November 03, 2004 - With new editions of the blockbuster Dynasty Warriors franchise due out for both the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS game systems, players finally are seeing the dream of button-mashing goodness on a portable game system come true. But while we are swooning for these Romance of the Three Kingdoms battlers, the road to romance has not been an easy one for the developer in bringing this sophisticated, epic franchise to the handheld.
Speaking to Game Developer Magazine (a trade magazine about the business and the technology of designing and coding games), Koei's Yoshiki Sugiyama and Takazumi Tomoike spoke of their respective DS and PSP versions of the game. The two spoke independently of the projects -- it is unknown if the DS and PSP editions share developer talent or are two separate productions -- but as the heads of their own versions of the franchise, each has had to get creative and work hard to make the game fit into the new systems with the unproven technology of early test kits.
Our recent preview of Dynasty Warriors PSP illuminates some of the compromises and changes needed for the PlayStation Portable edition -- some changes are to better fit the system, others are clear technology adjustments for the early launch software. Takazumi Tomoike had to say of developing the PSP edition, '[I can't] say that it was easy -- there were many problems. For instance you can't use the exact same models. With the specs it should work the same as it does in the PS2, but on this hardware it doesn't.' It is unclear whether Mr. Tomoike is speaking about technical limits, or just different hardware handling -- the PSP's texture and rendering systems are similar but different from PS2. We have also heard from many developers that a surprising number of adjustments needed to be made once the team saw the game on the screen -- the golf ball in Tiger Woods PGA Tour, for example, needed to be scaled up to proportionally the size of a baseball before it was big enough for players to follow it on the greens.
Whether or not Mr. Tomoike is speaking of the technical or the aesthetic challenges of creating early PSP software, his challenges with the provisional development suite were more clear. 'We had problems with the library that Sony gave us. There are still quite a few bugs.' Of course, new hardware is always a frontiersman's wild country, but this early in the hardware cycle, the system has proven particularly challenging for this team.
The Nintendo DS seems to be on better footing for Koei's other team. 'The library Nintendo provided allows us to do various things, so we're satisfied,' said Yoshiki Sugiyama. 'The DS is more prepared, so it's easier to develop for at this stage.'
That being the case, Koei has still not shown the DS version of Dynasty Warriors, and it is unknown when plans to do so. With the series debuting on the advanced PlayStation 2 (a 1-on-1 fighting game called Dynasty Warriors was released on PSone, but the epic war brawler we know the series best as really started in Japan as Shin Sangoku Musou and was renamed Dynasty Warriors 2 in America), the team has had to start from scratch on the Nintendo DS. The handheld's relatively meager technical specs have mean that the team has had to redesign both the graphics and the gameplay of this edition. Speaking for the DS edition, Mr. Sugiyama said, 'The DS can't do the higher quality graphics, so the 3D models are pretty tough. AS a result we decided to make a game that's simpler looking, and plays simpler too.' This change in play may incorporate the touch screen, as has been rumored since the game was announced, but Sugiyama did not go into details on this aspect.
Naturally, every work of art and entertainment involves some compromises -- sometimes, getting creative to work around problems can actually help make the project better for it. As developers in the pioneer days of these two systems, Koei's job is that much harder in making games with new hardware and work-in-progress development tools. We're eager to see the results of both teams when Dynasty Warriors for PSP and DS arrive in finished form, for PSP by the end of 2004 in Japan and for both systems sometime in 2005 for gamers here in North America. |
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发表于 2004-11-8 07:05:50
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