Question about Vermintide 2 mod making, community made maps, and future of Vermintide 2 stingray engine

[LittleCiddles]

I guess what I’m wondering is, what is Fatshark’s future plans regarding engines? Considering that the Stingray engine is no longer being developed/actively supported by Autodesk, is Fatshark going to continue using it with the next game Fatshark makes? Or is Fatshark going to be moving to a new engine?

If Fatshark is moving to a new engine, is there really any point in further developing a SDK for Vermintide 2 considering the amount of work required to do so? Wouldn’t it make more sense to, if the next game were to be another Vermintide game on an engine thats consistently being further developed/supported, to develop a SDK on that platform than for the currently existing one?

It just seems really difficult to develop those tools given the situation. Like, it sounds like its difficult to develop content as it is in-house, so how could FS, or the community, expect to develop content too when the development isn’t being done in-house but rather by regular users for an engine that isn’t supported anymore, with tools that are being developed from scratch?

[Flinlock]

@LittleCiddles

Like, it sounds like its difficult to develop content as it is in-house, so how could FS, or the community, expect to develop content too

There are those who speculate that maybe it isn’t so hard to develop content, and that Fatshark doesn’t want to release the SDK because a bunch of super talented modders will pump our content and show Fatshark up. I’m not convinced of that but it certainly is possible. Could be that most of their people are incredibly talented artists and designers (which most people will agree with, especially in the art and character department) but maybe not as good at technically implementing it. A game like Vermintide is very, VERY technically complex so I don’t doubt one bit that it’s time consuming to create content… but you know how it is, whatever engine they use doesn’t matter there is some kid out there with savant-level skill who can take it and create wonders in his or her spare time. Those types of people don’t often work for a big company that will only limit them.

[SmokerT69]

I remember them talking about the engine a while back, it’s actually their own in house engine. They made it and they update it themselves.

[KaelusVonSestiaf]

They made it and then sold it. There’s a big issue there.

[SmokerT69]

I’ll try and find the topic about it later. The Devs gave us a really in depth discussion about it. From what I remember, it’s their engine. The licensed it out to other games, but it’s still theirs.

[SmokerT69]

Found a post from hedge about it.

@Fatshark_Hedge

The journey of the engine is loosely as follows:

• Fatshark developed the Bitsquid engine.
• Autodesk purchased Bitsquid.
• Autodesk renamed it Stingray.
• Vermintide used Stingray.
• Autodesk stops supporting Stingray.
• Fatshark retains the ability to continue development of the branch of the engine we used.

Essentially it’s an in-house engine once more at this point, and one we plan to continue to develop and improve both tools and development pipelines for. Our Engine Team is incredibly talented and will expand with time. If you want to see what happens when you switch an engine during development, look no further than the Overkills: The Walking Dead.

(The above is a simplification of events, but hopefully clears up where we’re at)