Nintendo Revolution Deel 25: All-Access Gaming

Ja, maar hunters is een echte fps in tegenstelling tot Metroid Prime (schijnt een fps adventure te zijn ofzo).

Nog... e.. elf.. dagen..

*KUCH*

Ik ben... stervende... Ik ga dood door gebrek aan Revolution info.

Nog elf dagen en zes uur!!

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Op maandag 5 september 2005 11:46 schreef King_of_cubes het volgende:
Wat een gelul, EA gaat toch wel games maken voor de Rev.

Ja. Dat bericht klopt niet.

Wat heb ik een meisterlijke countdown op me desktop.

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Op maandag 5 september 2005 15:13 schreef Pheno het volgende:

[..]

Bron?

Me gezond verstand. Ownage.nl ( ) heeft het gewoon overgenomen van http://www.gamefront.de/ . Ik wil niet zeggen dat gamefront.de onbetrouwbaar is (in tegendeel), maar het is gewoon een zwak bericht. Het "schijnt" dat EA het niet weet? Wat een onzin. Als EA 'in the know' zit dan betekent dat sowieso niet dat wij het weten.

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Op maandag 5 september 2005 15:16 schreef philipnorth het volgende:

[..]

Deel eens

Ik gebruik gdesklets, maar er zal wat Windows apps zijn die hetzelfde kunnen. Gewoon effe googlen ofzo.

Als ie klaar is met aftellen komt er

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"Wow!"
REVOLUTION

te staan. Maar goed.

Nu precies 10 dagen en 10 uur te gaan!!

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Op maandag 5 september 2005 20:30 schreef Oksel het volgende:
Ik haat het wachten.

Leesvoer (deze is goed):


Let's first take a look at his argument, HD content. You don't really have to recreate the HD textures for a lower resolution display. They can be down sampled quite easily. The same goes for polygon meshes if we are assuming that the rev's graphics hardware doesn't have the horsepower to deal with the same number of polygons as on the xbox 360 / ps3. Meshes may have to be tweaked, but it is not a whole lot of work to go from a higher poly count model to a lower count one.

The HD content argument is trivial when compared to the actual architectural differences in the 3 systems.

Here's what we know: (I'm eliminating some details for brevity)

Xbox 360:
CPU: IBM powerPC based processor, 3 cores, 2 threads per core, 1 vector unit per core. Each core runs at 3.2 GHz

Graphics: ATI graphics processor, 10mb embedded DRAM, rumored(confirmed) to be based on the x800 line of Radeon cards.

RAM: 512MB unified


PS3:
CPU: IBM/Sony PowerPC based Cell processor. 3.2Ghz. 1 vector unit, 7 SPE @ 3.2GHz

Graphics: Nvidia RSX @ 550MHz

Ram: 256MB XDR main ram, 256MB GDDR3 VRAM.

Revolution:
CPU: IBM PowerPC based processor

Graphics: ATI GPU

RAM: unknown


Now, it's easy to see that comparisons cannot be directly made between the rev and the other systems at this point. There's just no information. Nintendo has said no HD, but they've also said that amazing graphics are just the entry fee for the next generation.

But I'm not interested in talking about visual prowess, I'm talking system architecture, and as a result, game engine architecture. No game that is developed to take advantage of the architecture of the PS3, or Xbox 360 will be easily ported to the other machine.

Games, and game engines today are designed with 1 hardware thread in mind, a single core, general processing unit. The PS2 has some vector units attached as well but I'm not going to bother looking up that system architecture because it's moot for the next round.

The Xbox 360 has 6 hardware threads and in order to use the system to it's potential the game engine will have to be designed to use all 6 of those hardware threads. Whether this is to have different logical segments of the game run on different physical threads (such as core game loop, AI, physics, etc) or to use some of the cores together for a certain job and have a smart compiler, or software engineer implement a simulated "out of order" processor by combining the processing power of 2 or more hardware threads. This would be less efficient than using the 6 threads independently however. As an analogy, think of a sports team, each member has it's role, but they have to work together to achieve a the desired outcome. For the PS3, you've got one hardware thread. The SPEs are not generic enough to run their own threads, but they're great helpers that can be managed by the main thread.

Game engine wise, these are completely different. You need to develop the game engine specifically for the console in question. There's not going to be a lot of code re-use in the next generation as far as engines go. (For this reason I see middle ware developers gaining momentum in the next round) At any rate, the Rev's system architecture is unknown. IBM has their hand in all 3 systems so we can guarantee that all three systems are PowerPC based.

Now, Nintendo has said the Rev is easy to develop for. To me, this means 1 hardware thread, maybe 2. Symmetric multiprocessing has historically been the domain of research, not commercial applications. The Sega Saturn introduced a dual processor setup and developers had a hard time tapping it's potential.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud Microsoft's choice in using 3 dual-core processors. Multiple cores can increase performance while keeping heat and power consumption low compared to a similarly capable single core processor. However, developing games for this beast is going to be tough,

If I'm right, and the Rev has a single hardware thread then porting game engine code between the rev and the PS3 will be easier than porting game engine code between rev/ps3 and xbox 360. If the rev goes the multi processor/core route then it'll be easier to port between rev and xb360 (obviously) Now let's talk about the graphics. Both the XB (dropping the 360 from here on) and Rev use ATI GPUs while PS3 uses an Nvidia developed one. There's been a lot of comparisons between the XB and PS3 GPUs, and the general consensus is that they are the same with the XB having a slight edge.

The Rev is again an unknown. But no matter which of ATI's current offerings it's based upon, it will be physically capable of doing HD output. Assuming Nintendo's Rev is based on slower technology, say the Radeon 9600 series, such a graphics processor is still capable of outputting Unreal tournament, at a resolution of 1024*768, using maximum quality settings at 90 frames per second. (check tom's hardware guide or any other benchmarking website if you don't believe me)

Honestly, however, the hardware doesn't matter from a porting standpoint. Well it does, but there's something more important. The Software API used.

Microsoft has been touting it's XNA development tools. Basically this means that games developed for the XB and PC will be done using MS Visual Studio, and use C++ combined with Direct3D as the graphics API. Sony has been rumbling that it will use OpenGL as the graphics API. (source: ps3world.com, opengl.org) Really this is a nobrainer since MS developed Direct3D and OpenGL is the only viable alternative.

Nintendo has been using OpenGL for gamecube development. (pretty sure ps2 was also openGL, but too lazy to search with a post that's getting this big already) And what do we know about Rev development? It currently involves using GC dev kits, which means... (If she weighs as much as a duck... she's made of wood.. and hence... a WITCH! BURN HER!) that Rev is almost assuredly using OpenGL as the graphics API. Now, I'm getting tired and have a headache, but to sum it all up, from a speculation standpoint, with Rev being "easy to develop for", and using GC dev kits initially, it will be easier to port from PS3 to Rev than from PS3 to XB.

And, counter point, if Nintendo is lying, and the Rev is complicated from a system architecture point, it will be easier to make XB ports for Rev than for PS3. Boiling that down a little more the revolution will be the easiest machine to port to from a game engine perspective.

-----------------

Now, we have another issue that was brought up; the controller as a barrier to ports.

So we know the Rev controller is revolutionary, and it's different. That's given. XB and PS3 use controllers that are basicly the same as this generation. Now, we also know that the rev controller can be used to play all the old Nintendo games.

(and don't dare say that it might not be able to play GC games because there's no way in h e double hockey sticks, that Nintendo is going to make consumers buy a GC controller to play GC games. I don't care what you say and I'm willing to do a crazy Internet stunt if they do.)

So anyways, the Rev controller also supposedly has less buttons, and is less complex.

This doesn't mean it has less options for input, just that it is more natural. It may very well have less input options than the others, but it has just as many as the GC / N64. Now a stick may not end up being mapped to a stick, but rather a gyro, or direct mind link or whatever other rumors you prefer to believe.

The point is that the revolution controller is capable of providing n distinct inputs, where n is at least 13 toggles(buttons) with 2 of them allowing for analog input, as well as 2 x*y field inputs which can be used to emulate an analog stick.

The rev controller requires this many inputs (minus the x*y field) to allow for N64 support (A,B, c-up,c-down, c-left,c-right, l, r, z, d-up, d-down, d-left,d-right [although the directional pad could be mapped to an analog input ])
So, the rev controller will be able to send lots of various signals to the hardware. so let's abandon the hardware view and take a look at the software side, since that's the most important for ports.

Now how does software capture the input? By listening for events and / or polling the state of an analog stick. The software hears an event, say an A button press, and calls whatever routine is necessary for an A button press. This could cause the main character to jump or whatever that button has been mapped to in the software, modified by context, etc.

It doesn't matter what the inputs are from a programming perspective. The characters or objects in the game need to perform certain actions as defined by the game's design. Whether they are triggered by pressing an A button or throwing a peanut butter sandwich at the screen is irrelevant. The objects are still programmed to perform that action. The event handler that causes that behavioral code to run can be mapped to any sort of input. The only time it gets tricky is in supporting input types which cannot be easily converted to another type. Such as gestures.

We've already established above that the rev controller needs a certain number of inputs which can be treated like those offered on a 'normal' controller.
Does the new XB or PS3 have more input sources than the N64 / GC? In the way of analog buttons, yes. So this may be an issue. We may end up with games that have to modify the player controls for the Rev. Such as how SSX for PS2 uses all buttons, and then for the GC, the developers suddenly found they had 2 less shoulder buttons to work with.

Continuing, with any control scheme there will be genres which are more suited than others to the layout. Sports games may be more suited to the XB, Mario type games may be more suited towards the Rev input and dingo hunting games may be more suited to the PS3 boomerang. but that is normal.

All of this controller discussion assumes that the revolutionary input features of the rev controller are worthless, and instead the controller is used in a traditional fashion. But consider that the Rev DOES have a 'different' control method. IF this different method of control offers something to any of the major genre's, then fans of those genres will want to use the rev controller unless the games look horrible on Nintendo's system.

^ Misschien kunnen sommige 'insiders' van al die 'blogs' daar even wat van leren.

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Op dinsdag 6 september 2005 09:24 schreef Pheno het volgende:
Weer een blog met iemand die zijn fantasie loslaat

Nee hoor. 't Is gewoon een gozer die alles redelijk netjes op een rijtje zet.

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Op dinsdag 6 september 2005 09:59 schreef Kill_em_all het volgende:

[..]

Goh gaat hij ff snel de fout in...

Dat boeit niet. Er worden in het tekst toch geen belangerijke conclusies getrokken op basis van dat feit.