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[Gaiff]

This is an awesome video revealing some of the steps Nixxes took to have Ghost of Tsushima running on PC. They speak of the challenges they faced porting a game with no PC code path whatsoever to PC. They also explain the significant advantages the unified memory architecture (UMA) on consoles offers and much more. I strongly recommend anyone interested to watch this. They do a great job breaking it down for the layman (even though there's still a lot of technical mumbo jumbo most of us won't understand).

I also found it interesting to learn that at the start, it was just two graphics engineer with Bruce Oberg, co-founder of Sucker Punch, helping them out for a couple of months to get everything set up so they could start working.



Key facts:

• PC development started in early 2022 with a team consisting of two graphics engineer supervised by Bruce Oberg, the co-founder of Sucker Punch
• There was no PC code path at all. They had to build everything from scratch
• Importing the particles system proved one of the more difficult part. Marco thought it would take a month. It took him 4 months
• Getting most render systems fully operational was accomplished by June 2023
• Full team came together in June 2023, adding teams for QA, input, multiplayer, etc

Typical multiplatform game:

PlayStation exclusive

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Nice to see this. It really puts into perspective how much of a challenge it is and what it takes to port a pure console game to PC.

Thanks for the post!!

 

[Jigsaah]

Very interesting. I will watch this later, but GoT runs fantastically on PC

 

[Flabagast]

yeah suuurreee it was importable.

lmao these companies

 

[Fabieter]

yeah suuurreee it was importable.

lmao these companies

They just explain how it was more work than they thought it would. Nothing more Nothing less.

 

[OverHeat]

Great port! Awesome game

 

[Magic Carpet]

It was a great port. So why then have all the other ports gone so crappy?

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Because games use different engines. Each new IP may be built on a different engine which requires engineering time.

 

[Bojji]

It was a great port. So why then have all the other ports gone so crappy?

Returnal - ok
Days Gone - great
GOW - ok
GOW R - ok
TLOU1 - bad (shit at launch)
Horizon 1 - bad at launch
Horizon 2/Remaster - ok
SP/MM - ok
SM2 - bad
GoT - great

There are other games but I don't remember them now...

 

[Lorianus]

I lack complete understanding on the subject but my uninformed brain tells me:

Are these games not made on PC's and in some form or another did run or have been playtested on PC's during development ?

 

[Magic Carpet]

TLOU1 - bad (shit at launch)
Horizon 1 - bad at launch
SM2 - bad

There are other games but I don't remember them now...

I guess these 3 must have stuck in my mind and ruined my perception of PS ports. I outright forgot about all the decent ports.

 

[damidu]

I lack complete understanding on the subject but my uninformed brain tells me:

Are these games not made on PC's and in some form or another did run or have been playtested on PC's during development ?

they have dev-kits to run and test, writing the code on a pc doesnt mean they are creating a pc version

 

[Gaiff]

Returnal - ok
Days Gone - great
GOW - ok
GOW R - ok
TLOU1 - bad (shit at launch)
Horizon 1 - bad at launch
Horizon FE/Remaster - ok
SP/MM - ok
SM2 - bad
GoT - great

There are other games but I don't remember them now...

Death Stranding - Great
HZD - Bad at launch, Great now
Days Gone - Great
GOW - Good at launch, Great now
Sackboy - Okay
Returnal - Okay at launch, Good now
Rift Apart - Okay at launch, Great now
Uncharted - Okay
Spider-Man/MM - Good at launch, Great now
TLOU - Terrible at launch, Okay now
HFW - Okay
GOT - Good
GOWR - Okay
HZDR: Okay
TLOU II - Okay

This is my assessment.

I lack complete understanding on the subject but my uninformed brain tells me:

Are these games not made on PC's and in some form or another did run or have been playtested on PC's during development ?

No, they run on devkits. Exclusives almost never run on a PC.

 

[Denton]

Impressive work, GoT looks and runs fantastic on PC. In fact my experience with all Sony PC games is positive, even TLOU1 was fine for me at launch, aside from the long shader compilation. I didn't played Spidey 2 though.

 

[yurinka]

Are these games not made on PC's and in some form or another did run or have been playtested on PC's during development ?

Yes, at least for a portion of the development.

Parts of the game code instead can be freely tested in a PC independently of the engine. As could be stuff related to the logic as could be enemy AI, 2D UI, quests, part of the particles stuff, etc.

When using a multiplatform engine (UE, Unity, Godot...), or a console only engine ready to do this (like Decima or the Insomniac one), also applies to console specific stuff like the rendering (visuals) or console API part. Some console specific stuff can only be tested in the devkit/testkit, so obviously that part specially in the later stages must be tested/debugged there for any game to be released in that console.

But there may other engines more coded to the metal like the ND or Sucker Punch ones (at least before they did one or two PC ports) that can only run their rendering/API part in the devkit, this is mostly the part regarding the graphics, inputs, trophies, memory management, rumble, etc.

Roughly speaking, part of the job of these porters was to replicate that API code (common code used for all games, let's say the Sony code provided to all 1st and 3rd party devs to interact between the game/engine code and the console hardware, a bit like DirectX is in PC but includes other things like trophies or MP and user stuff) with a PC alternative adapted to work in thousands of different CPU/GPU/memory/disks variations). And then on top add a layer for the extra PC stuff like additional controls, wide screen, PC upscaler options, scalability settings, etc.

When done for the first game of an engine that wasn't ready to release games on that platform, it's a very technical, repetitive and difficult job. A bit frustrating because during a long period of time they don't see results in the screen. To make ports in engines already ready to work in PC is way easier and faster job. I mean, their first game in this engine took them a couple years. These three guys will port the next game made in this engine, Yotei, way faster because they already will have done that API abstraction layer, and updating whatever API and engine changes they had since the previous game (a lot, but at least not all) they will be able to play it on PC and will "only" need to focus on the PC specific stuff.

 

[poppabk]

Impressive work, GoT looks and runs fantastic on PC. In fact my experience with all Sony PC games is positive, even TLOU1 was fine for me at launch, aside from the long shader compilation. I didn't played Spidey 2 though.

Do you have AMD GPU by any chance? I had no real problems with TLOU1 either.

 

[viveks86]

Yes, at least for a portion of the development.

Parts of the game code instead can be freely tested in a PC independently of the engine. As could be stuff related to the logic as could be enemy AI, 2D UI, quests, part of the particles stuff, etc.

When using a multiplatform engine (UE, Unity, Godot...), or a console only engine ready to do this (like Decima or the Insomniac one), also applies to console specific stuff like the rendering (visuals) or console API part. Some console specific stuff can only be tested in the devkit/testkit, so obviously that part specially in the later stages must be tested/debugged there for any game to be released in that console.

But there may other engines more coded to the metal like the ND or Sucker Punch ones (at least before they did one or two PC ports) that can only run their rendering/API part in the devkit, this is mostly the part regarding the graphics, inputs, trophies, memory management, rumble, etc.

Roughly speaking, part of the job of these porters was to replicate that API code (common code used for all games, let's say the Sony code provided to all 1st and 3rd party devs to interact between the game/engine code and the console hardware, a bit like DirectX is in PC but includes other things like trophies or MP and user stuff) with a PC alternative adapted to work in thousands of different CPU/GPU/memory/disks variations). And then on top add a layer for the extra PC stuff like additional controls, wide screen, PC upscaler options, scalability settings, etc.

When done for the first game of an engine that wasn't ready to release games on that platform, it's a very technical, repetitive and difficult job. A bit frustrating because during a long period of time they don't see results in the screen. To make ports in engines already ready to work in PC is way easier and faster job. I mean, their first game in this engine took them a couple years. These three guys will port the next game made in this engine, Yotei, way faster because they already will have done that API abstraction layer, and updating whatever API and engine changes they had since the previous game (a lot, but at least not all) they will be able to play it on PC and will "only" need to focus on the PC specific stuff.

Outside of game code, I would think all assets/textures/animation are still built on high end pcs using industry standard tools?

 

[yurinka]

Outside of game code, I would think all assets/textures/animation are still built on high end pcs using industry standard tools?

Yes.

3D assets using stuff like Maya, Blender, etc. Textures / UI stuff / 2D illustrations or icons using Photoshop etc. Pixel art with Photoshop, Asesprite, etc. Same goes for music and sound effects.

Basically each artist works with whatever they want and later there are tools to convert them to propietary filetypes when needed, compressed or packed, etc.

But an artist, animator, composer etc. uses industry standard tools also used in other industries like animation, illustration, comic, music, cinema, etc. An artist may only do concept art. Other one may only sculpt in 3D characters, weapons, environment props (there are both generalists and people specialized only in these areas), then other people (or the same in small teams) just texture them, then other ones only animate them, other ones are in change of the lighting etc.

And there's other people who are in charge of putting them in the game, sometimes also making some minor tweaks, fixes or optimizations if needed.

Devs specially in big companies normally have very powerful PCs specially in the specific part they use/need. And also licenses to any expensive industry standard tool. In case of indies, obviosly something more limited. To draw artists normally have big ass Wacoms, in case of indies maybe something like a good price/value XPPen.

 

[Denton]

Do you have AMD GPU by any chance? I had no real problems with TLOU1 either.

Nope, 3080Ti. Even made video on release day on max settings, no issues

 

[DirtInUrEye]

I'm playing this at the moment actually, I'm really enjoying it considering I am generally sick and tired of open world stuff. But the combat is just so good, that along with the lovely visual style it makes for a compelling package. I'm using 4k DLSS 4 on balanced and with a 90fps lock it's a lovely presentation.

Does the new Assassin's Creed feel anywhere as nice to control as this game, or is traversal and combat mechanically still very much an AC game? I'd only touch it if they have completely revamped how the avatar fights and moves through the world.

 

[Gaiff]

Also, a little part I found interesting to know is how they QA'd the game. They just put the PC and PS5 version side by side on TVs and had the graphics team look at them to spot bugs or other irregularities.

This reminds me of GOWR and Uncharted where there were/are several visual bugs in the PC version. I wonder if those teams go through the same process and simply didn't spot them, or they just have a QA department look at the games and report their findings.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I wonder what’s next for Nixxes. Not much left to port.

 

[Wolzard]

Very enlightening video, apparently, the problems with ports are due to adaptations that need to be made, because some functions exist on Playstation consoles, but not in DirectX.

And the secret of consoles is really that the structural design of the game is thought out in every detail of the console, in order to get around the limitations.