dump the PS2...

[Elexia]

Half of the playerbase still plays on ps2?

That's hard to believe, considering they don't even make hard drive ps2s anymore, which ffxi needs to run on.

I've bought quite a few recent things from Japan made for the PS2. It may be "dead" where you live but a lot of indie developers and smaller studios still support it along with new consoles.

[Atomic_Skull]

OMG... not another one. We probly have 2 dozen or more of these threads.

Essentially what has to happen when shooting for multi-platform compatibility, the foundation of your programming has to be restricted to the lowest level of hardware you intend to support so it will always run on all the platforms you expect to run it on.

FFXI was built in a specific environment (PS2) and has hard-coded limitations embedded in it's core to communicate with the firmware/BIOS of a PS2. That is why you need a BIOS file from a PS2 to make a PS2 emulator work--it has to be able to run the compiled code, and an x86 system cannot read that assembly language natively. This has not changed. PS2 assembly is still used in the Windows and 360 versions, they just have a "wrapper" to run that code. A large portion of that core code has remained the same as it was 10 years ago.

And you know this because?

There are too many differences between the Windows and PS2 versions of FFXI for it to be simply emulation. Projection shadows are higher resolution in the windows version, certain ingame effects are quite different (avatar glow effects and the on screen battle message animation immediately come to mind, some magic effects are a little different between the versions also) Weather effects can be toggled off in the PC version. And the recent addition of buttons that automatically scale with resolution all point to FFXI on Windows not being simple emulation.

I do know that some things that could be done with shaders in DirectX 9 now were done with software because DirectX 8's fixed function shaders weren't as powerful and flexible as the PS2's vector units. Shouldn't be too hard to just replace that code with Shader Model 3.0 code though.

It wouldn't really be hard to create am HD client for FFXI on Windows and 360 using Gamebryo Lightspeed or whatever. These days you don't have to build a game from the ground up, you just license an engine and over 75% of the coding has been done for you.

The thing you have to remember about an MMO is that most of the important stuff doesn't happen on the client, it happens on the server end. The client is just a graphics terminal that shows you what's happening on the server (in FFXI's case, as with many MMOs it also handles your character's movement). There's no technical reason why they couldn't make an HD client for Windows and 360 while retaining compatibility with the PS2 client. Without memory limitations annoying things like lag in transferring items between bags would disappear because you'd have enough memory to cache the transfers. The 80 slot per bag limit would remain, but wouldn't really matter anymore because you could now transfer from any bag to any other bag on the Windows and 360 versions (the old limitations would still apply to the PS2 version)

[RAIST]

common industry practices. you don't typically compile apps seperately for each and every release of java from 3.0 all the way up to 6.x. You pick one assembly release to compile with and set that as the minimum requirement. You let the JRE's handle everything else outside of what is handled by the core logic in the compiled assembly.

It has been discussed adnauseum by people who have picked the files apart laboriosly (as in people who developed third party tools) and have posted to the effect that there appears to be a core PS2 logic that is run through a "wrapper" of sorts, hooking into the various API's and such specific to the environment it is running in.

Research also confirms over 400 files (roughly 64MB worth, just ran the search and actually got 448) on the hard drive (a lot of ROM and DAT) that predate even the PS2 launch by over a year--many show Dec. 18, 2000. Those files were pulled off optical media and added to my system at the time of install and have remained unchanged since. How many are still actually used is open to speculation, some are in the sound directories and such though. So, it can reasonably be assumed that at least for the PC's launch date in the US almost 3 years later (Oct. 2003), it was likely still using something tied to the PS2 somehow (or at least something to enable a PC to process PS2 specific code) to run certain PS2 specific assets and/or assemblie(s) that have not changed since they were last compiled during the lengthy PS2 development cycle.

All of this has been discussed and debated to the ends of the earth and back, but in the end it has been agreed (in general, there are still skeptics of the theories, as is human nature) that there is a portion that is PS2 specific that has remained unchanged over the years.

Edit:
Even if the PS2 was not set as the lowest common hardware in the platform pool and the source was compiled in something higher that integrates fully with the PC environment like C++ and such, that source would STILL have to take into account the limitations of the PS2 so when it is compiled DOWN to the PS2 assembly code, it doesn't overstep the confines of the PS2's registers. This is basically what happened with FFXIV and the PS3 (went hogwild in PC version only to find it won't "fit" right on the PS3, and have to revamp), so it is possible that is another way they did it.

But either way, one simple fact remains. The original source upon which all of this was built off of IS restricted by the limits of the hardware expected in the PS2. So, just drop kicking everyone playing on a PS2 doesn't mean they get to immediately ramp everything up for the other platforms. They have to go all the way back to source and recompile. Even then, that's just the core engine--all the other assets may still have limiations (like those crappy ground textures) and would also need to be updated to satiate the lust for HD at that point. Effectively, you would be rebuilding the game in a sense

[Atomic_Skull]

common industry practices. you don't typically compile apps seperately for each and every release of java from 3.0 all the way up to 6.x. You pick one assembly release to compile with and set that as the minimum requirement. You let the JRE's handle everything else outside of what is handled by the core logic in the compiled assembly.

It has been discussed adnauseum by people who have picked the files apart laboriosly (as in people who developed third party tools) and have posted to the effect that there appears to be a core PS2 logic that is run through a "wrapper" of sorts, hooking into the various API's and such specific to the environment it is running in.

Research also confirms over 400 files (roughly 64MB worth, just ran the search and actually got 448) on the hard drive (a lot of ROM and DAT) that predate even the PS2 launch by over a year--many show Dec. 18, 2000. Those files were pulled off optical media and added to my system at the time of install and have remained unchanged since. How many are still actually used is open to speculation, some are in the sound directories and such though. So, it can reasonably be assumed that at least for the PC's launch date in the US almost 3 years later (Oct. 2003), it was likely still using something tied to the PS2 somehow (or at least something to enable a PC to process PS2 specific code) to run certain PS2 specific assets and/or assemblie(s) that have not changed since they were last compiled during the lengthy PS2 development cycle.

All of this has been discussed and debated to the ends of the earth and back, but in the end it has been agreed (in general, there are still skeptics of the theories, as is human nature) that there is a portion that is PS2 specific that has remained unchanged over the years.

Yes it's obvious that it uses a wrapper, many multi platform applications do it this way in fact. (common core code that uses platform specific front end renderers) But I find it difficult to believe that they would write a PS2 VU emulation engine when just replacing the VU machine instructions in their source code with Shader Model 1.0 and some X86 code to handle what Shader Model 1.0 isn't capable of (surprisingly the PS2 VUs were actually more capable than Shader Model 1.0) would be much easier and simpler to implement and would have the same end result. Also remember that FFXI ran on PC's from 11 years ago, emulating PS2 hardware, even only parts of it is a pretty tall order for a Pentium 3.

[RAIST]

yeah... but it is just so old... and SE has been soooo resistent to change. how long have we been able to exceed 1024 resolutions and they just recently released updated text ffs. 2160 resolution monitors are already in the market. Granted...not many are going to pay the price for them, but they are out there.

Just don't think SE would see the investment would be worth the time--they even scrapped the freaking DX update a couple years back.

[Atomic_Skull]

yeah... but it is just so old... and SE has been soooo resistent to change. how long have we been able to exceed 1024 resolutions and they just recently released updated text ffs. 2160 resolution monitors are already in the market. Granted...not many are going to pay the price for them, but they are out there.

Just don't think SE would see the investment would be worth the time--they even scrapped the freaking DX update a couple years back.

Those auto scaling buttons in the title screen are actually a pretty big change to FFXI's UI code when you stop to think about it. It can't just be something they slapped together by changing a few scripts.

Take a screenshot of the title screen at two different resolutions then scale one to match the size of the other and overlay them. The buttons and the security token logo now scale with resolution to remain the same size relative to the screen regardless of resolution. And I suspect that they plan to eventually implement this throughout the UI. This required some work and I doubt they're just going to leave it at the title screen.

[Fearforever]

I think SE said somewhere that they plan to slowly redo the whole UI for PC/360, the next step would likely be HD Status icons.

Also SE said about the UI Redesign when they stated we might be getting to see the hidden stats like Ranged Attack, Acc etc.

[Sp1cyryan]

I think SE said somewhere that they plan to slowly redo the whole UI for PC/360, the next step would likely be HD Status icons.

Also SE said about the UI Redesign when they stated we might be getting to see the hidden stats like Ranged Attack, Acc etc.

They did icons already.

[Solonuke]

I just want them to nuke POL and they can keep their PS2 limitations for eternity.

[Atomic_Skull]

They did icons already.

They only did the icons next to your character name though.