Rayman himself

[PluMGMK]

I remember getting the feeling before that they were thinking of doing a 3D UbiArt game, but it got shelved when Legends failed commercially. But yeah, given the Smash trophy, maybe it was for the best!

[Hunchman801]

Ray would probably look similar to his Smash trophy.

Well, this confirms my fears.

[paulnewman2001]

Ray would probably look similar to his Smash trophy.

Well, this confirms my fears.

I don't think he looks that bad, maybe the eyebrows are slightly off putting but I'm sure that they would have changed his look slightly.

[Hunchman801]

Maybe it's just aversion to change on my part after all!

[PluMGMK]

In that case, I wonder why that aversion to change didn't manifest itself in the treatment of the invalid Ting donation error message in 2016!

[Hunchman801]

Maybe at some point we can bring this message back in a different context for April Fools' Day.

[RayCarrot]

Here's another one of my big posts after Droolie and I reverse engineering the 2D Rayman games, this time the last remaining ones: Hoodlums' Revenge and the GBC games. I posted it in this thread since it's about more than just 1 game this time.

Rayman Hoodlums' Revenge
While there's not a lot of interesting things found here, unlike most cartridge games this one actually has a lot of names for things left in the data. Every animation set and sprite has a name, as well as several object states.

The one unused thing we found was this unused power-up:


As some of you may know the game was developed by Digital Eclipse who also made the isometric Spyro games. The first one, Season of Ice, uses a different engine, but Season of Flame and Attack of the Rhynocs both use the same engine as RHR (most likely named "Dragon" judging by what a developer wrote). There are a few other GBA games, like Tron 2.0: Killer App which use it, but the format is quite hard-coded per each individual game, so we only added support for Spyro and RHR.

You can see some Spyro maps here and here.

A benefit of having our map viewer in Unity is that we can display it in 3D. Obviously all graphics are 2D sprites and tiles, but the collision data and object positions are in 3D. Droolie made a really nice 3D mode showed here.

GBC
The GBC engine is actually the precursor to the engine used for R3 GBA (which seems to be named "GBASimilar" - similar most likely referring to it being similar to their GBC engine). The data structure is almost identical, and is probably the nicest data structure for any game ray1map supports. One fun thing is also their naming scheme for data types (which can be seen in the R3 GBA prototype and PalmOS versions of R1 GBC):

Code: Select all

Actor - a game object with graphics
Captor - a trigger
Puppet - the graphics an actor uses
Knot - a sector, consisting of multiple actors "tied together"
Scene - the level
PlayField - the map

I also copied the object names from their init functions for R1 GBC which you can see here.

A level most people probably haven't seen is Ubi Cliff, which unlocks using the Ubi Key. I believe it's available as a bonus time trial level in the PocketPC/PalmOS versions.



The PalmOS and PocketPC versions also have much higher quality artwork:

GBC:

GBC.png (10.13 KiB) Viewed 2097 times

PocketPC:

PocketPC.png (78.67 KiB) Viewed 2097 times

Rayman 2 has some unused animations:

(swimming)
(waterskiing)
(flying with a keg)

There are two other games which use this engine; Donald Duck Quack Attack/Goin' Quackers and Mowgli's Wild Adventure. I also posted screenshots for them and some other random things from the GBC games here (including everything here would make this already long post even longer :p). I also showed some comparisons here between the GBC and PocketPC versions, the latter of which has a lot more color added to it.

[ChronicTraitor]

Woah, this is the first time I've ever seen the actual Ubi Cliff level!
I always thought Ubi Cliff was the name of the Time Attack map because the cliffs there looked like the word Ubi to me. It's interesting how they use the same tileset though.
And as much as I love the GBC version, I've always wanted to try the PocketPC version, it looks really polished up and nice. I'm one of the few that doesn't mind the highnotes of the GBC OST, probably because I brought the game as a kid and grew up with it, but the Pocket OST is a lot softer on the ears for most people, I'm sure. Also grew up with RHR, actually beat it as a kid.
Never could get all the stamps though, that'd drive me nuts. The Bonus Levels were fun though.

[Steo]

Some nice interesting discoveries again as usual!

[PluMGMK]

Nice finds! The Pocket PC artwork looks amazing compared to the GBC one! I love the 3D view of RHR too, it feels liberating!

[Hunchman801]

Great finds as usual, Carrot!

It's pretty cool that those engines actually have names, it will make it easier for us to refer to them. And I had no idea there was an actual 3D structure in RHR! This viewer tool Droolie built is really neat, even without proper textures.

As for R1 GBC, I'm actually surprised that there's no mention of Ubi Cliff on the wiki. I mean, isn't the Ubi Key really easy to find, in the first level or something like that? Maybe it takes more than just collecting the key to access, after all I can't remember if I've ever seen it before.

I also had no idea that the PalmOS and PocketPC versions were so different, it's pretty cool to see the upgraded artwork and differently colored levels. I can't wait to see the rest of them.

And yeah, those unused animations are really nice. Interesting how they relate to stuff you can only do in Rayman 2. Yet I don't remember those actions to be possible in R2F? Is there any reason to think that both games were developed in parallel, anyway?

[Aaron]

Very interesting finds as always!

[RayCarrot]

As for R1 GBC, I'm actually surprised that there's no mention of Ubi Cliff on the wiki. I mean, isn't the Ubi Key really easy to find, in the first level or something like that? Maybe it takes more than just collecting the key to access, after all I can't remember if I've ever seen it before.

You need a second GBC and another copy of a game with a Ubi Key to link with in order to unlock it. Some emulators can probably do it, but I've never seen this level myself prior to this. I'll add it to the wiki later when I upload the unused content we found.

And yeah, those unused animations are really nice. Interesting how they relate to stuff you can only do in Rayman 2. Yet I don't remember those actions to be possible in R2F? Is there any reason to think that both games were developed in parallel, anyway?

It always felt odd how Ssssam appeared in the GBC version for one level and only for you to ride on his head for a short bit. I'd imagine they originally planned more to emulator how the console versions did it with you waterskiing, but I'm curious how that would even have worked in 2D. At least in R3 GBA they had the Mode7 mode they could use for those sections.

[Retrofuge]

That's some really interesting finds, RayCarrot. When it comes to the Hoodlum's Revenge maps and sprites being imported to Raymap. Also, I'm more interested in the Spyro maps aswell. Since, they are pretty much my childhood games and it's nice to see, that the formats or the how maps are created rather was not only carried over some Season Flame and Spyro: Adventure (or Attack of the Rhynocs for US folk) but to a Rayman game. Digital Esclipe always had a particular of way of creating tilemaps and sprites looking very pseudo-3D with that iconic isometric layout. So, it's really good that you got it ported to Ray1map, seeing how no one in the Spyro community hasn't really done it yet surprisingly. Besides that, it's pretty cool to see anyway, there's a way I can experience the Spyro maps finally. As well as, Hoodlum's Revenge.

It's pretty interesting, that Season of Ice and Flame used different engines though. But, the developer did say, while the engine was similar, they pretty much rewritten Season of Ice's engine from stratch. Hence, it's lack of compatiblity from that game on Season of Ice's part.

The time constraints were imposed because we were expected to reuse the isometric engine in the sequel. However, the isometric engine was a complete mess, in that it was almost entirely hard-coded for Season of Ice. Reusing the engine was risky business, since the original programmers who wrote it were no longer on the team. We made the hard decision to throw it all away, redesign it, and rewrite it from scratch.

But, it seems like engine used for the games after Ice after seemed to just to be an improved version. It just looks pretty similar. Other than that, great job on the achievement. You have really contributed a lot with these discoveries.

[Hunchman801]

You need a second GBC and another copy of a game with a Ubi Key to link with in order to unlock it. Some emulators can probably do it, but I've never seen this level myself prior to this. I'll add it to the wiki later when I upload the unused content we found.

So that's why! I look forward to reading all this.

It always felt odd how Ssssam appeared in the GBC version for one level and only for you to ride on his head for a short bit. I'd imagine they originally planned more to emulator how the console versions did it with you waterskiing, but I'm curious how that would even have worked in 2D. At least in R3 GBA they had the Mode7 mode they could use for those sections.

I guess you would have had to dodge obstacles by jumping up and down, and maybe bending over backwards, but that's about it. By the way, are those animations also present in R2 GBC or just R1 GBC?

[RayCarrot]

By the way, are those animations also present in R2 GBC or just R1 GBC?

They're only in R2 GBC. R2 essentially uses the same animations as R1, but with these added to the end of the array.

[Hunchman801]

They're only in R2 GBC. R2 essentially uses the same animations as R1, but with these added to the end of the array.

My bad, I thought they were in R1 GBC, hence my first post. Well I guess it all makes sense then.

[PluMGMK]

Since it's Valentine's Day for about twenty more minutes in this timezone, and nobody's mentioned that fact here so far today, I'd just like to throw out there that I still ship Rayman×Ly. Opinions on that were neutral to positive a year and a half ago, how about now?

[Steo]

Well it was on the official Rayman 2 site as far as I remember, so the ship works pretty well. Of course, some ship him with Betilla, but those people don't realise she's basically his mother.

[Elite Piranha]

I wonder how many people know about what Rayman had to do to make some money:

https://www.facebook.com/52394115761904 ... 52/?type=3