Darksiders developer contributed to Warhammer 40K: Space Marine

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine director Raphael van Lierop has said Relic's transition to a multiplatform, third-person action developer was eased by a helping hand from Vigil.

"It's been a huge technology challenge for us. Early on in development, a couple of years ago, we took a drop of the Darksiders engine from Vigil, who shared the technology with us so that we would have a foundation to work with," van Lierop told CVG.

"That's how we started the multi-platform engine and on top of that we built a huge amount of proprietary Relic tech."

Relic aren't reinventing the wheel, either, but strategically adopting various middleware technologies where appropriate.

"We've got Havoc physics and whatnot, we've done our due diligence on the technology, we've got a lot of smart people working on it," the director said, adding that Space Marine is looking good so far.

"The game is running very well on all platforms right now. It's smooth at 30 frames per second and we're even going to be able to take it above 30 for most of the game."

Relic had previously largely focused on PC-exclusive strategy titles. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a third-person action title to release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the third quarter this year.

Vigil's debut title was Darksiders; it's currently hard at work on Dark Millenium Online, the Warhammer 40,000 MMO.