Rayman 1

[Steo]

I noticed the pencils tend to be just random colours too in Picture City. Also, as for Rayman Advance, I'm really not too fond of the colour palette they use, the bright colours don't look that great in my opinion.

[RayCarrot]

They do indeed use random colors. Funny enough the PC version doesn't have support for sub-palettes (except for Designer), so all different colored sprites are duplicated for each color.
I might make a mod some day which changes the GBA colors. The rom is quite easy editing, so shouldn't be too hard.

[PluMGMK]

Those random pencils are sometimes different shapes too though. Most of them are hexagonal, but some colours are round instead…

[RayCarrot]

Ray1Map now supports the Atari Jaguar version I'd like to go on a rant on how horribly coded this version is, but I won't Essentially this version runs on a completely different engine than every other version. Everything is hard-coded. Each level has a separate function for loading it, each event type has a pointer directly to a function etc. This means the more abstracted system they built for other platforms, where events have properties such as etat, hp, follow, commands etc. is not here at all.
My guess is they started making this engine, before they had plans to port the game, and once it was decided they were making a PS1 release they built a new engine for their multi-platform releases, while maintaining the old Jaguar engine at the same time (this would also explain the differences in that version). What more backs up this theory is that the earliest PS1 demo, dated December 1994, uses the new multi-platform engine.

Alright, enough of that. Here are some of the exclusive and/or heavily modified maps. Some events do not display (they appear as a placeholder "E"), such as the Rayman position and gendoors, because these are spawned through hard-coded functions (or in the case of gendoors they don't need any graphics, so they don't).

Some interesting facts:
- As you might know the Jaguar versions omits slippery platforms. Collision is handled by each tile having a collision type index. In most versions it's between 0-30, with the slippery types being the last couple of ones. On Jaguar the collision type value is a 4-bit value, giving it a range of 0-15.
- Although the Jaguar version does not have shrink fairies, there is an incomplete version of small Rayman in the game, used only for the world map. Unlike other versions it has its own animations.
- In this version the sprite indexes of BigRay (the big version of Rayman assembling himself during the splash screen) exactly match Rayman's sprite indexes, making it seem as if they originally has a complete sprite-set of BigRay.
- The game has a seventh world, used for the world map, Breakout etc. Oddly Mr Dark gets loaded in here.

Besides that there's nothing new or interesting really. The game does reference some extra levels in some worlds, but they just point to already existing levels. There are no unused animations or sprites.
With this we only have the two Jaguar prototypes remaining.

[Steo]

The fact that it's a.completely different engine explains why the physics in general are nothing alike. I did notice everything is entirely different, but I didn't know the entire engine was.

[dr_st]

Ports of classic video games in general is one area where reading the details often fascinates me. It's amazing how much coding from scratch was often involved in porting a game to a different system. Sometimes cool features pop up in ports that were planned for the original, but omitted due to various constrains.

[RayCarrot]

True, but every other version of Rayman 1, including PS1, PC, GBA, DSi etc. use the same engine. The data there is a lot more generic, meaning it's not tied to any specific system. I'd imagine the Jaguar was harder working with though, so porting this multi-platform engine to it was probably more effort than it was worth.

[Steo]

I still think the Jaguar version is pretty cool. Of course it's technically worse than every other version, but there's some things about it that are unique and kind of cool. They did manage to do pretty well with it considering the hardware limitations, and I actually like the menu music from the Jaguar version.

Candy Château for example is pretty interesting when it comes to the Jaguar version. The level is completely different, and it's got the pocket knife, corkscrew, and sweets for example. I know they're in Designer, but it's still pretty cool that this version features them.

[RayCarrot]

Yeah, I just posted the full maps for those levels above

Also seems I spoke too soon. I'm fairly sure this animation is actually unused.

[PluMGMK]

Looks like what might happen if you knock a boulder out of his hands when he has less than half his health left. I guess they thought it was too confusing and just made him throw the boulder before you can get a chance to make him drop it.

[Steo]

Interesting, this probably would have been the case since he does start to throw the boulders. Strange that they decided to skip the part where he drops it on his foot though.

[RayCarrot]

Not sure if I should post this here or in the Ray1Map topic, but here's a test for real-time level editing in Rayman 1 Currently only for PC, but the same logic can be used on any platform (except Jaguar which runs on a different engine). The editor also reads the memory of the game to display animations and such in real-time.



We're also looking for someone to help out with the UI as we currently don't have anyone working on it, so if anyone here wants to help out with the UI and is familiar with Unity, please let me know

[StelzenBomber]

This editor already looks better and better the more i see it

[PluMGMK]

Ray1Map now supports the Atari Jaguar version I'd like to go on a rant on how horribly coded this version is, but I won't Essentially this version runs on a completely different engine than every other version. Everything is hard-coded. Each level has a separate function for loading it, each event type has a pointer directly to a function etc. This means the more abstracted system they built for other platforms, where events have properties such as etat, hp, follow, commands etc. is not here at all.
My guess is they started making this engine, before they had plans to port the game, and once it was decided they were making a PS1 release they built a new engine for their multi-platform releases, while maintaining the old Jaguar engine at the same time (this would also explain the differences in that version). What more backs up this theory is that the earliest PS1 demo, dated December 1994, uses the new multi-platform engine.

A couple of years ago, I remember I came up with the idea that Allegro Presto was something of a last-minute backport from the PlayStation version to the Jaguar version, since the whole level pretty nonsensical without the sliding mechanic. Looking back on old posts, it seems I also thought that maybe Bongo Hills was originally two levels on the Jaguar version, that were then combined into a really long one when Allegro Presto was added as the second level. Based on the insights you've gained on the engine differences, does that theory sound plausible?

Or did someone just screw something up with the number of bits used to represent the tile types?

As for the UI, unfortunately I don't think I know anyone who could help with this, but it looks really impressive already!

[RayCarrot]

I don't think the number of bits is the limitation. Most likely sliding was added rather late into the game (as can be seen by the index the sliding animations has, which is very high compared to other ones) and then it never got ported to the Jaguar engine.
I agree that the music levels were probably pretty rushed when they got ported over. The layouts were clearly made with sliding in mind, so I guess it was a last minute decision to add in all of those enemies. At least in the image world they completely remade one of the levels which relied on sliding.
Interestingly they also cut the second helicopter stage in Mr Stone's Peaks, but kept the same level indexes (more proving the point how these levels were converted from the PS1 version) by having that level still appear in the array, but pointing to an already existing level.
About Bongo Hills being two levels originally, no idea. I do know that the order originally might have been different in the jungle world at least since one of the demos has the Moskito chase level indexed differently than the final version (it's one less if I remember correctly).

Edit: Btw, this is most likely the order the worlds were made in:
Jungle
Mountain
Cave
Music
Image
Cake
This is based on how they appear in the Jaguar ROM, and it matches quite well with the time frames of when we've seen early gameplay of them in videos and demos. It also proves more that sliding was added in much later, as it's only really used in the last 3 worlds.

[Steo]

I'd be willing to guess the Moskito chase was originally going to take place one section later, since that way it would take place just before the fight instead of having another area in between both.

Also, I guess the mountain world does have some slippery surfaces, but it's just some ice and it's not exactly doing nearly as much harm as the last three worlds by lacking sliding physics.

[RayCarrot]

I've been comparing the PC versions today and interestingly PC version 1.00 retains a lot of level design from the PS1 version, even going as far as including the moving drum!



There are a ton of other changes between 1.00 and the other PC versions too, almost all of them making the game easier in later versions (1.00 has more enemies and spikes and fewer platforms, they also added more tings later to show where to jump etc.).

[StelzenBomber]

If rayman 1 was any harder id be very very anyoed

[PluMGMK]

OK, I wanna play that version now, if it's more challenging! So wait, does the removal of that particular walking drum mean it doesn't appear in the PC version at all? I hadn't actually realized that…

[RayCarrot]

Yep, walking drums don't usually appear in the PC version. They're still in the files though and are fully usable.

Regarding the difficulty, here are some examples:







Many of these harder parts are basically the same as PS1 (it's worth noting PS1 PAL and NTSC have slight differences too, but I won't go into that now ). This part in Allegro Presto, with the drum, is practically identical to PS1 as it has the smaller platforms too (they were made wider on later PC versions):

PC 1.00:

PC 1.21:

PS1:

Another part which shows it's more similar to PS1 (check the tings):

PC 1.00:


PC 1.21:


PS1:


Also, some slight graphic changes:




Edit: I've uploaded all maps in case anyone wants to have a look at the version differences