You’ll Never Guess How Long Making the Agni’s Philosophy Demo Took

Jaws were on the floor when Square Enix showed the three minute Agni's Philosophy demo earlier this year in Los Angeles. They were on the floor this weekend when Square Enix once again showed off the tech. To dazzle like that takes time. A lot of time.

While showing off the mind-blowing demo this weekend, Square Enix said (via Game Watch) that planning took six months and developing it took another six months. That's an entire year for three minutes of footage.

[majiebeast]

Lol FF15 only 30 years away guys. With the way Square enix is going we will have flying cars before the next proper final fantasy title. Meanwhile Wada is still CEO he is a captain going down with the ship atleast thats commendable.

[Qrphe]

How large was the staff? Was the project a priority or a side project? It doesn't help knowing SE sucks at project management.

[Kur0]

I thought the presentation was in-engine. Why would it take them that long unless it was CGI and they had to render everything by hand.

[hkgamer]

The demo was rendered in game and in CGI.
basically they made a CGI as a target render, then they made everything in engine and it basically looks identical apart from a few effects.

A few minute CGI would also take less time then rendering everything in-engine (in terms of this tech demo anyway).

[Sharingan_no_Kakashi]

KH3 is gonna be gorgeous!

[Hufandpuf]

And people say next-gen is a year away? pfft.

[DarkZane]

So, they spend a year on something that won't even see the light of day like that FFVII tech demo. Really, no wonder Versus is not out by now, they really need to get their priorities straight.

[rainslacker]

Tech demos are made to show off the technology available in the engine. It's done by every game engine maker, including Unreal, Frostbite, Unity, etc. It's there to show people what the engine can do and hopefully get people interested in using it. Generally the people that make the demos are not the ones working on games, except maybe a programmer or artists who gets pulled from a team for some reason.

[porkChop]

This is Square Enix, they're notorious for having horrible management, and they take forever on even the smallest of things. A 3 minute trailer like that could realistically be done in a small fraction of that time by many other studios.

[jonboi24]

Well I assume during developing those three minutes of beauty they were developing the at the same time? I can understand if it took a year to build an engine but a year for 3 mins video is crazy.

[-Gespenst-]

Right, so given that the average modern Final Fantasy game would want to be exceeding around 120 hours of gameplay, that adds up to 7200 minutes. Now given that 3 minutes of the game took 1 year to create, 7200 minutes, or 120 hours of the game would therefore take 2400 years, probably subtracting a few hundred years because a lot the game would presumably be real time, and that is also if we presume the development / planning process follows the same pattern year in year out.

Hmmmmmm...

[MRMagoo123]

maybe read the above comments by Autodidactdystopia before talking bull ?

[-Gespenst-]

Woah woah woah I'm not being a hater. Just thought it'd be funny.

I mean did you really think I was taking my calculations seriously? They're obviously ludicrous, no game has ever taken close to that amount of time to develop and never will, there's no reason why this game would be any different.

It's immediately obvious that other more fundamental things must have contributed to such a long development time for the footage.

Cool it.

[stuntman_mike]

You’ll Never Guess How Long Making the Agni’s Philosophy Demo Took?

I bet it wasn't as long as Final Fantasy 13 versus.

[Nodoze]

This is exactly why Square Enix is no longer relevant. In the time it took to create 3 editions of Mass Effect SE still has not finished FFVS13.

Sony bailed them out after the abysmal FF movie, perhaps they should have let them die.

[Dynasty]

You guys are insanely naive if you really thought that a game by them would look ANYTHING like this. All it was there for was to showcase their new engine and it fulfilled that purpose. Now move on.

[Trago1337]

Next gen consoles wont look that good

[-Gespenst-]

Ps2 / Xbox - - - Ps3 / Xbox360 - Ps4 / Xbox720 - Agni's Philosophy.

In other words, the Ps3 / Xbox360 are 30x more powerful than their respective predecessors, the Ps4 and the Xbox720 will be 10x more powerful than current consoles, and Agni's Philosophy would probably require a console 10x more powerful than the forthcoming consoles. I'd imagine.

[ado908]

Oh boy if you people believe next Gen. will look like this you will be fairly disappointed when the next box and PS4 come out. Possibility that it might look like this but I highly doubt it. We will see a dramatic difference into the next gen but not THIS much of a difference.

[Tyre]

What a display of ignorance in the comments of ado908/Trago1337/Dynasty...tha t's all i say. Guess how long it took EPIC developing their Unreal Engine3 and getting to know the Tech to get Gears of War 1 the way it finally was at the beginning of current Gen? Did U guys think that Dev at Square Enix have to do this every time? This has been a breakthrough in Tech especially for the NextGen Consoles, that's why they developed the Luminious Engine in the 1st place. The big hurdle has been overcome(Developing the Engine and struggling to get to know the tech)that's why it took so long. Same this Gen and before that. The dev-time will become shorter and Games Will look that quality on Next-Gen. Square Enix said Luminious Engine can do 1:1 High Poly Models exchange with standard Hollywood CGI High-End 3D Modeling/Animation Software MAYA (They made the effort to build this Engine to eventually get faster dev times for Next-Gen Consoles).

[Dynasty]

You're an idiot. Agni's Philosophy was only made to showcase the engines ability. YES, we COULD possibly see games like that on next-gen systems. Is it practical? NO. Not at all. 3 minutes of footage alone took 1 whole year. Now imagine having to implement mechanics, a story, a HUD, etc. It'll take ages.

Now, I have no doubt at all that this engine will eventually make some pretty gorgeous games. But I would NOT expect anything like Agni's Philosophy. Probably pretty damn close, but real-time graphics like that in a game would take ages to make.

[turgore]

They made a game engine in 6 month to 1 year. That is impressive.
FF13 took forever to be made, now they keep churning out sequels to it like no tomorrow.

[isarai]

Dear god the amount of ignorance here on N4G is unbelievable. Tech demos on this scale always take long like this, especially when it involves developing it on completely new tech from scratch, not to mention they bothered adding some lore and common themes through the whole thing which requires a lot of collaboration to keep things consistent in the look and feel department.

[rainslacker]

A year to produce this is hardly anything. A single character model of that level could take several weeks to produce and texture on it's own, and that doesn't even include the amazing particle effects and super detailed environment. The level of detail is pretty high, and not something you slap together in a week.

On top of that I'm sure that year was filled with going back and changing things within the engine itself just to get it to the level it was.

When I first saw this video a while back I saw the tech they were showing off, and I was simply amazed at how advanced it was. This video showed off some of the behind the scenes stuff it can do and I was really impressed at the creation pipeline structure that they have created. This engine puts a lot of power into the artists hands, which only speeds up development, not slow it down like most of the people on here are assuming.

[isarai]

exactly, plus what no one here seems to know is that 3D assets are what take up the majority of game development time. so if this were an actual game it would probably only take another 6 months(which would include the creation and programming of missions, mechanics, features, and events with animations) to make that level into something playable

[Npugz7]

It shouldn't have taken that long! Either they are slow developers or there engine is difficult to use!

[Roccetarius]

Well, it's no wonder it took them a year to make it. They complained about the generation not being long enough.

[shempo]

they could work on versus instead waste time for this crap for a whole year

[Ippiki Okami]

Thats probably why this tech demo took so long to make. During the last year alone they been working on FFXIII-2, FFXIII-3, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, FFXIII VS and maybe KH3.

[taquito]

how big was the team working on it for a year?

was it 5 guys?

10

30

100

teams that make AAA game number in the 100's, i doubt this was more than 10 people working, and once the engine sdk is made, all assets are in place, development flies along