Sounds like the guys at Codemasters are starting to reach the limits of what the current generation of consoles can do. Bodycount’s Andy Wilson and F1 2011’s Stephen Hood both agreed that the PS3 and 360 are approaching their “technical peaks”.
Speaking to CVG, Wilson said that “it’s been an unusually long console cycle”, admitting that “it’s going to run on for some time yet”.
“You find the ceiling by building engines, tools and middleware which mean the next game you do on the current generation you’ve already done all of that stuff, so you can then push it even further,” he said.
“DiRT is a good example; it’s on its third iteration on the current console cycle and they’ve got all of that tech that’s now integrated into Ego that they’ve spent all of these years building.”
[drop2]”Clearly if you built DiRT 3 from scratch it would not look as good.”And Hood commented on F1 2011’s development too. “You can quickly fill [the memory and the processor] and when you’re starting to push the boundaries of the hardware, you have to year-on-year become a little more clever in the way that you go about doing things.”
Bodycount, too, was a “struggle” to get running at a decent framerate. “It takes a huge amount of effort to [the realtime destruction] to even work on current consoles, because it takes shit-loads of memory, it sucks up performance out of the consoles like you wouldn’t believe,” he said.
“It takes a long time before you even get to the point where it works as a gameplay device working at a decent framerate. But when you get there it makes you kind of wonder when you go in to a more static shooter, why you fire a machine gun at a wall and nothing happens.”
Indeed, one of the things that impressed us the most about Bodycount at E3 was the realtime splintering of the environment. You can read our hands-on impressions of Bodycount here.
TSBonyman
One day they will have the tech to build a Rally game.. can’t wait..
TSBonyman
Apologies for allowing my disappointment at Dirt 3 to blind me.. must stop that .. :|
So, Bodycount then … hopefully they’ll manage to finetune their code to improve the framerate and game speed without losing too much visually. Although it kind of sounds like we might have to wait for a Bodycount 2 or 3 for the most efficiently coded version from the way he’s talking.
cam the man
I’m also a bit disappointed with Dirt3. I was really looking forward to it when I heard there was a lot more ‘proper’ rally stages than Dirt2. There’s too much gymkhana stuff for my liking.
bacon_nuts
It’s a shame that people don’t like the Gymkhana in Dirt 3. Personally, I adore it, and the game as a whole so far. I just think It’s so much fun, although DiRT 3 has become a bit more like “Ken Block’s DiRT 3” as opposed to Colin. I think that’s a shame as Ken isn’t actually that good at rally…
tonycawley
If you bought Dirt 3 expecting a Rally game, well that’s your fault for not reading what Dirt 3 was about before buying it. Clearly, there is a big focus on Gymkhana and the other freestyle modes, and that is clearly described in all of the pre-launch articles that you’ll find anywhere. Dirt 3 is a great game, it’s a lot of fun and performs extremely well both offline and online. I don’t think you can blame Codemasters for making a great game, just because you bought it thinking it was going to be a rally game, when clearly it isn’t. It has elements of Rallying in it, that’s all.
Forrest_01
The thing I don’t understand is why they found it so hard to code the real time deformation & destruction, when BFBC2 (a game from over a year ago) & the frostbite engine do it so effortlessly?
sideshow
You’re supposed to be comparing it to MW2, not BC2! Definitely don’t compare it to the upcoming BF3 either.
blackredyellow
BFBC2 is actually made with tiny little speheres of super magic. Hence why it’s so awesome and is undoubtedly better than MW2. So there.
billsmugs
I don’t know much about Bodycount’s destruction but Battlefield I though was pretty rubbish, with loads of invincible bits and the destruction limited to obviously pre-defined areas that just vanish and spawn a few flying bricks when hit by a big enough force.
david
Even though the dustruction wasn’t that realistic, it was dustruction and miles ahead of any other game that had tried it. Also it completely changed the gameplay for the better. Imo the game wouldn’t have been half as good if it didn’t have it.
billsmugs
It does explain why they didn’t find it as hard to implement as Codemasters though, if they are doing proper real-time destruction.
KeRaSh
Just look at what Volition did with Red Faction Guerilla. I wouldn’t consider BFBC2’s predefined destruction miles ahead of Volitions realtime destruction.
Forrest_01
@billsmugs – I actually have no idea what you are talking about. I have never encountered ‘invincible’ scenery on BFBC2 & things generally blow up pretty realistically pretty much wherever I plant my c4. The only thing I can think of is that you were trying to blow things up where people would never be & so what would be the point in that anyway? Not calling you out on it, just never encountered any issues with it myself.
I have been able to shoot people through walls by creating holes, have killed people from blasting through walls they were hid behind & have even created my own escape routes & ‘roof hatches’ etc at times. I am not sure what you were expecting from it & whilst I am not saying that it’s perfect, it’s pretty damn good.
Also, RF:G is a good shout too – I had forgotten about the destruction in that game.
A2J7C
And i want to discuss DLC Limitations.
When we bought a DiRT 3 DLC, we find out in the menus that it will be another one comming soon! and by 800MP/8€, go steal in another place!
cc_star
Consoles really have reached their limitation, of course there’s optimising to do, but they are now pretty much holding up graphical progress.
Yesterday, EA release the free ultra settings DirectX 11 update for Crysis 2 on PC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udwN0vwGpCI
It’s day & night in comparison to the PS360, 2013 seems a long way off when you look at something like that.
Fat Goose Chris
I had it on PS3 and that video looks just the same as that did.
and they can have as much post processing mumbo jumbo as they like; the actual game itself (gameplay/story/characters if you can remember what those things are) was as generic, one dimensional and dull as fuck!
Gadbury
John Carmack said recently in an interview that no developer has maxed out the current generation. I assume he means there’s always room for improvement.
Smallville2106
Can;t remember how many times I have read that devs have ‘pushed the PS3 to the limit’ with their new game.
Foxhound
I would buy a ps4 today, just imagine how good it would be, I mean ps3 is staggeringly good……
TheMekon
Thing is, soon as next generation consoles from Sony/MS appear, likes of Hideo K. etc going to do the standard…’what a dissapointment’ line, start banging on about how the new uber consoles, whilst good, were not anywhere near as powerful as they had hoped for, their creative visions would have to be toned down etc.
Then? the VS ‘debates’ start all over with folks quoting technobabble about bi-point render this and quantum texturing that etc.
And what do gamers find? prices are even higher,you’ll need to own more than 1 console and so on.Cycle begins again.
I
‘m more than happy to stick with current gen, limits and all for few years yet.
Deathbrin
So Bodycount is alive? Great news. Didn’t know it was coming to 360 though.
SpikeyMikey23
GRID? give me some Grid 2!!