14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Ubisoft working on the upcoming The Division is delivering a developer diary for the title which is designed to offer players more information on the all new Snowdrop engine that's being used for the innovative game.
Massive explains that the tech was created entirely in-house and that it is designed not to deliver scale, but to improve the overall quality of the gaming experience.
The company explains that, "AAA 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."
The Snowdrop engine is being built around a node-based system, which affects everything from rendering to Artificial Intelligence, mission scripting and the user interface.
The new tech is designed to help the entire team working on The Division by allowing them to quickly create their assets and test how they look in the game world before deciding how to then use what they have created.
Massive and Ubisoft are able to design more content using a smaller amount of resources, which means that the resulting game worlds can be bigger than before and more detailed, especially when it comes to the lighting system.
The two companies are also talking about unspecified innovative features that Snowdrop allows them to include in The Division.
The developer diary also features some impressive nature shots, but it seems that they will not be part of the coming game, with the teams adding, "The forest shots, turrets and giant flies that you saw in the trailer are not part of The Division. This video is a technical demonstration, to display Snowdrop’s full capacities as a new generation engine. Snowdrop is capable of creating a large range of varied universes, procedurally, and in an unprecedented level of detail."
The Division is currently set to be launched on the Xbox One from Microsoft, the PlayStation 4 from Sony and the PC before the end of this year.
It is based on a Tom Clancy concept and will allow gamers to play as a first responder who needs to deal with a plague that manages to spread all through the United States in just five days.
Ubisoft has promised a game experience that seamlessly blends elements traditionally seen in the action and the MMO spaces.