The Xbox 360 comes out in 3 months and so far it is planned to ship with a standard DVD drive. It’s simple math why this is a problem.
Let’s take the transition from PS1 to PS2. PS1 characters were generally 200 to 1500 polygons max. PS2 characters are generally 1500 to 15000 polygons. That 7 to ten times the polygons. A PS1 only had 3.5 meg of ram. A PS2 has 40meg of ram. That’s nearly 10 times the ram. These types of facts generally translate into 10 times the data on the DVD.
So now, with the next gen coming up the new systems both appear to have 512meg of ram. That’s 8 times more than Xbox and 12 times more than PS2. So, if we calculate it out, if the data being used is going to go up by 8 to 12 times then if the average game uses a one gig of data that becomes 8 to 12 gigs needed on the DVD. DVDs only store 4.7 gigs of data. That doesn’t even count for bigger games like Grand Theft Auto, Gran Turismo, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, God of War and any others that probably use 3 gig or more of a DVD just for game data (not for audio and not for movies). Put those games on the next gen and with all the fancy textures, normal maps, gloss maps, HDR environment maps, and high res polygon models they will not fit on a DVD and we haven’t even considered adding HD video which Mr. Allard emphasised so much in past 360 presentations.
Checking out some current gen games to see how much data they use. (note, these are guesses looking at the contents of the DVDs)
| Burnout 3 XBox: | Burnout 3 Next Gen: | |
| Sound: | 1.35gig | 1.35gig |
| Video: | 0.3gig | 0.3gig * ?? to make it HDTV? |
| Data: | 0.65gig | 0.65gig * 8 <-> 12 = 5.2gig <-> 7.8gig |
| Total space: | 2.3gig | 6.85gig <-> 9.45gig not including HD video |
| Halo 2 XBox: | Halo 2: Next Gen | |
| Sound: | unknown | unknown |
| Video: | 0.4 gig | 0.4 gig * ?? to make it HDTV |
| Data: | 4.4 gig | 4.4 gig * 8 <-> 12 = 35.2gig <-> 52.8gig |
| Total space: | 4.8gig | 35.6gig to 53.2gig not including HD video |
| Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow XBox: |
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Next Gen: |
|
| Sound: | 0.4gig | 0.4gig |
| Video: | 1.5gig | 1.5gig * ?? to make it HDTV |
| Data: | 0.7gig | 0.7gig * 8 <-> 12 = 5.6gig <-> 8.4gig |
| Total space: | 2.6gig | 7.5gig <-> 10.3gig not including HD video |
| Jak 3 PS2: | Jak 3 Next Gen: | |
| Sound: | 3.2gig | 3.2gig |
| Video: | 0.0gig | 0.0gig |
| Data: | 0.9gig | 0.9gig * 8 <-> 12 = 7.2gig <-> 10.8gig |
| Total space: | 4.1gig | 10.4gig <-> 14gig |
| GTA:SA PS2: | GTA:SA Next Gen: | |
| Sound: | 2.8gig | 2.8gig |
| Video: | unknown | unknown |
| Data: | 1.4gig | 1.4gig * 8 <-> 12 = 11.2gig <-> 16.8gig |
| Total space: | 3.9gig | 14gig <-> 19.6gig |
Is this an over simplification, yes but it’s not that far off the mark. To give a very concrete example, Tim Sweeney of Unreal fame told us that a single character in Gears of War uses a 2048×2048 texture. Given that next gen characters need at least a color map and a normal/height map a 2048×2048 texture is 32MEG just for the texture of one single character. Nearly the entire memory of a PS2 or 1/2 the memory of an XBox just to texture one single character. Yes, you can compress the texture, you could also compress the texture on the old systems too. The point is even if you compress them their relative sizes are still going to be 8x to 12x in size which means the data is going to grow 8 to 12 times.
Some people will mention not all data is graphic and the non-graphic data will not expand as much. First off, it is still likely to expand. Maybe not 8-12x but more physics, more real world attributes like friction per polygon etc or more A.I. info will increase non graphic data as well but even so, non-graphic data is insignificant in size compared with graphic data. Do you think a 100 artists on a giant EA team are making non-graphic data? No, they are making graphics and those graphics are going to take 8-12x the space on next gen. At best you could probably take those data numbers above and split them 80% graphics 20% non-graphics (probably more like 90%, 10%) then multiply only the graphic piece by 8 to 12. You’ll still see they don’t fit on a DVD.
So, what does this tell us? 360 without HD-DVD is screwed! Sure the developers will make games for it but there is clearly a limit. Many current gen games converted to next gen would not fit on a DVD and so those types of games are not going to appear for XBox 360.
also, there is the issue of the slow transfer speeds of blue-ray and hd-dvd. the transfer speed of the xbox 360 dvd drive blow the competition out of the water
First off I’m not even including video in my calculations above. I’m talking only about 3d game data. After the disc fills up with that then you still have to fit video and audio but even before those go on the disc you are already out of room.
The hard disc is not an option since it’s not standard therefore expecting your game to use it is pointless. On top of which it’s only 20gig. If the problem I’m bringing up is that a Dual layer DVD holds only 9.6gig then how is a 20gig drive going to help you? You’ll get a 2 DVD game and copy one DVD to the HD? Joy, you get to wait 20 minutes while it gets copied, then when you run the second game that needs to copy another DVD you’ve filled the HD.
Texture compression is something used at runtime for getting more textures into ram so that you can have more textures in memory, not something used for storage. I already went over that below.
You’ve already heard one developer complain publically. I’ve heard several developers complain privately and I’d be willing to bet you’ll hear more complain about the lack of space in the coming months.
> trust me, dual layer DVDs at 8.5 GB, offer more than enough storage for xbox 360
Why should I trust you? How many games have you developed? How many professional game developers do you personally know?
Face it Gregg, as JackPalevich said below, “…the extra single-disc capacity of the PS3 drive will not translate into noticably improved gameplay for most genres.” Read that well, MOST GENRES. Only a few games will be bad if put on multiple discs but sadly for your thesis, loading times, disc swaps and other hurdles never killed any system, the high price of the media did though: The Nintendo 64 had no loading times and no disc swaps, but the winner was the system with the cheaper media, full of multiple disc games and killer loading times!
CHEAP is the Key, a Cart with 512MB of storage, ALTHOUGH POSSIBLE, was too expensive back then, as are Blu Ray drives and media now(ok less, but still…).
As you can get a 2048X2048 material without a 2048X2048 texture thanks to procedurals, the often mentioned RPG a good example does not make (to say it as Yoda would ^__^) since due to lack of expertise by the Developer we wont see any in that game (hence the two discs).
But most importantly (as mentioned above): games shipping on 2/3/4 discs? No problem (for the majority of genres).
Texture compression for storage by the way, was used in RE 4. It will be probably used in many X360 games too (what you say holds true for your PAST experiences and different pieces of hardware it seems).
GTA? Graphics were never its strong point and will be sub-par (compared to FF 13 and so on) in the next generation too.
Yes, no GTA with Gears of War graphics, so no problems there either…
I assume you probably don’t talk too much with the money guys in the development comunity (tech guys maybe?). The Tech Heads will always want the best tech, even if doesn’t make sense conomically (specially if you plan to launch a new system way before your competitor as in MS case).
What matters is wether or not the end consumer will buy the product (even if its on 2 discs), and as the DS VS PSP or Snes/Genesis VS Neo Geo wars show us, better tech does not translate in better sales…
Mmmm… I dont see World of Warcraft on the lineup for either the PS3 or XBOX 360.. so that means both systems are gonna suck.
Computer games are where it’s at.. even my laptop has a Nvidia 6800 256M/b and 2gigs of ram. And it cost me less then $1200 THANKS DELL!!
Nerf Shamans..
I don’t think you are going to find that 2 or 3 DVDs are cheaper than 1 Blu-ray.
Procedural textures will not give you what you are seeing in all the demos on 360 or PS3 to date. Maybe you should sit down with some game artists. Let’s see, there are 60 aritsts making video game art in my floor and another 240 on other floors in this building. How many are at your company showing you how to make all this procedureally generated art you speak of?
That GTA’s graphics were never its strong point works in my favor. If all they do is keep the crappy graphics but make them next gen the space needed for the game will increase 8 times. If they actually go for better art it will take even more space. Regardless, it will not be running on 360 without 3+ DVDs and lots of swapping or drastically reduced visuals.
If your arguement is that graphics don’t matter that’s fine but then you’re just conceding my point. You’re agreeing that they can’t support the graphics needed with the limited storage but you’re claiming that’s fine because you don’t need the graphics. I agree that great entertainment doesn’t need the best graphics but that assumes no competition. Comparing PSP to DS is has no relavence, they are completely different and support completely different experiences. PS3 and 360 are at at a basic level really no different in raw power. They both have next gen GPUs, they both have 512meg if ram, and unlike DS/PSP they will both run the same software from most 3rd party developers (ie, EA, Atari, Ubisoft, etc). BUT, if one has 40gig of storage and one only 9gig there is going to be a qualitative difference in many, not all but many, of those titles so unlike DS vs PSP it will be very easy to directly compare them.
I believe MS should make it a priority to put better storage in the 360.
when the original playstation came out, all games were just on 1 cd. It wasn’t until a while later that some games were broken up into multiple cds, most notably, Final fantasy 7. When the ps2 came out, most games that were still being made for the ps1(25% of all ps1 games were sold after the ps2 was introduced) were still just on 1 cd and I’m sure most people thought that the dvd based storage is nice for playing movies, but for games, it was over kill. At most, virtually all games should fit on 2 cds. But look at gregg’s tables above, all the games for the ps2 generation are in the 2-5 gig range. Now, imagine if MS thought back in 2000 that they were going to release a new console called the xbox with 64 megs of ram, 733mhz cpu, and oh yeah…a cd-rom based optical drive. That would be crazy looking back now, but back then, the idea of releasing a cd-rom based console is somewhat reasonable. Remember, most ps1 games were just on 1 cd, and some at the most 2 cds. I could perfectly imagine, J allard saying “well…after much consideration and seeing how most games this gen(ps1) fit on 1 cd…we’ve decided to go with a cd-rom based system. Now I understand some games won’t fit on 1 cd, but I believe the game playing experience won’t be hurt if people switch around between 2 cds.” well, I guess we’ll never know how xbox would’ve fared with a cd-rom based system, since MS decided, rightly so, to go with a dvd based system. Will not going with the next gen optical format be a mistake, only time will tell? If MS went with a cd based storage for the xbox, halo would span at least 9-10 cds and gta would span 8-9 cds. probably more, since game logic code would need to be duplicated across the cds. If you don’t think that would’ve hurt the xbox playing experience and sales, you need your head checked.
I’m not so sure about the 3 DVD VS 1 Blue Ray: I pay 50 cents for bulk DVDs (100 pieces, single Layer) but considering a 100.000 disc order I wouldn’t be surprised if the price for a DVD-9 would be similar. Considering that I was able to buy a 3 DVD-9 disc set (an Anime series) with a Luxurious Packaging for a $6 retail price in Hong Kong (this summer) and that their making money on it, it is safe to say that 50 cents is what a Company pays for large scale productions. Large Scale pricing for Blue Ray discs is unclear at the moment but it is rumored to be well above 3 DVDs…
What I think about the next GTA is that it will not be 8 times the size of San Andreas. Probably it will be around 30% bigger (they need time to make a game 8 times bigger, and they can’t wait 2010 to release the next installment) with crappy graphics (compared to the likes of Gears of War) . I also think that both the 360 and PS3 version will ship on DVD.
We’ll see…
As for procedurals, the Japanese Developers in general have little experience with them, so concentrated as they were to develop for a system that didn’t support them (and even Japanese PC games have no procedurals whatsoever) we won’t see many from that comunity initially.
Also, where you work, they certainly don’t have trouble storing Bitmap textures on disc as they have a lot of space (I’m not arguing wether or not “more is better”), but if you go in a US or European Studio (Crytek or UbiSoft Montreal for example) you’ll see a lot more people working on them.
There are effective ways to make a great looking game on 8.5 gigs it’s just more difficult. Why make the effort?
Because the System comes out first and for a while it will not be a Next Gen Console, it will be THE (one and only) next-gen console.
Japanese RPG makers can put the game on 3 Discs and get away with it (they are quite linear after all), US and European teams (far more trained on Next Gen stuff thanks to PCs) can use new techniques (ie Oblivion), but most of all, remember that Sony is shooting for a 7+ years lifespan for its PS3 (hence PS4 in 2013) while MS will launch the 360 successor November 2009, and right now, long term performance of the Disc Drive its not their concern.
By the time it’s gonna be important MS will have its Next-Gen drive.
I believe that MS and Sony’s strategies are too different to compare, whether the long term one of Sony (7+ years of lifespan for PS3), or the short term one of MS (next system on November 2009) will work better, it’s something we’ll have to wait out and see I guess…
It’s a bit of a generalization to say that Japanese developers have little experience with procedurals as many of the developers don’t necessarily share information about their technology … at least not to the general media. Games like F-Zero X(N64) and Super Monkey Ball(Gamecube) could have easily used procedural data based on how the level data is laid out. I’m quite sure there other Western devs that have used procedural data in their game, but haven’t said anything about it.
If you think Japanese developers aren’t trained as well in Next Gen, then I’m under the impression that you haven’t been looking at some of the products released by companies like Sega, Tecmo, Capcom, Square-Enix, and a few others.
Writing code for a PC based game does not necessarily easily translate to similar code (or programming techniques) for a console system … especially for the architectures that are featured in both XBox360 and PS3 … If anything, going to console from a PC environment can be tricky given that the architectures on consoles can be a lot less forgiving (and thus more demanding) than on PC.
If you’ve had experience programming a commerical game on both a PC and a console, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
There was an interview with Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games here
beat me to it, i was going to post that quote. But gregg, I think we would all have to agree that linear games like ‘resident evil 4′ or final fantasy will come out fine on multiple medias. Also, this lac of space would only be a problem with games like grand theft auto that have the need for huge persistent worlds.
So let’s recap:
UTB 7 will be around 20 Gigs, 1 Disc for Sony, 2 or 3 for MS.
Since the game spans on several “separate” maps (not a huge cohesive world) multiple discs will cause little or no trouble.
Gears of War is based on separate chapters with linear progression, so no troubles there either (same goes for Japanese RPGs).
Resident Evil 5: No problems.
A GTA with Gears of War quality graphics would be a problem, BUT, that’s not gonna happen.
A GTA big in scope featuring under-par graphics(as usual)will be the case, so once again no troubles.
In the end it boils down to this=
“Bigger Drive better than Smaller drive”: 100% CORRECT
“Microsoft in trouble” (which was stated in the above article):100% INCORRECT
That’s my impression at least…
Shortly before E3, Microsoft “gave-in” to developers and doubled the 360’s memory from 256MB to 512MB. Many programmers applauded this decision, saying it was a big victory for them. Based on your arguments, wouldn’t you say doubling the system ram was a mistake on Microsoft’s part?
You’re a fucking moron. Less than 17% of all X360s will be core packages, the rest premium packages.
ps2:120+ million
ps3:75 million
xbox: 23 milliom
xbox 360: 10-15 million
rev: 10-15 million
That not happen. XBOX360 will dominate in the future. PS3 is no longer win next gen system. Playstation is suck and I hope that system die in the future. I hope playstation is no more product video game. Microsoft will buyout more exclusive on XBOX360 and less Playstation 3 is more expensive and cost. PS3 is not best graphic.
have reported a recent Japanese article about PS3 developer support, which has an insider source claiming that the initial investment for PS3 software development it at least ¥2 billion (U$S 17.6 million), and that figure does not include the actual development costs associated directly with the title.
This initial investment, according to this insider source, is “nothing but a nightmare for many Japanese software development companies.”
The article also reveals that the prevailing rumor in Japanese game development circles is that many companies may end up developing for the Xbox 360, which will lower R&D costs since the system shares many similarities with Windows game development, allowing developers to release a single title on both platforms.
Could Sony’s ambitious plans for the PlayStation 3 scare small game developers away and push them to towards Xbox 360 development? Only time will tell…
This news is link PS3Today.com and PS3Foucs.com XBOX360 is less cost and best easier developing on XBOX360
I hate to burst your bubble but there is no market for PC games in Japan so being able to cross develop for Windows is a non-issue. Also programming for PC massively raises the development costs of a title because you have start programming around a moving target. One customer has a 1.5ghz PC, 128meg of ram with a GeForce3 with 32meg of video ram. Another as a 3.2ghz PC, 2gig ram with an NVidia 7800 with 512meg of video ram. Pain In The Ass.
PS3 and XBox share pretty much the exact same development costs and issues. They both have 512meg of ram, the both have similar advance shader oriented graphics hardware, they both have multiple processors that require a whole new style of programming (ie, different than PC) to get any performance out of.
Except for those companies that have special relationships with Sony or Microsoft I suspect most 3rd parties will just do both. Heck, the Unreal 3 Engine runs just fine on both systems so many developers (30 so far and counting) will just go that route and cover both.
you have an interesting point of view, but what you say.. to my knowledge, is anaccurate. like you said, not all data is graphical, moreover not all the graphical data will need to be scaled on the same ratio and what’s more.. better (and perhaps loseless) compression techniques can be utilized due to the extra power of the main cpu, the use of the dvd standard in the new machine is far from folly, you dont rush a technology or use a “new” technology in application to something used as rigouresly as the optical drive on a console whos primary source of data is one such drive, other wise you will end up with system failures as was the fiasco with ps2 & xbox, watch as consumers pay $700(?) for a ps3 utilizing the first generation of a brand new optical standard and be amused. because, basically your telling me you don’t think the first blu-ray and hd-dvd drives off the assembly line arent going to fail and are going to be up to the labor demands of an optical heavy video game console, if you were to ask me i would say sony’s misnomer and no one else’s and the people who are going to *pay* (pun intended, pshh 600-1000 $) are the people who are the first inline to buy the console using a technology which has no right being used in such a way as of yet (another reason why the system will cost so much)… oh and buy the way, with the development & deployment of XNA (microsoft’s propritary xbox development system which is under license) the dev cost & issues are slanted most certainly in xboxs favor (dev cost supposidly reduced by a margin of 20-60%) the maker of the world’s best development tools creates a video game dev “suite”… thats insurance of small house studio producing for one system alone.. so yes the ps3 will be more difficult and costly to produce for….. in summation, ms may have slowed its pace with leaving out of a higher density optical format but sony is about to trip over a stone and off a cliff due to its own pace, and nintendo was never in the race as far as this tech stuff is concerned, also… hd isnt highly adopted and most likely will not be within 3 years so who cares anyway. right now games like Gears of War are just flexing next-gen muscle you’ll see more practical use of the hardware in the year or two to come
It doesn’t matter what special tech is used on the graphics. Game teams almost always FILL all available RAM. So, whether the graphics take 8 times the space or whether they only take 4 times the space but the team uses twice as much graphics (or sound, or A.I.) they will still be loading up 8times as much memory which will translate into needing 8 times the space on the disc.
This is not about PS3 vs 360. It is only about 360 needing more than a DVD for storage. PS3 could not exist and it would still be true that 360 needs more than a DVD.
So do you think Microsoft made a mistake bumping the memory up to 512MB, since it used to be 256?
No, I don’t believe changing from 256meg to 512meg was a mistake. As a developer I can tell you there is never enough ram. If they gave us 2gig we’d still fill it. But, having given us the ram they need to give us the storage to go with it.
right, but then its a damned-if-you-do/don’t position. maybe xbox360 developers should just resign themselves to treat it as though it had 256MB.
Head to IGN Insider for the latest videos of ES IV:Oblivion to see how ALL the landscapes are procedural (done by the game through algorithms, no artists involved) and that, YES, procedural landscapes indeed look drop dead gorgeous.
They are the first to exploit this technology, others will follow.
Also catch an interview with J. Allard on the disc space issue…(he basically states that any problem right now is due to programmers being sloppy with compression, something that will be cured in the second or third wave of software…).
Hence, better compression and procedurals will save the day
Sorry to burst your bubble but their are plenty of shipping titles (PS2/Xbox, even PS1) that use procedural terrain generation. On top of which the majority of that title is still hand made.
The only thing not hand made are the trees, some plants and possibly some hills (although the textures are still normal textures, not prodcedural)
mr. gman.
how, may i ask, do you propose to break the time-cost-quality triangle in respect to filling a 9 gig disc?
there’s a reason that pc games have been working in hi def for a while now with essentially limitless storage capacity, yet, they still aren’t busting out of the dvd range.
why is that?
also, while you’re at it, can you explain to me why increases in game budgets are mysteriously mirroring game size increases?
bonus points: how do your answers affect your tables?
m3mnoch.
> time-cost-quality
I’m not sure what this has to do with the point above. If you’re suggesting because it costs to much to fill a DVD it will never be filled so why worry I can only say it’s work to fit textures. It takes artists more time to make texture palettes and map every little thing to as few textures as possible to fit them on the disc. It takes less time to just press “Bake” and have some tool create high res color textures and normal maps (ala Gears of War). So, we win because certain steps are easier and we lose because other steps are harder (building more details into the models). Some tools have come out to help with that like Z-Brush that make generating that kind of data faster than ever but it still adds up to more data.
Case in point, I think I already mentioned down the page Gears of War uses 2048×2048 textures for their characters. Uncompressed that’s 32meg, an entire PS2 game for the texture+normalmap of one character. Sure, you can use various compressions to get it down but we used those same compressions on last gen games to get 256×256 textures down (.5 meg texture+normalmap)
In other words, for a big game it will be easy to fill the disc using the same number of resources.
> why do PC not fill DVDs
With few exceptions PC games generally have a smaller budget than console games because they have a smaller market. That means they generally can’t afford to hire the people to make the content to fill a DVD like consoles can. Otherwise the games that appear big repeat the crap out of stuff to make them appear bigger
> explain to me why increases in game budgets are mysteriously mirroring game size increases?
I’m not sure what you are trying to get at here. It seems pretty obvious if you want to make a big game you need more people to make the content which costs more money.
> how do your answers affect your tables?
They don’t.
“In other words, for a big game it will be easy to fill the disc using the same number of resources.”
this is pretty much what i anticipated you to say. it’s the outlook of a programmer. spend 90% of your time getting it set up, the rest is cake because you just multiply it out.
there are a few things wrong with this.
the first, that i want to point out to the non-industry folks, zbrush has been around forever (in video game terms). when did it debut? it was winning awards if i remember right around 1999 or 2000. even before that, realtime texture painting on a 3d model was something of a common practice.
(maybe not common, but certainly not new with zbrush. i want to say ilm actually pioneered the technology or was it someone else? eh. it was too long ago and i can’t remember and i’m too lazy to go look it up. totally doesn’t matter.)
so, saying “some tools have come out to help with that like Z-Brush” implies that they tools are new and will help more in future generations than in past. that’s not correct. the industry has been using this tool, if not similar tools, now for the better part of a decade.
therefore, it has nothing to do with reducing the time/content-size in modern games whatsoever.
not only that, but the texture size 2048×2048 is, oh, i dunno — 64 TIMES THE SIZE of a 256×256 texture. do you know what that tells me? it’ll take 64 times the time and effort to paint 64 times the detail on 64 times the area! we both know that’s not technically how it works because there are large flat areas of texture or what have you.
sure, you can just crank up the size of the brush to ‘cover more area’ but, that kinda defeats the purpuse of adding detail to a high-def texture, eh?
the point is, it still takes a crap-ton more time to create a 2048×2048 texture than it takes to create a 256×256 texure.
however, when you say this:
“In other words, for a big game it will be easy to fill the disc using the same number of resources.”
you are saying that it took the same amount of time to texture this guy:
http://media.xbox.gamespy.com/media/747/747891/img_2790777.html
as it did to texture this guy:
http://screenshots.teamxbox.com/screen/4945/Crash-Bandicoot/
you are either stupid or just didn’t really think before you said that. i’m certainly going to assume the latter as you seem like a pretty sharp fellah.
“With few exceptions PC games generally have a smaller budget than console games”
say what? yeah. maybe if you are talking about ‘zuma’ or ‘where in the world is carmen san diego.’ we’re talking about triple a games. we’re talking about the halo’s, the morrowind’s, the final fantasy xi’s. games that are LARGE — thus, necessitating the entire disc capacity question….
it’s pretty safe to say we’re talking about games that represent intellectual property. games that use the same art assets, just deployed on different platforms. so, a game developed for the pc (bethesda games, for example) but also deployed on the xbox have a smaller budget than “wrath of cortex?”
heh. okay.
“It seems pretty obvious if you want to make a big game you need more people to make the content which costs more money.”
why, yes. yes they do. maybe you think game budgets, now that we are in the “HD Era” are going to increase by a factor of 10, i don’t.
“> how do your answers affect your tables? They don’t.”
yes, they do. your big point:
“The point is even if you compress them their relative sizes are still going to be 8x to 12x in size which means the data is going to grow 8 to 12 times.”
i’ve already demonstrated how you don’t just ‘get extra size for free.’ that means, to have 8x or 12x content sizes, you had to spend 8x or 12x more money.
uh. $120 million budget for a video game in the next 5 years? not likely.
the way to explain this phenomenon, is not the just compare generation leaps between previous consoles. it’s to explain that, now, the size of files on disc aren’t necessarily limited by technology anymore. (as in the days of the ps1 or god forbid — cartridges) they are limited to the detail and rate at which artists can produce content.
we have been creating games using hi-res models and then mapping their textures back to low poly models for an entire console generation now (and arguably before that) on the pc.
in modern game development, content size is a direct function of title budget.
m3mnoch.
unsurprisingly I disagree.
Comparing a PS1 game to 360 game and claiming some kind of point? Sorry if I don’t give that another thought.
Does creating the textures for your Gears of War picture take more or less time than the textures on say Virtua Fighter 4 (PS2). In my experience, about the same. In Virtua Fighter 4 every detail is hand painted, the face, the hands, the shirt, the pants, a shoes are all hand textures, and hand UV mapped, all the details hand drawn. In Gears of War the charater is modelled, it’s far easier to model all the details of the character’s armor than it is to draw them, and then lots of tech is brought to bear (dirt shaders, etc). Then you press a button and you get your textures for free. So, you lost time having to model more details in the model but you gained time not having to hand draw every little detail in your textures.
Even more interesting, you bring up a Gears of War picture as an example of it taking more work to make a game and that therefore teams won’t be able to fill a DVD. And yet the developers of Gears of War make a point of saying how they’d done the entire game with only 25 people. So, if 25 people can make that much data just imagine what the 70 person team at Naughty Dog, the 120 person team at Insomiac or one of the 150 person teams a EA could do with the same tech.
Z-Brush
All I can say it is was not used by any developers I know of until this gen (360/PS3). Maybe some PC developers used it but console develoeprs did not. My company (400 developers) is only just starting to use it. Neither did the last two companies I worked at used it (one with 2000 developers, one with 70). Saying it came out in 1999 has no point. lots of product come out and it takes years for them to gain any marketshare.
That said, having used it, we found it was a huge time saver. Again making my point that new tech helps save time in making all these new assets. In other words, a texture or model with 10 times the surface or 10 times the polys does not take 10 times to effort to make. It does take 10 times the space to store though.
> PC game budgets
I doen’t take an idiot to figure out that if the console market is X times bigger than the PC market the budgets available for console developers will be bigger. That you can name a few games like Halo that have been ported back and Morrowind going the other way doesn’t change the general case.
Content size has never been a direct function of title budget. There is a corrolation possibly but there are like kinds of tech that generate lots of data from little input. Content size has more to do with the design of the game and the design often has to do with player expectations. Players will not except a GTA4 with GTA3 level graphics because there is “no budget” nor will they except GTA4 with next gen graphics but only 1/4th the size of GTA3 with the excuse that there is no budget.
Companies will find a way to bring the largest of last gen’s games forward the same size or larger and with next gen content and that content will not fit on a DVD
“Comparing a PS1 game to 360 game and claiming some kind of point? Sorry if I don’t give that another thought.”
maybe you should. that’s my point. you’re the one who said “In other words, for a big game it will be easy to fill the disc using the same number of resources,” not me. by that rationale, it took the same amount of time to texture crash as it took to texture jak. and it took the same amount of time to texture jak as it took to texture marcus. if a=b and b=c then a=c. if you disagree with that, then you are disproving your own theory.
you’re saying creating more detail is free. i’m saying it’s not.
“Does creating the textures for your Gears of War picture take more or less time than the textures on say Virtua Fighter 4 (PS2). In my experience, about the same.”
uh. no. not even close. as an artist — a painter even — i can very, very distinctly tell you that painting brad burns is completely and utterly trivial compared to painting marcus fenix. all those things you are talking about painting — “the face, the hands, the shirt, the pants, a shoes” — are still hand painted for gears of war. there’s no automatic “choose appropriate colors, scuffs and details” button anymore than that “animate” button automatically animates anything.
“In Gears of War the charater is modelled, it’s far easier to model all the details of the character’s armor than it is to draw them”
then, how come you are so hot on zbrush? last time i checked, zbrush allowed you to draw geometry in order to speed up the process. uh. yeah. i’m pretty sure painting is faster than modelling. otherwise, nobody’d use zbrush because it was slower than traditional modelling.
“And yet the developers of Gears of War make a point of saying how they’d done the entire game with only 25 people.”
yep. how much did they pay for the unreal engine? did you know they’ve been working on it for 4 years? do you know how many outside contractors they are employing, especially since contractors don’t actually count as team headcount? even with all of that, it still seems to me like they are staying within that triangle to me — trading time and leveraging cost for quality.
it’s taking twice as long as a traditional game and they have the advantage of saving a substantial chunk of their budget by not having to license the unreal engine.
so, using your own examples, how fast do you think bankruptcy would come crashing down on naughty dog if you had to pay all 70 of your developers for 4 years — without making a dime?
you can only pay so much for so long for so many developers. “fancy tools” or not, there is a term for measuring product output to money. it’s called productivity.
do you think productivity is going to rise 8 or 12 fold over this next console generation?
“All I can say it is was not used by any developers I know of until this gen (360/PS3). [snip] lots of product come out and it takes years for them to gain any marketshare.”
really? let’s just take the top 100 developers. at 18 month cycles, over the last 5 years, they have prolly put out 3 games apiece. so, in 300 games over the last 5 years you don’t think anyone has used zbrush?
and, when was maya created? how long did it take to gain acceptance? incredibly useful, paradigm shifting, easy to demonstrate technology gains marketshare seemingly overnight. it’s only 1 or 2 years older than zbrush. but, then again, i supposee every game developer you know uses xsi.
“In other words, a texture or model with 10 times the surface or 10 times the polys does not take 10 times to effort to make. It does take 10 times the space to store though.”
so, creating 10 times the detail doesn’t cost 10 times as much? maybe you should start measuring paint strokes. you’d find yourself surprised.
that’s because using the same effort, only on a larger scale, doesn’t add to detail. it just adds bloat. it’s like painting a 29″ x 36″ canvas with a 6″ brush instead of a fine camel hair brush. if you want more detail, you have to use finer, more detailed tools.
“I doen’t take an idiot to figure out that if the console market is X times bigger than the PC market the budgets available for console developers will be bigger.”
true. the console market is bigger. however, you have to take into effect that you are targeting a specific console, not just the entire market. not only that, but, since the large majority of games don’t even make back their initial advance, wouldn’t that mean the console market also potentially loses more money?
also, moving forward, we are seeing more and more ip over multiple platforms. it’s an added financial device developers are using to spread all of this (unnecessary acording to you) cost over a larger market to make back as much of their investment as possible.
and, even then, if it were true that you can use fancy tools to basically get details for free, why aren’t pc games bigger still? especially since it doesn’t cost any more to add detail and, since they’ve been running at hi-def resolutions for almost a decade. hell! those games should be 30 gigs!
“Content size has never been a direct function of title budget.”
it very most absolutely is. i think it’s the fact that you come from old school console development as to why you’re having such a hard time with this. previous generation consoles have always been inferior technology. thus, technology was the primary limitor on content size and availibility.
if you could have put 2048x textures on the ps1, wouldn’t you have done it?
those limits have virtually disappeared with this last generation of pc titles. that’s the whole “game development visual fidelity is approaching real life” thing you hear about. they sure as hell weren’t talking about consoles.
consoles moving forward are not limited nearly as much by technology as art. all of the details in the world come at cost. that’s why all the developers are groaning about what high-def will do to their budgets. that’s why spore was so unanimously lauded as a solution. (heh. how big do you think that shipping size will be? especially considering all the content is created on the fly by the player!)
if developers (obviously excluding you) knew that “dude! all this extra detail is free! more visual quality, same great price!” then we wouldn’t need visionaries like will wright. maybe you should tell him that he’s off his rocker to think that game development budgets are ballooning out of control.
games are not like movies where all the required entities and detail are just sitting around waiting to be filmed. that’s why the movie industry has a miramax. because fantastic, detailed movies are able to be produced on the cheap — they don’t have to both create the world first then film it.
you’re trying to argue against the immutable laws of time, cost and market economies. better men than you or i have tried and failed.
m3mnoch.
I never said it took the same time to create crash vs marcus. I said given advances in tools it takes similar time to make a more detailed model today as to took to make a less detailed model yesterday. How long do you think it would have taking you to make marcus in 1980? All you have to do is look around and see the explosion of effects movies to see that making next gen graphics is getting easier and cheaper by the day. Today we have all kinds of tools and advances we didn’t have yesterday.
On top of that before we would make shaders for rendering the movies and then hand make textures for the game. Now we can use the same shaders and same textures for both. A whole level of work has just disappeared. Yes, I know it’s not that simple but it’s closer than ever, more work can be shared than in the past. Were as 0% could be shared in the past somewhere between 25 and 75% can be shared now. That’s 12-36% less work as just one example.
> ZBrush / modeling / painting
I’m saying it’s faster to model most details and have them look presentable than it is to paint the textures by hand with the same amount of details (bump map, normals, edges, shadows, etc.) Are you telling me you chould paint the textures on this tank including all dirt, rivits, seams, door latches, faster than you can model them and still have them reflect, shadow, in realtime and look as good? I’m saying I can make that tank, apply basic colors and then press a button and run a dirt/aging shader, an ambient occlusion generator and get something that looks like that tank in my game far far quicker than if the artist had to try to draw every rivit, every bumpmap, every door latch, every shadow by hand.
Z-Brush’s advantage is that it speeds up both. Are you trying to say it would be faster for you to use photoshop and draw your textures and hand draw a normal map?
Z-Brush and other tools have made the process of making more detailed graphics faster than it was before. That’s the point. Nitpicking the details won’t change that fact.
> Gears of War with 25 people
I’m not sure what you are getting at? The team is going around screaming to anybody that will listen “Hey, look at us, we are a 25 person team and we were able to make this! Those who tell you you need a big budget for next gen games are wrong“ Just to make it clear are you saying they are lying?
> past present future
I’m claiming that from pong, to mario, to super mario, to crash, to GTA3…From pong to atari 2600, to NES, to SNES, to PS1, to PS2 every gen the size of data of games has gone up nearly an order of magnitude. That part is fact. I further claim that that trend will not suddenly change this new 360/PS3 generation.
You are claiming there is something special about this gen (budget) that will prevent that trend this time. I don’t agree. Come back in 3 years and we’ll see if there are very few games larger than a DVD. One has alreadly been announced and it’s only a 1st gen title.
Uh Greggman, the game you mentioned that didn’t fit on one disc? It totally fits on one disc.
I didn’t know that. Good for them Still, you don’t go from “we can’t fit on 1 disc let alone 2″ to “yea it fits just fine” without losing something. Of course it’s possible they had really bad data formats to begin with and were worried about nothing. It’s also possible it looks 1/2 as good as it did or half the game was cut and held back for a sequel.
“Today we have all kinds of tools and advances we didn’t have yesterday.”
yes. that is very true. i’m not arguing that advances in technology don’t allow for extra uber-cool effects.
a couple of things to note about that, tho. first, what’s the average budget of a special effects laden movie these days vs. one a decade ago? film budgets, with the rise of dvd and video distribution as the largest cash cow in history, have blown up crazy. unfortunately, video gaming’s tiered, “old games suck” quandry doesn’t have a similar solution.
second, the special effects in star wars episode one are not 64 times the resolution. they are not 64 times the visual accuity of star wars episode three. despite any nifty technological advances that may have arisen in the six years between them.
“That’s 12-36% less work as just one example.”
yep. and 12-36% less file size since you can use in-game engine cut scenes instead of bloated fmv.
REGARDLESS of that, you only really gain a relatively small amount of time — even with the advances in technology. and by relatively small, i mean 100% faster.
sounds impressive, huh? you can make a 256×256 in half the time! cut out an entire middle step!
too bad you need 64 of those 256×256 textures to fill up a 2048×2048 texture. again, it’s like painting the side of a barn with a fine camel hair brush. what’s the point of using “hi-def” if you are going to paint the side of the barn with a 12 inch roller instead?
you don’t gain any detail by scaling your brush at the same rate of the texture size.
zbrush, normal mapping, real time lighting, whatever — they are nice. don’t get me wrong. but, they aren’t disruptive technologies.
“Just to make it clear are you saying they are lying?”
nope. go back and read what i wrote. they are still consistent with any cost to detail theories. they’re taking almost three times as long. they have more budget availible to them due to not including unreal engine 3’s license fees. “25 full-time employees” does not include contractors.
they aren’t lying at all. oh yeah, and gears of war will be on one disc.
“You are claiming there is something special about this gen (budget) that will prevent that trend this time. I don’t agree.”
and, you are wrong.
all of these games where developers are crying wolf — enchant arms, oblivion, doa 4 — are fitting on a standard dvd. it’s just the ‘in thing’ to do to say “we have so much content is won’t fit on a dvd!”
and, about doa ‘losing’ content to fit on the dvd? how come it’s only half the size? if it were me, cutting content to make my release, i would only cut enough content to get us to fit on the disc. i wouldn’t just piss away 4 gigs “because.”
no. the reason is, when the day is said and done, that’s all the money and time they had availible to make the assets necessary to ship their game.
there’s a reason why, as games get more detailed and lush, the total play hours get less. you and i both know that’s a trend. i mean, hell, if bethesda, with their ridiculous 100+ hours of gameplay, can fit oblivion on one disc who the hell else couldn’t?
and, it’s not just a “this gen” thing. it’s the last 2 generations of pc games. for example, diablo 2 shipped on 3 discs. quake 4 shipped on 4. half-life 2 shipped on 5 — and was in production for 6 years.
their file size growth is right inline with budget or ‘time taken’ growth. there’s a reason for that.
the takeaway point:
a doubling or even tripling of productivity doesn’t produce 10 times the content with the same timeline and budget.
m3mnoch.
This is a frustrating coversation. You are clearly speaking from nearly ZERO experience otherwise you’d wouldn’t be making rediculous remarks like 64 256×256 textures make up one 2048×2048 texture. So what?
Here an example of enabling tech. One old digital camera takes 320×240 pictures, a modern one will take 5000×3000 both of them do it instantly. It takes no more time to take the 5000×3000 pixel picture than it does to take the 320×240. Many textures are made from digitial camera. Where’s the extra time?
You brought up diablo. Perfect example, Diablo 1 used prerendered images made from 3d models with way more detail than they needed. Now they can actually put that detail in the game in realtime. Time saved rendering but more memory needed for it all.
The licensing fee for the unreal engine is a moot point. A large game (and that’s what we are talking about because a small game is not going to fill anything) is going to have a budget 10 to 20 times the licensing cost of unreal (I happen to know the actual cost since it was pitched to me). So by your arguement, because I lost 5-10% of my budget to buying unreal I somehow can’t make 50% or more of my graphics!?!? not.
Further more, not buying an engine costs the same or more since you have to pay your programmers to write one if you don’t buy one. Often it costs way more because your artists are sitting around for 6 months to a year waiting for tools and engines to get usable.
About their 25 people team, you seem to be claiming they are lying. They are not going around saying “You can make a next gen game for a small budget and as proof check out our 25 person team plus XX contracters plus money saved on no license” They are saying they only have 25 people period. You’re claiming otherwise.
Having a game last 100 hours has nothing to do with size. Tetris lasts indefinately as do pretty much all MMOs. So, the fact that some 100 hour games fit on a DVD is pointless as well.
You still haven’t answered the question. Every generation has seen the size of the games go up 5 to 10 times. Why is this generation different? I’ll tell you why. It’s not. First gen PS2 games shipped on CD. 2nd and 3rd on DVD. First gen 360/PS3 games will probably ship on DVDs. 2nd and 3rd will not (well, they won’t on PS3, not sure what 360 is going to do).
The team sitting next to me is converting a game that was supposed to ship on last gen to next gen, all their graphics are taking 8 times the space. Their game is not a giant game so it will probably fit on a DVD.
Let’s get specific, what are you going to cut from the last gen games listed above to make them fit on a DVD? If you made the exact same games but just upped their graphics they would not fit. Make them 30% smaller? Only upgrade their graphics to 2/3rds the actual potential of next gen machines?
“This is a frustrating coversation.”
sorry to hear that. people tend to get frustrated when confronted with something they don’t understand and the other dork (me, in this case) is seriously lacking in communication skills to effectively describe it. just judging from this post, i don’t think i’m making clear what i’m talking about.
especially judging by this quote:
“You are clearly speaking from nearly ZERO experience otherwise you’d wouldn’t be making rediculous remarks like 64 256×256 textures make up one 2048×2048 texture. So what?”
i’m not saying that LITERALLY you would take 64 256x textures and stack them up to make one 2048x texture. i’m talking about equivalent surface area. i’m comparing the work involved in a making (the hi-res model) and baking a 256x texture to the same ratio of work it takes to create the model and bake a 2048x texture.
to be clear, i’m also not talking about random surface textures — brick, pebbles, sandstone, whatever (i don’t even WANT to know how much it would cost to create a life-size replica of master chief and ‘photograph’ it to create the skin for the in-game model) — i’m talking about modeling/texturing the entire game. i’m talking about that 2048x texture that wraps around a model like marcus fenix. i’m talking about, instead of the 5 or 10 different surface types and surface textures required to effectively texture a main character from last generation, the multiple dozens needed for a hi-def model. i’m talking about the effort in general it takes to create the hi-res model with all their wrinkles, cracks, buttons, collars, pockets, shoelaces and leds.
for example, back to jak: let’s say that it takes 1/2 the time to model and texture jak with modern tools as it did to model him in that original ps2 game. that’s pretty fair to say, right? (i think it’s a stretch to say it’d be twice as fast, but totally doesn’t matter)
so, with your stance on tools make it just as easy to create new content as it did back then, marcus fenix is only takes twice as long (in other words, 1/2 as long to model jak as it would marcus) to model as jak. (so, four times faster than the original jak with the original tools at your disposal) i think you could maybe model and texture marcus’s head in about the same time — absolutely not the whole body.
“Time saved rendering but more memory needed for it all.”
i’m afraid i don’t understand this one. we’re talking about artists’ time. not cpu time. and, it still adheres to the budget/content paradigm.
“So by your arguement, because I lost 5-10% of my budget to buying unreal I somehow can’t make 50% or more of my graphics!?!?”
with the same team size and same budget, if they had to purchase the unreal engine, they couldn’t afford to pay 10-15 of their artists for the year when, during the production cycle, art assets get churned out. so, the team size (when you are talking about 25 people) gets cut in half. yep — the final art gets cut in half.
“Often it costs way more because your artists are sitting around for 6 months to a year waiting for tools and engines to get usable.”
that’s why teams are smaller at the begining and then ramp up to full production. maybe your company doesn’t because you have so many titles going on at once, but lots and lots of other development houses work like that. i don’t need to explain that to you.
“They are saying they only have 25 people period. You’re claiming otherwise.”
i’m saying they have 25 full-time employees. do you know for a fact that when they first said it, that distinction wasn’t in there? or that they qualified it with some statement like “we’ve used absolutely no contractors!”
“Having a game last 100 hours has nothing to do with size.”
heh. okay. maybe i should have said 200 hand-crafted dungeons instead — and that’s just dungeons. the parts of most games like oblivion that are randomly generated.
“You still haven’t answered the question. Every generation has seen the size of the games go up 5 to 10 times. Why is this generation different?”
i have answered it. in every post.
pc’s haven’t been limited in content for a decade now. developers pretty much assume unlimited install space. yet, pc games still ship on roughly the same media (given the rise in budgets reflecting content size) today as they did then. why do you think that is?
because the content on consoles going forward aren’t limited as strongly by technology, they are going to be in the same boat this generation. 64mb of ram to 512mb for example. it wasn’t storage that was the big bottleneck on the previous xbox, it was ram.
pc’s on the other hand, have basically had all the ram and hard drive they’ve wanted for a couple of generations now. and, over the last decade, they’ve also been capable of running in hi-def resolutions.
so, why aren’t they shipping on multiple dvds?
they have a lot better development tools than consoles do. it’s a lot easier to develop pc games. why aren’t they just… freakin… huge?
budgets.
you can only make so much content with so much budget. content directly relates to detail in the world. manufacturing detail in the world directly relates to time. time directly relates to budgets.
now. if you come back and say that pc games don’t have the same budgets that console titles do and therefore don’t have the same amount of content, aren’t you in essence, agreeing with me?
you already have said that with more money you can make more content. how much more? twice the budget? 8 times the budget? does jak and daxter have 6 gigs of content? 25 gigs of content? what console game does?
i mean, if you know of a console game that has 8 times the content of half-life or quake 4 or neverwinter nights or morrowind, i’d gladly eat my words. i know i’ve never seen an 25 gig game come out of any shop at launch anywhere.
and, if pc’s have been doing hi-def, are easier to develop for and essentially have unlimited technology requirements, why are they still the same size — adjusted for budgetary increases? even with the relatively standard 1024×1024 texture sizes that have been in pc graphics engines since 2003?
“Let’s get specific, what are you going to cut from the last gen games listed above to make them fit on a DVD?”
that’s the big question. what’s going to give? mediocre looking games? shorter games?
that’s why will wright got a standing ovation. that’s why speedtree is making money hand over fist. that’s why procedural technology is coming to the forefront.
not because of filesize constraints — because gamemakers don’t have the budgets to get that level of detail into their games.
to be clear, we’re not just talking about “sizing up” textures through interpolation or simply subdividing existing models. we’re talking about creating more detailed content.
more detailed content requires more time. more detailed content takes up more space. more detailed content costs more money.
i’m not really sure how to be clearer about any of this.
m3mnoch.
Speedtree is an example supporting my arguement. Instead of hand creating 50 trees you click a button and get 50 instantly. Speedtree than saves those trees out and they are loaded into memory. (I know of no teams generating the trees on the fly except spore, they all generate them offline). So, what used to take weeks now takes a day or 2. Press a button and whammo, you’ve got megs or gigs of assets.
Part of my arguement is we were already creating that content. I don’t know any artist that draws face textures at 64×64. They draw them at 512×512 to 1024×1024 and then because they had size limits on PS2 or XBox they scaled them to 64×64 losing the details. Now they don’t have to throw those details away.
The artists next to me are making next gen characters. They are not spending significantly more time to do it than last gen but their results are taking 8 times the space. Things like ZBrush are helping. Were before they would have had to draw wrinkles in their textures, now they draw nothing in their textures (plain flesh tone will do) and they paint the wrinkles in Z-Brush. It takes them no more time than before but at the end of the process they have incredibly detailed models, hi-res textures and hi-res normal maps.
PCs have all kinds of limits that consoles don’t have. You can’t push PCs to the edge because you don’t know if the user is going to have a 64meg Geforce 3 or a 512 meg Geforce SLI quad. You don’t know if he’s going to have 512meg of ram or 2 gig and even if he has 512meg of ram 200meg of it is used by the os.
Are there some large games for PC? Sure, but the average size of games is larger on console, much larger. You keep bringing up Jak. Have you played it? Those are MILLION POLY LEVELS. Have you seen any game on PC with million poly levels? I haven’t. (and I’m not talking about grass blades) I keep bringing up the GTA series. Is there another game with more assets? Very few if any buildings repeat in that game. It happens to exist on the PC but aruably only because the console version funded the asset creation.
Your unreal engine argument is silly. you don’t get an engine for free even if you don’t license it. Whether you spend the money for license unreal or whether you spend the money making your own engine the money is still spent and it’s not spent on art so it has no effect on the art budget. Coversely, if you do buy an engine, especially one with tools as good as unreal your artists can not only start from the first day making real assets but because the tools are better than any your team is likely to be able to create quickly your artists are going to be that much more productive. Both of these will end up giving you even more assets in the end than not licensing.
I agree with you, content is not free. I disagree that developers will not find a way to fill 512meg for every place they filled 32meg on a PS2 or 64meg on an XBox. In order to do that they need the assets and they will find a way to create them whether it’s offline auto asset generation (speedtree) or process optimization (z-brush) or just not reducing what they’ve already created in the past.
I can’t even begin to point out how irrelevant most of your rebuttals are to greggman’s comments. I’m not going to waste my time fighting with you about each individual thing.. but answer me this:
If HD-DVD drives aren’t going to be something needed on next-gen consoles, why is PS3 whipping with a Blu-Ray? More importantly, why is Microsoft going to release an add-on HD-DVD drive for the 360 shortly? Why are there already plans to produce games on HD-DVD media?
You’re an idiot.
Firt off, what’s with the moronic suggestion that an 8x increase in ram = 7x increase in game data? You’re telling me that if Sony had decided to up their RAM to 1gb, that J&D would suddenyl require 20GB of GAME DATA?
What are you smoking? Can I have some?
Who don’t you do a meaningful comparison, what is the average increase in textures on next gen titles (you have ~40 x360 titles to analyze now) compared to previous gen, taking advanced compression into account. Then, what is the average percentage of GAME DATA used by textures (and no it’s not 100% as your ridiculous article implies). Using those figures, you COULD give a decent represenation of next gen disc size’s that might actuall be interesting, instead of this ridiculous ‘lets just multiply everything by 8′ rubbish.
7x = typo
“You still haven’t answered the question. Every generation has seen the size of the games go up 5 to 10 times. Why is this generation different? I’ll tell you why. It’s not. First gen PS2 games shipped on CD. 2nd and 3rd on DVD. First gen 360/PS3 games will probably ship on DVDs. 2nd and 3rd will not (well, they won’t on PS3, not sure what 360 is going to do).”
Because genious, we’re reaching a plateau in disc sizes. Do you expect a 10x increase every 5 years? Do you expect games in 2010 to be 10x the size of PS3 (which you claim ~20gb) which would be 200GB? You expect 1-2 TERABYTE games in 2015? Give me a break!!
Game will continue to grow slower and slower as the bottleneck becomes development resources, and NOT processing power. No one has $100million to spend filling 20GB of data with high quality assetts. Next gen, no one will be spending $500 million to fill 200GB, disc space is no longer the limiting factor, budgets, manpower, and timeline’s will become the limiting factor. You won’t see huge 10-fold increases between generations, but a much flatter, more PC-like growth curve.
You might be right
Still, > “we’re reaching a plateau in disc sizes”
O R LY?
I don’t believe we will hit that bottleneck, I believe we will find ways to more easily generate more data. Whether it’s auto generated data. Or 3d cameras or new interfaces or something else.
The movie industry already generates terabytes of assets. There’s no reason to believe the game industry won’t do the same. Currently the power and storage is not there to use today’s movie assets but with each generation we move up.
June now, and a lot of games out there. None of them have needed more than a single DVD. Big games like Oblivion, Ninety nine nights, etc.
And you were talking about speedtree and it generating Gigabytes of data? As far as I can tell from my speedtree stuff, all you’re generating is the parameters for your tree, and it’s much smaller than “gigabytes”. The facegen software generates any face in 130 bytes (Also used in oblivion), including both shape and texture. You could have millions of unique characters, and still fit it onto a DVD.
Do a search for .kkrieger, and you’ll see that to get amazing deep textures does not require huge amounts of storage. (The entire .kkrieger game fits into 96KB)
Greggman, I don’t know if you have already seen this, but I thought that you and your blog participants might enjoy another media storage debate.
Game industry veterans Ozymandias (Andre Vrignaud- a member of the Xbox team) and Mark Deloura, (former head of Sony Developer Relations) debate the merits of media storage. Specifically Blu-ray.
http://www.satori.org/2006/08/on_ps3_and_bluray.html
and Ozymandias’ response
http://ozymandias.com/archive/2006/08/31/Mark-Deloura-Comments-on-Relevance-of-Blu-ray-_2800_Oddly_2C00_-We_2700_re-in-Violent-Agreement_2900_.aspx
After noticing that the discussion was getting to much “theoretical” I vowed myself to return when there would have been some Actual meat on the table
In the end I feel I was quite right in asserting that the above article was mistaken, and that Gamers would have been best served with 1024MB of ram instead of a new Disc format.
Take Oblivion as a first example: the game is huge and materials can be zoomed up even closer than, say, PS3 Resistance FoM, without loosing definition. The PC version “cures” the load stutters with additional RAM (not additional disc space) and the visible detail clipping is due to lack of processing power not lack of disc space. (actually it was lack of expertise with the 360 on Bethesda part, in the end it was developed for PCs for the most part of the development cycle).
Second example, Gears of War: the game clearly has the best visuals ever made on any system, but after the initial loading, it hardly pauses to load ever again. Data streaming done right(take that Bethesda!).
Finally, a game that will have Sony (and the rest) wait a lot in order to get something as Big and Awesome: Crysis
The game will ship on a single Disc and makes you wonder why oh why, Sony is already filling 25GB of Blu-Ray Capacity with a lesser game as Resistance.
P.S.
That’s because starting next year they want all games on dual layer blu ray discs (hint, hint! There will be no dual layer BlueRay writers next year making it impossible to copy PS3 software even if they crack the protection scheme…did I hear:”they’ll be filling the disc with dummy data in order to avoid piracy?” ^__^)