Valve Says PS3 Complexity Hinders Game Development

[Aura Guardian]

Interesting stuff.

Jumplion, I know it's tough, but just ignore them.

Bu-....but......but I must enlighten them! Truth be told, I like debating stuff like this, it gives me something to do instead of look up porn watch random YouTube videos.

Makes sense to me. Give'em Hell

 

[internutt]

Valve do not have to program for the PS3 if they don't want to. Stop whining.

The PS3 is complex compared to the PC programming Valve are used to. They want to stay in their comfort zone.

Perhaps if the PS3 install base was larger they would be more keen to do it, but wouldn't you rather A+ content on their preferred formats, rather than a buggy mess on the PS3?

 

[Jumplion]

"Hahahahahahahahahaha

Thanks for demonstrating your posts are not worth reading!"

seemed to imply that you had a bias against MGS4 and made it seem as though you thought that Theif trumped everything, and while that's not bad per se, if you've never even played the game that you put down and then say that your opponent probably never played it (which he did [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.118382?page=4#2267484]), that's hypocrisy my friend.

Is english your primary language?

You even added "seemed to imply" which shows you didn't have a clue what the fuck I was saying but opened your mouth anyway.

I would be a hypocrite if I did what I tell others not to - i.e. judging two games which are imo too different to meaningfully compare.

Here's a hint: read my post which you quoted and read it damn hard. When you get to the point when I said "I haven't played MGS4 but if I ever get a PS3 I will be sure to give it a go." reflect hard on just how bad your reading comprehension is.

No need to get piss ante, and yes english is my primary language, or so I would assume.

I'm not saying what I said is true about you, I'm saying that it seemed like you were being a hypocrite. Sorry if I'm getting you all riled up over a little play of words.

When you said;

"Hahahahahahahahahaha

Thanks for demonstrating your posts are not worth reading!"

To me it seemed like you were telling Indigo that because he favored MGS4 over the Thief series that somehow that rendered all of his posts moot. You laughed at him, saying "none of your posts are worth nothing!" because he favored MGS4 over Thief, both of which he played. That is his personal opinion, which apparently people on this site seem to hold against him.

You obviously favor the Thief series, which I will assume you played, but Indigo has played both games which leads me to believe that he has a better stance in this than you do.

 

[shial]

PS3 is missing a major component in network infrastructure. Nearly all of Valve's games depend heavily on multiplayer. On the PC they have Steam, on Xbox360 they have Windows Live. PS3 is WAY behind on the network side and Valve would need to construct it from scratch. This would also make for a much smaller community to play with since it isn't established.

 

[PiCroft]

When you said;

"Hahahahahahahahahaha

Thanks for demonstrating your posts are not worth reading!"

To me it seemed like you were telling Indigo that because he favored MGS4 over the Thief series that somehow that rendered all of his posts moot. You laughed at him, saying "none of your posts are worth nothing!" because he favored MGS4 over Thief, both of which he played. That is his personal opinion, which apparently people on this site seem to hold against him.

You obviously favor the Thief series, which I will assume you played, but Indigo has played both games which leads me to believe that he has a better stance in this than you do.

I'm sorry for getting pissy, but you misunderstood my point again:

Indigo has a track record of defending Sony to the hilt, and when one poster made a silly dick-waving challenge by listing off a bunch of PC games (Including Dwarf Fortress, something which I connot even begin to imagine being comparable to any traditional game on any other platform including PC!).

His response was to assert point-blank that every game on the list was inferior to the PS3 equivalents (As if every game on the list even had equivalents on the ps3!).

I took issue with thief becuase it is a game I am personally interested in, but mypoint would apply to almost any other game on the list, including Homeworld, Baldurs Gate etc.

Bearing this in mind, does Indigo strike you as someone who has a non-biased opinion? My response was to basically say: "Holy shit, how the hell can I take what you say seriously after such a blatent kiss-ass to a particular brand/company/platform?"

 

[FloodOne]

Meh, I disagree. I'm not saying MGS4 isn't innovative, but it certainly can't match Thief's revolutionary gameplay. And again, when your comparing games 10 years apart, you have to look at not only their gameplay, put what kind of imprint they leave on the gaming culture. I would argue Thief has left a much bigger imprint. Besides, Thief's plot was relatively simple and interesting, whereas I've heard MGS4's is headaching-ly complicated.

EDIT: Ok i just watched the youtube thing Dingo posted, and I'm already hating it. I have know idea about the story, but isn't it supposed to be in the future? And are there not guns? Why the fuck would they get into some hugely elaborate, knife fight when it looks as if you have killer fucking robots standing right there? I HATE plot? holes like that, because then you know the maker of the game is just doing that to try and make his game seem more badass. Just shoot the ************ and be over with it.

You must never have seen any anime in your life.

They constantly knife/sword fight while they have pistols strapped to their hips.

I enjoy anime, but that's just how it is.

 

[tino1498]

The way i see it.
yes, the PS3 can be complicated and intimidating to developers. But when used correctly (ie knowing how to program for it) it can have higher graphics standards.
The problem is that it is difficult to program for and has a big learning curve. valve simply doesn't want to tae the time to learn how to program for a ps3.
Does that matter? no. because 1. Valve already has a strong audience for both the PC and the xbox 360. 2. It takes alot of time to make a game on both platforms and valve feels that its energy would be best spent on perfecting a game on two related systems that they know how to use instead of reprogramming for a system with a steep learning curve that doesn;t affect their sales a huge amount.

 

[Crash486]

it's not really hard to understand why valve would say this considering they have their roots developing PC titles. Developing a game for the 360 is much like developing a game for the PC, in fact that's why its so easy to port pc games to the 360 and vice versa. The ps3 on the other hand is not only a completely different language with different syntax, it's got different code architecture as well

Valve is very good at programming for the PC, that's obvious from the quality pc games they provide. They've also been at it for quite awhile. So when someone hands them a completely new platform and says "program for this" its not hard to understand why they would say that's difficult. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. That's like if you've been programming in object oriented C++ for the past 12 years of your life, and someone comes in and says "here, i want you to write a really complex program in assembly code for a processor you've never used before, here's the instruction manual."

I don't think that programming on the PS3 is really that much "harder" its just that its different and outside people's comfort zones. There have been enough developers out there who haven't had any trouble writing excellent games for the system, the only companies who say its hard are thsoe who haven't really released anything for it other than poorly ported pc titles "cough valve cough"

 

[murphy7801]

The way i see it.
yes, the PS3 can be complicated and intimidating to developers. But when used correctly (ie knowing how to program for it) it can have higher graphics standards.
The problem is that it is difficult to program for and has a big learning curve. valve simply doesn't want to tae the time to learn how to program for a ps3.
Does that matter? no. because 1. Valve already has a strong audience for both the PC and the xbox 360. 2. It takes alot of time to make a game on both platforms and valve feels that its energy would be best spent on perfecting a game on two related systems that they know how to use instead of reprogramming for a system with a steep learning curve that doesn;t affect their sales a huge amount.

uh give up dont bother trying to explain they wont get it there fan boys

 

[Arehexes]

No, code is not code. Some code is easier to make, others aren't. Some code is easier to convert to other code, while others are impossible.
Simple fact about developing games on the PS3.
Companies like Valve, make the game on the PC, Then they port it to the 360/ps3. So the code is natively 'PC'. 360 = microsoft so OF COURSE Its going to be easy, it uses the exact same propritary code/software that pc gamers have, that works with Windows! Is meant to work on windows! Look at it this way, if 360 has DX9, would you be shocked? I wouldn't. If PS3 did, I'd probably drop dead.

Please, please stop posting about things you have absolutely no understanding of. I think you will find that code IS code, assembly is assembly, C++ is C++, C is C and so on. Sure, the code may have to be modified, reorganised or even re-written to function correctly with specific hardware, but it's all still the same language that compiles to machine code for that system. There's no magical special language that PS3 games are written in that's different from PC and 360; PS3 dev kits will compile C++, 360 dev kits will compile C++, as well as several other languages likely. The mere notion that some code is impossible to port is ridiculous - the only time this would be true would be in trying to implement a function for which the necessary hardware is not present, like trying to code bluetooth into a system with no bluetooth hardware.
Right, now here is the part where you need to read carefully what I'm typing. Aside from DirectX, which Windows and the 360 both have, there is no super secret code shared between PC and 360. It's not a matter of copying the PC source code into a 360 dev kit system and hitting compile, changed have to be made for the 360 too, it's just more straightforward than the PS3. Get this notion out of your head that Microsoft is in control of everything here - they aren't. By your logic, games like Doom and Quake which have native OpenGL renderers port to the PS3 all nice and simple just because the PS3 uses an OpenGL implementation. It doesn't work like that.

Another thing is this. Yes, the ps3 has harder 'architecture' to work with then People who DESIGN games for the PC.
PC, you think of everything as a giant pool of resources, you have X ram, X HDD, X CPU speed, X Vid Graphics, ect ect. Its one giant pool. You now create a game, And try to make it work on a certain set of requirements. And given the way PC/Windows works, This method works, its not meant to be 'optimized' for every pc. Thats impossible, theres to much varation.
And this is why VALVE fails at console game making. They haven't realized, that the reason Sony has won the last 2 generations, is because They HAVE optimized games for there consoles. Look at PS1. My god. NO BODY thought you could do what they did, with the resources of that system! There were people who developed games, that said they PUSHED the ps1 BEYOND what it should have been able to do. The Ps2 was similar, but not to such an extreme level.
The Main difference between Ps3, and 360 is The Ps3 is based on games being optimized in the best way possible for said console, the 360 is more about big pool of resources, and throwing what you got at it and hope the pool doesn't flood. Valve is not used to writing code that allocates Say, Physics to only work on one SPE, and animations on another, He'd rather throw it all at the PS3's single CPU and say 'see, its weak, it can't handel it' with out even touching its real power.

So wait, what? You're saying that code on the 360 isn't optimised because it's more easily ported from PC? And what on earth are you talking about saying that Sony optimises games for their consoles? It's not their job, it's up to the individual developers and teams to do that, they don't finish a game and then say, "Hey Sony, we're done now, come over here and optimise this so it runs better." And how does Valve fail at console games? Last I looked, The Orange Box was a perfectly functional and great set of games on the 360 and the PS3. Last I looked, Left 4 Dead was fully functional and great fun to play on the 360. You're just bitter that a developer has said it's a pain in the ass porting their code to a radically different architecture because it happens to be the console you like. And yeah, I think Valve might have some experience allocating things to cores, saying as Source has has multi-core support for a while now. You clearly aren't a developer, and you obviously don't work for Valve, so how can you say what they have and haven't done?

The 360 is no where near the architecture of the PS3. The 360 is basically a 'tri-core cpu'. Its 3. uhh 1.5ghz? cpus, that all work together in unison. (Not the technical terminology mind you) Again, the 'pool methodology' Think of the 360 as a gaint 50 galon drum.
The Ps3 is 8, 6 galon drums. Course, the cell doesn't work at all like the normal cpus either. They don't 'work together pooling resources', you 'dedicate' resources to specific portions of the CPU.

You don't seem to understand what an architecture is. An architecture, in computer processing, is, simply put, the set of instructions that the processor understands. In this case, the PS3 CPU understands PPC instructions. And oh look, so does the 360 and the Wii. And just to note, the 360 CPU is indeed tri core, but with each core clocked at 3.2GHz, the same frequency as the Cell SPEs. The 360's cores are independent and in fact are modified versions of the PPEs in Cell, as it turns out. As well as that, each core supports two threads, meaning your analogy is completely incorrect. And yeah, dedicating things to specific bits of the CPU is exactly how multi threading on multi core and HyperThreaded CPUs works, so it isn't anything special or new.

Basically developers are finding the problem with developing with the ps3 isn't Starting out on the PS3, thats easy.
Its porting.
In order to port a game from pc to ps3, or 360 to ps3, They can't just go about the 'normal' method of porting a game. They actually have to dive in and manually code the system to work with the ps3! Because they can't just throw it at the ps3 and expect it to understand what to do with it, since its needs to know 'what' to do with it all. However, by making it on the ps3, porting to pc/360 is far far easier

Your logic is incredibly flawed. How does it make any sense that PS3 code could be converted easily to 360 and PC but not vice versa, you've even said yourself that they are totally different. And having to manually code for the PS3? Well I can see that they'd have to make lots of edits in the lower level of things because of how the CPU works, but high level C++ for example is still going to be high level C++ regardless of platform. I'll admit many changes would have to be made, mostly on the CPU and GPU areas obviously, but the same goes for porting to 360, with the exception that the 360 tends to be easier. If by "manually coding for the PS3" you were indeed referring to the low level changes and the conversion of everything from DirectX -> OpenGL and CPU optimisations, then I'd just like to tell you THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT. This is why they don't want to release on PS3, because it's so (unnecessarily by many people's opinions) different, they feel that it isn't worth their time.
Now for the love of all that is holy stop acting like Valve are incapable nitwits because they don't want to develop for your console.

*claps* I love this, can we be friends never read a post about programming on different consoles so well

 

[murphy7801]

No, code is not code. Some code is easier to make, others aren't. Some code is easier to convert to other code, while others are impossible.
Simple fact about developing games on the PS3.
Companies like Valve, make the game on the PC, Then they port it to the 360/ps3. So the code is natively 'PC'. 360 = microsoft so OF COURSE Its going to be easy, it uses the exact same propritary code/software that pc gamers have, that works with Windows! Is meant to work on windows! Look at it this way, if 360 has DX9, would you be shocked? I wouldn't. If PS3 did, I'd probably drop dead.

Please, please stop posting about things you have absolutely no understanding of. I think you will find that code IS code, assembly is assembly, C++ is C++, C is C and so on. Sure, the code may have to be modified, reorganised or even re-written to function correctly with specific hardware, but it's all still the same language that compiles to machine code for that system. There's no magical special language that PS3 games are written in that's different from PC and 360; PS3 dev kits will compile C++, 360 dev kits will compile C++, as well as several other languages likely. The mere notion that some code is impossible to port is ridiculous - the only time this would be true would be in trying to implement a function for which the necessary hardware is not present, like trying to code bluetooth into a system with no bluetooth hardware.
Right, now here is the part where you need to read carefully what I'm typing. Aside from DirectX, which Windows and the 360 both have, there is no super secret code shared between PC and 360. It's not a matter of copying the PC source code into a 360 dev kit system and hitting compile, changed have to be made for the 360 too, it's just more straightforward than the PS3. Get this notion out of your head that Microsoft is in control of everything here - they aren't. By your logic, games like Doom and Quake which have native OpenGL renderers port to the PS3 all nice and simple just because the PS3 uses an OpenGL implementation. It doesn't work like that.

Another thing is this. Yes, the ps3 has harder 'architecture' to work with then People who DESIGN games for the PC.
PC, you think of everything as a giant pool of resources, you have X ram, X HDD, X CPU speed, X Vid Graphics, ect ect. Its one giant pool. You now create a game, And try to make it work on a certain set of requirements. And given the way PC/Windows works, This method works, its not meant to be 'optimized' for every pc. Thats impossible, theres to much varation.
And this is why VALVE fails at console game making. They haven't realized, that the reason Sony has won the last 2 generations, is because They HAVE optimized games for there consoles. Look at PS1. My god. NO BODY thought you could do what they did, with the resources of that system! There were people who developed games, that said they PUSHED the ps1 BEYOND what it should have been able to do. The Ps2 was similar, but not to such an extreme level.
The Main difference between Ps3, and 360 is The Ps3 is based on games being optimized in the best way possible for said console, the 360 is more about big pool of resources, and throwing what you got at it and hope the pool doesn't flood. Valve is not used to writing code that allocates Say, Physics to only work on one SPE, and animations on another, He'd rather throw it all at the PS3's single CPU and say 'see, its weak, it can't handel it' with out even touching its real power.

So wait, what? You're saying that code on the 360 isn't optimised because it's more easily ported from PC? And what on earth are you talking about saying that Sony optimises games for their consoles? It's not their job, it's up to the individual developers and teams to do that, they don't finish a game and then say, "Hey Sony, we're done now, come over here and optimise this so it runs better." And how does Valve fail at console games? Last I looked, The Orange Box was a perfectly functional and great set of games on the 360 and the PS3. Last I looked, Left 4 Dead was fully functional and great fun to play on the 360. You're just bitter that a developer has said it's a pain in the ass porting their code to a radically different architecture because it happens to be the console you like. And yeah, I think Valve might have some experience allocating things to cores, saying as Source has has multi-core support for a while now. You clearly aren't a developer, and you obviously don't work for Valve, so how can you say what they have and haven't done?

The 360 is no where near the architecture of the PS3. The 360 is basically a 'tri-core cpu'. Its 3. uhh 1.5ghz? cpus, that all work together in unison. (Not the technical terminology mind you) Again, the 'pool methodology' Think of the 360 as a gaint 50 galon drum.
The Ps3 is 8, 6 galon drums. Course, the cell doesn't work at all like the normal cpus either. They don't 'work together pooling resources', you 'dedicate' resources to specific portions of the CPU.

You don't seem to understand what an architecture is. An architecture, in computer processing, is, simply put, the set of instructions that the processor understands. In this case, the PS3 CPU understands PPC instructions. And oh look, so does the 360 and the Wii. And just to note, the 360 CPU is indeed tri core, but with each core clocked at 3.2GHz, the same frequency as the Cell SPEs. The 360's cores are independent and in fact are modified versions of the PPEs in Cell, as it turns out. As well as that, each core supports two threads, meaning your analogy is completely incorrect. And yeah, dedicating things to specific bits of the CPU is exactly how multi threading on multi core and HyperThreaded CPUs works, so it isn't anything special or new.

Basically developers are finding the problem with developing with the ps3 isn't Starting out on the PS3, thats easy.
Its porting.
In order to port a game from pc to ps3, or 360 to ps3, They can't just go about the 'normal' method of porting a game. They actually have to dive in and manually code the system to work with the ps3! Because they can't just throw it at the ps3 and expect it to understand what to do with it, since its needs to know 'what' to do with it all. However, by making it on the ps3, porting to pc/360 is far far easier

Your logic is incredibly flawed. How does it make any sense that PS3 code could be converted easily to 360 and PC but not vice versa, you've even said yourself that they are totally different. And having to manually code for the PS3? Well I can see that they'd have to make lots of edits in the lower level of things because of how the CPU works, but high level C++ for example is still going to be high level C++ regardless of platform. I'll admit many changes would have to be made, mostly on the CPU and GPU areas obviously, but the same goes for porting to 360, with the exception that the 360 tends to be easier. If by "manually coding for the PS3" you were indeed referring to the low level changes and the conversion of everything from DirectX -> OpenGL and CPU optimisations, then I'd just like to tell you THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT. This is why they don't want to release on PS3, because it's so (unnecessarily by many people's opinions) different, they feel that it isn't worth their time.
Now for the love of all that is holy stop acting like Valve are incapable nitwits because they don't want to develop for your console.

yes well people dont get this

 

[300lb. Samoan]

I remember a thread about this yesterday. But, in all honesty who cares about valve games on the 360. Their really on worth their salt on the PC.(due to the huge amount of mod support from the community) Besides they look pretty awful on the 360 in comparison.

i'm not sure what kind of system you are playing on, but I was pretty sad when I saw TF2 on the 360 and realized that my $1500 spend in the last four years was being outperformed by a $150 dvd player. It offers Full HDR, Very High textures and High level models. Unless you are running a DX10 system, a GeForce 280 and 4+gigs of ram (and the picmip, hwmmodels and hwmcvds commands) I don't think you're getting a huge improvement over the 360 except in frames per second, which are lacking - 360 seems to run at just under 60.

soryy really have to take issue with this - you must have got criminally ripped off. I have a relatively cheap self built system and it can run ring rings around my 360 in every department except start-up time. Don't get me wrong I love my 360 but i dislike anyone misrepresenting the power on any system it just provides fanboys ammo for flamewars ( not accusing Samoan of fanboyism)
On a more relative matter its only one developer, admitably one of the best, and they havent said that they won't make any games mearley that its a pain.
cue the song fanboys claiming halflife sux and the 360 fanboys gloating and gaming as a whole suffering.

If we're solely talking TF2, I couldn't tell you, because I've never played it. However, I know for a fact, GTAIV on PC, smokes the dogmeat out of PS3/360 versions. Resolution, Texture Detail, FPS, FSAA, View Distance etc... And, then of course, there's Crysis. Interestingly enough though, it's amazing that a studio even SMALLER than Valve, ala Crytek, were able to refine their CryEngine 2 (Arguably the greatest looking and performing FPS engine on the planet...scratch that, it is the greatest), and made it work on consoles. Go figure.


Morne

Yea, I was only talking TF2... and talking as a PC fanboy... If I'm missing something here, it's not a ripoff but a brainfart because my system is 100% handbuilt from day one. I know every piece of it and I know I got my money's worth. If someone landed a quad-core with 1033-DDR3, in 2006, for less than $1000, I wanna know who that was... and I want to become uncomfortably close to them...

Of course I know TF2 running comparably smooth on 360 is an exception, not the rule... just a testament to Valve's engine's flexibility. Also note I said in all departments EXCEPT framerate: it's framerate is comparable to mine, but I have an ANCIENT video card, that was slightly outdated even in 2006 (GeForce 7600GS... doesn't the XBox have an 8800 chipset?)

On topic... uh... I have three PS3's?

 

[Arehexes]

*snip*

If by superior you mean: Filling up a game with 9 hours and a half of cutscene. Then yes MGS4 is superior.

I just had to. ^^

(But to be honest MGS1 is much better than MGS4. At least theres no tranq. gun. But thats another debate.)

Either way, both are superior to Thief. And when the cutscenes include this
there's not much you can complain about

You know whats sad, I bet you only say it's good cuase of the nice shiny graphics. When did you start gaming when the PS came out, I never heard a gamer from the 2600 games take graphics over gameplay. And MGS4 isn't stealth, I've tried it and the stealth isn't their as much anymore. Besides I know a lot of older games that beat the pants off of these newer games.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

"Sony had intentionally designed the PS3 to be difficult to program so that developers wouldn't be able to maximize its potential right away."
I call BS.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

I never heard a gamer from the 2600 games take graphics over gameplay

I think EVERY's first system should be a 2600. My parents started me on THEIR old Atari with Space Invaders and Freeway before they finally bought me a NES in 1989. Used to spend hours in my room fine-tuning that old manual TV set to get those pixels (massive pixels... MASSIVE) to be RAZOR SHARP and just the right color!

Random hi-jack: when are we gonna see an Atari mod with HD output? NOT HD graphics... just HDMI or Composite jacks so I don't have to invest in half-of-a-Radio-Shack-worth of parts just to connect the damn thing!

 

[bad rider]

Off topic: How many times have you been on probation. It's seems like every other week it happens.

Edit: Also

*snip*

If by superior you mean: Filling up a game with 9 hours and a half of cutscene. Then yes MGS4 is superior.

I just had to. ^^

(But to be honest MGS1 is much better than MGS4. At least theres no tranq. gun. But thats another debate.)[/quote]Either way, both are superior to Thief. And when the cutscenes include this
there's not much you can complain about[/quote]WTF he just picked up giant robots and span them around in circles like they where made of of dust and pixies.

 

[300lb. Samoan]

I started with a Coleco Vision, thanks.


Morne

Was Coleco fun? My friend had one and it never seemed to work, and he only had one good controller so we always played Knights on 2600 instead. Although secretly I wanted his CV... I wanted every console I saw when I was young, even if I knew it sucked.

 

[Arehexes]

I never heard a gamer from the 2600 games take graphics over gameplay

I think EVERY's first system should be a 2600. My parents started me on THEIR old Atari with Space Invaders and Freeway before they finally bought me a NES in 1989. Used to spend hours in my room fine-tuning that old manual TV set to get those pixels (massive pixels... MASSIVE) to be RAZOR SHARP and just the right color!

Random hi-jack: when are we gonna see an Atari mod with HD output? NOT HD graphics... just HDMI or Composite jacks so I don't have to invest in half-of-a-Radio-Shack-worth of parts just to connect the damn thing!

If they did that I would steal my brothers 2600 just to do that. Oh well I still have his Atari 800 PC . Anyway to all you guys saying value sucks cause they don't want to dev on the PS3, post a pic of your degree in Computer Science (I will have mine soon in 2 years ), or business degree, or some indication you work for valve. If not then shut up, it's valve's company they can do what they want, they have been doing this for a long time. And they are doing quite well so they stick with what works. Also this is just a big whining forum. Valve won't make a game for a system I bought so I say they suck, well NIS made Disgaea 3 for the PS3 and I still love them. Just get over it, he said what he wanted about his company plans and that's it. Now go play your consoles and enjoy what you have. If not sell the console you have and buy another one.