Orange Box Dysfunctional on the PS3? 154
Via Next Generation, a preview of the PS3 version of the Orange Box . 1up is the site running the piece, and it's notable because it's so incredibly negative. PS3 fans may have some frustrations in store when the game pack releases soon: "After spending a significant amount of time with a near final version of the PS3 game, it's apparent that this version suffers from a number of technical flaws, which at best merely hinder game play and at worst make the experience downright unplayable. Framerate is a consistent issue throughout the Half-Life series of games included in The Orange Box. One moment you'll be cruising through the game at 30 frames per second and the next you'll be enjoying a slideshow of series protagonist Gordon Freeman cruising down the river. "
I wonder why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aha! There's the problem!
...and multiplayer (Score:3, Insightful)
PRE-RELEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
I get EA are funing today. I also expect 1UP to be precluded from ever seeing unfinished code again.. Talk about killing your buisness..
Slate it, if it hits the shelves like this, but lets at least wait until then, before passing judgement!
Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:consoles are for kids ... and companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PRE-RELEASE (Score:1, Insightful)
But when release is supposed to be so soon, there's only so much you can do to actually release it. Problems that exist in previews and demos often AREN'T fixed by release. Especially when the release is merely weeks away.
Face it, chances are the PS3 won't be able to get a bug-free Source engine. This speaks more to how insanely difficult Sony made PS3 development than anything else. Either it's going to get delayed even further, past when it would have mattered, or the final release will contain these bugs. Bugs take time to be fixed, and when the bugs are probably caused by the PS3 itself, it may take a long time to find workarounds.
Labeling something a "beta" doesn't absolve responsibility for fixing bugs.
Precisely (Score:3, Insightful)
Fault lays about 90% on EA and about 10% on Valve for trusting EA's coders. If this actually is the case, then it definitely will tarnish Valve's reputation which has been pretty good (barring initial Steam issues) to this point.
Re:Precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were to bet, Valve probably made a pragmatic decision because they had nobody in-house who knew enough about the PS3 to do the port. Their roots are in PC gaming, and from what I understand, they have a very dedicated culture. The chances that one of their star developers would learn to write for the PS3 just for fun are slim. Then, EA says, "Oh, sure, we've got people who can do the port!" and of course, because they're a bonehead marketing company with little respect for programmers, this turns out to be an exaggeration or an outright mistake.
Re:Oh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
So far I am not impressed with Valve and their commitment to anything besides MS platforms.
Or more realistically: being a pure microsoft-shop they do not have the necessary knowledge to port the orange box to ps3. Makes sense to outsource that work (especially if you don't believe the ps3 is going to be important).
Re:Depressing (Score:1, Insightful)
Okay
Valve hasn't done ANY non-Windows work (and I include the 360 as a Windows platform do to the similarity on the APIs). I don't see HL2 running on the Wii, and it certainly has sold more units than the 360 or PS3.
Yes, considering that their primary market is (and probably will remain) PCs, it makes sense for them to do the 360 dev in-house (again, assuming the APIs are pretty close). On the other hand, since Sony has consistently said that developing for the PS3 requires the right mindset, and since EA claimed to have done it before (for various values of "done"), on paper it made sense for Valve to hand off development for the only other platform this generation that would be capable of supporting HL2.
Its not Valve's fault for EA screwing up royally.
Its not Sony's fault for EA screwing up royally.
Its EA's.
Re:PRE-RELEASE (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that, in the absence of Sony Pictures, the PS3 would have had 512MB of XDR, no hypervisor, and a DVD drive, and would have cost about $100-200 less at launch. They might well still be on the original design, which wouldn't have been remade four times to try to reduce costs, games would have come out a lot sooner, and so on. They might even have been able to not do the "one SPE disabled" thing which not only gimps the system directly, but also makes it impossible to use SPE affinity correctly -- since there's no way to predict at compile or design time where there will be adjacent SPEs.
Price savings would have come from not needing to push blu-ray (what a crock!) and not needing to spend nearly as much effort on the hypervisor and virtualization code; there would be more available memory, and the savings on using a more standard medium would have EASILY covered the cost of giving the machine a slightly roomier memory footprint -- which would have solved one of the biggest problems developers seem to be running into.
Having enough processor power and raw speed is great, but if you haven't got enough memory for enough data to keep the CPU busy, who cares?
Re:I wonder why... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I wonder why... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides they are right about console controller vs mouse/keyboard for control. Average mouse/keyboard users can out-control excellent console controller users. The very best console users would not be able to hold their own against average or above average PC users, this is why PC users don't tend to use game controllers on their PC any more. You may be more comfortable with a keyboard and your friend may be more comfortable with a controller, but you're going to out-control him for sure.