Blu-ray or bust says Killzone producer
by Jedwin Celestino 
{ Sep 4th 2007 at 3:15PM }
Killzone 2 producer Steven Ter Heide and Guerrilla Games managing director Herman Hulst would be out of jobs if it weren't for the PS3 and Blu-ray. In an interview with Official PlayStation Magazine UK, Heide and Hulst tag team to deliver major props for their system of choice, all while bashing a certain competing console.
"We really need Blu-ray to make the game. I don't know how you could fit it on Xbox 360 without taking some shortcuts", producer Heide explains. And with graphics like those seen in this 25 minute video, there's little doubt that he isn't just speaking the company line.
Continuing on about Killzone 2's Blu-ray dependency, Hulst adds, "Blu-ray isn't important for watching movies; we need it for making games". Something tells us that a few companies beg to differ.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stef Geiger @ Sep 4th 2007 3:53PM
I'm all for blu-ray winning the format war, and for the PS3 winning the console war, but so far the arguments for the merits of blu-ray in games have been weak at best.
One argument that devs keep making for Blu ray being necessary is that "This one level demo we showed at E3 was 3 gigs alone." - like Naughty Dog said of Uncharted. Sure, maybe the entire demo is 3 gigs, but that also includes the engine and sound library, which you only need to have once, so I find it hard to believe that you couldn't fit 10 more levels worth of textures and maps on a 9 gig DVD.
A similar statement was made by Guerrilla, who if I recall correctly stated that the demo they showed clock in at over 10 gigs, so even ONE level wouldn't fit on a DVD. I find this extremely hard to believe, since even if you had the drive spinning at MAX speed on the PS3, taking data off the disc as fast as possible, it'd probably take more than 40 minutes to pull 10 gigs off a BRD. Even with level streaming implemented, there's no way in hell you could "play" through 10 gigs of data in less than an hour. Also, in a game like killzone, it's likely that a HUGE amount of assets like textures, models and sounds in the first level would be re-used in later levels.
Some people argue that having 5.1 surround sound etc takes up a lot of space. It doesn't. You're still using the same mono or stereo samples at the same bitrate. The only thing that changes is that the PS3 has to do some processing to output in 5.1.
Anyone notice how Warhawk would fit on a single layer DVD?
Compression is an amazing thing. Windows XP Pro takes up about 600 megs on a CD. Installed, it extracts to over 2 gigs.
I don't think that Blu-ray will REALLY be necessary for games till developers decide to 1. Never repeat textures and 2. Have 1080p cinematics with uncompressed audio.
mccomber @ Sep 4th 2007 3:56PM
"there's little doubt that he is(n't) just speaking the company line."*
*Suggested change is dependent on fanboy system affiliations. Your opinions may vary, please see your respective console manufacturer of choice for preferred belief systems.
The1 @ Sep 4th 2007 3:57PM
I wish developers would stop the FANBOYISM and develop GREAT games. You can really tell SONY is paying these developers to say what they want to support Blu-Ray. I just want to play the darn game.
TRUTH @ Sep 4th 2007 4:32PM
OK so how much are they getting paid?
Or are that just that lazy to use some good ole compression?
I mean c'mon Warhawk looks great, & how many MB was the download 725mb or something...
Well hopefully with all that room they can fix the AI!!!
Sometimes you just have to wonder....
SimplyB @ Sep 4th 2007 4:46PM
@ 1,2,& 3. How did you like buying the HD-Dvd add on for you 360's? Have fun swapping all those discs when you run out of space to store your games on your dvd's.
Jedwin Celestino @ Sep 4th 2007 4:46PM
@2 Oops! Thanks for pointing that out. The gremlins momentarily took over the part of my brain that makes sense of double negatives and other things like that.
GRANTED @ Sep 4th 2007 4:49PM
sony is doing what they need to do to ensure blu-ray wins the format war. stop getting so pissed. you are getting larger games due to blu-ray. they may not all be better, but they take up more memory.
nick @ Sep 4th 2007 5:00PM
I'm not sure if you need Blu-Ray for gameplay, but perhaps for all the extra media they'd like to include (sound and video) and not have to compress the content.
David @ Sep 4th 2007 5:01PM
most first party title don't have 5.1 dolby digital tracks they actually have 7.1 PCM uncompressed soundtracks like Resistance. That takes a lot of space...much more than 5.1 dolby digital.
Shin Zearim @ Sep 4th 2007 6:56PM
Yeah thats what I have been waiting for bigger crappier games on a blu-ray disc. I think they should just shut up and make the damn game then talk after it sells.
Andy @ Sep 4th 2007 5:16PM
Some games have things that do not need to be loaded every time you play. For example you are not going to load 500 cars every time you play Gran Turismo, your only going to load the ones in the race.
Its not just Sony studios that like Blu-Ray.
upz @ Sep 4th 2007 5:21PM
Who is this Jedwin Celestino? That is an even weirder name than Jem "Hologram" Alexander!
apease @ Sep 4th 2007 5:33PM
Who knows if they are using compression or not? Besides, with textures you have to be careful with compression, a lot of the hardware-supported compression formats can have nasty artifacts.
And you really shouldn't make wild guesses about things that can be easily calculated, such as how long it would take to stream 10 GB worth of data. You're guessing 40 minutes to stream 10 GB. The numbers I've found says the ps3 has a 2x BD-ROM drive that can transfer 9MB/s sustained. 9*60 gives us 540 MB per minute of data streaming, so 10 minutes gives us 5,400 MB, then 20 minutes gives us a little over 10 GB. And yes, you can re-use assets all you want, helps make games cheaper. Wouldn't it be nice not to HAVE to? Ratchet and Clank takes place on a bunch of very different looking planets, they can't re-use a lot of assets there.
You should also understand the game engine takes up very little room, it's just executable code. Saying it took up even 50 MB would be outrageously high. Sound data does take up a lot of space though, I think Ninja Theory mentioned they used 10 GB of space for just audio (multiple languages included). I'm sure rpgs would use a ton of audio too, maybe someday we'll have Final Fantasy games with both English and Japanese audio tracks?
Aaron @ Sep 4th 2007 6:01PM
As far as read speeds and pace of play are concerned you also need to take into account the fact that the PS3 thoughtfully comes with a built in HDD. So Using the HDD as a buffer read speeds from disk and load time become shorter. If only M$ had thought of this, oh wait, they did but you gotta pony up more cash to do it. That lower X-box price point doesnt mean much when you are going to need to buy 300 bucks worth of extras to play the newer games. But thats just my opinion.
BlackBeltJones @ Sep 4th 2007 6:09PM
I'm sick of people from both sides of the argument talking about how it "could only be done on blu-ray" or "we don't need all that extra space", just make the game and leave the jackass comments to Gabe Newell.
Stef Geiger @ Sep 4th 2007 6:16PM
@5: Uh? Hello? The FIRST thing I said was that I support BRD and the PS3. And how many 360 games are there that require disc swapping?
@9: Not really. Yes, the SAMPLES themselves are at a significantly higher bitrate, and thus take up more space, but the number of channels that the game outputs doesn't make any difference. A gunshot sound sample takes up just as much space whether the game outputs in mono or 7.1, assuming the same compression. It's still a mono sound - it's just up to the CPU to determine which channel(s) to output it to.
Stef Geiger @ Sep 4th 2007 6:22PM
@13: Try installing a game like Virtua Fighter. I believe it's a two gig install. I think it's safe to say that if you're EVER going to see the PS3's drive work it's fastest, it would be while installing. As I recall, it took at least ten minutes to copy two gigs onto the HDD. And that's with the disc spinning at full speed. In a game you'd never keep the disc spinning at full 2x, so you'd have to factor in spin-up time.
And check out that 25 minute Killzone 2 demo - they even say that there's no streaming implemented yet, so every so often it pauses to load, and the pauses are like 4 seconds long. There were probably around... five four second pauses during the demo. How much data do you really think could have been streamed in that time?
Anthony Pittarelli @ Sep 4th 2007 8:00PM
they can decompress that much on the 360 because of the lack of a guaranteed hard drive. with the ps3 it doesnt even matter because you could always expand the game on the hd
Spartan 1308 @ Sep 5th 2007 1:36AM
Why are you still using a screenshot from the pre-rendered video? The game doesn't look like that(at least at this point).
railven @ Sep 5th 2007 1:49AM
@Stef Geiger
First you need to understand what true 5.1/6.1/7.1 sound channeling is. It isn't just mono/stereo.
First of all you can never upvert mono to stereo and you can never upvert stereo to surround sound. You can play mono over a stereo feed and stereo over a surround feed.
What surround sound is (5.1/6.1/7.1) is the number of channels + the bass.
So a true 5.1 uses five channels of audio and one bass. That isn't stereo, two channels with the bass tagged on. If you aren't hooking up your speakers through more than one wire you don't have a true surround (this excludes digital hook ups).
So having 5+ channels eats up space. Video games use a different method of using sounds then movies. Where movies use the five channels specifically for different things (such as you looking at a car scene as the car passes from left to right the sound is played on the front-left channel (stops) plays on the center channel (stops) then plays on the front-right channel (stops).
Games use sound points. When the camera/point of view looks at a sound point it channels through different channels (thus in a game with true surround sound, if a person is standing in front of you talking to you as you look at them it will only play on the center speaker, as you turn around in a 360 left to right, the sound will move from speaker ot speaker as the other channels (speakers) pick up ambient sound).
It isn't just mono/stereo. If anything its a sophisticated mono designed to play multiple singlular sounds over various channels per instance.
And as far as the textures go. You need to look at the games closely. Games with high details often have more textures. More textures in turn require more space. Because a level is say 10GB, it doesn't mean that all 10GBs are required upfront. That is why we buffer objects, or as its being called now stream.
In the Killzone 2 demo they said they had the raw data loaded which should have technically eliminated loading/lag but it didn't and that bugged me. Once they implement their "section sizes" and "streaming requirements" you'll come to see that probably 10% of the data per level is ever loaded at a given time.
And if they wanted to have more textures thus eliminate the need to reuse textures (I swear Halo did that waaaaaaaay too much) then they have the option with the extra space.
DVD9 restricts your space so you take "shortcuts" such as reusing textures and sound bytes. More space, more options simple as that. Utilize it or not.
andres @ Sep 5th 2007 2:20AM
jebus you guys seriously.
why do you guys listen to any of this. This is just some guy saying why his game rocks. Of course hes going to be saying all these things. Thats what sells the game.
It doesn't fracken matter how big the game is in size.
What you guys should be saying to these people doesnt matter what console is "I'll believe it once I see it"
Because as it stands right now Blu-ray is being proven that it is not needed for games. Resistances, Motorstorm, and Lair which are Blu-ray games have shown that the bells and whistles means nothing if the game sucks.
Resistances over was considered Ok. And frankly its not all that as far as looks. Motorstorm looks like any other car in mud racing game out there. And we all know about the problems the majority of people are having with Lairs controls.
Stef Geiger @ Sep 5th 2007 8:46AM
@20: I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about, and it kind of seems like you didn't REALLY read everything I said too carefully.
I say that because if you HAD actually read what I'd said, you'd see that I'm well aware of how surround sound works, see? "A gunshot sound sample takes up just as much space whether the game outputs in mono or 7.1, assuming the same compression. It's still a mono sound - it's just up to the CPU to determine which channel(s) to output it to."
And by the way, a TON of PS2 games output in stereo, but are Dolby Pro Logic II compatible, which means that if your receiver does Pro Logic II, it intelligently unfolds the stereo signal and gives you rear channels. If you don't believe me, put in any FPS that's pro Logic II compatible, and listen to how a person's voice will, like you said, move from one speaker to the next if you spin around in front of them.
upz @ Sep 5th 2007 9:16AM
Stef, you're right on this, but I think to explain it to railven you need to differentiate between pre-processed 7.1 sound and dynamically evaluated (is that the right term?) 7.1 sound.
High bitrate surround sound on a movie takes up so much space because every channel is essentially playing its own mono stream. Compared to a single channel mono source, you'd essentially have about seven times more data and take up approximately seven times more space. Compression algorithms with variable bitrates can change this, but for the sake of argument, this is reasonably valid.
Games, on the other hand, use a predetermined set of recorded mono sounds and it's up to the processor to dynamically evaluate what channel(s) to output that sound from based on your position in the 3D world. In other words, it doesn't matter whether you're processing and outputting that pre-determined set of sounds through one channel or a million - it takes up the exact same amount of space.
The novelty Blu-ray's capacity offers in terms of sounds, like textures, comes from the ability to use a larger number of audio samples with more variation and less repetition, not an increased number of audio channels. If anything, we have Cell to thank for 7.1 surround.
upz @ Sep 5th 2007 9:58AM
So I typed a huge comment that got lost in purgatory. Love our comment system...
Anyway, Stef's right. There's a difference between pre-determined 7.1 sound (movies) and dynamically generated 7.1 sound (games). In movies, 7.1 sound is, for all practicaly purposes, seven individual mono streams, and assuming a constant bitrate compression scheme, it would take up approximately seven times the space. In games, however, you have a pre-recorded set of mono sounds that are dynamically assigned to one or more channels based on your in-game positioning. It doesn't matter if you output that set of sounds to one channel or a million, they'll take up the same amount of disk space. What Blu-ray allows is a larger set of those sounds at higher bitrates, giving higher variability and less repetition.
Stef Geiger @ Sep 5th 2007 10:26AM
Thanks for backing me up (twice, heh), upz.
My mistake was assuming that people kinda knew that stuff.
I guess people can't really be faulted for being confused, seeing as developers HAVE said that the game being in surround sound means it's larger. What makes the difference in the amount of audio data isn't at all whether it's stereo, 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1. It's how the audio is encoded. If the game outputs in 5.1 PCM, that's uncompressed audio, so there'll be a LOT of audio data. If the game is Dolby 5.1, the audio data will be small because the samples can be compressed to hell.
On a somewhat related note, has anyone noticed that EA games like Tiger and Fight Night (maybe all of them, I haven't played any others) will output in DTS? It's a nice treat (DTS audio streams are usually twice the bitrate of Dolby AC3s, and use a more efficient encoding method). However, it seems rather buggy. I'll get lots of popping and what seems to be software overdriving with loud low bass.
JayD-1K @ Sep 5th 2007 12:57PM
Reading these comments is getting funnier and funnier every day. It’s funny to read people talk about how BD is not needed at the time they play, champion, and back the same disk format (DVD) that;
1) Was FIRST used for gaming, by the same company that every body seems to dislike now!?
2) Was also, not needed for gaming. ( so every body thought…boy were they wrong!)
In addition, the games that have been developed for the system have been, made to fit on the lead system which we all know uses DVD9.
It’s like watching the game reviewers (when the PS3 launched), hold up a BD and laugh because, the games didn’t take up a lot of disk space! How stupid was that, I mean, you know the games were developed to fit a smaller disk format. …so why would take up any more space than that?
Sony, has been trying to get devs to start with the PS3, why? (IMHO) Because they know, that if the devs get use to having all that disk space, that would show how “under powered” (for the lack of a better phrase), the current format is!
Stef Geiger @ Sep 5th 2007 2:55PM
@26:... I'm not sure I understood a single sentence you used.
JayD-1K @ Sep 5th 2007 4:02PM
@27 lmao sorry, half sleep!
lets try this again!
every time some dev say,"OMG, thank goodness for BD!" somebody else says, "meh, BD is not realy needed...we can fit every thing onto one DVD9." not yhinking about how the DVD went through the same scruitny (i think that's right), as the BD!
so just imagine if devs never used DVD's as a format for games...where would we be? all i'm saying is, if continue to think like that..we would never move on!
and other part was about how, if a game is made to fit within, lets say 10GB...it's only going to use that much space (hince, all the PS3 games that leave more than enough room on a BD). but if the game was developed to fit 20,30, or even 40GBs....it wouldn't fit on a 10GB format...no matter how hared you tried!
i hope that helped..Sref.
ray @ Sep 5th 2007 8:57PM
but is the game any good? Killzone 1 was kinda not too great...
And why do Helghast always jump OVER the cover so you can shoot them? the animation on it is sweet, but AI looks not too smart, huh?
John @ Sep 5th 2007 10:43PM
@15, Stef Geiger, whoo! Are you ever wrong! I've been working in audio for years.
You actually stated: "A gunshot sound sample takes up just as much space whether the game outputs in mono or 7.1"
I wish I could just slap you, but I'll have to try to explain.
"stereo" is not simply doubling the output. To have a true stereo sound (and that's just 2 channels,) the left sound has to be different from the right, otherwise the human ear perceives it as mono. If you play the same exact same sound in headphones, not delayed, the listener will hear the sound in the middle. There will be no spatial references. The whole point of multiple-spatial sound references is exactly the same as improving the lighting in graphics. Depth is conferred.
Fact is, a stereo sound, a simple stereo sound, takes exactly twice the amount of room that a mono sound takes, if not compressed.
And you people talking about compression, maybe Sony devs should mention this, EVERYTHING is compressed. They're not NOT compressing shit. That would be stupid. Compression is a way of life. Even frickin Blu-Ray movies, with all of Blu-Ray's capacity, HAVE to be compressed. It would be stupid not to, and would take far greater capacity than "even Blu-Ray" (spoken in whispering tones) could achieve.
@railven, thank you for elucidation, but I would NOT say that it is "sophisticated mono"-- maybe for ps2, with the streaming that it had to use. But there are a plethora of algorithms that people are using now, where as the camera changes, it is picking up sound sources in stereo, rather than streaming a simple mono process over various speakers. So in realtime, the ps3 is shifting a STEREO image over 5 or 7 speakers. This can be experienced in The Darkness, where the ambience changes because you turn your head-- this is some intense processing and I was impressed to hear it.
But I generally agree, railven, especially with what you are saying about re-using textures. This will be hugely obvious, shortly. Xboxers may bemoan the ps3's less RAM, but with streaming, if you're streaming off blu-ray, with good code, you have WAY more options for things like textures.
It turns out, that with a built-in hard drive and massive storage via blu-ray, good programming can render an environment more richly detailed that DVD can, which means "more space, more options, simple as that. Utilize it or not."
Word.
Andres is a troll: "Resistances [?] looks like any other car in mud racing game out there."
I am not sure what Troll means by this. I asked andres, and he said, "oooga booga!"
@22 Stef, again, that's nice and all, but the kind of example you're inciting is more for the ps2 crowd. As I mentioned earlier, the ps3 alters AMBIENCE. I can't give you a lesson in that right now, but here's something fun for those of you who would like a home-made surround-sound system: on any amp that has A-B outputs, hook up your main stereo speakers to A. Now, take another set of speakers, car speakers, tv speakers, it doesn't matter, and hook them up like this:
Speaker left: to the B LEFT terminal, hook the positive out to the positive of the speaker.
Now take the negative of that left speaker, and run a wire to the right speaker's negative.
Now run a wire from the right speaker's positive, to the amplifier's right-out positive.
These speakers will play the difference between the two channels, and it's the way all early surround sound worked, and it's still a great cheap fix. The only problem is you can't control volume, but you can remedy this somewhat by positioning the speakers effectively.
The way this works, anything in the center channel, that is anything playing mono, will not play at all on the surround speakers.
The more right or left it is, the louder the surround speakers will play, but at the same volume. This is not true surround sound, but a great approximation, for cheap.
Also, sounds with more ambience, their ambient tones will be played louder in the 'surround' speakers, provided that ambient tone is in some form of stereo.
Stef Geiger @ Sep 6th 2007 10:37AM
Once again I feel like people aren't actually listening to what I say. I KNOW that Stereo is double the audio of mono. However, in the case of the sound of a gunshot coming from a gun, or a sword clank etc, the sound originates from ONE location in the game, and thus there's no logical reason for the sample to be stereo. Regardless, even if it IS stereo, having gameplay be in 7.1 doesn't require you to have samples pre-encoded in 7.1. The system will generate the 7.1 stream on the fly from mono and stereo sources.
Mr.X @ Sep 16th 2007 1:36AM
Man ain't u guy tied of this cause why keep go on and on about sound rather video and why the hell u r writing and essay just to explain the sound why don't u just put the key point and the guy will understand and i know he not stupid to understand the point that u has input into your writing.
For those of u wasn't sure about u need bd or not or rather staying with the original dvd format.
1. if u look back and see that when dvd was first introduce into gaming back then people where complaining that we don't need the space and what the purpose of it to use game when the original CD format still play good games but now people realize that without dvd we cannot see the potential and the quality of dvd that was produce in the gaming world thus this the same as BD now people still complaining as the same thing about BD compare to DVD.
Come on u guy u need too look at the brighter side of what SONY is trying to do, BD is the next generation of format and gaming so without we be still experience the same thing in the future if there no new things were to be introduce.