So let's start with what is my favourite part about this engine (and what I hope to see them expand upon!), the fact that ANY STYLE OF ART can be dropped into the engine and animated fairly quickly. "The image may be a 3D rendering, an India ink drawing, a modelling clay background, an image drawn on a graphics tablet or a scanned image, and so on. In fact, any visual source can be used" (taken from the UbiArt blog). So far, only hand drawn art and some 3D models (in Rayman Legends) have been displayed working within the engine... I can't wait until we get some Clay Fighter style games coming out from this thing! The artistic possibilities are so vast, it's nuts. To get technical (as the blog puts it), they "use 2D patches to contort sections of the image with a level of complexity that can adapt to the potential needs of the final rendering and the target machine." My interpretation of this is that there are chunks of matrices that are generated on a per-image basis. These matrices then have vertices that can be manipulated based on what animation is happening (this could be why most of the Rayman Origin movements look similar in the animation). They mention in the blog that this "adapts remarkably well to this type of animation and gives excellent performances in a real-time context," which makes me wonder if the animation style (and therefore, code) would need to be tweaked based on what style of art is being imported.
Here's a quick video of how the animation process goes down:
Now, let's look at the the useful features that come in the level editor (an integral part of the engine), while using Rayman Legends as our example. Everything you see in Rayman Legends (even the loading screen) was created within the level editor. While these scenes may look 2D, it turns out they are actually 2D planes within a 3D space (or something to that degree). This is accentuated through parallax backgrounds in which the background is ACTUALLY farther away spatial, not just coded to move like it is. As mentioned before, you can edit the level (in all respects) while playing the game. This is accomplished by turning on a button type overlay and turning things on and off through toggle the buttons.
With the UI on, however, you can see that the ground is constructed by these connected nodes. As the designer manipulates the ground, the actual look of the ground changes (e.g. if the ground goes from flat to 90 degrees, the part that rises straight up will turn in to a cliffside). Additional nodes can be added and nodes that are already placed can also be manipulated. Enemy animation can also be done in the same way - the example they used was a boss fight (with a 3D model!!! MADNESS). Nodes were placed down within the level editor and a spline was then created through all the nodes. This allowed the boss to travel along the nodes, in and out of the background, etc. These nodes were just as easy to move and edit as the ground nodes and would rebuild as moved to keep the animation loop complete.
Lighting is also just as cool in the UbiArt engine. The lighting is... wait for it... DYNAMIC. YES. DYNAMIC 2D LIGHTING. THERE'S EVEN A LIGHTING EXCLUSIVE MODE, SO YOU SELECT ONLY THE LIGHTING. Ahem. When you drag the lights out, there's an area of effect that shows up (depending on what type of light is selected). When Rayman runs towards the light, the light interacts with him based on his position and the type of light and its respective settings. There's also the capability to edit the colour of the light (which seems negligible, but having this in the editor is HUGE) and set shadows using these invisible blocks (they block light that is casted into them... its fairly hard to explain, but there is a video after).
All I can hope here, at the end of this blog, is that my ramblings have made you realize just how amazing this engine is and, as it grows and updates with the times, how much better it will get. In the video (that I will post below), they talk about a new feature that they updated into the game - the player turning the light on. Yeah, it seems like whatever - player turns the light on, whoop-de-doo. But the way the have the lights turn on sequentially AND start an animation for a boss within the level editor itself, is freakin' awesome. That's what we need to keep in mind here - there is no bonus code. There is no, "Oh, we added this script for the game since we couldn't do x." There's the engine, the artists and the developers. To have such a powerful tool at your disposal during game creation can really alter how you approach the development itself and the results of what it is you can/will create. The words used in the video spring to mind once again, "... this is level development in 'easy mode'." If my words weren't enough to persuade you, the developer video below should do the trick:
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