Dev: It Takes 2-3 Months Just To Add Trophies For PS2 Emulation & Trophy Progression Tracker Comments

[BlindMango]

Thought I'd share this because I thought it was pretty interesting. Timothy Lindquist from PlayStation was asked questions regarding trophies on Twitter recently (it seems he deleted his tweets recently?). Anyway, he talked about just how much work it takes to add trophies for PS2 Emulated games, he also touched on trophy progression trackers.
 
Article by Gaming Bolt - Click here to read it

 
Here's some snippets of what he said on PS2 Emulation and their trophies:
 

"The simplest sounding trophies can turn out to be really complex to program! ... Deciding what the trophies should be takes 1-2 weeks (plus extra time to get them approved). Programming is about a month ... Testing them after programming can take another 1-2 months depending on how long the game is! ... Mark of Kri's Complete a level without dying is trophy is a lot harder to implement than you'd think, too."

 
When asked "do you think it's possible we'll see trophy progression trackers on ps4? Would be a great feature to add to see how close we are", he responded:
 

"I love that suggestion."

 
 
I should probably point out that he's probably not be the one responsible for adding features to the trophy system, he currently is "managing a team of (reverse) engineers" who "analyze the code, registers, and memory contents of games as they run, and then write Lua script to make new, magical, things happen." (Basically working on PS2 Emulation). So "I love that suggestion" is probably the most he could do with that suggestion. It makes me think though, I wonder who is the person (or people) that add stuff to the trophy system, I'd love to ask them questions!

 

So what are your thoughts? Personally, I knew adding PS2 emulated trophies were definitely a process, but surprised it takes that long!

Edited December 18, 2015 by BlindMango

[TheVader66]

I kinda guessed that it would be a lot of work. Luckly, I am not in a hurry to get the PS2 games as long as the come to the PS4 eventually and the trophies are not glitched, I am alright with the wait. I just want my Star Wars Battlefront 2 to come back to me.

Edited December 18, 2015 by TheVader66

[Suicide_Tortuga]

Come on Sony, trophy progression tracker would be a grand idea to put in. Xbox One has it for achievements.

Edited December 18, 2015 by Substitute

[SuffyZorugelion]

Interesting read. It's easy to forget something that sounds so simple can take a lot of work!

[bcks007]

Come on Sony, trophy progression track would be a grand idea to put in. Xbox One has it for achievements.

 

What is trophy progression track?

[jedi_padawan]

Was gonna ask the same question.

[Suicide_Tortuga]

What is trophy progression track?

Sorry meant tracker which is this

It tracks your progress with a % until you unlock the achievement.

Some games do have this in game but I would like it for all games.

[Remilia Scarlet]

I wonder that as well. Wouldn't our trophy progress bars technically be trophy progression tracking anyway? Add to that the rarity status added to PS4 and you already have an entire system in place.

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

I'd like to think I'm the elected asshole on here who complains about PS2 on PS4, I mean, other people have done it, but I keep doing it.

 

Anyway, I've said several times, the only thing that actually would take effort about these emulated games after the emulator is complete, adding the trophies.

 

I will admit, I've said that shouldn't be much effort, but then, I didn't give it much thought. Considering these games are essentially the retail versions, then the devs probably no longer have access to the source codes (or whatever the fuck the actual innards of a game are called) of the games, so with that in mind, making sure something triggers when it should, with a lot less guarantee of accuracy than you'd get doing it on a new game that's not already completed and on disc, and then testing it all out and shit. I'll respect that, that would take a bit of effort and someone's gonna have to get paid for it and making sure they will pop right and QA and all that, that's a bit of effort. 

 

I still don't think any of these games are worth $23 bucks in Australia even with that in mind, but it's cool to have someone straight up say that adding trophies takes a lot of work. But I will give a lot of props to the teams who have to do this, same as any quality and bug testing team out there that actually does their job (so no one from Ubisoft basically), so to the people who's job it is to add trophies, good job, so far no one has complained about PS2 trophies being broken, so you've done a great job in my eyes, and jobs like this will never get as much mention and respect as say a director or something and I get that, but everything has to come together for a complete package and it wouldn't be 100% complete without these guys, so to the people who have to code in and test trophies, this is my long and kind of over the place thank you.

[Oberlin_94]

I wonder that as well. Wouldn't our trophy progress bars technically be trophy progression tracking anyway? Add to that the rarity status added to PS4 and you already have an entire system in place.

 

What? No, do you not get it?

The progress bar shows how many trophies you've got in the game left to go etc

What they're talking about is a bar/percentage for every trophy so we know what we've got left to do

Would make tracking that 100 kills etc. much easier

Jeeze, read better

[ihadalifeb4this]

i don't get it why would programer "complain" about this. Does being unemployed sounds better than having to work on trophies?

[BlindMango]

i don't get it why would programer "complain" about this. Does being unemployed sounds better than having to work on trophies?

 

I don't think he's really complaining, he's more plainly describing how complicated the task is to people when they ask. Note that the quotes I strung together above are taken from 5 different tweet responses this guy made to other people, it shows that better in the article.  

[StrickenBiged]

Damn! That site is just riddled with ads. It crashed my browser twice. I only got it to open by closing all other tabs. 

 

And people wonder why Adblocks are so popular. When you've got so many ads that some of your readers can't even open your website, you've got a problem. Jezuz. 

[Undead Wolf]

I just hope people start to realize why these aren't free to people who have purchased the game on PS2 or PS3. It takes time and effort to optimize the game for the platform. My understanding is that there is no one size fits all for that kind of stuff. Also as mentioned above, adding trophies can take months to implement. Then you also have to get the game put through certification again, testing, etc. If you bought a game for PS2. you shouldn't expect it to work on anything but a PS2. 

[ExHaseo]

This is exactly why I'm ok with the prices for the PS2 games on PS4. I knew it took some actual time and effort. It would be nice if they put more people on them though, to get more games out faster.

[GoldenShaka]

Good suggestions but how much effort to have trophies with better sound on PS4?

With whatever the setup you put it's just weak, like background noise, like a timid mouse.

[Daniel_Shadow170]

I will call bs on this until a few other noteworthy people say it does.

[Carlver]

I'm not saying it isn't hard and time consuming to make trophies, but isn't he exaggerating when he says it takes 1-2 weeks to only think about the trophies?

[quintriplet]

I'm not saying it isn't hard and time consuming to make trophies, but isn't he exaggerating when he says it takes 1-2 weeks to only think about the trophies?

 

I would think there would be a lot of brainstorming, testing, and decision-making about what trophies to include. Like, if they're gonna spend all that time implementing them, they probably want to make sure they're putting in fun, interesting, challenging, unique trophies.

[BlindMango]

Damn! That site is just riddled with ads. It crashed my browser twice. I only got it to open by closing all other tabs. 

 

And people wonder why Adblocks are so popular. When you've got so many ads that some of your readers can't even open your website, you've got a problem. Jezuz. 

 

Sorry about that! I have Adblock and didn't realize it was so bad. It's funny because I used to be so firmly against Adblock until every other site started embedding the most ridiculous ad structure to their sites, actually encouraging me to get Adblock because it was becoming a serious performance (and frustration) issue, lol. 

[Pumpkin Head Cthulhu]

being that this is a trophy site i expect to get flamed for this but:

 

This seems like a total waste, rather than make actual improvements to the older games they add trophies. i would prefer them to make real improvements to the older games.

[JapanimeGamer]

being that this is a trophy site i expect to get flamed for this but:

 

This seems like a total waste, rather than make actual improvements to the older games they add trophies. i would prefer them to make real improvements to the older games.

Some people might say that by adding trophies they have improved the games.

Also, what you have to consider is how some of these games got their cult status was by being the game that they are, if this was altered in any way people would complain...

They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

[smellslikejavier]

being that this is a trophy site i expect to get flamed for this but:

 

This seems like a total waste, rather than make actual improvements to the older games they add trophies. i would prefer them to make real improvements to the older games.

This are just ports, what were you expecting? that's why is called emulation and not HD remaster.

They are just the same games with trophies, 1080p resolution, remote play, streaming, second screen capabilities, etc.

And after things like the awfully done Silent Hill HD Collection we got last gen, I'm glad we are getting the original versions of the games.

Edited December 29, 2015 by smellslikejavier

[Pumpkin Head Cthulhu]

that is a good point javier. i know they are not HD ports i was just saying they could do better things with their time on these ports. i did not really see the problem with the Silent Hill HD, but then again I only played part 3 as i never did like SH2.

 

EDIT:

you are also correct Gamer, developers cannot win no matter what they do. people will always complain. If they were to do Megaman X command Mission for example one thing that game really needs is an option invert the Axis.

Edited December 29, 2015 by DarkHarmonixer

[smellslikejavier]

that is a good point javier. i know they are not HD ports i was just saying they could do better things with their time on these ports. i did not really see the problem with the Silent Hill HD, but then again I only played part 3 as i never did like SH2.

 

EDIT:

you are also correct Gamer, developers cannot win no matter what they do. people will always complain. If they were to do Megaman X command Mission for example one thing that game really needs is an option invert the Axis.

I don't see what else they can do, they can't touch the graphics because they are just ports, all they can do is upgrade the resolution and add the PS4 capabilities that I mentioned earlier.

The Silent Hill HD Collection got bad reviews everywhere so yeah it has a lot of problems, if you didn't played the original games (along with SH2 that is a masterpiece of horror) you probably wouldn't notice some changes, including the new awful dubbing they did for SH3 (the original was so much better).