|
Quote: |
|
|
|
|
Originally Posted by therealsmallville |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I find game design to be a very interesting topic. How did Madden manage the Pro Bowl helmets on Madden 2005 on the original Xbox? I remember the logos were very low-rez compared to the helmets in regular games, but they found a way to do it. Was it because of everything else being so less detailed compared to today?
Or perhaps it would be low-rez again, and not a product they want to ship (I could only imagine the complaints they'd receive). Interesting to think about.
Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports
|
|
|
|
|
|
In ye olden days of console gaming in 2003, none of the consoles could push out 1080p @ 30 FPS, let alone 60 FPS. In North America the PS2 - the most popular video game console ever built - topped out at 480i (640x480). The original XBOX I think could do select games at 720p and 1080i, but it certainly wasn't a popular option; Madden never supported either of these output formats as far as I can tell. The hardware wasn't nearly as powerful, so stuff that's taken for granted today like normal mapping (which was gaining mainstream attention in PC gaming at the time) or extensive particle effects just weren't even considerations on consoles. The lower hardware capabilities to some extent freed up RAM to do other things (but only so much; one of my bosses who used to work on The Show on PS2 has told me how they had to repurpose memory which was holding a texture to store game stats in some situations). That's why you were able to see all 32 teams have their helmets in the Pro Bowl in older Madden games; they could put the lo-res helmet images into memory and it'd still look almost as good, because console games could only look but so good in the first place.
As the consoles' hardware have increased in power and capabilities, so too have expectations about what a console game should look like and do. Consoles must output at 1080p at minimum, do all the fun lighting and shading bells and whistles (normal mapping, HDR, particle effects, shadow mapping, etc. etc.). Not to mention the requirements for just the basic textures themselves have increased; because the console can output more pixels to the screen, the textures need to be bigger to show off more detail and not look stretched and muddy. All this stuff takes memory to pull off effectively, and there's only so much memory to go around. AAA game developers are all pushing the console hardware to its limits in different ways.
I think you're right that Tiburon
could deliver the Pro Bowl back into the game but in a fashion that no one here, or even they themselves, would be happy with, be it with generic NFC/AFC helmets (which I think was the case at one point? I could be wrong) or lo-res helmets and reduced graphical effects on helmets. The next question would be how much is that addition worth? If they were to do this, how many people would actually play the Pro Bowl? I would guess not many, and I think if the Pro Bowl were to be done right it'd have to be as a byproduct of another component to justify the work. For example, it could be justified if the Longshot story mode had a Pro Bowl chapter, or maybe in franchise the Pro Bowl gets featured as the one place to do 3v3 squads in an online franchise. On its own right now, though, I don't think the Pro Bowl adds enough value to the game to make it a developer focus; there are other places where the devs can better spend their time to get more bang for their buck.