Middleware supporters have been very active on PS4, so there are versions of all the middleware we wanted available," Jenner continues. "One thing that definitely helped getting the game to work was that the engine uses quite a lot of middleware. There are even options within Sony's compiler specifically added in order to increase compatibility with the Microsoft counterpart used in compiling DirectX 11 games.
#Ps4 the crew Ps4
For the PS4 developers, the use of the established Visual Studio environment proves to be a key benefit, and the extent to which Sony has acknowledged and supported cross-platform game-makers is self-evident.
#Ps4 the crew series
Sony has made a big deal about the accessibility of the PS4 hardware, and a key element of that would be the quality of the toolchain - the series of programs used to create compiled code.
#Ps4 the crew windows
The initial aim of our work was to get the PS4 version to feature-parity with the Windows version." "It's important to start with a 64-bit version because obviously the hardware is 64-bit so it's nice to get those 32-bit/64-bit issues out of the way before you start worrying about the platform specifics. And we started with a 64-bit Windows version of the engine using D3D11," says Reflections' expert programmer (yes, that is an actual job title), Dr.
"We started off with a large codebase - there were about 12,000 source files. However, what's curious here is that it's the UK-based Ubisoft Reflections tech team that is entirely responsible for the PS4 edition, while other staff in the Newcastle studio produce additional content for the game - specifically sound, script, the skill challenges and, remarkably, the entire state of Texas.įor the PS4 staff, the task facing them looked rather onerous, with the developer taking on a massive codebase generated by an entirely separate studio, the initial aim simply to compile it on the new Sony hardware and try to get some kind of image on-screen.
#Ps4 the crew Pc
It's a new project created from ex-Test Drive Unlimited staff who've formed a new studio - Ivory Tower - and are producing the core PC version of the game (and, we suspect, the Xbox One version). Ubisoft's highly promising next-gen racer, The Crew, received its E3 debut last month, with the company's first gameplay demo running on PC hardware. It makes sense that PC takes centre-stage during the development effort, simply because games take upwards of two years to develop and actual console hardware wasn't available until very recently. E3 2013 starkly demonstrated that the availability of final production console hardware for developers is exceptionally limited, with many games destined for console hardware running on "target" PC systems. Once upon a time your hardware was a porting target, sometimes with only minimal effort put into the conversion. It's an intriguing state of affairs, especially if you're a PC gamer with a reasonably powerful computer. For Digital Foundry, it was a must-see presentation primarily because the vast majority - and perhaps even all - of the multi-platform games we'll be playing on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 by the end of the year have been derived from PC code, necessitating some level of porting across to the new hardware. Ubisoft Reflections rounded off day two of last week's Develop conference with an intriguing talk, tantalisingly entitled "Tips and Tricks for Porting to Next-Gen".