The artist-friendly UbiArt Framework game engine allows artists to easily develop games using their living concept art. Each of these games is built with UbiArt engine and known for its unique hand-drawn art style, creating a new. UbiArt Framework makes creation easy. More info on http://www.ubi-art.com. Games™ sits down with Valiant Hearts associate producer Guillaume Cerda to talk about how the UbiArt Framework allows smaller teams to make the most of their time and creativity As we witness the console market embrace new digital distribution methods and support the indie development scene, it’s becoming more and more important for the industry’s publishing behemoths to venture outside of the reliable old triple-A game and take risks, gamble with new IP. Diversification is becoming more and more important to Ubisoft particularly, and the publisher’s UbiArt Framework is spear-heading the expedition into innovative, interesting territory. For a lot of gamers, it doesn’t matter how a game looks – to get them playing through to the end of a release, the developer will have to make it play, too. Unfortunately, it’s never that simple – there tends to be a trade-off between art direction and gameplay in a lot of titles, consequential of discrepancies between developmental departments, end vision or simply time constraints. Ubisoft’s UbiArt Framework aims to combat these issues – the engine has seen a lot of use in recent years, with Rayman Origins acting as a proof of concept for the Framework, followed up with Rayman Legends, and then more recently we’ve had the dark horse Child Of Light proving that the Framework is more than a one-trick pony. “The Rayman games were very cartoony,” explains Guillaume Cerda – associate producer of newest UbiArt game, Valiant Hearts, “and Child Of Light had this very watercolour-y inspiration. With Valiant Hearts, we wanted to make an interactive comic book – that was very much the idea from the start of development – and the UbiArt Framework has allowed us to do that, in a way that was very respectful to our inspirations.” Valiant Hearts: The Great War has a visual style that takes the cartoony minimalism of early comics and applies it to a brutal and ugly context: the First World War. The contrast between the sharp colours and caricatured characters to the thematic content of the game is striking – the result being a non-verbal comic that highlights the horrors of war without patronising or saying a word. It communicates through its art, and it does it very well. This is because, in part, UbiArt allows the artist that creates the assets to directly influence the gameplay – where other development processes see an artist sketch out concept art, pass it through to level designers, character designers, 3D artists and whole other departments, the small teams that work on UbiArt games put their vision directly into the engine. “You have no idea how direct the process is in getting your raw ideas into the game,” explains Cerda. “You know how much concept art there is for this game? That’s because all the visuals and all the graphics you’ll see in this game are done by one guy, [Paul Tumelaire].” After the main artist passes his assets onto the level artists, the directly graph skeletons onto the art, creating the interactive objects and solid surfaces in the game world. By creating skeletons inside characters or buildings, hand-drawn art can be animated by the Framework with ease, allowing the game developers to focus on establishing solid gameplay and mechanics (showcased beautifully by Rayman’s handling and collision detection) whilst the artists can focus on bringing every detail of the world to life (demonstrated by the significant detail visible in Child Of Light). “The UbiArt Framework makes is platform agnostic, too,” explains Cerda, “which makes it very easy for us to output our games on multiple consoles. The technology behind the engine allows us to output at 60 frames per second and 1080p easily, too, so [the staff] working on the games can focus on releasing 2D games that pay homage to the 16-bit roots of 2D, but with the animations and depth you’d expect from a release in 2014.” We’ve seen a resurgence in the 2D game over the last few years, and we sincerely hope the ease of which the UbiArt Framework allows smaller teams to produce games will mean more experimental titles coming from Ubisoft’s internal studios. Framework DirectValiant Hearts was created by a team of 15, and as such has retained the intimate touch that only comes from a small crew’s project. In the triple-A gaming scene, this is something that’s sorely missed, and we anticipate Ubisoft’s next move eagerly – especially if the rumours about a UbiArt Prince of Persia prove fruitful.
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January 2019
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