Let’s just take a second to reflect on how great it is that BioShock 2 is releasing simultaneously on the PLAYSTATION 3 this time around…OK, enough daydreaming about the underwater city of Rapture, because we’re here to tell you just how amazing BioShock 2 is already looking, underlined by a drill-wielding Big Daddy of a main character. Hunting the Big Sisters and utilizing Plasmids to unload a host of destruction, the return of Rapture brings a whole new world of experiences.

We listened last week as a some of the team behind the BioShock series talked about how this sequel came about and how this time around, you can take you Big Daddy outside the indoor confirms of Rapture and explore the surrounding sea. You now have the ability to Harvest or Adopt a Little Sister, and that dynamic will be an important driving force in the game and the incessant hunt for Adam.

And in a few weeks, Jeff and I will hop over to publisher 2K Games for a video interview with some of the brains behind the game. Of course, we’ll need your questions to make that happen. So drop your burning inquiries as comments, and we’ll make sure to get the goods in the very near future.

I’m Keith Shetler, Assistant Producer at 2K Boston, and I’m very excited to introduce two new play modes with this DLC pack: New Game Plus and Challenge Rooms. Both add new twists to the game millions already love!

New Game Plus allows you to start a new supercharged playthrough of BioShock. Ready for this? You begin the game with any weapons, abilities, and inventory that you collected during a previous playthrough. Always wish you could obliterate Dr. Steinman with your uber grenade launcher? Now you can!

Challenge Rooms are another beast altogether. These are puzzle rooms where the objective is to rescue a Little Sister. Sounds easy enough, right? Dead wrong! Whether it’s fighting a Big Daddy without any weapons or surviving room after room of Splicers, Challenge Rooms require equal amounts brain and brawn in order to succeed.

The whole BioShock downloadable content team is proud to bring this new content to the fans that made and continue to make BioShock a huge success. We hope that you enjoy playing it as much as we did making it.

By skirt I mean the source code. For a programmer there is great joy in understanding. Every time the Great Carmack open sources an id engine, I rush to the Interwebs and fill my brain with the glory. I remember being astonished that they were using Huffman compression on their network stream for Quake 3. If I recall correctly, they’d just capture a bunch of traffic and build the table out of it. It was like profile-guided optimization for packets. That’s sublime right there.

Well, it was a bit odd, being the way I am, that the first thing I did when we got the BioShock build was … check the other ending. Like a coward, I could never bring myself to harvest. What kind of demented person can do that? Sure, I laugh when I light a Splicer on fire and she runs away screaming and then I shoot her in the head and beat her corpse with a wrench … but in my mind the freak deserved it. The point I’ve failed to make is this: learning more about the world of BioShock overwhelmed that programmer’s impulse.

How about I say something on topic? BioShock on the PlayStation 3! My first task was to optimize the character ‘skinning’. For Bioshock, a lot of resources go into the character animation – here ‘skinning’ refers to the process of taking the various animated joints (spine, elbows, knees, wrists, etc) and deforming the rendered character to match that animation.

Skinning was coded for PS3 in two phases: first I made it work on the main CPU (actually Sony calls their CPU a PPU) using their specialized math instruction set (much faster than straight up C/C++). That was about four times faster, but the PS3 still had more love. That love was the final step, take that code and run it entirely on a SPU, freeing up the PPU for other tasks. The SPU processors run along side the PPU, chewing data while the PPU worries about something else. The idea being, if you have spare SPU time, your skinning is essentially ‘free’ (done before the rendering system even asks for it).

After that was working, I helped out with profiling and memory optimization. Things you want to do when you change memory architectures, like adding a second straw to your milkshake. In this amazing analogy the two straws would be the collision system and the rendering system. The ‘milkshake’ (chocolate) would be the objects in the world that need to be drawn but, just as importantly, shot, knocked over and generally interacted with. By dividing the data describing the objects between the two dedicated areas of memory I eliminated the need to make a second copy of the object while giving both systems full-speed access to the parts they needed.

As we wrapped, I was slogging on TRC issues (not fun) and crashes (quite fun actually). Such are the tasks of taking it the last mile … as usual it comes down to some nuanced and hard to nail down issues.

Well, enough of my technical jargon for now – thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy BioShock on PlayStation 3. It was an honor to be able to contribute to it.

One of our first goals was to get the Ferris Wheel in the game. The finished asset was actually physically in the original release of the game, but never used. It was a shame, because it’s a really well crafted piece. So I went through the steps of breaking it apart, rigging it and getting it to move convincingly. Then I had to learn some things about collision and getting the Little Sister to stay in the carriage without misbehaving. After a bit of elbow grease and sweat we got a functioning Ferris Wheel in engine. I hope you guys have fun playing in that room!

I also had to do quite a few more custom Little Sister animations. Revisiting the Little Sister rig from BioShock was a welcome assignment, and I found it somewhat cathartic to once again channel my inner child. My coworkers must have thought it odd when I would jump around my space and wave my arms to act out some of her moves. Actually they’re probably used to it by now.

The team worked really hard and it was fun diving into this project. I have to give props to Kirk Bezio (Add on content Designer), Chad King (Add on content Lead Artist) and Dan Kaplan (Add On content Programmer) in particular for their roles in getting this done. It almost felt like being back in school, except my peers weren’t students but big time pros.

Thanks for taking the time to read our post!

There have been many questions regarding the trophy system in BioShock for the PLAYSTATION 3, and we are glowing from the attention. As some of the trophy criteria noted in our last post seemed familiar, some drew the conclusion that the PS3 wouldn’t have unique trophies. That is not the case.

As BioShock for the PLAYSTATION 3 continues its ascent from the depths we have assembled new information regarding the trophies that will be available to players. Specifically, we have new intelligence on the trophies which are unique to BioShock for the PLAYSTATION 3.

“A Man Chooses” is the first of these golden trophies and is reserved for those with the courage to complete Survivor difficulty. Its name is meant, in the words of Andrew Ryan, father of Rapture, to remind you that a man chooses because in Survivor mode every choice could mean the difference between life and death.

The final trial for any committed BioShock player is “I Chose The Impossible”. This trophy is named appropriately as attaining it will make even the most self-assured gamesman into a shaking leaf. To make this your own, you must complete BioShock on Survivor difficulty with the Vita-Chambers turned off.

Each of these shining treasures can only be found on the PLAYSTATION 3. So tense up your trigger finger and polish your diving helmet, you will need them at the ready.

Recently, the BioShock PS3 design team here at 2K Marin spent some time with the Trophy system for the PS3. The Trophies for the PS3 are ranked as if you, the game player, were an Olympian. It seemed only right that we organize our thoughts by this method.
Our first batch out of the Trophy-maker, were the Bronze Trophies.

Just like in the original BioShock, for the PS3 version our initial emphasis was on encouraging thoroughness and exploration of the BioShock universe. Each system in BioShock has a reward for the player that digs deep enough. Our hope is that players that may otherwise neglect a system will want to explore it just for the Trophy. Systems like Researching, Modifying Weapons, Hacking, and Crafting are all loaded with awards. A meticulous player will find themselves up to their armpits in prizes.

While every system has a tactical in-game advantage, we hope these Trophies will encourage players to try out every aspect of BioShock. Hacking, for example, is a system that some players may never focus on. However, for the player who gets out their wrench and starts tinkering, the tactical significance of having a turret and two security bots on your team is impressive. We hope that luring you in with the promise of glittering medals will make you consider revisiting such systems. We believe that once you get a nibble of the effectiveness of certain tactics, you’ll come back for a full meal.

Silver Trophies were next to be handed out.

For the true explorer, we present one of the more difficult Trophies to get in all of Rapture. The “Historian” Trophy is awarded for finding every single audio diary. This particular Trophy is Silver because we understand the rigor required for this endeavor. If you’re a true adventurer and seek to know the full story of the fall of Rapture, look under every desk and open every door. There are many to find.
As you may expect, several Trophies must remain secret. Giving this information away has the same effect as turning to the last page in a great book. We imagine you hate this as much as we do. The other silver Trophy must remain in our vault until you discover it for yourselves.

Next we turned to the Gold Trophies, the real beauties.

When considering how to use these Trophies to reward players, we chose to give a respectful nod to those few who desire a challenge. We believe that BioShock PS3 has a lot to offer in a single play through, but we wanted to emphasize and reward a player’s second or third descent into Rapture. This led us to create new Trophies that encourage more advanced tactics and enemies that provide a greater challenge.
As a result of this thinking the first Trophy bears the name, “Brass Balls”. If you desire to be among the few who have this prestigious award on their mantle, you must win BioShock on Hard difficulty with the Vita-Chambers turned off. A feat so daring that anyone even glimpsing this formidable Trophy in your glass case will be shaking with terror and respect.

There are still more Trophies yet to be unveiled which will push you further than this. Devilish trials which only the sturdiest among us will finish. Keep your ears peeled for further details.

We believe that you will find gathering all of these Trophies a grueling but satisfying trek. Should you manage to gather every single bronze, silver, and gold Trophy, the ultimate achievement is waiting: the coveted BioShock Platinum Trophy. Its glistening mass is reserved for those few who can stare down a Big Daddy without shivering.

Our hands are at the ready to give congratulatory pats on the back to anyone strong willed enough to claim these shiny keepsakes. Until then, expect more updates from the designers here at 2K Marin as BioShock for the PS3 surfaces.

But first things first – before we get into too many details, let me tell you about the fantastic team that’s working on the PS3 version of BioShock.

The project is based in the 2K Marin studio, which is located in Novato, CA. The 2K Marin team has been collaborating with the 2K teams in Australia and Boston to build the game with team members in each of the studios building, coding, optimizing, bugfixing, and polishing away. On top of that, because this is the first PS3 title from 2K Marin, 2K Australia and 2K Boston, we’ve also got another development partner with some outstanding PS3-specific coding chops helping out with the project – we can’t talk about what studio that is yet, but we look forward to revealing that in the future.

For today, we’ll give a brief “who’s who” for the three 2K studios that are working together on BioShock for the PS3.

2K Marin: We started the 2K Marin studio in November of 2007 with a group of eight people who migrated across the country (and in some cases, the world) in order to continue working on BioShock. The core 2K Marin group includes the Executive Producer (me!), our Creative Director, Jordan Thomas (designer of the Fort Frolic level), Lead Programmer Carlos Cuello, and Lead Artist Hogarth de la Plante. All the aforementioned folks worked on the original version of BioShock. We’ve also got some extremely talented programmers including Ray Graham (previous titles include Godfather, The Simpsons, NBA 2K, and NBA Street) Johnnemann Nordhagen (formerly from Sony’s R&D group), David Pittman (previously of Stormfront Studios), and Jake Etgeton (also from the original BioShock crew), who are currently hard at work making builds and squashing bugs.

2K Australia: During BioShock development, Australia was the home of the tech team – the guys who worked on the core engine and rendering features that brought to life the gorgeous visuals of Rapture. Five members of that team, Mathi Nagarajan, Ben Driehuis, Daniel Lamb, Weicheng Fang, and Tim Cooper are now working on the PS3 version, focused on rendering, graphics and optimization. Their goal is to make the game run amazingly well on the PS3, and they’ve been making tremendous progress so far on that front.

2K Boston: The Boston team is the largest chunk of the BioShock team at the moment; many of them hard at work on some of the as-yet-unannounced components of the PS3 version. I can mention the work of one Boston team member, Ian Bond, who has been optimizing and refactoring the physics simulation for the game to take the maximum advantage of the PS3 hardware.

It can be tricky to coordinate the work of so many teams across so many time zones (the Boston team has almost no overlapping working hours with the Australia team); we make liberal use of phones, videoconferencing, forums, emails, and travel to keep everyone aware of what’s going on. The good news is that with all these teams on the case, development on the PS3 version goes on for roughly 18 hours a day!

That’s a brief overview of the teams working on the PS3 version. In the future, we’ll go into more depth about what’s different and what’s new in the upcoming release. We hope that you’re excited about BioShock coming to PS3 as we are, and we’ll see you again soon!