{"id":51666,"date":"2025-09-04T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=51666"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T07:51:08","slug":"we-had-to-make-sure-you-couldnt-run-faster-than-the-map-could-load-like-a-dragon-technical-director-on-the-series-shift-to-ps3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/we-had-to-make-sure-you-couldnt-run-faster-than-the-map-could-load-like-a-dragon-technical-director-on-the-series-shift-to-ps3\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe had to make sure you couldn\u2019t run faster than the map could load.\u201d Like a Dragon technical director on the series\u2019 shift to PS3\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

RGG Studio technical director Yutaka Ito recently reminisced about the development of 2008\u2019s Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan!<\/strong>, the Like a Dragon series\u2019 first PS3 title. Although the PS3 offered developers a big leap in hardware capabilities, they had limited resources about the console, and getting the increasingly elaborate 3D environments of the time to run smoothly was no easy task. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a thread on his personal X account, Ito comments<\/a>, Actually, I was in charge of Ryu Ga Gotoku: Kenzan!\u2019s first 3D map. Before development started, I was thinking, Well it\u2019s the PS3, we\u2019ll manage somehow.<\/em> But the map of Gion our designers so ambitiously created went beyond my expectations in both scale and quality. That\u2019s when I realized I was in trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ryu<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From there, Ito\u2019s programming team held numerous meetings to figure out how to fit Kenzan’s 3D environments within the memory limits and lighten processing load. He mentions that there was far less information available for game developers at the time, so they turned to overseas websites and research papers for solutions. However, finding the right ones for their game involved a great deal of trial and error. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlso, the game was designed so that you could play straight off the disc, without installing data to the hard drive. But loading from Blu-ray is slower than from the hard drive, so if you kept sprinting around, sometimes the map data couldn\u2019t load fast enough, and you\u2019d see patches of sky through the gaps.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ryu<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t limited to just Kenzan! – the Like a Dragon series in general tends to have very dense backgrounds, so even a small movement requires loading a lot of data. That\u2019s why we actually set the characters\u2019 sprint speed to \u201cthe maximum speed at which the environment data can still load in time,\u201d Ito explains.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, another factor Ito and his fellow programmers had to consider when developing for the PS3 was which data went where on the Blu-ray. \u201cSince the outer edge of the disc reads faster, we placed files that need to load quickly there. Also, to avoid triggering seek time, we had to make sure that data which needed to be read consecutively was arranged in order. Ito says these kinds of adjustments continued right up until release. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related articles: Like a Dragon\u2019s programmers talk about the struggles involved in making game-breaking mechanics like Kiryu\u2019s Dragon Resurgence\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a Dragon\u2019s dev team size has barely changed since the first game, according to RGG Studio head<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RGG Studio technical director Yutaka Ito recently shared insights about the development of the Like a Dragon series’ first PS3 title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":51669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,3],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-51666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-development","category-news","tag-japan-related-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cWe had to make sure you couldn\u2019t run faster than the map could load.\u201d Like a Dragon technical director on the series\u2019 shift to PS3\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"RGG Studio technical director Yutaka Ito recently shared insights about the development of the Like a Dragon series' first PS3 title.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/we-had-to-make-sure-you-couldnt-run-faster-than-the-map-could-load-like-a-dragon-technical-director-on-the-series-shift-to-ps3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cWe had to make sure you couldn\u2019t run faster than the map could load.\u201d Like a Dragon technical director on the series\u2019 shift to PS3\u00a0 - 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