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Onlangs hadden we een interview met de heren van Insomniac Games over hun nieuwe game, Ratchet and Clank Future: a Crack in Time. En wat je dan meestal krijgt is dat mensen allemaal dezelfde vragen gaan stellen zoals ‘Vertel eens wat over de game’, ‘Wat is echt heel leuk?’, ‘Komt er ook DLC?’ etc. Je kent het wel, dus wij hadden zoiets van, laten we eens deze ontwikkelaar gaan uithoren over de weinig gebruikte screenshot en video-capture functie van de PlayStation 3.

In de Software Development Kit (SDK) voor de PlayStation 3 bestaat namelijk een plug-in die ontwikkelaars kunnen toevoegen, zodat gamers screenshots kunnen maken van wat ze op hun scherm zien. Naast deze plug-in bestaat er tevens een mogelijkheid een Youtube-recording te starten, zoals je misschien al wel eens in een game als RagDoll Kung Fu of LittleBigPlanet hebt gezien. Wij vroegen ze of de nieuwe Ratchet hier ook gebruik van maakte, helaas was het antwoord nee, maar toen wilden we weleens weten waarom de functie nu eigenlijk niet zo populair is. Benieuwd geworden? Lees dan het interview hieronder.

Roy (PS3-Sense) – As you might know, a Youtube upload function and a screenshot function was added in firmware 2.50. Will Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Timeusing one of those functions?

James Stevenson (Insomniac Games) – You know ehm, we don’t have the screenshot or Youtube functions. It didn’t make a lot of sense to intialize them, and it takes memory. Again, it’s always a resource question. If you look at the budget we have and the amount of memory slice that takes..

Roy (PS3-Sense) – But all of the components are there in the Software Development Kit, right? It’s just a matter of a plug-in, that you push in and whooptie-doo?

James Stevenson (Insomniac Games) – Sure! But then it takes 4% of our available system memory and it’s like okay, that means we have to cut out one enemy, out of every setup or something. It’s something you always have to decide very early and I don’t know if that was something we really gave a high priority for Ratchet.

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Roy (PS3-Sense) – I just wonder why there’s so little developers out there that use these functions.

James Stevenson (Insomniac Games) – It just hasn’t caught on to the point where we want to sacrifice our setup so that someone can upload a screenshot or a video. If we saw this game as a game where people really really wanted to partake in this functionality, if it’s something a large chunk of our audience wants then maybe we could do it.

I think with like multiplayer games, look at Naughty Dog and what they’ve done with Uncharted multiplayer and the replay the theater modes there. I think you can do replay, but just make a game like a Youtube captured directly from your game generally compared to say actually building in a full replay feature which then maybe you can export. Or if you look at what Bungie’s done where you can upload your replay file and they’ll make the video file for you instead of capturing it yourself.

I think there’s some really interesting ideas out there. Yeah you can start a Youtube recording and end a Youtube recording, but I don’t know if that’s all the tools you’d want to basically just turn your PS3 into a capture card. But I can say, and I don’t know what the exact memory requirements are, but they’re significant enough to make it a not no-brainer once you have extra overhead.

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Roy (PS3-Sense) – But when many video’s of a game hit Youtube and people see that, they’ll want the game even more. I mean that is just plain cheap advertising.

James Stevenson (Insomniac Games) – I know and we believe strongly in the community and sharing, I mean that’s why we’re doing single player stats and leaderboards and stuff like that. Just so people can share that with each other but that doesn’t take anywhere near as much memory as capturing video.

Wat ons betreft zeker een aantal interessante uitspraken. De screenshot en Youtube functies worden misschien wel met veel bombarie door Sony aangekondigd, maar voor ontwikkelaars is het toch altijd maar weer even kijken of er überhaupt ruimte voor is qua geheugengebruik.