Warhorse Studios Weekly Torch

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.

DrFusselpulli · July 19, 2017, 9:24am

Petr “Hudy” Hudeček is one of the newest members of Warhorse Studios, as he joined the team just recently in April 2017 as a tester for the quality assurance departement. He was born in Brno, in the east of the Czech Republic. But now he is here in Prague and helps to make Kingdom Come: Deliverance a better game.
Do you have any questions for Petr “Hudy” Hudeček or his position as a tester? Just ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I first heard about Warhorse soon after its successful Kickstarter campaign. It caught my attention for its uniqueness. I‘ve been working for Warhorse since April 2017, so I’m one of the latest additions to the team. There is of course a less fancy name for it.

2) Describe your position. What is it about being a quality assurance?
I’m helping my colleagues to identify and eliminate problems in the game so we can deliver the highest quality product possible.

3) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
I’ve created a few custom-made games for my friends so to be honest……no, not really.

4) Which job would you not want to do?
There is no such job. Any job you do can branch you out in a spectacular way. However, I know what I would love to do: design the whole concept of the game – gameplay, business model, monetarization, message to the players, etc.

5) Describe your usual day at the studio?
If possible, I start my day by dishing out offensive jokes towards Luboš Suk or Prokop Filcík. Afterwards, I start downloading new data while waiting for their sweet revenge. After that, I’m looking for problems in the game that might downgrade player’s experience. Part of the job is to analyze the reasons behind it and then see who the problem(s) should be reported to. It takes a lot of time and focus, but whenever I have some spare time, I’m of course inventing new offensive jokes towards Prokop and Luboš.

6) What are you currently working on?
Currently I’m working on E3 content, which brings both great fun and responsibility. Most of the E3 content is part of the main story (without spoiling anything major, of course). Besides that, I’m working on the crime system, ambush events, and several quests.
I like how the perception of NPCs in the crime system works, especially when you are trespassing into someone’s property. You can sneak through their backyard without being noticed, but if you’re not careful enough, they will come after you and hunt you down.

7) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
The whole package. It’s either that or nothing, as it always should be.

8) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
For me it’s almost all Bioware characters. I also love the Mass Effect series’ characters and Star Wars’ characters, how they ask the right questions and create emotional relations. The BEST one would probably be Kreia - she knew how to open one’s eyes. She made me realize how naive I can be about consequences and assumptions. It was the perfect thing to teach a young growing boy like me.

9) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
The most fun of course. I’m open minded about it, but it depends on the gameplay. However, if I have the chance to play a supportive character, even in a small way, I usually take the opportunity to do so.

10) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
No matter what I do, somehow I always end up playing SWTOR and LoL. I’m intensively trying to analyze why.

11) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
I believe I will bring that bad boy to life one day. For now, I have my own fails to make. I can reveal that it will create a new genre, but it is all a work in progress. A second best game would be described in the world-renowned book: Ready Player One. I’ve never felt so passionate about the gaming world before. Ernest Cline created and described something very unique there.

12) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
Definitely something in KCD. Funny things happen during game development.

13) What game have you been really looking forward to but turned out to be a total disappointment?
Atlas Reactor. Information from developers was non consistent with the game itself. It was really a great idea that was badly executed, and the tutorial didn’t help much.

14) What species is your spirit animal?
Panda

15) Your travel tip?
Decide to go, then make the first step.

16) What’s your guilty pleasure?
Nutella, Lotus biscuits, peanut butter and chips.

17) What will be your famous last words?
Oh! So I was wrong again, I guess.

18) What is your kryptonite?
Nutella, Lotus biscuits, peanut butter and chips. I’m so weak around it.

19) Which is your favorite historic event?
Hannibal Barca’s campaign against the Roman Empire. Everyone in business should know his story.

20) If you could fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck, which would you choose?
Fight them? I would befriend them! That would be the ultimate badass achievement.

21) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Brace yourself! Its coming.

Do you want to know more about our tester Petr “Hudy” Hudeček? Please ask here!

DrFusselpulli · May 31, 2017, 4:12pm

here are Petr “Hudy” Hudečeks answers to your community questions.

I find it difficult to admire people as idols. I always try to question everything and everyone. Including myself. I would do some things differently, but who am I to judge right now? You guys will be the judges that matter.

No I haven’t. I had general idea about the game from youtube, but that’s all.

In one word: inconsistency. But it’s improving.

Not to spoil too much, I can say that NPC reacts to noises in a way and dogs can be soothed right now.

Haven’t seen it yet, but I will definitely give it a go!

Oh yeah! Yeah! Lovely babes are all over me… begging for my attention, guys ask me what is it like to be so important! That’s a NO by the way.

That is interesting theory. But more important question is: why are you asking?

I haven’t spent that much time with everyone to tell. But I can say this. Ending of every project is hard. It’s not always sunshine and butterflies, but it definitely isn’t “just a job”.

DrFusselpulli · July 19, 2017, 9:14am

Jan “Bodkin” Němec is one of the designers here at Warhorse Studios, and his crazy mind makes for very interesting quests. He was born in Kyjov, in the southern Moravian part of the Czech Republic.
Do you have any questions for Jan “Bodkin” Němec or his position as a tester? Just ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I can’t remember when I heard about Warhorse for the first time, but I do remember that I said something like, “Fuck, I wanted to make an RPG about the Hussite Wars!” Sometime later, Warhorse was looking for Designers and I was looking for work… just a simple destiny thing. As they say, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’
A few years later I joined the studio just two months before the Kickstarter…

2) Have you ever worked on Videogames before?
Yeah, back in the DOS times, I once opened Gorillas small QBASIC game, deleted one line of code and never made it work again.
In the early 2000s I was part of a team behind a game which was very popular with teenage boys.
Around 2009 I started to work on Roguelike to end all Roguelikes, as it never saw the light of day.

3) What are you currently working on?
Nowadays I am trying to play my quest, squash bugs, add moods, rewrite logs and weep silently.

4) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
There is one sentence I am really proud of.

5) What is most difficult in designing a quest?
To know where to stop. Or better yet, to find the right balance between over-designing and under-designing the quest. It’s too easy to add so much cool stuff that it is not actually possible to make it work together (or test every possible fringe situation) and it is too easy to miss an obvious solution, because you already have 3 and it is more than enough.
The other super hard thing is actually finishing the quest. The beginning is all fun and roses and beer (or other alcohol), but then the reality sets in and you start throwing out things that don’t work (but you loved that idea so much) and it’s not fun to play, it looks stupid, and it breaks your heart and you start to detest it sooo much, that you want to take the quest behind the barn and finally end its suffering. Furthermore, everything is your fault, it was your stupid idea!

6) Do you have a favorite quest?
My favorite quest is one where you can solve everything by just punching people in the face. Yeah, you can also solve it by other means, but this had a great feel of a stupid 80’s action movie.

7) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
In the early 90’s, I remember playing Captain Comic, Cosmo, Prince of Persia, and Crime Wave at my uncle’s computer. Later, Prince of Persia was the first game I played on my first computer - 386DX/40MHz (Yeah, I’ve been an AMD fanboy my whole life without knowing it…)

8) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
I don’t like class-based systems in my RPGs! And because of the first Baldurs Gate, I absolutely hate magic casters (1 spell, 4 HP, bloody Tarnesh…). Arcanum of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura were the best: you could create elven time-bending sword masters, Half-Ogre Intellectuals, gnomes with grenade launchers, magic throwing dwarfs, and everything in between… VtM: Bloodlines and old fallouts too had fun systems.

9) Which videogame character are you?
Duke Nukem. I too have balls of steel. Childhood accident.

10) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
Does this count?

11) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
Nowadays it’s a rare occurrence, as I am wasting time with MP games and roguelikes, but I’ve played through the first Deus Ex several times and my play-through count of Fallout1&2/Arcanum goes into the dozens.

12) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
Far Cry 2 (or Metal Gear Solid V) mixed with Jagged Alliance 2, gently stirred with a pinch of simulation.

13) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
If my work day was creative, I’ll play games (MP shooters, Strategies, RPGs and roguelikes) or I’ll read a book (Scifi or Horror). If I didn’t reach my creative satisfaction, I’ll write short stories or short comic scripts or things like that - something that is finished in one go or in a day or two…

14) Your favorite movie or book?
Books: Terror by Simmons, Dune by Herbert and the Hussite Trilogy by Sapkowski
Movies: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Snatch, and Kung-fu Hustle

15) What’s your guilty pleasure?
Jaywalking, lollygagging, and infanticide. (Also reading TV Tropes)

16) What is your kryptonite?
UV radiation - I’ll burn to a crisp.

17) What is your weakest trait?
My attention span is that of a hyperactive kitten and the memory of a goldfish with Alzheimers.
Also, written English…

18) Which is your favorite historic event?
That is quite a hard question, as History is full of interesting/mind-blowing things. I’d say that the burning down of the library in Alexandria is my favorite (not in a positive way but as a warning and it makes me really angry).
Also, it could be, as we Czech says: “Pořádný fajrák.”

19) Knights or Samurai?
Pirate actually. Pirates, Vikings and Knights was a great HL mod.

20) Jan was a very important name in Czech History, Jan Hus, Jan Žižka, Jan Nepomucký. How do you feel being part of this tradition?
This is quite a funny question, because you don’t use Jan in a casual conversation. It is one of those written names that history is full of, but nobody says them aloud. You use the home version of the name or the nickname.

21) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Well, summer is near, the sun is shining so please use protection! I mean it! Also, thank you for your support. I mean that too!

Do you want to know more about our tester Jan “Bodkin” Němec Please ask here!

DrFusselpulli · June 7, 2017, 4:22pm

And here are the answers from Jan “Bodkin” Němec to your community questions.

That ‘bug picture’ is from alpha/beta so no, it is not final

There was a English snippet of Hamlet in a book for literature class and bodkin had a really nice sound when read aloud (yeah, I’ve had no idea what it is, just that it is some handheld tool). And that’s it. I am sorry.

It’s always smart to have protection! But this was around our armor video and I was curious how does it feel to have it all on you. So after 10 minutes I found, that.
a) it is not that heavy,
b) I was dying from overheating.

Some smart pun. I guess. Unless someone else renamed because it was too stupid.

Sometimes there were problems, when I was counting on too many systems working together flawlessly, so it was cut out or simplified.

So there is this quest, with this one guy and when you choose the right answer to his question, he will say it! Sorry

Truth to be told, I was using examples from nearly all of my quests. I did a few mainquests and not-so-few sidequests. I couldn’t write a love story to save my life…

But you can’t write with your gloves on!

Well, I had to change all of my cynophobic NPCs to polephobic.

DrFusselpulli · July 19, 2017, 9:01am

Karel “pan Tau” Taufman is an Animator here at Warhorse Studios. He was born in Hradec Králové here in the Czech Republic. Check out what he has to say.
Do you have any questions to Karel “pan Tau” Taufman or his position? Please ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) Describe your position. What is it about being an animator?
I work at Warhorse Studios as an animator/motion editor, which makes me co-responsible for motion of all characters and props in the game.
Almost all of our animations begin in a mocap studio, where we record actors playing out the required moves or acting out their roles for cutscenes. Although the recordings are very good and mocap itself has become an indispensable tool for any AAA game production, it cannot be used in the game as is.
Animations need to be looped, stitched or blended together, timing-adjusted, gestures enhanced or reduced, body language altered, and interaction with props must be corrected.
A good example from KCD is killing a person in a fight. We can’t really expect the actors to attack each other with deadly force and put mocap swords through their torsos. Actors record the motion as close to the intended result as possible and then the animator makes it look fatal.

As you can see in a photograph nearby, killing with a mocap sword is just not possible. We need to implement a workaround – the animator.

2) What’s the difference between an animator and a motion editor?
A traditional animator is responsible for the character’s motion and its concept from start-to-finish. He or she gets to choose when the character hesitates, what leg she puts the weight on, or how hunched she walks.
Mocap-based animation on the other hand, is a collaboration between a mocap actor and the animator. The better the actor’s performance the less work for the animator.
Sometimes the quality of the actor’s performance may pleasantly surprise you. Details like the blacksmith tossing the hammer into the air for a quick bit before getting to work make the animation more unique and interesting. Sometimes, on the other hand, you end up improving the actor’s performance by adding motion into an otherwise dead spot. In the end nobody knows who created what aspect of the final animation. If I do my work perfectly, everybody thinks the mocap was just that good

3) Is it beneficial to have an in-house mocap studio?
Mocap is a must for any game with a considerable amount of humanoid animation. The majority of game developers cannot afford their own mocap studio, so they need to commission one. Although a common practice, this presents many problems for the workflow in the ever-changing world of computer game development. It is not only about planning the mocap sessions to be as few and economical as possible, it’s also about the distance to a good studio.
At Warhorse the animators are separated from the mocap studio by some 2 meters. It is just across the corridor, which is a blessing. Whenever there is an issue we can quickly record a new motion. There is no ordering process or negotiation slowing us down. We can experiment and spend as much time in the studio as we want.

4) What are some of the difficulties of game animation?
Coming up with interesting motion is getting more and more difficult. In every game we get to see walks, lifting, or dropping items and random gestures during dialogues. The complication is, there just isn’t an infinite number of ways a biped character can pick up an item. Because of that, similar motions turn up not only in games but also in animated children television programs. This puts more stress on work of everyone involved with the recording in a mocap studio.
Technical issues also come into consideration. When the cameras in the studio cannot see the markers (little plastic balls attached to actors and props), no motion can be recorded. I confronted a very bad example of this issue when working on a cutscene, in which our hero finds himself in an intimate situation with a girl. Since both actors recorded the motion with their bodies very close to each other, many markers were hidden from the cameras and the actors’ motion could not be recorded properly. I took up the challenge and hopefully made the animation work. I admit that research for this particular animation was rather peculiar.

5) Is there any part of animator’s job that may be surprising to us?
I don’t know about surprises, but perhaps something that could happen unexpectedly. Being an animator is not only about moving objects by hand; the experience in scripting and programming also comes in handy. Our macro scripts may be as complex as the one depicted on a nearby screenshot.
I used a simpler one for the stone that gets loaded into a trebuchet. Considering the type of motion, it made really no sense to animate the stone by hand, so I used a script to move it along with the character and roll along the ground (trebuchet). It was fast and with a few polishing touches it worked very nicely.

6) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
I started in the gaming industry as a journalist for printed gaming magazines. I got to play games, travel to trade shows, interview game designers, and I was well paid for it. Can you imagine? For a young kid that was a dream come true.
After that I was a game designer, screenwriter, project leader, 2d and 3d artist and animator on forty six games. Until KCD happened, the biggest game I worked heavily on was ArmA III. I also worked as a VFX artist, copywriter, TV commercials writer, and director.

7) Please describe Warhorse Studios.
The atmosphere at Warhorse is very good. Even after so much time spent working on one game, people are still enthusiastic about it. The interaction among colleagues is very pleasant. You don’t see any bullying, mobbing, or bossing going around as it’s been unfortunately reported in some other game development studios today.

8) What are you currently working on?
The whole animation department is currently back at work on cutscenes. We are doing another quality pass that includes (among other things) detailed hand/finger animations and most importantly, facial animations for all characters.
We use an in-house tool to procedurally build basic mouth animation from the dialogues. This is just as great of a help as mocap itself. I used to do such animation by hand only a few years ago, so I would know. There is no ay a game of this magnitude could be accomplished the old way in our lifetime.
After adding procedural mouth animations, we hand tune them in every cutscene. At the same time, we add all facial animation: smiles, frowns, eye movement or blinks. All cutscenes combined take more time than a very long movie, so there is a lot of blinking to add.
The secret to a proper facial animation is subtlety. Sometimes not so much though as you can see in a screenshot nearby. Also in the same screenshot, note our very secret rig for facial animation.

9) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
The first game I played was the first commercially successful game in the world: Pong. At the time, it was only available to me occasionally in traveling arcades. I was instantly hooked on the phenomenon just like all the other kids. Pong had no AI, so you had to find another kid to play against you. Sometimes no one was available so you had to stoop to playing against your sworn enemies! It made the game that more interesting.

10) What was your most touching video game moment?
Probably not what you might expect. It was actually when I animated the hero of “Evil Days of Luckless John” and his girlfriend. After escaping the bad guys in a deadly chase the couple finally got to share a kiss by the sunset. It was very romantic and pretty cheesy and it was the first time my own animation touched me emotionally. I created an illusion of love by moving bones of a character skeleton. It blew me away. I couldn’t wait to see it in the game.
EPILOGUE: There was a mistake in the design and I was asked to reanimate the whole scene for the opposing camera in a fraction of the originally allocated time. Oh well, sigh…
Things like this do happen in game animation though, and you must never take them to heart.

11) What game have you been really looking forward to but turned out to be a total disappointment?
I was a big fan of Ultima RPG series when Ultima IX: Ascension was announced. Considering the grand ending of the preceding Ultima VIII and the subtitle of the game, it promised to be a proud finale to the third trilogy in the series.
Use of a 3d engine in what was previously an isometric game, was supposed to give the player an unprecedented freedom and immersion. That’s in a game series famed for allowing players to mix ingredients and bake their own bread. Not that you had to but you could. Over the development of the game, Origin Systems would release sneak peaks at the prerendered cutscenes that were second-to-none at the time and hinted at a truly epic story.
The development of the game took five long years. In the meantime, with no new Ultima to play, I’d finished all of the series’ MS-DOS/EGA installments. I wrote walkthroughs for them that were printed in the Excalibur magazine along with the maps I drew (you can see one somewhere nearby).
When Ultima IX finally appeared it failed in every department except for the cutscenes.

12) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
I am a very digital person but lately I started to feel a need to create something I could touch with my hands, so I started working with wood. I built my first cabinet only a few weeks ago. Surprisingly it looks good. The door works and most importantly - it does not disappear when the power goes off.
I also write a little bit. In fact, I’ve been writing screenplays for a comic book series for almost fifteen years now. It brought me together with some of the kindest people in the world, so it’s a little treasure in my life.
The real challenge of writing for comics is telling your story with short bursts of text that can fit into the speech balloons. Forget graphomania, you cannot use any fancy sentences and you often find yourself deleting your best dialogue simply because it is too long for the balloons that are available. So writing for comics is definitely not for everyone.

13) Your travel tip?
Anywhere with someone you love. Still, maybe not Mogadishu.

14) What will be your famous last words?
You mean I get to say my last words now?!

15) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Nope. You can try to be a nice person though. That should be enough.

16) What is your kryptonite?
I certainly have one, but you will never know.

17) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
With pleasure: Rictusempra, Tarantallegra, Levicorpus, Rictusempra, Liberacorpus, Molliare, Rennervate, Episkey, Erecto, Aguamenti, Obliviate.

Do you have any questions to Karel “pan Tau” Taufman or his position? Please ask here!

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:06pm

And here are Karel´s answers to your community questions:

Greetings to Thee, Baron Blacksmith. Thank you for your questions.

This is my favorite question in the batch. You could write a thesis on this topic alone. It touches upon animation, game design, programming, hardware and more. Unfortunately I have neither the time nor expertise to give you a deserving answer. Let me try my best.
We have several distinctive animation sets for normal, subordinate, regal etc. characters. These were required by designers and will be used throughout the game. That is why it makes sense to create whole sets of motions for them.
Why only make full sets for selected character types? One reason above all is RAM. Every animation that is being played must be loaded into RAM. That is every motion of every bone in every character on the screen. This is the main reason why all game characters in all games tend to share the same sets of motions. It is also why game characters have so few bones. For example the rat I modeled and rigged for DayZ had a limit of 18 bones only!
Obviously more character variety is needed and it is usually achieved by inserting characters with limited motion sets. For example a beggar who can only beg and react to people passing by in both positive and negative ways.

Technically we can do lipsync for any language. The automatic process that we use is only a start though and there is a huge amount of hand tweaking and polishing. Because of this and because of the very many hours of cutscenes and dialogues, lipsync will be fitting for English only.

Nope, I am only an animator

There is never enough time. Neither in game development nor in life. But I would like to pass the question to Martin Klekner who will be certainly happy to answer in more detail in the next Weekly Torch.

Nice idea, but arm wrestling was never intended to be a mini game and as of now, there are no plans to make it into one.

In the beginning, Warhorse Studios bought some mocaps of a horse. We did it because we needed those motions very fast and also because the horse did not fit through the corridors leading to our mocap studio. I am not joking. There are mocap studios designed specifically to let big animals or vehicles in. This requires a ground floor and an appropriate building. Our mocap studio is on the fifth floor and covers 99.9% of our mocap needs. It is possible to mocap animals though, but it is very difficult especially with those that are not easily trained. Also animals tend to find mocap markers all over their bodies very unnatural and often reject wearing them. Can you imagine attaching mocap markers to a cat? You can find horses tamed enough for that or dogs trained for obedience, but even they may prove quite a challenge in the studio. I know this because I worked with a dog mocap and it was quite unusable. It would work for an episodic character in a movie, but could not be used to create motion loops needed for a game. Currently we animate all animal motion manually in the studio. Even the original horse mocap was heavily altered during the production and there was no other mocap/animation purchase after that.

@savvym has already answered your question correctly, so I will only fill in some details.

Accidentally you ask the right person, because I did the animations for the trebuchet. We now have anims for loading up the rock, pulling down the trebuchet arm and firing; including all the trebuchet motion. They are now at the disposal of designers and scripters to use as they please. As far as I know, the trebuchet will be fired both in a cinematic and by the player and I think it’s been already implemented.

Facial mocap would produce much better results than manual animation of facial rigs, but we don’t use it on purpose. Firstly recording facial mocap and accompanying contact sound and reference video for all of our cinematics and dialogues would require tremendous amount of storage. Mere management of this amount of data would require much more hardware, a lot of additional manpower and time. Secondly, it would take much more time and manpower to polish facial mocap than it takes to animate the rig by hand. In both cases we are talking a difference between a car shop and NASA. That is why facial mocap is so successfully applied in film production but not so often used in computer games. It is about the difference in the amount of data (i.e. animation) that needs to be processed at every stage of production.

Hi! Thank you for your questions and good wishes!

Cumans will play a very important part in the story, which is very unfortunate for our hero.

KCD was designed from the get go with the first person view only in mind. A lot of the production is heavily influenced by that.
For example all the player animations, that we see through the POV cam, were tailored to look as good as possible in the POV cam. The modifications we apply to achieve that often make the animations look unnatural in the 3rd person cam.
If there is a 3rd person mode in the end, it would only be in a form of an Easter egg, but it will not play well.

Hi and thanks for your questions. This is what I’d call the Andromeda effect. One thing is the animation itself, while the way it is used in the game is another thing alltogether. Animators cannot really influence in any way how characters move around the streets or the country. We can do the animation cycles as well as we can, but the motion of characters around the world is totally in the hands of scripters, AI guys and programmers who then combine those animations to create illusion of living beings. You may need to approach them for a more detailed discussion.

Yes there is an awful lot of foot sliding and there is no way around it. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Although again this has nothing to do with the character animation. The reason is Cryengine’s way of interpolating feet between two animations. Instead of going from one pose into another, it sort of interpolates the first anim feet into a kind of default pose and then into the feet of the next anim. Our technical animators would be required for more in-depth explanation.

Perhaps Dan would be better qualified to reply.

Absolutely no bad feelings. Thank you for your time. Best of luck to you too!

Hi, umar! I am not sure what part seemed wooden but again this appears to be related to how the animations are used rather than how they are created. The dialogue system is in constant development and characters are still being heavily worked on. I can’t really tell more without better description of the parts you found displeasing.

NOTE: Karel didn´t saw the E3 presentation, so he don´t really know what exact animations you were talking about.

Thank you everyone for your time and your questions. Best of luck to you all!

DrFusselpulli · June 30, 2017, 2:11pm

Martin Klekner is our Lead Cinematic Designer here at Warhorse Studios. He joined the team after the Kickstarter Campaign back in 2014 and enriches the team with his excellent visual sense. He was born in Liberec in the north of the Czech Republic, but now he is here in Prague of course.
Do you want to know more about Martin Klekner and his job as a lead Cinematic Designer? Don´t hesitate and ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I am one of the many people who first heard about Warhorse through their Kickstarter campaign. It’s funny, because I never actually thought that I could become part of the WH team. However, by total accident, I got invited in. Back in 2014 I was working on a student project called Chronicles: Prague - basically an iPhone app, tourist guide and video biography of Charles IV.'s life, all in one - and for this app me and my friends built a pretty substantial 3D model of the 14th century Prague. I wanted to lend a helping hand to Warhorse’s project so I sent an email to Dan Vávra, offering him this model. It turned out completely different than I expected. Several weeks later, Dan sent me a message, in which he told me that he saw Chronicles and he wanted me to join the project. I was to be helping to create the game’s future cinematics. To be honest, I have always been more of a freelance guy, but this was an offer I simply could not refuse. I’m glad I didn’t… and I’m really grateful for the opportunity Dan gave me.

2) Describe your position. What is it about being a Cinematic Lead?
Well, it’s pretty much about trying to persuade the rest of the team that our open-world RPG needs good looking cutscenes as well But really, what I love about this job, is that it’s many things in one. One day I find myself drawing storyboards for Dan’s story, other times I’m directing actors on motion capture, even fooling around in mocap suit myself, the rest of the time it’s about working with a talented team of cinematic guys and animators, editing cutscenes in MotionBuilder and CryEngine and trying to achieve the best results possible in our limited conditions. It’s an adventure, often strenuous, but I guess that’s what I love about it.

3) Have you ever worked on Videogames before?
All of us in the cinematic department - Petr Pekař, Tomáš Kraus, Jiří Švarc and me - have come from the film and vfx industry. Everybody - except Petr - never worked on a game before (Petr worked on Mafia 3)… After three years of doing this, I must say, games are probably the most difficult projects to work on - there’s so many elements that must come together for the game to work, so many different departments, and all of it is constantly buggy and crashing. You may finish some task on Friday and find it completely ruined on Monday, without apparent reason (I don’t actually laugh when this happens). But we’re doing our best, learning on the run, solving one problem at a time. I believe it will pay off in the end

4) Please describe Warhorse Studios:
It’s an adventure, simple as that. Sometimes we hate each other, sometimes we despair, sometimes we feel immense pride in what we were able to achieve. It’s a process of trial and error, so it really can’t be any different. What makes it different from any other studio project I’ve worked on, is the enthusiasm.

5) What is your favorite team activity?
Our (more or less) weekly screenings of cutscenes, where we debate what can be improved. Especially when accompanied by a bottle of beer Also, lighting and fine tuning cutscenes with our Art Director Mikuláš Podprocký. Miki has a great eye for detail, one can learn from him a lot. The fine-tuning phase is when all our work finally comes together - and it’s always a great feeling.

Also, the mocap recording with our team of actors. I think I will never forget this experience

6) Describe your usual day at the studio?
A hot cup of coffee. That’s where it always starts Otherwise, it varies. A year ago, the process was completely different from now (we were mocaping the cutscens), two years ago as well (that was when I drew the storyboards) . After that, we edited the rough cuts of the cutscenes, putting the mocap data together, adding cameras and cuts.

These days we are in the finishing phase of cutscene production. Which means, first thing in the morning, I start downloading the latest data build of the game and in the meantime, I solve some bugs reported by our testers. Then, I start working on my cutscenes, same as the rest of the cinematic team. We polish the camera moves, the lighting, the environment, add particles etc. etc. Anything to make the cutscene look nice, while not lowering the FPS too much.

7) What do you think is the most important part of the game?
There’s this atmosphere of believability about the whole thing. For example, I remember the first time I walked into Talmberg village. It was at night - and suddenly, this huge black shape appeared in front of me. It was the Talmberg castle. And for some reason, it made a greater impression on me than any other castle from any other game. It was not the biggest, not the most awesome looking castle I’ve seen in a game, no. But since it was set in this realistic, down-to-earth environment, it stood out. And I realized: wow, this is how it must have felt to see a real castle in the Middle Ages.

I get the same feeling from all the elements in the game, from the story, the combat system or just from strolling around through the environment.

8) As a lead cinematic designer you can surely tell us more about the Global announcement Trailer?
Well apart from the fact that we had a crazy deadline and generally it was one big chaos, trying to make the best possible result without a final edit of the video up until the last moments… it was fun! Required a few sleepless nights spent in the studio, but it was worth-it. A great team effort. And a lot of people seem to like the trailer, which is awesome

9) You were involved in the recent change of Henrys hair-style, can you tell us more about that?
Well, I’m not really sure about the importance of my role in this change, in the end, it was a joint decision of Dan Vávra, Mikuláš Podprocký and Ivan Čerevko (our character artist working on the characters’ haircuts). But I did make some comments about Henry looking a bit too metrosexual for a son of a blacksmith. And I probably mentioned this to Dan, Miki and Ivan… I think the new haircut is much more fitting, which means it helps to tell the story of the game… And that’s the most important thing for the cutscene department.

10) with what game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
Prehistorik! I loved that little fella

11) What was your most touching video game moment?
Oh, there’s so many. I think the time around 2003/2004 was when, for me personally, the most influential games were released. Max Payne 2, Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time… I realized then, that games are capable of telling a gripping story. The next wave of games I loved came around 2010: Witcher 2, Mass Effect. I am also happiest when I win a battle in Total War games - oh, I love their games.

If I had to pick, though… probably the ending of Max Payne 2.

12) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
Total War games. I’ve also played Mass Effect series, Dragon Age 1, Max Payne 1,2,3, Witcher 2 and Half-Life 2 several times.

13) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
New and exciting bugs are created every single day in our game! There’s a lot of hilarious stuff. I remember a bug from recent days, that made me laugh: “Sir Robard appears to be holding a chair in his hand and flying around the map with it.” You wouldn’t come up with these ideas the game produces even if you tried. Of course, we in the cinematic department, encounter our fair share of strange stuff.

14) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
Reading a good book, swing dancing or brazilian jiu-jitsu sparring. Especially the last one. There’s something about being choked by your sparring partner that makes you forget about KCD… at least for a while

15) Your favorite movie or book?
The Lord of the Rings. Yes, movie and book.

16) What’s your guilty pleasure?
The movie 300. It is atrocious… but awesome at the same time.

17) What was your favorite subject and your most hated one at school?
Now when I think about it, I probably loved history lessons the most. I love great stories. And history is full of great stories.
Most hated? That’s easy - Math, Physics, Chemistry. I can’t really say which I hated the most

18) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Thank you for your patience and your faith in our project. It never ceases to amaze me how many people are interested in an RPG situated in 15th century Bohemia, a relatively unknown part of history. I think this is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to make a game like this and we all do our best to make you happy in the end

If you still have questions for our lead Cinematic designer Martin Klekner, just ask here!

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:04pm

here are the answers to your questions about Martin Klekner.

Well, I think that the original idea came from Dan Vávra and Mikuláš Podprocký (our Art Director). And to be honest, the concept art Miki did for Henry’s undercut looked great! He looked gruff, rugged, anything BUT metrosexual. It seemed to work…on paper, but when our character artists tried to replicat that haircut in game, it simply did not work on Tom McKay’s type of head.
It’s worth mentioning, that the undercut is historically accurate. It was quite common among higher classes and fighters of the time, probably because it is easier to put on a helmet, when you have sides of your head shaved.

Yes, we go through a lot of stages. First there was a rough cut, then polished cut, then some first camera polishes, overall polishes, etc. We schedule the completion of each phase around some important milestone our management gives us. In each round of this process, we try to improve the look of the cutscene as much as possible.

All of it, probably But you know what? I think that on every project worth doing, there’s never enough time, money, tools or people. It’s just about what you can do with what you’re given.

Yes, we are all very much aware of how Mass Effect: Andromeda ended up, so our animation department will definitely try their best to make the facial anims as polished as possible. It’s a tough job, though, especially in the span of 4 hours of dynamic cutscenes.

You are probably referring to the “dead faces” seen in our E3 demo. No worries there, the facial “moods” for in-game dialogues are one of the last things that are implemented. Basically, for each paragraph of our in-game dialogues, a character mood needs to be set and somebody has to set it. This, however, was not finished when we set out for E3 this year. Don’t worry, it will be ready for the final product, the characters will be blinking, have different emotions etc.

Creating different good-looking hairstyles for the main hero takes a lot of time. At this stage, we rather focus on polishing the stuff we already have

That really depends on the type of a deadline. For E3 trailer deadline there really is no plan B, it needs to be finished on an agreed-upon day. For game-related deadlines, there are often plans on how can we make things simpler or what we can cut, to finish everything in time.

I wish I could tell, sorry, I wasn’t tracking the hours It took us about four weeks from first cut to final polish. That, however, was just a process of polishing shots that have been in production for more than a year. However, in those 4 weeks, I think our team often worked double the normal workweek hours We were also still working on finishing the rest of the cutscenes throughout the production of the trailer.

I try not to think about it too much, one can get crazy thinking like this

It is my opinion, that one has to be familiar with the game we’re making, with its story, the medieval setting, the historical characters etc… generally, you have to live it and put a lot of heart into it, to make good cutscenes set in the world we crafted. Outsourcing is not really an option.
However, the cinematic team is pretty well balanced at this point, everybody is great at something, we work really well together and made good improvement since Beta. So I am confident we can make something worth watching.

The whole layer system adjusts to everything the character is wearing, changing shape so that it can fit to the layer above it. I am not really an expert on this topic, however. I think there is a videoupdate about this, probably update #2.

Filming a movie or a series from medieval era, that would be great.

DrFusselpulli · June 30, 2017, 1:56pm

Tobias “Tobi” Stolz-Zwilling has evolved very quickly from the Community Manager when he started in the summer of 2014 to the PR Manager in 2015 and has since become the face of Warhorse Studios. Born in Offenbach am Main he is known as the German intruder in the office.
He just came back from E3 in Los Angeles, and left the beautiful Californian sun behind, just to answer the call of the Weekly Torch for you.
Do you want to know more about Tobias “Tobi” Stolz-Zwilling and his job as a PR Manager? Don´t hesitate and ask here!
You can find a Spanish translation of this interview here.

1) You just came back from the E3 in Los Angeles. How was it there?
Extremely exhausting. People tend to believe that I am going for a fun trip whenever I am attending a convention. However, in reality it’s tons of hard work, from building the booth, fighting with hardware and software problems, buying last minute stuff because everything is broken, to presentations every 30minutes to a new bunch of journalists. I think we did 36 presentations to over 150 journalists in 3 days. In the end of the day I am always so tired that I skip all those fancy E3 parties. But to be honest… it’s still kind of a fun trip!

2) What exactly did you do on E3?
At E3 we were a team of 7 people. While Rick Lagnese and me presented the game the others either helped with technical problems or guided journalists through their hands on sessions. Before E3 my core job is to take care of journalists appointments and while E3 of course presenting the game to them. It’s pretty tough if you consider that you have to present the same thing, with the same enthusiasm up to 16times per day (8h), but I love my job and love to be in contact with the people. The best moment is when I hear those whispers of “wooooow”, “no waaay” or “cooool” while I present my stuff. Always makes me smile!

3) What was your personal Highlight on E3?
Unfortunately, I can’t leave my E3 booth, that means that I almost never see anything else than our own game. Therefore, my highlight every day was when Jiri Rydl came into the booth each evening saying “Done! That was the last bunch for today!”.

4) Where can we usually find you lurking in the holy halls of Warhorse?
I am almost always at my desk in the Marketing and PR Office. And yes! I will forever call it like that even though we share this office with Scripters, IT, Testers and other. However… WE WERE HERE FIRST!!! (and are the only ones who didn’t move back and forth)

5) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I was watching my favorite gaming show back then called “GameONE” and they were talking about “Hardcore” games. So while I was munching my breakfast they introduced Kingdom Come: Deliverance and some bearded Hobo who was presenting it. In the same week I was taking the elevator to my flat and another bearded guy shared it with me. I saw the guy several times and always asked myself who this burglar is. When we shared the elevator, he looked at me and said “Hey I am Dan, do you also live here?”. That was the first time I looked into his face – I had this sudden feeling that I know this guy. I went to my apartment, tried to google him and boom… Daniel Vávra, creator of Mafia and founder at Warhorse Studios – the same guy I saw on GameONE. I tried to sneak on him somehow, wanted to pass my CV to him, but WHS only searched for programmers and alike. I even tried to look out the window to see if he is going on a walk with his baby and/or dog. Didn’t work out. But then one day… I think it was Thursday evening 9pm, I checked the WHS job page and they were looking for a Community Manager. I dressed myself, printed my CV, went down the stairs, knocked on the door. Dan in shirt and his undies opened the door and I said: “I know who you are, I love what you do, here is my CV”. He laughed, said that it was shitty payed, but that he will look over it. Right day, right time I guess.

6) Describe your position. What is it about being a PR Manager?
Whatever job at Warhorse Studios you’ll apply for, be sure that you most likely will do several other things in addition. So as PR Manager I should do strategical planning of our entire communication including media relations. However, I also do press speaking (presentations, interviews, streams and shows), organization of events, supervising our Community Manager, media/community monitoring, organizing team activities like our annual Secret Santa or Team Building, being the captain of our Warhorse football team (the European one… the only real one!!!) and running a very successful business, we call TobiShopTM. In the end my job is all about communications, either to the outer world or to the inside of the holy halls of Warhorse Studios. And hell… I do talk a lot!!!

7) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
Not at all. I always played a lot of videogames, but I worked as a freelance journalist before. I always thought that I am very good in asking questions and writing. At WHS I found out that I am even better in answering and talking.

8) Which job would you not want to do?
In Sims 3 there was an ability you could add that was called something like “Enthusiastic” or so. I always took it because this describes me pretty well. It said that you are happy about all the small things in life - I think I would try all jobs and would give my usual 110%. However, I really sucked at programming at University… almost break my neck… I am almost sure… it would break my neck for sure if I had to do this as a living.

9) Please describe Warhorse Studios:
Warhorse is a great place to work! It surely has its flaws and tends to be a bit too punk rock from times to times, but on the other hands it gives a chance to proof that you are worth it. It gives you the freedom to develop your skills and pitch new ideas projects that might or won’t find its way into the project KCD. One moment everyone loves each other the other one everyone hates each other. It’s almost like working with friends rather than with coworkers.

10) Please describe one of your colleagues or your department:
Jiri Rydl is a great guy… in his own weird, crazy, annoying, hateful, dick-move way. He really is… trust me… like for sure!!! Ooooooookay it might be true that whoever meets him for the first time thinks that he is a total unfriendly douche… but that’s only a facade. If you are able to look through that you’ll meet one of the most loyal and diligent persons at WHS. He was my tutor and coach when I started here and turned out to be my best friend at the studio… in his own dick-move way :). He didn’t get me a birthday present… DOUCHE!

11) What is your favorite team activity?
I am proud to call myself the founder of the WH Soccer team, the teambuilding at fortress Malesov, the Secret Santa Christmas Party and dealer of sweet treats at TobiShopTM. I love my baby’s equally!

12) Describe your usual day at the studio?
My work varies strongly from day to day. Usually I start my day with our free breakfast and a cup of coffee and go over though monitoring the internet, searching for articles, tweets or general mentions about the studio or the game. However as I said, since my job changes every now and then there are always different challenges.

13) What are you currently working on?
I just finished some E3 paperwork, internal reports about our performance. My next task is a live stream we are going to have today, on this Friday 23rd at 6pm CEST. But to make things a little trickier, I also have to welcome ESO today, a YouTuber from UK at the WHS who will get my full attention. But he agreed to join me at the stream which could be really great. I am looking forward to it.

14) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
Well, whenever I prepare myself for a big show I play through the presentation build and start my usual hate speech about how I dislike this and that. Our devs hate me then thinking that I hate our game which is not true at all. I love it… I am just really nitpicking when it comes to the stuff I am presenting. In the end this potentially benefits the bug hunting and optimization since I have a different view on the game. And then my biggest fail – I have a small voice over role in the game… and I hate it

15) What do you think it’s the most important part or thing in the game?
Every department thinks that their feature is the most important one in the game. However, I really like the combat. I know that some might have issues with that… but hey… I finished DarkSouls 1, 2 and 3 :). I really love the way it is. Hard, tactical and technical. Even after 3 years of fighting, I still feel great after each fight I win. And this really is something special!

16. What is the most important characteristic a PR Manager must have?
Being a PR Manager at WHS requires you to be an extrovert. You need to be able to present the game, yourself and be full of enthusiasm.

17) How, when and with what platform did you first get acquainted with videogames?
It was a Atari 2600, but I went to many platforms. Sega Mega drive, DOS gaming, a Gameboy… but the one that I still play today, and consider the best platform ever is my SNES. I love it… and it’s actually in the studio. We even had a Tetris league once… I think we never found the true master of blocks.

18) What was your most touching video game moment?
Finishing Final Fantasy X… I thought I have nothing to accomplish anymore in life… I didn’t know what to do next… it was just such a great game. I finished it another 5 times later

19) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
Tobi in which ever I can create and name my own character!

20) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
I almost always play as a mage with fire attacks.

21) Which videogame character are you?
Tobi from the character editor.

22) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
Well I finished Final Fantasy X 6times, I play my Snes over and over again (preferably Super Mario World) and I really love Xcom 2. Hmmm… I also play those games no one understands… like Football Manager.

23) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
I keep telling myself… today I am going to plays some games… end up sleeping on the couch… DAMN!

24) Your favorite music or Spotify playlist
I like electronic music but I am able to listen to all kind of stuff, so it really depends. I found an old Offspring CD yesterday… so guess what I am playing on full Volume when driving to the studio.

25. Your favorite movie or book?
To my shame I must admit that I am not a great reader. I read the Harry Potter books before the 1st film was aired. It was great but nowadays I almost only read news.

26) Your travel tip?
You’ve never been to Prague? Do it! There is tons of great food and beer… which is pretty much the only thing you can get cheap in Czech Republic.

27) Sport is…
The greatest thing on earth. I played Handball for 19years and made it even to contracts. However I have a bad luck for injuries, so after 9 surgeries my career ended. But on the other hand, if I stay fit and made it to be a professional. I most likely wouldn’t ended up at WHS.

28) What’s your guilty pleasure?
I love cookies… and everything that is baked like cakes and stuff. Hmmmm… CAKE… wheeee…

29) What was your greatest mistake?
My greatest mistake is about to come… and I am still waiting for it.

30) Do you have a Bucket List?
Well actually… I could imagine myself living and working in USA or Canada. So maybe that might be something?

31) What will be your famous last words?
I actually hated all of you…

32) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Sure, I mean one hand washes the other… right?

33) How do you like living in the Czech Republic?
I had the advantage that I was able to talk Czech since my mum is from Czech Republic. So when I moved here in 2012 I had an easy start. But my plan was to finish my studies and return to Germany… but then I worked as a journalist… and met that bearded dude… well and now I am here. But Czech Republic is great… the Texas of Europe!

34) What is your weakest trait?
I am not patient at all. And I tend to be really pissed and angry if things are not going the way I imagine it. I mean… let’s talk about stuff… but I am too German to miss deadlines!!!

35) Who is your favorite historic character?
I liked Alex the Great when I was younger… I don’t even know why.

36) What was your favorite subject and your most hated one at school? What were your grades in history?
I was pretty good in all “talking” subjects obviously like history, politics and alike. I was pretty bad at Maths and Physics. There was only one way… become a Journalist… … or PR guy.

37) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
I know many of you people for a long time. Back then, when I started as a Community Manager I was closer to you, but I always like to remember the goofy discussions we had at the forums. Well, we came a long way together and we are almost at the finishing line. I hope, and know, that you are as excited as I am so let’s bring that baby home!

Do you want to know more about Tobias “Tobi” Stolz-Zwilling and his job as a PR Manager? Just ask here!

DrFusselpulli · January 5, 2018, 12:02pm

Here are Tobi´s answers to your community questions.

Not really. My girlfriend asked me to grow a beard… I refused… well… you know the result.

I don’t know. I can’t compare it to the situation of starting as “someone”. However, when I started at WHS, they were in an office made for 20 people, but they already were a team of almost 40. So my first month at Warhorse Studios was on Home Office… I think you can consider this an easy start. And yes, but this is a general phenomenom, the closer you get to the finishing line the more attention you create. In the beginning it was “Wow, that KickStarter success” then “Wow, it’s really a thing and they are developing it”, and now “Wow, it’s on the finishing line”. Fingers crossed to get it to “Wow, what a great game” stage.

I don’t know. I inherited this from my parents I guess. My father is an introvert and very professional (German), my mother is an extreme extrovert and very creative (Czech). I guess I actually am a mixture of both. Professional extrovert… hmm… sounds good!

No never. That breaks your neck and is never good. No matter if at work or in your personal life. However, I said stuff that got changed afterwards, which is unfortunate but life is a process, so is game development. And processes change sometimes.

Yes. But since it’s a secret I can’t tell you. Which is actually a real pain. For those who know how I present the game… .I LOVE TO TALK… and I would love to praise all the secret cool stuff.

Something that caught me off-guard you mean? Being a good PR means to have satisfying answers on questions you have no clue about. Like politicians!

Everything you wish for: cereals, fresh boiled eggs, fresh bread and different cream cheeses. Vegetable and fruits and the souls of broken developers. Yummy!

Hmm… we’ll see. KCD would certainly have many more stories to tell, so there is no dead end. However, I’ll see where my feet bring me…

There is always PR to prepare. No matter if Social Media activities, streams and stuff. But since I also do a lot of internal stuff there is always work to do. Currently we are working on Gamescom preparations, then eventually Paris Games Week and so on… well… and then there is the release… so I guess the window for possible vacation is slowly closing down for me

Yes. My girlfriend forced me into it while everyone else hated it. Now almost everyone likes it.

Of course, constantly. We get feedback on several stuff: The booth, the game, the e3 build, my performance and so on and so on. The Media feedback is pretty good. People really seemed to like what we showed.

Not at all. It just tells us what to focus on on the next show. Something like “The seemed to have trouble in XY, so we focus our presentation on YZ”. Not talking about optimization of the game. This continues of course.

Yes! It was great.

Well Angela Merkel will be at Gamescom, POTUS should have been at E3 as well. He would like Wolfenstein

Not scratched, just postponed to unknown.

Hm I am not sure what you are referring at. I am no Designer so I don’t add anything to the game per se. However, when it comes to fine tuning before events, I want to make it more accessible for media and players. Devs tend to presume that the person who is going to test the game saw all of our videos and heard all of our presentations. Dumb down would be the right term, but this sounds way to negative. Just more accessible!

Hm… hard to say. I vocalize the things I hate before events, so they usually get fixed or changed . But to be honest, I really like our game.

Actually no, there is always some game. No matter which day or month you release it. But of course, the further away from such huge titles, the better. But this is only one factor of many to determine the “right date”.

Hmmm… now that you mention it…

Naaaahhh I think I already passed the acceptable amount of Hipsterness. That’s a really thin line and I don’t want to overdo it. However, the coffee tastes a lot better now!

Show (first presentation) started at Tuesday 12:00pm nothing worked (hardware), and I had to sacrifice my presentation laptop for the first Hands on session at 12:30 pm. While the first bunch of people played we had to crawl beneath the tables to wire stuff. We even accidently unplugged a PS4 while someone was playing… this is one of the moments were I get super angry. But in the end we made it!

Hmmm… It’s no present if there is no display!

DrFusselpulli · June 30, 2017, 2:26pm

Anna Pačesová started as a tester in 2014 here at Warhorse Studios, but her dream was to become an Environment Artist, and here in wonderful Prague -the city where she was born- that was definitely in the realm of possibilities. So her new job is to work on the beautiful countryside and create assets to bring it to life.
Do you want to know more about Anna Pačesová and her job as an Environment Artist? Don´t hesitate and 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?
You can find me in our dark vampire artist cave, where is no light at all, so we can see the colors properly (or maybe we are light sensitive, because if somebody accidentally switch the light on… mayhem! Everybody starts to scream - “Light! Switch off the light! It hurrrrrts!”)

2) How did you hear about Warhorse?
I like to play video games, so I like to read about them as well. I´ve probably read about Warhorse somewhere on the internet for the first time. I actually started here as a quality assurance person and then I clawed my way up to the 3D department, because that was the thing I wanted to do all my life and I am really happy I´ve got the chance. I am here for almost three years now.

3) Did you ever worked on Videogames before?
I have worked previously on “Attentat 1942” (or “Československo 38-89”) as one of the game designers. It is a project of Charles University, where I am studying, so this is how I ended up with the project. I also like to play historical games and currently I am writing a thesis about them.

4) Please describe one of your colleagues or your department:
His head is shiny and round like the moon!
When he will see this, awaits me the certain doom!

5) What is your favorite team activity?
Ehm…drinking?

6) Describe your usual day at the studio?
When I am able to wake up early, I come around 8am and eat our Warhorse breakfast, which consists of eggs and bread. Then I download the new data and start to work on various tasks (modelling, creating the actual environment, optimizing), lately it was a lot of creative work and final touch ups in our areas (every artist has a part of the map, which he takes care of - for example - mine is Úžice area), like creating the points of interests, which I´ve really enjoyed and I am looking forward what will people say about them. Then I work, work, work (while listening to some music and audiobooks), tea time with other art colleagues , work, work, and after that I submit my work and go home.

7) What are some of your notable accomplishments?
I don´t know if it is notable, but at least is is noticeable – I´ve made the shop signs and the dice for the minigame.

8) What is the most important characteristic an environment artist must have?
A good eye for detail, a lot of imagination and passion.

9) What do you like the most about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?
The environment of course!

10) How, when and with what platform or game did you first get acquainted with videogames?
When I was three years old, I played Prince of Persia for the first time on my mum´s laptop. I think I had died every five seconds, but I really liked that Then I spend a lot of time with Prehistorik, Stunts, UGH, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Age of Empires and all those old time classics.

11) Which videogame character or figure is the best?
Geralt or Ezio Auditore… I can´t decide which one is better, but they are both sexy, clever and funny
Oh, and I can´t forget to mention Guybrush Threepwood!

12) Which class, gender, or type do you usually pick?
Stealthy, pretty females (boring, I know).

13) Which videogame character are you?
I am a random villager in Kingdom Come: Deliverance Yes, you can find me there!

14) Are there any videogames you repeat playing over and over again?
No. I hate to repeat things. So every game which is repetitive absolutely frustrates me. I´ve tried to play Fallout: New Vegas for more than once, but I´ve ended up trying to break the game and did really silly things. Another exception are story driven multiple choice games - I sometimes go back and see what would happen differently.

15) What would a perfect game according to your wishes look like?
True open world RPG in Dishonored world. It would be nice to walk around freely and discover the stories of inhabitants and not just be hiding and be hunted all the time

16) Most hilarious bug you have ever encountered or worst video game experience?
The flying people in KCD. It does not happen anymore, but it was hilarious. Especially this one I have managed to capture.

17) What game have you been really looking forward to but turned out to be a total disappointment?
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I used to love AC series (mainly those with Ezio), but after so many parts it became soooooo repetitive and stupid. I love victorian London as a setting, so it was very disappointing when I have realized it kind of bores me.

18) How do you relax after a hard day at work?
I like to eat good food, so I either like to cook or hang out in some great restaurant. Also I relax a lot while painting or drawing. Or I read some book, play games, do yoga, ballet, learn new things…

19) Your favorite music playlist
So many genres, so little time! I love especially the older music - jazz, big bands, 80’s. From the newer interprets - Lana del Rey, Nick Cave, Marilyn Manson. And the best soundtrack ever -The Witcher III.

20) Your favorite movie or book?
The Last Unicorn - movie (I am not ashamed of that!) Other than that I like movies by Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, Jim Jarmush, David Lynch and also weird japanese movies.
From books - Neil Gaiman is my favourite writer. I love Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami lately and comics by Guy Delisle - also other serious comics are my favourite thing to read.

21) What species is your spirit animal?
Jack Daniels

22) Your travel tip?
Japan and Canada! People are nice and kind there, nature is beautiful and food delicious! What more do you want? (Tip: Best sushi is in Kanazawa.)

23) What’s your guilty pleasure?
Eating french fries with ice cream. And watching high school themed movies … while eating the french fries with ice cream.

24) What will be your famous last words?

25) Is it possible to buy you with candy?
Oh, yes. For a period of time I was subscribed to Japanese candy boxes. They have sent me box of various weird treats every month. Omnomnom.

26) What is your kryptonite?
Stupid evil people. I want to commit suicide when I have to deal with them.

27) What is your weakest trait?
When I am hungry, I get grumpy.

28) Imagine you are a cake, what kind of cake are you?
Sushi cake

29) Who is your favorite historic character?
Cleopatra. She had cool hair and boyfriends. And when I was young I had always the feeling that Jan Žižka is my uncle for no reason at all

30) Which is your favorite historic event?
World War II, because it is fascinating and also terrifying how people can be manipulated.

31) You have to fight in medieval times… who are you?
The leader. I have no weapon. I am in the tent… where the food is. I just point on the map and send people to die.

32) Knights or Samurai?
Samurai! Obviously!

33) If you could say something to the fans of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, what would it be?
Find all the easter eggs!

Do you want to know more about Anna Pačesová or her job as an Environment Artist? Just ask here!