UE3 on PS3 Struggling?

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 04 Oct 2006 10:06 am

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... tory=11102

The ever-entertaining Epic Games VP Mark Rein, sassing "Don't take my picture!" at the photo-hungry crowd before the start of his GDC London talk on Unreal Engine 3 and Gears Of War, was bombastic as usual, commenting of the imminent debut of the X360 title: "Sony says the next generation starts when they say so - bullshit!" He also opined that Gears, as a second-gen Xbox 360 title is likely to look better than PS3 launch titles.

Rein started with a capture of an in-game cut-scene and gameplay footage from the second level of Epic's own Xbox 360 exclusive title. The long footage showed the game's characters clearing out a decaying urban area of the game, plugging up 'Emergence Holes' in the ground with frag grenades to stop the enemy 'Locusts' from appearing, and plenty of frenetic urban duck and dive combat.

The Epic VP then took the stage, commenting that Gears Of War ships in around 6 weeks, commenting: "We're trying to counteract all the hype the game has" by keeping a lot of the game features concealed and fresh. He also revealed that Gears Of War itself will take twelve-and-a-half hours to complete (not a recently cited ten hours, he made sure to point out), and that there is "plenty of replayability" after the fact.

As Gears Of War ends, Rein explains that the concentration is changing to making the Unreal Engine 3 engine for PlayStation 3 better. He notes: "We have a couple of worried customers" regarding the PlayStation 3 and UE3, who are asking: "How are we going to get it to perform as well as the Xbox 360"? But this is now what Epic is concentrating on, as it moves toward the completion of Unreal Tournament 2007 "some time in 2007."

Rein also commented on some of the most notable third-party Unreal Engine 3 titles from this year, from Bioshock through Mass Effect, but was particularly interested in Lost Odyssey, the Hironobu Sakaguchi-created Xbox 360 RPG.

"Lost Odyssey was a little lost for a while - it took the developers a little bit of time to find out how to use Unreal Engine 3," said Rein. He noted the problem in getting Japanese developers to change their pipeline to UE3, but that it is something developers are getting much better at.

As had been done at Tokyo Game Show, the existence of Epic Games China as an official subsidiary for asset creation was revealed, with Rein countering forum chatter over the question of outsourcing outside the U.S. and 'sweatshops', charging: "Shanghai is a little too expensive for a sweatshop," and further commenting: "We're paying people the absolute top end of the wage scale."

He also discussed the Integrated Partner Program for middleware companies and Unreal Engine 3, explaining it as a "formal business relationship between Epic and selected companies" making sure that middleware companies such as AI.Implant and others will be concretely working with UE3 - 10 companies have signed up so far.

Finally, Rein touched on software rendering support for Unreal Tournament 2007 on the PC, revealing that the company has been talking to a third-party about providing software rendering again "so we can support those crappy Intel chips," commenting that: "If it's possible this time, Epic will do it."

AgOnNy · Post by **AgOnNy** » 04 Oct 2006 10:13 am

i cant wait for this game. Looks great. BRIGN IT ON!!!!!!!!

mech · Post by **mech** » 04 Oct 2006 10:29 am

Some people are definitely having problems moving their engines to PS3. Apparently COD3 runs like a dog on PS3. But we already know the potential power is there, some of the games shown at TGS look amazing. And we already knew that it's a cunt to program for. Next...

jizzlobber · Post by **jizzlobber** » 04 Oct 2006 10:41 am

so you're saying it has potential?

General Chaos · Post by **General Chaos** » 04 Oct 2006 10:52 am

Clearly they should just get the code running on the main core forget the PPC and let the GPU push out the pretty GFX.

Should be able to squeeze 30fps out like that assuming they are cpu crippled ATM.

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 04 Oct 2006 10:56 am

Devs that have been programming single threaded engines since the beginning of time can't exploit an architecture that relies on thread level parallelism to get decent performance?

Geez. Fuck. I'm just in shock. I'm absolutely gobsmacked. I can't believe it. I mean, yeah.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 04 Oct 2006 10:56 am

mech wrote:Some people are definitely having problems moving their engines to PS3. Apparently COD3 runs like a dog on PS3. But we already know the potential power is there, some of the games shown at TGS look amazing. And we already knew that it's a cunt to program for. Next...

I hear developers are having a lot of problems with the 256k local store on the spe and the lack of semaphore based locking schemes most modern cpu's use. I guess the problem with ps3 is an engine needs to be totally designed around the screwy non symmetrical cpu design of the cell.

With quad core pc cpu's coming next year, I see more pc devs building engines around symmetrical core based cpu's, something which you can move to 360 without to much hassle, but you can't on cell. You effectively only have 1 general purpose core. The spe's need code specially targeted for them and there are probably routines that just can't be effectively done on a spe due to various limitations in the spe's.

Even when using the spe's developers have commented that the performance isn't all that great.

Arthas · Post by **Arthas** » 04 Oct 2006 11:01 am

Well it is a PC engine and it is an Unreal engine and while I love UT they're engines weren't always the best. They're usually cpu intensive which doesn't translate well to console. Xbox360 has it's problems and incompatabilities like no AA? Gears of War looks pretty nice but looked boring to play.

mech · Post by **mech** » 04 Oct 2006 11:04 am

On the flip side, I've heard a lot of devs comment on how powerful it can be. It's like the PS2 lestat, you were a real naysayer about its goofy CPU architecture and how shit it was, but games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus and GT4 show how wrong you were. There's a lot of untapped potential as devs find ways around the odd design and get used to it. A video podcast I saw the other day had a guy from Factor 5 raving about using the SPEs for doing really cool stuff, like one alone was dedicated to doing the wave motion physics in the water for Lair. They sound like they're a lot better than the VU0 and VU1 in terms of usability. I'm surprised at how many positive comments I've heard actually, I was expecting much worse, same with 360 though actually.

Probably helps that everything is moving to multi-core designs so it's becoming a real necessity to be able to do good multi-threaded code. Normally at work I get to avoid that shit, but lately I've been back into it again and goddamn, I hate to think what it'd be like trying to do it on a bare bones machine like like the 360 or the PS3 where every bit of performance counts, it's tricky enough on PC as it is

Kabal · Post by **Kabal** » 04 Oct 2006 11:11 am

mech wrote:It's like the PS2 lestat, you were a real naysayer about its goofy CPU architecture and how shit it was, but games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus and GT4 show how wrong you were.

Yeah so the PS2 had like 3 good looking games ever (4 i guess if you include black). COOL. If anything that proves how shitty its goofy CPU architecture was, IMO.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 04 Oct 2006 11:25 am

There is a lot of potential in any closed box mech if it's the only intended target, all the games you mentioned are sony developed games. I of course expect sony's own games to design their game around the strengths and weaknesses of the machine. Besides it took a loooong time for sony to get those results too. Like kabal mentioned, there are probably over 2k ps2 games and only 3 stood out, even then those games compared to pc/xbox games weren't all that mind blowing.

Problem is the vast majority of games release are not sony exclusive developed games, but games developed by 3rd parties who target multiple systems. So once again i can see the ps3 holding back/being the lowest common demoninator because of it's difficuilt cpu design.

Mech wrote: Probably helps that everything is moving to multi-core designs so it's becoming a real necessity to be able to do good multi-threaded code. Normally at work I get to avoid that shit, but lately I've been back into it again and goddamn, I hate to think what it'd be like trying to do it on a bare bones machine like like the 360 or the PS3 where every bit of performance counts, it's tricky enough on PC as it is

Heh you think it's tricky on pc, the same multithreaded model that people have used for years works on a 360 without too much drama, works on modern pc cpu's without too much drama. It doesn't work on cell at all. With developers moving to more code reuse/engines with games getting a lot bigger, i just see it being more of a pain. I don't think sony has the time advantage this time or 3rd party confidence as leverage for cell.

mech · Post by **mech** » 04 Oct 2006 11:26 am

Kabal wrote:
mech wrote:It's like the PS2 lestat, you were a real naysayer about its goofy CPU architecture and how shit it was, but games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus and GT4 show how wrong you were.
Yeah so the PS2 had like 3 good looking games ever (4 i guess if you include black). COOL. If anything that proves how shitty its goofy CPU architecture was, IMO.

3 good looking games ever? I beg to fucking differ. Plenty of awesome looking PS2 titles, and many from 3rd parties thank you lestat.

mech · Post by **mech** » 04 Oct 2006 11:28 am

lestat, we're already seeing amazing looking titles for the PS3, I really believe you're going to be proven wrong again this generation. I don't think the PS3 will be _that_ much better than the 360, but I think some games will outpace what the 360 can do.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 04 Oct 2006 11:42 am

3 good looking games ever? I beg to fucking differ. Plenty of awesome looking PS2 titles, and many from 3rd parties thank you lestat.

I think the phrase polishing a turd is appropriate here. A lot of polishing.

ps3 isn't better than 360. I consider both machines to be equal in terms of performance. no where near the level of difference in power we have seen in prior generations. Both machines are 2005 graphics/cpu hardware, ps3 just got delayed because of bluray.

Pointy Cat · Post by **Pointy Cat** » 04 Oct 2006 11:55 am

Untapped powah!~

Arthas · Post by **Arthas** » 04 Oct 2006 02:30 pm

I thought the PS2 managed some very nice looking games. MGS2 did some amazing stuff for its time. MGS3 wasn't too damn shabby either. The weakness of the PS2 wasnt it's cpu anyway I thought? It was it's strength and everyone fucking bitched about it's gpu because it lacked good filtering and whatever

.

PS3 has a rockin nvidia setup this time.

selfish · Post by **selfish** » 04 Oct 2006 08:23 pm

i would never have imagined an engine designed for a pc would have troubles on a krazy ken style architecture. what a shock.

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 05 Oct 2006 05:01 am

mech wrote: It's like the PS2 lestat, you were a real naysayer about its goofy CPU architecture and how shit it was, but games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus and GT4 show how wrong you were. There's a lot of untapped potential as devs find ways around the odd design and get used to it.

Be nice if they [developers] could start expoilting some of this architecture within two years then instead of 5.

Ambrose Burnside · Post by **Ambrose Burnside** » 05 Oct 2006 08:50 am

t0mby wrote:
mech wrote: It's like the PS2 lestat, you were a real naysayer about its goofy CPU architecture and how shit it was, but games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus and GT4 show how wrong you were. There's a lot of untapped potential as devs find ways around the odd design and get used to it.
Be nice if they [developers] could start expoilting some of this architecture within two years then instead of 5.

Jak and Daxter looked pretty damn good when it came out, that was released fairly early in the PS2's life.

mech · Post by **mech** » 05 Oct 2006 09:25 am

Or how about GT3?

TTT, SSX and Madden all looked amazing on launch too.

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 05 Oct 2006 09:25 am

t0mby wrote:Be nice if they [developers] could start expoilting some of this architecture within two years then instead of 5.

MGS2, released 2001, you thought the game-engine cut scenes were FMV, etc.

Actually I remember MGS2 won an award for visuals/graphics at E3 2000.

Peppermint Lounge · Post by **Peppermint Lounge** » 05 Oct 2006 09:33 am

And what about Sky Odyssey? Ok just joking it looked shite but man it was a great game. So jagged and shimmery you felt exfoliated after playing it.

mech · Post by **mech** » 05 Oct 2006 09:42 am

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 07 Oct 2006 06:06 am

Peppermint Lounge wrote:
t0mby wrote:Be nice if they [developers] could start expoilting some of this architecture within two years then instead of 5.
MGS2, released 2001, you thought the game-engine cut scenes were FMV, etc. Actually I remember MGS2 won an award for visuals/graphics at E3 2000.

Is it too late to say I was only joking about the cut scenes? :backpedal:

Man, goes to show how long a majority of us have been around, or remember specific stuff.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » 09 Oct 2006 03:56 pm

None of MGS2 was in-game