I have a question

[Guest]

I got a reply to my Gamecube and Max Payne post and i read this message from Skaven in another gamecube max payne post.
Nintendo's target audience is a lot younger than the target audience of, say, PlayStation. Also, you need a special license to make games for Nintendo. I'm sure there are other reasons too, but judging them all it's quite understandable there won't be a Nintendo version of Max Payne.
Unless they really want to make a cute super-deformed GBA Max Payne, which I kinda doubt.


<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

I can understand where hes coming from but i also have a question, if Max Payne isn't coming to GC then why do i see Duke Nukem Forever for a slated release for the Gamecube? Isn't that suspose to be an even more violent game than Max Payne? Just curious, thanks for any replies you can give me.

[Ninja]

It's NOT coming out to GC or any other console. It's pure crap that information. Only when DNF is out on PC will 3DR think about doing a console port...they'll probably get another company to do them.

[Joe Siegler]

Originally posted by Xwolverine:
I can understand where hes coming from but i also have a question, if Max Payne isn't coming to GC then why do i see Duke Nukem Forever for a slated release for the Gamecube?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Because you're buying into someone else's made up rumours, that's why. images/icons/smile.gif

[George Broussard]

We all wanted to do Max for the GameCube - badly. But it was evaluated by port teams and was decided it wouldn't really be possible. Max required 128 megs to run well on a PC and it barely fit on an XBox (64 megs) and PS2 (32 megs). The GameCube has 24 megs making things basically impossible, without majorly altering the game, or doing a really lousy job.

[biXen]

Originally posted by George Broussard:
The GameCube has 24 megs making things basically impossible, without majorly altering the game, or doing a really lousy job.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Lousy job. I like that one...

[Guest]

Ah i see, but one question for Joe, Duke Nukem Forever isn't coming for Gamecube?

[Guest]

I went to igns site and found the system specs for the PS2 and the Gamecube. The Gamecube has a 485mhz clock frequency and 24megs of main memory and 60megs of system memory. Now the PS2 has a 300mhz clock frequency with only 32megs of ram altogether. So heres my question, wouldn't Gamecubes extra 185 clock frequency and 60mb system memory make up for the main memory? I'm not a tect specialist or anything but im just curious.

[Guest]

whoever said dnf is not coming to gamecube is a liar.one more Question is rockstar going to make aleast one game?

[Ghast]

best info on comparing the three consoles to date IMHO

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1561&p=13

[Guest]

George,

I figured developers might have some issues with GameCube's RAM implementation, but it does have a total of 40MB counting the A-RAM and not the 3MB of e1T-SRAM. And it's been proven by Factor 5, for one, that you can use that A-RAM as a virtual memory of sorts, not just for 16MB of audio.

I'm sure it's a complicated process, but perhaps tuning in to Factor 5's virtual memory lecture at GDC could greatly help.

I just find it very hard to believe that a game like Rogue Squadron II can run on GameCube, but not Max Payne. And, have you seen the Star Fox Adventure screens lately? There's a massive amount of high-quality textures and geometry going on there.

Of course, I know nothing about programmin. =) But it just worries me a lot that developers so easily dismiss GameCube just based on a number.

And, is DKF not coming to GameCube anymore because of that?

[Ninja]

The PS2's 300mhz processor is 128bit and is designed purely for graphics work....the Xbox is an Intel 733mhz 32bit chip, pretty much the same as in any PC.

[SamiV]

Originally posted by Fran-IGN:

I'm sure it's a complicated process, but perhaps tuning in to Factor 5's virtual memory lecture at GDC could greatly help.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I believe it is safe to say that squeezing something that used to take 128MB into 32MB was very, very hard. After that squeezing the 32MB into 24MB is down right impossible or would take enormous amounts of time and adjustment. I'm not a console expert but the GC's 24 + 16 MB approach doesn't sound exactly trivial to work with.

In the future the biggest problems of creating multi platform games will come from squeezing the content to fit into a certain memory footprint. Sure on the programming side it's very hard to just get the code to run (and run fast) but once the code works you'll realize how much work you still have ahead of you.

Designing games should be done on the target platform - I don't think there's a single good game out which shipped as multiplatform on day one (ok, exclude the sport titles). Shipping day one as multiplatform usually means you compromise to meet the lowest common denominator - which doesn't give you high quality.

As George said - currently Max isn't coming out for the Gamecube.

SamiV.

[Guest]

Yes but the only reason why any console can play these 128mb+ games are cuz consoles dont have to deal with Operating Systems, which takes up almost all of ur memory just turning ur PC on. Plus, consoles are getting greater with the compact era (IE. Gameboy advanced's cartridges are half the size of a GBC cartridge, yet it holds 2-4x the memory)

And i dont get the "violence" thing. Resident Evil series is a gamecube exsclusive, and thats quite violent. I guess it all comes down to the specs, eh?

I gotta XBox so i dont have to worry images/icons/grin.gif

[The Baskinator]

Uhhhhh....

Tetris: Max Payne Edition!

*laughs* images/icons/grin.gif

[Guest]

I believe it is safe to say that squeezing something that used to take 128MB into 32MB was very, very hard. After that squeezing the 32MB into 24MB is down right impossible or would take enormous amounts of time and adjustment. I'm not a console expert but the GC's 24 + 16 MB approach doesn't sound exactly trivial to work with. - SamiV<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yea, I totally understand that. It's just that no one has commented that it's the engine that isn't compatible with GameCube, not the content. GameCube's RAM setup is very unique, and the 1T-SRAM is blazingly quick. If developers are treating it like average DRAM, they're not using it to its fullest benefit. I'm positive Max Payne could be done on GameCube. I think the issue is just that it would require a lot of engine rework. Which, really isn't worth it.

From that perspective I certainly understand. I can just relate with the other GameCube fans here, and it sounds like 3D Realms is saying it can't be done -- in any way.

[Mblackwell]

Considering Gamecube's RAM is not only 1T-SRAM, but is also a large chunk is embedded in the processor, it seems silly to say it could not be done. If you do not want to take the time to do it, I can see that, but just saying "it can't be done" is silly. Star Fox Adventures now features full fledged FUR on characters, Max Payne is much lower quality in terms of environments and models, it sounds obsurd to say it "can't".

Also people, the reason Unreal, etc, was easily ported to Dreamcast was it used Windows CE... this is the same reason it is easy to port to the Xbox, although you may have to deal with various hardware things, it's using a PC OS (on the console) for a PC game, which is half the battle with PC porting.

[biXen]

You can eat stone too, doesn't mean anybody's gonna do it. Stop misinterpreting everything... saves us a lot of nag...

[Guest]

I find it very disappointing to see a game developer so misinformed about a console currently on the market.

Like Fran said, the 16MB of A-RAM on the GameCube can be used for anything the developer wants, it doesn't have to be used for audio. That effectively makes 40MB of RAM available to a game. Now a simple break down of the PS2 memory structure with the GC's:

PS2 has 4MB of embedded video RAM. GC has 3, so take 1MB away from the above 40. PS2 has 2MB for audio. So lets subtract 2MB to use for audio on the GC too. That still leaves 37MB of available RAM. I'm sure when dealing with the game code it won't break down as simple as this, but it still certainly looks possible to me.

All that would be needed is to add code to deal with A-RAM in the memory manager. If you spent the time to get Max Payne to work in the PS2's 32MB, I can't imagine why you couldn't spend the time to work with the GC's A-RAM.

I don't mind if Max Payne doesn't come out on the GameCube, I would rather just play the PC version. But to me, saying it can't be done because of memory problems sounds like an excuse.

BTW, I do have some console programming experience, so I'm not completely clueless on a subject like this. images/icons/smile.gif

CrowTRobo

[GNS-Jim]

I find it very disappointing to see a game developer so misinformed about a console currently on the market.

Like Fran said, the 16MB of A-RAM on the GameCube can be used for anything the developer wants, it doesn't have to be used for audio. That effectively makes 40MB of RAM available to a game. Now a simple break down of the PS2 memory structure with the GC's:

PS2 has 4MB of embedded video RAM. GC has 3, so take 1MB away from the above 40. PS2 has 2MB for audio. So lets subtract 2MB to use for audio on the GC too. That still leaves 37MB of available RAM. I'm sure when dealing with the game code it won't break down as simple as this, but it still certainly looks possible to me. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Except that the GC system memory and audio RAM are NOT the same.
The GC's system RAM is 24Mb of MoSys 1T-SRAM running at 324Mhz through a 64bit memory bus. That's 2.6Gb/s (approx) of bandwidth. The A-RAM is 16MB of DRAM running at 81Mhz through an 8-bit memory interface, that's 81Mb/s data transfer rate. That's a huge difference.
You can't just say "hey the GC has 24MB+16MB=40MB of RAM!"

GC fans keep throwing out the fact that Factor 5 used the A-RAM as additional system memory, but they don't take into account that Rogue Leader was built from the ground up for the console's hardware, Max wasn't.
Also they're VERY different games on different engines. Just because Factor 5's technique can be used for one game doesn't mean it can be used for every other Cube title out there.

If it was a squeeze to break down Max's levels to get them into the PS2's 32Mb of memory then imagine how small and fragmented they'd have to be to fit into the GC's system memory!
Trust me that the PS2 version's levels were broken up more (and some of the unnessential side rooms were cut from some levels too) than the PC version.

It's in 3DR/Remedy/Take2's interests to get their games out on as many platforms as possible, if they could get a reasonable port of Max on the GC I have no doubt whatsoever that they would. The fact that it isn't on the Cube is a clear indicator that the task is totally impractical.

[ 07-16-2002, 11:07 AM: Message edited by: JDPJim ]