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Orange Box Dysfunctional on the PS3?

Posted by Zonk on from the so-close-and-yet-so-far dept.

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. "

30 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder why... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While the PC and Xbox 360 versions were handled by Valve, the PS3 port was handed off to an internal team at EA.

    Aha! There's the problem!

    1. Re:I wonder why... by ThirdPrize · · Score: 3, Funny

      It was probably the Madden team.

      --
      I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
    2. Re:I wonder why... by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Specifically, EA UK. From Wikipedia, their resume:

      *Burnout Legends
      *Burnout Dominator
      *Catwoman
      *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
      *Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
      *Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
      *Untitled DICE Project
      *PS3 port of Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:I wonder why... by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Funny

      I was wondering why Gordon Freeman was carrying a football and wearing a Bulls helmet...

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    4. Re:I wonder why... by stoolpigeon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bulls helmet? Madden doesn't do basketball, and the nba is rough, but they haven't gone to helmets yet. Bills would have worked though. Let's go with that as a typo.

      --
      It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    5. Re:I wonder why... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Funny

      EA programmer: The bugs can't be fixed. Is very hard.
      EA exec: We'll just buy out Orange box the franchise then.
      EA programmer: Good. I am going on vacation.
      EA exec: You can't. We bought out your vacation days. And your soul too.

    6. Re:I wonder why... by twistedsymphony · · Score: 3, Informative
      Here are some reasons...
      • correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure someone will) but doesn't "Games for Windows Live" only work with Vista? If so that would be a very strong reason why Valve didn't sign up for it...
      • another one is that you would need to pay the $50 annual contract for a Live Gold subscription to play with your friend while most PC gamers are used to playing online for free. Also you would need to connect to MS servers for patches updates etc. while Valve has their own Steam system... EA had the same problem with the Live system back in the Xbox 1 days because they wanted to use their own servers instead of the XBL servers... eventually a compromise was reached and special provisions were made for EA but something like that may need to be worked out with Valve before you see any of their games on the Live network.
      • Finally, considering that Games for Windows Live is a "new" platform and Half Life 2 predates its buy a fair margin, they would likely have to re-build a substantial portion of the multiplayer code to be in compliance with the Live system... and that's something most developers wont bother to do.
      In all likelihood the decision to NOT support Games for Windows Live came from the fact that they would have had many many more rabbit fanboys complaining about having to use Vista and Live than they got complaints of not being able to play between PC and 360 users.
      --
      Collector's Edition
    7. Re:I wonder why... by djikster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every single PS3 game made by EA that I have played has been beyond bad in terms of sustaining a constant frame rate (demos, didn't bother to buy after playing them)! I cannot believe that EA is pumping out games on the conveyor belt without any QA, or if they do QA, their threshold for accepting a product is so good, that I do not want anything from them. Luckily, nowdays you can actually download the demo before having to buy it, so the gamers can at least taste the game before getting PO'd by its quality :)

    8. Re:I wonder why... by nahdude812 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A HUGE deal in Valve's current multiplayer engine is its anti-cheating code. My guess is that they want to keep individual environments as locked down and identical as possible so that cheaters can't exploit differences between the platforms.

      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.

      --
      Slay a dragon... over lunch!
    9. Re:I wonder why... by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · · Score: 2, Funny

      Can't be. If that were the case it wouldn't be called "The Orange Box." It'd be "Half-Life 2008" and we'd still be at Black Mesa, just with bigger textures.

    10. Re:I wonder why... by FlyveHest · · Score: 2, Funny

      In all likelihood the decision to NOT support Games for Windows Live came from the fact that they would have had many many more rabbit fanboys complaining about having to use Vista and Live than they got complaints of not being able to play between PC and 360 users.
      So, THATS where bunny-hoppin' originates!
  2. ...and multiplayer by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why people spend any money on a proprietary system is a mystery to me. There aren't nearly as many Free games of AAA production values as there are proprietary games of AAA production values.

    Go open, build a PC, Install Linux, go to town ... Even with proprietary games, not enough multiplayer games are designed for use with SDTV or EDTV output and four USB game controllers. Developers of multiplayer games for PC seem to be of the general mindset that each player has his own computer and his own copy of the game. This is often not true for multiple players living in one household. Consoles, on the other hand, allow players to share one system, one (usually larger) monitor, and one copy of the game.
  3. PRE-RELEASE by Zoidbot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What part of pre-release do they not understand.

    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!

    1. Re:PRE-RELEASE by Zoidbot · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have seen exactly this.

      If anyone picked up the free demo disc of Ratchet And Clank Future Tools Of Destruction on PS3, from Gamestop, it looked nice, but had quite bad framerate issues, and screen tearing. This was about 2 weeks prior to release.

      The final cut of the game, is perfect, with perhaps the best looking and smoothest visuals ever seen in a videogame.

      It really depends on how old the cut of the game code was, but I doubt SCEA would authorize it's release, if it's as bad as 1Up say it is.

      So I can see this playing out 2 ways.

      1/ The game comes out, and it's fine, and LOADS of trashy sites (this one included) are make to look like idiotic fanboys.

      2/ SCEA block it's release, because it's sub par.

      3/ SCEA don't block it, but it's still sub par, and then EA and Valve get it in the neck for sloppy coding (as the PS3 has been proven to be a great console, if you can be bothered to learn it).

    2. Re:PRE-RELEASE by seebs · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Er, no. The PS3 has 256MB of RAM -- VRAM doesn't count. However, the OS chews up about 72MB of that, leaving you with less, and you need extra space for SPE buffers. The 360's crappy unified architecture, in practice, gives you a lot closer to a real full 256MB of RAM -- with only about 32 taken away by the OS.

      The decision to cut back from 512MB of XDR to 256MB was a crappy decision.

      Yeah, lots of companies, developing specifically for PS3, are able to work around the memory limitations -- but some games are built around the assumption of at least 200MB available for the actual game engine.

      There's no defenders of the memory shortage who are actual PS3 programmers. There's some apologists who will admit that it's an issue, but argue that it can be worked around, but the people who claim it's not an issue are, curiously, never actually people who have developed for the target.

      --
      My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
    3. Re:PRE-RELEASE by Cowclops · · Score: 2, Informative

      Lesson: Valve is the company that makes Half Life. Steam is the method they use to distribute it. Sierra is the company that originally published Half Life 1 but has had nothing to do with it at all since then.

    4. Re:PRE-RELEASE by seebs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not under any NDAs at the moment. :)

      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?

      --
      My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  4. Depressing by Cy+Sperling · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Meanwhile, Infinity Ward managed to put out a rock solid multi-platform FPS- COD4. If they can make it look and play so great on the PS3, why can't Valve?

    1. Re:Depressing by Alphager · · Score: 4, Informative

      Meanwhile, Infinity Ward managed to put out a rock solid multi-platform FPS- COD4. If they can make it look and play so great on the PS3, why can't Valve? Because EA (and not Valve) is responsible for the PS3-port.
    2. Re:Depressing by fistfullast33l · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Somebody else has already pointed out that it was EA's fault, not really Valve's which is true. But it's also true that Infinity Ward did what other developers haven't - developed from scratch for the PS3. You can't port 360/PC code well to the PS3 platform. It's the painful truth. I love my PS3 but I fear that this kind of lack of portability really may hurt the platform.

      On the other hand, porting from the PS3 to the 360 has had some success to my knowledge. Maybe that's the way these developers should go?

    3. Re:Depressing by DDLKermit007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah just like how a game like Assassin's Creed was on the PS3 first, ported to the 360, and the PS3 version is the one that ended up with frame-rate issues XD

    4. Re:Depressing by Alphager · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So my impression so far is that Valve doesn't care enough about the PS3 to do the port themselves, or to carefully track EA progress on the contracted port or to step up after this horrible PR snafu and promise that everything will be smoothed out before release.

      So far I am not impressed with Valve and their commitment to anything besides MS platforms. Yup, they don't care about the PS3.
      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).
  5. Re:consoles are for kids ... and companies by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, what platformers are there even close to Super Mario Galaxy for Linux?

    --
    Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
  6. Precisely by fistfullast33l · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some commenters on the blogs I've read are quick to write this off as Gabe Newell hating on the PS3. I really don't think that's it. It's just that EA couldn't code for a non-Microsoft platform if it's life depended on it. Everything they put out for the PSP had bugs (two Maddens, NCAA Football, Sims 2), and now bugs on HL for the PS3. I've decided that EA couldn't code themselves out of a black box.

    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.

    1. Re:Precisely by happyemoticon · · Score: 3, 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.

    2. Re:Precisely by Smidge204 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I've decided that EA couldn't code themselves out of a black box.

      Well it certainly seems they can't code themselves out of an Orange Box...
      =Smidge=

  7. Re:consoles are for kids ... and companies by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nethack. It's the only game you'll ever need.

    --
    At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  8. EA...WTF? by Steauengeglase · · Score: 2, Funny

    "How is that port of whatever those dorks from Bellevue sent us going?"

    "Well, we've gotten it to load and we even played through the game once."

    "Yeah, whatever, excellent, I assume you will have finished play testing by noon. After that slap another Medal of Honor together, Bob, VP of Interior Design thinks it should be modeled after Hogan's Heroes and personally, I think any man who drives a Miata; well he just has fine taste. Oh, and before I forget, we fired everyone on your team. We know you can handle it or..... Well you know what I mean."

  9. Re:Oh by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I hate to break this to you, but it runs fine on Xbox 360 which is, what, 2 years old now? Video game consoles (at least non-crappy ones) have no problem running Half-Life 2 engine games whatsoever.

    --
    Comment of the year
  10. AC Framerate PS3 vs 360 by bateleur · · Score: 2, Informative

    It a controversial issue, since GameSpot claim the PS3 version performs better whilst IGN say exactly the opposite. (Having played neither version I have no idea who is correct.)