SE should talk with Lionhead Studios about licencing their "Mega Mesh" terrain tools

There was an article posted on Kotaku a couple days ago about some new terrain editing technology that was developed by Lionhead Studios in the UK for their (now canceled) Xbox 360 game, Milo & Kate.

Anyway, long story short, the technology looks like it can produce some pretty amazing results, allowing artists to create very large 3D environments that don't contain all the excessive repetition that we see in FFXIV's terrain.

You can read the full article here:

http://kotaku.com/#!5783474/the-gorgeous-tech-that-powered-milo--kate-makes-the-xbox-360-look-brand-new

Considering that repetitive terrain is one of the biggest problems with FFXIV currently (not to mention most of the other games SE has produced in the past five years), I think it would be highly beneficial for SE to consider either licensing Lionhead's technology, or developing something similar themselves for use in FFXIV and future games.

Here's some other links pertinent to the topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture

http://miciwan.com/GDC2011/GDC2011_Mega_Meshes.pdf

integrating a third party terrain tool would be too difficult at this juncture I think. especially considering the Crystal tools engine was coded by japanese coders and lionhead studio makes glitchy shit.

Yeah, it probably would be better for SE to develop their own tools that did essentially the same thing, just so they can ensure greater compatibility with their own software and have more control over what the tools can do. Perhaps the Crystal Tools engine could be updated to work with these new tools if SE chose to develop them on their own?

Though perhaps SE could still talk with Lionhead to get a better understanding of how exactly the "Mega Mesh" tools work, just so they know what's going on under the hood before they set off to develop their own equivalent software.

But honestly, I do think SE should seriously look into improving the way they go about creating terrain, as FFXIII and FFXIV both have horribly bland and unimaginative environments, which I suspect may possibly be the result of an inefficient development pipeline.

Perhaps with better tools, SE could create better environments.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Though perhaps SE could still talk with Lionhead to get a better understanding of how exactly the "Mega Mesh" tools work, just so they know what's going on under the hood before they set off to develop their own equivalent software.

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Unless they were selling this they are very unlikely to tell another company how to duplicate something they have spent time and money creating.

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Originally Posted by Ryodi

Unless they were selling this they are very unlikely to tell another company how to duplicate something they have spent time and money creating.

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Indeed, Lionhead has not (yet) jumped on the bandwagon of licensing engines that I am aware.

Somewhat off topic, but it's interesting that this topic should come up right after I read an article on Gamasutra that states that PC developers think DirectX is holding gaming graphics back.

In the article, it's mentioned by several people in the PC industry that the DX API adds a lot of overhead and prevents designers from really getting the most out of the hardware. I think I read in the comments that usually the games released towards the end of a consoles lifespan are much better technically due to the fact that developers have managed to learn how to work strictly with the hardware limits as opposed to using DirectX for much. I wonder if Crystal Tools has the same issue.

I'm no game designer and I'm hardly in the know, but I thought I'd put it out there.

Article here.

Mala, most people do agree that Open GL is a much more robust and less hardware intensive rendering api. But the problem is to get the most out of it you have to customiza the open source code to your software. The best way I can make this example would probably be Counter Strike 1.6 The Open GL version is much smoother and less jagged then the Directx 8 version.

Oh, I wasn't trying to put either on a platform as much as I was just thinking aloud that maybe the issues that SE ran into with Crystal Tools was with trying to keep everything standardized for every supported platform and and DX9 without really trying to get into the "meat" of each individual system.

You don't really have any idea on how those tools would work in the extensive environment of a MMORPG, considering that Kate and Milo was to be an extremely limited game in spatial scope.

Any and every decent engine can create amazing environments when the scale is small, that's nowhere such an amazing achievement (and it's unsurprising that the article is from kotaku, since they overly drool over anything and everything that comes from microsoft's mouth). The crystal tools engine is no exception, suffice to give a look to the environments in Final Fantasy XIII, that easily give those shown in that limited movie a run for their money (and do so on 60 hz, instead of 30).

Again, when another engine will produce better results *in a MMO* than the crystal tools, we'll talk. As of now, none did, so I don't see any reason to think that SE should go the roundabout way of integrating third party engines in their own suite, which is not exactly something that easy and fast to do, by the way.

In any case Milo & kate (including their engine) ended up just being another of Molineux's failed promises. There has to be a reason for that.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

You don't really have any idea on how those tools would work in the extensive environment of a MMORPG, considering that Kate and Milo was to be an extremely limited game in spatial scope.

Any and every decent engine can create amazing environments when the scale is small, that's nowhere such an amazing achievement (and it's unsurprising that the article is from kotaku, since they overly drool over anything and everything that comes from microsoft's mouth). The crystal tools engine is no exception, suffice to give a look to the environments in Final Fantasy XIII, that easily give those shown in that limited movie a run for their money (and do so on 60 hz, instead of 30).

Again, when another engine will produce better results *in a MMO* than the crystal tools, we'll talk. As of now, none did, so I don't see any reason to think that SE should go the roundabout way of integrating third party engines in their own suite, which is not exactly something that easy and fast to do, by the way.

In any case Milo & kate (including their engine) ended up just being another of Molineux's failed promises. There has to be a reason for that.

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I highly doubt that Milo's cancellation had anything to do with it's engine though, although I agree that third-party integration might be a pain in the ass(also expensive for licensing and screw that).

I agree with the fuck Kotaku part though. Incidentally that was the first thing I read from Kotaku in about 2 weeks. :)

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Originally Posted by Malakhim

I highly doubt that Milo's cancellation had anything to do with it's engine though, although I agree that third-party integration might be a pain in the ass(also expensive for licensing and screw that).

I agree with the fuck Kotaku part though. Incidentally that was the first thing I read from Kotaku in about 2 weeks. :)

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Let's not forget the 30 hertz part. I'm quite sure everyone with a fairly decent gaming PC here would be SO happy to see the game limited to 30 fps because of this oh so "revolutionary" engine :D

The repetition in the FF terrain has nothing to do with the tools. The SE artists or those who were comissioned to create it (maybe it was 3td party) for sure are fully capable to create one without repeating elements.
I can only think of 3 reasons

- saving time
- saving budget
- Performance issues

I think the terrain is not made of a large mesh but rather of a series of smaller tiles.
Those tiles are not connected and the engine simply does not calculate/render the parts that are not visible.
There are various ways and tricks used in game development and every engine has different limitations and features.

I am sure that the guys working for SE are capable people, the team probably had long discussions about the repeating tiles and for some reason they choose to go this way.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

But honestly, I do think SE should seriously look into improving the way they go about creating terrain, as FFXIII and FFXIV both have horribly bland and unimaginative environments, which I suspect may possibly be the result of an inefficient development pipeline.

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Just... what... just...

I give up.

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Originally Posted by Betelgeuzah

Just... what... just...

I give up.

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I especially laughed at the notion that "FFXIII has horribly bland and unimaginative environments". That sure was awesome comedic relief for the day.

SE don't need another program or technology to create a better terrain and maps, they are repetitive, but they can change it with the same technology they have. I was looking the FFXI's maps and it has much more cool environment, nice places, etc... SE might do the same with her own technology

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Originally Posted by Abriael

and it's unsurprising that the article is from kotaku, since they overly drool over anything and everything that comes from microsoft's mouth

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Uh... we're talking about Lionhead here, not Microsoft.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Again, when another engine will produce better results *in a MMO* than the crystal tools, we'll talk. As of now, none did

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Actually, pretty much *ANY* other modern MMO has better environments than FFXIV. Seriously, all the zones in this game are very monotonous completely lacking in variety.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

I especially laughed at the notion that "FFXIII has horribly bland and unimaginative environments". That sure was awesome comedic relief for the day.

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Well it does. Unless you want to try to say that the repetitive tunnel environments of FFXIII are actually interesting? But seriously, the last FF game to have interesting environments was FFX-2. The three FF games since then (FFXII, FFXIII, FFXIV) have all had terrible environments.

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Originally Posted by Xquiel

SE don't need another program or technology to create a better terrain and maps, they are repetitive, but they can change it with the same technology they have. I was looking the FFXI's maps and it has much more cool environment, nice places, etc... SE might do the same with her own technology

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Hmmm, I suppose you could be right in that their existing technology could solve the problem just fine, and it might simply a matter of using their current tools more efficiently.

Though something I noticed in FFXI was that the older environments were much better than the newer ones. For example, I can navigate the original cities in FFXI without ever looking at the map, because their layout makes it easy to recognize where you are at any given time, due to the unique landmarks they each have all around. But in Aht Urghan Whitegate, I constantly have to keep looking at the map just to navigate, simply because everything looks the same from every angle.

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Originally Posted by Randis

The repetition in the FF terrain has nothing to do with the tools. The SE artists or those who were comissioned to create it (maybe it was 3td party) for sure are fully capable to create one without repeating elements.
I can only think of 3 reasons

- saving time
- saving budget
- Performance issues

I think the terrain is not made of a large mesh but rather of a series of smaller tiles.
Those tiles are not connected and the engine simply does not calculate/render the parts that are not visible.
There are various ways and tricks used in game development and every engine has different limitations and features.

I am sure that the guys working for SE are capable people, the team probably had long discussions about the repeating tiles and for some reason they choose to go this way.

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You are thinking of Occlusions and Pre-Fabs. Render 5 Items 100 times,turn them off if they are out of the bounds of line of sight of the player.

Se already is using a form of megatextures in FFXIV. The only way they were able to maintain normal maps and specular on the terrain was to use prefab world geometry...

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Originally Posted by Abriael

I especially laughed at the notion that "FFXIII has horribly bland and unimaginative environments". That sure was awesome comedic relief for the day.

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I'm hoping he meant terrain design. XIII has some nice settings yes, but it is so on rails(largely due to terrain) that a lot of people call it a movie, there's no world map, the terrain doesnt branch out until late in the game and a lot of the dungeons dont have side rooms to look in.

I kind of feel like the map designer got ahold of crystal tools and was like "Aaaaaaah what do"