Sony's complex PS3 hardware is a 'nice fit' for Ubisoft's ambitious Far Cry 2 - but developers Ubisoft Montreal admit that compromises have been made. "We were somewhat worried by some of the reported high complexity of developing for the PS3", reveals Tech Director Dominic Guay, "but the raw processing power is impressive".
After a slew of delays, and some unfavourable comparisons between 'identical' Xbox 360 and PS3 ports, it seems developers are finally getting to grips with Sony's machine. "We made sure we had a group of programmers that were not scared by complexity and had a large console programming experience to work on the initial PS3 R&D of Dunia (Far Cry 2's graphics engine). At that point, we didn't know what to expect."
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"One thing that we realized pretty quickly as we started R&D on PS3, was that the hardware architecture had a very nice fit with some of our technical design decisions. We were positively surprised by how efficient the SPUs (the Cell processing units) were to do such things as run our vegetation simulation, our animations or our physics systems. So while it did require quite a bit of R&D to understand how to use the system correctly, once we started having results we saw that it was a very capable console and that FC2 could run on it."
Tech Director Guay is also impressed by the potential of Blu-ray and PS3's hard drive for streaming games in real-time. "The hard drive and Blu-ray are making our life easy considering FC2 is an open world continuously streamed around the player. That streaming bandwidth and disk space is very appreciated. So, in terms of AI, game structure, physics, dynamic time of day, open world gameplay, dynamic weather system, destructible vegetation, all of those things where we had really pushed the envelope technically, they run well on PS3."
The PS3 version, unsurprisingly, won't match top spec PCs. "However, the notable area where we had to make some tradeoffs is in some assets resolution which had to be brought down from the higher end PC configurations due to memory size difference. However, the good new is that since PS3 players are not outputting over the top resolutions like high end PC users, this is not a big deal. It's somewhat proportional to our video resolution output."
To read more about Far Cry 2, including an exclusive Q&A with Creative Director Clint Hocking, check out PSM3#98, on-sale 14th February in all major UK newsagents.
根据育碧蒙特利尔分部的看法,开发门槛较高的PS3与育碧的《孤岛惊魂2》是“很好的一对”,但蒙特利尔工作室也坦承PS3版在某些方面要做一点妥协,“像之前提到过的,PS3架构复杂,难于开发,但其预处理能力令人赞叹。”
“我们有一群从不畏惧困难的程序设计师,有大量主机开发的经验。这些确保我们能够开始在PS3上试验R&D of Dunia(《孤岛惊魂2》)的图形引擎。当时还无法预计究竟会发生什么事情。
“但在PS3上使用R&D时,我们很快意识到该主机的硬件结构与该引擎的好些个技术设计决策十分相称。在植被模拟,影片演算,物理系统方面,SPUs的高效率让我们感到惊讶。虽然让R&D能够正确地运行在该系统上还要在花些时间,但一开始就能有这样的成果,所以我们认为PS3有能力运行《孤岛惊魂2》。”
PS3的蓝光和硬盘在“stream games in real-time”方面也给技术主管 Guay留下了极深的印象。“硬盘和蓝光使我们的工作变得容易。因为《孤岛惊魂2》的游戏场所是一个开放的体系,玩家四周的环境是‘生生不息’的,所以多亏有‘streaming bandwidth ’和硬盘空间可以用来帮忙。现在,AI,游戏架构,物理效果,一天的时间动态,超高自由度,开放的游戏方式,动态天气效果,植被损毁效果,等等这些《孤岛惊魂2》在非‘内涵’方面的技术进步,PS3现在都运行地很好。”
但不出所料,PS3版还是赶不上顶级PC的效果.“但是,因为内存设计理念的差异,与高端PC的效果相比,分辨率这一块得让出部分资源用于其他地方。”
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