Uncharted 2 almost didn't fit on PS3

Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 is inarguably one of the greatest games of recent years. But according to its creators, it almost didn't fit on PS3 - thanks to the firm's ceaselessly ambitious development style.

[MariaHelFutura]

Hard to believe.... But, ND can say what ever the hell they want after Jak and UC1/2.

[zootang]

Well I'm glad it did!

[DualConsoleOwner]

why Bluray is the future of console gaming. well at least for another 10 years according to analysts.

[Shanks]

"If anyone on the team makes a face like, 'Oh, we're f*cked', then we know we're good,"

ROFL!

[nveenio]

From any other developer, I wouldn't believe this; but there were so many times during that game where my jaw just hit the floor--incredible. Thank god for Sony and Naughty Dog, that's all I have to say.

[Finalfantasykid]

-----QUOTE-----
Another Reason
why Bluray is the future of console gaming. well at least for another 10 years according to analysts.
---END QUOTE---

While I agree with you, that is not what this article is referring to. It talks about the ram memory, and how at times the game simply would not fit in main memory(I bet that firmware update helped them out near the end of development, maybe they were the ones who asked SONY to do that)

[jwk94]

I dont see how this is possible, single layered BRD's hold like around 50gb, and dual layered holds almost twice that!

[DualConsoleOwner]

Hmmm thats very interesting because PS3 has pretty good memory.

it has two 256 memory (total 512) with pretty high bandwidth.
As matter of fact, it is a lot faster than xbox 360's ram.
(so fast that Cod Black ops only uses 256 while xbox 360 uses 512)

it's pretty surprising to hear that wasnt enough.

@jwk94

single layer supports around 25 gig and double layer is 50 gig.

but they came out with a new 200 gig disc that is playable on current drive. but obviously no one uses it cause its expensive as hell at this point.

[Finalfantasykid]

I never said that the PS3 had bad memory, its just that there is never enough memory. If the PS3 had 2GB of memory, I'm sure that ND would be using 99% of that.

[hay]

@DualConsoleOwner: And Uncharted 3 appears to have "pretty good" visuals, engine and stuff. You know, it takes ram. See PC: 1GB in average now.

[tawak]

but it will surely fit on xbox 360 dvd (sarcasm)

[HappyGaming]

Than compress the huge video files a bit and it should give you a bit of extra room...

I am sure they tried to use all the space...
if you have extra space why not bump up the cutscene video and audio quality a bit?

[MrBeatdown]

@DualConsoleOwner, jwk94, tawak, and Gumtrol

Read the damn article before you post. This had nothing to do with Blu-Ray.

[hellraiserpop]

/facepalm

All you idiots talking about blu-ray capacity when in fact the article is about main/primary memory.

[Vaud-Villian]

Make the disc the right size and it will fit

[-Alpha]

Seeing that it's CVG they probably twisted the headline in some way.

[MariaHelFutura]

LOL. It`s probably something like "We almost didn`t make the release date" translated to CVG as something like "it almost didn`t fit on the PS3"

But I wouldn`t know cause I won`t give them hits.

[Darkfocus]

However the actual quote is "Balestra said that three weeks before the game was due to ship, the team couldn't fit it into the console's memory."

[HappyGaming]

As in the RAM memory?

[tplarkin7]

Just a guess, but running low on space was probably due to redundant data required to speed up loading.

[talltony]

"Balestra uses the analogy that of PS3's "six-lane freeway" of SPUs, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune used two. Uncharted 2 used all six, but at 'street cars' level of performance. Uncharted 3? Guess what? That's 'more like Formula One'."

nice!

[ct03]

If there's a problem fitting the game into memory as they say, then SPUs aren't going to change that. LODs need to be more aggressive, textures need to be lower res etc. Similar to how they solved the problem for Uncharted 2.

The quote is quite deceptive to those who don't know what they're talking about.

[Persistantthug]

with other technical tricks, such as with disk cache and other optimizations.

Naughty Dog knows their stuff.

Their games already speak volumes.

[nycredude]

Ct03

WTF are you talking about. I played through UC2 3 times and you would be hard pressed to find low res textures in that game. It has one of the best texture streamer ever

[Kleptic]

cto3...you missed it...

the SPU's being paralled for certain processes allows multiple affects to be done in tandem with the gpu...which...directly frees up memory, as certain processes are no longer pooled in memory waiting to be rendered one after the other...

that is EXACTLY how the PS3's CPU allows work arounds for certain resource heavy operations...biggest example so far being MLAA cpu optimization, where the cpu handles all AA functions, instead of loading it up on the gpu, and using more of its memory...

so when they get the spu's to sing more...the gpu has more room, and more importantly, more memory to work with for other operations...in the end...resulting in games that look like Uncharted 3, killzone 3, etc...

this is why I would argue that the absolute best gamble Sony took with the PS3 was the Cell...not blu ray...blu ray is great for content, and its ability to store uncompressed HD textures...but the CPU is what makes it all possible (streaming those uncompressed textures in in real time, rendering calc specific processes, etc.)...without it, blu ray really wouldn't add much...meaning if you put a blu ray drive on a 360, and allow it to run blu ray games, it would hardly effect anything, as the 360's processor coudln't take advantage of it...

[DaTruth]

But all of that wouldn't be possible without XDR ram at 3.2 ghz! Ken was a visionary to include it considering it's heavy cost compared to the alternative, it was a real risk. But its use in the PS3 will bring down its cost considerably, making PS4 a go with one gig or more of XDR.

Good ol' Krazy Ken made a lot of good decisions! I fear for the PS4 without him. It won't be the console it could be with him at the helm! I hope they contract him back as a consultant or better yet, lead designer for PS4 development!

[RedDead]

Didn't ND just say the had no limits on Ps3?

Edit---Surely they're limited to what the Ps3 can do?

Edit 2---I'll go read again

Edit 3---I'm watching the interview. I can't make out any words at all, the sound is messed up. I'll take your words for it, it sounds like ripten just blew it out of proportion to be honest, if it is what your saying then it's hardly a bold statement like Ripten said it was

[Daz]

They they said they no had no limits. They didnt say the ps3 has no limits if you read that artical.

Edit: There is limits but you can optimize things make it run better, look better and so on.
uncharted 1 to uc 2 looks better and now it looks like it be the same for uc 3 has well.

Edit 2: yeah things are always tacken out of proportion over the interent. it will never change ;p

Happy gaming

[TANUKI]

Exactly as Daz said, ND said they themselves had no limits (as in Sony wasn't interfering with production).

[Tommykrem]

If they did, I think what they meant was that their work wasn't limited by hardware capacity. Because obviously the PS3 has limits ;)

[visualb]

no. ND never said they had no limits on the PS3

they said they had no limits working with sony.

[Consoldtobots]

there is never enough ram,I think we can all agree to that.
IMO what sony should do is release a new upgraded PS3 with 1 or 2GB of XDR and then have developers offer a settings option for newly released games.

Do you have a 512mb PS3?

Do you have a 1 or 2GB PS3?

and they can extend the life and quality of their console for an extra 10 years easy. No it's going the PC route because PC games have to be configured for a myriad of HW combinations. Memory options for PS3 games isn't that far of a stretch and wouldn't really increase development time, just the parameters of the game engine and what assets are loaded at runtime.

[blackburn5]

*ND grabs crowbar* must.... make it ......FIT! lol. Just kidding. BTW if UC2 was such a beast that YLODed PS3s what about UC3? Am I going to have to put my PS3 on ice while I play?

[koehler83]

Games don't kill machines. Machines die while games are in them.

[MariaHelFutura]

Koehler I believe you. BUT..... I swear Dead Rising 1 was killing 360s. Myself (x2) and ALOT of my friends playing Dead Rising 1 lost their 360s in the middle of playing that game. Morgan from Xplay had 2 360s die while playing Dead Rising 1 aswell.

I know it doesn`t make sense, but I swear some game are more prone to killing consoles. Dead Rising always comes to mind when people say games can`t kill consoles.

[Nicaragua]

Dude - EVERYONES 360 was dying around that period regardless of whether they were playing Dead Rising or not.

More to do with the launch 360's being shit than the games they were playing.

[multipayer]

My 360 died during perfect dark zero, and gears of war multiplayer. It is just what I played the most, I made it through Dead Rising 1 fine. I never achieved the S rank ending though... maybe that's what does it. /s

I also had a PS3 YLOD, while I was playing LittleBigPlanet... Again, it was just what I played most.

[IcarusOne]

My launch 360 never died. Still rocking to this day.

[sobekflakmonkey]

I have never heard of UC2 causing YLOD before...it definitely didnt break any of my friends ps3's...or my own..

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

The water in that debut trailer looked flippin awesome. Hope we get to do some under water stuff.

"If anyone on the team makes a face like, 'Oh, we're f*cked', then we know we're good,"

LOL

[tehpees3]

Uncharted 3 could be even better than this. Hope it doesn't get any problems because it has some of the best graphics I've ever seen. PS3 is really showing what it can do compared to 360.

[AccountClosed57029]

As much as I agree with you, I have to say that it's best not to make comparisons because then people will say "Oh it almost didn't fit on PS3, so PC is better because it would fit perfectly". When it comes to facts on memory and graphics, it's hard to put the PS3 over PC. Just say that it's nice that it takes advantage of the PS3, not "the Xbox is so gay, that it can't handle Uncharted".

[Raoh]

spu's.. why arent other developers doing what they are supposed to to make games work as smooth as this.

[artynerd]

When a good portion of your "in-game graphics" are pre-rendered movies, yeah, it will take up nearly 50gb. God of War III is the same way - tons of background movies are playing in a lot of the levels to give the illusion of amazing in-game graphics. Why do you think you can't change the camera angles in that game?

That's the main edge PS3 has in this generation - the storage space to put lossless enough videos into their games that pass off to 99% of people as "rendered in-game". It's kinda like the evolution of the pre-rendered backgrounds in the original 3 Resident Evil games. Parasite Eve 2 on the PS1 was one of the first games I saw that used pre-rendered movies for some backgrounds. The effect was very cool, but it was obviously limited on the PS1.

When it comes down to graphics, it's more in the hands of top-tier developers like Naughty Dog, Epic Games, Rockstar and Santa Monica Studios, and much less the hardware itself.

[Digital-_-Smoke]

Kid please do your research first..
God Of War 3 is all "Realtime"

[visualb]

Actually you are part right.

MOST of GOWIII is realtime, but SM studio's did officially state that certain cutscenes (like the intro, and a few others) were video's recorded with the in game engine and then played back,
thus the seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay.

this wasn't because of shortcomings, it was a design decision to allow the game to load while the cutscene was playing, and to save some space/keep the game free of loading times (which it is) =)

[artynerd]

Hahahahaha.... that's fine, believe what you will. I don't want to ruin the magic for you. Again, why else do you think you can't change the camera angles? That Lavos boss has A TON of pre-rendered movies. If you had a 65" plasma, you'd notice the compression artifacts in the background movies. Looks great either way, but don't think for one second that all of the backgrounds are being rendered real time... but then again, you're probably one of those people who has some speed of light/wormhole theory about how Santa Claus can visit billions of homes in one night, lol.

Disagree all you want, it's still the truth.

[BrianG]

Funny you say that artynerd

I have a 67 inch tv and don't notice what your talking about.

Also, doubting real time? What about Cryengine 3, which is supposed to be all real time, all the time, on PS3 and other home consoles as well as PC?

It is possible, GOW3 did it.

[Mac is OK]

I bleieve they're talking RAM memory not disc space, otherwise they would just use a double layered disc(the torrent for U2 seems to be below 25gb). Memory has always been the bottleneck of the PS3.

[Focker420]

Yep, they're talking about RAM

[OpenGL]

Yeah, I think that's what they meant as well. RAM limitations are more of an issue that disc space. I think Uncharted 2 still only used a single layer Blu-ray anyway.

[zaz12]

what?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!

[GodsHand]

So in the first God of War game you could change the camera angle? I could understand if the previous games had the ability to do this to back up your statement, but since the game is following a certain play style from secession to secession I don't belive your comment.

[Rageanitus]

most of gow was real time except for some cutscenes... i know this because i had a costume addon , and in some scenes it reverted back to the original costume..

Gears of war 1 did that well on xbox also, but after looking at the pc you can tell how well they hid the in game cutscenes lol day an night on the pc version

[d3nworth1]

Ah you can't change the camera angle in God of War 3 period reguardless of wether your in game or prerendered. Plus the storeage is not just to put videos. High resolution textures take up space too especially when you have alot of them. For example Final Fantasy 13 the Ps3 version had higher rez textures than the 360 version why? Cuz it had more space. The prerender scence aren't different from what you get in game any way since they were rendered using the game engine. When it come down to graphics hardware is equally important. Developers can only do what the hardware can handle. If it was just up top the skill of the developers games would look like Final Fantasy Advent Children or Beowulf by now.

[Inside_out]

That kind of truth telling will lose you alot of bubbles around here.

You are absolutely right and ND knows it. Uncharted 1 had 80 pre-rendered " simulations " as ND like to call them...Uncharted 2 had 564...their numbers, not mine. Calling them simulations was to try to hide the fact that they had nothing to do with the actual game play.

The technology is no different than the blue/green screen stuff you see in movies. It's nothing more than smoke and mirrors...like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

So when Drake is running along a collapsing bridge or a hotel is being blown up or when little Kratos is jumping around a 10 story monster, it's all just background animation. All games are using the effect to some degree...ND and the very ( except for blu-ray space )limited PS3 are using it for everything...opening doors, jumping from a chair...that's why Uncharted has 564 " simulations ".

If ND and the PS3 community want to brag about it...go ahead...they are only fooling themselves.

Here's some Uncharted footage from part 2...in game...

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

This is the most advanced game ever...lol...look at all the bad textures, silly collision detection problems, cameras that don't behave...terrible animations, that Yeti looks outright PS2 quality...yes, it's a man in a suit but who cares. If you go watch the Jimmy Fallon UC 3 footage, it has all the same problems. The villager speaks in a language NOBODY understands including Drake...O_o...which is comical. You pull ladders out of the mountain side, no different than if you were in any other level. Every game has issues but Uncharted seems to be exempt.

Single player campaign, 4 player story based co-op, Forge, Firefight and award wining multi-player...Halo Reach is a technological marvel...Same for Gear 3....all on a little DvD disc. On 360, you don't have the luxury of 50 gb's but strangely the games are no longer on the PS3...or better for that matter.

[josh14399]

if i remember correctly i read in an article that naughty dog put some parts of the game on the disc twice to help load stuff quicker.

[CernaML]

I believe that's what Insomniac did for the Resistance games. Not Naughty Dog and Uncharted.

[TheTruth89]

Hey FanBots do you understand now why PS3 is a beast?

[bailoutbenny]

no.

[Arup02]

hahah lmao

[AccountClosed57029]

can't the PC "FanBots" use your same question against you.

[TheTruth89]

When i see something better than KZ3 or Uncharted 3 with a 2006 hardware yes =)

(And it still difficult for them prove this with a current PC gen hardware, LOL)

[the_best_player]

you speak The Truth lol

[no_more_trolling]

uncharted 2 was only 18 gb

[Drekken]

You should change your name to no_more_reading.

[CernaML]

Wow seriously... start reading the articles before making yourselves look like complete fools.

[theonlylolking]

Naughty Dog said they wanted to fit everything on Uncharted 2 without the need for a dual layered disc.

[ct03]

This isn't about the size of the game. It's about how much they can fit into memory (512 MB) at any given time.

[theonlylolking]

Oh...well obviously. There is almost not even usable amount of RAM on the PS3.

[Pandamobile]

That's because of all the pre-rendered cut scenes ;)

[y0haN]

They're not pre-rendered, they are just using swap-out models & textures. Bullshots, if you will.

[Xander756]

Didn't they also say that MGS4 barely fit on PS3? It's probably because they just don't bother to compress anything.

[MeNoRasta]

This is hard to believe.

[theroadtoruin]

almost didn't fit? Uncharted 2 is only around 22gigs and a dual layer can hold 50gig, so that's not even half of its space.

BDXL can hold up to 128gigs.

Heavy Rain was larger than Uncharted, God Of War III is almost double its size.

[wicko]

read the article and it will make more sense.

[Matthew94]

When they said memory, I believe they meant the RAM and not Blueray.

[Karum]

It's nice to see a developer really pushing themselves and their tools to the limit, with 3 weeks to release they must have been shitting their pants about having to delay the game at the last minute.

[Jazz4108]

Split ram is hurting development. Wow. I hate to see what the ps2 couls do with 1 gig of ram. It looks good now but they should have went with a more streamlined approach with the ram.

[TronEOL]

It's going to be hard to find developers that even come close to the hard work and dedication of Naughty Dog. They optimize the hardware they're working on to give us the best game we can find. Then use their awesome writer to give us the best cinematic story.

It's a nice thing to see in an industry full of repeats (Call of Duty), and ONLY using the newest hardware as a benchmark rather than optimizing and pushing the hardware that is used by everyone (PC Gaming, I should have been able to play Crysis on a 4 year old, from now, Graphics card and have it look and play amazingly).

Naughty Dog deserves an award for their efforts.

[Bathyj]

They got plenty of awards.

They're called "Game of the Year".

[TronEOL]

Although that is correct, the award was for that game. The STUDIO and the people themselves deserve an award for their overall effort in pushing the gaming industry forward.

Or at least one huge pat on the back.

By the way, I love the reasons behind the disagrees.
Hard to take the truth isn't it?

[Rageanitus]

imo uc2 was the best game on the ps3 alot of memory was used for the sound and cutscenes

[Rageanitus]

lol disagrees... did you guys hear the uncompressed sound from uncharted its pretty clear... this is the same nonsense that happened with hd-dvd vs blu-ray where the xbox fans were convinced uncompressed sound cannot be heard and is "not needed"

[BrianG]

they are disagreeing with you because you don't understand the article. Its about RAM, not disc space, which it seems you a clearly referring to.

[kesvalk]

uncharted 2: among thieves disc image have 22.32 Gigs

yeah, right...
i hate this type of lie...

[BrianG]

It should a be a rule to read the article first haha. Someone suggested that the other day.

About RAM, plain and simple, not disc space, read first please. Why else use the site if your not reading the material on it?

[ReBurn]

As a lifelong software engineer I always chuckle when I read things like this. Developers patting themselves on the back for solving contrived problems. Great job, Naughty Dog!

Still a great game. Non-tongue-in-cheek good job on that one.

[Bathyj]

Just another reminder of why Sony is awesome for the risks they take.

Sure, they could have made a mid range PC, slapped it in a box and called it a console but instead they did something different.

They used they own chip which they had been developing for years.
The same with their optical disc's.

I can still remember how happy I was when they announced PS3 would have The Cell and Bluray because I had been following both technologies since before PS3 was even announced. I guess it was all part of the master plan.

Anyway, they took the risk and its paying off, and we the gamers are the ones that benefit, Bravo.

[GusBricker]

If it was on 360, it would've used like 11 DISCS.

Awesome!

[jalen247]

Uncharted looks better than any game on the Xbox 360 and only used 2 of the PS3's 6 SPUs...WOW...that is crazy...

[turgore]

Gears 2 looks better than Uncharted 1.

[Bathyj]

Haha, thats funny.

Gears 2 looked like all UE3.0 games. Low Poly models hidden by normal maps, plastic shiny textures, poor animation, texture load in, static looking environments.

It wan barely an improvement over Gears 1 and Uncharted 1 still looks better than both of them.

[jalen247]

LMAO @ tugore's commment....See comparison proof below...ROTFL

http://kineticninja.blogspo...

http://kineticninja.blogspo...

I think the links speak for themselves!!!

[CYBERHATER]

Whatever. Get off the games nuts already. You one console only fans are idiots. And it still didn't sell like call of duty lol.

[BrianG]

Hey, Wii Fit is the best game ever, OMG, Its sooooo much more fun that anything else I've ever played. /S (Big S for emphasis)

Sales do not equal quality. Even by those standards, high quality products usually sell less than low quality products. How many Lambos you see on a daily basis compared to Hondas?

Uncharted = Lambo
COD = Honda

[AccountClosed57029]

Really? You do know that you're incorrect in your "high quality products usually sell less than low quality products" argument because the real factor in Lamborghini selling less than Honda is not it's higher quality but it's ridiculously higher prices. By this actual comparison it makes no sense because Uncharted and Call of Duty are the same price, but when you factor in DLC, Call of Duty is more expensive than Uncharted, which would mean that Call of Duty is the "Lamborghini" and Uncharted is the "Honda", but since comparisons between quality, price, and sales are inconsistent between cars and videogames, your argument lacks any credible evidence, thereby making it flawed.

[BrianG]

At above

I was using that logic just as an example. I can see where it would be flawed.

But regardless, sales do not equal quality, thats what I was going for. I hope you at least saw that in my comment.

[turgore]

the PS3 is gonna catch on fire.

[joereaper]

whats uncharted 2? is this game new?

[joereaper]

silly joereaper its only THE BEST GAME ON THE BEST CONSOLE EVER THE PLAYSTATION 3!!!!!!!!! DUHHHHHHHHH thats why we talk about it for years and never mention games that are better

[peowpeow]

*tumbleweed rolls past*

[Memo-Xen x3100]

COD : Uncharted 2 = McDonalds : Lobster. Zitty emo 360 cheerleaders wouldn't understand the word quality if Major Nelson tweeted the Webster's Dictionary definition while shaving his chest.

[Too_many_games]

Meh, i'll pass.. didn't like Uncharted and then bought Uncharted 2 based on hype and it still didn't catch...so...i think i will skip this game

[Tzuno]

Yeah Right!!! I think Naughty Dog kiss their own ass too much.

[orange-skittle]

Well that shows PS3's limitations bc it wasnt as if the game was that spectacular. the story was good, animations were very good, but the game wasn't OMFG!! Not even in scale. God of war did more in terms of scale. The game was linear and with that alone should show why it wasn't OMFG. It told a story and the cutscenes drew you in more. You wanted to see what happened next. IMO, God of War 3 looked better and so did KillZone 2. For what Rockstar is doing L.A. Noire, they will change the way we look at games and characters. Actors like Nolan North will soon be visible and not just "a voice"

[JJFNIGHTS80]

must big A BIG ASS FILE THEY HAVE.