The Nature of Orks There were several reasons we chose Orks as one of the playable races in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. The first is humor. Warhammer 40,000 is a dark universe, and so it is nice to have an element of the game that provides levity and a sense of fun. Nothing does that like giant green guys with axes and no sense of self-preservation! For this reason we found Orks were the most readily liked race by people who weren’t familiar with Warhammer 40,000 universe. We also wanted a race that focused heavily on close combat as opposed to the more ranged-combat oriented Space Marines. The Orks fit that bill nicely. They provide a great general threat that we use as a backdrop for our single-player game. Ork warfare usually involves them ‘going to ground’ until enough Orks mass in a single location that they simply overwhelm their enemy, or fall back, mass up, and try again. This is how the race has been designed to play in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. The more Orks you have, the better units and tech you can requisition, and the faster you can increase the rate at which Orks are attracted to your cause. Once you reach a critical mass of Orks you roll over your enemy. The disadvantage is that Orks are weaker early in the game, and if their mighty charge fails they have to reconstruct a bit before they can charge again. To offset this Orks have several advantages. The Orks live for war, and this is reflected in everything about them. Every structure in the Ork base has emplaced guns on them, whereas the other races need to make heavy use of turrets to defend their bases. This makes Ork bases easier to defend early in the game. Orks can also garrison within their own structures, to protect your squads early in the game. Orks have the fastest vehicles in the game, and so are also suited to hit and run attacks early on. Orks focus on physical power above all other things, choosing overkill instead of precision when it comes to combat. Their commander unit, the Warboss, is a hulking giant, easily capable of crushing any infantry that stand before him with his massive metal Power Klaw. Physically he’s the most powerful commander in the game, if he can get within arm’s reach of the enemy! But even the Warboss is dwarfed in power and size by the mighty Squiggoth, a large reptilian elephant-like creature that the Orks use as a transport, weapons platform, and general stompy thing. He’s the largest unit in the game, bristling with guns, able to trample all those before him and send units flying with a stomp of his foot! - Jay Wilson, Lead Designer Creating a Unique Orky Style Games Workshop was very collaborative, understanding, and easy to work with. Initially I was really cautious when I completed a new design. First I'd show it to Relic's internal Warhammer 40,000 fans, next the team, and only then would I send it to Games Workshop. The feedback was awesome. It was so good in fact that once I got to know our contacts there better I'd send them the sketch directly. Once I even had famed Games Workshop artist Jes Goodwin do an over sketch of the Eldar tech tree just so the details were right. It was a great feeling to know that the man who designed the Eldar race in the table-top game just unofficially approved the Eldar tech tree! Games Workshop and I both really wanted this to be a collaborative process and it ended up being exactly that. Designing the additional Games Workshop units and tech tree was by far the most enjoyable part of the project for me. A couple of the unique units we created for Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War include: Big Mek - Character unit, not a war boss but a big mean Ork that likes to build stuff. • The design was based on a suggestion by the lead designer Jay Wilson, involving making him a fat Ork based on an image from the Ork codex. • He was a 'builder' Ork so we gave him a welding apron, welding goggles (initially), a 'Swiss army' power claw and a mechanic peg leg to show his know how. • Relic Creative Director Rob Cunningham suggested the idea for the welding mask and helped refine the 'Mega Blasta' weapon. Trukk - A troop transport with guns • The initial sketch was just for fun and sent out to the team with no thought of actually using it. • The design is based on a chopped ‘34 Ford pickup with a blown and injected big block. • Games Workshop liked the design even though I felt it didn't 100% fit. Then I figured they know Orks better then I do, so I decided to go with it. • Rob Cunningham and I collaborated on the next phase of the concept. We discussed making it a half track then Rob thought it would be cool to add armour over the front wheels. I dug it, and that’s what we have. Wartrak - The Ork 'fast shooty vehicle' • The first thing I designed for GW approval so I was really nervous. • It had to be a tracked vehicle since we weren't planning proper vehicle turning (which we eventually got later). • It was designed so long ago it's hard to remember why I made my choices. I will tell you I really wanted an Ork on the back and for it to have a cool exhaust system. - Andy Lang, Art Director Bringing the Orks to Life We read and studied all the information and artwork that Games Workshop had to offer along with talking to our in-house Ork expert, Jay Wilson (an avid Ork race tabletop player, he has multitudes of very finely painted miniatures on hand, and to me they just scream fearlessness, brute strength, and a joy in the brutality of battle. Many discussions on what we liked and disliked from other “adaptations” of Orks envisioned in other fantasy realms all helped round out an overall definition of what we wanted from the Ork race. Bottom line, they were meant to be brutally powerful fighters who live to engage in bone-breaking, flesh-tearing melee. All four races are very distinct in character and we pushed to realize this in their individual animations. For the Orks, we worked to visualize through movement their wild bloodlust to engage in any kind of battle, without losing the sense of humor we wanted them to have. But when you see Orks moving and fighting in the game, there’s no doubt that left to their own devices, there would be infighting among the hordes of greenskins. They are utterly fearless and take pride in every drop of blood they draw from their enemies. They love battle, and the joyous and brutal way they interact with their enemies helps define their flavor in our game. - Joe Schober, Animator How to Play an Ork Orks live for the power of the mob. Massing together increases the strength of individual units, so the more Orks you have the better. Orks are a force of nature and this nature is reflected in everything they build, their weapons and abilities, even in their resource system (which is slightly different than the other races). The more Orks you have, the faster you can build Orks. This is fantastic early on in a game, but it means you have to be wary when committing to a combat as it can set you back if you lose too much, since the power of the Orks is largely derived from their ‘strength in numbers’ philosophy. Orks love to fight, and you gather them to you by constructing huge Waagh! banners. These banners attract Orks to your fight, and in typical Ork fashion, the more Waagh! banners you have the more Orks you can get, and the faster you can get them. In combat, Orks are all about the up close and personal. They are brutal melee fighters, with not too much strength in firepower until the mid- to late-game. And while they may look barbarous and ‘low-tech’, it would be wrong to assume they are push-overs. Orks can put up as strong a fight as any race in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The strategy when playing Orks is fairly straight-forward, and yet the race provides for a varied and interesting array of strategic choices throughout the game. You can choose to focus on having Shoota Boyz and go for maximum firepower, you can decide to emphasize melee with Slugga Boyz and still be effective, or you can race through the tech tree to cheap, fast, but fragile Wartraks and take advantage of your opponent’s weaknesses versus vehicles at an early stage in the game. Grots, the small green Ork ‘helper’ units provide for a lot of humor value as well as being a valuable meat shield in combat. What really differentiates the Orks from the other races in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is their unique resource model, the ‘power in numbers’ philosophy behind everything they do, and, of course, the Squiggoth, a giant lizard-like beast that rampages through the landscape throwing units every which way. - Andrew Chambers, Designer Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Space Marines SPACE MARINES, TECHNICAL CHALLENGES, & MAP BEAUTIFICATION 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