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[mikeandbandit]

some examples would actually help your case. Please name a game specifically designed from the very beginning to play on the 360 and then tell me the features that were left out because of the lack of a HDD.

[Devedander]

QUOTE(mikeandbandit @ Oct 5 2005, 06:52 PM)

some examples would actually help your case. Please name a game specifically designed from the very beginning to play on the 360 and then tell me the features that were left out because of the lack of a HDD.

[mikeandbandit]

Your statement is false, that developers of saint row were planning to include airplanes in their game, however they claim they were unable to because the HDD was not standard, which means thyat saints row was not planned for the 360 as MS told devs from the beginning to not assume the HDD was standard so why would a dev go and build agame around that assumption unless
A) they did not want to listen and wasted man hours coding for it anyway
it was originally intended for the xbox but pushed to the 360 and they dont feel like reworking the code

[mikeandbandit]

double post

[twistedsymphony]

You can't compare the hard drive to things like a SegaCD, 32X, or the N64 Ram pack...

Those changed the processing capabilities of the systems dramatically...

if anything it would be more comparable to something like the the PS1's dual shock controller, or the XBL Headset

Both of those added extra function to games that are not capable without them... both of those devices were ADD-ON components not available at launch and were very well accepted by the gaming population.

Also the games that make use of those can also function perfectly well without the features they add... there are also a hand full of games that REQUIRE them to be present to play at all.

On the Same token add-ons like the SegaCD and 32X have no grey area with games... there are no games that can work on a Genesis and get extra features if you have a 32X. It's a completely different console.

Not to mention most of the items you mentioned failed because of poor marketing and managment... the PS2 hard drive was only supported by Sony for 8 months and never hit a single holiday season... even in that short time there were 10 games that supported it. Similarly the 32X was launched less than a year before the Sega Saturn launch. Of corse no one wanted it, they were waiting for the Saturn. If MS released an Xbox upgrade right now would you buy it? probably not, you'd hold out for the 360.

Another reason they failed was because they were released VERY late in the consoles life. History shows us that the earlier an add-on is introduced the higher % of the market will embrace it. The HDD is present from the begiing...

--------------------

Lets make a list of all the know features that come along with a hard drive....

Downloadable content.
-Like any company is going to fore-go money making DLC because a few people don't have a hard drive to put it on

Custom Sountracts from the hard drive.
-Required by MS anyway so it doesn't really matter now does it?

Caching, allowing for shorter or no loading times.
-Most devs have said that it's incredibly easy to implement, and if they're lazy enough not to then we have some loading time.. does it effect the mechanics of the game at all? no... so what difference does it make?

If you can think of others let me know, I'd be happy to add them to this list.

In the end have we really lost anything if we never had it in the first place... it doesn't even put us at a disadvantage to other consoles considering none of them have a hard drive either.

[mikeandbandit]

QUOTE(Devedander @ Oct 5 2005, 04:14 PM)

Ok you found one I was not aware of... and I am now sorry that Saints Row won't have airplanes when it could have.  As you can see this is a case of building for the lowest common denominator. 

[rasmithuk]

The Saint's row developers have come out with multiple excuses why they've had to drop features and none of them stand up to examination if you know about writing a 3d engine.

That said, sorry to pick holes (hey, debugging's a natural tendency for me) but mikeandbandit seems to have gotten a little confused. What he's talking about is the reduction of detail of a model depending on distance, usually referred to as a Level of Detail adjustment. Occlusion, or Occlusion culling is the removal of polygons usually due to them being covered by objects in front of them (E.g. no point drawing a guy hiding being a wall if you're on the other side of it), something that the 360 should be pretty good at since the Xenos is supposed to have a very fast z-buffer test due to it's unified architecture.

Most likely the problem on SR is a combination of both of these (trying to draw too much and at too higher detail). One of the benefits of the 360 was supposed to be that you could use a spare core to do things like geometry reduction (simplifying a model without losing too much detail), so instead of storing multiple models you could store one and create the other from it as they were needed. The 360's lockable modular cache was designed to make this streaming of geometry data possible without flooding the cache with junk.

MS have outlined some pretty cool ideas to do with models for the 360 (E.g. b-spline/NURBS patches stored on disc and converted to geometry data on the fly by a spare core at the correct LoD) and if these are used the there's going to be extra space on the DVDs for other stuff.

[m_hael]

I think some people need to read up on some terms... sorry mike but occlusion is not what you described and would NOT have helped Saints Row as you describe.

Occlusion can be described fairly easily... imagine you're standing at the corner of a large building... you look INTO the buildings corner thus the building "occludes" most of your field of view.

The occlusion systems used in renderers are employed to work out what geometry in the game can be sucessfully ignored due to the fact that something occludes them. It doesn't alter the amount of Geometry that needs to be loaded into memory thus it would not have helped Saints Row.

As has been said by me and many others.. it was NOT designed with xbox360 in mind.

[xxwillisxx]

QUOTE

twistedsymphony

QUOTE

Downloadable content.
-Like any company is going to fore-go money making DLC because a few people don't have a hard drive to put it on

you can put it on a memory card(xbox360 launch guide page 15)

[twistedsymphony]

QUOTE(xxwillisxx @ Oct 5 2005, 08:45 PM)

you can put it on a memory card(xbox360 launch guide page 15)

[Devedander]

QUOTE(mikeandbandit @ Oct 5 2005, 07:39 PM)

[m_hael]

QUOTE(Devedander @ Oct 7 2005, 05:25 PM)

Or C: They wanted to make the best possible game using all the technology available and they couldn't belive MS would really be dumb enough to leave out one of the key features in making the Xbox as successful as it was and were caught off guard.

[Foe-hammer]

Here's food for thought,

If roughly 30% of xbox 1 games used the hdd for performance increase, and the xbox 1 had an hdd standard, how small of a percentage of games will use the 360's hdd for a performance increase, when it's hdd is not standard?  

I wouldn't doubt if it's in the 5% or less catagory.

That's the pisser for me.  Hopefully the good devs take the extra time and money to take advantage of the 360's hdd.

[Carlo210]

Actually, M_Hael is trying to show you that games don't require a harddrive IF THEY AREN'T DESIGNED TO USE ONE.

Look, if you ALSO are saying that the 30% of games which used the hdd are the ones which are good games on Xbox1, then what is making you doubt that good games on Xbox 360 will use the hdd too? 70-80% of Xbox 360 owners will have a hdd, so all developers have to do is make the game non-hdd aware. Everything else stays the same.
The people who don't have a hdd are the casual/mainstream fews who either don't need it due to short gaming time or havent got to buying it yet. They dont care for the extra performance and are fine without a harddrive.

I don't want to keep speaking alongside others about this case and similar cases. Read between the lines or just wait until Xbox 360 is released before you work yourself up over something you can't settle.

[BIGMANSLIM]

too lazy to read all of this, but i think the answer is pretty simple. They will probably put if then commands. if u have an hd, it caches and u get the good gaming experience that you deserve. if u dont have one u get the shity experience that comes with being a cheapass. hes talking about trying to make them good for people who dont have an hd too. but if they were stumped on the if then thing, then they dont deserve to develope.