GDC 08: PS3 version of The Force Unleashed the hardest to develop, says LucasArts |
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Developing a single title is hard enough, but what about making that same title but with six drastically-different versions? That's got to be quite the feat, and in this news update direct from GDC about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, DS) , Project Lead Haden Blackman talks about the difficulties of making a multiplatform title. Specifically, the difficulties they're having with ESRB rating issues, as well as those they had with the PS3 version.
First up, the deal with the ratings. Haden Blackman complained that they weren't able to do everything that they wanted - in terms of carnage and going all-out with the Force - as they had to keep things mostly clean for the Teen rating. Remember the Rancor blowing up from within? Yeah, they weren't able to do that, either. But not to worry, as he reassures that even with the violence restrictions, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is all about "kicking someone's ass with the Force."
As for the difficulties in making a multiplatform game, Haden Blackman has this to say: "It really turned out to be a long, slow battle to get everything working on PS3."
He didn't quite specify just what made developing the PS3 version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but he did say that he had no regrets about the development team's vision and ambitions in regards to the title, and the game itself is nearing completion on all platforms. So whatever those difficulties were, it's a safe bet that they're already resolved. Here's hoping.
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Comments [refresh]
Even though I haven't even picked up a PS3 yet, it kinda bothers me when devs and such say stuff like this. It adds to the arsenal that fanboys can use but if you think about it, of course it'll hardest for the PS3 because it's the newest tech and not everyone is familiar with it. Good to hear they're not just doing the port from 360 version though :)
If it's true then it's true. I've nothing against developers who speak the truth like this.
I don't get why they're all saying its hard to develop on a PS3 for. Anyone with foundation knowledge of programming for a multicore CPU will have it easy.
And as a player I don't care about the whats and whys. If a game looks and plays better on 360 then I won't buy the PS3 version because "its harder to develop for". What kind of moron would do that?
Wow.
This is so much unnecessary to say this.
I'm very disappointed that they are choosing to dumb down the Force-tastic violence this game was gonna give us just so they can sell it to a bunch of brats who've proly never seen Episodes 4, 5, & 6...
oh well I guess if Spielberg was involved all the light sabers would be flashlights or Ipods or some s#!t
That often means the PS3 version's gonna suck. This is usually the case when devs talk about one specific console being hard to develop for.
I hate how all of you idiots that know nothing about actually developing games think you know everything. If you have never developed a game for the PS3 then dont give other people a hard time when they have trouble developing for the system. Every game designer I have read about has said the PS3 is harder to create games for mostly because of the way the processor is set up. Also the blu-ray drive is only 2x speed which cant get the data out of the disk fast enough to play some games without having to preload 4 gigs of data onto your harddrive first. That is why games like DMC4 and Lost Planet on the PS3 require you to preload data onto your harddrive before you can play them. Sony really needs to put a faster blu-ray drive in the PS3, then you wouldnt have this problem.
First of all, as many posters that have been here for a while know, I am a staunch supporter of the PS3. I purchased mine in February of 2007 and have not regretted my purchase yet.
But the cell is not a true multicore processor. This does not mean that the cell is not a hell of a piece of machinery but it has limitations that normal multicore processors do not have.
A normal multicore processor can use both of the cores, in addition to their caches, for any operation at any time using any part of the main memory in the system as long as the information has been correctly compiled to do so.
The cell does not work the same way. The cell has its PPE and 8 SPE's. The PPE is a dual threaded, but not dual core, RISC in-order processor based upon PowerPC architecture.
This is very similar to the XBOX 360 processor but the 360 processor bears much more resemblance to a normal multicore processor.
With the cell much less PPE time is spent on general computing operations than is spent on sending the poper information to the SPE's to process. The SPE's handle the bulk of the gruntwork. The SPE's are very powerful but also very limited in what they can process. They have no cache and they cannot access the main ram. Instead they each have a local store dedicated to them. The limitation comes from the fact that these stores only hold a small amount of information each and this is all that the SPE's can access. This is why they were made to be fully capable of vector processing and they can access information from another SPE's local store therefore acting as a stream processor.
The biggest advantage to this design is that, as I stated earlier, the SPE's access their local stores to process this information. This reduces the time that a conventional single or multicore processor spends waiting for it's cache to access the memory for a new operation to process.
While these differences make the cell much different than a more mainstream multicore processor they are also its strength. The local stores can be accessed in a fraction of the time that it takes for a "normal" processors cache to access the main system memory. Plus, due to the vector and stream processing capabilities, they excell at audio and video processing negating most shortcomings of any video card attached to it.
The "harder to program for" statement that we hear/see so often is due to the problem of finding which information to process with the PPE and which information to vectorize and offload to the SPE's. Once the cell is more completely understood I, IMHO, don't believe that we will hear/see that statement anymore.
When this happens is when I believe that the PS3 will really begin to shine.
Sorry for the long post but most people really have no idea how the cell really works.