Game engine from scratch?

[Jedi2016]

I was reading a thread here the other day, and got to thinking.. not sure what it was tipped me off, but anyway:

Were the PS2 versions of GT actually all-new game engines from what was on PS1? Or were they simply ported over (GT2000) and then tweaked for graphics, physics, etc for GT3? And then tweaked again for GT4? Are we really just playing a vastly-upgraded GT1?

If this is the case, GT5 becomes a really big deal. Due to the entirely new architecture (most notably the multi-core CPU), GT5 will require an all-new game engine. The core code will have to be completely rewritten to operate on Cell.. I don't think the PS2 engine can be "tweaked" to run multi-core. Sure, they had it running for VGT, but that was just a demo.. most likely running on the PPE only.

This means that everything will be rewritten from the ground up. The AI engine, the physics engine, the graphics engine.. all of it. Nothing rehashed.

Thoughts?

 

[KENJIusa]

it's sure gonna take a hell of time do to such thing.

physic in GT4 is good, so it just needs some tweaks here and there. For graphic, no more grainy background (Paris?) would be nice. The AI engine is the only thing that need to be rebuilt.

 

[Pebb]

I reckon they will use more then 5,000,000 pollygons in the new engine if they make a new engine on the PS3.

 

[Horch]

Well , when GT4 finally came out , I told myself i'd never be this hyped-up again .
Especially more than 2 years before the actual release .........
And... Here I go again , eagerly awaiting the very first screenshots or vids of the upcoming sequel .
Man , I thougt I had more self-discipline ... but ... what the h*ll , I like it !

 

[Dave A]

No, they will re-use GT4's engine, tweaked for PS3 ofcourse. GT3 used GT1 and GT2's engine.

 

[Jedi2016]

No, they will re-use GT4's engine, tweaked for PS3 ofcourse. GT3 used GT1 and GT2's engine.

See, that's what I'm saying... I don't think they can use GT4's engine. The multi-core architecture is just too different, that's one of the things that Anand article touched on. It was one thing to go from single-thread to single-thread (PS1 to PS2), but I don't think there's any feasible way of "tweaking" single-threaded game code to run on eight cores, I think it has to be written from scratch.

'Cause you know if anybody's going to take FULL advantage of Cell, it's gonna be Polyphony.

 

[Dave A]

They've already used it in the Vision GT demo, granted theres going to be alot of work to do, but what they'll be doing is tweaking certain aspects of the game to run on one core, it's not like one job will be jumping from one core to the other they only need to tie one core in to different parts of the game engine, so it's not that tough when you think about it, it'll just take time but again not as much as starting from scratch.

 

[Jedi2016]

VGT was most likely running on only the PPE, without even touching the SPE's.

General consensus is that most developers won't even use multi-core for the first couple generations of games. If it were that easy to simply "reassign" code to the SPE's, don't you think they'd all be doing it at launch?

 

[Dave A]

I'm not 100% certain on this becaseu it's been a loooong time since I've been reading the GT4 news, but I think there was a thing about the GT4 game engine where Kaz said he'd done it to be upgradable so it could be used in future GT's, at that stage Kaz also had no plans of another GT on PS2. I'm no PS3 engineer so I don't know how easy/hard it is to do, but I do know the PS3 is easier to develop for than the PS2. If Kaz has to build a new engine it won't stop the next GT being fantastic though it might take a bit longer .

 

[MasterDriver]

umm guys i believe i read somewhere and please correct me if i'm wrong, but all the ps3 demos.. Were actually movies because the ps3 hardware isnt completed yet.. just giving everyone a small reality check... and Vision doenst impress me in the least. Oh yea, and what about not being able to load garages in LAN mode, what a joke that is...