Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is out and in the hands of discerning 40k sickoes now, so of course the modding scene is taking a good hard look at exactly what “enhanced modding support” means as a release day promise.
Spotted over on IGN, one particularly bright spark has taken to stress testing the title in a very specific way – pushing the 64bit update of the game to breaking point by seeing how many Ork Boyz it takes to completely hobble the experience.
Surprisingly, it’s more than you might think. Hell, it’s more than 40,000 – which is even more than WE thought:
This testing is being done by modders that helped contribute to Dawn of War’s Unification Mod, a monumental community upgrade to the game that adds a swathe of community-created races to the game to bring even more conflict to the dark future of mankind.
To this end, Gunnisson, a member of the Unification Discord, started pumping out his very own green horde to see just how big of an Ork WAAAAGH! the game could handle when limitations were removed:
Take a good look at the minimap, and know despair
Even at lofty numbers approaching the thousands, the game was still running. Perhaps not running WELL, but running nonetheless.
After more than 10,000 orks were inhabiting the space, the frame rate was in the single digits – but that is still an admirable effort.
But Gunnisson wasn’t content with that many boys. His GPU was likely sounding like a jet engine, the game was a PowerPoint presentation – but like that incredible Kylo Ren gif, the mad bastard wanted more.
The most awe-inspiring control group ever
By Gunnisson’s own admission, it took 47,504 Ork Boyz before the game “died” – it’s final moments rendering a cataclysmic horde of green hooligans with one frame getting squeezed out at 10 seconds-per-frame.
That’s a lot o’ boyz.
It’s an incredible effort on both Gunnisson and Dawn of War’s part, and gives some extraordinary insight into how well the old game has been optimised as part of the re-release. I am still plodding through the games girthy storylines, and can agree that this is a pretty textbook example of what we should expect from a modern re-release of an older game – no super involved visual updates, but a ton of under-the-hood tinkering to get it running beautifully on modern hardware, with all the quality of life accoutrements that one would need for bigger screens and bigger numbers. I am loving it.
Either way, it is extremely fitting that it took more than 40 thousand dudes to bring the title to its knees. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only WAAAGH.
Are you enjoying Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition? Do you fondly remember the METAL BAWXES of times past? Tell us all about it in the comments or on social media.
Shoutouts to Wesley Yin-Poole over on IGN.