“Ray Tracing is commonly used for indirect lighting,” Kasparas Eidukonis, Senior Audio Programmer, says. “Like when you shine a light into a room – maybe it bleeds out through the door and highlights the areas outside, maybe it bounces on walls and creates different colors of light based on the materials it hits.”

“For audio, it’s essentially the same. Light can be described as a wave, just like sound, it just behaves differently when it hits a surface. We shoot out rays that bounce around and propagate sound. And the more rays we shoot out, the clearer an idea of what it should sound like we get.”

Light can be described as a wave, just like sound, it just behaves differently when it hits a surface.

Let’s imagine you sit opposite another person at a table. If you talk, you can clearly hear each other. The sound waves don’t have an obstacle that separates the two of you. Place a lamp on the table, the sound changes slightly. Flip the table over and suddenly you have something between you and the person on the other side, muffling sounds. Is there a door? Is it open? You can keep building on the scenario, and everything you add will bounce waves – or rays, in the case of Ray Tracing – back to your ears, all in different ways. That’s sound propagation.

Now teleport yourself to the middle of the Kinglor Forest. Consider all the trees, plants, rocks, animals, flowing water, birds, enemy bases, and machinery. Imagine what they do to the thousands of rays the game sends out every frame and what it means for the audio experience.

“It’s super important for immersion to get the sound propagation right,” Simon Stevnhoved, Senior Sound Designer, says. “We are evolutionarily trained to be aware of our surroundings, and our ears can pick up on the slightest changes in our environment. When sound propagation works well, you might not pick up on it consciously, but when something is off, it quickly becomes noticeable. You know instinctively that if you make a loud sound – like firing a gun next to a canyon – the sound will reflect a certain way.

We are evolutionarily trained to be aware of our surroundings.

The team started out by using propagation tech adapted from Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, such as the Slapback, Bubblespace, and Obstruction systems. But, as work on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora progressed, they realized that they needed to both improve what they already had and build completely new tech for the game. While looking for ways to improve sound obstruction, GPU Ray Tracing was integrated into Snowdrop, and the audio team saw their opportunity to jump on board.

“The Division 2’s solution wasn’t built for a jungle environment,” Kasparas says. “It was designed for a city environment, with blocky buildings and props. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the geometry is much more varied, with trees and leaves and bushes.”

So, the team got to work on building a small prototype for raytraced sound obstruction, which worked well for walking around the Kinglor Forest, hiding behind trees and tree trunks, and listening to water sounds. They were happy with what they had but knew there were a lot of improvements that could be made. Some environments worked better than others, for example. The team ended up with a hybrid system, mainly relying on the Ray Tracing solution, but still utilizing hand placed data which was already available, such as volumes for inside spaces and doors.

“In the old system, we would have a custom-built solution for each type of environment, for each type of plant, rock, cliff, terrain,” Kasparas says. “The advantage we were seeing with the Ray Tracing solution is that we could do much more with the rays. We wouldn’t need to build those custom systems, instead it would see all those things naturally. We didn’t need to edit a rock and say, ‘this rock is solid’ or ‘this bush is semitransparent’ every time – naturally the bush will have gaps and the rays can pass through it better than the rock.”

Another bonus of utilizing Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing system as a basis was that the team could move the process from the processor (CPU) to the graphics card (GPU), allowing them to create and sample a lot more rays, faster. Moving parts of the process to a separate piece of hardware also frees up the CPU to do other things. And being released exclusively on the current generation of consoles – and PC – helped, as there’s suddenly a lot more memory and power to take advantage of.

For an early prototype of the system, the audio team tried a very realistic approach to sound propagation – trying to mimic how sound propagation works in the real world as closely as possible. While it created an impressive soundscape, it also became too overbearing to be useable in a game.

You still need to tell a story; you still need to understand gameplay. It needs to be approachable.

“You would end up with sensory overload,” Alex Riviere, Audio Director, says. “It’s a lot of sounds: from insects to birds, foliage rustling with the wind, cues for gameplay and navigation, to name a few. It became too much to take in and understand.  It sounded great, but any new player would be overwhelmed in that situation. So, we had to take a step back and iterate on the sound mix to make it less overbearing. You still need to tell a story; you still need to understand gameplay. It needs to be approachable.”

There’s still a lot of exploration left in the audio field. But now, we have the opportunity to enter the various vast (and virtual) environments and landscapes of Pandora and immerse ourselves in the diverse sounds of the flora and fauna you can only find there.

More from Snowdrop

• Shining a Light on Pandora, Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

One of the first things that Oleksandr Koshlo, Rendering Architect and Quentin Kuenlin, Senior Rendering Programmer on Snowdrop, mention when we sit down to talk lighting and Ray Tracing in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, is the scale of the project compared to other projects that Snowdrop has been used for previously. And it’s not just about the map of the game, but also how far away the horizon is for the players.

“It’s a huge world, which means that you can see far, especially from high vertical positions. This means that we need to support very distant rendering and we need to give it a lot of care,” explains Quentin.

Compared to The Division 2, which was also built on Snowdrop but before current gen enabled Ray Tracing, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora saw a lot of work going into supporting different lighting effects from a high distance, which presents light sources that allows distance processing volumetric lighting.

We have been able to drastically improve some of the techniques that we had to forgo in previous productions.

“With Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora being a current gen title, we have been able to drastically improve some of the techniques that we had to forgo in previous productions. Now, we could implement Ray Tracing for both lighting and reflections, and that’s a huge change.”

According to both Oleksandr and Quentin, the change in lighting quality is drastic compared to previous titles built on the Snowdrop engine, making things in the world much better connected, and as different materials and objects have different reactions to lighting, they look more realistic than before.

With the previous probe-based global illumination, small objects and details didn’t have any effect on the global illumination. However, thanks to the new system which works on a per pixel basis, all the objects in the world and every small detail can have an influence on the lighting.

Quentin points at a controller on the table we are sitting at.

“For example, if you take the controller here as an example, when we had probe-based illumination, you wouldn’t be able to cast those small, detailed shadows. But now, we can catch these small indirect shadows on their surroundings – the controller casting a shadow on the table, with the TV screen shining a light on the scene for example. It’s much more precise, and much more realistic – and more physically accurate as well since it reflects rays of light in real life.”

It’s much more precise, and much more realistic.

This also connects to the weather system on Pandora. For example, when it’s foggy, some light will be obscured, and the fog itself uses Ray Tracing to indirect light, creating a systemic interaction.

“The systems kind of feedback on themselves. If the sky is completely clouded, you get less direct light from the sun, making the environment darker. It’s all connected,” says Oleksandr, and adds that one of the challenges they have faced in the past is light shining into interiors, which has been a difficult problem to solve.

“We have worked a lot on this and been pushing the boundaries of the tech to make it work – which it now does,” he says with a smile. “And what’s even nicer is that since we don’t rely on baked data, we can actually support opening doors into dark interiors which will become bright due to the light shining in from the outside. It sounds like a basic thing, but it’s something we’ve worked on quite a while, and it’s nice to finally achieve it.”

Speaking of bake times, Ray Tracing has been pivotal in shorten iteration time for the artists working on the game, as it eliminates long bake times and gives artists instant feedback and removes some of the problems with baking. For example, to get the impression that you would get in the full game, the team had to bake things on a build machine, which would take a lot of time.

“With Ray Tracing, if an artist moves an object, it will instantly update the lighting. This means that artists can create windows and objects and instantly see what it will look like in-game for the players,” explains Quentin.

By working closely with the artists on the project, the Snowdrop team has been able to make the tech better and better with direct feedback, considering how artists work with Ray Tracing.

“It’s really a collaborative effort,” says Oleksandr. “When we started the processes in the development of the tech, it showed promise quickly. But once we committed to it and started using it to produce Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, we had to tackle a lot of challenges, and that’s where our collaboration with the artists really started.”

We had to tackle a lot of challenges, and that’s where our collaboration with the artists really started.

By working together, the artists worked to understand how to implement Ray Tracing in their work, and the Snowdrop developers figured out the best ways to optimize the tech. The collaboration has yielded great results, and the instant feedback from artists to the Snowdrop team has proven invaluable.

“When we work on the tech side, we work with simple scenes with a red cube that you can see the light bounce off from,” explains Oleksandr. “However, once you go to a real level, you can see a lot more, and realize that the artists see issues that we don’t necessarily see since it’s so much more complex.”

Quentin adds:

“The feedback has been great. For us in the Snowdrop team, what we do is physically based, and sometimes you try to be as realistic as possible, but it can actually be too realistic for artists, since it hampers the player’s experience,” says Quentin.

As an example, Quentin brings up light during nighttime in the game. During the night, it will (quite obviously) not be much light in the environment, but for the player, it’s too dark and takes away from the gameplay.

“If the player can’t see anything, it will take away from the experience, so sometimes it might be that they need to boost light in a certain area to make the player experience as good as possible. It might not be the most realistic lighting, but it’s necessary to make the game fun.”

Moving forward, both Oleksandr and Quentin see many opportunities with Ray Tracing and how it can be further evolved.

“What we are doing right now is basically tracing rays from the surface of objects into random directions. If we hit something, we hit something. But in that sense, it’s limited since the light won’t bounce indefinitely. What I think will be our next technological step for our future titles is “Path Tracing”: shooting rays which bounce and bounce and bounce. At the moment we are still working on solving some challenges, but it looks promising and it’s definitely something that we want to keep pushing,” says Quentin.

Right now, we are at the tip of the iceberg.

The Snowdrop team’s goal is to make all new technologies developed on Snowdrop available for any team at Ubisoft that is using the engine to develop their games. Ray Tracing is no different and is now available for anyone to leverage.

“There are things we are working on to get better precision and quality,” says Oleksandr. “Right now, we are at the tip of the iceberg, and there are a lot of exciting and interesting things that we want – and hope – to do in the future when it comes to Ray Tracing and lighting in games.”

More from Snowdrop

• An Evolving Pandora, Snowdrop’s dynamic world
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

“In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the player can directly do things that affect the state of Pandora,” Kunal Luthra, Lead Technical Artist, says. “You defeat a big facility belonging to the RDA, the main bad guys of the game, that’s polluting the world around it, it will become abandoned and overgrown – nature will be reclaiming the area. The forest will recover from the pollution, animals will return. And as you push back the RDA across Pandora, you will see it directly reflected in the world around you.”

“The player can tell straight away when they are approaching a Resources Development Administration – the RDA – facility,” Kunal says. “The plants are dying around you; the wildlife is dying around you. Harvest materials are destroyed, and suddenly you can’t harvest anything. The pollution takes away gameplay opportunities, and the only way to get them back is to destroy the facility. And as soon as you’ve done that, you can see the pollution start to disappear in front of your eyes.”

The system was originally built for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, where civilian settlements get upgrades as the player helps them recover. It has then been expanded and built upon for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

We can change almost anything. We can change the geometry of the level area, we can load and unload entities we no longer want.”

“We can change almost anything. We can change the geometry of the level area, we can load and unload entities we no longer want,” Daniel Edenbrandt, Senior Gameplay Programmer, says. “We can have new geometry for the animals and NPCs to traverse. It also affects the shaders, that decide how objects and environment look, so even when we don’t change anything gameplay-wise or geometry-wise in a wider area, we can change how we render the plants and environment using what’s called vertex shaders and pixel shaders.”

The system is also built this way to empower the game’s level designers, as it gives them the opportunity to create bases with engaging gameplay together with detailed environment.

“We have scripts in the Snowdrop editor to help the designers generate a variety of foliage depending on what area of the map you end up placing your base,” Kunal says. “You can design it once, and then the system spawns the correct plants automatically based on that. This means that we can create the most immersive world for our players, where the lush and vibrant vegetation populates the entirety of the vast landscapes of the Western Frontiers of Pandora.

We show and hide whatever is appropriate, with bespoke geometry. It’s like layers in Photoshop, essentially.”

“When you design a facility, you place the props and everything that should always exist, then you place the props that should only exist when it’s operational and then props for when it’s abandoned,” Daniel says. “Then we show and hide whatever is appropriate, with bespoke geometry. It’s like layers in Photoshop, essentially.”

Pollution is a whole system in itself, that directly interacts with the dynamic world system.

“The way it’s set up, any gameplay system can access the pollution, and it is also available to graphics shaders running on the graphics card using a pollution texture,” Daniel says. “We can have any range of pollution and if we wanted to, we could define the amount of deterioration on any material or gameplay object – like a harvestable, for example – using these shaders, instead of having multiple versions of the same object just to showcase the amount of pollution.”

The goal of the dynamic world system was to tie everything together and to make every landmark unique. It’s meant to give the player an incentive to go back to previous areas to reexplore places they’ve already visited and to create a sense of the passage of time. But it’s also a part of the game’s message.

“The basic purpose of the dynamic world is to show how bad human actions can be for the environment, but that we can take it back and help it recover,” Kunal says. “The facilities will still be there, but as you progress, they will be taken back by nature.”

More from Snowdrop

• Shining a Light on Pandora, Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing
• Crafting Pandora’s Breathtaking Landscape, Snowdrop’s scattering system

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Kunal Luthra, Lead Technical Artist, David Österlind, Lead Environment Artist, and Carl Leonardsson, Senior Programmer, are three of the people that have worked on the scattering tool to help the Avatar team build an immersive Pandora.

“Simply put, the scattering system is a procedural placement tool,” David says. “It uses a node system that connects objects together in a parent-child relationship based on the radius around the objects. Maybe a tree has certain plants that grow around it, or a river has a certain type of pebbles and rocks on its banks, which in turns have certain flowers that grow around them. Once we have set up the logic we can populate the world in an instant, allowing for quick and easy iteration. It’s advanced, but the core idea is very simplistic, in the sense that everyone can grasp it.”

“We consider scattering to be the first pass,” Kunal adds. “But it’s a good first pass! When we’ve locked the scatter, we can go in and massage the content, add, remove, and move objects – adding that artist flair. And if you have an area that is extra important, where you know something important will happen in the game, artists can go in and handcraft those specific areas without using the scattering system first.”

Procedural world building tools are not new, games like Far Cry 5 have used them for a long time, but the scattering system in the Snowdrop engine was built from the ground up based on the specific needs of the project which brought a range of new innovations. After all, each procedural generation tool does things differently, based on the desired outcome. But with this level of fidelity and detail, it’s easy for the tools to bloat and become hard to use.

For artists, this tool is invaluable.”

“The scattering interface in Snowdrop is meant to be as art friendly as possible,” Kunal says when asked what improvements the team has made compared to other similar tools. “The system is not just driven by a code recipe to generate some procedural, arbitrary result. An artist can, from scratch, fill out a map based on rules, with specific assets, the child-parent relationship between objects, hierarchies, and build a nice, believable world in a user-friendly way. For artists, this tool is invaluable.”

Originally, the scatter system might have been built for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but by now it has become a general Snowdrop feature that other games can benefit from.

“We did cater it for this project,” Kunal says, “to create the Pandora we wanted, but we always keep in mind how to keep it scalable and streamlined for other Snowdrop projects in the future. The more projects use it, the better and more comprehensive and advanced and easier to use it becomes.”

“It is definitely integrated into Snowdrop overall now,” Carl says. “That’s also something that we want to work more on, to make it better and easier for other projects to apply.”

Once an area has been automatically populated, it’s easy – and fast – for an artist to go in and tweak and fix things to their specifications.

“And we can scatter in layers,” Carl says. “We can place objects in layers. You might have your aquatic systems – you can have scattering at the bottom of a river, at the surface, on the cliffs next to the river, perhaps on the floating island just above it.”

It’s also important for the team behind the scattering system to be in contact with other teams, like game design, to make sure that the areas it produces fit the rest of the game.

“It might be artist driven, but it needs to go hand in hand with level design and game design, for example,” David says. “For example, interactive plants might need to have a certain distribution, or crafting materials can only be found on a certain tree with a certain type of bark. That needs to be considered as well.”

We can scatter on other assets, on props, anything really that we think should have it. That’s very powerful.”

The system is also built to be fast.

“You can have your graphs that describe the rules on one side, and the game on the other,” Kunal says. “We make an adjustment and in seconds we see the results. That’s another of its key strengths, that the iteration times are so fast – you can iterate, and iterate, and iterate quickly, and not have to wait for ages until your changes are reflected in the game.”

“When we started, we were only placing things procedurally on terrain,” Kunal says. “But now we can scatter on other assets, on props, anything really that we think should have it. That’s very powerful.”

“At the end of the day, it’s about keeping the player immersed, consistently, through the whole game. And if there are some pockets, anomalies, that we can tweak, then we do that.”

More from Snowdrop

• An Evolving Pandora, Snowdrops dynamic world
• Shining a Light on Pandora, Snowdrop’s Ray Tracing

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora © 2023 20th Century Studios. Game Software excluding 20th Century Studios elements: © 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 20th Century Studios logo are trademarks of 20th Century Studios. Licensed to Ubisoft Entertainment by 20th Century Studios. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

When Christian Seger joined Massive in 2004, Ground Control 2 had just launched. The tech team – which consisted of one person – had developed the core technology for the engine that powered the creation of Ground Control and was at the time mostly focused on things like graphics and rendering. And when that person decided to try out new opportunities, Christian saw himself take over and the team starting to grow.

“This was really when our journey started, I would say,” explains Christian. “The coming years, we started to expand our tech team with new recruits, which meant that I became a lead for the team.”

And then development on World In Conflict started. During the coming three years, the team kept growing, and after launch in 2007, they started working on a console version of the game.

World In Conflict was released in 2007 and the engine used was the root of what later became Snowdrop.

“We had gotten pretty far with it when our then owners Activision decided to let us go and we needed to find new owners – which we did in Ubisoft. I would say that the development of Snowdrop is a direct effect of us becoming part of Ubisoft,” says Christian.

So how did Snowdrop come to be, and what part did Ubisoft’s acquisition of Massive play?

Exploring concepts and opportunities

Christian explains that when Massive became part of the Ubisoft family in 2008, there was a period of time where the studio needed to integrate into the company, and during that time, the tech team could uninterruptedly work on pure R&D.

“This period without any active game projects meant that we could explore new concepts and opportunities, and the game engine was one of them. It also gave us time to make some valuable decisions regarding tools, like script, level, and object editors, to name a few,” says Cristian.

At this point in time, Snowdrop had yet to get its poetic name and was simply called “Tech 2”. It wasn’t until several years later that it was named after the symbolic flower.

When Christian and his team started developing what would later become the Snowdrop engine, all the tools that were used were written in different UI and programming systems.

“I believe we had about four or five UI systems at the same time, and they were all closely connected to PC. As you might guess, it was pretty messy, especially since every UI system had its own contact person and we couldn’t use it for development on any other platform than PC.”

The first decision the Massive tech team took was to create their own UI system.

The idea was that if we write our own UI system, we have full control over it, and we can also make it work for more platforms than PC.

“The idea was that if we write our own UI system, we have full control over it, and we can also make it work for more platforms than PC. For us, it was a highly strategic decision which also allowed more people to use the tool as you could also run it on consoles.”

The UI was called FaceMan, and Massive had two programmers working with it.

“It was pretty complicated,” says Christian. “We also decided to release different themes for the UI so the users could give it different looks. We obviously had a default look, but I know we also had a theme for Amiga, for example.”

Autonomy for the users

Another strategic decision that was made at this time was to gather all tools and game code in the same code solution. This meant that it became easier and faster to go from client to tool.

“And then we have the node system, which marked a significant change from previous systems. For example, in World In Conflict, it was up to C++ programmers to build everything. With the node system, people specialized in different disciplines, such as tech artists, could themselves build a lot of the mechanics in the game. The system is used by all aspects of the game, from animation to sound,” explains Christian.

Christian also tells us that it was important for both the team and Massive as a studio to adhere to a design philosophy focused on modular design. By doing so, different games developed in the engine can reuse tools and editors that previous projects have used. This means that projects can connect what they want and need and use Snowdrop in different ways when it comes to software development.

“It’s a bit like a car: there is a generic platform, with the engine and the wheels, but then you can put different bodies on top to change the design,” says Christian.

Additionally, fast iteration times have been a core principle for Snowdrop since its inception.

“The bigger the project, the bigger the codebase, the slower it is to work with it. For example, when we worked on another game engine, it could take up to 45 minutes to compile that engine. So, for Snowdrop, it was important to prioritize iteration so we could start and test the game quickly.”

It’s a bit like a car: there is a generic platform, with the engine and the wheels, but then you can put different bodies on top to change the design.

Snowdrop has had quite the journey – from a conceptual R&D project aimed to make development faster and easier to a renowned game engine used by projects such as The Division, South Park, The Settlers, and the recently announced Star Wars Project. And for Christian, it’s been both fascinating and interesting to be part of the journey.

“It’s been both interesting and fascinating to work with games not developed in our studio and try to predict that work for Snowdrop. In the beginning, we based most of our work on our experiences with World In Conflict and the challenges we faced there. But as we’ve grown, so has Snowdrop, and no project is like the other. But with Snowdrop’s UI, node graph system, modular design and fast iteration times, Snowdrop is in a really good position. We don’t want to guess, and we don’t have to anymore.”

Fast, innovative, empowering, and flexible: since its inception, the Snowdrop engine has helped power many games and IPs at different Ubisoft studios all over the world. Last month, a new campaign for the Snowdrop engine was revealed, with a new website and other initiatives being launched.

But there was also another first for the engine in November: The first ever Snowdrop Summit, gathering the Ubisoft Snowdrop community to share the latest updates and information about the engine’s current state and future.

Reinforcing the community

“The main goal of the summit was really to enable connection, sharing, and branding to reinforce the community of Snowdrop users,” explains Stephanie Pecaoco, Associate Producer at Snowdrop and organizer of the summit.

“It’s a way to create new connections in the community, as well as improving the understanding of Snowdrop through the different talks, breakout rooms, and panels.”

The main goal of the summit was really to enable connection, sharing, and branding to reinforce the community of Snowdrop users.

The plans for the Snowdrop Summit started early this year – although the idea was initially born back in 2018 – and at that point the idea was to host a physical version of the summit. Due to the global pandemic, the plans had to be reorganized and the summit became fully digital – a challenge that the hosts rose to.

“What’s cool about going digital is that it enables more people to participate. Usually with events like these, attendance can be limited because of different onsite and logistical challenges, which we were able to eliminate by going digital. Also, I think it was a plus that everyone could join the sessions from the comfort of their home, with all that entails,” says Stephanie.

A global collaboration

The Snowdrop Summit consisted of four half-days filled with different talks, breakout sessions, and updates about the engine. Both the speakers and the participants were from different Ubisoft studios all over the world, and some of the topics that were brought up included audio, ray tracing, build systems, animation systems, and the engine’s tool suite.

“We treated this event as a platform to unveil features and give our attendees information that we felt was crucial for them to know,” Stephanie explains, and continues:

“Since Snowdrop’s user community is spread across many different Ubisoft studios outside of Massive, it was important for us to also give them an opportunity to express their thoughts and showcase their work in the engine.”

With the overall success of the summit, the team is already now looking at next year’s edition and how they can tweak it to become even better.

“We have definitely had some important learnings from this event which we will take with us for the Snowdrop Summit 2021. We are also opening the floor for all Snowdrop users within Ubisoft to submit their ideas for topics, which should be very interesting.”

“We are really looking forward to keep developing and improving the concept to connect the community and share knowledge about the engine,” concludes Stephanie.

If you want to know more about the Snowdrop Engine, check out the Snowdrop website.

Useful links

• The launch of a new campaign for Snowdrop.
• Learn more about Tech and Tools Programming at Snowdrop.

Snowdrop started out as an R&D project at Massive Entertainment – a Ubisoft Studio, and was originally developed alongside Tom Clancy’s The Division, released in 2016.

Since then, the engine has grown globally, and is now used by Ubisoft studios from Canada to Japan. It’s been used to develop games such as South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, and Starlink: Battle for Atlas – all thanks to the engine’s powerful flexibility and control given to the content creators.

A CENTRALIZED HUB

As the use of the engine has grown, so has the team, and as a result, there is now a need for a centralized hub to find everything Snowdrop, which is the core of the new campaign now being launched. This Snowdrop website is the stepping stone, and a way for us to invite interested parties to learn more about the engine, as well as bringing existing users closer.

“With a growing interest of the Snowdrop engine both internally at Ubisoft, and externally, we want to work to engage with our community,” explains Linda Malmgren, Communications Director at Massive Entertainment.

“We believe that through collaboration and knowledge sharing we can bring our engine towards the future and not only make it future proof, but also make it truly flexible for all games, which is why we are now launching a long-term commitment to our community where we promise to increase our knowledge sharing, listen to developer needs and share updates and successes.”

BUILDING COMMUNITY AND COLLABORATION

For the first time ever, non-users of the Snowdrop Engine can learn more about its features, tools, and development through this website, to get closer to the development of our games. There will also be opportunities to learn more about how different projects have used Snowdrop in the past, and what the future might hold through deep diving knowledge sharing articles with experts from Ubisoft studios from all over the world.

This campaign showcases the best qualities of Snowdrop. It’s an opportunity to build community, to share and to collaborate around making Snowdrop the best game engine possible. Ola Holmdahl – Production Manager, Snowdrop

“Snowdrop is an amazing game engine that is being adopted by more Ubisoft teams every year. This campaign showcases the best qualities of Snowdrop. It’s an opportunity to build community, to share and to collaborate around making Snowdrop the best game engine possible,” says Ola Holmdahl, Production Manager for the Snowdrop Engine.

“Our community of game makers – past, present, and future – is the foundation of Snowdrop’s strength: the brilliant programmers who laid its foundation, the talented team that improves it every day, and the outstanding people who will join us and add their own inspiration to the engine.”

Stay tuned for more content about Snowdrop, what it can do, and where it’s going.

“The work we do is very diverse,” explains Patrick Görtjes, Localization Project Manager, as we sit down in Massive’s kitchen for a coffee. “Broadly speaking, as a Localization Project Manager, it’s my job to make sure that the game is localized in all the languages we support, and coordinate that work with all stakeholders, from vendors to other Ubisoft studios.”

Important aspects of Patrick’s work are deciding which languages to support, overseeing the text pipeline, casting voice actors in different languages, recording the voice-overs, and testing the localizations in the different languages.

“One of the most exciting things about working in Localization at Massive is that we are embedded in the development team and therefore part of the entire development cycle of the game, from pre-production to the live phase. For example, on The Division 2 I was able to sit in on feature design meetings from an early stage, so by the time we started localizing, I knew the game inside out. That’s incredibly helpful for someone in my job,” he says.

From linguistics to games

Patrick has a background in linguistics with a focus on English-to-Dutch translation and interpreting, but he has always known that he wanted to work in the game industry. The first game he ever worked on was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and after some freelancing, he got the chance to try out project management.

“About three years ago, I started to look for a change in surroundings and ended up here at Massive. But that’s just one way to get into localization in the games industry – I know many people who come from a more technical background, and many have started out in game testing and quality assurance.”

In the early stages of development on The Division 2, Patrick took ownership of the subtitles feature and started working on ways to improve the subtitles from The Division. One of these improvements was closed captions, which are text descriptions of certain sounds in the game.

“We also added a directional marker to show which direction sounds are coming from, as well as adjustable font sizes and different text colors indicating different characters speaking.”

We also added a directional marker to show which direction sounds are coming from, as well as adjustable font sizes and different text colors indicating different characters speaking

In total, The Division 2 is localized in 17 different languages. Of these, nine are fully voiced, while the rest has localized menus and/or subtitles.

“One of the most interesting things we do that players never see is working with the Snowdrop team on improving our localization tools and the text pipeline – all with the aim of making localization as efficient as possible, while at the same time staying true to the Snowdrop philosophy of empowering developers,” says Patrick.

Subtitle accessibility – for everyone

Earlier this year, The Division 2 team was invited to speak about the game’s accessibility features at GAconf EU in London by the IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group.

“My part of the talk centered around subtitle accessibility, while Matte Wagner from Red Storm spoke about text chat and text-to-speech, among other things,” says Patrick.

In his presentation, Patrick chronicled the research and design journey of The Division 2’s subtitles, outlined plans for future improvements, explained how closed captions work, and shared usage statistics.

“We see that almost 1 in 5 players use an ‘accessible’ subtitle mode, which is evidence that these features are used by all types of players – hence the title of the talk, ‘Designing better subtitles for everyone’”.

We see that almost 1 in 5 players use an ‘accessible’ subtitle mode, which is evidence that these features are used by all types of players

“It’s about accessibility, but at the same time I think accessibility is also just advanced user customization: giving players as many options as we can to allow them to play the way they want to play, because in the end, we want as many people as possible to enjoy our game, no matter who they are.”

• If you want to watch Patrick’s presentation from GAconf EU, you can do it here (starts at around 2h30m).
• Want to know more about our game engine Snowdrop? Click here!

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fortunate enough to know what my dream job is.

It all started with my uncle assembling a computer at our home in Russia sometime between 1998 and 1999, and then bringing us some games to play. One of these was the amazing adventure game Kyrandia: The Hand of Fate, which half of my family became obsessed with solving.

I think that I knew already then that I wanted to be part of the industry – a part of creating these games that I love so much. And a hundred or so games later, I knew for sure.

Today, I work as a Gameplay Programmer at Massive – the type of job I always dreamed of. So how did I get here?

Math and games

When I started university, I had an easy time choosing my path into programming, mainly because I was very good at math.

And even though it wasn’t a university course about specifically game programming, I took every opportunity to focus my projects on games, which allowed me to experiment and learn a lot of new exciting things within programming. It’s something I recommend to anyone interested in working with games: try to build up your knowledge about it any way you can!

I took every opportunity to focus my projects on games, which allowed me to experiment and learn a lot of new exciting things within programming.

After my Bachelor of Science in Information Systems, I decided to focus my expertise on games even more. And so, I started a master’s in game development in the UK.

This program was still focused on programming, but it also helped me get a broader idea of what it is like working as a team with different people who have their own ways of solving problems. I believe this is super useful knowledge no matter what job you do in the games industry!

From porting AAA to mobile to AAA

From there I got a job at a company that ported AAA games to Mac and Linux OS, but for different reasons I couldn’t stay there for very long. So, I came back home, got a little rest, and started looking for a new job.

After a few months, I’d found a job at a mobile game company, and I would like to say that that was my first real step into the games industry.

Being able to solve bigger issues in games helped me grow so much during a very short amount of time. All the coding, complex challenges, and social experience let me become a professional in my work.

All the coding, complex challenges, and social experience let me become a professional in my work.

I think it’s not really until the moment you see your knowledge and skills being used to craft something tangible that you truly understand what you are capable of.

The feeling when you are faced with a task that seems so complex and challenging that you must break your head a few times before finding a solution, but then you solve it … is unbelievable.

After working there for a while, I came to the realization that I wanted to work on a bigger game project. And by a random happenstance I stumbled upon a job ad from Massive, and I haven’t looked back since!

So, what does a Gameplay Programmer at Massive do?

Being a Gameplay Programmer means that you can work with a wide variety of tasks. It all depends on which part of the game you are working on! It can be anything from developing player movements, to creating mission systems which gives the players exact goals to accomplish.

Most of the time (at least when you’re working on a bigger project!) you will be mainly working on the back-end of the game, which means that you are creating tools for a specific usage of the engine.

One of my favorite things about my job is that I’m able to see things happen on the screen any time I change something. That means that I can see the immediate impact of everything I do, and the progress is super clear.

At Massive, for example, we work with our in-house Snowdrop engine, and my role is connected with creating specific features for the designers working in Snowdrop. In short, my job is to make sure that the designers have all the tools they need to fulfill any artistic ideas they might have.

One of my favorite things about my job is that I’m able to see things happen on the screen any time I change something. That means that I can see the immediate impact of everything I do, and the progress is super clear.

My top tips for aspiring gameplay programmers

• Love solving puzzles. Practically everything about programming is about the process of finding solutions, and it’s important that you love that type of work.
• Bear in mind who the user of your work is. Sometimes we can become too focused on getting things to just work, instead of getting it to work the way it should according to how it will be used.
• Do it. Just do it. If you think you will enjoy programming a game, just try it out! You’ve got nothing to lose.

Interested in Programming?

• Check out our open positions!
• Learn more about the Snowdrop engine.
• Watch our latest Inside Massive episode, which is all about Tech and Tools at Massive (and where you will also see Natalia!):
  Please accept marketing-cookies to watch this video.

In this article, Tech and Tools Programmer Marcus Göransson talks more about his work, how he went from a job as a plumber to Massive, and what it’s like working on an in-house engine like Snowdrop.

When people think of game development, they often think of what they can see on the screen – like the interfaces, environment art, and visual features. But none of this would exist without the very foundation of every game: the game engine.

And that’s where we Tech and Tools Programmers come into the picture.

As a Tech and Tools Programmer, it’s my job to create and maintain the technology and tools that exists in the game engine – which in Massive’s case is Snowdrop.

We work with the base of the game, making sure that development runs smoothly and that all our users – for example world creators and artists – have the features they need to make the best game possible (which I think is pretty cool!).

But how does one end up as a Tech and Tools Programmer? For me, the road here has not been very straightforward – but worth every second.

Becoming a tech and tools programmer

I have always liked math and solving logical problems, but it never really occurred to me that I would (or could) work as a Tech and Tools Programmer, or even in the game industry. Not until a friend of mine told me about game programming and how to try it out.

I was immediately hooked.

At the time, I was a long way from the game industry. I was actually working as a plumber, but my newfound love for coding had me re-evaluate my choice of profession. In the end, I decided to take a leap into a whole new world and re-educate myself to become a programmer.

I applied to The Game Assembly’s Game Programming education, and that’s where I discovered my passion for tech and tools.

At the time, I was a long way from the game industry. I was actually working as a plumber, but my newfound love for coding had me re-evaluate my choice of profession.

In general, I would recommend anyone interested in working with tech and tools to attend a game development education, since it gives you a great understanding of how games work and the different aspects of a project.

Working with Snowdrop

Massive as a game studio had been on my radar ever since the release of Ground Control back in the day. I’ve always had a huge interest in games, and Ground Control and World in Conflict are two of the games I’ve really enjoyed. So, when I started my studies at The Game Assembly, Massive quickly became a dream workplace for me.

One of the most unique things about working at Massive is that we have our own in-house game engine Snowdrop. Before I joined Massive, I had worked a bit in some other game engines, so the difference wasn’t too big when I started working on Snowdrop.

One thing that has really made the work smooth is the fact that some of our users are in the same house as us, which means that communication is easier and that you can receive immediate feedback.

One of the most unique things about working at Massive is that we have our own in-house game engine Snowdrop.

For example, I’ve worked a lot with the people who create content for buildings in The Division 2. Being able to just go over to their screen and have a look if there are any issues makes it so much easier to understand and solve challenges we might face, and it’s something I value greatly – both for the development of the engine, and for my own professional and personal development.

The core of the job

But, at its core, my job is to make it easier for the users to create the game and to make it beautiful. And this is where I have really found my passion: in helping others.

Doing what I do, I get to help people in their work every day, and I can instantly tell that what I’m doing for them is actually useful, especially when we get such quick feedback!

And it’s especially nice knowing that the work I do every day will ultimately help create the best game possible for our players. In that sense, everything we do, we do for others.

What qualities are good to have as a tech and tools programmer?

• You should be good at prioritizing your work and understand what is most important in the moment.
• You need to be able to put yourself in other people shoes. A huge part of our work is to help others, and to do this we need to understand their needs.
• Being good at compromising. At its heart, we want to do what’s best for the users, which means navigating the needs and wants of many different stakeholders. Finding the middle road is essential to succeed with this.

Want to learn more?

• Check out our open programming positions!
• Read more about our Snowdrop engine.
• Meet Sven, Marcus’ colleague, in this portrait!