Lost Planet PS3 demo this week - Capcom Comments by Robert Purchese

So this is SP and MP?

The review in PSM3 says it's worse than the 360 version, after all this time they had to improve it too!

Well the Lost Planet PS3 multiplayer demo is every bit as dull as the 360 one I tried a year or so back, only with inferior graphics (jaggies and low-res textures but, oddly, no screen tearing). I definitely wouldn't buy this game for its multiplayer, that is a fact.

apparently 5Gb install

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/02/18/lost-planet-to-include-5gb-installation/

Yep it's a 5GB install. Looks like it will be a Capcom feature on it's Ps3 games.

Don't worry drumbaby, the game is sheit.

Somewhat ironic really that BD has won the Movie Format War but is proving to so slow for games that it requires mandatory 5 GB installs from some developers like Capcom in order to achieve similar loading speeds to the Xbox 360's 12X DVD drive (going by experiences with the full PS3 and 360 versions of Devil May Cry 4)... oh the irony! LOL

IMO, compulsory 5 GB installs for the PS3 are a very, very, very, very BAD thing, particularly for owners of the 20 GB and 40 GB HDD models.

It shouldn't require mandatory 5gb installs though. Uncharted needs no install and has virtually no loading.

Is it lazy dev syndrome?

Well as someone mentioned neither Uncharted nor Ratchet and Clank required massive HDD installs and both load data very quickly so I guess we can put this one down to lazy developers at Capcom then.

@goodfella

Nope not lazy dev syndrome sadly. Blu-ray drives are slow when seeking random data. Uncharted has no backtracking and so they were able to stream their levels fairly easily. Devil may cry has you constantly back-tracking through regions. Loading this from blu-ray would definitely get their reviews the "Extremely slow loading times" quote you tend to see in a lot of PS3 reviews.

It's a case of damned if they do, damned if they don't. I guess they simply need to pick the lesser of two evils.

Edit: Darren

Play Ratchet again and you'll notice the spaceship take-off and landing sequences. Try to skip them and see what happens. It seems to be a strange myth that's grown up around that game i.e. that it has quick load times. Sadly they are simpy, disguised.

penhalion: Can you explain to me why backtracking would make it harder to load data. I don't understand why.

PS3LOL

@Disc

If you lay out your data on a disc in a liniar fashion i.e you can read through it from start to finish without having to go backwards, then load times can reach their maximum data transfer rate. If you have to go to a random point in the data however, you need to move use indexing and move the head backwards, wait for the head to be over the start of the data and then read it. Due to the data density of blu-ray, this isn't a quick task for the hardware. Seek times are typically 3 to 4 times slower than the equivalent dvd. Given this you can see that this slow seeking will accumulate if you use a lot of random access to the disc.

Fair enough, penhalion. As disc says though, I don't understand why.

Edit: Ah, thanks for the explanation.

@penalion - Yes, I know Ratchet & Clank does have loading times disguised by short cinematics but they're no worst than the majority of Xbox 360 games IMO so can be considered "quick"-ish compared with, say, MotorStorm, Resistance or even PGR 3 on the 360 for example. I mean I know a game has long loading times if I get frustrated at all the waiting around and that never happened with Ratchet & Clank.

penhalion: Nothing you detailed there would explain why going backwards in a world would make loading slower.

Please try again. I can't wait.

@Darren

Yep. Didn't mean to imply the times are slow by any standard, just that there seems to be this myth that they are quicker than a lot of games out there. The cinematic means you watch that and litterally forget the time. It's a good tactic and if anything, some games are guilty of simply putting up a loading message instead of a transition. I know I tend to notice the loading message as being far more intrusive than watching my character fire up his ship engines and fly off into the distance.

With games that use streaming, the levels need to be created in a specific manner, which isn't always practical for every game type.

EDIT: Disc

In that case you may want to look up the meaning of the words seek time and also how a blu-ray or dvd player works. If you truly can't understand why loading data from random sections of the disc slows down load times then you really do need to start studying.

bring back cartridges, that would get rid of load times!

(apart from batman forever? on the snes, that was just silly)

@Disc & Goodfella

Just for you as I realise the question is a genuine one, I'll attempt to explain in more detail.

If I create three game areas and only one of them can fit completely into memory at any given time but, all three are connected to each-other. I need to do the following.

1. Load the start area.
2. wait until the player get's to the door/trigger leading to the next area.
3. Load the next area.

Scenario 1:

If I know the player has to go from area 1 to area 2 and then on to area 3, I can do some clever portalling and sectioning of my areas. This allows me to pre-load the start section of area 2 when the player is in the end section of area 1. Providing I stop any backtracking from the current section to a previous section (rock slide, explosion, colapsing ledge etc. etc.), I can also layout my area data linearly on the dvd, blu-ray, hard drive or whatever media i'm using. In this way the player doesn't have any noticable load times because the game is effectively one step ahead of the player at all times.

Scenario 2:

If however, the player is able to move back and forth thorugh the areas at will. I can't use a linear data layout. While I can still pre-load data based on where in the area the player is how can I know in advance where the player will decide to go?

Answer: As it's not a trick question, the answer is simply that I can't!

So I need to load the sections as and when the player decides to enter them. This means that there will be some delay between my requesting the data and the dvd, blu-ray etc. etc. returning the data. If the dvd drive has to move the head to a completely new area of the dvd disc in order to get that data, then load time will increase.

In game terms this means that going backwards and forwards in a game (for scenario 2) will cause the dvd or blu-ray players read head to also need to jump all over the disc to retrieve the relevant data. As the amount of data needed for each section of the game may be significant, I'll have to put up a message to the player saying "loading" and then they just wait idly while the data is retrieved, possibly de-compressed, models are set-up and finally control is returned to them.

Most games use scenario 2. I will say this though. Most FPS games could use scenario 1 quite easily as it's very rare to backtrack in a FPS. FPS' also tend to employ the exploding hallway, broken lift style of limiting backtracking so could pre-load sections of a level without any significant (or indeed any) change to their gameplay. Why they don't is anyone's guess.

Incidentally this is the kind of explanation I expect people to be able to give in interviews for anyone who's interested :)

Option A

Installing to an HDD on buying then enjoying good load times and a very quiet and reliable drive, with option of upgrading HDD with any easily available SATA 2.5"

Option B

No install and enjoy faster seek times at cost of machine sounding like a jet engine, possible need for multiple discs and added disadvantage of requirring machine to be fixed once every year. Ability to upgrade HDD after remortgaging to finance it.

/scratches head

Come back Spectrum all is Forgiven - with no Hardrive it only took about 5 minutes to load ANY new game - perhaps they should have fitted a cassette deck to the PS3 instead of forcing Blu-ray down ever owners throats - or maybe they could launch one as an add-on like MS did with the brilliant HD drive! lol ;-)

@BadBoyBonner - Forced 20-30 minute installs are extremely rare on the PS3 (although Everybodys Golf 5 is apparently another such game alas) and some games like Oblivion manage to somehow install 4.4 GB of data to the HDD without any user prompts or noticeably longer loading times (which is really quite clever). Not that those should be encouraged, PS3 game installs should *always* be optional IMO because there's going to come a point when people run out of HDD space and not everyone will be keen to upgrade the PS3's HDD to make more space for game installs. Sony really need to address this and quickly.

@Gaol

Installing to an HDD on buying then enjoying good load times and a very quiet and reliable drive, with option of upgrading HDD with any easily available SATA 2.5"

What you meant to say was: "Being forced to perform a lengthy install to HDD, subsequent forced HDD upgrade due to space running out then experiencing similar load times to DVD-based games"


"No install and enjoy faster seek times at cost of machine sounding like a jet engine, possible need for multiple discs and added disadvantage of requirring machine to be fixed once every year. Ability to upgrade HDD after remortgaging to finance it. "

What you meant was: "Remortgage to afford a console with fewer, inferior games. Free buggery supplied with every console. Barrel not included."

Darren

Couldn't agree more - it should only be an option (not a requirement) to install and perhaps a 1 or 1.5 GB limitation would help developers become a little more creative in it's use.

At least the slow loading speed of the PS3 means that in COD 4 you get to watch all of the intro movies ;-)

Surely it can't be long now before faster BR drives are launched and this all become a moot point? Or even if faster drives come out, will it still be a requirement to ensure compatibility across the range?

Could always fit 3 DVD drives to a machine giving 54Gb of disc access and 6 times the through put of BR (would still be cheaper than one BR drive probably! lol) obviously a free acoustic dampening case would be nice as well!

@farticusmaximus

Get your own baiting template! -1 for lack of originality.

Lost Planet? They still make that?

oh, also: LOLst Planet amirite?

@penhalion:

you know the direction the player is going and facing. you know the player's objective (having given it to them). you know their position within the game area. why not start to stream based on all this info? then if the player turns round, scrap whats currently in memory and re-stream based on the new directional vectors and position. makes sense to me and allows for streaming.

@badboyrunner

Come back Spectrum all is Forgiven - with no Hardrive it only took about 5 minutes to load ANY new game - perhaps they should have fitted a cassette deck to the PS3 instead of forcing Blu-ray down ever owners throats - or maybe they could launch one as an add-on like MS did with the brilliant HD drive! lol ;-)

glol - well structured, brother.

13 minutes per level, I seem to remember Gunship on the Commodore 64 was. Man, what a game.

At least once 'Elite' was loaded up on the ol' speccy 48 that was it - No Load Times!

Serious post:

This topic was beaten to death yesterday. Not using the HDD to improve perfirmance when it's a standard part of the hardware is silly. What is better, is a game like Oblivion which installs as you create your character and do the tutorial. I know its not an ideal example, but the load times on PS3 derived huge benefit from the installation and the process was seamless.

burnout paradise doesn't install and that only does one load that's not very long

criterion = great
capcom = lazy

end of conversation :)

@BadBoyBonner - What strikes me as being really stupid is that Lost Planet was a 360 game, right, so it came on a DVD9? So why don't Sony allow multiformat developers like Capcomrelease their PS3 games on DVD rather than BD, where the extra 16 GB of storage space is clearly wasted?

I believe the PS3 can read DVDs at 8X (feel free to correct me, folks) so that is one way round the slow BD read speed, surely? I seem to remember early PS2 games coming on CD before DVD became the standard so it didn't bother Sony back then. Why now? Sony's stubborn refusal to allow PS3 games to come out on anything but BD, even when they obviously don't need it, just makes the format look bad in the hands of less talented developers like Capcom.

To bad the PS3 version is lackluster. I loved both singleplayer and multiplayer on 360. The multiplayer was actually fantastic when you got used to the maps, the grappling hook and the sniper rifles.

apologie: so how were the burnout load times covered up? cos they did it so well, i can't see any

ApoIogie - Well Capcom have had a year to improve this game for the PS3 so whether they're untalented or lazy, the fact remains that this game is inferior to the 360 original graphically and in terms of loading speeds which is unacceptable even at £30 RRP. I really thought the lacklustre 360-to-PS3 ports had become a thing of the past but, sadly, it looks like I was very much mistaken. If Capcom couldn't make the game as good as the 360 version then they really shouldn't have bothered IMO.

no, i mean HOW do they cover the times? there isn't any loading apart from at startup.

the game was created on ps3 then ported to 360, now i'm assuming that they didn't create a whole new caching system for the 360 as that would have been a hell of a lot of work for no reason.

so, that means the ps3 version cannot use the harddrive (as the 360 version cannot assume a hdd is present).

now it might just be me, but that must leave it to stream from the bd. and the detail level is awesome. and the game really shifts.

so you are telling me that no other developers can work out how to stream this amount of data? either that or microsoft have made them lazy programmers (although listening to the pgr3 disk loading, that would be about right. grindgrindgrindgrindchugchug that kind of sound)

>the game was created on ps3 then ported to 360

A frequent mistake. It is created on a common engine that was actually designed on 360 and PC first.

I believe the PS3 can read DVDs at 8X (feel free to correct me, folks) so that is one way round the slow BD read speed, surely?

Well, let's do the math - after all it's just multiplication.

DVD: 8 x 1.25 MiB/s = 10 MiB/s

Blu-Ray: 1 x 36 MiB/s = 36 MiB/s

So: no.

Keep in mind, though, the real criticism seems to be seek time not transfer; but it seems it's the random seeking that is the culprit for cutting the otherwise up to 2x speed in the first place...

Its £29.99 and approx 6.5 hours longm nice graphics but the gameplay is very average hence the price.