Eldar End Cinematic Commentary


The Eldar video was the last video I did of the seven videos, and probably my least favorite. I had spent so much time on the other six videos that I was at a bit of a crunch to finish this one. Plus, I simply wasn’t too familiar with the Eldar race, so it was hard to think of what to film for them. To me, I consider the Eldar a mysterious race and wanted to give the video a mystique to it.

Part 1


Scene 1
This is probably my favorite part to the whole cinematic. There’s no dialogue, no music and no action, but it sure has an awesome feel to it. It makes you ask what the Wraithlord is doing. It’s mysterious, just like the Eldar.

Scene 2
The color schemes for the races of Soulstorm are very similar. The Craftworld Ulthwe Eldar are blackish like the Necrons. The only way you can tell they are fighting against each other is by the difference in color of the weapon projectiles. Nonetheless, I found it imperative to have a scene of the Eldar slamming down the Necron. Have the Necron spawn out of the tunnel was just for dramatic effect. It took several code rewrites to get the hitches down as low as possible when they spawned. The Nightwings that fly in at the end of the scene didn’t have their proper art until the very end of the project.

Scene 3
I had several different shots for this scene. I ended up just going with a long drawn out close up of the Farseer’s face. I wanted to put something else in there, but I simply ran out of time. It took several recordings before I felt the particles floating around her weren’t too distracting.

Part 2


Scene 1
I really liked this next scene. I was kind of tipping my hat to the ole Star Wars jedi bike scene through the forest. Plus, it was a shot you typically wouldn’t see in-game, as playable areas wouldn’t have this much obstruction of view. Here it works well. I had to record this scene on our best machine to get the framerate up. I also enjoyed the small encampment of Orks at the end of the scene who get killed by the Eldar Banshees. They’re just kind of doing their own thing. This scene is kind of reminiscent of the Rokclaw area, where one would expect to find those silly Orks.

Scene 2
It’s kind of difficult to tell what’s going on in this scene, but I think the point is there if you see it enough. There’s a cloaked ranger kneeling next to a group of Imperial soldiers who’ve managed to survive the whole Kaurava conflict. I had instructions to bring in Warp Spiders who killed Tau kroot coming to kill the soldiers and vanished before the soldiers could tell what was going on. I was then supposed to show the soldiers being confused at the dead bodies. I did the scene several different ways and I thought they were all horrible, unfortunately. Instead, I did this scene where the Imperials are just trying to reestablish themselves and bring in reinforcements, but the Eldar watch over everything they do.

I had some instructions for the next scene but decided to change them up as well to better fit the dialogue. Instead, I continued to show the Imperials reforming on the Kauravan.

Part 3


Scene 1
I took the Warp Spider idea from a few steps before and moved it to this scene. Here, it goes along with “all attempts on the third planet of Kaurava met with disaster.” It shows some buildings being constructed (once again, not an easy scripting chore as one would think, although I knew the pitfalls by this point) and Warp Spiders jump in one by one. Typically, you’d see a whole squadron “jump” into an area simultaneously, but I put a short delay on their appearance and disappearance. It gave it a more realistic effect. The explosions are pretty nice too. :)

In walks the old general, a model used in the original Dawn of War game (just for fans, not per instructions), who appears right as all the Spiders are gone.

Scene 2
The last scene shows a few Eldar heading out as they enter the Webway Gate. I tried to make the Gate vanish as well, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I kept trying to make the gate jump to a different location, but the gates don’t jump. Once again, I just wasn’t familiar with the Eldar setup unfortunately.

I added some flyers at the end of the shot. Some people didn’t understand why I did this. I was trying to add flyers wherever I could, considering it was a new “feature” we added to the game. The truth is the functionality and art for the flyers didn’t come in until the very end of the project! Putting them in the cinematics made it look like it was all planned out and smooth. :)

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