Dawn of War II - обсуждение - Страница 2 - Форум Warhammer Dawn of War II Основной форум

В том числе жертвуя всей и всяческой секретностью.

Only few RTS-games are as dared in the way Dawn of War is. Inspired on the Warhammer 40k franchise this dared combination of fantasy and sci-fi full of brutal combat and fast-paced action is almost unique. The expression ‘Over the top’ was probably born the moment the first DoW was released. Everything is Over the Top in DoW, think of the impossibly large melee weapons, the heavy guns or the gory death animations. And haven’t we been spoiled as DoW-fans by the three expansions (WA, DC and SS) that put the number of playable races on 9? But time has left it’s mark which means it’s time for DoW 2. Stefan Wenmaekers, who looks during the current adjustments on his house like an Ork Warboss, and even placed green goblins in machinegun turrets on wooden emplacements to keep away government officials with annoying questions about building licenses away, volunteered to go to Vancouver, Canada for the world première of DoW2.

Contrary to what you’d expect the Relic-Crew, that besides the DoW-franchise also created Homeworld and Company of Heroes, mainly consists of sober people. Who, just as me, half-expected a crazy gang of wacky devs in crazy suits will be disappointed. Wether it’s the Canadian urge for quality, or simply the pressure that’s part of working on a promising sequel, the team of devs that I got to see at Relic were completely occupied in their work. After a tour through the offices, where we were expected to keep quiet (otherwise the game would be delayed by at least a month by my noise), we were guided in a demonstrationroom where it was all going to happen. (Rahl: now follows a quick introduction of the Warhammer 40k world, I don’t think you guys need this.)

How do we go from here?
At Relic they’ve gone into the Canadian woods to meditate on the RTS-genre. When they returned after several days of living of the hunt, they concluded that the current RTS-games lack on two serious points. There are close to no ‘long term goals’ and as a player there is close to no personal bond with your units. In nearly all RTS-games you start at the beginning of a mission with building out a base which, when completed, has no more use. Nothing of the stuff you build passes to the next round and that’s a waste of the time you put into it. According to Relic it’s much better to spend your time on your units and reaching your goal. At the end the player should also be able to count on cool rewards for his effort. In DoW 2 these awards are pieces of equipment, weapons and rare objects. “Give the gamer the desire for more, better and stronger and the urge to reach his goal will increase immediately and become more intense”, according to the devs. There where the gamer had to do it with beating his enemy and maybe a medal, he will be overwhelmed with choices of new weapons, stronger armor or upgrades. “Let’s pimp out squads with cool stuff!” is the motto at Relic. This is closely tied to the second vision of bonding with your units. As RTS-games are now, you usually go to war with nameless, faceless units. In DoW 2 every unit will get a name, a face and a personality that should create a strong feeling of recognition in the player. Having compassion with your units is hard when dozens of squads are upon each others like a massive anthill. Overview is important in DoW 2 en because of that Relic has lowered the number of squads to a maximum of 6. It’s obvious that you’ll take these warriors through all the maps and assignments. Because you no longer have endless amounts of ‘cannon fodder’ you’ll constantly have to consider how you use your squads and how you keep them alive. This survival aspect goes so far that you’ll have to keep the squad leader alive to succeed in the mission. That Relic is serious about this becomes clear during the demonstration where Space Marines are fighting Orks.

Dawn of War in action!
From the Space Marine spaceship we get a view on a planet where there are 3 emergency situations, each one colour coded (green, blue and red) according to their difficulty. In the green conflict zone a group of Orks have overrun a landing zone and it’s up to the Space Marines to drive back these Orks with two squads. As a reward you’ll get a suppression rifle that spews an incredible amount of bullets per second (Rahl: I think he means an heavy bolter) and a Thunder Hammer that can be added to the equipment of the Commander. During this short conflict the renewed ranged combat of Dawn of War 2 was demonstrated. The visual beauty of the map with the landing zone catches the eye. With fluid paces the two SM squads take cover while the Orks approach. What follows is an excess of ammo that is blasted towards the Orks in which the light effects, the smoke and the debris is only surpassed by the screams of the dying orks and the rattling of the machine guns. As if this wasn’t enough, an artillery strike is started from the space ship that whipes out dozens of orks in one hit. A landing pod drops down with the commander, who decided to fight along. When the short battle is over, it’s time for the reward. The suppression rifle now belongs to one of the squads, while the commander can now smash heads with a thunder hammer. A strange weapon, left behind by the orks, is taken with the SM for further study. It’s possible that research can lead to something brand new. During a second battle the melee combat was central. The team of SM, that was just equipped with the Suppression Rifle, is surrounded by Orks that attack from all sides. Thanks to the heavy weapon the SM succeed in keeping the wild Orks at bay while the necessary reinforcements arrive from the space ship. The Orks, who are clearly in the advantage in close combat, hack and chop away at the space marines, with blood flying everywhere. The combat moves of the Orks are simply stunning, and it doesn’t take long before the first space marines hit the dirt. Suddenly a drop pod arrives with the enormous dreadnaught combat robot of the Space Marines. I rub my hands in pleasure, as the Dreadnaught was one of my favourite DoW units. The damage caused by this behemoth is enormous. Dozens of orks are blasted away by the Dreadnought’s gun while others are getting pulverised and broken by the free arm of the metal monster. And to finish things off the Dreadnought crushes several Orks by walking over them! The Orks really have a reason to yell Waaagh! Dawn of War 2 is still Over the Top and more powerful than ever! Again it’s time to hand out rewards. The attacked team of the SM gets extra shoulder patches and a flamer to deal more damage in close combat. It’s fun to see the upgrades visible on the units.

Thunder Struck!
The last part of the presentation was dedicated to the destructible environment. Something which fits very well in a DoW game. An artillery strike from a spaceship makes the Orks on the ground head for cover. The force of the bombardment blows away the cover of the Orks and the survivors are forced to seek shelter in several buildings, something the Ork Warchief is not happy with as he throws one insult after another at his troops. Several stragglers head over a bridge towards several safe buildings just as an orbital strike takes out the bridge. When the space marines land, they attack the buildings the Orks are in with grenades and the new flamers. Again the damage is huge. Parts of the building collapse as Orks, burning like human torches, try to get away. The flamers seem to be a perfect answer on the close combat violence the orks display. A squad Assault Marines lands on the wrong side of the river, but quickly cross the gap to reach the others. The Warchief, and enormous violent Ork with oversized teeth where blood and drool drip off and armed with a giant hammer in the one, and a chainsaw in the other hand proves to much for both SM squads. Even with the flamers and the rapid fire they have to retreat and leave the confrontation to the Commander with the Thunder hammer. What follows is an epic battle that shakes the ground and throws debris all around. The Warchief keeps the commander at bay with his hammer while hitting the commander with the chainsaw. Sparks and chunks of armour fly everywhere as the commander waits for a good moment to attack. I’ve rarely seen such intense Hack&Slash in a RTS-game! Eventually the battle turns and the Warchief receives an enormous hit from the Thunder Hammer. With a lot of noise the Warchief goes down, and with it the battle ends. If the Commander didn’t have the Thunder Hammer, he probably wouldn’t be able to take down the Warchief. Receiving a reward is not only fun, but is also strategically important. With the known DoW-tradition as a base Relic is on the way to make this franchise even better, more intense and powerful. Even though Relic released the agreed amount of info, I was able to get the DoW 2 producer, Mark Noseworthy so far to answer some questions.

Interview
PCGP: How long have you been working on the development of DoW 2 and how many people are working on this sequel?
Mark N.: The idea of making a sequel goes back many years, because the concept clearly worked. 2.5 million sold copies are proof of this. In September 2006 we’ve started with a team of 55 developpers of which the original DoW-team with several members of the CoH-team.

PCGP: In an RTS-game the AI behaviour is determent for the game play. What can we expect from the AI in this game?
Mark N.: We have mainly build upon the excellent AI from CoH. As you also have a couple of squads in DoW2, it was a logical choice to take all the good from CoH and improve it. The ‘awareness’ of the squads and their ‘path finding’ is deciding for their behaviour. Things like cover, retreat to buildings and ideal firing positions are constantly considered by the squads.

PCGP: Is DoW2 going to be a CoH in the Warhammer 40k universe?
Mark N.: Yes and no. It’s correct when you say the AI-behaviour is taken from CoH. It’s not right however when you assume this is done without adjustments. The settings are to different for that. I’ll give an example. In CoH the soldiers take cover to stay alive in the first place. This is a reaction that’s completely right with reality. In DoW2 reality is not an obstacle. The SM you saw in the presentation also take cover but their armorsuit can take a lot more damage before the Marines really get hurt. The way of waging war is completely different. In CoH the AI will for example ask itself if flanking is the right option. In DoW2 the Ai asks itself, in the case of the SM, if it should use the jetpacks to jump over the attacking orks and hit them in the back.

PCGP: During the presentation I saw fights between Orks and Space Marines on relatively small city maps. Is this going to be a new trend, fighting for small areas?
Mark N.: Not really. Dependand on the assignment and the race you are fighting against this will vary. To make the presentation easier we choose a short and heavy battle between Orks and Space Marines on a small map. This was to bundle the action for you, the spectators. In the complete game there’ll be a lot of different worlds and other races that each have their own environment. Stretched and desolate desert areas, densely grown jungles, mountain landscapes or city maps,… It’ll all be there.

PCGP: So about those ‘other’ races…
Mark N.: I can’t say anything about that yet, it’s to soon. We’ll release more info on that later this year.

PCGP: I only saw land units during the presentation. Are there going to be air- and/or sea units in the final game?
Mark N.: We’ve dropped air and sea units. We have done so much research into how you can improve the bond with your squads that these flying or sailing units would only ruin the experience. The bond and compassion with your squads is the most important aspect, the rest is distraction.

PCGP: Won’t you or can’t you release something about the multiplayer gamemodes?
Mark N.: (evil grin) Nice try, but no, it’s to soon. I can tell you however that the singleplayer story can be played in co-op mode with the two races you saw today: the orks and the space marines.

PCGP: Which 3D-engine takes care of all the graphical violence on the screen?
Mark N.: It our own Essence 2.0 engine that proved it’s use earlier in CoH. This engine is so flexible and module-aimed that we could easily take it apart for DoW2 and adjust it to the new needs.

PCGP: Can you give some characteristics of this Essence 2.0 engine?
Mark N.: The Havok physics and animation engine connects flawlessly with our Essence 2.0 engine. You saw the result in the presentation when there was heavily zoomed on the battles. Fluid movements of the units, melee combat with a never before-seen detail and a destructible environment are several examples of this. For the light spectacle we used High Dynamic Range rendering and Dynamic Lighting among others. The clear lighted firing muzzles of the automatic weapons, the tracer light bullets, the explosions and the nice shadow effects are the result of this. There was also a lot of attention to improve the engine for multicore pc’s. There was a maximum of 25% performance improvement measured between single-core and multi-core pc’s. Off course this engine also supports DirectX 10.

PCGP: I couldn’t help but notice that the squads’ commentary varied a lot.
Mark N.: This is also part of the bond you are supposed to get with your units. Players tire quickly of to much repeating in the unit commentary. To avoid this we implemented an ‘intelligent audio-cue’ system that takes care of unit commentary that concerns the actual battle or event. Think of the reaction of the Ork Warchief when he faced the SM commander who was just equipped with the Thunder hammer. “Ooh, nice hammer, but mine is bigger!”. This is not what you hear when you place the commander with his standard weapon against the Warchief.

PCGP: Last question, how long will we have to wait for DoW2?
Mark N.: The first quarter of 2009 is the earliest I can say.

PCGP: Thank you for this interview.
Mark N.: You’re welcome.

Ну нахрена нам Компания Американцев с графической оболочкой ДоВа?! Ну нахрена они ЭТО делают?!

если только это не первоапрельская шутка

если только это не первоапрельская шутка