Of Mice and Men

Fatshark Games recently released Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, a cooperative first-person shooter, the first to be set in the End Times of the Warhammer Fantasy universe.

Within that universe, players assume the roles of five heroes tasked with the defense of Ubersreik, a town of the Empire, where they take on the Skaven, a race of giant rat-men.

The game - available for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One platforms - is the first to be powered by Autodesk's new Stingray engine. Throughout the game, players navigate tremendous cityscapes, which illustrate Stingray capabilities, including AI pathfinding, rendering, effects, and more.

Here, CGW Chief Editor Karen Moltenbrey discusses the work on this amazing title with various designers, artists, and leads at Fatshark.

Tell me about your vision for this game.

Anders De Geer, game director: The vision with Vermintide was to create a melee-heavy game where players have to work as a team to make progress and where groups of players challenge themselves to clear levels at harder difficulties.

The visual goal with Vermintide was to bring players into the Warhammer world in a way that no one had seen before. We wanted to make sure that players feel every aspect of the world, from walking down a cobblestone street in Ubersreik, to planting an axe in the head of a Skaven. Everything had to feel true to the lore and be believable.

What kinds of characters and environments are there?

De Geer: In Vermintide, players assume the role of one of five heroes, all with district agendas, personalities, and backgrounds. These include the Witch Hunter (rapier-wielding and chaos-hating old man), the Waywatcher (mysterious and lethal wood elf), the Empire Soldier (powerful and grizzled war veteran), the Dwarf Ranger (loud and social to a flaw), and the Bright Wizard (crazy pyromaniac old lady). Each of these heroes has his or her own distinct arsenals, where some weapons focus on precision while others cause more widespread damage.

Throughout the course of the game, these heroes are taken through 13 missions set in a multitude of locations: the top of the Tower of Magnus, the bowels of the Skaven Under Empire, and the eerie Garden of Morr.

What role do the cities play in the game?

Joakim Setterberg, design manager: Vermintide is played in and near the Empire city of Ubersreik, acting as setting, playground, and backdrop to the events and stories of the game. Being Warhammer enthusiasts ourselves, we did extensive research on the story, architecture, and visual style of the city. With artists and designers working together with Games Workshop experts and writers, we strived to make the city and its surroundings true to both the universe and its many fans - from the large landmarks, map layout, and city environments to the smaller details, like the finer aspects of Empire construction or naming a street after a prominent figure.

How would you describe the gameplay?

Victor Magnuson, game designer: Fast-paced, first-person melee and ranged combat, with a heavy emphasis on gritty melee combat. We put a lot of effort into making each impact feel rewarding and gratifying to ensure that the feedback when hitting an enemy felt right. Combine this with a heavy reliance on teamwork and you have Vermintide.

What about the visual effects?

Isak Berg, VFX artist: The main focus for effects was gameplay feedback : mainly blood, fire impacts , and screen -space effects.

Was Stingray used exclusives on the game?

Mikael Hansson, lead animator/technical artist: We used Stingray exclusively in the production of Vermintide.

Why did you decide to use Stingray?

Hansson: We chose to use Stingray as we are very comfortable working with the engine since our days with it when it was called Bitsquid. We also already had a lot of our systems and workflows tailored for the Stingray engine and workflows. The Stingray engine is data-driven and enables fast iteration .

What advantages did Stingray give you that you couldn't get from another engine?

Hansson: One major advantage is that Stingray is a very flexible engine that allows us to tailor it to our workflows and needs. Stingray also comes with additional first- and third-party integrations that were vital to developing Vermintide. Tools like Autodesk Navigation and Audiokinetic's Wwise have helped us achieve our goals within AI and sound design.

Tell us more about Stingray's rendering capabilities and what they allowed you to achieve on this project.

Hansson: Stingray now features a state-of-the-art physically-based rendering pipeline. We have fully benefited from and used all the new rendering and lighting features added to Stingray since we first started the project. With the very flexible rendering pipeline, we've also been able to add to and modify the rendering pipeline to suit our needs.

With a physically-based rendering pipeline, our artists have adopted a new way of thinking about content production. Artists now have a common framework and guidelines to what the correct' values are to re-create a specific material. This helps all artists stay more in line with the rest of the content produced and with the art style we set out to achieve.

This also helps a lot with our lighting, as balanced content is a big key to allowing the lighting to do its job correctly.

How was your experience with Stingray's UI?

Hansson: We've used the latest rendering and core engine features in Stingray but have not yet used the actual Stingray tool set in the production of Vermintide. We were already in production well before Stingray was released, and the new tools were at a level that could be usable in production, so we chose to keep using the old tool set we were used to working with.

We have, however, kept up-to-date with the new tool set and workflows and are very eager

LINK:	http://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/In-Focus/2015/Of-Mice-and-Men.aspx...
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