Rayman 2

[PluMGMK]

Interesting, he mentions Serge Hascoët's (yes, that guy ) four gameplay ingredients at the end.

Other than that, it's pretty handwavy, and I think most of it's in the final game (except there are walking shells rather than "strange beasts", and I don't think his fist can be a " lasso")...

[need my speed]

Nor can his fist be a transportation device.

But that would be a very interesting power, especially with your fist/bullets bouncing around; shoot somewhere, press a button to end up where your fist/bullet is. Instead of your fist returning to your body, your body travels to your fist.

[PluMGMK]

Nor can his fist be a transportation device.

I suspect he was alluding to Ssssam with that remark…

[dr_st]

Nor can his fist be a transportation device.

I suspect he was alluding to Ssssam with that remark…

Or maybe to Purple Lums?

I liked the interview. It offered some interesting insights on how they went about the design and what was important to them.

Clearly some of the pitfalls of early 3D games were considered, like worlds that are too open or too big. Even some later games suffered from it, like Simon the Sorcerer 3D (released in 2002 and heavily criticized for being a huge empty world where it takes long time to get anywhere).

But this aspect was not used as much in the final game:

The player derives positive pleasure from revisiting universes and discovering hidden doors and levels that were inaccessible until he acquired some special power.

There are hardly any places that you must revisit after finding some power, and when you do - it's part of the mandatory progression (e.g., Menhir Hills). Only the Fairy Glade entry from the Echoing Caves comes to mind.

In Rayman Revolution they did more of that, however not always well (for example - some segments that allegedly require you to revisit after gaining the power of flight over lava - do not actually require that).

[Hunchman801]

I suspect he was alluding to Ssssam with that remark…

Or could it be the lasso?

[Mortamon Saturn]

Very interesting! I’ve never seen that before.

Interesting, he mentions Serge Hascoët's (yes, that guy ) four gameplay ingredients at the end.

Ah, yes, I remember it was mentioned in L’Histoire de Rayman! Crazy to think that guy was nicknamed ‘the French Shigeru Miyamoto’…

[Retrofuge]

I recently found this old interview of Michel Ancel dating from the development of Rayman 2. As is customary, it seems that a lot of stuff was scrapped in the final game, or never developed at all.

Transcript:

Q64 recently had a chance to meet the man behind Rayman 2, Michel Ancel, at Ubi Soft's Montpellier, France, studio. We spoke about many gameplay issues, and more importantly, what Rayman 2 will be all about.

Q64 — How will you let game players know what kind of moves your Rayman can perform?
MA — There's a learning map at the start of the game, and the player can't move on to the gane itself if he hasn't mastered all the movements, as well as Rayman's first skills and powers. As soon as he is more at ease with the character (the controls are really intuitive), he leaves the map and the adventure can begin. If he doesn't succeed after 5 minutes, a virus is automatically generated which erases the hard disk and socks him one as an extra bonus. But seriously, the map is really simple.

Q64 — Is an analog stick vital for 3D platform games?
MA — When the controls are similar to Mario or Banjo, we think it's really useful. We opted for it with Rayman 2. Player reactions are really put to the test in Rayman 2, and the analog stick is a real comfort for the player. But of course it's possible to play Rayman 2 with a pad and without a stick, as well as on the keyboard in the PC version. Anyway. we think the analog stick introduces a really sexy element into 3D games.

Q64 — How will you keep players working through your game?
MA — The basic principle of Rayman 2 is to force the player to move quickly through the maps. Speed and intensity are at the root of Rayman 2. This makes it really different from all the other 3D games where the player can spend hours wandering through immense worlds where there is nothing for him to do except admire the scenery. In Rayman 2, the player hasn't a second to waste because everything keeps collapsing behind him, because he is riding this strange animal or because he is pressed for time, lack of oxygen or strong winds.

Q64 — Can adding new skills seem like a token gesture? What interesting skills will you be implementing in Rayman 2?
MA — Giving the hero new skills in the course of the game isn't an essential phase, but it adds a lot of depth to action and adventure games. The player derives positive pleasure from revisiting universes and discovering hidden doors and levels that were inaccessible until he acquired some special power. He can then enjoy the beauty of the universe, the special effects, all the details he couldn't appreciate first time round because he was driven by the tension and intensity of the game.
Compared to his first incarnation, Rayman has became a veritable athlete: he jumps every which way, rolls about the place and somersaults, flies a helicopter, climbs trees and walls, swings from nets over precipices, underwater (and does a good job of it too!). He also rides strange beasts that take him through the maps at incredible speeds. Besides. his projectile has acquired lots of different uses: not only is it a veritable weapon that he can use to strafe the enemy but it is also a grapnel, a lasso and even as a rather special means of transport (but enough said about that).

Q64 — Will you base level progression on a series of courses (like most 2D games) or on open-ended worlds? What led to your decision?
MA — We were determined to avoid the major shortcoming of 3D which, if the worlds are too open, leads to a slack game where, even if the immersion is successful, the player isn't really sure what he's supposed to be doing because the action plods along too slowly. With Rayman 2, we hope that the player will very rarely have time to wonder what he's supposed to be doing. There are some very open passages with magnificent perspectives, then tighter pathways which are therefore more intuitive and better paced, before again leading to incredible panoramas.

Q64 — What has been the biggest difficulty in designing a camera for your game?
MA — I think we had the same difficulties as everyone else. At each moment in the game, we asked ourselves what the camera was to show the player: where to go, who to fight, where enemy shots are coming from, etc. Then it's up to us to place the camera correctly, it's just a question of work. One of the many challenges of the game was to make a very "director's cut" type of game. There are therefore very many different cameras which are used in a very studied manner in all the delicate passages of the game.

Q64 — Does the design of your camera dictate level design? For instance, tight claustrophobic levels are somewhat prohibited by the fact that cameras can't pan out as like in open spaces — unless walls are removed as in Mario 64's rope-bridges.
MA — This didn't really bother us. Of course the artists who created the levels graphically were careful not to construct scenes so tightly that the camera couldn't move about. But in reality this wasn't really a major constraint because the game designers or level directors, who are in charge of cameras and maps, can always switch to the standard game camera: either a fixed high-angle side view, or a low-angle shot. There is a great range of freedom and the work is almost comparable to directing a film, except that it's interactive too!

Q64 — What have you retained from 2D platform games and why?
MA — Some golden rules that remain valid for all games, therefore for 3D action games. These rules can be summed up in 4 words: SPEED (all the ingredients that force the player to keep constantly moving), TIMING (all the ingredients that require the player to move at the right time), PRECISION (in shooting, moving about, jumping) and RESOURCEFULNESS.

Q64 — And lastly, what would be your '3 Golden Rules' of 3D game design?
MA — As many actions as possible for the hero. Clear objectives for the player. Pacing, pacing and more pacing. To sum it up, the player shouldn't have to find the action, the action must come to the player.

This is very interesting article, it's very intriguing how the development of Rayman 2 was handled. I can only imagine the transistion from 2D to 3D somewhere difficult. It's probably why Tonic Trouble was somewhat used as a testbed as commonly believed. But for what they did, they did a splendid job and they probably had a lot of ideas too. The story was more expansive too which was always interesting. It makes me wonder, how big Rayman 2 would be if they kept some of their concepts in the game. Thanks for sharing, it's really cool.

[Garo]

Hey guys I don't know if anyone will care about this but I found something pretty cool. So I was messing with the settings on Rayman 2 and I set my luminosity to max and I didn't know which value was the default luminosity. Turns out to set ALL of your settings back to default all you need to do is go to Data/Options and delete the Current.cfg file. Then the next time you start the game all of your options will be reset. (Don't worry your saves will still be there they are stored in a different location) I hope this will help a few people who had the same issue as me.

[Steo]

Oh yeah I never actually moved this when I played the game, even on Dreamcast. Normally I think it would be better to just change the brightness settings on your monitor or TV in those cases, at least in older games.

[arnoldfranklin]

Hey guys, this video is of a Rayman 2 trailer. Video is called Rayman 2 early trailer on N ve's Youtube channel. Anyways, notice towards the end, Clark has the thing which makes him get controlled in a completely different environment than Tomb of the Ancients. Look at 0:27ish in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCMP-ojw9p0

[Hunchman801]

Nice find, I don't remember seeing this before. That place looks a lot like the Canopy, doesn't it?

[arnoldfranklin]

Yeah it does like like Canopy. I wonder what that was going to be. The Rayman 2 is some cool stuff before it released.

[ElZboub]

I just found out that there was a comic book about Rayman 2 called Hands Down! and I saw that on each page there was a trick related to a level. On page 3 it says "The Precipice Short Cut: After the first check point, move the two planks of wood in front of you, then jump throught the net above you to find a short cut!" I don't even remember a short cut in this level. Any ideas?

[PluMGMK]

I never knew about this comic either! It's a bit like a Dandy comic but set in Rayman's world. So I'm sure young me would have loved it, but now I find it meh!

As for the shortcut, taken literally, it seems to be something that might have been cut! The language is a bit vague though, so maybe it just refers to some kind of manoeuvre on the tower in part 2…

For part 1, this picture shows the first checkpoint on the left, with arrows coming out of it, and the end of the level on the right, separated by a little OOB space…

snip-1631047147.png (158.42 KiB) Viewed 1865 times

There's are no movable planks or net above, but maybe there were once intended to be, and you could cross that little space?

[ElZboub]

Weird that they left that tip in if it was removed in the end. But it would have been really interesting if it was real and we only found out now!
And I don't think it refers to the second part. The only trick I know of in that part is the one about taking the trampoline earlier.

[Hunchman801]

The description says nothing about the shortcut being in the second part, so, either they made a mistake or they're referring to the first part. Could it be linked to the ring skip below?

[Elite Piranha]

For the sake of preservation here is the menu screen of an R2 demo and the pre-order form that can be printed from it (both come from this Funhaus video that I have shared before). This pre-order form is a variation of the one that I uploaded to the wiki, that is a scan with better quality.

Edit: added the original PDF file of the pre-order form that could be obtained from here (thanks to Fifo).

[Hunchman801]

The more I read about this original plot, the happier I am that they ditched it for the pirate stuff. Why they had to partially reuse it for the animated series though, I don't know!

[Elite Piranha]

Even though I like how the final version of the plot turned out, I'm still interested in that mysterious guild since it seems like a bigger deal than the Robo-Pirates or the organization The General works for. In general I was always interested in what is outside of Rayman's planet, like the planets of origin of characters like Razorbeard or the alien rabbids.

Btw, I've already added everything I know about the mysterious guild and the intergalactic circus/zoo plot line to the Rayman 2 (early production) article. It's weird how the mysterious guild was only mentioned in the main R2 article, but not in the early production one.

[PluMGMK]

The more I read about this original plot, the happier I am that they ditched it for the pirate stuff. Why they had to partially reuse it for the animated series though, I don't know!

I guess this was part of the degoofification / darkening they did to differentiate it from Tonic Trouble…