Timespitters 2...Offline!:( (1 Viewer)

[BrianB]

I would hope as a developer you might be able to provide some insight into this.

The only guesses I can make are that at the time they initially made the decision for online only on PS2, Microsoft's plans or libraries weren't suitable for their goals, or that as a publisher, Eidos weren't interested in the financial setup that Microsoft were offering.

Or, possibly the developer chose a network setup that just wasn't compatible with the Microsoft libraries.

 

[Romier S]

now, if SOCOM announed that it wouldnt support Online Play either, then there would be some killing sprees going on!!

That would be suicide and will likely never happen!! If it did though I would be the first to fly and out and approprietly flog the developers.
Socom HTF CLan. Thats what its all about baby.
Anyway back to topic.
Brian could you explain a little more what you mean by not being compatible with Microsofts and or Sony's libraries? I have a base understanding of what software libraries are and do, but exactly how do they come into play with online games? Also with that in mind how would a compatibility issue occur? My curiosity is peaked and I'm always up for more information/knowledge on these kinds of things.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

As a consumer I'd be interested to know why they dismissed XBox online support rightaway & planned for it only to be on the XBox... Know what I mean

Because there are over 30 million PS2s out there and less than 5 million X-Boxes.

The PS2 is where TimeSplitters started. Combine that with the fact that it has the largest installed user base and that it will be first console to officially go online, and you can see why the PS2 was where the game was going to be online. Also, they only have one dev team, so making them put the X-Box version online at the same time as the PS2 version is a little much. At least, thats how I see it.

 

[BrianB]

Brian could you explain a little more what you mean by not being compatible with Microsofts and or Sony's libraries? I have a base understanding of what software libraries are and do, but exactly how do they come into play with online games? Also with that in mind how would a compatibility issue occur? My curiosity is peaked and I'm always up for more information/knowledge on these kinds of things.

Both Sony & Microsoft provide libraries to developers for network support - basically, these provide the lowlevel code for sending data back & forth across the network, interact with any provided lobbies etc. Usually with libraries from a console manufacturer, the first few revs suck. This is normal. But, depending on the timescale, developers may not have time to wait on this evolution of maturity. So they have to make decisions based on the early revs or are "locked in" to the earlier revs - a later, more mature version may come too late in the development process (devs tend to like nice stable libs).

As for the "compatibility", that was more of a throwaway remark - there's a number of different ways of coding network games (client/server, peer to peer) as well as a number of ways of sending the lowlevel data out (see PC games). If you code it up expecting one way, it may not be straightforward to change if you've got a poor level of abstraction in your code (ie direct refs & links to things all over the place instead of keeping it all "tidy" so you can change things later). I doubt that was an issue to be honest.

I've done zero work on networking with either platform, so this is all general comment type stuff. I'm sure someone out there knows more about it.

 

[Romier S]

As for the "compatibility", that was more of a throwaway remark - there's a number of different ways of coding network games (client/server, peer to peer) as well as a number of ways of sending the lowlevel data out (see PC games). If you code it up expecting one way, it may not be straightforward to change if you've got a poor level of abstraction in your code (ie direct refs & links to things all over the place instead of keeping it all "tidy" so you can change things later). I doubt that was an issue to be honest.

This part I have a good understanding on. Network coding (For the PC platform)I've done some previous reading on.

Thank you again for the explanation Brian.