Valve Week at 1UP.com -- Day Five

[WritingARequiem]

i don't get gabes complaints. its like if he doesn;t get it, it can't happen. sony made ps, and ps2, they knwo what they hell theyre doing, more innovation came on those to systems then gabe ever made. now with the ps3, its even more.
valve didn't invent havoc, they didn't invent the q1 engine. they did source, and it handles facial animations great, which means more blend shapes and higher polycounts, but they never got beyond the tiny levels so you still have to load for 30 secs every 5 mins, very distracting.

don't worry about the ps3, it will work, he may not understand it, but it will work. About steam being the future, maybe for pc, but i seriously doubt that steam will be the microsoft of the future, owning 90% of game distribution over the internet. steam as it is now sucks, and i hate it, more hasle then anything, i would rather have a cd ,and download updates every 2 months then start my game and have to wait 30 mins to play it as steam updates. but this next version might be fixed, and i hope they update their sdk.

episodic games, well i don't have to buy them, prolly won't, can't stand giving my cc over the net unless absolutly necissary

1) Sony isn't a god, they can make mistakes. They can assume, but they don't know everything. They have polls, but they haven't asked the guy down the street what kind of games he likes to play. Sony has been in the business a while, and if you listened to what he said about dual core processing, I doubt you have any idea what he's talking about, except that he thinks the PS3 will fail.
2)Incredible AI, Improved Graphics, Realistic Facial Animations.
3)What will work? The PS3? Yes, it will turn on. But without game developer support, that's all it will do.
4) And Load times. Yea. That's what they are. On every system of every game.
5) They don't update that often anymore, but when they did, they fixed BUGS. They cared enough about the community to release bug fixes when they were done with them. Not in a single update every two months, because then some people wouldn't be able to play the game they bought for 2 months.
6) I agree with you on giving a credit card numbers for episodic games.

 

[Cypher19]

Um...image based rendering is kind of old by now. The system he describes is just like integrating impostors into a level of detail algorithm, which Far Cry did 18 months ago (another game that I know did it was Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike).

His comments about the PS3 are quite valid though. Just not having a nice debugging suite to work on, to view what's going on inside the hardware will make it quite frustrating. In fact, one Xbox dev I know personally simply LOVES developing on it because of tools like PIX (Performance Investigator for Xbox). I've only used the Windows version of it, and have found it useful, but for the real PIX, some of the stuff they can do just boggles my mind*. If MS is continuing this with Xbox 360 and the PS3 really is as hard to develop for as it sounds, then I'd hardly be surprised if publishers and developers decide to just toss PS3 support.

 

[polyguns]

but has any other developers voiced this concern? I haven't heard any. are the unreal 3 devs voicing this concern?

this is the second time that ive heard gabe mention the hell of developing for next gen consoles, but hes the only one ive heard anything about it from.

I would like to hear what the unreal people have to say, thats the engine all the smart devs will use anyways

 

[Hyperion2010]

but has any other developers voiced this concern? I haven't heard any. are the unreal 3 devs voicing this concern?

this is the second time that ive heard gabe mention the hell of developing for next gen consoles, but hes the only one ive heard anything about it from.

I would like to hear what the unreal people have to say, thats the engine all the smart devs will use anyways

I will say that John Carmack agrees with GN on this one. Being a god of engine coding, I will say that JC knows his shit, if he thinks that it is too time consuming to write code for multiple cores, then I will go with "he's right."

There is no easy way under current compile schemes (i dont really know this this well) to take a batch of code and have it run with balanced loads on multiple cores. There are about 2 engines out there that support multiple cores right now, and one of them was probably writen by sony specifically for the PS3. Also, only rewriting entire code bases can allow for efficient multi core utilization, and few, if any devs will be willing to do that, there must be an easier way...

 

[Bedwetting Type]

...

;(

Now look what you did. You made the baby Jesus cry.

valve didn't invent havoc, they didn't invent the q1 engine. they did source, and it handles facial animations great, which means more blend shapes and higher polycounts, but they never got beyond the tiny levels so you still have to load for 30 secs every 5 mins, very distracting.

You're right, they didn't. Id Software made their own physics engine, they invented the Q1 engine, but tell me, which game do you play more: DOOM 3 or HL2? Oh, and load times? Don't even get me started.

Valve isn't out to make the most advanced engine ever... that's not their focus. They focus on making a great game. That's why Gabe is so frustrated by the next-gen consoles: it takes focus away from the art side of things. At least that's what I got out of it....

steam as it is now sucks, and i hate it, more hasle then anything...

Hassle? I'll tell you what's a hassle. Waiting in line at Fileplanet. Besides, I'm on a four-person LAN at my house. With Steam, I no longer have to worry about patching each system whenever an update comes out. I just know that they are updated.

...i would rather have a cd ,and download updates every 2 months then start my game and have to wait 30 mins to play it as steam updates

We waited almost 6 years for HL2. What's 30 minutes?


P.S. Your spelling and grammar sucks, and I hate it.

 

[toekneebullard]

All the people who are saying Gabe's just being whiney are missing the point. He's not saying it's impossible. He's not saying it's going to kill the PS3. He's saying it's a huge undertaking to make a game for the two consoles.

Essentially you would have to make two completely seperate games. Yes, this is time consuming and expensive. They're a business. That's a big concern for businesses.

Here's an analogy for you. You want to make a movie. You want to be able to put it on DVD and VHS. But imagine if DVD and VHS were so different you had to reshoot the whole movie for each format. Yeah, it wouldn't be impossible...but it would make the cost of production twice as long, and a hell of a lot more expensive.

If you want to make a game for 360 and PS3, then you've got to find twice the number of coders, or else pay the same coders twice as much to do things.

 

[Scotsman]

iron sights in DoD:source? **** YEAH!

 

[WhiteZero]

You really think that Sony would let their developers bad-mouth them freely?
"Hey guys... heres a big wad-o-cash to not bitch" is a possibility...

 

[§amW]

I am strongly against sacrificing "good story and community" in favour of detail. What I want to see is cinematic gaming, working like a masterpiece. Think about films. You have the big blockbuster movies that cost millions of dollars and then you have the quiet achievers that make a fantastic film from what they already have. This is where I want to see gaming headed.
Do you really want to see NFL 2006, 2007, 2008...all the same rehashes except with more complex grass each time? Gaming has to evolve using current techniques, not just pumping more juice in to the processor.

Exactly...
That may be the way you feel... but whas EA games has always said, and the PS3 will now say, More detail please.
Remember the PS3 demos at E3... ooooh we can simpulate 5000000 rubber dukkies dropping into a bathtub... ohhhh we have over so and so terraflops of pure processing power. YEAHH!
They want to improve power and complexity, and guess what either game companies will have to pool more resources together per game, create a time machiene (or lengthen development time... like that will happen), or take sacrafices out of non-technical areas... what non technical areas do we have now?

Gabe Newell wants to make a game, he does not want to re-create reality in painstaking detail. He wants to focus on fun gameplay, not figure out how to make a bullet create the perfect and most convincing hole in the wall. He wants to see people have fun, not make a waterfall that rivals real water.

And about others claiming that its just developers being lazy.
Its not about if developers need to bee less lazy and code more, its about wheather developers have enough resources to NOT sacrafice anything else for technology. Why do you think modding became popular? you have an engine already there and you have a base already there. You want to put your ideas into a game, and one of the quickes ways with the most results is making a mod you do not have to build an engine (no graphics, sound, or physics coding required), you don't even have to build any placeholder graphics or such since there is already a set of suitable placeholders there. so instead of working out all the details of code, you can work out gameplay and story. you simply get results fast with modding...
Now with engine building the same thing is sought after... The faster one can get results with thier coding, the more they can focus on making the rest of the game. There IS a LIMITED ammount of RESOURCES and for many there is a LIMITED ammount of TIME (release date pressure and funds running low). If a dev can barely get through the coding before times up... what is the rest of the game, conjured up in less than acceptable time, be?

 

[WritingARequiem]

but has any other developers voiced this concern? I haven't heard any. are the unreal 3 devs voicing this concern?

this is the second time that ive heard gabe mention the hell of developing for next gen consoles, but hes the only one ive heard anything about it from.

I would like to hear what the unreal people have to say, thats the engine all the smart devs will use anyways

Unreal 3 is going to use the XBox 360 in Gears of War...yeah...

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

People are missing the point, gabe is saying Sony is ripping out it's OWN throat by forceing people to jump hurdles to develope on there platform. They will miss out on multi-platform titles and franchises cannot easily move onto PS3. It's an egotistical way to develope a console.

 

[blinking halo]

Americas Army had iron sights before CoD.
:thumbs:

the D-Day mod for Quake 2 had ironsights waaaaay before AA :thumbs:

 

[§amW]

People are missing the point, gabe is saying Sony is ripping out it's OWN throat by forceing people to jump hurdles to develope on there platform. They will miss out on multi-platform titles and franchises cannot easily move onto PS3. It's an egotistical way to develope a console.

Thats not true... ther are developers out there who will use 99% of thier development time to use the PS3s technology... My main example... well EAsports ofcourse

 

[DeusExMachina]

I love how when GN says something, everyone here agrees with him. Especially when its against the "big bad consoles". Ugh.

And the episode business sounds mighty fishy.

 

[bliink]

Gabe's cool to listen to, You never really appreciate the developers until you hear from them.

Also, rifle grenades + iron sights in dod?? cool

 

[hi_ted]

I love how when GN says something, everyone here agrees with him. Especially when its against the "big bad consoles". Ugh.

And the episode business sounds mighty fishy.

What is there to disagree with?

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

the D-Day mod for Quake 2 had ironsights waaaaay before AA :thumbs:

stole the words from me

 

[Black Mesa corp]

Looks like Gabe Newells life is a tough and complicated one revolving games. I will continue to support him and his games

 

[Kadayi]

There was some profound stuff said in those clips. I loved the way he compared episodic content to working on a TV show. Lets hope that SiNepisodes delivers something akin to LOST or BSG in terms of storyline quality. Small digestible gaming chunks seems like a much more sensible idea compared to spending 3-4 years unleashing some bloated behemoth.

 

[Pesmerga]

The great thing about episodic content is fan base. Like he said with WoW, you're not shoving huge chunks of story, character, and plot down someone's throat. You spoon feed him the stuff as he wishes to feed, and in small enough bits to leave him very hungry for the next spoon. And if you finish the entire plate, you get to vomit it all back up and digest it slowly again.

All I'm gonna say is... MMO is the future, MMOFPS to be precise.