WHAT PLAY YOU!? Version 3.0

[Tommy!]

1 hour ago, SpiritOfTheForest said:

In an RPG I'll always choose to play as a man

Some where a former keffers "gaslighting misogynist" sense is tingling.

[TildeGuy~!]

Huge if true, Metal Gear Solid 3 remake trailer is rumoured to be airing at the next Sony event too.

[Merzbow]

I wouldn't touch it, personally. Fuck Konami.

I'd at least want to hear from Kojima first.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Merzbow

[Mr_Danger]

That’s the funniest thing about the whole Activision/Xbox thing. No cunt tries to monopolise the market with exclusive third party content more than Sony. It’ll be even funnier when the next Call of Duty launches with Playstation exclusive packs and shit.

[Jazzy G]

Phil Spencer's declaring that Microsoft aren't involved in a console war is indication that I don't think they'll be putting consoles out for long, and concentrating more on getting Gamepass onto as many systems as possible going forward, as most of the money is made through games.if they're selling gamepass, and then have a lot of game publishers under your wing selling the games to the people who don't want to pay for gamepass it could still be a pretty profitable venture. Maybe the "Xbox" line will be evolved into some gaming PC style range like Steam Machines?

[Mr_Danger]

He’s been peddling that line for years though. They might be a service seller first but I’ll bet they always be a console seller. They’ll probably drop out of the generational model and do incremental upgrades like with PC gaming and they’ll continue to build the cloud gaming services so that even if you have a janky old series whatever you just need to have a working internet connection to play the latest and greatest.

[seph]

[Old man yelling at cloud]

Not cool #1 - Jedi Survivor is 155GB min on PS5, so had to toss two games off the drive. Maybe another if/when I get hit with a 50GB update thanks to Sony's IDIOTIC patching policy.

Not cool #2 - Whatever is copying/downloading is taking its sweet time - it's about 20% done with est. 70 minutes to go. I miss games being ready out of the box.

Either *external additional* SSDs will need to be mandatory in the near future due to escalating asset sizes, or things will become full circle and we'll go back to cartridges with "full" games on them. I may well love this game but once it's done it's going off.

[/Old man yelling at cloud]

Edited May 8, 2023 by seph

[Merzbow]

SSD's are already mandatory, that's what's in the PS5 and Xbox Series and they're almost as fast as you can get. The problem is the cost for ones with such speeds, it's why we ain't seeing 2TB ones in systems when that should be the minimum in 2023.

[Mr_Danger]

Doesn’t it let you play via streaming whilst it’s downloading on a lot of Gamepass games now? That’s a decent work around.

[Loki]

1 hour ago, seph said:

we'll go back to cartridges with "full" games on them

I dearly love the Switch and its cartridges but imagine the cost of £150Gb carts!  The Switch supports iirc 32Gb max at the moment and most developers target the smaller ones to keep costs down.

I will say that imo the inflation of game sizes has got vastly out of hand.  It’s 95% art assets and there’s very little of the disk optimisation that used to go on.

 When I started out *lights pipe* we had to fit onto a CD which was something like 700 Mb, and the memory size of the PS1 was 512k.  So there was a lot of very clever techniques to maximise what you had - compression, tesselation, all sorts.  The more memory we’ve had the less anal we’ve become about optimisation.

 On the audio side the last AAA game I worked on we were using 1 Gb of memory for audio; in my current indie game I’m using about 120Mb because I’m a tightwad who still optimises everything like it’s 2006.

TL:DR kids these days etc

 

[TildeGuy~!]

It’s why I never download the Call Of Duty games anymore, the last one I bought had me deleting a couple of games and then there was a 100gb update within a few weeks! 

[SuperBacon]

'Member 8MB memory cards eh???? 

[TildeGuy~!]

Bring back the days LMA Manager took up all 15 blocks on your memory card.

[Tommy!]

26 minutes ago, Loki said:

will say that imo the inflation of game sizes has got vastly out of hand.  It’s 95% art assets and there’s very little of the disk optimisation that used to go on

Where do you stand on the occasionally heard view that lack of limitations hinders creativity by not presenting problems to try and solve? I tend to hear it talking about things like Silent Hill or Soul Reaver where limitations drove great creativity choices or ensured everything was relevant in driving the game forward.

[Loki]

7 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

Where do you stand on the occasionally heard view that lack of limitations hinders creativity by not presenting problems to try and solve? I tend to hear it talking about things like Silent Hill or Soul Reaver where limitations drove great creativity choices or ensured everything was relevant in driving the game forward.

There’s some merit to it.  Most of the iconic 80s videogame sounds were created using very simple synth chips where the goal was to fit the gameplay requirement rather than be realistic.  Think Mario’s jump.

 There’s also a big whoosh of nostalgia that’s dissipated by going back and playing early games.  I’m trying to play Link’s Awakening atm but the music 🤯  Similarly when I did the sound design for Silent Hill Shattered Memories I was asked to replicate the repetitive footsteps of the original - even though that was really a memory limitation more than a creative choice!

When I was teaching music and engineering a few years ago I’d set the students a task to write a piece of music entirely with samples and a maximum memory of 1.2 Mb (a floppy disk worth). That blew their minds.

The biggest issue nowadays is the SIZE of the games.  Hard to be creative for every foot of a game the size of an Assassin’s Creed.