A couple of days ago we picked up some news over the tin cans that Bizarre Creations (the studio behind
Project Gotham Racing 4) had some issues fitting what they wanted to include in their game on Microsoft's chosen game storage format for the Xbox 360, DVD9. Now that that news has washed over the gaming blogosphere, Bizarre Creations has posted some
clarifications on their web page. Now they say that:
"DVD size is absolutely not a factor that we consider when designing our games... and PGR4 is no exception. DVD9 gives us more than we need to create a fabulous experience for you guys."
To 'shed some light' on what's going here, please take a look at what Alan M, another Bizarre staff member posted earlier:
"In the past we've always had day and night and to do this we've had to create a duplicate set of textures for most of the buildings, obviously there is the space on the disc and the time it will take make all those night time textures. For some cities night time is important, as good as Vegas looks in the day everyone really wants to see it at night, so in PGR4 only night will be available, and if you thought Vegas and Tokyo looked good at night wait until you see what Shanghai looks like!"
So, it seems like Bizarre Creations' response is to say that their dynamic weather system could create more gameplay situations than the previous day and night option, letting them change the environments of one texture set in many ways. That definitely makes sense, but it does not change the fact that there can only be a set amount of texture sets because of the limited storage space. They said it themselves:
"You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD."
While there may be more variety with the lighting/weather effects versus simply having a day and night version of each locale, wouldn't it be better to have more texture sets
and the lighting effects? In other words, while a night time Tokyo may look great, will their lighting system be enough to make those night time Tokyo textures look like day time ones? That would be kind of hard to imagine. It's kind of a bummer because a Tokyo sunrise can look great, too.
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49 comments + 106006 views
Let's play the "in other words game" I'll go first:
In other words, XBOX360 DVD limitations ruins another potential grand scale game.
I'll play!
In other words: we said too much in our forums and now we have to cover our ass/
Oops, looks like someone got a spankin' from microsoft. Now go apologize to your sister.
So wait, they say the exact opposite of what they said 5 minutes ago? And it covers their asses? Who would've thought.
Being an artist in the game industry myself that first post didn't make a whole lot of sense. Its my understanding that many high end games these days don't need specific textures for night and day. Of course there are acceptions, for example if you want lit windows, bulbs, signs, anything that would exsibit different material properties if it were lit at night or if you have shadows baked into the textures that take a light sources' direction into consideration. But with next gen consoles much of the lighting is done dynamicly.
All that being said, I'm not working on the game so I can't know exactly whats going on but I find it hard to believe it was a size issue.
@AgentMOO it's only a $100 difference now.
Either way, I appreciate the honesty of the original post where they admit the systems shortcomings. Every system has weaknesses. It sucks that developers can't be honest without getting a scolding from the hardware maker. Or at least that the case with MS developers.
Vegas loses it's cool factor after about a week.
Reeper - not to me!
i personally was looking forward to Macau and Shanghai at night :(
I am still baffled about how they call DVD9 a next-gen format.
@Professor Pew
For the Wii it is! Haha, I love the Wii, don't kill me guys.
lolllll too funny .... well i guest BD will rock the world now :)))
mean guess
Lol, they probably got an angry phone call from MS saying "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!?" and found themselves surrounded by mercenaries.
And BTW, you got linked on Penny Arcade =O
Umm if it takes two texture sets one for day and one for night then how were they able to do 24 hour real-time translation back when the game was called Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast, which used a GD-ROM and held only 1.2GB of data?
Metropolis Street Racer:
The day/night time spectrum during gameplay is realistic, in that the game uses the internal clock of the Dreamcast to calculate the present time in each city. Play at 8AM in England, for example, and the San Francisco races will all be at night.
This is just a wild guess, but the current systems support higher resolution textures which take a boatload of more memory. Beyond the larger detailed textures and 3d models there is also the issue that it supported 24bit color where the newer systems support 32bit color. Anyways, the point is that it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see that DVD9's limits are quickly approaching.
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