In Braveheart, William Wallace yells out "FREEEEEEEEDOOOOM!!!!" while being tortured.
That is PC development.
The PC is an open platform which means developers can do anything they want. There is nobody telling you how big your game can be or what other people can add to your game. Openness is very important for Zero Gear. The game is built around the concept that anyone can add anything after we release it. This is simply not possible on a lot of closed platforms.
This is freedom.
However, because the PC is open, there are so many different configurations of what a PC actually is. A closed platform is strictly defined and so developing for a closed platform is generally easier. Zero Gear needs to run on every video card, CPU, different amounts of RAM, etc.
This is torture and we are really starting to feel it...
PC Development = Braveheart
Friday, October 3, 2008
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6 comments:
I do not think that is so much the case with most newer consoles. I mean when we look at the xbox360 and the PS3 we see that the content model is more like the PC everyday. In that we can provide custom content if we need to. A great example of this is Unreal Tournament, you can build custom content and send that to the PS3 and that same content will run on both the PC and the PS3.
I think its getting more and more to be the same everyday and with things like XNA which can support custom content from users and so forth I would not be surprised that in the future we see more of this.
the technical ability may be there, but that does not mean that the companies owning these platforms are going to allow you do do what you want.
Depends on the company, of course. More open minded companies are looking towards the "core" user even more. The consoles are looking each time more close to PC's wich is really bad (all the performance is wasted on the incredible poor x86 architecture). Talk about freedom? What about having a few sources released and maybe MacOS/GNU Linux support? =]
@David: In fact, nowadays companies owning those platforms frown upon not just user created content, but content that they can't charge money for as well.
That is a very good point mayan. I know Valve is having this issue with MS right now. They want to release the new maps and game modes that they released for free on the PC while MS wants to charge for them. Very good point.
"Talk about freedom? What about having a few sources released and maybe MacOS/GNU Linux support? =]"
Haha, we are busy enough with the core game. Are you interested in doing the ports for us? ;)
"Haha, we are busy enough with the core game. Are you interested in doing the ports for us? ;)"
I will port it to both platforms. I personally would like to see a mac version of the game :P
I disagree in some respect with what has been said about MS and free content. I think they are slowly opening up to this with things like XNA going forward which will allow users more freedom on the console. I know Epic Games is working hard to bring Unreal Tournament 3 mods to the 360 as well. I think that direction is coming and in all honesty MS is the last one holding out.
We see Sony embracing custom content with Unreal Tournament 3 and mods, we see that Valve would have been able to provide the custom content to the PS3 version of the orange box if they had PS3 devs. This movement towards custom content is going forward. Its no longer a tech issue but rather a biz issue and I think its moving in the right direction :P
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