Square Enix details how it optimized FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE for next-gen platform PlayStation 5.
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FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE features dramatically faster loading times on PlayStation 5. Was there a lot of work involved in optimizing the game to load more quickly on PS5's NVME SSD?
Lead Technical Programmer Tomohito Hano: With PS5 having an SSD, I/O speeds were no longer a bottleneck. Instead, time slicing and CPU load became the causes for longer load times.
Not only have loading screens been minimized, but textures load much faster, too, which is especially evident in the Sector 7 slum area of the game. Can you talk about the work that went into improving those streaming issues using Unreal Engine?
Hano: In the PlayStation 4 version, we had to forgo using a higher-quality format and high-resolution textures due to memory and disc capacity restrictions. However, we still didn’t have enough disc capacity with
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE to include a high-quality format and high-resolution textures.
And so, we integrated
Oodle Texture [Compression], and by using it in combination with
Oodle Kraken, we were able to achieve a smaller file size on the PS5 version, even taking the higher resolution textures into account.
Plus, the increased memory compared to PS4 and the improvement of the Non Streamable Mip Map, which ties into the response of the aforementioned question, also helped to load textures.
We were also able to use more high-resolution light maps, which improved the accuracy of the lighting.
Do you have any advice for Unreal Engine developers who are hoping to port their games to next-gen?
Hamaguchi: Through the development of
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE INTERGRADE, I couldn’t help but feel just how versatile Unreal Engine is–since
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE on the PS4 was developed based on UE 4.18, naturally, there wasn’t support for future platforms such as the PS5 at the time. However, all we needed to do was to do a partial merge or implement a few unique items on our end based on the most recent version of UE4, and there was flexibility for expansion even from a slightly older version of UE. Of course, there will be more instances where the native code in UE will need to be amended, so the skills expected from an engineer are still necessary, but I’m hoping that today’s article serves as somewhat of a reference, and helps those who are looking to port their games to next-gen.