Ubisoft took to the stage at GDC in San Francisco to talk more about the Snowdrop engine, which powers their upcoming game The Division. Developed in house by Massive in the response to a specific requirements to do things better, not bigger.
As game development projects grow in scope exponentially, Massive wanted to be smart and not rely on brute force. Allowing freedom to experiment and prototype which promoted creativity, supporting how Massive works in studio. The result of this was the creation of an incredibly powerful and beautiful engine that truly empowers content creators, giving them as much control and freedom as possible to innovate and create amazing games.
The brilliance of the Snowdrop engine is that at its heart it’s a node-based system, it affects all the systems of the engine from rendering to AI to mission scripting and the UI.
Offering such flexibility where developers can create their assets quickly and interact with them in ways that have never been done before. The game and editor are unified, everything in the engine runs in real time. Which means that the ongoing project that developers are working on is always playable, which is extremely useful and allows for the implementation of new ideas and creations instantly.