This, the final talk I’ll post from GDC’08, centred on the development of the first company-wide technology platform (or engine) for Square Enix. Despite the heavy tech-focus, this was the largest lineup I attended at the conference due to the chance of gleaning any information from these Japanese RPG masters.

Square Enix: The Technology of FINAL FANTASY

Taku Murata – General Manager, Technical Research Division

Traditionally, a new platform was created for each title, with the game first made in Japanese and translations following much later. This looks set to change with the latest upcoming releases which will be very exciting to many western fans, and the target platforms (for the engine) are PS3, PC and XBOX360.

Murata’s history reads like something of a chronology of technological breakthroughs in Japanese game development, with much of his work driven by animation – in particular facial animation. Of interest most of all was the admission that several of the driving forces for this new engine centred on displaying characters’ faces to a very high fidelity in close-up.

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In the last few weeks I’ve been getting out to a handful of various presentations, beginning with the IGDA BioShock presentation and most recently a week-long film and videogame visual extravaganza at the 2007 Adapt Conference.

Representatives from Disney, Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic and several high-profile game development studios were in town to share work methods and techniques, for which I am all-ears, with the week ending on a high at the Halo 3 party, whereby I was fortunate enough to come home with a second copy of the game after beating a handful of Ubisoft animators into Slayer submission.

Over the next week I’ll be uploading my notes from the various lectures attended, (in no particular order), beginning with Bungie’s own Feature Presentation below:

Bungie: Creating Movie-Quality Cinematic Moments In Realtime

CJ Cowan & James McQuillan – Lead Producer and Cinematic Director on Halo 3

This talk was unfortunately beset with technical problems throughout, and as such many of the real-time editing features of their engine were unable to be demonstrated. It did, however, offer an insight into a company creating one of the most epic games ever with tools that were so technologically backwards it is amazing they managed to get anything out the door at all.

Despite this, they appeared oblivious to how outdated their systems on show were as they proudly demonstrated tools and processes that I’ve fortunately never had to endure in all my time in this industry. Perhaps Bungie is living in a bubble-shield?

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