magik Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 In a world seemingly dominated by popular young upstarts (we're looking at you, Halo and Gears of War), it's good to see that granddaddy of FPS genre, Castle Wolfenstein, is still keen to stake a claim in the genre it arguably created.Id's Kevin Cloud said in an interview that the company and Raven (who has already collaborated on Quake 4) "are working together to take advantage of all the graphic capabilities that the Xbox 360 has to offer, and what we're doing with Wolfenstein is creating this one, large empire that is seamlessly loaded to the player as he explores his world." This will mark the first time that Id will develop a Wolfenstein away from the PC, but developer John Carmack is keen to put gamers at ease, claiming that "the Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've got for the PC." Cloud added that the new Wolfenstein "is really a way of redefining the way first person games are experienced." Bold words, but with the release date of the game on the distant horizon we'll have to wait to see if Wolfenstein can truly evolve this over-populated genre. Source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodrigo Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 I'm a big fan of the Quake series and those guys know what they are doing. I hope they bring an excelent title to the 360. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Live Veteran Posted November 19, 2006 Veteran Share Posted November 19, 2006 "Developers, Developers, Developers!!!" :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idioot Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 What I don't get is, why did that site just put up this news..when Carmack said that like atleast a year ago :unsure: Here, in this clip: http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?fs=1&id=2214 X05 Cam Announcement Oct 9, 2005 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnerhkjp Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 It would be interesting to see what J Carmack can do on the 360. GOW has really spoilt us, but we never know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerxes Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 I dunno if I should believe this or ask how much MS paid him to say that? :wacko: with all these "war of words" MS and Sony are having, I can't tell what is the truth or BS these days :no: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.KICK Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 More developers liking the 360, this is awesome news :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Wang Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 I dunno if I should believe this or ask how much MS paid him to say that? :wacko: with all these "war of words" MS and Sony are having, I can't tell what is the truth or BS these days :no: How corruptible do you think people are lol? It's been obvious Carmack has a 360 leaning for a while now, it seems he's just more set on the idea because of the developmental support Microsoft has shown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C++ Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 I believe it, just do the math... It's Microsoft. And if there is anything Microsoft knows, it's software. There is a reason why Windows is used by 90% of the world (and no matter how much the Mac zealots and Linux fanboys preach it, that reason is not monopoly). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smigit Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Well I'd say the claims probably true considering many parties have made the exact same claim. That said once developers know how to utilise the PS3 it will be a very competent platform easier. In the end of the day the PS3 will sell and sell well regardless of whether it is the run away winner as in the last generation. SO in the end of the day developers will learn to live with the extra difficulty in coding for the PS as while theres demand developers will be getting paid to go to that platform too. I dont think this situation will effect consumers much at all, just make developers lifes a bit tougher but really we saw this with the last gen too. Not many publishers nowdays want to be doing too many exclusives when you are in effect cutting out over 50% of the market. Hopefully it will assist in xbox to pc ports but. This was touted wit hthe original xbox but really the ports took years to arrive in many cases and often the quality and performance left alot to be desired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neufuse Veteran Posted November 19, 2006 Veteran Share Posted November 19, 2006 anything would be easier to develop for then a PC when you think about it... a PC has how many hardware combinations? for a game that is like whoa when ttrying to develop for tons of divverent graphics cards with different specs, possibly single core or dual core or RAID enabled HD's.... just so many combos... then u get a console... a set fixed piece of hardware, just that alone makes it easier to develop for so no mater what you say the statement "easier to develop for then a PC" is going to be true no mater what I dunno if I should believe this or ask how much MS paid him to say that? :wacko: with all these "war of words" MS and Sony are having, I can't tell what is the truth or BS these days :no: hey microsoft development tools do make software writing a LOT faster... they do put a lot of work into their development lines, saying that after compareing Java tools and C++ tools to MS's own Visual Studio and all its add on's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Wang Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Which is why say Halo 2 on the original Xbox would never be able to run on an equivalent spec'd PC. I'm sure having a defined limit on hardware is quite nice for developers sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadrack Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Which is why say Halo 2 on the original Xbox would never be able to run on an equivalent spec'd PC. I'm sure having a defined limit on hardware is quite nice for developers sometimes. Sometimes? Look..developing for target hardware is infinitely easier. I program for hardware all the time for industrial applications (which is VERY simple compared to video game programing, I'm sure). If I know what the machine is going to have on it, then I can optimize my code for it. Otherwise I spend a lot of time asking myself "what if it doesn't have..." When you run a game on your PC, what % of the hardware do you think is being pushed to it's maximum potential? I bet it is somewhere around 50%. If a developer comes and optimizes the code to specifically run on the hardware you have, and ditches all of windows (and any other luring overhead)..i bet you would be very surprised how well a game could run on your computer hardware. You just don't get that on a PC like you do on a console. These may be bad examples, but take a look at Halo for the PC and Fable for the PC. To even get them looking the same as the xbox versions the hardware is running about 3x faster. It has to manage all that overhead that is required on a PC these days. That isn't to say there isn't a place for the PC gaming market anymore. Some games are meant to be played on a keyboard mouse and 1-2 feet away from the monitor. I couldn't imagine playing a RTS on the Xbox 360. The gameplay would have to be seriously reworked. Games on the Wii have the most opportunity to recreate the PC gameplay experience on the console. We will see. I'm looking forward to future id software releases on the 360. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was definitely one of the best single player FPS experiences I've ever had. The recent Quake 4 and Doom 3 were outstanding, IMHO. And all those old school Quake, Heretic/Hexen, and Doom games are classics that have definitely withstood the test of time. The original Hexen was brilliant. I remember playing through that entire game on coop mode w/ a friend over a 28.8kbps modem when I was 14. I'm glad to see Gears of War supports coop play. It hasn't been as popular w/ developers lately which is a shame because I prefer coop play over deathmatchs. -shad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetham Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Wolfenstein was indeed one of the best FPS on the xbox. Im interested to see what they are going to do for the 360 game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spenser.d Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 (edited) This isn't exactly surprising. We've known for a while MS has released an excellent set of tools for developers. It's nice to see them praising that. -Spenser Edited November 19, 2006 by bangbang023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain_Wang Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Sometimes? Look..developing for target hardware is infinitely easier. I program for hardware all the time for industrial applications (which is VERY simple compared to video game programing, I'm sure). If I know what the machine is going to have on it, then I can optimize my code for it. Otherwise I spend a lot of time asking myself "what if it doesn't have..." Yes but look at the Crysis engine. Sometimes not having a set hardware limit is encouraging for game developers, hence; sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lol911 Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Well now with DX10, developers won't have to program individual stuff for ATI and nVIDIA graphic cards anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceBreakerG Posted November 19, 2006 Share Posted November 19, 2006 Whether some of you agree with me or not, I have a feeling developers are going to start abandoning "low-end" machines when it comes to game design in the future mainly because its a limiting factor in a lot of games. If a developer has to tone down a lot of things, that 1, takes time and developer resources, 2 increases development costs, which 3, increases production costs. Now, how much the last 2 are increase varies from developer to developer, but that overhead is still there. If you want to use Crysis as an example. There's probably no freakin way that game will run on low end hardware, at least not above 15-20fps. Company of Heroes, while running pretty decently on low end to mid range hardware, runs like crap unless you have a upper mid-to-high end system. My GeForce 6800 Ultra "used" to be the ****, now it is ****. When I used to play every game at 1600x1200 with all video settings on high, I'm now finding myself having to turn them to medium or low at 1280x1024 or 1024x768 (CoH) to get "decent" frame rates. Alan Wake is another game thats coming out soon. And I believe I read that the developers are saying the game will NOT run on a single core system. I haven't made the jump to multi-core yet, and by the time I'll have the money to do it (got other priorities at the moment) Intel's Core 2 refresh will probably be out. Because I'm a diehard PC gamer, I won't say PC Gaming is dying, because honestly, its not. It's just changing/evolving. And with progress, some things have to go, and I feel like low end machines are whats getting the axe. Only this time it won't be subtle, it'll be blatant and intentional. This isn't all developers, there's some like EA that wants "everybody's" money, so they'll do what they do. But leaving out certain "levels" of hardware will ease some of the burden on PC developers. It's already starting to happen. Vista will be the entry point with its performance rating system. I know that was somewhat long, and I know some of you won't agree with what I said, but thats just my own opinion, for better or worse :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerxes Posted November 21, 2006 Share Posted November 21, 2006 Whether some of you agree with me or not, I have a feeling developers are going to start abandoning "low-end" machines when it comes to game design in the future mainly because its a limiting factor in a lot of games. If a developer has to tone down a lot of things, that 1, takes time and developer resources, 2 increases development costs, which 3, increases production costs. Now, how much the last 2 are increase varies from developer to developer, but that overhead is still there. If you want to use Crysis as an example. There's probably no freakin way that game will run on low end hardware, at least not above 15-20fps. Company of Heroes, while running pretty decently on low end to mid range hardware, runs like crap unless you have a upper mid-to-high end system. My GeForce 6800 Ultra "used" to be the ****, now it is ****. When I used to play every game at 1600x1200 with all video settings on high, I'm now finding myself having to turn them to medium or low at 1280x1024 or 1024x768 (CoH) to get "decent" frame rates. Alan Wake is another game thats coming out soon. And I believe I read that the developers are saying the game will NOT run on a single core system. I haven't made the jump to multi-core yet, and by the time I'll have the money to do it (got other priorities at the moment) Intel's Core 2 refresh will probably be out. Because I'm a diehard PC gamer, I won't say PC Gaming is dying, because honestly, its not. It's just changing/evolving. And with progress, some things have to go, and I feel like low end machines are whats getting the axe. Only this time it won't be subtle, it'll be blatant and intentional. This isn't all developers, there's some like EA that wants "everybody's" money, so they'll do what they do. But leaving out certain "levels" of hardware will ease some of the burden on PC developers. It's already starting to happen. Vista will be the entry point with its performance rating system. I know that was somewhat long, and I know some of you won't agree with what I said, but thats just my own opinion, for better or worse :) I agree with you there, I've noticed alot of current games (and coming games) minimum specs are quite high. While been an owner of a "low-end" machine this sucks, I can completely understand why the developers are doing it. Part of the challenge of programming for the PC is been able to support a wide range of hardware configurations, but there comes a cost in doing this (whether that be graphics, performance, game play etc) and some of these new games are only made possibly with current hardware...so making it run (in some shape or form) on a lower spec'd machine is challenging (sometimes impossible) and at some point I'm sure developers have thought why bother? and with these game that take advantage of Dx10 graphics cards (and Dx10 is a significant upgrade to Dx) and multi-core CPU based systems, enabling these games to run on single core, pre-Dx10 GPU based systems will cause some major headaches...in fact this reason alone is why I've gone to console gaming (sure I still game on my PC, but with most current games not supporting my PC at all, my choice of software is limited) That all said, PC gaming is far from dead...I think alot of gamers (like myself) who have low-end machines will probably end up shifting to console gaming, while the rest can afford to keep their PC relatively up to date will help keep PC gaming alive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smigit Posted November 21, 2006 Share Posted November 21, 2006 I dont think developers are dropping lower end systems at all. It depends on what your definition of "low end" is but I'm gaming on a 2 year old PC with an X800 and 1Gig of ram and I can play oblivion on mid settings, NWN2 on mid settings (at 1600 x 1050) and Fear on max. Every time a game like Crysis has come arounf its been playable on much lower end hardware than people first expected. Look at HL2, Doom3 ect, they all ran quite well on old systems. Of course there will be those people that refuse to lower game settings to accomodate their hardware and thats where most of the compatability issues come in. However on most if not all current game if you put the specs to min you could quite comfortably play the games on three year old machines at a decent resolution. I also suspect Crysis will run quite well on older hardware. What we have so far seen is the game running basically maxed out as its a technical demo. Thats not to say the game engine wont scale. Infact I'm sure the engine would scale quite well. Its also not due out for another 4 months too so you need to take that into account. That said current systems can run the game now obviously and by the time the games out the machines that can currently run this game wont even be considered new. Now if people expect an Radeon 9700 to play this then no, your machine probably wont even be considered low end come 6 months with it being what? 3 generations behind in the graphics department. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arbiter Posted November 21, 2006 Share Posted November 21, 2006 This is pretty interesting. The more I hear, the more the 360 sounds like it could be a clear cut winner, at least in the US. I remember when I was reading about The Darkness, they said better textures would be found in the 360 version compared the the PS3 (though the PS3 has storage advantages because of Blu Ray). I am really interesting to play that game on both formats, because its one of the first "true next gen" titles that will be on both formats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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