Interview BioShock community Q&A

[xemous]

A hilarious post.

 

[xemous]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Slamelov

Quote:
Are there any lessons from Deus Ex 2 that the team has learned and is using when making BioShock?
Many development teams have learned important lessons from previous attempts to bring PC games to the console, though Deus Ex 2 is an infamous example. One of the main things we are doing differently is that we are leading our development efforts with the 360. Therefore all decisions on HUD and gameplay situations are made on the 360 and brought over to the PC to avoid the situations you are thinking about.
What situations?. So, the lessons you learned about Deus Ex 2 is to make the same errors?.
<...>
It will be a console game ported to PC.
That FAQ entry is not accurate. According to Ken Levine, it was written by our new community development liaison who is coming to Boston this week to get fully briefed on our development process.

- Chris Kline, Lead Programmer

Sweet.

 

[don_tomaso]

Wth? Is he an idiot? His soloution to making UIs not feeling consolish on PC is to make the UI for a console, then use it for the PC version? There´s no logic in that?

Either he´s totally dumb, or he didn´t understand the question at all.. or both.

 

[The_Pope]

Why are they even making a PC version?

All its doing is getting PC players interested enough to look and see that the game is a piece of shit. Then they'll bitch about it on the internet, which is bad for the games hype.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Therefore all decisions on HUD and gameplay situations are made on the 360 and brought over to the PC to avoid the situations you are thinking about.

I'm having a bad flashback to Oblivion when I read that. Oversized text and seeing only five items in your inventory at once ahoy?

 

[Krafter]

Levine is smarter than this, I hope that my worst fears are not coming true. Not Bioshock, please. Deus Ex was bad enough.

What a shitty week. You've got Fallout 3 news and Bioshock news, yet both of them are games made for console kiddies. Fallout 3 is definitely already lost, but I still have hope for Bioshock as Irrational has not let me down yet. We'll see.

 

[Gambler]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.p ... ost1549285

 

[KreideBein]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1549285#post1549285

That FAQ entry is not accurate. According to Ken Levine, it was written by our new community development liaison who is coming to Boston this week to get fully briefed on our development process.

That's quite a relief.

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1549285#post1549285

That FAQ entry is not accurate. According to Ken Levine, it was written by our new community development liaison who is coming to Boston this week to get fully briefed on our development process.

That's quite a relief.

And yet he doesn't state clearly that the PR guy is mistaken and the game is, in fact, not being developed primarily for the 360, which is all he had to say on the matter. Unless, of course, he too needs to be "fully briefed on the development process."

 

[KreideBein]

And yet he doesn't state clearly that the PR guy is mistaken and the game is, in fact, not being developed primarily for the 360, which is all he had to say on the matter. Unless, of course, he too needs to be "fully briefed on the development process."

True, and this could very well be PR doublespeak. But given that he did say that the entry was "not accurate", he's giving the impression that the new guy was pulling the information out of his ass.

 

[The_Pope]

It sounds like 'trust us' to me. If he meant "it's not a shitty console port", he could have said so.

 

[Blacklung]

Actually one UI that seemed to really find a good intermediate between platforms was the one in Morrowind. Not exactly pretty, had a few problems (couldn't type in numbers for things but had to scroll instead), but was otherwise extremely functional and versatile. Resizable, windowed, movable, optional UI's are the way to go if you ask me. You have to be retard to not know how to use them or adjust them to your liking.

 

[Jason]

Um, well maybe you just "experimented" in college but it's ok because you were really high and that guy was super cute and it was just once or twice so it doesn't really count.

 

[z3r'0']

It sounds like 'trust us' to me.[snip]

That is the gist I gathered as well... having serious flashbacks of DX2 here. I can only hope that such is not the case - as something in the vein of SS2 has been a long time coming.

 

[Oarfish]

Hasn't Bio shock being a 360 title been common knowledge since it was announced? Any title that is developed for a console is going to be constrained by it to some extent. The technical limitations that a 360 imposes are not too onerous compared to the xbox 1.

And at least its likely to have been tested before shoving an unoptimised, broken game in a box. Gothic 3 and NWN2 were both shockingly broken on release. If you luck out with the same graphic chip set the developers use, a PC / 360 title is at least likely to be playable at release.

I'll probably buy it on the 360 anyway. I don't know if I can be bothered with the gaming hardware treadmill any more.

 

[Mangler]

Bah, I'm expecting the PC version to get delayed just like Halo.

Not that Halo was good either. Frankly the game was doomed as soon as the whole XschlockX 3666 cross-development was announced.

It did put out a very convinicng 'next SS2' effect for quite a while, until you realise its STILL a consone game and will ALWAYS be one.

 

[JoeDirt]

EvoG's interest in the game just doubled.

 

[One Wolf]

A game with a trailer like this isn't allowed to suck.

I hope so.

you're right, that trailer is excellent.

 

[Dmitron]

Well, the video released a while back (featuring the developer's narration) didn't leave much of an impression. So I'm not surprised by this latest development. Wasn't the big chunky HUD enough of a console give away? The narrator (was that Levine?) was talking about a different game than the one actually shown.

 

[doctor_kaz]

Deus Ex: Invisible War sucked in large part because it was developed primarily for the X-Box. So the solution for Bioshock to not fall into the same pit is to develop it primarily for the X-Box 360. That makes absolutely positively no sense.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Eh, I will still probably get it, but I'm not sure. Anyway, levels may be better if the 360 has more processing power than the XBox (unlike those in DX 2).

 

[denizsi]

No surprise to me, I've seen it coming in the last update on the game. Don't rate Levine so highly.

Levine is the public "face" of Bioshock (and Irrational) so it's natural that any bitching about the game will go his direction, regardless of who made each individual decision. Kind of like Warren Spector and Deus Ex 2.

If he's not "teh mastahmind" behind most if not all decisions, then that wouldn't be an accurate comparison. Warren is 100% behind his game and he even defends the most retarded design decisions with a passion, praising DEIW to no end (He's quite literally stated this somewhere in an interview, without adding in the word "retarded" of course).

 

[FrancoTAU]

Eh, I will still probably get it, but I'm not sure. Anyway, levels may be better if the 360 has more processing power than the XBox (unlike those in DX 2).

I don't have an Xbox 360, so anybody have a comment on this? Is the average Xbox 360 game area significantly smaller than the average PC game?

 

[Fez]

It depends on how graphically intensive it is. Usually when they have spare power they use it to make it look prettier, rather than have plainer or uglier views in larger and more expansive areas. It is a developer-end decision, rather than the hardware to blame. If they use a loading system like Gothic/GTA then it can obviously have very large areas.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Which they hopefully will.