Ted-Insomniac's blog on RFOM, Blu-ray and more

[progmetal]

Update on Resistance: Fall of Man, Blu-Ray, and more

Hi everyone,

Ted Price here from Insomniac Games. We?re joining the party a little late with this blog, but as a result we?ve got lots to share when it comes to Resistance: Fall of Man. As I hope most people know by now, Resistance is a brand new first person shooter launching with the PS3 in a couple of very short months. While there?s lots of information making its way to the web, I and others from Insomniac are hoping to use this blog to tell you more about the game and its development as we finish it up.

Where we are with Resistance: Fall of Man

So where are we right now? We?re currently fixing bugs, testing the game and putting in lots of polish. Every day it seems like another totally sweet effect goes in or the lighting improves for a level or we tweak the details to make the game look and run even better. Everyone is working extremely hard to put in all of the ?gravy? we?ve planned. As we near the end, we?re also testing the bejesus out of the game ? for single player, co-op and multiplayer. We?re continuing to tune difficulty and add some cool unlockables.

For all of you on the forums:

Rather than give you a list of game features, I?d like to spend our first blog answering some questions and directly addressing topics that have been coming up on the IGN forums. Last week, two threads showed up analyzing the interview that a bunch of us did for IGN. Watching these threads grow has been pretty gratifying for us here at Insomniac. Obviously people are very interested in Resistance ? some love it so far, some seem a bit skeptical. But we all knew we?d be under the microscope as one of the most visible games on the PS3 and it?s cool to see so many raging debates.

Within those threads from last week the two topics most heavily debated are the result of my somewhat ill thought-out answer to a pretty open-ended question during the IGN interview.

Could Resistance have been created on?uh, Gameboy?

The first topic is whether or not I was blowing smoke when I said ?It would have been very, very difficult to create Resistance on any other platform. What I should have said was, ?It would have been very, very difficult to create Resistance as designed on any other platform.? You make your design choices based on what you have available and the PS3 and Xbox360 are very different machines with different strengths. We designed Resistance with the PS3?s strengths in mind. In several other interviews and presentations I?ve elaborated on what we think those strengths are and why we think the machine is pretty damn amazing.

But as many of the IGN posters have correctly pointed out, with enough redesign and enough time almost any game could be made to run on any platform. This has been proved in the past and is being proved right now by other franchises purportedly being created for PS3, PC and Xbox360 simultaneously. (And I?ll bet there are PSP and DS versions in the works for plenty of those games as well.) Certainly there will be differences between all of those SKUs ? differences that will be analyzed as thoroughly as they were for SKUs on previous generations of hardware.

Just for fun, I?ll elaborate a bit more on the initial choice we made. Even though we as a company haven?t released a game on a non-Sony platform, there are plenty of people at Insomniac who have. So when it came to making a choice between PS3 and Xbox360, we didn?t go in blind. Certainly our experience working with Sony on PS1 and PS2 helped, but being independent we had to do what we thought was best for our games. And we had to choose one system because our current philosophy is to create technology specialized for one platform - enabling us to get the most out of it. We chose the PS3 because we believe that it has the best long-term potential of any next gen platform. The amount of raw processing power that it offers and the fact that we can get ?down to the metal? on the platform fits our programming style. We like the fact that right out of the box, using the SPUs allows you to do some incredible things. But what we like even better is that as we refine our technology ? technology we?ve designed specifically for the types of games we make, we?ll be able to see bigger and bigger wins using the Cell.

The question at the heart of the debate is whether or not the PS3 is more ?powerful? than the Xbox360 and there is no way I will get sucked into that one. Sure, I and others here at Insomniac have our own opinions (and are admittedly biased) but no matter what I say and no matter what people see at launch, the debate will continue long after the PS3 has been released. And since different games focus on different things it may be very hard to make true "apples to apples" comparisons. To all of us at Insomniac the most important question has always been, ?is the game fun??

The 20Gb debate

The second topic that has been surfacing a lot lately is our support of Blu-ray as a medium. Yes it is true - we are currently using more than 20 gigs. And yes, we do compress our level data. The fact that we store so much on disc is actually not that surprising when you look at the numbers. Consider that even with compression, each of our ?levels? (or loaded areas) has more than 300 megs of unique data. And keep in mind that we?re also streaming data during level playthroughs. It doesn't take too much level data before you've gone past what can be stored on a dual-layer DVD. And between single player and multiplayer we have a lot of level data (over 40 different large loaded areas) ? yes, more than will fit on a dual layer DVD.

We also include a lot of data in the form of game movies in both HD and PAL formats, high quality audio streams for all supported languages and some of those Insomniac ?extras? that our fans have come to expect.

I realize that some people will still be skeptical unless we provide an actual layout of the disc. But for now I wanted to give you some better info.

More answers

And finally, two bonus answers to other questions that always seem to come up:

Question:
Aren?t you guys owned by Sony?

Answer:
We?re 100% independent though we?ve been working directly or indirectly with Sony for over 10 years now. A huge amount of trust exists between the two companies, which I believe is unique in this industry. Sure, we could work on the Xbox360. Sure we could work with EA or Microsoft. But even though we?ve had those opportunities, we?ve stuck with Sony (and they?ve stuck with us). Not trying to sound like a fanboy here but the folks we work with at Sony are all honest, extremely hardworking, fair, loyal and creative. And they really know games. It?s been a great partnership.

Question:
Didn?t Ratchet & Clank use Naughty Dog?s engine?

Answer:
When we were moving from the PS1 to the PS2, Jason Rubin from Naughty Dog called me up and said ?Hey, do you want to take a look at what we?re doing?? It was a completely selfless gesture since they had already gotten a strong start on developing technology for Jak & Daxter. But we?ve been friends for a long time and our companies had always been very close since we used to work side by side on the lot at Universal Studios.

So Al Hastings (our CTO) and I went over to Naughty Dog and checked out their stuff. It was really impressive. We ended up bringing back code for a couple of their core background object renderers and incorporating it into our own engine (which was comprised of over 10 different renderers).

During development of our next game (Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando) we gave them code for our occlusion system. After Going Commando, I don?t remember sharing code between the companies for the PS2 though we certainly shared ideas and compared notes on future designs. And, of course, our respective engines diverged pretty significantly.

Wrapping up

Some final words: We at Insomniac pay close attention to what everyone is saying on forums (thanks for the great post, powerkevin9). And while it?s occasionally hard to listen to the haters, we appreciate a healthy argument as much as anyone else. We definitely love the feedback ? positive or negative. At this point we?re pretty darn stoked about the game and we?re doing our best to make sure that when Resistance hits the shelves it rocks!

crumbumb posted:

"hey ted please answer this question. is the rsx closer to the G80 or G70? why has sony not released any info on the gpu? will they ever release info on the gpu?"
Hi crumbumb - sorry man, there is no way I can answer that for a lot of reasons...And j_konman this is an (I'm sure very unsatisfying) answer to your question as well.

Next time, more about the game?

Ted

http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac/2006/10/09/

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.p...e=mov&id=13885

[Dr. Bombay]

If Resistance is less than 8 hours, they're going to look awefully stupid when a game 1/5 the size ends up being the better experience

[TheHardware]

this has been posted already

[progmetal]

Originally Posted by TheHardware

this has been posted already

This was from his blog 7th of October and yesterday, I haven't seen it before.

[UniGamer]

Nice civil blog, none of that let bash the other side crap. The other dev blogs seem to have.

[Seraph]

Originally Posted by Dr. Bombay

they're going to look awefully stupid when a game 1/5 the size ends up being the better experience

great statement. this game will show us the big difference "needed bluray" makes.

[Icarus4578]

Or how about 1/5,000th? Strider on Genesis. 8-MEG. Better than 99.99% of what's out there and what's coming. Don't give a rat's ass if you're using 500 or 5,000 MEGS (5 gig) for your stupid levels. So frigging what? He's just trying to show off. Too bad that GoW still looks better. Blu-ray ....means nothing. You can use two HD-DVD and it's done. For graphics, internal ROM is what matters, or how much space the system can hold in storage at any one given time. Besides this, what's so unique about Resistance? I'll answer that question for him: NOTHING. Guess what? It's another FPS with improved graphics. Wow. I'm so impressed.

Kiss my ass.

[diunx]

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

Or how about 1/5,000th? Strider on Genesis. 8-MEG. Better than 99.99% of what's out there and what's coming. Don't give a rat's ass if you're using 500 or 5,000 MEGS (5 gig) for your stupid levels. So frigging what? He's just trying to show off. Too bad that GoW still looks better. Blu-ray ....means nothing. You can use two HD-DVD and it's done. For graphics, internal ROM is what matters, or how much space the system can hold in storage at any one given time. Besides this, what's so unique about Resistance? I'll answer that question for him: NOTHING. Guess what? It's another FPS with improved graphics. Wow. I'm so impressed.

Kiss my ass.

can you tell me whats unique about gow? lost planet look a lot more intersting than gow IMO.

[Icarus4578]

It just looks like Resident Evil 4 mixed with FPS elements in my eyes. As far as visuals are concerned, well, there's no comparison.

I'll bet that that Resistance team.... What are they called again? Hold on. *scrolls down* ...Yeah, Insomniac Games. Bet that they couldn't do as much with 100 MEGS as Sega did with the 8 they used in Strider.

BTW, you posted directly beneath mine so there was no need to quote me.

[DBJAY]

What they don't mention is that Sony partially funds their games as their publisher, so they are not 100% independent. EA, who fully finance and publish their own work, is 100% independent.

I found this to be ironic..

"Not trying to sound like a fanboy here but the folks we work with at Sony are all honest, extremely hardworking, fair, loyal and creative. And they really know games. It?s been a great partnership."

If there is one thing Sony has proven to the community over the past several months, honesty certainly is not one of those qualities. From some of the first taget videos, to release date misinformation (spring 2006!) to just like week Kaz lied about why they removed the rumble feature from the PS3 controllers.

Creativity seems to be lacking as well. Gran Turismo HD, sequel to Genji, Untold Kingdoms are their major 1st party games for launch. That doesn't speak to creativity.

He seems to have some pretty heavy fanboy blinders on.

Better to appreciate Sony for what they are than for what they are not.

[Icarus4578]

And don't forget the fact that SCEA is anything but knowledgeable when it comes to games. They'll turn down most games if they're 2D and not made by Capcom.

[AmishNazi]

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

Or how about 1/5,000th? Strider on Genesis. 8-MEG. Better than 99.99% of what's out there and what's coming.

That's almost funny...

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

Don't give a rat's ass if you're using 500 or 5,000 MEGS (5 gig) for your stupid levels.

Of course you don't the game you're whoring is what like 8 hours long?

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

So frigging what? He's just trying to show off. Too bad that GoW still looks better.

Considering the engine is for sale there will be quite a few games that look pretty close to as good and a FEW that look better.

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

Blu-ray ....means nothing. You can use two HD-DVD and it's done.

You guys enjoy your 8 hour games and keep claiming it's the "experience" you're after, and you make it that much easier for developers as a whole to be lazy and rip us off.

Originally Posted by Icarus4578

For graphics, internal ROM is what matters, or how much space the system can hold in storage at any one given time. Besides this, what's so unique about Resistance? I'll answer that question for him: NOTHING. Guess what? It's another FPS with improved graphics. Wow. I'm so impressed.

Kiss my ass.

That's suprising for something that's really just UT FPS with improved graphics you are acting mighty impressed.

[UniGamer]

Dude why did you even bother? I could smell the bait like a mile away.
You have a blogger/developer who wasn't saying one machine is better than the other. One who wasn't using words like "bullshit". He was basically selling his game and the platform it?s on. Yet the usual reactions followed suite.

[Icarus4578]

Ummm, no, just no. He was trying to bend it in PS3's favor just because he's a Sony-exclusive developer and for no other reason. Of course he's only playing to the Sony crowd. He even admitted that he's not developing for X360, so he's not familiar with X360 development firsthand to go around prancing his personal observation about what is/isn't possible on a platform he knows nothing about firsthand. He's basically a Sony advertisement ~ seemingly friendly on the outside but poisonous on the inside.

Originally Posted by AmishNazi

That's almost funny...

Yeah, so is the fact that after less than a year after its release nobody will care for his tripe entry into an overcrowded genre which will see much better software, whereas myself and others will still be enjoying Strider.

Originally Posted by AmishNazi

Of course you don't the game you're whoring is what like 8 hours long?

Shows what you know. I can play through Strider in about 20-30 minutes. I'll tell you something else: that short time span is more fun than any FPS I've ever "experienced." And there are plenty of other examples to go around, too. Who the heck still plays Insomniac's software for the PS1? I'd wager NOBODY. They're all too busy playing MGS or whatever to care about frigging Spyro the hi-this-is-just-another-Mario64-clone-except-as-a-dragon-and-not-half-as-good title.

Originally Posted by AmishNazi

Considering the engine is for sale there will be quite a few games that look pretty close to as good and a FEW that look better.

Wow, so you mean that every consecutive year game visuals improve? Duuuuh. They do ...technologically. But not necessarily artistically. For instance, I prefer the artwork of Strider to Resistance's tired same-old been there, done that visuals which any competent develop could easily imitate.

Originally Posted by AmishNazi

You guys enjoy your 8 hour games and keep claiming it's the "experience" you're after, and you make it that much easier for developers as a whole to be lazy and rip us off.

No, being ripped off is called paying $60 for the same game that everybody is making except in a different guise.

Originally Posted by AmishNazi

That's suprising for something that's really just UT FPS with improved graphics you are acting mighty impressed.

GoW isn't a FPS. Case closed.

[AmishNazi]

Wow a Sony is evil. They ripped off Nintendo. All thier games are lame all in on post. Is that the only way you know to argue Icarus?

GoW looks good because it's made by Epic. It's engine is for sale. Everyone knows Epic makes DAMN GOOD engines.

Originally Posted by Icarus

GoW isn't a FPS. Case closed.

Mostly the engine will be used in FPS's, but since there is a lack of a mouse console side they added a third person view. Sorry though Icarus it still looks and plays like a FPS, and is what the engine was designed and will be mostly used for.

Originally Posted by OriginalPost

Just for fun, I?ll elaborate a bit more on the initial choice we made. Even though we as a company haven?t released a game on a non-Sony platform, there are plenty of people at Insomniac who have.

"

Originally Posted by Icarus

He even admitted that he's not developing for X360, so he's not familiar with X360 development firsthand to go around prancing his personal observation about what is/isn't possible on a platform he knows nothing about firsthand. He's basically a Sony advertisement ~ seemingly friendly on the outside but poisonous on the inside.

Nice way to not read the whole interview and immediately put your own slant on it.