Rayman 1

[PluMGMK]

The one where they ignored their own advice on good game design (from the Rayman Designer manual, although that probably wasn't even written yet!)

[Rudie Radio Waves]

WARNING: INSANE RAMBLING

I don't know if this has been done before (probably it has lol) but did you guys ever wonder how many "official" levels there are of Rayman 1? (By that I mean levels contained in a collection published by Ubisoft.) I needed to sate my curiosity; here's what I found.

I've heard people say that Rayman 1 has 18 levels, which isn't incorrect, but it's very misleading: as you guys know, each level is split into parts. Now, certain maps you do not revisit, like Betilla's "stages" or the boss maps, so I decided to leave them out of my calculation, mostly to give a more generous number. Rayman 1 has 56 "normal" stages.

Rayman Designer adds 24 more levels, all of them single-map only; Rayman By His Fans boasts 40 new stages and Rayman 60 Levels is pretty self explanatory.

So that comes down to a total of *180* stages!! That's not even counting the fan-made levels or even Rayman Junior- that's insane!

[dr_st]

Well, technically the 100 levels in By His Fans / 60 Levels are fan-made, no? They are still official, of course.

[Rudie Radio Waves]

Of course, but I meant fan-made levels that didn't make it into an official Ubisoft release, like say "Return to Allegro Presto" or "Red Instantaneous Death" by Jaxxckle. But yeah I guess it is a little ambiguous, oops.

[Hunchman801]

Well, technically the 100 levels in By His Fans / 60 Levels are fan-made, no? They are still official, of course.

I'm actually curious, what do we know about this whole process of selecting fan-made levels? Surely a contest wouldn't have gone unnoticed...

[PluMGMK]

Well, the people who made those maps were given template level structures that were ready-made, and at least some of which had already been used in the educational games. I get the feeling that those levels must have been made on-site, because I can't imagine those templates being distributed via the internet…

Anyway, most of the levels are second-to-third-rate, so I don't know if it really matters.

[Rudie Radio Waves]

Well, technically the 100 levels in By His Fans / 60 Levels are fan-made, no? They are still official, of course.

I'm actually curious, what do we know about this whole process of selecting fan-made levels? Surely a contest wouldn't have gone unnoticed...

I just assumed it was a sort-of-internal thing announced on RaymanZone, and that Ubi picked the winners from there.
I wonder if the creators were all French? Maybe some of them can be contacted and/or interviewed (if they remember something, it's been a little more than 20 years).

[PluMGMK]

It was before the site was called "RaymanZone", but yes, it could've been.

One name that stuck in my mind was Lorry Moalic – doesn't sound like a French name, but I dunno…

[Hunchman801]

Oh yeah, it's true that a lot of those levels have a similar structure, they're clearly based on templates. Indeed, people must have been brought onsite to "develop" them, but I wonder how they were chosen (and if they were really fans at all ).

As for contacting them, are their names actually in the game? I can't quite remember.

[Rudie Radio Waves]

I checked Rayman By His Fans and each map has the name of who made it. So that's pretty cool!

[Hunchman801]

I guess it might be possible for the professional stalkers out here to find at least a couple of them on LinkedIn.

[dr_st]

Oh yeah, it's true that a lot of those levels have a similar structure, they're clearly based on templates.

Out of curiosity, I checked, and the "60 levels" do not seem to share the same template among multiple level as the "40 levels" do. They also do not display the author's names, and the wiki says they were made by Ubisoft. So it seems only the "Rayman by his Fans" levels were indeed made by fans.

[Hunchman801]

Come to think about it, I'm not even sure I've ever played Rayman 60 Levels.

[RaymanRedemption]

Hi there!

I found this video on YouTube where Rayman is flying in the air, impressive!

[dr_st]

Come to think about it, I'm not even sure I've ever played Rayman 60 Levels.

I just checked, and it looks like I have beaten 49 out of the 60 levels. Most of them in 1999, some in 2003.

[Hunchman801]

The one where they ignored their own advice on good game design (from the Rayman Designer manual, although that probably wasn't even written yet!)

So what was the advice in question, having consistent behavior for the same visual tiles? Well, they're right, the Jaguar level is fun, but probably not state-of-the-art level design.

I found this video on YouTube where Rayman is flying in the air, impressive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmecTg-jhPE

This looks like the glidewalk glitch in Rayman 3.

I just checked, and it looks like I have beaten 49 out of the 60 levels. Most of them in 1999, some in 2003.

I'm impressed that you still have all your data from back then, none of my computers from the late 90s or early 2000s still work, and anything I worked on back then is forever lost.

[PluMGMK]

The one where they ignored their own advice on good game design (from the Rayman Designer manual, although that probably wasn't even written yet!)

So what was the advice in question, having consistent behavior for the same visual tiles? Well, they're right, the Jaguar level is fun, but probably not state-of-the-art level design.

This one:

I have the English version lying around the house somewhere but I'm too lazy to go look for it right now…

[dr_st]

I just checked, and it looks like I have beaten 49 out of the 60 levels. Most of them in 1999, some in 2003.

I'm impressed that you still have all your data from back then, none of my computers from the late 90s or early 2000s still work, and anything I worked on back then is forever lost.

I'll confess to something even scarier: Not only do I have the data, I also have one of my computers from back then (purchased around 1999-2000, don't remember exactly).

However, I almost never use it anymore; it's sitting at my parents' place, mostly as a relic. Many years ago, I extracted my full game collection - directory structure, launchers, batch files and all - from that PC - and I play it via DOSBox on any one of a number of modern systems.

[Hunchman801]

This one:

Yeah, that's what I thought.

However, I almost never use it anymore; it's sitting at my parents' place, mostly as a relic. Many years ago, I extracted my full game collection - directory structure, launchers, batch files and all - from that PC - and I play it via DOSBox on any one of a number of modern systems.

I did try to do the same thing years ago, but the computers in question wouldn't even start.

[PluMGMK]

I can't remember if this has been brought up before, but I just realized tonight that Rayman's guiding of the firefly with his fist in Eat at Joe's kinda foreshadows the way in which he defeats Skops a few levels later, guiding the tail-stings. I wonder if the tail-stings are an evil form of the firefly, like antitoons are to electoons…

Also, I managed to get through Eat at Joe's tonight without dying, and even managed to punch out two of those horrible biting fish!