'South Park' TV creators can beam their work directly into 'The Fractured But Whole'
South Park: The Fractured But Whole has a deeper connection to the Comedy Central TV series than you probably realize.
The long-awaited Stick of Truth sequel has seen its share of delays -- it was originally meant to arrive in late 2016. The work would be moving a lot more slowly now, however, if not for a major change to the way Ubisoft works with South Park's Comedy Central team.
"We made the process different," Senior Producer Jason Schroeder said during a new episode of Kotaku's Splitscreen podcast, referring to the sequel's use of a new engine -- Snowdrop -- to power the game.
The Stick of Truth was an Obsidian Entertainment production, but this sequel is in the hands of Ubisoft's San Francisco studio. And the switch to Snowdrop, which is proprietary Ubi technology, comes with one important advantage: Snowdrop works with Autodesk Maya, the software used to create South Park episodes.
"We started from scratch with Snowdrop, but that was with the idea that their show is built in Maya, and Snowdrop imports Maya files clean," Schroeder said.
"We built a pipeline that basically, we run export tools, clean up some files, and then all of a sudden their content plays in game. It’s a crazy, crazy pipeline, but it actually works to create something that looks so authentically like the show."
It's South Park's seemingly simple 2D look that makes the development process more challenging on the art side. While many current tools are built to make 3D world creation smoother, a greater degree of hands-on work is required to animate 2D visuals.
"I think when you’re animating to a very specific look and style, there’s not really compromising. There’s no shortcuts," Schroeder said earlier in the interview.
"[If] you want to have unique facial expressions -- and so much of the action of the show actually takes place on those big eyes and little mouth shapes -- if you want it to be really expressive, you’ve gotta animate that too. You’ve gotta show pain, show effort, show all this stuff."
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
