412 replies to this topic

[mirza044]

something interesting:
DICE to Focus on the PC with Battlefield 3

part of the geforce.com interview with Battlefield 3 Executive Producer Patrick Bach:

Do you feel the consoles are holding PC games back?

Yes, absolutely. That's the biggest problem we have today. Most games are actually still based on the same core idea that the consoles are your focus, the superior platform or something. I don’t know why. That was the truth 5 years ago, but the world has moved on. PCs are way more powerful than the consoles today and there are actually almost zero games out there that actually use the benefits of this. So for our target of what we want to hit, we are now using the more powerful platform to try and prove what we see gaming being in the future rather than using the lowest common denominator, instead of developing it for the consoles and then just adding higher resolution textures and anti-aliasing for the PC version. We're do it the other way around, we start with the highest-end technology that we can come up with and then scale it back to the consoles.

Can you talk about the benefits of that? That probably makes the PC version look better but does it then hinder the consoles in any way?

This is interesting. In theory you could argue that you're building it for a more powerful platform and that it will look crappy on consoles. That's not the case because when you build the target high, you can then pick and choose from the target and ask what actually creates this picture and then pick the best things from that and turn that into your console solution. The other thing that is very interesting is that since you're building the engine based on the knowledge that you will release it on the consoles, you actually streamline the whole technology to be able to scale back to the weaker platforms. So in the end, by, you know, painting this high-end target, you actually set a new bar and then when you scale it back, I think people will be surprised to see how good it looks on the consoles. We can't show it right now, because we're aiming to use the PC to set the bar, but it's actually helping us make a better console game.

[Sean_Seanston]

mirza044, on 06 May 2011 - 09:08 AM, said:

Do you feel the consoles are holding PC games back?

Yes, absolutely. That's the biggest problem we have today. Most games are actually still based on the same core idea that the consoles are your focus, the superior platform or something. I don’t know why.

Thank ****.

mirza044, on 06 May 2011 - 09:08 AM, said:

That was the truth 5 years ago

Lolwat.

[Valdez]

mirza044, on 06 May 2011 - 09:08 AM, said:

instead of developing it for the consoles and then just adding higher resolution textures and anti-aliasing for the PC version. We're do it the other way around, we start with the highest-end technology that we can come up with and then scale it back to the consoles.

My memory is a bit fuzzy on this but I think PG had troubles with this as well when they did UAW, but I cant recall if they did the console-to-PC approach or the other way round, all I remember was that DX 10 was really wonky on my UAW.

I'm no game dev so I can't tell which approach is better, since I cant tell if it's easier to scale up or to scale down (it might depend on modularity of the API too). Maybe Mike can answer based on his expertise.

Edited by Valdez, 06 May 2011 - 10:36 AM.

[Piglet]

I wonder how it will sell alongside MW3, and truely which one will be the better game.

I so hope it's gonna be BF 3 that wins it.

[Erix]

I'm pretty sure BF3 will be better quality. But will it outsell MW3? Not likely. Too many single-minded console players out there are just gonna buy it without even blinking.

[Dei]

Yes, it will outsell BF3, however, a lot of people lost their faith in CoD after Black Ops. Especially the PS3 owners. A few are also saying that they're getting tired of the gungho approach CoD has.

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

Erix, on 14 May 2011 - 04:00 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure BF3 will be better quality. But will it outsell MW3? Not likely. Too many single-minded console players out there are just gonna buy it without even blinking.

Single-minded console players?

*Cough**Cough* 25-dollar Celestial Steed *Cough**Cough*

But yeah, I agree with you: MW3 will outsell BF3 by a fair margin after what happened with Black Ops. Can you believe there are radio advertisements proclaiming Black Ops to be the best game ever?

[Piglet]

just so you know: about 20 people already pre-ordered MW3 at our store compared to about 10 for battlefield 3

[hagren]

I'm not surprised. People are idiots

[Erix]

Gazdakka Gizbang, on 20 May 2011 - 09:58 PM, said:

Single-minded console players?

*Cough**Cough* 25-dollar Celestial Steed *Cough**Cough*

But yeah, I agree with you: MW3 will outsell BF3 by a fair margin after what happened with Black Ops. Can you believe there are radio advertisements proclaiming Black Ops to be the best game ever?

No one in their right mind would admit to owning one these days. I wouldn't even use it if someone gave it to me for free. I'd learn it to boost my mount count but that's it. I have no desire to be grouped with "those people".

[Dei]

Hahahaha, seen like 2 of them since I started. Well..since 2 weeks after I started to be more precise. I basically started when it got released. XD

[Sean_Seanston]

What if you bought a Celestial Steed as an ironic gesture? Would that still be terrible?

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

Sean_Seanston, on 21 May 2011 - 06:03 AM, said:

What if you bought a Celestial Steed as an ironic gesture? Would that still be terrible?

Uh, yeah. Unless you thought paying the same amount for a full game or an addon was worth it for one mount skin.

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

I will be one of those people that gets Modern Warfare 3 for the console. Maybe not at release but somewhere down the road. I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed MW2's singleplayer and Spec Ops, and it will probably be my last Call of Duty purchase unless they make some massive revolutionary manoeuver. Which they won't because Treyarch will be making one of them, and they're always ultra pro-American garbage.

That being said, I'm getting Battlefield 3 on release date if my computer can handle it. And if they don't pull a Battlefield 2 and cut offline gaming to just 16 uneditable bots, only 16-player size maps, no aircraft, unable to access unlockable weapons and uneditable attrition limits.

[Sean_Seanston]

Gazdakka Gizbang, on 21 May 2011 - 08:32 AM, said:

Which they won't because Treyarch will be making one of them, and they're always ultra pro-American garbage.

Again... maybe MW games are actually just incredibly well done satire?

[Dei]

Sean_Seanston, on 21 May 2011 - 09:22 AM, said:

Again... maybe MW games are actually just incredibly well done satire?

It's hard to call the latest CoD games 'incredibly well done anything'. Only Modern Warfare 1 did something incredibly good, the rest are just carbon-copies of that game with extra shinies..and more suck.

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

Sean_Seanston, on 21 May 2011 - 09:22 AM, said:

Again... maybe MW games are actually just incredibly well done satire?

Black Ops wasn't. Treyarch went the full 9 yards of Platoon x GI Joe to try and make Americans and war look as awesome as possible. Now Modern Warfare made by Infinity Ward, that's different - the Brits do all the actual work in those games. First Modern Warfare - Americans invade Middle East, get pulverised, end of their involvement. Modern Warfare 2 - Americans do little more than defend their home soil for the entirety. But the British are the guys that commit to the endgame, and the British are the ones that kill the bad guys at the end. That's quite the something for an American-based company.

Quote

It's hard to call the latest CoD games 'incredibly well done anything'. Only Modern Warfare 1 did something incredibly good, the rest are just carbon-copies of that game with extra shinies..and more suck.

I didn't play the multiplayer of Modern Warfare 2 to any great deal, but I know what the biggest levels of suck were - More aim assist, tactical nukes, consecutive killstreaks, grenade launcher lethality radius, throwing knives, easy melee kills.

Now the storyline, I enjoyed. Infinity Ward did a very good job of increasing the variety of scenarios you encountered. But Black Ops is terrible - lots of instances where control is leveraged from you into predefined events. You kill a guy to disguise yourself and you can only move in one direction and in a straight line to hide the body. LITERALLY, you only push forward on the thumbstick and can't move it anywhere else. NPC allies block the way so you can't move forward through areas until they lug their fat asses out of the road. Why? When you followed Macmillan in the first Modern Warfare's stealth you weren't forced to wait for him to move. You could do anything you liked. Why did that change?

And all the ******* slow-motion cues...this isn't fricking F.E.A.R., you're not the offspring of a massively powerful psychic individual. It was only the breaching in MW2 that contained those, but in Black Ops whenever an enemy kicks over a door it g-o-e-s i-n-t-o s-l-o-o-o-w m-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-t-i-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-n........

Edited by Gazdakka Gizbang, 21 May 2011 - 10:58 AM.

[Valdez]

Dei, on 21 May 2011 - 10:39 AM, said:

It's hard to call the latest CoD games 'incredibly well done anything'. Only Modern Warfare 1 did something incredibly good, the rest are just carbon-copies of that game with extra shinies..and more suck.

Considering the amount of moderny warfarey FPS out there these days (we have like what, 3 main franchises?), I'm inclined to believe they're more or less carbon copies of each other anyway. This was something my friend pointed out in a recent convo.

Einstein once said world war 4 will be fought with sticks and stones. Maybe we should have a World War 4 FPS.

[Sean_Seanston]

Gazdakka Gizbang, on 21 May 2011 - 10:44 AM, said:

But the British are the guys that commit to the endgame, and the British are the ones that kill the bad guys at the end. That's quite the something for an American-based company.

Yeah, that's true I suppose.

The whole world is saved by the Lemmy-esque sideburns of Cap'n Proice

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

For those who never saw this, by the way:



Good for a laugh or two, and VERY applicable to Black Ops.