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Right now, the PS3 version of id's upcoming shooter, Rage, will offer superior graphics performance on PS3 than Xbox 360. Not because of sheer horsepower, but because of storage. The game is shaping up to be a three disc game, a costly proposition due to Microsoft's licensing fees. Textures would need to be compressed "to fit the game's assets on two DVDs."
Microsoft may have to rescind any fees for additional discs, as it's becoming evident that more developers will require more space in the future. For example, how much compression will Square Enix use for the 360 version of Final Fantasy XIII if making multi-disc games becomes too costly? In the future, we're likely to see more games take advantage of the sheer space offered by Blu-ray disc.
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Absolutely. Blu-ray offers more storage for on disc textures.
While the 360 has the advantage of quicker loading times for large areas, the small amount of time it takes to load large amounts of textures throughout the game really allows better graphics.
Face it, if your game is going to re-use textures, a second disc could lead to multiple discs.
Sandboxed? Well, a second disc is out of the question, that would kill that system's version of the port.
omg what the hell are these dev's doing, why the hell do you need more than 9 gig for a damn game, and don't talk to me about textures, that's a load of bubcus.
the only reason that they need more disk space is so they can squeeze stupd fmv into the game, it's a game it don't need fmv to tell the story
look at mgs4 OMG i wanna play the game not watch a movie.
these stupid dev's are going the same way they went when they first had CD's ''ooo look at all this space we must fill it'' "with what" ''ermm, yeah, FMV yeah''.
FMV FTL, MGS4 is a great game, shame about the FMV that completely spoils it. why didn't they just forget the interactive bit and release it as a 2 hour movie.
blah blah blah MGS4 is a masterpiece through and through, and unlike many other games, if you don't wanna watch the in game video you can skip past it. If the mainstream can't put a HD movie on a DVD, then why would you expect a long video game in HD to fit on a dual layer DVD either?
I was reading SmokeyAssassin's post until he got to MGS4, then I just lost interest. We get it, you didn't like its FMV's. I did, they were beautiful. Kojima is God, ect.
And as for the size of games, they are just going to keep getting bigger. Deal with it.
there is absolutly no need for games to be that size, check out the product
http://www.theproduct.de/ if you don't believe me
With other games that might work, but with MGS4 you can't skip the cutscenes. Why? Because you bought MGS4 for the story. Don't lie to my face and say you were interested in the gameplay aspects of the game, because everything they did has been done before and could be found elsewhere. The great thing about the MGS series is its incredibly deep stroyline, so no, you can't skip the cutscenes. It'd be like playing SMG so you could talk to NPC's. However, I do agree with the fact that more space = win. MGS4 is a top of the line game and is a perfect example of what you can do with more space. As for John Cormack... I don't even know who he is.
Isn't some guy from id Software? At any rate, he seems to have a very big mouth today.
there is absolutly no need for games to be that size, check out the product
http://www.theproduct.de/ if you don't believe me
how much gameplay can be fit in with those kinds of graphics? Innovative gameplay?
The better the graphics get, the more space they're going to take. That's how everything works. Eventually we'll find better compression techniques that store the data even smaller without a loss of resolution. But there's always going to be a limit and less compression = better texture res.
and many people don't even use FMV anymore. These days, 360 and PS3 games usually render the cutscene using the engine.
Oh yeah, I always forget MGS4's cutscenes were real-time... because Kojima thinks FMV's are lame or something. He must hate Nomura xD
I think FMVs are lame when you could just render the cutscene in game. This generation it's inexcusable. With the PS2, it was passable (RE4, Okami).
With other games that might work, but with MGS4 you can't skip the cutscenes. Why? Because you bought MGS4 for the story. Don't lie to my face and say you were interested in the gameplay aspects of the game, because everything they did has been done before and could be found elsewhere.
Umm, I bought MGS IV for the gameplay, story was an afterthought. I was hoping to relive some MGS tactical espionage, but was a tad disappointed in those reguards.
MGS4 isn't exactly a "masterpiece" but anyway.
gft, you are partially right theory, of HD fitting to a high density disc, but remember, movies are different. Movies in HD are basically frame by frame stored on the disc, just at a much larger resolution. The increase in size of movies is greater than the increase in data size of a game, as the engine really doesn't need to grow that much, just a larger texture database.
smokey, you are correct with the CDs. Anyone remember the Sega CD? If you don't, I suggest you check out the Angry Video Game Nerd review of the Sega CD. While it's humorous, it points out all the god awful FMV games that ruined a system with more potential. (Which also sucked at movie playback, not even close to full motion).
What actually takes up the most space on game discs is audio. A true uncompressed PCM audio stream is almost always only available on the PS3 version. However, unless you have a really high def sound system, this is really useless, even if you do, you really have to know what you're hearing. Modern lossless audio compression technology has grown enough to avert the need for PCM audio. That said, it's still nice to have.
Compression, however, is a different story. Compression takes CPU cycles. In processing a game, CPU cycles needed for decompression are really a waste. If I'm designing a sandboxed game, but I need to compress the vast textures for DVD (see a bigger, newer, Oblivion), I will need decompression constantly available on the fly. Since the player can enter almost any zone and any angle, I need to be ready to decompress any given textures at any given time. Immediately, the loading disadvantage of blu-ray is cancelled out. Now, spare CPU cycles, instead of going to mapping the texture, preventing pop-in, working on having the AI of the guy at the corner of the screen responding quicker, etc, that is working to decompress this texture.
Generally, the higher the compression, the more resource intensive the decompression is.
Umm, I bought MGS IV for the gameplay, story was an afterthought. I was hoping to relive some MGS tactical espionage, but was a tad disappointed in those reguards.
wow. that's just...wow.
MGS4 isn't exactly a "masterpiece" but anyway.
What exactly about MGS4 wasn't masterfully done?
you're inviting the wrath of teh lm-x. tread softly...
Ah, they can be as wrong as they want. None of my business.
Once again lm-x is full of win.
Umm, I bought MGS IV for the gameplay, story was an afterthought.
HAHAHAHA! Damn that was funny!
sc7, I have no idea what you just said. Decompression... CPU cycles... PCM audio... wha..? Ideally you'd wanna have a blu-ray disc though right, to avoid those things?
sc7, I have no idea what you just said. Decompression... CPU cycles... PCM audio... wha..? Ideally you'd wanna have a blu-ray disc though right, to avoid those things?
Ok, I'll explain a little of what each is.
Decompression. If textures are compressed, there are two options.
One: Compress the size of the texture file itself, remaining "unarchived". This results in no adverse CPU effects, but lousy graphics.
Two: Compress the texture file in some type of archiving file format, where data has to be read and translated for the full texture resolution (a larger than compressed size), to be displayed. This requires on the fly CPU cycles.
CPU cycles. Well, there's different ways of looking at this. Theres 3 cores, each can handle so many threads, and what I mean by cycles, is basically, there's a speed of how fast a CPU can complete a single arithmatic execution. Many are required for compression. So you're using a lot of CPU resources that could be spent doing other things when dealing with compression.
PCM audio. Stands for Pulse Code Modulation. It's basically a 1 to 1 (as close as digital can get, see: why audiophiles still buy new music on vinyl.) representation of the given audio in the specified range. (usually 44000Hz - 48000 Hz). This takes up a lot of space, because what it does is allows space for any given sound in the range, therefore creating a large constant bitrate, even if that bitrate is full of blank space where nothing is occuring. 4 minutes of PCM audio for only two channels could take around 45 mb. 4 minutes of PCM audio at 7.1 (not Dolby, since Dolby is really just a compression system), takes as much as 300-450 mb.
(for those who don't know, the bitrate is the decompressed amount of data being played at any given second).
What usually is included in games is either Dolby Digital (most likely), or in some DVDs, DTS. These, much like MP3, AAC, ATRAC3, OGG Vorbis, are compressed/lossy audio codecs. What these do is take out anything that (depending on encoding bit rate), cannot either be heard at all by human ears in the range, or the very faintest of audio that would only be heard by extravagent equipment. (Really low bitrates such as 64k can produce horrible sound). (Most games are around 320kbps Dolby Digital). Dolby Digital is generally more than enough for the average gaming setup.
There are also other new audio codecs, called lossless codecs. WMA has one, Apple has one, FLAC is one, Dolby has a lossless True HD one, and DTS has one too. These are codecs that represent all sounds within the range, but attempt on the fly decompression, since they compress the file to make up for empty space. Usually these are about only half the size of a PCM file, and therefore are only used on Blu-ray movies.