Porting games between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation was a bit of a nightmare for developers in the last generation. The PlayStation 3’s tricky, cell-based architecture and RAM constraints meant that the Xbox 360 was invariably the lead platform, and the PS3 versions suffered – until developers really got their heads around the system roughly 3 years too late. That’s just not the case with this new gen – though that’s hardly surprising; they’re both built on the same architecture.
"There was a much bigger difference in making a game for both PS3 and Xbox 360 back in the day than what it is now," Andreas Ojerfors, senior gameplay designer on The New Order told TechRadar.
"The new platforms are much, much more similar to work with than what we’re used to. So it is less of a challenge this time than it has been before."
Of course, this is obvious. Both consoles run on X86 based hardware, and both sport AMD GPU’s. That doesn’t mean that a power gulf doesn’t exist between each machine – but Machine Games has leveraged idTech 5 to the best of their abilities, making a game that runs at 60fps at 1080p on both consoles. For the most part, it even looks the same too.
"It’s about creating an engine that is from the very bottom up built to scale," he said. "I think from the beginning when we got our hands on id Tech, we realised it was an engine that was built to scale very well between different platforms.
"And it’s been an ongoing effort both among the engineers here at Machine games but also with a great deal of help from id’s software to make sure it’s an engine that continues to scale on the next generation of platforms."
In the end, Wolfenstein looks and runs great on whatever platform you’ve chosen, even if it is subject to a huge patch on every platform. The PS4 version needs 5Gb of bandwidth, the Xbox One 7Gb, and the PC a whopping 10Gb.
Last Updated: May 21, 2014
Matewis Jubilai
May 21, 2014 at 15:12
Lol at the header… Port 😛
Viking Of Science
May 21, 2014 at 15:20
How do they get the 1080p 60fps, and other companies Struggle, is iDTech 5 just a more forgiving engine?
derp
May 21, 2014 at 15:31
They probably have Carmack’s lucky socks in a shrine. Praying to it before compiling is known to increase performance by 23.5%.
Rags
May 21, 2014 at 16:03
Tech 5 was built on the philosophy to run at 60fps, whereas its previous ones ran on a lower tickrate, but higher framerates. As I understand the tickrate for tech5 is 1:1 with the framerate, which reduces graphical and gameplay artifacts and give it the typical id smooth and responsive feel. Damn I should work for their marketing dept. What they did with Rage was to build every scene to run at that minimum, where other developers don’t mind many scenes to drop down to 20-30fps for the wow factor. I guess they adopted this from Rage as that really worked for that game.
geelslang
May 21, 2014 at 17:23
Im reading reports about texture popin like Rage. If thats true ID Tech 5 is still bollocks.
Brian Murphy
May 21, 2014 at 15:28
“until developers really got their heads around the system roughly 3 years too late.”
Which is why Naughty Dog > All devs
Mark Treloar
May 21, 2014 at 16:28
Now they just have to work on the rubbish AI.
Brian Murphy
May 21, 2014 at 16:36
Well, now that they actually have some assets to work with, that shouldn’t an issue. I keep telling Sony on their @AskPlaystation twitter account to look into either purchasing or licensing GSC’s Xray engine, which had probably the best AI of any game last gen.
Admiral Chief in Space
May 21, 2014 at 16:17
http://www.dcclothesline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/AIR_AH-64_Apache_Flying_High_lg.jpg