Topic: DVD size limiting Project Gotham Racing 4 (Read 361 times)

jdsony · « **Reply #30 on:** July 31, 2007, 12:03:00 AM »

QUOTE(FCTE @ Jul 31 2007, 01:58 AM)

I guess I should start building a new gaming PC.

Last time I checked PC games were still virtually ALL on DVD. Sure they can compress them so they install larger on the HD but in general they don't really become all that much bigger after install.

I don't see it as a problem. Yes it does make more work for DEVS and more space is better but honestly night time and daytime textures? The lighting system is obviously not based on reality. They should really work on making the game fun instead of a chore. And what's with driving in a blizzard? It's a cool idea but not for that kind of game.

notcrack · « **Reply #31 on:** July 31, 2007, 12:25:00 AM »

Don't want to get into any of these arguments but is anyone else slightly worried by this announcement.

I remember working in gamestation (uk game shop) when the dreamcast was singing it's swan song
I love the xbox franchise, i even won a prize once for selling over 1000 in a year (strangely enough it was a limited edition halo smoke edition xbox and £500 worth of games), but using a previous technology for a nextgen console is slightly foolish, does anyone remember playing shenmue on the dreamcast 3-4 disc it was just too much. i can only hope that they put a hd-dvd inside the machine and start selling them.
who on this forum could honestly say that they wouldn't have purchased a xbox360 for £500 i very much doubt many of you

fingers crossed there is some hope over the horizon

well thats my 2 cents on the subject

PS3 does suck arse though it's just a shame that MGS4 looks so fucking ball achingly good

luther349 · « **Reply #32 on:** July 31, 2007, 01:54:00 AM »

acully that brings another point. use more then 1 disk if its that huge of a issue. blue dragion uses 2. and back in ps1 days it wasent out of the ordnary for a game to be 4 cds long and none cryed in fact they prometed that fact to sell games and it worked. rember those ads 70 hrs of gameplay on 4 cds!!!. and if i rember cd/dvd prices to make are alot lower today then they where then.

and knoe it seems as we move along in gaming we seem to lose those insanly long games mutch shorter ones with good gfx. back in ps1 days you got both good gfx for that gen of gaming and a long assed game normaly multidisked.

Mephilust · « **Reply #33 on:** July 31, 2007, 02:19:00 AM »

So does this mean that the 360 is already falling behind?
Can they not update with patches and what not?

Oh, and what's wrong with multi disk games?
I'd have no problem wit that. :/

bucko · « **Reply #34 on:** July 31, 2007, 02:56:00 AM »

Why don't they use compression?

cerealkillajme · « **Reply #35 on:** July 31, 2007, 06:14:00 AM »

QUOTE(Cyberdude93 @ Jul 30 2007, 08:46 PM)

Seconded.

There's some funky technique called procedural generation to generate content on the fly. There are many good examples of this in use, like a 96kB first person shooter, but a bit more on-topic is the Live Arcade game RoboBlitz:
480MB to 3MB. I think it's safe to say that'd make any 360 game have no problems fitting in 8.3GB.

Now I'm no expert, but from what I make it, using this technique would mean less work in the long run too. Write the algorithims to make textures ONCE, then you don't need to hire as many artists for every future game you make. It's a win win if you ever plan to make any game remotely similar.
And on a completely different note, I've heard that some Atari/Amiga games on multiple disks could run either asking you to swap, or play more seamlessly if you had multiple floppy drives. Bearing in mind that was in the day when floppy drives were really expensive. Regular DVD drives are dirt cheap, Microsoft could sell one at a profit and allow games to either disc-swap (for the cheap, or those who think two DVD drives is ugly) or use both at once when appropriate. And really, if 16.6GB isn't enough then unless you're making a huge RPG, you're just doing it wrong.

Yeah, as I was reading the article that was the first thing that popped into my head (procedural generation). A guy I work with had told me about the the tech a few months ago and when he told me the first thing I thought at the time was, "well, guess Bluray won't be needed for PS3 games". I'm surprised the industry isn't already using the new tech as it looks better and saves loads of space that can be used for better things than textures. I wonder if the PGR4 devs even know about it or have used/tried it out.

Here is a pretty good Procedural Texturing Site with lots of pics and demos that show how useful the tech is.

Jagosix · « **Reply #36 on:** July 31, 2007, 07:34:00 AM »

QUOTE(BillMan @ Jul 31 2007, 04:54 AM)

**********************************************************************
We've been through this, DVD9 is plenty of space. The problem comes in when developers don't want to spend the extra time/money to fully optimize their code and media support files. I guarantee they could fit it all if they took the time to optimize, they just don't want to do that when they get next to nothing for that extra time in return...

Don't blame the fact that you can't fit your game on the DVD9 format on the size, blame the CODE, and ultimately the CODER.

EDIT: How much do you want to bet the disc is packed with bloated pre-rendedered cinematics at maximum resolution and bitrate? LOL.
**********************************************************************
Sorry, new to this and responding to this POST

Then your talking about compressing which is a very bad idea. The more things are compressed, the more jittery they become and more CPU resource is needed. Everything runs better at an uncompressed rate. You need to remember that, and this is stricltly why devolpers don't like to do so. And if DVD9 had enough space for HD movies, we would still be using the DVD format. but we switched to HDDVD. You also need to remember most games use upscaling on the Xbox360, which with PS3 we dont need to worry about.

So remember their are reasons you dont get when you talk about compressing. Very bad idea.

Also for the compressed materials, you have to remmeber it will make your 360 work harder, which means more RROD's hahaha! So I'm sure they are trying to stay away from that. And the thing is, we dont know if it was lazzyness for the code or not. Microsoft said they were working on making it fit onto a single DVD, So i'm sure they were recording it the best they could. You all have to learn to read the full article. If they could have the game the way they wanted it to be, they would of compressed it more. (if they could) But I dont watn games compressed due to the RROD.

Running games off an HD is very very bad idea for the 360 at this point. We need to focus on having the damn console work first.

Hello Fellow Gamers. Well some companies are implementing some type of Procedural Programming in some of their games. M$ should've made it a standard from the begging. Gears of war only takes up 6.43GB (add in all the current maps & up have 7.2GB). Forza 2 takes up 6.53GB. All of this still boils down to the programmers & their ability to utilize such features. This topic has appeared before the X360 even launched. Now it rears its' head again.
IF (& that's a big IF) The programmers (Developers) really utilize this technique of procedural programming, the amount of information (data) stored on a game would easily rival that of current HD-DVD & BLuRay. Also there are different types of compression techniques that are used when making a game on all levels

You have Lossy & Lossless. Lossless is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data (like a zip or rar file).
Lossy compression method is one where compressing data and then decompressing it retrieves data that may well be different from the original, but is close enough to be useful in some way (for ex. MP3, Mp4, Jpeg, etc). Again, just about every video game contains some form of compression. Even the ones on Sony's blu-ray. DVD9 is enough space for HD Movies. VC1 movies (movie only) will fit on a DVD9, But all the extras won't.

More space doesn't make better games. Better developers (programmers) Do. Utilizing the BEST available techniques & taking advantage of current technology will result in better games that'll use as little space as possible. Nintendo has a proven track record for utilizing space. Everyone else should learn from that.

Reaper527 · « **Reply #37 on:** July 31, 2007, 08:59:00 AM »

QUOTE(BillMan @ Jul 31 2007, 12:54 AM)

Sorry, new to this and responding to this POST

Then your talking about compressing which is a very bad idea. The more things are compressed, the more jittery they become and more CPU resource is needed. Everything runs better at an uncompressed rate. You need to remember that, and this is stricltly why devolpers don't like to do so. And if DVD9 had enough space for HD movies, we would still be using the DVD format. but we switched to HDDVD. You also need to remember most games use upscaling on the Xbox360, which with PS3 we dont need to worry about.

So remember their are reasons you dont get when you talk about compressing. Very bad idea.

actually, thats not true at all. there are lossless compression formats. compression does not equate to jaggies. you are assuming all compression is like taking a raw image and saving it as a jpeg, and that is not the case.

also, compression can actually IMPROVE game performance. the processor can process data alot faster then the dvd drive can provide the data. this means the dvd drive can transfer a small compressed file and let the processor decompress it quicker then it can transfer a large uncompressed file. this gets worse with blueray and its slower transfer speeds.

also, your HD movie comparison isn't good as that is pre-rendered video and it takes up alot more space. in a game, you can have a set of textures and your game will generate the image frame by frame at a fraction of the storage foot print.

also, don't forget that DVD as well as HD-DVD and BlueRay both employ their own forms of compression. as far as i know, the compression algorithms used in the next gen dvd formats aren't a part of the dvd movie standards, so a stand alone player would be unable to decompress it if they tried to squeeze more data on to the disc that way.

i'm not even going to comment on your RRoD or stay away from the HD comments

tgm4883 · « **Reply #38 on:** July 31, 2007, 09:04:00 AM »

QUOTE(BillMan @ Jul 30 2007, 10:54 PM)

Then your talking about compressing which is a very bad idea. The more things are compressed, the more jittery they become and more CPU resource is needed. Everything runs better at an uncompressed rate. You need to remember that, and this is stricltly why devolpers don't like to do so. And if DVD9 had enough space for HD movies, we would still be using the DVD format. but we switched to HDDVD. You also need to remember most games use upscaling on the Xbox360, which with PS3 we dont need to worry about.

Wrong, there is enough space on DVD for high definition. But the movie industry would much rather you re buy your movies on HD-DVD or Bluray. Joe Consumer doesn't know any better so he buys it thinking its better. Tell me, why do they release movies that weren't even shot with a High Def camera on HD-DVD and Bluray?

throwingks · « **Reply #39 on:** July 31, 2007, 09:20:00 AM »

I have owned a HD copy of T2 for I don't even know how many years.
http://www.microsoft...ideo/t2dvd.aspx

Compression is not bad. Every DVD is compressed, even superbit DVDs have compression.
http://www.sonypictu...s_superbit.html
I haven't heard any complaints about it.

DVD9 is big enough, for both HD movies and HD games.

Knasen · « **Reply #40 on:** July 31, 2007, 09:51:00 AM »

I don't mind having the games come on several DVD's (like blue dragon that some people already mentioned). If people are so lazy that they cannot go and change a DVD once in a while they should consider selling their console and start exercising instead!

Also I do agree that its mostly up to lazy programmers. I would say that most games will fit on a single dvd9 if done correctly. If a game like Oblivion with a huge world and countless dungeons can fit on a DVD, then surely a "simple" racing game with 10-15 tracks would fit also. Look at Dirt, it's a racing game too with alot of tracks and different racing modess (cars), it still fits one DVD. The developers for PGR4 must be crap.

MOE2FREAKY · « **Reply #41 on:** July 31, 2007, 10:20:00 AM »

QUOTE(ethanknepp @ Jul 31 2007, 11:27 AM)

with xbox 360 limited to 8.5GBs for a game unless Microsoft does something, say hello to more Sony Exclusives with pretty unlimited space for developers from blue rays 25GBs but this wont set in for another few years ...

Sorry guys just want to clear this up everybody seems to think the Xbox 360 has 8.5gb capacity available when true the DVD can hold that amount but the 360 only utilizes 7 - 7.5 Max. Even more headaches for the developers. It was posted in the forums before somewhere but I dont have the link.

esc1 · « **Reply #42 on:** July 31, 2007, 10:49:00 AM »

This game lost appeal to me when they added crotch rockets. To hear them bicker means nothing to me. I agree they can easily fit what they want to do on a DVD if they were efficient.

Mr Invader · « **Reply #43 on:** July 31, 2007, 01:19:00 PM »

QUOTE(ethanknepp @ Jul 30 2007, 07:54 PM)

the 360 is already starting to cripple .... if PGR4 is having trouble fitting on DL discs then how the hell does Halo3 fit on DL discs ?

Because PGR4 is further away from us than Halo 3, Bungie seemed to have optimized the code and compressed the information pretty well. PGR4 is still in heavy production for the most part.

I'll wager that this isn't the last that we hear from PGR4's capacity problems, either they'll compress it more or find a different way around it. Bizarre is a very talented gaming studio.

perfectdark · « **Reply #44 on:** July 31, 2007, 06:07:00 PM »

and if they did add the HD DVD drive, then the price would have been $649 CAD like the PS3 and all you guys would have been complaining its too much money
DVD9 is fine, multiple discs is fine, get over it

Author Topic: DVD size limiting Project Gotham Racing 4 (Read 361 times)