Crysis on consoles?

[tomos]

read yesterday that they want to port the game to the PS3. i can see a good port working there due to the untapped potential of the cell. But, is there a point of porting it to the 360?

[anephric]

A port is a port is a port. Anything can be made to work on anything else if it's cut down and reworked enough. Crysis would have to be cut down severely on either platform just because of the diminutive amount of RAM available (even if you stream textures), which is most certainly less on PS3 once the OS footprint is taken into account, even if it's been optimised these days.

If 360/PS3 Crysis ends up being like the consolelised versions of Far Cry, I don't know why anyone would bother anyway.

[jester]

Was FarCry out on the the PS3 though? I understand Farcry 2 is coming out for 360/PS3. Will be interesting to see what it looks like.

What with this and another recent thread I can see PS3 and 360 owners banding together against PC Gamers.

[Terribly_Mauled]

Far Cry neve rmade it to PS3, no. There was just no point. The port was optimised for the original Xbox, and wasnt anything like the PC version anyway, so thats the best you can hope for for Crysis on PS3. Far Cry 2 was announced for PC first, but seeing as its also on Consoles its likely to have been built for those platforms from the ground up.

[Drysolder]

Crytek have already said it would be a cut down port on both 360 and PS3, and that means NO DX10 mode equivalent.

IMHO, the DX10 mode is the USP for Crysis, and agree with anephric - what's the point if you can't translate just how much of a difference DX10 makes to Crysis.

FarCry 2 is not being developed by Crytek, and I think it's being developed using the GRAW engine.

[jester]

FarCry on PC was one the best games ever. Adored it even when the stupid monster section turned up. As stated in the other thread I have abandoned the high end PC as a games platform as fed up with upgrades and configuration changes etc.

My opinion is that unless you spend at least 1K on a gaming rig you will be better off on either console (360/PS3 that is). Yes it may be better but we are talking degrees of seperation though, especially if built from the ground up rather than a lazy port.

[anephric]

I haven't played Crysis (I've watched a lot of footage, though), but considering most of the DX10 stuff was hacked for DX9 with (supposedly) only a minimal performance hit, I think the Vista/DX10 platform is pretty overrated at the moment. Far Cry 2's supposed to look pretty amazing considering (it's not Crytek and the Ubi games were pap), but who knows.

[RomerojpgX]

Urrrgghhh Crysis on a joypad, slit your wrists now!

You should be forced to get a Mouse and Keyboard with the game if it comes out on consoles.

[anephric]

Conversely, if you're not a PC Kid who frottages himself on pictures of Fatal1ty posing with his latest monstrous branded gaming mouse, joypad is just fine.

[Adge]

I'm waiting for the DS port

[Bish]

Urrrgghhh Crysis on a joypad, slit your wrists now!

You should be forced to get a Mouse and Keyboard with the game if it comes out on consoles.
Surely it depends on what you are used to, I've been playing FPS games on consoles for ages so I'm used to using a pad. I downloaded the demo of Crysis and it seemed totally weird using the keyboard for various actions although the mouse wasn't too bad.

[Terribly_Mauled]

The Crysis manual has a keypad layout for the 360 Controller in it ;)

[KRW]

Surely the only reason they'll be thinking about porting it, is because its only sold about 14 copies?

[RomerojpgX]

Crysis has sold a fair few copies from what I saw, nothing compared to console games mind you, not even close I suspect.

Crysis on a next gen console is easily possible, you may loose a few effects, but hell its not that much better than the console shooters, just some fancy effects.

Surely it depends on what you are used to, I've been playing FPS games on consoles for ages so I'm used to using a pad. I downloaded the demo of Crysis and it seemed totally weird using the keyboard for various actions although the mouse wasn't too bad.

Yup if you are only used to pad then its maybe harder to get into Mouse and Keyboard, some people never ever get used to anything other than pads.

But pads will never be anywhere near as good as a mouse, I used to wipe out everyone when I was on mouse and Board agasint 5 people on pads on Quake 3 on dreamcast :D

I have never played a FPS with pad that I thought worked anywhere near good, Halo esspecially is awful on a pad.

But many never even try anything other than a pad, so they will never know I guess. Or again they just cannot get used to doing it the strange PC way :D

I like being able to shoot people where I want to, in the eye from a mile away with a mouse :D with a pad, thats damn hard and some games not possible at all.

[KRW]

I thought Crysis bombed. Not sure what the figures are like now, but I thought its performance was generally regarded as disapointing, hence the sudden interest in porting it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/17/hardware-geeks-fail-bump-crysis

[jester]

Urrrgghhh Crysis on a joypad, slit your wrists now!

You should be forced to get a Mouse and Keyboard with the game if it comes out on consoles.

I was the staunchest advocate of mouse/keyboard combo for FPS there ever was. I was the first in my group of freinds to migrate from keyboard to mouse when quake replaced Doom as the FPS of choice, that was when we lugged half a dozen computers around from house to house and got a coax peer to peer novell network running :nuts:. Ahhh them were the days....

...back on topic, I had tried in the past to use a pad for FPS on consoles and failed dismally until I played drakes fortune, it was like a halfway house if you like. I then moved onto COD4 and after half an hours pererverance I would not go back. I think its becasue more buttons are immediately under your fingers.

[puddleduck]

I thought Crysis bombed. Not sure what the figures are like now, but I thought its performance was generally regarded as disapointing, hence the sudden interest in porting it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/17/hardware-geeks-fail-bump-crysis

Wouldn't suprise me - great demo, and I enjoyed it, but it needs a £150 hardware on a new video spend to get the best out of it.

Can't see if working on a console at all, as even a top of the range PC can't handle it, so it would have to be cut down pretty drastically.

My plan was to buy it when it dropped to a fiver in the bargain bins :)

[RobDickinson]

Crysis bombed sales wise, which makes it odd they'd port it to a console which is expensive and not selling software.

Neither the 360 nor the PS3 are up to DX10 graphics either. 360 is closer but its still a DX9 part mostly.

[SqueakyG]

IMHO, the DX10 mode is the USP for Crysis, and agree with anephric - what's the point if you can't translate just how much of a difference DX10 makes to Crysis.
Does DX10 make a difference to Crysis? The visual difference between DX9 and 10 has been minimal in games so far -- tech forums are filled with almost identical screenshots that show how eagle-eyed you must be to spot differences.. But the performance difference between DX9 and 10 can be about 30%.

I haven't played Crysis myself (Bioshock is the main game I saw this phenomenon on). But several reviews pointed out that it's also true of Crysis, and suggested that gamers may as well play in DX9 mode to get a performance increase.

If it's a choice between an extra 20 frames per second, or slightly shinier leaves, I'll take the fps.

[SqueakyG]

If 360/PS3 Crysis ends up being like the consolelised versions of Far Cry, I don't know why anyone would bother anyway.
If you mean in terms of graphical quality, I think a console port would sell very well. Only a minority of PC gamers can play Crysis at top settings -- the rest have to compromise the settings rather a lot. Also, remember that there are millions of console gamers out there who don't even touch PC gaming, and they are absolutely still impressed with Xbox 360 quality graphics.

If you mean that gameplay would be compromised, you'd be right. A console's memory would not be able to hold the huge maps, and the game would become a cut-down "lite" version of Crysis, just like Far Cry: Instincts on the Xbox.

I thought that was a pretty fun game though. Like I said, console-only gamers play in a different arena. You could call it lower standards. But I dunno.

[Terribly_Mauled]

At its most basic level, DX10 Crysis features denser jungle and foilage.
Thats about it. ;)

[Drysolder]

At its most basic level, DX10 Crysis features denser jungle and foilage.
Thats about it. ;)

And the more complex light diffusion, better water particle effects, increased physics calculation (building deformation, etc)... I could go on...

I would agree with the majority of comments on any number of forums about the differences being very subtle, but taken as a whole they are noticable.

Performance-wise, I noticed a massive fps jump just by using up to date gfx drivers.

[AKPiggott]

It would be good to port it.

The one thing about PC gaming that I don't miss in the least is trying to get games like this to run optimally on your system. By the time you actually get to play the sodding thing, you've already been tinkering with it for hours and it's probably time to go to bed.. Since purchasing a 360, I might now take the pick-up-and-play nature of console gaming for granted... and why not? I can't be arsed to waste precious free time installing/configuring games and making sure all my drivers are up-to-date etc.

[Drysolder]

It would be good to port it.

The one thing about PC gaming that I don't miss in the least is trying to get games like this to run optimally on your system. By the time you actually get to play the sodding thing, you've already been tinkering with it for hours and it's probably time to go to bed.. Since purchasing a 360, I might now take the pick-up-and-play nature of console gaming for granted... and why not? I can't be arsed to waste predious free time installing/configuring games and making sure all my drivers are up-to-date etc.

I'd agree with that, m8 - had a big problem getting Unreal 3 to run because it was conflicting with another piece of software, so I thought sod it, and took the thing back to the shop.

[AKPiggott]

If you mean that gameplay would be compromised, you'd be right. A console's memory would not be able to hold the huge maps, and the game would become a cut-down "lite" version of Crysis, just like Far Cry: Instincts on the Xbox.

I haven't actually played Crysis (watched a mate play it on his PC for three minutes or so) but if consoles can handle huge outside enviornments in games like Oblivion, Assassin's Creed, Just Cause and GTAIV (presumably)... then why not Crysis?

[tobiasboon]

Crysis bombed sales wise, which makes it odd they'd port it to a console which is expensive and not selling software.

Neither the 360 nor the PS3 are up to DX10 graphics either. 360 is closer but its still a DX9 part mostly.

It would still sell more than the PC version, check out some figures for Unreal Tournment 3 between the PC and PS3 versions, considering the PS3 version has only been released in the States so far. They would certainly make more money even just releasing it on the PS3.

As for the graphics, DX10 doesn't actually add a lot bar a couple of features that can be approximated visually using DX9. DX10 was supposed to add more a more efficient way of doing things, for example processing more effects in a single pass rather than requiring two or more passes to achieve the same effect, but it just hasn't turned out like that if Crysis performance is anything to go by. The reason the Xenos is labelled as a DX9/10 hybrid is because it uses unified shaders, not much beyond that and certainly nothing visually, mainly because the visual difference between the two standards is so minor. The PS3 is harder to classify (although in isolation we all know RSX is not as powerful as Xenos) since it uses Open GL and can basically be written to do whatever they want it to do (although it features discrete as opposed to unified pixel and vertex units). The SPE's on board the Cell might also give it the edge as they can muster a very healthy amount of shader power if this paper (http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf) is to be believed. Considering the RSX is roughly equivalent to a 7900GT, this paper talks about 5 of the SPE's delivering shader power equivalent to roughly a 7800GTX (roughly as fast as the RSX basically) with a quite substantial lack of efficiency (27% time spent waiting is the figure in the article). This might well be leveraged to help with some of Crysis's more exotic looking scenes where lots of shader work is going on but who knows.

Unfortunately even with the extra shader grunt, as has been mentioned, lack of system memory in both cases would be the killer to the massive world as it stands, although I'm not sure how far streaming might go to counter this (anyone?).

Has this even been officially announced by anyone yet? Until it is I would certainly not bet on it coming out. Also, as has been mentioned, why wouldn't there be a 360 version? The PS3, while potentially marginally more powerful than the 360 when used correctly, doesn't really have any hard and fast advantages over the 360 to aid it in running Crysis as it is on the PC, at least in terms of the size and scope of the areas which is the big draw, as well as the main hurdle for the consoles. I get the funny feeling this is all rumour ignited by that streaming software "running" Crysis on Linux on the PS3, who knows though. The PC version didn't impress me much beyond the visuals so I certainly wouldn't be bothered if the consoles never saw a port of it or even a cut down version ala Instincts.

Time will tell ofc, it's not something I'm particularly excited about after playing the PC version, and the multiplayer is pretty dire in my experience as well. I guess it might be quite interesting to see it done from a tech pov, but not much beyond that.

[KRW]

I can't be arsed to waste predious free time installing/configuring games and making sure all my drivers are up-to-date etc.

I think it does depend on how much free time you have. From what i've seen of PC gaming, you have to like the hardware/configuration side of things as much as the gaming side, to the point where the configuration, and trying to make it run at its best on different settings actually becomes the game itself.

Like the difference between someone who likes driving and someone who likes driving kit cars that they have built themselves. Nothing wrong with it, just not for me.

[AKPiggott]

I think it does depend on how much free time you have. From what i've seen of PC gaming, you have to like the hardware/configuration side of things as much as the gaming side, to the point where the configuration, and trying to make it run at its best on different settings actually becomes the game itself.

Definitely, before I entered full-time work I used to enjoy putting PCs together and setting them up etc. Now I'm a grown-up who has to fend for himself alongside a nine-till-five, I just can't be arsed with it all.

[Drysolder]

Has this even been officially announced by anyone yet? Until it is I would certainly not bet on it coming out. Also, as has been mentioned, why wouldn't there be a 360 version?

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/30/crytek-says-360-and-ps3-cant-handle-crysis/

This report from 2006 is from Crytek's Bernd Diemer at Leipzig where he kinda states that if they were to do something it would have to be based off of the DX10 version of the game.

But I'd certainly agree with you on the blandness of the game, outside of the initial jungle encounters, once the aliens have been introduced and you've been through the ship, it all gets a bit dull.

[AKPiggott]

Why are the best looking ones always so superficial?

[tomos]

isnt crysis (just like far cry) basically a tech demo? "hey, look what our engine can do" kinda thing.

if people buy it for their games then they win in the end. it looks spectacular and runs quite smoothly IMO . i'm still redoing the ferris wheel bit on cod4 on veteran to play much of it yet. what i did play though was with my 360 controller :)

[Adge]

Crysis sells the engine onto other developers as well as the game to high street consumers, so there is a revenue stream there.

[tobiasboon]

isnt crysis (just like far cry) basically a tech demo? "hey, look what our engine can do" kinda thing.
Hmm not sure, I mean the original CryENGINE was used in only 2 non-Ubisoft games according to its wiki entry:


Far Cry (2004, PC) - Crytek, Ubisoft
Far Cry Instincts (2005, Xbox) - Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft
Far Cry Instincts: Evolution (2006, Xbox) - Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft
Far Cry Instincts: Predator (2006, Xbox 360) - Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft
Far Cry Vengeance (2006, Wii) - Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft
Aion: The Tower of Eternity (2007, PC) - NCsoft, NCsoft
Special Force 2 (2007, PC) - Hezbollah


ID Tech 4 (the Doom 3 engine) was generally believed to have been used in Doom 3 as a showcase title and had moderately better success as a licensed engine than the CryENGINE and ofc Valve's Source engine was showcased extremely well in Half-Life 2 and went on to be used in quite a few games. So far the CryENGINE 2 hasn't been picked up by any game software houses according to its wiki entry and until the hardware is available to run the game comfortably with some of the more advanced details enabled, the engine of choice this generation will probably remain the Unreal Engine 3 which ofc runs Unreal Tourney 3 and Gears of War plus a number of other relatively high profile titles with a combination of great visuals and great performance across a number of platforms. With Crysis bombing fairly badly sales wise, performance being a major problem for a lot of people and the hype surrounding the first "proper" DX10 title and the terrible performance under the DX10 API in the vast majority of cases, I don't think it will have done the engine any favours as far as securing licensees in the short to medium term. :(

[AKPiggott]

isnt crysis (just like far cry) basically a tech demo? "hey, look what our engine can do" kinda thing.

You can say exactly the same thing about all of id's games and the first Unreal game....

Dunno if I'd quite lump Far Cry in that category because the mercenary fights were cool.... shame about the crap monsters though.

[anephric]

If you mean that gameplay would be compromised, you'd be right. A console's memory would not be able to hold the huge maps, and the game would become a cut-down "lite" version of Crysis, just like Far Cry: Instincts on the Xbox.

Yep, exactly: cut-down on all the free-roaming (the whole point of Far Cry) and send the player down "corridors" of beach and jungle that if they dare to step away from, invulnerable helicopters come and blow you to bits. I can vaguely understand the gameplay (for console players that want their hand held) and technical reasons (lesser platform) for Xbox1, but still.

Admittedly, this was less of a problem in the "expansion" game that followed (and was bundled with the 360 version), but both campaigns were still abysmal, imo, especially since Ubi could have by then ported the original PC Far Cry to 360 rather than foist another naff consolised version (with teh "special" beast powers) that was vaguely borked.

[anephric]

ID Tech 4 (the Doom 3 engine) was generally believed to have been used in Doom 3 as a showcase title and had moderately better success as a licensed engine than the CryENGINE

There have only been a couple of games that have used the Doom 3 engine, iirc, Prey being the most notable, and that ran like a dog on occasion on 360. Of course, nothing like as badly as id's own Quake IV on 360.


Unfortunately even with the extra shader grunt, as has been mentioned, lack of system memory in both cases would be the killer to the massive world as it stands, although I'm not sure how far streaming might go to counter this (anyone?).


You can do as much streaming as you like, really, as long as the engine supports it and the drive can deal with it: however, from what I understand assets set up for this type of streaming (as in UE3) require a lot of space on the disc, which is a problem for DVD-9, obviously. On Blu-Ray that's not an issue, apart from seek times, but, for example, quite a few people moaned about Resistance: Fall of Man's textures compared to Gears, because those were entirely pre-cached and not streamed, whereas by the time of Drake, ND had incorporated streaming into their engine, and you can see the difference in fidelity instantly (and with noticeably less pop-in than with UE3, from what I've seen).