Company of Heroes, long time established in the Real Time Strategy genre, continues to develop its visual quality and coding ease with the Essence Engine. And of course, it also recently won the “Best PC Game” and “Outstanding Innovation in Gaming” awards at the Elans. I got a chance to speak to Relic artist Damian Pannell, who worked on modeling, textures, and gameplay aspects of the vehicles and tanks. It’s nice to get a chance to check out leaps in art that are local to me in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia–a mecca of game industry.

Q: What was your role in working on the expansion to the popular Company of Heroes?

A: Modeling and texturing the playable vehicles/tanks. I was responsible for more of the game play aspects of the vehicles as well, including the setup of damage critical states and dynamic real-time physics. This was carried over from Company of Heroes to Opposing Fronts.

Q: What do you feel is unique about developing art for a 3D RTS?

A: The challenge to create art assets that would hold up graphically from all camera angles and axis, from far to close range. Since COH was developed with no camera lock, all the art content had to be crafted with the utmost realistic attention to detail.

Q: What is it like working with the Essence Engine?

A: Endless possibilities—if a cool idea or feature was discussed, these ideas would eventually become something tangible and useful. The Essence Engine is one of the most stable and reliable RTS engines out there. The scripting language has become quite popular within the community as well, carrying out a reputation for being basic and easy to learn for a novice user to allowing flexibility and a challenging integration for the more advanced designers.

Q: Were any new features integrated for the expansion?

A: Most of the new features for Opposing Fronts were already created from COH; it was just a matter of time, which we ran out of in the end. So we prioritized that time to add the features into the expansion. Some of these features included: weather FX like heavy rain and lighting, vehicle immobilization and team auto match online. One of my favorite features is the mobile headquarters that the commonwealth race use. Tricky game play comes into effect especially when the opposing team tries to storm your base but your base isn’t there because you packed it up and moved it somewhere else on the map. HA!

Q: How many team members did you have, and how was the teamwork managed?

A: At the end of COH there were well over 100 team members, and about 50 members developing COHOP. The team was managed using a system called Scrum. Every 3 to 4 weeks a milestone of tasks needed to be delivered. These tasks were split up between Scrum teams. For example, I worked on anything vehicle related, so this was a Scrum team made up of 6 artists called “the HEAVIES”. Each member would give an estimation of each task assigned within this 3 to 4 week time frame.

Q: How did the workload compare to developing the original?

A: The workload for Opposing Fronts was cut quarterly compared to COH. All the features were developed and game play was locked. Basically it was all content creation for the expansion. COH took 4 years to develop all the engine features and game play, which meant a lot of long nights and weekend work. COHOP was developed in less then a year–it was all content driven. All the wrinkles were already ironed out. I don’t even think I worked one late night on this project.

Q: Which aspect of the game art would you say you’re most proud of?

A: I would have to say that I’m most proud of the Marder III tank. It was the last vehicle I created for COHOP and I put all my heart, experience and knowledge into her.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Art Interviews, PEOPLE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.