Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - Grey Knights turn-based tactical RPG

[Infinitron]

In the third and final entry to our three-part Developer Diary series, Complex Games’ Creative Director Noah Decter-Jackson, Lead Designer Peter Schnabl and Chief Technology Officer Adrian Cheater introduce us to the Baleful Edict’s crew and ship systems, along with the roster of characters, you will lead in the fight against Nurgle and his minions.

 

[PanDupa]

In the third and final entry to our three-part Developer Diary series, Complex Games’ Creative Director Noah Decter-Jackson, Lead Designer Peter Schnabl and Chief Technology Officer Adrian Cheater introduce us to the Baleful Edict’s crew and ship systems, along with the roster of characters, you will lead in the fight against Nurgle and his minions.

1:58 what?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

how do people actually work with something like that in their office?
I just... I wouldn't be able to do it. It would be like working with someone in a clown uniform+makeup or something, except they actually believed they were born a clown. There's no way I could take them seriously or want to interact with them.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ho...-paralysis-by-letting-you-carve-up-the-galaxy

How Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters aims to avoid "analysis paralysis" by letting you carve up the galaxy
We sit down with creative director Noah Decter-Jackson to talk about the origins of their upcoming turn-based tactics game



You may not have heard much about developer Complex Games, but the Canadian studio has a surprisingly storied history. Despite spending the last two decades building mobile and browser games for the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon and Zynga, their heart has always resided with the PC. "There wasn't a lot of game development in Winnipeg, so we tried to figure it out ourselves and spent a few years trying to build a PC game," says creative director Noah Decter-Jackson. Fresh out of college, Complex's first project was a third-person hand-to-hand action prototype that they pitched to publishers at E3 2003, an endeavour that Decter-Jackson describes as "phenomenally unsuccessful".

This led to Complex remodelling as a work-for-hire outfit, and their long track-record making mobile games. But in 2015, Complex launched The Horus Heresy: Drop Assault, a fast-paced tactics game in conjunction with Games Workshop. In the wake of Drop Assault's success, the studio saw an opportunity. "We had been wanting for a long time to return to our PC roots," he says. "So we pitched a core idea for a game to Games Workshop, because Drop Assault had been quite successful... and that's essentially how Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters came to be."

Complex's development history is apposite, because Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters encapsulates the studio's experiences as a developer. It's a sweeping turn-based tactics game set in the 40K universe, focusing on an elite fighting unit that likes to get up close and personal in brutal, pacey melee combat. That unit is the Grey Knights, Imperium fighters who, as implied by the game's title, specialise in eradicating demons. In Complex's game, your unit of Knights is tasked with combating the spread of a galactic plague known as the Bloom, caused by the pestilent god Nurgle. Using your Imperial Strike Cruiser, the Baleful Edict, you'll travel around the galaxy, dispatching squads of Grey Knights to different planets to combat the spread of the plague, ultimately trying to prevent a cataclysmic event known as the Morbus.

If this sounds to you like XCOM in space (well, more in space, like it did for Matt in our earlier preview) that is true to an extent. Daemonhunters adopts both the base combat mechanics and the broad campaign structure of Firaxis' tactical masterpieces. However, the fact that Daemonhunters is also 40K game necessitates some key differences. Whereas in XCOM your starting units were little better than cannon fodder, the Grey Knights begin the campaign as psychic supersoldiers and work their way up from there. Consequently, one of the primary goals of Daemonhunters was to ensure your units felt powerful from the start.


This is where Daemonhunters' most novel mechanic – its melee combat system – comes in. Known as "Precision Targeting", if one of your Knights successfully performs a critical attack on an enemy, they create an opportunity to rush in and attack a specific part of that opponent's body. You could choose to sever a limb, for example, hindering that enemy's ability to move or fight. Or you could target their weapon, instantly disabling one of that unit's more dangerous abilities.

The mechanic is designed to encourage you to play aggressively, rather than "creeping around" as Decter-Jackson puts it. "There's a system in place, effectively called the 'execution system', where if you're able to stun an enemy effectively and perform an instant kill in melee combat, then you get momentum bonuses in terms of additional action points," he says. Moreover, killing daemons helps generate the Knights' psychic energy, making them even more powerful. Hence, there's a cascade effect to combat, where playing boldly rewards you with the ability to push forward harder.

Placing such a strong emphasis on melee attacks is unusual in a tactics game, and Decter-Jackson notes that balancing the system to be flexible without overcomplicating the game was one of the biggest challenges during development. "It went through many iterations of whether or not enemies would have specific damage and armour values on their body parts," he says. "You don't want to get too bogged down in 'analysis paralysis' trying to make every fine decision."

Spoiler

The tactics of precision targeting instead lies in manipulating your likelihood to do critical damage, for which Decter-Jackson notes there are "a variety of different things you can do". The options that open-up in precision targeting are as much a reward for pulling off that crit as they are an extension of your tactical options. It's also worth noting that, while your Knights are proficient in close range combat, that's far from their only skill. Some classes of Knight are geared more toward ranged combat or support abilities, while all the standard abilities you'd expect in turn-based-tactics, like Overwatch and Suppression, make an appearance as well.

Indeed, part of the challenge of developing Daemonhunters was ensuring your Knights feel powerful without that power compromising meaningful tactical choices, and that the scenarios you find yourself in feel tense and dangerous. According to Decter-Jackson, there are several layers to this. Your Knights are always outnumbered in combat, for example, but on top of this comes the risk of 'warp surge events'. The psychic abilities of the Grey Knights derive from the 'Warp', an unstable alternate dimension. When they use their psychic abilities, they increase the chance of an event.

"Warp surge events are very unpredictable," Decter-Jackson explains. "Often they can bring enemy reinforcements into the game, summoning reinforcements from the warp because the warp is very unstable, and there are rifts in the warp. In other ways it can change the actual landscape of the map, introducing new hazards, or even buff a lot of your enemies by giving them mutations."


Then there's the structure of the campaign itself. Like XCOM, it's an open-ended affair that sees you making targeted strikes against the Bloom's ever-escalating threat. "The missions that are going to appear on the map will occur organically over time," Decter-Jackson says. "And based on where you are on the map, you have a certain amount of time to get to each one of those missions where the Bloom spreads, and you're not going to be able to deal with them all at once."

Hence, you'll need to pick and choose your battles based on the potential rewards they offer or the scale of threat level to the galaxy. Indeed, while all missions are important, some are critical. "There are certain types of missions that we have called 'flowering missions' where a gate of chaos effectively will open." Decter-Jackson says. Fail to respond to flowering missions five times, and it's game over.

In addition to the scale of the threat, another obstacle faced by your Knights is the initial condition of their equipment. Your ship, the Baleful Edict, is damaged at the outset of your campaign, and you'll need to repair it over time, restoring functionality of systems like the ship's warp drive and its weapons. The former will help you respond to threats more quickly, while the latter are crucial to dealing with enemy ships sent out by Nurgle to patrol key areas of the Starmap. "If you encounter a ship, then you have a series of options to determine how you want to deal with that ship encounter. This is where upgrading your guns is extremely important," Decter-Jackson points out. "If you take too much damage in a ship encounter, then you can also lose the game."



Daemonhunters sounds like an intriguing prospect. While it may seem like the PC is drowning in tactics games in the wake of XCOM, the truth is it's been a while since there was a truly great one. Phoenix Point and Chimera Squad were both decent romps, but neither reached the heights of XCOM 2. Gears Tactics was arguably the best think 'em up in the last five years, bearing many similarities to Daemonhunters in terms of its visual spectacle and more aggressive combat. But it lacked the all-important strategic layer to lend it depth. If Daemonhunters can combine the scope of XCOM with the pace and presentation of Gears Tactics, all wrapped in the gloriously gothic excess of the 40K universe, then Complex Games could well be onto the winning PC game they've sought for so many years.

 

[Decado]

how do people actually work with something like that in their office?
I just... I wouldn't be able to do it. It would be like working with someone in a clown uniform+makeup or something, except they actually believed they were born a clown. There's no way I could take them seriously or want to interact with them.

In a former job in the game industry, I worked with a transwoman on a project, who was part of a different organization so I didn't see him all the time. But I had to work with him in person several times, and it was fucking insane.

He was clearly mentally ill, and everyone knew it. He just radiated anxiety, and it made everyone super uncomfortable. Also, he dressed in ridiculous goth attire -- this was at semi-formal business meetings. There's a lot of leeway in the games business on dress code, people wear jeans and whatnot and many women have goofy colored hair, multiple piercings, tons of tattoos. That's all fine, nobody cares. But this guy of course took it to the next fucking level, wearing fishnet stockings and goth dresses that exposed his "cleavage." It was ridiculous.

He was supposedly this great community manager but he was friendless, nobody could stand to work with him. This just increased his anxiety so he was always, always talking really fucking fast, interrupting people, etc. He couldn't read social cues, kind of classic autism (which is, of course, a condition strongly correlated with being trans). It didn't help that his breath was FUCKING HORRIBLE which I was told later was due to the hormones he was taking. I knew this because ANOTHER trans person who was also on the project was super irritated with the guy all the time, and was constantly apologizing on behalf of his fellow transters. The rest of the group was bitchy feminist types, and the only other normal guy besides me was an engineer who would sit silently in meetings, playing on his tablet. He was saving up his money to buy a farm in Ohio and never touch a computer again. I often wonder if he made it.

The whole thing was a fucking funhouse production that went nowhere and likely wasted a few tens of thousands of dollars. Most of these people were in academia so they faced no consequences for being incompetent losers with no actual skills.

 

[Tyranicon]

Despite spending the last two decades building mobile and browser games for the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon and Zynga

Well, discovered why this looks like a mobile game.

He was saving up his money to buy a farm in Ohio and never touch a computer again. I often wonder if he made it.

That's the most programmer thing I've ever heard.

 

[Fedora Master]

Every time Infinishill posts his retarded "news" the final score of the game drops by a point.

 

[Decado]

Every time Infinishill posts his retarded "news" the final score of the game drops by a point.

what was the point of this post?

 

[Fedora Master]

Every time Infinishill posts his retarded "news" the final score of the game drops by a point.

what was the point of this post?

The game will be a 70% mobile trash game. Infinitron has never shilled a good game.

 

[Decado]

Every time Infinishill posts his retarded "news" the final score of the game drops by a point.

what was the point of this post?

The game will be a 70% mobile trash game. Infinitron has never shilled a good game.

The game may or may not be shit, but the guy is posting about upcoming RPGs, which is literally his job on rpgcodex.net. What's the alternative? You get to decide which games get covered? If so, why don't you have the job?

Also, how is he "shilling"? Do you know what "shilling" is?

 

[underground nymph]

Do you know what "shilling" is?

Being paid to promote shite. Exactly what he does. Any news worth attention would have been posted by forum members.

 

[Infinitron]

Imbued with psychic energy the Nemesis Force Weapons are iconic to the Grey Knights.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This doesn't seem like much of an RPG to me. Seems like nu-XCOM in warhammer skin.

 

[Infinitron]

Sometimes a two-handed weapon is better than one.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

He was clearly mentally ill, and everyone knew it. He just radiated anxiety, and it made everyone super uncomfortable. Also, he dressed in ridiculous goth attire -- this was at semi-formal business meetings. There's a lot of leeway in the games business on dress code, people wear jeans and whatnot and many women have goofy colored hair, multiple piercings, tons of tattoos. That's all fine, nobody cares. But this guy of course took it to the next fucking level, wearing fishnet stockings and goth dresses that exposed his "cleavage." It was ridiculous.

He was supposedly this great community manager but he was friendless, nobody could stand to work with him. This just increased his anxiety so he was always, always talking really fucking fast, interrupting people, etc. He couldn't read social cues, kind of classic autism (which is, of course, a condition strongly correlated with being trans). It didn't help that his breath was FUCKING HORRIBLE which I was told later was due to the hormones he was taking. I knew this because ANOTHER trans person who was also on the project was super irritated with the guy all the time, and was constantly apologizing on behalf of his fellow transters. The rest of the group was bitchy feminist types, and the only other normal guy besides me was an engineer who would sit silently in meetings, playing on his tablet. He was saving up his money to buy a farm in Ohio and never touch a computer again. I often wonder if he made it.

The whole thing was a fucking funhouse production that went nowhere and likely wasted a few tens of thousands of dollars. Most of these people were in academia so they faced no consequences for being incompetent losers with no actual skills.

All of this makes me so sad to hear.

 

[Decado]

He was clearly mentally ill, and everyone knew it. He just radiated anxiety, and it made everyone super uncomfortable. Also, he dressed in ridiculous goth attire -- this was at semi-formal business meetings. There's a lot of leeway in the games business on dress code, people wear jeans and whatnot and many women have goofy colored hair, multiple piercings, tons of tattoos. That's all fine, nobody cares. But this guy of course took it to the next fucking level, wearing fishnet stockings and goth dresses that exposed his "cleavage." It was ridiculous.

He was supposedly this great community manager but he was friendless, nobody could stand to work with him. This just increased his anxiety so he was always, always talking really fucking fast, interrupting people, etc. He couldn't read social cues, kind of classic autism (which is, of course, a condition strongly correlated with being trans). It didn't help that his breath was FUCKING HORRIBLE which I was told later was due to the hormones he was taking. I knew this because ANOTHER trans person who was also on the project was super irritated with the guy all the time, and was constantly apologizing on behalf of his fellow transters. The rest of the group was bitchy feminist types, and the only other normal guy besides me was an engineer who would sit silently in meetings, playing on his tablet. He was saving up his money to buy a farm in Ohio and never touch a computer again. I often wonder if he made it.

The whole thing was a fucking funhouse production that went nowhere and likely wasted a few tens of thousands of dollars. Most of these people were in academia so they faced no consequences for being incompetent losers with no actual skills.

All of this makes me so sad to hear.

I know this is the codex and it is filled with Nazi degenerates, but I will say this:

I do genuinely feel for these people. So many of them have these comorbid conditions like autism, BPD, manic-depression, high levels of anxiety, OCD, PTSD. And instead of helping them, the medical establishment has not only gone along with their delusions but helped to rearrange whole institutions in order to make it easier for these people to hurt themselves. I really do think in 20 years we will be staring at a holocaust of dead trans people -- ODing, committing suicide, made homeless from their mental illness. The lucky ones will be detransitioning into unfulfilling lives rife with unnecessary medical complications brought on by the reckless prescription of hormones and mutilating surgeries. All because a bunch of weirdo, disillusioned, and aimless liberals thought they were heroically fighting on the next frontier of civil rights, because their lives needed meaning, because they themselves were arrogant and gormless and completely subsumed into the new cosmopolitan order of sexual liberation and identity. They will have been responsible for all of these lives ruined, and short of a violent revolution, none of them will ever pay for what they have encouraged and enabled. It's enraging.

Think about the kid I was talking about. I mean, he was crazy and annoying. But at heart he was just some poor boy who had been failed over and over again, by every competent adult on his way up the ladder. And when he met a real malevolent force, a real psychopath who convinced him it was okay, that he really was a woman? Fuck, man. Totally defenseless.

 

[Chippy]

Heh; how come the Codex hasn't erupted in controversy over the trans developer here:


I suppose the game is such an expected dissapointment that there are more issues to proritize.

 

[Sykar]

how do people actually work with something like that in their office?
I just... I wouldn't be able to do it. It would be like working with someone in a clown uniform+makeup or something, except they actually believed they were born a clown. There's no way I could take them seriously or want to interact with them.

In a former job in the game industry, I worked with a transwoman on a project, who was part of a different organization so I didn't see him all the time. But I had to work with him in person several times, and it was fucking insane.

He was clearly mentally ill, and everyone knew it. He just radiated anxiety, and it made everyone super uncomfortable. Also, he dressed in ridiculous goth attire -- this was at semi-formal business meetings. There's a lot of leeway in the games business on dress code, people wear jeans and whatnot and many women have goofy colored hair, multiple piercings, tons of tattoos. That's all fine, nobody cares. But this guy of course took it to the next fucking level, wearing fishnet stockings and goth dresses that exposed his "cleavage." It was ridiculous.

He was supposedly this great community manager but he was friendless, nobody could stand to work with him. This just increased his anxiety so he was always, always talking really fucking fast, interrupting people, etc. He couldn't read social cues, kind of classic autism (which is, of course, a condition strongly correlated with being trans). It didn't help that his breath was FUCKING HORRIBLE which I was told later was due to the hormones he was taking. I knew this because ANOTHER trans person who was also on the project was super irritated with the guy all the time, and was constantly apologizing on behalf of his fellow transters. The rest of the group was bitchy feminist types, and the only other normal guy besides me was an engineer who would sit silently in meetings, playing on his tablet. He was saving up his money to buy a farm in Ohio and never touch a computer again. I often wonder if he made it.

The whole thing was a fucking funhouse production that went nowhere and likely wasted a few tens of thousands of dollars. Most of these people were in academia so they faced no consequences for being incompetent losers with no actual skills.

I worked with a transman. He was chill and very polite, no problems working with him. On the other hand I met well over a dozen straight white guys who were somewhere between moronic and batshit retarded.
One of the worst of them was a complete and utter fuckwit. Just one instance that comes to mind, after asking and receving a Snickers bar from one of the other work colleagues he said "I need it to fuck. Fucking until the cunt bursts!" and yeah he used the German equivalent for cunt, "Fotze" while our lady boss was actually not much more than a room away, lucky for him she did not hear it and none of us were snitches just rolling our eyes. Another day and the dumbfuck did a Michael Meyrs Friday the 13th impression while him and myself were about to meet in a relatively narrow hallway, playfully threatening me with a ball pen having it raised above his head. I was just saying something like "Sure whatever" in a sarcastic tone but the fucker actually stabbed me so hard into my collar bone that I needed to treat it.
Just a small excerpt of my 20+ year working life, chances of meeting batshit retarded straight white guys are much higher than just meeting a transperson. As George Carlin once remarked, remember how stupid the average motherfucker is and remember that half of them are stupider than that.

 

[underground nymph]

Nothing surprising here. Germans is a nation with dire mental health issues. Males are affected much worse than females.

Anyway, how is this shit a RPG?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Heh; how come the Codex hasn't erupted in controversy over the trans developer here:
.

Very few people care about this game at all, it looks like mobile shovelware, the thread is only kept alive by news posting bots and people telling them to stop posting.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Specialist roles call for specialist tools. Discover more on the Narthecium, Nemesis Warding Stave and Crozius Arcanum!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://www.chaosgate.com/news/ultramarine-chant-remastered

NEWS
ULTRAMARINE CHANT REMASTERED
30 Mar 2022


Witness a classic brought back to life! The iconic Ultramarine Chant from the 1998 Chaos Gate has been remastered in Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters!



To mark the occasion, we're also making the remastered track available to download for free today!

The Ultramarine Chant remaster was composed and created by Warhammer music veteran Doyle W. Donehoo (known for his previous work on Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2, Space Hulk: Deathwing and Battlefleet: Gothic Armada). We caught up with Doyle to understand what it is like composing music for the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium.

The world of Warhammer 40,000 is dark, gritty and dangerous. How does that affect composing music to fit into it?

I like composing dark and gritty music, so the universe of Warhammer 40,000 is a natural fit for me and my creative sensibilities. Warhammer and I excel in drama! The music I make for games set in this rich fictional universe reflects that.

The Ultramarine Chant from Chaos Gate (1998) is an iconic track, how did you go about approaching a remaster?

Back in 1998 when Chaos Gate (1998) was released on PC, composers had access to fewer tools than we have today. Being able to build upon the original theme with today’s technology gave me a real advantage, and helped me take this iconic track to the next level for a 2022 audience.

As I have been writing Warhammer music since Dawn of War II, I have developed my own particular style and approach to this universe, which I was able to apply to this new version of the Chant, keeping its awesome score but tailoring it for a new audience.

I'd also really like to thank the composer of the original 1998 chant, Jim Crew, for providing a terrific foundation to start from, and to my Assistant Composer Nikola Jeremić for his vital contributions, too.

Creating video game music is a daunting task, what can you give as an overview of the process?

It only really gets daunting when there is a lot of music to create at one time – otherwise, it’s a lot of fun. Composing to picture is relatively easy, because the video footage you’re given pretty much tells you what you need to do, and the producers spot the video and tell you what they expect.

For video games, you’re frequently working blind: you get artwork and early gameplay to look at of the project for inspiration, and the producers give you direction for what they want to hear for a given in-game environment. We trade direction ideas to get the music into the right ballpark, then I compose the full length track for that section of the game when we’re all on the same page.

Music can often help enhance a character in a game, were there any character themes you enjoyed or focused on?

As a Warhammer music veteran, I love working with all Warhammer 40,000 characters and factions. They all have their own thematic style and approach, giving a huge amount of variety to the audio of this iconic universe – my work across these games, right up to Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is made to capture the vastness of the Warhammer 40,000 fiction itself.

 

[Darth Roxor]

thanks for giving me cancer

 

[Beowulf]

It will go well along with how they remastered the AP system from Chaos Gate as well.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

there are official news bout Diablo IV today let's go there!