Warhorse Studios Weekly Torch

DrFusselpulli · March 31, 2017, 3:05pm

Prokop Jirsa is one of the Warhorse Studios designers since the beginning of 2014, before the start of the Kickstarter Campaign. He was Born in the city of the famous beer, Pilsen, in the Czech republic and today he will use his writing skills to answer the call of the Weekly Torch.
Do you have any questions to Prokop Jirsa? Please ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you join Warhorse?
I joined Warhorse on January 2014. And to this day it baffles me how weird it was.
I was finishing my masters in economics and was preparing for serious job hunting. But as a gamer I was obviously reading all the Czech gaming sites and one article caught my eye. It was about one small Czech gaming company with big dreams. And they were hiring!
Unfortunately, I found out that gaming startups aren’t really looking for people that can valuate derivatives. Weird, isn’t it? Nevertheless, I would blame myself till the end of days if I didn’t at least try to apply, so I chose the one profession that nobody really knows how to do anyway – designer. And here I am

2) Describe your position. What is it about being a Designer?
You are either writing some crazy stuff or dealing with some crazy people. Like all people in Warhorse studios!
The thing about designers in Warhorse is, that you actually do many different things during the development. Designing features, events and quests. Writing dialogues, codex entries and tutorials. Constant playtesting and helping with production. And in the end even directing the voice overs.

3) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
Not professionally. I joined Warhorse right from the University so I only had part time jobs outside the industry up until then. Quality management implementation for example.
But I did some modding and my ultra short Shadowrun Returns campaign must have been at least promising. They hired me after all.

4) Which job would you not want to do?
You know the guy that has to stand in our hallway for hours in full plate armor every day? Man that would suck. Although I tried talking to him once and he completely ignored me. What a dick…

5) What are you currently working on?
We finally finished most of the voice recordings so I am mostly playtesting and polishing the quests and various features of our game.
This week was kinda like this:
- Two 4 hour sessions of voice actors directing.
- Weekly torch writing
- New dialogues for events.
- Quest objectives, map markers and logs readjustment and polishing.
- Two new tutorials in both the short and long version.
- Overall experience gain design polishing.
- Skillchecks adjustments and testing.
- Alchemy and potions UI design polishing.
- Skillchecks visualization UI design polishing.
- Subtitles lenght adjustments.
- New design and NPC routes for one stealth mission.
- And many other smaller things…

6) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
My quests obviously! Hopefully you will enjoy my weird characters and many possible solutions. Recently I also heard some dialogues I directed with the actors and some of those are really good!

7) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
Chicken killing. Really, try that!

8) What is the most difficulty when creating a quest?
To balance what is possible with what is cool. And knowing what will look good after years of production.
The fact that we are (as designers) at the beginning of the whole game production and that our bad decisions could potentially waste huge amounts of company resources can be quite intimidating…

9) Can you tell us about one of your quests without spoiling too much?
Not really… Although I am quite fond of the way you can fail some of my quests and the story still continues. Try enlisting for example and just leave your commander. That was one of the loudest shoutings we ever had in the voice recording studio
Nobody treats you like a hero in our game…

10) What was your most touching video game moment?
The “secret” ending from 2008 Prince of Persia. My god that was beautiful and smart.
Or the revelation of the link between the two protagonists in Game of Thrones RPG.
Interestingly I don’t consider either of those games especially good…

11) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
Kreia from KotoR really managed to question the jedi morality much better than any movies ever did.
And Morte from Planescape. I really loved that lying little bastard!

12) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
Basically Bloodlines 2. Preferably without gamebreaking bugs on release
That game had everything I love about RPGs: Intriguing story with mature lore, excellent and memorable characters, multiple solutions for every quest, with rewards only for completion (so you are not forced to “farm” exp anywhere) and an interesting RPG system and combat.

13) How do you relax after a hard day at work?

14) Your favorite music playlist:
It changes a lot. Currently I am listening to Oxygène from Jean-Michel Jarre.

15) Your favorite movie or book?
Hard to say. But Foundation from Asimov probably influenced me a lot in my formative years.

16) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Nope, try Argentinian medium rare tenderloin steak.

17) How do you like living in the Czech Republic?
Quite a lot. It is said that living abroad makes you appreciate different cultures and point of views. That is definitely true, but for me it also made me appreciate our culture. The things that I took for granted.

18) You have to fight in medieval times… who are you? Which weapon do would you choose?
I am just an ordinary guy in A-10 Thunderbolt mowing anybody that opposes me with 3,900 armor piercing incendiary shells per minute!
You thought I’d choose a medieval weapon, didn’t you? Heh, I don’t like dying…

19) Knights or Samurai?
Seriously? That would be a blood bath. Medieval knight is an outcome of centuries long arms race in Europe. Samurai were poorly armored, with swords made from very bad iron. Any stronger contact of the swords would result in the katana shattering.
I would even bet on unarmed knight against samurai as he would be near invincible in his armor against samurai sword designed to cut flesh…

20) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
We are really trying hard to bring you something different and original. Hopefully you will love playing the game as much as we love building it

Do you have any questions to Prokop Jirsa? Just ask here!

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:43pm

here are Prokop Jirsa´s answers to your community questions:

If the outcome of the quest is a historical event it changes only the path to that. If you are smart, it can be easier, or you can get additional rewards for example. In non historical quests we have more freedom, so the whole outcome can change heavily based on your decisions.

Regarding the interconnectivity of the quests – some quests are like that, meaning that some paths in one quests, can close a different quest or even provide a solution for quest not yet started.

But every quest in our game influences the whole reputation system. If you make someone happy his personal reputation influences the local reputation and that influences the whole faction reputation. So if in one quest you make many people happy, skill checks in another quests will be easier. If you are forced to steal some things in one quests, local awareness will rise, more guards will show up and the stealth part in another quest will be harder.

Both. We are trying to offer paths for different playstyles, but those are usually just “paths” to the end. But if there are decisions in the quests they are usually play style indifferent.

Yep it changes, it’s even funnier now We now have a crime for killing farm animals as well, but i am not sure if chicken counts.

Usually you speak to someone, or one quest starts another. But some quests are started in a more original way

You get different rewards for different solution. Also, try refusing the material reward some time, you might get surprised

I won’t spoil this one for you

Anything that has strong visible outcome in the game fast. I like results

Sure. And not only for story reason. Given the time i would polish for all eternity

DrFusselpulli · March 31, 2017, 2:41pm

Tomáš “Bary” Barák, born in Znojmo in the Czech Republic, is one of the programmers for Kingdom Come Deliverance. He juggles the CryEngine code to bring Kingdom Come Delivernace to life and create the base on which the game is built. He joined Warhorse Studios in November 2013, only a few months before the start of our Kickstarter campaign.
Do you have any additional questions to Tomáš “Bary” Barák? Just ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse? How did you join?
My colleague from the university told me about the studio. He joined the studio in 2012 I think, and he was really excited about his job. I was really unhappy with my job at that time, so I decided to quit and started working for Warhorse.

2) Which job would you not want to do?
I have done some webs before and I dont want to by a web developer in any form for any company anymore. That was my most boring programming experience ever!

3) Please describe Warhorse Studios:
A bunch of young, talented people, full of passion. My co-workers are, in the end, the thing I like the most about Warhorse!

4) Describe your usual day at the studio?
It depends on the stage of the project. In the beginning we were implementing a lot of new features every day. These days, we focus more on bugs and optimizations, but typically I sit at my desk and work with Visual Studio (which I personally hate). Fortunately there are not many meetings happening anymore.

5) What are you currently working on?
Mostly optimzations of the code. With todays hardware, it’s really important for the game to utilize all resources for most of the time. For example, if you have an 8-core CPU but your code can utilize just one, your game will run 8-times slower than it should run. That’s like 4 FPS instead of 32, whichis a lot! We have achieved most of our FPS by executing pieces of code concurently instead of serially.

6) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Feature-wise I am responsible for the RPG module of our game. We now have a pretty complex rpg system with cca 500 buffs and perks. We have managed to implement that with a relatively clean code and the system is mostly data-driven – that means easier modding.

7) What was your most touching video game moment?
I remember many touching moments in Warcraft 3 (+ FT), like Arthas killing his dwarf friend. Also, the Diablo series has pretty impressive moments (mostly in cutscenes). My favourite one is with Mephisto (after you kill him) and the gate to hell.

8) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
Gordon Freeman – he never speaks and almosts never shows himself in the game.

9) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
Magic-based characters like sorcerres, wizzadrs, druids and even necromants are my favourite. I usually don’t play paladins and warriors – they are boring.

10) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
I have played the old Fallout series (1+2) many times along with Diablo 2 and AoE 2. My favourite multiplayer games are: Starcraft BW, 2 and Unreal Tournament (the first one).

11) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
The moment when I have learned to make more save files? I was playing Fallout 1 and the game crashed during the save. Unfortunatelly, it damaged the save file which was the only one I had. So, I had to start over…

12) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Sometimes I play the guitar. I have finished the amazing Lego Bucket Wheel Excavator during this weekend! I rarely watch TV or read books.

13) Your favorite music playlist?
I am a cross-genre kind of a listener. I will list some of my favourite artists here (from all genres I currently enjoy, most important first): Technimatic, Pink Floyd, Underworld, Steve Vai, Dub FX, Kiasmos, Kraftwerk, Iron Maiden, Totalni Nasazeni, Michal Pavlicek (Prazsky Vyber, Stromboli), High Contrast, Above and Beyond, The Cinematic Orchestra, Monkey Business, Dubioza Kolektiv, …

14) Your favorite movie or book?
As I said before, I dont read much nor watch TV/movies, but I have loved the StarWars serises since I was a kid! I have played a lot of StarWars games too!

15) What species is your spirit animal?
This is a strange question. Nobody asked me this before. The first animal that comes to mind is a whale.

16) Do you have a Bucket List?
No, but I have many dreams I wonder why there is no question regarding dreams here? I always wanted to be a scientist working in a secret underground lab, or be a good (not necessary famous) musician.

17) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
If you have ever wanted to be a game developer, go now and start working in the nearest gaming company. It is now much easier to join the industry than you might think.

Do you have any additional questions to Tomáš “Bary” Barák? Just ask here.

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:32pm

Here are Tomáš “Bary” Barák´s answers to your community questions:

Sorry, I have to disappoint you, but nothing like real-time simulated massive destruction of castle walls will appear in KCD. Those things usually look great in a prepared demo scene, but it is not an easy task to integrate such features in a real game. For example, the simulation is unstable or unpredictable, it eats a lot of CPU/GPU power. CryEngine physics is unfortunately not an example of a stable and easy to understand module. But you can look forward to see our character dirt/blood/damage system. Basically every piece of armor/cloth has ability to become dirty, damaged or covered by blood. That’s something that fits our RPG open world game perfectly.

In theory, there is nothing like “you need at least 4 cores”. If you have lesser number of cores, your operating system will serialize the work for you. So the game will run slower, but it will run. In practice, you fine tune the application to the hardware you are targeting. It is always easier to design, write and debug sequential code rather than parallel. So many applications are single threaded. Such applications will not benefit from a many-core CPU at all. Some applications or tasks are easy to write in a parallel/multi-threaded fashion – like a video codec. Such applications will benefit from more cores a lot. KCD is somewhere in between. We have managed to parallelize many tasks (like AI, updates of entities, RPG, …) and some tasks were already parallelized by CryTek (like physics, skeleton updates, audio, …), but there is still a lot of work that is executed sequentially. Currently KCD runs best on a 8 core CPU. If you remove 4 cores it will slow the application almost twice, but if you add 8 it won’t run two times faster (my guess ).

Some of the threads are fixed: the main thread (the main game loop and control of the other threads) and the render thread (the draw call submission). The rest is dynamically assigned by the operating system. We plan to experiment with the AI thread/job.

We currently don’t have any Ryzen CPUs in the studio. But we plan to get some to test and optimize for. We have a good relationship with AMD, I would say, better than with Intel :).

KCD won’t fit into 8GB of RAM on PC. It will probably swap a lot or you will have to lower the detail to spare some memory. Please buy at least 16GB :).

That’s not true anymore! The AI team has improved the performance of the AI system a lot in the last months. We have also started to use AI behavior LODs. So now we are able to simulate more than 500 NPC brains in 10ms on PS4 (not counting the thousands of smart/trigger areas and objects). The whole system runs in a separate thread, so it does not block the main thread anymore. Render is our current bottleneck.

I had to move to Prague to study the university I wanted to study and to find a job I wanted to do. We have number of co-workers from Moravia, they drive hundreds of km every weekend to see their families. We have also Americans and other nations working here, they all had to move to Prague. So what are you going to do? Každopadně díky!

DrFusselpulli · March 31, 2017, 2:23pm

Pavel Beskeyd was born in Kežmarok in Slovakia but moved to Prague in the Czech Republic. Formerly working for 2K Czech, he joined Warhorse Studios in 2015 to work as a 2D Artist on Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
His wall paintings are adorable. Medieval churches and castles were very colorful once, and he brings this former glory back to our enjoyment.
Do you have any questions to Pavel Beskeyd? Please ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse?
Just like many of my fellow colleagues at Warhorse Studios, before joining this great project I had been working for 2K Czech. I hear from my friends that they are hiring at Warhorse Studios and they’re looking for someone to create the wall paintings and medieval illuminations.

2) Describe your usual day at the studio?
Sometimes I make some of the designs for corporate designs, prints, t-shirts, etc. but mainly I create murals for interiors in the game (e.g. churches, castles, chapels, altars, etc.). Together with our historian Asia Nowak, we are looking for references and suggestions as a source for a complete interior.

3) What are you currently working on?
An interior painting of a small church in Rattay., Prophet’s and scenes from the life of Jesus Christ. I’m also working on Madonna on the altar, St. Sigismund, and St Procopius

Before the painting:

and after:

4) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Interior painting of the cross corridor at Sasau Monastery. It took me over half a year. It is a free reconstruction of the cross corridor painting at the Emmaus, from which much hasn´t survived (after insensitive reconstructions and a bombing in the WW2).

Interior of the Church of St. Martin in Sasau with scenes from the life of St. Martin

concept:

and realization:

Here you can see the church in a small video:

Or Sasau Church altar with central motive of the crucifixion. Above, St. Martin is cutting the coat. In the opposite stands St. Ludmila. Down in the row are St. Sigismund, Vít, Adalbert and Wenceslaus.

5) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
The visual of the entire country and the emphasis on realism and detail. This way, the game allows an impressive trip into the past.

6) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
My uncle was a big fan of computers since the 80´s, so I would join him by the computer since childhood. I remember our Atari with cartridges and the games like Berzerk, Montezuma, and Moon Patrol.

7) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
The game is like Minecraft: I like creative games that don´t limit me much and I can create my own environment.

8) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
I would enjoy something like a mix between Transport Tycoon and Bridge Builder.

9) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Good meal and drink. I like to play board games with my family or friends. I also enjoy sleeping.

10) Your favorite music playlist
Alternative, punk.

11) Your favorite movie or book?
Book: Ed Wood, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.
Movie: Slaughterhouse – Five, Death Is My Trade

Both of these works are biographical and both fit precisely into the historical facts.

12) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
I hope they will like our game and will enjoy it.

Do you want to know something more about Pavel Beskeyd? Just ask here!

DrFusselpulli · April 5, 2017, 9:10pm

This time nobody asked a question to Pavel Beskeyd. But that does not mean that we didn´t got any feedback.

Pavel was very happy to hear about your comments. As you liked his pictures so much, here are some more of them. Enjoy:

DrFusselpulli · April 7, 2017, 3:11pm

Tereza “Fura” Semecká was born here in Prague and joined Warhorse Studios a year ago, on the first of April 2016. But this was no April fools joke, she is taking her job as a scripter very serious. Just read what she has to say about it.
Do you want to know more about Tereza “Fura” Semecká? Just ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse?
The first time I heard about Warhorse was on TV a few years ago. I thought something like, “Wow, I’d love to work there!” I thought I might at least try to learn the CryEngine but the poor old computer I had was not able to run it. I looked up few different game engines and ended up starting to learn Unity3D.
I joined Warhorse on April 1st, 2016. It all started with a crisis in my previous work so I was thinking about what I wanted to do in the future. I applied to Bohemia Interactive at first and got an interview for a position in Brno, which was not so attractive for me. I thought that I might as well try sending a CV to Warhorse too. To my amazement I got a reply the day I sent the CV and we agreed on an interview. Evidently, it went well.

2) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
It was about sixteen years ago when I first thought it would be cool to make a game. I started some programming classes, learned the basics, but I didn’t have the patience to stick with it. It took me another seven or eight years before I tried again and somehow I managed to learn more of it and I actually began enjoying it. Still, I was nowhere near the point where I could make a living out of it or even make games. I took a job at a bank and forgot about making games for some time. I learned to script in Excel and a little bit of database stuff and I occasionally worked on small hobby projects which I began and I never finished except one or two of them, like a memory game or a maze generator. When I got some experience, I ended up in a data warehouse department (do not confuse “warehouse department” with “Warhorse Studios”, this is another thing). It seemed pretty cool at first but it was not in the end. The best thing about this was that it made me rethink what I wanted to do. I got to the point where just the decision of quitting the job was a huge relief. Luckily by that time, I met a person who helped me decide that I might as well try to apply for a job in game development, which is what I always wanted to try. The day when I handed the resignation to my boss was one of the best in my life. So, here I am

3) Which job would you not want to do?
Clown. I’m not that funny.

4) Describe your usual day at the studio?
I make coffee. I drink coffee. Repeat until evening.

5) What are you currently working on?
Writing answers to those questions, thinking about making coffee.
Oh, you mean at work? Quests and more quests - old quests, new quests, fixing quest bugs.
Currently, I’m working on a quest Night attack. It features attacking. At night.

6) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Learning to make fun of myself. I was a real Grinch, as one of my colleagues would call me when I’m grumpy.
Being able not to consume more than three or four cups of coffee a day and stay awake.

7) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
Nature and the environment. It feels authentic. Only thing that I miss is the scent of morning in the forest.

8) How, when and with what game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
First game I remember is Goofy’s Railway Express on PC. I still don’t understand how it kept me entertained, even for a few moments. Few years later I got my hands on Descent, The Incredible Machine, and Heroes of Might and Magic; those still feel like games that hooked me up for good.

9) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
Druid. Female druid.
Or, something which shape-shifts, casts bad-ass spells, and has cute pets. Pets are a must-have so it can be a ranger if druid is not an option. Best would be necro-druid, who would raise/summon skeletal animals that will kill wandering villagers and then spill their blood onto the roots of trees to awaken them as evil treants, to roam the forest and make them want to feed on the living too. The druid’s forest would be full of evil creatures lurking in the shadows, watching you with only a spark of cold blue fire in the empty eye-holes. Imagine a little skeletal kitten with blue fiery eyes cuddling to get scratches…
A little tour to my own creepy world. You’re welcome.

10) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
Baldur’s gate 2. Even though the RPG system sometimes feels like random chaos and classes are poorly balanced, I still find this game engaging because of many aspects. As an occasional Dungeons & Dragons player I love the complexity of the Forgotten realms world and how you can encounter characters from books. I repeatedly played it just to see how the story goes with different party members. Characters feel alive and their interactions not only with the player but also with each other are simply wonderful. For example, when Viconia (a bad-ass evil dark elf cleric) was hitting on Sarevok (a bad-ass main evil guy from BG1) he replied how he’d been to hell and back and he wasn’t scared of anything except her. Well, it doesn’t sound very funny if you don’t know the characters…
And of course, you can play as a druid, which is a big plus.

11) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
Definitely RPG. Simple base stats, like Skyrim or Ultima Online - lots of skills which you would advance by practicing them. Crafting more like UO or Minecraft - you can grow plants and trees, mine ores, make houses and equipment, tame animals, wander into dark dungeons to obtain rare materials., and the ability to write your own story in this world as either hero, nobleman, simple craftsman, or just a lone wanderer.

12) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
Broken animations. For example, instead of a normal walk, the character was moving while playing the sitting/riding horse animation. That made me laugh for a solid fifteen minutes several times. But to be honest, it is fairly easy to make me go into a crazy unstoppable laugh.

13) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
I began training Jiu jitsu recently to get in shape and unwind a little. Apart from that, I spend an awful amount of time at the computer playing games, mostly Heroes of the Storm with a bunch of friends or coding some stuff for a hobby project which is slowly growing. Maybe one day it will become a real game. Sometimes I draw silly pictures or I try to write short stories to keep my mind occupied with something else than technical stuff. There are even days when I try to go out and socialize, but only in moderate amounts.

14) Your favorite music playlist
Melodic power, speed or heavy metal, folk, rock, orchestral music. Whichever keeps me in the mood to get things done. Currently Dreamtale.

15) Your favorite movie or book?
I can’t decide between Dogma and Galaxy Quest; both of those are hilarious.
As for a book, it is definitely the Earthsea series by U. K. Le Guin.

16) Sport is…
Trolling. Have you heard of it? It’s fun, you should give it a try.

17) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Nope, but you can try pizza… or very good coffee.

18) What is your weakest trait?
I am lazy as hell and have little to no patience at all.

19) You have to fight in medieval times… who are you?
I believe you already can guess now. Druid it is.

20) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Thanks for your support and patience. We are all trying to do our best to make this game great! Special thanks to you all for reading the weird stuff I wrote.

If you have some more questions to Tereza “Fura” Semecká, you can ask them here!

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:28pm

Here are Tereza “Fura” Semeckás answers to your community questions

I’ve played the quest through many times during the development phase, so I don’t consider myself a good judge in this matter, still it seems pretty playable to me. Light is low, but feels pretty good for the action. Apart from that it is partially stealth mission which means you don’t really want to try that during the day when you can sneak through in the cover of darkness.

Good idea! I should at least give it a try

The bug was due to wrong indexation of animations, so the game thought it played right animation, but there was another one bound to that index.

Depends on the quest and design, there definitely will be savepoints but to be honest I am not sure whether it will be exactly at the start of every quest, more like at the point before crucial moments of story.

It is hard to tell, because the quests now seem to me more like work than entertainment although I still enjoy working on quests. I consider special two quests I worked on each one for different reason. First is “Piece of a Saint”, it is small but it is first quest I ever worked on here in WHS. Second one is “Stone dead” which is most complex quest I worked on so far and apart from some serious headaches it gave me lot of experience in scripting (that much, I leveled up several times).

Yep, maine coon kitty, her personality is a very good reflection of my worst personal traits

Nah, no plans
I learned that my plans never end up exactly as planned. I’m sure the life will surprise me with an opportunity when the time is right for me to move on.

It is more like work from a colleague who left us so these are new for me, not really new in the game

DrFusselpulli · July 19, 2017, 2:44pm

Luboš Suk was born in Nová Paka in Czech Republic and joined Warhorse Stuidos around half a year ago in October 2016. He is a part of the now bigger Quality Assurance team, to find bugs and glitches and get them fixed.
Do you have any questions to Luboš Suk? Please ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
It may sound boring (as it is…), but it’s behind my desk. This is because my job is to test the game and its content, which is hard to do from a couch or from the kitchen. I do hope one day that I will be able to say that I’m lurking in a hammock near my desk.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I heard about WH studios from one of the scripters, Tereza Semecká, in the Summer of 2016. She was talking about how awesome it was to work here and how she has fulfilled her dreams, bla bla bla. So when I moved to Prague, (due to my girlfriend who is a PhD student here), I tried to apply for a job. To my surprise, it was successful! I then joined Warhorse Studios in October of 2016.

3) Describe your position. What is it about being a QA?
I’m working in the QA department (yay to a bunch of guys who break everything and only play games the entire time). How is it being a QA member? It’s depressing and no one likes you! Why? Because you broke their precious stuff and you’re telling them, ‘OMG! This doesn’t work!’
But seriously, what is it about being a QA? I think it’s a great responsibility (yeah, laugh now…). We are testing the game again and again to figure out as many issues/bugs as we can. Try this, try that and again… how to deal with nasty issues/bugs? It’s not just, ‘write it down and move along ,sir,’ we need to examine that bug, describe it correctly, and find as much information about it as we can (otherwise our job is useless if we just write out, “This doesn’t work…”). So we spent a bunch of time trying something again and again (and again…) to figure out what really happened.
Many bugs are tricky ones that need certain conditions to be met to reproduce them. So there is a plenty of time looking into debugging tools and logs. After a bug is reported (and fixed) our job isn’t done. There is a need to review if the fix was enough, so it’s almost back to the beginning.
To make a long story short, being a QA member can be frustrating.
Another task for a QA member is to rate the quality of a game (oooh it looks great and meh this looks shitty) which can be unpleasant. No one wants to hear that they’ve done something wrong (I know that behind everything, much effort and hard work is put into it). So, you can get an easy reply, “you don’t understand this, so STFU and GTFO” and it’s not pleasant to hear. It’s probably the same as hearing, “what you made isn’t good enough.” Rating the quality is an important part of development, because we all wanna make something great, I hope.

4) Have you ever worked on Videogames before? What have you worked on previously?
Previously, I worked (as a volunteer) on development for Czech Ultima Online Freeshard, but I think it can’t be consider ed work, because it was really for fun. And about my previous real job? I worked for TRW Automotive (now ZF/TRW) in Jablonec nad Nisou, where I worked as a support IT guy in the CAE department (tool coding, creating and maintaining databases, customer communication). The main part of the job was to create and maintain tools, which saves time for the other guys and it made their job easier.

5) Describe your usual day at the studio?
A usual day? I think that every day is unusual, but for simplicity, every day starts in the morning (some breakfast and coffee), get new data from the builder, check emails for some bug fixes from the previous days, and prepare the status for our QA review ,which is at 10 o’clock. For review, we are discussing the state of the game and the plans for the day. And that’s our our daily routine: trying to break everything!

6) What are you currently working on?
Currently I’m working on quests (as everyone else is in our department). With this in mind, I’m maintaining feature tests, which runs on tests levels and it helps us with testing common tasks (movement, basic features, shopping, etc). This way, you don’t need to test them again and again every day; you need to only look at the test results and focus on the complicated stuff.

I also have a special build on which I’m catching some nasty errors, which can have an impact on game performance and overall functionality for programmers. There is also another build where I am catching errors for NPC behaviors. After that, I need to go through the errors and distribute them between responsible people so that they can fix them (also for game performance and more deeper game testing than just simple playing).

7) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Dunno. Maybe there are other people who can tell what notable accomplishments I’ve had (if there is something )

8) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
Probably the story-line and combat system. I like the medieval theme and the atmosphere of the game, which has great potential.

9) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
My first time was when I was 8 (maybe 10?). Not exactly sure, but it was on a platform called, “Didaktik” (an 8bit Czechoslovakia PC) where games was loaded from audiotapes. Then I spend some time on DOS games (Wolf 3D, Blood, Dune 1 &2, Civilization, and many, many old games). A very important gaming moment for me was when I discovered Ultima Online – a game which absolutely amazed me (along with MMORPGs). I met awesome people there and I spent a lot of time there…

10) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
As a class I prefer summoners (Necromancers are the bests) and I absolutely choose a female, because watching a chick ass while playing is much more better than playing as some dude.

11) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
There are many of them, because there are not many new games that I like. I absolutely play games over and over like Fallout 1&2, old RTS like KKND2 and Red Alert 2.

12) Your favorite music?
Picture will be enough

13) Your favorite book?
I’m mostly interested in Czech “trash” science fiction. Authors like Jiri Kulhanek, Frantisek Kotleta, Miroslav Zamboch.

14) Your travel tip?
Norway for sure! Awesome nature, nice people, Nordkapp, Tromso, Trollstigen, wildlands…. Just get your car packed, buy stuff and go, but beware of wolverines and elks (and also trolls).

15) Sport is: MTB
When I lived in Liberec (Reichenberg), I really loved bike trips (mountain trips, downhill, and hard terrain ride) but one day some bad things happened and some **** stole my bike!

16) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Candy isn’t bad, but have you ever heard about meat?

17) Which is your favorite historic event?
There are multiple of them, e.g. battle of Vienna, battle of Wizna, the siege of Prague in 1648 (where some ordinary people did unusual deeds). Also, events like Charlie Brown and the Franz Stigler incident or Walther Wenck in the battle of Berlin

18) Knights or Samurai?
Kenshin

19) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Keep calm and be patient (and don’t be a lousy troll)! This is not an ordinary game - there are many good ideas and cool features, which can be fun in a game, but it’s not easy to make everything work together.

Do you have any questions to Luboš Suk? Please ask here.

DrFusselpulli · May 10, 2017, 10:10am

Here are the community answers from Luboš Suk:

Mainly I testing on PC version. Stuff like quests, NPC behavior and etc… but when I working on profiling I need to switch on consoles too. (and sometimes almost break my fingers on the controller. (yep im clumsy with that little plastic toy)

Im specialised on breaking Terezas’s stuff and she hate me for that! But i dont think we aren´t specialised on bugs here, because you never know what breaks, so you need to deal with everything what appears.

In not focused on console testing, so I can’t answer this question correctly. But I think that consoles are awesome and without bugs

Yep, what was in alpha/beta was a bit annoying. But for now save and load seems fine and will works like a charm

It depends on what you call main bug don´t be worried and wait for the surprise.

It depends on what I currently doing. While testing game quest & features we need to listen to the game or discus with colleagues (lot of chitchat here ) but when i need to focus on something music is great choice (some epic music ofc).

Hmm currently im relaxing by writing thesis, so only planning how I will relax after work But probably new MTB, some travel (need to try new hammock) and you know Starcraft remastered version coming soon…

DrFusselpulli · May 12, 2017, 3:51pm

Martin “Šouris” Šourek was born in Desná, in the very north of the Czech Republic and he is our tool programmer here at Warhorse Studios. Martin Šourek is very talented, when he sits in front of the computer and finds amazing solutions for every upcoming challenge in the development of our Warhorse tools.
Do you want to know more about Martin “Šouris” Šourek? Just ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
I’m usually at my desk, in the AI office.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I heard about Warhorse 5 years ago, when there were first mentions about a medieval RPG (Hussite’s times) from a new Czech based game studio. Next year I visited and I watched GDS conferences. After the Kickstarter campaign I became a real fan . I watched video updates and I read most of the news about the game. But to be honest, I never imagined I could work there. Being a game developer is kind of a dream job, like dustman, cosmonaut, or a train driver, but large games are developed mainly in C++, which is not my cup of tea.
2 years ago, I was looking for a new job and saw a Facebook post of my green-bearded university colleague, Viktor Podhajecký, who was also working there. They were looking for a WPF/.NET developer asap. So here I am.

3) Describe your position. What is it about being a programmer.
I am responsible for Skald, our in-house design software. It’s used widely by our designers for writing game quests with branched dialogues. Quest document contains several parts: gameplays, dialogues, and cutscenes. Based on the gameplay, the scripters try to set up the game in game editor and also set various properties to each dialogue branches (eg. Entry conditions, objectives…). Our cinematics guys take the cutscene parts and use it like screenplay for the scene. The actors record responses automatically generated for each voice, based on roles set in dialogues.
Testers need to know the quest content, to test all the possible outcomes. There is also a database of roles, characters, locations, items, voices, etc… with statistics (usage in quests, association). The graphics department uses a build-in map of game objects (houses, NPCs, stashes, rivers etc…). Then I participate in automated profiling - download current game builds for each platform (PC,XB1,PS4), set them up, run a variety of tests (performance, memory, graphic stress), proceed them and visualize it on the web.

4) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
No, it’s my debut in the game industry. But I used to have a job at a similar position in the company doing thermal vision.

5) Which job would you not want to do?
QA, as mentioned by another colleague before, it is not as fun as it looks. I don’t think I would like the game after a whole day of repeating the same quest(s), or parts of it.

6) Please describe Warhorse Studios:
Like a ZOO, there are so many professions, both technical and artistic kinds. Even the offices are thematical - somewhere there is dark, somewhere there is sultry and light and somewhere there is a funny smell. I love the ZOOs

7) Please describe one of your colleagues or your department:
I sit in the AI department, one of the smaller offices. The AI programmers are in the minority. There are also sound department guys, 1 “common” programmer and 1 – one-man so-called Skald department.

8) What is your favorite team activity?
Beer drinking in a pub (sometimes Kontušovka included ), summer grill parties, and of course, our annual team building on the Malešov fortress, where all the weird stuff happen to me.

9) Describe your usual day at the studio?
In the morning, I check the mail for news, newly assigned bugs or not completely recorded sessions to delete from the database. Next, I check automatic profiling results and failures. When everything goes well, I can implement new features to Skald or polish old ones by current needs. I’m also validating translations and voiceovers directly in our database, because the quests are often edited, translated, and recorded simultaneously, which can break our usual pipeline.

10) What are you currently working on?
Diff/merge quests. We need to merge our release database branches back to the main branch. Because the dialogues have a tree structure, it’s not just a simple row-to-row comparison.

11) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
I have made Skald usable, fast, and user friendly (a little )

12) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
It’s easy to repeat our strong aspects, such as realistic graphics (it’s like home, no need to visit real life forest anymore). It has a great story with various choises to make in the game. KCD aslso has advanced world mechanics, which will be fun to break in repetitive gameplay.

13) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
My childhood was quite computer-free. The first game, I remember, was VLAK (train in Czech). I played in my primary school computer classes, when I was like 7 years old. Do you remember the sound when the train crashed? Later, we bought the Famiclone and played NES hits like Super Mario, Contra, Super Tank, and 999+ (in one) other games.

14) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
Mage, or archer, long range. Hit, run, and drink a potion at once. I prefer a female character, at least for the 3rd person games - it’s more pleasant to watch.

15) Which videogame character are you?
Snorlax… a wild Snorlax appears.

16) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
Gothic series, Gothic 2 especially. A believable compact world, with lot of stashes and details.
GTA:Vice City - 80’s radio playlist, neons, an appropriate amount of content compared to following GTA:SA.

17) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
A complex, story-based RPG game with cooperative multiplayer (not the MMORPGs). I believe there is nothing like it.

18) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
I saw one of the funniest bugs last month in out automated profiling (because the video is also recorded). In one of the test scenarios, the Oktoberfest NPCs sat on their asses like dog with worms and moved like sledge hockey players on meth.

19) What game have you been really looking forward to but turned out to be a total disappointment?
As I mentioned above, I’m a Gothic fan, so my biggest disappointment was the Gothic 4/Arcania. It a wasn’t true ancestor at all, just a simple clicking festival.

20) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Music, movies, TV series, pubs.

21) A personal story?
Did I mention, my name is Martin Šourek, and šourek means scrotum in the Czech language? With my calculations, it makes me possibly the greatest scrotum in the whole world.

22) Your favorite music or Spotify playlist
Almost everything. I don’t use Spotify playlists, just shuffle on all songs. If you like details, check my last.fm profile (last.fm/user/shurin).

23) Your favorite movie or book?
American 80’s action movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Book reading makes me sleep, so the only things I have in my Kindle are the comic books (Čtyřlístek collection currently).

24) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
I’m not a fan of healthy food, so you can lease me with candy, but if you want to buy me, try kebab or a baguette.

26) You have to fight in medieval times… who are you?
Bard, articulacy, and caution rule the world of muscles.

27) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
A large RPG is like a 10,000 piece puzzle image of a calm ocean and azure sky: not so easy to finish, but the results are worth it. So don’t speed up the hype train, but don’t slow it down either.

Do you want to know more about Martin “Šouris” Šourek? Just ask here!

DrFusselpulli · May 10, 2017, 11:30am

Here are the answers from Martin “Šouris” Šourek to your community questions.

Thanks for the tip

It was JR’s Secret Santa gift, but he didn’t want to wear them, so I had to try it, because, yes, I enjoy wearing trendy swimsuits and showing my baroque body and scaring/amusing colleagues as well

Check these videos, they are over a year+ old, but you can make a picture.

CZ

EN

You just named the variants, we discuss. But there are lot of hardcoded things in the application and database, to be changed to make it generally usable. So someday, I hope, there will be some kind of public release.

Yes, but there are some advantages:
1) No colleagues, no communication errors and hidden fuckups.
2) All users are my testers. No beta/stable version, one current version for everyone can be published immediately after change/fix
3) All data are stored in database, which is exported during game build process, so it is quite interfered from the game changes.

Sure, consoles are basically mainstream PCs from 2014, so current PCs can run faster or/and with better details. The game is developed primary on PCs, so we are profiling PCs mainly for the reference to the console results.

I hope so, but not sure, we are collecting them systematically.

DrFusselpulli · June 30, 2017, 1:56pm

Jiří “J.R.” Rýdl was born in Prague in the Czech Republic and joined Warhorse shortliy after the Kickstarter campaign in the beginning of 2014. As a marketing manager he takes care about a lot of community work in the background, like the database of backers, the production of the physical items. And many more. Do you have any questions to Jiří “J.R.” Rýdl? Please ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
In the morning, I am standing in front of the coffee machine and in the afternoon, I am sitting next to Tobi’s shop. From time-to-time you can’t find me at all, because I am talking to journalists about E3 or having a beer with fans at Battle of Libusin where we will be this saturday.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I worked with Martin Klima for ALTAR games a few years ago and it was him who contacted me when the Kickstarter campaign had started. I was first assigned to answering hundreds of questions from the fans all around the world.

3) Describe your position. What is it about being a marketing guy?
My task is to take care of the backers, community, and business partners.

4) Describe your usual day at the studio?
Checking the twitter feed on the way to office, reading through emails in the morning, having a meeting with colleagues about the box cover/trailer or incoming event, going for lunch, having a cup of coffee with a famous Czech artist about production of the statues for the collector’s edition, reading through media campaign plans in the afternoon, and updating our website with current screenshots in the evening. It is changing pretty much every day and now in May we are preparing for our E3 presentation.

5) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
I’ve worked with several teams on several games already, which is always fun! Sometimes, I’ve worked with a company throughout the entire project like ALTAR, I’ve worked on advertising campaigns, I organized events for IDEA games distributor, I was responsible for creating the website for UFO: Aftermath and Aftershock games, I presented the first ArmA at E3, and I was also behind the community port of Fish Fillets to Linux.

6) Which job would you not want to do?
Telling fans the bad news. No one likes the bad news and that makes me sad.

7) What are you currently working on?
Planning our presence at the event Battle of Libusin in Czech republic, where we go together with Pivovar Malesov, our exclusive producer of KC:D beer sets. We plan to meet our fans face-to-face, drink some beer and give away some posters. Looking forward to it!

8) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Actually, backer rewards production is a huge project and together with my colleague Josef we were working on the pre-production for a few months now, doing everything to fulfill the backers’ expectations. Another big task ahead of us is to gather addresses from all the physical backers, so we will be able to deliver the rewards to them. If you are not registered on our website yet, please do!

9) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
The community is great and supportive; it is very pleasant to meet the backers face-to-face at the gaming events or even on the street. I like to talk to them and hear how they are looking forward the game; that is great. Thank you!

10) How, when and with what platformor game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
I started with games like Arcanoid with my friends on Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Giana Sisters on my first computer (Commodore C64), or Leisure Suit Larry on PC. I am pretty old ;-]

11) What was your most touching video game moment?
I was quite sad when I died in Red Dead Redemption.

12) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
I spend a lot of time with Master Chief in the Halo series, including the first strategy game. He is definitely someone I would like to meet in the pub.

13) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
In case of fantasy RPG I am usually ranger class, sometimes woman, but usually man. Warriors are too repetitive, wizards too weak, especially from the beginning, so I pick someone in the middle, able to use both magic and sword.

14) Which videogame character are you?
I see myself as mix of Lara Croft and Alan Wake, but my friends say that I look like Gordon Freeman!

15) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
A game that plays itself!

16) Your favorite music playlist
Metallica, Prodigy, Nine Inch Nails, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machines, Linking Park, Korn, Garbage, Nirvana, Deftones, Alice in Chains, Faith No More, the list goes on …

17) Your travel tip?
Prague is beautiful city and when you are in the Czech Republic, you can visit the Sazava Monastery!

18) Sport is:…
I used to play NHL and FIFA on Xbox, but I don’t have much time now :-]

19) What’s your guilty pleasure?
Watching action B-movies from the 80ties.

20) What was your greatest mistake?
Waiting rather long for the best time to have children.

21) Do you have a Bucket List?
I don’t plan till the death; I have some short-term plans (finishing the bookshelf in the living room, finding a proper school for my second daughter) and mid-term plans (pay the debts to the bank, rebuild the garden). I am quite a happy guy who fulfilled his dreams already - I have a great family and kids.

22) What will be your famous last words?
No.

23) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Definitely.

24) What is your kryptonite?
Stupid people.

25) What was your favorite subject and your most hated one at school? What were your grades in history?
I was keen on history and literature. I had all the grades you can imagine, sometimes better, sometimes worse. I was able to learn something if I had to.

26) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
I am looking forward to meeting you all at the Battle Libusin event, and of course, later on at the events all around the world! If you say the secret password, I can give you a poster :-]

And many more. Do you have any questions to Jiří “J.R.” Rýdl? Just ask here.

DrFusselpulli · May 3, 2017, 1:12pm

@Vojtroslav had a question for @WH_JiriRydl in the the barrel of questions:

Yes sure, but only in a small window.

DrFusselpulli · May 12, 2017, 4:07pm

Conor Doyle is one of the Animators in our team. As such he is working on cutscenes and ingame animations to make the game as lifelike and immersive as possible. He was born in Dublin in Ireland and Joined Warhorse Studios not long ago in January 2017.
Do you have any questions to Conor Doyle? Just ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
I’m quite boring, 9 times out of 10 I’m at my desk.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I heard about Kingdom Come shortly before moving to Prague, it came up in conversation usually if me and my friends were talking about kick started games.
At the time, I was working for Bohemia Interactive (Arma 3, Apex) when I was contacted by warhorse. During then I was mid-way thought a project but once it ended I remembered there offer. Warhorse interested me more than realistic shooters as I’m more of an RPG fantasy fan. Since I contacted them I have been lucky enough to join the team, that was 5 months ago. Since then I have worked on some really cool bits of work.

3) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
I studied computer games animation at Teesside University and luckily while I was there I was able to help out a few projects mostly for short films and smaller projects. But since leaving I have built up quite a back log of work, I have worked on projects like Arma 3 Apex, a few unreleased games, Films/Documentary’s and helped out other games like Battlegrounds & Project cars 2.

4) Which job would you not want to do?
Programmer, what they do is black magic. I tried my hand at it before but I have more of an artistic mindset and get lost easily if you drop numbers or a new language on me, I would like to learn Python at one point. Mostly to make some of the more tedious parts of animation easier where possible.

5) What are you currently working on?
My main tasks at the moment are cleaning up and polishing cinematics, I also create a few in-game animations where needed. I usually get cinematics that are just taken from the raw motion capture and placed where the cut scene designers want it. From there I start clean up and making the animation look good, to fit within the shot/frame and make sure everything is happening as it should.

6) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
My first gaming experience that I fell in love with was Baldur’s gate, I had played others before then but what drew me in was the freedom, the story and the roleplay. Since then it has always been my style of game, to the point that I run my own D&D games quite often for my friends, It also got me interested in games like Kingdome come.

7) What was your most touching video game moment?
One that always sticks with me was playing Dragon age 2, there was an elf character (Merrill) I didn’t like her that much and found it fun to not allow her to do anything, at one point we had gotten into a fight and I thought it would turn into a proper fight or she would leave the party, but what I really was not expecting was a cut scene to play (Sex scene) and it lead to us getting married and moving in together. I was in a fit of laughter after that for far too long to the point I was in pain.

8) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
I actually try to branch out a bit. I like to roleplay my characters so I mostly pick male, but when it comes to class I try to mix it up, if I pick a sorcerer this time next time I’ll pick a paladin. I do tent to lean towards magic casters but sometimes hitting something with a big cub is just as fun. ( I tent to develop the motivation, hardships and challenges the character needs to overcome more then what lass I’m playing) Saying that, I’m using D&D as my main example and usually I’m the one stuck DMing

9) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
There have been a few, I guess the first I played multiple times was Neverwinter knights.
Since then I think the one I finished the most was Dark Souls or Bloodborne.

10) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
At the moment. Krave Maga or persona 5. if I have the energy and time to plan, coming up with D&D games, Cosplay or LARPing.

11) Your favorite music playlist
I’m not that varied. I like Industrial, Metal (ish) and then I have a few odd ones out like Dido and Beethoven

12) What species is your spirit animal?
I want to say platypus as I have a feeling no one ever picks them. Platypuses need love to. If not is dragon an exemptible answer?

13) What was your greatest mistake?
Not taking over the world while I had the chance…

14) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Yes (Short answer) but I would be tempted to stab you for saying candy, I also ask you nicely not to tempt me, I am Diabetic.

15) What is your kryptonite?
Surprisingly it actually is Kryptonite….

16) How do you like living in the Czech Republic?
Prague is the nicest place I have ever lived. people are nice and life is easy. But I do miss having native English speaks around more.

17) What was your favorite subject and your most hated one at school?
Dose all of school count, I dropped out to do only Interactive media study’s. I liked history, I had I nice teacher, but Irish history is really boring. Or the way he thought it was. Grades…… don’t think I sat enough tests to get a grade.

18) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Always be yourself. Unless you can be batman, then be batman

Do you want to know about Conor Doyle or his job here at Warhorse? Please ask here.

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:25pm

Conor Doyle answered your community questions:

At the moment, I know there are animations for swinging swords from horseback. Fighting on horseback will be possible, but it will be a bit simpler than primary planned.

There are animations for pulling people off horseback. It will be possible, yes.

Only bows for now. I would like to add crossbows or slings if we have time.

Sadly no. it’s a nice idea but hard to implement.

Probably a terrible one.

Personally no. we have an animator on the team Jiri Sejvl who is amazing at making them look realistic. I use his animations to add to cut scenes.

Animal animations are quite hard to get looking right. Mocap allows you to capture people nearly perfectly and getting animals looking as good is a really big challenge, in my books.

No we do not.

The main program I use in Motion Builder, I can use 3Ds Max and Maya as well. But Motion Builder is best for Motion Capture.

I cannot speak a word of czeck, I tried for a few months but it’s hard and would take years. Hell I still have problems with English.

DrFusselpulli · May 12, 2017, 4:14pm

Senior Programmer Michal Bartoň is one of the experienced Warhorse Studios veterans, who is beeing a member of the team from the early beginning of the project. He was born in Nový Jičín, a middle size city near Ostrava in the Czech republic.
Now he is one of the developers who is responsible for the console port onto PS4.
Do you have any questions to Michal Bartoň or his work? Please ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
This may be a bit tricky to answer. You’d expect to find me in a programmer’s room but if you tried to find me there, you would probably be disappointed. Most of the day I’m usually lurking next to someone else’s desk, helping to solve their troubles. When I come back there are often several people looking for me already so I have to sneak around to the kitchen or toilet if I need to get one more minute of peace.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
It was like 5-and-a-half years ago (“wow, is it really 5 years already?”). I was working with Dan Vavra and several others on Mafia II. After we finished some DLC’s and started working on Mafia III, there were some rumors going around that Dan was about to start a new project and he happens to be looking for programmers. I didn’t hesitate too long. I went to see Martin Klima in our old offices and everything looked so cool that I quit my job the same month and spent my whole underspent vacation working for Warhorse. Then we had to choose the engine we were going to use for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which was a really challenging job.

3) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
As previously mentioned, I worked with 2K Czech on Mafia II and many others before Warhorse. I joined the team in the middle of the Mafia II project when they needed someone to help with 3DMax export tools. Then I moved into the core tech team and helped with port to PS3 and Xbox 360. After I finished MII we were working in small teams on DLC called “Jimmy’s Vendeta,” while others were helping with Top Spin 3.

4) What is your favorite team activity?
I enjoy team yachting on a near reservoir called Orlík. There is only one rule: what happens on the boat stays on the boat”.

5) What are you currently working on?
Lately we’re all working hard on getting the game to be released It involves mostly code optimizations and bugs fixing. Besides that, I take care of the PlayStation 4 console build. For those of you who don’t know, there is a big list of technical requirements (we call them TCR’s) from Sony. As soon as we think we have our game ready to be released, we send it to Sony first, they test each TCR (every one of them), and only if we pass, they’ll approve our game and we can start making Blu-Ray Disks.

Some of them are really easy to accomplish and we do those things anyway for the PC version as well. Some others are still easy but PS4 specific so additional work is required. For example, there is one I never noticed when I played a game on PS4 before but there aren’t any PS4 games that have a “quit” menu option, which is normal for all PC games. So we had to remove all exit menus.

The last group of TCR’s are the worst. They are completely PS4 specific and they’re very hard to implement into the final game if you haven’t designed the game for it. Like, there is a requirement which lets you play the game for at least one hour before you finish installing the game. It means there has to be some game content available before all data are installed or even downloaded into the console. This was really tricky for our game with an open world where we don’t restrict the player to stay in one specific location. We have almost created another small game, which you would have to play before we let you into the open world. Anything else related to this is classified so I cannot go into much detail here and you’ll have to wait and see for yourself.

6) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
One of my first tasks for Warhorse was to create a dialog module for the game. As you might have already seen in some other posts or in Dan Vavra’s talks, we have a pretty complicated dialog writing tool in place. There are thousands of dialogs written with several thousand lines. We have a living world with NPC’s doing theirs daily routines and everybody can talk to you about something. It would be impossible to write dialogs for each NPC separately, since there are a number of topics that almost everybody can talk with you about. We did extensive research among other open world games and we have concluded that the one used in Skyrim had a really good approach but it was too complicated for us. So we started from scratch and built our own dialog system based on principles from Skyrim. This means that when designer writes a new dialog he writes it for a specific role in the game. A role can be totally generic like a female NPC to a completely specific role like Henry, for example. Then we assign roles to NPC’s dynamically as the game goes on. For example, a guy working in the shop knows how to sell things just by getting assigned a salesman role, as he will inherit this behavior. This allows us to create an immersive living environment.

7) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
I was fascinated by videogames from the beginning. It means I’m too old because I remember the oldest videogames. Unfortunately, our family wasn’t rich enough to buy me a computer or any gaming device so we had to play on our friend’s computer right after school or occasionally, we went to the arcades. One of my favorite arcade games was Mortal Kombat. I mastered that really quickly and I even remember most of the fatalities!

8) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
I always try to pick the most overpowered ones. I hate losing so anything that is good for my team. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tank or a healer, as long it leads our team to victory

9) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
I’m a multiplayer guy only so there is not many single player games I’m returning to. But every time I see Transport Tycoon somewhere I cannot resist to make some good old virtual dollars. Now it’s even easier when one can play this super game on mobile as well.

10) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Relax? What is that? Our work on Kingdom Come is not done so we are not allowed to relax. We have a strong commitment to our backers and the game is not going to finish itself. But I like to relax with a cup of good coffee between compilations.

11) Your travel tip?
Yeah, I love to travel. I hope we finish the game soon so I can travel again. I love scuba diving, so I really recommend Thailand or other Asian islands like Bali. Maldives are also beautiful. I’ve also been around Europe and I love Northern Europe such as Scandinavia – it’s very beautiful.

12) What’s your guilty pleasure?
It has always been a chocolate!

13) What will be your famous last words?
“This bugfix does not break anything!”

14) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Nah, not really. I don’t like sweet stuff but you can buy me with good meat.

15) How do you like living in the Czech Republic?
Currently, I think Czech Republic is best place to live in Europe. We are in the middle so it is close to everywhere north as well as south. Prices here are still reasonable in comparison with western Europe, so we are still capable of buying and owning houses. People here are friendly and the weather is always in good balance, which means we have the same number of cold days and warm days. And of course, we have a really nice nature here.

16) Imagine you are a cake, what kind of cake are you and why?
I’m always on the latest version of cake so currently, I’m Nougat.

17) Which is your favorite historic event?
I guess my date of birth is my favorite. I celebrate this event every year and a lot of people are coming to visit the place where this historical moment happened.

18) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
I don’t want to spoil anything here but sometimes I get to play parts of the game to track a bug or reproduce strange behavior and I catch myself really enjoying it. Often I lose track of what my first intention was and I start exploring the city or the surroundings. What we have created here is a unique medieval experience and I hope that the wait will be worth it.

Do you want to know more about Michal Bartoň?Just ask here.

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:10pm

And now it is time for Michal Bartoň to answer your community questions

We are not 100% sure yet. But there definitely will be higher resolution or better graphics quality settings but the game itself have to be equal to base version.

As I pointed out in my answers we managed to pass this criterion without additional content. But please keep in mind that Xbox have similar prerequisite.

We will not. You can go as fast as you can and we managed to have content ready to play. We might disable game load as you might be able to jump too much forward.

TCR is never-ending process. We have completed every one that we could at this point. Then there are others which we cannot complete yet since we don’t have some related game features in place. We will continue working on those as soon as possible.

Haven’t count them but we started with just two but now there are several other PS4 Pro kits along with several test kits.

You will see about it in some future weekly torch

We are not VR game genre, whatsoever and I would not recommend using this type of game in VR if you have any weakness for simulation sickness.

We are using standard PS4 trophy API as others. No additional menus.

Yes!

I’m afraid this is really complicated. Any game modification has to be approved by Sony. But we can always make free DLC from any good mode created for PC.

Not sure what is your question but we managed to fit into memory and we still working on improving our memory footprint.

It’s hard to say. Each console has its good and bad things. I guess the tools were better on Xbox but PS4 is catching up recently. PS4 is also more different from PC hardware so there is more work to be done. There is nothing major to complain about though.

Yes, you can already pre-order it on some online shops like Amazon for example. There are also other shops which you could try. But the Beta is for PC only, and it only available for our supporters on Kickstarter and on our homepage.
A pre-Order for console on our homepage is not possible.

If you already own one of the Kickstarter Tiers of Baron Level or higher, please wait for more details. This is a different category.

DrFusselpulli · July 19, 2017, 9:35am

Alisa Zavodina was born in the city of Almaty in Kazakhstan and joined Warhorse Studios in late 2015 as a tester for the quality assurance departement. Recently she switched to the scritping team because of her interrest in technical design.
Do you have questions for Alisa Zavodina and her position at Warhorse? Just ask here.
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
During my time in QA, I could normally be seen running around the studio with an axe and chasing colleagues, who usually vanished when they noticed me carrying another bug in their direction. Now that I’m on the other side of the field doing script programming, I can squash a few of them (bugs, not colleagues) myself.

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I heard about Warhorse from my friend whose husband works with us as a Character Artist. She knew about my passion for being a gamedev and she helped me push myself over the edge in making a decision, for which I’m forever grateful.

3) Describe your position. What is it about being a Scripter?
Being a script programmer means bringing the designers’ work to life. We put together the works of other departments - design, animations, functional details, etc. We use our tools to liven up the world, fill it with up NPCs, wildlife, and we aid designers in their quest duties. Afterwards, we work on the quests and then we give the quests some more touch until all of them are crafted and polished.

4) Please describe Warhorse Studios:
The atmosphere at Warhorse differs massively from the other engagements I’ve been a part of. It’s much less formal and much more friendlier; people are always there for you. There’s little to no competition between us as we all strive for a common goal, which is to polish the game. As a result, we’re no strangers to spontaneous after-work beers or outside activities as a team.

5) What is your favorite team activity?
I’m all about running and shooting (Lasergame), racing (karts, small cars at Matejska pout… or Rocket League) and of course I enjoy movie evenings with the team quite a lot.

6) What are you currently working on?
As of now I’m involved in livening up the game world, specifically providing jobs, food, and places to rest for our dear NPCs. Each house should have a certain set of content to suit the NPC’s needs and the workplaces should be equipped accordingly (i.e. a farmer’s got to have a hoe and a field to work). After a busy day, each NPC enjoys a particular hobby, that, in its turn, requires specific objects, and it’s part of my job to keep the stock full.

7) What was your most touching video game moment?
All of these moments happened during the completion of the Sleeping Dogs’ story. I’ve never been affected by a game as much as I have with this one. Someday I’ll play it through it once more.

8) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
Dante of DMC: his charisma and big mouth always deliver.

9) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
As a kid, I’ve replayed Dune 2 - The Battle for Arrakis on Sega Mega Drive as House Harkonnen multiple times, then it got replaced by HoMM. I’m also a big fan of Devil May Cry and on an unpopular note, I’ve played the 5th game the most (and discovered Combichrist). Having rather warm feelings for the Bioware universe, I’ve also completed Dragon Age quite a few times.

10) What game have you been really looking forward to but turned out to be a total disappointment?
I had big expectations for Prototype 2, but since they’ve turned Alex Mercer into antagonist, I was too disappointed to even give it a shot.

11) Your favorite music playlist
Metal, metal and more metal of all kinds, especially live. Otherwise I’m attracted to various genres as long as it rocks me.

12) Your favorite movie or book?
That’s a tough one as I’ve been influenced by many books. George Orwell’s 1984, Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Stephen King’s The Running man are definitely there. My favorite movies are book-based too - Palahniuk’s The Fight Club by David Fincher and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Miloš Forman. Like many, I’m a big fan of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, Pulp Fiction in particular. I never grow tired of watching it.

13) Your travel tip?
China. Marvelous country, ancient history, tons of sightseeing and on the other hand, a lot of hi-end decisions and scientific research. And if you’re into good food, this place has it all as each of China’s numerous regions has its own cuisine, the common thing being both quality and quantity. The nature’s something else, I mean, the country has karst hills, so what else could you possibly want?

14) What will be your famous last words?
I live, I die, I live again!

15) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
You can only buy me with meat.

16) Who is your favorite historic character?
Sir Winston Churchill was not just one of the history’s most prominent minds in terms of politics and military strategy, he was also a true intellectual genius. Nikola Tesla’s another brilliant man - a mind so revolutionary for its time that he was considered insane,. That’s the brain I’d love to pick.

17) Knights or Samurai?
Vikings!

18) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
We’re trying our darndest to make this a truly interesting and remarkable game and we really do put our heart and soul into making it just that. I hope in KCD you’ll find another realm you’ll be glad to return to.

Do you have more questions for Alisa Zavodina? Just ask here.

DrFusselpulli · May 25, 2017, 12:39pm

And here are Alisa Zavodina´s answers to your community questions.

I’ve lived here before I started working in WH.

there will be some dice game in the pubs.

Nope, but I played Alpha/Beta in WH.

You will see it in the game

Yes, and this mini game is great.

There are no random quests. We are trying to limit filler content as much as possible. All quests are hand crafted. But in the game are random events, for example, you can be attacked by bandits or you can investigate a murder.

There is one achievement where you have to find all the names of the higher kickstarter backers that we have in our game.

This is some debug for beds, benches etc. If it’s not working (or not correctly) – sheep is spawned on this place.