Multi Platform Games

[Charan]

Hello all gamers,

Tough not a gaming freak myself, im intrested the the technology involved in games development. I have seen many reviews of games for PC,XBOX and PS2. I was wondering how the game companies release games for different platform i.e., PC , Xbox , PS2 ,game cube,and XBOX 360. as the architecture is different for each console, so u cant use one game disc in another console. no one would write code for each and every console isnt it.

My tought is that companies develop game engine for different platform and then compile the original game code for the target console. Am i guessing correct?

may be you gamerz can tell me more about it

thanks Charan

[Nemesis]

As far as I know, they code for all platforms separately. I guess they have different teams working on different versions since even the graphical details are different. Graphics can be scaled up or down depending on the system but code is native to the system for which you are coding. However, I do believe that coding for the Xbox/Xbox 360 is similar to coding for the PC. GC coding is also relatively simple. PS2 was a nightmare when it first came out but now developers are used to it and it isn't a problem anymore. It's only the biggies such as EA and Ubisoft that release games on multiple platforms simultaneously since they have the resources to do so.

[imported_tarang]

all the basci commands will remain same. just the codes for the hardware compability changes. its like same product in diffrent box. only the starting and ending and few middle of the codes differ. which r not so hard to replace.

[Charan]

@tarang thanks a lot.is there any site which can explain about this. thanks

[imported_tarang]

i dont know abt the site but i heard it on TV. the channel is G4Tech TV. it comes only in america and canada. this channel is completely on video games 24/7.

[Charan]

Originally Posted by tarang

this channel is completely on video games 24/7.

u lucky. we only hav to watch gamer tv
hope hathway can stream it, if available. i hav a set top box i get arround 145 channels. i get "NOW" (channel) but has only replays

[siriusb]

What you want to know is "game porting". Porting is simple enough: take a code that is written for a particular architecture/OS/cpu/framework and make it to run on another. You can do this eitehr the short and easy way, or the long and hard way.

The short way is to emit the code for PC, PS2, XBox and other consoles simultaneously during the compilation process or to simply cross-complie. Small games that don't have much value/graphics/performance considerations can use this method. But games like gta and other big games prefer to fine-tune the game engine to take care of every performance features and critical bugs in each target platform.

Often, when you are porting your big game to a smaller platform or vice-versa, you need to rewrite the game engine from scratch to scale down (or up) the resolution, texture, models and other things.

[Charan]

@siriusb thanks a lot man. "Cross-Compile" how didnt it get into my head earlier.