In many cultures there is very wise tradition of giving children names which they can change when they become mature people, taking a name that better fits the person they’ve become. There are other more comprehensible examples – during childhood or our teen years, many of us had endearing nick names which today just make for a funny anecdote, and we now have much more “adult” nicknames that reflect our personality better. That exact thing happened to the browser game, which was initially planned simply as a small bonus feature for the Witcher community – to give Witcher fans opportunity to quarrel not only through words but also to feel the excitement of a real fight.

DuelMail surprised us all, becoming something much more than just a fun forum diversion. It became a matured complex platform which now stands on its own legs. As a result, the name which fit quite well in childhood slowly lost its meaning and no longer applies to a more self-reliant game. That’s why we think that the time for change has come.

Michał Madej

From this day on there is no longer DuelMail.
We now present
The Witcher: Versus!!

To show how the game has developed during the beta test, we’ve prepared some statistical data

From the beginning of the beta test
4 151 100 fights have been completed.

Players created 46 284 accounts

The Witcher became the most popular class with
29 618 accounts

Most active player rolled 6000 fights

Highest number of fights taken in one day 91 000

Highest number of fights won in a row 80

Short:

Three classes: Witcher, Sorceress and Beast!

Build your character to level 30
Over 70 skills
Over 150 items
Spectacular fighting scenes

Storyline, tournaments and much more!

Description

The Witcher: Versus is an exciting browser game using The Witcher licence and created in cooperation with the creators of the original game, CD Projekt RED.

In the game, you step into the shoes of a ruthless Witcher, mighty Sorceress or the trainer of a cruel Frightener and you duel with other players in the arena, vying for gold, experience, glory and power.

The Witcher: Versus is a modern version of the classic battlemail games, which consist of sending challenges to opponents with a fight sequence queued up in advance – attacks, defence and special actions.

By winning, players gain experience, allowing them to reach higher levels of development and obtain new skills and items to be used in fights.

You can choose among three different character classes with unique features, equipment and individual tactics.

Requirements

To play you need a computer connected to the Internet, a web browser and Flash.

To enter the game, you need to create an account at thewitcher.com/forum.

Apart from the existing English version we plan to implement other language versions. We will surely have a Russian version, which is almost ready thanks to very big help from our Russian partner, Noviy Disk. This version will be available at the launch of the full version of the game. We are planning to release other language versions, as well. We are looking for partners who would help us to not only translate the game, but who would also be willing to participate in developing the game, translating new elements or events we plan to implement.

Darek Jasiński, product manager, one2tribe

A couple of weeks after the premiere of The Witcher: Versus we plan to start the First “Era”, i.e. a big three-month event comprised of smaller events creating the larger whole. One of the goals we wish to achieve by creating events is to really get the community involved and to add even more depth to the game. We want the community to control the further development of events and influence the development of the game thanks to the choices they make and their behaviour in the game. That’s why the future of the game depends – to a great degree – on the players themselves.

Each event will be a chance to scoop up valuable prizes and unique distinctions.

Paweł "Eriash" Majak, community manager, CD Projekt RED

One of the most interesting challenges during the design of The Witcher: Versus was the Beast character. We knew from the beginning of the project that a player would be able to fight as a Witcher or a Sorceress, but the third class wasn’t decided for much longer. We had various concepts, like archers, druids, villains, knights and freaks that populate the world of The Witcher. Finally we decided that a player would be able to fight as a monster. The first attempt at a monster character was a Wyvern.

A terrifying cousin of the dragon, powerful and fire-breathing. After verification in book sources it appeared that fire-breathing was somehow lost through evolution, that the dragon is a very distant relative, and that the Wyvern itself is a bit small... but that certainly did not discourage us. CD Projekt Red gave us the Wywern animations taken from The Witcher PC game. We implemented these animations to our test game server, ready to show all those Witchers and Sorceress who the boss is. And there was a surprise… In The Witcher, a Wyvern jumps high in the air while attacking. Our animator was trying to fit all those aerial acrobatics into quite a small game window, so he reduced the size of the monster. Thus, the opponents that entered the arena were a clone of Geralt and a… battle chicken.

The creature was jumping around in the arena, biting and flapping its wings. It was surprisingly effective, winning its first few fights. So we decided to test the special attacks, Poisons (which replaced the missing fire-breathing), and another surprise greeted us. Because of a bug in animation positioning, the Wyvern turned its back to the Witcher and jumped butt-first straight into his face!

When we presented our creation to our colleagues from CD Projekt Red, they decided that a crossbreed of Wyvern and battle chicken is not something we should be proud of and that we should together redesign the monster class from the scratch, introducing something far more terrifying. And that’s how the Frightener appeared in the game.

Darek Jasiński & Andrzej Ilczuk, community manager, one2tribe

The originator of the whole undertaking was Michał Madej, the chief designer of The Witcher. Benek Szneider also played a not-insignificant role – he designed the whole visual setting: the user interface, logo, animation and special effects. Another two people from CD Projekt RED who dedicated a lot of their time and effort are Jan Molak – responsible for integration of game with thewitcher.com platform and the technical part – and our invaluable Community Manager, Paweł Majak; thanks to his help the game was developed with the incredible support of the community. From the beginning, the project was lead by Paweł Feldman as a way of building The Witcher brand; now it’s a separate enterprise… and is still being developed.

One the one2tribe side there are many people involved. At the very beginning (June last year) these people were involved: Wojtek Ozimek (our president), who co-created the concept of the game, and Małgosia Rycharska, who made us start working on the game and helped with contact with CD Projekt. Later (in September) I joined the team as a designer, Piotrek Piechota became responsible for the server part, and Łukasz Witkowski created the flash part of the game. In February, after the alpha tests were started, Andrzej Orłowski-Skoczyk joined us as a tester, catching all the bugs and looking through the applications for alpha- and beta-testers. In April, after the start of beta tests, Andrzej Ilczuk came onboard, a specialist in running player communities. Finally, Wojtek Turak was of help to us in the optimisation of the servers’ efficiency.

In the first closed tests of the game, the most active members of The Witcher community from all over the world played a very important role. CD Projekt RED gave them the chance to test the project, showing the community a lot of trust, as no non-disclosure agreements were signed. No one from the group of testers breathed a word… we were proud. We have great community and this was further proof of that.

Michał Madej, Darek Jasiński & Paweł Majak

Read The Witcher: Versus Developers Chat

Benek Szneider, CDP RED artist, answers questions about in-game graphics

What was the biggest challenge when working on Versus graphics? When creating an interface, the only challenge and at the same time the most important one is to make it in such a way, that the user will know where to click in order to do what he wants to achieve. Michał Madej, the mechanics designer who worked with me on the GUI, is very experienced in creating games, so, basically, everything went smoothly: he determined which particular sections were planned and my task was to create some cool identification system which would assist the game mechanics and simultaneously be nice to look at.

What was your inspiration? The game world is not common fantasy; the mythology in it is more gray than the trivial black & white. Geralt is a controversial hero, a mutant, a trained machine, so a simple visual design suits him better than traditional, ornate gold RPG decorations. I equipped the Fallout-like panels with some Scandinavian patterns and they fit well. One may say they are both ‘biological’ and ‘mechanical’.

How did the animation process go? We took the animations straight out of the PC game. The Witcher has masses of great combat animations, very carefully prepared, and we had to fit them into The Witcher: Versus sequences, which was a task for Piotrek Żyła. Then, we had to check how the animations acted in a restricted game structure, if they fit well, if everything worked together, etc. Later we added some magic effects, damage and blood. We tried hard to make these animations convincing and significant despite the fact that Flash is quite limited in terms of its capabilities. In the final version, all of the graphics were remade – characters were re-lit and new effects were added to make them more impressive, and the backgrounds were perfected by Damian Bajowski, a brilliant matte painter. Everything is fantastic!

The beta test revealed all of the strong and weak points of the game, which helped us improve the not-so-good elements, and make the good ones even better. In short, the final version is still better and cooler than the Beta, and some new elements are particularly eye catching – challenging someone through e-mail, the shout-box and tutorials. The gameplay itself has been considerably improved, particularly the visuals – we have completely new animations, special effects and moving backgrounds. These few weeks of Beta gave us enough data about the gameplay to help us improve the diversity of the classes, their balance, the number of items and general fun. The last and the least visible change –however of no small importance –is the enhancement of security against cheaters, who were a plague in the beta version. We hope that now The Witcher: Versus is totally fair game.

Michał Madej

Rankings and characters will be reset for the launch. Firstly, it’s because of technical reasons, for the game to run faster. Mostly, however, the ranking itself changed during the beta test, as we implemented modifications and limitations to make cheaters’ lives more difficult, and we implemented honour. The current ranking is mixed – there are players with points gained according to old rules, some according to new ones. We believe that it will be fair to have equal chances for everyone with the start of the full version of the game.

Soon you can expect further improvements and new game elements.

Darek Jasiński

Download The Witcher: Versus Wallpaper

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The Witcher: Versus will be released 9th of July!

http://versus.thewitcher.com