Thread: will 2.0 look like xiii-2?

The graphics for xiii, and xiii2 are epic. Is this what we can look for in 2.0? If soo I will scream with excitement.

I haven't seen the graphics for XIII-2, but based on the reasons Yoshi-P gave for rewriting a new engine for FFXIV from scratch, I know they won't be running on the same engine.

On the other hand, Square-Enix has a bunch of talented graphics engine developers that are or were working on both the Luminous engine, which XIII-2 may use, and the new, unnamed engine for FFXIV 2.0, so you may see some similarities.

It should be pointed out that the current FFXIV runs on Crystal Tools as well, so we are currently using that same engine as in FFXIII and FFXIII-2 already. So why do we talk about graphics problems? Here is why:

Possibly the most fundamental property of Crystal Tools is that it loads all fixed landscape graphical elements for an area at once and then places them in the field as directed by the game's coding, regularly using the same graphical item at multiple locations to build a larger landscape with fewer resources. It's limitation is that it can only have so many variable character elements on screen at once.

Now this is fine in a single-player game where you really don't need more than 30 characters on screen at once and can afford to build complex landscapes that are rather enclosed to mask the copying of landscape elements, but FFXIV is an MMO with demands for lots of character elements being displayed simultaneously in large open areas. This is how the copy-paste landscape became so blatantly obvious when compared to FFXIII and why we experience an inability to load more than a certain volume of character elements on to the screen at once (this is most apparent in the Ul'dah market wards).

So Crystal Tools is not really appropriate for FFXIV, which is why they have been building a new graphics engine for this game that carries limitations appropriate to an MMO rather than limitations appropriate to a single-player game. You HAVE to have limitations on your graphics engine if you want it to not consume excessive resources - it's just about making those limitations ones you can better work around.

THe switch from Chrystal tools to Luminous was already discussed, as the engine is already complete and will also be in another seperate mmo.

The new engine is designed for MMo's in mind, Chrystal tools is not, and isn't efficietn for loadign large ammounts of characters on screen. While Chrystal tools is scalable, it simly is to much to scale it for consoles such as the PS3 with it's limited abilities and memory design, no matter how much you try to offset the split memory core.

THe PS3, and Xbox 360 is limited in memory, but to be honest (no matter how PS3 only fanboys want to accept it or not) the 360 allows for a higher color pallete and easier memory allocation. Still with the current engine, it won't be effcient enough even with the use of quick loadign and flushing of textures. The new engien will better handle such tasks.

How ever the return of load zones means PC versions are being held back. The PS3 has 256mb of vram instantly available. 256mb of fast system ram (which part of it is already taken up by the under lying OS that doesn't offload, as well as audio encoding since there is no dedicated sound processor). Certain aspects will be precached, thers loaded into scenes, hopefully they can work on it so detail is maintaned as memory is reallocated for on screen images and the harddrive speeds are sufficient.

By lower end, that includes the PS3, which is where the new engine comes into play. If the engien is sufficient, it will look great in the world, but one thing is certain, character pop in will be similiar to how it is today, rather then how it will be more effcient on PC's with the engine (they already stated the current engine is a problem across the board with limited on screen drawing of characters).

I look forwrd to the new engine and servers for the pc side, and to see a playable version on the ps3 and possibly later the 360.

Be nice if a GAikai or onlive version was possible for loud gaming on tablets, but that i still in the works on the mmo side of those.