Square-Enix Acquires Unreal Engine 3 License

[liolio]

Sorry for being HT

I can understand that the rsx could read in the ppu cache (coherent memory)
I can understand that an spu can send data to the rsx.
I can't understant how the rsx could read spu ls (non coherent memory)( the other way around doesn't make sense ie spu reading rsx cache).
Anyway, the 35 GB/s cell/rsx seems useless if you don't aim at memory pools.
cell will send geometry data (not that much needed) and the cache of rsx will be full quiet quick if you don't aim for gddr3 ( sorry if dumb i try to understand).
For texturing it looks easier for for rsx to requet data in main ram, that lot of bandwith seems better suit for texturing, so it could be easily match buy a gpu with a wider bus to gddr, no???
(i'm trying hard to figure this clearly... i would not bet a penny on the result... lol)
/HT

HT again...
I can understand that it's usefull for xenon to send data to xenos, but what is the point for xenos to be able to read in the xenon L2 cache??
/HT

 

[Serenity Painted Death]

It seems obvious that they'll be using the engine for their new MMO, which is supposed to span PS3/360/PC, and possible other games we don't know about. PS3 exclusives will no doubt continue to use the White Engine.

IGN also turns in another stellar bit of journalism, citing the press release as their only source... and going on to claim that FFXIII is the ONLY game that will ever use the white engine

Even though the PR explicitly states they'll be using their own in-house stuff AS WELL AS the newly licensed UE3.

If there is anything FFXII doesn't need it is profuse use of normal maps. The character models are much higher poly than those in GOW and it shows in the animation... something that is rather important.

 

[Nesh]

Point is they made a conscious effort to make the game western friendly. They know the west is a very important market and Japanese gamers will buy whatever FF game comes out regardless so it would not surprise me to see FF ported to 360 to attain more US sales.

I dint think its any more westren friendly than what previous FF were (or atleast enough).

Its actually very japanese, with some japanese humor, we arent used to in the west (The part where Cloud got dressed as a woman and his visit in the night club were ).

Also superdeformed characters, weird looking enemies, cartoony character summons, big eyed heros and heroines arent what I d call "western". The first effort to make the series truelly more western friendly was FF8.

The character models in UE3 games use normal mapping beyond anything SE has shown with their proprietary engines. I don't think it's artistic choice as much as a limitation of the engine.

I d go for FF13 art and visuals over UE3 games anytime.

Why do all games have to make "dirty" looking enviroments with "dirty" looking characters full or unnescessary wrinkles, cracks, wounds and stuff just to show off unnecessarry amounts of normal mapping in order to be considered good looking?

Besides if SQUARE wants to make really detailed characters they can surpass in both art and graphics what EU and US devs can if they want. Particularly during the PS1 days, Vagrant Story featured charactrs that surpassed in detail almost anything else seen on the PS1 by many western developers. That game followed a more westernised look unlike Final Fantasy. Its quite obvious that SE's choice in characters are artistic.

Even the Advent Children movie which is ofcourse CGI rapes visually and artistically any real time game, but features characters that are artistically clean looking just like many of their games

I am totally with london boy. If they f*ck up FF's looks and adopt a GoW/UT style I ll be EXTREMELY dissapointed

 

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

I know many people are speculating that UE3 might be used for the new SE MMO, but with everything we've seen on FFversusXIII CG trailers(dark, gritty setting), maybe they'll use it for that game instead?

Probably not , but something I thought of just now

 

[Inane_Dork]

I d go for FF13 art and visuals over UE3 games anytime.

I thought Lost Odyssey had killed this rallying point but I see I was mistaken.

 

[Bad_Boy]

I thought Lost Odyssey had killed this rallying point but I see I was mistaken.

The last LO shots didnt look so hot imo. Hopefully they were just an old build.

 

[deathkiller]

I thought Lost Odyssey had killed this rallying point but I see I was mistaken.

I played the Lost Odyssey demo and I fell that it had far worse art than Final Fantasy XIII trailers. Still, I don't think that using UE3 will change the Square Enix art and general look for worse.

I can't understant how the rsx could read spu ls (non coherent memory)( the other way around doesn't make sense ie spu reading rsx cache).

Local Store memory is addressable I think, I don't know why using a local store address would change anything for the RSX.

 

[cocopops]

This IS very interesting news.
Working In japan, It always struck me that Japanese developers have a great deal hostility towards non in house engines. I worked for a while on a canceled Unreal Engine Project (one of only three i know of In japan). The reaction of the Japanese programmers towards the engine was astonishingly negative. It was understandable given that epics Japanese support has been pretty poor up to now. But still I sensed a degree of wounded pride at the prospect of having to touch someone else's code.
As an artists, myself and the team (including a number of japanese artists), loved the engine, not only for what it could do visually, but for the tools and editor. This for me is the great strong point of the engine, and having realised just how much of an advantage those tools were for making next generation games. Im not suprised that Square would want to pick up the unreal engine.
However, having seen the reaction of many of the Japaneses on our project, and my knowledge of how poorly the engine was received on one other massively high profile Japanese unreal engine project. There is no guarantee that square might not cancel its interest, at some undetermined point in the future, especially if epic don't improve the Japanese support, and get the PS3 version of the engine up to speed a little quicker.

 

[TheChefO]

This IS very interesting news.
Working In japan, It always struck me that Japanese developers have a great deal hostility towards non in house engines. I worked for a while on a canceled Unreal Engine Project (one of only three i know of In japan). The reaction of the Japanese programmers towards the engine was astonishingly negative. It was understandable given that epics Japanese support has been pretty poor up to now. But still I sensed a degree of wounded pride at the prospect of having to touch someone else's code.
As an artists, myself and the team (including a number of japanese artists), loved the engine, not only for what it could do visually, but for the tools and editor. This for me is the great strong point of the engine, and having realised just how much of an advantage those tools were for making next generation games. Im not suprised that Square would want to pick up the unreal engine.
However, having seen the reaction of many of the Japaneses on our project, and my knowledge of how poorly the engine was received on one other massively high profile Japanese unreal engine project. There is no guarantee that square might not cancel its interest, at some undetermined point in the future, especially if epic don't improve the Japanese support, and get the PS3 version of the engine up to speed a little quicker.

Thanks for the insight! :smile:

So given the general pride of most dev teams in Japan to develop their own engines and this action by one of the most respected Japanese developers, do you think it was upper management liking the tools that ue3 gave them or the ability to save the team time from trying to get games up to speed on ps3/360/pc to hit a specific release date?

 

[scooby_dooby]

This IS very interesting news.
Working In japan, It always struck me that Japanese developers have a great deal hostility towards non in house engines. I worked for a while on a canceled Unreal Engine Project (one of only three i know of In japan). The reaction of the Japanese programmers towards the engine was astonishingly negative. It was understandable given that epics Japanese support has been pretty poor up to now. But still I sensed a degree of wounded pride at the prospect of having to touch someone else's code.
As an artists, myself and the team (including a number of japanese artists), loved the engine, not only for what it could do visually, but for the tools and editor. This for me is the great strong point of the engine, and having realised just how much of an advantage those tools were for making next generation games. Im not suprised that Square would want to pick up the unreal engine.
However, having seen the reaction of many of the Japaneses on our project, and my knowledge of how poorly the engine was received on one other massively high profile Japanese unreal engine project. There is no guarantee that square might not cancel its interest, at some undetermined point in the future, especially if epic don't improve the Japanese support, and get the PS3 version of the engine up to speed a little quicker.

Damn, Frame City Killer actually looked kinda cool

 

[aselto]

Damn, Frame City Killer actually looked kinda cool

I couldn't resist

 

[Nesh]

I couldn't resist

Thats god damn ugly! What game is that?

 

[AlNom]

Damn, Frame City Killer actually looked kinda cool

Thats god damn ugly! What game is that?

Take a guess

 

[Nesh]

Take a guess

Whats the cool part?

 

[AlNom]

Whats the cool part?

There were a bunch of screenshots that weren't meant to be released like the one above, and then there were others.

edit:

released screenshots meant for public: http://screenshots.teamxbox.com/gallery/1216/Frame-City-Killer/p1/
something not meant for public (old thread): http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26845&highlight=frame+city+killer
another thread: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19732&page=3&highlight=frame+city+killer+fck+namco

As for what's cool.... ah... no comment. I'm just pointing to the different sets of screenshots. Have a nice day.

 

[Nesh]

that thing looks ugly in general even in the other pics. By "cool" i ment anything nice

 

[quest55720]

I really hope this means that we will see more square-enix games on the 360 and even PC. It would be cool to see them spread the love to some other platforms.

 

[TheChefO]

I really hope this means that we will see more square-enix games on the 360 and even PC. It would be cool to see them spread the love to some other platforms.

Even before this news SE stated in an interview a while back that they "don't want to support Sony too much". It is interesting that they decided to license ue3 though. I just hope it doesn't end up looking like the last Jdev UE3 game in production.

 

[RollingBalls]

IGN also turns in another stellar bit of journalism, citing the press release as their only source... and going on to claim that FFXIII is the ONLY game that will ever use the white engine

Nomura and Toriyama speak about the two upcoming PS3

The White Engine, it should be noted, isn't just something being made for Final Fantasy XIII. Square Enix will go through many versions of the White Engine over time, according to Nomura, with different games being developed using different versions of the tools. "It's sort of like FFXIII is there as a target. FF Versus XIII will also use the White Engine, and it will be tuned for FF Versus XIII."

Whoops

 

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

Wouldnt it also be a possible scenario, that after FFXIII and versus XIII, that instead of SE spending more $$$ on R&D to revise/update/whatever the white engine for other projects, that they'll just use the UE3, thus saving time and money (which is very crucial on next gen games nowadays).

After all, that article was from November 8 and things may have changed since then

Not that im saying ign is right , but just adding to the theories and whatnot :smile: