Resident Evil 4 PS2 Porting Problems

An anonymous reader writes "Gamesarefun is reporting that Capcom is having serious difficulty in porting Resident Evil 4, to Sony's PlayStation 2. The numbers behind the graphical differences are interesting, since Capcom sites a few specifics. Apparently the original model for Leon Kennedy in the GameCube version has had to be scaled down from 10,000 polygons to 5000 for the PS2 version, which is equal to both the poly count for Naked Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3 as well as the poly count of the typical villager in the GameCube version of RE4."

Comments

Re:PS2 that underpowered

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dreamcast came out before PS2, yet still had double the video ram PS2 has.

Incredible insight!

[cluke]

While I have no doubt that for many applications the PS2 is less powerful than the gamecube, this article is just guff.

"The PS2, does however, have a large Direct Memory Access bandwidth, which will allow the developers to provide a high amount of textures into the game."

Well, that sounds good! If it made sense! But didn't he just say we couldn't have a load of textures?
But wait! Some of the textures have had to be reduced from 24-bit to 8 or even "4-bit". Yes, folks, the PS2 is so back they are using 16 colour greyscale! Either that or he's talking out his ass.

His source? "Various Japanese publications." Interesting!

And, despite this uber-DMA, they are still shit out of luck apparently. He continues:
"But, if they choose to do this, the game's framerate will drop substantially, this is due to the PS2's, as stated before, limited texture memory capacity."

Sounds pretty technical, not sure if I can follow that!

Bottom line is, Capcom may or may not be having lots of troubles scaling down their engine for the PS2, but this article is not going to give you any insight whatsoever into the technical reasons for this.

Re:Incredible insight!

[mausmalone]

"The PS2, does however, have a large Direct Memory Access bandwidth, which will allow the developers to provide a high amount of textures into the game." Well, that sounds good! If it made sense! But didn't he just say we couldn't have a load of textures? But wait! Some of the textures have had to be reduced from 24-bit to 8 or even "4-bit". Yes, folks, the PS2 is so back they are using 16 colour greyscale! Either that or he's talking out his ass. His source? "Various Japanese publications." Interesting! And, despite this uber-DMA, they are still shit out of luck apparently. He continues: "But, if they choose to do this, the game's framerate will drop substantially, this is due to the PS2's, as stated before, limited texture memory capacity."

You're right, it pretty much is a shitty article, but here's what's really going on: First of all, the main source is an interview with Capcom graphic designers in the latest issue of CG magazine (that's the source cited in another incarnation of this article I saw elsewhere).

Second: they totally botched the details. The PS2 has a very limited ammount of space for textures being rendered, so they've had to go down to 8 and 4 bit textures in some places (probably lightmaps and/or alpha maps which can sometimes be saved with low color depth). Another alternative, since the PS2 has DMA between the system RAM and the graphics processor is to store textures in system RAM and swap them in and out of texture memory as you go. One will result in a decrease in visual quality, the other will result in a decrease in speed.

They've had to decrease the number of polygons on each model for the PS2 version. The reason why is that the PS2 rendering pipeline will require multiple passes to do most of the effects that the GCN does in one pass. The PS2 will probably end up rendering about the same number of polygons as the GCN version in the end, but it suffers from having to render the same polygons several times over.

So, even though this article is inciting all sorts of flamewars around the internet as we speak, it's really just saying that it's hard to port a game to one platform when it's been specifically designed for another.

I believe it

[metamatic]

Speaking as someone with both GameCube and PS2 systems...

It's a real shame the GameCube didn't become the world's #1 console. It's a better system than the original PS2 in almost every way... design, aesthetics, graphical capabilities, fan noise, build quality... The only thing it lacks is breadth of software.

When I have the choice, I mostly prefer to play the GameCube versions of games. Generally they're superior, though there have been some exceptions. For Splinter Cell, I decided to go with the PS2, because it had an entire extra level, and that was worth a tradeoff in graphic quality. But ultimately, there are just so many great PS2 games that aren't available for GameCube, and so few GameCube-only "must have" games, that if I had to pick only one system, it would be the PS2. (I'd miss the Metroid games terribly, though.)

Anyone know of a good games review site that specializes in comparing the same game on different consoles? It seems to me that there are a lot of people with more than one console, who would find it very useful to know which platform to pick for multi-platform games.

I suspect the DS vs PSP battle will go the same way, only more so because of Nintendo's blinkered focus on kiddy games on the GBA. Already, the PSP has more titles I want to play than my GameBoy Advance has titles I want to play. I haven't yet seen anything that makes me want a DS, since Metroid's just a demo.

Re:PS2 that underpowered

[Grey Ninja]

I've been saying for months now that the PS2 wouldn't be able to handle the game. Reason being that Resident Evil 4 is a poster child for the true power of the GameCube. PS2 lacks several things required to make the game really work.

Load times. The GameCube version of the game streams in a lot of data from the disc when navigating through levels. Moving from inside to outside is seamless, and the GameCube has been designed to minimize the effect that this has on gameplay. The PS2 on the other hand... is lucky to even load a codec conversation in MGS.

Level size. The PS2 has but a fraction of the RAM available to the GameCube. The levels in RE4 can quite often be huge, and often have some complex geometry. The closest I've seen on PS2 is MGS3, and having played both.... I assure you that the GameCube is the CLEAR winner in this case. Also of note in this case is Metroid Prime or Eternal Darkness... which both managed to stream the levels off the disc, eliminating load times completely. (In the case of Eternal Darkness, load times were artificially inserted, as the player couldn't react to the new room quick enough). At any rate, this should be a non-issue, given that I've seen many GameCube games without load times, but have yet to see a PS2 game do the same. And levels are almost always bigger on a GameCube than a PS2.

Polygons. They are the nice little things that make a 3D model. GameCube often has upward of 6 or 7 enemies attacking you simultaneously, with a high poly player model, all while rendering incredibly detailed backdrops. Again, the closest thing that I am aware of on the PS2 is MGS3, which never has more than 4 or 5 enemies attacking you... and each with significantly less polys. Also worthy of note, GameCube is still the current leader for most polygons pushed in a console game with Rebel Strike. Rebel Strike pushes upwards of 20 million polys per second, which far outdoes the closest competitor on PS2 or Xbox.

Textures. The PS2 attempts to make up for lack of memory by giving some absolutely insane memory bandwidth. This allows you to swap textures out in memory, but you will not be able to hold nearly as many as the GameCube can. GameCube also has the advantage of 6:1 texture compression. This all results in the color depth of the PS2 textures being greatly reduced. Once again, this is probably going to be related to level size.

Anyways, this is just a few reasons why RE4 on PS2 just won't work.

Re:PS2 that underpowered

[redivider]

I haven't RTFA, but I'll bet that it's mostly a developement process woe, rather than a hardware or performance limitation that is causing the frustrations.

I'll take that bet.

From TFA: "According to various Japanese publications, the new Resident Evil 4 team is encountering a few problems porting Resident Evil 4 to the PS2. Why do you ask? Hardware, Hardware, Hardware."

"One of the big issues the team over at Capcom is facing is the fact that the PS2's texture memory capacity is far smaller than the Gamecube's. In the Gamecube version of Resident Evil 4, players were treated to 24 bit textures. However, in the PS2 version, expect 8 and 4 bit textures, which is quite a downgrade."

"But no sir, it doesn't end there."

"Leon's polygon count, in order to run on the inferior PS2 hardware, will have to drop from the original 10,000 polygons to a mere 5,000, slightly more than Snake from Metal Gear Solid 3."

Sounds like hardware issues to me.

Re:PS2 that underpowered

[unclethursday]

Also note that if you are on something fast, like a PCJ motorcycle, you can actually get into areas before the area streams from the disk. For example, in Los Santos, get on a super fast bike, and drive down the eastern straight highway comming from the mountains at full speed. You can go so fast, that you will actually end up driving on the sky, with nothing around you, because the PS2 simply can't load the areas as fast as you are going through them.

I love San Andreas, but you have to be a fool, or a fanboi, or both, to not notice stuff like this happening.

It's not about sheer hardware power.

[realityfighter]

As someone who owns both systems, I can tell you that, even though their respective bits of hardware may be comparable, the Cube has some very distinct performance advantages. Most notably:

Load Times. The Cube is so fast reading and writing all it's media, that sometimes you'll blink and miss a load screen. Some games (like Donkey Konga) save every two minutes or so, but you never even see a save screen. The practical upshot is Metroid Prime's ability to stream the next area as you approach the door, resulting in no load times at all - which RE4 apparently imitates. Compare this to, for example, Simpsons Road Rage for the PS2, where you often have to wait 45 seconds to retry a 20 second time trial. Obviously, this is also a problem with the game software - you should never have to reload the entire game environment to replay a single level. But it still takes 45 seconds to load! That's about 5 seconds more than it takes my computer to boot up.

Full-Screen Antialiasing. The Cube has it, the PS2 doesn't. This means when I pop in a simple-looking "kiddy game" like Wind Waker, what I see on the screen are smooth edges. Even if the characters had only a few polys, the whole thing would look smooth because of the antialiasing. Compare this to Shadow Hearts for the PS2. Everything looks like it was bluescreened together - jagged edges everywhere. I'm sure game developers could write a bit of code to simulate antialiasing on the PS2, but on the Cube they don't have to - it makes the graphics smooth for you. This, by the way, is one of the reasons it's so damn hard to pick the zombies out of the background in a Resident Evil game.

Also, Resident Evil 0 (and also the original I think) used a 1-second full screen video loop as the background for every room in the game. This allowed all of the poly-pushing power to be put into the character models and other movable objects. This is possible on the Cube because it has a powerful 2-D engine native to the system. (I would guess that this particular technique isn't too hard to do on the Cube, because Baten Kaitos uses it also.) Guess what? The PS2 doesn't have this. It's not that it can't be done on the PS2, it's that, as a developer, you'd most likely end up having to write the graphics modules for it yourself.

I don't know much about memory buffers and poly- or texture-pushing capacities, and I'm not really sure if these differences have anything to do with the hardware itself. They could very well be optimisations in the Cube's compiler, or flaws in the PS2's OS. I do have both systems though, and just from playing both of them (a lot!) I know that there are some areas where the Cube just takes the cake. It's not too far fetched to say that RE4 exemplifies them.