Microsoft took some criticism in the beginning of the Xbox 360's life because of their choice to continue to support the standard DVD format for their game titles. They defended themselves saying that the DVD storage medium was more than enough space for upcoming games with their new compression techniques, but now it seems that the format's limitations have causes a negative effect on one Xbox 360 title.
Bizarre Creation says that the DVD format is too small to fit all of the features they wanted to include in
Project Gotham Racing 4. A Bizarre Creation's staff member says:
"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."
A
post on Bizarre Creation's forums explains that the fix for this was to create different lighting models for each locale depending on weather. So, in other words, each city will only have one time-of-day setting.
Before you throw out the 'two disc' question, another staffer explains:
"Having the game spread across two discs isn't an option for a number of reasons. Sorting out gameplay both in single and multiplayer where you always have to swap discs around would be difficult, and detrimental to the flow of the game. Also, having two discs puts the price of manufacturing up, and that's one we'd have to discuss with the publisher."
"As it stands, we've got the best of all options. We've got tonnes of cities, the best lighting effects we've ever done, and weather which dramatically changes the look of the cities too. And it all fits on one disc."
[Via
360 Advanced,
Bizarre Creations ]
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
4:15 PM on 07.31.2007
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i kid, they don't normally think things through. [:
Anyway, that's my 2 cents, don't know if any1 else might agree. But coming from a programmer's perspective, they are probably doing a shitty job to start with. Microsoft's proposal makes the most sense on the short term.
But not all Xbox360 owners have hard drives. Developers are very cautious about excluding people that bought the basic system.
2. There must be some compression issues. I have a 15kb file on my computer that is a super compressed file that renders a 15 minute video in real time. And like Deus Payne said, they fit Oblivion on one disc. As far as I understand it Mass Effect is on one disc as well. Why can't PGR4 fit on one disc?
In 3-4 years when it's time for the next Xbox, Blu-ray will be much cheaper, HD-DVD will be ancient history, and 50GB discs (if not larger) will be standard. They'll be able to put together a system where the most expensive component isn't the disc drive, as is the case with the PS3.
I love Blu-ray but it was a huge mistake for Sony to force it down people's throats by including it in the PS3 and they're paying for it.
now i don't know too much about game development either, but as far as I know, oblivion doesn't have the same speeds that PGR does because oblivion isn't really a high speed racing game... i'd assume that the textures change a lot faster in a racing game than in an RPG, and therefore need much faster loading times.... i could be wrong, but that's just my intuition
it almost sounds as if instead od doing proper lighting and level design they are relying on just textures to change the atmosphere...
I know for a fact you can use the same texture of day and night...you just change the lighting....now i am sure their engine is different than what i have experiance with but i don't see them needing multiple versions of each texture on the disc
I think that's precisely why they "catch flak". They decided to go with DVD-9 to beat Sony to the punch and keep prices down. It's worked out well so far, but we'll see how far developers can push the system in the years to come with the capacity limitation.
Also, if people actually clicked the link and read the source (yeah, I know, crazy thought), they'd see that they couldn't simply reuse the same textures for night and day because some cities have dramatically different look at night than at day and just shining a light source on them or taking it off of them wouldn't work the same.
Jumping to the assumption that they're just not using compression also seems a bit naive. I'm sure they're either already using compression or have a very good reason that it wouldn't work.
Did I mention is plays Blu-ray movies!?! :P
Anyway ... you still have your HD-DVD to read your games .... Oh i forgot ... it's only for movies .... sry me bad :)))
Do you think buildings and cars change their surfaces at night in real life? If they want to get a night effect in the game, they should completely rely on a good lighting system, not redoing the entire set of textures.
You've obviously never watched Christine.
they prob want to introduce a live night with street signs glowing, kinda like "Las Vegas" oh but wait, they should just scratch that cuz Las Vegas looks the same in the day as in the night.
Were are moving on People; from old to new, we don't just want a couple of boxed buildings with a light(sun) that makes it day & night.
btw, I bought today 300 the movie on blue ray... it was 7$ cheaper than HD-DVD ;[
Again MikeTava hits it on the head...take out the cities we've been driving in since Metropolis Street Racer and give us the variety we've known and loved.
*Sigh...stop giving me bad news about one of the few franchises i still have faith in as an aging gamer Dx
[i]Lord_Satorious says:
This is bullshit, if they used decent enough compression, they could fit everything on a single dual-layer DVD. Sorry, but the Xbox 360 isn't the PlayStation 3 with it's Blu-Ray and 30 GB of space for uncompressed textures. That may be easier, but you can compress anything down to a fraction of its original size. Stop being lazy Bizarre Creations.[/i]
if this isn't fanboism I dont know what it is, lol. have u guys seen the rain effects in PGR4? its fucking incredible, looks like VFX for a movie.
BD is faster (then dual layer DVD9)
This is very wrong. The Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 is 2x speed, while the 360 DVD9 drive is (I think) a 12x speed.
Killzone 2 has roughly 2GB levels
That's just amazing, considering the combined system and vRAM in the PS3 (and 360) is 512MB. Are you telling me each level in Killzone 2 will have multiple loads?
There is a trade-off here. On one hand, we have a console with Blu-Ray and a much higher price tag. On the other hand, we have a console with DVD9 and a much lower price tag. Would you be happier if the 360 launched at $600 and had extra time effects, or would you be happy you have a cheaper console that looks amazing and know that the other console capable of these things will one day be affordable? I'd rather have the latter.
I would prefer the 360 be priced @ $500-$600 if you offered XBL FREE, no 50$ a year cuz that adds up (reality you pay $450+tax for a 360, so its 150$ difference). HD-DVD player as the mainstream gaming (that would actually help fight against BRD, bit more gaming space, and HD-DVD movie playing) and to compete against the Wii-mote & Sixaxis, a motion to the controller + make it wireless.
Now that will make it a next gen system worthy of beating the PS3. on your Killzone comment, you know how good Resistance play's, and thats a launch title, when UT3, KZ2, Haze come out you know its going to get better.
Can you imagine if we had two $600 consoles? Ugh.
I don't see anybody complain about the disc space on the ps3 !!!!"
But you see many people complain about the price of the actual thing because of BRD, which is precisely why support for the PS3 is lacking from all over... in fact, the only thing that's going right for Sony (at this moment) are movies... which is fine and dandy, but this thing is supposedly made for games, and I have yet to see one that actually takes advantage of that technology... maybe Killzone 2 will. Time will tell. Not being a fanboy here... cocky comments from either side just kinda make me laugh.
As for PGR4... I dunno, I just don't see the game being that much of a space leecher. Comparing it to Oblivion might not be the fairest thing, since well, PGR4's way prettier... but compare it to Mass Effect, and suddenly one realizes that perhaps Bizarre is a little at fault here.
And besides, it is completely off of the subject. This discussion is about the fact that they claim that they can't fit day and night levels into PGR4. I find it as a huge excuse, they are blaming their shortcomings on the capacity of a disc, and its pathetic. If they developed a proper engine with a proper dynamic lighting system they would never have to make a whole new texture set for night and day. I understand that some games won't be able to fit on one disc, Blue Dragon uses 3, and there are legitimate reasons so to blame the 9GB DVD for not havign enough capacity, but saying that you have to make double textures as the reason it won't fit on a disc is just a pathetic excuse for shitty development and no forsight in the development of an engine.
Just a heads up. Game developers read comments too, and everytime they see a comment like yours, where you think you know how to design and develop video games better than them, they laugh at you.
Unless of course you have already deisgned and implemented the perfect engine with a "proper" dynamic lighting system. I mean, how hard could it be? These guys are only industry professionals with countless years of experience. Surely you can do better than those lazy idiots.
As for the actual topic. I can understand not doing real-time lighting for every single light source. It would be fairly processing-intensive, to the detriment of the more important physics of racing. But duplicate textures for nighttime just sounds lazy. I've done a bit of programming; a "hardcoded" solution like that is never ideal.
I'm no expert. They are the professionals. However, while I'm armchair critiquing, I'll just go ahead and blame it on them being British.
Personally I really don't care if 360 games are chopped to fit a DVD-9. Just leave the content in the PS3 version though.
Since I started out with a C64, I really can't imagine filling up a DVD. Procedural synthesis can be done very quickly and effectively for normal maps and other things that suck up a lot of space.
your are a truly M$ fanboys and Crunshii is right put every add-ons on the 360 and it's more expensive then the PS3 like it or not.
Stop being so fanboy and accept the truth that the PS3 is coming out strong and will shut your little fucking mouth !
uh should i compress my msg for you ??? lollllllllll
like malhavoc, i really think you shouldn't try to argue with the devs... i'm sure they know a lot more about game development than you do. if you only use lighting to change night to day and vice versa, then you end up with two settings that look exactly the same, with just different lighting. however, i'm sure you can really change things by having different textures (such as the comment somebody made WAAAY up about having a las vegas-esque night).
@buckfitches, the x12, x2 etc. doesn't mean a thing unless you're talking about the same format. the x1 speed for BD-ROM is waaay faster than X1 for DVDs.
regarding killzone, different parts of the levels will stream in at different times depending on where you are. just cuz you're in a level doesn't mean it's all going to be loaded. whatever you don't see won't have loaded yet. that's how it worked in resistance as well (if i remember correctly), where each level was nearing a gig or a gig and a half.
@Aequitas Are you sure that 9MB/s isn't the blu-ray's x1 speed?
as much as i might agree with your point, don't be a fucking little prick