ps3 easier to program for

[steviep]

No guarantees, NulloModo, that Sony will retain its crown if they don't price the PS3 competitively enough and there aren't enough games, but they still have the best marketing department. They are certainly poised to, however, if this generation was any indication. But don't count your chickens too prematurely That said, if they have a lot of top tier exclusives, like the PS2, I will be in line to get one as well. Even if it costs 20 mill to START development on a PS3 title, as has been stated, developers will still flock to it if it has the largest installed userbase. It's all about the bottom line, and nothing will change that... not even a system that's extremely hard to code for.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

Quoted and misquoted. Your sources are usually correct; it's your interpretation of those sources that is at fault.

Without tool support, Cell will be a difficult processor to code for. This goes without saying. However, your stepping from that into nonsensical statements like "its a pita" or "SPEs can't run physics" is where you stumble.

This day and age, without tools...ANY processor would be difficult to program for

 

[NulloModo]

No guarantees, NulloModo, that Sony will retain its crown if they don't price the PS3 competitively enough and there aren't enough games, but they still have the best marketing department. They are certainly poised to, however, if this generation was any indication. But don't count your chickens too prematurely That said, if they have a lot of top tier exclusives, like the PS2, I will be in line to get one as well. Even if it costs 20 mill to START development on a PS3 title, as has been stated, developers will still flock to it if it has the largest installed userbase. It's all about the bottom line, and nothing will change that... not even a system that's extremely hard to code for.

The price won't be the issue. You have to take into account that Sony has said the PS3 will be fully backwards comaptible with the PS1 and PS2, that brings a big use base from those of us like me who have halfway functionaly PS2s as well.

 

[ne0-reloaded]

wow, i didnt think me posting this would get such a big reaction. i thought itd be one or 2 posts of people saying "I just hope it dont cose 600."

honestly though, I didn't know we had so many professional game designers on this forum. it seems like everyone has an expert knowledge of smp programming, game design, physics, and cpu architecture (which isn't even available to most devs yet, much less the general public). it seems to me that 99% of the people here know a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing.

anyways i just hope the 2 i sell on ebay can make like $6000 so i can pay off my credit cards and get a plasma.

on a side note, to all the people posting technical reasons as to why the ps3 is hard to code for and why the spe's and blah blah blah suck, id like to know your educational background and work experience. im not trying to say anyones lying, but i find it hard to believe that so many people who haven't even seen a ps3 controller in person knows so much about it, and can go as far as to imply that the devs who are in the industry are lying for sony

 

[amdgamer]

Hmmm, when high profile developers are quoted talking about the complexity of the PS3 and the difficulty of coding for it, I guess that doesn't mean anything, does it?

wow, i didnt think me posting this would get such a big reaction. i thought itd be one or 2 posts of people saying "I just hope it dont cose 600."

honestly though, I didn't know we had so many professional game designers on this forum. it seems like everyone has an expert knowledge of smp programming, game design, physics, and cpu architecture (which isn't even available to most devs yet, much less the general public). it seems to me that 99% of the people here know a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing.

anyways i just hope the 2 i sell on ebay can make like $6000 so i can pay off my credit cards and get a plasma.

on a side note, to all the people posting technical reasons as to why the ps3 is hard to code for and why the spe's and blah blah blah suck, id like to know your educational background and work experience. im not trying to say anyones lying, but i find it hard to believe that so many people who haven't even seen a ps3 controller in person knows so much about it, and can go as far as to imply that the devs who are in the industry are lying for sony

 

[lesman]

I do recall someone earlier in this thread talking about how they programmed advanced physics in college. They seemes like they knew what they were talking about, and I think they did. But, yeah, for the most part, everyone here is only stating what they hear and think to be true because it is what is said by the people who really do it. Until we are one of those people, I don't think we should state if it's easy or not.

Hmmm...let me reiterate the last part of my above post: "everyone here is only stating what they hear and think to be true because it is what is said by the people who really do it. Until we are one of those people, I don't think we should state if it's easy or not.".... forgive me for gloating, but DAMN that is sig material!

 

[ne0-reloaded]

Hmmm, when high profile developers are quoted talking about the complexity of the PS3 and the difficulty of coding for it, I guess that doesn't mean anything, does it?

as far as i know, there are no high profile developers on this forum so whats your point? and as someone previously mentioned the 2 big name devs who have said it was hard to program for never came in physical contact with the sdk.

again, for those people who claim to know so much about the architecture and are members of [H], post your credentials. until im proven wrong im pretty much gonna keep my previous assumptions

 

[masher]

Hmmm, when high profile developers are quoted talking about the complexity of the PS3 and the difficulty of coding for it, I guess that doesn't mean anything, does it?

Not really, not when those developers have no experience with massively parallel systems, nor with Cell itself. Myself, I have no game coding experience. However, I do have many years experience on massively parallel systems. Such systems are indeed "pitas" to use without decent tools and compilers. But with tool support, they are remarkably easy to use. Let me demonstrate with an example, that shows concerns about deep multithreading, branch-heavy code, and code portability aren't necesarily well founded.

Programmer writes a simple single-threaded loop to update the elements of array "a":

for (i=0 ; i<256 ; i++ ) a(i) = a(i) * foo(i);

That code is relatively branch heavy, due to the short loop. So the first thing the compiler does is a partial loop unroll, converting the code to:

for (i=0 ; i<64 ; i+=4 ) {

a(i) = a(i) * foo(i);
a(i+1) = a(i+1) * foo(i+1);
a(i+2) = a(i+2) * foo(i+2);
a(i+3) = a(i+3) * foo(i+3); )​

​

With 1/4 the iterations in the loop, the code now has 1/4 the loop branch instructions. Then, the calls to foo() are converted to spawns on other processors, allowing the code to run not on just one cpu, but five simultaneously:

for (i=0 ; i<64 ; i+=4 ) {

spawn( *foo, i, PROC_2 );
spawn( *foo, i+1, PROC_3 );
spawn( *foo, i+2, PROC_4 );
spawn( *foo, i+3, PROC_5 );
a(i) = a(i) * gather(PROC_2);
a(i+1) = a(i+1) * gather(PROC_3);
a(i+2) = a(i+2) * gather(PROC_4);
a(i+3) = a(i+3) * gather(PROC_5);​

​

Now, what are we left with? A branch-heavy, single-threaded line of code-- code that would run on most any cpu in existence unchanged-- has been converted to a branch-light, multithreaded code, optimized for a SIMD-based massively parallel system. With ZERO work on the part of the programmer.

Do such tools exist for Cell? I have no direct experience, but IBM says they exist. And given such tools were written many years ago, for systems not nearly as high profile as Cell, I have no reason to doubt them.

 

[DukenukemX]

It looks like the compiler turned a clean for loop into something that's going to be hard to keep track with hundreds of lines of code.

Though hopefully the compiler works and nothing goes wrong. Hopefully the coder will never ever have to see anything beyond your first example.

 

[masher]

The steps shown are just illustratory psuedo-code; these optimizations are done during compilation. The original code is, of course, left untouched.

 

[Tutelary]

Guerilla Games is owned by Sony. I would take everything they have to say about the PS3 with a grain of salt, or am I the only one who remembers the so called Killzone PS3 'gameplay' footage?

 

[Firewall]

 

[Lamont]

I feel that the Killzone footage is real. Take a look at the MGS stuff, and they aren't even done yet.

 

[RancidWAnnaRIot]

Not really, not when those developers have no experience with massively parallel systems, nor with Cell itself. Myself, I have no game coding experience. However, I do have many years experience on massively parallel systems. Such systems are indeed "pitas" to use without decent tools and compilers. But with tool support, they are remarkably easy to use. Let me demonstrate with an example, that shows concerns about deep multithreading, branch-heavy code, and code portability aren't necesarily well founded.

Programmer writes a simple single-threaded loop to update the elements of array "a":

for (i=0 ; i<256 ; i++ ) a(i) = a(i) * foo(i);

That code is relatively branch heavy, due to the short loop. So the first thing the compiler does is a partial loop unroll, converting the code to:

for (i=0 ; i<64 ; i+=4 ) {

a(i) = a(i) * foo(i);
a(i+1) = a(i+1) * foo(i+1);
a(i+2) = a(i+2) * foo(i+2);
a(i+3) = a(i+3) * foo(i+3); )​

​

With 1/4 the iterations in the loop, the code now has 1/4 the loop branch instructions. Then, the calls to foo() are converted to spawns on other processors, allowing the code to run not on just one cpu, but five simultaneously:

for (i=0 ; i<64 ; i+=4 ) {

spawn( *foo, i, PROC_2 );
spawn( *foo, i+1, PROC_3 );
spawn( *foo, i+2, PROC_4 );
spawn( *foo, i+3, PROC_5 );
a(i) = a(i) * gather(PROC_2);
a(i+1) = a(i+1) * gather(PROC_3);
a(i+2) = a(i+2) * gather(PROC_4);
a(i+3) = a(i+3) * gather(PROC_5);​

​

Now, what are we left with? A branch-heavy, single-threaded line of code-- code that would run on most any cpu in existence unchanged-- has been converted to a branch-light, multithreaded code, optimized for a SIMD-based massively parallel system. With ZERO work on the part of the programmer.

Do such tools exist for Cell? I have no direct experience, but IBM says they exist. And given such tools were written many years ago, for systems not nearly as high profile as Cell, I have no reason to doubt them.

so besically your sacrificing more memory space for speed

 

[|MaguS|]

I feel that the Killzone footage is real. Take a look at the MGS stuff, and they aren't even done yet.

Kojima has stated himself that the final game will actually look better then the Demo that was displayed at TGS.

 

[masher]

so besically your sacrificing more memory space for speed

Loop unrolling is a tradeoff, yes, as are nearly all compiler optimizations. Function offloading is not. However, remember the 90/10 rule of thumb, that 10% of the code tends to consume 90% of the running time. Optimizing the most heavily used segments doesn't usually add greatly to memory requirements.

 

[Tutelary]

I feel that the Killzone footage is real. Take a look at the MGS stuff, and they aren't even done yet.

yeah, it was pre-scripted at 5fps on actual hardware then edited into a reel that could be publically shown at a realistic speed. MGS might indeed be real, but that doesnt discount the fact that killzone at the time it was shown, was not.

 

[Lamont]

Yeah, very true. But when it's finally shown, it will be sweet. I belive there are a few factors that can determine the "ease" of which something can be programmed, a couple are:

The skills of the programmer, and the support from the company along with quick SDK updates and documentation. No matter how good you are, and no matter how good the hardware claims to be, the support from the company who makes the hardware is key.

 

[ne0-reloaded]

yeah, it was pre-scripted at 5fps on actual hardware then edited into a reel that could be publically shown at a realistic speed. MGS might indeed be real, but that doesnt discount the fact that killzone at the time it was shown, was not.

its true like you said that at the time it wasn't real, but that doesn't discount the fact that it's very doable. mgs 4 looks way better than killzone, so i can see people keep bringing up the fact that what was shown was a fake when theres already a game that surpassed it.

 

[steviep]

I think you're proving to be a little bit dense here. Tutelary said that Killzone was doable... at 5FPS on the hardware. So then you go on to claim it's doable and list MGS4 as the proof. Newsflash: MGS4 can run on either system (or even the PC) according to Kojima. And while I do not doubt the skill of Kojima productions, you have to remember that you still have to run physics/AI etc and many other things aside from just scripted visual sequences.

 

[Lamont]

Granted that physics and AI take up a processing. That's just background noise because of the times/quantity at which they come into play. Compared to geometry rendering (with soft-skinned meshes), texture/shader handeling, animation, sound and lighting models to contend with... AI and physics are not true killers in performace.

When there is a problem near the end of a game cycle, who get's bugged about performance most? Art.

 

[NulloModo]

I think you're proving to be a little bit dense here. Tutelary said that Killzone was doable... at 5FPS on the hardware. So then you go on to claim it's doable and list MGS4 as the proof. Newsflash: MGS4 can run on either system (or even the PC) according to Kojima. And while I do not doubt the skill of Kojima productions, you have to remember that you still have to run physics/AI etc and many other things aside from just scripted visual sequences.

The graphical elements are almost 100% dependent on the GPU, not the CPU. Given that the PS3 will run a max res of 1080p and that the GPU is effectively an enhanced 7800GTX, that should not be a problem. That card can run higher resolutions on a PC easily even with all of the overhead. In an optimized console environment it should not be difficult for it to handle even enhanced HDTV resolutions.

 

[steviep]

You're correct, however I doubt we'll be seeing CGI-quality stuff at least until we've given a few years for developers to earn the tricks of the trade on the PPE+SPE combo.

 

[NulloModo]

You're correct, however I doubt we'll be seeing CGI-quality stuff at least until we've given a few years for developers to earn the tricks of the trade on the PPE+SPE combo.

What would be interesting to see would be someone hooking up a modern graphics card (X1900XTX, 7800GTX) to an older CPU, PIII 700Mhz or something, and see what the effect of limited CPU capability has on overall gaming performance. True, it is a different environment, and I can't think of any PIII of S478 boards that support PCI-E, but it could be telling to see how a system without a fully utilized CPU might perform in the early days until developers learn how to take full advantage.

Are there socket A PCI-E boards? Or maybe a pairing of one of those cards with a low end sempron or something would be close enough...

 

[lesman]

That Killzone demo is absoluetly NOT what we're going to see on the final hardware, plain and simple. You can quote me on that, and get back to me when the game's out. It is then when if I'm wrong I will formally apologize, and vice versa.

 

[Lamont]

That Killzone demo is absoluetly NOT what we're going to see on the final hardware, plain and simple. You can quote me on that, and get back to me when the game's out. It is then when if I'm wrong I will formally apologize, and vice versa.

I call you out on that. Look at any launch game and compare it to the games at the end of the hardware's life-cycle.

 

[steviep]

And Carmack adds his voice to the mix here:

"The difference between theoretical performance and real-world performance on the CPU level is growing fast. On, say, a regular Xbox, you can get very large fractions of theoretical performance with not a whole lot of effort. The PlayStation 2 was always a mess with the multiple processors on there, but the new generations, with Cell or the Xbox 360, make it much, much worse. They can quote these incredibly high numbers of giga-flops or tera-flops or whatever, but in reality, when you do a straightforward development process on them, they’re significantly slower than a modern high-end PC."

"...The graphics systems are much better than that, though. Graphics have an inherent natural parallelism. The capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PS3 are really good on the graphics side — although, not head or shoulders above any PC stuff that you can buy at a higher price-point."

He also finds X360 developing easier... that's a big surprise /sarcasm
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2164&Itemid=2

 

[Gnu314]

He dosn't say anywhere in that article that the 360 is easier to develop for. He does say that the PS3 is less mature, and that the 360 will probably be iDs primary "development" platform which is in the context of the new rendering software and game that "isn't announced yet." You need to stop reading information into articles that isn't there.

 

[steviep]

probably all of our gameplay development and testing will be done on the Xbox 360. It’s a really sweet development system

That's good news for those that actually like console shooters, that's for sure.

 

[Lamont]

And Carmack adds his voice to the mix here:


He also finds X360 developing easier... that's a big surprise /sarcasm
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2164&Itemid=2

That's his opinion, but it would be hard for some Jr. College programmer regardless of the platform. The difficulty of something/anything is always relative to the person who's using it.

And we all know MS and Sony toss numbers that phanboys/gals eat up. It's part of the marketing machine. When someone who knows what's going on behind the scenes can see through the smoke and mirrors.

**EDIT**

If I were running the show, I'd handle many things the way Nintendo does: Lead by example. Don't toss numbers, and if you do, base them on real-world. Nintendo always downplayed the power of the systems... and to everyones surprise, it's actually pretty damn strong.

 

[masher]

And Carmack adds his voice to the mix here:

Still waiting for you to explain where he called Cell "a pita"...

 

[steviep]

*sigh* Would you like me to get an interview with the guy? He does have a dev kit, even if it's not final. Microsoft has given him dev tools to make the PPE "pita" inside the X360 much nicer to use. Has Sony? You can easily infer that they have not.

 

[Gnu314]

Even if thats true, the ONLY thing you can infer from it is that Microsoft's development tools are more advanced than Sony's are... which you might expect from a console that has been released for 3 months and been in "final production stage" for 6 or more months versus a system that is still 11 months from release. You seem to forget about the huge difference in the stage of the development cycles of the 360 and the PS3.

This time last year we were looking at one or two screenshots from the 360 hype machine (the exhaust system of a ferrari at that), assuming that the Nov '06 release date is correct (which for the sake of argument we can presume that it is) we're lucky to have the ammount of info that we do have about the PS3.

 

[ZX6Master]

Even if thats true, the ONLY thing you can infer from it is that Microsoft's development tools are more advanced than Sony's are... which you might expect from a console that has been released for 3 months and been in "final production stage" for 6 or more months versus a system that is still 11 months from release. You seem to forget about the huge difference in the stage of the development cycles of the 360 and the PS3.

You might have a point if Microsoft's development environment for the original Xbox hadn't been better than that of the PS2, but it was. It's something Sony fans are going to have to face; Microsoft is a software company and they're better at providing the right tools to utilize their hardware efficiently.

This time last year we were looking at one or two screenshots from the 360 hype machine (the exhaust system of a ferrari at that)

And unlike Sony, Microsoft actually delivered a system capable of pushing the visuals they advertised right out of the box. Everything that has been shown for PGR3 has been done by the in-game engine and can be seen by any person at home during a real game.

 

[NulloModo]

And unlike Sony, Microsoft actually delivered a system capable of pushing the visuals they advertised right out of the box. Everything that has been shown for PGR3 has been done by the in-game engine and can be seen by any person at home during a real game.

Just means Sony is better at marketing. I will admit Sony can be shady when it comes to advertising here and there, but hell, they are a corporation insterested in getting your $$$, if you expect any major corporation to be straight up with you then you deserve the money you lose. Doesn't really make me think less of them, you have to take all marketing claims with a grain of salt.

 

[Gnu314]

You might have a point if Microsoft's development environment for the original Xbox hadn't been better than that of the PS2, but it was. It's something Sony fans are going to have to face; Microsoft is a software company and they're better at providing the righttools to utilize their hardware efficiently.

What? I don't see how that has anything to do with the current state of development tools based upon the stage of product development

And unlike Sony, Microsoft actually delivered a system capable of pushing the visuals they advertised right out of the box. Everything that has been shown for PGR3 has been done by the in-game engine and can be seen by any person at home during a real game.

This is pure speculation. No one knows what the PS3 or even the revolution will be capable of at release. I can almost guarantee to you though that the screenshot that we were drooling over this time last year was rendered and not from any kind of live playing... which is what I think you're attempting to get at here.

 

[ZX6Master]

What? I don't see how that has anything to do with the current state of development tools based upon the stage of product development

...the PS2 was out in March of 2000, so it's safe to infer that Sony had their development kits out to developers in mid-1999. Despite that gap, the Xbox and Gamecube were supposedly easier to create games for.

Now, Sony is releasing a system based around a CPU that is more complicated than anything that the industry has ever seen. Based on the former generation, it's safe to assume that they don't provide good tools for development.

This is pure speculation. No one knows what the PS3 or even the revolution will be capable of at release.

We know what we said it was capable of, and we know they outright lied at last year's E3 presentation about whether some presentations were real-time or not.

I can almost guarantee to you though that the screenshot that we were drooling over this time last year was rendered and not from any kind of live playing... which is what I think you're attempting to get at here.

Have you ever played PGR3? At any time, you can pause the game and move freely through the game in real-time to analyze the rendering engine. Nothing is changed.

 

[Lamont]

Let's say that the PS3 is hard to program for. Who here really cares (if you are not a developer) what is done to get that game on the shelf? Is this ammo for the PS3 phanboys?

I deal with this stuff day in day out, and I really don't care if ::Insert console name here:: is hard to program for, I just want the damn game done, whatever it takes to get it done and move on to the next.

Would you think of the system any different? We should only care about the end result: games that are fun, and worth our time.

 

[Gnu314]

...the PS2 was out in March of 2000, so it's safe to infer that Sony had their development kits out to developers in mid-1999. Despite that gap, the Xbox and Gamecube were supposedly easier to create games for.

Now, Sony is releasing a system based around a CPU that is more complicated than anything that the industry has ever seen. Based on the former generation, it's safe to assume that they don't provide good tools for development.

The PS2 was released in Japan yes, but not in the US until November. Besides that, I don't see how that has ANYTHING to do with what we were talking about before. steviep's point was that

Microsoft has given him dev tools to make the PPE "pita" inside the X360 much nicer to use. Has Sony? You can easily infer that they have not.

to which my response was that theres a natural development of the development TOOLS (not the underlying structrual problems that a particular platform may possess, ala ps2) and that the PS3 is still in a relatively primordial state in comparison. Your argument is tangential and confused.

We know what we said it was capable of, and we know they outright lied at last year's E3 presentation about whether some presentations were real-time or not.

I agree with this statement and I think it is ludacris that they use this marketing scheme, however the MGS3 video WAS done in real time... whether it was on PS3 hardware I don't know... and infact I suspect that it was put together on a "representative" dev kit.

Have you ever played PGR3? At any time, you can pause the game and move freely through the game in real-time to analyze the rendering engine. Nothing is changed.

I haven't played PGR3 but the simple fact that you can move through the environment does not change the fact that the first stills that we saw months before E3 were in fact likely rendered. And that wasn't even the point of that statement, rather the point was that at this point in the 360 development cycle we only had a handful (1-3) extremely small teaser stills to salivate over, and I will fully admit that they were salivation worthy.

You're taking words that I'm typing and using them to drive points that are contained nowhere within my original text.

 

[NulloModo]

Now, Sony is releasing a system based around a CPU that is more complicated than anything that the industry has ever seen. Based on the former generation, it's safe to assume that they don't provide good tools for development.

It is also safe to assume Sony isn't dumb. If Microsoft has good dev tools in place, Sony will work up something comparable. Programmers work cheap, the big money in tech is in engineering, not programming, Sony can drop 500,000 for a couple of code monkeys to work up a good compiler easily.