A-Men dev: you won't see PS3's texture problems on Vita

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 20 February, 2012

Vita RAM pushes handheld closer to Xbox 360.

You won't see the texture issues that plague the PlayStation 3 versions of some multi-platform games on Vita, one developer with experience of both platforms has said.

The Vita's impressive amount of RAM means it's better able to produce stable, high resolution textures than the PlayStation 3, the creator of Vita launch title A-Men told Eurogamer.

Vita has more RAM than PS3. Vita has 512MB of RAM and 128MB of V-RAM, compared to the PS3's 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of video RAM. Vita also has the advantage of not having to reproduce HD visuals.

"This is great," Bloober gameplay programmer Jakub Opoń, who worked on Vita launch title A-Men, told Eurogamer.

"This is the main drawback for PS3 versus the Xbox 360, because the Xbox 360 has half a gigabyte of RAM, so the texture quality is better in games on the Xbox 360. You can see when you compare two games.

"Vita won't have this problem. This is a really good solution. It tells developers not to think so much about really hardcore optimisation. They can focus on making the game, and not strip the quality of the assets. This is really important.

"Our artists made some really good effects and we have no problems with game speed."

Bloober's A-Men is a downloadable 2D platform strategy game inspired by Blizzard's Lost Vikings and Lemmings.

It is the Polish developer's Vita debut, but is has worked on a number of platforms, including WiiWare, DSi Ware, PlayStation Portable, iPhone, iPad, and, more recently, PS3.

Opoń said despite Vita's RAM advantage over PS3, it is not as powerful as the PS3, which, through the Cell microprocessor, is a heavyweight when it comes to physics, simulations and AI. "It's not as powerful as PS3, which you can see with Uncharted, which is a great example to compare the hardware power."

But: "Vita has so much power in this small device, every player will be satisfied with the things you can do."

Bloober creative director and vice-president Piotr Bielatowicz added: "There is much more computational power in PS3. Obviously you've seen how Uncharted was supposed to look like, and during the development how it begins to look like."

While Vita's power is attracting programmers to the system, Sony has also tried to make making games for it as easy as possible - certainly easier than it was with the difficult, complex PlayStation 3 when it launched in 2007.

"Vita is very easy to develop for," Opoń said. "It's much easier than Sony's previous platforms. The hardware is much more popular. It's the same type of hardware you can find in iPad 2, but twice as powerful. The core mechanism of working on the platform is the same.

"Sony provides a great SDK [software development kit/devkit]. The documentation is really good. Basically, we came up with a port of our engine in three months. It's fast, rapid development on the platform.

"It's easy even to set up the machine on your computer. You just start the installer. I can't say the names, but on some other consoles it takes a whole day, or two days, even, to even set up or build the game.

"For some devkits you've got three USB cables just to plug into your computer. You've got three cables that connect the same two machines, which is crazy.

"Now we get this beautiful console, which is small, and only has two cables. The only problem is you don't have the battery for that [on the Vita devkit], so you need to use the adapter.

"In all other aspects, it's the best we've worked on until now. The easiest one, the fastest one to start just making the game, not struggling with the hardware, with the software provided."

For Bielatowicz, Vita marks an important change in approach to third-party development at Sony, one that moves away from former Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi's philosophy when he launched PS3.

"It's great now to cooperate with Sony," Bielatowicz said. "When Kutaragi was in charge it was very technologically oriented. It was, 'we create the best possible hardware and deal with it. Figure out on your own how to program it.' For PS3 it might take two weeks for a programmer to just compile a demo. It was so hard in the beginning.

"Now, I believe Sony is more developer oriented. They reach out to us. They organise seminars to train us, to teach programmers and designers features like Near. The support is very swift. The communication is very good. I would say, at the moment, Sony is by far the nicest format holder to work with."

Vita launches in the US and Europe on Wednesday, 22nd February.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (39) Latest comment 3 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • deez #1 3 months ago

    Based on those screenshots, I'm not that surprised they didn't encounter RAM/texture issues!

  • INSOMANiAC #2 3 months ago

    Artwork is horrendous

  • X201 #3 3 months ago

    Its a cross between Lemmings and Lost Vikings according to the EU Blog
    Edited by X201 at 20/02/12 @ 17:10

  • oi #4 3 months ago

    "This is the main drawback for PS3 versus the Xbox 360, because the Xbox 360 has half a gigabyte of RAM, so the texture quality is better in games on the Xbox 360. You can see when you compare two games"

    genuine :/ at wording

  • wattsn26 #5 3 months ago

    That game in the screenshots looks terribly average, I'm not sure why they are even commenting on something like texture streaming when they aren't developing something as complex and detailed as RAGE or Skyrim

    I do hope that Sony makes the PS4 as easy to develop games on (more RAM too) as the PC and 360 so these issues are not even relevant...

  • Machiavellian #6 3 months ago

    "Sony provides a great SDK [software development kit/devkit]. The documentation is really good. Basically, we came up with a port of our engine in three months. It's fast, rapid development on the platform.

    It sounds like to me that Sony has learned a lot from the PS3. From what these developers are saying, Sony now understand that giving the developers all the tools to take advantage of your hardware is more important then throwing together a piece of hardware and say program it. Time and resources are expensive to a developer so giving them the tools and making your system easy to develop for will increase the number of top notch games on the platform.

    just reading these statements definitely gives a positive light on the Vita development and it may win me over to another PSP

  • ZuluHero #7 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 17:19:04 20-02-2012

  • Abdu@EG #8 3 months ago

    Sony learnt from their mistakes. Great.

  • abigsmurf #9 3 months ago

    The RAM may solve the physical reasons behind low texture sizes but financial reasons may still limit it.

    Large textures = larger file sizes = needs higher capacity (more expensive) media

  • photoboy #10 3 months ago

    I've always wondered why Sony went the route of making hard-to-master hardware. At launch PS1 came with excellent dev tools and dozens of libraries to make development easier and it only got better as time went on and this was all coupled with a very easy to understand architecture. The only complaint developers had was initially Sony wouldn't let them interact directly with the hardware, instead mandating everything be done through their libraries, which had a performance deficit.

    Yet with the PS2 that all changed. There were virtually no libraries and developers were pretty much left to work it out for themselves. While it was great Sony weren't mandating developers only work through their interfaces, it did mean in the early days developers were just left tearing their hair out trying to understand the hardware. From what I understand the same thing happened with the PS3 too, so it's good to see the Vita changing that trend.

  • Snake_2011 #11 3 months ago

    funny thing is the 360 can not do a exclusive on par with the PS3 so it must be more powerful.

  • GamesConnoisseur #12 3 months ago

    Now Bethesda could maybe port Skyrim to Vita as an apology for the cock ups on PS3 version?!

    Playing Skyrim on the move would be great, maybe some dumbing down of physics, AI but can imagine Vita doing an excellent sandbox world. Afterall PS2 and Xbox did with GTA3 etc.

  • FenderMaster #13 3 months ago

    die in a ****ing hole wealthchat spambots.

    Sounds like Ken Kutaragi leaving Sony happened just on time. Fantastic engineer, but didn't understand or care about the developers and players whatsoever. He just had that horribly smug overconfidence that came with two generations of success and thought he could throw anything at us and we'd lap it up. Kaz Hiria really turned things around, so fair play to him.

  • hiscore #14 3 months ago

    Seriously... 2 x 256Mb = 512Mb. Case closed. If you can't write a decent game code for PS3 at this time of its life cycle then you will NEVER succeed. If you prioritise your game for 360 and port the damn thing to PS3.. don't blame it on the "failing architecture". Lazy b*st*rds.

  • Lucodeath #15 3 months ago

    Have you tried writing code for the PS3? It is more of a ball ache than other systems, everyone knows that.

  • MattEdWithCheese #16 3 months ago

    This sounds like a case of someone saying something on the internet to try to get attention for the game he just made and with a screenshot gallery like that, it won't work...

  • Chuxfm #17 3 months ago

    "VITA R BIG RAM"

    no s**t

    that game looks pretty aweful.... massive fan of lost vikings though

  • CatWeazle #18 3 months ago

    yeh, until Sony decides to take back a big chunk of it for something (trophys snyone?)

  • Lord_Gremlin #19 3 months ago

    Duh, both PS3 and 360 have 512 mb of RAM. The catch is - 360 RAM is unified, in other words you can for example dumb down physics to increase texture resolution or reduce texture resolution to add more ragdolls etc. On PS3 you have 256 RAM and 256 of vRAM and the architecture requires you to carefully assign every element of game code to one of these pools. That's why it's easier to port from PS3 to 360: it's way easier to take the data divided between 256 and 256 mb of RAM and dump it all in a single pool of 512 then port from 360 to PS3: take 512 mb of data and try to divide it into two pools. Skyrim is a perfect example. It's the kind of game that should be developed on PS3 first to work properly - too much stuff in memory pool to start dividing it once the job is done.

  • zedzee #20 3 months ago

    Whatever happened to swapping textures in/out from disc or HDD?

    Is that what programmers tell their project managers these days?!

  • BonzoBanana #21 3 months ago

    Maybe I'm missing something here but if you run a Vita game from a game cartridge or its downloaded and stored on a Vita memory card surely they are random access memory too so you effectively have even more capacity than the PS3/360 transferring code from a slower optical drive or even hard drive into main memory.

    I realise the game code is compressed and encrypted on the carts but so is the data on optical discs.

    Whatever the outcome of the Vita be it successful or a failure I think it could end up with a reputation like the Dreamcast for brilliant games. It just seems such a capable bit of hardware with so much potential.

  • Ryze #22 3 months ago

    Heh!

    I've been waiting for this shit to come out!

    :D

  • MeBrains #23 3 months ago

    @Machiavellian: throw together a piece of hardware?!

    utter bollocks. the ps3 was very well engineered from the start. the hardware worked fabulously together. in fact, with all the nagging about the ram, you can not deny that, when really tapped, the ps3 produces equally as nice games as its counterparts.

    thrown together piece of hardware was a certain other console with all its initial hardware difficulties.
    Edited by MeBrains at 20/02/12 @ 22:05

  • funkateer #24 3 months ago

    "Vita RAM pushes handheld closer to Xbox 360. "

    So 768 is closer to 522 than 512?
    Who wrote that anyway? Oh, right...

  • carlosdfn #25 3 months ago

    I've read every face-off out there and except for some very rare exceptions texture quality is consistent across both platforms, it's the time it takes to stream them that is different sometimes but that has nothing to do with ram.
    Besides, the best textures on any console game are in PS3 games like Uncharted 2/3 and God of War 3.

  • riseer #26 3 months ago

    his is the main drawback for PS3 versus the Xbox 360, because the Xbox 360 has half a gigabyte of RAM, so the texture quality is better in games on the Xbox 360..I see what he is saying but lets take a step back..Their are Ps3 games that have awesome textures.Both consoles have 512mb of ram the problem with Ps3 is the split pool of ram.Isn't Vita the same way 512mb of system memory and 128mb of Vram.If Ps3 had something like 512mb of System memory and 256mb Vram their would be less of a bottleneck.Plus this game looks like it could run on Ps1 hardware..

  • riseer #27 3 months ago

    @BonzoBanana Yea i love my Vita Marval vs Capcom 3 looks awesome on Vita.Suvh a sharp looking game looks like it's in HD.The party chat is great as well.Near is very cool met some friends near me.Sony imo has nailed the socal aspect if this is a sign for Ps4.Sony is on the right track in terms of Hardware and socal gaming.

  • Badassbab #28 3 months ago

    @Lord_Gremlin

    Your forgetting about the OS footprint, framebuffer size and EDRAM.

    360- 512MB Unified 700Mhz GDDR3 RAM less 32MB OS. Framebuffer usually fits within the 10MB EDRAM. So 480MB in total.

    PS3- 256MB 3.2 Ghz Main Rambus RAM less 43MB OS footprint = 213MB. 256MB 700Mhz GDDR3 VRAM less 7MB OS footprint LESS frambuffer (depends on game but it can be as high as 36MB if we take KZ2 as an example) = Depending on game.

    Not saying one method is better than the other just pointing out some other differences.

  • Lucodeath #29 3 months ago

    @mebrains Yes in the beginning but then they cut out half the cell and bunged in a gpu .

  • FuzzyDuck #30 3 months ago

    I guess having an easy to develop for console doesn't compensate for atrocious art design, eh?

  • abigsmurf #31 3 months ago

    I find it amusing that I got so negged for pointing out that the expensive media will still limit texture sizes.

    Uncharted 3 is on a 45gb disc. Textures take up a lot of space. This is fine on disc media where you only get a slight increase in cost going to dual layer but on memory cards there's a massive increase in cost.

    Capcom raised the RRP of Resident Evil Revelations because it used 4gb media, how many publishers will want to splash out on 8gb or even 16gb cards for the Vita when they can keep texture sizes low and save themselves a considerable cost?

  • spish #32 3 months ago

    @Badassbab

    That comparison only holds if the game isn't tiled or doesn't implement some form of deferred rendering. You're correct in saying the 360 reserves less memory than GameOS on the PS3, but frame buffers on 360 frequently exceed 10MB.
    Edited by spish at 21/02/12 @ 06:26

  • Dave52 #33 3 months ago

    PS3 v XBox360 fan-baiting in a Vita article. Wow, well done EG.

  • eliasruiz #34 3 months ago

    Why is that every positive comment about the PS3 gets down-voted? Is this site really that pro>Xbox?

  • eliasruiz #35 3 months ago

    @Lucodeath "If you can't write a decent game code for PS3 at this time of its life cycle then you will NEVER succeed."


    You know, when I started learning to program on C++ I remember that I found it really difficult but after a few months of practice it really isn't anymore (at least basic applications like calculators and stuff). Now my question is, can't this same logic be applied for programming for the PS3? Specially after what, 6 years? I mean, the guy's comment got down-voted but what he said was completely rational.

  • Badassbab #36 3 months ago

    @spish

    True but Alan Wake, Gears 3, Halo Reach and Crysis 2 framebuffer all fit within EDRAM.

  • Lucodeath #37 3 months ago

    @eliasruiz Its still a ball ache compared to other systems, that is why multi plats are often better on the other. All that extra work to get it to run as good costs time and money which eats into the profit.
    How long was exclusives like Killzone 2 and GT 5 in production, bloody ages.
    Edited by Lucodeath at 21/02/12 @ 18:02

  • spish #38 3 months ago

    @Badassbab

    All good looking games, but there were tradeoffs in resolution, AA, and dynamic range in order to fit within 10MB. With many games using analytical antialiasing it's probably a smart bet to sacrifice MSAA. I'm surprised Gears 3 didn't use FXAA actually.

  • bemaniac #39 3 months ago

    for next gen comparing to the pc now I think even 1gb of system memory optimised would allow for amazing textures given that as long as all of this is built in a system that can interface with the gpu quicker than a modern pc we can fill the gpu memory up and clear it out over and over and avoid stuttering and buffering. Modern pcs when hovering at the limit of a gpus vram tend to stutter like hell because the ram can't keep up with buffering the card, I think a purpose built chipset next gen will almost eliminate this problem meaning a relatively tame gpu will be able to handle 2048x textures in little chunks as you move around the game world.