Experiences on a portable platform are usually vastly different from what a player experiences with a console game. Developers have to contend with small screen sizes, hardware limitations, simpler controls, the typical duration of a portable gameplay session, and more. That hasn't stopped big name console franchises from making the transition to Sony's PSP, however.
IndustryGamers set up a roundtable of PSP developers to find out how they go about successfully transitioning an IP from the PS3 (or PS2) to the PSP. The participants in this special PSP Q&A are Richard Ogden of Bigbig Studios (MotorStorm: Arctic Edge), Dana Jan of Ready At Dawn Studios (Lead Level Designer on God of War: Chains of Olympus, and currently Design Director), and Mark Green, Senior Producer, Sony Computer Entertainment, Cambridge Studios (LittleBigPlanet PSP).
IndustryGamers: We would think that graphics and controls are two huge considerations when developing a beloved console franchise for the PSP. What are the biggest challenges you encounter in going portable?
Richard Ogden: Both these areas were a challenge for MotorStorm: Arctic Edge. We don't have the second analog stick and extra shoulder buttons on PSP so we had to make some adjustments to the control design and provided the player with the option of switching between analogue and digital steering. It was our ambition to bring the entire MotorStorm experience across to the PSP as intact as possible - the handling, crashes, ragdolls, player-centric excitement: the whole brutal off-road racing package. So, we've really pushed the technology to allow us to achieve this. Whilst we obviously can't match the fidelity of the PS3, taking a different approach to the graphics and code (sometimes employing a few under-the-hood tricks) we've got a great result which we are very proud of. We've even squeezed full multiplayer online play in there for as many as 6-players in a race - which is great fun!
Dana Jan: We knew from the beginning that God of War had a distinct visual style and an epic scale that had to be recreated on the PSP in order to do the franchise justice. With God of War 2 hitting shelves prior to Chains of Olympus, it quickly became evident that we had an even higher standard to hit with the visuals. It took us some time to reverse engineer the many components that make up the look (it's deceptively complex). The art department faced the huge challenge of fitting all the animation, textures, geometry, and FX into a fraction of the memory available on the PS2. They also had the task of creating expansive environments with incredible detail and many one-off visual set pieces. The God of War franchise was a great opportunity to push ourselves and our technology as much as the PSP hardware.
Controls are definitely a consideration when going portable. We had several control scheme variations that we tried during the production. However, there were inputs like the left analog stick and the face buttons on the PS2 controller that we mapped exactly the same on the PSP. Doing this meant that Kratos' movement and combat mechanics would feel the same. Then you look at the rest of the controls and build a hierarchy to see what's important. What can be moved, combined, or even removed? How often did the player press a button and what was the context? We made decisions based on what would be logical from the users' perspective and built gameplay rules to support them.
Mark Green: Graphics are certainly an issue because all the lovely lighting effects that exist on PS3 just aren't possible on PSP, but this is offset by people's expectations and you tend to compare yourself with other games on the same platform. With LittleBigPlanet I think the artists have done an astounding job.
Controls are perhaps an even bigger problem. Sometimes you have to omit aspects that were present on previous versions. Fortunately we managed to cope with the limited number of controls by making use of the shoulder buttons as shift keys and retain all the functionality from this perspective.
Probably the biggest problem for us was the physics engine. What Media Molecule did on PS3 was incredible. To get that on PSP was something that, at first, we thought was impossible. However with a bit of clever design and some very persistent programmers we managed to make it fit. Yes, we've had to cut some corners, but you can still create anything on PSP that you can do on PS3.
IG: When looking at your franchise, what factors into your decision to bring it from console to PSP to begin with?
Dana Jan: I think there was a large opportunity for us to bring something to the handheld market that we felt hadn’t been seen before. Games like God of War don’t usually translate well when they are brought to handhelds. The gameplay, graphics, animation, sound, etc. have a tendency to ‘differ’ from their console counterparts. We believed that it was possible to deliver a God of War game on the PSP that would fulfill the expectations of players who liked the original games on the PS2. The franchise has a staggering amount of depth yet is accessible to a broad audience. We felt that the audience it appealed most directly to was the same audience buying PSPs. With God of War II in development and the PSP install base growing rapidly, we saw that the timing was right for the expansion of the franchise into the handheld market.
Mark Green: When LittleBigPlanet came out on PS3, so many people said they wished that they could do some of the creating when they were on the bus or train or when their partner was hogging the TV. So, that it made us think that a PSP version of the game might be perfect. The real consideration was more about whether something as physics-intensive as LittleBigPlanet would ever fit on PSP. Fortunately, it does!
