Was just wondering, was it hard developing a Trials game for the Xbox360 rather than the PC??? And how different was it compared to what you are used to??
Not that much different I'd say. The biggest difference really is the higher quality requirement for the console game release. Just one very infrequent random crash or hang bug and the game cannot be released. Even silly things like the player ripping off the console hard drive while saving a track must be gracefully handled ("Please reinsert your hard drive to allow the game to save the track"). As patching is highly disregarded, the final testing and bugfixing of each game takes months. Basically this means that Trials HD is much more tested and bug fixed than Trials 2 SE at launch. After Trials 2 SE launch, we spent almost half a year releasing new game versions improving things, fixing bugs and adding new features (and tracks). Trials HD will have all this finetuning already done at launch.
Highly disregarded??? But surely you can still release updates for the game? Every other game seems to do it, even UNO, which is an XBLA game.Originally Posted by sebbbi
Yes. Console players do not want to wait for 20+ minutes in front of their consoles just to start a game. You put the game disc in and it starts. Simple as that. Constant patching is the most annoying feature in many PS3 games. Last time my fiancee wanted to play Singstar we had to install 2 updates to the game and one update to my PS3 just to start the game. It took almost an hour to get the game started. And all this just to sing couple of Singstar songs. I am very happy that Microsoft has tighter quality standards and forces the developers to finish the game before releasing it.Originally Posted by b3anh3ad
Many XBLA games have been updated recently to support the new Xbox 360 avatar system. So the players can get awards such as avatar clothing when they unlock the game achievements. All these patches are really small (one megabyte or so) and fast to load.
To clarify: New Singstar downloadable songs do not need any game patching, just like downloadable content packs in Trials HD do not need any game patching. Game patching is mainly used to fix bugs that developers and testing didn't notice before the game release. We can release new tracks, new tournaments, new editor objects and new achievements in future content packs.
PS3? No wonder your talking about annoying!! Ps3 has possibly the worst updating ever!! Take for example Metal Gear Solid 4. Ok good game, but watching the cutscenes is bad enough, without having to install each act seperately!! That is just wrong!! Thankfully, Xbox is much better at updating games than Ps3. and as for patches being small, what about when a game needs to update to include an entirely different game mode? take for example battlefield bad company. when the conquest mode was released, it just came as an update, which took roughly 3-5 mins. Now surely that must have been a pretty big update???Originally Posted by sebbbi
There is a huge difference on PS3 and Xbox patching! Only yesterday I played 'Pain' on ps3 and it had an update... it had to update 43 items... the whole thing took at least 10 mins. And then you have to wait for the install too! Xbox however, the updates are fast swift and the longest I have had to wait was when they updated the Dashboard, and that was only like 3-5 mins from download to completion. Games, weather disc or xbla, take usually 20 seconds and the game restarts!
I would quite happily update all my Xbox games over again than one PS3 title! (a few times I have cleared the cache on xbox meaning you loose all update data for games, but its not a big deal on Xbox)
I dont think there is a comparision in updating PS3 games and Xbox games! Completley differnt experience!
Tottally agree with you there!! i have overe 30 games for xbox, and again, i agree with what you said, i could update every single one of them, before the ps3 has even got to 20% of an install!!!Originally Posted by KurtCobain
We have programmed a system to Trials HD that allows us to add more tracks (incl. skill game tracks), more tournaments, more objects to the level editor and more achievements without changing the program code. Release of new content packs later on is very easy because of this. The game has been tested so well (pure testing and bug fixing for more than 2 months already, using over hundred players), so we believe that the game release quality will be top notch. Hopefully no issues will be found after the release, and there will be no need to patch the game to fix bugs.
Naturally, if a critical bug is found, RedLynx and Microsoft will surely find a way to release a patch to fix it.