Rally Point - Episode 11: Official new Teutoburg details and behind the scenes.

[Will CA]

http://youtu.be/lhusQLHy07o

Episode 11 of Rally Point delves even deeper into the dark forests of Germany, revealing new nuggets of information from a press event in Munich.

Jamie Ferguson, Lead Battle Designer, talks about the fight and answers the all-important question everyone's asking: "Can I use those giant burning balls on my enemies?"

We also caught up with our fight performers - modern day gladiators who are paid to smash each other about in the name of art. Peek behind the curtain and see how we put together some of the animations that feature in the game. I'll give you a clue, it involves bruising.

And, finally, the icing on the cake: we took on the WHOLE WORLD at Total War: Shogun 2 to celebrate the release of the Gold Edition of the game. Below, you can find links to the streams showing CA utterly pulverise the opposition*.

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/CA_Vs_The_World_Event

*Except on those several occasions when we didn't.

[Frontlines]

Thanks Will!

[PROMETHEUS ts]

Thankyou , to when the final reveal of the last faction and minor factions?

[SirFork]

Thank you very much!

[koovie]

Thanks.

Those animations look awesome!

I guess those Romans with the spears are the auxiliary.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

I have listened to words spoken in the video and I am a bit concerned about the fighting animations, does that mean that all the romans will fight in a loose style like the japanese on one to one fights ?
They will not fight in closed formations like they historically should? also the animations showed seemed more for 1-1 fights for a gladiator or a medieval fight but not much for the shield and gladius stabbing close fight in a formation ... Can we know more informations about that aspect?All soldiers in the teutoburgium video seem to fight in a messy unordered disposition favoring the 1 - 1 fight rather than the disciplined and cohesion of a unit .

[Jokern]

Awesome, thanks Will.

I have to agree with Prometheus here, the animation does look more like gladiator duels than the tight formation combat that Rome is famous for. And there are more important aspects of the game than great balls of fire. The AI has been mentioned as little as possible, the diplomacy is something that is not talked about enough by you guys. Several other mechanics that have been mentioned in interviews should be explained in more detail.

I appreciate everything you give us, CA, but my personal opinion is that you could talk more about things that have been mentioned in magazines, like the agent types for example.

And lastly, will the Horde mechanic if RTW: BI be implemented?

[Will CA]

Awesome, thanks Will.

I have to agree with Prometheus here, the animation does look more like gladiator duels than the tight formation combat that Rome is famous for. And there are more important aspects of the game than great balls of fire. The AI has been mentioned as little as possible, the diplomacy is something that is not talked about enough by you guys. Several other mechanics that have been mentioned in interviews should be explained in more detail.

I appreciate everything you give us, CA, but my personal opinion is that you could talk more about things that have been mentioned in magazines, like the agent types for example.

And lastly, will the Horde mechanic if RTW: BI be implemented?

I will throw some common desktop items at Jumping Jack Lusted and see if he can shed any light on this.

[Jack Lusted]

I have listened to words spoken in the video and I am a bit concerned about the fighting animations, does that mean that all the romans will fight in a loose style like the japanese on one to one fights ? They will not fight in closed formations like they historically should? also the animations showed seemed more for 1-1 fights for a gladiator or a medieval fight but not much for the shield and gladius stabbing close fight in a formation ... Can we know more informations about that aspect?All soldiers in the teutoburgium video seem to fight in a messy unordered disposition favoring the 1 - 1 fight rather than the disciplined and cohesion of a unit .

The soldiers in the Teutoberg video we released are fighting in disorganised units because they have been ambushed and so their units have been disrupted.

The animations are 1v1 for reasons of practicality and getting the variety of animations we want, multiple attackers are taken into account in the combat rules.

[Pinarius]

seems there is also motion capture for the horses.

[Halie Satanus]

They looked like the animations of men who'd been isolated in the forest.

[AngryTitusPullo]

I will throw some common desktop items at Jumping Jack Lusted and see if he can shed any light on this.

I would rather have Adriana come here and explain. I mean we've seen Jack almost everyday.....

[PROMETHEUS ts]

The soldiers in the Teutoberg video we released are fighting in disorganised units because they have been ambushed and so their units have been disrupted.

The animations are 1v1 for reasons of practicality and getting the variety of animations we want, multiple attackers are taken into account in the combat rules.

Thankyou I understand the disruption momentum due to the ambush , but then the cohesion should be renstablished after a while possibly .Perhaps according to the discipline of the unit.

As for the animations 1v1 the same way of fighting of scutum + gladius is different from the one showed .
In the movie we see a roman soldier charging full face open chest and sidened shield toward a german that kills him with a javelin , that kind of action would be quite unrealistic for that roman style of fight , unless the roman lost his mind ofc ...

Even if is just a 1v1 animation , it still is different than slashing and cutting with open widening of the shield , i'ts a more controlled type of fight ,with stabs from side of shield top and bottom with shield covering and protecting.
The use of the gladius sword was made for fight in cooperation that resulted in a more deadly style for the close quarters , where the slashing of long swords wouldn't have been usefull ..
I hope those will get implemented as well ,to increase realism ... those slashes and cuts would not suit much in a closed formation of a roman unit .


_BTW

Great Congrats to

Pawel WOJS
and his Environment Artists team ....

the best of the best there ...

[Dan113112]

lamee..

They can't please everyone it seems.

[torongill]

If CA used the same 1 on 1 animations, would they really need to build a new mocap studio that allows five characters mocapped simultaneously?

Pinarius, IIRC Mr. Russel explained that for animals the animations are done by hand, since it's difficult to make a horse rear on command and it's even more difficult to find a human being willing to be kicked by a horse

P.S. It's difficult to establish cohesion and a fighting line, when you have been ambushed and everybody around you is getting massacred, I imagine.
That's the whole problem with ambush in RTW - cohesion was practically guaranteed and the ambushers started too far away from the ambushed.

[CraigTW]

If CA used the same 1 on 1 animations, would they really need to build a new mocap studio that allows five characters mocapped simultaneously?

Pinarius, IIRC Mr. Russel explained that for animals the animations are done by hand, since it's difficult to make a horse rear on command and it's even more difficult to find a human being willing to be kicked by a horse

Yeah, the animation guys hand-key horses meticulously from reference footage and other material.

I for one am not going near a warehouse with an angry horse cooped up in it!

[torongill]

Yeah, the animation guys hand-key horses meticulously from reference footage and other material.

I for one am not going near a warehouse with an angry horse cooped up in it!

That's great news! It won't be necessary to torture the communication team to divulge details about the game. We'll just have to have an angry horse in the abandoned warehouse.

[MathiasOfAthens]

You guys should motion capture some elephants too... those things really need to be animated right.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

If CA used the same 1 on 1 animations, would they really need to build a new mocap studio that allows five characters mocapped simultaneously?

Pinarius, IIRC Mr. Russel explained that for animals the animations are done by hand, since it's difficult to make a horse rear on command and it's even more difficult to find a human being willing to be kicked by a horse

P.S. It's difficult to establish cohesion and a fighting line, when you have been ambushed and everybody around you is getting massacred, I imagine.
That's the whole problem with ambush in RTW - cohesion was practically guaranteed and the ambushers started too far away from the ambushed.

And every one knows that constructive criticism is the solid base on wich to build a good game .
If we all just played the " fanboys " they wouln't get any critic , ideas , sugestions or feedback to their work and they woudln't even need to share their time with us.
So please avoid making those futile comments and stay on topic .


About the Horses and animals surely they can be motioncaptured, but if is worth doing is another thing ... Red dead redemption developers stated how difficult and hard it was and how long it took to make it the right way ... So probably there is no need to extremize the attention to the animal motion capturing when they aren't the main focus of the game and you can get a faster and surely good job with tool animation.

[kostas84]

I have bad headphones and could barely hear what they were saying, YouTubes automatic captions helped me, but anyway, good work.