Production Update March 2014
Since the beginning of January the Eternal Crusade team has had to focus on prototyping and testing, and optimizing our precious preproduction time. This is a very important period for our game’s production where we are proving concepts, gameplay and technology. Basically a good preproduction is synonymous with a good production and at BEHAVIOUR, we are taking that part seriously. During this period our communication means have been disrupted, but as you can see with this Newsletter all is well and we are back online. About this I would like to introduce our new marketing and communications partner:
TURBULENT. We are really happy with this new and friendly partnership with a solid and talented team working with us. TURBULENT has been working with us on StarCitizen for some time, and we look forward to fully bringing them on board.
There is a lot to say but before everything I want to thank MMORPG.com, the largest independent US Online Game media outlet, for their visit to our office, their great article and the
pre-alpha preview and video. This helped us a lot, giving you fresh news about the game progress when our communication means were offline. Thanks again Garret for supporting our transparency approach and the “no Marketing Firewall” between fans and devs policy. These motivate us in showing you even more and please forgive us the inevitable bugs and glitches of such an early version of the game. Ghislain (our Art Director @ghislain_barbe) was crying while watching the videos but Miguel’s wisdom brought back some courage in his heart:
“We are transparent or we are not Ghislain! What you see here on your screen is the proof of Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade’s transparency...”
On this subject, you need to know that Miguel is super active and engaged with the community. He is answering emails openly, chatting on Facebook, tweeting on twitter and starting threads on our forums. The dark side of our leader (the Carniguel or TyranoMiguel, your choice) would eat me alive if I don’t deeply thank our community members and guilds in this newsletter. You guys are awesome, so passionate and dedicated. As examples I can say that
Vigila Mortis, with our devoted Crusader Valrak, has created an
EC dev tracker regrouping developer discussions! We also have multiple guilds and groups rising and getting ready for the conquest of Arkhona.
With the upcoming new website, we have plans to release a guild listing, including how many StrikeForces (10 Squads) and Squads (10 players) they can muster on the field of Battle…. From the forums, we can see that a friendly competition has already started between some of the largest guilds.
Because of you, dear Crusaders, and the overwhelming demand, Miguel is on a mission since beginning of March. You convinced him that this is the way to go, so yes, we are going to have a founder program. Miguel is working closely with TURBULENT who will be in charge of setting up our Pre-Order founders Program store and our NEW ‘’real’’ website which we plan to launch this spring during E3.
On the game side we are making great progress. From paper design to concept art, or from grey boxing to 3D assets, we are creating YOUR world step by step. Everything you see here is “work in progress”. We are spending a lot of time iterating, testing and improving.
On the art side I would like to welcome
Martin Spenard (Lead Artist @MartinSpenard) and
Nicolas Cote (Concept artist) to the team. The Art team is doing an amazing job dressing our landscape, finalizing our Space Marine characters and creating buildings. You can appreciate Nicholas talent with the two pictures below.
The Level Design team has been stress-testing our processes and integrated some new tools that will help us build beautiful and diverse continents. Since late January, we’ve been creating the very first buildings of Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. Even more exciting,
Shawn Bauer has joined us as a second level designer, creating “combat scenarios” that we test daily. Our current top focus in Level Design is ensuring that the core gameplay is fantastic. Like Steven says:
“The Level Design of Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade is focused on two core experiences: of the individual and the army. For the individual, our buildings and outposts must offer a fantastic shooting and melee combat experience. For the army or the commander, our terrain, roads, and outpost placement must offer a fantastic strategic experience. “
In parallel we are developing story, game design, level design, tech and visuals. A preproduction is a crazy period rich in emotions and creativity. If it is one the best part of any game project it is also really intense, so I am not too unhappy that we are close to be done with it. I will finally be able to get some rest.... or not..
On the following picture you can see a Raptor, a Chaos Space Marine and a Chaos Space Marine with Heavy Bolter (yes we know, but we need a temporary model to test with). This means we are already playing with three fully functional classes out of four.
Outside of balance and load-outs, the synergy between classes is working well. Brent and his left brain Michael (on the Game design team
Ezekielknight - @pulsemeat) are currently working on the fourth class: The Apothecary and.... I will let you guess what the Chaos counterpart is.
Did you notice the rhino? Well yes, this is what you think; it is working as a transport and
mobile spawn point. You can already destroy the enemy’s rhinos or tank shock people to death. The gun on the transport is not functional yet, but I have Patrick’s (our Lead coder @lordpada) word this is going to be implemented soon..
Last point but not least, the ugly colorful grey-boxes structure in the background is our FIRST WORKING OUTPOST! You will find inside capturable objectives, spawn points, ammo stations, utility and defensive buildings... etc.
But all that wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of the tech team (see
Patrick‘s Interview ). Keep in mind that behind each feature we’ve talked about there is a coder. The code team also spent a good part of their time working on the backend, stabilizing the engine and integrating Pikko server technology. Because of their efforts we
had a successful 64+ player’s companywide test. That was lot of fun and people are already reserving their tickets for the next play-test.
There is also this rendering test with more than 300 Space marines and Chaos Space marines (without LOD optimisation).