Full game was my understanding.
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What's going on with Square Enix's Luminous Engine?
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Pinko Marx
Banned
An insanely huge task that multiple developers have managed to accomplish.
There's no reason to give SE the benefit of the doubt when this is the 2nd time they've tried this and the second time they've crashed and burned.
DigitalDevilSummoner
zero cognitive reasoning abilities
My only comment would be that Yoshihisa Hashimoto, the former technical director very likely lied during the 2013 ps4 unveiling about the tech demo "running on PS4" (since it was just the exact same video presented in 2012 running on high end pc). perhaps they couldn't optimize it for the PS4 ?
Awful Falafel
Banned
Has there been any word on if Julien Merceron had anything to do with the luminous engine? I know he mostly had a history with the Eidos arm of the company but he was their worldwide CTO so it's not entirely out of the question if he worked with Square Enix Japan on it. Him jumping ship to Konami to work on the fox engine could've been a sign of what a mess it was.
D
Deleted member 20920
Unconfirmed Member
Why? So that the Square and Enix merger could happen earlier?
Yep. Ubisoft's Dunia and Anvil, DICE's Frostbite, Capcom's MT Framework, KojiPro's Fox Engine...just to mention some. Even a boutique developer like Platinum has their own internal engine that they use for their multiplatform projects.
I have no idea what or who is to blame for two debacles in a row, but some shit has to be going in the SE tech team.
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
It's frustrating. If it's not the games they are having trouble completing, it's the engine that's used to make the games that they are having trouble with. I just want SE to get back on track already.
To help clear up some confusion, Luminous is supposed to be a top to bottom development suite that handles all your needs from graphics to audio to cutscenes to physics to networking to tools, etc, etc.
However, the engine took so long to finish and they had some games that were also taking a million years to finish, so they took off modular components from Luminous and tried to integrate them into existing projects.
At first Versus was just going to harvest a couple of parts from Luminous, but it took so long to come out that they're now trying to port the entirety of the game over to the new engine.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has always been planned to be entirely in Luminous as opposed to being ported over from another engine.
However, the engine took so long to finish and they had some games that were also taking a million years to finish, so they took off modular components from Luminous and tried to integrate them into existing projects.
At first Versus was just going to harvest a couple of parts from Luminous, but it took so long to come out that they're now trying to port the entirety of the game over to the new engine.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has always been planned to be entirely in Luminous as opposed to being ported over from another engine.
Well, I'm not sure Square Enix had much of a choice to iterate on their old tech. Their engine wasn't next-gen worthy.
They could have just used a licensed one though. They seem to come with solid Japanese support these days and Square Enix has had a lot of success with Unity (which isn't next-gen worthy really, but it is an external engine to prove that they can still work with a toolset they didn't create and have it meet their needs).
Capcom's goal was actually to rebuild their toolset with the idea of making it plausible for them to actually keep shipping AAA games by making development significantly more efficient, but they seem to have run into a variety of stumbling blocks there. One of those however also seems to be a general lack of interest in shipping AAA products.
Doesn't S-E have a huge blanket license for UE4?
You're right about S-E not being able to iterate but Capcom could probably have added features to MT framework relatively easily. It was a very scaleable engine that ran well on PCs so porting it to next gen wouldn't have been a huge task.
Demon Lizardman
Banned
So, does that mean Kingdom Hearts 3 will have less problems being in development?
JordanN
Banned
It was the same thing last gen but other companies adapted anyway.
That was also during the move to HD with bigger production pipelines, so there's less of an excuse now.
Does this mean if they finish KH3 on whatever engine they have, Luminous would technicaly be ready? What about if FFXV is done, what happens to the custom engine used in that game?
Always wondered how game engines were made, why they took long, and what happens when that engine is customized.
Always wondered how game engines were made, why they took long, and what happens when that engine is customized.
legacyzero
Banned
I'm really sad seeing this. I used to love Square so much before they shat the bed last generation. Now it's pity. I just want to see them get back to glory again.
It's a pretty engine, S-E. But if you're going to struggle with it THAT much, just cut your losses and focus on making games with the same creativity and excellent that you had in the 90's. Wanna take risks? Don't take risks on engines. Take risks on games.
I was about to ask this kind of question.
It's a pretty engine, S-E. But if you're going to struggle with it THAT much, just cut your losses and focus on making games with the same creativity and excellent that you had in the 90's. Wanna take risks? Don't take risks on engines. Take risks on games.
I was about to ask this kind of question.
It will be very interesting to see how the engine turns out in the end, assuming they manage to finish it.
Even more interesting (to me personally at least) will be to compare its technology to Square Enix west engines like Glacier 2 (Hitman) or whatever modified Crystal Engine (don't confuse with Crystal Tools) Crystal Dynamics is using in the next Tomb Raider.
Even more interesting (to me personally at least) will be to compare its technology to Square Enix west engines like Glacier 2 (Hitman) or whatever modified Crystal Engine (don't confuse with Crystal Tools) Crystal Dynamics is using in the next Tomb Raider.
Yes, they have a group license for Unreal Engine 3 and Unreal Engine 4.
The only people using it are other studios they're publishing who are using UE3 and UE4 to make their games like Life is Strange, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Nosgoth, and some Japanese arcade game I'm blanking on.
Why? I have no idea.
Ingueferroque
Banned
I'm just happy the FOX engine worked out. I'm excited about games using it. Just wish MT Framework could have evolved to current-gen properly, such wasted potential.
We wouldn't know that unless we've actually seen MT Framework's codebase, toolchain and the designer workflow. We're judging only based on our consumer experiences. There could be a myriad of dev issues we don't know about such as long re-iteration time, scripting, portability to next-gen, multithreading from ground up, etc etc.
killatopak
Gold Member
SE didn't learn the last time around?
I don't really get why they're even pursing internal bleeding edge engine technology. Last-gen it made some sense, because they didn't know Japan was going to abandon consoles, or the Wii was going to win, or the West was going to outclass them, etc.
Why invest so heavily when the return on these huge console projects is smaller, and they don't make many of them? Realistically they only made five HD console RPGs last-gen. The Last Remnant, which was on UE3, FFXIII, FFXIII-2, which was co-developed by tri-ace, LR:FFXIII and FFXIV, which is an MMO and will not be replaced this generation.
I would be surprised to see even five this generation, and their Western arm clearly has no issue with licensing third party engine technology. It's attractive to have an internal engine that's inline with the industry, but there has to be a point where you accept that you're not a player in the console AAA technology space anymore, and compromise for a smoother development for your titles.
Even if FFXV is some technical wonder (and it's not going to be, The Witcher 3 is visually in a completely different class), it's gone from The White Engine, to Crystal Tools, to some bastard child of that and the Luminous Engine they've taken to calling the Ebony Engine (which is a pleasing full circle if nothing else), and it's all taken place over more than a decade.
I'm still very excited for FFXV, and I'm sure I'll enjoy KH3, but SE's striving for an internal technology base for these games is simply not worth it given their focus on the mobile market.
Why invest so heavily when the return on these huge console projects is smaller, and they don't make many of them? Realistically they only made five HD console RPGs last-gen. The Last Remnant, which was on UE3, FFXIII, FFXIII-2, which was co-developed by tri-ace, LR:FFXIII and FFXIV, which is an MMO and will not be replaced this generation.
I would be surprised to see even five this generation, and their Western arm clearly has no issue with licensing third party engine technology. It's attractive to have an internal engine that's inline with the industry, but there has to be a point where you accept that you're not a player in the console AAA technology space anymore, and compromise for a smoother development for your titles.
Even if FFXV is some technical wonder (and it's not going to be, The Witcher 3 is visually in a completely different class), it's gone from The White Engine, to Crystal Tools, to some bastard child of that and the Luminous Engine they've taken to calling the Ebony Engine (which is a pleasing full circle if nothing else), and it's all taken place over more than a decade.
I'm still very excited for FFXV, and I'm sure I'll enjoy KH3, but SE's striving for an internal technology base for these games is simply not worth it given their focus on the mobile market.
I remember reading that this was actually one of the specific issues MT Framework would have had with the new consoles with their relatively low powered multi-core cpus.
I have no idea if it's true or if someone else was also speculating since I can't remember where exactly I saw it, so take that with a few grains of salt.
I don't think it's that surprising that the (major) Japanese branches would be stubborn against licensing major parts of their games unless they develop it themselves when compared to western development. The amount of strange and old middle-ware lying around in modern Japanese games is pretty telling of that. On the more specific case of Hashimoto and the Hedgehog Engine, anything but audio/video playback (Criware) and physics and animation (Havok) were developed by his team, or re-used from way older games by Sega (Sega Tools).
What's weird is that they're not even using Unreal Engine internally at Eidos.
So what's the culprit here?
Lack of technical know-how and expertise?
Poor management?
Japan's aging workforce?
ashecitism
Member
Are they only using UE?
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Seeing the problems Eidos faced with their engines, for example Deus Ex running in the TR:Underworld engine, they would choose a licensed one for next gen.
I guess there's no really need, since they focus less and less in AAA games and going persistent online games.
Hire people who know what they're doing. Capcom, EA, UBI, etc. have no problem putting together engine development teams. 4 years with nothing to show is bad. They should have let Eidos handle engine development.
Hmm, I don't know, I think FFXV might be prettier than the gameplay demos that have been shown of TW3.. FFXV certainly animates a heck of a lot better than TW3. TW3 looks amazing in that one E3 trailer but the gameplay stuff hasn't really been impressive, to me anyway.
-tetsuo-
Unlimited Capacity
Is it?
ScionOfTheRisingSun
Banned
Poor, poor versus. It has been kicked around like a red headed stepchild due to engine shenanigans since 2006. This situation reminds me a lot of the downfall of a number of projects and developers in the engine wars of post Quake wake.
Duke Nukem Forever anyone?
At least they are not so desperate that they would lower themselves and resort to trash like UE for their big Japanese projects yet.
Duke Nukem Forever anyone?
At least they are not so desperate that they would lower themselves and resort to trash like UE for their big Japanese projects yet.
Well you have a point in terms of animation, but with how seemingly auto-pilot XV appears to be, you can go wild with animation priority, where as with TW3, they need to have all animations directly relate to player input in real-time.
But just graphically I think it's way ahead. FFXV looks nice in terms of characters and movement, but all the geometry pales in comparison, and the TW3 IQ is going to blow it away PS4 vs PS4. And TW3 is actually open world, we've yet to see exactly what the structure of XV is.
No, sorry, I was unclear.
Eidos isn't using Unreal Engine anymore internally.
Pyrrhus
Member
Man, they're looking like clowns. They shitcanned Sakaguchi, the man who basically built their company, over $52 million lost on the development of Spirits Within. Money that was already sunk into RD and could have been made back with future movies and contract work. How much money do you think they've wasted with all of this with absolutely nothing to show for it?
They had an entire engine made just for XV?
Ebony was originally Black, which was related to FFXIII's White Engine (later redubbed Crystal Tools), but modified to work better for Versus XIII's needs.
Basically they're saying that most of the game was on the original PS3 engine, but they're trying to port the whole thing to the new engine by integrating it part by part.
I know it's Wikipedia, but the page for Final Fantasy XV says that the production of the game has moved entirely on to the Luminous Engine, and it uses this link for reference.
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201409/20061908.html
Looking at it with a bad Google translation seems to agree with the OP's claim that the engine is now called "Ebony" and it's a hybrid of Luminous and their older engine though.
I wish someone would actually ask them directly what's going on with Luminous and if it's definitely planned to be main development engine for games going forward.
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201409/20061908.html
Looking at it with a bad Google translation seems to agree with the OP's claim that the engine is now called "Ebony" and it's a hybrid of Luminous and their older engine though.
I wish someone would actually ask them directly what's going on with Luminous and if it's definitely planned to be main development engine for games going forward.
ashecitism
Member
I see. Are they're using their own engines then?
Zuhzuhzombie!!
Member
So, please tell me again why Crystal Tools ended up so badly.
You always hear that "things change," but it's tough to watch it happen in cases like these.
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