[Jon Irenicus]

Cmq su PC e PS4 ci sono 2 thread sui forum tripwire:
Lets talk about PS4 and KF2

With the news of the Sony Playstation 4 hitting this weekend, and the subsequent wave of expected feedback ranging from "yeah KF2 on PS4" to "oh no TWI are going to ruin the PC version" I thought it would be a good time for me to weigh in with some thoughts and information. I would like to apologize in advance for the long post, but I have a lot to cover.

First off let me talk about the "why," as in why we're bringing a game to consoles now. Alan Wilson touched on this in his blog here http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/...time-is-right/ but I'll give a bit more detail. As you all probably know, Tripwire Interactive are hardcore PC gamers and developers. We love the PC as a platform and have been championing it for years, even in the dark days of 2005 when all the press could talk about was how the "PC was dead." We've been very successful on PC selling million of games, and we've no intention of leaving the PC or relegating the PC to a "second class citizen".

A few things have changed in the gaming landscape recently though that got our attention. First off, game consoles have greatly increased in power for the new generation and their architecture is much better. When we looked at bringing games to the previous generation of consoles, they had far too low performance and not enough ram for us to provide the type of experience that we wanted to make. This means that we could now create an experience on the console without having to compromise the experience. Additionally, the previous generations of consoles were very different than a PC's architecture, meaning that it look a lot more effort to make a game run well on both platforms. This is no longer the case, as current gen consoles have an architecture much more similar to a PC.

Secondly, as you all probably know Tripwire Interactive is a fiercely independent company. We fund our own games, we publish our own games, and we succeed or fail based on our own decisions. No one tells us what game to make, when to release it, or what the content of the game should be. Our only limit is our time, resources, and talent. In the past when we looked into getting a game on consoles, we were told by the console manufacturers that we would HAVE to go through a big publisher if we wanted to get our games on their console. They wouldn't deal directly with an independent company. Now however, that has changed, and Sony has opened up the PS4 for independent developers like Tripwire.

Another consideration for us is the business side. This is something fans generally don't get to see, but games have gotten a LOT more expensive to make in the past few years. With the complexity of modern games and game engines, on top of the art requirements for modern games the cost of making games from the early 2000s to now has exploded. Red Orchestra 1 and Killing Floor 1 were both developed on just a few hundred thousand dollars as they were developed on older game engines. Red Orchestra 2 cost millions of dollars to make, and Killing Floor 2 will likely cost much more to make by the time we are done. When we made RO1 we had 4 employees, KF1 we had 11 employees, RO2 started with 7 employees and got up to 25 by the time it shipped. KF2 is being developed by 50 people. With game development costs rising it is very important as a business to make your games available in as many places as possible, to as many potential customers as possible.

When done right however, this is a good thing for fans. Let me explain how. Right now, shipping a game on a console adds about 10% additional work (very rough estimate) but opens your fanbase up to tens of millions of additional gamers. So if we as a studio can do 10% more work but gain 25%, 50%, even 100% more customers that's a great thing and here is why. Lets say we could afford to spend $2,000,000 making a game for the PC only, but we could afford to spend $4,000,000 if we released it on PC and console. In the end PC gamers get almost double the features and content as the developer could have afforded to make if they released the game on a single platform alone. Over the past few years you've been benefiting from this but never knew it. Great multi-platform games like Farcry 3, Dishonored, etc all wouldn't have been possible at the scope that they were released at if they were only on a single platform.

Finally, and likely the most important reason for it as that we just think it will be fun. Sure, we're hardcore PC guys, but a lot of us also grew up playing console games on the Atari, NES, Playstation, etc. We think it will be fun to bring a game to the living room, and to expose a new crowd of gamers to Tripwire's style of games and doing business (i.e. different types of games and lots of free updates, post release support etc). In other words, Tripwire is not being "consolized", rather we plan on "Tripwirizing" console gamers. The time has come when we can put games on the consoles on our terms, without compromise, and we're excited for this new frontier and the experiences we'll be able to provide gamers.

Lets talk about PS4 and KF2 - Part 2

So with my other post running long, I thought I'd make a Part 2 to continue the discussion. Here I'd like to post some things in a Q&A format to address some of the questions that have been popping up on the forums and the internet at large.

Q: Is PC the lead platform from Killing Floor 2?

A: Yes PC is the lead platform from Killing Floor 2 and will be coming to the PC first. We will however be taking the time and effort to ensure that we provide an amazing experience for PS4 users as well.

Q: What are the differences between the PC and PS4 version?

A: There will be some differences between the user interface and of course the PS4 version will support gamepads (as will the PC version for SteamOS/Big Picture mode). The difficulty will be tuned on the PS4 to take into account the different playerbase and controller. So far however we've got what we think are some pretty good gamepad controls, and can actually play the "PC difficulty levels" pretty well with a gamepad.

Q: Does the gamepad have aiming assists, etc?

A: Yes the gamepad has aiming assists. It's actually pretty funny, as we asked around to people that play a lot of shooters if the shooters they were playing on console had aiming assists, many thought they did not. When we looked at the games however we found every single one of them did have some form of aiming assists. In other words, many console gamers had no idea that they were getting assists from the game. I'd rather not go into specific of what the aim assists are, as we're still tuning the controller functionality. What I will say is what we have right now works very well, and feels a bit like a cross between COD and Borderlands console controls. We basically looked at the best of what other games had done, took what we thought were the "best practices" of other console game controls, and then looked at how we could make those even better.

Q: Are you going to "dumb down" the PC version because you are making a PS4 version?

A: Short answer - heck no! Longer answer, the PS4 version has no impact on the gameplay of the PC version. PC is the lead platform, and the game will be separately tuned to play well on both the PC and the PS4. PS4 gamers are likely in for a harder game than they are used to. With that said, we feel many developers underestimate gamers on the consoles, and we feel that console gamers are ready for a challenge. Hell on Earth on PS4 will be HARD. With that said, the game will scale on easier difficulties for more casual gamers.

Q: Are you going to reduce the graphical quality on the PC version because you are making a PS4 version?

A: Short answer - heck no! Longer answer, the PS4 is a powerful machine, much more powerful than the PC min spec. We're not dealing with last gen consoles here. Honestly, last gen consoles created an annoying phenomenon. In the "old days" when a PC game came out and you cranked up all the graphics options and the game ran bad, you went out and upgraded your computer. In the past 5 years however so many games were developed with last gen consoles as the lead platform that they didn't push modern computer hardware. So gamers got used to cranking the graphics options all the way up and getting 60FPS on their 4 year old PC (even though the games looked just like the console counterpart, or only marginally better). If a game came out that they couldn't crank the graphics options up all the way on their 4 year old PC, they complained that the game was "poorly optimized". Well I'm here to tell you KF2 will have some high end graphics options specifically for high end PCs (not all will necessarily be in when early access ships). Yes we are using UE3 (actually UE3.5), but it's been heavily modified and modernized with some high end rendering features. The game will run well and look nice on reasonable PC hardware, but if you want to crank those graphics sliders up all the way make sure you have some high end PC hardware in your machine when the game ships.

Q: Will there be dedicated servers for the PC?

A: Yes and a good old server browser as well, just like any good PC game should have.

Q: How can we trust that you won't make the PC game bad because you are making a PS4 version?

A: If you are skeptical, don't trust us. Wait for reviews, wait for a free weekend. Inform yourself before purchasing, it's something you should do for any game purchase. What you shouldn't do however is gripe and moan endlessly on what we "might" do or what your "worried we'll do". Give us feedback on what you'd like to see, give us feedback on what we've shown, and when you get your hands on the game give us feedback on what you like and what you don't. But people speculating with their crystal ball (which more often than not has some storm clouds in it for some reason) doesn't really contribute to the conversation.

Q: Will you "gimp" the monsters on the PC because of the PS4 version?

A: Heck no! The monsters are far more deadly now than they even were in KF1, and we like them that way! I mean, did you see that Scrake doing a spin attack in the latest trailer!?!? He's deadly!

Q: What PS4 specific features will the console version have, especially for matchmaking, servers etc?

A: We're not really ready to talk about that yet. We're still working out how we'll do matchmaking, servers etc on the console so we've nothing to report on that right now.

Q: Now that you are going on consoles, are you going to turn into EA/UBI/Activision and have heinous business practices?

A: Umm, heck no. We're still Tripwire, and we believe in providing great value for our customers. We just put out new free content for RO2 (game is 3 years old) and KF1 (game is 5 years old). Putting a game on a different platform doesn't change our business philosophy. KF2 will have DLC on PC and PS4. DLC is how we fund ongoing support and free content we provide the community, so that isn't going away. But we'll continue with our philosophy of not dividing the community for our multiplayer games.

Q: But but but, I don't like that you charge for weapon packs already!

A: Umm, that's not really a question, but OK I'll answer it. Did you like the free content you got for KF1 for the last few years? Hillbilly Horrors, Twisted Christmas, Objective Mode, etc? Well you can thank the DLC weapon packs for that. If they weren't there, we couldn't have afforded to fund the free content that we made the past few years. That and it helped the community weapon guys (IJC) start their own business making content for video games.

Q: You guys had a rough launch for RO2!

A: Umm, that's not really a question and not KF2 related, but OK I'll respond. Yes we had a rough launch for RO2. Then we spent a million dollars and six month fixing the game and the GOTY edition was really solid. Then we spent 3 more years and millions of dollars giving out free content for RO2. So yeah we screwed up, and then we fixed it. Then we put out Rising Storm and had a really smooth release, and won MP GOTY in PC Gamer beating out BF4 and COD. So yeah, we learned our lesson and made up for it in spades. So you can stop reminding us about our screw up 3 years ago. Really really, you can stop, in like 2012 even Anyway, if you are worried, get in Early Access and help us hone KF2 with your feedback and bug finding skills. Or wait till the full launch and read a review before you buy.

Q: I'm worried KF2 won't be exactly the game I want it to be.

A: I can guarantee it won't be, certainly not when Early Access ships. That is why we are doing Early Access, so we can actually have time to incorporate your feedback. So get in there when Early Access ships, play the game, and tell us what we can do better! With that said, we'll never make EVERYONE happy, so some people will have to live with the fact that the game isn't exactly what they want. The only way to get that is to start your own game studio, and even then you don't always get your way

Inoltre escludono assolutamente cross matching tra pc e ps4 perchè le versioni saranno troppo diverse.