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00013_Field_RAYMAN2.txt
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1998-08-21
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Names and titles :
Michel Ancel, Director
Serge Hascoët, Game Play Manager
Grégoire Gobbi, Senior Project anager
Pauline Jacquey, Project Manager
(N64)
Nathalie Paccard, Project Manager
(PC, Play Station)
Laurence Buisson, International
Marketing Manager
Grégoire Gobbi:
How long have you been working on
Rayman 2 project ?
So far, we have been working on
Rayman 2 for one year, we started at
the beginning of August 1997 and have
been working on it since then.
How many people are working on it?
We've got the biggest staff at Ubi Soft.
There are 80 people on the team, 40
who are engineers. The rest of the
team consists largely of game
designers who work in small teams of
two with individual graphic designers.
Each group is responsible for a
specific map or game level.
What is new in the organization of the
team ?
These teams use the integration tools
that Ubi Soft has been developing over
the last two years. What is unique
about this set-up is that all the game
designers and graphic designers
develop the AI of characters and
different game situations
independently. The flexibility of those
tools allows an extraordinary increase
of creativity. In the "olden days" of video
games, the designers used to "order" a
character from the engineers, who
would then program its behavior before
the designers integrated it in the map.
This process did not allow rich
behaviors. With the development of our
tools, we now have 35 people looking
for new ideas, developing them
themselves and evaluating them in real
time gameplay. I think we can assert
that Rayman 2 offers a richness of
gameplay never seen before in a 3D
game.
How do you manage with a team split
between France and Canada?
In theory, the production takes place in
different countries, since Ubi Soft
develops our products internationally.
For example, the programming team
who works on improving the game
engine is working in the South of
France in Annecy. At the same time,
Michel Ancel's team is working in
Montpellier. The game designers and
the graphic designers are in Paris
while all the game testing is handled
out of our office in Montreal, Canada.
This sort of structure requires a great
deal of coordination. But overall, it
works well, partly because of our useful
computer network. For instance, we
use a tunnel to send huge quantities of
data to other countries. We are even
able to beat the clock by sending game
versions to Canada at night, which are
tested and then ready for corrections
magically the next morning !
Is it the same team that did the original
Rayman ?
Almost the entire team who created the
original Rayman is involved in the
creation of Rayman 2. The universe
and the characters are very familiar and
everyone wants to make an even better
game than the first one !
What are the design teams' other
accomplishments?
This is also the same team who
created Tonic Trouble, the 3D
adventure game in a delirious cartoon
universe for PC and Nintendo 64, to be
released in November 1998.