Next Gen

[Sarex]

the issue isn't mouse use, it's keyboard use. hence why fps are so much harder to play. These games are probably the easiest to play for me next to adventure games.

And AwesomeOcelot I understand, but nothing 3d will make their jobs take longer than it already would for the pc version.  I kind of would like to see a test how long it takes to create something on the PS4 first, then make a PC version. I suspect the pc version would take longer because you have to factor in a thousand different video cards and operating systems, etc for compatibility.

 

You do realize that every game is made for a PC first. When they demo games, they use PCs. As for thousands of video cards, well that is mostly NVIDIA/AMD driver department job. They get the game and optimize the driver so it can run without problems.

[Sensuki]

the issue isn't mouse use, it's keyboard use. hence why fps are so much harder to play. These games are probably the easiest to play for me next to adventure games.

No no you missed my point. Josh Sawyer has explicitly stated that the game is being designed (the interface, etc) so that you can play primarily mouse only.

 

Personally I find using the mouse only in the IE games is a more relaxed form of play, I use spacebar for pause and unpause and that's about it. You will be able to do the same in Project Eternity (as well as click the pause button).

[Hormalakh]

i don't understand the point of this though: why would anyone want a xboxone/ps4 port?

 

If you want to play this game you'll need a keyboard and a mouse. If you want to play with a controller, they'll have to actually figure that out. and that takes time and money and Avellone isn't interested in doing that (and I'm not either).

 

If you want to play with a big TV, then just get your PC video output to a HDMI and get it on a TV with HDMI capabilities.

 

What exactly does a PS4 port provide? A wider audience? The console isn't out yet, and people who want to play this can play it on their computers since apparently you don't need a high-end one to play it. I bet there are more medium-end computers out there than there are PS4s.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Hormalakh

[ManifestedISO]

^

<read thread title>

<skip all posts>

/meaningful contribution

[PrimeJunta]

Why not, as long as it doesn't hold up the PC/Mac/Linux release? -- Although I'm sure current-gen consoles have more than enough horsepower to run it great too, although the architectures are different enough from a PC that it might make things a bit trickier than the PS4 at least.

 

I've never had a console so I couldn't really say how the UI would work; I would imagine that a game built on the idea of selecting things by pointing at them might not adapt all that gracefully to that though.

 

I think a tablet version might be easier actually. You could do all kinds of stuff with gestures. Draw a circle to select a group, that sort of thing.

 

(There's nothing particularly difficult about it technically I'm sure; it's a design challenge.)

[Hormalakh]

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Any work on a next gen takes away from a better pc.

[Sarex]

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Any work on a next gen takes away from a better pc.

 

DA2 was a prime example of this, they had to dumb it down even further, so it could work on consoles.

[Chrononaut]

Yes, I am suspicious of any RPG that is multi-platform, except perhaps one that is ported elsewhere maybe a year or more after the PC release with no discernable design influences to make it easier to port to console or tablet.

 

I mean look at Shadowrun Returns recently, game isn't even on iOS (yet), and the PC/Mac users still had to deal with a horrible, big, ugly tablet touch interface.

 

I like PC games, I like the small, tight UI design that only comes from being designed for mouse control first and foremost. Consoletards can whine and complain that a port is "only giving them the choice" of buying/playing on console, but in the real-world of game design it doesn't work like that. For a game to be equally controllable on PC and console, it needs to be designed (both UI and controls) from the ground-up at the beginning to be a multi-platform game. And the ONLY result of that, from what we've seen from every multi-platform game, is that the PC version suffers, because the least complex control scheme, the gamepad, is what is what is designed for first, PC controls second, it's the old "lowest common denominator" thing at work again.

 

I would say that it is impossible to have a multi-platform game in which the PC version, the most complex version, does not suffer as a result of the least complex version, the console version. Developers and designers actually gain a myriad of new opportunities and they gain so much more freedom when they don't have to constantly have in the back of their mind the limitations of the console, both memory and controls. It is an insidious influence because any design decision made under this influence, whether it's cutting back on the size of levels or the amount of enemies in a level due to limitations of console memory, UI design, control design, and any number of smaller decisions that might come even from the general idea that at some point in the future they may want to port this game to console and doing this now for the PC version may make it easier when they do.

 

It's better for the designers just to say from the start, no console version ever, and then develop the game with that freedom of knowing their platform. It's why even console games and PC games were better back in the 90's before the multi-platform era of the first Xbox, console games were console games, they were designed for console, and same for PC games, they existed in their own self-contained worlds.

 

Even Chris Avellone himself stated, he's sick of designing RPGs for console and console controllers. It's better for everybody to just forget about consoles entirely and concentrate on the Master Race, exclusively. PE was Kickstarter funded and doesn't have a publisher calling the shots, so OE don't have to make a mainstream "RPG for the masses".

Edited August 18, 2013 by Chrononaut

[ManifestedISO]

I would say that it is impossible to have a multi-platform game in which the PC version, the most complex version, does not suffer as a result of the least complex version, the console version.

 

 

Master-race types are just closet airport bathroom-stall console gamers. Don't be scared, it's fun. Chris Roberts disproves your imaginary complexities:

 

 

 

Roberts said that a PS4 version of [star Citizen] is definitely possible, after the PC version will be complete and stable, as the PC version itself remains the primary focus. Porting to PS4 would be pretty easy as CryEngine already works on the console and there would be no need to compromise anything important. After all, the more players the better.

 

If Star Citizen can go PS4, so can Eternity. 

[moridin84]

 

I would say that it is impossible to have a multi-platform game in which the PC version, the most complex version, does not suffer as a result of the least complex version, the console version.

 

 

Master-race types are just closet airport bathroom-stall console gamers. Don't be scared, it's fun. Chris Roberts disproves your imaginary complexities:

 

 

 

Roberts said that a PS4 version of [star Citizen] is definitely possible, after the PC version will be complete and stable, as the PC version itself remains the primary focus. Porting to PS4 would be pretty easy as CryEngine already works on the console and there would be no need to compromise anything important. After all, the more players the better.

 

If Star Citizen can go PS4, so can Eternity. 

 

 

Umm, isn't Star Citizen a space simulator? It looks like something that can be easily played using a controller. 

[Kjaamor]

Quite aside from any mechanical difficulties and time constraints regarding porting, there is something deliciously ironic about a game being kickstarted on the basis that it plays like games from 1998 and people talking about slowing release so it can be run on next gen hardware in 2013.

 

One of the many things I was looking forward to for P:E was not having to worry about the state of my graphics card.

[Ieo]

Meh, stupid.

 

How many of those ported-to-console games have over half a dozen reactive branching dialogue options and lots of text to read, and multiple party members to control?

 

Whether a game is AAA or not (or has lots of money or time) is 100% irrelevant compared to the genre when it comes to system porting. Look, I'm even being conservative and not mentioning the 18-dialogue-options-on-one-screen and 800k words in PS:T. Anyone saying "if X can do it even though X is a genre absolutely nothing like PE" without considering those differences is...

 

This topic has been done to death. I'd rather the mods just merge into the console thread and let all the stupidity congregate there.

 

 

Didn't we covered this already in this topic: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/59945-merged-please-make-a-console-version/ ?

[ManifestedISO]

Once again, you are not reading the thread's content before posting. 

[Althernai]

But does this thread add that much that is new? Most of the issues with consoles remain. It's true that the new consoles will finally have a sane amount of memory; that's great and it does remove one massive difference. The GPU is also pretty decent. The CPU is x86 (good), but it's bizarre in that it has 8 slow cores (bad) whereas most PCs have 2 or more fast ones. This already might be problematic because multithreading is hard, but Unity doesn't seem to require a great deal of CPU in the first place so I'm not going to dwell on it.

 

The UI issues are mostly the same -- the only major difference is that the PS4 controller will have a touchpad. Not even the best of touchpads can fully replace a mouse, but if it is really good, I suppose you could use it as a mouse substitute (the game has a pause function). If that's the case, the game is more or less playable, although it will be much more awkward than on a PC, kind of like playing on a laptop without using the keyboard. I am not sure that the touchpad is actually that good though -- it looks like just a large button on the controller and the positioning is pretty awkward.

 

The legal issues are almost exactly the same. The PC platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) have one thing in common: you can install whatever you want on them without consulting Microsoft or Apple or anyone else. This is not true of the consoles. Not only do the manufacturers take a cut of of the money, but they also require the developer to jump through hoops to conform to various requirements. These appear to have been relaxed somewhat (at least Sony allows self-publishing now), but it's still way, way more troublesome and expensive than making the games available on the PC.

 

All of that said, I would not be opposed to a PS4 or XBone version as long as all work on them was done after everything promised by the Kickstarter was delivered. That is, Obsidian shouldn't even think of the consoles while the PC version is being developed. If the resulting game is amenable to porting and they believe that the sales will be worth the cost of porting and of dealing with Microsoft and/or Sony, then of course they should do it. However, after explictly saying that they would focus on the PC during the Kickstarter, it would be dishonest for them to spend time or money on console development or, worse, compromise the PC version for the sake of the consoles.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

But does this thread add that much that is new? Most of the issues with consoles remain. It's true that the new consoles will finally have a sane amount of memory; that's great and it does remove one massive difference. The GPU is also pretty decent. The CPU is x86 (good), but it's bizarre in that it has 8 slow cores (bad) whereas most PCs have 2 or more fast ones. This already might be problematic because multithreading is hard, but Unity doesn't seem to require a great deal of CPU in the first place so I'm not going to dwell on it.

 

The UI issues are mostly the same -- the only major difference is that the PS4 controller will have a touchpad. Not even the best of touchpads can fully replace a mouse, but if it is really good, I suppose you could use it as a mouse substitute (the game has a pause function). If that's the case, the game is more or less playable, although it will be much more awkward than on a PC, kind of like playing on a laptop without using the keyboard. I am not sure that the touchpad is actually that good though -- it looks like just a large button on the controller and the positioning is pretty awkward.

 

The legal issues are almost exactly the same. The PC platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) have one thing in common: you can install whatever you want on them without consulting Microsoft or Apple or anyone else. This is not true of the consoles. Not only do the manufacturers take a cut of of the money, but they also require the developer to jump through hoops to conform to various requirements. These appear to have been relaxed somewhat (at least Sony allows self-publishing now), but it's still way, way more troublesome and expensive than making the games available on the PC.

 

All of that said, I would not be opposed to a PS4 or XBone version as long as all work on them was done after everything promised by the Kickstarter was delivered. That is, Obsidian shouldn't even think of the consoles while the PC version is being developed. If the resulting game is amenable to porting and they believe that the sales will be worth the cost of porting and of dealing with Microsoft and/or Sony, then of course they should do it. However, after explictly saying that they would focus on the PC during the Kickstarter, it would be dishonest for them to spend time or money on console development or, worse, compromise the PC version for the sake of the consoles.

 

 

One thing I considered about the new controller that we're forgetting, is the built in move controller. I think it would be very possible to use the controller to point the controller on screen and make the party walk where you want them to as a new mechanic. Playing on a 32-60 inch display on your comfy couch with your surround sound speakers would be cool. One of the features of PS4 is it supports 4k movie playback. To do so on a PC would require a really high amount of disk space to install. However on the PS4, it would easily fit on Sony's new blu ray disk. (Currently Sony is partnering with another company to develop a 300 GB blue ray disk.) Or, with technology that came out this year, it's now possible to stream 4k resolution on devices as small as a cell phone or the Vita and it requires about 50% less bandwidth than current 1080p at max settings if you were to stream online and that's a new experience.

 

To say the Ps4 has 8 slow cores is not quite accurate. You can process 176GB of data per second on the PS4. My PC from 2 yrs ago has a really nice Nvidia GTX 580 and only does 20GB and has only 2GB of built in GDDR5 ram. Not to mention was $500 by its self.

 

The legal issues you mention I don't think are existent in PS4 since the dev's have complete control of their pricing model, release date, and patches I think are either up to them when they want to, or at most is 1/10th of the cost from this gen. I know Xbox 360 was $50k per patch from a project I worked on a couple of years ago. From what I gathered from some industry folks so far the PS4 doesn't have any of those restrictions, and the process to go through approval is like a week to nine days. And again, most 3rd party developers creating games on PS4 and PC keep stressing how easy it is to develop for PS4. I even read an article from Gamescom where the guy said it's easier to develop for PS4 than PC because Sony actually went to developers and created the machine for developers by developers and gamers. We've moved past the 12-18 month cycle to get a game up and running on a console now. I've read time and again it takes weeks to do so now.

Edited August 25, 2013 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Althernai]

One thing I considered about the new controller that we're forgetting, is the built in move controller. I think it would be very possible to use the controller to point the controller on screen and make the party walk where you want them to as a new mechanic.

It's certainly possible, but I don't see how this is not just another poor man's mouse.

 

One of the features of PS4 is it supports 4k movie playback. To do so on a PC would require a really high amount of disk space to install. However on the PS4, it would easily fit on Sony's new blu ray disk. (Currently Sony is partnering with another company to develop a 300 GB blue ray disk.) Or, with technology that came out this year, it's now possible to stream 4k resolution on devices as small as a cell phone or the Vita and it requires about 50% less bandwidth than current 1080p at max settings if you were to stream online and that's a new experience.

Wrong game. 4K is nice for the few that have the devices to use it, but it is not a good fit at all for Project Eternity. Such frills are good for games with typical big production budgets (i.e. $50M), not the $4M that Obsidian raised. It would be utterly bizarre for them to bother with 300GB disks or whatever for the sake of higher resolution; last I heard, they weren't even going to do physical distribution except for the people who paid for it on Kickstarter.

 

To say the Ps4 has 8 slow cores is not quite accurate. You can process 176GB of data per second on the PS4. My PC from 2 yrs ago has a really nice Nvidia GTX 580 and only does 20GB and has only 2GB of built in GDDR5 ram. Not to mention was $500 by its self.

You are confusing several different quantities. I was talking about the CPU of the PS4 which does indeed have 8 slow cores. More specifically, the architecture the PS4 and XBone CPUs are based on is called Jaguar. This architecture is intended for low power consumption rather than high performance. The actual console CPUs will of course be customized so I can't tell you their exact speeds yet, but it would be very strange if the individual cores were fast because the architecture is not well suited to it (in that case, they would have just used AMD's high performance architecture).

 

The 176GB/s that you quote has very little to do with the CPU: it's the memory bandwidth of the GPU. The corresponding value for your GTX 580 from 2 years ago is 192GB/s.

 

The legal issues you mention I don't think are existent in PS4 since the dev's have complete control of their pricing model, release date, and patches I think are either up to them when they want to, or at most is 1/10th of the cost from this gen. I know Xbox 360 was $50k per patch from a project I worked on a couple of years ago. From what I gathered from some industry folks so far the PS4 doesn't have any of those restrictions, and the process to go through approval is like a week to nine days. And again, most 3rd party developers creating games on PS4 and PC keep stressing how easy it is to develop for PS4. I even read an article from Gamescom where the guy said it's easier to develop for PS4 than PC because Sony actually went to developers and created the machine for developers by developers and gamers. We've moved past the 12-18 month cycle to get a game up and running on a console now. I've read time and again it takes weeks to do so now.

Do you have links for any of this? The only thing I have heard of is that independent developers are no longer required to go through publishers to get their games on the PS4. It any case, even your optimistic scenario still involves much more red tape, money and time than on the PC.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

 

Do you have links for any of this? The only thing I have heard of is that independent developers are no longer required to go through publishers to get their games on the PS4. It any case, even your optimistic scenario still involves much more red tape, money and time than on the PC.

 

 

There's a lot of links for those, it would take me a lil while to compile them all, but a few you can refer to would be:  http://www.develop-online.net/features/1993/Land-of-the-indies-PS4-self-publishing-explained - http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/24/4553842/so-how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-for-playstation-4 -  http://www.itproportal.com/2012/02/14/xbox-360-patching-costs-40000/#ixzz1mMnpOLCl -  http://www.psu.com/a018676/ - http://au.gamespot.com/news/just-cause-dev-says-ps4-will-out-power-most-pcs-for-years-to-come-6405102? - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-22-ps4-pc-like-architecture-8gb-ram-delight-developers

 

you can also check out n4g.com probably or even reddit.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Falkon Swiftblade

[AwesomeOcelot]

One of the features of PS4 is it supports 4k movie playback. To do so on a PC would require a really high amount of disk space to install. However on the PS4, it would easily fit on Sony's new blu ray disk. (Currently Sony is partnering with another company to develop a 300 GB blue ray disk.)

PS4 will have standard Blu-Ray, and if a new optical disc technology comes out in a couple of years, it'll be available on PC probably before a new PS4 has it, also available will be much cheaper HDD storage because barring natural disasters the price has been declining year on year. Not to mention the install base for 4k displays and the ability for developers to generate 4K content is lacking. Plus as mentioned, h265 will be available on PC, meaning 4K content compressed to the same bitrate as high quality 1080p content that you'd get in games now. This is not at all related to Project Eternity or game development in 2013 or 2014.

[mcmanusaur]

Seeing as how the ps4 is a fixed architecture that has been called a high end pc by members of Ubisoft and other top developers

 

Edited August 26, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Osvir]

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/884980

 

How about no PS4 Controller and just plug in your regular USB/Bluetooth KB & Mouse into the PS4?

[moridin84]

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/884980

 

How about no PS4 Controller and just plug in your regular USB/Bluetooth KB & Mouse into the PS4?

 

Wait... why bother with a PS4 port at all then?

 

Besides, keyboards and mice are optional for consoles, there's no way you can release a game on a console and tell them that they have to use a keyboard and mouse, they have to make it playable with the standard controller.