Comments 184

Re: More Developers Sing PS5's Praises After Tech Specs Reveal

badbob001

On the PS4, detailed textures can greatly make up for simple geometry. I'm thinking of Uncharted 4. In comparison, Resident Evil 7 had some really low resolution textures that just took me out of the experience.

So even though PS5/XBSX has the same 16GB of ram, maybe PS5's super fast SSD will allow it to basically stream very large textures directly from storage and show insane level of detail. 4K on PS4Pro wasn't always as sharp with lower-quality textures and checkerboard rendering, so perhaps this is how the PS5 will fix it smartly and cost-effectively.

Unreal Engine 4 actually has a texture streaming option and so it may be easy for devs to toggle this feature and compare the performance difference. I would imagine PS5 has features that were actually tested with software to see if they actually make sense to have. Gone are the days of the PS3 and Saturn where the one team creates the hardware and then it's up to the software devs to spend months or years to "just figure it out". Would be amazing if multi-platform devs would add a 'mega-textures' option just for the PS5.

Re: More Developers Sing PS5's Praises After Tech Specs Reveal

badbob001

I wonder if PS5 will match xbsx's multiple game resume feature. I would imagine this feature requires at least some of the ram data to be saved to storage (I think the PS4 keeps it in ram, which is why it goes away if power is lost). If the PS5 supports this, there should be an option to save that data to an external usb drive instead of to the precious ssd. Sure it will take longer to resume, but I rather save the ssd space for in-game usage.

Re: More Developers Sing PS5's Praises After Tech Specs Reveal

badbob001

Oh my. All the clues makes sense now:
1) Ready At Dawn dev praises PS5. They only worked on VR games in the last three years.
2) Cerny says SSD is important for load-less viewpoint shifts in games.
3) Some devs says there are still exciting PS5 features to be revealed.
4) Matrix 4 comes out next year.

Conclusion: the secret PS5 feature is better VR support. I guess this excites any dev that has VR plans. Just like how any dev that made dancing games were excited about the kinect. Yay.

Re: Reaction: PS5 Deep Dive Was As Expected, But Was Shockingly Misjudged

badbob001

Cerny did make a point that he rather have fewer but faster CU than more but slower due to the complexity of providing enough work for all the CU. I guess we'll see how this plays out in the actual games or if this is just damage control.

I did especially like how they determined how much SSD bandwidth is needed for nextgen gameplay experience and then designed a system to meet it.

And Sony would be smart if they price the PS5 slightly cheaper than the XB given the slightly lower specs.

Re: Blade Runner, the 1997 Adventure Game, Is Being Remastered on PS4

badbob001

This is playable via ScummVM and the GOG version that you can buy now actually runs on the ScummVM. Apparently the sourcecode was lost so is NightDrive just going to upscale everything, like what was done for Final Fantasy VIII? Maybe they'll just spend 99% of the development time porting ScummVM to the PS4. Also hear that the ScummVM team are working to integrate unused content that are still on the disks.

Re: Rogue Lords Is a Hellish Roguelike That Sees You Take Control of Satan

badbob001

@Jaz007 I'm curious how would the game keep itself from crossing that satanic line when the game involves villains lead by satan. Perhaps the villains are less satanic, despite their boss, if they have likable qualities (eg: funny, attractive, professionalism, heart of gold, loves mom, has a pet, etc). Kind of like Suicide Squad.

Re: Poll: Will PlayStation Exclusives on PC Affect Your PS5 Purchasing Intent?

badbob001

One major reason I play on console is for owning the physical release. PC games are mostly digital.

If PS exclusives are released at the same time on PC, which is what MS does for their own games, then that will not be a good idea. But if released to PC much later, I'm ok with that. This is similar to MS' release of the Halo Collection to PC. My theory is that it is good marketing: PC games are much more likely to be pirated and once more non-playstation users are amazed by the old games, then they may want to get a PS5 to play the sequel. But often with marketing, it's all flash but not much substance, which may explain why the PC version of games often are buggy and not well supported post-release.

Re: There Will Be Exclusives You Can Only Play on PS5

badbob001

I don't think the PS5 will have any component so specialized and unique that would make it difficult to port to another console or PC. I think the days of the ps3's cell are in the past. Any console exclusive would be due to a contract agreement and not a technical reason.

This is because modern consoles use components that are very similar to the ones used on PCs. This allows for some of the development to be done on PCs and also makes it easier for cross-console support.

If PC games can support computers from one with a $150 video card to one with a $1000 video card, then the exact thing applies to consoles. In fact, this is already happening with the xbox1/xbox1x and ps4/ps4pro. The next gen will just add another tier to that range.

Re: Microsoft's Xbox Series X Exclusive Game Strategy May Play Into Sony and PS5 Hands

badbob001

@Nyne11Tyme Don't forget that their games will also be on PC. So I guess if their games can scale to work on computers of various levels of performance, then the same can be done for their 3+ versions of the xbox. I'm sure this will make it much harder to tune the games for best performance.

Maybe they will introduce a buy-once strategy where a single purchase allows you to run the same game on previous and new-gen xboxes. Heck, why not throw in a download code for Windows version.

Re: Rumour: Is the Recently Patented PlayStation Cartridge Upgradable SSD Storage for PS5?

badbob001

@AdamNovice From a cost perspective, a hybrid approach would be best. I rather they put most of the cost on the cpu/gpu/ram, as that can NEVER be updated without buying a newer system (ala ps5 pro) and let us upgrade the storage later. Does it make sense to use up expensive SSD storage for video clips? It would require PS5 games to be designed to allow for part of it to be on faster storage. Then either SSD can be a requirement for the game or if not, then the user can choose to let the game decide or have the user override the defaults. Also, perhaps having a HDD is needed for PS4 compatibility.

Maybe many years later, SSD will be very cheap and so users can pop in a 4TB SSD and migrate everything to it.

Re: PS5's Devkit Looks Like a Monster in Visualisation

badbob001

@wiiware stacking computer systems is a common thing to do to save space. And one developer may need access to multiple dev kits at the same time (eg: multiplayer, different builds, server/client, etc) or the dev kits are centralized and shared in one place instead of being allocated to specific individuals.