Polygon Problems For PS2 RE4 News

It has to be said that Resident Evil 4 is probably the best looking game on the GameCube, and one of the best looking titles from the last 12 months but Japanese magazine CG World has reported that the team responsible for the PS2 conversion have had to make cuts due to the technical restraints of Sonyâ??s ageing machine.

According to the report Leonâ??s polygon count has dropped by 50% in the conversion, from 10,000 on GameCube to just 5,000 on the PlayStation2. The figure is barely above the number of polygons each villager had in the GameCube game, which stood at between 3000 and 4000, but is still greater than the number of polygons allowed for Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3.

The quality of textures is also an issue facing the developers with the GC able to handle 24-bit textures, whilst the PS2 is limited to just 4 or 8-bit. To combat this, the large Direct Access Memory Bandwidth of the PS2 will allow the team to include an unusually high number of textures and diversity into the game, however, this needs to be balanced against the frame rate, which was a constant issue in the GameCube version of the game. According to the report, the PS2 version will suffer from reduced frame rates if Capcom included all of the textures, polygons and dynamic lighting therefore some drastic changes will have to be made.

The report comes shortly after the news that the decision to port the game over to PS2 was not made by Production Studio 4, even though now the studio is having to deal with the problems.

Weâ??ll have more on Resident Evil for the PlayStation2 shortlyâ?¦