Finalboss Interviews Ready At Dawn

Brazillian site Finalboss recently sat down for an interview session with Ready at Dawn Studios, makers of the excellent PSP platformer Daxter. They discussed a wide range of detailed topics including the technical challenges of working with the PSP, especially compared to the PS2, Daxter’s magnificent game engine, the experience of working with Naughty Dog, company philosophies and future projects. It’s a highly interesting read and the team seems like they’re focused and really have got the right idea about how to approach working on a PSP game. It’s also comforting to know that the studios next title will most likely be another PSP game. Personally I can’t wait! Here are some snippets from the interview:

One thing that most people notice about Daxter on the PSP is that it’s probably one of the best-looking games out there right now. That was something we really set out to do from the beginning -– to push the technology, we spent a lot of time on the engine for that, to get to really show that even though the PSP is a handheld, we never saw it and don’t want to see it as a subset of a home console; something where you have to make compromises to get a game from a home console onto the handheld. So we never really thought about it as a limitation, we approached it the same way we would approach any kind of project on a regular home console.

It’s really the first time people are going to see what the PSP is capable of doing in terms of graphics, it goes to show them it’s no sub-PS2, it’s just a great platform where we can do games just as good as any home console. Certain locations in the game, like the city streets which acts kind of a hub from level to level, are actually taken from the PS2 games, the same geometry as the locations in Jak II. But in this particular case we managed to even increase the texture resolution compared to the PS2 version… so it doesn’t only look as good, but actually better, which has been impressive.

This game kinda shows that you can do things that look as good as PS2, if not better. I think we’re moving forward a lot more games you know that are at that level of graphic quality.

This is what we can do with 233 Megahertz (laughs) Can you imagine what we could at full spec? Going to the full speed wouldnÂ’t be you know only 33 per cent speed up, it’s actually a lot more, because the PSP has a single bus and the speed of each memory is accessed… the boost that it gets is tremendous, but… Eventually, when the battery technology catches up,then it will be possible… I think that as it is, the platform is perfectly capable of doing full size, non-compromised 3D games.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump!
Brazillian site Finalboss recently sat down for an interview session with Ready at Dawn Studios, makers of the excellent PSP platformer Daxter. They discussed a wide range of detailed topics including the technical challenges of working with the PSP, especially compared to the PS2, Daxter’s magnificent game engine, the experience of working with Naughty Dog, company philosophies and future projects. It’s a highly interesting read and the team seems like they’re focused and really have got the right idea about how to approach working on a PSP game. It’s also comforting to know that the studios next title will most likely be another PSP game. Personally I can’t wait! Here are some snippets from the interview:

One thing that most people notice about Daxter on the PSP is that it’s probably one of the best-looking games out there right now. That was something we really set out to do from the beginning -– to push the technology, we spent a lot of time on the engine for that, to get to really show that even though the PSP is a handheld, we never saw it and don’t want to see it as a subset of a home console; something where you have to make compromises to get a game from a home console onto the handheld. So we never really thought about it as a limitation, we approached it the same way we would approach any kind of project on a regular home console.

It’s really the first time people are going to see what the PSP is capable of doing in terms of graphics, it goes to show them it’s no sub-PS2, it’s just a great platform where we can do games just as good as any home console. Certain locations in the game, like the city streets which acts kind of a hub from level to level, are actually taken from the PS2 games, the same geometry as the locations in Jak II. But in this particular case we managed to even increase the texture resolution compared to the PS2 version… so it doesn’t only look as good, but actually better, which has been impressive.

This game kinda shows that you can do things that look as good as PS2, if not better. I think we’re moving forward a lot more games you know that are at that level of graphic quality.

This is what we can do with 233 Megahertz (laughs) Can you imagine what we could at full spec? Going to the full speed wouldnÂ’t be you know only 33 per cent speed up, it’s actually a lot more, because the PSP has a single bus and the speed of each memory is accessed… the boost that it gets is tremendous, but… Eventually, when the battery technology catches up,then it will be possible… I think that as it is, the platform is perfectly capable of doing full size, non-compromised 3D games.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump!