News: Digital Trends Interview

Hamma · 2012-04-07, 12:15 PM

http://www.planetside-universe.com/n...rview-2744.htm

SniperSteve · 2012-04-07, 12:23 PM

Did they just say 200 players at once? Some one tell them they are an order of magnitude off.

Edit: I sent them a correction request about it.

Fenrys · 2012-04-07, 01:08 PM

I wonder how many players the PS4 will support.

AFAIK, current gen consoles can only manage 64 players on a small map, and less than that on larger maps.

Graywolves · 2012-04-07, 01:35 PM

Console version will be farmside. The Farmville equivalent.

Mastachief · 2012-04-07, 01:44 PM

It won't see the current gen of consoles the hardware couldnt handle 16vs 16vs 16 let alone anymore.

This article is badly written and they role out the crappy trailer.

Skitrel · 2012-04-07, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by Mastachief

It won't see the current gen of consoles the hardware couldnt handle 16vs 16vs 16 let alone anymore.

This article is badly written and they role out the crappy trailer.

Did you miss MAG? Large scale battles are proven on PS3 already, unfortunately the mechanics of the game were clunky, it wasn't up to the standard of AAA shooters, but it wasn't bad at all.
Sure, the layout of the game limited combat to small fights on the kind of scale that you'd see in regular fps games, but the netcode could indeed cope with all players in one area at once and there's several youtube videos of entire servers on screen at the same time.

I agree that it won't be coming to current gen, but I disagree with the sentiment that the scale can't be done.

As for technical challenges... There's not enough RAM in the current systems to cope with the map load, unless they do something fancy like harddrive streaming in combination with disc read like Battlefield 3 did. I dunno, tech limitations aren't much of an issue, it's just the netcode and optimising that would need to be addressed, claiming it's impossible is in my opinion a little bit silly though and smells like us vs them.

Mastachief · 2012-04-07, 01:57 PM

Nope didn't miss mag.

And you just made my point with everything you listed that's wrong with it.

You've seen planetside2 in beta, the ps3 couldn't hope to handle it.

Skitrel · 2012-04-07, 02:07 PM

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Nope didn't miss mag.

And you just made my point with everything you listed that's wrong with it.

You've seen planetside2 in beta, the ps3 couldn't hope to handle it.

Couldn't hope to handle what? We saw 50 players in beta footage, I'm not sure that's a particularly great example of "herp derp consoles can't do that". We have seen nothing of any scale whatsoever yet.

Graphics can easily be toned down for consoles, the real technical limitation that they'll have is particle effects, dependant on how the game produces them. When there's 300 explosions going off all creating particle effects that's going to be a bit of a technical hurdle, but there's plenty of tricks that can be resorted to, consoles handle thousands of explosives going off simultaneously in Just Cause 2 just fine, so there's tricks available to circumnavigate those problems.

The issue with releasing the game as a next gen release is cost over benefit. Next gen releases are usually extremely high risk until a year after release when the prices on the consoles drop and the second massive wave of sales occurs. That's not going to be soon enough to make developing PS2 for next gen consoles worthwhile at all.

It's not really about the technology, it's about the bottom line. They'll make it happen if they think it's worth it versus the development problems that would arise. You may be right, it might be impossible for SOE to do it, not because it's impossible overall though but because it may not have been in their plan from the start. When it's not in your plan from the start you don't plan for it, by now they may have made technical decisions regarding architecture of the game that makes it completely impossible, that's not to say they could change that, but the question is whether that would be worth it.

Timealude · 2012-04-07, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by Skitrel

Couldn't hope to handle what? We saw 50 players in beta footage, I'm not sure that's a particularly great example of "herp derp consoles can't do that". We have seen nothing of any scale whatsoever yet.

Graphics can easily be toned down for consoles, the real technical limitation that they'll have is particle effects, dependant on how the game produces them. When there's 300 explosions going off all creating particle effects that's going to be a bit of a technical hurdle, but there's plenty of tricks that can be resorted to, consoles handle thousands of explosives going off simultaneously in Just Cause 2 just fine, so there's tricks available to circumnavigate those problems.

The issue with releasing the game as a next gen release is cost over benefit. Next gen releases are usually extremely high risk until a year after release when the prices on the consoles drop and the second massive wave of sales occurs. That's not going to be soon enough to make developing PS2 for next gen consoles worthwhile at all.

It's not really about the technology, it's about the bottom line. They'll make it happen if they think it's worth it versus the development problems that would arise. You may be right, it might be impossible for SOE to do it, not because it's impossible overall though but because it may not have been in their plan from the start. When it's not in your plan from the start you don't plan for it, by now they may have made technical decisions regarding architecture of the game that makes it completely impossible, that's not to say they could change that, but the question is whether that would be worth it.

I think what he means is they couldnt handle the load that planetside 2 is going to offer, planetside battles were huge back in the day in the first one like 300 vs 300 vs 300. if i remember right mag was 364 max right? I think it would be too much processing for the current console to handle.

Ieyasu · 2012-04-07, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by Timealude

I think what he means is they couldnt handle the load that planetside 2 is going to offer, planetside battles were huge back in the day in the first one like 300 vs 300 vs 300. if i remember right mag was 364 max right? I think it would be too much processing for the current console to handle.

MAG supported up to 256 players on one map. You were still basicly fighting in 4 different 32 v 32 battles but still felt pretty big relative to anything else consoles offered fps wise.

PS1 or PS2 would bring modern consoles to their knees. If PS2 is to see console life it will undoubtedly be on the next gen consoles that are slated to hit in the next couple years. If theres any validity to leaked specs they are quite a bit beefier than their current iterations.