What changed
0 fixes1 addition5 changes0 removals
changedIt's hard to believe that it's been ten years since Company of Heroes landed. It impressed us with its explosive simulation of World War 2 squad tactics, inspired by Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan and mid-2000s World War 2 shooters. The game still plays wonderfully today, so it's as good a time as any to talk to Relic's Quinn Duffy, Ian Thomson and Alun Bjorksten about how Company of Heroes came to be, from its early prototyping stage in the Impossible Creatures engine, through to the design of the game's finest missions, and the inclusion of the enigmatic 'Donkeyschreck'.
changedQuinn Duffy, game director: We finished Impossible Creatures with Microsoft and we did the Insect Invasion expansion pack and so it was a small team kind of ready to go. THQ was publishing Dawn of War at the time so we had a relationship with them and we were casting around for another project. We knew RTS we had a kind of engine to build games within and some people were ready. World War 2 was popular it was maybe just at its zenith in popularity. We had Band of Brothers, we had Saving Private Ryan before that and so it had a real presence in the marketplace, and it was big in shooters, and I thought that there was an opportunity to do something really spectacular and take a maybe different approach to RTS and to World War 2, to do some of the high production value stuff.
changedIan Thomson, principal programmer: The genesis is back in the Impossible Creatures technology that we built. We spent many years making that game and learning a lot, thinking this is how I d do it better. Some of those things were being done as part of work happening on Dawn of War which was running in parallel.
changedBut also we were sitting down and doing a bit of dreaming in terms of we re looking around at what other games are doing and cherry-picking and stealing, really and we were like oh wow, lighting looks good over here, there s a thing called Normal Maps! and Things use physics now! Let s actually bring some of those things in. And also additionally in terms of animation technology: Well lets have something that allows us to make better decisions about what animations we re using and blending between them. And all those things tying together really create a a more realistic character motion in what they re doing instead of just wiggly legs and arms.
addedAnd so Quinn the programmers pretty much said well, have two programmers, work on this prototype using some of our old engine technology and the rest of us are going to go away and make something new and fancy for you. So yeah, we kind of disappeared for about a year, which I think was quite infuriating for Quinn, because he kept wondering when he was going to get actually finally start making this game.
changedNothing technical would translate over to Essence. Nothing you tuned, none of the combat, none of the feel. And so when you get
Company of Heroes - Legacy Edition changes
changedIt's hard to believe that it's been ten years since Company of Heroes landed. It impressed us with its explosive simulation of World War 2 squad tactics, inspired by Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan and mid-2000s World War 2 shooters. The game still plays wonderfully today, so it's as good a time as any to talk to Relic's Quinn Duffy, Ian Thomson and Alun Bjorksten about how Company of Heroes came to be, from its early prototyping stage in the Impossible Creatures engine, through to the design of the game's finest missions, and the inclusion of the enigmatic 'Donkeyschreck'.
changedQuinn Duffy, game director: We finished Impossible Creatures with Microsoft and we did the Insect Invasion expansion pack and so it was a small team kind of ready to go. THQ was publishing Dawn of War at the time so we had a relationship with them and we were casting around for another project. We knew RTS we had a kind of engine to build games within and some people were ready. World War 2 was popular it was maybe just at its zenith in popularity. We had Band of Brothers, we had Saving Private Ryan before that and so it had a real presence in the marketplace, and it was big in shooters, and I thought that there was an opportunity to do something really spectacular and take a maybe different approach to RTS and to World War 2, to do some of the high production value stuff.
changedIan Thomson, principal programmer: The genesis is back in the Impossible Creatures technology that we built. We spent many years making that game and learning a lot, thinking this is how I d do it better. Some of those things were being done as part of work happening on Dawn of War which was running in parallel.
changedBut also we were sitting down and doing a bit of dreaming in terms of we re looking around at what other games are doing and cherry-picking and stealing, really and we were like oh wow, lighting looks good over here, there s a thing called Normal Maps! and Things use physics now! Let s actually bring some of those things in. And also additionally in terms of animation technology: Well lets have something that allows us to make better decisions about what animations we re using and blending between them. And all those things tying together really create a a more realistic character motion in what they re doing instead of just wiggly legs and arms.
addedAnd so Quinn the programmers pretty much said well, have two programmers, work on this prototype using some of our old engine technology and the rest of us are going to go away and make something new and fancy for you. So yeah, we kind of disappeared for about a year, which I think was quite infuriating for Quinn, because he kept wondering when he was going to get actually finally start making this game.
It's hard to believe that it's been ten years since Company of Heroes landed. It impressed us with its explosive simulation of World War 2 squad tactics, inspired by Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan and mid-2000s World War 2 shooters. The game still plays wonderfully today, so it's as good a time as any to talk to Relic's Quinn Duffy, Ian Thomson and Alun Bjorksten about how Company of Heroes came to be, from its early prototyping stage in the Impossible Creatures engine, through to the design of the game's finest missions, and the inclusion of the enigmatic 'Donkeyschreck'.
PC Gamer: Let's start at the beginning, the very first moment you guys decided to do a World War 2 game after coming off I believe it was Impossible Creatures, is that right? Was it an idea that had been hanging around the studio for a long time? How did it start?
Quinn Duffy, game director: We finished Impossible Creatures with Microsoft and we did the Insect Invasion expansion pack and so it was a small team kind of ready to go. THQ was publishing Dawn of War at the time so we had a relationship with them and we were casting around for another project. We knew RTS we had a kind of engine to build games within and some people were ready. World War 2 was popular it was maybe just at its zenith in popularity. We had Band of Brothers, we had Saving Private Ryan before that and so it had a real presence in the marketplace, and it was big in shooters, and I thought that there was an opportunity to do something really spectacular and take a maybe different approach to RTS and to World War 2, to do some of the high production value stuff.
PCG: So you started prototyping in the Impossible Creatures engine?
Ian Thomson, principal programmer: The genesis is back in the Impossible Creatures technology that we built. We spent many years making that game and learning a lot, thinking this is how I d do it better. Some of those things were being done as part of work happening on Dawn of War which was running in parallel.
But also we were sitting down and doing a bit of dreaming in terms of we re looking around at what other games are doing and cherry-picking and stealing, really and we were like oh wow, lighting looks good over here, there s a thing called Normal Maps! and Things use physics now! Let s actually bring some of those things in. And also additionally in terms of animation technology: Well lets have something that allows us to make better decisions about what animations we re using and blending between them. And all those things tying together really create a a more realistic character motion in what they re doing instead of just wiggly legs and arms.
And so Quinn the programmers pretty much said well, have two programmers, work on this prototype using some of our old engine technology and the rest of us are going to go away and make something new and fancy for you. So yeah, we kind of disappeared for about a year, which I think was quite infuriating for Quinn, because he kept wondering when he was going to get actually finally start making this game.
Nothing technical would translate over to Essence. Nothing you tuned, none of the combat, none of the feel. And so when you get
