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CK2 Dev Diary #56: Meet the Team

Good afternoon, all. I’m Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, the programmer on CK2. In the past I’ve written dev diaries about modding, optimization, and quality of life improvements.
Summer has started, and most of the office is gone until the end of July, including the majority of the CK2 team. However, the show must go on, so for these four weeks I’ll be writing all the CK2 dev diaries.
Since most of the team being on vacation means that little development is happening, that means that these four dev diaries will be pretty light on info about the upcoming expansion and patch, but I hope to provide you with some interesting insights, info, and tidbits regardless.

For today, I’ll be writing about the different roles people on the team have, and what each such role is responsible for.
At the time of writing, the core CK2 team consists of: one creative director, one project lead, one designer, two content designers, one programmer, one artist, and two embedded quality assurance testers.
Beyond the core team, we also have the support of our central quality assurance unit, a 3D artist, and a number of external contractors, as well as a number of publishing roles.

So let’s start from the top, with the creative director.

Game Director
Person: Henrik “Doomdark” Fåhraeus

Our creative director has since CK2’s inception been Henrik Fåhraeus, though at the time the role was combined with the Project Lead role and Programmer role, and simply called Project Lead.

The role of the Creative Director is to provide the overall direction for the game. The main way the director does this is by writing the overall vision for each expansion, and provides guidelines and a framework for the designer to work with, which is collected in a vision document. This document outlines each feature the expansion and patch is supposed to have, with descriptions of what each feature entails, its purpose, how important it is, whether it’ll be free or not, and what professions will be involved in implementing it.

The game director then monitors the state of the game to ensure that it is staying in line with their overall vision and concept; that features are implemented in a way compatible with the needs they wanted to address, and working in the manner they expected.

Designer
Person: Alexander “rageair” Oltner

Next, we also have a designer. While the game director focuses primarily on the overarching vision, the designer focuses more on fleshing out the details, though there’s significant overlap with the game director sometimes fleshing things out, and the designer sometimes being responsible for parts of the vision.

The designer turns the vision document into a design document; a document fleshed out enough that it can be implemented by the programmers, content designers, and artists without having to constantly make assumptions about how something is meant to work.

The designer also serves as the primary point of contact between the people implementing the design, and the design team (the creative director and designer). If the design is unclear, ambiguous, or the implementer sees a potential issue, the designer is the person to ask in order to resolve such issues.

Project Lead
Person: Anna “Anona” Norrevik

While the design team decides what the goal of an expansion/patch is to be, the project lead figures out the “how” in order to make the release as good as possible, and to ensure the schedule is kept. As part of this, the project lead keeps track of the progress made towards the release to ensure that it is kept on track, and ensure that new features don’t creep into the project plan without good reason. If the project is lagging behind schedule, the project lead is also responsible for getting it back on track. There are three main ways for the project lead to do this:
  1. Ask for more resources. For example, if the code is lagging behind, a programmer might be loaned from another project. “More resources” will in some cases simply be more time; plan the release for later so that more can be done
  2. Reduce the scope of tasks. Often, it is possible to scale a feature down to some extent if there’s simply not enough time. For example, if a new feature originally was intended to have six related event chains, reducing this to five might be a way to get the project back on schedule
  3. Cut features entirely. Every design initially starts off with a number of ideas or features that aren’t core to the overall design. If the project is lagging behind, features like those are the first to go. As an example, during Monks and Mystics we implemented a large number of quality of life features, but there were some that ended up cut for time before implementation. However, features cut from one patch or expansion often end up in a later one
To keep the project on track, the project lead runs a number of activities:

Estimation meetings
At the start of each expansion, the project lead meets with each implementation profession (art, content design, and code). In these meetings each point of the design is gone through, and the profession identifies any tasks that relate to their job, and how long it is likely to take to implement.

Based on this, the project lead can see from the start if it is actually plausible to complete the project on time, and determine if anything needs to be cut already.

If new features are added to the design later, shorter estimation meetings or estimations by the profession lead will also be undertaken for these features so that they can be fit into the project plan.

Task sprint distribution
Based on the estimates and the time available, the tasks are distributed across a number of sprints. Each sprint is four weeks long, with the first three being dedicated to new functionality, and the fourth week being dedicated to fixing issues introduced during the first three weeks. The tasks are split so that each sprint has roughly the same amount of work, but with tasks with more significant risks scheduled early so that the team can eliminate the risks as soon as possible.

Task distribution and prioritization
When a profession has more than one member, the project lead is responsible for assigning individual tasks/bugs to each member, or delegating this responsibility to someone within the profession.

The project lead is also responsible for assigning priorities to tasks and bugs so that the rest of the team is aware of what order they should work on the tasks.

Scrum meetings
As the CK2 team uses the development methodology Scrum, there’s three Scrum meetings: standups (AKA “morning meetings”), sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
  • Morning meetings - Each morning, the team meets to briefly summarize what they’ve done in the previous day, and what they’ll be doing today. This helps keep everyone aware of what’s currently going on in the project
  • Sprint reviews - At the end of each sprint, each member of the team shows off some of what they’ve done in the sprint. These meetings generally also involve a few people outside the core team, so that they too can see how the project is progressing. This is also an opportunity to give feedback on the work done
  • Sprint retrospectives - At the end of each sprint, the team identifies what aspects of the work itself could use improvement, and what went well. For example, the team might identify that communication between two disciplines has improved, or that parts of the design aren’t quite clear enough. The most important issues are identified, and a plan made to address them so that the team will do better in the future

Content Designers

People: Milla “IsakMiller” Isaksson, Joel “Divine” Hansson, and until recently, Drikus “Bratyn” Kuiper (who is now on HoI4 instead).
Joining us for the summer, we also have Matthew “blackninja9939” Clohessy from the Game of Thrones mod team


Content designers are part of the implementation team. In the old days, this position was simply called “scripter”, but the name was eventually changed as while “scripter” does capture some of what a content designer does, it leaves out quite a lot of it.

Content designers are essentially responsible for creating the actual content of the game, as opposed to code functionality and art. What is to be added is determined by the design team, but the details are generally delegated to the content designers, which is why they’re no longer called “scripters”; content design entails not just implementing a specification, but creative writing, research, game balance, narrative design, and so on.

For example, the design for the actual artifacts to be included in Monks and Mystics was quite vague. One bullet point for example was: “Add 10-20 Major Christian relics. To make it more interesting, these are unique and can never be destroyed”.

The content designers then had to come up with what historical artifacts to include, descriptions for each, ideas for what the art could be like, effects for each, and acquisition methods. A single paragraph of design turned into hundreds of paragraphs of event text, and thousands of lines of script.

What content designers create includes:
  • Individual events and event chains
  • Decisions
  • Societies and other systems
  • Artifacts
  • Flavor text
  • Characters
  • Titles
  • Religions
  • Cultures
  • Much more
While design says what to do, content design turns it into a finished product and decides on all the details. Content designers also often improve on old content, such as by fixing event bugs, spelling mistakes, or making event chains more expansive.

Artist
Person: Bjarne “Grimjotun” Hallberg

The artist is responsible for creating new art for the game. This mostly manifests in a large variety of interface icons, but they’re also responsible for the overall layout of each interface, as well as providing sketches and similar so that the interface itself can be implemented before the art is completed.

For example, here is a sketch of the society interface from the Monks and Mystics design document:
image1.jpg

As you can tell, a number of things have since changed, but the overall idea is recognizable in what’s in the game today. Sketches like this are invaluable when it comes to ensuring that early versions of the system can be implemented and iterated upon.

The artist also helps outline what’s required from artists external to the team. For example, if 3D art is needed, the artist might make a 2D sketch of what it is they want so that the 3D artist has something to work with and the result ends up fitting well into the game.

All told, the artist has significant impact on the overall art direction of the game, while making sure that new interfaces don’t look out of place.

Programmers
People: Magne “Meneth” Skjæran, and until recently Gwenael “Moah” Tranvouez (who is now on Stellaris instead)

The programmers’ main responsibility is to create new systems based on the design document. For example, the society system introduced in Monks and Mystics was created by the programmers, while the societies themselves were created by the content designers, and the art for it by the artist.

For some systems, no content design is needed. One example of this is the ally orders in Monks and Mystics. However, for most systems the job of the programmers is essentially to produce a foundation that the content designers can build the actual house on. In these cases, when a system is to be implemented the programmers will usually meet with the content designers to discuss what they require from the system, and agree on the syntax the content designers will use to interact with the programmed system.

Once implemented, content designers will often discover functionality that they require that was not provided by the first implementation, and based on this the programmers will iterate on it further.

Beyond creating new systems, programmers maintain the old systems by fixing bugs and making improvements. Most of the quality of life changes made in the 2.7 patch for example were implemented by the programmers, though often with significant assistance from art.

Another aspect of maintenance is ensuring the game stays performant. This is done both by trying to implement new functionality in a way that doesn’t significantly impact performance, and by spending time optimizing existing systems to make them faster.


Overall, programmers and content designers work closely together; the programmers ensure the core systems work, while the content designers make sure that the systems are actually varied and fun to use.

Quality Assurance
People: Arthur “[Arthur-PDX]” Bialecki and Daniel “Tuscany” Moore

The design team figures out what to do. The project lead figures out who should do it, when, and how to stay on schedule. Implementation creates it.

Quality assurance makes sure it actually works and is fun to play.

Quality assurance has a number of tasks. The most well-known is simply to find bugs, but this is far from all they do. In short, quality assurance’s responsibilities include:
  • Verifying that new features work
  • Verifying that bugs marked as fixed have actually been fixed
  • Identifying new issues introduced for old features
  • Identifying issues for old features that have not previously been found
  • Giving feedback on game balance
  • Giving feedback on whether new features are actually fun to use
  • Giving feedback on whether there are annoying aspects of the game that could be improved upon (E.G., quality of life improvements)
  • Monitoring the stability of the game (crashes and out of syncs)
  • Monitoring the performance of the game
  • Bringing problems to the attention of team members who can fix them
  • Monitoring the forums to collect bugs that have not been found by internal testing, and to inform reporters if an issue is already known
  • Monitoring the forums to identify what concerns the playerbase has
  • Identifying risks, such as an increasing number of open bugs, degraded performance, decreasing stability, and so on
  • Determining whether patches can be released or not
Beyond the embedded quality assurance testers on CK2, PDS as a whole also has a central quality assurance unit. This unit is brought in for certain types of testing, such as testing whether patches are ready to release, and participating in internal multiplayer to help identify issues that only occur if there are a lot of players in a game.

Contractors
Beyond the internal team, there’s also a number of contractors that do a variety of tasks on the game that are more limited in scope:
  • Localisation - We have several contractors who translate the game into German (shokii), Spanish (kgw), and French (zimxavier)
  • Portraits - Our portraits have long been created by an external contractor, CrackdToothGrin. You might also know him from the CK2 modding forum
  • Event pictures - We generally have an external company create a number of event pictures for us each expansion
  • Music - While we also create music internally, we do at times outsource some of it
Contractors help fill out areas where the amount of work varies a lot over time, or where the work is outside our core competencies.

Summary
I hope you liked this introduction to what the people on the CK2 team does.

Next week, I’ll be talking about the lifetime of a bug; from initial discovery to release of a fix.

As an added bonus, here’s five changelog entries from the 2.8 patch chosen at random:

- The society member list now includes a member count. Hovering over it will give you a breakdown of how many members hold each rank
- The 'All' Gender Equality rule no longer prohibits Achievements, though you will not be able to gain the 'Empressive' achievement while the rule is enabled
- Fixed piety giving an opinion bonus with anyone who can hold temples, not just theocratic governments
- The AI now checks to see exactly how many liege levies it'll deny its liege by revolting, rather than going "eh, half my levies I guess?"
- Fixed the end date given for settlements in the settlement construction confirmation window not always matching the actual end date even if all build time modifiers remained the same throughout construction
 
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I do not want to be mean, but really, expansions and DLCs are real gold mine for Paradox (and many other publishers). So few people work on them (just one programmer, is it really enough?) and yet the price is quite high, comparing to the base game. One could really expect more coders and less management staff involved in the development.
xD

You have literally 1 person in management here, project lead. Maybe 1.5 if you stretch it count game director. For 8-9 core people. Expect less management, yeah.
 
Many thanks for this interesting DevDiary @Meneth. Good to have a look behind the scenes..eeh..castle walls.

I personally hope that we see the canceled
Cut features entirely. Every design initially starts off with a number of ideas or features that aren’t core to the overall design. If the project is lagging behind, features like those are the first to go. As an example, during Monks and Mystics we implemented a large number of quality of life features, but there were some that ended up cut for time before implementation. However, features cut from one patch or expansion often end up in a later one
in upcoming patches/DLCs. For me, QoL has become very important over the years.

By the way, nice holiday greetings from the game director:

CK2 DevTeam postcard.png
 
Content Designers

Content designers are essentially responsible for creating the actual content of the game, as opposed to code functionality and art. What is to be added is determined by the design team, but the details are generally delegated to the content designers, which is why they’re no longer called “scripters”; content design entails not just implementing a specification, but creative writing, research, game balance, narrative design, and so on.

For example, the design for the actual artifacts to be included in Monks and Mystics was quite vague. One bullet point for example was: “Add 10-20 Major Christian relics. To make it more interesting, these are unique and can never be destroyed”.

The content designers then had to come up with what historical artifacts to include, descriptions for each, ideas for what the art could be like, effects for each, and acquisition methods. A single paragraph of design turned into hundreds of paragraphs of event text, and thousands of lines of script.

What content designers create includes:
  • Individual events and event chains
  • Decisions
  • Societies and other systems
  • Artifacts
  • Flavor text
  • Characters
  • Titles
  • Religions
  • Cultures
  • Much more

Contractors
Beyond the internal team, there’s also a number of contractors that do a variety of tasks on the game that are more limited in scope:
  • Localisation - We have several contractors who translate the game into German (shokii), Spanish (kgw), and French (zimxavier)
  • Portraits - Our portraits have long been created by an external contractor, CrackdToothGrin. You might also know him from the CK2 modding forum
  • Event pictures - We generally have an external company create a number of event pictures for us each expansion
  • Music - While we also create music internally, we do at times outsource some of it
Contractors help fill out areas where the amount of work varies a lot over time, or where the work is outside our core competencies.

It is truly fantastic to see Paradox using so many of our forum members as contractors to deliver content outside of the company's scope.

But I wonder if the company has ever considered a combination of the two; while Content Designers usually work on delivering content as the development of the DLC is underway, a while after, development focus forces the team to devote their effort on fixing things or developing content for upcoming DLCs or features, leaving whatever was created for past patches or DLCs untouched for the most part, until there is a drive, for some reason, to rework content.

I fill there might be a spot for a new position, that could have immense added value; Namely a Content Designer Contractor. After the DLC is out, and the programming base is well established and solid, Paradox could very well expand the contractor positions to abovementioned post, for developing flavour content, decisions and events, that is in line with the latest patch or DLC focus. It would have the benefit of potentially employing aspiring or established modders in contractor positions, on lower-than-employee rates, to give more content meat to every single patch and DLC à posteriori. Paradox could have a position that would liason with established modders, seeing if - after the patch/DLC was out and running - those modders would have ideas on interesting events, decisions, flavour, etc. using underlying mechanics, to develop those for the company. The ideas would have to come with a ETA, provided by the Content Designer Contractor, which would then have to pass through the the Game Director, Designer, and the Project Lead before it would be greenlit for development and a contract sign.

If the Secondary Content Designer would deliver on the content on schedule, it would go through the necessary Q&A hoops to make sure it didn't break anything, and if the content was approved, the Content Designer would be paid the pre-agreed sum. That way, it would allow for content for previous DLCs to be constantly added to the game, adding to its overall enjoyment.
 
I love that idea, because I would love to work for Paradox and doing a contract thing would let me do something close without moving to Sweden (my wife has forbidden it), but I think it would add a lot of overhead for the company to manage that kind of thing.

Personally, I kinda hope that Paradox puts the content files (all the text stuff) in a repo on GitHub and has someone review/accept Pull Requests occasionally for bug fixes and balance/flavor improvements. There are a lot of small design improvements to the code that could be made to improve readability and modability.
 
One programmer is enough for the expansion we're currently working on. We did have another until about a month ago (though a month before that again I was only 50%), and will get one more in August, though at that point I'm also going back to 50% since I'm going back to uni.


Best to direct those questions at @Doomdark.

Are u going to university? And working on paradox at the same time? that awesome! How did u achieved it?
 
Are u going to university? And working on paradox at the same time? that awesome! How did u achieved it?
Yep, starting my 5th and last year of university in fall.
I got my foot in the door with the PDX Wikis, and then managed to get a summer job as a programmer last summer. That went pretty well, so a few months after the summer I started working 50% as a programmer from home while attending university.
 
I am currently Playing HoI 4 - i love CK2 because i can take over the world as Wales! but it tends to be a pain trying to increase naval levy's and takes a long time to send them to Crusades in Jerusalem. In HoI4 you send troops using naval ports and targeting a distant port. this feature would absolutely fit in crusader kings 2!
 
Be honest is there any confusion about the responsibilities of an program lead or an designer does. For my untrained eye besides the title they do the same thing can you trained eye see the difference?
 
Need more society and grandmaster powers.

Tried Hermite, Assassins and Lucifers cult. Lucifers cult is too OP well consider the rest don't have much power.

Worst is getting to grand master rank. and then finding you can't do as much at all.
Kick people out. or promote people. it same as playing the Pope. atleast the pope did get request and stuff.

The grand master NONE. also want to create holy orders or mercenaries attached to the grandmaster position. so they can become landless entities.
I really want more player control again. with a playable option like 1.21 so I can play baronies and other stuff. doesn't have to be achievement compatible.

But I love monks and mystic. reapers due was funny. but all in all everything beats conclave.
But it is time to put the dots on the I.

Finish the council stuff. nomad stuff. society.

Seriously council to validate conclave fiasco. make some unique options and council ranks. that players can create. for those who do not like absolute despotic powers.

Nomad. move please that stupid first spot on the main buildings to the fort area. less conflicts this way. and the nomad camp stinks anyway when attacked early or late game.

Society flesh it out more. especially with grandmaster power rank.

Now aside from the nomad moving to the fort area. I can mod all the rest.
But I think Paradox should finally make complete DLC's

About potraits Cracktooth love you for the dutch Potraits. especially the women are HAWT !
Redo the Norse potraits. those pink bloated big faces need some love and scaling too.
Then the Iberians. bring back some of that love back to their women .

Unlock all those locked events. I haven't gotten any profession events pop up in ages. hedonist, child wanting to go join holy orders. (one tried to join varangian guards and popped right back into my court)

But all in all monks and mystic and reapers due definetly was a worthwhile upgrade. but again it feels unfinished.
 
Hellenic mystic -cult revival religion .. No members at the begining because you are the one that going through learning and reading ( event etc..) something like the series of vikings that there was a king of wassex and anthelstan who wanted to learn more about these pagan..
 
I'm not sure if this is the best place to suggest it but I got the idea after seeing the society sketch.

I think societies there should be features in societies like not being able to know everyone else in it, and definetly not the grandmaster. And instead we should be able to infiltrate them or send someone to infiltrate them to be able to find members of the society and try to topple it. So just make the whole secret religion and demon worshipper societies more intrigue focused.

Also now that I think about it then it seems like someone definetly has suggested something like this before.
 
Where would we be without the firm yet oddly gently hand of Henrik Fahraeus guiding this game all these years?

Eating dog food and marrying our sisters without divine incest boni, that's what I say!

Your beard and cardigans make me feel safe and warm, Henrik, keep doing Ahura-Mazda's work.