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.
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People need to stop hyping what they want and replace it with the reality. Development of this type will mean $80-90 games with even harsher nickle and diming.
Until this type of technology is as easy as it is to develop this gen of games (and it's not that easy), it won't happen. And while they have progressed it, we are still seeing 5 to 8-year old engines that had demos where they showed off graphics we still haven't gotten to as the norm on consoles in this day and age.
So, the question is how much of the tech demo will make it into a next-gen console and how long to get it maximized for each console's potential?
its called r&D
seriously hope you guys dont think they couldnt do this again in a fraction of the time.
you guys maybe dont know enough about how this all goes about.
they can now implement any model or environment and quickly. iteration is now a snap. it was the planning and r&d that took all of that time.
building shit like that from scratch is HARD. it doesnt happen over night.
no matter the size of your team of artists it all comes down to a handful of people who are the "supers" for the development of the engine creating algorithm based realtime rendering technology is the very forefront of technological development these days and sadly less than 1% of the people on planet earth have the mental ability to tackle problems in programming at the level they are with noones footprints to follow in.
i.e. you want to learn to program... so you look it up cause millions of others have been there done that and there is an established method to achieve 99.99 percent of the operations you could imagine.
for these guys, it is much different. Ploughing through mounds of some of the most advanced equations ever created in technical papers barely recognisable as language to the average person then gathering a full understanding of mathematics never implemented on a cpu before and finding a way to abstract and recompile the mechanisms of each equation in a form that can do the job at runtime, and REALTIME, its a fucking technical achievement for which their efforts should be heralded from the rooftops for years to come.
unfortunately this is too much to expect from average gamer folk.
getting you to actually appreciate something so complex you couldn't achieve it with a lifetimes worth of effort is something akin to trying to explain the difference betweeen a 351 windsor and a cleaveland to your 5 year old sister; who would soon proclaim "you're boring!" and start picking her nose.
Seriously, people really need to learn a little more before jumping to conclusions like this
A really good post that puts in perspective just how big an achievement it is to pull off things like this...and we take it for granted.
We are such a spoilt generation.
Ever heard of economies of scale?
I get what you're saying, but that's rarely the case as engines are continually being updated and improved for each iterative game release. Constant R&D, constant improvement on dev integration and engine tools. It doesn't stop. So, you keep paying the same amount.
And, as poly counts get higher, more detail is needed. More physics. More lighting. More particle effects. It's more people doing more work.
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).
Hmmmmmm...
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.
I bet it wasn't as long as Final Fantasy 13 versus.
Sony bailed them out after the abysmal FF movie, perhaps they should have let them die.
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.
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.
FF13 took forever to be made, now they keep churning out sequels to it like no tomorrow.
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.
was it 5 guys?
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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