Developer dilemma -- one Game, four platforms - Feature #30

Ever wondered what developers think of the major gaming platforms? Bennett Ring put this question to the makers of Splinter Cell, for a guts and all look at the PC, PS2, GameCube and Xbox.

We've been meaning to put all of today's major gaming platforms up against each other for a while now. Then along came Splinter Cell, a blockbuster of a game that was released on the Xbox, PC, PS2 and GameCube. What better way to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each of the platforms than to look at the different ports of this game to see exactly how the versions differ?

The following sections were written by various developers involved in the creation of Splinter Cell. As such, it's the most candid explanation of each platform's pros and cons you're likely to have seen. Huge thanks to Ubi Soft for its assistance, not to mention honesty, with this article. Now, let's see what a team of real developers have to say about the four major gaming platforms. . .

Xbox
The original Xbox version was developed over two years by a team of eight programmers, thirty artists and level designers, two producers and two associate-producers. As with any core game design, most of the time was spent experimenting with game concepts and algorithms and it took a while before everything was put together. It was only after E3 2002 that everyone started working together in the same direction; the market had undoubtedly tagged the E3 demo as amazing. 

From a technology perspective, the key point of the project was when Lead Programmer Antoine Dodens decided to develop only for Xbox, dumping any algorithms that might end up not working with other consoles -- or even the PC. Specific Direct3D Xbox extensions were used, making the game incompatible with non-NVIDIA graphic cards.

Some of these algorithms couldn't even run on a PC because Direct3D wasn't exposing the necessary features. This allowed the team to create a game with a unique look using most of the Xbox's features, and also helped to speed up the development of the title.

ABOVE: Along with the PC version, the Xbox does an impressive job rendering Splinter Cell. Although the trusty IMB compatible is much more pretty, the NV2A can't be faulted.

Much of the work was in fact accomplished in the last six months before the game shipped. Due to this approach, it was thought for a while that the game would end up being non-portable to the PS2. The Xbox has a very feature-rich GPU compared with the PS2, as well as a much more powerful general purpose CPU. On the other hand, the vertex shader unit isn't as flexible as the PS2's VUs. This partly explains why skinning was done in software, as the Xbox vertex shaders can't output vertices to memory. The key elements of the Xbox version are the use of pixel shaders for all of the special effects including the glow, the night vision algorithm, the thermal vision algorithm and the shadow buffer algorithm unique to Xbox and NV2x/3x cards. The decision to use this algorithm was pivotal in the look and feel of this version of Splinter Cell.

The Xbox doesn't really have any weaknesses, so to speak, with a very well balanced design. The CPU is great, the triangle processing power is very powerful, the raw pixel power is strong, and the overall graphics/audio features are great. While 64MB of memory isn't much, it's still better than all of the other consoles, though it's still not much compared to the PC. The Xbox's hard drive is a great tool to stream data from -- something the other consoles don't have. In all, the Xbox is an excellent platform and the other platforms can be judged positively or negatively relative to it.

Xbox unique features include a depth of field effect when using the sniper zoom. The Xbox also has great sound because of its powerful APU. Only PCs with nForce/nForce2 motherboards are able to achieve the same level of sound rendering. Sound Blaster Live! is getting very old these days, and it certainly shows with Splinter Cell.

The Xbox version makes extensive use of the Xbox's hardware, using features such as the stencil buffer, pixels shaders, vertex shaders, SSE optimisations and hard drive sound streaming.

ABOVE: Like the Xbox, the PC uses a shadow buffer to generate convincing realtime shadows.

PC
The PC version went gold on January 23, four and a half months after the port started.  The main challenge with the port was to make it compatible with older generation DX7 graphic cards like the GeForce2 GTS. These cards don't support the basic algorithm to render shadows on Xbox (shadow maps) and they don't have pixel/vertex shaders.

ATI's cards, such as the 8500 or even the newer 9700, even if they did support pixel/vertex shaders, can't do D3DFMT_D24 depth textures. The team consisted of three programmers and one intern (two 3D programmers helped finish the version late in the project). Four artists were also on the project, as well as one producer and one associate producer.

Replacing the shadow buffer algorithm was no small task; it involved finding a replacement algorithm that was able to be used in the current scenes without too much artistic work. We decided to use the shadow projector algorithm because, as with shadow maps, it was possible to use an object's alpha texture to update (or not to update) the depth or color texture target.

ABOVE: Splinter Cell's fire effects.

As for key differences compared to the Xbox version; the NVIDIA NV2x/NV3x doesn't have depth of field when using the sniper rifle and gun muzzle flashes only generate dynamic light illumination for a single frame; however, the night vision post-filter is much clearer than on Xbox and it supports higher resolutions.

The PC version has three render paths; the one for NV2x/3x cards is very similar to the Xbox (almost identical except what is described above). Here are the special characteristics of each adaptor class.

Class 2 graphic adaptors (NV2x/NV3x):
Dynamic lighting system: shadow buffer
Vertex position modifiers: yes
Light beams stopped by depth texturing: yes
Pixel shader effects/filters/water: yes
Reflection/details texturing/specular: yes