Rayman: Revenge of the Dark

[Spanex]

Hi guys,

I've been away a lot because yes, I'm very busy with getting my butt moved into my first ever apartment. As of now that's going a bit slowly. Just coming to say thanks for the compliments on my texturing. C:

[Rulez]

Oooh I like the man-hearse!

[TeensieKing]

Awesome menhirs, girls! Good job

[Adsolution]

Thanks, but you might want to be reacquainted with my gender icon quick.

[Minor-T5]

you might want to be reacquainted with my gender icon quick.

That will take awhile...

[Rulez]

you might want to be reacquainted with my gender icon quick.

That will take awhile...

u wot

[Fouadtjuhmaster]

I've been a fan of your videos for some time now, and I watch this project grow since 2011. You're doing a wonderful job! Great story. Thank you very much.

Have you considered to add Polokus?
Or about adding this thing:



Since Moskito flies, it could be an idea to add the Yellow Shell for the land. Or just on the background on a stage, just like the chickens..

[Adsolution]

I do plan on having the Shells in there, though I'm not sure if you'll be able to ride it or not yet; I haven't put much thought into it. I do know that during the Aeropolis race track, one of the racers will be riding a shell.

Have you considered to create some sort of relationship with The Magician and Polokus?

I haven't considered it, it never occurred to me. Can you expand upon that more? I'm curious to know what you mean.

[Bionichute]

I must say, this project is looking absolutely amazing. The Zombie Chicken animations look amazing and the environments you've shown in you're videos are honestly some of the most beautiful graphics I've seen in a long time. The only things I'm iffy on are some plot elements, like Raven, which I've talked about before and I won't get into, and the use of characters from the animated series, but considering you've been doing an amazing job on everything so far, I don't think much could go wrong there.

Another thing I'm bothered by are the lack luster descriptions in the OP. For example, I'm incredibly interested in the Graveslaves, but you don't describe them in anyway other than their abilities. I'm sure you have some kind of design in mind for them, considering they're the main enemies. Some of worlds also interest me, but you don't give clear descriptions for them. Some levels like the Penumbra Ocean, Towering Timbers, Islandale, and Shrine of Myre don't have that much description to them at all, while some like the The Land of Unimportant Proportion and the Crying Moor have big descriptions, but no descriptions on what the areas actually look like.

All I'm saying is that I'm incredibly interested in these locales and would love to hear more about them. Also your remix of the Hoodoo theme from Rayman 3 is amazing.

[Adsolution]

Thanks a lot, Bionichute! As for the lacklustre first post, that's due to us working on the new website, and until then, the info will be a bit confused at the front. In the coming months (again, the timing is dependent on Humch's contact with Romano, as the site is being hosted on RPC), the first post will be replaced to a link to the website with a few bits of information here and there (most of which will redirect to the website).

If you're worried about the lack of clarity on some descriptions, that has all since been fixed, it just hasn't been presented yet to the public; it'll come with the website.

[Bionichute]

If you're worried about the lack of clarity on some descriptions, that has all since been fixed, it just hasn't been presented yet to the public; it'll come with the website.

That's nice to hear! When do you think the website will be up?

[Earth Gwee]

I just got done listening to your song "They Speak of a Hero" with the vocals. Just wonderful, man. I can't begin to describe how unbelievable it is, along with everything else you've done so far.

On a side note, out of curiosity, if you're still looking for voice actors, would I be able to audition for a role?

[Shrooblord]

I know I ask this a lot from time to time, but that's just because I'm interested: how is progress coming along? Have you a finished level yet, or are you working on a more global scale fixing this and that game-wide? Any new soundtracks coming up soon?
I bet we're all dying for another sneak-a-peek into your beautiful art, too.

[Plejadenwolf]

I must say, this project is looking absolutely amazing. The Zombie Chicken animations look amazing and the environments you've shown in you're videos are honestly some of the most beautiful graphics I've seen in a long time. The only things I'm iffy on are some plot elements, like Raven, which I've talked about before and I won't get into, and the use of characters from the animated series, but considering you've been doing an amazing job on everything so far, I don't think much could go wrong there.

Another thing I'm bothered by are the lack luster descriptions in the OP. For example, I'm incredibly interested in the Graveslaves, but you don't describe them in anyway other than their abilities. I'm sure you have some kind of design in mind for them, considering they're the main enemies. Some of worlds also interest me, but you don't give clear descriptions for them. Some levels like the Penumbra Ocean, Towering Timbers, Islandale, and Shrine of Myre don't have that much description to them at all, while some like the The Land of Unimportant Proportion and the Crying Moor have big descriptions, but no descriptions on what the areas actually look like.

All I'm saying is that I'm incredibly interested in these locales and would love to hear more about them. Also your remix of the Hoodoo theme from Rayman 3 is amazing.

I think it's good that we don't know everything about all the characters and enemies in the game. In fact it would be more awesome to not know about the content at all until you play it but this wouldn't work at all, because you couldn't share ideas. And I always like when some unresolved myths of the Rayman universe been left unanswered or just merely touched.

What I very much like is the idea of the Temporal Palace. I was always interested in constructions like tesseracts, pentachorons and hypercubes in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-cube#Graphs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-cell ).




It would show that Rayman is not one of the most powerful beings but more or less an involuntary hero in a greater universe full of magical beings and things. There could also be some bittersweet stories about the time and how time influences the life of all beings. Because neither Rayman nor a human player could really see but only imagine this (let's call it simply the "fourth") dimension, there could be some symbols (the famous hourglass) or baroque-like allegories (Titian's Allegory of Prudence for example), riddles and all that kind of stuff. To see all the events happening in time all together on a big screen, just to notice that all events (life, death) just gathers together in time like there one and that everything is just a little spark in a well functioning something called the cosmos which is just so much bigger, that someone cannot even imagine it. Mare Saeculum, the ocean of time.
Optical illusions (M.C. Escher style, surreal like Salvador Dali, Anamorphosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion) can also show the weirdness of time from our limited perception. I know that this is some serious stuff I mentioned but I think there is much to get out from this interesting topic, especially for a magical universe like Rayman's world.

Ah, and the idea of Fort Night seems a great one to me. A last resistance against the Darklanders, a place between the magical bright light of the Glade of Dreams and the Darklands appearing to be something like the end of the world. A last resting place before the unknown Darklands (reminds me a bit to the End of the World from Kingdom Hearts), where one can see some surely nice crossings between the transforming Darklands and the border to the Glade of Dreams. I think such border regions can sometimes be an artistically and atmospheric highlight (in between all the other highlights) because it's neither really part of the Darklands nor the Glade of Dreams. But yeah, these are just some thoughts from me.

The last screenshots with the menhir rocks and the mushrooms look fantastic, good job!

[Adsolution]

That's nice to hear! When do you think the website will be up?

Like I said, hopefully within the next few months.

I just got done listening to your song "They Speak of a Hero" with the vocals. Just wonderful, man. I can't begin to describe how unbelievable it is, along with everything else you've done so far.

Thanks! As time passes and my skill level ups itself, I feel the need to remake things, so expect a remake of that track popping up in but a few years when the game is further along.

On a side note, out of curiosity, if you're still looking for voice actors, would I be able to audition for a role?

Perhaps. I've currently cut all the voice acting positions, as I was almost literally giving them away a couple years back; I won't need to seek them until much later on, as voice acting and cutscene creation are some of the last things needed in game design. The only voice actors I will for certain be keeping are myself as Rayman, Dark Rayman, the Magician, Rhook, and a variety of other characters, Rayfist as Bzzit, and Eshap as Raven. Rayfist and Eshap truly have the perfect voices for their designated parts, and they've since become very close friends of mine, so there's virtually no chance that their ties to their respective roles will be severed.

if you're still interested though, I'd gladly accept all auditions when the time is right. It'll certainly be nice to have some older members apply if they like (I'm referring to people in their mid-20's at that point), as most of the auditions received back then were from young members barely in their teens, and suffice to say it wasn't very good; it was partly due to my immaturity back then as well; I wasn't able to attract a better audience.

I know I ask this a lot from time to time, but that's just because I'm interested: how is progress coming along? Have you a finished level yet, or are you working on a more global scale fixing this and that game-wide? Any new soundtracks coming up soon?
I bet we're all dying for another sneak-a-peek into your beautiful art, too.

We're currently working on creating an immense amount of Dream Forest assets - since March, we've been redoing all our assets from scratch, spending much more time giving detail to every single object, and our pipeline is much more secured this time around: I create a relatively low-poly and symmetrical model, I send it over to Spanex who then hand-paints a texture for it and UV-maps said texture to the model. I then receive the model and further stylise it and add in much more detail, export it, fuck with the material under various different lighting settings to find an optimal balance, and we then have our finished asset. Due to a lack of personal space at home causing me to not be able to enjoy the now moderate amount of free time that I do have, my motivation to create these assets is minimal and uninspired, and I'm not getting much more than one model done every week or two, which is kind of embarrassing - I want to get at least three or four done per-week. That way Spanex will never be waiting for the next model, and a greater bond over the project will likely occur, resulting in both an escalated quality speed of production.

I think it's good that we don't know everything about all the characters and enemies in the game. In fact it would be more awesome to not know about the content at all until you play it but this wouldn't work at all, because you couldn't share ideas. And I always like when some unresolved myths of the Rayman universe been left unanswered or just merely touched.

Aye, mystery is certainly a big part of this for me, but I do plan on explaining things for the sake of making sense. In regards to actual mystery, there will be subtle hints towards certain things, but those thing will likely remain unconfirmed and left up to the viewer's interpretation… unless I decide to reveal the truth somehow at some point.


By the way, you speak my language, Wolfy. The rest of your post I found very inspiring to read, and is a cause for modelling-motivation.

What I very much like is the idea of the Temporal Palace. I was always interested in constructions like tesseracts, pentachorons and hypercubes in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-cube#Graphs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-cell ).

storage/16351/677dc755d3cc0173f8d71dffc2b97903
storage/16352/cdcf00a2b7d6f70978df6a8fb71d264c

It would show that Rayman is not one of the most powerful beings but more or less an involuntary hero in a greater universe full of magical beings and things. There could also be some bittersweet stories about the time and how time influences the life of all beings. Because neither Rayman nor a human player could really see but only imagine this (let's call it simply the "fourth") dimension, there could be some symbols (the famous hourglass) or baroque-like allegories (Titian's Allegory of Prudence for example), riddles and all that kind of stuff. To see the all events happening in time all together on a big screen, just to notice that all events (life, death) just gathers together in time like there one and that everything is just a little spark in something which is just so much bigger, that someone cannot even imagine it. Mare Saeculum, the ocean of time.
Optical illusions (M.C. Escher style, surreal like Salvador Dali, Anamorphosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion) can also show the weirdness of time from our limited perception. I know that this is some serious stuff I mentioned but I think there is much to get out from this interesting topic, especially for a magical universe like Rayman's world.

Absolutely, every single word you've typed combines to form what I'm aiming for. One thing is for sure, the Temporal Palace will hopefully be one of the most visually and mentally thought-provoking things to have ever been in a video game. It is a passageway that threads not only between all our minds and our subconscious, its motive is based off the same extraordinarily basic principle that applies to every concept, and it is limitless. Imagine Disney's Fantasia, a story directly transcribed from the inner-workings of our imagination when we hear the pieces being performed. This Palace is similar in a way, but my indescribable goal is to have it be a place that, no matter what you're feeling, will be a transcription of your present subconscious.

Ah, and the idea of Fort Night seems a great one to me. A last resistance against the Darklanders, a place between the magical bright light of the Glade of Dreams and the Darklands appearing to be something like the end of the world. A last resting place before the unknown Darklands (reminds me a bit to the End of the World from Kingdom Hearts), where one can see some surely nice crossings between the transforming Darklands and the border to the Glade of Dreams. I think such border regions can sometimes be an artistically and atmospheric highlight (in between all the other highlights) because it's neither really part of the Darklands nor the Dream of Glades. But yeah, these are just some thoughts from me.

Heeh, indeed. As you progress, the feeling of desperation increases quite drastically. At the beginning, you feel as if the enemy is a small party and you have the whole world backing you up. About a third-way through the game you'll begin to realise that the enemy is a serious, menacing threat, and by the end, you're basically a lone warrior wandering through the ashcloud of a global extinction - that's completely figurative, of course.

The last screenshots with the menhir rocks and the mushrooms look fantastic, good job!

Thanks!

[Earth Gwee]

I've currently cut all the voice acting positions, as I was almost literally giving them away a couple years back; I won't need to seek them until much later on, as voice acting and cutscene creation are some of the last things needed in game design. The only voice actors I will for certain be keeping are myself as Rayman, Dark Rayman, the Magician, Rhook, and a variety of other characters, Rayfist as Bzzit, and Eshap as Raven. Rayfist and Eshap truly have the perfect voices for their designated parts, and they've since become very close friends of mine, so there's virtually no chance that their ties to their respective roles will be severed.

if you're still interested though, I'd gladly accept all auditions when the time is right. It'll certainly be nice to have some older members apply if they like (I'm referring to people in their mid-20's at that point), as most of the auditions received back then were from young members barely in their teens, and suffice to say it wasn't very good; it was partly due to my immaturity back then as well; I wasn't able to attract a better audience.

Well, I wouldn't want to beg for a role that's already taken. So, I'll gladly wait and see further development for the characters.

One thing is for sure, the Temporal Palace will hopefully be one of the most visually and mentally thought-provoking things to have ever been in a video game. It is a passageway that threads not only between all our minds and our subconscious, its motive is based off the same extraordinarily basic principle that applies to every concept, and it is limitless. Imagine Disney's Fantasia, a story directly transcribed from the inner-workings of our imagination when we hear the pieces being performed. This Palace is similar in a way, but my indescribable goal is to have it be a place that, no matter what you're feeling, will be a transcription of your present subconscious.

I never fully realized the deep symbolism behind the Temporal Palace. After reading the description under the Youtube video of it, I imagined it as a sort of gateway through time, which I suppose would make sense in a way. But now I'm seeing it's much more abstract than that. Unfortunately, my autistic brain is hard-wired to not have an initial understanding of abstract ideas, so I'm really trying my best to fully understand this one, how a place like the Temporal Palace plays a part in our subconscious. But I'll say that I certainly felt something deep and strong while listening to the accompanying music. And the meaning being the lyrics really solidified it. In fact, I will also say that I shed heavy tears while listening and absorbing the described meaning behind the Palace. I can scarcely imagine the kind of pain Rayman would be feeling in the presence of the Palace, taking into account his deceased friends and destroyed home. But I think I understand that no matter what goes through your mind at any given point, the Palace will always be present in some form, whether you're aware of it or not. It's both comforting and disturbing, in a way. But in the context of what's shown in the video, it certainly made a plethora of emotions swell within me, and still does. It's an idea that has stuck fast with me.

Major kuddos, Ad. Just for being such a creative, intelligent young man.

[Plejadenwolf]

Absolutely, every single word you've typed combines to form what I'm aiming for. One thing is for sure, the Temporal Palace will hopefully be one of the most visually and mentally thought-provoking things to have ever been in a video game. It is a passageway that threads not only between all our minds and our subconscious, its motive is based off the same extraordinarily basic principle that applies to every concept, and it is limitless. Imagine Disney's Fantasia, a story directly transcribed from the inner-workings of our imagination when we hear the pieces being performed. This Palace is similar in a way, but my indescribable goal is to have it be a place that, no matter what you're feeling, will be a transcription of your present subconscious.

Hey, thanks for that. That is just what I have thought of, a transcription of our inner subconsciousness into something atmospheric, something you feel that works in the background of our universe in some way but which you can't describe. You can only understand time if your "in" time for yourself, which is the main problem why we can't ever get a full picture of time. We can just roll out the time which is given, exegesis through being in time itself.
It's the same with understanding. We can only understand understanding if we do understand, if we are in the process itself. We can't go outside and say: "Hey look, this is understanding!" It always includes the existence of ourselves. As we do say this, the process just happened and you walk behind yourself in understanding things (which is almost the case in everything). Yeah, I like those paradox thoughts. Never thought that such topics would ever made it into a Rayman game but I'm happy to see that they will make an appearance in such a good way as the Temporal Palace.

I never fully realized the deep symbolism behind the Temporal Palace. After reading the description under the Youtube video of it, I imagined it as a sort of gateway through time, which I suppose would make sense in a way. But now I'm seeing it's much more abstract than that. Unfortunately, my autistic brain is hard-wired to not have an initial understanding of abstract ideas, so I'm really trying my best to fully understand this one, how a place like the Temporal Palace plays a part in our subconscious. But I'll say that I certainly felt something deep and strong while listening to the accompanying music. And the meaning being the lyrics really solidified it. In fact, I will also say that I shed heavy tears while listening and absorbing the described meaning behind the Palace. I can scarcely imagine the kind of pain Rayman would be feeling in the presence of the Palace, taking into account his deceased friends and destroyed home. But I think I understand that no matter what goes through your mind at any given point, the Palace will always be present in some form, whether you're aware of it or not. It's both comforting and disturbing, in a way. But in the context of what's shown in the video, it certainly made a plethora of emotions swell within me, and still does. It's an idea that has stuck fast with me.

Major kuddos, Ad. Just for being such a creative, intelligent young man.

Damn yes, the Youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYcLCSX72DI) is a great one, the visual atmosphere and the song are perfect. Like you're being a wanderer above an cosmic ocean of fog, caught in the misty mechanics of your mind.
I can fully agree with that what you wrote. And hey, I was always fascinated by the skills of some autistic people to think in very different directions and well...dimensions.

Apart from that I can't wait to see more updates and besides the Temporal Palace I'm waiting for more information about the Temporal Guardian. This always reminds me of the other triangular shaped guardians in Rayman 2.

At last I wanted to mention the holographic principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle). Some scientists like Craig Hogan suppose that we are just a hologram, which means that all that we see is a some-kind-of-illusion and that there is a higher dimension from where the hologram is projected from. I know, that's a very general description of it. I think the theory sounds very interesting even if I don't know if it could be useful in some way for ideas at all. There are many weird theories out there which use to describe our universe and which in some kind proves the overall weirdness of your universe. Just wanted to share it for people who are interested.

[Earth Gwee]

I was so incredibly moved by the music from Temporal Palace, I couldn't help but do this quick piece.

Yeah, I also couldn't help drawing Rayman in his more updated design. XP

[Rulez]

Bloody hell, I love that!

[Shrooblord]

Yeah, Gwee, that is gorgeous!