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[Gaiff]

I haven't seen this posted. It likely got drowned by the flood of April's Fool bullshit on the 1st, and the Switch 2 stuff on the 2nd. Anyway, a little interview GameInformer did with Nixxes and ND regarding the PC port of TLOUII. This doesn't seem to be an April's Fool.



https://gameinformer.com/interview/...pc-port-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii-we-take-the

Some highlights:

Game Informer: Regarding PC ports in general – and I acknowledge this is a dumb question – but, presumably, The Last of Us Part II was developed on a PC. So why is it so difficult to bring a game to PC when it was built on a PC to begin with?

Frauenfelder: [Laughs] That's a very good question.

McIntosh: Okay. So let me talk about how development happens at Naughty Dog. So, everybody has a PC at their desk, but they also have a PS4, PS5 dev kit, depending on which game we're talking about, also at their desk, and the dev kits are hooked up to a TV.

So when we compile the code, when we run the code, it does not run on a PC. It runs on the PlayStation next to us, and we debug it on that and the actual hardware that all of our code here at Naughty Dog executes on is always a PlayStation console. So we don't have any code that would run on a PC, for the entirety of the development of Last of Us Part II.

When we decided to move it to PC, it required a full port. The way we write the code is very close to the hardware. It's very specific to PlayStation hardware. So the code will work on this one graphics card and this one CPU. It relies on the bus speed between the two being a certain amount and the amount of memory being fixed.

In regards to challenges and PSOs:

Game Informer: What were some of the unexpected difficulties of porting this game? What is something that is more challenging than the average player might expect in bringing a PlayStation game to PC?

McIntosh: Something I think I’ll call out because of what we did on The Last of Us Part I on PC that is much improved. On PlayStation, all your shaders are compiled ahead of time. You just load them up and they work. On PC, you have to compile shaders for each machine as you go. It’s called PSO loading. On the first game we did, we tried to do all that in the main menu. People had to wait a long time. On this game, Nixxes has done a really cool new system that allows it to compile those shaders on the fly and seamlessly play the game without having to wait very long for shaders to build up.

It's a problem we never had at all on the PlayStation. It's not even something that we had in our minds. It was a huge engineering effort on the PC version.

And much more if you're interested in reading. It's fairly simple and succint. Sadly, they don't really go into the technical reeds. It's mostly surface level stuff. If you want a deep dive into a PC port, I highly suggest the Ghost of Tsushima presentation by Nixxes.

 

[mèx]

The quote regarding the Steam Deck performance:

Well, we’re verified, so we're super happy with that. And also the scalability, which was one of the things, of course, that was a high priority for us making sure that this game is super scalable on different hardware, AKA the Steam Deck. Steam Deck is such a niche market, but it's so important. I mean, we're releasing a game on Steam, so yeah, of course, we have that whole community of Steam Deck players. And those are just like the hardcore PC players with the faster systems. They're really dedicated.

They find their own ways to improve the game by tweaking settings, etc., and we definitely love supporting them. We added specific Steam Deck presets, making sure that the majority of them can just run the game stable on 30 FPS, directly out of the box. But I'm more than happy to see those forum posts that say, “Hey, you can tweak this and this and you're still able to hit 30, but then this makes it look a little bit better.” We take the Steam Deck very, very seriously. And I'm super proud that we were able to get it verified by Valve.

Having a preset dedicated to the Steam Deck is pretty good.

 

[DAHGAMING]

Its a shame they dont take PC performance seriously.

 

[adamsapple]

The Deck version isn't able to maintain a consistent 30 per the DF video, not sure how well they took it in implementation.

 

[Loxus]

This gives me hope of a new PSP getting some real proper support compared to the Vita.

The only problem would be cost.
If the Switch 2 cost $450. A new PSP would cost something like $500 - $600.

 

[GHG]

The Deck version isn't able to maintain a consistent 30 per the DF video, not sure how well they took it in implementation.

Looks solid enough here:

 

[N0S]

Nixxes been dropping the ball

 

[Baemono]

So basically Game Informer was like "you guys develop on pc first so you should have a pc port from the get go"

 

[GHG]

So basically Game Informer was like "you guys develop on pc first so you should have a pc port from the get go"

Honestly that was such a stupid question.

Code and assets created on PC does not mean they are designed to run on PC.

It would be like telling someone who designs software for cars that their PC should be a car because they used a PC to build the software.

 

[Loomy]

Honestly that was such a stupid question.

Code and assets created on PC does not mean they are designed to run on PC.

It would be like telling someone who designs software for cars that their PC should be a car because they used a PC to build the software.

To be fair, they acknowledge it's a dumb question. I think asking dumb questions is fine as long as you're open to being educated, which it sounds like they were.

Game Informer: Regarding PC ports in general – and I acknowledge this is a dumb question – but, presumably, The Last of Us Part II was developed on a PC. So why is it so difficult to bring a game to PC when it was built on a PC to begin with?

 

[Gaiff]

Honestly that was such a stupid question.

Code and assets created on PC does not mean they are designed to run on PC.

It would be like telling someone who designs software for cars that their PC should be a car because they used a PC to build the software.

People don't know the difference between made on PC and running on PC.

I even saw at least one poster here argue that every game ever developed has a PC version because they're all developed on PC.

 

[Fake]

Its a shame they dont take PC performance seriously.

I don't think they take anything seriously at all.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Its a shame they dont take PC performance seriously.

Yeaaaaaah, with the PC slip ups they've had, really makes you question how Steam deck will go lmao.