Space Marines, Technical Challenges & Map Beautification Q&A with development staff

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What makes the Space Marines different?

The Space Marines are the standard by which all other races in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War are measured. Fielding some of the most resilient units, vehicles, and structures of any race in the game, the Space Marines are arguably the most versatile of all races in the game. But, their real focus is on firepower!

The standard Tactical Marine, the basic Space Marine unit, is the most well-rounded of all the infantry units in the game. They fire with better accuracy than the Orks, are better at melee combat than most Eldar, and recover morale more quickly than any other unit in the game. Really, robust morale is an earmark of the Space Marines as a race - "they know no fear" as the Warhammer 40,000 fluff says - and they have a lot of abilities that focus on recovering morale.

The Space Marines have the most expansive and diverse array of vehicles of any race in the game, nearly twice as many as the other races! This focus on vehicles and technology offsets the fact that they don't have any 'gods' or 'monsters' as the other races do.

The Space Marines are probably the most accessible race for new players. They will feel familiar, their tech tree is intuitive, and the weaponry is an extrapolation of armament we all know and love. But, their accessibility does not imply simplicity - Space Marines are just as tactical and strategic as any other race. Despite lacking the 'star power' of a monster or deity to rally behind, powerful vehicles and versatile infantry units make the Space Marines a force to be reckoned with in the universe of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.

- Chris Degnan, Designer

Wherefore the Blood Ravens?

The Blood Ravens are one of the 1,000 Space Marine Chapters that serve the Imperium of mankind. Part military organizations, and part warrior-monk brotherhoods, Chapters have a long glorious history they maintain.

In creating this entirely new Chapter for the Warhammer 40,000 universe we focused on two goals. The first was we wanted a Chapter whose military tone complimented the unit selection and intent we were focusing on for Dawn of War. The second was we wanted a group that had a lot of un-answered questions in their past that we would be able to explore not only in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, but hopefully in future sequels or expansions.

The Blood Ravens are a Chapter obsessed with knowledge and the power that comes from that knowledge. They believe knowing their enemy leads to victory, and so have some of the most extensive libraries and archives of any Chapter in existence. They also make much more extensive use of Librarians, Space Marines focused on recording and preserving the history of their Chapter. These individuals are gifted, some say cursed, with powerful psychic abilities. This fit well with one of the design goals of our game, which was making psychic units far more powerful than they typically are in the table top Warhammer 40,000 game. It also fits well with one of the themes of our single player story, the danger of seeking too much knowledge.

Part of the Blood Raven's obsession for knowledge comes from their lost past. While they have extensive records of their activities for roughly the past 3,000 years, their personal archives are non-existent beyond that point, as if someone had intentionally expunged them. They have no knowledge of their creation date, or what their parent Chapter (the Chapter they were built from, also known as the Successor Chapter) is. The quest for information on their origins will be a primary focus of the future, and holds quite a few surprises.

- Jay Wilson, Lead Designer

The Colour of Blood

Coming up with the Blood Ravens chapter colours and insignia was a challenging process. Not only did we need Games Workshop approval, but we needed the lead designer, producer, and myself to all agree on the ideal colours to represent this new Chapter created especially for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.

The Raven is a common subject in West Coast native artwork. What I really like about this influence was that this style of artwork is unique to our region of the world (West coast of Canada). I passed on my initial sketches and influences to our front-end artist Shawn Woods. Shawn took the West-coast influence and combined it with the Warhammer 40,000 influence to produce the final logo.

The bird's outline is very much done in a West Coast style but the blood drop is very Warhammer 40,000. I felt the two melded perfectly. The colour choice was also based on West coast native influences. At first I avoided red since it was already used by the prominent Blood Angels chapter in Warhammer 40,000 lore. After struggling with so many colours, I decided to use the colours found in so many west coast Native art pieces, which are red, black, and white painted on natural wood. As soon as I applied these colours to the Tactical Marine, I new it was a winner!

Instead of using a bright blood red I decided a dark, almost primer red would give the Chapter a bit more of a gritty feel. The black trim and black guns look perfect, and the bone-colour found on their shoulder pads went back and for between us and Games Workshop to get just the right shade. Everyone on every front was happy with both the colours and insignia. Games Workshop even had their 'Eavy Metal guys paint up a Space Marine squad using our Blood Ravens colour scheme. Seeing it applied to a squad made the whole experience that much cooler!

- Andy Lang, Art Director

The Technical Challenges in Dawn of War

There are technical hurdles to the development of anything as technology-intensive as a computer game. In the development of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, in particular, we faced several interesting challenges to support our core gameplay idea of 'visceral frontline combat'.

These challenges can be categorized in four main areas: the large numbers of units, squads, and vehicles desired (our goal was to have 100 simultaneous units on-screen); a reactive melee system which would depart from the standard 'puppet-like' melee combat you see in most RTS games (where the attackers and defenders play animation loops that don't necessarily correspond to anything that's actually happening in the game logic), a melee system that would need to draw on a system of realistic animations; a simplified physics system for blowback/knockdown effects and believable vehicle physics (recoil, sway, etc.); and finally, all the visual systems that support the immersive environment, i.e. shadows, sound effects, speech, and visual effects.

As you can imagine, creating an infrastructure that can support the display of a hundred units, all playing animations, all reacting to one another, all thinking independently, all displaying visual effects, was one of the most difficult tasks we faced. Since we were building on existing technology (the Impossible Creatures engine), we had a head start, but I don't think we could have anticipated how much work we'd have to put into modifying the basic technology to account for this huge increase in the number of units on screen.

Probably the crowning glory of our development successes has been the Attribute Editor tool. Through the Attribute Editor, we were able to put wide-ranging powers in the hands of the designers, including the ability to create new units, tweak unit characteristics, modify the strengths and weaknesses of weapons versus various targets, and create entire new races. Not only did this help to streamline our development and remove programmers as a bottleneck to the designers' progress, but these tools will provide the same creative freedom to our mod community when we release them!

- Dominic Mathieu, Lead Programmer

The Process of Beautifying a Map

When the art director Andy Lang or I receive a multiplayer level from the designers, it's often little more than a barren, hilly landscape with a few Decals or textures and a handful of models scattered around to "suggest" where the player can walk, find cover, or will find the all important Strategic Points.

At this point, three things have been established: one, how many players the map is designed to accommodate; two, the locations for bases and the game play items such as Strategic Points, Relics, etc. have been established; three, (most importantly) this map is already fun to play.

Next, the designer of the map, Andy and myself will sit down and decide what the map should look like, whether it's in the jungle, city, military base, the moon, etc.

The first step is setting the base Detail Texture for the level (there are dozens that can be mixed and matched), and they run the gamut from bare city pavement or litter-strewn cobblestone, to muddy fields and rocky cliffs. We're not limited to one per map, so these can be distributed around the map. This way you can have a lush park in the middle of a city, or a mountain pass on the edge of a jungle.

While adding the Detail Texture to the level, I'll also be editing the height map. This allows me to create mountains and rivers, impassable jungle canopies, multileveled cities, large bomb craters for cover, or create restricted areas specifically for 'jumping' units like the Chaos Raptors or the Ork Stormboyz. More than anything, the height map will guide or direct the player around the map.

Now the actual beatification can take place, the adding of Decals and the placing of environmental objects. In a city map, the first Decals (placeable textures) I add are the sidewalks to designate city blocks and the size of the streets. In a jungle environment, the first Decals define the forest edge. Both of these decals and their placement are important in that they mark the size (and edge) of the playable area within the map. All streets and jungle paths have to be wide enough to allow enough troops through to avoid aggravating bottlenecks or traffic jams, while other open areas also have to be big enough to allow room for big epic battles. Over all, wider is better.

The remainder of time spent on a mission is devoted to the dressing, the addition of more decorative Decals and the environmental objects. Decals include building rubble textures, craters, street lines and general rubbish. Environmental objects include collapsed building walls (which, like craters, can provide some cover) and power lines, sewer pipes and broken smokestacks, trees, burned or lashed forest, and shrubs.

The final touch is the painting of details into the base Detail Texture. On the city pavement you can paint in traffic stains and burn marks from past battles and in the jungle the addition of lighter, well travelled dusty paths, helps guide the player to resources, or the enemy.

So, that's just a small glimpse into some of the work that's involved with making a level interesting from a visual standpoint!

- Roland Longpre, Artist