14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft's Massive studio has offered a few more details about its stunning Snowdrop engine, which was once again highlighted to GDC 2014 participants yesterday in a great video, saying that the new tech helps it achieve its ambitious goals.
Ubisoft tasked its Massive studio in Sweden with creating a bold new open world online role-playing game with a distinct focus on realism, third-person shooting, and other action adventure elements.
The title was revealed to the world last year and, since then, a few different videos focusing on its underlying technology – the Snowdrop engine – have appeared online, with the latest surfacing yesterday.
Ubisoft Massive's Brand Art Director, Rodrigo Cortes, has shared a few more details about the new technology with UbiBlog, saying just what the studio wanted when it made the impressive engine.
"Snowdrop was created in-house, at Massive, in response to a specific requirement: to do things better, not bigger," Cortes said. "Triple-A game development projects are growing in scope exponentially, so we wanted to be smart and not rely on brute force. We needed an engine that would support how we work in the studio, promote creativity, and allow the freedom to experiment and prototype."
Snowdrop certainly has lots of features to help the team at Massive, as Cortes explained that it's a node-based system that can affect everything from visual rendering, to artificial intelligence behavior, mission scripting, or the user interface.
What's more, the engine runs in real-time, meaning a change can be implemented and immediately its results can be seen inside the game, without having to wait for pre-rendering or the "baking" of effects like lighting.
Given these great tools, Cortes says that the studio's creative staff can focus on crafting the experience without worrying about technical problems.
"Snowdrop is a dynamic, interconnected and flexible system where developers can create their assets quickly and interact with them in ways that have never been done before," he added.
"Thanks to the power of our technology, we have empowered our artists and thus can reach levels of quality never before seen in videogames. With the usability of the tools, people really excel in what they create. This has resulted in amazing graphics, as well as unexpected new features and unique innovations that really push the engine, the power of the consoles, and the games we work on, forward."
The Division might appear in 2014, but recent reports claimed that a 2015 release is more likely, as Massive started actually working on content for the game really late into development.