Grand Theft Auto IV

[Bob_the_lost]

as for this name one screen out their on the market at present which is an HD tv whcih can display hier than 1080p which was the question again the limitation is the SCREEN not the machine.

sometime's i really wonder about tech heads...

1) The PS3 can't output true 1080P games (or not all of them, there's probably some it can hack) so your demand for higher resolutions is crap. It can't manage 1080P when there are TVs that can display them.

2) The Dell 3007 is a 30" LCD with a resolution so high it makes your ears bleed. There are others in the same size and resolution range. If you want the best quality graphics then you would not use a console and a TV. Because that would be utterly stupid.

3) TVs have no need to exceed the HD spec, specifications that computer displays left behind years ago. To demand the TV misses the point entirely.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

erm huh are you mental ....

upscaling isn't for hd output is it?

it's for non hd output which you want to convert to hd output such as your old dvd's or old games and the like the machines themselves natively support 1080p and can also upscale non HD media to this. the fact it can do this doesn't some how translate as not beign able to output propper HD, in actual fact as the HD res is usually limited by a) the media b) the screen and not the player which is ordinarly of a higher spec than the screen it play's back through...

I'ts not full HD. It's no different to running a CRT at lower than max resolution. It's a cop out.

You worry about tech heads? Fair enough but it'd be nice if you knew when to cut and run, cos you're trying to defend a position that is indefensible. I don't worry about you, i just despair.

 

[jæd]

To claim that the users of the PS3's GPU will become more efficent and computer GPUs less is balls.

I'm not... Just point out that staying at the bleeding edge of PC gaming means upgrading your computer two years. To do the same with a console means upgrading every eight years or so...

But then its horses for courses init.... My main opinion is that PC games are for spods with lots of cash and lots of time farting around getting the things set-up...

 

[Bob_the_lost]

I'm not... Just point out that staying at the bleeding edge of PC gaming means upgrading your computer two years. To do the same with a console means upgrading every eight years or so...

But then its horses for courses init.... My main opinion is that PC games are for spods with lots of cash and lots of time farting around getting the things set-up...

The bleeding edge of console gaming just doesn't bleed very fast

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

The bleeding edge of console gaming just doesn't bleed very fast

yet...

again i'm at a loos what you are sayign is in esssence it's shit because it's new and there's nothing out for them at present...

so tell me how this works then enw technology must only ever be released with the most up to date software and everyone must have a full programing knowledge of the technology before it can be released each piece of software must push the endurence envolope as far as the eye can see.... is that truely what you are saying becuase it's certianly the argument you are protraying...

 

[Bob_the_lost]

yet...

again i'm at a loos what you are sayign is in esssence it's shit because it's new and there's nothing out for them at present...

so tell me how this works then enw technology must only ever be released with the most up to date software and everyone must have a full programing knowledge of the technology before it can be released each piece of software must push the endurence envolope as far as the eye can see.... is that truely what you are saying becuase it's certianly the argument you are protraying...

If that's what you're reading you need to stop and re read it all. As it is it seems you're not reading what i'm writing.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

If that's what you're reading you need to stop and re read it all. As it is it seems you're not reading what i'm writing.

yes i am you are being eleitist and sneering about a piece of technology and seem intent on some sort fo illy waving from what was an innicous commet to allen about his pc beign shit it was a joke... that's all he understood it as such hence his mumble... mumble... "only more to go wrong"... mumble... mumble...

the picachu and yerself and a few other decide to have some soggy biscuit comeptition about pc vs console...

it's a thread about GTA IV k, not some long dull excercise in technoratti boredom...

and yes that is what you have written or to put it in other words my dads bigger than your dad.... k you get it now....

what you are suggesting is that some console bcuase it hasn't yety been applied or used in the manner you'd like to see that it's a fail....

it's a shit arguement really....

 

[obanite]

Meh. The Cell relies upon games programmers knowing what they're doing and a kick arse compiler. Last time i checked the second was absent and the former is laughable.

Don't really see what a kick arse compiler will really be able to do for you with Cell... the way to get performance out of the PS3 is to parallelise your code, then parallelise some more

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Don't really see what a kick arse compiler will really be able to do for you with Cell... the way to get performance out of the PS3 is to parallelise your code, then parallelise some more

The cell requires the programmer to move data into the SPE's version of RAM. If you get that wrong then nothing will work. If you don't do it well then the SPEs can't function. You could do this by hand, but i don't want to even think about how much time the programmers would spend doing that. A good complier would allow the writers to maintain a high level approach. A bad compiler or badly written program won't transfer the data across in time, leading to pipeline stalls which will hurt the SPEs even more than normal chips.

Garf, i don't give a shit if your feelings are hurt. You brought up tech specs, you opened the door and the conversation moved on. I've no reason to go after you but if you get things wrong then i may tell you so. Don't make it personal.

 

[obanite]

The cell requires the programmer to move data into the SPE's version of RAM. If you get that wrong then nothing will work. If you don't do it well then the SPEs can't function. You could do this by hand, but i don't want to even think about how much time the programmers would spend doing that. A good complier would allow the writers to maintain a high level approach. A bad compiler or badly written program won't transfer the data across in time, leading to pipeline stalls which will hurt the SPEs even more than normal chips.

Garf, i don't give a shit if your feelings are hurt. You brought up tech specs, you opened the door and the conversation moved on. I've no reason to go after you but if you get things wrong then i may tell you so. Don't make it personal.

That's no different to writing code for vector units on the PS2 though... the real challenge with making code work quickly on the PS3 is getting CPU intensive stuff threaded and onto the SPU's, it's not really a compiler issue. e.g. here we have skinning on an SPU.

 

[jæd]

I always love the way on these threads everyone's an expert on programming Cell CPU's... D:

 

[stdPikachu]

That's no different to writing code for vector units on the PS2 though... the real challenge with making code work quickly on the PS3 is getting CPU intensive stuff threaded and onto the SPU's, it's not really a compiler issue. e.g. here we have skinning on an SPU.

It might not be any harder than coding for the EE, but bit-twiddling of individual registers isn't fun in anyone's book; making all that shit happen in a multithreaded model is a fucking nightmare.

Neither is the issue just about getting a particular subroutine running on an SPE, cos I imagine that's impractial. The SPE's are SIMD units and would suck at heavy integer work. Any particular code path/thread is likely to have datasets that need to be worked on by both the PPC core and the SPE's, so you need to work out a way to copy the data into the SPE, wait for it to do its thing and then incorporate it back into the core, all the while having to think about locks, mutexes and making your code run efficiently on an in-order architecture.

And yes, everyone does love to make everyone think they're an expert on low-level assembly I'm not, but I'm hoping I know enough about the general topic to know when to say "this shit is hard"


Garf, I don't really give a crap about the PS3 or the games debate in general; I just like talking about techy shit. The PS3 just makes for the most interesting console to talk about cos it's the most "out there" in terms of its hardware (the 3-core CPU inside the Xbox 360 is interesting too, but it's nowhere near as radical as the Cell architecture). All I was doing originally was pointing out that a list of arbitary numbers does not a good console make, I didn't mean to turn this into another thread on the semantics of console design, but it has. I'm not even the sort of person who'd say "I'm not buying a console because the CPU is shit" (heck, I bought an N64 and that had design problems coming out of it's ears), I just find it interesting to talk about.

 

[taita]

.

 

[obanite]

Jaed, I'm not an expert, but I do work with people who are - one of our xbox/ps3 guys is sat 2 seats behind me and I do sometimes chat with him about what he's up to in the world of optimisation and threading.

stdPikachu, I wouldn't quite go so far as to say it's a fucking nightmare, at least not in games. Skinning is exclusively floating point - it's quarternion/ matrix number crunching. Once it's done, you're copying vertex data straight into the GPU. Likewise with particle systems...

You're correct in that things that need to interact with data from the main thread often are going to be a nightmare - AI for example would just suck because it needs to do a lot of interaction with game level code - but there's plenty of low level engine/graphics stuff that can be put on SPU's without a mega headache. It's not as easy as the 360, but it could be worse.

You're bang on about the PS3 being the most interesting to talk about too. One of our console guys said today that between the 360 and the PS3, he prefers working on the PS3, because despite the 360 being a bit simpler, the Cell is more challenging to him as a programmer.

 

[stdPikachu]

stdPikachu, I wouldn't quite go so far as to say it's a fucking nightmare, at least not in games. Skinning is exclusively floating point - it's quarternion/ matrix number crunching. Once it's done, you're copying vertex data straight into the GPU. Likewise with particle systems...

Thanks for that, like I said, IANACP and as such it can be difficult to guess at which bit of code is int or fp.

You're correct in that things that need to interact with data from the main thread often are going to be a nightmare - AI for example would just suck because it needs to do a lot of interaction with game level code - but there's plenty of low level engine/graphics stuff that can be put on SPU's without a mega headache. It's not as easy as the 360, but it could be worse.

Likewise, I figured there'd be some stuff that'd be well suited to executing on the SPU's but as you say it's by no means simple.

Does anyone have an idea of how much of the silicon/transistor budget is taken up by the branch predictors and OoOE engines? Cell is pretty large at 221mm2 for a 90nm chip with comparatively little cache (compare to a 90nm Athlon64 or a 65nm Core2 at ~150mm2) so it' easy to see why they were left out I suppose, but I believe the Xenon chip in the 360 is less than 100mm2, so a bit more difficult to see why it was left out (especially since traditionally the Xbox was incredibly similar to PC hardware and libs, and thus made porting games a relative doddle).

 

[Bob_the_lost]

The PPE is 11.1 % of the surface area and the cache makes up another 10.3% apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor_implementations

(Isn't 512Kb of L2 the norm for A64 chips anyway, they briefly went to 1Mb per core but the performance gains were trivial, it's a decent sized cache)

 

[Jambooboo]

Gta4...

... is delayed until well into next year btw (Easter?).

 

[Ned Pointsman]

We owe it to the game’s millions of fans, to our dedicated development team, and to our shareholders to make sure that Grand Theft Auto IV is a groundbreaking gaming experience that takes maximum advantage of next generation technology.”

I hate that sort of rhetoric, Valve, who couldn't deliver a fucking paper on time do the same thing to the defence of thousands of fanboys who all come out with the same thing, "you want it to be as good as they can make it don't you ?"

YOU FUCKING KNEW THIS WHEN YOU STARTED/ANNOUNCED A RELEASE DATE YOU TWATS, IF YOU SPENT LESS TIME MAKING THE SORT OF POINTLESSLY JUVENILE GAMES BEAVIS WOULD COME UP WITH AND DID SOME PROPER FUCKING WORK, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE YOU COULD RELEASE IT ON TIME.

 

[Bullys_special]

Agreed what a bunch of fuk wits. The rockstar north office is at the top of my road i have a good mind to knock on the door and tell em to get their fingers out of their brown boxes and get on with it!

 

[bluestreak]

well, i learnt so much about gtaiv from this thread.

 

[Barking_Mad]

the problem is that the XBox version is all but done, but the PS3 platform is proving hard to get the game finished on cos it's a pain to programme for and still quite new.

Also Take Two the publishers have a deal that both versions will appear at the same time and not one ahead of the other. So they have to finish the PS3 version.

 

[Augie March]

Bump for the third trailer here.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Look pretty nice although GTA SA bored me to tears...

 

[The Groke]

the problem is that the XBox version is all but done, but the PS3 platform is proving hard to get the game finished on cos it's a pain to programme for and still quite new.

Also Take Two the publishers have a deal that both versions will appear at the same time and not one ahead of the other. So they have to finish the PS3 version.

My understanding is that they were having issues with both versions:

PS3 for memory (RAM) reasons and the 360 for the limitations on the capacity of the DVD and streaming the data.

 

[wishface]

Agreed what a bunch of fuk wits. The rockstar north office is at the top of my road i have a good mind to knock on the door and tell em to get their fingers out of their brown boxes and get on with it!

theya re probably too busy knifing prostitutes and shooting coppers in the face.

 

[Barking_Mad]

29th April is the release date.

Recent previews: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=180050

and here: http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/827/827005.html

 

[wishface]

Can't they do something original with this format? Another game about stabbing people in the face and murdering prostitutes for the chavs and the idiots who let their underage spawn play them to wank over. More grist for the right wing media.

 

[The Groke]

Can't they do something original with this format? Another game about stabbing people in the face and murdering prostitutes for the chavs and the idiots who let their underage spawn play them to wank over.

More grist for the right wing media.

Oh the irony.....

 

[Kid_Eternity]

More grist for the right wing media.

I don't see why I should pursue my interests with the permission of the scum media...

 

[wishface]

When SA came out all I heard in game shops were kids clamouring their mcDonalds fed overlords to buy them this game while their parents didn't seem to care it was 18 rated. The shops were happy to sell it to the parents and wash their hands of it while the kids in the shops woudl gleefully recant 'this is the game where you can knife coppers'.

I like the GTA games for the most part because I like sandbox games. I liked Saints Row as well, I just don't like that.