FFXIV Graphics Engine change

[Mireille]

They did stipulate that because of the change they will be letting us change a lot of character options which to me implies we may not like the way what we chose in V1 looks in V2. Based on the art that was released the artistic style of the game is changing. Cartoonish was just an example of radical change to the artistic direction of the game.

[Crux]

They did stipulate that because of the change they will be letting us change a lot of character options which to me implies we may not like the way what we chose in V1 looks in V2. Based on the art that was released the artistic style of the game is changing. Cartoonish was just an example of radical change to the artistic direction of the game.

They are rebuilding the current engine with some of the Luminous Engine devs. Your system will dictate the graphics, so I imagine there won't be a huge change in graphics for high-end systems. They want it to be able to run on low end machines and consoles, but you will see less detail and less player characters if you are on a system that can't handle all the data. Here are some quotes from this interview: http://goo.gl/Bfv9o

RPGSite: With the new graphics engine, by chance will it be using the Luminous Studio engine?
Yoshida: As you know, it was recently announced, but the Luminous Engine is being more designed for console games, where the emphasis is more on passive types of games with high quality graphics. Because it’s a one player game, it’s about showing what’s there, but for an MMO, it’s different, it’s more about having lots of things—characters on the screen at the same time. You’re in a community with many, many people. The [Luminous] Engine is more developed for a console type of system. To get something that would be more suited for an MMORPG, what we did was we borrowed some of the engineers that are working on the Luminous system, and had them help us rebuild an engine that would be able to display high quality graphics, but is more tweaked to displaying many of those rather than just a passive type of image. That’s what we’ve been doing.

RPGSite: Similar to how FF Versus XIII is taking the lighting portion of that engine and using it in their game?
Yoshida: It’s different in the sense that it’s not a part of the existing Luminous Engine, because if we were to wait until that engine was completed, we wouldn’t be able to get the game out in time. What we are doing is taking people who are working on Luminous, and having them use their knowledge—some of those things that will be used in Luminous as well, to make a completely new engine. You mentioned the lighting—yes, probably the lighting we’ll end up using will be similar to what will be used in Luminous, but it’s not like we’re waiting for Luminous to be completed.

RPGSite: Will the newly introduced graphics engine support Direct X 10/11? Or will it still be limited to DX 9.0c?
Yoshida: With the development of the new engine, the first phase—the first thing that we are prioritizing, is to have a graphics engine that will support high-end users, low-end PCs and the PlayStation 3. The quality of graphics will be the same across all three, but depending on your system, it’ll be about how many characters can you display… how many effects can you display, draw distance.

You won’t have to have a high-end PC to have great graphics; the high-end PC people will be able to see more stuff, and for the low-end, we’ll be able to limit that so those people can still play it, and so PS3 users can also run the game. That is our first phase. Once we have gotten that ready for 2.0, the next step is getting that ready for Direct X 11. That might take between 6-8 months, but it’s on our schedule. We are pushing it back because if we had put that together, then it would mean delaying the release 6-8 months, so first thing’s first.

RPGSite: Not to mention, not everyone has a DX11 system.
Yoshida: It’s a very long schedule, and if you have too much stuff that you want to get in, then it just delays that release. We thought we could make that a step—release [2.0] first, and then go from there.