Dead or Alive 4 - Official

[outRider]

Jason Rubin, co-founder of Naughty Dog: "Like for instance, Crash 1 had no Z-buffer, Crash 2 had a Z-buffer."

Naughty Dog FAQ:

11) Q: Naughty Dog created the first software z-buffer for the PlayStation. How did you do it?
A: Greg coded it. We don't know how it works. It just does.

Hogwash. The Playstation does not provide access to pixel z depths once the triangles they belong to have been sent through the pipeline to be transformed. There's no way around that fact.

Whatever they call "z-buffering" is not z-buffering as the rest of us all know it*, more likely it's not pixel based at all but probably has to do with the bin-sorting that the PSX does. Be that as it may, the PSX does not do z-buffering, nor can it be done in software if the hardware is drawing the polygons. I'm sure they're doing something clever, but it's not accurate to call it z-buffering, which is what I was pointing out to diffusionx.

*(i.e. a memory buffer containing the transformed z value for each pixel of the frame buffer after it's been rasterized - the PSX hardware doesn't even calculate z values for pixels, let alone store them anywhere).

[SamuraiMoogle]

I think DOA4 looks nice. If they can just show us a GTA game that looks like that all the time with a huge ass draw distance, that would be something impressive.

I'm still impressed with a lot of games graphics with the current XBox. Sure they're PC ports but Doom 3 and FarCry look crazy.

[Diff-chan]

I'm sure they're doing something clever, but it's not accurate to call it z-buffering, which is what I was pointing out to diffusionx.

Then you'd better tell Naughty Dog, a company that has sold millions of games and is one of the most technically accomplished in the world, that theyre wrong. Im sure you know more than they do about their own products and software.

[outRider]

Then you'd better tell Naughty Dog, a company that has sold millions of games and is one of the most technically accomplished in the world, that theyre wrong. Im sure you know more than they do about their own products and software.

I'm sure their programmers knew it all too well, whether or not the people conducting those interviews knew it or (more likely) chose to simplify their discussion with a non-technical audience (and avoid disclosing proprietary info) by using a generally understood but innacurate name is another story.

And I don't claim to know anything about their software (though I can make some educated guesses about how they overcame the depth sorting issues of the PSX), I do however claim to know about the hardware they were working on, which is why I am in a position to say that "z-buffering" is not what they were doing.

Anyways, sorry for sidetracking your thread marwan.

[elfneedsfood]

300 dollar console and 70 dollar games .. for this?

Has it been confired that games are going to be $70? Because if so...fuck that.

[Cowutopia]

Has it been confired that games are going to be $70? Because if so...fuck that.

yep.

Luckily they'll all fall to 30 bucks fast. Except Luigi's Mansion is still like 20 bucks..fuck that.

[recon_zero]

i bet 5 cents that is a joke pic.

[Shin Johnpv]

that background blur is called depth of field it happens when you tighten up the focal point in the foreground and the background goes way out of focus, there were a couple gamecube games that used it so I don't see why the Xbox couldn't do it

[Tommy Tallarico]

Has it been confired that games are going to be $70? Because if so...fuck that.

Typical spoiled consumer bullshit. Everything else in the world has gotten more expensive with inflation, so why do so many people get so pissy when it comes to games going up in price? Games were 50 bucks 10 or 15 years ago, and adjusted for inflation, those games would cost something like $75 right now, not to mention the Square games that were like 80 bucks. When disc media came out, games were cheaper to produce, so they went down in price. Guess what? Now development is getting more expensive, so they're going up again, and unless you hate gaming and want it to die, that isn't something you should complain about, especially since they're still cheaper than they should be.

[sethsez]

Typical spoiled consumer bullshit. Everything else in the world has gotten more expensive with inflation, so why do so many people get so pissy when it comes to games going up in price? Games were 50 bucks 10 or 15 years ago, and adjusted for inflation, those games would cost something like $75 right now, not to mention the Square games that were like 80 bucks. When disc media came out, games were cheaper to produce, so they went down in price. Guess what? Now development is getting more expensive, so they're going up again, and unless you hate gaming and want it to die, that isn't something you should complain about, especially since they're still cheaper than they should be.

Development costs are going up, but more people are buying games as well.

Besides, an increase to $60 wouldn't be a terrible idea, but $70 is quite a large increase. People don't mind slowly rising costs (well, much) but they hate huge, sudden leaps. If the industry wants people to pay $70 for a single piece of media, they'll need to be a hell of a lot more subtle than this.

It's also a bad idea simply because many people won't be able to afford more games this way. If buying two games will cost me $100, I might do it, but at $140 I'm not going to bother, and I'll just stick with a single $70 game. This won't do much to harm big games (since those will sell anyway) but it'll kill smaller games.