Quote Originally Posted by Elexia View Post
Indeed, though a lot of companies will use 3rd party tools due to it not costing as much as producing your own tools, i.e Crystal Tools likely cost SE a lot more to make than if they just stuck with using Cinema 4D.



This is the point I was making. They can bring the maps over if they want to, there's no reason to when they're doing it specifically for the game's relaunch. The main draw of 2.0 is having new servers so we can actually get things that are missing due to shoddy servers, which doesn't necessarily prevent them from making smaller maps because in order to have maps that we have now (large maps) you'd logically have to be able to support smaller maps.
I think you may be confused. Crystal Tools is a game engine, while Cinema 4D is a 3D creation suite(modelling, animation, etc.). Ergo you need both to make a game. Also, I am pretty sure that Cinema 4D is NOT free. Whatever software they are using to create assets has a licensing cost for every machine it is installed on (very expensive for even a group of just 10 people).

I think every company uses 3rd party software for content creation. Eg: Maya, 3DSMax, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Some companies even use 3rd party engines like Unreal or Source. And I don't think I can think of any current company that would take the time to create asset production software on par with the leading developers like Autodesk or Adobe (outside of maybe proprietary motion capture software, I think Quantic Dream might have made some of that...). So your first little paragraph is both confusing and fallacious.


As for the second paragraph, I am not getting your logic here either. It does prevent them from making smaller maps for 1.whatever. Squeenix is a business. At the end of the day, they are doing what they are doing to feed their families (that does not mean they don't have a passion for what they are doing). To spend the man hours it would take to retro-fit the new maps into the current (and soon to be dead) engine and server structure would take away from valuable time they could be spending on future content. Saying that they can if they want to is a poor argument. If they wanted to, they could completely scrap everything they've done for 2.0 and buy the rights to Hello Kitty Online (I'm sure Squeenix has the money and muscle to do so). Then re-release that in a month or so without changing anything except the title to Final Kitty II Online.

My point is that they probably could put 2.0 maps in 1.whatever. But because we live in the real world, they can't. Waste of time, waste of resources, bad business plan, etc. Just because we have big maps now, doesn't mean that replacing them with a bunch of small ones is easy or even worth it. I mean, they already have these long, narrow, minimalist areas in between zones that obstruct the view of both zones (probably to hide loading and such), to give the illusion of a large and cohesive map. And that thing takes place practically everywhere. You would probably have to completely restructure some code in the current engine in order to just change that from (kill everything except skybox and tiny bit of inter-zone hallway -> begin loading next zone without loading screen) to (enter loading screen -> Kill zone -> Load zone -> leave loading screen and enter new zone). And then you would have to go in and throw all these zoning triggers everywhere, and then test them all to ensure stability, etc.

So. No. They can't.