific hardware set. They can do this, because they know they will get a return on the time spent. When they port that code to the PC they don't have to do a lot of optimisation as the extra power there means that will run about the same without needing optimisation. They also don't add anything except for allowing the engine to run at high resolutions.

I am not saying that developing a game on the PC that is as optimised as console titles is easy or cheap, in fact I think it is more expensive and time consuming for lower returns on investment due to the lower numbers of PC audience, hence why it is not being done. But that does not mean it cannot be done, which is my whole point.

To go back to your vehicle analogy, super cars like the Bugatti only make up a tiny fraction of the car market. But that does not mean auto makers don't bust a gut tweaking them and making them faster and more refined. That's because they know that the advances they make in this low volume market is leveraged to their consumer car markets. Can't wait for game dev's to work this out, again like they were aware of in the past. The PC was never the biggest gaming market, and PC gamers are never expecting it to be, but like the super cars that did not stop it having an impact.

 

[Jordi]

OS-agnostic

Aside: I do love the idea of having a computer that philosophises on the nature of OSs.

Like I said, it's much easier to then say that the XBOX version will be fixed at a certain setting, than it is to later make the game run at higher graphical levels for the PC.

It really depends. Some PC specialist games have graphics options so far up the wazoo as to be unachievable at the moment. Beyond a certain point though, I think it's just fluff. In an FPS, how long are you going to pay attention to something before getting headshot? I'm still running on 1024x768.

Once you've got a general level of graphics that work across all the systems, then you can leave flourishes to post-production. They're the least important parts really, as they're the first things people turn off for a better FPS.

I agree, but I think that a lot of PC gamers would be really pissed if they had to run a game on "console graphics" on their monster gaming PC. I don't think this is something that developers can easily get away with.

The thing is that both controllers are better at different things and sometimes you need to adjust the gameplay for that. For instance, focusing on an enemy with a controller is much slower than with the mouse, so difficulty, number of enemies and possibly even the level design need to be "adjusted" to take that into account.

True...hadn't thought of that. But still, does that make that huge a difference?

I think so. It is very important to have balance in your game and you need to present a fun challenge. I think the whole "cover-based shooter" mechanic was basically invented for consoles.

Ideally, a game could be developed that is optimized for both, but I understand that sometimes that isn't really feasible. However, it would be nice to see developers at least make an effort to make the PC port decent.

I think most developers (See Gearbox) are terrified of innovating because the base audience is looking for the no-scope, instakill as standard; and will return the game with a torrent of criticisms if it doesn't keep up to their standards.

I'm just thinking pipe dreams here, but how about if the consoles had a keyboard you could plug into one of the ports? Mad idea I know...

I'm pretty sure I heard you could already connect a keyboard and mouse to modern consoles. But I don't really think that that is what most console gamers want. I don't think anyone disagrees that the mouse is superior to the game pad in terms of reaction time in a shooter. But that doesn't mean that the gaming experience is also objectively better. Sometimes being handicapped in what you can do can lead to more fun game play. Furthermore, with a game pad it's much easier to just slouch on you couch, which may be more relaxing than sitting with a keyboard and mouse at some sort of desk or table. These things come down to preferences, and I bet that most console gamers prefer the "console" way of gaming to the PC way, and vice-versa.

I don't have any problem with focusing on consoles as the primary platform. But unfortunately what this usually means is not "we will focus only one third of the energy on PCs", but "fuck PCs, you guys are getting a crappy port".

If you want to reduce the input, graphics and options - I guess it makes sense to work on the easy version first.

Actually, if you have any intention of doing both versions right, I think it is a lot better to develop primarily for PC (but with a controller). Basically the PC needs extra features/complexity and it is far easier to make a console version from a PC game than the other way around, because you can just fix most of the settings at whatever will work for that console.

The control scheme is a little different of course, so I understand they want to get that right on consoles first. However, I don't think there is any reason why they can't also keep the PC (and keyboard + mouse) into account when developing the game.

ok i went back and reread the article and heres what ive got from it and what i think he was trying to say. they are making it on the pc but not syincing the controls to anything but controllers now. now when you think about it this is a great idea, see one of the reasons ports from pc games fail is that they dont take the time to optimize the controls for consoles, which is in fact a hell of a lot harder to do then PC, so the game flops and the publisher losses money. now if you do what they are doing making the controls (not the graphics as some have incorrectly assumed) for consoles the main focus they wont screw over their majority and still have a great game for the minority as they can do the pc right in less time(a keyboard and mouse are not that hard to work out controls for expessialy if its a pc developer) so relax my PC brothers its not the devil.

This is only a great idea if you are not a PC gamer. It's interesting to hear someone being concerned about a crappy console port, because almost every game nowadays is developed primarily for consoles and then (crappily) ported to the PC. I don't know if it is harder to get the controls right for consoles, but I can tell you right now that it is apparently not that easy to do for the PC either, because a lot of PC ports fail completely at this.

I understand that most games nowadays are developed primarily for consoles. They are right: that's where most of the money is. But I think forbidding the developers to use the PC control scheme goes a little far in my opinion. After all, if two thirds of the sales will be console games, doesn't that also mean that one whole third (or fourth, whatever) will be PC sales? In my opinion that means that the PC should also get some love, and not "how dare you use a keyboard!". They have made it very obvious that they are making the PC control scheme an afterthought. And that does not bode well for the quality of the PC port.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Anyone actually hyped for this game? Cause its really low on my radar atm. Now that i know the PC version will essentially be a gimped game its even more so.

O wells best of luck to your game id. pretty sure the engine of the game will be worth more to you than the game.

 

[rossatdi]

I'm enjoying all the yelling on this thread (from both the PC elitists and the people attacking the PC elitists). Thumbs up to the reasoned comments though - *shrug* "they're optimising for their biggest sales area, makes sense".

I think all this antagonism is inevitable given the shift from PC to consoles for being the focus of gaming as an industry. The PC gamers don't want to see this change and the consoles either don't care or realise it, or are enjoying reaping the benefits (like myself).

 

[Treblaine]

If you want to make games for children then console is the way to go, if you want to make games for intelligent mature gamers then PC is the way to go. As we can clearly see with such games as the Witcher 2.

The Witcher 2 was developed with a console in mind through and through. I do not see how it helps you make your point.

Really?

No it was made largely with gamepad in mind but gamepad=/=console

Witcher 2 is full of stuff that would be utterly alien and hated by console gamers, for one it aims for graphics that would have to be hideously toned down for consoles. And the content, particularly the sex, is a liability very unlike console title where everyone is rightly terrified of their boxed copy being banned from Wal-mart.

Also, it's not even out on Xbox 360 yet. Likely won't be for a while and if they want to keep those graphics and a decent framerate, then the resolution is going to have to go way, WAY down. Right down to 1024x576 probably.

Witcher 2 deserves 1080p and 60fps.

All the sex makes it perfect for fourteen year old adults.

Very true, but that is WHY Wal-mart/Target/etc are likely to ban it because they are utterly paranoid that 14 year old boys will actually see sex.

Or more precisely, their conservative soccer Mom customers will see them as "selling smut" and go to the competition.

The is absolutely a non-issue. PC games have to get REEEEEALLY bad before anyone does anything, I'm talking Rape-play bad but that doesn't shut down the digital side which makes up some 80% of the PC market.

 

[Togusa09]

Well, now I'm tempted to cancel my preorder... I won't cause I like id and want to play it. I am however, getting sick and tired of 8bit textures, low poly models and claustraphobic levels on what are supposed to be AAA games. Looking rather closely at crysis 2 and black ops....

There's been some bloody good games made for consoles, some of which have come to PC later, in which case I'm fine with the lesser graphics, as the gameplay pulls it's weight, and I'm gracious that someone took the time to port it.

What I hate is multiplatform development that just becomes an exercise in the lowest common denominator. Not that it can't be done, from a technical and gameplay perspective I have great appreciation for games like Homefront, Red Faction: Armageddon and the Lost Planet series as well developed.

As for the streamlining involved in bringing existing franchises to consoles, it really annoys me. Especially when it's believe that changes you make for console improve the PC version. Crysis 2, Invisible War....

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I don't care if a game is a console port to a PC. What sucks is that the console interface is inevitably ported also.

Playing a game at 10 feet away from the screen on a couch with a gamepad is totally different than playing at 18 inches away with a mouse and keyboard. Every single "AAA" game I played recently on the pc is an offender

Borderlands, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion.

In the case of F3 and Oblivion the games were almost unplayable on the pc without mods. Borderlands was fun enough for me to power through it.

 

[kurokenshi]

Wasn't going to buy it anyway, just got a new reason why not to buy.

At least their honest about it being a console port unlike Crytek.

 

[Frapple]

Was going to post that, felt sure Mr Carmack said literally the exact opposite at E3.

 

[Killerbunny001]

Rage over Rage, funny stuff.

I don`t get why he needed to come forward with this information. It`s a strategic decision based on facts and experience that is most likely to be taken as a middle finger shown to PC gamers by the people that don`t understand the "why".

So what have we learned today kids ? Don`t spill your guts to the public because they have funny ways of interpreting stuff.

 

[YunikoYokai5]

I don't understand why people are getting so snippy about this Although I can only really view this from the console point of view (Until my PC gets it's upgrade done and I play some processor killing games) I have no idea what is wrong with a console port. Consoles have had PC ports, I don't see why it can't work the other way around.

I'm not a person who plays by graphics alone. So toned down graphics are absolutely no problem for me. I also read about menus...no idea why a list menu is so bad on a PC you can quickly scroll down while on a console you need to move down each item individually.

Can someone please explain to be why PC gamers (elitists I'm guessing? ) are getting so worked up?

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Because one control method has to be inferior and underdeveloped. It's the law.

 

[YunikoYokai5]

Can someone please explain to be why PC gamers (elitists I'm guessing? ) are getting so worked up?

In a nutshell - some game types (RTS, FPS, RPG, some types of simulators) have a much higher potential when developed for a PC as opposed to a console.

Word of advice - don't use the term elitist if you want to be taken seriously. Because it's not a serious word nor does it pose a serious argument at any level in any debate.

Ah thank you. Yeah, didn't really know what 'elitist' meant. Just saw a few people here and guessed it was the fanboys or something of PC Gamers. I'll avoid the word in the future ^.^

 

[Levethian]

Makes sense. They know PC controllers will be faultless, so it's perfectly sensible to provide additional development for console controllers. Like providing ramps for wheelchair users; you want to design your building with disabled access first, not retro-fit it...

 

[Treblaine]

I'm enjoying all the yelling on this thread (from both the PC elitists and the people attacking the PC elitists). Thumbs up to the reasoned comments though - *shrug* "they're optimising for their biggest sales area, makes sense"

I suppose it's not unreasonable, the very premise of Rage doesn't seem a very "PC-ish game" if you know what I mean.

-Team Fortress 2 (to spite it's meh console ports) is very much a PC game from

-Also for Left 4 Dead, a game that is quite fatally flawed on console for the types of actions aren't suited to thumbstick aiming.

-Minecraft is also a very PC game, 360 version will be a nice "me too" but there's no doubting what platform and community it it fares best on.

But Rage? It's gameplay is Grand-theft-auto mixed up with Halo. It would definitely be preferable to play on PC, but it wouldn't be a complete disaster on consoles. It can lead effectively on consoles without missing out on too much.

I suppose the question then is WHY are most of the sales of Rage going to be on consoles?

PC I believe has huge potential, which is being met. But what has changed that id software now feel like outsiders in the gaming arena they helped forge?

I think they still don't "get" digital distribution, what potential it has. PC games were boxed games in the 90's to early-2000's now console games have utterly dominated the boxed-game category.

Digital downloads is more than just marketing, it really changes the way you consume games that is a huge part of the incentive to buy.

I don't care if a game is a console port to a PC. What sucks is that the console interface is inevitably ported also.

Playing a game at 10 feet away from the screen on a couch with a gamepad is totally different than playing at 18 inches away with a mouse and keyboard. Every single "AAA" game I played recently on the pc is an offender

Borderlands, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion.

In the case of F3 and Oblivion the games were almost unplayable on the pc without mods. Borderlands was fun enough for me to power through it.

Well a lot of the things can be fixed with mods/tweaks here is the list in brief:
-90-degrees field of view for 16:9 resolution (to take advantage of higher res and closer screen)
-change whether toggle or hold for most functions (crouch, sights, etc aids key binding)
-mouse smoothing/acceleration options
-use the scroll-wheel properly (particularly useful for changing stance)
-If there is gamepad support then REAL gamepad support, the same aim-assist as console versions get

 

[rossatdi]

-Also for Left 4 Dead, a game that is quite fatally flawed on console for the types of actions aren't suited to thumbstick aiming.

Say what? Being a pretty avid fan of the console game (and owning the PC version), I have no idea where this is coming from. Left 4 Dead works absolutely great on the 360. The slightly higher percentage of 360 gamers that seem willing to use/have headsets actually has made the game more fun on 360 for me.

 

[RadiusXd]

wait a sec

PC 1 360 2 PS3 3 Wii 4 so 3.

yep, one out of three platforms gets one third of the sales.

No shit sherlock, figure that out all by yourself id?