Huge variation in graphics of PS2 games.

Mr .Bungle

I was just wondering why is there so much variation in PS2 graphics? I mean GT3 was 1 of the first games for PS2 and the graphics on that were just plain amazing, close to lifelike. since then i haven't seen one racing game come close to then in terms of graphics, they all just look like PS1 games. And also MGS2 the graphics in that 2 are also amazing (esp. in 1st person mode) yet i haven't seen 1 other 1st person shooter that looks even half as nice as that? Even on the PS1 there was some amazing games and some **** games but there was never the gap in graphics that there is on PS2.

Sony should enforce some sort of quality control..........

Giblet

Well the reason is due to the budget of the games; more noted brands get more money and time to work on their games, thus better graphics.
And some game designers can get away with truley shoddy graphics and still sell a game due to a licence or whatever.

Shinji

Er that's a fairly small part of the reason to be fair Giblet.

Most of the reason is that the PS2 is genuinely the most difficult console ever to develop for. GT3 wasn't an early title, it came out over a year after the launch of the machine in Japan and had been in development for over two years. MGS2 was in development for three years. These are developers that are favoured by Sony and got kits very early on, as well as a lot of support from in Sony.

Other developers are still getting up to speed on the console and building their own tools to work with it. Bear in mind that most western developers have only had their kits for about eighteen months at most, many of them only a year....

As for quality control, well, that's what Nintendo do to a certain degree with their machines. And then people whinge about not enough games coming out. Guess you can't please everyone, eh?

chernobyl

Lots of companies are not even building their own stuff, just using middleware..uh!.

Shinji

That's not necessarily a bad thing. GTA3 is built on Renderware and you don't hear anyone complain about that; the new Unreal engine stuff on PC and Xbox is built on Karma physics.

And of course, everything on the Xbox is built on middleware, since that's effectively what DirectX is.

chernobyl

Ever notice which games have the highest load times?

DirectX is a highly evolved API with so many different libraries that developers should find makes Xbox games a dream come through, well those that have dev'd for the PC in the past.

Xbox was made with DirectX in mind and the hardware/software just knows this technology and each other so well, DirectX has evolved with Nvidia but Station2 middle-ware was made with "one fits all" in mind..

Stephen

Its quite impressive to think that both GTA3 and Burnout use the same RenderWare engine. Two totally different games (besides the fact that you can drive in both ) - burnout does load a lot faster than GTA, but then its not half as complex or massive.

chernobyl

I would have to dispute that Stephen, both games look completely the same.

Burnout




GTA3




Burnout




GTA3

Shinji

What absolute bloody cack!

For a start, "look I found some screengrabs with the camera in similar positions" does not equate to "the games look the same". In fact I can tell you right now that while Burnout, as it was developed in-house by Criterion, uses Renderware at a high level, most of the use of Renderware in GTA3 is at an intermediate level comparable to DirectX.

Oh, and by the way, Pro Evolution Soccer also uses Renderware. I suppose THAT looks exactly like GTA3 too? And Airblade, that loks so much like Burnout...

DirectX is a highly evolved API with so many different libraries that developers should find makes Xbox games a dream come through, well those that have dev'd for the PC in the past.

That being sod all of them actually. There's a huge upset at the moment among Xbox developers because NVIDIA is refusing to release details of how the NV25 works at a very low level to them, so they HAVE to use DirectX to access it. As the majority of Xbox coders (well, those in proper companies anyway) are from a console background, they're unbelievably píssed off at this. It's one thing to decide to use middleware as part of your project by consensus, it's another thing to have it forced on you.

Station2 middle-ware was made with "one fits all" in mind

This is absolute, total nonsense and I'd challenge you to present ANY evidence backing that up. PlayStation 2 middleware (and we're not just talking about Renderware here - middleware covers a lot of ground, from companies like Havok and Mathengine through to tools companies like Codeplay) is built from the ground up to take advantage of the PlayStation 2 and nothing else. It wouldn't make sense to do it any other way - you don't use middleware if it's going to give you a significant performance hit.

The fact of the matter is that modern middleware is bloody good at what it does, and for a lot of developers it makes a hell of a lot more sense to use that than to píss about reinventing the wheel for every game. I have absolutely no idea where you get your downright bizarre opinion on this from, although I do note that it's yet another example of Chernobyl Explaining Why Xbox Rules All, so it doesn't come as much of a surprise really....

chernobyl

I certainly dont think Xbox "rules", the PS2 certainly doesnt either as its has very few original titles, i just have to see what the GC offers now.

... and where have i ever said "Xbox rules", i said it has potential, thats all i have ever said, go Shinji and quote me where i say "Xbox rules"..go!

I have not looked at Mathengine for quite some time, it may have evolved, but when it was first released and everyone was going "whohoo" about it, the final products were not impressive, so i stand to be corrected on what i say about it.

But the fact is Shinji the middleware cannot compare to "in house" engines developed by good coders and the prime example is Lionhead who decided to use Karma for the console version of B&W, reading the press release you can see that the only genuine happy party in this deal are MathEngine.

I have both Burnout and GTA3 and both games look the same, i decided to use those games as exmples because they are similar it would be stretching things to compare a football title to GTA3.

Now back to your flame bait...

another example of Chernobyl Explaining Why Xbox Rules All

Examples please.
Thankyou.

tHE vAGGABOND

PS2 certainly doesnt either as its has very few original titles

ROFL - thats brilliant. Are you really Billy Conolly in disguise?

tHE vAGGABOND

I have both Burnout and GTA3 and both games look the same

Thats just rubbish. I have them both in the office too, and Burnout does not look like GTA3 past the whole fact that they both have computer game graphics..

But the fact is Shinji the middleware cannot compare to "in house" engines developed by good coders

The reality of making games for any platform is based around money. How much you will make or how much it will cost. Most developers these days dont have the time or money to spend months of dev time pricking around trying to replicate the functions middleware. Even if you take the big studios as an example over the hundreds of other game dev houses you will forget about its far easier to get a set of tools you know work, and that you cant get support for rather than spend time writing and then testing your own suite of tools.

end of the day you dont have a clue about making console games, bar what fanboy websites seem to tell you so I would give up if I were you

Shinji

go Shinji and quote me where i say "Xbox rules"..go!

Obviously you didn't. Although you're doing a damn good job as the resident Xbox fanboy, you do luckily have a vocabulary better than the average internet Xbox fanboy, so I've yet to see an "Xbox ROOOLZ DOOOD" out of you. I'm sure it's only a matter of time though.

I have not looked at Mathengine for quite some time, it may have evolved, but when it was first released and everyone was going "whohoo" about it, the final products were not impressive

Um, which final products exactly? Karma is a damn impressive product - you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who'll disagree strongly on that point.

the prime example is Lionhead who decided to use Karma for the console version of B&W, reading the press release you can see that the only genuine happy party in this deal are MathEngine

Well, having gone a little further than the press release and actually talked to the parties involved (I wrote a feature about Karma around the time of the Lionhead deal) I'm really not sure where you're coming from there. Lionhead used Karma because they sat down, looked at what needed doing, realised that it'd take months to do it themselves and opted not to reinvent the wheel, and they're perfectly happy with that decision. I also believe that it's not just the console versions of B&W using it - Molyneux' team will be using it for their next (as yet unnamed) project, too.

I have both Burnout and GTA3 and both games look the same

Look, you're talking absolute cack here and there's no two ways about it. Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of computer graphics can look at those two games and point out that, for a bloody start, they use totally different lighting systems, entirely different depths of up-close detail and different LOD systems... Christ, just look at the cars. Yes, in both games they have four wheels and a chassis, but the similarities in terms of rendering end there.

the fact is Shinji the middleware cannot compare to "in house" engines developed by good coders

You might be interested to know that most big Japanese companies use middleware of sorts - they have a group within the company who develop tools and libraries for the platform, which are then utilised by the rest of the company. That's middleware - MGS2, FFX, ICO, all the best looking games on the platform use it. It's just that they're a year further into the learning curve for PS2 than US and UK developers are.

I think you also overestimate just how many "good coders" there are working on the PS2 right now. It's a MASSIVELY complex platform - orders of magnitude more difficult to get good performace from than the PSone was. Coding stuff like the vector units is hardcore computer science and maths work, not straightforward programming. Given this, middleware is a FAR more sensible solution for the vast majority of game development projects.

And here's a question for you - which is going to be a better use of development resources, the FPS game running on the Quake 3 engine (which is licensable middleware) or the game running on a proprietary engine coded up from scratch? It's not a tough question, really, is it?


To be honest I think Vagga is right - you're way out of your depth here. You're making points about middleware which were true in the PSone era and which I've seen fanboy websites regurgitating ever since, but this stuff is simply not true any more.

Oh yeah! Almost forgot:

Examples please.

Every single god-damned thread I've argued with you in over the past month. That's a lot of threads. You must remember SOME of them

tHE vAGGABOND

To be honest I think Vagga is right

STOP PRESS!!!

Dont be at yourself

Funny, I was thinking the same thing