| Crystal Tools | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Square Enix |
| Initial release | September 2007; 18 years ago (2007-09) |
| Platform | Microsoft Windows,Nintendo Switch,PlayStation 3,PlayStation 4,Xbox 360,Wii,Wii U |
| Type | Game engine |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
Crystal Tools is agame engine created and used internally by the Japanese companySquare Enix. It combinesstandard libraries for elements such as graphics, sound and artificial intelligence while providing game developers with variousauthoring tools. The target systems of Crystal Tools are thePlayStation 3, theXbox 360,Microsoft Windows and theWii. This was decided with the intention of making cross-platform production more feasible. The idea for the engine sprang from Square Enix's desire to have a unified game development environment in order to effectively share the technology and know-how of the company's individual teams.
Crystal Tools entered development in August 2005 under the code nameWhite Engine. It was intended for the PlayStation 3-exclusive role-playing gameFinal Fantasy XIII, while it was first showcased in theFinal Fantasy VII technical demo for the PlayStation 3. The decision to expand Crystal Tools' compatibility to other game projects and systems marked the official project start for a company-wide engine. Development was carried out by the Research and Development Division headed byTaku Murata, which was specifically established for this purpose. As Square Enix's biggest project to date, the creation of Crystal Tools caused substantial problems in the simultaneous production of several flagship titles; various critics cited the engine as the primary cause of significant delays in the release ofFinal Fantasy XIII.
Crystal Tools is a unifiedgame engine by Japanese developer and publisherSquare Enix that combinesstandard libraries forgraphics rendering,physics processing,motion control,cinematics,visual effects,sound,artificial intelligence andnetworking.[1][2] Its target systems are thePlayStation 3, theXbox 360,Microsoft Windows and theWii.[1] On the development side, the engine takes the form of variousauthoring tools focused on large-scale game projects.[1][3] It encompasses a character viewer for3D models, an effects and a cutscene editor, aprevisualization tool, and asound maker.[1][4] Usage of the third-party programsAutodesk Maya,Autodesk Softimage andAdobe Photoshop is supported viaplug-ins. The individual authoring tools are connected over acommunications server called GRAPE2 which reads all the different data formats, processes them and gives an instant preview of the final game.[1] The engine is highly customizable and can be expanded with new functions and tools should the need for them arise. Although Crystal Tools allows for easiercross-platform development, the differences in the target systems'video memory andmicroarchitecture still necessitate fine-tuning adjustments in the games, for example concerningtexture sizes.[1][5]
As a video game company with different production teams,Square had wished for its employees to efficiently share their know-how and technology even before the merger with its competitorEnix. The desire for a common development infrastructure and engine dates back to the 1997role-playing video gameFinal Fantasy Tactics, which was created in the transitional period from2D to3D game production.[3] Back then, the artists working on the game asked programmerTaku Murata for a fast way to check how their work would look in the final game. As the development was carried out on personal computers, the graphics were displayed on computer monitors. This looked very different from thePlayStation console's actual graphics displayed on a television screen. Initially, a faithful preview of the game's visuals was too time-consuming because all data had to be transferred from PC to console first. To evade this step, Murata created an instant preview tool. With this, he soon witnessed a boost in the artists' productivity and in the quality of their work. For 2000'sVagrant Story, the developers opted to reuse this instant preview tool rather than programming a new one from scratch.[3] Murata and his colleagues added new functions to create a unified preview and cutscene tool tailored to the game's fully polygonal 3D graphics. With 2001'sPlayOnline service, the company then made its first foray into introducing a common software for all its divisions.[1]
After the Square Enix merger, however, the individual teams still continued to program and customize their own tools for each game, which would eventually go to waste as only their respective creators knew how to use them. With the amount of assets and tools required by the in-developmentFinal Fantasy XII and the impending advent of theseventh console generation, a common data format for the company was proposed in 2004. It was to be developed in-house and replace general-purpose formats such asFBX andCOLLADA. Realizing the goal of an engine with a common set of tools proved to be difficult, as many production teams wanted to further their own interests rather than those of the company as a whole. Select staff members from different company divisions teamed up to work on the project on a voluntary basis, but their loose organizational structure failed to yield results. Nevertheless, Murata considered this group effort a first step in the right direction.[1] In 2005, he was appointed general manager of the newly formed Technology Division.[3] Although this enabled Murata and his subordinates to talk about a company-wide engine more extensively, the lack of manpower again prevented any significant achievements.[1]
Following the public's positive reaction to the graphics of theFinal Fantasy VII Technical Demo for PS3 presented at theElectronic Entertainment Expo in 2005, it was decided to release the role-playing video gameFinal Fantasy XIII on the PlayStation 3 rather than thePlayStation 2 as originally planned.[6] That August, the Technology Division began working on the White Engine, a PlayStation 3 engine that was supposed to be exclusively used forXIII.[1][6][7] Eight months later, however, it was decided to repurpose the engine to further make it compatible with other projects such as theaction RPGFinal Fantasy Versus XIII (later rebranded and repurposed intoFinal Fantasy XV) and themassively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)Final Fantasy XIV.[6][7][8] In order for the company to stay competitive in a multi-platform environment, support of the engine was extended from the PlayStation 3 to the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, both of which were successful in Western markets.[1][5] This marked the official development start of a company-wide engine for whose purpose the Technology Division was expanded into the Research and Development Division in September 2006.[1][3] Murata remained the division's general manager with a full-time staff at his disposal.[1]
During development of Crystal Tools, the Research and Development Division continually surveyed what types of tools were needed to create Square Enix's flagship titles. Among the most frequently requested features was an extensive use ofcharacterclose-ups. This made the staff realize that theFinal Fantasy series put great emphasis on the "anime-like coolness" of its characters. Consequently, the engine's developers focused on attractive visuals rather than on accurate physics. To achieve a stylized look, apost-processing filter for additional lighting,blur, and visual effects was implemented. Square Enix's large teams were typically composed of a mix of industry veterans and rookie game developers. To accommodate this, thegraphical user interface of the engine became another main feature and was designed to be as intuitive as possible. The large investments into technology and human resources quickly made the White Engine the company's biggest project to date. After one year of work, version 1.0 of the engine was completed in September 2007.[1]
After version 1.0 had been finished, the engine's code name White Engine was changed to the official title Crystal Tools.[1][2][5] This was not only done to represent the company and its works better, but also due to therefractive effects of real-lifecrystals that were meant to symbolize the flexibility of the engine.[5] Over the next few months, the programmers advanced the engine to version 1.1 and added preliminary support for the Wii.[1] In September 2011,Final Fantasy Versus XIII directorTetsuya Nomura and his team replaced Crystal Tools with a proprietary action game engine that was supplemented by the lighting technology of the company's newLuminous Studio engine.[9] Other teams, such as the staff behindFinal Fantasy XIII-2, kept using and refining Crystal Tools.[10] ForLightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the engine was adjusted to make it more suitable to games with anopen world design.[11]
WhileFinal Fantasy XIII was in production, the development of Crystal Tools caused significant problems and delays. The programmers spent much time on taking all demands from staff into account. Based on this feedback, Murata's team tried to adapt the engine to the needs of several game projects, which proved to be virtually impossible and prevented the engine's specifications from being finalized.[12] Furthermore, as separate groups were working on the individual tools of the engine, there was no comprehensivesoftware documentation to ensure usability and compliance.[13] Unable to wait any longer, theFinal Fantasy XIII team had no choice but to begin creating assets to keep to the game's production schedule. However, the lack of specifications resulted in these assets being incompatible with the engine. In the end, it was decided thatXIII was to be the principal focus of Crystal Tools and the game's team began cooperating with the Research and Development Division more closely to receive the required tools and specifications.[12] While preliminary support of Crystal Tools was developed for the Wii, the console did not fully support all components.[3] In 2008, Murata said that Square Enix might license the engine out to other companies at some point in the future, although the limited documentation and the impracticality of supporting licensees posed great problems in doing so.[1][5] Two years later, the game's producerYoshinori Kitase stated that developing an engine from scratch to go with a new game may have been a mistake and a likely cause for the long period between the title's announcement and release.[14]
At the time ofFinal Fantasy XIII's release, Crystal Tools was met with praise from critics.Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter described it as an "excellent 3D engine".[15] Nate Lanxon ofWired UK felt that it produced "some of the most breath taking cutscenes and 3D graphics" seen on the Xbox 360 and that it made "lengthy cutscenes more movie-like than ever".[16] Writing for RPGFan, Stephen Harris called Crystal Tools an "impressive software" that "powered the jaw dropping visuals inFinal Fantasy XIII".[17] As time passed on, however, various media outlets criticizedSquare Enix for building their own engine. GameZone's James Wynne saw Crystal Tools as a means of "combusting money" during its development, and said it was "fairly out of date" by the time it had matured enough to be used for the company's projects.[18]GamesRadar's Ashley Reed faulted Crystal Tools for leading to extended delays in the company's release schedule and even lowering the quality of some games. She blamed the engine for having caused a "catastrophic meltdown" forFinal Fantasy XIV. Reed also noted that becauseFinal Fantasy XIII had been prioritized in Crystal Tools' development, the engine struggled with the open-world environments ofVersus XIII.[19] Harris said that people had come to expect "pretty" graphics from Crystal Tools and thatFinal Fantasy XIV simultaneously "met and completely shattered" those expectations. He felt that the game was "the most visually astounding MMORPG ever created on the PC platform". However, he called certain graphical features "resource hogs" and was disappointed with the "steep" hardware requirements recommended by Square Enix to run the game.[17] RPGFan's staff writer Derek Heemsbergen said thatLightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII could be seen as "a desperate attempt to squeeze one last game out of the aging graphical engine".[20] Wynne equally panned Square Enix's alleged decision to drop Crystal Tools in favor of the newly developedLuminous Studio engine.[18]
