ffxiv_future: New Development Engine (Luminous or Cry Tools 3?), UI Picture etc.

[Elkwood]

As a player who was recently unhappy with the latest patch and has subsequently decided to stop playing, a friend directed me to your latest batch of updates regarding the redesign of XIV. I have to say taking on a feat of this task while the game is live I am most impressed.

I am curious as to the differences between the Luminous Engine compared to Crystal Tools, I know Luminous is DX11 capable and would like assurances that the games redevelopment will include features that were currently left out of the current version of FFXIV. I assume with the recent videos that have been released you are developing FFXIV in the Luminous engine since it was designed by SE as a replacement to the horrid Crystal Tools engine you initially used on the game. What i would like to know is the following...

1. Are you actually using Luminous to develop the game, or did you license another engine out to redevelop FFXIV 2.0 thus incorporating DX11 capabilities into the engine?

2. With DX11 capabilities present should you be switching over to Luminous, will you incorporate proper development to take full use of Quad, 6 and 8 core processors to alleviate some of the issues that plagued FFXIV version 1.0?

3. Will you incorporate proper programming to allow full use of SLI/Crossfire setups on the PC version allowing for greater than 60 fps on proper setups?

4. With the redevelopment of the client is it possible to have the new PC client stop time-stamping 2-300 files every 60-90 seconds as that was causing variable lag on some systems forcing people to upgrade there HDD to SSD to stop said itinerant lag?

5. What types of hardware will you be testing on to verify that GPU temps will not spike like they did in FFXIV 1.0?

6. Is the new UI pic concept art or was that an actual picture of what we can expect from FFXIV 2.0?

7. Will there be a return option in the future to replace our current physical hard media copies. Some NA/EU ISP have bandwidth caps and downloading 6+GB of Data every time we need to install is not the most optimal option. Will there be a replacement option for our hard media should we want new physical disks?

8. Are you developing FFXIV primarily for PC or PS3 will FFXIV be a PS3 client ported to PC or vice versa, SE in the past has used PS2/3 limitations as an excuse not to do certain things to the game or implement certain features.

I understand answering question number 6 may be hard to do because of the current state of development. As someone who left the game you have finally done what was asked and for that I am happy.

I also understand that because of this I will miss out on some of the new storyline but that is my choice. I refuse to pay for a Beta that is currently in development after the last year or so, not to mention your horrid FFXIV payment options still have not been resolved.

I as a consumer have lost a great much faith in your company recently with the purchases of XII, XIII, and XIV all products I have thus far been unhappy with, and am hoping that this redesign will restore said faith. I look forward to hopeful responses from you in regards to some if not all of these questions.

Should you properly fix the game and client with this new revision of FFXIV I will return as a loyal customer, should you not, then well we shall cross that bridge when we arrive there.

For those unaware of Luminous Engine and what it is capable of I will link you to the IGN article where SEE debuted the new engine in Tokyo on Oct 12th.

http://games.ign.com/articles/119/1199800p1.html

[Synfrag]

Good post but unfortunately I highly doubt you will get any response on it. If they aren't announcing publicly what engine the new version is being developed on they sure aren't going to do it in here.

We are all praying for DX10/11 but I think they would have mentioned it already if it were happening.

Best of luck though!

[Vaer]

I have a feeling it will be Luminous. One of the things they touted was scalability, and that's exactly what they need for FFXIV to reach a wider audience. In one of the documents they released they want to "broaden the range of PC environments" that can run it, both high end, ("genre leading graphics") and low end, as well as being able to (eventually) scale down to the PS3 as the PS3 ("and similarly powered PCs") will become older hardware eventually.

Just my guess though.

[Synfrag]

It would be awesome, I saw the Luminos video a while ago and it's pretty amazing. 3D Modeling with global illumination murders my PC and that video shows the same effect in realtime. It's just nutty.

[Elkwood]

Good post but unfortunately I highly doubt you will get any response on it. If they aren't announcing publicly what engine the new version is being developed on they sure aren't going to do it in here.

We are all praying for DX10/11 but I think they would have mentioned it already if it were happening.

Best of luck though!

It would make sense for them to announce Luminous if it is said engine especially since they are touting a 30% reduction in development time using said engine.

If it is Luminous then it would make sense that DX11 works, that should also fix the AA/AO issues as well and most of the heat issues with the new client.

I guess from a stockholder view of things I am curious how XIV 1.0 even got the green light using Crystal Tools if it was such a bad engine to begin with. Judging by what this development team is saying the engine is so bad it seems like SE wasted there money developing anything for it aside from FFXIII which was straight to PS3/360.

Idk as a consumer I guess I just want assurances and technical details that these issues will be resolved using the new engine, or at least some type of technical explanation on how they intend to resolve these issues in the 2.0 brand of product.

[NefarioCall]

i also want to know the answers to these very important questions.
they are CRITICAL issues. Especially if SE has any goals to surpass 1 million active players.

[Abriael]

They just had a conference about DX 11 at their event in tokyo, so i wonder too if the new engine will support DX11.

But lol @ "unhappy with the latest patch". This is downright laughable.

And even more lol at the trite argument "pay for a beta". The beta ended september last year buddy. Get over it.

Oh, for the record, the team is saying nothing about the crystal tools (that shown some pretty amazing results with other games), the issues have very little to do with the engine (seamless zones, server structure and so forth), and they're updating the engine simply to keep the graphical edge in the market.

[Jennestia]

Crystal Tools isn't a bad engine, XIV is just a very unoptimized game as well as running on unoptimized servers.

[Holland]

You might want to post your questions in the other thread of questions that might be asked during the second Live letter from the producer.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...AL-FANTASY-XIV

[Alhanelem]

I don't get how "revamping the graphics engine" gets read as "we're using someone else's engine."

Revamp != new. They're still using they're own engine, just revising it not to suck.