Hi everyone,
Today is Gamers' Day for Sony Computer Entertainment America. We have another opportunity to show off Resistance:Fall of Man to a crowd of both consumer and enthusiast journalists. Our plan is to present a cool tech demo that helps explain what the PS3's SPUs are doing in the background during some of our larger battle scenes. We’re using a Manchester, England environment where about 15 of your allies are under heavy fire from around 20 or so Chimera. There are bullets flying everywhere, explosions going off left and right - basically chaos. During gameplay I plan to pause the action in mid battle and begin stepping through the game frame by frame, moving the camera around the scene to check out lots of stuff that players will almost certainly miss when playing real time. I’ll talk about the many processes we send to the SPUs where they're all taken care of at the same time (physics, navigation, collision checks, lighting calculations, special effects processing, etc). I’ll also explain how running these processes in parallel simply allows us to do much more per frame than we could do in the past. And doing more per frame means more details and moving parts in the scene. Supporting these details in the game helps make the action more vivid and creates a greater sense of immersion.
Just as important though, we’ll be showing the finished game. Yes, we've wrapped it up and it is now taking the final steps toward becoming an actual packaged game on the shelves during the launch. That's just a month away!
And now that we're finished with the game I have some more updates for everyone - updates that were the result of the final weeks’ of work on the game.
Update on disc size
I'm probably adding fuel to the fire by bringing up this issue again. But the debate over Resistance's size on disc has been raging for a while and I want to give you guys the final number. Earlier I gave some very specific reasons why we were over 20Gb - all legit then and now. And I've also been careful to say publicly that this size was the current size of the game whenever I brought it up. And this week on Neogaf’s forums the topic was brought up yet again as part of the thread on an interview Phil Harrison did.
As we moved into the final week of finishing up the game we made two big changes which dropped the size of the final disc to just over 16Gb – still pretty large nonetheless. What were the changes? We removed PAL movies and further improved our data compression. It turns out that the NTSC movies (not HD, but NTSC just in case Lachamania is reading this) could be converted on the fly to look really good on PAL TVs and therefore we saved space by removing them. It's something that was a pleasant surprise. Why did we bother when we had so much space to work with? It simply saved us time when burning discs. When you're making revs every day and distributing them to a large test team, saving burn time is crucial. We could have left the PAL movies on disc and not improved compression to keep the size around 20Gb but that would have been inefficient and a little disingenuous. We don’t want to pad the disc just to get it to a certain size. Whatever the game needs is what we put on the disc. Still, having a lot of space on Bluray means that we’re including things we wouldn’t have been able to include if we had had to use dual layer DVDs: higher res game assets and more of them, HD movies, higher fidelity sounds, more dialogue, all languages on one disc, etc.
And of course, as others have pointed out in the many threads on this topic, the debate over disc size is a little silly. What really matters is whether your experience in the game is fun.
720p versus 1080p
We’ve gotten a few questions about whether Resistance will be running in 1080p or 720p. In fact, AssassinX01 brought this up in his comments on my last blog.
Over the past few months we've told all of the enthusiast magazines and websites that we will TRY for 1080p. And indeed we did try. But when we began making our final discs we made the decision to release at 720p. Why? Native 1080p (versus 720p scaled to 1080p) uses much more VRAM than 720p. When we finished up a few of our bigger levels at the very end of the development process we realized that we would have had to steal VRAM from some of our characters and environments to run in native 1080p. Some of you who aren’t familiar with hardware in general may be asking “So didn’t you say you freed up more space?” Well yes, but VRAM and disc space are two completely separate things. VRAM/RAM is the 512Mb of dynamic memory allocated to game assets at runtime versus the 25Gb or so of permanent storage on a single-layer Blu-Ray.
Anyway, we felt it was best to stay at 720p and that, at least while 1080p televisions are still relatively scarce, we should focus on implementing 1080p for our future games. Keep in mind too that Resistance still looks great on 1080p TVs even though it’s running in 720p. All 1080P TVs have a hardware scaling mechanism which scales the input signal to the TV’s native resolution. In fact, much of the non direct-feed (i.e. handheld cam) footage of Resistance floating around on the net has been of 1080p TVs using Resistance’s 720p signal.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game also looks really good on standard NTSC (480i) TVs. I think it’s easy to ignore the fact that not every consumer owns an HD TV. But we made sure to thoroughly test Resistance for text legibility and overall contrast on different types of NTSC sets.
As far as the 1080p question goes, we at Insomniac realize that naysayers will have a field day with this one. Yet keep in mind that developing a launch title is a fluid process – things change all of the time. That’s what makes this kind of “on the edge” development both fun and terrifying. Ultimately what matters though is that you end up with a game that looks, sounds and plays great. And for Resistance: Fall of Man, I believe we’ve succeeded.
What about video chat?
Nope, no video chat in Resistance. I think that ninjatech on the IGN boards nailed it in this thread
http://boards.ign.com/ps3_general_bo...29334745/p1/?7 . He pointed out that Kaz Hirai’s comment about video chat was not referencing Resistance but “what abilities games in general will have.” Ninjatech is exactly right. Resistance does not support video chat but undoubtedly other games on the PS3 will. Perhaps our future games will as well.
Now for some Q&A
Man, the floodgates have opened - there have been a lot of great questions from you guys. But seriously, there are a LOT of questions. There have also been some very good ones showing up on Neogaf as well regarding the multiplayer lobby - some of which I will answer below.
Because I know you guys don't want to read a novel I’ll answer a limited number today. Then I’ll post another blog fairly soon to try and answer the rest. Here we go:
totao923 posted:
"question ted, whats the limit of people per rosters in a clan???"
TP: Hey totao923. We have a pretty high limit on the number of people in a clan – 200. I hope there are clans that get this big!
Arztek posted:
"Great answers, Ted. I have a question for you, Do you ever see the character's physical model in first person? Better yet, do you see the character's legs or even his shadow when looking down?”
TP: Sorry Arztek. We aren’t supporting this. We found though that you really don’t notice when playing. You should try it out and see what you think. But there IS a way to see the character you’re playing – play co-op with a friend! You’ll be able to see your entire character from your friend’s perspective.
porch_monkey_15 posted:
"Insomniac has made alot of excellent ground braking games past the years but i think RESISTANCE-FALL OF MAN is going to over take all of them with its great graphics and action packed story line but im still wondering if RESISTANCE is going to be made for the xbox360 too and will it be on xboxlive to play online please write back"
TP: Hi porch_monkey_15 – that’s an easy one. We’ve made Resistance: Fall of Man exclusively for the PS3. That means you’ll never see it on Xbox360 and you won’t be able to play it on Xbox Live. But Resistance features a huge online multiplayer component. We’ve got 6 different online modes, most of which support 40 online players at once. And you don’t have to sign up for a service to play Resistance online – it’s free!
daviddoel posted:
Do you consider the R&C franchise a platformer, or more of an action/adventure title? I know there has been a lot of debate about this subject on these boards, and I've always considered it an Action Platformer. I would just like to know your views on this, and why you believe its a platformer or not. Thanks!
TP: Hello daviddoel. That’s a question we’ve debated here over the years. And a lot of journalists have had trouble fitting the Ratchet & Clank franchise into any particular genre. Certainly the series has its roots in platforming – Ratchet jumps and glides with the best of ‘em. But the Ratchet games we’ve made so far have borrowed heavily from RPGs, shooters and more traditional adventure games. Personally, I think that because the gameplay is so varied, the Ratchet franchise fits better into the action/adventure category. This category is a lot broader in terms of its definition (though I don’t think there is an official definition for any genre).
toxicity08 posted:
Will Ratchet and Clank 5 be more like up your arsenal or will it be more liked deadlocked? Will the weapons be upgradable like in the last 3 games?
TP: Hi toxicity08. Sorry, you’ll just have to wait and see. We don’t want to give out information on the game too early. If you can wait for another few months, we should have a lot to divulge.
ANBUKaptain posted:
“What do you think of the DualShock/Sixaxis setup?”
TP: Hey ANBUKaptain. I’ll answer each of your questions separately. First, we’ve all been pleasantly surprised at how good the Sixaxis feels. It’s much lighter than the old DualShock and the analog sticks have a smaller deadzone. The smaller deadzone means better camera control which is crucial for a shooter like Resistance: Fall of Man.
“…And, which is your favorite controller that you've used?”
TP: I think everyone at Insomniac would have a different answer. If you asked me this years ago, my own answer would have been the NES controller – but my hands were smaller back then
. These days I really like the Sixaxis, followed by the dual shock. Why? I like the size – both fit comfortably and my hands never get cramped. I also think that the button layout is ingenious. They’re all within easy reach and don’t force you to take your thumbs off of the stick. Furthermore, there aren’t too many buttons to deal with. I get confused when a controller has buttons all over the place.
“I was also wondering about your opinion on the lack of rumble in the Sixaxis is. I enjoy rumble, I think it helps the immersion of the game, do you agree with this? Do you think it's bad or good that it's not in the Sixaxis, or do you have no opinion?”
TP: Honestly, I don’t miss it. We used the rumble feature for our Ratchet games on PS2 but it always ended up being a lot of work for little return.
“And finally, I'm not even sure you've used a Wiimote, but I was wondering what your thoughts on Nintendo's new controller are. Do you think that they made a good choice, and do you think the controller will make for more intuitive games (even if you aren't developing them)?”
TP: I can’t wait to try it. I didn’t get a chance to check it out at this year’s E3. But I think it’s great that Nintendo is going out on a limb and experimenting with alternate forms of user input. Whether it’s Nintendo’s controller, Eyetoy or new uses for headsets, alternate user input devices are great ways to inspire unique game concepts.
Devon_Vice posted:
“Are you (Insomniac) paying for and running the servers for this game? If so, in five years when nobody is really playing anymore, will you shut the servers down?”
TP: Hi Devon_Vice. To answer your first question, Sony is running the servers. As far as whether or not they would get shut down if no one is playing the game – I hope we never have to face that scenario!
“Also, you mention TGC and how playing people in America was a testament to the online of PS3. I would ask, if 40 people were in a game and all of their upload speeds were 95bps, would the game run smooth?”
TP: If you’re talking about 95Kbps, yes, the game will run smoothly with 40 players at that upload speed.
“How many times have you actually tested this in real world conditions with 40 people of varying speeds of broadband playing together?”
TP: We do this every day between Insomniac and Sony. We’ve run thousands of 40 player games with varying connection speeds. Between our testers and Sony’s testers we’ve used many flavors of DSL and cable lines. And just to make sure the game will be bulletproof we consistently introduce artificial latency and packet loss during the test games. Finally we’ve tested extensively over Wi-Fi. And everything is working great!
“Can we create our own rooms, or do we have to play on your servers (if individual servers is the way you go)?”
TP: While everyone will be playing on the Sony servers, you can create your own customized (unranked) games. You can also mark them as private so you can have a select group of friends playing with you.
Matrix_Peter posted:
Will the final game offer Split-Screen ONLINE play, much like Ratchet&Clank:UYA?
TP: Hey Matrix_Peter. Nope, no split screen online this time.
FFObsessed86 posted:
“May I ask, as the PS3 has been delayed in Europe til March, will the European version of Resistance contain any extras, bonus content etc for us poor filthy Europeans to enjoy? Or are you just gonna go hardcore on the next Ratchet?”
TP: Hello FFObsessed86. Our plan is to release Resistance in Europe as it is now. Our plan from the beginning has been to create a worldwide disc – one that supports all territories. It’s already packed with a lot of content – and some great unlockables (you will hear about these soon).
“Also, will Resistance be just the one game? Or is it going to be a new franchise? Personally, I'd love to see a full blown Sci-Fi one!”
TP: Nope. Resistance is the first chapter in a much larger story.
“Any plans to create any new IPs after the next Ratchet game?”
TP: We’re always looking to create new IP. It’s what we do! But because we’re relatively small (160 people) we have to be careful about working on too many projects at once. Therefore we’ll wait until the time is right to start another franchise.
clintar posted:
“I forgot to ask something. Watching a video of you explaining the game at TGS you sure looked to be under the weather or maybe just jet-lagged/exhausted. It made me wonder. How is it for you, going through the whole TGS showing? What's that whole thing like from a developer's perspective?”
TP: Hi clintar. TGS is always a lot of fun. First there’s the city itself – Tokyo is just amazing. From an American’s perspective the architecture and culture are fascinating. Someday I’d love to take a month and just wander around that city. The Tokyo Game Show itself is a madhouse. You probably saw pictures of how crowded it was. For developers it’s exhilarating to see people trying the games for the first time. And at the same time it’s challenging doing one interview after another especially with the time change. But I still consider us at Insomniac extremely fortunate to have had such great exposure in Japan – that’s thanks to Sony Japan’s support of our games. Whether it’s tiring to show our games off incessantly, it always ends up being worth it!
Warabit0 posted:
“Will I be able to take a friend into online multiplayer as a "guest" similar to Halo 2?”
TP: Good question Warabit0. If you’re referring to split screen online, we don’t support that. But if you’re not playing split screen you can invite friends to join you in your online games. What you can do is first create a buddy list. This is a list of players you like playing with. The list is persistent – i.e. it’s available every time you log in. You can invite players from your buddy list to join a party you’ve created. Then you can join other games with your party. You can have up to 20 people in a party. This means that you and 20 close friends could play as a team against 20 other players in ranked or unranked matches.
gofreak from Neogaf asked:
"Can you clarify at all re. the in-game buddy list? Is that leveraging the PNP buddy list from the XMB with some Resistance-specific functionality, or is it completely independent? Also, can you comment on in-game messaging to people on your buddy list - is that possible? There's some confusion over that spawning from the Eurogamer article, and whether you can actually access the XMB buddy list anymore in-game, and communicate with friends from there. "
TP: Hey gofreak. The buddy list is specific to Resistance. And we decided not to bother people in-game with messages. If you have a new message sent to you while you’re in a game, you'll see your "buddy list" tab flashing when you re-enter the lobby after playing a game. The buddy list tab is where you can access your friends, ignore list, messages, etc.
Doom_Bringer from Neogaf asked :
"I haven't played a console FPS online so please answer. How are they going to handle people who team kill and talk trash? Team killers are especially a big problem cause they keep rejoining (at least in BF 1942 server I play in). Since the servers are going to be handled by Insomniac who is going to moderate them? Is there an auto-kick or auto ban featuer built in (like if a person gets a score of -4 he is automatically kicked and if he rejoins and does it a couple more times that person gets banned...)"
TP: Hi Doom_Bringer. In ranked games, friendly fire isn’t enabled. This means that there won’t be any team kills. Of course if you’re playing custom (unranked) games you can set friendly fire to “on” or “off”. If someone is really bothering you can put them on your “ignore” list as well. If you REALLY don’t like playing with strangers you can create private (unranked) games for you and a select group of friends. Down the road we also hope to release some tools that will help players self-moderate.
Seriously what the hell does two years do, nothing. Its good to hear your excited Electro UK 
I'll need to hide it aswell, for just a while, my parents don't like me having those things... though I don't see how I can be infulenced by saving my planet and killing off evil aliens...
or maybe all the time depends on the side but thats besides the point. I think rating games and keeping them from children who are able to actually handle mature content is just lame.
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