Universal Dragon Quest VIII (by Square Enix)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by Haruhi, Dec 12, 2013.

  1. CygnetSeven

    CygnetSeven Well-Known Member

    Feb 6, 2010
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  2. HellaciousPuppy

    Feb 25, 2014
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    Thanks to everyone who said nice things about my original post. I really appreciate the support.

    I actually don’t work at the company any more, so I am not privy to their plans for updates. All I can tell you is that there is still a small team of highly skilled developers working on it, optimising and fixing bugs as best they can.

    You make a good point, and I can't really comment on how those other games were made. But there are so many factors at play. For example, the choice of development system used that it was ported to has its own limitations, and the nature of the the assets.

    The art style of DQ8 is toon shading with black outline, so all characters HAVE to be rendered (almost) twice. There is no way round that. The games you mentioned don't have THAT particular requirement.

    GTA is not at all more demanding than DQ8. First of all, it is pretty ugly, lots of camera clipping into buildings, very low res models, no baked in shadows. The city itself is made up of boxes (very very few vertices and very easy to do ‘level-of-detail’ geometry substitutions - but even so they still have very obvious popping), not rolling hills and forests (very very many vertices). And there only seems to be a dynamic shadow for the player character.

    Bard’s Tale has an overhead camera so there is a ridiculously short draw distance and very few onscreen characters at any one time. There are no character shadows at all, dynamic OR faked, and the textures they used were ridiculously lowres and as ugly as sin.

    Monster Hunter is the only one comparable. It is beautiful and has very lush organic environments, but it is nowhere near as complex or deep as DQ. Again, fairly few onscreen characters at any one time. And you will notice they have much more crappy fake shadows on their characters (I worked on the character shadows in DQ8 so I am biased).

    I don’t mean to rag on the developers of those games, and while I do see your point, you really can’t compare those games to DQ8 in terms of size and complexity. And to be fair, it does run well for the most part, when running around the beautiful, huge world, right? It is only in certain situations with lots of close complex geometry and many NPCs, and particle effects like smoke and fire that it lags a bit.
     
  3. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
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    Dragon Quest I is basically the JRPG prototype. It's a very simple game, much more simple than any of the FF games. You only have one party member, the map is relatively small, and there's not much more to the game than leveling to 20, finding the few mystic doodads, and beating the boss. I enjoy replaying it, but it's very short and primitive. The iOS version is a port of an older feature phone version and graphically, it's probably my least favorite version. Its mechanics are based on the SFC remake, so enemies give you more gold/exp than the FC/NES version, making it far less of a grind.

    Dragon Quest II also predates the first Final Fantasy. It adds party members and means of transportation. It's a much larger, more complex game than DQ1. It's also my least favorite DQ game due to the frankly horrible lead-up to the end. Like DQ1, the iOS version of this is a port of an earlier feature phone version and has similar graphics. The mechanics are based on the remake, with less of a grind. It's still not a very pleasant game to play through, in my opinion.

    Dragon Quest III is considered by many to be one of the best in the series, if not *the* best. It introduces the class system, allowing you to customize your party, and even multi-class in a way I prefer to the much later releasing FF3's system. It released after FF1 but before FF2, and I feel it's a more sophisticated game than any of the first three FF games easily. It's where DQ really starts going into mini-stories for each town and area. The quest is huge and by the time you reach the end, you'll be goggling at the idea that this was a NES game. The iOS version is yet to be released in Japan, and while I hope it's not based on the earlier feature phone release, it probably will be. Nevertheless, it's an absolutely brilliant JRPG even by modern standards, in my opinion.
     
  4. ImLegend

    ImLegend Well-Known Member

    Jun 26, 2010
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    there is no Dragon Soul in level 65 :(

    I beat all the dragons incl Ultimate Dragon before lvl65, trained my hero to level 65 and look forward to his Dragon Soul, but this port doesn't has it like ps2 version....

    please add it back.
     
  5. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
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    Yeah, Dragon Soul was another addition only for the English PS2 version of DQ8, and since this is based on the original JP version, it's not in.
     
  6. ImLegend

    ImLegend Well-Known Member

    Jun 26, 2010
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    i understand, but it shouldn't be hard to add it, they changed the mobile version anyway, such as

    *start with Ultimate Alchemy Pot not normal Alchemy Pot with no waiting time
    *free Dungeon maps without finding them.


    so I believe they can easy add it without problem.... no? :eek:
     
  7. Shaun Musgrave

    Shaun Musgrave Well-Known Member

    Jul 8, 2013
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    My feeling, and maybe Hellacious Puppy can back me up here, is that Square probably didn't give the developer any of the International assets, so there's a good chance they weren't even aware of Dragon Soul. If SE were to provide those assets, Dragon Soul would probably be the easiest among the changes to add in, but something tells me we shouldn't hold our breath on that particular hope.
     
  8. HellaciousPuppy

    Feb 25, 2014
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    I am afraid I can be of no help at all here. I don't know anything about those things. I generally have no interest in JRPGs. I am just a graphics programmer that worked on small parts of the game. To be honest, when they told me what series I would be working on, I had to feign excitement because I had never heard of it before. But that's just me.

    But yes, the development team is just doing whatever SE wants them to do. If there is something in the international version that is not in the Japanese version I doubt they even know about it. I was the only foreigner on the team and I was no help in that regard. But if they get enough pressure on various aspects, it will get done. SE have worked very hard to find the balance between keeping original fans happy and appealing to a new audience.
     
  9. heringer

    heringer Well-Known Member

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    You say Monster Hunter isn't as complex as Dragon Quest VIII (which is true), but San Andreas has a lot more going on compared to DQVIII too. It's not just plain buildings. It has tons of NPC's, different cars and a lot of stuff going on. And the NPC's have their own (though very basic) IA routines, with car chases, thefts and gang wars going on randomly around you. DQVIII has your character, the hills and a couple of monsters here and there. It's nowhere near as complex, even if your character is a high poly model.

    Also, you mentioned lack of dynamic shadows in GTA but ironically that is actually missing from the iOS version of DQVIII while the iOS version of San Andreas has dynamic shadows for the player and all the cars, real time reflections as well as normal mapping and a increased draw distance. It looks much better than the PS2 version and with a better framerate (PS2 version of GTA had a lot of slowdowns). DQVIII, on the other hands, has lower framerate and missing graphical effects.

    I'll give you one thing though: DQVIII is at least playable on an old device like the iPhone 4S. However, there's no reason for the game to run only marginally better on an iPad Air, which is a much more powerfull device. I also disagree on the game running well. Sure the framerate is fairly stable (though on my Galaxy S4 the game gags a lot, more than on my 4S), but even if it's stable 20 fps isn't what I would call "running well". It's playable, but not smooth.

    So, while I respect your opinion and the fact that you know a lot more about the whole situation, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a better port.
     
  10. heringer

    heringer Well-Known Member

    Oct 2, 2011
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    Oh yeah, I forgot to mention physics, which makes a huge difference too.
     
  11. CygnetSeven

    CygnetSeven Well-Known Member

    Feb 6, 2010
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    Thanks Shaun for taking the time to give such a detailed and thorough response. I appreciate it!
     
  12. HellaciousPuppy

    Feb 25, 2014
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    #592 HellaciousPuppy, Sep 3, 2014
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2014
    Yeah, I may have been a bit overly harsh with my criticism of GTA, it is a good game. However, I stand by much of what I said. I specifically mentioned the shadows because it is one of the criticisms of DQ8. In GTA, ONLY the player has a dynamic shadow, not the NPCs and NOT the vehicles. They are faked just like the characters in DQ8. Ever ridden a bike in GTA? The player character shadow is riding an invisible bike. And ALL shadows are jarringly absent in cut scenes.

    The physics in GTA is minimal, just cars as boxes receiving the odd impulse now and again. Almost no draw on resources. Also, DQ8 probably utilises just as much actual physics, to emulate the motion of the characters, to sample the terrain and keep things on the ground. You don't think of it as physics because it is not objects reacting to collisions or explosions, but it is in there. But anyway, since graphical heavy games like these are usually "draw bound" meaning that it is the GPU that is not fast enough, not the CPU, the physics is a moot point when discussing framerate. Same goes for AI, it's moot to framerate.

    I don't think GTA on iOS does have dynamic reflections, I have never seen them, but if it does it is probably just a simple cubemap (a cheat) or just reflects minimal geometry.

    And you mention normal mapping in GTA. Where? I haven't seen it. And by the by, DQ8 does have normal mapping on some of the water. I should know, I wrote it! But it is made to fit in with the toon aesthetic.

    A single smooth rolling hill in DQ8 probably contains more geometry than a whole block of GTA. A flat surface can be represented by 2 triangles, whereas a hill or cliff needs tens of thousands. I have seen DQ8 running in wireframe mode, and there are f**kloads of polygons for the ground alone. Look at the paths through the world. They are CURVED lengthways AND breadthways. There are SO many polygons. You just don't notice it because your brain just thinks "ground". DQ8 has VASTLY more geometry and complexity than GTA. The characters too are far higher res too. GTA characters look awful in the cut scenes whereas closeups in DQ8 are a large part of the game. And like I said, in DQ8 all characters HAVE to be rendered twice. That is quite heavy.

    Even the sky has hundreds of vertices for scrolling cloud billboards set in a swirling hemisphere and complex shader - mine ;) - for fading between times of day. GTA seems to just use a skycube.

    All in all, DQ8 is a vastly more complex and polished game than GTA in many ways, aesthetically and technically. It has to push much more geometry, and has an unbelievable amount of very complex shaders to keep the look as faithful as possible on a wide(r) variety of devices.

    I understand that you are disappointed in the framerate, and that's fair enough. Personally, if I had been in charge I would have made more sacrifices to ensure a more consistent framerate, but the occasional lag is DEFINITELY not due to poor/lazy developers, as I originally was replying to. I can attest to that. I was partly responsible for GPU optimisation and I can tell you the huge number of specifically tailored shaders there are are highly, highly optimised. I used every trick in the book to save every cycle I could.

    If I had to hazard a guess at why the framerate was a lower priority than other things (I mean lower priority in terms of outcome, not how much development time was devoted to it), I would say that it is because DQ8 is an RPG, not an action game, so although a smoother framerate would be nice, it is not as important as in games like monster hunter and GTA. The decision was made to limit the framerate rather than have a wildly flailing one, and for most devices it hits the mark fairly well. When I set the limit to 60fps it was at 60 the majority of the time.
     
  13. heringer

    heringer Well-Known Member

    Oct 2, 2011
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    San Andreas does have dynamic shadows for the characters, cars and NPCs. By dynamic shadows I mean that they change according to the position of the sun. I just checked. Also, I don't see any problem with the shadow of my character riding the bike. Maybe you are referring to the PS2 version or maybe it's related to your device? In any case, I don't know why are you mentioning shadows when they are the biggest feature that was cut from the graphics of the iOS version of DQVIII. As for reflections, I don't know if they are a trick, but this is what the Appstore description says:

    Enhanced for the iPhone 5 series and iPad 4th Gen and above with dynamic detailed shadows and real-time environmental reflections.

    Also, I think you are being a bit dismissive of GTA San Andreas ground. It's not just plain surface at all! There are plenty of hills and mountains. Take a look at this screenshot for instance:

    [​IMG]

    While I won't dispute the fact that DQVIII terrain has more polys, I think the number of NPCs, cars and objects showing on the screen at the same time, as well as a much bigger world to render, helps to negate that.

    GTA also has a lot of graphic effects going on, like multiple explosion, smoke, etc. The kind of effects that makes DQVIII iOS slowdown.

    In any case, I'm not out to prove that the devs were lazy or anything. I just think, and I'm pretty confident of that, that the port could have been better. To have missing graphical effects AND a lower framerate is nothing short than disappointing.

    But who knows, maybe we'll get updates later.
     
  14. HellaciousPuppy

    Feb 25, 2014
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    Well, we are both right. I see GTA does indeed have dynamic shadows on nearby entities on the very newest devices. But on the older devices it looks terrible with almost no shadows. And it doesn't even work on some very old devices on which DQ8 does work.

    And I will say again, I specifically mentioned the shadows because that was the criticism of DQ8 I was referring to, that the dynamic shadows were replaced with fake ones. I originally pointed out that that is what almost all ps2 ports have to do to get the game running on a tiny tiny pocket device. Sure, for the latest cutting edge devices it is possible to put back, and perhaps the DQ8 team with do just that.

    You are welcome to wish for a better port. I know you didn't call the dev team poor/lazy, but you replied to my original post that was replying to someone who did. But I still stand by what I said. I think we did an amazing job considering the particular challenges of the port.
     
  15. yeah yeah

    yeah yeah Well-Known Member

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    What level do y'all recommend to be on before tacking the 1st cave? I went in there, but could barely make it to the boss before my team was already taken out. I notice that compared to FF, DQ takes a lot longer to level up and get gold.
     
  16. Cagey75

    Cagey75 Well-Known Member

    Sep 2, 2014
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    Complete newbie Q here, but would you have to have played any of the previous games to go for this? Or just jump right in?
     
  17. curtisrshideler

    curtisrshideler Well-Known Member
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    This one you can just jump right in I think. No previous story to worry about.
     
  18. curtisrshideler

    curtisrshideler Well-Known Member
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    I think it's recommended to be at least at level 6. And I think the grinding in DQ has always been part of the appeal.
     
  19. yeah yeah

    yeah yeah Well-Known Member

    Jun 2, 2009
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    I'm through the cave. Seemed much easier at Level 6/7. Flew through it.
     
  20. Christian86

    Christian86 Active Member

    Jan 11, 2013
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    Lvl 5 is fine for the first cave
     

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