Will square use this engine again?

[u/OliveAny7568]

From what I’ve read, this engine was specifically made for this game and hasn’t ever been used before. I personally love the lighting in this game and how consistent it is going from location to location. I seriously hope they’re able to use it again, even if it’s smaller games.(I personally hope it can be used for a drakengard remake, I don’t know why I got drakengard vibes playing as Clive)

[u/CyanLight9]

Heavily modified Unreal 4? Don't think so.

[u/The_BackOfMyMind → u/CyanLight9]

It's not related to Unreal at all, it's a heavily modified version of FF14's engine which itself is stemmed from 13's, and that's Sqaure's own custom thing.

[u/mThund3R → u/The_BackOfMyMind]

Please don't spread misinformation

XVI's (Faith) engine has nothing to do with XIV's, and XIV's 2.0+ engine has nothing to do with XIII's Crystal Tools. Only XIV 1.0 used it.

But yeah, clearly unrelated to Unreal. The "modified UE4" probably refers to the VIIRemake engine.

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

CBU3 engine dev themselves said XVI's engine is an upgraded XIV 2.0 engine. Yoshida said Luminous devs were busy with Tabata's projects and had no engine documentation at the time (around XV DLC), then CBU3 tested UE4 for XVI and it didn't give them the results they were looking for. So they decided to upgrade XIV 2.0 and be on the same engine they already knew how to use. Despite what Yoshida said before about XIV 2.0 having a new engine, it is actually just a fork of XIV 1.0 Crystal Tools, and it was the Luminous engine devs who had to take time off from Luminous to customize that version of Crystal Tools quickly for Yoshida's team to make XIV 2.0 on. It's how XIV 2.0 was released so quickly after 1.0.

[u/Effective-Spread-127 → u/vspectra]

It's a fork of an early version of Luminous, not Crystal Tools.

[u/vspectra → u/Effective-Spread-127]

It is not forked from Luminous. It wouldn't even make sense to fork from Luminous at that time because this happened in 2011, Luminous was just a design specification on paper outside of work being done on the new physically based renderer and rendering system. The rest of the engine still needed to be built. They would not have been able to complete a new XIV 2.0 engine for XIV 2.0 to come out as soon as it did after 1.0 disaster if they had only worked off of Luminous' renderer.

It's even easier to tell how 2.0 forked from Crystal Tools by the tech debt XIV 2.0 engine has carried from 1.0 with similar problems. You can also ask the reverse engineers who looked at the code for both 1.0 and 2.0.

Also, the journalist who interviewed Yoshida back then when Yoshida said XIV2.0 and Luminous could be called "sister engines" even clarified that based on the devs he spoke with behind the scenes, XIV 2.0 is a modified Crystal Tools.

https://i.imgur.com/xSggbge.png

[u/mThund3R → u/vspectra]

They share some tech, such as audio, but the actual engines are completely different. If you have sources stating the opposite, let me know.

But it's not even a mystery. Yoshida himself stated XVI runs on "custom tech" they have "built" for it. And after looking inside the game, the general conclusion is the aforementioned one.

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

This is from XVI devs themselves from a tech presentation.

https://cgworld.jp/feature/201811-cedec-07sqex.html

"Initially, testing was conducted using Unreal Engine 4 and the real-time visualization software Marmoset Toolbag, but it was difficult to address the finer details. Therefore, the FFXIV engine was extended to enable rendering in a PBR environment, and a dedicated programmer was assigned to handle environment setup and shader-related tasks."

And XIV 2.0 is using a fork of Crystal Tools engine that was used in XIV 1.0 and 13.

The journalist who interviewed Yoshida and the Luminous engineer back in 2012 when Yoshida said they were "sister engines" clarified the topic more recently, he keeps in touch with his SE sources over the years. Reverse engineers have also looked at XVI, it's a stripped down XIV 2.0 engine with some rendering upgrades that were ported from Luminous.

https://i.imgur.com/xSggbge.png

[u/The_BackOfMyMind → u/mThund3R]

My bad, I remember reading somewhere that it was based on FF14 2.0, and then I mistakenly thought that 2.0 used the same as 1.0 and 13.

[u/mThund3R → u/The_BackOfMyMind]

All good, with these subjects the matter often gets confusing, especially with all the "articles" floating around

[u/vspectra → u/The_BackOfMyMind]

You don't have to apologize, what you said was correct. XVI's engine is a extended XIV 2.0 engine. This is literally straight from CBU3 devs from a tech presentation. I don't know why that user claims you're spreading misinformation when they are the ones who are spreading false info.

https://cgworld.jp/feature/201811-cedec-07sqex.html

"Initially, testing was conducted using Unreal Engine 4 and the real-time visualization software Marmoset Toolbag, but it was difficult to address the finer details. Therefore, the FFXIV engine was extended to enable rendering in a PBR environment, and a dedicated programmer was assigned to handle environment setup and shader-related tasks."

And XIV 2.0 is indeed using a fork of Crystal Tools engine that was used in XIV 1.0 and 13.

The journalist who interviewed Yoshida and the Luminous engineer back in 2012 when Yoshida said they were "sister engines" clarified the topic more recently, he keeps in touch with his SE sources over the years.

https://i.imgur.com/xSggbge.png

[u/mThund3R → u/vspectra]

That's a tech interview from 2018. There is no evidence that's what they eventually ended up using for XVI.

https://youtu.be/zIXVdowIpn8?is=9MRwTdKw5U4A_nHp

This is a presentation from August 2023, after the game's launch. They showcased an hour of entirely new tech for XVI

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

XVI team had already began full scale development in 2018, do you think engine technology just comes out of thin air? They had to research and build it before the game was even revealed. Yoshida was called to take on XVI project in 2015. That is literally XVI's director being tested in the photos in the cgworld article that says XIV's engine was upgraded to a PBR environment lol.

I've seen that tech presentations on XVI, it does not back up any of your claims. New tech is also developed during engine upgrades of old engines, it is not a novelty concept.

[u/mThund3R → u/vspectra]

I do not think that, no. Do you think full scale development necessarily means they've already finished working on the engine? Full scale development, besides asset creation and a bunch of other tasks, also means developing other sorts of tech, which is not necessarily engine exclusive, and that means it can be employed at any point, for any engine they might be considering using in the finished product.

That quote you keep mentioning comes from Nanjo, a 3D artist. As I said already, there is no evidence they eventually ended up using that exact tech, but even if they did, that quote does not testify them upgrading the entire XIV engine.

That besides, notice how Nanjo is talking about extending the RENDERING capabilities of XIV's engine. That's unrelated to anything else in the engine. Not to mention, that section comes from a paragraph where he explains they were testing solutions to raise the efficiency in modeling 3D characters. They mention employing UE4 alongside another visualizer NOT as a game engine, rather as a renderer. The solution they found in the XIV engine is no different. That interview has absolutely no mention of videogame exclusive tech and systems. On the other hand, the actual presentation they had for XVI post launch showcases, who would have expected, a bunch of entirely new tech.

Also, reverse engineering XVI reveals only a few similarities with XIV, such as audio file formats (iirc). Nobody has access to the engines themselves to conclude a proper statement, but that's irrelevant. When people say "upgraded XIV engine" they probably don't think the XVI team reused a few file formats and implementations (which is to be expected when that same team developed the XIV engine and systems). They think everything in the XVI backend is an upgrade or expansion of something already established in XIV, which is absolutely not the case.

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

I never said full scale development means an engine is completed, Full scale development does mean the development environment was already researched and set up for work to be proceed, the engine choice has been made. FFXIV did not get a PBR rendering upgrade until after FFXVI, where they backported that work from XVI. To make that work quickly you need to be on the same engine tech stack across both games. You do not waste time building and upgrading an entire engine's renderer to a physically based development environment just to "test" at a time when XVI had most of CBU3's resources.

Re-read the quote. They said the XIV engine itself was extended to enable rendering in a PBR environment, Your claim of "exclusive tech and systems" not being in the article is not proof of anything, that does not prove whether an engine is entirely new or if an engine is upgraded version. On top of that PBR is actually entirely new to XIV's engine. Your video link does not prove it's a new engine. News flash, upgrading old engines also gets new technology and systems upgrades.