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Witch Hunters: Adepta Sororitas Mod Interview |
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This Page has been viewed 201331 times since March 2004!
Komrad went to France and met up with the Inquisitors of the Witch Hunters Mod team to discuss about the progress of this excellent mod.
Komrad -Fellow Brothers and Sisters. I would like to know who is working on the Witch Hunters : Adepta Sororitas Mod and what do they do.
KRMZ -The Codex Witch Hunters: Adepta Sororitas mod (AS mod among us) is mainly composed of French people. Several members are (or worked) working in 3D/Game field for a long time and therefore cannot be considered as newcomers in this area. Thankfully, this is not the case for all of us, thus we can still expect DoW community to see our final output as the result of a truly amateur team. Each member brought his past experience of 3D / textruring, etc… and shared it with the others. So, if at the end of this wonderful adventure we do not meet the overall player expectations; believe me that, within the team, we’ll have nonetheless created a real friendship.
Anyway, the team roles and work responsibilities can be split as follow:
KRMZ: Mod leader/Coding
Compiler: Assistant / consultant for coding and OE integration.
Friedric P: Human units and Buildings (modelling, textures, animations, integration, or finalisations), texture homogeneity, environment and missions, additional sound effects, FX
Goldo_O: Human units, Buildings and flying vehicle modelling, texturing, animation, OE, FX
Falk: Modelling, texturing and animation of the tanks, and Throne of judgement.
Meviobutcher: Buildings Modelling, Soundtrack manager
PogS: Icon, Manual, and Installer Designs, Quality and Balance Control
Thudmeizer: AI coding and special scripts
Mamatteo: French voice acting
Maalka: New maps
Kanjinan: Forum administrator, and trailer director
Bester Orbit: Falk’s brother (lol)
Inoceram: Forum moderator, Icon
Mov: FX effects
In addition to this mentioned list, other key people have partly contributed to the set up of the mod:
Clinto: English voice acting
RedCat: Logo, game loading screens, and concept art researches
RavAge: Special winner of our French taskbar contest
Finally, I would like to do a “special thank” to someone that had left the mod long time ago (for personal matters), but all the team miss him and his forum picture.
Ben/Scyd: Sister of battle modelling, animations, and OE integration (in January 2005!!!)
Falk -Well this mod is a great experience as what I've worked on so far was mostly high-rez models or illustrations. So this is a first experience in game-oriented, real-time 3D, with professional standards in sight, new methods -like the possibility to practice animation way faster than with a high-rez model- and new constraints (the polygon limits for instance, small textures, and so on...).
To tell the truth, I'm surprised by the professionalism of the team. At first I thought the mod may sink like most of "fan projects". The kind of people who just don't realise the amount of work, but we've gathered a nice amount of talent in the various fields and the mod has proved to be one of the most productive and healthy. And though everything can not always fit to everyone's tastes, there's a good mood and everyone is quite comprehensive towards the critics of the others.
PogS -Our team spirit is really strong and we benefit from a real synergy among us as most members have common skills and we constantly confront our views and opinions to improve things for the mod. We are all open to criticisms and we try to reach consensus on unit design and gameplay before starting the production process.
   
Komrad -Strong Indeed! What are the Witch Hunters : Adepta Sororitas ?
Compiler -In the Warhammer 40K Universe, as set by Games Workshop, the Inquisition plays a central role. It monitors all the aspects of life in the Imperium to search and destroy all signs of heresy and deviant behaviours.
The Inquisition is branched into several Ordos, one of them being the Ordo Hereticus, the Witch Hunters. These Inquisitors, aided by their faithful followers and Specially trained Shock Troops, seek out unprotected psykers or heretic cults and destroy them.
It occurs frequently that the Inquisitors are not the Imperium's first line of defence, though. The Adeptus Arbites, stern faced and shotgun armed special police forces, deal with most threats with their anti riot weapons and Repressor tanks. Only when they uncover a very important cult do they call on the Inquisition's full might.
Another very important institution of mankind's Imperium is the Ecclesiarchy. The priests are in charge of preaching the Imperial Cult on a million worlds.
To aid them in their task, when heavy fighting is expected, both of these institutions can call on the power of the Adepta Sororitas. They are all women, since a decree forbade the Ecclesiarchy from maintaining any man under arms.
These power armour clad maidens are fanatically loyal to the Imperial cult and fight on endlessly for Truth, Justice, and the Imperial Way. Be they self chastising Repentia mobs, or powerful leaders known as Canonesses, aided by the Ecclesiarchy Redemptional Machines, they are a fighting force to be reckoned with.
The Witch Hunters army is a mix of all these forces, each one balancing the others' weaknesses, making for an army difficult to master, but very powerful once you get accustomed to it.
Komrad -Ordolicious indeed. How will the Witch Hunters : Adepta Sororitas play? Strengths? Weaknesses?
PogS -Adepta Sororitas mod is composed of 4 different factions that team up to fight aliens and psykers:
1st Level : Adeptus Arbites
2nd Level : Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle)
3rd Level : Inquisition
4th Level : Ecclesiarchy
Each faction comes into play one at a time, the fist one being the first level of threat removal, if one cannot deal with the threat by himself, it calls the next one to help. Each faction has additional requisition means. It roughly corresponds to tiers in standard Dow races.
Each faction has a unique gameplay and remains powerful and useful enough in late games via upgrades and additional units. We've tried to respect as much as possible fluff but we've made necessary adjustments as Dowq is not a TT game but a real time strategy one. We've tried to keep the mood over exact translation of TableTop rules, thus gamestyle should remain close to the TableTop game.
KRMZ -Basically, the main strengths and weaknesses of the different factions can be described as follow:
Adeptus Arbites: This faction must really be considered as a local force. Therefore, they have limited means and can not be seriously used for a long run game. They are very weak in terms of HP and moral. However, their cost is clearly low; and you can produce them quickly. Moreover they have access to a large variety of weapons including some never featured ones in DoW like the shotgun. They can also enter hot action thanks to a special ForgeWorld Vehicule called Repressor with its deadly “Rampage-like” ability. All the Adeptus Arbites troops are managed through the classic DoW squad and support caps management
Adepta Sororitas: This faction is known as the Chamber militant of the Ordo Hereticus army. In terms of gameplay, their forces are close to the Space Marines standards in terms of units and vehicles. They are equipped with deadly weapons like storm bolters, flamers, melta guns, or Inferno pistols. Even if they are weaker than the Space Marines chapters in close combat, the Sisters of Battle have the genuine chance to use deadly abilities call Act of Faith. These powers enhance Adepta Sororitas troop’s combat skills. Each sister of battle unit type possesses its own unique power. The Adepta Sororitas have also access to an interesting range of powerful armoured vehicles. Believe us, the Immolator will certainly become the nightmare of Orks thanks to its twin heavy-flamers. In addition, to the well-known Witch Hunters codex vehicle units, we have decided to include a special one known as the Incarcerator. Basically, this tank sounds like an Ordo Hereticus mobile jail. And guess what kind of horrible creature could have been imprisoned? Finally, the acquisition of Faith points rules sister of battle units, and will be the prerequisite for unit creation as well as reinforcement. This Faith point resource is close to the Orks’ Waaagh system management.
Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy: This faction is the ultimate troop’s alternative that a Witch Hunter army can mobilise on the battlefield. They have no fear and are highly specialised in close combat. Unfortunately, a player will have access to a limited set of units as they are very expensive in resources. As the Adeptus Arbites faction, the Inquisitional units are managed through the classic DoW squad and support caps system.
PogS -We've tried to imbue Witch Hunters mod with many innovative gameplay tricks:
- Our Builder Unit can defend itself and destroy an entire squad of Chaos Space Marines. Moreover, it is droppable and may be deep-strike anywhere on the map (except fog of war areas). However, it moves really slowly to counter-balance these advantages
- In the same way, our Inquisition Storm Troopers are droppable anywhere on the battlefield as a complete squad (including fog of war areas). But, do not imagine that they will be able to stop banshees for example
- Celestian Imagifer can drastically reduce the ability recharge time of any nearby friendly unit, but as soon as the ability is launched the whole Celestians squad gets weaker
- Living Saint fighting damages increase or decrease upon the time, and when she died all your army get demoralized
- Our Brasero mines are not dealing with damages, but attacks heavily troops moral
- Arbites Headquarter addon will need new types of game requirements. Players will need to take several strategic points in order to get it,, instead of the classical DoW requirements for collection of buildings
- Canoness Liber Hereticus ability is reducing the fog of war on a large map area
- Canoness Jetpack…Need to say more?
To conclude, keep in mind that each faction features its own Champion / Commander.
Adeptus Arbites has the Judge
Adepta Sororitas has the Canoness and Living Saint
And Inquisition features a ….walker-type vehicle! As throne of Judgment is a walker mounted by an inquisitor.
   
Komrad -Do you have voice acting for the units. Everyone would love to hear the sexy voices of the Battle Sisters.
Mamatteo -Yes off course!! Our mod includes completely new voices for each unit
English and French versions are already implemented. The texts are close to the existing Space Marines ones, but you will find a more "religious mood".
KRMZ -“Religious mood”, lol. Repentia voices are so hot to handle (extreme Sado-Masochist style), that I still fear a XXX rating. My gosh, you need to hear their death voice sound (so sexy)
Mamatteo -Concerning the voice effects: due to the fact that is not easy to record plenty of actresses, we were forced to modify some voices but, we try to catch a mystical ambiance, and some times magical (to stress the mystic power of the canoness for example).
Meviobutcher -Beside the work that has already been done with Voice Acting and Sounds FX, our mod team wanted to include something with deeper personality. The result is the collaboration with a brand new Group from France called “Otargos”, they are playing true Black metal and we already know that an exclusive track will figure in the first release of our mod, it's called : "Iron Flames". Before you play you will hear it within the game-menu and trust me you won't forget it, 'cause it's totally sharing the harmony of the sisters gameplay. It sounds like the hunt of heretics and the curse of unfaithful mutants. The guys from Otargos will also produce exclusives tracks for the in-game songs: the one when you're fighting' and all the others of ambiance. As everybody doesn't like metal, we will obviously preserve the option to shut down the sounds and musics, but once again trust me, for the ones made of steel like me, it sounds perfect and increase perfectly the pleasure of playing this awsome Mod. You'll be able to find out more on Otargos within the release of the mod, as for now they're working on their own release: their first Album which is coming soon, just like our mod.
Komrad -This mod is going to be for multiplayer use.
Will singleplayer AI ever be a possibility with the mod, or even a campaign?
Thudmeizer -The Skirmish AI will utilize the latest in Advanced AI development for the Witch Hunters. There were a few code challenges (ie. how to deep-strike Builders, not to the battlefront like regular military units do - Thanks Flenser on this one!) but generally the AI will be beyond challenging and far superior to anything experienced by the vanilla AI from the original game. You will have to devise far better strategies to conquer the Inquisition!
Friedric P -I would love to work on a campaign, but this requires a lot of work, not only for level design: voice acting for instance is needed in a much important quantity than for the multiplayer part, and a detailed mission is very long to do. Anyway, all the mission Maalka and I are doing can be easily modified and put into a campaign. For instance, "Afterflood" depicts the fight of the Witch Hunters trying to take back a cathedral lost to the hands of Chaos. It is quite easy to put a storyline in this map, as all details fit this theme. For the moment, I imagine player will love to play it as Witch Hunters + Space Marines VS 2 Chaos army. We will see at the end of the year if we have time to put a story behind this.
Komrad - Mmm.. begun the purging it has. Has the community been supportive with the Imperium so far?
Compiler -Most AS forum members acknowledged the high graphic quality we consistently seek throughout our work. In this regards, overall comments have been so far very positive, the only drawback being the expectations people have in our mod, leading to no end of "when will it be finished" questions
KRMZ -It is obvious that there is a kind of competition between all the different existing mod teams. After many nights spend on code, textures or animations, you are naturally forced to consider your work as the ultimate state of art. You can not be neutral. But, I am happy to see that now, more and more mod teams try to share their efforts and knowledge. Jealousy, personal attacks, blackmail should be part of history. I think it is time for everyone to focus on a unique objective: providing the whole player community with new sensations and excitements.
   
Komrad -Hmm, it seems my dropship have arrived. To wrap things up, any progress report? How far along is the mod?
(Komrad looks suspiciously as two Arbites enters the interview room)
KRMZ -Arff, the kind of question I fear most, lol. (Arbites locks their shotgun)
Officially, our mod started on February this year. Quickly, we had been in position to create all type of Sister of Battle like Basic troops, Celestians, Seraphims and Retributors. Then, we have made a little pause, because we had to concentrate more on the gameplay with basic questions like: What should have been the main characteristics of our race? What kind of new stuff we could provide to players?
After having answered to these questions, we started to organise ourselves in a more professional way: Allocating To Do” list to members, stating planning and milestones, accepting each other criticisms, organising internal polls, producing alpha builds, etc…
So now, I can announced that the AS mod will have 24 units, including 5 vehicles and 3 walkers.
Believe me, this represents an enormous amount of work to do. Indeed, models and textures are generally quickly produced, but animations and OE settings are another story and require weeks before having something we could all be proud of. Patience, faith, and commitment remain the key words for such human experience.
But, we need, at a time, to show and give a result to people. Otherwise, nobody will ever play our mod, which is just a non-sense.
Therefore, we forecast to issue 2 releases of the AS mod. The first one will arrive before Christmas. You will discover our gameplay, most of the major units, all buildings, voices, music, and new maps. The second release is planned around March 2006. It will consist in an addon, proposing few special character units and squads, heavy textures, maps, special bonus and obviously bug fixes.
I think, that the best compromise we can offer to people. We have our own life’s and problems. We need also to rest a bit.
PogS -One of the most important part of modding is unit and weapon balancing. Adding more than 2O units in a game demands hours and hours of testing, which KRMZ and I completed for the mod's sake. Of course we have not done all the testing yet and several weeks before we release the mod, we'll open a beta-test of AS mod to all faithful members of our forum
Compiler -Another major risk we face for a realistic release planning is the codding part. Converting from DoW 1.2 to 1.3 is quite easy. In theory. You must beware of .nil files and combat stance data, especially versatile stance (that 1.3 doesn't have) and melee stance (which has changed somewhat). Of course, this assumes that you have a clean base. Searching through scores of files to finally find one that was totally useless but crashed the game anyway makes you understand why people sometimes turn off their computers with a two handed axe. I personally keep one handy, just in case Relic tells us that all 1.3 mods should be converted to 1.4 to be WA compatible.
Falk -On a personal note, another element to consider is certainly the learning curve. I have to say that I'm quite happy with the tanks, well particularly the Exorcist. Though the Immolator was nice, it was my first model for the mod and as such lacked a certain crispness in the details, as at that time, we didn't really know where we were going (still discovering the OE, no idea of how to use the FX editor and so on). Then when it was time for the Repressor, the team had matured as well as the methods, so it had to fit our "new standards" of quality (I mean this in a "we're-constantly-gaining-experience" way, not "we'z-da-best-moddas" way) and the Exorcist, with the lot of gold stuff it has on its hull, meant to be a challenge. With the help of a good basic method from Fried to make a nice gold, I went berserk on the gold effect for a few days, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out
Friedric P -Let me just add something on delivery and overall team workload. First, we often do several graphical researches for each unit. Despite we made the main models very close to the original figures, we try to bring a different vision for the characters or special units. For instance, I wanted to make the canoness more dynamic and closer to an anime character. Her design goes in the same way: some details on her legs are more coming from Asuka's suit in NG:Evangelion than from anything else. I see special characters, and also some special units, as a good opportunity to modify them like the Golden Demon Artists do. And off course, all of this R&D effort take sometimes.
   
Komrad -It's been a delight discussing the progress of the mod (watches as the Arbites leave the room). Any last remarks before I depart?
Friedric P -I would like to thanks Relic for giving us the opportunity to play a little with their tools. As every graphical work for DoW are made with Photoshop and 3DS Max, it doesn't change that much from everyday work. The tools, once understood, are quite easy to use, and run well. I also want to thanks Games Workshop for letting us playing quite freely with their universe, that's not the case of all corporations! And on special note, thanks to all the team members for their kindness and excellent work, and to our entire fan for their support!
Goldo_O -Yes, just a last comment on the graphical part of the mod. The aim of the team is to reach a level of commercial quality. As most of us are already working as 3D artists in real life, we always try to find new techniques to improve the visual quality of our models. Friedric is one of the most efficient in this field and often finds new tips. Auto-illumination for golden parts on textures, face animation for main characters, and so on.
We always work our texture maps in a double or triple size to get a better level of detail after reduction. Also note that this process will allow us to create a high-quality version of the mod for the players who possess last generation computers.
Animations are also a key asset. Indeed, Compiler gave us the opportunity to include complex animations for buildings. Thus, the construction process of our buildings, as well as the unit production itself, won't be devoid of moves! You'll at last know how an immolator is produced in 70 seconds, seeing the whole process of the assembling in the vehicle building.
We also kept the objective to create units with variety. Especially for the trooper’s ones, we tried to include as much as random parts we can.
Friedric P -Yep, Goldo is doing an incredible job on his side, the sentinel and penitent engine animations are very dynamics, and after a lot of comparisons, I even prefer his Arco-Flagellant than the original ones in figures. Falk for the moment stayed very close to the figures with his tanks, but the Throne of Justice will be even bigger and nastier than the standard one. And for the Living Saint... It will be a surprise
Goldo_O -We want players to take pleasure in playing our mod and to take advantage of the Dow zoom possibilities. As a consequence, we worked hard on the level of texture details, including hidden funny animations, and if you still don't like the Witch Hunters race, you'll probably enjoy knowing that we also plan to include “bonus units” for the main 5 (6?!) races as Winter Assault will.
KRMZ -Thanks for having given us the opportunity to describe our team and the AS mod. See you in fall for exciting and fresh LAN games thanks to all the new mods arriving soon. With powerful allies like the Steel legion troops on our side, the Sisters of Battle will certainly give some hard times to Thousand sons, Necrons, TAU and Tyranids troop’s factions.
  
Komrad - Very well, I will see you all on the battlefield in fall. I will take my leave now.
(As Komrad heads for the Thunderhawk Dropship, Federic P issued an order to the Callidus Assassin who just appeared in front of him.)
Friedric P -See that he does not make it back to the planet.
KRMZ -No. Not now, perhaps another time...
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