Hello everyone!
This is the first of several developer blogs centered around different aspects of the recently announced upcoming class, the Arbites! This dev blog will focus on a key aspect of the Arbites’ gameplay: His loyal pet and companion, the vicious Cyber-Mastiff! This deadly enhanced canine darts through the battlefield, mauling criminals and pinning them down so that Judgement may be passed upon them. We’ve interviewed Game Designer Gunnar, Gameplay Programmer Diego, Animator Olliver, and Sound Designers Jonas & David, to find out more about what the dog is like and how it was developed.
What is a Cyber-Mastiff?
The Cyber-Mastiff is a massive, deadly robotic Imperial hunting dog, bred, trained and enhanced to track and catch their master’s prey. How much of a Cyber-Mastiff’s body remains organic and how much has been replaced with mechanical enhancements depends on each hound. Many have been entirely servitorised but they’re all ruthless killing machines. The Adeptus Arbites routinely deploys agents with a loyal Cyber-Mastiff companion, and our Arbites class is no different: The Cyber-Mastiff is core to the Arbites’ gameplay.
Design and Gameplay
What was the process when designing the Cyber-Mastiff? When we were thinking about which class we could do, what direction we could go in and what was feasible for a class, the Arbites was on the table, and we were never going to do the Arbites and not do the Cyber-Mastiff. The dog is a core theme of what makes Arbites different from the other classes, so as soon as we decided on the Arbites as a class, we had decided on doing the Cyber-Mastiff. We looked at different games that had done companions as a mechanic, dogs or not. There were all different sorts of avenues of what makes a good companion and how it needs to differ in our game due to our unique combat loop. From that initial idea, we developed the design and set these directives: ● The dog should always act how the player expects it to ● The dog should always be in the player’s field of view ● The dog should never be in the way. That was the gist of it; an initial idea, set goals, and then start developing it from there. How does the Cyber-Mastiff work, gameplay-wise? From the very beginning, we wanted the Cyber-Mastiff to be a full companion, to accompany the player through every step of the mission. That was our end goal. In case that proved too difficult, we were prepared to fall back on a more simple implementation that would have it be a temporary ally. Maybe you summon it to attack and pin down an enemy, or it’d only stick around for a limited time on a cooldown, that sort of thing. But we never wanted this as a solution if we could avoid it, so we’re very pleased with how it’s turned out. From starting the game and loading into the Mourningstar, to the end of a mission you’re gonna have a companion, the Cyber-Mastiff. It will follow its master throughout the mission, always staying in sight when out of combat. Usually it’ll be to the sides, but if the area is more cramped or filled with obstacles it can instead opt to be in the front. In combat, the Cyber-Mastiff will mostly act on its own, picking out enemies to harass and attack, but you can command it to attack specific enemies like Elites or Specials by pinging said enemy twice. Like the Pox Hound on the players, it will pounce and lock down human-sized enemies. On the Ogryns it will do a heavy stagger and some damage, but it’s not gonna lock them down permanently. On Monsters, it will attack and it will bite. It’s not gonna do much on the stagger front but it’s definitely gonna pack a punch. “And then of course you can command the dog to attack something else, like if it’s attacking a Berserker on the ground and you want it to chase down a sniper, you can do that.” ~ Gunnar When not following an order from the Arbites player, the Cyber-Mastiff will move independently on the battlefield, picking out what it thinks is the best target and chasing it down on its own. It can even rescue its master when disabled by a Pox Hound or a Mutant. While it will often find itself in the thick of danger, the Cyber-Mastiff is very good at taking care of itself. In-game, it cannot be shot or take any damage, and enemies will instead opt to focus on you and the rest of your strike team as it darts around the battlefield. Darktide is a fast-paced game and we did not want players to have to worry about their loyal companion instead focusing on directing it towards high-priority targets while laying down fire on the remainder of the enemies. Through the talent tree, you can further improve the Cyber-Mastiff’s capabilities with certain nodes. How many nodes you dedicate to the dog and how many you dedicate to improving your own personal arsenal will drastically change how your Arbites ends up! You can also opt out of the Mastiff if you want to; there’s a talent in the tree that removes the dog if you’re going for a different playstyle or player fantasy, and you’ll get some pretty decent bonuses to make up for the lack of a companion. What were the challenges when designing and developing the Cyber-Mastiff? We had to be very careful about the Mastiff’s power. In Darktide, if you’re sufficiently skilled, a player can achieve some amazing feats on their own and overcome some really tough situations by yourself. Adding the Cyber-Mastiff on top of that had the potential to create some very overpowered scenarios. So while it can lock down elites and rescue you from certain situations, you can’t just run around blocking and hope to finish the level letting the Mastiff kill everything. Mainly, though, since Darktide didn’t have any systems for something like an AI companion, we had to develop everything from scratch, especially how we were going to make it move. The work done on Vermintide 2’s Necromancer class wasn’t suitable for this use case (although many lessons were learned from that implementation), the Cyber-Mastiff’s behaviour and gameplay was just too different. Making the dog navigate the levels smoothly, while always being in your field of view but also not being a bother or in the way was the most difficult part. The pathfinding had to be solid and consistent throughout the level as the Cyber-Mastiff accompanies its master. “Since the dog is a part of you, we couldn’t just make the game go ‘Oh, the dog is in a bad position, we just despawn it and bye bye’. […] We want it to always fall in a good position.” ~Diego We also went through several iterations of how we handled the player issuing commands to the dog. We couldn’t just add a whole new input and use that, we had to work with the inputs and commands that we already have in-game. We toyed with having it as a Blitz, or as a Combat Ability, but in the end we opted for relying on the tagging system, by double tagging.
Animations
While we had a solid base to start with thanks to the Pox Hound, a lot of work had to be done to make the animation set for the Cyber-Mastiff. This involved a rework of the locomotion system and a suite of brand new animations. “For references, I’ve been looking at A LOT of dog videos, and we’ve been quite lucky to have several dogs in the office that I have been recording for reference data. Sadly I haven’t done any mocap for the dog, but they’ve been good actors for videos, hehe.” ~ Olliver
Molly hard at work!
When making new animations, the process involved a lot of iteration. The basic workflow
involved getting references, making a rough blockout animation to test in-game, then either
re-do or commit to it with a more polished animation that would fit the final product.
A guiding principle while making the animations was to properly convey that the Cyber-Mastiff is not a cute dog. It’s primarily a lethal killing machine, and it is also a cyborg! The animations
need to be ruthless and cold, as well as robotic and stiff in some places, rather than fluid and
playful; all while still properly acting like a dog.
At the same time, however, we wanted the player to be able to engage with the companion in
fun ways. In the Mourningstar, where things are more relaxed, you can do things like give
casual orders to the dog, such as telling it to bark or sit. You can then reward the Mastiff with
food or by petting it!
These kinds of animations were the most fun to implement, but they also proved a challenge in design, as the interactions had to be implemented without going against that guiding principle (mentioned above).
“Overall, working with a quadruped is difficult. […] I do like animating, like, monsters and
creatures and stuff. But in my previous works they’ve mostly been enemies, so they had very
stiff behaviour. And the challenges with the dog were that we realized as we went that ‘Oh, we
need this. Oh, we need that’.” ~ Olliver
Sound Design
Almost from the very beginning, the process for designing the Cyber-Mastiff’s sounds was split into two areas: ● The voice, which covers things like barks, growls, breathing sounds and so on ● And the sound effects, which covers every other sound involved, like footsteps, bites, mechanical gear and the like. Voice The very first step was finding a base for the voice of the Cyber-Mastiff. Looking through various sound libraries, our Sound Designers searched for dog sounds that sounded big and imposing to fit the aura of the Arbites’ Mastiff. Barks, whines, attack sounds, and especially breathing sounds. “[…] we finally got it into the game with help from coders and then we got instructions that it was a bit too much like a normal dog. […] they wanted more aggressive sounds mixed into the voice. That’s when David took over and took a shot at making it more monstrous.” ~ Jonas “[…] I then went through and found all kinds of other growls and barks, from bears, tigers and lions, and pretty much surgically fit them to match the dog sounds Jonas made. […] So it had a lot more aggressiveness, basically. A deeper voice, and louder as well.” ~ David Making the Mastiff sound menacing enough wasn’t the only challenge! Due to the cyborg enhancements, a Cyber-Mastiff can sound more or less robotic, and this depends on what cosmetics the player equips on their dog. This led to the Sound Design team making three separate ‘voices’ for the Cyber-Mastiff: a fully ‘natural’ voice, a fully robotic one, and one in between. This has also been the hardest part of the Cyber-Mastiff’s sound design: Having a ‘cyber’ voice that sounds cool while still sounding like a dog and making sense. It wouldn’t do to just have any robot voice, after all. “It needs to be a cool 40K dog. […] That’s why we want it to sound cool, especially when it’s more cyber-dog as well. ‘Cause we want to set some kind of staple, like ‘This is how Cyber Dogs sound in Darktide’. That’s why it’s so important to nail it.” ~Jonas Sound Effects and Foley Depending on what Cyber-Mastiff cosmetics the player has equipped, it can affect which of the Cyber-Mastiff’s legs are made of metal and which aren’t. This led to us needing proper sounds for different combinations, so that the dog would make the correct sounds when moving around depending on your set up. This was also an opportunity for our designers to make their own sounds from scratch rather wherever possible. A metal cycle pump, for instance, was a perfect base for the metal footsteps, and sound recordings of it in different locations and on different surfaces gave plenty of material. Or using a glove with paperclips at the tips to make the normal paw sounds!
When you hear the Cyber-Mastiff move, you’ll probably be hearing one of these!
Playtesting led to a lot of fine tuning and iteration on the volume levels of the different sounds, the footsteps, the barks and so on. The player should be able to hear those sounds without it being annoying, which was a particular challenge with the metal footsteps. At the same time, the sound of combat should drown out some of the sounds but you should still be able to hear the voice of your own dog.
Bonus questions
Will the Cyber-Mastiff have cosmetics? Yes! You’ll be able to customize their loyal companion by giving it a name and picking its fur colour and pattern! Players will also be able to further customize their loyal companion with various cosmetics, obtained either from the class penances and through the Commodore’s Vestures. Can you pet the Cyber-Mastiff? Yes! Only in the Mourning Star, but there’s various interactions you can have with your companion in the hub, including giving it a quick pet for being a loyal companion. Is the Cyber-Mastiff a good dog? “I mean… It’s a good dog… to its owner. It’s a terrifying killing machine to everything else.” ~ Gunnar “I want to give a shoutout to Molly here at the office, which is the Art Director’s dog. She is such a well-trained dog […] and she’s been a great source of inspiration for me, haha.” ~ Olliver
Good job, Molly!
That’s all we have for today, but stay tuned! More Dev Blogs about the Arbites will be released
soon!
This is the Will of the Lex.
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
Wishlist the Arbites Class today on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3710910/Warhammer_40000_Darktide__Arbites_Class/
– The Darktide Team