[2023] Stormgate Gameplay Reveal AMA - All Answers

Hello everyone! u/LLJKCicero, u/ralopd and I have compiled all questions that were answered during the Frost Giant AMA. You can see the original thread here. Enjoy reading!

Question: What target audience are you shooting for in terms of maturity with Stormgate's storytelling? Children's stories are very much black and white, with a virtuous hero facing off against an irredeemable villain; whereas more mature stories tend to have more shades of grey, there's nuance to the characters and conflicts and there's more focus on narrative consistency to make the characters and setting feel relatable.

Micky Neilson - Lead Narrative Designer: Answer for the first part: We're aiming to tell complex and compelling character stories with a maturity level and tone similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For the second part, I would have a longer answer but running out of time... please ask again on the next AMA!

Question: 1)What's the geopolitical situation on Earth as it stands? Do the Vanguard rule humanity (de facto and/or de jure), or are there multiple human factions, and if so, how do they relate to one another? 2)Sigma Six was responsible for opening the stormgate. Can any info be given on Sigma 1-5? 3)What lore, if any, can be given on therium and luminite? Assuming the Infernals harvest them as well, does this have any bearing on anima? 4)Can you give any info on the in-universe timeline? I've encountered contradictory information as to how much time between the initial Infernal invasion and the start of the game (some say decades, some say centuries). 5)Warcraft III and StarCraft (more 2 than 1) were character-heavy stories. Will Stormgate have a similar level of character focus, or would you say it's more focused on the world (to use the "character vs. world" paradigm)? 6)To clarify with the game modes, there's a 3v3 co-op mode. Is this analagous to the co-op missions of SC2, or a reference to the campaign? If the latter, if one is playing through the campaign solo, are elements adjusted (e.g. does an AI take over allies, or does the mission itself shift?) 7)In many ways, Stormgate seems like a hybrid of Blizzard's major IPs rather than just its RTS entries - demons from Diablo/Warcraft, humans from StarCraft, an aesthetic reminiscent of Overwatch, etc. Was this an intentional design choice, or is it just the way things developed?

Micky Neilson - Lead Narrative Designer:

1. After the Stormgate is opened humans are broken up into decentralized human Resistance groups, scattered across the world. One of these Resistance groups will become the Vanguard.
2. Earlier Sigma programs were aimed at battling or avoiding the various catastrophes plaguing Earth. For instance one of the Sigma programs was focused on genetically enhancing crop production, making crops that can grow in extreme conditions, etc.
3. No additional resource lore to share just yet.
4. Infernals originally Earth thousands of years ago, before ultimately leaving. Time passed, beyond our current day to a point some time in the near future when Sigma Six opened the Stormgate and they flooded back in.
5. Definitely focused on amazing characters!
6. I'll leave the co-op question for other team members.
7. Some intention to harken to other IPs that we all love, also partly development.

Question: What's the overall match score between TLO and Monk? You guys must have just cherry-picked a loss for Monk ;)

Kevin Dong - Lead Co-Op Designer: ​​Unfortunately, I don't have enough answer all these questions, but I wanted to share some insight to my games vs TLO. TLO has been helping us playtest for a few months now. For some reference, at my peak, I was high NA GM in WoL. And TLO is TLO.

On his first day, after playing around a bit and learning all the units, he took ~2/10 games off of me. I was going easy on him, but on that day, I learned I could no longer go easy. After 1 week or about 10 hours of playtime, he surpassed me, winning over 50% of our games. If we were both trying our hardest today, I don't think I could take games off of him.

I think it just goes to show the immense skill difference between a decent player and an actual pro and how those skills transfer over.

Question: [how will the damage and armor system look like?

• different upgrades for different unit types?
• will spells ignore armor?

-will there be negative armor?

bonus question:

when an air transport ship dies what happens to the passengers?

will they die or something else?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/14a7qu8/official_stormgate_gameplay_reveal_ama_thread/jodn6vw/?context=3)

Kevin Dong - Lead Co-Op Designer:

• different upgrades for different unit types?

Though we tentatively have weapon/armor upgrades in the game to try out, I'm personally moving away from having them in the game. My personal philosophy with upgrades is that all upgrades should do one of two things:

Changes the relationship between the upgraded unit and the units they fight in a clear, visible, meaningful, and specific way. (The upgrade itself is cool!) Gates power in a meaningful way. (The unit is cool and the upgrade exists in service of the unit!)

Traditional weapon/armor upgrades don't fall into one of these two categories. And though they have benefits such as committing players towards specific tech paths, allowing players to feel a sense of gradual progression within a game, and enabling cool timings in PvP, we're not confident these benefits are strong enough tradeoffs for the added complexity they add to the game. On this topic, we're curious to hear your thoughts!

• will spells ignore armor?

Funny story. They're intended to but I just realized we don't have this feature in-game at the moment.

-will there be negative armor?

Yes!

bonus question:

• when an air transport ship dies what happens to the passengers?
• will they die or something else?

Units currently die when an air transport dies, but I'm personally interested in testing different behavior on different transports!

Question:

1 - You guys have previously mentioned powerful, mega end-game units being in the game.

Are they still planned to be in the game?

And if so, how do you guys plan on tackling balance with a unit that is supposed to leverage superior tech to finish games against turtling opponents (if that's still their design philosophy)?

2 - Will Stormgate have asymmetric creeping, with different factions having particular mechanics or abilities that interact uniquely with creeps?

3 - Do the creep camps have different starting difficulty levels like wc3's green/brown/red creep camps?

4 - Will the game have camera locations?

5 - SC2 had slightly different military unit numbers per faction, with Zerg having the fewest, and with Heart of the Swarm adding one more unit to Protoss than the other races (+3 units instead of +2). Do you guys plan on every faction having the exact same number of military units? And a follow-up question: how many units per faction are you guys aiming at having?

6 - Will closed testing occur in multiple isolated playtests (e.g. just a week) or will it be continuous/mostly continuous from July and on?(https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/14a7qu8/official_stormgate_gameplay_reveal_ama_thread/jodl690/?context=3)

Kevin Dong - Lead Co-Op Designer:

1. Yes, because of our production schedule, we were only able to show low/mid-tier units in our gameplay reveal. We have lots of thoughts on how to balance these high-tier units versus low-tier units.

First, we'd want all the higher-tier units to have definitive weaknesses. For example, maybe an end-game unit can ONLY break turtles. We'll have late-game upgrades for low-tier units that put them back into the game. While early-game units will cost a similar amount of supply as they do in Blizzard RTSs, end-game units will cost more supply. Our thought here is that extreme late-game viability (at the time when resources are plentiful but you hit the supply cap) in Blizzard-style RTS depends primarily on supply costs. At an extreme example, a Battlecruiser costs 14x that of a Marine but only 6x supply. To that end, we'll be balancing supply cost more on extreme late-game viability, which will allow "end-game" units to not be the end-all/be-all units you'll always want to build. (As another tidbit, our current max supply is 300, which allows for similarly sized armies to SC for end-game units but more units when you're massing low-tier units.) For the super late-game units, we may limit them to a certain count.

Ok, now rapid-fire!

1. Factions/Units will at least have implicit ways to uniquely interact with creeps.

2. Yes.

3. Yes, they already exist in the game.

4. Not every faction will have the same number of units. My personal thought is that both SC1 and WoL had a good number of initial units such that every traditional role was filled and there were not many overlapping roles.

5. Multiple isolated playtests.

Question: Is that something you're willing to share with us ? If so, were there any other RTS titles you got inspiration from?

Kevin Dong - Lead Co-Op Designer: Our attack/armor counter system will leverage a tag system similar to SC2. We found this to be a good compromise between an approachable system that doesn't require the memorization of an attack/armor chart and one that introduces granularity in terms of HOW hard units can counter each other.

One small difference is that some units will be able to gain bonuses against multiple types of other units instead of just one. This KINDA exists in SC2 where Banelings deal bonus damage to Light units and Structures, but it's done in a less systematic way.

Armor will grant % damage reduction instead of directly reducing damage by the armor amount. This is similar to systems that WC3 and many MOBAs use such as League or DOTA. Specifically in our game, 1 armor will grant 1% effective HP against physical damage. 100 armor will double your effective HP.

While we enjoyed the interactions we've seen throughout the years with breakpoints when you upgraded attack/armor (which we view as the coolest part of the SC armor system), they were not very noticeable for the vast majority of players, and this system had a couple of downsides.

First, as a game that aims to be a social RTS, we realized we really wanted to heavily leverage buffs as a way to encourage teamplay. Unfortunately, stacking SC-style armor via buffs can get very degenerate very quickly. In addition, we realized that while developing SC2 Co-op, because we wanted to scale enemies almost indefinitely, SC-style armor stopped mattering at a certain point. Why would you want 2 armor when your enemies are dealing 100 damage?

However, for fans of the SC system, I'm happy to report that we will still use this type of "armor" on one-off units, just not game wide.

Question: How are you currently building maps? Is the in-game editor already sophisticated enough for map making or do you do something else?

Kaizen - Associate Level Designer: Heyo! We use our in-game editor for building maps. u/Frost_Larson and I provide feedback to the engineers almost every day on development of the IGE as we build maps, and progress has been amazing! ~Kaizen

Question: What are the odds of keeping the chickens?

Kaizen - Associate Level Designer: Hiya!I'm so glad you guys love these chickens as much as we do! I had so much fun giving her and her friends(!!) their fantastic wardrobes. As fearsome as these pre-Alpha temp hires are, I hope you'll find their replacements as DELIGHTFUL as we do. Still, who knows what the future holds for these dudes? If they aren't creep camp critters, what would you love to see them as? ~Kaizen

Question: What does an Associate Level Designer do and why does that poor lad has no surname?

Kaizen - Associate Level Designer: Hello!In addition to taking long naps, DMing Dungeons and Dragons, and playing League of Legends, I spend my time as a Map-Making Yeti! I get to learn from the best: not only u/Frost_Larson, but many, many of us here at FG are Starcraft and Warcraft custom map makers!I've designed a few of our in-house 1v1 maps, prototyped creep camp mechanics and some other potential mid-map objectives (what are those purple flowers??), and playtested my heart out with the team! I'm new to the RTS genre and playing against the people who made some of the best RTS's has been...humbling. T^TStormgate is really exciting for me as someone new to RTS because I LOVE the social aspect of MOBA games. Getting to jump into VC with friends, chat with new people, and spam emotes are huge reasons why I've played MOBA's for so long. We're still working on the social aspect of Stormgate, and I've loved what we've done so far. Is there anything you'd like to see on the social side come into the RTS genre?And no surname necessary - there's only one Kaizen :wink: ~Kaizen

Question: Are there any unit designs that have already been relegated to campaign/coop because they're too over the top for PvP?

Kaizen - Associate Level Designer: Hello! There's definitely lots of abilities that have been backburnered! We've actually prototyped lots of units for potential map objectives (mercenary shop units, big bad bosses that spawn in the middle of the map, recruiting creep camp units). My favorite that I designed as a prototype though, is undoubtedly Squif, the bestest boi, from a few months ago (you can see an older iteration of our UI and minimap!). He won't make it into the game, but he's made it into our hearts <3 Big Boss Boi ~Kaizen

Question: Ensuring that one has made sufficient number of workers is crucial for a good macro. In StarCraft II, one has to hover over the supply at the top right to see the worker count. Having the count always visible would be helpful especially for newer players. What is the team's current state of thinking on this UI design? Is having an always visible worker count something the team is willing to consider?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer We probably will not be showing this information by default but it is possible we will add an option to do so. Additional UI, even when it contains valuable information, is not necessarily always a positive for new players. One of the most important things for new players is being able to focus on the right information at the right time, and additional noise does not always help with that goal.

Question: How far along are the editor and asset tools? ... How many TDs, mobas, Castle Fights, Starjeweleds etc. have been tried internally so far?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer Right now we don't have concrete answers on when to expect the tools to arrive but we are very likely going to be delivering them in stages, with the first stage being the terrain editor for building melee maps.

One of our engineers actually made a tower defense game during a hackathon over the holidays and that was pretty cool to see.

Question: What sort of general unit movement commands are you planning to give most units, or are experimenting with, that do not exist in SC2 or WC3? Perhaps something that's been inspired from other RTS games?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer We actually have a sort of "retreat" command on Vanguard air units right now that sends them back to the nearest hangar bay and repairs them up. It is somewhat reminiscent of Company of Heroes or Dawn of War.

Question: What additional sorts of things are you going to automate that wouldn't have been done in prior Starcraft or Warcraft games? What have you learned NOT to force your players to have difficulty doing. On the flip side, what are some new forms of required attention taxes that you are planning on implemented. And what are your lines in the sand where you will never allow automation?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer Right now beyond what you have seen previously, we are mostly just automating control groups and selecting a worker for construction while using quick macro. We don't have specific red lines for what we would be willing to automate if we feel it is appropriate in the future but at the moment we are not automating base building, worker training, army training, or anything like that.

The game in general has a lot of opportunity for any extra attention bandwidth the player has to be spent on micro due to the lower lethality. Personally I have been enjoying that quite a bit, and have managed to win a couple of games where I was on the ropes through micro.

Question: Any updates on UGC such as publishing vs. p2p, monetization structure (if any), or the roll-out plan for the editor?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer We are leaning towards a publishing model currently and are investigating the right solution for that. For roll-out we will likely be starting with just the terrain editor and melee map support and then unlocking/expanding the capabilities of the editor for modders from there.

Question: I'm really curious to know what it's like to be a UX Designer for a video game. Did you join as a designer from another industry or did you start in gaming? Does your role involve illustration; or do you lay the foundation for artists to fill in the gaps. What does your day-to-day look like? How do you find people outside the company (if any) to test the functionality of the game's interface?

Ryan Schutter - Lead UX Designer: For my day to day I build wireframes and write a lot of documentation for engineers and artists to work from. For the most part you want to provide them with as much good information as possible so while they are working they do not need to constantly stop to get answers. Before joining Blizzard I was pursuing a career as an illustrator, and StarCraft II was my first job as a designer other than some smaller graphic design work when I was younger. I don't get to do much illustration here at Frost Giant at the moment but on StarCraft II I produced numerous 2D assets for the game including portraits, console skins, and sprays. We have done some outside user testing for RTS games in general through universities, but our main testing for the UI is going to come from our alpha and beta, and we have left the UI in a somewhat flexible place so we can react to that testing and feedback. Thank you!

Question: Are the skins and models the units used in the gameplay trailer final? Because it looked pretty polished. But I’m not super stoked about some of the readability regarding some of the units.

Tim Campbell - Game Director: Great to hear the feedback! This is a really good observation and is definitely one that the team is paying close attention to as more and more units go into the game. Legibility and distinctiveness are very, very important to us. In this case, we've already tried a few different colors for the lances and didn't feel that a color change was enough of a difference to create visual clarity. Instead, we're going to put Exo in our queue to get a functionality and visual update that will help it to stand out on the battlefield and be differentiated from Lancers. You can expect that a LOT of iteration is going to be done as we move forward! Its a delicate balancing act between taking time for revisions vs making forward progress, so sometimes an identified issue like this will take a bit of time before the dev team can circle back around to it. But in the meantime, please keep sending feedback like this - we hear you and really appreciate the help making Stormgate great.

Question: Will the campaign be only playable as solo and in a group of three or will there be a way to play as a duo (even in a basic way like dividing the units that would be allocated to the third player among the two players)?

Tim Campbell - Game Director: Good question - Campaign missions can be played entirely solo if you'd like. However, if you'd like to share the experience with friends, you'll be able to also play missions in coop with 2 or 3 players.

Question: With the recent Atlas footage and the "light forest" from the gameplay video, it seems trees are going to be a major map element. It certainly takes a lot of dev resources to fill the map with destructible objects, so it's not a stretch to imagine they'll be used in most maps. But what about areas with no trees? WC3 had some creative takes to fill out its biomes - giant mushrooms in Outlands, tropical palms in Sunken Ruins, etc. - but without the need for trees to be harvestable, will FG consider more options?

Will we see, perhaps, glacier maps with destroyable ice chunks in lieu of trees? Urban maps with buildings (ruined or otherwise) to demolish? Infernal hellscapes with jagged rocks and statues to topple? Maybe even more complex features like bridges that can be broken or rebuilt, such as in Tiberian Sun?

Tim Campbell - Game Director: Hi there - Our Hinterlands tileset (the green forest shown so far) is just one of multiple environments that we're working on, and interactive terrain elements will be available in all of them. We'll vary the appearance and presentation of terrain elements to make sense in different environments, but they will be present.

Question: Will there be random symetrical map generation for ranked 1v1?

Tim Campbell - Game Director: Hi Andelkar - We're really interested in the feature and are excited about its potential, but we're not working on anything related to it right now. That may change in the future, though...

Question: What can we expect each stage of development (pre-alpha, alpha, beta, etc) to mean in terms of what gets built out when, what is reasonable to dive deeply into (e.g. graphics are likely not anywhere close to being done in pre-alpha, but is the concept of destructible trees fair game? How about during alpha/beta/etc)? What can we expect from different developement milestones?

Brett Crawford - Assistant Game Director: Hey BeoMulf - thank you for the question! There really is no great answer to this question, as so many things are in flux during development. Almost anything you see until we release the game has the potential to shift, change or completely disappear. Of course, we will have certain confidence levels on mechanics/units/maps/etc... but building a game like this is much more akin to creating with Legos rather than making a soup - we need the ability to add/remove/tweak things, not just keep piling things together in a known 'recipe'. That said, I feel like there is a fairly profound difference between how we are showcasing our development here at Frost Giant compared to how we did it at Blizzard. Transparency to the community is a very core pillar for us. Our end goal is to make sure that the community is actively helping us develop the game by being able to see the stages of development and give critically needed feedback along the way. As for expectations from milestones, it really is a bit impossible for me to tell you anything concrete - just know that you and the rest of the community will see and be able to react to it when we get there!

Question: Do you worry that each player having a scout unit makes it very hard for players to use any creative early game plays/rushes? Or is that on purpose? Wouldn't each player having a scout mean that we are mostly going to see people start with the same, standard build order until they can fight off the scout and then hide the rest of their build?

Brett Crawford - Assistant Game Director: That's a great question Drinksarlot, There are certain places that we want to iterate with factions, and starting units is one area that we are playing with. I am not sure that Vanguard players starting with a SCOUT will dumb-down the decision making that SC players had. I would imagine that it will likely create more strategies while not 'forcing' players into using economy units as scouts, which is very difficult for newer players to understand. One of our major goals of the game is to increase the approachability for players. The RTS genre is infamous for having large learning curves that causes a lot of potential players to bounce off-of before understanding the 'fun' parts of the game. While we still want a very large mastery component to the game for our high-level players, we also want to onboard newer players with a fun and gradual experience to grow into becoming high-level players themselves!

Question: We have seen light forests where the infantry can pass through easily while bulkier units get caught. Are you planning on making the opposite like some rough rocky area in which larger units have no problem moving but smaller ones maybe have half their movement speed?

Brett Crawford - Assistant Game Director: Thanks for the question benibomb! That is a great idea, and while we don't currently have this exact design being prototyped, we are looking at other ways that we can use terrain constraints to make armies and strategies more interesting (water, maybe?) :)

Question: How often does the team in the office play games and tournaments against each other? Who is the current reigning champion?

Brett Crawford - Assistant Game Director: We meet again Drinksarlot! Very often. Let's just say that we have an employee discord we use that helps our team find people of their skill-level to play together. It ranges from 0 to Monk.

Question: /u/Frost_Daybringer We miss you (and everyone else) in Heroes. This isn't a question, I just want to thank you. Still my most played/beloved game! (Unless you have anything to share on the war chest/battlepass, in which case, 👀

Brett Crawford - Assistant Game Director: Thank you lemindhawk! Nothing on that I can share right now <3

Question: Do destroyed Trees come back? Is there a distinction between Light Forests that units can walk through and Heavy Forests that they can't for Tree destruction?

Ben Cahill - Gameplay Engineer: Hi there! At this moment destroyed trees do not come back. So new paths that get created on the map by destroying trees are permanently there. This has led to some funny back door moments.

There is also a difference between the trees that are part of a light forest and the heavy forest, the difference is the spacing in the trees. The light forests are placed in a way that units with a small radius can fit through. This is done through tooling so we have control of the spacing. But right now a tree is a tree.

Question: Small thing, but will units have voice lines when they are selected? Things like the orc peon's 'ready to work' lines add a huge amount of character to the game.

Ben Cahill - Gameplay Engineer: Hello! Yes, there will be voice lines on each unit when they are selected and when you issue orders. Which really helps brings the game to life. I remember awhile ago when we did not have those voice lines and how weird that felt when playing. It is night and day when a game starts to get sounds and music. Someone else also asked some bonus questions. There are currently not any talking dogs, buuut since the S.C.O.U.T is a robo-dog, maybe he does need a voice box...

Question: Would random generated maps ever be a consideration?

Ben Cahill - Gameplay Engineer: Thanks for asking a question! Randomly generated or procedurally generated content on the maps is not something that we are actively working on right now. This is a topic that we have talked about and are excited to think more about in the future.

Question: With the recent Atlas footage and the "light forest" from the gameplay video, it seems trees are going to be a major map element. It certainly takes a lot of dev resources to fill the map with destructible objects, so it's not a stretch to imagine they'll be used in most maps. But what about areas with no trees? WC3 had some creative takes to fill out its biomes - giant mushrooms in Outlands, tropical palms in Sunken Ruins, etc. - but without the need for trees to be harvestable, will FG consider more options? Will we see, perhaps, glacier maps with destroyable ice chunks in lieu of trees? Urban maps with buildings (ruined or otherwise) to demolish? Infernal hellscapes with jagged rocks and statues to topple? Maybe even more complex features like bridges that can be broken or rebuilt, such as in Tiberian Sun?

Ben Cahill - Gameplay Engineer: Hello! Since we do plan on having different biomes for maps, it is not a stretch to think there will be some biomes where our luscious green trees might look out of place. So there will be some equivalent of a destructible objects available for us to use on maps that will match that environment.

Question: I've seen a couple of FG staff say they like certain aspects of food gathering in Age of Empires - being able to gather in different ways, risk v reward with the deer/boar giving fast food but in exposed areas of the map. Is this type of mechanic something you have decided to pursue, or can you tell us anymore in this area? I think something like this adds a bit of spice and variety to that of Starcraft resource gathering. Keep up the great work!

Ben Cahill - Gameplay Engineer: Hi there! This is an area we are exploring, but we are in the early stages of exploration with our resources. So, with respect to resources in exposed areas of the map, we have been playing with the locations of the Therium deposits in relation to a base. Even in the players main base, the Therium deposit is placed off to the side. From the gameplay video, you can even see two covered Therium deposits placed in an interesting position (the red cracked earth). This will probably go through some iterations, but it is something that we are pursuing.

Question: Since you won't be revealing anything about the third faction, when will we know more about the Infernals? Something of an extension of that question is whether there is a planned date (or date range) not for release, but for non-NDA testing. I think a lot of us would be fine with not playing if we could at least see our favourite content creators doing so. What is the identity and flavor of the fourth faction? ;)

Tim Campbell - Game Director: Thanks for your question, JonasHalle! We're planning to share more about the Infernal faction later this year, including revealing some of their unique gameplay mechanics and units. They're already being actively worked on and playtested internally, and I'm excited to share more in a few months!

Its a little too early to comment on any faction(s) beyond that. But I love the question and would like to hear any feedback on any desired # or themes of playable factions. Perhaps Viking Chicken?

Gerald Villoria - Communications Director: Hi JonasHalle! As Tim said, we plan to show you more of the Infernal Host later this year.

We don’t have a date set for non-NDA testing or Early Access, though we are aiming to expand the testing pool and get Stormgate into many more players’ hands next year. We need to get through these initial tests first and take in player feedback before we can assess when the time is right to open the floodgates to the public or open the game up to streaming.

Question: For custom games, will there be more in depth lobby settings, like the various ways players are customizing lobbies with map mods in SC2, Including the ability to swap to a different balance patch? Does FG have a rough idea of how will you support custom map community? Better tutorials for the editor (if there is one) to better onboard new mapmakers, for example? Will there be in-game UI customization?

Gerald Villoria - Communications Director:

Custom games and modding (answers from Frost_RyanS) We haven't build an extension mod equivalent system yet, but I am a huge fan of those so hopefully we are able to support them in the future. We do currently have an attribute system similar to StarCraft II's that does allow maps to add settings to a lobby that can then be passed through into the game. We have some strong ideas as to what would make a great tutorial system for the editor but it is not at the top of our priority list right now as we are still working on more foundational features. We are working on some basic UI customization options like flipping the minimap from the left side to the right side of the screen, but we do not currently have plans for massive customization. On reconnects: Yes, but it's too early to share too many details! by Frost_AustinH

Question: Stormgate’s art is definitely stylised, but “cartoony” doesn’t seem like the right word for it, and I'm not sure “painterly” quite fits either. How does the art team describe Stormgate’s art style?

Jesse Brophy - Art Director: Stormgate’s art is definitely stylised, but “cartoony” doesn’t seem like the right word for it, and I'm not sure “painterly” quite fits either. How does the art team describe Stormgate’s art style?

I would best describe our art style as "Stylized Realism" with the number one goal being readability. Unreal is a beast of an engine and we could easily throw tons of polygons at it and make Stormgate an overly detailed game. But, if everything is overly detailed, nothing is. You have noise. That is something we are constantly trying to avoid. Giving players the ability to quickly read what units are on screen so that the art never gets in the way of gameplay, that is our north star.

Question: In earlier interviews, it was mentioned that full, 3D portraits are only a 'maybe', as they would put a lot of extra work for the team. What are the chances of pre-rendered animated portraits, like what we saw in Brood War, or with the upcoming RTS game D.O.R.F.?

Jesse Brophy - Art Director: I love 3d portraits. I was fortunate to have made many on SCII. That being said, they are a massive undertaking. It would take me roughly 5-7 days to quick concept, if one did not exist, usually on a post-it, model, texture, light and camera a portrait. Our animator would do the rigging and animation. I am sure there was even more that occurred I did not know about. Because of this we are going to be starting out with static portraits but I fully understand animated ones are great. There is a world where we add 3d portraits later.

Question: It's been mentioned that Blender is one of the tools being used to develop the assets for the game - is there any chance that we could see a select number of assets open to developers to use as a basis for how content should be developed for use in-engine?

Jesse Brophy - Art Director: Great question. That is correct, we are doing the majority of our 3d work in Blender. I would love to support that. We will look into what that looks like on our end.

Question: What level of goofiness will be present? More serious like SC2 or a joke fest with a playable chicken race and an announcer that has a laugh track?

Jesse Brophy - Art Director: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwyoay7ztwM

Question: How/will you design cosmetics with fancy looking colors, when every player needs a player color to identify their units?

Continued in comments...

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