One of three things will happen when Xbox devs run out of DVD9 space.

one argument i have to make, disc swapping is completely unnaceptable besides in linear games such as RPG's

people wouldn't want to get up during watching a dvd movie and switch disks. why should they have to with games? imagine if we took this strategy with HD movies. who freaking wants to switch the disk every hour rather than have one big disc.

also there is the point that it wouldn't work for some games such as nonlinear rpg's, sand boxes, shooters, etc.

i personally think they should just start releasing games on flash drives, once usb 3.0 comes out, no more loading, and no space limits.

mistervengeance

[QUOTE="Sooshy"]I'm honestly not worried about it. GTAIV is a huge game and they got it to fit on a DVD just fine. AmyMizuno

people wouldn't want to get up during watching a dvd movie and switch disks. why should they have to with games? imagine if we took this strategy with HD movies. who freaking wants to switch the disk every hour rather than have one big disc.

mistervengeance

Indvidual movies are generally only 2 hours long, if not less. Games are far longer, especially RPGs, which is the genre that almost exclusively has required multiple discs so far. If it's a 50 hour long RPG and it's three discs, getting up to change a disc once every 15-20 hours shouldn't be taxing to anybody who isn't bed-ridden.

[QUOTE="Sooshy"][QUOTE="AmyMizuno"][QUOTE="Sooshy"]I'm honestly not worried about it. GTAIV is a huge game and they got it to fit on a DVD just fine. AmyMizuno

I dont believe it will be the massive issue.

Halo 3 didn't drop the features. Neither did Call of Duty 4.

Neither did GTA 4. It is the longest GTA, the most polished story, massive multiplayer gameplay.

Gears of War? those were 2 maps thats it. I think that was abit out of left field.

IF anything the visuals will peak because the compression will get better and better, just they won't be able to crank up the visuals any more after awhile. The 360 has peaked in visuals. Now it will just make outstanding games. which is fine. Nothing on the PS3 has really been too massive. Visually they have shown impressive things. But nothing that says wow 360 cant do that with its disc space.

[QUOTE="mistervengeance"]

people wouldn't want to get up during watching a dvd movie and switch disks. why should they have to with games? imagine if we took this strategy with HD movies. who freaking wants to switch the disk every hour rather than have one big disc.

Zeliard9

Indvidual movies are generally only 2 hours long, if not less. Games are far longer, especially RPGs, which is the genre that almost exclusively has required multiple discs so far. If it's a 50 hour long RPG and it's three discs, getting up to change a disc once every 15-20 hours shouldn't be taxing to anybody who isn't bed-ridden.

I dont believe it will be the massive issue.

Halo 3 didn't drop the features. Neither did Call of Duty 4.

Neither did GTA 4. It is the longest GTA, the most polished story, massive multiplayer gameplay.

Gears of War? those were 2 maps thats it. I think that was abit out of left field.

IF anything the visuals will peak because the compression will get better and better, just they won't be able to crank up the visuals any more after awhile. The 360 has peaked in visuals. Now it will just make outstanding games. which is fine. Nothing on the PS3 has really been too massive. Visually they have shown impressive things. But nothing that says wow 360 cant do that with its disc space.

jg4xchamp

[QUOTE="AmyMizuno"][QUOTE="Willy105"]

What's the big deal with DVD9? It's like 8 GB right?

That's amazing.

That's like a couple million Super Mario 64's in one disk right?

Eddie5vs1

They don't "reserve" a part of the DVD...you're thinking of the HDD which they reserve space on.

[QUOTE="jg4xchamp"]

I dont believe it will be the massive issue.

Halo 3 didn't drop the features. Neither did Call of Duty 4.

Neither did GTA 4. It is the longest GTA, the most polished story, massive multiplayer gameplay.

Gears of War? those were 2 maps thats it. I think that was abit out of left field.

IF anything the visuals will peak because the compression will get better and better, just they won't be able to crank up the visuals any more after awhile. The 360 has peaked in visuals. Now it will just make outstanding games. which is fine. Nothing on the PS3 has really been too massive. Visually they have shown impressive things. But nothing that says wow 360 cant do that with its disc space.

AmyMizuno

Compression is getting better, but the way compression improves is slowly and in very small babylike steps. I've programmed a simple encryption which used compression technologies as a feature.

One game in particular that was srtipped of features was PGR4. They removed the night driving because they couldn't fit it on the DVD, and that was probably the first of many games that will have some sort of compensation because of DVD9.

PS: I don't agree about the 360 'maxing out' or 'peaking in visuals.' That's just plain rubbish.

Apparently they redid the levels, which would make sense because lighting is the 360's weakest area imo. A lot... and I mean A LOT of 360 games use the quick and easy phong/blinn shaders (the ones that make everything look like plastic) and hardly get 30 fps.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/01/pgr4_won_t_fit_on_a_dvd_content_axed/1

This is one game where multiple disks wouldn't have made sense. They had either option #1 or option #3, and they chose option #1. I do not know if the levels eventually reappeared as downloadable content.

AmyMizuno

im gonna take a complete shot in the dark with the issue of swapping discs...

they might reserve a certain amount of missions to one disc in games such as oblivion and gta.

[QUOTE="Sooshy"][QUOTE="AmyMizuno"]Apparently they redid the levels, which would make sense because lighting is the 360's weakest area imo. A lot... and I mean A LOT of 360 games use the quick and easy phong/blinn shaders (the ones that make everything look like plastic) and hardly get 30 fps.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/01/pgr4_won_t_fit_on_a_dvd_content_axed/1

This is one game where multiple disks wouldn't have made sense. They had either option #1 or option #3, and they chose option #1. I do not know if the levels eventually reappeared as downloadable content.

AmyMizuno

You really think it'll be that big an issue this generation? It seems to me that what developers have been more worried and annoyed about is the 360's lack of a standard HD with every model, and that I can agree was a dumb and unnecessary mistake on Microsoft's part (particulary since the original Xbox had a standardized hard drive).

[QUOTE="killab2oo5"]o_o I'm still wondering,if devs are running out of space then why don't they take advantge of "procedurial synthesis" (spelling). I know there a few dev tools like SpeedTree that utitlize this technique,but why not make the whole game using "ps"?It would really cut down on disc space and I read that it wasn't hard at all to program.AmyMizuno

[QUOTE="Sooshy"]I agree that it was a dumb move not to make the HD standard. I also don't think the space issue will hurt the 360 too bad, and if it does, it will be at the end of it's life cycle (Holiday 09, maybe?) This holiday has GeoW2, BK3, and Fable 2. Halo Wars might get pushed to March... I don't know, I'm just not too worried about it.AmyMizuno

I agree that as far as what you see in pictures, graphics won't improve tremendously next generation. But I do think, or at least I hope, that we'll see big improvements in things like animation and A.I., as well as level size (since I feel games of all genres will be getting more and more open in terms of freedom of movement).

I think that's what the next technological step entails, and those are things you can't see in pictures (except for level size).

Ohhhh boy, we're still hearing this. The DVD9 format has already reached its limit, which there is nothing to substantiate it. People just make up their own numbers as to how much content is on the discs, and claim they know that dev this and dev that had squeezed as much as they can. And in the end they weren't on that development team and simply don't know what they're talking about.

The only games that have been extended to multiple discs, the ONLY ones, are those which use CGI cut scenes, like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. As anyone knows, video files take up more space than game engine rendered graphics. Games that don't use pre-rendered video, instead implementing the in-game engine to render the cinematics, don't have any problems with a single DVD disc.

It's as simple as that. Use in-game engine and not video - which really isn't needed where todays level of game graphics can create brilliant cinematics - and DVD has sufficient space for content.

And if Blu Ray really allows for longer and larger games, then where are those exclusive PS3 games (the ones not "held back" by 360) that are built on a scope and scale that completely dwarfs any 360 game? Heavenly Sword? Uncharted?? I mean since it doesn't have to worry about being shared on a smaller media format, there should be no excuse, right?

[QUOTE="Zeliard9"]

[QUOTE="AmyMizuno"][QUOTE="Sooshy"]I agree that it was a dumb move not to make the HD standard. I also don't think the space issue will hurt the 360 too bad, and if it does, it will be at the end of it's life cycle (Holiday 09, maybe?) This holiday has GeoW2, BK3, and Fable 2. Halo Wars might get pushed to March... I don't know, I'm just not too worried about it.AmyMizuno

I agree that as far as what you see in pictures, graphics won't improve tremendously next generation. But I do think, or at least I hope, that we'll see big improvements in things like animation and A.I., as well as level size (since I feel games of all genres will be getting more and more open in terms of freedom of movement).

I think that's what the next technological step entails, and those are things you can't see in pictures (except for level size).

Well, I was looking at it from the PC's perspective, which has long had great framerates and true HD resolutions. Though I guess the PC also doesn't really have "generations".

I also thought that A.I. took up quite a bit of memory, no? Crytek, for example, claims that the A.I. programming is the most difficult thing to transfer in attempting to port the game to consoles because of their small amount of RAM.

[QUOTE="AdobeArtist"]

Ohhhh boy, we're still hearing this. The DVD9 format has already reached its limit, which there is nothing to substantiate it. People just make up their own numbers as to how much content is on the discs, and claim they know that dev this and dev that had squeezed as much as they can. And in the end they weren't on that development team and simply don't know what they're talking about.

The only games that have been extended to multiple discs, the ONLY ones, are those which use CGI cut scenes, like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. As anyone knows, video files take up more space than game engine rendered graphics. Games that don't use pre-rendered video, instead implementing the in-game engine to render the cinematics, don't have any problems with a single DVD disc.

It's as simple as that. Use in-game engine and not video - which really isn't needed where todays level of game graphics can create brilliant cinematics - and DVD has sufficient space for content.

And if Blu Ray really allows for longer and larger games, then where are those exclusive PS3 games (the ones not "held back" by 360) that are built on a scope and scale that completely dwarfs any 360 game? Heavenly Sword? Uncharted?? I mean since it doesn't have to worry about being shared on a smaller media format, there should be no excuse, right?

AmyMizuno

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/08/01/pgr4_won_t_fit_on_a_dvd_content_axed/1

How come the average size of games on the PC is now overtaking 7.3GB, which is the size of the 360's DVD9? I can see the handwriting on the wall, but I could also explain it technically.

Assasin's Creed: 6.65GB
COD4: 6.23GB
Crysis: 6.7GB
Rainbow 6 Vegas 2: 7.5GB
UT3: 7.87GB
Gears of War: 9.92GB

The reason games are getting so large is because of comparative interpolation. The graphics engine for most modern games internally scans a high-resolution mesh, compares it with a low-resolution mesh, interpolates the difference and stores it in a normal map. Not only is this a redundant process, but it requires massive amount of data, because the high resolution meshes can be hundreds of millions of polygons. Each level in Gears of War is roughly 1GB because of this method.

Also, sound is another large contributor, and some games have lots of dialogue. There are compression techniques for sound, but they will eventually degrade the quality.

Space is becoming a problem, and it's becoming a problem quick. All three of my solutions are viable, and I prefer #2 the most (multiple disks), but it's not a realistic solution to all games.

That article is dated almost a year old. Can anyone who owns PGR 4 confirm that the day and night cycles aren't in the final game? Also consider that there's wheather cycles now. And GTA4, while not being as graphically impressive, is much larger in the scope of its world and story content, and still has day/night cycles in addition to wheather cycles. Something doesn't seem to add up here.

As for the other games listed, where did you get these numbers? I notice you list GeoW as 9.92 GB. So that must be the uncompressed data, and of course we know 360 uses compression on the DVD9. Oh and there's actually 8.5 GB space on those discs, not 7 GB. People just call it DVD9 for simplicity.

And if Blu Ray really allows for longer and larger games, then where are those exclusive PS3 games (the ones not "held back" by 360) that are built on a scope and scale that completely dwarfs any 360 game? Heavenly Sword? Uncharted?? I mean since it doesn't have to worry about being shared on a smaller media format, there should be no excuse, right?

AdobeArtist

mgs4 will be out soon enough and the chief dev of naughty dog said in an interview to gametrailers they didnt want to break thwe 25GB mark so early with uncharted 1 but the prefer to resort to dual layer blu ray (50GB) for uncharted 2

[QUOTE="Eddie5vs1"][QUOTE="AmyMizuno"][QUOTE="Willy105"]

What's the big deal with DVD9? It's like 8 GB right?

That's amazing.

That's like a couple million Super Mario 64's in one disk right?

AmyMizuno

They don't "reserve" a part of the DVD...you're thinking of the HDD which they reserve space on.

for a star if ti became a real prob it would be FREE downloadable content

as devs make more games on the 360 they become better at it!

have you heard of a VMD disc??? fairly possible

and also this sounds stupid but memory sticks are becoming real cheap now in the future maybe we will see games being released on 16GB mem sticks??

they will not reduce sound quality to youtube dont be silly!

i think this is a pointless thread its nothing we need to worry about itsmicrosoft and the devs problem they wont just cut out quality of games so it all fits like i said its there problem adn at the end of the day they still have to supply a quality game so levae them to figure it out plz!

Option #4, downloads for games to make them run smoother, like what DMC 4 GTA IV and Haze had. :?

Forgot what that was called :|

for sanbox games, i can see each disk having the whole city map on it

the left over space would be used up on cut-scenes' video and audio etc

so you'd switch disks as you progress through a story, rather than when you want to switch to a new area

ofc the later disks wouldn't work unless you had a save file for that part of the game

this seems reasonable .. it'd keep disk swapping to a minimum

i don't think disks are that big a deal .. if oblivion, mass effect and gtaIV all fit on one disk, then the most we may ever need this gen is two IMO

even the PS3's huge games like MGS4 are possibly unnecessarily huge .. the space was taken up by the game's long cut-scenes and lossless audio

if kojima didn't have the same, he'd compress the audio .. it would have still sounded great and not taken away from the whole gaming experience

They will be fine. Sooner or later they will require a HDD and that will give the 360 another couple of years.

THis isn't a huge issue until PS3 exclusives start getting too big and too grand that they clearly can't be done on the 360.jg4xchamp

And what about

- ram limits

- rendering limits

- development cost limits

- development time limits

Why are you so sure games will get that much bigger than they are today ? The biggest ones take a LOT of time and money to develop, so chances are we won't see much more huge games, not because of space, but the reasons above

FF 7 and MGS1 were on like 3 disks yet that didn't stop them from being great gamesMad_Rhetoric

Yeah also final fantasy games use to be a few disks aswell. As u can see MGS4 was able to be fit on to one disk and theres tons of audio, gameplay and cut scenes including online on there so bluray is really useful.

Microsoft should have made the HDD a standard. Then I think devs could work more with the DVD9 and MS wouldnt have had to include a next-gen format like HDDVD standard in their console.

All they had to do was make the HDD standard, and they didnt.

[QUOTE="Mad_Rhetoric"]FF 7 and MGS1 were on like 3 disks yet that didn't stop them from being great gamesthrones

Yes it did. When I had to switch discs, I stopped playing and never found out that Solid Snake has fisticuffs with Liquid Snake on top of Metal Gear Rex, which Solid has destroyed, and then Liquid Snake died from foxdie after a thrilling chase through a tunnel.

Umm...spoilers? Only just beat the game about 3 days ago, thanks god.:P