Greetings everyone! I’m Graham “Thunder” Somers, the new Community Manager here at Relic Entertainment. Those of you who visit our forums on a regular basis will know that I started work here at Relic a few weeks ago, and I’ll be working on keeping you all updated on Dawn of War II and what’s going on here at the office. Dan “dmolina” Monlina will still be around, he’s been updating the community site here since it came online. He’ll now be concentrating much more of his time on working on the game itself.

Speaking of what’s going on around the office, I stumbled into one of our conference rooms during the end of the day and found a few members of the Relic crew engaged in a campaign of the 40k tabletop game. Relic animator Michael Moore gives us a look at who’s involved in the campaign and how it’s progressing:

“Here at Relic, we’re well into our 2nd in-office Warhammer 40,000 campaign – battling it out for control of assets and territories on a global scale. We’ve got 12 active players participating, ranging from programmers to artists to designers from all the projects in the studio. Check out the images below that show the state of the game for the end of turn five and the start of turn six. Just about every race in the 40k universe is represented and there are some allied players too, having the advantage of moving through each other’s territory. George and Alun, Dan and Nick, Matthew and Shawn, Darwin and David are the two man teams working together. We have an escalating campaign going, where we fight battles of increasing size (starting at 750, building up to 1500 points); partially for flavor, and also to encourage finishing painting our own armies. Currently the strongest armies have been the Imperial Guard, as the sheer amount of firepower and men brought to bear has steam-rolled nearly all of their opponents, but the shift is changing as the enemies get better units at larger sized forces. Two of the outstanding players so far in the campaign have been Matthew Berger who is leading the Orks and Alun Bjorksten who’s rolling with the Imperial Guard. Luck has also swung a number of games as the ever-treacherous dice have foiled many battle plans.

Fifth edition has been received pretty well, and we mix in some Cities of Death battles as well – there’s talk of doing an Apocalypse battle on a weekend; we’re all pretty involved in our armies here at Relic. The campaign organizers are already beginning to plan the third campaign, as we learn as we go. Wish me luck in the battles ahead.” - Michael Moore

The board at the end of Rnd 5 | The board at the start of Rnd 6

For those of you in the Vancouver area and interested in some tabletop board gaming of the Warhammer variety, West Coast Mayhem is coming up. A few members of our team went to this event last year, and there will likely be some Relic shwag up for grabs again this year. Drop in for some gaming if you’re in the area!

That’s a quick look at what’s been played in the office right now. Coming up in the weeks ahead we’re going to be talking more about the Space Marines in Dawn of War II.

DAWN OF WAR II - PAX Community Exclusive

We’ve been alluding to the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Washington for some time now… and guess what… PAX is kicking off THIS FRIDAY, August 29th!

On our forums, a lot of fans have been asking to see Dawn Of War II in action; level walkthroughs and detailed gameplay. We are very please to deliver! In case you’ve missed the subtle (yet quite prominent) description on the PAX website, we will be showing all of the fans and community in attendance a LIVE demo of Dawn of War II.

Yes, it’s true. - a LIVE demo of the game in action played right before your eyes, hosted by Dawn Of War II’s very own Producer, Mark Noseworthy, and Lead Designer, Jonny Ebbert. And, of course, following the demo we’ll have an audience Q&A.

Relic Entertainment Presents: Dawn of War II
WHEN: Friday, August 29th, 2008
TIME: 8:00pm to 9:00pm
WHERE: Walrus Theatre

PAX details here. PAX schedules here (PDF). Event descriptions here (PDF).

That’s not all!

We’ve reserved some special front-row seating for the presentation, and some personalized swag for you guys in our community… all we ask for is a little something in return. A simple haiku about our favourite topic on this forum, Dawn Of War II , just might net you one of these reserved seats and some Relic Swag! Not to mention, the AWESOME folks at PAX (thanks Khoo!) have provided us with 10 3-day passes to get you in the door.

The Details are below! We’re really excited to see you there, and we can’t wait to read what you come up with! And remember that if you can’t make it to PAX, watch out for us at other events coming up like Games Workshop’s Games’ Day next month.

DAWN OF WAR II PAX COMMUNITY CONTEST

So what is a haiku? www.dictionary.com provides an elegant answer:

but wait there’s more…

This afternoon on IGN’s podcast, Jonny Ebbert, Lead Designer on Dawn of War II will be talking about the game and our presence at PAX this Friday

There has been a lot of positive fan reaction to the DOW2 music, which obviously makes us happy that we’re going in a good direction. Now we would like to let you know the name behind the music for DOW2; Doyle W. Donehoo. Doyle was chosen after an exhaustive search through some of the industry’s top composers, plus a meeting at GDC where he managed to sneak our Audio Lead into somewhere they really weren’t supposed to be, then proceeded to say everything we wanted to hear.

When Doyle submitted music for our audition, he didn’t know anything about the title we were working on, except that it was a game set in the 40k universe. However, his sense of what a 40k game should sound like nailed the sound we were after, technically and stylistically. When we laid that audition music behind some previs animation video it seemed like Doyle had composed the whole thing to picture, or he read our minds (psyker?), and that sealed the deal. It didn’t hurt that Doyle was already a 40k tabletop fan, had played through the DOW franchise, and was completing Dark Crusade’s campaign with all races as he signed on to do the DOW sequel.

Previous to focusing full-time on composition, Doyle had spent a couple decades in the digital trenches as a software coder and developer, so he is fully aware of the ins and outs of our production processes and technical needs. While other composers may boast game credits as long as a chainsword, Doyle’s game credits are only beginning, though he’s been in the industry for quite a long time, and something tells me his list of game credits is going to grow… How many composers do you know who can provide technical white papers on the musical technicalities of what they’re up to?

His website is here:
http://www.sierra-trails.com/radarmusic.html

ps. When not composing music for DOW2, Doyle has managed to hike about 99% of the trails snaking their way through the Sierra mountain range, and goes on “practice hikes” weekly carrying a 50lb backpack.

Welcome to the new Community Portal for Dawn of War II!

This portal is dedicated to help you join Relic and our development process as we bring you Dawn Of War II. This is something new, a first of its kind for us. We are really excited to be able to talk to our fans through this site. This will become your source to learn about the game, glean insights, and hear news directly from the development team at Relic.

Our goal is to provide you with not only information about the Dawn Of War II but also all the cool on-goings around the studio bringing it to you. So don’t come here just anticipating new screenshots, previews, and videos. Sure we’ll be sharing all that, but anticipate a behind-the-scenes look at what we do here at Relic and how we make kick ass games. I’m Dan Molina, Associate Producer along with Mike Torillo, Assistant Producer on Dawn of War II. Together with others, we will be your guides through the halls of Relic and on the road to Dawn of War II.

Usually you’ll see new stories appear at the top of the blog but we’ve gone ahead and posted some content for you already. Scroll down and you’ll see some new screenshots exclusive to the community site, the new teaser video, and some bio’s about our leads.

Check back soon, and check back often, the doors to Relic open very very soon!
- Dan and Mike

If you are coming here for inside information about Dawn Of War II, you might be wondering “who are the people making this game?”. Let us introduce to you the core team at working to bring you the game. By no means is this a complete list, it takes many dedicated people to bring you a top notch title. These are the Leads, the people overseeing all aspect of their department. They are:

Mark Noseworthy - Producer

Mark Noseworthy grew up on the flatlands of Winnipeg, Manitoba where he majored in Finance and minored in obscure 8-bit NES games before moving to Vancouver to put his twenty plus year thumb-mashing education to good use. Mark joined Relic in 2004 after after working as a Game Analyst at Nokia and started his game development career as an Assistant Producer on The Outfit. The self-declared foosball champion at Relic, Mark took on progressively more responsibility on subsequent games including an unnannounced project as well as some additional production help finishing Company of Heroes before kicking off Dawn of War 2. Currently Playing: Dawn of War 2 (PC) , Jeanne d’Arc (PSP), Ms. Pac-man (Arcade).

Jonny Ebbert - Lead Game Designer

If Jonny Ebbert were to put on an Indiana Jones hat and don a bullwhip, he’d be in pursuit of the Lost Ark. After all, according to him, Raiders Of The Lost Ark is the only true and pure Indy movie and he refuses to acknowledge the existence of all others. Luckily, he’s not a relic hunter, but he IS a Relic Designer. For the last 3 and a half years at Relic, he’s been a Senior Designer for Winter Assault and a Lead Designer for Dark Crusade, Soul Storm, and now, Dawn Of War 2. Before cracking the bullwhip here, he served as a strike team member on Empire Earth, a designer on Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, and a senior designer on Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War for Stainless Steel Studios in Boston, MA.

Roland Longpre - Art Director

Making it out west from his recent home Calgary, Alberta, Regina native Roland Longpre contributed to Tetrisphere as Art Director and as Environment Artist on The Next Tetris before further work in “Cow Town” as a 3D Artist and Art Director at a multimedia advertising studio. He joined the Relic team in 2002 on a project so shrouded in mystery we weren’t sure if Roland himself even existed. Thankfully, when Relic needed some fancy rocks and fancier ships, UI, and Animatics for Homeworld 2, Roland hadn’t made himself disappear. On Dawn of War, he worked on most of the maps and environment objects with Andy Lang, and on Company Of Heroes Roland functioned as the Environment Supervisor. Today, its no mystery Roland is making Dawn of War 2 look its absolute best as Art Director.

George Hornmoen - Lead Programmer

George has a background in Tel-co Unix security which none of us understand. He came to Relic as an Animation Programmer on an unannounced Xbox project. George began work on Dawn of War early on the prototype team to once again become a Animation Programmer during development. For the Winter Assault expansion, he did Gameplay and AI programming and was a Senior Programmer on The Outfit working on core engine tech. After starting as Lead on Dark Crusade George left Relic for a, thankfully, short while to return on an unannounced console project. Maybe it was his ability to dominate his co-workers on the table-top with his Sisters-of-Battle, maybe it was just his damn fine programming, for when Dawn of War 2 needed guru in a Lead Programmer, George was our man.

Nathan Hocken - Lead Animator

Nathan joined Relic in 2004 and since then he’s shown distressing levels of unusual behaviour. Random outbursts of laughter, an unhealthy obsession with foos, sniffing coworkers, running laps late at night in the hallways, taping people to their chairs, his perverse nature seems to know no limits. He came from Amaze Entertainment and Nintendo Software Technologies previously, working on titles like Ridge Racer 64 and Harry Potter, so we’re unsure if they did something to him or if he’s acquiring these habits from Relic. We tried our best to subdue him with Company of Heroes with little success, and now he leads the Animation Team for Dawn of War 2. We’re glad to have him in this role because, while he is a menace, Nathan has a passion for pushing the quality and complexity of animation in games. We’re just concerned he may be insane.

Jason Ross - Lead Audio

Jason C. Ross was airdropped into Relic in 2006 to wrangle audio for Dark Crusade. Prior to this he worked a bit at Ubisoft, and much more at Electronic Arts, on some Need For Speeds, some James Bonds, an arena full of sports franchises, and Julie Delpy’s Extreme Zen Koans 2002: Shunkai’s Vengeance, which sadly never shipped due to the rice paper based source code being lost in a fire. In moments of repose he draws abstract landscapes of Dimension F, writes words whispered to him by Thelemic Demons, maintains a net radio program in it’s 7th year, and reacts to external stimuli.