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SE E3 scheduleFollow

#1 Jun 09 2013 at 6:32 AM Rating: Excellent
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Just thought I'd post this here for those interested .Square Enix's E3 schedule can be found here http://square.vo.llnwd.net/o2/e3/SEP_E3_2013_program_ver_0607.pdf
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#2 Jun 09 2013 at 8:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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660 posts
Awesome, thanks so much for this! Monday will be the Ubisoft/EA/Microsoft/Sony conferences. I'll definitely have the Square-Enix YouTube channel on in the background while I write on my days off from work. In case anyone missed it, this is it: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjaudkQ1noQT4eaWlYbeO8Q
#3 Jun 09 2013 at 8:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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98 posts
I'll probably be tuning in the middle of class :3
#4 Jun 09 2013 at 9:41 AM Rating: Default
I find it a bit funny that the president of Square-Enix, in regards to a remake of FFVII, said that if they remade a title the series then the franchise "would be done for," and yet we're getting a FFX remake (hd) and Kingdom Hearts remake (HD)......
#5 Jun 09 2013 at 10:06 AM Rating: Default
Yeah that's kinda lame...
#6 Jun 09 2013 at 11:02 AM Rating: Excellent
Those are not real remakes - they are upping the resolution of the graphics scene by scene to 720p, but nothing else in the rest of the story is changing. They also had all the source code and stuff already for X in a digital format, so it was just a matter of importing it into Crystal Tools and re-jiggering it. (Even then, it seems this process was a hell of a lot more difficult than they expected, because Crystal Tools sucks.)

With VII, they were idiots and deleted all the source code, all the graphics models, and all the digital storyboards to make room for VIII. Back then hard drive space was at a premium. Rather than do the smart thing and run the data to archive quality tapes, they just deleted it all to free up resources. Redoing VII would literally be starting the game over from scratch. They'd be lucky if someone kept a paper printout of the dialog.

Edited, Jun 9th 2013 1:03pm by Catwho
#7 Jun 09 2013 at 11:37 AM Rating: Good
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660 posts
Yeah, I think that's why Square is being mostly mum on the topic of remaking VII. It would truly be a huge investment for them. I think they also mentioned they would rather make a numbered title that exceeds the success of VII first before trying a remake. IF that ever happens, it'll be another 5+ years for development if we're following how things have gone for this generation.
#8 Jun 09 2013 at 12:47 PM Rating: Decent
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262 posts
Atkascha wrote:
Yeah, I think that's why Square is being mostly mum on the topic of remaking VII. It would truly be a huge investment for them



A huge investment that would be worth it. I know that just from the nostalgia for me alone I would throw lots of money at them for the remake. Even more money I would be throwing at my computer if they included a CE.

My guess is they are holding FFVII remake in their back pocket. If they ever get desperate enough for money they will use that as their trump card. I fear at that point though it would just be a cash grab and they would ***** it up.
#9 Jun 09 2013 at 12:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,112 posts
Catwho wrote:

With VII, they were idiots and deleted all the source code


Really? That's insanity. Why would you do that! Ok, disk array storage was expensive back then but as you say, magnetic tapes were cheap and were (and still are) very robust. Somebody somewhere should hang thier head in shame.

Where did you hear this by the way? First I've heard about it. Admittedly I don't frequent any places where I would hear about it mind you.
#10 Jun 09 2013 at 1:14 PM Rating: Excellent
Kordain wrote:
Catwho wrote:

With VII, they were idiots and deleted all the source code


Really? That's insanity. Why would you do that! Ok, disk array storage was expensive back then but as you say, magnetic tapes were cheap and were (and still are) very robust. Somebody somewhere should hang thier head in shame.

Where did you hear this by the way? First I've heard about it. Admittedly I don't frequent any places where I would hear about it mind you.



Here's a nice essay on the issue.

Joshua Walker wrote:
In the beginning, however, the PC port suffered many problems. When the contract programmers received the FF7 source code from Square, it was a horrible state of atrophy. When work started on the port, it was soon discovered that they had received an earlier, buggy version of the program. Work had to stop while Square accumulated a later version. It was also discovered that the people and equipment used to create the backgrounds for FF7, were now being used for FF8 and FF9. There was no way to re-render the backgrounds and the port team was forced to use the original low color/low resolution PSX dependencies. The movies fared worse. Squaresoft never rendered high resolution versions of the movies. The movie format was incompatible with Microsoft's DirectX system, so it was decided to convert the compressed PSX movies to one more native to a PC platform. This caused disastrous results. The movies were now a copy of a copy of a low resolution render.
#11 Jun 09 2013 at 2:40 PM Rating: Good
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972 posts
Catwho wrote:
Kordain wrote:
Catwho wrote:

With VII, they were idiots and deleted all the source code


Really? That's insanity. Why would you do that! Ok, disk array storage was expensive back then but as you say, magnetic tapes were cheap and were (and still are) very robust. Somebody somewhere should hang thier head in shame.

Where did you hear this by the way? First I've heard about it. Admittedly I don't frequent any places where I would hear about it mind you.



Here's a nice essay on the issue.

Joshua Walker wrote:
In the beginning, however, the PC port suffered many problems. When the contract programmers received the FF7 source code from Square, it was a horrible state of atrophy. When work started on the port, it was soon discovered that they had received an earlier, buggy version of the program. Work had to stop while Square accumulated a later version. It was also discovered that the people and equipment used to create the backgrounds for FF7, were now being used for FF8 and FF9. There was no way to re-render the backgrounds and the port team was forced to use the original low color/low resolution PSX dependencies. The movies fared worse. Squaresoft never rendered high resolution versions of the movies. The movie format was incompatible with Microsoft's DirectX system, so it was decided to convert the compressed PSX movies to one more native to a PC platform. This caused disastrous results. The movies were now a copy of a copy of a low resolution render.

I wish there was some historical gaming preservation group who stopped asinine things like deleting old code and preserving games for all to play,
#12REDACTED, Posted: Jun 09 2013 at 3:38 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) If you actually believe they deleted the source code because of storage limitations then your quite gullible.
#13 Jun 09 2013 at 3:40 PM Rating: Default
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153 posts
What time zone does the list refer to?
#14 Jun 09 2013 at 3:44 PM Rating: Excellent
onineko wrote:
If you actually believe they deleted the source code because of storage limitations then your quite gullible.


Remember, it was developed in the mid nineties, back when hard drive storage space was still $279 for 2 GB of space. The final source code was never properly archived, while the raw image files for backgrounds were outright deleted, as was the uncompressed cinematic video. As the essay explains, this caused major issues porting it over to the PC the first time around.

Edited, Jun 9th 2013 5:48pm by Catwho
#15 Jun 09 2013 at 3:52 PM Rating: Default
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153 posts
$300 is quite a small investment for a multimillion dollar company. In the unlikely event that HD storage was a big issue then they could have easily burned the information to several CD-ROMS. I don't think anyone at Square would lack the creativity to come up with a solution to solve this minor problem. Point me to a credible reference then I'll believe it.
#16 Jun 09 2013 at 4:57 PM Rating: Excellent
The published essay from Joshua Walker I linked above doesn't count as a credible reference? Smiley: dubious It's almost 200 pages long, and granted, it's a work in progress on Sourceforge and not peer reviewed, but he wouldn't put something in what is clearly a solid academic essay if he didn't have proof. I heard about the VII debacle over a decade ago. It's pretty well known in the game industry and acts as a lesson in video game project management of what not to do.

It's just as stupid as the Disney artists surfing down the hallways on the original cells used for Snow White, but supposedly that's what they did, which is why it's impossible to find cels for some scenes. (Cannot find a reference for it, but I remember seeing it on an A&E special a long time ago.)

#17 Jun 09 2013 at 5:15 PM Rating: Decent
onineko wrote:
$300 is quite a small investment for a multimillion dollar company. In the unlikely event that HD storage was a big issue then they could have easily burned the information to several CD-ROMS. I don't think anyone at Square would lack the creativity to come up with a solution to solve this minor problem. Point me to a credible reference then I'll believe it.


It's actually a well known story, it's been told countless times in different forums.
#18 Jun 09 2013 at 6:35 PM Rating: Excellent
Also, the first inexpensive CD-R burner wasn't available until 1995. And by inexpensive I mean under a grand. In the early '90s, a burner would set you back $10,000 and the CDs for the data a hundred bucks a pop. They didn't become economical enough to stick on individual computers until 1999 or so, and CD-Rs didn't drop in price until 1997 (when they were down to $10 each.)

The issue was that Squaresoft didn't have a single central version controlled repository for their source code, which is standard operating procedure today (and has been in programming for the last decade (e.g. SVN, github, etc.) And the images and artwork used in the design of the game was left on the individual graphics workstations, and again, not gathered in a central repository or backed up anywhere. Once the finished game was pieced together for the "gold" image to be sent off to the factory for final image burning, they felt they had no reason to keep the raw images and scraps of source code on their various workstations, since the complete thing for PS1 was ready to go and they were done with it.
#19 Jun 09 2013 at 11:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,310 posts
Catwho wrote:
Kordain wrote:
Catwho wrote:

With VII, they were idiots and deleted all the source code


Really? That's insanity. Why would you do that! Ok, disk array storage was expensive back then but as you say, magnetic tapes were cheap and were (and still are) very robust. Somebody somewhere should hang thier head in shame.

Where did you hear this by the way? First I've heard about it. Admittedly I don't frequent any places where I would hear about it mind you.



Here's a nice essay on the issue.

Joshua Walker wrote:
In the beginning, however, the PC port suffered many problems. When the contract programmers received the FF7 source code from Square, it was a horrible state of atrophy. When work started on the port, it was soon discovered that they had received an earlier, buggy version of the program. Work had to stop while Square accumulated a later version. It was also discovered that the people and equipment used to create the backgrounds for FF7, were now being used for FF8 and FF9. There was no way to re-render the backgrounds and the port team was forced to use the original low color/low resolution PSX dependencies. The movies fared worse. Squaresoft never rendered high resolution versions of the movies. The movie format was incompatible with Microsoft's DirectX system, so it was decided to convert the compressed PSX movies to one more native to a PC platform. This caused disastrous results. The movies were now a copy of a copy of a low resolution render.


I was aware of some parts of this story, but I hadn't realized they lost so much of the original. Thanks for posting this.
#20 Jun 10 2013 at 12:04 AM Rating: Good
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325 posts
Wow very good info going on here. Thanks for sharing! E3 finally underway in the next few hours Smiley: nod

Edited, Jun 9th 2013 11:05pm by Veagan
#21 Jun 10 2013 at 4:42 AM Rating: Default
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153 posts
Next, you'll be telling me that you infiltrated Square Enix yourself and deleted the files. I'm done.
#22 Jun 10 2013 at 6:06 AM Rating: Excellent
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1,310 posts
onineko wrote:
Next, you'll be telling me that you infiltrated Square Enix yourself and deleted the files. I'm done.


On further reading, I don't think they actually "deleted" the source so starkly. The only thing truly lost was the ability to remake the FMVs.

I do believe it's possible they outsourced the making of the FMVs, at least the high-quality ones where the character detail jumps up significantly over their usual blocky forms (which would probably denote the in-house cut-scenes). It wasn't possible to re-render them for any number of good reasons, not the least of which that the job was over and people and equipment used for the originals had moved on to other projects. So without the ability to create an HD version, the team porting FF7 to the PC were stuck with an SD version that was designed to be rendered with a PSX. But PCs don't render graphics the same way, so they had to make a copy of the copy that a PSX rendered and displayed that on a PC screen with a max resolution of 640 X 480. So it probably looked as good as it sounds.

But the article goes on to state that FF7's engine was used in other games like Parasite Eve, so it wasn't like they chucked the whole source or anything. They just might not have had as good a source control as they ought to have.
#23 Jun 10 2013 at 11:03 AM Rating: Excellent
I think the greater lesson to take from this is that Square learned their lesson and never, ever ******* did that ever again. Smiley: lol Someone realized "hey there is this stuff called version control software now that lets us check in and out bits of code and when it's good mark it as a formal version and we don't even have to think about it."

I'm kicking myself for not visiting SE headquarters when I was in Tokyo. I made it to the Sony building, though.
#24 Jun 10 2013 at 1:36 PM Rating: Decent
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273 posts
Does SE have a press conference tonight? I read in an article they did, but can't seem to find anything on it.
#25 Jun 10 2013 at 1:56 PM Rating: Good
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130 posts
Parathyroid wrote:
Does SE have a press conference tonight? I read in an article they did, but can't seem to find anything on it.

Dun think so. 11th for that "epic" trailer and press conference. 12th for the live battle at E3.
#26 Jun 10 2013 at 7:07 PM Rating: Decent
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972 posts
Is SE gonna show anything during the Sony conference?
It's starting now!!
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