Tim Lindquist who is a Senior Technical Project Manager PlayStation, revealed a few interesting tid bits about how PS2 emulation works on the PS4. If you are not aware already, Sony is asking players which PS2 game they want to see on the PlayStation 4, so it seems that Sony is at least serious about making the emulation a success on its console.
But making older games work on newer technology is not an easy task, says Lindquist. He revealed that even the simplest sounding trophies can be hard to program for and just deciding the trophy list takes around 1-2 weeks. But the actual programming takes a month, not to mention testing and QA analysis which takes another 1-2 months depending on the length of the game. Overall, we are looking at 2-3 months just to implement trophies in the emulated game! But which games has so far proven to be more challenging than the others? Lindquist revealed that one of the games was Dark Cloud given the complex calculations they had to do in order to implement it. Mark of Kri’s Complete a level without dying was a trophy that was lot harder to implement too, says Tim.
And what about a progression tracker for trophies on the PlayStation 4? Lindquist apparently loved that suggestion but whether it will be implemented is something that remains to be seen. Finally, Tim revealed that players should expected new emulated releases “regularly”.
@Sentreh @davethach The simplest sounding trophies can turn out to be really complex to program!
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@Sentreh @davethach Dark Cloud's completion % stat calculations for everything still make me anxious.
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@shadowtabako Deciding what the trophies should be takes 1-2 weeks (plus extra time to get them approved). Programming is about month.
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@shadowtabako Testing them after programming can take another 1-2 months depending on how long the game is!
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@MattPhillips46 I love that suggestion.
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@Sentreh @davethach Mark of Kri's Complete level without dying is trophy is a lot harder to implement than you'd think, too.
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015@jamezmsn Right now I can only say "regularly." Thanks! 🙂
— Tim Lindquist (@tglindquist) December 16, 2015