DCharlie redeemed. Appearently Crystal Tools did take the wind out of FFXIII

[BlueTsunami]

1UP: Can you discuss the process of developing the game's engine -- as it evolved from the White Engine into Crystal Tools, did everything go as planned, or were there some bumps along the way?

YK: I'd say that it's on schedule as we'd originally planned, but it certainly hasn't been easy, and it's been quite a time-consuming process. FFXIII currently functions in all the basic ways, but we're still working to polish the engine. People may be under the impression that it's a total package that only needs to be tweaked a little bit in order to port the game to 360, but that's not the case -- we still have to fix it to make it more platform-specific.

[patrickula]

Bow to the emperor

[Cormacaroni]

If by 'Crystal Tools', they mean 'Unreal Engine 3', yeah

[BlueTsunami]

Would be funny if Crystal Tools is a derivative of UE3.

[recursivelyenumerable]

my insider sources tell me it's a derivative of

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the Silicon Knights Engine

[close]

[BlueTsunami]

;_;

[Jansen]

lol i liked the rumor dcharlie tried to start that ffxiii was switching to ue3. was pretty funny.

[Brehvolution]

my insider sources tell me it's a derivative of

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the Silicon Knights Engine

[close]

PLease be not true.

[Joe Molotov]

my insider sources tell me it's a derivative of the Silicon Knights Engine

I think they're calling it the Unlimited Entertainment 3 engine now.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

wow, dcharlie is such a prophet (no offense dcharlie)

[Cormacaroni]

btw, if development really is on the schedule they originally planned, it is the most distinguished mentally-challenged schedule in the history of video game development.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

btw, if development really is on the schedule they originally planned, it is the most distinguished mentally-challenged schedule in the history of video game development.

"Why does it say 'pre-production' next to '2004-2008'?"
"JUST ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU."

[Cormacaroni]

btw, if development really is on the schedule they originally planned, it is the most distinguished mentally-challenged schedule in the history of video game development.

"Why does it say 'pre-production' next to '2004-2008'?"
"JUST ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU."

[dark1x]

should have just went with UE from the beginning or just launched FF13 on PS2 per plan A. They didn't need to build their own cross platform engine for this.

I disagree.  There hasn't been a single UE3 game that proves to me that it would be capable of handling a polished experience like we expect with FFXIII.  Gears of War is about as polished a UE3 game available and it's a shooter.  I've played nearly every other UE3 title released and all of them have issues that make it feel as if the team just couldn't quite get things right.  Heck, Square's own UE3 game (at least Last Remnant) just does look like something they would normally have produced.  I just don't think using an engine created by an English speaking company would work well. 

Look at the difference between what Artoon did for Blue Dragon and UE3 for Lost Odyssey.  Blue Dragon was awe inpsiring, despite the slowdown, but LO was one of the least polished JRPGs I've ever played.  It had tons of loading, uneven performance, and all sorts of other wonky issues.  I think Square could do a better job, but I still don't really enjoy seeing middleware used with so many games.  No matter how hard a team may try, you can always tell when a game is using a certain engine.  I recall reading an interview regarding LO that basically stated that using UE3 was not enjoyable and the language barrier was a primary reason for that.

It's true that the Japanese have seemingly struggled this gen with the technology side of things, but look at some of the best results.  Capcom's games, for instance, all look absolutely incredible as did MGS4.  They each decided to create their own technology base and it paid off in spades.  They managed to create a look and feel for those games that differs greatly from anything UE3 and they all look excellent.

Alright, that was just an aside.  I really actually LIKE UE3, but I really don't believe it is suited to all genres (despite what Epic may say).  You can squeeze anything into it, yes, but it won't necessarily deliver the look and performance the game deserves.

[Vizzys]

  Blue Dragon was awe inpsiring, despite the slowdown, but LO was one of the least polished JRPGs I've ever played.  It had tons of loading, uneven performance, and all sorts of other wonky issues. 

lol whut

[y2kev]

I kind of see his point. BD is really quite stunning, but that might be more a function of its art style. LO is uneven to me. It does a lot right, but it often feels like it's going to come apart at the seams. The end of disk 2 in particular really shocked me with  the framerate. I think one big difference is that LO drops frames on the world map and is steady in battle and BD is steady on the world map and drops frames in battle. lol.

But whether or not that has anything to do with UE3...I dunno. I still think we've yet to see a UE3 title as impressive as Gears.

[Vizzys]

 only problem I remember with with lost odyssey is the kind longish battle intro where it flashes the battle field from different angles rather then showing your party and the enemy, it gets kind of annoying waiting to see what you are fighting. obviously its for loading but still...

 Ill take that over battle slowdown in blue dragon anyday, turn based or not that shit drives me INSANE

[MCD]

uhh...

BD had worse problems than LO, more tearing and framedrops and about the same loading.

and dissing on LO's loading then praising MGS4 is lol, one huge fucking install then installing with each act then 10sec loading with every zone and cutscene.

get real.

[dark1x]

uhh...

BD had worse problems than LO, more tearing and framedrops and about the same loading.

and dissing on LO's loading then praising MGS4 is lol, one huge fucking install then installing with each act then 10sec loading with every zone and cutscene.

get real.

I suppose if you pull them apart, you'll find flaws across the board, but LO just felt as if it were falling apart.  It wasn't just about loading, it was about the lack of polish overall.

I wasn't praising the loading in MGS4 either.  I think it's kind of bullshit, honestly, but everything else about the game is very polished and that was my point.  Loading is far from the only issue with LO.  I'm surprised you would call me out on MGS4 while ignoring Dead Rising (a Capcom game).  While they've since solved the issues with framework, Dead Rising featured loading issues much worse than MGS4 and LO.  Everything else about the game was EXTREMELY polished, however, so it can be forgiven.

I loved LO, by the way.  I finished the game and had a blast.  On the flipside, I actually did NOT like Blue Dragon all that much (but felt it looked MUCH better overall).  The battles were filled with slowdown, but that was pretty much its own problem.

But whether or not that has anything to do with UE3...I dunno. I still think we've yet to see a UE3 title as impressive as Gears.

We haven't.  Epic simply knows how to use the engine in the most efficient manner.  Developers have stated several times that they are always stunned by how simple the actual level geometry in Gears is compared to whatever they may be working on.  It's kind of like how the cars in GT4 back on PS2 always looked so damn good despite using fewer polygons than similar XBOX games.  They use textures, shaders, and other effects in conjunction with just the right amount of detail to produce something that looks insane.

I don't want to make it seem as if I think poorly of UE3, however.  It's an awesome engine, but I've yet to see proof that it's awesome for EVERYTHING.  It may be CAPABLE of such things, but that doesn't mean every team could deliver it.  I think a Japanese company is better off using their own code.  Working with someone else's code IS difficult...but when the code and documentation were both originally written in another language (English, in this case) it becomes even more difficult.

[dark1x]

All I need to know about UE3 is that all UE3 games run like dream on my rig and Mass Effect is utterly beautiful during dialogues. And the drawing distance on planets is just beyond amazing.

I cannot wait for Last Remnant PC now. This uses UE3 also, right?

This is true, but not in all cases.  UE3 games on the PC are usually awesome due to super smooth framerates.  I've found many of the ports to be extremely uneven, however.

Mass Effect, Gears of War, UT3, and Stranglehold are all examples of UE3 games that run beautifully on the PC (much better than consoles).  Then you have the odd example like Turok or Blacksite which actually turned out pretty awful on the PC.  I know Turok isn't a great game, but man, the PC version was SO bad.  Downgraded visuals, extremely long loading screens (the game used streaming on consoles, but not on the PC), and other wierd issues.

I'm surprised that you're impressed with the planets in Mass Effect, though.  I mean, the story based worlds are awesome looking, but most of the planets use a generic terrain system with no detail of any sort.  It looks good enough, I suppose, but it's hardly impressive.

[MCD]

the field/overworld in BD is running at like...15 fps lol, when flying that is or near that fortress in the snow.

tearing gets really ugly later too.

my problem with LO was mainly the battle animations, WHY CAN'T I SKIP IT LIKE ENCHANTED ARMS OH GOD ANOTHER ENCOUNTER.

[dark1x]

the field/overworld in BD is running at like...15 fps lol, when flying that is or near that fortress in the snow.

tearing gets really ugly later too.

my problem with LO was mainly the battle animations, WHY CAN'T I SKIP IT LIKE ENCHANTED ARMS OH GOD ANOTHER ENCOUNTER.

Well, I never finished Blue Dragon (put in about 15 hours), but I thought the field map/overworld generally ran at a smooth 30 fps.  If it gets much slower, well, that's unfortunate.  I still thought it was the better looking game of the two.  Perhaps the style has something to do with it, but a lot of the areas and models in LO are just flat out ugly.  In rare instances, the game can appear beautiful, but it's generally pretty ugly.  The framerate is never really smooth (during any portion) and everything feels kind of disjointed.  The game does feel as if it will tear apart at any second.  The lack of uniformity during animations and cutscenes also annoyed me (some scenes were well animated, others were horrible, and yet others were somewhere in the middle).

I guess my point is that I would be EXTREMELY disappointed if FFXIII were to feel anything like LO (in terms of polish as, again, I loved LO).  Obviously, the much higher budget of XIII would certainly help, but still.  Like I said, I haven't been impressed with what they've shown of their main UE3 title thus far (Last Remnant).  It's not bad looking, but you can really feel that it's not running on home grown technology. 

[y2kev]

I kind of think....um....that Blue Dragon looks better and is more artistically consistent than LO too. So, yeah, it's more technically shitty, but I guess that is the price you pay for out of this world lighting. Plus, LO has that annoying problem of frame dropping in cutscenes when the screen goes into PiP (which is actually really neat).

The one thing I find pretty dismal about LO is the character faces. Between the hair and the skin shader, I find something like Mass Effect to have much more believable characters. In an RPG, I think that's fairly important. In this regard, MGS4 looks very far ahead of any other console game in terms of facial animation and believability. The Meryl model really impresses me for some reason.

So, with FFXIII, I am expecting big things. I expect technical proficiency on a level Square demonstrated on PS1 and PS2 combined with MGS4 level cutscenes and character modeling. I have very high hopes for the game. Now that it will actually be profitable, I think they should spare no expense.

edit: wrt: Crystal Tools, I'm not sure they actually MAKE enough games (particularly next-gen ones) to warrant developing a next-gen engine. Square Enix's output is often outsourced, and it's doubtful that those games would ever use Crystal Tools. To me it sounds like they spent millions on an expensive engine for FFXIII, Versus, whatever else they were planning to shit out for FFXIII, and KH3. Which I'm sure would result in them making their money back on the engine's dev costs, but why?

[Jansen]

on god FRAMERATE ISSUES i can't enjoy this game.

:suicide

[recursivelyenumerable]

edit: wrt: Crystal Tools, I'm not sure they actually MAKE enough games (particularly next-gen ones) to warrant developing a next-gen engine. Square Enix's output is often outsourced, and it's doubtful that those games would ever use Crystal Tools. To me it sounds like they spent millions on an expensive engine for FFXIII, Versus, whatever else they were planning to shit out for FFXIII, and KH3. Which I'm sure would result in them making their money back on the engine's dev costs, but why?

Well, for their PS1/2 development they created a new engine from scratch for every game (with a few exceptions like FFX-2) so it'll probably end up being more efficient regardless.

[Narag]

edit: wrt: Crystal Tools, I'm not sure they actually MAKE enough games (particularly next-gen ones) to warrant developing a next-gen engine. Square Enix's output is often outsourced, and it's doubtful that those games would ever use Crystal Tools. To me it sounds like they spent millions on an expensive engine for FFXIII, Versus, whatever else they were planning to shit out for FFXIII, and KH3. Which I'm sure would result in them making their money back on the engine's dev costs, but why?

Well, for their PS1/2 development they created a new engine from scratch for every game (with a few exceptions like FFX-2) so it'll probably end up being more efficient regardless.

I thought XII was running on a modified XI engine.

[MCD]

@darkx, yeah i like BD visually more than LO even though the third disc needed better polishing and less motion blur overall.

[recursivelyenumerable]

Was IX not using the same engine as VIII also? Graphically, at least. I always believed it was.

nope. 

I thought XII was running on a modified XI engine.

nope.  (XI is heavily dependent on having the HDD available for caching, it wouldn't have worked anyway)

[MCD]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=160232

The Mistwalker boss told Gamespot: "I feel that the Final Fantasy series should come to Xbox 360 as well. This is wise. It makes so much sense to me...it has so much potential in North America and in Europe. So there's a great chance for the series to succeed on 360 as well."

Continuing the chat Sakaguchi-san suggested that Square Enix could port its upcoming PS3 instalment Final Fantasy XIII to 360 fairly simply, because "they made the White Engine open platform".