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The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

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Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#31

Post by bitwize »

dangero wrote: post #18
bitwize wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crash Bandicoot was developed at Naughty Dog back when Naughty Dog was a a hardcore software development house. They routinely did clever, not-quite-kosher bullshit like unload parts of Sony's graphics library to free more RAM. If the backwards-compatibility people took an HLE approach and assumed the graphics library was a constant in memory, I can see the emulation going totally sideways. It could probably go sidew…

curious why you don't think Naughty Dog is a hardcore software development house now they have their own state of the art game engine with cutting edge features

Before they were really pushing the envelope from an execution perspective, delivering different types of games with quality and features we really haven't seen before. Today they're riffing on The Last of Us, their "state of the art game engine" an extended version of the one they used for Uncharted. Their last major release was... a remaster of The Last of Us. And there were huge problems with the production of The Last of Us 2.

It's been known that ND haven't been doing anything with GOOL or GOAL since the end of the Jak & Daxter era, around the time that Andy Gavin left. But the programmers there were still using Racket to generate data, scripts, and glue code for their new engine well into the era of TLOU. My conspiracy theory regarding TLOU's third remaster/rerelease is that it happened in significant part because they wanted to get rid of the Racket bits so that they could focus on hiring average developers from a large talent pool to execute on Druckmann's auteur-wannabe vision. Retconning Ellie to not look like Elliot Page and promotion for the HBO series were also factors, but I think the focus at ND has changed to becoming Yet Another Generic Game Studio, and managing the TLOU IP.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#32

Post by beaned »

jdwithit wrote: post #12
_trackno5 wrote: post #10

Fascinating read, even if not very technical. That type of deep work must be a joy to do. Wonder if there are still places where one might get a chance to work like that, specifically on “low level” stuff

It's wild how often these "this was my first development job of any kind" stories crop up in the gaming industry. This seems like a deeply technical project requiring expertise in some very niche areas. Yet Sony trusted this fresh grad with zero experience to knock out one of their marquee features essentially on his own... and it worked??

I don't have any evidence for this but I feel like things used to work more this way in the future. Now we send everything to experts, people with licenses and degrees and years of experience. And I mean it works, but we pay in terms of lost creativity, and create fewer opportunities for younger and lesser experienced people to become experienced themselves.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#33

Post by [deleted] »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #28
RajT88 wrote: post #14

In my humble opinion, the PS2 is the best retro console for tinkering. So many of them were sold, they can be had cheaply, lots of aftermarket stuff for them (HDD/Network adapter), Crazy huge library of weird and interesting titles, vibrantly active homebrew community. And of course, the built-in backwards compatibility. Several interesting hardware revisions to play with as well (although the "fat" ones are the most…

I would agree, which is why a PS2 is on my list of consoles to acquire at some point, but it does have one significant nit: there is easily available no digital video output mods for them, which makes getting a decent picture out of them a challenge unless you already have a suitable CRT to pair with it.

[deleted]

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#34

Post by Tsiklon »

rocky1138 wrote: post #29
kitsunesoba wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree, which is why a PS2 is on my list of consoles to acquire at some point, but it does have one significant nit: there is easily available no digital video output mods for them, which makes getting a decent picture out of them a challenge unless you already have a suitable CRT to pair with it.

And even then, no progressive scan at 480 lines.

At a push the PS2 could do 720P as seen in aspects of Gran Turismo 4 (like it's screenshot mode) which to my mind is phenomenal.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#35

Post by dangero »

bitwize wrote: post #31
dangero wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious why you don't think Naughty Dog is a hardcore software development house now they have their own state of the art game engine with cutting edge features

Before they were really pushing the envelope from an execution perspective, delivering different types of games with quality and features we really haven't seen before. Today they're riffing on The Last of Us, their "state of the art game engine" an extended version of the one they used for Uncharted. Their last major release was... a remaster of The Last of Us. And there were huge problems with the production of The…

All state of the art game engines are multi-game iterations because the number of features and complexity is so large that it cannot be done for a single game any more

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#36

Post by RajT88 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #28
RajT88 wrote: post #14

In my humble opinion, the PS2 is the best retro console for tinkering. So many of them were sold, they can be had cheaply, lots of aftermarket stuff for them (HDD/Network adapter), Crazy huge library of weird and interesting titles, vibrantly active homebrew community. And of course, the built-in backwards compatibility. Several interesting hardware revisions to play with as well (although the "fat" ones are the most…

I would agree, which is why a PS2 is on my list of consoles to acquire at some point, but it does have one significant nit: there is easily available no digital video output mods for them, which makes getting a decent picture out of them a challenge unless you already have a suitable CRT to pair with it.

720p/1080i CRT's can be had - I have a late model Sony Wega 36" I snagged for $30.

I've used component cable as well as one of those HDMI adapters which are powered off USB - and it's not that much different with my CRT. Maybe it makes more of a difference with an LCD.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#37

Post by matheusmoreira »

bitwize wrote: post #15

> All an emulator is doing is changing the shape and flow of those commands. Maybe if you're SIMH and you're emulating an old CPU that was connected asynchronously to like RS232 peripherals. But I think this statement understates the complexity of emulating something like a console. Emulating a console or home computer, or even something like an old console's GPU, is HARD because you have to do these translations in…

I used to really enjoy byuu's detailed articles on the matter. They effectively demonstrated the effort necessary to accurately reproduce the behavior of these machines.

> the raster nature of CRT displays, which allowed for changing the display in significant ways between frames or scanlines

In case anyone would like to know more, this is a really good explanation of these concepts:

https://youtu.be/Q8ph2OVqZeM

> There's a reason why emulation is these days usually only undertaken by some of the strangest most terminally online people

They could be perfectly normal people for all we know... A few days ago I saw a comment here from someone who worked with an emulator developer. Only revealed that fact to him after 4 years working together.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#38

Post by astrange »

jdwithit wrote: post #12
_trackno5 wrote: post #10

Fascinating read, even if not very technical. That type of deep work must be a joy to do. Wonder if there are still places where one might get a chance to work like that, specifically on “low level” stuff

It's wild how often these "this was my first development job of any kind" stories crop up in the gaming industry. This seems like a deeply technical project requiring expertise in some very niche areas. Yet Sony trusted this fresh grad with zero experience to knock out one of their marquee features essentially on his own... and it worked??

Low-level programming isn't that hard if you've got all the docs. Hard part of emulator development is when you have to figure out everything yourself.

Also, as part of backward compatibility the PS2 just has a miniature PS1 in it, so the hardware is fundamentally able to do the old things.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#39

Post by qqtt »

rospaya wrote: post #24
RajT88 wrote: post #14

In my humble opinion, the PS2 is the best retro console for tinkering. So many of them were sold, they can be had cheaply, lots of aftermarket stuff for them (HDD/Network adapter), Crazy huge library of weird and interesting titles, vibrantly active homebrew community. And of course, the built-in backwards compatibility. Several interesting hardware revisions to play with as well (although the "fat" ones are the most…

Loved the PS2 but it's hard to argue when the original Xbox is basically a PC.

Xbox being basically a PC is interesting considering 20+ years later there is still no great emulator for it. xemu plays about 3% of games without minor issues.

Re: The PS2’s Backwards Compatibility from the Engineer Who Built It

#40

Post by autoexec »

highwaylights wrote: post #17
zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #6

FF7 spoiler alert

Bruce Willis was a ghost THE ENTIRE TIME In both cases, I think enough time has passed :-)

I agree, FF7 was a long long time ago, but the warnings are still nice and appreciated. New people are born, grow up, and get introduced to old things after all.

Plus, some gamers are always playing a decade or two behind since prices become dirt cheap, games get re-released in more complete forms without a need for buying a bunch of DLC to access the parts they paywalled off, and most of the bugs and crashes will be patched out.

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