Sunday
Jul172011
Harada Interviewed by Kayane
BY 
Aris ON Sunday, July 17, 2011 at 12:59PM
Aris ON Sunday, July 17, 2011 at 12:59PM 
Check out this recent interview of Harada by top Soul Calibur and Street Fighter player, Kayane. Thanks to GeekinStudio for the upload.
Reader Comments (18)
Hey that's me and Kane! @2:13!
hehe, I took some good footage and now its used worldwide! Woot. Now I just need a comiccon pass to get moooore..
Good interview though, very well packaged.
Now everybody should watch the interview, specially the part from 6:13 and onwards and shut the fuck up about GGPO. I think Harada answered beautifully!!!
I've been saying for years that only 2D games may get improved online with GGPO. 3D games has huge amout of information that just isn't possible to exchange quicker with the shitty internetconnections most people are on!!!
Also, nice to know that Tekken x Streetfighter is at 0 % currently!!
This was a fun and informative interview!
Uhhh no Harada didn't answer beautifully, he basically said they can't be bothered building their games around GGPO technology. I know GGPO is not magic, but Compression techniques? GTFO! we NEED input masking latency code and we need developers to realize that online is arguably the most important component to a console fighting game. Harada is an amazing guy but I really think he is talking crap here, I think his hands are tied and we will continue to see shitty Netcode in Namco fighters.
Personally I hope we get new hardware before TTT2 and TxSF drops. Because they obviously think they need more resources to pull it off.
But I am far more compelled to believe Ponder over a guy that makes amazing games but really shitty netcode. In this regard the Japanese are far behind the times probably because their culture has great internet and doesn't really care about online competitive gaming....
Oh and here is what the developer of GGPO had to say about this interview.
"To be 100% clear, my goal is to have these games to be played competitively at as high a level as possible online. If someone else finds a way to do it that’s better than GGPO, by all means I believe we should adopt that technique. Right now GGPO on the whole is a better solution than fixed or variable input delay, which is what most games use.
GGPO uses the CPU to compensate for the latency in the network by executing the game state for a frame several times. If you are using a very large percentage of your CPU to calculate the game state, then this can be an issue. My argument is that using a large percentage of a CPU to calculate the game state for a fighting game is unnecessary. Clock-for-clock 1 core of an XBox 360 (3.2 Ghz) is 200,000 times more powerful than the processor used for Super Street Fighter IV Super Turbo (16 Mhz) and over 100 times more powerful than the processor used for Tekken on the Playstation (33.86 Mhz).
The differences in gameplay between ST and SF4 or Tekken 1 and Tekken 6 are not so dramatic as to require a 100x increase in CPU, IMO. It therefore stands to reason that you can use 95% of the CPU to increase the visual fidelity of the scene and still have plenty of CPU available to execute the game and run GGPOs rollback frames. If you design your game in such a way that you burn 20% of the CPU executing the game state, then you will have a problem, but it’s not necessary to design the game that way, especially a 2D, hit-box based game like Marvel or Street Fighter.
and ....
In case anyone is wondering, I do not believe the technical considerations raised in this interview are very relevant to whether or not GGPO could be applied to a 3D game like Soul Calibur or Tekken. GGPO’s techniques do not require more bandwidth, and people currently play on GGPO all over the world, including areas like eastern Europe and South America which have notoriously narrow and high latency pipes.
Fundamentally, the rollback techniques used in GGPO use excess CPU power to compensate for latency in the network. Though no technique can completely eliminate the effects of latency, the ones employed by GGPO generally provide a better user experience to the input delay techniques used by most online fighting games."
Ponder
Personally, I'm tired about hearing about GGPO. They're either going to use it or not.
Also, fighting games are meant to be played offline against another human opponent, not sitting from the comfort of home where there's no pressure and when lag plays a factor in the match outcome. Improved online just gives more reason for people to stay home and talk shit behind a computer without having to prove themselves. I wish people would talk about playing offline as much as they did about GGPO.
@Malice
i think i can say that all player in the world would like to play against a person next to you BUT most of them cant
but they also want to play the game because they love them
easy and simple
I wouldnt be surprised if the Tekken team didnt even look at GGPO. They probably laughed at whoever brought up the idea .
"Suggestions coming from the United States? LOL lets not even give them Tag2!"
Nice interview overall though. Kayane's English is pretty good!
@Ashesfall: If you are in a metropolitan area, there are people to play. The real question is whether people want to actually put in the effort it takes to play offline. I’ve seen kids with no jobs put in more effort to compete in Street Fighter than other people would for other fighting games when they have people in their own city to play. So it’s not a matter of can’t.
Yeah I think the Tekken team haven't really looked at GGPO seriously, and guess what I am tired of hearing about it as well. But we need good netcode and at this time, GGPO is all there really is, Input delay netcode is UNACCEPTABLE. But the technical answer he gives against it here is extremely vague and I believe in-accurate. They just cant be fucked building their games around good netcode.
If ttt2 comes to consoles and has shitty online again I might just give up on this franchise. and why? Because there is hardly anyone who plays this game in my country as it stands and very difficult to get an offline community going.
Namco need to step there shit up and start taking this seriously. It will be interesting to see what happens once 3SO drops... Hopefully it's a bit of a wake-upcall to the commercial fighting game scene.
If you are near any decent size city, there is really no excuse for not attempting to find people who play the game in your area. Use your shitty internet connection to find people who play the game in your home town and *gasp* get out of your cave and meet them. Online should always be secondary to playing with friends (or just acquaintances) offline. " Boo-hoo.. I don't know any people who play the game near me" is a piss poor excuse and it just means you're too fucking lazy to do anything about it, and because you're spoiled by playing other games online.
It all comes down to how dedicated you are with Tekken or any other fighter for that matter.
@Devil Kazuya
I definitely agree with what you're saying about how Namco probably isn't even considering GGPO.
But in their defense, restructuring their code to to accommodate GGPO must be extremely taxing for them. I assume they have like 4-5 head programmers that are responsible for everything in the game that include cloth physics, ground damage, wall damage, floor break scenario's, move properties, sidestep distances, hitbox axes, etc.... and to reprogram ALL of that for a game that's probably took 15+ years of coding to reach it's current peak is a lot to ask for. Not saying it's impossible, but it'll probably take a good 1,500 man hours of coding and bug testing to get it to working how well it does now and be GGPO friendly. And I guess that's what's keeping them from redoing the entire thing.
@ The dude... I live in a little place called New Zealand ever fucking heard of it? ... Where i live would probably not even be considered a city to you... so kindly STFU. I know offline is where it should be played but some of us don't have this luxury....
@Devil
thats what i mean
i also life in a little town in germany
i dont want to travels for hour only to play one day
i want to play every day ...
Harada~sama is don!
@ the Dude I call bullshit bro I agree some people are lazy but I have and constantly keep trying to put a scene together and that shit just keeps blowing up in my face, people either don't come or have some excuse as to why they can't make it and I live in Chicago! I am a huge Tekken fan and a dedicated player the closest arcade is an hour and 30 min from my I can't do that all the time to play people that I'm not even sure are good or not rarely do I get a good match. With that being said I kinda have to turn to offline do I want to hell no but I mean that's really all I have at the moment until I luck up and find a good sparring partner offline. To every one thats shits on people who want a solid online connection shut the fuck up not everybody is blessed with a scene or active players where they live.
I'm getting really tired about the discussion of GGPO. The Tekken development team is very conscious about its existance, and whether they will implement it or not is definitely not up to the fans and they will make the decision internally. As far as I understood, based on the interview they didn't entirely cancel out the idea about using it so I don't know what people are bitching about. Lets see first what they come up with and then rant if need be.
And about the comment made by the developer of GGPO: don't you think there is even the slightest amount of bias to what he has to say?
You got to miss those good old put your quarter up days....sigh. I think Namco is doing a decent job with online for Tekken in my opinion. I'll complain if playing online gets worse over time. I don't know how playing the most recent SC performs online. It's funny the older players that grew up playing arcades want arcades back. The players that came around the console online play want better online. GGPO or not I don't care as long as online improves because we are spoiled with online play in the first place.
Of course he is bias, but he doesn't really have that much to gain by saying this Namco already obviously own a GGPO license and are using it in that dragonball z arcade game which is full 3D and has 4 players at once...