Port Or Exclusive?

[Old Duck]

There's a reason that some of the best-looking, amazing games are exclusives. When a talented developer takes time to really master a specific console, hardware and software, they can really fine-tune their game to squeeze every tiny bit of performance out of the platform. This is why a much lower-spec console can often compete with a higher-spec gaming PC. Uncharted and Horizon Zero Dawn are perfect examples of this.

Now I do think a port can be as good as an exclusive if the team doing to port has the same intimate knowledge of the platform that an exclusive team has. I think the PS4's Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration game is an example of this (I'm speculating based on how well the game looks and performs). Obviously the team needs to take the time to rewrite core game engine code to take maximum advantage of the console being ported to for this to work.

However, a port of a game can also be very bad. If the developer just takes the original code and wraps it with a compatibility layer, the end result can, quite frankly, be crap. A great example is the early days of iOS apps, where developers would just stick their website in a WebView and call that an app (Facebook comes to mind). Compare that to the later version that's written ground-up in native code, and the difference is HUGE.

So with this in mind, has there been any scuttlebutt on what Frontier's PS4 team is doing to port Elite Dangerous over to the PS4? My hope is that they are doing more than just copying-n-pasting the game engine from XBox and / or PC. Obviously the hardware has similarities, but I hope the team takes the extra time to deal with the differences with both the hardware and the OS (especially since the PS4 OS is quite different that Microsoft's platform).

I bring this up because I've been reading how Mac users are getting a substandard version of Elite compared to Windows version. When ED comes out for the PS4, I really want it to take advantage full advantage of the platform. I've seen what the PS4 can do when developers understand the platform, and I sure do hope that's what we get in ED.

ps - speaking of game engines, does ED use a third party graphics engine like Unreal or did they create their own engine?

 

[Sir.Tj]

Frontier uses their inhouse Cobra Engine.

You can read about it here.

http://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/

 

[Humbo]

There's a reason that some of the best-looking, amazing games are exclusives. When a talented developer takes time to really master a specific console, hardware and software, they can really fine-tune their game to squeeze every tiny bit of performance out of the platform. This is why a much lower-spec console can often compete with a higher-spec gaming PC. Uncharted and Horizon Zero Dawn are perfect examples of this.

Now I do think a port can be as good as an exclusive if the team doing to port has the same intimate knowledge of the platform that an exclusive team has. I think the PS4's Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration game is an example of this (I'm speculating based on how well the game looks and performs). Obviously the team needs to take the time to rewrite core game engine code to take maximum advantage of the console being ported to for this to work.

However, a port of a game can also be very bad. If the developer just takes the original code and wraps it with a compatibility layer, the end result can, quite frankly, be crap. A great example is the early days of iOS apps, where developers would just stick their website in a WebView and call that an app (Facebook comes to mind). Compare that to the later version that's written ground-up in native code, and the difference is HUGE.

So with this in mind, has there been any scuttlebutt on what Frontier's PS4 team is doing to port Elite Dangerous over to the PS4? My hope is that they are doing more than just copying-n-pasting the game engine from XBox and / or PC. Obviously the hardware has similarities, but I hope the team takes the extra time to deal with the differences with both the hardware and the OS (especially since the PS4 OS is quite different that Microsoft's platform).

I bring this up because I've been reading how Mac users are getting a substandard version of Elite compared to Windows version. When ED comes out for the PS4, I really want it to take advantage full advantage of the platform. I've seen what the PS4 can do when developers understand the platform, and I sure do hope that's what we get in ED.

ps - speaking of game engines, does ED use a third party graphics engine like Unreal or did they create their own engine?

ED uses the same engine for all its versions, a proprietary engine called COBRA.
The reason the MAC version doesn't support planetary landings is because of Mac OS only supporting an old version of open GL. There is no reason to think that the PS4 version will be any different from the X-Box version.
It will probably have slight graphical improvements (more so on the PS4 pro). it will also support the PS4 controller touch-pad and movement sensors (for head-look).
It will not support PSVR day one , though that may come later.

 

[Old Duck]

Frontier uses their inhouse Cobra Engine.

You can read about it here.

http://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/

This page is very informative. Of particular interest, "COBRA has been carefully planned, developed and evolved since 1988," which implies a very mature platform that has had plenty of time to be optimized (1988!!!!!), and, "offering the ability / flexibly to take advantage of the different platforms’ capabilities - e.g. different artwork resolutions, shaders etc." which answers my question directly. Thank you!

 

[xondk]

There's a reason that some of the best-looking, amazing games are exclusives. When a talented developer takes time to really master a specific console, hardware and software, they can really fine-tune their game to squeeze every tiny bit of performance out of the platform. This is why a much lower-spec console can often compete with a higher-spec gaming PC. Uncharted and Horizon Zero Dawn are perfect examples of this.

Now I do think a port can be as good as an exclusive if the team doing to port has the same intimate knowledge of the platform that an exclusive team has. I think the PS4's Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration game is an example of this (I'm speculating based on how well the game looks and performs). Obviously the team needs to take the time to rewrite core game engine code to take maximum advantage of the console being ported to for this to work.

However, a port of a game can also be very bad. If the developer just takes the original code and wraps it with a compatibility layer, the end result can, quite frankly, be crap. A great example is the early days of iOS apps, where developers would just stick their website in a WebView and call that an app (Facebook comes to mind). Compare that to the later version that's written ground-up in native code, and the difference is HUGE.

So with this in mind, has there been any scuttlebutt on what Frontier's PS4 team is doing to port Elite Dangerous over to the PS4? My hope is that they are doing more than just copying-n-pasting the game engine from XBox and / or PC. Obviously the hardware has similarities, but I hope the team takes the extra time to deal with the differences with both the hardware and the OS (especially since the PS4 OS is quite different that Microsoft's platform).

I bring this up because I've been reading how Mac users are getting a substandard version of Elite compared to Windows version. When ED comes out for the PS4, I really want it to take advantage full advantage of the platform. I've seen what the PS4 can do when developers understand the platform, and I sure do hope that's what we get in ED.

ps - speaking of game engines, does ED use a third party graphics engine like Unreal or did they create their own engine?

Do some developers make bad ports? definitely, many developers don't put in a lot of effort, that much is true.
But that is not the case with Elite if you ask me, the reason Mac has been falling behind is totally and entirely on Apple's shoulders, but that's not something Mac users want to hear.
It simply isn't realistic to waste development time coding for a new unproven API, when the player base on Mac is as small as it is, However if Apple had full openGL support, there wouldn't be that much of a worry, since it then also would allow in linux users, so it had a way to possibly gain more players there, and not just get Mac users, lets face it, Mac's aren't meant as gaming machines.

Now take the whole Xbox version, because frontier has done it right in my eyes, and only need to work on exceptions to work around a few quirks of xbox, they can effectively have one 'game' branch, and then just pull it into whatever release they are making, and same goes with PS4, meaning all optimisations and such can be done individually without interrupting actual 'game' development. Now obviously that's simplifying it as much as possible, but in essence that is what it comes down to.