What is it like to work with the very backbone of multiple game productions? Nikolay Stefanov, who took up the roles of Chief Architect for Snowdrop and Tech Director for Tom Clancy’s The Division 3, shares his insights from an over ten-year long journey with the engine.
My journey to becoming the Chief Architect of Snowdrop is a long one and starts all the way back in 2009. I was living in the UK with my family when I got the offer to join the Massive team. We took the leap, moved to Malmö and that’s where my Snowdrop adventure began.
We took the leap, moved to Malmö and that’s where my Snowdrop adventure began.
Since then, I have had the privilege to work on several projects, as Technical Lead on Far Cry, 3C & Animation Lead on The Division and Technical Director on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. My first serious involvement with Snowdrop was back in 2013. I was asked to help improve the visuals of the E3 demo for The Division. Together with a small team of very talented engineers, we started by upgrading the lighting solution in Snowdrop. We invented a new technique called precomputed radiance transfer probes, which significantly improved how the trailer – and eventually the game – looked. We also implemented other effects, such as ray marched shadowed fog.
Shortly after The Division released in 2016, I had the opportunity to present our work at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. This was one of the first times that we publicly talked in detail about the technology behind Snowdrop. The reception from the industry and our peers was great, and it was an amazing feeling to have people recognize the work of our team. Luckily, it was the second time I had found myself on a big stage like that, so I could enjoy this special moment without becoming a nervous wreck.
Snowdrop was always a key ingredient in the development of Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Snowdrop was always a key ingredient in the development of Tom Clancy’s The Division. The original idea behind Snowdrop was to unify the look and feel of the different editors used to create our games, as well as provide visual scripting and asset setup for artists and designers. With the release of The Division, we managed to set a new standard for high quality graphics and environmental interactivity, which is something that we’ve successfully carried over in all subsequent projects.
In the last ten years, the engine has been constantly improved and has proven to be flexible for a range of different settings (urban environments and large sci-fi open worlds) and genres (online multiplayer, single player). It has been a great pleasure seeing it power several AAA projects, such as The Division 1 & 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and most recently, Star Wars Outlaws.
With both Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws, we took a huge leap in the level of detail that is possible for open world games. For both projects, we managed to successfully bring Snowdrop to the current generation of consoles and fully embraced new and exciting technologies such as ray tracing. We are one of the handful of game developers that have been able to deliver ray tracing at 60fps on consoles. Over the years, the NodeGraphs of Snowdrop have proved to be a crucial tool for quick iterations and are used in many different contexts, such as props, scripting, NPC behavior trees, procedural generation, dialogues, UI and much more.
I am very proud to see the praise that our games have received, thanks to their visuals, sound and overall performance. It has been hard work, but all worth it in the end – and receiving the Digital Foundry nod for “Graphics of the year” for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is certainly a highlight.
I am very proud to see the praise that our games have received, thanks to their visuals, sound and overall performance.
Looking ahead, I am excited about the future of Snowdrop. In my new role as Chief Architect, it will be my job to define the technical vision for Snowdrop and align it with the needs of our games. I am looking forward to working closely with Technical Directors and Leads for the different Snowdrop domains, to ensure that the engine remains production ready and future-proof for the many upcoming AAA games that it will help bring to life.
Finally, I have a confession to make. In my early days when shipping The Division, I did use some “creative” solutions, all which made their way in Snowdrop and miraculously stayed there. 10 years later, I still sometimes get asked questions by confused developers about these dubious things I did back then. So, just in case someone hungry for revenge is reading this, I will keep them all to myself…
