Also it looks like the normal map was just a tangent space normal map but with the blue channel greyed out. Could be just so people ask what type is was, could be that they just didn't want the blue channel/height change information on the models.
Hai, I didnt mean a specific platform nor company. Just in general, the appeal of creative texture stretching/reusing on dense meshes, rather than lowpoly meshes causing harsh shading, being compensated by heavy uniquely painted texturing. As usual, MGS and FF series come to mind.
Pior your just trading texture memory footprints over for geometry memory(the 360 has 512mb, about 200mb of that would be taken by other things so 300mb max for geo, would get you about 3mill tris per frame). Yeah you can do it but like all things the deeper down the rabbit hole you go the harder it gets to get the look you want with that technique. Mostly id worry about the environment props/world geo. With a art/tech direction like that i think you would also need major artistic stylization to hide the lack of unique texture space. Also something that could be problematic would be the texture mips if the engine used mip maps. I say problematic because as the textures get blured together at the lower resolutions the objects would look like ass. You would need to make a crap ton of single tiling textures for it to remove the problem. For sure you would need a great shaders, realtime radiosity, and realtime z buffer ambient occlusion/highlighting. If you had all of those yeah you could make one hell of a game!
'GameSpy: Some gamers, especially Western gamers, have criticized recent Final Fantasy heroes for looking too feminine or androgynous. Why do you go for this look, and does the feedback from Western gamers affect your future design plans?
Akihiko Yoshida: *laughs* Vaan is the lead character and he does look a bit feminine. But this is what Japanese gamers want; games like this sell very well in Japan. Though feminine-leaning main characters are not very popular in Western countries, we don't feel this is a reason to change the characters into more masculine or more warrior-like types. It's not possible to release a game with characters that everyone in the world likes, and if we do release a game with a masculine male character, it'll be because we want to create a new style and not because the Western audience doesn't like feminine-type characters'.
Its actually better to learn the xsi controls, the keyboard short cuts and hot keys are amazing how they are set up in the default layout, and using the maya ones just cover them up.
Yeah, that was my point. By making it super accommodating and letting you use controls you already know it kind of (at least for me) kills the interest in learning and using something new. Even if the new stuff is there to learn under the surface. Whereas when I try to use Max it's an epic struggle with drama and cursing; there's a good story arc to it.
I dunno. I find these characters a hell of a lot more tolerable than FFX. I absolutely hated all the art for FFX. The characters, the environments, the vehicles. FFXII had bad ass character art design in my opinion. With the exception of the main character Vaan, of course. He looks like a rejected Abocrombie model. I mean.. Gabranth is a pretty bad ass looking villian.
For instance with the character above, its like the guys at Square keep asking themselves how we can make the characters even more GAY this time around!
The character designs are a reflection of what's popular here in Japan. Everyone wants to look like Jonny's, "Guriko" and Yankee's (not 'Merican Yankee). Go search Daigo, Exile, any of those groups. A ton of women play this game here, and these are the types of dudes that they seem to dig. Magazines are full of damn near the same hairstyle/take on the clothing like in FF. But people in the West have that shit-style Beckham(sp?) cupie doll hair style, or the "I didn't comb my hair, but I did" style.
Sorry but Western audiences are secondary to the Japanese devs. Selling Final Fantasy outside of Japan is just bonus money. Remember Japan's modern roots come from a very very different culture than European/Christian standards.
It's an old convention was being more feminine gives a male a touch of 'evilness'. Being how strict old Japan used to be, the more a guy strayed from Male into Female territory the more they strayed from the natural and thus became 'bad'.
Make them attractive and stylish and you have an edgy bad-boy anti-hero.
As with many things it has been re-purposed a fair bit, think medieval thoughts on magic and Harry Potter.
Another thing is that Japan is HIGHLY structured along gender lines. Breaking down the gender barrier is "...simply a means by which the gender barrier can be temporarily removed to allow for a more general discussion about the meaning and nature of romantic love." -Antonia Levi, Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation (Chicago: Open Court 1996), 135.
I always like to recommend this book to people: [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Anime-Explosion-What-Japanese-Animation/dp/1880656728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265935879&sr=8-1[/ame]
It's a great read and covers a wide range of topics that are really informative about Japanese conventions in anime and manga that also carry over into video games.
Baseline: It sells buttloads to Japanese girls. Just look at the rampant popularity of yaoi and semi-gay themes in manga and anime.
Sorry your heterosexuality is threatened, I'm sure Square-Enix will help dry your tears with the mountains of yen. ;p
Yeah, I removed some portions of my post to remove flame-bait, but like Snemmy said "Sexuality is different in Japan.". Just Google New Type, but not at work.
The character designs are a reflection of what's popular here in Japan. Everyone wants to look like Jonny's, "Guriko" and Yankee's (not 'Merican Yankee). Go search Daigo, Exile, any of those groups. A ton of women play this game here, and these are the types of dudes that they seem to dig. Magazines are full of damn near the same hairstyle/take on the clothing like in FF. But people in the West have that shit-style Beckham(sp?) cupie doll hair style, or the "I didn't comb my hair, but I did" style.
yeah seems to be a culture difference issue here. Theres a few I know of between Japan and the West (the city streets vs city blocks, doctors being paid there when you're healthy as opposed to when you're sick). Eh, shrugs. At least Resident Evil and Metal Gear still have that bad-assery appeal.
yeah seems to be a culture difference issue here. Theres a few I know of between Japan and the West (the city streets vs city blocks, doctors being paid there when you're healthy as opposed to when you're sick). Eh, shrugs. At least Resident Evil and Metal Gear still have that bad-assery appeal.
I have no recollection of this image whatsoever. My friends tell me I began having violent seizures right around the same time Metal Gear Solid 2 came out.
that raiden concept art made right after kojima receive survey , that female japanese gamer barely touch mgs 1. and had almost same comment : snake is not handsome/cute.
just same as north american game demographic , bald muscular men with beard and big guns = cool.
dont worry
it wont be forever, I remember shoujo manga genre popularity overtakes shounen manga in 90's
and later on 80's Shotaro Kaneda badass image replaced by 90's cute boi shinji ikari.
Funny you should post a picture of Raiden and say how THAT's a lot more badass masculine... MOST guys I know that have played the MGS series think he's the biggest sissy-ass pansy character. :P (Hard to argue against... I mean, after his sorta 'cameo' appearance as the guy in the past in MGS3...) IMO, he was darn kickass in the fourth game though.
But yeah, I enjoyed the MGS series a lot, but NOT like how I enjoy the FF series. It's really not a series targeted for a female audience, I don't really know any other girls who have played it, and people have even wondered how I got into it. Snake is completely awesome, but not so pretty. :P Now, FF guys are a lot more easy for a gal to fall in love with.
Asking Square Enix to change their style to be less 'pretty' and have more hardcore men... is kinda like asking Western studios to make their bad-ass, big, ugly bald men much softer and more effeminite.
That's ok ZacD, I won't hold it against you. I just hate to see the g-word thrown around as an insult in these discussions, when some of us would actually like a gay character in Final Fantasy. It's not something I usually make a fuss over but in this case it is a little annoying.
Thanks for sharing! Very cool to see their offices and workflow, and I love how everything shown results in a "OOHHH!!" and "AAHH!" from the commentators.
Replies
Also it looks like the normal map was just a tangent space normal map but with the blue channel greyed out. Could be just so people ask what type is was, could be that they just didn't want the blue channel/height change information on the models.
Pior your just trading texture memory footprints over for geometry memory(the 360 has 512mb, about 200mb of that would be taken by other things so 300mb max for geo, would get you about 3mill tris per frame). Yeah you can do it but like all things the deeper down the rabbit hole you go the harder it gets to get the look you want with that technique. Mostly id worry about the environment props/world geo. With a art/tech direction like that i think you would also need major artistic stylization to hide the lack of unique texture space. Also something that could be problematic would be the texture mips if the engine used mip maps. I say problematic because as the textures get blured together at the lower resolutions the objects would look like ass. You would need to make a crap ton of single tiling textures for it to remove the problem. For sure you would need a great shaders, realtime radiosity, and realtime z buffer ambient occlusion/highlighting. If you had all of those yeah you could make one hell of a game!
at least what you can see from the vid.
Akihiko Yoshida: *laughs* Vaan is the lead character and he does look a bit feminine. But this is what Japanese gamers want; games like this sell very well in Japan. Though feminine-leaning main characters are not very popular in Western countries, we don't feel this is a reason to change the characters into more masculine or more warrior-like types. It's not possible to release a game with characters that everyone in the world likes, and if we do release a game with a masculine male character, it'll be because we want to create a new style and not because the Western audience doesn't like feminine-type characters'.
http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/final-fantasy-xii/707845p2.html
Yeah, that was my point. By making it super accommodating and letting you use controls you already know it kind of (at least for me) kills the interest in learning and using something new. Even if the new stuff is there to learn under the surface. Whereas when I try to use Max it's an epic struggle with drama and cursing; there's a good story arc to it.
It's an old convention was being more feminine gives a male a touch of 'evilness'. Being how strict old Japan used to be, the more a guy strayed from Male into Female territory the more they strayed from the natural and thus became 'bad'.
Make them attractive and stylish and you have an edgy bad-boy anti-hero.
As with many things it has been re-purposed a fair bit, think medieval thoughts on magic and Harry Potter.
Another thing is that Japan is HIGHLY structured along gender lines. Breaking down the gender barrier is "...simply a means by which the gender barrier can be temporarily removed to allow for a more general discussion about the meaning and nature of romantic love." -Antonia Levi, Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation (Chicago: Open Court 1996), 135.
I always like to recommend this book to people: [ame]http://www.amazon.com/Anime-Explosion-What-Japanese-Animation/dp/1880656728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265935879&sr=8-1[/ame]
It's a great read and covers a wide range of topics that are really informative about Japanese conventions in anime and manga that also carry over into video games.
Baseline: It sells buttloads to Japanese girls. Just look at the rampant popularity of yaoi and semi-gay themes in manga and anime.
Sorry your heterosexuality is threatened, I'm sure Square-Enix will help dry your tears with the mountains of yen. ;p
yeah seems to be a culture difference issue here. Theres a few I know of between Japan and the West (the city streets vs city blocks, doctors being paid there when you're healthy as opposed to when you're sick). Eh, shrugs. At least Resident Evil and Metal Gear still have that bad-assery appeal.
I have no recollection of this image whatsoever. My friends tell me I began having violent seizures right around the same time Metal Gear Solid 2 came out.
just same as north american game demographic , bald muscular men with beard and big guns = cool.
dont worry
it wont be forever, I remember shoujo manga genre popularity overtakes shounen manga in 90's
and later on 80's Shotaro Kaneda badass image replaced by 90's cute boi shinji ikari.
But yeah, I enjoyed the MGS series a lot, but NOT like how I enjoy the FF series. It's really not a series targeted for a female audience, I don't really know any other girls who have played it, and people have even wondered how I got into it. Snake is completely awesome, but not so pretty. :P Now, FF guys are a lot more easy for a gal to fall in love with.
Asking Square Enix to change their style to be less 'pretty' and have more hardcore men... is kinda like asking Western studios to make their bad-ass, big, ugly bald men much softer and more effeminite.
Also ..some of us are gay and actually dislike pretty boys..just saying.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/359243
(and P for poorly drawn penises)
Some, not all.
Capcom is a prime example of a Japanese dev that Is focused on it's Western audience yet still manages to sell extremely well to the eastern audience.
Then you have Kojima and co.