Final Fantasy: The Movie

Epiphani writes: "It's been known for quite some time that Squaresoft was in the process of making a full length CG movie, however I never imagined it would be like this. 'Next to the beautiful Pacific Ocean, Square has selected Harbor Court in downtown Honolulu as the home to more than 150 computer graphic artist from all over the world, including Hollywood, Tokyo and Europe. There, surrounded by state-of-the-art computers and software programs, artists are able to transform their vision into reality set on a computer screen.' Square has really outdone themselves this time, with an amazing voice cast and unbelievably realistic CG -- this one is sure to be a hit considering Square's emphasis on plot. Be sure to check out the featured trailer (req. quicktime)."

Comments

pretty movie

[Klowner]

I have a feeling this will look a little better than toystory. 01S woo

Re:pretty movie

[enrico_suave]

Well the advances in graphics/tech/PC's/rendering/etc... pretty much makes that an absolute (artists not withstanding, the potential for prettier graphics increases as tech and time go forward)

They actually had problems with Toy Story 2, where the new Woody looked too good and was overshadowing (no pun intended) the look of the old Toy Story Woody.

*shrug*

E,

Final Fantasy

[AntiPasto]

I never cared for any of this stuff. I'm glad tho to see better and better projects available for the rendering world. Perhaps in the future, they'll be the ones striking for higher wages, and hollywood will have to actually finish their beef with the Screen Actors Guild to atleast get *something* into their commercials.

Rendering, I believe, is the next be dristibuted app. Of course, then we might have people sneaking in shout-outs into a frame or two... heheh

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Re:Final Fantasy

[tolldog]

Rendering will never be the next distributed app.

One reason is the fact that companies do not want data files outside of the company. Imagine if you had the Toy Story scene files and all the fun you could have making your own scenes with Woody and company and posting them on the web.

The second main reason is that it takes horsepower, memory and storage to render files. The frame sizes, depending on quality and resolution can result in several MBs. The memory required to make those frames can be on the order of 500 - 1000 MBs. Also, industry standard is an hour a frame for rendering film quality for CG.

Third and the greatest reason is that the renderer is not free. They are either in-house solutions and will never leave the company or they are licensed from whomever makes it to that company.

I have thought about this. I would love for fans to be able to render, heck, it would save us money on machines. Sadly though, I don't ever see it as a posibility.

Re:Final Fantasy

[Kit Lo]

I never cared for any of this stuff. I'm glad tho to see better and better projects available for the rendering world. Perhaps in the future, they'll be the ones striking for higher wages, and hollywood will have to actually finish their beef with the Screen Actors Guild to atleast get *something* into their commercials.

The Screen Actors Guild didn't have a beef with Hollywood. Instead, Hollywood and Broadway is beefin' with Madison Avenue because they're the ones making the product ads. Voiceovers (and character voices) in movies are also done by the SAG, after all.

Regarding the possibility of movie-related computer firms (like Manex Visual Effects) having unions: see NYT on High Tech Unions and and find out if it's a good idea.

Re:Final Fantasy

[drinkypoo]

Rendering will never be the next distributed app.

One reason is the fact that companies do not want data files outside of the company. Imagine if you had the Toy Story scene files and all the fun you could have making your own scenes with Woody and company and posting them on the web.

All they would have to do is dump you the information you need to render a small piece of a frame, including rays entering the scene, and the polygonal data for just that chunk. They will persist your information so you are always rendering the same chunk of the scene, so the best you could do if you went through the trouble to capture the data out (which of course will never be written to disk in any recognizable format) would be to get one small piece of a random frame of video.

The second main reason is that it takes horsepower, memory and storage to render files. The frame sizes, depending on quality and resolution can result in several MBs. The memory required to make those frames can be on the order of 500 - 1000 MBs. Also, industry standard is an hour a frame for rendering film quality for CG.

Not if you're rendering only a teensy portion of the data.

Third and the greatest reason is that the renderer is not free. They are either in-house solutions and will never leave the company or they are licensed from whomever makes it to that company.

My guess is that they'll do some of the work on their systems and then just use distributed clients to compute the radiosity data, which is the single piece of the rendering job which sucks up the most CPU time. Then they'll get back the data, merge it with their frame data, and bingo, they have saved themselves something like 60% of their compute time. Radiosity is insanely costly.

My hopes

[Carbonite]

If we're lucky this will be just like Titan AE, except with a different plot and good.

Re:My hopes

[The Cunctator]

Wow, that's some bad moderation. Who was Carbonite trolling? The large contingent of people who thought Titan AE had a good plot? The movie was pretty, even beautiful, but certainly not well-plotted.

it's gonna be wonderful!

[Moghedien]

as a long-time final fantasy- and Square-fan (anyone remember ff2 on the SNES?), I can't wait to see the result. it's gonna be like heaven again..

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[Losifer]

FF1, 2, and 3 were available on the 8-bit NES, not on the SNES. 2 and 3 were only released in Japan. I'm *pretty sure I'm correct here.

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[Moghedien]

ah, but I was talking about the European FF2.. which is the Japanese FF4. very confusing, I know..

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[aenomie]

Final Fantasy IV (in Japan) was released in the US on the SNES as Final Fantasy II. Final Fantasy VI (in Japan) was released as Final Fantasy III on the SNES in the US. To further the confusion, they recently rereleased FFV (which was never released in the US on SNES) and FF6 for Playstation, preserving their original numbering. It wasn't until FF7 for the PSX that they resynchronized the numbering.

BTW, FF1 was released for the NES but FF2 and FF3 (japanese numbering) were never released in the US at all (although this may soon change with Bandai's Wonderswan)

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[?erosion]

Someone's gonna post it, might as well be me.

FF1 was released for the 8 bit NES in both Japan and the US. There were a few differences, but they were clearly the same game. FF2,3, 4 etc continued to come out in Japan for the NES, but were never released here. However, Square then ported one of the SNES games over here and called it FF2 (us). There's a lot more to it than that, but you get the idea.

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[webrunner]

It's a bit complicated, but here's a little chart: Japan: Final Fantasy USA: Final Fantasy. Japan: Final Fantasy II USA: Never released. Japan: Final Fantasy III USA: Never released. Japan: Final Fantasy IV USA: Never released. Japan: Final Fantasy IV Easytype USA: Final Fantasy II Japan: Final Fantasy V USA: Final Fantasy V (HORRIBLY TRANSLATED) in FF Anthology Japan: Final Fantasy VI USA: Final Fantasy III, and VI in FF Anthology Japan: Final Fantasy VII USA: Final Fantasy VII and the rest are the same. Also, here are some other "FF" titles that are interesting. USA: FInal Fantasy Mystic Quest Japan: Final Fantasy USA. (This is much like Mario Bros 2) USA: Final Fantasy Adventure Japan: Seiken Densetsu USA: Secret of Mana Japan: Seiken Densetsu 2 (yes, SoM is a sequel to FFA) Japan: Seiken Densetsu 3, USA: Not released, buty ou can get a translated version off the net. USA: Legend of Mana Japan: Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana. Seiken Densetsu means, essentially "Legend of the Holy Sword" by the way, as a reference to the Mana Sword. Final Fantasy Legend 1, 2, and 3, in the USA were originally "SaGa", which made it's way to the PSX in SaGa Frontier. FF Tactics is called FF Tactics in both Japan and North America. As for FF Movie, it's not really an FF movie - it's not really Final Fantasy in any sense, they're just using the name a bit more freely. But it will probably still really really kick ass, anyway. It's worth 7 bucks just to see the effects of 3D realism on a crowd.
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Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[webrunner]

Okay, let's try this again. Hopefully it'll actually work this time.

It's a bit complicated, but here's a little chart:
Japan: Final Fantasy USA: Final Fantasy.
Japan: Final Fantasy II USA: Never released.
Japan: Final Fantasy III USA: Never released.
Japan: Final Fantasy IV USA: Never released.
Japan: Final Fantasy IV Easytype USA: Final Fantasy II
Japan: Final Fantasy V USA: Final Fantasy V (HORRIBLY TRANSLATED) in FF Anthology
Japan: Final Fantasy VI USA: Final Fantasy III, and VI in FF Anthology
Japan: Final Fantasy VII USA: Final Fantasy VII
and the rest are the same.

Also, here are some other "FF" titles that are interesting.
USA: FInal Fantasy Mystic Quest Japan: Final Fantasy USA. (This is much like Mario Bros 2)
USA: Final Fantasy Adventure Japan: Seiken Densetsu
USA: Secret of Mana Japan: Seiken Densetsu 2 (yes, SoM is a sequel to FFA)
Japan: Seiken Densetsu 3, USA: Not released, buty ou can get a translated version off the net.
USA: Legend of Mana Japan: Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana.

Seiken Densetsu means, essentially "Legend of the Holy Sword" by the way, as a reference to the Mana Sword.

Final Fantasy Legend 1, 2, and 3, in the USA were originally "SaGa", which made it's way to the PSX in SaGa Frontier.

FF Tactics is called FF Tactics in both Japan and North America.

As for FF Movie, it's not really an FF movie - it's not really Final Fantasy in any sense, they're just using the name a bit more freely. But it will probably still really really kick ass, anyway. It's worth 7 bucks just to see the effects of 3D realism on a crowd.
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Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[webrunner]

I was going to mention the Wonderswan but I haven't heard anything concrete one way or another about an american release. And these are more remixes then re-releases- they'll have SNES-calibre graphics on NES games, much like Super Mario All Stars.
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Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[Moghedien]

>But Final Fantasy I-VI were never released in Europe.

well.. hm. you're right. but at least there were import versions available...

Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[Temporal]

I was about to note that all the "never released" games are available via emulation with full english translations done by hackers, but then I realized who you are, and that you obviously already know all this. :) I love your comic! It's one of the six that I read daily.

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Re:it's gonna be wonderful!

[Kreeblah]

Actually, the Famicom (Family Computer, Japanese NES) was a 10-bit system. For some reason (I dunno why), it was reduced to an 8-bit system when it was released in the US.

IF it ever comes out...

[Godai]

Last thing I heard about this movie was that it was 2 years late and a few million over budget. Sure, the scenes look nice, but it seems it's taking them 6 months to do that single, break-taking scene. Uh, that is not good. Another thing: I like - rather, used to like - the Final Fantasy series quite a bit, but as much I think Square's got some killer CG artists, I can't see this flick doing all that well in North America. There are really only two audiences for this movie: fans of CG (geeks) and FF fans. Are there enough fans betwen the two groups to make Square back its investment? I'm not sure...
Wood Shavings!

Re:IF it ever comes out...

[startled]

Each installment of the series sells millions of copies in Japan and the U.S.. Those people who spend $50 on a game are going to spend the $10 on a movie (yay, SoCal movie prices), and they're going to take their friends. It's gotta be a much bigger audience than for Highlander, which spawned 4 movies.

The rest of the audience, of course, will be the same millions of people who see animated movies all the time. They don't have to link the promotion to the game at all-- and if they're smart, they probably won't. Pitch it as a good movie, and people will see it.

Re:IF it ever comes out...

[moonsammy]

Erm, actually it isn't late... I had a relative who had been working on it for a while, and it had been slated for a 2001 release since the first time I heard about it, which I believe was in 1997.

And so what if its a "few million" over budget? How many movies *don't* go over budget, and on a big-name release like this, whats another 2 or 3 million? Not a whole lot really. I have no doubt AT ALL that this movie will earn back the money put into it, with a huge amount of profit.

Re:IF it ever comes out...

[Eeeeegon]

> I can't see this flick doing all that well in North America.

It all depends on their target audience. As long as they market this movie well, it could be nothing short of a blockbuster (aka X-Men, Phantom Menace, The Matrix). All it takes is smart marketing.

And besides; kids will see it because it's a cartoon, college guys will see it because it's .. well ... Final Fantasy, and 'grown-ups' will go for the incredible animations that Sqaure is famous for.

At least, that's what the Marketing director will try to do; make people want to see it. I hope this movie does well; FF has had some excellent plots (ever since Nintendo's FF1 :) ), and I'd love to see them on the big screen.

-Egon

Will it live up to the games?

[dmatos]

I hope they concentrate as much on the plot as they do in the RPG's. Sure, I play them for the graphics as well, but the main point to an RPG is to lose yourself in the ever-twisting plots and sub-plots. If this is used just as an excuse to show off their CG talents, it will be a visually stunning movie, with little to no entertainment value.

Re:Will it live up to the games?

[Junks Jerzey]

I hope they concentrate as much on the plot as they do in the RPG's. Sure, I play them for the graphics as well, but the main point to an RPG is to lose yourself in the ever-twisting plots and sub-plots

No offense intended, but the plots in Square games are what you expect from an angst-ridden high school girl. They're so overwrought, so pointedly attempting to be all-encompassing and full of meaning, that they can only be taken seriously by people who haven't done much reading. And then actual gameplay involves pigtailed schoolgirls fighting wiggling, oversized cartoon frogs and foodstuffs, following the all the usual video game cliches (big dumb boss monster every so often, etc.).

Realistically, the Square's plots don't hold much water if you look at them outside the scope of video games.

Re:Will it live up to the games?

[Grahf666]

I feel compelled to respond, becuase you obviously haven't any Square games other than the Final Fantasies. I'll grant you that the plots are sometimes a bit cookie-cuttered (Final Fantasy 7's extensive backstory is an exception), but what about Square's other main development team, the Chrono/Xenogears people? Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears are all incredible games with very deep and philosophical plots. And for your standard medieval politcal drama, try Final Fantasy Tactics or Vagrant Story.

You should think before you make broad assumptions.

Re:Will it live up to the games?

[Junks Jerzey]

I feel compelled to respond, becuase you obviously haven't any Square games other than the Final Fantasies. I'll grant you that the plots are sometimes a bit cookie-cuttered (Final Fantasy 7's extensive backstory is an exception), but what about Square's other main development team, the Chrono/Xenogears people? Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears are all incredible games with very deep and philosophical plots.

You should think before you make broad assumptions.

I was talking about other Square games, especially Chrono Cross. That game is like a junior high philosophy dicussion gone bad.

Can't wait!

[MikeFM]

Waiting for this movie is right up there on my list w/ the new Star Wars and Matrix movies. 2001 may be a great year for movies much like 1999 was. 2000 has mostly sucked. :)

Re:Can't wait!

[webrunner]

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie is currently set ofr either 2001 or 2002, isn't it?
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Re:Can't wait!

[Kriticism]

Don't forget about Lord of the Rings.

-Kriticism

Re:Can't wait!

[skoda]

This is also now up on my must-see list; I stopped the trailer 5 seconds into it when I realized I didn't want any part of the movie spoiled.

Sadly, I doubt I will bother with the next Star Wars (sigh). Having spent my formative years playing star wars, I'm disappointed with the TPM, and I am not expecting any improvement with the next. Hopefully I am wrong, and we'll get another Empire Strikes Back.

What I want to see is the next X-Men movie (I've been ready since the credits began rolling on the first one :)
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D. Fischer

Re:Can't wait!

[iamblades]

Yeah, I am looking forward to the LotR movies almost as much as the new star wars movies... and this overbudgeted movies fits into the #3 slot...

This is news, alright.

[webrunner]

Yep, this has never been featured on /. before.

Never mind the fact that the 'new trailer' has been up for months.

Really guys, for all the flack we're giving the Patent Office for not checking into 'prior art', I think the /. crew should be checking prior art itself. This isn't meant to be a troll, or flamebait, but I for one am concerned at the frequency of old or repeated news on /. recently. It's crazy.
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Re:This is news, alright.

[myc]

oh c'mon it's not so bad. Not everyone reads /. every day. I don't mind the repetition that much if only because I may have missed something interesting in the past.

Re:This is news, alright.

[Steveftoth]

Hear hear!

Re:This is news, alright.

[2can]

Hey, its news to me!

Re:HEMOS

[IniBlitz]

HahAaha! Mod this up.

Can't wait, but...

[Zone5]

While I'm eager to see this movie, and I'm sure many other geeks are as well (be they anime geeks or FF geeks), I'm not sure how the general North American movie-going public will accept it. Let's face it, whenever a movie like Forrest Gump wins Best Picture while Fight Club is almost univerally hated, you have to question the average person's taste and capacity to enjoy something different. Square has always done a great job with warped plots, which should make this movie different enough to trouble the average nimrod who laid out $10 to see a pretty animated film expecting another Toy Story.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Masem]

Americans think animation is for kids. And because the FF film will be animated, it will be regelated to a kids movie, but probably, knowing the FF series, a PG rating, which means NO ONE besides diehard nerds will probably see it. Only a few times has an animated movie (traditional or CG) ever made everyone sit up and take notice; Chicken Run, Toy Story and sequel, and some early 90s Disney are some examples. The fact that Oscars will finally give animated movies their own catagory next year is doublefaced; there must be at least 8 animated works to have this award given; typical year only sees 5 or so.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Borg#9]

What kind of crack are you smoking?! Fight club was the lamest movie I have seen since Eyes Wide Shut and Bring Out the Dead. I was so upset that I wasted my time watching them (and I didn't watch them in their entirety, either)!

Re:Can't wait, but...

[skoda]

I agree that most adults consider animated films 'kids' movies, but with that, the movies you mention are about the only ones capable of making people 'sit up and take notice'.

Don't get me wrong, I love animated films, and have seen most of the US released animated films. But until the recent films from Dreamworks, most of the non-Disney animation has been mediocre at best.

But now, with Chicken Run, Prince of Egypt, TS1, TS2, and the wonderful Veggie Tales, "adults" are seeing more high quality 'cartoons' causing them to pay more attention to this genre of film.
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D. Fischer

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Sloppy]

Americans think animation is for kids

I dunno... who do you think watches The Simpsons, Futurama, King of the Hill, and Family Guy?

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Re:Can't wait, but...

[Masem]

Teenagers.

And if you pay attention, that's the demographic they are going for.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Masem]

I can name several animated films of late that have been 'looked over' by adults and only got mediocere outcomes in the box office.

"The Iron Giant". See this ASAP. It flopped at the box office due to poor advertizing by the WB, but if it was advertized as well as it was made, it could have been an Oscar contender. It was *not* a kids movie ("Duck and Cover" is mentioned), but instead, better seen as a "animated sci-fi movie", even though the main character is a kid. But the WB advertized it that way, and it came off boy-centric, and basically flopped. But most animation buffs agree that is was better than any animated work this decade.

"Balto" (hi matt!) had a few hokey parts, but for most matters, it was a good general (non-kids-only) movie with good effects and good story. Again, poorly advertized to audiences.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Reality Master 101]

What's wrong with Forrest Gump? If you thought that was a bad movie, then you basically didn't get it.

Or is it just popular movies that you dislike?

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Re:Can't wait, but...

[lZelus]

After watching the trailer, I dought most of the general american public will realise it's animated. The graphics are AMAZING

Re:Can't wait, but...

[drinkypoo]

What kind of crack are you smoking?! Fight club was the lamest movie I have seen since Eyes Wide Shut and Bring Out the Dead.

The vast majority of people I know who saw Fight Club thought it was one of the best movies they'd ever seen.

I'm not saying you're wrong; It's just your opinion. But given that I know a lot of people who've seen it, from various "walks of life" (woo-hoo-hoo,) I'd say there's a good argument for it being a good film.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[GeorgeH]

"Boy, the Sixth Sense was horrible. Bruce Willis' wife wouldn't forgive him, that pissed me off so much I left the theater."
"What was the big deal with the dude from the Crying Game? I was so bored that I left early."
"The Planet of the Apes was dumb because it took place on a planet so far away. It was so irrelevant I left before it ended."
"I hated how the empire won at the end of Star Wars, or at least I assume they won. I was so upset that I left before the end."
--

Re:Can't wait, but...

[SpryGuy]

Eyes Wide Shut truely was a horrible boring waste of film.

But I loved Fight Club, and thought it was a great movie. I saw it in the same month as seeing Three Kings and American Beauty... and pretty much pronounced that month as the single best month in movie history. Three amazingly good flicks all out at once. Most people I know also agree that these three movies were all great. Top notch. Excellent.

- Spryguy

Re:Can't wait, but...

[lunatik17]

But most animation buffs agree that is was better than any animated work this decade.

Hmm... you're using just American animated movies as a criteria, right? I dare you to watch the Rurouni Kenshin OVA series and then tell me "The Iron Giant" was even a top five contender :) (The second part to this will be released in November) This is the best storyline I have seen in an animated movie ever (well, it's not exactly a movie but it's not a tv show either... it's sorta inbetween). It's certainly not for kids, though--this much will be apparent two minutes into the first part :) I don't think we take animation serious enough to do it right.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Jonathan]

I think Bruce Sterling put it best: "Forrest Gump is like Stalinist propaganda: it suggests that the ideal citizen should be obedient and stupid". I want characters that question society, not just drift through it aimlessly.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Masem]

Anime kicks most American animation, but as the box office shows, when it comes to feature films, audience will only go to American animation (given the failings of Princess Monokoke and the general distaste for Pokemon and the candy-coated anime). Anime has almost always been beyond kids, almost to the point of being NC-17 (or worse!), and while I appricate it, I don't think that even enlighted Americans would appriciate it.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[lunatik17]

There are several good reasons for this:

• Nobody seems to want to watch a subtitled film, even though they are a hundered times more watcheable than a dubbed one.
• In order to dub a show into english, one would have to hire english voice actors.
• Voice acting is the bottom of the pool in America. The only stable job for voice actors is cartoons.
• Thanks to Disney, nobody here even accepts the concept of animation for adults. Not for a moment.

Anime has almost always been beyond kids, almost to the point of being NC-17 (or worse!)

In my specific example, Rurouni Kenshin is "not for kids" for a variety of reasons, but sex is not one of them. RK is a very deep show; it deals with situations that any kid's show wouldn't dare touch. Most of this would go completely over a child's head. Secondly, the OVA is extrememly violent, although the violence in in no way inappropriate. It's violent in the same way Saving Private Ryan in violent. It takes place during a revolutionary war in 1860s Japan that lead to the overthrow of the Tokugawa dynasty, and the main character is the head assassin for the group of patriots called the Ishinshishi. But that is the other great thing about RK; instead of glorifying violence, it is instead used to show why violence is bad. (I wasn't just kidding earlier, if you really do appreciate good animation I urge you to check this show out. It's worth your time!)

I guess my point is, screw American animation. There are some noteable examples (hopefully FF will be one of them--I don't care if pop culture likes it, I'll see it anyway :), but I think it is obvious that we cannot make good animated movies, or television shows for that matter. When the Japanese kicked our asses in making cars, and then electronics, we didn't just ignore them and go on buying crappy cars and bad electronic components! I don't think it's a prepreference for American animation, I think it's just a general apathy towards animation in general. You can blame Disney for that.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[__aatnwq2381]

The general North American movie-going public is going to eat up this thing like PEZ (that is, assuming they like pez). Your reservations are unwarranted; this thing is going to be huge. It is going to be MASSIVE. This will be (Toy Story + Matrix)2, and then some. As long as it is released far enough away from Episode 2 and Fellowship of the Ring, it'll be the defining movie of a new genre.

I know as little about this movie as the next guy, but I do know Square's track record. They make quality products and make quality money.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Zan Thrax]

I wasn't overly impressed with 3 kings. Not only did I not like the "heroes" (the only reason they bothered to help is because they felt kind of guilty ignoring them while they -stole the gold-), I felt like the producer (director?) didn't know what sort of movie this was supposed to be. It seems to be a bad war movie parody that occassionaly drifts toward trying to be a serious commentary - which it does very badly, melodramtically pounding the viewer over the head with the insanely fucking obvious. Sadaam & his army are evil. Sadaam's a madman that his men are terrified of. Bush only started the war for PR and secure oil. Bush calling for the Iraqi people to rise up, making himself look heroic and determined. CNN reporters being concerned only with career advancement and awards. None of this stuff should have been anything remotely new to any viewer who ever bothered to think about anything during the gulf 'war'. American Beauty at least had good directing and acting. (I don't care what his pay implies, Clooney can't act. Wahlburg's not a lot better) Not exactly controversial subject matter though, unless your a member of the christian coalition. The neighbor kid was rather original, but the other character's certainly weren't, and they don't deviate at all from what many people believe to be typical american suburbanites. The movie basically amounted to getting the audience to hate the wife. (I don't know how well it worked for women, but all the males I know really, really hated her. so did I, but I also felt like I was being led) The neighbor kid was creative, and the nazi plate thing was rather creepy, but for the most part it was a very well made piece of art reflecting exactly what the audience already believes. Fight Club had some of that too, with the anti-capitalist/consumerist messages, but that wasn't what the movie was about. (although I agree with those messages myself) It was about society and expectations of how others will act. We do not expect to have someone provoke a fight with us in the street, the police commishinor does not expect to be assaulted and threatened with castration, the boss does not expect to have an employee beat the shit out of himself. Such actions are so completely counter to how we expect things to happen that we cannot form a response to them. Many people in our society behave as little more than automatons, generating appropriate responses to a given set of inputs. (Think about the Seinfeld discussions of what's the appropriate response to actions that are _slightly_ outside normal paramaters) One guy goes insane, starts a cult that goes out of its way to do totally non-standard things, and winds up just replacing one set of inputs and responses with another set that are, if anything, even more inflexible.

Re:Can't wait, but...

[Zone5]

I really hope you're right. I agree it should have almost limitless potential, and I'd love for it to kickstart some serious appreciation of modern animation for adults. I'll see it and all my friends will - I just hope lots of other folks do as well.

Finally, a CG movie that appeals to people 12...

[Swift Kick]

Sorry, folks... but regardless of the technical merits of the Toy Story series, they were just a bit corny. Same with Ants.
I've been a fan of the Final Fantasy series for some time, and the last few releases for the PSX (VII, VIII, FF Tactics) had some amazing CG scenes... Finally, here's a movie that seems pretty appealing to adults and kids alike, yet light-years ahead of movies like Titan AE and Dinosaurs... sweet. I can barely wait for it to come out.

Sorry, subject should read "older than 12..."

[Swift Kick]

damn the boss walking on me during preview post...*sigh*

Anyone else doing something on this level?

[GMOL]

I have been waiting a long time for this
(but as a news story, this a little outdated no?)

I thought now that Square has shown a project like this is possible, there would be many that would jump on the bandwagon, but it doesn't seem to be the case...

Are companies taking a 'wait-and-see' approach, or are other making total CG non-cartooinsh 3d movies?

Final.ee

[kwashiorkor]

It's about time that they decide to just make a movie. It's practically what their "games" are anyways, except their games have endless waves of non-sensical button mashing "fight" sequences. Fun for the whole family!

Their tech for the movie looks really nice.

Except in the typical wacky fashion of Square's marketing campaigns, they talk about how well they render the clothing on the models in the "character" section, and don't mention a thing about the characters. I mean, who cares what the movie is about when there's redering deformations to talk about.

-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with

Re:Final.ee

[rabababoa]

Ittl be good.. Honestly Have you ever been dissapointed with the plot in any FF game? I havent, and ive played them all (even the imports yay!)

Re:Final.ee

[kwashiorkor]

No, I've never been disappointed with the plots in the FF "games". I simply can't call them games anymore because they "game" portion has all but been eliminated.

I'm sure that the movie will be good, and I'm really happy that they are simply making a movie and letting me get to the good parts without having to sit on my butt for 60 hours in front of the tube performing advanced calculations on ever increasing hordes of hitpoints.

-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with

Re:Final.ee

[webrunner]

Fortunately, Squaresoft isn't entirely in the 'movie business' for games. Other titles like FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Chrono Cross are much more interactive. In fact, Chrono Cross takes 'old school' a step further and even has a SNES/NES style 'gather elemental quest items' section.

Sure, FF8 is as interactive as a petrified tree, but FF9 at least looks to reverse that a bit, and Square does have a lot of other games.

Remember, it's SquareSoft, not FinalFantasySoft. "RedHat is not Linux" "Final Fantasy is not Squaresoft"

----

I'd like to know more about their Iron

[Sawbones]

In reading the bits and scraps I've found about the movie for the past year or so I've only ever managed to find two interesting tidbits.

1) The rendering horsepower was/is supplied by something like 2 full floors of sgi onyx boxes. That even with that it was limited to something like a second of film rendering per day and that they anticipated technological advances to be able to render the entire film in time.

2) Square developed a few new algorithms to help with animation. Namely one for hair blowing in the wind (sort of interesting) and the way cloth folds and bends as a "actor" moves (very interesting).

Anyone else with unsubstantiated rumor/facts? :) Or better yet, a more indepth site for details? :)

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[illumin8]

In the credits for "A Bugs Life" I noticed that Pixar uses Sun Microsystems for rendering the final theatre quality version, however they use SGI workstations. I would imagine that Squaresoft has a similar setup. Pixar probably has several fully loaded Sun Enterprise 10000 machines that do their rendering. Imagine how quickly they could render using the new UltraSparc III processors...

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[neuneu]

Offtopic, but id Software is selling on eBay the powerful SGI Origin 2000 system that they used to process all of the map data for Quake II and Quake III Arena.

• eBay action for SGI Origin 2000
• more pictures from id Software

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[hkon]

In the credits for "A Bugs Life" I noticed that Pixar uses Sun Microsystems for rendering the final theatre quality version, however they use SGI workstations. I would imagine that Squaresoft has a similar setup. Pixar probably has several fully loaded Sun Enterprise 10000 machines that do their rendering.

You would think so, but I guess they got a better deal on E4000 servers, as they used 100 of them for A Bug's Life. See http://www.sun .co m/smi/Press/sunflash/9812/sunflash.981215.2.html for more info.
Since then, they've got a new one, tho. 120 Enterprise 4500s, which are $223,000 EACH.... http://www. sun .com/smi/Press/sunflash/1999-08/sunflash.990810.2. html

Someone mentioned that he thought the Final Fantasy people used Onyxes, but that'd really surprise me, since the Onyxes usually are used for realtime graphics things, and not rendering. It would seem kinda pointless to put a really high-end graphics system in a box that's gonna do cpu-intensive things only. Unless, of course these boxes can use some of their graphics hardware for rendering nonrealtime stuff as well. You'd probably want to have one Onyx to see quick previews without having to push it through your rendering farm, but that won't be production-level quality.
--

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[Sawbones]

You're right, my bad. They didn't use Onyxes, they used Octanes. I can't find the original site I got that info off of, but here is a paragraph from www.thegia.com:

In development at Square Honolulu, dozens of the world's top graphic artists are slaving away on SGI's hottest machines, rendering what may very well be the future of entertainment. Square, in fact, is the world's largest consumer of SGI machines, outclassing even effects shop Industrial Light and Magic. Over a year was spent in research and development before work on the film itself began. Entire floors are filled with artists -- each with the greatest rendering weapon known to man, a Silicon Graphics Octane. Even so, rendering is proceeding at the horrendously slow rate of only a few seconds a day. The end result, however, should be well worth it.

The second-a-day part was right though :)

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[tolldog]

"each with the greatest rendering weapon known to man, a Silicon Graphics Octane."

HAHAHA. Hardly. The Octane is good for hardware renders and animating on, but not for render boxes. I use both Octanes and VALinux boxes. Give me the Linux boxes any day. The price/performance runs circles arround the Octanes.

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[KFury]

2) Square developed a few new algorithms to help with animation. Namely one for hair blowing in the wind (sort of interesting) and the way cloth folds and bends as a "actor" moves (very interesting).

Knowing today's IP climate, they've patented the algorithms...

Kevin Fox

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[hkon]

I can't find the original site I got that info off of, but here is a paragraph from www.thegia.com:

Tried to find this, but couldn't. How hard is it to implement a search engine on your own site? Not very, I think.


Entire floors are filled with artists -- each with the greatest rendering weapon known to man, a Silicon Graphics Octane.

Apparently, not everyone knows the distinction between modelling and rendering. At least, that's how I interpret it. Since each artist has his/her own machine, this is about the workstation that the individual artist uses to make the models on. The actual rendering (that is, making the images from the models with all effects added) is probably done on Sun or Linux boxes situated elsewhere. As described earlier with the Onyxes, the Octanes aren't very good for actual rendering, but they're excellent for modelling, since they have 3D cards that blows pretty much everythings else out of the way. Not very good for beowulf clusters, tho...
--

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[Temporal]

I heard that SquareSoft owns one third of all SGI boxes in the world. Or maybe it's just one third of all SGI Onyx boxes. I'm not sure.

------

Re:I'd like to know more about their Iron

[CaseyB]

Square developed a few new algorithms to help with animation. Namely one for hair blowing in the wind (sort of interesting)

This is not surprising. If it's a typical Japanese animated film, this effect will be used in every shot. :)

Forget the movie...

[Hurricane_Bill]

This website should win an award!! I'd love to see internet applications that have such creative design!!

Re:Forget the movie...

[russcoon]

creative or slick?

I'm not sure I see what part is creative...and I do this kind of stuff for a living...

Don't get me wrong, I love the site. The props section is espically slick, and the sounds are top notch for a flash animation.

But what part represents new thought in interface design? And what part would be particularly usefull in the design of internet apps?

I don't mean to flame, I'm just curious. I probably just missed something...

-----------------------
Widgets for the web
(or something like that)

Re:Forget the movie...

[drinkypoo]

But what part represents new thought in interface design? And what part would be particularly usefull in the design of internet apps?

I don't mean to flame, I'm just curious. I probably just missed something...

You didn't miss anything. It's a clean, well-thought out execution of a traditional design philosophy.

The only thing I hadn't seen before (though it's almost certainly been done) was in the "Props" section. On the non-flash site, it's blurred and tweaked. On the flash site, you drag the mouse around to move a spotlight. Either way, you don't get to take screenshots or save images (non-trivially) so that you can re-use their art. Very clever.

actors on strike? who needs actors?

[MenTaLguY]

...hollywood will have to actually finish their beef with the Screen Actors Guild to atleast get *something* into their commercials.

Either that, or we're going to start seeing a lot of CG spokespersons in commercials from here on in...

Re:Urgh

[Tower]

Huh? It looks like it is all from the submission. The quotes line up. Hemos actually *didn't comment* (a first, I know). That's all...

--

Re:QuickTime Rant

[moonsammy]

Actually, the Quicktime server software *is* free. Also, in going with Quicktime, you can get in on the Akamai action... anyone with a good connection probably notices how insanely fast a quicktime movie transfers even after its been slashdotted. Granted, it really would be nice if a truly open, cross-platform format became *the* standard for online video, but it just isn't the case yet. MPEG-2 is nice, but I believe it tends to be a larger file size in general (please correct me if I'm mistaken on this).

The best thing about CGI.

[Julius X]

I've seen the trailer for this, and I have to admit it looks beautiful. Even though, part of me is itching to say that it still doesn't look completely real.

The fact is that CGI movies shouldn't look real. There is a certain magic that CGI can create in a film that makes it look...perhaps more than real... CGI can allow things to look real enough, but then allow us to go beyond what is actually possible, and then take us there.

That is what I'm looking forward to about Final Fantasy. A movie that doesnt even pretend to be a cartoon, and a film that will take us past where reality has ever gone.

-Julius X

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[cvd6262]

People say the same thing about digital movies. They look too real.

We are used to seeing light projected through cells onto screens. Some say that film simulates the way the eye dissects images, so it looks better than digital.... Bunk.

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[talesout]

That sounds like the same thing I hear among audiophiles. "Digital recording doesn't give you good 'compression dynamics'".

What they are really saying is that Digital recording doesn't change your sound as it's laid down. Non-digital will 'compress' sound as you hit the high end of the audio spectrum and make it sound 'flatter'. Personally, I've always felt you should go for the sound you want and hope the recording device can pick up exactly that sound. Don't rely on the recording device to compensate for something.

Same principle to digital video. Use it and make your statements through the acting, expressions, and other elements of the film. Don't worry about looking or sounding 'too real'.

Technophobes piss me off!

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Phong]

I always find it mildly amusing when people say that CGI doesn't "look real". I usually counter with the question, "so, you thought Yoda looked real, did you?" :-)

I think part of the problem is that many people expect CGI to look flawless, while they don't hold other things (such as puppetry or stop-motion) to such a high standard.

Another part of the problem is that our brain does a really good job of subconsciously picking up on minute details that just don't look quite right, and this can distract us in a way that looking at a puppet or a model doesn't.

Finally, there are many things that people are used to seeing that we think of as looking "real" when they aren't. For instance, we movie-goers are used to seeing bullet hits done with squibs (that generate a hole that looks totally wrong), but when someone decided to do it in a more reality-based way, people complained that the wounds "didn't look real". This same sort of a thing applies to outerspace scenes. We're so used to seeing scenes here in our atmosphere (or done with models) that scenes that may be rendered truer to what you'd actually see in outerspace don't "look real" to our minds.

..wayne..

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Apotsy]

It's not "bunk". Film caputres light on a logarithmic (it takes four times as much light get twice the recorded brightness) scale, which is similar to the way the retina sees light. Video cameras, on the other hand, see light on a linear scale (twice as much light gives twice as much recorded brightness). That's what gives video its tell-tale look. Film really is closer to the way we see.

I've never actually heard anyone say video looks "too real". I've just heard proponents of digital video claim they've heard people say that. I've yet to actually meet someone who said it first-hand.

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Another MacHack]

As long as there is sufficient dynamic range in the linear quantization, it doesn't matter that it's linear; it's just a less efficient as a perceptual coding method.

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Apotsy]

I am not talking about the way the image is stored, I am talking about the way it is captured!

I mean that in order to get twice as much signal strength out of the light-sensing elements -- before it is quantized -- it needs to be a logarithmic scale.

With film or other photo-chemical light sensors (such as the human eye), in order to get twice as much chemical exposure, you need four times as much light.

With CCDs or other photo-electric light sensors (such as older, tube-style video cameras), in order to get twice as much signal strength, you only need two times as much light.

THAT is the reason why film and video look so different. It's because their brightness response curves are so completely different. And film, not video, is a closer match for how the human eye responds to light.

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[SpryGuy]

Well... puppet Jabba sure looked BETTER (and more 'real' because he looked *there*!) than the CGI Jabba in the special edition of the first Star Wars movie...

And frequently CGI doesn't look 'real' enough because it's too perfect/lean/new. It takes a lot of effort to go back and put scuffs on floors and doors, bump up the corners and edges of tables and chairs, etc. It's a lot of sophisticated modeling to make things look REAL, as in having all the signs of wear-and-tear of real items in the real world.

- Spryguy

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[smileyy]

You mean you didn't ask them:

Looked real, you thought yoda did?

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Another MacHack]

In that case, then all that's needed is to have the output intensity of the projection device be a non-linear function of the stored intensity values--a gamma curve.

Re:The best thing about CGI.

[Apotsy]

That would not help. Current analog video standards like NTSC have some gamma correction already. And still, things recorded with film and video look different. Think about the way the evening news or things recorded with a home video camera look compared to things recorded on film (like movies or large-budget prime-time shows). The differences you see are due to the logarithmic vs. linear scale. The way video systems are currently designed, they clip values to maximum brightness at much lower intensities than film, effectively throwing away data at the top end of the brightness scale. There is no way to recover that data after the fact.

You could, theoretically, build a video camera with a very large linear range and then post-process the data to simulate being captured on a logarithmic-response sensor, but so far, no one has built a device like that. It wouldn't be too hard, though. It could even be done in-camera. Have the CCD sensor output data in a 32-bit-per-color-component linear scale, and then before recording it to tape, have a DSP or other chip convert that data into a 10-bit-per-component logarithmic scale. There are even existing file formats, such as Kodak's "Cineon", that would do nicely. A system like that, if it also had comparable resolution to film, say 4000x3000 pixels (see this resolution chart for more info about film resolution) might actually serve as a replacement for film.

The thing is, nobody's even talking about those things I just mentioned! Some people are actually ready to settle for plain-old HDTV, which is nowhere near as good as film, both in terms of brightness range and resolution.

Speaking of resolution, let's talk about that for a second. As I mentioned earlier, 35mm film has scannable info on it all the way up to about 4000x3000. On the other hand HDTV, which is what Lucas is using to shoot the next Star Wars movie, is only 1920x1080. Worse yet, those Texas Instruments DLP projectors that have been put into some theaters have so far been limited to 1280x1024 resolution. That's pathetic! Imagine if they installed one of those in the Mann's Chinese theater in L.A. -- one pixel on a screen that size would be as big as my head! Yet some people are so enamored with the word "digital" that they have been running around proclaiming that digital cinema has "arrived"! Ugh.

Re:Urgh

[barcode123]

The information is there, and do the italics really obscure the content that much for you? Sheesh!

Re:HEMOS

[Tower]

Yup, and a couple of them don't even make any sense... like this one, where there doesn't seem to be anything wrong, or the other U PUNCTUATIN' U CAPITILIZIN' crap...

He (the <=12 yr old doing this) could at least be relevant. OOG_THE_CAVEMAN was actually funny... this is crap.
[please do not feed the trolls] (shoot! too late!)
--

will Cinepak AVI work for you?

[Sawbones]

If so you can grab it from my University site:
Here It's a ziped AVI file using the Cinepak codec. Yes I know DivX ;-) would have been much better, but I don't have the option available right yet :)

As for hating the embedded quicktime movies (I know the pain) - for $29 you can buy quicktime pro and make use of the little dropdown button that says "Save source as...". Greatest feature of it :)

Re:will Cinepak AVI work for you?

[karnal]

there's also an option in qt4 "shareware" that lets you kind of save files:

open up quicktime, click "Later" to the nag, click on "Edit - Preferences - General..."

At the top, you should see a drop-box -- choose "browser plug-in", and here you can check to "save movies in disk cache".

yes, it is a work-around, but all you have to do from here is just search for that file (or file size) in your browser's cache file locales...

hope this helps...

Re:will Cinepak AVI work for you?

[tdunn]

As for hating the embedded quicktime movies...

You can just save the source and grep for the *.mov HREF, then point your browser at it instead. I'd post the link, but the "Lameness filter" kicks in because akamai.net seems to like pseudo-random paths to their data nuggets.

Re:waiting

[Tower]

You could never properly capture Sean Connery in CG.... Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton, yeah - I'll give you that, but not Sean.

--

Kick Ass!!!

[imadoofus]

It looks to me like this movie could live up to the hype that something like episode 1 generated. I will definitly be in line for this one!

Re:Oh ... my ... god...

[webrunner]

Final Fantasy: The Movie never confessed to trying to be a game, you know. And it's not japanimation, it's being developped in CG in Hawaii, which is in the United States.
----

Re:QuickTime Rant

[johnathan]

All right. QuickTime is not the movie player application, it is a set of libraries and an API. The player is just another application that calls them (and happens to be distributed with them). With the API, any programmer could create a Windows movie player app with standard widgets. Several such 3rd-party players exist on the Macintosh. So why don't you write one, or commission one. Or you could cry about it.

--

Re:HEMOS

[ChopChopMasterOnion]

maybe you didn't see that hemos italicized the whole frickin page.

More FFM Pictures

[dew]

There's one at Ming-Na's website (she's one of the lead vocalists) not on the main site (picture), another from Animation Artist herepage for the movie).

The dmoz category for the movie is here with a fair number of links to sites about the movie (like the GIA).

David E. Weekly

Re:QuickTime Rant

[LMariachi]

You're not really stuck with the horrid QuickTime Player that comes with QT4. You can use the Movieplayer application from QT3 and get an interface so clean it makes Media Player 6 look like RealPlayer. As a matter of fact, any application can utilize QuickTime and make it look any way it wants.

Re:HEMOS

[Tower]

Nope, never saw that... maybe he fixed it...
--

Do you like anime?

[Mantle]

Even if you don't, a lot of the people that read /. do. (Enough to warrant an anime news topic) Why not view this as an anime film based in the Final Fantasy universe rather than "the next entertainment transition" from the game? That's what I'm expecting of it. A good story with gorgeous visuals.

Other places to get the trailers

[Hadean]

In case you haven't seen any yet (and you can't get on the site), you can get them here and here.

(hmm.. the trailer is months old... how's that new?)

Re:QuickTime Rant

[webrunner]

I've always wondered what the quicktime facination was. Maybe it's the Macintosh angle (this is the movie industry, after all), or the 'user friendlyness' of it. Maybe filesize? But really, quicktime is a lot slower than others. Plus, it doesn't /ask/ to change file associations and things- I have a SB Live, I don't want Quicktime software midi synthesis. And I have the 'free version' - I don't need to be reminded of "Pro" since I don't do anything that pro would want. I ended up pirating Pro just to get rid of the annoying nag screen that this supposed 'free' software has.

----

Re:waiting

[fenix down]

Indeed. No computer can say "Mosht things in here don't react too well with bulletsh." like he can.
Bell Labs doesn't even have a Russian accent option.

Common Lisp used in Final Fantasy

[lispbliss]

just had to point out that Square used Allegro Common Lisp for the movie. The link below has a nice discussion about why they chose Common Lisp and has a picture of the cool photo realistic computer graphics they have in the movie. http://www.fra nz. com/success/customer_apps/animation/squareusa.php3

Re:Common Lisp used in Final Fantasy

[iclysdal]

Is it just me that finds it horribly ironic that the headline of the press release is "Phantom by Square USA Inc. ensures that their new Computer-Generated Film is on time and on budget."?

ian.

Re:HEMOS

[webrunner]

At least it's a video game referene. You don't see that too often.
----

2002

[dmatos]

According to www.upcomingmovies.com
I hope they can get a voice as good as the radio broadcast one for Marvin the Paranoid Android!

Please Please Please

[Milinar]

Don't kill this movie by dubbing the voices horribly.

I wouldn't want to spoil the visuals with ugly subtitles, but the voices in the beginning (james woods and ???) really don't do it justice.

But knowing square, the soundtrack will kick some serious ass.

Re:duuuh

[Hadean]

Uh, check the code...

(req. quicktime)."

It's closed. Normal Slashdot as usual, except for the fact that CmdrTaco didn't write a comment. (which, then, wouldn't be italized).

Real time on a PS2

[SIGFPE]

If you were at SIGGRAPH 2000 you may have seen a shot from this movie running *real time* at HD resolution on a Sony box consisting of 16 PS2's running parallel in one box. It was pretty awesome! The camera was movable by the viewer and the image quality was pretty much the same with wonderful lighting, texturing and hair dynamics.
--

Re:Real time on a PS2

[nitehawk214]

At siggraph the demo wasnt running at full movie theatre resolution (i dont remember what the exact res is, but it blows this wimpy 1600x1200 i run on my monitor away!) Still, that sony box is pretty impressive.

-nite

Re:Real time on a PS2

[spitzak]

The Siggraph demo was at HDTV resolution, but was nowhere near the quality of the actual movie renders. It basically was a high resolution image of high-resolution texture maps but otherwise like a game box. An obvious indication that this was not used to generate the movie is that you could use the joystick to move the camera around while the action played, obviously an unnecessary feature for final renders of the movie.

The box was quite impressive. I was told it was 12 PS2's running in parallel, each doing a video-sized piece of the image. There may have been more PS2's coordinating it.

Re:Real time on a PS2

[Emil Brink]

"The box", which is called the GScube by Sony, contained 16 modified PS2 rendering pipelines, and also 16 PS2 Emotion Engine CPUs. It weighs in at a neat 512 MB of video memory. ;^) Since then, Sony has apparantly decided the box was to weak, and upped it to 64 rendering pipes. Yummy. At SIGGRAPH, it was fed data from an SGI Origin 3x00 server. I've read somewhere that the incoming bandwidth into the GScube is somewhere around 2.1 GB/s. Whoo-hoo.

so what if it doesn't do well

[Johnny00]

I see the point about it not doing well, but most of us /.ers go and see movies that not everyone will see (or understand for that matter).

I think it'd be interesting to see what square does with the technology born out of this production. Would they draft up a dozen white papers and license out the technology (could help recoop for a poor box office turn out) or would they just open-source the whole shbang? I mean, yea, it's highly unlikely that they would, but it be pretty cool to see what a couple geeks with a nice size beowulf cluster could churn out.

They give us a little taste of the tech talk with the character page about how the clothing is done, but I want to see more!

FF Movie = Starcraft?

[DesignMerc]

Looking at the trailer, doesn't it look more appropriate for a Starcraft movie than Final Fantasy? I know the most recent FF iterations (not counting Tactics) have really gotten away from the medieval feel but now it's gone completely sci-fi.

Dammit, I want swords, magic, demons and CG chocobos!

Re:FF Movie = Starcraft?

[drinkypoo]

Looking at the trailer, doesn't it look more appropriate for a Starcraft movie than Final Fantasy? I know the most recent FF iterations (not counting Tactics) have really gotten away from the medieval feel but now it's gone completely sci-fi.

FFVII looked to me like a sort of modern Japan mixed with 1940s Japan, with of course some other cities tossed in (I wonder what Costa Del Sol was based on, if anything.) In other words, a fairly traditional Japanese feel. You can get the same feeling watching Wings of Honnemise, or Laputa.

The cool thing about the FF games (Ever since about FF III) is the mix of magic and technology, Anime-style.

Dammit, I want swords, magic, demons and CG chocobos!

Swish! Boom! Wark!

Re:Oh ... my ... god...

[The Anti-Christ]

How many times do they expect us to buy the same product, redone in as many ways as can be imagined?

Perhaps you'd like to tell the guys at Eidos/Core that when they release the next _Tomb Raider_ game

Haven't they realized that to sell stuff it has to be ORIGINAL?

I have. I hate the fact that the _Star Wars_ series is just a retelling of various 'classical' tales of the great warrior turning to 'the dark side', of the young warrior saving the princess/galaxy/universe/yada yada yada.

Is anyone but me getting tired of playing the same game over and over?

Yeah, screw Quake 1/2/3/..., we already have DOOM. Programmers need to be more ORIGINAL!!!

Wait, now here's the Ultimate Final Fantasy: They have removed ALL interactivity to provide the Ultimate Corny Japanimation Experience. Now you don't have to push any buttons at all, just sit back with your popcorn and watch as completely unrealistic characters do the most irrational things right before your eyes! And somehow it all turns out good in the end! I saw this coming, though. Each game takes more control away from the player. Each game concentrates less on strategy and real RP'ing and more on the ridiculously brain-dead dialog. And here's the climax.

Oh, yes, I do agree that RPGs are becoming more linear in their plotlines, however, considering that it takes massive amounts of processing power and programming to allow players do everything in such games, it'll take a while for CRPGs to match the flexibility of Pen&Paper RPGs, unless you want a horribly drab, seemingly plotless 'RPG' that gives you shitloads of 'nonlinearity' in gameplay (ie The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall).

Re:Bad News

[talesout]

Some moron actually moderated UP a Bob Jones anonymous post as FUNNY?

Jesus Christ! It's the weekend and all, but I think you must have taken the entire day off to get that stoned by Friday night.

More information on Final Fantasy

[Devolver42]

For those of you unfamiliar with Final Fantasy, here are a few resources to get you up to speed.

A great Final Fantasy summary article is available at videogames.com
ffonline.com: the best place to find out details about the console game series
On usenet, the newsgroup alt.games.final-fantasy is useful for getting your FF-related queries answered.

Re:Urgh

[Hadean]

Uh, check the code...

(req. quicktime)."

It's closed. Normal Slashdot as usual, except for the fact that CmdrTaco didn't write a comment. (which, then, wouldn't be italized).

Re:actors on strike? who needs actors?

[skoda]

CGI News Anchors are a reality. Well one is, anyway: Ananova

Neat, but weird.
-----
D. Fischer

Re:Urgh

[Hadean]

Er, duh.. The /I was removed when I posted.. *sigh* Anyway, it's there.

(and yeah, it's Hemos, and not Taco.. *sigh* Long day at work)

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Chemical]

I completely agree. I cannot understand how Quicktime became the standard for Internet video. The software is terribly bloated. The codec is overly proprietary. And you must use Apple's software to view movies, which is only available for Mac and Windows, with apparently no plans for supporting more platforms. The absolute worst part about it is that Nagware viewer. Every time I want to view a QT movie, I gotta see that goddamn nag banner, unless I want to pay to "Upgrade" to QT Pro. The Pro version, by the way, is a total ripoff as it simply adds a few features that Microsoft includes for free in WMP, and it still sucks.

I cannot understand how something as open as the internet has adopted, with wide open arms, something as closed as QT. Maybe one of you could enlighten me because I can't figure it out. Does QT offer better picture quality? Not as far as I can tell. It looks no better than MPEG1. In fact Mpeg movies run significantly smoother on my system. Is the sound quality better? Maybe, but I can't tell. Better compression ratio? Not by a long shot. Divx;) offers nearly DVD quality video, much better video quality than QT, in a much smaller file. RealVideo offers very high compression ratio, and the picture quality is still fairly good. I know RealVideo very proprietary too, but at least their player doesn't constantly nag you to upgrade, supports more than Mac and Windows, and is actually good.

If anyone cares to explain to me how Apple keeps their stronghold over internet video, please feel free. I would really like to know. I pray for the day when webmasters see the errors of their ways and start using Mpeg.

Re:SHUT THE FUCK UP (MOD THIS FUCKER DOWN NOT UP)

[atrowe]

First of all, the URL is http://goatse.cx/ not http://www.goatse.cx.

Second, that link has been dead for over a week. You troll wannabes are always bitching about the moderators never checking THEIR links, so why don't you check your own once in a while.

The trailers have been updated

[PenguiN42]

Never mind the fact that the 'new trailer' has been up for months.

Look down at the bottom of the page:

"ver. 10.2.2000
Trailer A and B updated"

So though it isn't quite a "new" trailer, it is updated.

-------------
The following sentence is true.

Re:The trailers have been updated

[webrunner]

the A and B trailers (mere half second glimses) are updated regularly. However the 'featured trailer' - the REAL theatric-type trailer - has been up for a while.
----

Re:G*%Am$N Quicktime !

[isaac_akira]

Apple would appreciate that if there are more systems available to view content generated by their systems

Cept of course linux is a teeny tiny market. Obviously not having support for linux isn't hurting the use of quicktime, since just about all the videos on major web sites are in quicktime format (as you say you "keep running into stuff [you] can not look at"). These sites would not use it if they were concerned about a significant portion of their users not being able to see it.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[fsck]

Apple has already said, there will NEVER be a linux port of the current sorensen quicktime. Ever. I don't see why people use this format anyway, its much more resource hungry and buggy than anything else out there. Why not plain old mpg, or even that new hacked divx

Re:fuck quicktime (the app, not the codecs)

[pmsyyz]

Shouldn't posting as Plain Old Text convert greater than, less than, and ampersands to their entities?

Re:waiting

[TheCarp]

While true.... Sean Connery doesn't have one either.

I mean, I like the mans work alot. He has been in some great movies, and he is one of the better actors., but be realistic - he does the same accent in every movie - and it sure as hell ain't russian.

-Steve

please mom,

[myspys]

give me the skills to do this kinda' graphics, please?

Re:please mom,

[neuneu]

Forget about skills, little boy. What you need is a rich grandpa who will buy you all sort of hi-tech 3D rendering machines to do the job for you, then get in touch with Hollywood goons, and you will be on a roll.

Re:fuck quicktime (the app, not the codecs)

[Abnornymous Howard]

under windoze:

[START] --> Run... --> regedit --> [CTRL] + [F] --> .png --> [Delete] --> Exit

After that:

find a .png file --> doubleclick it --> Choose app

That's it.. :)

Re:And

[talesout]

Wow, one more reason not to vote for the nutbar.

Wasnt there a SGI behind it too?

[MfA]

Didnt they have a SGI Origin 3400 behind it feeding it the data?

Re:QuickTime Rant isn't flamebait!

[t0qer]

what the hell are the moderators on crack? this is a perfectly good point. Of course im a windows believer but still why should only windows/mac users be able to see this flick? --t0qer

That's what they have assholes like you for.

[Vermifax]

That's what they have assholes like you for.

Vermifax

What about Capcom's...

[Jon Shaft]

What about capcom's Resident Evil seris? The games are almost movielike... It would be interesting to see them in the big screen... altho it'd probably be a disappointment. :-)

Oh welps, I tihnk it's great that a video games has become so big that big moveis are coming out of it... (And no, the mario brothers movie was a piece of ....)

Hopefully Final Fantasy will be good... and not a Mario movie! :)

Re:What about Capcom's...

[aenomie]

What about capcom's Resident Evil seris? The games are almost movielike... It would be interesting to see them in the big screen... altho it'd probably be a disappointment. :-)

They are, and it will

Re:What about Capcom's...

[Grahf666]

The Resident Evil movie got canned a long long time ago, I thought.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[whatnotever]

Amen to the pirating...

"No, goddamit! I'm not going to upgrade! #@*&!"
... after a few thousand repeats of that situation, I finally gave in and "upgraded" in my own special way...

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Jonathan_S]

Actually with quicktime 4 the annoying nag screen it shows, asking you to upgrade to pro, is itself a quicktime movie. It you delete its .mov file then the free version doesn't nag you anymore and works normally.

Pointless but...

[tfxx]

...offtopic??

Re:Bad News

[Mr. Piccolo]

y*h*w*h
y*h*w*h
y*h*w*h

The lameness filter can go to HELL too.

I have been violated...

[Mustang Matt]

Why did I click on that link? WHY? WHY!?!?!

Re:akamai bastards

[neuneu]

"When I used a Mac, they laughed because I had no command prompt. When I used Linux, they laughed because I had no GUI."

"And so now I use MacOS X... i have a great gui and a solid commandline..."

But now they laugh because you have no life.

Let's hope it's not another Wing Commander

[shadrack]

Lets hope they do a better job of translating a game to the big screen. Wing Commander proved chief game designers don't necessarily translate into competent directors. After awhile I thought I was watching a really bad remake of 'Das Boot' interleaved with a really long and boring Calvin Kline commercial. (Come on, weren't you expecting some sort of product placement as the beautiful but no talent actess playing the commander moped around in her quarters?).

8-bit Nintendo!

[Luke]

Remember playing FF on a Nintendo?

Seems strange to be watching a preview for a CGI movie that is based (very very distantly, for sure) on those humble beginnings....

Spaceship

[PhantomCowboyGorilla]

Isnt that the space ship from that old Battle Beyond the Stars movie with "Johnboy" from the Waltons? Remember, the ship that had tits.

??? = Michael Baldwin

[MajorBlunder]

just my $.02

That's probably true today...

[2nd Post!]

Though I certainly can't verify it.

But the problem is that the FFMovie is at least a year, if not more, old. Someone knowledgeable know how long they've been working on it?

I would hazard a guess, that at the time, an Octane would have been the price/performance leader-that, or at least some other non-Linux box.

Think 2 years ago, what was a top of the line system on the Intel world? Probably some sort of P2, 300MHz. An Alpha would have been the preferred render box, perhaps, though at the time SGI was certainly a very popular choice. Jurassic Park, for example. Though I do remember hearing that Linux boxen were used for some movies. Anyone with more information? Maybe I'm misremembering my history.

It may very well be that they switch over *now* to Linux boxen to do their serious number crunching/rendering. Say, beowulf clusters of Athlons in a supercooled and controlled chamber? Regardless, you may be right about Octanes. SGI is not something I know much about.

The nick is a joke! Really!

Will FF the movie be rated PG?

[Chemical]

And because the FF film will be animated, it will be regelated to a kids movie, but probably, knowing the FF series, a PG rating, which means NO ONE besides diehard nerds will probably see it.

The original FF games were raped by Nintendo of America, and received extremely watered down translations, you spoony bard! Nintendo is a "family company". Sony seemed more open to allowing a little more liberal translations. Words like "shit" and "goddamnit" and "what the hell" are common in FF7 and FF8. The newer Square games also include quite a bit of sexual inuendo (Xenogears especially). The Parasite Eve games both received M rating from the ESRB. The point I'm trying to make is that the story writers and script writers for Square games aren't targeting kids, aren't affraid of being mature, and aren't affraid of making their characters act and speak like real people. I don't see why their movie writers would be. This isn't gonna be a kiddie movie. I think Titan AEs biggest fallback was the fact that they watered it down so much so it would have more "family appeal", but still tried to be mature. I doubt Square is going to do that.

Whats up with the FF site?

[brakzilla]

Does anybody know what happened to the Final Fantasy.com site there is like 4 frames and all of them are 404-Not found.

Hacked?? :(((

Re:HEMOS

[IniBlitz]

Nope, its still not fixed. Notice the quotes? Hemos has his own text italized.

Incredible facial animation

[Drog]

I saw this trailer on the Quicktime Movie Trailers website one or two months ago. Strange how it's just now news on Slashdot. Anyway, I'm really impressed. I've never seen such facial animation before. I wonder if they're actually modeling the muscles under the skin or if they've used motion capture technology. Usually the sensors are used to capture large body dynamics but I don't see why you couldn't put a lot of tiny sensors all over an actor's face.

FF Numbering Scheme Revealed

[_xeno_]

The original skewwed number started when Squaresoft was finally able to create an English localized copy of Final Fantasy IV. They hadn't done so with FF2 and FF3 for a variety of issues (mostly because the NES was nearing the end of it's US life when they were released, if I'm not mistaken). To avoid confusion for the American blokes, FF4 was renumbered FF2 since it was the second American release.

They then started translating, but never released Final Fantasy V (at least the SNES version - more later). They instead moved FFVI over and called it FFIII to again avoid confusion.

As everyone knows, there was a lot of hype about Final Fantasy VII - enough so that it would be more confusing (at least Square's marketing dept. thought so) to renumber it "4" to properly line up with the US releases.

After Final Fantasy became more popular in the US, they decided to release the already-translated FFV in the US. The data-files were already done; they'd already ported the code to the PlayStation for the Japanese re-release of Final Fantasy IV through VI, so they released it under the "new" naming scheme. (They didn't rerelease IV in the US which was annoying, since FF2US is actually FFIVJapan Easy Type version, with a watered down translation.)

It would be nice to see an official translation of the origianl FFII and FFIII, assuming they don't screw it up (since they're away from Nintendo of America's "we're a children's game company" policy, that's more possible). Keep in mind that FFVII was also the first Final Fantasy with a really decent translation.

One of my favorite examples of how Nintendo watered down FF3US is the scene where you meet Cyan behind Zozo or whatever, in the World of Ruin. If you pick up the key he drops, and open the locked chest, in the US version you find a book about machinery. In the Japanese version you find a porno mag. (In both cases, Cyan tries to hide it and blushes :) ) (Keep in mind you can't see the mag, but the text calls it such.)

Another decent example is the "dancer" that runs into Cyan at some point in the game. In the Japan version, she's a hooker.

Hope that gives some people some ideas of just what we in the US have been missing from the FF series.

Re:FF Numbering Scheme Revealed

[Kreeblah]

Square wanted to release Final Fantasy 2 and 3 in the US, but Nintendo, because it felt that American gamers didn't like RPGs very much, nixed the project (developers had to get permission and pay royalties to publish NES games, and Nintendo had the option to reject these requests). When Final Fantasy 4 was translated and released, Nintendo didn't want gamers to question why Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were never released in the US, and changed the number of the game to 2. They passed up releasing Final Fantasy 5 here (for whatever reason), and so they changed the numbering for 6 to 3. When Final Fantasy 7 was released in the US, Nintendo begged Square to change the number of the game to 4 (to continue to cover for them), but Square declined. Also, Square did have Final Fantasy 4 translated for the Playstation (at least partially), but due to technical problems (it had a hideous load time, something like 10 seconds for the menu to pop up, and some other stuff I can't remember right now), they put a sound track in the American Final Fantasy Anthology instead of Final Fantasy 4.

Voice Acting

[n00dles]

I just checked out the featured preview, and although eye candy abounded, I had to suffer through some of the worst, least convincing voice acting I have ever heard. Visuals alone do not make a good movie. They are going to have to bring in the fluffer, or do whatever else it takes to get some emotion out of these actors.

Square-to-Pixar comparisons

[potempkin]

There's been a lot of comparison between FF and films from Pixar such as Toy Story (1 and 2), and it seems as though practically everyone is scoffing "yea, 'dat Toy Story shit ain't nothin' ta' 'dis FF shit, bitch!" But I think that we need to realize that the two are _not_ the same film, and that they are two _completely_ different genres. This is important when it comes not only to storyline, but also to technical aspects as well (modeling, lighting, and rendering).

I have no idea what FF is going to be rated, but you can bet your monkey that it's not going to be "G". Square is not targeting the film to the interests of 6 year-olds who are gonna yell to mom and dad to buy them film-related merchandise for their birthday. Instead, they're targeting the _mid-teen to adult crowd_ who are going to yell to their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands/wives to buy them film-related merchandise for their birthday ;)

What's FF about? Future, war, intrigue..._technical_ stuff (machines, weapons, spaceships). What are the majority of Pixar's films about? Almost everything _BUT_ the future, war, intrigue, and technical stuff!

This is what makes Pixar such an unbelievably talented and ground-breaking studio--they produce work based on things in _human life_, and are able to pull are the funny and ironic things out if it and show them to us.

I'm not saying that FF won't do this as well. I just bought FF8 a couple of months ago (hey, I've been busy ;), and was blown away by how great the story line if it is considering it's a game. But it's important to understand that each genre intrinsically lends itself to certain cinematic aspects which are going to make the film lean towards certain technical and artistic displays.

Has anyone else noticed how many metal-type objects have been showing up in the "props" section of the web site? Metal, particularly _corroded/dirty metal_ is extremely awe-inspiring, and is often times far quicker to impress the viewer than a shader such as the light reflection and refraction with in Flick's eye's in A Bugs Life, although both have their subtleties. Just look at the techno-inspired invasion occurring at web sites all over the internet. Sharp objects make for sharp reactions.

It was mentioned that Square's got some proprietary algorithms to deal with stuff like hair movements, etc... Which kicks ass, 'cause the look of Maya's Paint Effects just isn't cutting it for me anymore :) The FF trailer _DOES_ look amazing, don't get me wrong. But have you noticed the shots Pixar placed in the opening of A Bug's Life or during the credit roll? There were the swaying movements of the grass and dandelion fluff. This practically made me pee my pants when I saw it--my jaw dropped right to the floor. What about the depth shading and focal properties used in Geri's Game?

_Both_ studios have, and are currently producing some truly _amazing_ work, without a doubt. Each film, due to its genre, contains it's own strengths, and also its own weaknesses. Pixar has the rare ability to produce films which can make not only kids, but also adults laugh and think. This is what makes Pixar revolutionary. At the same time, I've never seen so much attention to modeling, animating, and shading detail as is being done by Square on FF.

Here's to both studios!

Re:Square-to-Pixar comparisons

[drinkypoo]

There's been a lot of comparison between FF and films from Pixar such as Toy Story (1 and 2), and it seems as though practically everyone is scoffing "yea, 'dat Toy Story shit ain't nothin' ta' 'dis FF shit, bitch!" But I think that we need to realize that the two are _not_ the same film, and that they are two _completely_ different genres. This is important when it comes not only to storyline, but also to technical aspects as well (modeling, lighting, and rendering).

The things that impressed me most about Toy Story and Bug's Life are the things that impress me most about this trailer; The lighting, first and foremost, and secondarily the amazing texture maps. The cloth is pretty groovy in FF, but I'm far more impressed by the lighting effects.

All that said, what impressed me most about Bug's Life was the fractal world; The trees, leaves, et cetera. Now THAT is some seriously badass math, represented by still more seriously badass math.

And finally; While Pixar impresses the hell out of me, the FF trailer is the most realistic-looking set of CG (as far as humans go) that I've ever seen. Go Square.

Re:Square-to-Pixar comparisons

[quinto2000]

I have to agree; this is the best CG I have ever seen, and I am really into CG. The most important thing is the story, and although I barely know FF, it seems like they have it in place. The first computer animated shorts sucked because they had a bunch of computer people who knew nothing about film making it; film is film no matter what the technology.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Augustine_the_cat]

It is important to remember that quicktime was in existence well before the internet was popular. Apple developed quicktime as a mac based system extension back in the day when processors were chugging along at 25MHz. Frankly, I think that Apple was pretty bold to develop a system extension that was easily five years ahead of the current hardware. Give Apple some kudos for having the guts to do something that seemed absurdly insane. Given the timing of Apple's release, it predates the open source/open standard software distrubition paradigm. The internet adopted the standard because it had been in use for years as the defacto standard for movies on the desktop platform and it provided a way to incorporate different codecs (so it could use mpeg as well). It was a well thought out and well balanced standard.

Additionally, in the past, there was a UNIX version of quicktime available, but it is no longer produced because the codec that Apple redistributes is for Mac and Windows only.

Get over the "I hate QT" thing. If you want an open source version, write it yourself.

Claustrophobicly yours. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Argh.

Is it just me, or did the 'props' archive on the Final Fantasy website make you feel claustrophobic?

Interesting design work, nonetheless. We're getting closer all the time to movie production being cheaper without film, actors or real sets. Whether or not this is a good thing is somebody else's semantic exercise. I'm not up to it today.

I just hope the story in the movie isn't as. . . culturally alien as they have been in the games. I liked the level of plot detail and back story, (quite excellent in both regards), but I just can't get into some of the approaches Eastern story psychology takes. Some story structures are universally appealing, but others just don't jive with my hardwiring. Guess I'm too old. Thankfully, at least, this production doesn't look insipidly cute! And hopefully it'll also have more soul than the equipment used to make it.

Just watched T2 again last night.

"If a machine can learn the value of human life, then perhaps we can as well. . ."

-Fantastic Lad

Final Fantasy? Neverending Story?

[miguel_at_menino.com]

What's with the sequels?

If it's Final Fantasy, how can there be part two, part three? Not very final.

Almost as bad as Neverending Story, Part Two.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Chemical]

1. Just because Apple developed desktop video first doesn't mean that we still have to use it. NCSC Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, was in existance well before the internet was popular. Frankly, I think that the NCSC was pretty bold to develop an application that was easily five years ahead of the current tech trends. Who the hell still uses NCSC Mosaic though? Why should we be force fed Quicktime just because it has been around longer? Better technology than QT has been developed. It should be used.

2. If Apple had a Quicktime codec available for UNIX before, why discontine it? Considering Linux's large user base, they are missing out on annoying millions of people with their "Upgrade to QT Pro" banners. I would think any way to increase market share would help further their goal of market domiance. But then again, going for market share has never been Apple's style.

3. I don't hate Quicktime because it is closed source. I hate it because it sucks, it's antiquated, it's nagware, and is not available for non-Windows/Mac platforms. And I don't need to develop open source codecs. They are already available and should be used. It would not take a lot of effort on anyone's behalf to encode all their video with MPEG.

Re:distributed rendering exists

[drinkypoo]

softimage's mental ray is a distributed renderer.

So is Lightwave 3D's ScreamerNet. But we're talking about internet-distributed, here. Basically all large (film-size) rendering jobs are done across a LAN in a distributed fashion because of the CPU time requirements.

Re:Bad News

[drinkypoo]

Some moron actually moderated UP a Bob Jones anonymous post as FUNNY?

The real problem is the person who modded it up as Insightful.

As I'm fond of pointing out, the problem with moderation is the moderators, not the moderatees. Perhaps only people with karma over 20 should be allowed to moderate, and only people with karma over 10 should be allowed to metamoderate...

Momma says,

[NuclearArchaeologist]

If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all.

I'm not too sure what is particularly inightful here. Assides from calling your neighbors, "general North American...average nimrod(s)" without the taste to enjoy something different, you add little to this disscusion. Could you tell us a little more about Square instead? What do you mean by different, warped plots? Links would be nice too.

Give your neighbors some credit. Holywood is part of North America and it's products, good and bad, are certianly polished and excellent pieces of craft. You might also remember that your neighbors created jazz, R&B, the electric guitar, the internet, and all sorts of interesting forms of entertainment. Vast audiences of them have apreciated films as diverse as Pulp Fiction, Sixth Sense, Blade Runner, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and Jungle Fever. Why should you care if they like this or not? Frankly, Fight Club's preachy and puerile attitude towards mental illness mixed with tooth spitting violence was a turn off to me. It was fun, but I'd rather see Forest Gump again. What exaclty have you done better? Zone5, User 179243, all you have to your credit is a single post.

Taste is a poor thing to judge people by. Differences make life fun.

Re:Momma says,

[Zone5]

I expect I'm being trolled, but...

Just because a thing is popular doesn't make it good. Similarly, just because a lot of people agree on something doesn't make it right. Popular opinion defines neither quality nor fact.

If someone enjoys something - great! More power to them. Someone who watches a Forrest Gump and has a good time I'm happy for - they got their money's worth. Someone who watches Fight Club and dislikes it I'm also happy for - they at least tried something. Someone who refuses to watch a different movie because it doesn't fit into their idea of what a film should be (happy endings, the american dream, other jimmy stewart trash) has my sympathy - their life is going to run exactly as they think, with no surprises because they won't try anything different.

This was my point, if you need it spelled out. People on average these days do NOT like to try 'something different' in their moviegoing experience, which is clearly what any movie produced by Square is going to be. Something different and hopefully wonderful. If you need links provided to find examples of past Square plotlines, obviously you need to re-familiarize yourself with the use of search engines, because there's plenty of info out there just waiting to be found. Had the plotlines themselves been the point of my post, perhaps I would have linked some, but since they were not...

"Your neighbors..." Please! I live in North America, you self-important twit! Far better to see the flows and tides of groupthink that define this continent from here than from elsewhere in the world. I enjoy Hollywood TV-dinner entertainment as much as the next guy, but I also yearn for better fare.

As to the "all you have to your credit" crap... please, and just what do YOU have to YOUR credit, that we should all bask in the glory of your intellect? I have better things to do with my time than to maintain a long history of posts for self-declared defenders of the mundane like you to judge me by.

Re:Momma says,

[NuclearArchaeologist]

My oh my, nothing helpful and how rude you are. I suppose that I should have expected specific insults from someone who would make negative blanket statements about an entire continent. Thanks for all the useful links and the solid reasons to look up Square. So sad, you could have been helpful but chose to be insulting instead.

You should learn to define "different" before you think of yourself as free from groupthink, troll. While trying to understand what "same" is you may learn that it does not exist and that nothing goes according to plan. Unless you can define these things, you post had no point. Your reply shows off no more than a fragile ego.

Credit list is BA Classics, Tulane University, BS Mechanical Engineering, LSU, and current graduate student in Nuclear Science. I am surrounded by mundane people doing extrordinary work. None ask for glory, simply respect and polite treatment.

Grow up, put up or shut up.

Re:Oh ... my ... god...

[drinkypoo]

I hate to rain on the parade of the Console RPG lovers, but they ceased being games when they became a sequential series of CG rendered plot highlights stitched together with ever larger waves of mind numbing, button mashing combats against opponents simply differentiated by larger HitPoints and a palette shift.

The more complex a game gets, the harder it is to make it fork.

This said, I would personally like some games to be more non-linear. But that's not to say that I didn't go through the feelings of awe and wonderment while playing FFVII; Or, for that matter, Lunar: The Silver Star Story Complete. Both of those games are completely linear, at least as far as the core story goes. They have a story to tell, but they let you experience it firsthand, not just listen to it.

I happen to like RPGs and movies. As such, I will continue to play FF games (though I skipped FFVIII, because I refuse to play stupid card games to get the good objects) and I will also continue to watch movies - including this one.

Re:Hypereality

[drinkypoo]

I guess I don't understand the point of trying to create an animated movie that emulates reality.

And I personally don't see the point of trying to create a live film when you could just make Anime, but hey, what would all the actors do for work?

Re:QuickTime Rant

[drinkypoo]

I've always wondered what the quicktime facination was.

Apple has consistently had high-quality video that could be played on the vast majority of systems. Remember, until fairly recently, you couldn't play AVI or MPEG streams reliably on mac. Yes, I know about sparkle; Last time I used it, it was complete crap. Now I've stopped using Macs, so that problem is solved.

The Sorenson codec is the second-best video format I'm familiar with today, the first being the DivX MPEG-4 codec. But since DivX is free, the industry will probably never accept it, since they're short-sighted bozos who think they have the long view. So Sorenson is really the best way to get super-high video quality over normal 'net connections.

Re:QuickTime Rant isn't flamebait!

[drinkypoo]

what the hell are the moderators on crack? this is a perfectly good point. Of course im a windows believer but still why should only windows/mac users be able to see this flick? --t0qer

We all already know that linux users can't view sorenson. Install vmware and Win98. It's not like anyone else paid for it, so don't give me any excuses about cost.

It's offtopic because it's not about final fantasy, cinematics, or games. It's whinging. If you want to do that, find a story about pissing, moaning, and complaining, and do it there.

Oh yeah, I forgot something

[NuclearArchaeologist]

If you don't like the films that make it to your back yard, your house might be in the wrong town. Check out the NYT film to see what kind of movies are always showing. Most of these films make it around in one form or another, but let's face it not everybody has time to see everything.

Square != good plot

[SetupWeasel]

Throw together some corny religious symbolism, more "umm..."s, "err..."s, and "what?"s than you can shake a stick at, top it all off with the evil is bad morality message, and you have a Square RPG.

I once played FF VII for one half hour, and never picked up the controler again. That in my estimation was the best Square ever had to offer. I just hope Jar Jar doesn't make a cameo.

Re:Square != good plot

[Grahf666]

Actually, Final Fantasy 7 is not generally considered the best Square has to offer. Final Fantasy 6 and 8 are almost certainly better, and Chrono Cross is probably better than either. You might want to give it another chance.

Re:distributed rendering exists

[iamblades]

So is the most widely used professional renderer, Pixar's RenderMan. But of course you mean internet distributed, which requires HUGE pipes, and somewhat secure protocols, so somone doesnt steal your renders.... I dont really see the need for distibuted computing, or not anymore, after quantum computers appear.

On a slightly off-topic note, does anyone notice how sony is sucking up to square? They must be really desperate to keep them as an exclusive developer...

Either way, go check out those final fantasy trailers they are great

Celebrities suck

[gad_zuki!]

Gamers in general will be drawn to this, and depending on the marketing campaign curious onlookers too. The CGI is very nice, but I can't stand those damn celebrity voices, I can't stop thinking "James Woods" or whomever. Why is it that once an animated movie reaches a budget over 5 mill suddenly Jewel and Drew Barrymore "star" in it. It really distracts from the story as these people have more or less been typecast in their most popular roles, while real talented voice-only actors go ignored. Smart move Sony.

Re:yeah

[iamblades]

They have weekly and monthly updated trailers in addition to the actual theatrical trailer...

Re:Anyone else doing something on this level?

[GMOL]

Actually it seems to be alive...why the hell was your post rated low? www.rainbowstudios.com

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Naikrovek]

QuickTime was meant for much more than just movie playing. Sure, this is the core of QuickTime, but you can't have a *perfectly synched* subtitle track that can be turned on and off with MPEG or RealVideo or DiVX. You can't have a custom controller made, and embed it into the movie with MPEG or anything other than QuickTime that I know of.

This trailer is not the best example of good QuickTime, but its not a bad one. Most of the complaints I hear about QuickTime should be directed toward the Sorenson codec, and most are justly deserved. It looks great, but its not as thin as DiVX ;-), (which does NOT have DVD quality output, no matter what you say, only DVD resolution) or Real or MPEG.

Anyway... QuickTime has its place, trust me. I'm writing an entire multimedia application (completely in-browser) for children using QuickTime and JavaScript, and if it weren't for QT, this would never have been possible.

Direct your complaints to Sorenson, where they belong.

Just good timing..

[kazzuya]

QuickTime is the SoundBlaster of the video playback. It just came earlier than anything else.. when MPEG was too heavy do be decompressed in realtime and was too slow to be compressed decently.
I think nowdays MPEG is just fine, too bad there isn't a standardized protocol for streaming and playback isn't embedded in browsers just like JPEG (enter crashy RealPlayer).
In the end I think QT's strenght was timing.. MS noticed that and saw QT's long term plan (to be a complete media layer) and that's when it came out with DirectX. Luckly neither Apple nor MS completely succeded.

not completely true

[funkycat]

Well it's true that Mononoke Hime didn't do well in the theaters, but you also have to consider that, it WAS a limited release that focused only on a few (less then 100) thesters in the country. If Anime gets only limited release's all the time of course they arent going to make any money.... especially when they aren't really advertised.

MPEG-1 version coming up...

[Naikrovek]

In a few moments, I'll have an MPEG-1 version ready for all of you that don't have QuickTime.

This is probably illegal, but I really don't care all that much. The money they'll use to sue me would go to much better use in just putting out an MPEG version. Get with the picture, apple. Not everyone wants to pay $100 for your *still* incomplete OS. I mean COME ON, OS9, and you still don't have any dynamically allocated memory?! Crikey!

Here ya go.

If its not all there when you download it, its because Its not done uploading yet. Have fun.

PLOT?! SQUARE?! *ROTFLMAO*

[_KiTA_]

Yeah right. As one who suffered through Final Fantasy 8, I can safely say that Square doesn't give 2 cents about silly things like PLOT anymore -- they'd much rather have neato stuff like 2 hrs of FMV in *their* games. If ya need me, I'll be camping out at my post office box -- my copy of Dragon Quest 7 should come any day.. *Drool*

Re:Square. Plot. Aha.

[moonsammy]

Oh come on, there are quite a few bad Square games. Lets look at the list (and these are just off the top of my head):
Saga Frontier (ugh)
Legend of Mana (I *loved* secret, but Legend was just BAD)
FF Mystic Quest (hahahahahahaha...)
The translated FF5 on the anthology disc... wow was that a bad translation.
(Parasite Eve? Can't remember if that was Square...)

This is by no means a diss on Square. For the most part, they make GREAT games, but they are not perfect.

i am hoping

[trapkit]

my hope is that square plays out all their movie-making fantasies with this project, so they can concentrate on making games, instead of movies diguised as games.

I do...

[Tiroth]

*I* think it looks too real. Video is incredibly harsh next to film...sure, certain things are lost in the grain and in the exposure, but what comes out in the end is a wonderful visual experience and not a mathematically precise eyesore.

Contrary to popular opinion, movies are all about what looks *right*, not what looks *real*. This has reached such an art form that reality looks rather fake at times.

$8 != $39.99.

[SnotFu]

I am one type of game player who buys the game, then plays it just to get to the cutscenes (FMV's). Then I hear that they are making something that I can pay for that doesn't have the game part in it, and has about 3 times more of the FMV. I'm so there. And remember, only the name of the movie is Final Fantasy - Not the plot. It will have nothing to do with the video game.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[_xeno_]

I don't hate QuickTime because it's closed. I don't care if the version is open or closed. I care that it sucks major ass. They created their own bastardization of the Mac GUI for it (ie, they actually add a window to move the menu up along the top), so it runs quite slowly under Windows.

Unlike most Slashdotters, I'm quite willing to switch to Windows to watch something. I installed QT4 once, and never want to install it again. It's just something I won't do. If I could watch QT movies any other way, it might be worth it. But I can't - I'm stuck with QuickTime, or writing some dumb applet using QuickTime for Java to do it. Java AWT flaws make using Java just as slow. (Keep in mind, Java fans, that while Java runs quite nicely for most tasks, the fine folks at Sun have managed to continuously slow down GUI tasks.) Also, from other people in the Java dev community, I've heard that QT for Java sucks major ass anyway.

I don't mind using Real (for some strange reason - it really is in many ways worse than QuickTime) because it just feels faster. It also does some annoying GUI stuff, but the people at Real actually did a fairly decent job of it and it runs fairly nicely. The things I really hate are the many sites that decide I must stream things from them, which QT attempts to do. (Although lynx -source URL | grep mov and then lynx -source mov URL > mov file works OK. Under Windows you have to run through hoops to find the proper URL, but it can be done. Properly configured Netscape and IE will then ask if you want to launch the app or save the file. Bang - you can save it.)

I don't care about the codec - I care that the software is buggy, that every three times you run it it displays an ad for QT Pro (which Real doesn't do, I guess that's why I can stand them), and that ad can not be deleted - it's not really a QT movie, it's a built in thing.

BTW, as for "chugging along at 25MHz," QuickTime 4 managed to bring my K6-233MHz system to a crawl while attempting to view 210x120 movies. If I killed the sound, it would run smoothly. Otherwise it would die. Annoyingly enough, movies of the same size encoded in say MPEG layer 2 would run quite nicely, with sound. The quality may have been subtely worse, but hey - it worked.

Re:QuickTime Rant isn't flamebait!

[_xeno_]

First annoying thing about this is that it was posted after I thought I clicked "preview," but there it was, submitted, telling me I should have used the preview button. I'm not sure if I misclicked, or if Slash stills has some bugs in it, but anyway, it was posted.

Yes, it's whining - but that's why it says "Rant." It's a rant. It comes from the last time I tried to install QuickTime 4, and from watching the results. And it's about not being able to view the foolish trailer, which is what the story was about in the first place, because I don't want to install the file viewer.

What's really annoying is that more than likely, the movie will be released on DVD at some point. At that point, it will be encoded in MPEG Layer2 - something I can view under both Linux and Windows. MPEG is a cross-platform standard - in that it's a standard, period. QuickTime is a closed format that a company created before computers were really ready for streaming audio/video. (I could argue that they still aren't really ready for streaming audio/video.)

I'd like to watch the trailer, but I can't. Because they chose a format which I refuse to use - because the player for it messes things up. That's the link to the story, which is basically announcing that the trailer is available.

I do use Windows, and not just for games. I do development under Windows. I can write Windows applications. So it's not a "Windows sucks!" thing - it's a QuickTime sucks thing. The fact that most of the video files on the Internet are in QuickTime annoys me, because I'd rather not install the viewer, because I don't like it.

I've already got Windows 98. I might be upgrading to ME soon. But I also run Linux when I can. And in both cases, I don't really have a choice for QuickTime - it's Apple's player or bust. But I have multiple MPEG2 players, under both platforms. I can do that, and it works nicely. (Plus I can TV-out MPEG files, I can't do that with any other media. But that's a dxr3 thing.)

You didn't get the point

[samael]

At the time, I bumped into an interview with Tarantino. Apparently he'd been near the Gump people at the Oscars and had said "You _were_ kidding, right?" and they'd been delighted that _somebody_ got it.

They _weren't_ being serious. It was a satire of the american dream.
_____

Re:QuickTime Rant

[piranesi]

(well, actually, decoder, but Windows calls 'em codecs to sound cool)

No they call it a codec because that is what it is(and because everyone else in the industry calls it that(apple,avid,ms,adobe,terran,real,etc)) Codec means COmpressor-DECompressor. It isn't just a word MS made up(if they did it would be "MS activeintellipowercompressordecompressorvideothing )

REALLY hate the player. so use a browser & the plug in

why are they even using QuickTime? QuickTime isn't free

OH MY GOD! software that isn't free!!! I hope the rest of the software industry doesnt hear about this!

actually quicktime is free/nagware. try iShell or quickedit for a free/shareware player/editor alternative to the official quicktime player. I'm sure you could find a free player for windows if you actually looked.

(PLUS there's all the sites that embed the QT movie - I'd rather download the thing

so look in the html and download it

Re:QuickTime Rant

[Tiroth]

High bitrate MPEG1 (2Mbps+) actually looks great at resolutions around 400x240@24. Very little artifacting, and *should* play on any decent mpeg player.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[piranesi]

Why should we be force fed Quicktime just because it has been around longer?

boo hoo then don't watch it. QT is a good solution, you may not realize it but it is. It isn't like qt isn't evolving

If Apple had a Quicktime codec available for UNIX before, why discontine it?

apple had qt 2 for SGI(actually sgi licensed it from apple). qt3 brought a LOT of new stuff.Why don't you whine to red hat or slackware to license quicktime from apple ? Or save your pennies and license it yourself :)

Considering Linux's large user base . . . . of servers and people who can boot in to windows or use vmware if they want to.

But then again, going for market share has never been Apple's style

agreed

it's antiquated, it's nagware, and is not available for non-Windows/Mac platforms. ...encode all their video with MPEG

did you ever notice that you whine a lot? antiquated - no it isnt. nagware- yup. not avalible for AIX or Solaris or linux or freebsd or dos or acorn or Be OS or Digital unix- are you really surprised? BTW you should be pleased to hear that the next version of QT will include compression and decompression of MPEG 1 & 2

Does the CGI make the movie?

[Anopheles]

Watching the trailer, I kept on waiting to see that amazing special effect that is impossible to do live. Something in the same veins as Star Wars or Jurassic Park, where technology enables new art and allows it to transcends the plot, no matter how pointless it may be. A movie, IMO, that is worth watching in a theatre...

This trailer's major effects shots are CGI renderings of computer graphics, and a single impressive shot of Dr. Roth(?) looking over an alien landscape that almost looks painted. Amazing if it was in a game (FF9?) but not in a theater. And I saw the hair thing in FF8 on my playstation.

Not to be a troll, but FF seems to be nothing that hasn't been done before. I was disappointed by Titan:AE. That had big names voices too.

Re:QuickTime Rant

[_xeno_]

Ah, but it's not a codec - the Windows things are just the dec part. So maybe they should call them decs, instead of codecs. (Actually, a codec is a coder-decoder. To be a codec, you must be able to take raw input and encode things, then decode that back into raw output. The codecs under Windows only decode.)

The browser + plugin is the damn player, with buffer underflows. And you can't just download the thing from HTML source because if you attempt to "go" to that location, it'll start "viewing location" in Mozilla/Netscape/IE. The solution is to create a NEW PAGE with that link so that you can right click and "save as" which is more work than it's really worth.

The "QuickTime isn't free" was referring to the actual codec, and not the decoder portion. The free version is only the decoder and a viewer - an amazingly slow one at that.

Actually, the speed issues I can probably ignore, now, since I'd be using an Athlon and not a K6. (Amazing how AMD chips became good when it became an Athlon - people make fun of lousy K6's.)

The point is that there are alternatives to QuickTime which other people can use. (Along that line, people who use AVIs should also be shot. Probably more so since that basically locks them into one architecture - plus you can never tell what "codec" you need to decode the thing.) QuickTime is really a one-architecture beast. The player doesn't even do full-screen mode, something that makes viewing the files a lot nicer! Some of the alternatives file formats are free to use or encode! So why bother paying the extra money to use something which isn't cross-platform anyway?

Keep in mind that the Windows port of QuickTime is an amazingly poor port. It looks exactly like the Mac version, except that it doesn't seem to be optimized for Windows - WinAmp does a completely pix-map player, but it's nowhere near as slow. So does Media Player 7 (which is annoying, since it now looks like a cross between Real Player and the QuickTime viewer - Imaging QuickTime with channels along the side (that you can't hide!).)

There are other, better, video alternatives out that which are more open to other platforms. It's just not worth the troubles that the player causes to be able to watch video from the many sites that do QuickTime only.

I should also note that it's possible to burn VCDs, so that MPEG2 videos can be converted into something that most DVD players can play. A wider audience, if you will.

Re:Anyone else doing something on this level?

[Grahf666]

I think no one else is becuase it is incredibly expensive, and only some one like Square has the money and resources to pull this off, and make millions. Maybe in a few years, the doors will start to open.

Re:Bad News

[talesout]

That's not a bad idea, although I doubt Taco would allow anything that made that much sense to actually happen. How could he feel morally outraged at people complaining if he actually did something to try and fix things?

Re:Final Fantasy? Neverending Story?

[Valdrax]

At the time the first Final Fantasy game was released, it was an all-or-nothing prospect for the fledgling game giant SquareSoft. If Final Fantasy didn't make it, they would've been dead in the water. So, for Square, it very well could've been a "Final" Fantasy.

Fortunately, Final Fantasy did well and so did it's 8 sequels and spin-off games, and so did Square's other games, such as the Seiken Densetsu series. After Final Fantasy II, why change the name of a best-selling series?

(As an aside, Neverending Story Part Two makes a lot of sense if you think in terms of chapters.)

No Beowulf

[The Raven]

Beowulf clusters would NOT improve the rendering speed of the movie, because the managing of the shared processing is completely unnecessary... if you have 200 machines, EACH machine can render a SEPARATE frame all on its own, wasting no time with the beowulf overhead. There is no need to render the frames sequentially.

Raven


And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor