Rayman 2

[Tulio]

GOD the DC one was great. They should've put that in Revolution. In my opinion, a massive merging of the DC, PS and PS2 versions would've been the R2 to P0WN all R2s.
But don't the PC and N64 share an intro? And Revolution is basically the same...

Yeah, RR one looks quite nicer just because of overall graphic improvements.

Also, hat engine was used to make R2? Maybe some ENBseries addon could add some features like motion blur, bloom, DoF...

[Jewish Candy]

I'm not sure that engine was given a name... it's has been used in other games though, I think.
Revolution did look quite nice, despite the lower framerate. This is why I pity the Dreamcast...

[PluMGMK]

I think the engine can just be called the R2 engine or Tonic Trouble engine. It has no name.

[Haruka]

Too bad I only tried out 25% of the DC version once... The sprites of the VMU screen were so cool!

[spiraldoor]

I think the engine can just be called the R2 engine or Tonic Trouble engine. It has no name.

Doesn't it use the JADE engine? Or am I getting it mixed-up with some other game?

Your attitude suggests I'm opposed to the Hall of Doors... I'm not. I'm explaining why I prefer the alternative means of level selection Revolution offers. But for starters, the Front is certainly not 'dull' or 'bland'. Globox's House and Rainbow Creek are in my opinion some of the most beautiful environments in the entire Rayman series, whereas the Hall of Doors is simply a construction of spiraldoors and a path located deep in space. There's just no playability factor... what makes Rayman great is the free-roaming element to the gameplay, but in the HOD Rayman is restricted to one path (and even then doesn't have control except for one singular movement).

+1. I sat for 30 minutes staring at the gorgeousness of Rainbow Creek.

I don’t like the aesthetic of the Front at all. You say that it’s not ‘dull’ or ‘bland’, but I have to disagree. It’s just fields of grass, some stone walls, the sea and some caves. Like a lacklustre test-run for the Land of the Livid Dead, a level which did everything right. The Front’s principal background is a distant unimaginative forest with some rivers and mountains. This was passable as a background visible for fifteen seconds in the Iron Mountains, but not for what’s supposed to be the heart of the game. The Front just feels uninspired to me. There’s nothing at all in it that stands out as being particularly creative or original or interesting. Can one of you explain to me why you like the way it looks? I just don’t see where you're coming from.

Nor do I think that the Front pulled off the whole ‘free-roaming’ thing very well. We were always being told exactly where to go and what to do, so what was the point of being able to wander off anyway? It would be a different story if there were a bunch of side-quests and secret levels, and we were given multiple ways of achieving out objectives, but that’s simply not the way Rayman 2 was designed. The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire, along with Tomb of the Ancients, is the only part of the Rayman series that I think comes close to a good ‘free-roaming’ experience, and even those were mostly linear. What’s so bad about being able to just move on to the next level, and leave the gameplay for the levels themselves? A level-select screen shouldn't have ‘playability’. If I want playability, I will play one of the actual levels that are connected to it. Rayman 1 had a level-select screen which functioned exactly like the Hall of Doors, and it didn’t detract from the game at all.

I think a star-filled river in some kind of ancient metaphysical forest is a better level-selection screen that three stone circles with Spiral Doors on them. Having to use a Spiral Door to get from one sector of the Front to another so that you can use another Spiral Door to get to a level can get really annoying, especially if you can't remember which sector each level is located in and/or are confused by Revolution's arbitrary level-mishmash.

My view is simply that the Front improved the idea of the HOD. Perhaps if the Front concept was developed by the Montpellier team and appeared in the original game you'd hold similar views.

Perhaps if the Front concept had been developed by the Montellier team it would have turned out much better than it did.

I've actually drawn a diagram of an alternative hub for the game that I just made up myself. It took me about an hour. I like it. It's much more similar to the Hall of Doors than it is to the Front, but Rayman is still able to walk around freely in it (or rather, he would be, if my hub was actually in the game).

Here it is, for those who are interested.

The black lines are stairs, and the blue lines are doors that open to let Rayman progress to the next area of the hub when he has finished the appropriate levels or collected the necessary amount of Yellow Lums. The chambers ought to be a bit more complex than I have portrayed them (think Sanctuary of Stone and Fire part 1), but I can’t be arsed to actually design detailed and interesting levels that are never going to be made. Each of the four main chambers are themed after one of the four elements, so the water-themed chamber would have a similar aesthetic to the Sanctuary of Water and Ice, and so on. Stars should be visible at all times, of course; this is a very Hall of Doors-like place.

[Jewish Candy]

Spiral-senpai - you write posts which span miles and tire out people's eyes , but that's because they are filled with awesomeness and insight. It's amazing the time you put in to all this... your sketch of a potential Hall of Doors is truly inspired. It would've looked incredible in-game.

However, I suppose we all have different opinions. For me, Land of the Livid Dead had enormous potential, but in the end resulted in blandness and lack a lack of 'used' culture, if you catch my drift. I think it was meant to show the remnants of a lost Teensie 'civilisation', but many of the typical motifs (the coloured glass, the patterns etc.) simply weren't present, and we were left with some massive crystal tower with a dimensional port inside etc. Awesome as it sounds on paper, it really didn't translate into the game. Also, the ambience and 'weather' were bland as hell. I get that it was meant to be all moody, but the Rayman feel was not there one bit. Couple this with the linearity of Rayman 3, and in the end, a wasted opportunity. Still beautiful - just lacked the character and freshness of the environments in Rayman 1 and 2. Could say that for the whole of R3 really, but meh.

In comparison, I would say that the Front - whilst being incredibly flawed in terms of play design (and showing too many hints of linearity in a 'free-roaming' world, but we can blame that on the gen) - was still an excellent example of, well, the world Rayman lives in. I agree that at times (Minisaurus Plain in particular!) the styling was bland and rather boring, but for the most part, I think that it puts across the peace and gentle pace of the Glade of Dreams.
The Plain areas were uninspired; the Beaches and Forests, however, were places one could get lost in. The suggested simplicity and natural ambience created by the music and the (better) environments was ideal for the job. I remember spending a whole 20 minutes just playing, jumping around in that river flowing down the Minisaurus Plain, and then spending another 40 on that beach, and then moving on to Globox's house and running around there... I think the point of the Front wasn't to wow people with the zaniness or inventiveness of Rayman's world; it was to show its simplicity, its dreaminess, enough to satisfy the player, but not 'OOOOOOH!' enough to keep them hanging around. It appealed to the childlike tendency of any gamer to try their hardest to prolong a game's life by messing around. Have you seen 'In the Night Garden'? Or even 'teletubbies'? You'll understand what I mean - how can they have so much fun in such boring environments... and RR has so much better than that.
This is something that was sorely needed in a short game like Revolution. The issue with linearity stems from the tinyness of R2.
I admit that the Front did fail in many areas, but I still respect it and especially its aesthetic design for trying to flesh out an incredible but short game.

The difference between Rayman 1 and the Hall of Doors is that Rayman 2 was a MIDGET compared to Rayman 1. For me, the Hall of Doors felt empty. There was so much to choose from in R1 that linearity didn't matter. Definitely the way to do a straightforward game.

With regards to the Rayman 2 engine; definitely NOT the Jade Engine. Jade was used in BG&E, and I think Revolution (though I'm probably wrong on that one). The original R2 had nothing to do with Jade - a shame really, that engine was very efficient and designed with Ancel in mind, obviously!

[bunnieblaster]

I always wondered what was behind the rocks in the hall of doors after the mysterious black tunnel. (the storm thingie) And if we could rip the whole hall of doors.... awesome

[Tulio]

Google'd a bit and found it - it's RenderWare.

[phj]

I would expect that the hall of doors is somewhere near the sanctuary of water and ice. Both areas have a space part and a huge sea with cliffs on the other side.

[Jewish Candy]

The RenderWare list shows no Rayman 2... it seems like a very generic engine, and slightly too modern for R2 or Tonic Trouble in their original incarnations.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the Rayman 2 engine was homegrown.

[Xenon]

Spiraldoor, there's more to the Front than vast green spaces. Globox's house, the magic well, the pier, the beach, the caves and the pirate factory are all examples of areas that provide excellent viewing pleasure, and in my opinion are more 'inspired' than the Hall of Doors (which is essentially a level selection screen). The only uninspired areas I can think of are the Minisaurus Plain (the actual plain) and the East Plain, which do, granted, lack imagination from Ubisoft's part. But I consider those to be blips because the good aspects seriously outweigh the negative ones.

I don't really understand your point about playability. The general layout of levels isn't as well constructed as yours but what's better from a gamer's point of view: levels which are interconnected that can be accessed by foot or teleportation, or levels that are isolated from each other which can only be accessed by teleportation from outer space?

[El Dango]

Your attitude suggests I'm opposed to the Hall of Doors... I'm not. I'm explaining why I prefer the alternative means of level selection Revolution offers. But for starters, the Front is certainly not 'dull' or 'bland'. Globox's House and Rainbow Creek are in my opinion some of the most beautiful environments in the entire Rayman series, whereas the Hall of Doors is simply a construction of spiraldoors and a path located deep in space. There's just no playability factor... what makes Rayman great is the free-roaming element to the gameplay, but in the HOD Rayman is restricted to one path (and even then doesn't have control except for one singular movement).

+1. I sat for 30 minutes staring at the gorgeousness of Rainbow Creek.

I don’t like the aesthetic of the Front at all. You say that it’s not ‘dull’ or ‘bland’, but I have to disagree. It’s just fields of grass, some stone walls, the sea and some caves. Like a lacklustre test-run for the Land of the Livid Dead, a level which did everything right. The Front’s principal background is a distant unimaginative forest with some rivers and mountains. This was passable as a background visible for fifteen seconds in the Iron Mountains, but not for what’s supposed to be the heart of the game. The Front just feels uninspired to me. There’s nothing at all in it that stands out as being particularly creative or original or interesting. Can one of you explain to me why you like the way it looks? I just don’t see where you're coming from.

Nor do I think that the Front pulled off the whole ‘free-roaming’ thing very well. We were always being told exactly where to go and what to do, so what was the point of being able to wander off anyway? It would be a different story if there were a bunch of side-quests and secret levels, and we were given multiple ways of achieving out objectives, but that’s simply not the way Rayman 2 was designed. The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire, along with Tomb of the Ancients, is the only part of the Rayman series that I think comes close to a good ‘free-roaming’ experience, and even those were mostly linear. What’s so bad about being able to just move on to the next level, and leave the gameplay for the levels themselves? A level-select screen shouldn't have ‘playability’. If I want playability, I will play one of the actual levels that are connected to it. Rayman 1 had a level-select screen which functioned exactly like the Hall of Doors, and it didn’t detract from the game at all.

If you consider how much this game must have been rushed, they actually did a very decent job. However, I still think it should have been delayed. If that was the case, it could have had alot more details. I do like the Front, but I'd prefer something with more creative elements for a hub. And a little bigger, to be honest (four areas).

[PluMGMK]

JADE was used in RRR, for those who are wondering.

[Haruka]

I honestly like both Hall of Doors, Isle of Doors and the interactive landscapes of Rayman Revolution, I don't see what's so bad in the Revolution one. Since my original version is the PC one, when I played the RR it was confusing for me to try to find the locations of the levels since it wasn't straight-forward as the classic R2. The 3 maps are all beautiful: the Hall of Doors with the sea of stars and the holograms, the Isle of Doors being really itself an island with spiral doors and the details of the Revolution landscapes like the fauna, the flora, the buildings.

[Droolie]

About the engine, it doesn't have a name as far as I know. It was developed from the ground up for Rayman 2, but it was also used in Tonic Trouble, Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers ( or Quack Attack ), and it was improved for Rayman M/Arena, I think.
The JADE engine was made for Beyond Good & Evil and improved for King Kong ( and RRR used the King Kong code ).

[Jewish Candy]

I have a lot of respect for JADE, as I do for anything homegrown. It's good they put in the effort.

[Tulio]

About this donald duck game - have you noticed that this last boss is almost the same as Foutch? Now I know why...

[bunnieblaster]

Because it's the exact same engine with few modifications Just took the engine of Rayman 2, made some different levels etc.

[spiraldoor]

~~~~~Introduction~~~~~
Good grief, I’ve typed up a ridiculously long post. I’ve actually had to split it up with a few paragraph-header-type things, or whatever they’re called. I wrote most of the sentences in a semi-random order, then rearranged them into what I hope is a coherent post. If I’ve repeated myself or made myself sound weird by writing sentences with no apparent consideration for what’s immediately before or after them, that’s probably why. I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate my perennial request for spoiler tags, which I would have liked to have been able to use to hide the separate parts of my post and avoid stretching the pages of those who do not wish to read them. I wrote this post before reading Xenon’s, but it’s way too long already. I will respond to Xenon tomorrow, if I’m not too tired. This entire post is mostly a response to Jewish Candy’s long post above.

~~~~~Things I like (and mostly don’t like) about the Front~~~~~
My above posts make it sound like I hate the Front. Not so – I actually do like it. Just nowhere near as much as I like the Hall of Doors. I suppose I do hate the fact that it replaced the Hall.
You praise Revolution’s ‘Beaches and Forests’ – I assume you’re referring to the seaside area beneath Globox’s House and the forested area surrounding the first Teensie Circle? Those are the only beaches and forests I can recall, so I think you must be. I’m not disparaging those areas. The forest is nice, but I wish it was a bit more open, or complex. It really does feel like I’m literally running around in circles whenever I pass through there. The beach (which is bizarrely in Globox’s basement), I quite like. Especially the Skull Cave, and the air-swimming glitch El Dango discovered there. I don’t like the well itself – the fact that Rayman escapes my control and jumps onto it if I go too close, the fact that it has a silly little menu that asks me if I want to go down or not, that fact that it’s a load-zone.
I wasn’t a fan of the Front’s addition of ‘Magic Wells’, or Ly’s House/Stele/Cave. Why should we need to pay for powers with Yellow Lums? The Magic Wells feel as if the developers were attempting to insert (shoehorn?) RPG-ish elements into a game which should be very simple and straightforward. I preferred it when Yellow Lums simply opened the doors to the Sanctuaries and we were given powers as the game’s story required. The Revolution team actually nerfed Rayman’s start-of-game arsenal of powers just so they could justify the addition of a ‘shop’ system. I didn’t need an incentive to collect all the Lums; I did it anyway, because it’s, well, Rayman.
And Ly’s three minigame-accessing terminals never really appealed to me. Most of the minigames were snatched from their rightful places (Walk of Life, Walk of Power, Top of the World, etc). The Globox Village added in the Dreamcast version was a much nicer minigame-hub (and I like it much more than Globox’s House, too).
Another thing I didn’t like about the Wells and the Ly areas was how they took control of Rayman away from me, and an uncancellable animation played every time I stepped into one of those areas. I don’t like the fact that there’s an invisible line in front each of those areas, and if I cross it (intentionally or by myself), Rayman runs away from me in a little ten-second animation. With the Hall of Doors it’s different, because I always know when I will and won’t be able to control Rayman, and the controllable and uncontrollable sections are clearly separted and defined.

~~~~~Music~~~~~
Perhaps I’ve been underestimating the degree to which my judgement has been affected by the games’ music. I think the Hall of Doors’s music is phenomenal. It captures the spirit of the game perfectly. It is the purest example of the ‘magic’ atmosphere I value so much. Losing it was a significant part of the problem with the Front. Not that the Front’s music was bad; it conveys a sense of eeriness and of tranquility well enough at times, but it did not approach the transcendence of the Hall’s theme. I will discuss the music of the Land of the Livid Dead in the first paragraph of the next header-thing or whatever it’s called.

~~~~~A rambling defence of the Land of the Livid Dead~~~~~
Now, I like the Land of the Livid Dead. I think its music was some of Rayman 3’s best. Most of the tracks were remixes of the first one, I think, but that was not a bad thing. The first one was just as tranquil and relaxing as the music which plays when you enter the Minisaurus Plain; so is the music which plays right before you enter Roméo’s office. I remember one or two of the remixes being rather lively and adventurous; just as fitting. The track that plays when Rayman is chasing his Crazy Shoe through the tower of light is unique. I could probably make a long post just about the Land of the Livid Dead’s music.
What does the Front really have that the Land of the Livid Dead doesn’t have? They’re both primarily grassy landscapes. They’re both littered with those standing-stones/monoliths. They’ve both got underground passageways and caves. They’re both a bit (let’s face it) bleak when it comes to the aesthetic side of things. They’ve both got cool spiral-shaped grey clouds. They’re both by the sea. They’ve both got rivers and waterfalls. I guess the Land of the Livid Dead doesn’t have forests like the Front does, but forests aren’t exactly super-rare in Rayman games. I prefer the view of the ocean with Roméo’s office visible in the distance to the view of those mountains with the forest/rivers below them in the Front. I think the Land of the Livid Dead really comes into its own in the later sections. Sure, it starts raining for no real reason, but Mr Stone’s Peaks and the Iron Mountains did the same thing. For me, the weather doesn’t seem like an attempt to be ‘moody’ or emo or anything. It just breaks up the visuals and makes the later sections look a little bit different and a little more interesting.
I was never bothered by the Land of the Livid Dead’s lack of the stained glass often found in Teensie-related locations. I can’t think of a single place in the level where stained glass would have looked right. It would have been like finding stained glass at Newgrange or Stonehenge; sure, it would have looked nice, but it would be kind of weird and wrong, too.
I love the tower made of light. It’s quite unlike anything we’ve seen anywhere else in the series; the same cannot be said of any part of the Front. I can’t really elaborate on why I like the tower so much; I just do, so I’ll move on.
I love the moment when we first see Céloche striding across the hills in the distance. I have a thing for mechanical tripod enemies in games that shoot lasers at you (no, really), so this section seemed tailor-made for me. I find it quite eerie to just stand by and watch him, even if André’s comments at that moment are rather anti-atmospheric. The underwater section was enjoyable because it was such a break from the rest of Rayman 3’s gameplay, but it would have been better if we could swim around more freely. I really like how the ‘swimming’ music and Céloche’s boss-battle music fit together (both tracks are quite subtle, so you have to listen closely to see [hear?] what I mean). I also like the way Céloche jumps into the underwater arena, but I’d better stop listing the things that I like now before this post gets too long (...oops).

~~~~~On Rayman 2 being a ‘midget’~~~~~
I’m not sure if I agree that Rayman 2 was much smaller than Rayman 1 – R1 had eighteen levels, and R2 had nineteen, not counting the Walk of Life and the Walk of Power. Nearly every level in both games was divided into several sub-levels. R1 had exactly six different environments, and R2 had far more (although they were much less clearly defined). Are you saying that R2 is smaller because it takes a shorter period of time to play through it, or for some other reason?

~~~~~And another thing~~~~~
Also, I’ve just noticed that my design for a Hall of Doors (or whatever you want to call it) is quite smilar to the hub of Super Mario 64. Both can be traversed freely, both have multiple chambers (some with stairs) which branch off into smaller rooms, and both have portals which take the player to the games’ levels. I wasn’t aware at the time that I was combining the Hall of Doors with the Super Mario 64 castle hub, but in retrospect that’s essentially what I was doing.

[Jewish Candy]

I bow before the post-maker. That was just incredible...

In my previous post, I think I emphasised the bad in the Land of The Livid Dead too much. I don't actually hate it as a level, it definitely has some moments of genius, and it is beautiful in places (I completely agree about Celoche, that just looked epic ). The music was gorgeous throughout. Even the Tower I don't mind hugely, I just think it could've been so much better. The main issue for me is that an area like the LOTLD simply demands free roaming. Those wide, open fields of green and grue and grey begged for Link to jump in on Epona and go galloping off to find the next chest. I found all these convenient stiles in the way, which makes sense, but GOD I felt disappointed. In the end, LOTLD just didn't suit a point scoring game like R3...

I suppose we can agree to disagree about the LOTLD. For me, it just really wasn't Rayman, and - like the rest of the R3 levels - felt like an attempt to 'tick all the boxes'. We had an ice world (Summit Beyond the Clouds) sitting on top of a fire world (Hoodlum HQ), a forested area (Clearleaf Forest), a dungeon (DOTK) etc., and so they had to put in some mystical land of the spirits too. The thing I appreciated most about Rayman 2 was the accuracy with which the levels were styled. I'm sure there are snowy mountaintops in Rayman's world; but why the HELL is it imperative he goes there. The Glade of Dreams was a tropical paradise of beaches, lava and forested awesomeness, and it complemented the game rather than forced itself on it.
And yes, in my opinion LOTLD is moody, in the "I'm Squall Lionheart and I wants RINOAAAAAAAA" slash Legend of Zelda TP kind of way.

The Hall of Doors music is a masterpiece, I agree. It completely defines the mystical nature of the area, and sums up Rayman's quest in a way no other tune could quite manage - not even the awesome Main Theme. However, since the Front was focused on ambience rather than the story itself, this reflected on the music- making it very atmospheric, but nowhere near Chevalier's amazing original score. I did not find it an issue though, even though music does play a huge role in the games I like. The Odin Sphere score set me on the path to JRPGs...

Rayman 2 only took me 8 hours to complete; Rayman 1 took me 20. Yes, that may be a teensy bit too long for a competent gamer, but hey. Rayman 2 had a relatively low difficulty AND it was 3D - making it feel like it was shorter than it could've been (and more linear than it could've been). Rayman 1 was relatively rock-ish AND was 2D, giving the impression of length. I think linearity always works best in 2D, simply because you ARE side scrolling, whereas in 3D you hope for the freedom granted you in real life.

And... I sympathise with you about that 'invisible line'. Damn, that pissed me off.
Well, this is long enough, methinks. I look forward to part 2 of your post.