• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Prototype Build of Gears of War 3 for the PlayStation 3 Has Been Released

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
unknown.png


Remember that footage of the prototype build for Gears of War 3 on the PlayStation 3 that released one year ago? Well, seems like the person behind it has decided it was finally time for one last hu-rah, as it has been 10 full years since they started working on it.
To celebrate this anniversary, they have decided to release the build to the public.




Twitter user PixelButts made a post yesterday to celebrate the 10 year anniversary since they began work on the prototype Gears of War 3 PlayStation 3 build.
In it, he detailed that this would be his last and final prototype release of any kind, clarifying that they have finally “burn out” and that this is their send off gift.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the Gears of War 3 PS3 data being built, so to celebrate I’m releasing it. I no longer plan to release prototype game stuff after this, as this was the last one I was sitting on.
I will not be taking questions, I will not be your tech support. This data was treated with care for accuracy reasons. Although this data is a decade old and has circulated that whole time, I was the first to get it working, and I wanted to keep it as unmodified as possible.
Because I no longer belong to any specific group for prototype game related affairs, I can finally say this chapter of my life is over. I’ve finally burnt out on development collecting and want this to be a good send-off gift.

The prototype build of Gears of War 3 for the PlayStation 3 can be found here, though it will most likely be useless to most users.
PixelButts explains that a PS3 Devkit is required, since those variations of consoles have extra RAM over the retail versions. For those hoping to emulate this build using the popular RPCS3 emulator, it will only boot to the title screen and nothing more.
More work will be needed in order to properly get it working on the emulator.

 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
Full long-play (8hr) playthrough of the PS3 build:



Interesting to see how well it came across, considering there was apparently zero PS3 optimization involved in the build (they just ran a build export to see how the then-new version of UE3 was working out) and PS3 was notorious for needing special treatment to excel. There are for sure aspects of the PS3 build that are either underpowered/unoptimized or just incompatibile with the PS3's quirks without modification. Some sequences grind the framerate to a halt or throw the geometry all out of whack, but most sections appear to run fine. Speaks well of Unreal Engine support at the time, if nothing else; there's not anything to playing this over the Xbox 360 game of course (and I think it's unlikely hackers will be able to rerig it all the way down to play on non-devkit PS3s,) but it's interesting and curious to see that it exists.

Unfortunately, this is still a built-build, so this could never be pulled apart and use to make a "port" for a PC version of the game, right? Best way of playing Gears 3 is still going to be Xenia or an Xbox.
 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
{Need a FPS analysis!!!!}
What's the point when it only runs on PS3 dev kits with TWICE the ram, this would never run on a retail PS3.
Also, the FPS are embedded on Proto's videos.

It's near-30 when running well (not nearly the performance of 360, which held a nicely steady 30,) and 3PFS or less when things go to hell.

Interesting to see on RPCSX3

I'm curious, have there been other devkit builds of PS3 games released? (I assume there must be some rips out there, but devkits were I think harder to come by than like a PS2 TOOL.) I know this isn't booting, but does RPCSX3 even have a setting for emulating PS3 dev kit builds?
 
Last edited:

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


A prototype build of Gears of War 3 running on PlayStation 3 hardware was released in May 2021. In this episode I take a closer look at the build and how it ended up on PlayStation 3 hardware in the first place.
 
Top Bottom