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Monster Madness producer Lee Perez has moved to clarify comments made in an interview with VideoGamer.com in which he said “memory limitations” are the biggest challenge of developing on the PS3.
In a follow-up conversation with VideoGamer.com, Perez said that Monster Madness was designed to work solely with the Xbox 360’s “unified 512 MB memory system” and PS3 port developer Psyonix had to “tweak the way the game loads textures and objects” on Sony’s console, which has “a separate 256 MB of XDR main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX”.
Perez, associate producer at publisher SouthPeak Games, said of the challenges associated with PS3 development in an interview with VideoGamer.com last week: “The biggest thing is the memory. The PS3 only has 256 megs of memory. The 360 has 512 so you have twice the memory when you load a level. Now the offset to that is the Cell processor, so if you understand and your engine can understand how to use the multiple cores in tandem you can offset that. Theoretically you can do a lot more, especially if you have a lot of physics objects because it’s very math intensive, not memory intensive. So finding that sweet spot where your game does well in both and it takes advantage of its individual skills is tough.”
Perez’s comments were met with anger by some PS3 fans who pointed out that Sony’s console has collectively the same amount of memory as the 360.
When VideoGamer.com asked for clarification on his comments, Perez replied: “Developing for the PS3 versus the 360 each have pros and cons. I don’t really want to get into that debate. What I was trying to say is that the original developer of Monster Madness designed the game solely with Microsoft’s 360 unified 512 MB memory system. So we have to tweak the way the game loads textures and objects to play on the PS3, which has a separate 256 MB of XDR main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX.
“The new developer, Psyonix, has great experience with UE3 and the PS3. Therefore we had a fairly smooth transition to the PS3. The problem was not the console’s but the technical assumptions that were made in the game’s original engineering. Multiplatform games really need to take into consideration the technical nuances of the systems early on.”
Monster Madness: Grave Danger is set for release on the PS3 in Q3 2008.
