Frank Compagner describes what it takes to get a game like Killzone 2 out the door on his new blog.
"Hi there. My name is Frank. What's yours? Er, sorry, I still need to get the hang of this blog thing. I'll be the resident programmer on our squad, and as such I'm going to be pretty technical from time to time. Because I like getting technical. A lot. But not to worry, I'll try to keep things interesting for anybody curious about what it takes to get a game like Killzone 2 out the door.
Now, being paid to work on games definitely isn't the Walhalla you might think it is, but I'll tell you one thing: it ain't boring. Working on a game as big as Killzone 2 we get to have problems that few people have even thought about. All new and shiny problems, just waiting to be unwrapped so they can jump on us and make our lives miserable. One of the biggest problems we have is dealing with the sheer amount of data that's going into the game. There's about 150 people working very hard on the game right now and they're producing an ever increasing amount of high detailed models, animations, textures, audio samples and what not. All of this data goes into the central database (we use Perforce, which is a great tool, but does have its own peculiarities).
This all mostly works fine, but whenever somebody decides to do a "GetLatest" on his working files, he gets the combined effort of the other 149 people on the team copied to his computer. This can easily mean several Gigabytes of new data, which takes a considerable amount of time to download. During the download, the files on your hard disk are unlikely to be in a consistent state, so you basically have to stop working for the duration. This sucks, and we need to find a way to speed up the process, which is what I've been trying to do for the last few weeks.
We're already planning to replace our Windows32/NTFS server with a Linux64/XFS one. The new hardware has just arrived (I find myself strangely excited when looking at the rack mounted, all-black box filled with 15k rpm drives, should I seek help?), and now we need to configure it and find out how we're going to get the whole 3.5TB of our database safely onto the new server. And because few people have dealt with stuff like this, there isn't much advice to go on. This means lots of testing to make sure the server is running as fast as it can.
So I'm right in the middle of yet another test to determine the best configuration for our new Perforce server, when I get a call from my twelve year old son. He's in a panic, and I'm starting to get a little concerned, when I manage to calm him down enough to find out that the crisis is not, in fact, as life threatening as he initially made it out to be. He's recently picked up a nasty Civ IV addiction (I wonder where's he got that from), and he's just been invaded by his seemingly trustworthy neighbors, the Mongols. So now he needs my advice on how best to counter the threat. I do my best, but let me tell you: playing a game of Civ over the phone isn't the way that Sid intended. So I have to leave him fending for himself, while I finish the tests to determine the optimal size of the stripe set for the new RAID array that will hold our Perforce database (8KB seems to do the job best, but it's a close call). By the time I get home that evening his situation has deteriorated markedly, but after dinner we sit down together, and in an hour or so manage to recapture the lost ground. In an overly optimistic mood I promise him he won't have to go to bed until we crush the Hun. To his dismay, this decision is overturned another hour later by his mother when we get bogged down in a protracted fight for the Mongol capital. Still, with some more words of advice from me, he's able to finish the job himself the next day, and continues to score a space race win. Next difficulty level, please.
But back to Perforce performance. It turns out we have another gremlin lurking in our system: client-side disk fragmentation. The way that Perforce writes new files to disk under NTFS results in lots of disk fragmentation. Especially when dealing with large files (check) on disks with little free space (double check). We're working with Perforce to improve this, but that will still take a while. In the meantime we need to figure out how to improve the situation now. Really, it never gets boring when you're as obsessed with computers and performance as much as I am."
The PlayStation 3 may not have been the strongest generation for Sony, but there were still some diamonds in the rough that deserve a revisit as PS5 remasters.
Even if they could just remaster and put on PSVR2, some would still look great as VR titles and could do a whole lot to bolster the headset w these exclusives! I'd imagine the investment of reworking these titles into VR would be way less than building new games from the ground up, and they could be amazing experiences, and VR often makes flat games feel fresh again. The Resistance and Killzone games are particularly what I want to see!!
I played killzone 3 in 3d and it really changed the game per being immersive.
In vr, that would be even more awesome.
Funny you mention that... my son wanted to play some PS3 games in 3d on my PS tv and he was blown away by how good KZ3 was. It really was a great addition to the game. Im surprised there have not been more 3d games from that era being ported to the PSVR/VR2.
resistance 1-3, killzone 1-3, uncharted 1-3, uncharted golden abyss, folklore, socom 4 , motorstorm, twisted metal, MAG, heavenly sword
Killzone 2+3
Sly Thieves in Time
Crack in Time
God of War Ascension
Motorstorm
Modnation racer
Infamous 1+2
Killzone trilogy in VR would be amazing bonus points if they offer shadow fall.
There was a psvr1 Killzone project that supermassive was working on at one stage which wasn't up to scratch and Sony brand it back in house I was hoping we would see that on psvr2 eventually.
Personally I'd love to see some more love or acknowledgement of psvr2 from Sony in general it was a expensive headset and Sony barely acknowledge it's existence
The amount of work needed to remaster these games wouldn't be beneficial on a financial and business sense.. MGS4 would probably be the best bet as it would need the least amount of work!
The time is perfect for a resistance fall of man game campaign coop multiplayer
The resistance series is str8 trash to me. Socom 3 I would welcome. Or killzone MP.
Resistance was ok but Warhawk and Starhawk was better and kept me coming back for almost a decade of fun and petty revenge on the loud mouth unskilled players 🤣
Edit I loved capture the flag dropping the pot on the flag carrier was extremely satisfying as well as transforming your plane in bot form and stumping them to death 😱
The Amsterdam-based studio reflects on its humble beginnings, beloved franchises, and growth through the years.
Up there with the top tier in the industry. Love Guerrilla Games - Horizon Burning Shores is simply STUNNING.
Same. They nailed it with Horizon. The trouble is I also want a new Killzone! Can't I just have it all?!
I have yet to play Burning Shores as I just started Forbidden West (bought at launch, just unwrapped last weekend LOL) and playing on PS5.
man...I still can't believe the graphics especially now I'm playing it on my LG OLED. that graphics and with stable performance backing it up, GG really is the master of their craft!
32.7M sales in the Horizon franchise! With 8.4M coming from Forbidden West alone! Truly a hugely successful game and franchise as a whole. Looking forward to Horizon III
One year after realease HZD sold 7.6 million.
https://www.noobfeed.com/ne...
So not a drop off.
Unless you're saying a HFW should have sold as much now as HZD sold in 5 years?
It's been 3 games, this includes Call of the Mountain. Also no, its a great improvement over HZD.
lol you are comparing:
HZD: 28 February 2017 - May 2023 (6 years+)
HFW: 18 February 2022 - May 2023 (1 year+)
We will see if it surpass original number.
@shane, 2 full main games, 2 DLC add ons, 1 VR spin off game, oh and a an official LEGO set.
Not too bad for an ip that's only been on market for 6 years
Wow, very impressive. I didn't know the numbers were so high for Forbidden West. Still playing through it myself
Yooo, when I first saw that Killzone 1 footage at E3, my friends my brothers and I were like, Holy shit! When it came out, it didn't look exactly like it, but we sunk so many hours into 1 & 2.
I even liked Killzone: SF, it was a spectacle to look at, and even today it looks good. I hope they make a new one. Can you imagine how that will look, and they can get some modern FPS pointers from Bungie.
Such a wonderful studio. They deserve all their success.
The Decima Engine is absolute 🔥 I'm just mad they have abandoned Killzone.
They are probably working on mutiple projects. One of them is Horizon 3, but another is a multiplaer game and probably somehting else.
Alex DS. from Link Cable Gaming writes: "Is the PlayStation 3 retro? This is a surprisingly hard question to answer as the system definitely has the age to be considered retro, having launched in 2006, over 15 years ago now. But with it being home to so many massive games, many of which still hold up today and in fact were released for the PlayStation 4 when that console was released, make the PS3 a retro console that doesn’t feel retro."
Typically, the term retro is given to items which are at least 20 years old (but not yet 40 years old).
Quick google search
No the PS3 is not yet a retro console. But if you're gonna put 1 game from a series in this list, then LBP2 should be there instead of the original, Motorstorm PR is also an overall better game than the 1st game and to put Tools of Destruction over A Crack in Time is a blasphemy when ACiT is the best game in the series.
Cool
Great, they are using a Linux client now, things should get done faster.
great :D i deeply understand you because i work on movie editing and when we need to get big files it's stop time and go grab a beer. sounds great but when you have a deadline to meet it sucks. we switched to the linux based server and all is great
Nice to know he switched from Windows to Linux and even nicer to know he and his son are Civilization fans but i expected to hear something about Killzone from the Senior Programmer maybe a Demo Or Beta or even game progress and AI...
Rule #1 of Networking. Server = Linux/UNIX
Rule #1 of Video Editing/Graphic Design = MAC or Linux.