Talk:2022-12-23 Livestream
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Trascrizione grezza
Intro
- 00:00
Welcome and salutations to you all for our glorious development update for December.
- 00:16
We're coming to you live from our studio.
- 00:19
Obviously, I'm here today with some new faces.
- 00:24
Well, not really.
- 00:25
You've seen Langford here before.
- 00:27
We had him on during, actually it was your anniversary.
- 00:29
It was.
- 00:30
It was in February of this last year.
- 00:33
He's our executive producer and of course with me as always, Steven Tariff, our one
- 00:37
and only creative director.
- 00:38
Hello.
- 00:39
And I'm Margaret Brown, your Community Marketing Lead.
- 00:44
This is different.
- 00:45
It's different, right?
- 00:46
Actually, when was the last time that we did a stream in person?
- 00:50
It was in our old office.
- 00:52
Yeah, that was like almost two years ago or something.
- 00:54
A little over actually.
- 00:56
It's crazy to see how much we've grown as a company and I mean, this is the perfect
- 01:00
segue of what this stream is about too, is that you've just-
- 01:06
It's been a crazy year of growth.
- 01:08
Not even just a year.
- 01:09
During the pandemic, we grew an immense amount.
- 01:11
Yeah, but this year especially though has been pretty considerable as well.
- 01:16
We talked a lot about showing up at the studio and giving people a peek inside.
- 01:21
You guys saw some old, those of you who've been following since like circa 2018, 2019,
- 01:26
you saw- Steven walking around with his phone.
- 01:27
With my phone kind of doing, and now this is a little bit different, higher production
- 01:32
quality, but of course- We're still keeping the casual vibes.
- 01:35
Yeah, and the whole spirit of this is to invite you guys in, let you take a look under the
- 01:39
hood, meet some of the developers, and actually it's been pretty fun to do some of these interviews.
- 01:44
Yeah, Steven's already done one earlier, so we're-
- 01:47
Yeah.
- 01:48
These are a little pre-recorded obviously so that we can make it before, but we're trying
- 01:50
not to cut as- We didn't cut as much as possible.
- 01:54
Right.
- 01:55
So we're very much just trying to have pre-flowing conversations, which is really fun.
- 01:58
And I think these types of things are really good actually because obviously we do our
- 02:02
monthly updates.
- 02:03
Yeah.
- 02:04
But not everybody has an opportunity to kind of watch each month what's happening and what
- 02:08
those updates are, and this is a great way at the end of the year to kind of concisely
- 02:12
bring in what's happened and give people a one segment kind of look at all that's transpired
- 02:18
over the last 12 months.
- 02:19
Yeah.
- 02:20
So when you get a little glimpse into areas in our studio, so you can kind of see that,
- 02:25
and once we do have all of our cool murals up and our art, we will definitely do a proper
- 02:29
studio tour.
- 02:30
We just want to make sure that, we'll kind of give you a glimpse early on, and I know
- 02:34
those of you who are Kickstarters, who you're going to get a real life tour-
- 02:38
Ooh, that's right.
- 02:39
In person, yeah.
- 02:40
That, we want to make sure that it's really fun for you all, so that's probably going
- 02:42
to be nearer to closer for a long time.
- 02:45
Yeah, for sure.
- 02:46
Right.
- 02:47
So that's the business of this year, but honestly on the production side, you know-
- 02:52
Holy cow.
- 02:53
Your team has grown immensely.
- 02:54
Well, it did.
- 02:55
That's very true.
- 02:56
Yeah.
- 02:57
It doubled in size.
- 02:58
It did.
- 02:59
It did.
- 03:00
It doubled in size, and it's like super duper cool to have all these people like actually
- 03:02
supporting the team.
- 03:03
You know, like we talked about this a long time ago when we were moving from like a small
- 03:06
company to like a bigger company, and we were like, we're going to need a lot of support,
- 03:10
and we're kind of there now.
- 03:11
I mean, we've still got a long ways to go with a lot of growth still to come, but it's
- 03:15
super exciting.
- 03:16
I think it's been really cool to kind of watch quarter after quarter this year as we're doing
- 03:20
the production strategy meetings and going over the milestone schedules, just seeing,
- 03:24
oh, new face, new face, new face, new face, you know, keeps on going.
- 03:28
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
- 03:29
And we talked about annual reviews last month, how we were moving into wrapping those up,
- 03:35
and you guys have like way more people that you have to do reviews for.
- 03:37
Oh my gosh.
- 03:38
For me, my team is a little smaller, but you know, we also are supporting the development
- 03:42
team in order, like we're different people.
- 03:44
Like the people who are talking to you on, you know, like Twitter and hanging out with
- 03:49
you on Discord, we're a whole other team.
- 03:52
So when we get comments that are like, why are you talking to me and not developing the
- 03:57
game?
- 03:58
These guys are hardcore working super every day, really hard and passionately, as you're
- 04:03
going to see when you meet some of the developers.
- 04:05
Oh, and our leads team has grown too.
- 04:07
Oh, it's significantly, yeah.
- 04:08
We did some leadership training too.
- 04:10
Yeah, we did.
- 04:11
That was fun.
- 04:12
It was incredible.
- 04:13
We had a few, I think we did like almost six days between the two different groups of those
- 04:18
leadership meetings.
- 04:20
And they were a lot of fun just being holed up in a room for like 10 straight hours each
- 04:25
day.
- 04:26
Well, it made us realize like where we're lacking things, where we need to work towards
- 04:30
and things of that sort.
- 04:31
And sometimes you need that reflection.
- 04:33
And for people who haven't been leaders and leadership roles before, it also helps you
- 04:38
realize like how to talk to people or how to-
- 04:40
But you know, my most important takeaway I think from those particular leadership meetings
- 04:44
this year was just the level of alignment that existed already between us and the leads
- 04:50
and the development.
- 04:51
It was so cool.
- 04:52
She said to us that like the biggest problem that most other companies have is the camaraderie
- 04:56
and like sharing the same vision.
- 04:58
And she's like, that's the one thing you guys don't like have a problem with.
- 05:01
That was the thing.
- 05:02
It was so cool to see her come in and then go like, wow, you guys already got this.
- 05:05
Like this is crazy.
- 05:06
Like how connected you guys already are.
- 05:08
I do tons of these.
- 05:10
And then she went off on some of the ones that she's done and it was like, oh my gosh,
- 05:15
you guys are gelling so much better than all those other places.
- 05:18
My favorite thing about that whole process actually was as we were going through each
- 05:21
categories and we were filling out like scaling one through 10 numerical values of like those
- 05:27
particular things.
- 05:28
And we put all of our stickies up on each of the categories like, whoa, these are all
- 05:32
really close to each other.
- 05:33
That's so true.
- 05:34
Because that means we all see where our problems are and we're all on the same page.
- 05:38
Absolutely.
- 05:39
Which was really, I would agree with you.
- 05:40
That's pretty neat.
- 05:41
It was really good.
- 05:42
You know, it's really cool though.
- 05:43
The whole point of this last month of the year is that we get to kind of look back on
- 05:47
everything that we've accomplished, on all the things that we have plans for the future
- 05:51
and just reflect on kind of the course of the studio over the last year.
- 05:55
Yeah.
- 05:56
It's really a great opportunity for us to kind of get that back looking perspective.
- 06:01
Absolutely.
- 06:02
Yeah.
- 06:03
On our front, like my teams are looking at like the data from social media, what things
- 06:06
went well, what things didn't.
- 06:08
How can we engage with you all in a better way?
- 06:10
And obviously you've seen us continually progressing over that over the years.
- 06:14
I mean, even the way we do our live streams has changed and like next year we plan to
- 06:18
make more changes.
- 06:19
So we're definitely keeping an eye out on like the things that you guys say to us, how
- 06:23
you interact with us.
- 06:25
And obviously on the development front, continually progressing and making sure that we are just
- 06:29
being more efficient with our production.
- 06:30
Yeah.
- 06:31
And of course, you know, we're all watching kind of coverage for the game from our awesome
- 06:36
content creators out there who constantly kind of, you know, review what the live stream
- 06:42
updates are and everything for the game for our audience.
- 06:46
And I think one thing that can be said that all of you are going to agree with, 2022 was
- 06:52
a very different pace of year for our updates.
- 06:55
They'll get blanked.
- 06:56
I know.
- 06:57
But you guys got to see each month, you know, significant progress.
- 07:04
And of course that comes in part due to the company scaling over this last year, which
- 07:08
was very significant.
- 07:09
But in addition, just kind of as development continues, these things will ramp almost in
- 07:16
a very vertical way, right?
- 07:20
And that's something that I think people get to look forward to for 2023.
- 07:23
Of course.
- 07:24
And I think, you know, a lot of times you see games that are developed and you get to
- 07:28
see it like right when it's beta is, which their beta is like pretty much their games
- 07:31
ready to launch and they're just testing and polishing for us.
- 07:34
Like you're getting to follow us on this journey and making an MMO is a big feat.
- 07:39
It is much bigger than people think.
- 07:41
And I hope that you are getting a glimpse into like all the little details and the new
- 07:44
details that we, yeah, what it takes.
- 07:46
Cause it's a lot more effort than sometimes I think people think.
- 07:49
Right.
- 07:50
And I know that's not for everybody.
- 07:51
And that's why we always say like we make different pieces of content for different
- 07:54
types of folks.
- 07:55
Absolutely.
- 07:56
I mean this phase that we're in from a development perspective is really catered towards those
- 08:00
individuals in the community who are interested in watching the development of a game.
- 08:04
Because like you're saying, this is not just something that many players experience, but
- 08:08
also development teams don't typically think about how they're actively working on features
- 08:13
and assets that get shared live, you know, essentially.
- 08:19
I cannot think of another company that has invested this much in their community this
- 08:22
far in advance of the product.
- 08:24
Like we've been bringing this, you know, going this, going on this for three, four,
- 08:28
five years now building this community and it's amazing.
- 08:31
Yeah.
- 08:32
So amazing.
- 08:33
I was actually in a, you know, obviously if you watch our streams live, you get to see
- 08:35
all the amazing fan art that people send us.
- 08:37
And I was talking to Zach, who you're going to see in an interview following this segment.
- 08:43
And I was actually saying how crazy it is that we have all this amazing fan art.
- 08:47
And one of the walls in our hallway actually like right near us over there is where we're
- 08:51
planning to do this huge cork bar where we're going to put all the fan art.
- 08:55
So keep sending us those things.
- 08:56
We love seeing them.
- 08:58
And we've already had people making cosplay and we're definitely going to put that up
- 09:01
there.
- 09:02
So we appreciate you all so much.
- 09:04
And we hope that, you know, this to kind of segue into what you're going to be able to
- 09:07
see for the rest of today is that, you know, you're going to get a glimpse into our studio.
- 09:11
We want to set expectations that, you know, we haven't quite decorated everything yet
- 09:15
in Trepid style.
- 09:16
We are planning to do that.
- 09:17
We have some cool murals.
- 09:18
I chatted with John about like what pieces we're going to do and stuff.
- 09:21
So once those things get put up and we have a little bit more of a, you know, a vibe that
- 09:25
we want to share with you, we'll definitely give you a proper tour.
- 09:28
And we also bought some equipment, like gimbals and stuff like that.
- 09:33
You've been seeing our production quality for Extra Life increasing and obviously this.
- 09:37
So we do have plans of showing you guys those things.
- 09:40
But you know, this is going to be an opportunity for you to kind of get cozy with the developers,
- 09:45
get to know them a little bit more, not just about what the work that they work on, but
- 09:49
like them as people and kind of what they like about games.
- 09:52
And so we'll be chatting with the folks who helped with the Unreal Engine update, character
- 09:56
creator, seasons and environments, combat, gathering, and of course crafting.
- 10:01
So we hope that you enjoy that.
- 10:03
And of course we're going to look back at the year and kind of do a little year in review.
- 10:07
Bring your tissues, get ready to cry.
- 10:09
Shout out to Mike Becchio, who also made this tree.
- 10:13
Oh, I love the tree.
- 10:14
Oh my gosh.
- 10:15
The attention to detail on the little ornaments.
- 10:18
This little guy's face for the ornament is so cool.
- 10:21
Yeah, and he even made you one with him.
- 10:23
I know.
- 10:24
I love that.
- 10:25
We showed that last month.
- 10:26
This guy, the little Vec down here.
- 10:28
Yes.
- 10:29
Oh, it looks so cool.
- 10:30
They're really, really cute.
- 10:32
Maybe someday we'll have ornaments that we sell for a holiday.
- 10:35
I know.
- 10:36
That'd be great.
- 10:37
Should totally do that.
- 10:38
Yeah.
- 10:39
So before we go into everything, I do want to spotlight our comment for YouTube.
- 10:42
And of course, if you want to be spotlighted, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube on our
- 10:47
development update and also leave a comment and you could possibly be this spotlight.
- 10:53
So today's spotlight is Eric634, and they wanted to know, I'm very curious what work
- 10:59
Intrepid is doing to capture valuable data in Alpha 2.
- 11:03
Has Intrepid built dashboards and data gathering tools?
- 11:06
And I feel like this is a great- Oh man, I was going to say, who gets this
- 11:09
one?
- 11:10
Yes.
- 11:11
I feel like we're all hyped about that.
- 11:12
Yes, of course.
- 11:13
Data.
- 11:14
Yes, well, we do.
- 11:15
We love data.
- 11:16
But here is actual work going into data and collecting and game logs and stuff that we'll
- 11:22
be using down the road a lot, especially during our Alpha to help us, to guide us to understand
- 11:28
where we're meeting our marks and beating our marks and what we want to be accomplishing
- 11:32
as far as where finding the fun is.
- 11:34
Right.
- 11:35
Yeah.
- 11:36
And of course, those come along with a complimentary set of tools that are created by our developers
- 11:40
to collect that data, not just from gameplay, because that's one important aspect of it,
- 11:45
what players are doing in the game.
- 11:47
But another part of it which completes that picture is active community engagement with
- 11:53
those players as well to tell the tale from the player's perspective, not just the actions
- 11:57
in game.
- 11:58
Right.
- 11:59
And I feel like a lot of companies and many of us probably in the community have experienced
- 12:02
this in other games, decisions get made from just data points that are numerical, right?
- 12:07
It has to be a combination.
- 12:08
But it must be a full picture that requires some investment on the company's behalf of
- 12:13
that community outreach and engagement, right?
- 12:15
Yeah.
- 12:16
And that's what I mean.
- 12:17
That's one of the reasons why I started working here is the first conversation Steven and
- 12:20
I had on the phone.
- 12:21
At Milton's, we ate lunch at Milton's.
- 12:22
Before that, I had a conversation with you on the phone because McPee was like, you need
- 12:27
to come work with us.
- 12:28
And I was like, I don't know.
- 12:29
And chatting with Steven really like, and I think back on it, that was like four years
- 12:33
ago for me.
- 12:35
But the reason why I was like, this is a place where I want to go is because you really understand
- 12:40
community.
- 12:41
You understand how important it is that we are gamers also and that we are making games
- 12:46
for gamers.
- 12:47
And I often work in the past with people who maybe aren't gamers and they didn't really
- 12:52
get the perspective of that.
- 12:53
Or we'd be making decisions because it's like, hey, this is the bottom line and we're trying
- 12:57
to hit that.
- 12:58
And if you don't hit this, you're fired.
- 12:59
And there's nothing more frustrating from a player's perspective when something changes
- 13:03
in the game and it changes for the wrong reason because some value in some cell in some Excel
- 13:08
sheet says, hey, this is the data that we scrapped from player activity.
- 13:12
Yeah.
- 13:13
And so what we're doing when we're sending reports over, we're like, hey, the numbers
- 13:16
are down for this because X and Y.
- 13:18
We give some analyzation to it.
- 13:19
And I think that sometimes that part is not read or looked into as much as it should be.
- 13:24
And it's so important to not just like look at data and make decisions, but also understand
- 13:28
like why that data is that way in the like in the grand scheme of things.
- 13:33
And with that, I think that we're going to head on over and meet up with our Unreal Engine
- 13:38
and character creator folks who Steven was interviewing.
- 13:40
So we hope that you enjoy the rest of the stream and we will see you all on the flipside.
- 13:44
I love the fireside feel to this.
- 13:46
I just got to say it.
- 13:47
It's so good.
- 13:48
We aren't going to stop that.
- 13:49
We definitely want the genuine vibe.
- 13:51
And I think hopefully you guys all feel that way through this.
- 13:54
You know, all of our streams have been that way.
- 13:56
We want even just these types of ones to feel that way too.
- 13:58
Yes.
- 13:59
We'll see you guys in a little bit.
Meet a few of our Engineers
- 14:09
Hey, guys, I am joined by three of our awesome developers.
- 14:14
We have some of our engineers here at the studio.
- 14:16
Why don't we take a second for you guys to introduce yourself?
- 14:18
Hello, I'm Clayton.
- 14:20
You might remember me from the character creator live stream.
- 14:23
Hi, I'm Mitch.
- 14:25
I've been here at Intrepid for coming up on four years now and I'm a senior engineer.
- 14:30
I'm Zach.
- 14:31
You might also recognize me from the character creator live stream.
- 14:34
And me and Zach are also engineers.
- 14:36
Yeah, we are also also gameplay engineers.
- 14:39
So that was a fun live stream.
- 14:42
But let's talk a little bit about earlier in the year.
- 14:45
Actually, it was at the end of 2021 and into January of 2022.
- 14:51
We showcased our transition over to Unreal Engine 5.
- 14:56
That was quite an endeavor.
- 14:57
Yeah.
- 14:58
We had a lot of things going on all at once.
- 15:01
Yeah, it was a lot going on.
- 15:03
There were a lot of people who participated in kind of getting the project over to Unreal
- 15:07
5.
- 15:08
Talk to me a little bit about what that process entailed.
- 15:10
Yeah, Mitch and I were at the forefront of that, especially Mitch.
- 15:15
I was helping out a lot with the version control.
- 15:18
We have a lot of additions to our custom version of Unreal Engine that allow our designers
- 15:24
to do what they need to do and allow custom features for our engineers.
- 15:28
And getting those reconciled with all of the awesome new features from Unreal Engine 5
- 15:32
was a lot of work.
- 15:33
So, right.
- 15:34
Yeah, the more custom changes that occur in the engine makes that process a bit longer
- 15:39
and a bit more intricate.
- 15:40
Right.
- 15:41
Right.
- 15:42
And when we get a new version, we have to make sure that all of the previous edits we'd
- 15:46
made to Unreal Engine still apply or still are needed.
- 15:51
So we had to step through, pardon me, basically everything we had done up to that point and
- 15:58
one by one say, do we need this?
- 16:00
Do we need something else?
- 16:02
And talk to us a little bit about kind of what benefits, I know the audience obviously
- 16:07
has had an opportunity over this course of this last year to see the benefits that Unreal
- 16:10
5 bring to the project from a visual fidelity standpoint, but also a little bit behind the
- 16:16
curtain on the tech side.
- 16:17
What type of benefits come from Unreal Engine 5?
- 16:19
Well, there's a lot finer control for one, for the map and for things like separating
- 16:26
out things into, they call it world partition, to greatly increase the performance of especially
- 16:34
the client in very cluttered areas.
- 16:37
Right.
- 16:38
The large scale additions to the engine have really helped us from the regards that we
- 16:42
were already going to have this massive world and the engine, the feasibility of it just
- 16:48
improved in that regard.
- 16:50
Yeah.
- 16:51
Like one thing that a lot of people don't consider is how you bring all of the people
- 16:54
on a massive team like this to actually work on the same thing.
- 16:59
Because previously a lot of the files would be saved in larger chunks versus now in Unreal
- 17:04
Engine 5, things are saved as individual actors.
- 17:07
So people can actually access the same level simultaneously and contribute work to the
- 17:14
same features of the project or the same parts of the content without stepping on each other's
- 17:18
toes.
- 17:19
Right.
- 17:20
And from a workflow perspective, that is very nice to have because previously you would
- 17:24
have to wait as a handoff for some particular checkout to be checked back in before you
- 17:29
could start working.
- 17:30
Yeah, we'd lock each other out as well as the environment team very often.
- 17:35
Yeah.
- 17:36
That was a big problem.
- 17:37
Yeah, the workflow side for the environment team was a big relief.
- 17:41
And then finding out that someone had something you needed to make a specific engineering
- 17:45
change and then having to wait a couple days at the worst case to be able to access the
- 17:53
file.
- 17:54
Now you can just work on the same thing.
- 17:56
It's beautiful.
- 17:57
And tell me a little bit about kind of some of the performance related benefits that come
- 18:01
on the asset side, things like Nanite or just the visual fidelity of the world with things
- 18:06
like Lumen.
- 18:07
A lot of people hear terms like Lumen and Nanite and they just see that it looks awesome,
- 18:12
but you don't realize that these are also actually just fundamental changes to how the
- 18:17
graphics are handled under the hood because with Lumen, so previously a lot of people
- 18:25
are familiar with hardware accelerated ray tracing and...
- 18:29
So many people are familiar with that.
- 18:30
Yeah, simulating...
- 18:31
And the audience especially.
- 18:32
Yeah, simulating global illumination and shadows and like...
- 18:35
Well, it was a really big thing whenever graphics card companies were coming out and saying,
- 18:40
you know, this is going to be the new amazing tech and they were showing off...
- 18:43
I remember that.
- 18:44
We tested some of that with Tristan, I think back in 2017 or 18.
- 18:48
And we had little side by sides and watched the performance.
- 18:50
They're like, oh, ray tracing on, ray tracing off.
- 18:52
And one thing that Lumen does is it allows you to actually simulate ray tracing on the
- 18:58
software side.
- 18:59
So, well, it's not simulating ray tracing.
- 19:00
They're solving the same problem with a different solution with software simulated global illumination.
- 19:05
Instead of hardware simulated.
- 19:06
So now it's more accessible to people.
- 19:09
And that's why Lumen looks so amazing.
- 19:12
And that's actually one of the reasons why in early in the year when we showcased the
- 19:16
video transitioning over to Unreal Engine 5, we used that cave area to kind of show
- 19:23
the benefits of that global illumination bouncing, cascading off of the environment.
- 19:27
Yeah, exactly.
- 19:28
And you combine that with the virtualized geometry.
- 19:31
Yeah.
- 19:32
And it's a win.
- 19:33
Yeah.
- 19:34
Not to mention, obviously, the performance gains as well.
- 19:36
Because Nanite is per pixel geometry, which is amazing.
- 19:40
Like for large worlds, a lot of the times you have massive textures that are considered
- 19:46
virtualized.
- 19:47
And this is like a very common practice previously for handling giant textures as you virtualize
- 19:51
the texture, which means that it's now streaming from disk instead of all being loaded into
- 19:55
the memory at once.
- 19:57
And Nanite now provides that for geometry so you can stream in the geometry more granularly.
- 20:01
Which is huge.
- 20:02
Yeah, it's a pixel geometry, so it's pretty incredible.
- 20:04
That's very cool.
- 20:06
Now obviously it doesn't end with Unreal Engine 5.
- 20:10
As the community is aware, starting next month we're actually going to be making the move
- 20:15
over to 5.1.
- 20:16
Yeah.
- 20:17
And talk to me a little bit about what that process is going to entail and also what types
- 20:21
of benefit it's going to bring.
- 20:22
It should be a fairly smooth process, smoother than our initial...
- 20:28
Actually we did the pre-release version of 5.0 and that was a little rough.
- 20:32
But 5.1 should be better and we're looking forward to a lot of the performance gains,
- 20:37
especially with things like they're partitioning the nav mesh along the same lines as the world
- 20:42
partition.
- 20:43
And talk to us a little bit about what partitioning nav mesh means.
- 20:46
It means that different servers and different clients will have to can load partial sets
- 20:53
of the nav mesh instead of the whole nav mesh.
- 20:56
So it's a lot less memory.
- 20:58
And the nav mesh is essentially for people who don't know, that is how NPCs path around
- 21:03
the world eventually.
- 21:04
Correct.
- 21:05
And that's how they know where collision is and what they can move around and how they
- 21:08
get to a target location.
- 21:09
Exactly.
- 21:10
Don't walk through the tree, walk around it.
- 21:11
Right.
- 21:12
Absolutely.
- 21:13
And talk to me a little bit about the...
- 21:15
I know artists are very excited about 5.1.
- 21:17
Why is that?
- 21:18
Well, a lot of the features that were still in a beta form for the engine are now coming
- 21:24
online for as like more performant versions or more reliable versions.
- 21:29
So like the entire studio will be able to move over to DirectX 12 for our primary graphics
- 21:35
API, which that's going to save the artist a lot of headache because a lot of the time
- 21:40
somebody will be like, hey, this looks bad or like I'm getting these weird glitches on
- 21:43
the textures or I'm crashing.
- 21:45
And now, you know, a lot of it's just coming into maturity with 5.1.
- 21:49
And they're also incorporating Nanite as part, as I understand it, with the foliage actors
- 21:54
as well.
- 21:55
Yeah.
- 21:56
Yeah.
- 21:57
There's some talk of that.
- 21:58
Yeah.
- 21:59
Yeah.
- 22:00
Cool.
- 22:01
I know TechArt's a little excited about that.
- 22:02
Yeah.
- 22:03
Yeah.
- 22:04
They've been waiting for it for a long time.
- 22:05
Yeah.
- 22:06
Yeah.
- 22:07
I remember they were talking to me about it almost six months ago, I think.
- 22:10
Yeah.
- 22:11
Awesome.
- 22:12
So after we showcased our move to Unreal 5 earlier this year, we had a stream about
- 22:17
our character creator.
- 22:19
And this was something that for a long time we had been talking about kind of our goals
- 22:25
since 2017.
- 22:26
You know, what are some of the character creators that we've seen that we've loved in other
- 22:31
games?
- 22:32
Talk to me a little bit about your experience as a gamer first.
- 22:36
What are some of the things that you look for in a character creator and why you were
- 22:39
excited to bring something a little bit that level and beyond potentially with ours?
- 22:43
For me, it's the freedom of expression to make the character that you want to make.
- 22:49
Without the limitations that sometimes seem kind of arbitrary that developers put in.
- 22:55
I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate character creator.
- 22:57
I thought that was a lovely one that really made me feel like I was in a fantasy realm
- 23:05
crafting my own character.
- 23:06
As well from the, I guess, purely tech side of Black Desert Online, I really enjoyed the
- 23:13
more of the tactile, click and drag, the customized character.
- 23:18
The direct manipulation.
- 23:19
Exactly.
- 23:20
Yeah.
- 23:21
For me, it's usually, can I be green?
- 23:25
Can he be green?
- 23:26
Yeah.
- 23:27
Oh, it's like a lizard folk or an orc?
- 23:30
I'm just kidding.
- 23:31
All of the above.
- 23:32
All of the above.
- 23:33
You know, actually on that note, that's a great segue into one of my favorite character
- 23:38
creator stories, which was actually Oblivion back in, I think it was 2006, Elder Scrolls.
- 23:44
It wasn't like an amazing character creator, but they had a lot of options and you were
- 23:47
able to sort of manipulate it in a way that you could push the limits by dragging one
- 23:52
slider back and one slider the other way.
- 23:54
I would always make my person red or green just for fun.
- 24:00
Of course, we don't allow for that in our character creator.
- 24:02
We talk about only allowing positive results or adding constraints that you can have a
- 24:08
high degree of control while making sure that the final result is going to look good no
- 24:13
matter what.
- 24:14
Right.
- 24:15
And of course, good can be somewhat subjective.
- 24:18
Yeah, for sure.
- 24:19
But I want to make Igor.
- 24:21
Yes, exactly.
- 24:22
But whatever you see yourself as in this fantasy role-playing setting, you should be able to
- 24:28
make that in the character creator and express yourself.
- 24:30
Well, I thought the work that you guys did and that the artists did with bringing kind
- 24:36
of the first iteration of Ash's character creator to life was really phenomenal.
- 24:41
I know it got a lot of positivity and response from the community.
- 24:46
Talk to me a little bit about that process.
- 24:47
What did that entail?
- 24:50
That was a whole lot of R&D at first.
- 24:52
Yeah.
- 24:53
Just to see if it was, I guess, possible within the engine we're working in, especially like
- 24:58
what we wanted for it.
- 25:00
Yeah.
- 25:01
Because we had a lot of demands that we couldn't really point to in other games and be like,
- 25:05
let's just do that, you know?
- 25:06
Yeah.
- 25:07
And it was a bespoke functionality that was novel to Ash's.
- 25:12
And it's one thing to make it work in the character creator, and it's a completely different
- 25:17
thing to take the character that you made in the character creator and make that work
- 25:21
in game and make it performant.
- 25:24
And that's one thing that Zach played a huge role in was actually getting the assets gameplay
- 25:28
ready by threading the skeletal mesh merge process.
- 25:32
That was pretty awesome.
- 25:33
It wouldn't really be possible unless we did a lot of heavy tech in the background to make
- 25:39
it feasible.
- 25:40
Very cool.
- 25:41
And then another aspect, obviously, is the tech you guys worked on doesn't just facilitate
- 25:47
the front-facing character creator for the player, but it's also something that can be
- 25:51
utilized internally as a tool when creating NPCs, correct?
- 25:55
Yeah.
- 25:56
When we were in the ideation phase of character creator, we always thought that it'd be great
- 26:01
to have a customization suite for design so they can go in and make quest NPCs, they can
- 26:07
populate the world with their custom characters, they can go in and give life almost to each
- 26:12
individual NPC if they wanted to and really make them unique and customized.
- 26:17
Yeah.
- 26:18
Yeah.
- 26:19
And designers, of course, love having that tool available to them, right?
- 26:21
Oh, they love it.
- 26:22
Because they don't have to go and make specific requests necessarily to character on a particular
- 26:25
type of NPC.
- 26:27
They can just jump into the tool itself and create those things.
- 26:31
And of course, that technology isn't just restricted to humanoid type NPCs, but also
- 26:36
can be able to leverage across creature creators as well, potentially.
- 26:40
Is that true?
- 26:41
Well...
- 26:42
Big plans for that.
- 26:43
Yeah.
- 26:44
Yeah.
- 26:45
That one's...
- 26:46
It's still very much in the oven, but yeah, we want to leverage a lot of the technology
- 26:51
that we made for the character creator for things like animal husbandry and for populating
- 26:58
the world with unique variations of creatures as well.
- 27:02
Yeah.
- 27:03
Absolutely.
- 27:04
We're working towards that.
- 27:05
We're going to leverage that tech as much as possible.
- 27:06
Yeah.
- 27:07
Exactly.
- 27:08
Get the most out of it.
- 27:09
Yeah.
- 27:10
In creating the character creator, one of our biggest points of emphasis is while we're
- 27:12
making this is thinking about how it can be reused in other parts of the project.
- 27:16
Yeah.
- 27:17
Absolutely.
- 27:18
Because I can edit the size of my pug's eye.
- 27:22
To make them really oversized.
- 27:25
Talk to me a little bit about what...
- 27:27
We obviously talked a little bit about one of the aspects of the future uses for the
- 27:31
character creator with creatures potentially, but what are some of the other things you're
- 27:34
excited about to continue working on getting the character creator to a point where it's
- 27:40
going to be live for launch?
- 27:43
What are some of those features?
- 27:44
I know we took a lot of feedback from the community when they gave us responses during
- 27:48
the discussions thread about what they're looking for.
- 27:51
They talked a little bit about more hair options, more abilities to do tattoos, perhaps even
- 27:56
to customize those things.
- 27:57
What are some of the things you guys are excited to add?
- 28:00
Yeah.
- 28:01
So one thing that I'm really excited to work on next is the hair customization.
- 28:04
Well, a lot of the functionality for the hair customization is there, but I think that you
- 28:08
saw in the demo, it was still using sliders.
- 28:11
We really want to expand how much you can customize individually on the hair and also
- 28:16
incorporate that same mechanic of direct manipulation so that you're dragging different
- 28:21
parts of the hair or actually configuring it that way.
- 28:25
Especially with longer braids and jewelry and more of the granularity you can use to
- 28:31
really customize your character.
- 28:32
Yeah, we saw a lot of commentary about that.
- 28:35
And of course, players, as you guys understand, those might not always be available at the
- 28:40
inception of a particular character, but might be unlocked through achievements in game that
- 28:45
you can then revisit the character creator through salon services and nodes and start
- 28:50
to customize further as your character's history matures within the world.
- 28:54
Right?
- 28:55
Yeah.
- 28:56
That's one thing that I'm super excited for is the gameplay integration of the character
- 29:00
creator in real time and how we integrate different customization features and tie that
- 29:06
into your character progression.
- 29:08
I can't wait to see the different scars that I can unlock from a deadly battle.
- 29:14
Like reputation based tattoos.
- 29:16
Yeah, exactly.
- 29:17
Yeah, I've never seen that before.
- 29:20
That is cool.
- 29:21
Yeah, going into the tattoo parlor in the Dunir node and getting like a special Dunir
- 29:26
tattoo.
- 29:27
Oh my God.
- 29:28
It would be also cool as a feature if you're capable of inspecting other players, you know,
- 29:32
customization options and what they represent.
- 29:34
So if you do add the scar from the dragon fight, another person can see, ah, they have
- 29:38
a scar and it's from that dragon fight.
- 29:40
Yeah, exactly.
- 29:41
Yeah, that is super cool.
- 29:42
I love gameplay, I guess options, but we're going to give designers to be able to populate
- 29:47
the world with quests and reputation.
- 29:49
Yeah, yeah, that's super cool.
- 29:52
Very, very cool.
- 29:53
Well, awesome.
- 29:54
You know, I guess one final question that I would have for you guys is as someone who
- 30:01
takes a long time to create your character, do you generally just randomize and go or
- 30:08
do you sit there and fiddle with it?
- 30:11
I know that in an MMO setting, sometimes when you're making that character, and obviously
- 30:15
this is a service we've talked about offering is prior to launch, players will be able to
- 30:19
access the character creator and prep for that launch time because you want to get into
- 30:22
the server as quickly as possible.
- 30:23
You don't want to lose any time, right?
- 30:24
And trying to progress.
- 30:26
But do you guys like to fiddle with the character creator, spend a long time doing it, customizing
- 30:30
everything or do you just randomize and go?
- 30:33
Well, at first I do both actually.
- 30:35
Really?
- 30:36
At first I randomize them, go and I give the game, I'm super picky.
- 30:39
I give the game an hour and if I'm not captured in an hour, I get a refund.
- 30:45
A lot of people do that.
- 30:48
Then I spend two hours in the character creator making my real character.
- 30:52
Okay, so first you bet the game, then if you like it, you spend the time.
- 30:56
What about you guys?
- 30:57
Yeah, no, so normally I'll randomize to find a starting point that I like and then I'll
- 31:01
customize from there.
- 31:04
But normally I don't actually put a lot of time into the character creator.
- 31:08
Really?
- 31:09
Oh my gosh, the sacrilege.
- 31:11
I'm just kidding.
- 31:12
I spend a lot of time in character creators and if there's ever an option to mod it like
- 31:17
Skyrim, I'll add even more customization options like modded Skyrim just so I can have full
- 31:24
control and like if it's not a time gate or like I'm waiting to get into the game, if
- 31:30
I have like a single player game, I will spend a full play session.
- 31:36
I generally, if I'm starting a game, especially an MMO and I know that, I mean in the past
- 31:42
the MMOs that I've experienced, it was rare to kind of visit that character creator again
- 31:47
and get to change things.
- 31:48
So I would spend a lot of time building out the character, customizing things.
- 31:53
I don't know, I'm kind of a guppy for the role play side.
- 31:55
One of the nice things that Clayton did was he worked on a really nice randomization feature.
- 32:01
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 32:02
Like if you're not one of those players like me that spends a lot of time in it, you can
- 32:09
just randomize through and you're going to get like amazing results every time and Clayton
- 32:15
did a really good job with just the breadth of the customization with the randomization
- 32:20
and then you can always use that to go off of it.
- 32:23
Yeah, I was having a fun time just kind of spamming that randomize button and just watching
- 32:27
the different shapes and figures and faces.
- 32:30
Just roll through the character creator, that was actually pretty cool.
- 32:33
Yeah, seeing how many different ones you could generate in a short amount of time, that's
- 32:37
neat.
- 32:38
And that's also, that's going to be at the forefront of our content designers ability
- 32:42
to populate the world with convincing good looking characters is a decent looking randomizing
- 32:47
feature.
- 32:48
Awesome.
- 32:49
Yeah, very cool.
- 32:50
Well guys, thank you for taking the time to chat with me and our audience.
- 32:53
We're going to have a fun little segment coming up next.
Meet our Environment, Art Tech, & Audio Lead
- 33:04
And welcome over into the environment and season side.
- 33:08
I am joined by three absolutely awesome members of the team.
- 33:12
Tristan, you want to introduce yourself?
- 33:13
I'm Tristan Snogress, I'm the lead environment artist here at Intrepid Studios.
- 33:17
Absolutely.
- 33:18
We also have Brian Ganz, lead tech artist.
- 33:21
And of course the amazing...
- 33:23
I'm Kat Nary and I am the audio lead at Intrepid.
- 33:26
Yay.
- 33:27
So we actually pulled off some fun feats this year and showcasing to the community some
- 33:32
pretty exciting stuff.
- 33:33
One of which was the seasons showcase.
- 33:37
And we did that in the Riverlands biome, is that right?
- 33:40
Correct.
- 33:41
That was the first biome that we actually implemented the actual tech that Brian and
- 33:45
Hal and James actually worked on.
- 33:47
Right.
- 33:48
And talk to me a little bit about that tech.
- 33:50
What did it entail?
- 33:52
You're just touching every single component of Unreal where a lot of things had to be
- 33:57
harmonized like the cloud, the volume cloud stuff and the particle effects for the rain
- 34:01
and the snow.
- 34:02
I think I mentioned it in the livestream for the...
- 34:05
Yeah, you did.
- 34:06
But yeah, that's...
- 34:07
There's just so many parts to it.
- 34:08
I mean, it was amazing to see.
- 34:09
Like, you know, we talked about it during, of course, the demonstration that I've never
- 34:12
personally experienced any type of tech like that in an MMORPG before where you actually
- 34:17
get to see the biome change in front of your eyes on a seasonal basis.
- 34:20
How difficult was that to achieve and how much did moving over to Unreal 5, we just
- 34:25
talked about in the previous segment, moving over to Unreal 5 help with that?
- 34:28
I think it helped with it a lot.
- 34:29
I think a lot of the cases in Unreal, the solve you're looking for is a button, button
- 34:34
press or a check block or something.
- 34:36
But there are a lot of different systems to harmonizing gameplay implications that...
- 34:42
And it's probably one of the hardest things is the planning out of how to start it so
- 34:47
that the whole approach is future proof and does everything you want it to do or might
- 34:51
want it to do.
- 34:52
Right.
- 34:53
Yeah.
- 34:54
And that, of course, has implications on the audio side because as an environment changes,
- 34:57
of course, the ambience doesn't sound the same.
- 34:59
Those things have to...
- 35:00
Those tracks have to change.
- 35:01
How was that implementing?
- 35:02
I mean, first, doing season tech is something I wanted to do for like 20 years in the game
- 35:08
industry.
- 35:09
So when I got to see what the artists were doing, I was really excited to work on this.
- 35:13
You know, you would think that there's just four seasons and so you make your four sounds
- 35:17
of summer, winter, fall, spring.
- 35:19
But we're going to go high tech and we're going to do eight variations that seamlessly
- 35:24
go through.
- 35:25
Ideally, you won't hear the changes because it'll be so seamless and they'll just kind
- 35:28
of go through.
- 35:29
Yeah.
- 35:30
It's something you don't get to see in the live streams right now because you do changes
- 35:32
in 30 seconds.
- 35:33
Right.
- 35:34
So when we do the sounds for them and as the audio team continues to grow, like right now,
- 35:38
I went out and recorded the rare rain in San Diego a couple of weeks ago.
- 35:41
Oh, so good.
- 35:42
I love listening to that.
- 35:43
So as the audio stuff gets into the game and as it grows, we'll go do more field recording.
- 35:48
You know, we try to make as much custom sounds as we can that fit the environment that we
- 35:51
see.
- 35:52
And I, of course, haven't received yet your itinerary of all the places in the world you
- 35:54
plan to travel to.
- 35:55
To collect those things.
- 35:56
Yeah.
- 35:57
I will be asking for reimbursement when I go to Fiji.
- 35:58
Yes, exactly.
- 35:59
I am more than happy to travel all over the world for you.
- 36:05
To collect the perfect references for the different types of assets.
- 36:08
Of course.
- 36:09
Yeah.
- 36:10
We can do that as well.
- 36:11
Talk to me a little bit about that.
- 36:12
So, the biomes, the animations, I know James did a lot of work on the seasonal showcase
- 36:15
for those assets.
- 36:16
How do you guys kind of derive what you're going to fill those biomes with?
- 36:20
So first, it was just trying to find some real world references that we could take as,
- 36:24
you know, inspiration.
- 36:25
Then, of course, we do get concept images derived from that, the add the fantasy flair
- 36:30
that we're going to have.
- 36:31
Right.
- 36:32
So then, you know, we want to do real world, but we're also doing high fantasy.
- 36:35
Yeah.
- 36:36
What kind of elements to it.
- 36:37
So, they chose Wales as essentially the biome for this, which is basically like where my
- 36:43
family is from.
- 36:44
Right.
- 36:45
So, I was like, all right, we're going with this.
- 36:46
I remember seeing your shots that you took while you were in Wales, and you were posting
- 36:50
them all throughout the art channels.
- 36:51
Oh, yeah.
- 36:52
And you were like, all right, this is great for this.
- 36:53
This is great for this.
- 36:54
And when we need more references, I called up my mom and was like, hey, you want to go
- 36:58
out to the garden and pick some photos?
- 36:59
I got a task for you.
- 37:00
They want to know what the ground looks like during winter.
- 37:03
It's simple.
- 37:04
I can get you that right now.
- 37:05
Do you fill out any Jira tasks for her when you ask her to do that stuff?
- 37:07
Yes, she's still asking for her money.
- 37:08
Okay.
- 37:09
We'll figure it out.
- 37:10
She's retired.
- 37:11
She's okay.
- 37:12
But yeah, so then we moved on to the desert biome after that.
- 37:15
And so, that wasn't necessarily seasonal tech implementation right there, but we had a whole
- 37:19
bunch of stuff to kind of think about how we wanted to approach seasonal tech from a
- 37:24
very different environment.
- 37:25
Right, especially like the one that's desolate as a desert.
- 37:28
Right.
- 37:29
And so, how do we make that environment change over four biomes and make it feel like unique
- 37:32
and interesting and different, but also not just do a traditional desert.
- 37:37
Yeah.
- 37:38
So, we'd like to make like the winters maybe slightly different that you might see in a
- 37:41
desert.
- 37:42
I know.
- 37:43
We talked a little bit about that.
- 37:44
And there's some cool stuff that we've done for things that might come down the line,
- 37:47
but one of the things that we wanted to do was also out here in Anza, Borrego, we get
- 37:52
the desert super blooms, which is where everything turns into like this beautiful painting of
- 37:56
color.
- 37:57
It's unbelievable.
- 37:58
Yeah, the flower blooms are just mind blowing.
- 38:00
Beautiful.
- 38:01
And there's some stuff that we have been trying to make happen that is going to probably blow
- 38:06
people's minds even more than we've already done with the riverland.
- 38:09
Absolutely.
- 38:10
And I think that people are going to be really excited to see that stuff.
- 38:13
I think just the glimpse that we got actually at the desert area, that desert biome, there's
- 38:17
already just such beauty that you did with the oasis and the tech across the rolling
- 38:23
winds over the sand dunes.
- 38:25
Talk to me a little bit about how you kind of accomplished the winds for the sand dunes.
- 38:29
There's a couple of techniques, I think.
- 38:31
A lot of times the environment artists will take a stab at what they want to do and then
- 38:35
I'll pick it up and work it and massage it in a little bit better with some of the systems
- 38:39
that are in there already.
- 38:41
Making it a little more functional than what an artist might be.
- 38:44
And performant.
- 38:45
Might perform as well.
- 38:46
But yeah, they know, they have an idea of what they want in their eye and I'm just like,
- 38:49
okay, I get it.
- 38:50
And let's kind of use that in a particle effect to do that as well.
- 38:54
Sometimes it's kind of like use a different system but in the same way that they're envisioning.
- 38:59
I try to cover all the different things Unreal can do, like the grass, the foliage, and the
- 39:04
virtual textures and everything.
- 39:05
And there's a lot of ways to do things but there's often the best way to do something.
- 39:10
And just kind of put that in there.
- 39:12
The heat distortion was done one way, let's put that in the particle system.
- 39:16
And they all kind of layer on top of each other, these different systems that you're
- 39:20
utilizing.
- 39:21
If you take one out, then the whole scene just kind of falls apart.
- 39:25
And now of course we have certain types of weather events that are of course going to
- 39:28
impact audio as well for these areas.
- 39:31
Like we talked a bit about one of the boss designs that are intended for the desert biome,
- 39:36
having this kind of whirlwind of sandstorm.
- 39:40
And when players get inside of those things, how does that kind of change audio?
- 39:43
Yeah, no, Brian's been awesome to work with because he's built a lot of systems that can
- 39:46
drive the audio dynamically.
- 39:48
So I'll go out and record various levels of sounds and then they'll procedurally change
- 39:53
in the game to really make you feel like you're in there.
- 39:56
Even the same with the trees, if you go under the trees right now with the wind, the little
- 39:59
leaves will kind of go up and down with the wind parameters that Brian's set up.
- 40:04
And it's really, really neat and really interactive.
- 40:06
And not just the winds, I noticed that as I kind of move through the game and I get
- 40:10
close to some of these particular foliage actors, I hear birds chirping or some type
- 40:15
of cue that just happens in the background.
- 40:17
The birds are super cool too because they're going to be assigned to certain trees.
- 40:21
And sometimes you'll find that really cool bird, you want to sit under it.
- 40:24
And then sometimes you'll find a bird that maybe you don't want to be near.
- 40:26
And so maybe you'll chop down that tree and take away his home or move away.
- 40:30
Oh no, that's terrible.
- 40:31
But you know, it's really cool.
- 40:32
That is actually very genius.
- 40:33
I noticed also, as we were kind of showcasing some of the ranger footage that design and
- 40:42
the combat engineers have been working on, there was that almost pollen-like fog that
- 40:48
was just throughout the level that created that almost morning dust look in that area.
- 40:53
Yeah, one of our newer artists, John Wainick, has actually been implementing all of those
- 40:57
kind of features to get...
- 40:59
That's just another atmospheric element that completely adds to the mood.
- 41:03
And those are seasonal as well, right?
- 41:04
Those are going to be tuned to specific seasons.
- 41:08
And not just seasons, also weather in general.
- 41:10
So you might get a foggy morning.
- 41:12
There's been several pretty amazing games recently that I've played that have some of
- 41:16
these elements.
- 41:17
And that really changes the vibe of when you're running around, like one day to another is
- 41:22
completely different.
- 41:23
And that's a great point.
- 41:24
Like we're all gamers.
- 41:25
We all play games in our spare time.
- 41:28
That's why we're in this industry is because we love games.
- 41:30
We like seeing the smiles on people's faces when we make something that excites them.
- 41:34
How much inspiration do you draw from the games that you play?
- 41:38
That's a tough question because there's so many different types of games that you can
- 41:41
play, obviously, and I don't really stick to one.
- 41:44
And none of them have a shortage of awe-inspiring feats that their dev teams accomplish as well.
- 41:48
And for me in particular, Red Dead Redemption is an amazing game where I could just ride
- 41:54
around and enjoy the nature all day.
- 41:57
Or the shenanigans that the horses have.
- 41:59
Yeah, all the little things.
- 42:01
But yeah, that specific game has a lot of atmospheric elements for when I'm running
- 42:05
around.
- 42:06
And not just the visual elements, but then the sound does kick in.
- 42:09
And sound to me is one of the things that really truly sells like a movie or a game.
- 42:16
Especially the music and such like that.
- 42:17
But if the audio doesn't feel right, then you know.
- 42:20
Yeah, absolutely.
- 42:21
I mean, that was something that was big for me.
- 42:24
Not just in gaming, but I find in many different forms of entertainment, especially media,
- 42:30
television, movies, like the soundtrack, the music that accompanies what's happening,
- 42:38
more often than not elicits stronger emotions from me than the visuals or the dialogue.
- 42:42
My goal for Vero Audio is you should be able to find a nice little safe place to sit down
- 42:47
and leave it on in the background as a nice ambient audio generator.
- 42:51
And you can go work on your thesis or whatever else you're working on, or just nice little
- 42:55
go to bed to it.
- 42:56
And I want you to feel like you're always in there.
- 42:59
That's what we need to do.
- 43:00
That's what I'm saying.
- 43:01
Yes, remember we used to talk about that so long ago.
- 43:02
First we'll do that.
- 43:03
We should totally throw up like a YouTube loop that people can just leave on.
- 43:07
Oh, that would be a great idea.
- 43:09
That's one way to fall asleep.
- 43:10
Yeah, absolutely.
- 43:11
So as we kind of, you know, look forward into 2023, what are some of the areas that you
- 43:18
guys have on your excited list of things to tackle, right?
- 43:23
What's the biome you're looking most forward to?
- 43:26
So the Redwood Forest is something that we're aiming to push into.
- 43:29
Oh my god.
- 43:30
We've already kind of started pushing into it slowly, but you know, just being surrounded
- 43:35
by giant massive trees that just don't seem to be making any sense of why they exist.
- 43:41
Like when you're walking through a Redwood Forest in real life, like up in Northern California,
- 43:45
it's awe-inspiring.
- 43:47
And there's a lot of cool, seasonal stuff that we can do with that.
- 43:51
So that's my...
- 43:52
Yeah, I was talking to design a little bit about group gameplay dynamics when we instituted
- 43:57
the gathering tech and having specific assets that require multiple players in order to
- 44:02
actually chop down a particular tree.
- 44:04
Yeah, I don't think you can really take down a Redwood with a simple person in their hands.
- 44:09
Ah, six swings, we're good.
- 44:11
We'll see how that plays out.
- 44:12
That's going to be an interesting feature to actually make work, because from the tech
- 44:15
side of things, I mean, I guess we'll be talking more about that later on today, but harvesting
- 44:21
tech is going to play into that.
- 44:22
Right.
- 44:23
And it's relevant, of course, to seasons, because not just the ambience and the audio
- 44:27
changes, but the assets that are available and spawn those changes well, and those have
- 44:31
actual economic implications when it comes to the world economy.
- 44:35
So yeah, that's super cool.
- 44:39
Well talk to me a little bit about kind of how you blend the work between setting up
- 44:44
these zones, these biomes for the seasonal aspects, and working with design to determine
- 44:50
which assets spawn when, how it's affected potentially by time of day, and a little bit
- 44:56
about working with design on setting up these biomes filled with different types of gatherables,
- 45:04
essentially, and how it's affected by season, right?
- 45:07
They have cycles, essentially.
- 45:09
There's going to be different types of plants, different types of foliage that you can harvest
- 45:12
during certain times of the year.
- 45:14
Brian, I guess you were probably going to be plugging that tech into all the harvestable
- 45:18
assets in the sense that you might get a certain plant in winter, but you're not going to get
- 45:21
it during the time where weather might affect that.
- 45:24
Right.
- 45:25
And we saw a little bit about that, not just with the assets, but also with the creatures
- 45:28
as well.
- 45:29
Correct.
- 45:30
Yeah.
- 45:31
And what went into making the creatures kind of change with the seasons?
- 45:35
Actually, it's not as difficult as it sounds.
- 45:37
That was probably the easiest answer.
- 45:38
Wait, don't say that.
- 45:39
It's very difficult.
- 45:40
No, I'm just kidding.
- 45:41
Very complex.
- 45:42
We can't give away the secrets.
- 45:43
Yeah, I can't give away the secrets.
- 45:44
It's probably hard for the guys at Epic to put it on the engine, but we just kind of knew
- 45:47
every material, every object has access to wind, direction, and speed, time of year,
- 45:52
time of day.
- 45:53
It's up to the artist to just kind of tap into these accessible variables and say, make
- 45:57
this color in the summer, a different color in winter.
- 46:01
It gets complicated when you start putting in more dynamics with like, we want a storm
- 46:06
in this area.
- 46:07
So we move across the world and it has gameplay implications and all the clients know if they're
- 46:12
in a storm or not.
- 46:15
To that whole process of working with designers and how to integrate what we can do and what
- 46:20
they want to do, I have to have like, here's the ambitious goal that everyone's talking
- 46:25
about, but we've got to fall back just in case.
- 46:28
I need a fallback plan.
- 46:30
A scale of achievability.
- 46:31
Push the really ambitious thing that's going to blow everyone's socks off.
- 46:37
And we usually hit the ambitious ones.
- 46:39
Yeah, somehow, some way it always works out.
- 46:41
And then of course, you have to think about all of these things from an audio perspective
- 46:45
where essentially you're layering on these different sounds and when does it become too
- 46:50
much if I've got a storm coming, I'm in combat with ten creatures, I've got players around
- 46:55
me with abilities and effects, and I've got dynamic music.
- 46:58
A great code team and we're also using audio kinetics, audio engine, both those things
- 47:03
with the code team and the audio engine will allow us to do some really cool dynamic mixing
- 47:08
that we'll get to choose what needs to be in focus.
- 47:11
And when you're in the storm, you're going to hear the storm, but if combat's coming
- 47:13
on and bigger things that need to be focused on, those are going to kind of come up while
- 47:16
the storm will go down.
- 47:17
So it's going to be all kinds of fire toys like that.
- 47:19
That's awesome.
- 47:20
That is awesome.
- 47:21
Well, with that being said, we are going to be moving over into our discussion about combat.
- 47:29
And I want to thank you guys for joining us and chatting a little bit about the seasons
- 47:33
and what it takes to actually make this stuff exist in game.
- 47:36
So awesome job guys.
- 47:38
And we will be seeing you in just a second.
Meet some of the Combat Crew
- 47:48
And we are back with a fun little discussion with some of our awesome developers who are
- 47:55
involved in the development of our combat and classes and special effects, all the fun
- 48:00
stuff that makes an MMO an MMO.
- 48:04
First thing I want to ask is for you guys each to introduce yourself.
- 48:07
It was you, Jim.
- 48:08
I'm Jim.
- 48:09
I am the lead effect art.
- 48:10
Yes.
- 48:11
Trap.
- 48:12
Yep.
- 48:13
I'm Trap Thompson.
- 48:14
I'm a senior combat designer on the project.
- 48:16
Awesome.
- 48:17
Keenan.
- 48:18
I'm Keenan.
- 48:19
I'm a gameplay engineer.
- 48:20
Mostly work on combat and movement.
- 48:22
So we have shown some fun stuff this year.
- 48:25
And I think the audience of course would agree that the look at Ashes development since the
- 48:32
start of 2022 has ramped up in a very fun and engaging way for the community to kind
- 48:38
of take a look at how development works here.
- 48:40
You guys all are involved in a process of course that is very near and dear to many
- 48:44
players hearts, which is the identity of their archetypes, the abilities they have access
- 48:49
to those classes, how they interact from a role perspective with combat in general in
- 48:53
the game.
- 48:54
What are some of the inspirations?
- 48:55
What are some games that you guys have played in the past that kind of helped to influence
- 49:00
decisions that we make on Ashes?
- 49:01
Oh, you know, that's a good question because if you're playing an MMO, you're going to
- 49:07
have to think of kind of the big players out there.
- 49:09
And I got thousands of hours in World of Warcraft and that will definitely influence how I shaped
- 49:15
kind of some of the iconic imagery, the colors and shapes.
- 49:19
I think really a lot of that motivation comes back to the feedback I get from the community
- 49:24
and from the developers.
- 49:25
Like Tread is always kind of saying, Hey man, what about this shape or this size?
- 49:29
Or I'm thinking about this mechanic.
- 49:31
Yeah.
- 49:32
So I guess it's a circular, circle.
- 49:34
Absolutely.
- 49:35
I mean, all of us have been experiencing MMOs.
- 49:37
I mean, we're all MMO gamers.
- 49:38
That's part of the question that I ask in the final interview.
- 49:41
You come up with your favorite MMOs.
- 49:43
The real qualifying.
- 49:44
Yes, the qualifying question.
- 49:45
Tread, what are some MMOs or games in general that you draw inspiration from?
- 49:50
There are so many I would have to narrow that down to.
- 49:53
I'll pick an MMO since that's the most relevant.
- 49:56
And I'd say the most influential MMO on me, on just as a gamer has been Dark Age of Camelot.
- 50:03
I remember actually our interview when you asked me about my MMO experience.
- 50:07
That was the one I chose to talk about.
- 50:09
I loved it.
- 50:10
It was such a fun game.
- 50:11
Yeah.
- 50:12
Yeah.
- 50:13
That was really the game I think that really, well that and RuneScape, if you qualify RuneScape
- 50:18
as an MMO, that one as well.
- 50:20
But Dark Age was really where I think I realized the magic of an MMO and it really is what
- 50:27
got me into open world PvP and that's what really excites me about this project is bringing
- 50:31
that kind of thing back.
- 50:33
Just that really spontaneous gameplay that you run into out in the field and you never
- 50:37
know what to expect.
- 50:38
Absolutely.
- 50:39
Yeah.
- 50:40
What about you, Keenan?
- 50:41
For me, I think it's probably WoW.
- 50:45
Specifically the re-release of vanilla WoW, Classic WoW, I thought that was a phenomenal
- 50:52
experience.
- 50:53
I actually never played in vanilla.
- 50:54
Oh really?
- 50:55
So that was your first time with Classic WoW?
- 50:57
That was my first time with Classic and I feel like it brought back some of the old
- 51:01
school adventure that a lot of us have been missing.
- 51:03
That feeling back, yeah, the nostalgia.
- 51:04
Yeah, we've got a group playing right now.
- 51:06
Oh yeah?
- 51:07
Really?
- 51:08
Hopefully we'll start back up again on Old War.
- 51:10
Very cool.
- 51:12
So obviously, as our audience has kind of seen throughout the year and they're kind
- 51:17
of seeing now as we put little clips into this particular video, we've shown off a little
- 51:22
bit of the ranger, we've shown off a little bit of basic weapon attacks and melee, some
- 51:27
of the fighter skills, we've shown off the cleric most recently.
- 51:31
Tell me a little bit about the process that goes into actually making these archetypes.
- 51:36
Obviously the ability side is very important that needs to have support from engineering
- 51:40
and the effects and stuff, but what typically goes into, and we have a lot of classes to
- 51:44
make, right, and we're deep within the thralls of that process, but what does it take?
- 51:48
Yeah, I could start on that.
- 51:51
So obviously a class has to, or an archetype has to start on paper, right?
- 51:57
A lot of the time we'll go into prototyping and start building out stuff and see what's
- 52:00
fun but just about always we start on paper on a design document.
- 52:05
And we're talking about specific abilities when we start out on paper, right?
- 52:10
First we actually go about establishing the class fantasy and the identity and the role
- 52:14
within the party, right?
- 52:17
Because that really helps to inform what those abilities then are.
- 52:22
So that's usually the first step is, you know, what is this archetype?
- 52:24
What identifies it?
- 52:25
What is the role that it's trying to accomplish?
- 52:28
Once that is done then we go into what you're suggesting there where, you know, we'll go
- 52:33
and brainstorm a whole wide list of abilities and class mechanics and then once we've got
- 52:39
all those, you know, a lot of them will get the chopping block and some of them will make
- 52:43
it through, some will get iterated and, you know, kind of redesigned, reimagined.
- 52:48
And then after that step usually we go to you and we have a sort of review meeting and,
- 52:55
you know, you'll pick ones that you like, you'll pick ones you want to change.
- 52:58
That's the second chopping block.
- 52:59
The second chopping block, yeah, there you go.
- 53:02
We try and filter it on our end as much as Steven makes sure it gets done one way or
- 53:07
another.
- 53:08
And then, you know, once that's done then we jump into the prototyping, right?
- 53:13
Then it starts down the pipeline process, right?
- 53:15
Yeah, yeah.
- 53:16
And rapid prototyping is a really important step of the design process for combat because
- 53:21
we want to build and fail early or, you know, succeed early.
- 53:26
And we find the fun, we find what's not fun.
- 53:28
And we can all do that within, you know, the tools that our very talented engineers provide
- 53:33
us and we're always working to improve that stuff.
- 53:36
And the better tools we have, the better the designers can do their job.
- 53:39
And of course engineering kind of fields requests from a capability standpoint on what design
- 53:45
can actually provide a particular ability to do, right?
- 53:49
Talk to me a little bit about, you know, how you field those requests, how you incorporate
- 53:53
that as part of the ability system, all those things.
- 53:56
Well we always do feasibility on any requests that we get, but our designers are really
- 54:00
good about that and we don't usually have too many issues there.
- 54:04
Usually, yeah, I like to run wild sometimes.
- 54:09
For me as an engineer though, I think a lot of times the challenge is in, you know, they're
- 54:15
trying to get the fantasy right and the question is like, how do you make somebody who's playing
- 54:21
a game feel like they are being delivered on that fantasy?
- 54:25
So when design asks us for something, we usually play it a lot ourselves as we're making it
- 54:29
and we search for that feeling and, you know, we're all gamers so we know what it feels
- 54:33
like so we're looking for it as we build it.
- 54:35
That's one of my favorite things is I'm walking past your desk going to my office, sometimes
- 54:39
you'll just be like, hey Steven, you got two minutes.
- 54:41
And then you put me at your desk at the keyboard and you're like, how does this feel?
- 54:45
Do you feel like a ranger?
- 54:46
I know, do you feel like a ranger?
- 54:48
Does this sword slash feel good?
- 54:50
Yeah, absolutely.
- 54:51
I mean, and obviously, you know, you guys, you and Adam have had a very instrumental hand
- 54:55
as part of working with design and visual effects to kind of capture not just that role,
- 55:00
but that feeling as you described, and sometimes that incorporates working with animators to
- 55:05
get the right types of author animations for like particular weapon attacks and or abilities,
- 55:11
and the timing on those things is pivotal in creating the right feeling, right?
- 55:16
There's so many technical components to it and as is often the case with engineering,
- 55:20
it's like eliciting that right human response out of the very mathematical thing is the
- 55:26
challenging part.
- 55:27
Yeah.
- 55:28
And Jim, obviously, you know, audio and visual effects, they come in kind of near the end
- 55:32
of that pipeline where, you know, design and engineering has provided the tools to design,
- 55:38
designs iterating with authored animations, and then VFX comes in and says, how can I
- 55:43
make this look spectacular?
- 55:44
I mean, there's a tremendous amount of thought that's already been placed into this mechanic
- 55:50
or designer ability or whatever.
- 55:53
So on top of that, we're thinking about how can we push the MMO space?
- 55:57
We don't want to recreate the other games.
- 55:59
We want to make it our own game.
- 56:00
I mean, we want to push the effects to a level that you just don't see in the industry period,
- 56:05
but at the same time, we don't want to create visual effects soup.
- 56:08
So we're working on creating a visual language, something that the gamers here are playing
- 56:13
are going to understand like, hey, that's like an arcane ability or that's like a tank
- 56:18
mixed with this, you know, summoner or whatever.
- 56:20
So we have to figure out how to do all of this, not make it too muddy, but actually
- 56:24
execute in a way that looks cool, so it's really, really nice to have people like Trad
- 56:28
and our engineer team to go back and forth and be like, hey, can we connect this beam
- 56:32
here?
- 56:33
Can I parameterize it and can we expose this to the UI guys so we can ramp it up or down
- 56:37
to do stuff?
- 56:38
Yeah, and you hit on a really interesting point, which is visual effects is obviously
- 56:42
not just about creating things that are awesome, but the language that communicates in the
- 56:47
style guide of how these effects translate to particular classes from just a silhouette
- 56:52
perspective, shape language or visual fidelity and the hues and colors that are used to communicate
- 56:57
at long distances like, hey, I know what I'm going up against, especially if it's a PvP
- 57:02
scenario, or if you see your group kind of doing something, there are visual cues for
- 57:06
you to respond appropriately and synergistically from a rotations perspective.
- 57:10
And that's something I know early on, you know, we worked with each other kind of going
- 57:14
through you and the VFX team across, you know, what those shapes languages should look like
- 57:18
for particular types of abilities, the colors that should be associated with particular
- 57:22
types of archetypes, the symbologies and iconography that's used as part of those particular visual
- 57:27
effects, some of which obviously people saw in the last cleric demonstration.
- 57:32
But how has that been for you kind of defining those things and creating that style guide?
- 57:36
I mean, it's a comprehensive list, there's 64 classes, right?
- 57:40
And how do you steer and make sure that it doesn't become that visual suit that so many
- 57:45
people I mean, I've played games where it does become visual suit.
- 57:50
And especially it starts to break down every 10th player you add into the mix or every
- 57:55
10th, you know, actor NPC or whatever, right?
- 57:58
How do we accomplish that?
- 57:59
Well, I love that question.
- 58:01
So I mean, I'm a gamer.
- 58:03
And I think that especially in MMOs, when you get to that in game content, and you're
- 58:07
in this huge raid, whether it's like 10 people or 100 people, and all of a sudden, it's like
- 58:11
you can't find your mouse cursor, you're like, if you don't hotkey, you're lost, right?
- 58:15
So, but to answer your question, we're not.
- 58:18
Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to give that to the player.
- 58:20
So the player is going to be able to tune that experience.
- 58:24
So we are going to create a very smart parameterized subset of matrix particle systems.
- 58:31
That's a fancy way of saying that we're going to let you tune what it's like in single player
- 58:35
versus maybe you and your buddy versus a five person party or a giant raid.
- 58:40
Not only that, but let's make it where we can change the camera shake.
- 58:43
And the post process and a particle intensity and then do a global one that scales all of
- 58:48
that.
- 58:49
And give that to the player because I mean, really visual soup is a thing, but there's
- 58:52
a scale that's subjective kind of to the player on how much they want to see of those things
- 58:58
happening in a particular area.
- 58:59
And this is something obviously you guys who've been following the project for a long time
- 59:02
is what we've talked at since the very inception of Ashes is a desire to tackle that particular
- 59:08
issue that many of us have experienced in other games, of course.
- 59:12
So talk to me a little bit about our 64 classes, right?
- 59:16
In those roles, those class fantasies, where do we kind of live when incorporating?
- 59:21
And obviously we have an eight member party, right?
- 59:24
And we have eight archetypes that are associated across our game.
- 59:27
And people know it's kind of a matrix of eight by eight in which creating these classes,
- 59:31
the augment system, all that type of stuff.
- 59:33
People have just now been starting to get a peek under the hood of the creation of these
- 59:36
archetypes and these classes.
- 59:38
What are you most excited to kind of tackle come 2023?
- 59:42
I know that there's a lot of stuff in the works right now and building up towards Alpha
- 59:45
Two.
- 59:46
Of all 64 of them.
- 59:47
Yes, yes.
- 59:48
Probably the Dreadnought because that's my default character.
- 59:53
But actually, I don't know that there's any particular class yet.
- 59:57
I mean, we haven't even shown everybody all the archetypes yet.
- 1:00:00
But I will say I'm pretty excited to see what the Summoner becomes.
- 1:00:04
We haven't shown anything on the Summoner and I'm not necessarily a pet class player
- 1:00:09
myself, but I feel like every Summoner type class that I've seen in games, they usually
- 1:00:16
fall a little bit flat in my opinion.
- 1:00:18
Maybe that's why I don't play them, right?
- 1:00:21
But I'd like to see something a little bit more dynamic with like, you know, summoning
- 1:00:26
in real time in combat rather than, oh, I summon my pet right at the beginning of combat
- 1:00:30
and then it's done.
- 1:00:31
It's out there doing its own thing.
- 1:00:33
I think there's a lot left to be explored there.
- 1:00:37
In fact, we've already written up some stuff about it.
- 1:00:39
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 1:00:40
And it's some stuff that we've shared a little bit with the community.
- 1:00:42
Just a little bit.
- 1:00:43
Just a little bit, but I think they're going to be excited to see next year kind of some
- 1:00:47
of the stuff that's gone into that.
- 1:00:48
What about you, Keenan?
- 1:00:49
What are you kind of excited about from either a technical challenge perspective when it
- 1:00:52
comes to these ability systems or combat in general or class wise?
- 1:00:58
I think if you're talking about what I'm most excited to work on, I would say all of the
- 1:01:02
bard classes.
- 1:01:03
Ah, okay.
- 1:01:04
I think that the bard seems to have been largely forgotten by modern gaming.
- 1:01:09
So I'm excited to bring it back and show off some of the cool ideas that we have.
- 1:01:13
Yes, I think next year as well people are going to be excited to see how that class
- 1:01:16
interacts from a support perspective for the party and how it kind of lives next to but
- 1:01:22
doesn't encompass the same space as the healer, which is what a lot of previous games I think
- 1:01:27
that try to bring in that bard perspective do.
- 1:01:29
They just throw it on top of the healer's role.
- 1:01:31
And that can be a little bit boring.
- 1:01:33
There's a lot more to support than health bar goes right.
- 1:01:36
Right.
- 1:01:37
Health bar goes right.
- 1:01:38
Whack.
- 1:01:39
Whack a mole pole too.
- 1:01:40
Agreed.
- 1:01:41
How about you, Jim?
- 1:01:42
What about you on the visual effects side?
- 1:01:43
I know you guys got a lot of fun tech working with tech art teams for supporting visual
- 1:01:49
effects, not just from a class perspective, but also on the monster side, NPC encounter
- 1:01:53
side as well.
- 1:01:54
Oh yeah.
- 1:01:55
I mean, we're going to have so much fun.
- 1:01:56
Like monsters and boss fights are going to be unreal because we can just dial that up
- 1:01:59
and really have fun with all the actual tech that's built in the engine, the custom tech.
- 1:02:04
I think from just like a real technical perspective, I'm super excited about augments.
- 1:02:10
I want to do the augmentations and see how these different classes interact and how we
- 1:02:14
can create like the difference between a cleric and a paladin, for example.
- 1:02:19
But from just a selfish point of view, all about the necromancer man.
- 1:02:23
It's going to be incredible.
- 1:02:24
I don't think you're alone there, buddy.
- 1:02:25
It's going to be amazing.
- 1:02:26
And we showed off a little bit, some of the augments, I don't know if everyone picked
- 1:02:33
up on them during some of the demonstrations.
- 1:02:35
There were a few abilities that had some of the augments associated with them, but next
- 1:02:40
year I think in preparation for Alpha 2, there's going to be a lot of that stuff that players
- 1:02:44
are going to get access to and kind of see.
- 1:02:47
You know, it's something that's interesting to me is I think next month we're showcasing
- 1:02:51
the tank archetype and we're going to be showing some of those abilities and within the next
- 1:02:56
couple of months, I might have actually just leaked that.
- 1:02:59
I'm so sorry.
- 1:03:00
Okay, so a little leak in today's video.
- 1:03:03
But within the next couple of months, or I think it's the next two to three months, we're
- 1:03:11
also going to be talking a little bit about showcasing one of the big raid bosses, the
- 1:03:16
Cyclops.
- 1:03:17
And I know that has a lot of visual effects that's going into that encounter, as well
- 1:03:20
as some unique mechanics that are associated with supporting some of that ability that
- 1:03:25
the actual Cyclops has available.
- 1:03:27
And I think people are going to be a little bit shocked by that because it's pretty cool.
- 1:03:31
Well, it's going to be epic.
- 1:03:33
It's going to be insane.
- 1:03:34
I mean, you have this unique problem with big bosses in general.
- 1:03:39
Now I'm going to leak a little more.
- 1:03:41
Hopefully you guys don't have to edit this out.
- 1:03:43
Oh yeah, I'm ready.
- 1:03:44
I'm scared, but I'm ready.
- 1:03:45
So we're going to have this monstrous creature just going across our terrain.
- 1:03:48
It's not going to be your flat arena that you see in every MMO.
- 1:03:52
It's going to have different heights, altitudes, obstacles to climb on.
- 1:03:55
And we got to solve for that.
- 1:03:56
We don't want our effects just hanging in there.
- 1:03:58
We want to mold to the terrain and do different stuff.
- 1:04:01
But I think that's going to be something that I'm really excited about.
- 1:04:04
It's really technical, but it's also going to be something that people are really going
- 1:04:07
to dig.
- 1:04:08
They're going to enjoy it.
- 1:04:09
Oh, for sure.
- 1:04:10
I totally agree.
- 1:04:11
Every little edge case we missed is going to be scaled up 20x.
- 1:04:13
Oh yes.
- 1:04:14
And that's part of the greatness of kind of showcasing.
- 1:04:17
It's how we figure it out.
- 1:04:18
Yes, exactly.
- 1:04:19
And as we get to encounter those problems as the course that we're bringing this to
- 1:04:24
life, and as we're addressing them, we're showing the community as well.
- 1:04:28
That's something that's super cool.
- 1:04:29
Another thing, obviously we're building a massively multiplayer game.
- 1:04:34
And a lot of our encounter design, a lot of the PvP scenarios that players are going to
- 1:04:39
be subjected to, those are very dense populations.
- 1:04:44
And when you're building out this concept of these ability systems, how much of that
- 1:04:50
massively multiplayer component gets taken into account when creating, ideating, so to
- 1:04:55
speak, these mechanics that are provided by engineering, but also the class kits as a
- 1:04:59
holistic view, what abilities we're actually authoring.
- 1:05:03
Do you take into that account?
- 1:05:04
Or is this something that's really more focused around solo gameplay, group gameplay, or massive
- 1:05:10
gameplay?
- 1:05:11
Oh, we've got to think about all of it.
- 1:05:13
From the ground up, in that phase I was talking about earlier, the ideation phase when we're
- 1:05:18
brainstorming these abilities, we always, always have to think about how does this scale
- 1:05:23
up.
- 1:05:24
A lot of games have the luxury of not having to do that.
- 1:05:27
They can design a number of abilities without even having to necessarily consider the performance
- 1:05:34
implications it would have in a networking environment.
- 1:05:37
There's a lot of additional things as designers and engineers and artists that we've got to
- 1:05:43
think about every time.
- 1:05:44
So it kind of blows up the scale of, it can be a little bit mind paralysis sometimes when
- 1:05:51
you think, but we get through it and we've gotten pretty good at it.
- 1:05:55
From a performance as authoring these visual effects, how useful has the migration of Unreal
- 1:06:01
5 been with the use of Niagara in its system?
- 1:06:04
It's key.
- 1:06:05
It's very critical.
- 1:06:06
So every single effect that we author, we have to author for different scenarios, how
- 1:06:10
far away it might be, when we might call stuff, how close it's going to be.
- 1:06:13
We're also going to call stuff.
- 1:06:14
There's no point in having something that just blocks your entire view.
- 1:06:18
So all this will happen in real time dynamically.
- 1:06:20
So we can scale down particle systems based on how many players are active or how your
- 1:06:25
performance might be changing or anything really.
- 1:06:28
Maybe it's a Thanksgiving day and we want to have less effects.
- 1:06:31
We can do that.
- 1:06:32
But it's super robust with the amount of control we have over every aspect of visual effects.
- 1:06:38
And we'll be needing to do all of that to set all these things up because we don't want
- 1:06:42
to have a situation where, oh yeah, our game is really great until we got into the open
- 1:06:46
world PvP and all that stuff.
- 1:06:47
So we're not going to make this...
- 1:06:49
The effect should be there, but it shouldn't be.
- 1:06:52
That's all you see.
- 1:06:53
Right.
- 1:06:54
It's complementing absolutely the mechanics and the gameplay 100%.
- 1:06:57
Keenan, obviously on the engineering side, the gameplay engineering side, you of course
- 1:07:01
have to field these requests for different types of mechanics that need to be authored.
- 1:07:05
But when you think about performance-related considerations for the ability systems, stats
- 1:07:11
to kind of quickly update, all of the stuff interacting with the network, how has that
- 1:07:16
been for you from a challenging standpoint?
- 1:07:18
Yeah.
- 1:07:20
With the scalability requirement cranked to 10, it pretty much makes every aspect of combat
- 1:07:24
like three times harder than it would otherwise be.
- 1:07:28
But ultimately, I think we've got a handle on it and we've been very intentional with
- 1:07:34
our data and with our systems so that we can modulate how quickly they receive and send
- 1:07:40
updates based on who cares the most.
- 1:07:43
And so that's going to help us with scalability a lot.
- 1:07:45
That's something that I think a lot of players kind of were noticing in Alpha 1 last year
- 1:07:51
was just the sheer density that was achieved during some of the Castle Siege fights that
- 1:07:56
we had where there were 300 plus players in a particular area.
- 1:08:00
Not many people, I think in today's age, have experienced that and experienced in a way
- 1:08:04
that was performant.
- 1:08:07
And that was something that I think is wholly unique to this project and what we're trying
- 1:08:11
to achieve and accomplish, not just from the combat's perspective and these class kits
- 1:08:15
that we're creating, but how they harmonize with many players in a particular area.
- 1:08:19
So you guys have been doing an awesome job on that.
- 1:08:22
Well, thank you guys for joining us and talking a little bit about what it takes to make this
- 1:08:26
magic come to life.
- 1:08:28
I think I speak on behalf of the community.
- 1:08:30
You guys are doing an awesome job and not just you, of course, the teams that work in
- 1:08:33
association with you and that you're a part of, we're really appreciative of that.
Meet a few of the developers behind Gathering and Crafting
- 1:08:45
Welcome over to our conversation, a little bit about gathering and crafting.
- 1:08:49
And earlier this year, of course, we showed some of the recent work that's been done towards
- 1:08:54
gathering, particularly around trees and the bushes and mining.
- 1:09:00
But I'm joined today by some of the developers who worked on those things.
- 1:09:04
So a little introduction, Hal.
- 1:09:07
I am Hal Anderson, and I'm an environment artist.
- 1:09:10
So that means I work on things like rocks, trees, kind of anything you just see in the
- 1:09:14
environment.
- 1:09:15
Everything that makes the world beautiful.
- 1:09:16
And we also have Alex.
- 1:09:19
Hello, I'm Alex Cudoli.
- 1:09:21
I'm a senior gameplay engineer.
- 1:09:23
I'm a generalist.
- 1:09:24
I wear many hats.
- 1:09:26
I work with animation, environment, many departments.
- 1:09:29
All the things they say.
- 1:09:31
Exactly.
- 1:09:32
We have Cory.
- 1:09:33
Hi, I'm Cory Rice.
- 1:09:34
I'm a technical designer, and I usually focus on artist and ship, do a little work with
- 1:09:38
AI and also our design tools.
- 1:09:40
Yeah, and a lot of economy stuff too as well, yeah?
- 1:09:43
Yeah.
- 1:09:44
So obviously, a lot of people saw the gathering demonstration that we showed where currently
- 1:09:49
like harvesting trees and stuff.
- 1:09:51
We just talked about what goes into kind of inspiring you guys around the experiences
- 1:09:58
you've had in other MMOs or other games where you're out and you're gathering things and
- 1:10:02
crafting.
- 1:10:03
What are some of the favorite experiences you guys have had?
- 1:10:06
I think for me personally, one of my favorite kind of like harvesting things that I really
- 1:10:12
love in an MMO would be just all the little plants you find around in elder schools online.
- 1:10:18
Yes, they're so good.
- 1:10:20
Oh my gosh, there's so many of them too.
- 1:10:23
I love just kind of scouring the environment, kind of seeing what you can find.
- 1:10:27
I think they have such good design too.
- 1:10:28
You can always like visually really spot them, like, oh, that's gonna go over there.
- 1:10:32
See what I can find.
- 1:10:34
Yeah, what about you, Ock?
- 1:10:35
For me, probably realism, specifically ArcheAge.
- 1:10:40
I spent a lot of time scouring all the lands to find illegal farms, all of that, but like
- 1:10:47
any trees.
- 1:10:48
But the fun part about it is like after a while, you go outside and be like, oh, I know
- 1:10:52
what that tree is.
- 1:10:53
Oh, I know what that tree is.
- 1:10:54
A little bit of learning from the game.
- 1:10:55
Yeah, exactly.
- 1:10:56
And then you're like, oh, this is an Aspen tree.
- 1:10:57
I know that.
- 1:10:58
I do like that too, where there's a hint of realism kind of in what you're experiencing
- 1:11:02
the game and how you can associate that with the real world.
- 1:11:05
What about you, Cory?
- 1:11:06
Yeah, totally.
- 1:11:07
I really like the exploration part of it.
- 1:11:09
Searching around for things and like how mentioned there being like things that catch your eye
- 1:11:13
and oftentimes you're like, oh, there's some gold.
- 1:11:16
And then you find yourself at the bottom of the dungeon and you're like, oh god, what
- 1:11:19
am I doing here?
- 1:11:20
Maybe meet some friends.
- 1:11:21
Wait a minute.
- 1:11:22
That's not a friend.
- 1:11:23
Exactly.
- 1:11:24
This guy's trying to take my gold.
- 1:11:25
And then we fight.
- 1:11:26
And then we fight.
- 1:11:27
And yeah, just get you into all sorts of different adventurous situations.
- 1:11:30
It's such an important part, obviously, of MMO design, right?
- 1:11:34
It brings kind of the environment that you're in, the world that you're in, and it makes
- 1:11:37
it a bit tactile.
- 1:11:38
It makes it something that you can leverage to further advance your character, your position,
- 1:11:43
the wealth that you might have.
- 1:11:45
And one of the things that I think was really interesting about our approach on these gatherables
- 1:11:52
out in the real world was even simulating a bit more of that realism, not just from
- 1:11:56
the type of thing you're gathering, but how that thing interacts with you in the world.
- 1:12:00
And one of the things that sticks out is the design of these trees falling and the physics
- 1:12:05
associated with them.
- 1:12:06
And I know we talked a little bit about during the demonstration, but you know, talk a little
- 1:12:09
bit about what it took to get there from a tech feasibility perspective.
- 1:12:13
Oh, it's a lot of work.
- 1:12:15
I mean, it's a lot of cross departmental work.
- 1:12:20
For example, like we have to work, figure out how we want to simulate the physics, what
- 1:12:25
kind of collisions we want to have to have on trees, as well as making sure that they
- 1:12:32
simulate similarly on every client as well, so that it doesn't feel off-putting for one
- 1:12:37
player to see it falling to the left, for other players falling to the right.
- 1:12:40
Like, oh my God, this tree just hit me.
- 1:12:42
No, it didn't.
- 1:12:43
It hit that guy.
- 1:12:44
Exactly.
- 1:12:45
Yeah.
- 1:12:46
So, but yeah, no, physics is, as I was saying before, it's a wild beast to tame.
- 1:12:50
It's just a lot of tweaks.
- 1:12:52
You have to have a lot of patience figuring out all the constraints, you know, all the
- 1:12:57
volumes.
- 1:12:58
It's just hard work.
- 1:13:00
And even from a performance perspective, right, we have thousands of foliage actors that might
- 1:13:06
live within a particular area that's very small, maybe one and a half by one and a half
- 1:13:10
kilometers zone, right?
- 1:13:11
Yeah, exactly.
- 1:13:13
And you want to make sure it's per request, so as you're chopping down, so it's not always,
- 1:13:18
you know, there, otherwise, you know, our client FPS is probably going to be pretty
- 1:13:22
bad.
- 1:13:23
Right.
- 1:13:24
So we do a neat trick when you are coming up to the tree, we swapped it to skeletal
- 1:13:28
mesh and then you cut it down and then as it starts to fall, we start simulating physics.
- 1:13:35
And as it falls down, we kind of like freeze it up in the end and then slowly like dissipates.
- 1:13:40
Right.
- 1:13:41
And Hal, tell me a little bit about what it takes to actually bring one of those assets
- 1:13:45
with joints and a skeletal rig so that the impact on the tree can show the physics and
- 1:13:51
the branches moving.
- 1:13:52
What did that take from an environment perspective?
- 1:13:54
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- 1:13:56
So I think definitely got a lot of help from animation, you know, all the animators on
- 1:14:02
our team kind of setting that set up.
- 1:14:03
But I think from an environment perspective, our kind of most challenging thing was kind
- 1:14:07
of setting up the skeletal rig so they can all kind of communicate efficiently and kind
- 1:14:12
of finding a nice balance between so like, you know, one branch doesn't have all the
- 1:14:16
weight, you know, it's able to kind of fall and be in a fluid.
- 1:14:20
Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:14:21
And you have to make different states as well, right?
- 1:14:23
Because it's not just about being able to gather this particular thing in the world,
- 1:14:29
but also at what stage is that thing?
- 1:14:31
Is it an adolescent?
- 1:14:32
Is it a young tree?
- 1:14:34
What type of harvest can I get from it if I were to, let's say, gather it earlier in
- 1:14:38
its lifespan, right?
- 1:14:39
That has some design principles associated with those.
- 1:14:41
Yeah, definitely.
- 1:14:42
Like we wanted it to look good when it falls down, but we also wanted the environment to
- 1:14:46
look really good during different seasons and different stages of life of the thing
- 1:14:50
that you're harvesting.
- 1:14:51
So not only did they have to do that work one time making a tree look good, but we wanted
- 1:14:56
it to work on all the variants.
- 1:14:57
And we wanted it to work when it's a small little sapling or a mature tree.
- 1:15:00
So yeah, just figuring all that out and all the different permutations of it was interesting.
- 1:15:07
It's interesting.
- 1:15:08
And also, not only that, but when you think about kind of showcasing those different stages
- 1:15:14
of life for a particular asset, that obviously creates an additional amount of work on the
- 1:15:18
asset side, right?
- 1:15:20
To create those particular stages of that mesh's lifespan, right?
- 1:15:24
Yes, yeah, it does.
- 1:15:26
Yeah, I think that kind of like in a forest, like one thing that was really important for
- 1:15:32
the environment team was kind of showing not just one kind of monolithic tree, but having
- 1:15:37
different kind of varieties.
- 1:15:38
So you can see that it's just like a living forest that like grows and has different stages
- 1:15:42
of life.
- 1:15:43
And it definitely is a lot of work.
- 1:15:46
Because now you're not just making the tree at the adult stage, you're making it at the
- 1:15:50
sapling, you're making it at the other.
- 1:15:52
And then talk to me a little bit about kind of how we achieve that scaling between these
- 1:15:57
different stages.
- 1:15:58
I think the first thing we wanted to achieve is to make sure that environment artists can
- 1:16:03
place them at the painted stage so that it sets up the general environment.
- 1:16:10
And then creating multiple states that it iterates over efficiently.
- 1:16:14
Once you can chop down like adult stage and goes, for example, to empty, it has to make
- 1:16:19
sure it replicates to every other player.
- 1:16:22
And then it transitioned into a sapling stage, into young stage.
- 1:16:26
And all the data needs to make sure it propagates to every client that sees it.
- 1:16:30
And make sure that also the bandwidth is not too large.
- 1:16:34
Because we want to, you know, keep the network traffic a little cheaper.
- 1:16:38
Exactly.
- 1:16:39
We don't want you to run through the forest in like 400 megabytes.
- 1:16:42
Oh my God.
- 1:16:44
Exactly.
- 1:16:45
Corey, obviously, you know, design has some significant intents when it comes to the variety
- 1:16:50
of the types of gatherables you have access to.
- 1:16:54
And as many of our players know, the professions that relate to these particular gatherables
- 1:17:00
and what you can do with them are also expansive.
- 1:17:03
How do you guys on design go about kind of architecting what that pyramid, so to speak,
- 1:17:09
of gatherables are within the world?
- 1:17:11
It is the base of the economy, right?
- 1:17:13
So all the processing professions and crafting professions kind of start with what's gathered
- 1:17:18
from the world.
- 1:17:19
And we start by like determining what needs to be fulfilled.
- 1:17:25
So players need armor and consumables and weapons.
- 1:17:28
So each one of those things sort of like fits in their lane.
- 1:17:31
And we need to define what things should exist in the world so that we can make those, right?
- 1:17:35
So that was kind of the first step.
- 1:17:38
Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:17:39
Now, obviously, it's interesting to see when you go up to a particular rock and you mine
- 1:17:45
it.
- 1:17:46
It takes obviously some amount of time that it takes to gather that particular resource.
- 1:17:53
What types of profession-related progression can influence that time that's spent?
- 1:17:59
But also, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, there's an element of prospecting
- 1:18:05
that occurs.
- 1:18:07
Talk to me a little bit about that and how it interacts with the system.
- 1:18:09
Yeah, so we definitely want progression, right?
- 1:18:12
Like the more time you spend mining and the more effort you put into understanding how
- 1:18:16
mining works in Ashes, along with other gathering professions, we want you to get better at
- 1:18:21
it.
- 1:18:22
And there's different ways, right?
- 1:18:23
You can get gear, you can progress in the profession, and like you said, get faster
- 1:18:27
and maybe find better stuff.
- 1:18:29
And one of the ways to be able to find better stuff is through surveying.
- 1:18:32
And surveying is a way of kind of scanning the area, narrowing down what you're looking
- 1:18:36
for.
- 1:18:37
You know, maybe there's one recipe for a golden sword that you're trying to fill for your
- 1:18:41
friend and he wants it to be of a certain level and certain power.
- 1:18:45
And so you need this specific gold ore.
- 1:18:48
So you're not looking around for any gold, you want the specific gold.
- 1:18:51
So we want to give players the tools to be able to kind of find what they're looking
- 1:18:55
for.
- 1:18:56
And that'll be another thing that they can get better at and work with others to increase
- 1:19:00
their productivity.
- 1:19:01
Absolutely.
- 1:19:02
And with having such an expansive list of gatherables that are available, walk us through
- 1:19:07
a little bit of what that pipeline looks like.
- 1:19:09
I mean, what does it take to actually make a specific type of tree or a specific plant?
- 1:19:14
How does that process begin?
- 1:19:15
Tell us a little bit about that.
- 1:19:16
I think kind of the first step in any type of kind of asset creation like that would
- 1:19:21
be kind of gathering like a reference board, kind of finding out what sort of like real
- 1:19:26
life things we want to draw off of to make sure that's just kind of grounded.
- 1:19:30
And then also kind of deciding sort of what kind of like a mood we want to elicit, you
- 1:19:33
know, like, is it going to be a spooky tree?
- 1:19:35
Is it going to be more like, oh, like, is it going to be like a little bit more like
- 1:19:39
it's going to be magical, you know, if you feel like awe and kind of establishing that
- 1:19:42
so we kind of know what to go into the process.
- 1:19:45
The identity of the asset.
- 1:19:46
Exactly.
- 1:19:47
Yeah.
- 1:19:48
Yeah, get that like, get that mood.
- 1:19:49
And yeah, after that is kind of established, we would go into a program called SpeedTree
- 1:19:55
Normally, which kind of allows us artists to set up kind of these like, almost little
- 1:20:00
logic systems, you know, like, we want trees with like branches that are approximately
- 1:20:04
the size, you know, and kind of randomize that so it has that kind of organic element
- 1:20:09
that just, you know, kind of the human brain can't quite can't quite do as well.
- 1:20:13
But yeah, so after we have that, and we have all our geo done, we would then import into
- 1:20:18
Unreal where we would set up all of our like wind data and all of our seasonal technology.
- 1:20:23
Yeah.
- 1:20:24
And there's a lot that goes into that, right?
- 1:20:25
Because when we talked about this in an earlier segment about seasons and how that impacts
- 1:20:30
kind of all the assets that are within the world, because they all have to not just have
- 1:20:33
stages of growth when they've been gathered, but they also need to reflect the season as
- 1:20:39
well.
- 1:20:40
So that tree might lose leaves, right?
- 1:20:42
Or that plant might not even be available within a particular season.
- 1:20:46
And that's something that ties into on the engineering side, which is something you have
- 1:20:51
to take into account on the spawners, right?
- 1:20:54
And how you're kind of bringing that up.
- 1:20:55
How does that work?
- 1:20:56
Well, we just need to hook we basically hook into the seasonal tech.
- 1:21:01
And we query our service to figure out, okay, is this a winter?
- 1:21:05
Is this spring?
- 1:21:06
Is this summer?
- 1:21:08
And when the tree transitions to state to another, we check, okay, is this supposed
- 1:21:13
to happen during winter?
- 1:21:14
Is this supposed to happen during spring?
- 1:21:16
What kind of yield it's supposed to maybe give, right?
- 1:21:18
And that manager doesn't just take into account necessarily all that information as well,
- 1:21:23
but it also takes into account another system that we talked a little bit about, which is
- 1:21:27
land management.
- 1:21:28
And that can also affect kind of spawn rate, frequency, density within a particular area,
- 1:21:35
length and longevity of time to promote to different stages.
- 1:21:38
Tell me a little bit about your expectations for land management as it affects things like
- 1:21:43
gathering and crafting as a whole.
- 1:21:45
Yeah, my expectations are that it creates cool entry points for content.
- 1:21:50
You know, players have different expectations of the things that they want to achieve for
- 1:21:54
themselves and they extend that out to groups like their guilds or their node and whatever,
- 1:21:59
right?
- 1:22:00
So, you know, you might not want to chop down every single tree outside of your node because
- 1:22:04
you like using those trees for harvesting the fruit, right?
- 1:22:07
And if another group of players wants to cut them down because they want wood before a
- 1:22:11
siege, right?
- 1:22:12
Like those are conflicts that players will need to work out and interact with each other
- 1:22:16
to solve, right?
- 1:22:17
And then we can hook up into content that we create ourselves, not necessarily player
- 1:22:22
to player where maybe you cut down all the trees and you piss off a tree ant.
- 1:22:25
It's a predicate, right?
- 1:22:27
Exactly.
- 1:22:28
So that's why we think that land management is so interesting because it gives us a way
- 1:22:31
to hook into all these different content points and do cool stuff.
- 1:22:35
And so much in the world of Vera is built around this idea of players committed action
- 1:22:41
and the action has a response from the system or from other players potentially, right?
- 1:22:46
And as we're talking about how land management is just another value that can represent some
- 1:22:52
predicate system in that event or in allowing a policy, perhaps you're a more industrious
- 1:22:57
node if you constantly keep the land management at a low value, right?
- 1:23:02
All of those things are just giving the tools that we get to implement around either from
- 1:23:06
a narrative perspective or from a systemic one.
- 1:23:09
And that I think creates a very dynamic atmosphere that not a lot of players are accustomed to
- 1:23:14
in the games that we play, which offer things like gathering.
- 1:23:18
You know, typically it's a very kind of binary system, I do a thing, I get a thing.
- 1:23:23
But here I do a thing and there's a whole host of stuff that can happen as a response.
- 1:23:27
Exactly.
- 1:23:28
Yeah, the non-binary part of it is very important because it's not always this action equals
- 1:23:34
bad, right?
- 1:23:35
Right.
- 1:23:36
It is a whole slew of options of things that can happen.
- 1:23:39
So even if, you know, you think that cutting down all of the trees is going to piss off
- 1:23:43
the tree ant, there might be a whole slew of positive things that happen, you know,
- 1:23:48
after you defeat the tree ant or when the tree ant spawns and becomes someone that you
- 1:23:53
can interact with in the world.
- 1:23:54
So it's not always black and white, whether an action is good or bad, which I think is
- 1:23:58
very interesting.
- 1:23:59
It is very interesting.
- 1:24:00
And for example, that tree ant, many years ago, I think circa 2018, we showed a big tree
- 1:24:09
ant model that Keith worked on.
- 1:24:11
Remember that guy?
- 1:24:12
Yeah.
- 1:24:13
I don't know.
- 1:24:14
Maybe we'll see him if people chop down a little too many trees.
- 1:24:17
That might be interesting.
- 1:24:19
So obviously you're all MMO gamers.
- 1:24:20
We've been talking with a lot of MMO gamers here at the studio.
- 1:24:23
Many of us are MMO gamers.
- 1:24:25
What is the profession you're looking most forward to?
- 1:24:28
Go ahead.
- 1:24:30
Oh yeah.
- 1:24:31
What type of thing do you like to do from a crafting artisan perspective?
- 1:24:37
Oh, I think my personal favorite would be kind of anything in line with like the, like
- 1:24:44
harvesting, gathering potions.
- 1:24:46
Oh, alchemist.
- 1:24:47
Okay.
- 1:24:48
Very nice.
- 1:24:49
You like getting the perfect ingredients to make some type of potion that's going to come
- 1:24:53
in handy during some engagement.
- 1:24:55
That's awesome.
- 1:24:56
I also love alchemy by the way.
- 1:24:59
Don't tell anybody that.
- 1:25:02
What about you Alec?
- 1:25:03
For me, probably it would be whichever corner is the market.
- 1:25:06
Oh, there you go.
- 1:25:07
Opportunist.
- 1:25:08
You're an economist.
- 1:25:09
I'm an opportunist.
- 1:25:10
There you go.
- 1:25:11
So whatever is most worthwhile.
- 1:25:12
Exactly.
- 1:25:13
Especially with our node system, a lot of nodes going to need a lot of materials, resources.
- 1:25:18
We're going to have to, yeah, it's just, you know.
- 1:25:21
And that actually brings up a really good point because the way that the environment
- 1:25:27
is constructed, a lot of these gatherables and ergo the craftable components of those
- 1:25:34
gatherables are determined by location.
- 1:25:38
And so you're not just creating one giant economy, you're also creating local economies
- 1:25:44
as well, which relate to the transition of those goods across the world, which can make
- 1:25:48
it more opportunistic with some danger or risk involved.
- 1:25:51
Yeah.
- 1:25:52
That's super interesting.
- 1:25:53
I like that.
- 1:25:54
I'm kind of there too.
- 1:25:55
What about you Cory?
- 1:25:56
For me, it'd be really hard to choose just one.
- 1:25:58
I love fishing.
- 1:26:00
I'll try fishing in every game no matter what.
- 1:26:02
I really like crafting of equipment, whether that's like armor or weapons.
- 1:26:06
There's something special to me about outfitting yourself or another person for an adventure
- 1:26:11
that they're going on.
- 1:26:13
You have that interaction of like, what do you need?
- 1:26:14
Yeah, I can make that for you.
- 1:26:16
There's initial investment and they take that thing with them and they may trade it and
- 1:26:20
sell it and that item specifically has a story, right?
- 1:26:23
It's not the same as consumables where you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 1:26:27
You use like a hundred of them a day.
- 1:26:29
And then engineering is really interesting to me.
- 1:26:31
I like little gadgets.
- 1:26:32
Those usually end up being the things that break some of the rules and you get to do
- 1:26:36
special funny things.
- 1:26:37
So engineering is always like very, very interesting.
- 1:26:41
Very interesting.
- 1:26:42
You know, it actually brings up something else that I was just thinking about, which
- 1:26:48
is essentially that you're working on something with engineering regarding kind of a gameplay
- 1:26:55
layer around crafting itself, right?
- 1:26:59
Talk to me a little bit about what that is.
- 1:27:01
So yeah, we're trying to put together kind of a more haptic or rooted in the world.
- 1:27:06
I guess the right word is like a diegetic experience for making weapons.
- 1:27:11
You know, oftentimes in other games or other MMOs I've played, there's a lot on the front
- 1:27:17
end of like, you get stuff and you have the stuff and then you push a button and the item
- 1:27:22
comes out.
- 1:27:23
Right, the execution is just a button.
- 1:27:24
Yeah, and all of the, there is like skill and some gameplay to that portion, right?
- 1:27:31
And I think that that will also be great in Ashes where, you know, I have to acquire all
- 1:27:34
the things and there's risk and there's trade.
- 1:27:36
But I also think that it's interesting to have skill involved in the actual crafting.
- 1:27:42
So what we're trying to put together is a way to make weapons where it feels like you're
- 1:27:47
actually making the thing.
- 1:27:49
And how you do in making the weapon results in what the stats of the weapon are going
- 1:27:54
to be.
- 1:27:55
Very cool.
- 1:27:56
So that's what we're working on.
- 1:27:57
And that's something that I think players are going to have an opportunity next year
- 1:28:01
to kind of take a look at.
- 1:28:02
And we're going to have an opportunity to collect good feedback from you around whether
- 1:28:06
or not you like that element of gameplay layer associated with the crafting profession, right?
- 1:28:13
I think that's going to be super cool.
- 1:28:15
Well guys, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me and our audience,
- 1:28:19
of course.
- 1:28:20
They're very grateful for your contributions to making Ashes of Creation a reality.
- 1:28:24
And you guys are doing a phenomenal job.
- 1:28:26
So thank you very well done.
- 1:28:27
We are going to be moving on next to a little video that showcases this last year with our
Year-in-Review video
- 1:28:34
studio and the project.
- 1:28:42
Building games is difficult.
- 1:28:43
That being said, we built an amazing team at Intrepid.
- 1:28:47
And it feels very much like a family.
- 1:28:49
So getting up each day and going into the office and working with the colleagues at
- 1:28:57
Intrepid is a delight.
- 1:29:24
What a year it has been.
- 1:29:27
The team has been hard at work.
- 1:29:29
You've seen the progress of Ashes of Creation over the last four or five years.
- 1:29:34
And you've seen where we've come from in that time to our Alpha One presentation.
- 1:29:38
And you can see how things develop.
- 1:29:43
Super excited with the character creator.
- 1:29:45
And I have very rarely ever encountered a character creator, even at this state, that
- 1:29:51
is as capable as what our team has been able to develop.
- 1:29:57
Every day that passes and I'm watching the tech continue to get refined and the environments
- 1:30:04
continue to get these passes.
- 1:30:06
And I'm just talking to the team and like, so good.
- 1:30:13
The new world map in all its 1200 square kilometer glory.
- 1:30:33
I love what the new skybox is doing.
- 1:30:36
I mean, it's just visually great.
- 1:30:45
I am so happy to see the excitement from the MMORPG community at large.
- 1:30:51
Like that looks crazy good.
- 1:30:56
That is just oh my god.
- 1:30:58
Like whenever people are talking about how they want fantasy games, this is what they're
- 1:31:03
thinking.
- 1:31:05
It grows into a horse.
- 1:31:06
I didn't know that.
- 1:31:09
This game looks amazing.
- 1:31:16
Way too good.
- 1:31:17
Ashes of creation.
- 1:31:18
It will be the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG ever attempted.
- 1:31:23
No, no.
- 1:31:24
It looks good.
- 1:31:25
It does look good.
- 1:31:26
Grab yourself a...
- 1:31:27
The team behind Ashes of Creation are some of the most talented developers.
- 1:31:42
What we're building in Ashes of Creation is the ultimate desire of a true MMORPG Ashes
- 1:32:05
team.
Outro
- 1:32:12
Thank you everyone so much for joining us.
- 1:32:14
That's going to be a wrap for us for our December livestream update.
- 1:32:17
We hope that you enjoyed it and loved getting to know our developers.
- 1:32:20
That was so much fun chatting with everyone.
- 1:32:23
They're so sweet.
- 1:32:24
Everyone's amazing and you can just see the vibe is just so...
- 1:32:27
Everyone's just passionate and loves what they do and that's kind of like the best part
- 1:32:30
of the game.
- 1:32:31
Super talented.
- 1:32:32
I know.
- 1:32:33
Just a great team.
- 1:32:34
Absolutely.
- 1:32:35
Of course, if you have feedback for us, head on over to our forums, forums.ashesofcreation.com.
- 1:32:39
We love hearing from you guys.
- 1:32:40
We interact with you always.
- 1:32:42
We're sending reports to our developers so they can continue to make sure that we're
- 1:32:45
on the same page as we move forward in creating the world of Verra.
- 1:32:48
Those reports are super important.
- 1:32:51
Really they are.
- 1:32:52
The community does such a great job of picking out all the tidbits of information from the
- 1:32:56
players on the forums, on Twitter, on Reddit, everywhere.
- 1:32:59
They read everything.
- 1:33:00
They compile it in a huge report and there's an hour that we kind of sit down with the
- 1:33:04
developments of particular features and or systems and kind of hear from the community
- 1:33:10
team all the thoughts that you guys give about these particular subjects.
- 1:33:13
So it's very important.
- 1:33:14
Make sure you guys go and give commentary on stuff.
- 1:33:17
And most often the thing is, wow, that's already stuff we're already planning and we're already
- 1:33:20
thinking of.
- 1:33:21
So I think that's the validation that we're all on the same page.
- 1:33:24
So thank you so much for joining us.
- 1:33:26
And of course you can follow us in all places at Ashes of Creation.
- 1:33:29
We are constantly posting and giving you guys updates on a daily basis and interacting with
- 1:33:33
you and we love all your fan art.
- 1:33:35
So please keep sending them back to us.
- 1:33:38
So good.
- 1:33:39
2022 isn't just the last year.
- 1:33:42
This is going to say like it's really cool to just look back at what we accomplished
- 1:33:45
this year in 2022 as a team.
- 1:33:47
The growth of the studio has been huge, but it's not done yet.
- 1:33:50
We're still going.
- 1:33:51
We're going strong into 2023.
- 1:33:53
So keep that in mind.
- 1:33:54
You guys check out our page and come join our family and direct others, people out there,
- 1:34:00
your favorite developers, stuff that you've seen.
- 1:34:03
Make sure to go out on Twitter and share the careers opportunities that that interrupted
- 1:34:07
because 20th is going to be a huge year.
- 1:34:09
Oh my gosh.
- 1:34:10
Yeah.
- 1:34:11
I had done a big thing for Steven to put together a whole like spreadsheet.
- 1:34:13
So we've got a lot to come.
- 1:34:17
It looks super good.
- 1:34:18
And guys, you haven't seen anything yet.
- 1:34:21
2023 is going to be an unbelievable year for the studio, for the project.
- 1:34:25
We have so much to show you.
- 1:34:26
I know Margaret is just chomping at the bits to get in there and get all this stuff and
- 1:34:31
share with you guys.
- 1:34:33
And you know, honestly, I just want to comment on the fact that this development that we
- 1:34:37
have, this rapport that we've built with you guys as a community and the safety we feel
- 1:34:42
in sharing works in progress with you, sharing the development along its lifespan of development
- 1:34:48
with each of you out there is very important and near and dear to our hearts.
- 1:34:52
So keep tuning in in 2023.
- 1:34:55
Keep commenting, give us your feedback, give us your thoughts, give us the experiences
- 1:34:58
that you guys have had in the past because it makes the potential for Ashes of Creation
- 1:35:03
to be such that much more of a great game when you guys are participating in it.
- 1:35:07
And that's why we do these things.
- 1:35:08
That's why we invite you in.
- 1:35:10
We show you what we're working on on a monthly basis because we want you guys to give us
- 1:35:14
your feedback.
- 1:35:16
And so we cannot thank you all enough for being a part of that in 2022.
- 1:35:20
And 2023 is going to be an awesome year and we will see you in January next month.
- 1:35:26
Bye guys.
- 00:00
Welcome and salutations to you all for our glorious development update for December.
- 00:16
We're coming to you live from our studio.
- 00:19
Obviously, I'm here today with some new faces.
- 00:24
Well, not really.
- 00:25
You've seen Langford here before.
- 00:27
We had him on during, actually it was your anniversary.
- 00:29
It was.
- 00:30
It was in February of this last year.
- 00:33
He's our executive producer and of course with me as always, Steven Tariff, our one
- 00:37
and only creative director.
- 00:38
Hello.
- 00:39
And I'm Margaret Brown, your Community Marketing Lead.
- 00:44
This is different.
- 00:45
It's different, right?
- 00:46
Actually, when was the last time that we did a stream in person?
- 00:50
It was in our old office.
- 00:52
Yeah, that was like almost two years ago or something.
- 00:54
A little over actually.
- 00:56
It's crazy to see how much we've grown as a company and I mean, this is the perfect
- 01:00
segue of what this stream is about too, is that you've just-
- 01:06
It's been a crazy year of growth.
- 01:08
Not even just a year.
- 01:09
During the pandemic, we grew an immense amount.
- 01:11
Yeah, but this year especially though has been pretty considerable as well.
- 01:16
We talked a lot about showing up at the studio and giving people a peek inside.
- 01:21
You guys saw some old, those of you who've been following since like circa 2018, 2019,
- 01:26
you saw- Steven walking around with his phone.
- 01:27
With my phone kind of doing, and now this is a little bit different, higher production
- 01:32
quality, but of course- We're still keeping the casual vibes.
- 01:35
Yeah, and the whole spirit of this is to invite you guys in, let you take a look under the
- 01:39
hood, meet some of the developers, and actually it's been pretty fun to do some of these interviews.
- 01:44
Yeah, Steven's already done one earlier, so we're-
- 01:47
Yeah.
- 01:48
These are a little pre-recorded obviously so that we can make it before, but we're trying
- 01:50
not to cut as- We didn't cut as much as possible.
- 01:54
Right.
- 01:55
So we're very much just trying to have pre-flowing conversations, which is really fun.
- 01:58
And I think these types of things are really good actually because obviously we do our
- 02:02
monthly updates.
- 02:03
Yeah.
- 02:04
But not everybody has an opportunity to kind of watch each month what's happening and what
- 02:08
those updates are, and this is a great way at the end of the year to kind of concisely
- 02:12
bring in what's happened and give people a one segment kind of look at all that's transpired
- 02:18
over the last 12 months.
- 02:19
Yeah.
- 02:20
So when you get a little glimpse into areas in our studio, so you can kind of see that,
- 02:25
and once we do have all of our cool murals up and our art, we will definitely do a proper
- 02:29
studio tour.
- 02:30
We just want to make sure that, we'll kind of give you a glimpse early on, and I know
- 02:34
those of you who are Kickstarters, who you're going to get a real life tour-
- 02:38
Ooh, that's right.
- 02:39
In person, yeah.
- 02:40
That, we want to make sure that it's really fun for you all, so that's probably going
- 02:42
to be nearer to closer for a long time.
- 02:45
Yeah, for sure.
- 02:46
Right.
- 02:47
So that's the business of this year, but honestly on the production side, you know-
- 02:52
Holy cow.
- 02:53
Your team has grown immensely.
- 02:54
Well, it did.
- 02:55
That's very true.
- 02:56
Yeah.
- 02:57
It doubled in size.
- 02:58
It did.
- 02:59
It did.
- 03:00
It doubled in size, and it's like super duper cool to have all these people like actually
- 03:02
supporting the team.
- 03:03
You know, like we talked about this a long time ago when we were moving from like a small
- 03:06
company to like a bigger company, and we were like, we're going to need a lot of support,
- 03:10
and we're kind of there now.
- 03:11
I mean, we've still got a long ways to go with a lot of growth still to come, but it's
- 03:15
super exciting.
- 03:16
I think it's been really cool to kind of watch quarter after quarter this year as we're doing
- 03:20
the production strategy meetings and going over the milestone schedules, just seeing,
- 03:24
oh, new face, new face, new face, new face, you know, keeps on going.
- 03:28
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
- 03:29
And we talked about annual reviews last month, how we were moving into wrapping those up,
- 03:35
and you guys have like way more people that you have to do reviews for.
- 03:37
Oh my gosh.
- 03:38
For me, my team is a little smaller, but you know, we also are supporting the development
- 03:42
team in order, like we're different people.
- 03:44
Like the people who are talking to you on, you know, like Twitter and hanging out with
- 03:49
you on Discord, we're a whole other team.
- 03:52
So when we get comments that are like, why are you talking to me and not developing the
- 03:57
game?
- 03:58
These guys are hardcore working super every day, really hard and passionately, as you're
- 04:03
going to see when you meet some of the developers.
- 04:05
Oh, and our leads team has grown too.
- 04:07
Oh, it's significantly, yeah.
- 04:08
We did some leadership training too.
- 04:10
Yeah, we did.
- 04:11
That was fun.
- 04:12
It was incredible.
- 04:13
We had a few, I think we did like almost six days between the two different groups of those
- 04:18
leadership meetings.
- 04:20
And they were a lot of fun just being holed up in a room for like 10 straight hours each
- 04:25
day.
- 04:26
Well, it made us realize like where we're lacking things, where we need to work towards
- 04:30
and things of that sort.
- 04:31
And sometimes you need that reflection.
- 04:33
And for people who haven't been leaders and leadership roles before, it also helps you
- 04:38
realize like how to talk to people or how to-
- 04:40
But you know, my most important takeaway I think from those particular leadership meetings
- 04:44
this year was just the level of alignment that existed already between us and the leads
- 04:50
and the development.
- 04:51
It was so cool.
- 04:52
She said to us that like the biggest problem that most other companies have is the camaraderie
- 04:56
and like sharing the same vision.
- 04:58
And she's like, that's the one thing you guys don't like have a problem with.
- 05:01
That was the thing.
- 05:02
It was so cool to see her come in and then go like, wow, you guys already got this.
- 05:05
Like this is crazy.
- 05:06
Like how connected you guys already are.
- 05:08
I do tons of these.
- 05:10
And then she went off on some of the ones that she's done and it was like, oh my gosh,
- 05:15
you guys are gelling so much better than all those other places.
- 05:18
My favorite thing about that whole process actually was as we were going through each
- 05:21
categories and we were filling out like scaling one through 10 numerical values of like those
- 05:27
particular things.
- 05:28
And we put all of our stickies up on each of the categories like, whoa, these are all
- 05:32
really close to each other.
- 05:33
That's so true.
- 05:34
Because that means we all see where our problems are and we're all on the same page.
- 05:38
Absolutely.
- 05:39
Which was really, I would agree with you.
- 05:40
That's pretty neat.
- 05:41
It was really good.
- 05:42
You know, it's really cool though.
- 05:43
The whole point of this last month of the year is that we get to kind of look back on
- 05:47
everything that we've accomplished, on all the things that we have plans for the future
- 05:51
and just reflect on kind of the course of the studio over the last year.
- 05:55
Yeah.
- 05:56
It's really a great opportunity for us to kind of get that back looking perspective.
- 06:01
Absolutely.
- 06:02
Yeah.
- 06:03
On our front, like my teams are looking at like the data from social media, what things
- 06:06
went well, what things didn't.
- 06:08
How can we engage with you all in a better way?
- 06:10
And obviously you've seen us continually progressing over that over the years.
- 06:14
I mean, even the way we do our live streams has changed and like next year we plan to
- 06:18
make more changes.
- 06:19
So we're definitely keeping an eye out on like the things that you guys say to us, how
- 06:23
you interact with us.
- 06:25
And obviously on the development front, continually progressing and making sure that we are just
- 06:29
being more efficient with our production.
- 06:30
Yeah.
- 06:31
And of course, you know, we're all watching kind of coverage for the game from our awesome
- 06:36
content creators out there who constantly kind of, you know, review what the live stream
- 06:42
updates are and everything for the game for our audience.
- 06:46
And I think one thing that can be said that all of you are going to agree with, 2022 was
- 06:52
a very different pace of year for our updates.
- 06:55
They'll get blanked.
- 06:56
I know.
- 06:57
But you guys got to see each month, you know, significant progress.
- 07:04
And of course that comes in part due to the company scaling over this last year, which
- 07:08
was very significant.
- 07:09
But in addition, just kind of as development continues, these things will ramp almost in
- 07:16
a very vertical way, right?
- 07:20
And that's something that I think people get to look forward to for 2023.
- 07:23
Of course.
- 07:24
And I think, you know, a lot of times you see games that are developed and you get to
- 07:28
see it like right when it's beta is, which their beta is like pretty much their games
- 07:31
ready to launch and they're just testing and polishing for us.
- 07:34
Like you're getting to follow us on this journey and making an MMO is a big feat.
- 07:39
It is much bigger than people think.
- 07:41
And I hope that you are getting a glimpse into like all the little details and the new
- 07:44
details that we, yeah, what it takes.
- 07:46
Cause it's a lot more effort than sometimes I think people think.
- 07:49
Right.
- 07:50
And I know that's not for everybody.
- 07:51
And that's why we always say like we make different pieces of content for different
- 07:54
types of folks.
- 07:55
Absolutely.
- 07:56
I mean this phase that we're in from a development perspective is really catered towards those
- 08:00
individuals in the community who are interested in watching the development of a game.
- 08:04
Because like you're saying, this is not just something that many players experience, but
- 08:08
also development teams don't typically think about how they're actively working on features
- 08:13
and assets that get shared live, you know, essentially.
- 08:19
I cannot think of another company that has invested this much in their community this
- 08:22
far in advance of the product.
- 08:24
Like we've been bringing this, you know, going this, going on this for three, four,
- 08:28
five years now building this community and it's amazing.
- 08:31
Yeah.
- 08:32
So amazing.
- 08:33
I was actually in a, you know, obviously if you watch our streams live, you get to see
- 08:35
all the amazing fan art that people send us.
- 08:37
And I was talking to Zach, who you're going to see in an interview following this segment.
- 08:43
And I was actually saying how crazy it is that we have all this amazing fan art.
- 08:47
And one of the walls in our hallway actually like right near us over there is where we're
- 08:51
planning to do this huge cork bar where we're going to put all the fan art.
- 08:55
So keep sending us those things.
- 08:56
We love seeing them.
- 08:58
And we've already had people making cosplay and we're definitely going to put that up
- 09:01
there.
- 09:02
So we appreciate you all so much.
- 09:04
And we hope that, you know, this to kind of segue into what you're going to be able to
- 09:07
see for the rest of today is that, you know, you're going to get a glimpse into our studio.
- 09:11
We want to set expectations that, you know, we haven't quite decorated everything yet
- 09:15
in Trepid style.
- 09:16
We are planning to do that.
- 09:17
We have some cool murals.
- 09:18
I chatted with John about like what pieces we're going to do and stuff.
- 09:21
So once those things get put up and we have a little bit more of a, you know, a vibe that
- 09:25
we want to share with you, we'll definitely give you a proper tour.
- 09:28
And we also bought some equipment, like gimbals and stuff like that.
- 09:33
You've been seeing our production quality for Extra Life increasing and obviously this.
- 09:37
So we do have plans of showing you guys those things.
- 09:40
But you know, this is going to be an opportunity for you to kind of get cozy with the developers,
- 09:45
get to know them a little bit more, not just about what the work that they work on, but
- 09:49
like them as people and kind of what they like about games.
- 09:52
And so we'll be chatting with the folks who helped with the Unreal Engine update, character
- 09:56
creator, seasons and environments, combat, gathering, and of course crafting.
- 10:01
So we hope that you enjoy that.
- 10:03
And of course we're going to look back at the year and kind of do a little year in review.
- 10:07
Bring your tissues, get ready to cry.
- 10:09
Shout out to Mike Becchio, who also made this tree.
- 10:13
Oh, I love the tree.
- 10:14
Oh my gosh.
- 10:15
The attention to detail on the little ornaments.
- 10:18
This little guy's face for the ornament is so cool.
- 10:21
Yeah, and he even made you one with him.
- 10:23
I know.
- 10:24
I love that.
- 10:25
We showed that last month.
- 10:26
This guy, the little Vec down here.
- 10:28
Yes.
- 10:29
Oh, it looks so cool.
- 10:30
They're really, really cute.
- 10:32
Maybe someday we'll have ornaments that we sell for a holiday.
- 10:35
I know.
- 10:36
That'd be great.
- 10:37
Should totally do that.
- 10:38
Yeah.
- 10:39
So before we go into everything, I do want to spotlight our comment for YouTube.
- 10:42
And of course, if you want to be spotlighted, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube on our
- 10:47
development update and also leave a comment and you could possibly be this spotlight.
- 10:53
So today's spotlight is Eric634, and they wanted to know, I'm very curious what work
- 10:59
Intrepid is doing to capture valuable data in Alpha 2.
- 11:03
Has Intrepid built dashboards and data gathering tools?
- 11:06
And I feel like this is a great- Oh man, I was going to say, who gets this
- 11:09
one?
- 11:10
Yes.
- 11:11
I feel like we're all hyped about that.
- 11:12
Yes, of course.
- 11:13
Data.
- 11:14
Yes, well, we do.
- 11:15
We love data.
- 11:16
But here is actual work going into data and collecting and game logs and stuff that we'll
- 11:22
be using down the road a lot, especially during our Alpha to help us, to guide us to understand
- 11:28
where we're meeting our marks and beating our marks and what we want to be accomplishing
- 11:32
as far as where finding the fun is.
- 11:34
Right.
- 11:35
Yeah.
- 11:36
And of course, those come along with a complimentary set of tools that are created by our developers
- 11:40
to collect that data, not just from gameplay, because that's one important aspect of it,
- 11:45
what players are doing in the game.
- 11:47
But another part of it which completes that picture is active community engagement with
- 11:53
those players as well to tell the tale from the player's perspective, not just the actions
- 11:57
in game.
- 11:58
Right.
- 11:59
And I feel like a lot of companies and many of us probably in the community have experienced
- 12:02
this in other games, decisions get made from just data points that are numerical, right?
- 12:07
It has to be a combination.
- 12:08
But it must be a full picture that requires some investment on the company's behalf of
- 12:13
that community outreach and engagement, right?
- 12:15
Yeah.
- 12:16
And that's what I mean.
- 12:17
That's one of the reasons why I started working here is the first conversation Steven and
- 12:20
I had on the phone.
- 12:21
At Milton's, we ate lunch at Milton's.
- 12:22
Before that, I had a conversation with you on the phone because McPee was like, you need
- 12:27
to come work with us.
- 12:28
And I was like, I don't know.
- 12:29
And chatting with Steven really like, and I think back on it, that was like four years
- 12:33
ago for me.
- 12:35
But the reason why I was like, this is a place where I want to go is because you really understand
- 12:40
community.
- 12:41
You understand how important it is that we are gamers also and that we are making games
- 12:46
for gamers.
- 12:47
And I often work in the past with people who maybe aren't gamers and they didn't really
- 12:52
get the perspective of that.
- 12:53
Or we'd be making decisions because it's like, hey, this is the bottom line and we're trying
- 12:57
to hit that.
- 12:58
And if you don't hit this, you're fired.
- 12:59
And there's nothing more frustrating from a player's perspective when something changes
- 13:03
in the game and it changes for the wrong reason because some value in some cell in some Excel
- 13:08
sheet says, hey, this is the data that we scrapped from player activity.
- 13:12
Yeah.
- 13:13
And so what we're doing when we're sending reports over, we're like, hey, the numbers
- 13:16
are down for this because X and Y.
- 13:18
We give some analyzation to it.
- 13:19
And I think that sometimes that part is not read or looked into as much as it should be.
- 13:24
And it's so important to not just like look at data and make decisions, but also understand
- 13:28
like why that data is that way in the like in the grand scheme of things.
- 13:33
And with that, I think that we're going to head on over and meet up with our Unreal Engine
- 13:38
and character creator folks who Steven was interviewing.
- 13:40
So we hope that you enjoy the rest of the stream and we will see you all on the flipside.
- 13:44
I love the fireside feel to this.
- 13:46
I just got to say it.
- 13:47
It's so good.
- 13:48
We aren't going to stop that.
- 13:49
We definitely want the genuine vibe.
- 13:51
And I think hopefully you guys all feel that way through this.
- 13:54
You know, all of our streams have been that way.
- 13:56
We want even just these types of ones to feel that way too.
- 13:58
Yes.
- 13:59
We'll see you guys in a little bit.
- 14:09
Hey, guys, I am joined by three of our awesome developers.
- 14:14
We have some of our engineers here at the studio.
- 14:16
Why don't we take a second for you guys to introduce yourself?
- 14:18
Hello, I'm Clayton.
- 14:20
You might remember me from the character creator live stream.
- 14:23
Hi, I'm Mitch.
- 14:25
I've been here at Intrepid for coming up on four years now and I'm a senior engineer.
- 14:30
I'm Zach.
- 14:31
You might also recognize me from the character creator live stream.
- 14:34
And me and Zach are also engineers.
- 14:36
Yeah, we are also also gameplay engineers.
- 14:39
So that was a fun live stream.
- 14:42
But let's talk a little bit about earlier in the year.
- 14:45
Actually, it was at the end of 2021 and into January of 2022.
- 14:51
We showcased our transition over to Unreal Engine 5.
- 14:56
That was quite an endeavor.
- 14:57
Yeah.
- 14:58
We had a lot of things going on all at once.
- 15:01
Yeah, it was a lot going on.
- 15:03
There were a lot of people who participated in kind of getting the project over to Unreal
- 15:07
5.
- 15:08
Talk to me a little bit about what that process entailed.
- 15:10
Yeah, Mitch and I were at the forefront of that, especially Mitch.
- 15:15
I was helping out a lot with the version control.
- 15:18
We have a lot of additions to our custom version of Unreal Engine that allow our designers
- 15:24
to do what they need to do and allow custom features for our engineers.
- 15:28
And getting those reconciled with all of the awesome new features from Unreal Engine 5
- 15:32
was a lot of work.
- 15:33
So, right.
- 15:34
Yeah, the more custom changes that occur in the engine makes that process a bit longer
- 15:39
and a bit more intricate.
- 15:40
Right.
- 15:41
Right.
- 15:42
And when we get a new version, we have to make sure that all of the previous edits we'd
- 15:46
made to Unreal Engine still apply or still are needed.
- 15:51
So we had to step through, pardon me, basically everything we had done up to that point and
- 15:58
one by one say, do we need this?
- 16:00
Do we need something else?
- 16:02
And talk to us a little bit about kind of what benefits, I know the audience obviously
- 16:07
has had an opportunity over this course of this last year to see the benefits that Unreal
- 16:10
5 bring to the project from a visual fidelity standpoint, but also a little bit behind the
- 16:16
curtain on the tech side.
- 16:17
What type of benefits come from Unreal Engine 5?
- 16:19
Well, there's a lot finer control for one, for the map and for things like separating
- 16:26
out things into, they call it world partition, to greatly increase the performance of especially
- 16:34
the client in very cluttered areas.
- 16:37
Right.
- 16:38
The large scale additions to the engine have really helped us from the regards that we
- 16:42
were already going to have this massive world and the engine, the feasibility of it just
- 16:48
improved in that regard.
- 16:50
Yeah.
- 16:51
Like one thing that a lot of people don't consider is how you bring all of the people
- 16:54
on a massive team like this to actually work on the same thing.
- 16:59
Because previously a lot of the files would be saved in larger chunks versus now in Unreal
- 17:04
Engine 5, things are saved as individual actors.
- 17:07
So people can actually access the same level simultaneously and contribute work to the
- 17:14
same features of the project or the same parts of the content without stepping on each other's
- 17:18
toes.
- 17:19
Right.
- 17:20
And from a workflow perspective, that is very nice to have because previously you would
- 17:24
have to wait as a handoff for some particular checkout to be checked back in before you
- 17:29
could start working.
- 17:30
Yeah, we'd lock each other out as well as the environment team very often.
- 17:35
Yeah.
- 17:36
That was a big problem.
- 17:37
Yeah, the workflow side for the environment team was a big relief.
- 17:41
And then finding out that someone had something you needed to make a specific engineering
- 17:45
change and then having to wait a couple days at the worst case to be able to access the
- 17:53
file.
- 17:54
Now you can just work on the same thing.
- 17:56
It's beautiful.
- 17:57
And tell me a little bit about kind of some of the performance related benefits that come
- 18:01
on the asset side, things like Nanite or just the visual fidelity of the world with things
- 18:06
like Lumen.
- 18:07
A lot of people hear terms like Lumen and Nanite and they just see that it looks awesome,
- 18:12
but you don't realize that these are also actually just fundamental changes to how the
- 18:17
graphics are handled under the hood because with Lumen, so previously a lot of people
- 18:25
are familiar with hardware accelerated ray tracing and...
- 18:29
So many people are familiar with that.
- 18:30
Yeah, simulating...
- 18:31
And the audience especially.
- 18:32
Yeah, simulating global illumination and shadows and like...
- 18:35
Well, it was a really big thing whenever graphics card companies were coming out and saying,
- 18:40
you know, this is going to be the new amazing tech and they were showing off...
- 18:43
I remember that.
- 18:44
We tested some of that with Tristan, I think back in 2017 or 18.
- 18:48
And we had little side by sides and watched the performance.
- 18:50
They're like, oh, ray tracing on, ray tracing off.
- 18:52
And one thing that Lumen does is it allows you to actually simulate ray tracing on the
- 18:58
software side.
- 18:59
So, well, it's not simulating ray tracing.
- 19:00
They're solving the same problem with a different solution with software simulated global illumination.
- 19:05
Instead of hardware simulated.
- 19:06
So now it's more accessible to people.
- 19:09
And that's why Lumen looks so amazing.
- 19:12
And that's actually one of the reasons why in early in the year when we showcased the
- 19:16
video transitioning over to Unreal Engine 5, we used that cave area to kind of show
- 19:23
the benefits of that global illumination bouncing, cascading off of the environment.
- 19:27
Yeah, exactly.
- 19:28
And you combine that with the virtualized geometry.
- 19:31
Yeah.
- 19:32
And it's a win.
- 19:33
Yeah.
- 19:34
Not to mention, obviously, the performance gains as well.
- 19:36
Because Nanite is per pixel geometry, which is amazing.
- 19:40
Like for large worlds, a lot of the times you have massive textures that are considered
- 19:46
virtualized.
- 19:47
And this is like a very common practice previously for handling giant textures as you virtualize
- 19:51
the texture, which means that it's now streaming from disk instead of all being loaded into
- 19:55
the memory at once.
- 19:57
And Nanite now provides that for geometry so you can stream in the geometry more granularly.
- 20:01
Which is huge.
- 20:02
Yeah, it's a pixel geometry, so it's pretty incredible.
- 20:04
That's very cool.
- 20:06
Now obviously it doesn't end with Unreal Engine 5.
- 20:10
As the community is aware, starting next month we're actually going to be making the move
- 20:15
over to 5.1.
- 20:16
Yeah.
- 20:17
And talk to me a little bit about what that process is going to entail and also what types
- 20:21
of benefit it's going to bring.
- 20:22
It should be a fairly smooth process, smoother than our initial...
- 20:28
Actually we did the pre-release version of 5.0 and that was a little rough.
- 20:32
But 5.1 should be better and we're looking forward to a lot of the performance gains,
- 20:37
especially with things like they're partitioning the nav mesh along the same lines as the world
- 20:42
partition.
- 20:43
And talk to us a little bit about what partitioning nav mesh means.
- 20:46
It means that different servers and different clients will have to can load partial sets
- 20:53
of the nav mesh instead of the whole nav mesh.
- 20:56
So it's a lot less memory.
- 20:58
And the nav mesh is essentially for people who don't know, that is how NPCs path around
- 21:03
the world eventually.
- 21:04
Correct.
- 21:05
And that's how they know where collision is and what they can move around and how they
- 21:08
get to a target location.
- 21:09
Exactly.
- 21:10
Don't walk through the tree, walk around it.
- 21:11
Right.
- 21:12
Absolutely.
- 21:13
And talk to me a little bit about the...
- 21:15
I know artists are very excited about 5.1.
- 21:17
Why is that?
- 21:18
Well, a lot of the features that were still in a beta form for the engine are now coming
- 21:24
online for as like more performant versions or more reliable versions.
- 21:29
So like the entire studio will be able to move over to DirectX 12 for our primary graphics
- 21:35
API, which that's going to save the artist a lot of headache because a lot of the time
- 21:40
somebody will be like, hey, this looks bad or like I'm getting these weird glitches on
- 21:43
the textures or I'm crashing.
- 21:45
And now, you know, a lot of it's just coming into maturity with 5.1.
- 21:49
And they're also incorporating Nanite as part, as I understand it, with the foliage actors
- 21:54
as well.
- 21:55
Yeah.
- 21:56
Yeah.
- 21:57
There's some talk of that.
- 21:58
Yeah.
- 21:59
Yeah.
- 22:00
Cool.
- 22:01
I know TechArt's a little excited about that.
- 22:02
Yeah.
- 22:03
Yeah.
- 22:04
They've been waiting for it for a long time.
- 22:05
Yeah.
- 22:06
Yeah.
- 22:07
I remember they were talking to me about it almost six months ago, I think.
- 22:10
Yeah.
- 22:11
Awesome.
- 22:12
So after we showcased our move to Unreal 5 earlier this year, we had a stream about
- 22:17
our character creator.
- 22:19
And this was something that for a long time we had been talking about kind of our goals
- 22:25
since 2017.
- 22:26
You know, what are some of the character creators that we've seen that we've loved in other
- 22:31
games?
- 22:32
Talk to me a little bit about your experience as a gamer first.
- 22:36
What are some of the things that you look for in a character creator and why you were
- 22:39
excited to bring something a little bit that level and beyond potentially with ours?
- 22:43
For me, it's the freedom of expression to make the character that you want to make.
- 22:49
Without the limitations that sometimes seem kind of arbitrary that developers put in.
- 22:55
I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate character creator.
- 22:57
I thought that was a lovely one that really made me feel like I was in a fantasy realm
- 23:05
crafting my own character.
- 23:06
As well from the, I guess, purely tech side of Black Desert Online, I really enjoyed the
- 23:13
more of the tactile, click and drag, the customized character.
- 23:18
The direct manipulation.
- 23:19
Exactly.
- 23:20
Yeah.
- 23:21
For me, it's usually, can I be green?
- 23:25
Can he be green?
- 23:26
Yeah.
- 23:27
Oh, it's like a lizard folk or an orc?
- 23:30
I'm just kidding.
- 23:31
All of the above.
- 23:32
All of the above.
- 23:33
You know, actually on that note, that's a great segue into one of my favorite character
- 23:38
creator stories, which was actually Oblivion back in, I think it was 2006, Elder Scrolls.
- 23:44
It wasn't like an amazing character creator, but they had a lot of options and you were
- 23:47
able to sort of manipulate it in a way that you could push the limits by dragging one
- 23:52
slider back and one slider the other way.
- 23:54
I would always make my person red or green just for fun.
- 24:00
Of course, we don't allow for that in our character creator.
- 24:02
We talk about only allowing positive results or adding constraints that you can have a
- 24:08
high degree of control while making sure that the final result is going to look good no
- 24:13
matter what.
- 24:14
Right.
- 24:15
And of course, good can be somewhat subjective.
- 24:18
Yeah, for sure.
- 24:19
But I want to make Igor.
- 24:21
Yes, exactly.
- 24:22
But whatever you see yourself as in this fantasy role-playing setting, you should be able to
- 24:28
make that in the character creator and express yourself.
- 24:30
Well, I thought the work that you guys did and that the artists did with bringing kind
- 24:36
of the first iteration of Ash's character creator to life was really phenomenal.
- 24:41
I know it got a lot of positivity and response from the community.
- 24:46
Talk to me a little bit about that process.
- 24:47
What did that entail?
- 24:50
That was a whole lot of R&D at first.
- 24:52
Yeah.
- 24:53
Just to see if it was, I guess, possible within the engine we're working in, especially like
- 24:58
what we wanted for it.
- 25:00
Yeah.
- 25:01
Because we had a lot of demands that we couldn't really point to in other games and be like,
- 25:05
let's just do that, you know?
- 25:06
Yeah.
- 25:07
And it was a bespoke functionality that was novel to Ash's.
- 25:12
And it's one thing to make it work in the character creator, and it's a completely different
- 25:17
thing to take the character that you made in the character creator and make that work
- 25:21
in game and make it performant.
- 25:24
And that's one thing that Zach played a huge role in was actually getting the assets gameplay
- 25:28
ready by threading the skeletal mesh merge process.
- 25:32
That was pretty awesome.
- 25:33
It wouldn't really be possible unless we did a lot of heavy tech in the background to make
- 25:39
it feasible.
- 25:40
Very cool.
- 25:41
And then another aspect, obviously, is the tech you guys worked on doesn't just facilitate
- 25:47
the front-facing character creator for the player, but it's also something that can be
- 25:51
utilized internally as a tool when creating NPCs, correct?
- 25:55
Yeah.
- 25:56
When we were in the ideation phase of character creator, we always thought that it'd be great
- 26:01
to have a customization suite for design so they can go in and make quest NPCs, they can
- 26:07
populate the world with their custom characters, they can go in and give life almost to each
- 26:12
individual NPC if they wanted to and really make them unique and customized.
- 26:17
Yeah.
- 26:18
Yeah.
- 26:19
And designers, of course, love having that tool available to them, right?
- 26:21
Oh, they love it.
- 26:22
Because they don't have to go and make specific requests necessarily to character on a particular
- 26:25
type of NPC.
- 26:27
They can just jump into the tool itself and create those things.
- 26:31
And of course, that technology isn't just restricted to humanoid type NPCs, but also
- 26:36
can be able to leverage across creature creators as well, potentially.
- 26:40
Is that true?
- 26:41
Well...
- 26:42
Big plans for that.
- 26:43
Yeah.
- 26:44
Yeah.
- 26:45
That one's...
- 26:46
It's still very much in the oven, but yeah, we want to leverage a lot of the technology
- 26:51
that we made for the character creator for things like animal husbandry and for populating
- 26:58
the world with unique variations of creatures as well.
- 27:02
Yeah.
- 27:03
Absolutely.
- 27:04
We're working towards that.
- 27:05
We're going to leverage that tech as much as possible.
- 27:06
Yeah.
- 27:07
Exactly.
- 27:08
Get the most out of it.
- 27:09
Yeah.
- 27:10
In creating the character creator, one of our biggest points of emphasis is while we're
- 27:12
making this is thinking about how it can be reused in other parts of the project.
- 27:16
Yeah.
- 27:17
Absolutely.
- 27:18
Because I can edit the size of my pug's eye.
- 27:22
To make them really oversized.
- 27:25
Talk to me a little bit about what...
- 27:27
We obviously talked a little bit about one of the aspects of the future uses for the
- 27:31
character creator with creatures potentially, but what are some of the other things you're
- 27:34
excited about to continue working on getting the character creator to a point where it's
- 27:40
going to be live for launch?
- 27:43
What are some of those features?
- 27:44
I know we took a lot of feedback from the community when they gave us responses during
- 27:48
the discussions thread about what they're looking for.
- 27:51
They talked a little bit about more hair options, more abilities to do tattoos, perhaps even
- 27:56
to customize those things.
- 27:57
What are some of the things you guys are excited to add?
- 28:00
Yeah.
- 28:01
So one thing that I'm really excited to work on next is the hair customization.
- 28:04
Well, a lot of the functionality for the hair customization is there, but I think that you
- 28:08
saw in the demo, it was still using sliders.
- 28:11
We really want to expand how much you can customize individually on the hair and also
- 28:16
incorporate that same mechanic of direct manipulation so that you're dragging different
- 28:21
parts of the hair or actually configuring it that way.
- 28:25
Especially with longer braids and jewelry and more of the granularity you can use to
- 28:31
really customize your character.
- 28:32
Yeah, we saw a lot of commentary about that.
- 28:35
And of course, players, as you guys understand, those might not always be available at the
- 28:40
inception of a particular character, but might be unlocked through achievements in game that
- 28:45
you can then revisit the character creator through salon services and nodes and start
- 28:50
to customize further as your character's history matures within the world.
- 28:54
Right?
- 28:55
Yeah.
- 28:56
That's one thing that I'm super excited for is the gameplay integration of the character
- 29:00
creator in real time and how we integrate different customization features and tie that
- 29:06
into your character progression.
- 29:08
I can't wait to see the different scars that I can unlock from a deadly battle.
- 29:14
Like reputation based tattoos.
- 29:16
Yeah, exactly.
- 29:17
Yeah, I've never seen that before.
- 29:20
That is cool.
- 29:21
Yeah, going into the tattoo parlor in the Dunir node and getting like a special Dunir
- 29:26
tattoo.
- 29:27
Oh my God.
- 29:28
It would be also cool as a feature if you're capable of inspecting other players, you know,
- 29:32
customization options and what they represent.
- 29:34
So if you do add the scar from the dragon fight, another person can see, ah, they have
- 29:38
a scar and it's from that dragon fight.
- 29:40
Yeah, exactly.
- 29:41
Yeah, that is super cool.
- 29:42
I love gameplay, I guess options, but we're going to give designers to be able to populate
- 29:47
the world with quests and reputation.
- 29:49
Yeah, yeah, that's super cool.
- 29:52
Very, very cool.
- 29:53
Well, awesome.
- 29:54
You know, I guess one final question that I would have for you guys is as someone who
- 30:01
takes a long time to create your character, do you generally just randomize and go or
- 30:08
do you sit there and fiddle with it?
- 30:11
I know that in an MMO setting, sometimes when you're making that character, and obviously
- 30:15
this is a service we've talked about offering is prior to launch, players will be able to
- 30:19
access the character creator and prep for that launch time because you want to get into
- 30:22
the server as quickly as possible.
- 30:23
You don't want to lose any time, right?
- 30:24
And trying to progress.
- 30:26
But do you guys like to fiddle with the character creator, spend a long time doing it, customizing
- 30:30
everything or do you just randomize and go?
- 30:33
Well, at first I do both actually.
- 30:35
Really?
- 30:36
At first I randomize them, go and I give the game, I'm super picky.
- 30:39
I give the game an hour and if I'm not captured in an hour, I get a refund.
- 30:45
A lot of people do that.
- 30:48
Then I spend two hours in the character creator making my real character.
- 30:52
Okay, so first you bet the game, then if you like it, you spend the time.
- 30:56
What about you guys?
- 30:57
Yeah, no, so normally I'll randomize to find a starting point that I like and then I'll
- 31:01
customize from there.
- 31:04
But normally I don't actually put a lot of time into the character creator.
- 31:08
Really?
- 31:09
Oh my gosh, the sacrilege.
- 31:11
I'm just kidding.
- 31:12
I spend a lot of time in character creators and if there's ever an option to mod it like
- 31:17
Skyrim, I'll add even more customization options like modded Skyrim just so I can have full
- 31:24
control and like if it's not a time gate or like I'm waiting to get into the game, if
- 31:30
I have like a single player game, I will spend a full play session.
- 31:36
I generally, if I'm starting a game, especially an MMO and I know that, I mean in the past
- 31:42
the MMOs that I've experienced, it was rare to kind of visit that character creator again
- 31:47
and get to change things.
- 31:48
So I would spend a lot of time building out the character, customizing things.
- 31:53
I don't know, I'm kind of a guppy for the role play side.
- 31:55
One of the nice things that Clayton did was he worked on a really nice randomization feature.
- 32:01
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 32:02
Like if you're not one of those players like me that spends a lot of time in it, you can
- 32:09
just randomize through and you're going to get like amazing results every time and Clayton
- 32:15
did a really good job with just the breadth of the customization with the randomization
- 32:20
and then you can always use that to go off of it.
- 32:23
Yeah, I was having a fun time just kind of spamming that randomize button and just watching
- 32:27
the different shapes and figures and faces.
- 32:30
Just roll through the character creator, that was actually pretty cool.
- 32:33
Yeah, seeing how many different ones you could generate in a short amount of time, that's
- 32:37
neat.
- 32:38
And that's also, that's going to be at the forefront of our content designers ability
- 32:42
to populate the world with convincing good looking characters is a decent looking randomizing
- 32:47
feature.
- 32:48
Awesome.
- 32:49
Yeah, very cool.
- 32:50
Well guys, thank you for taking the time to chat with me and our audience.
- 32:53
We're going to have a fun little segment coming up next.
- 33:04
And welcome over into the environment and season side.
- 33:08
I am joined by three absolutely awesome members of the team.
- 33:12
Tristan, you want to introduce yourself?
- 33:13
I'm Tristan Snogress, I'm the lead environment artist here at Intrepid Studios.
- 33:17
Absolutely.
- 33:18
We also have Brian Ganz, lead tech artist.
- 33:21
And of course the amazing...
- 33:23
I'm Kat Nary and I am the audio lead at Intrepid.
- 33:26
Yay.
- 33:27
So we actually pulled off some fun feats this year and showcasing to the community some
- 33:32
pretty exciting stuff.
- 33:33
One of which was the seasons showcase.
- 33:37
And we did that in the Riverlands biome, is that right?
- 33:40
Correct.
- 33:41
That was the first biome that we actually implemented the actual tech that Brian and
- 33:45
Hal and James actually worked on.
- 33:47
Right.
- 33:48
And talk to me a little bit about that tech.
- 33:50
What did it entail?
- 33:52
You're just touching every single component of Unreal where a lot of things had to be
- 33:57
harmonized like the cloud, the volume cloud stuff and the particle effects for the rain
- 34:01
and the snow.
- 34:02
I think I mentioned it in the livestream for the...
- 34:05
Yeah, you did.
- 34:06
But yeah, that's...
- 34:07
There's just so many parts to it.
- 34:08
I mean, it was amazing to see.
- 34:09
Like, you know, we talked about it during, of course, the demonstration that I've never
- 34:12
personally experienced any type of tech like that in an MMORPG before where you actually
- 34:17
get to see the biome change in front of your eyes on a seasonal basis.
- 34:20
How difficult was that to achieve and how much did moving over to Unreal 5, we just
- 34:25
talked about in the previous segment, moving over to Unreal 5 help with that?
- 34:28
I think it helped with it a lot.
- 34:29
I think a lot of the cases in Unreal, the solve you're looking for is a button, button
- 34:34
press or a check block or something.
- 34:36
But there are a lot of different systems to harmonizing gameplay implications that...
- 34:42
And it's probably one of the hardest things is the planning out of how to start it so
- 34:47
that the whole approach is future proof and does everything you want it to do or might
- 34:51
want it to do.
- 34:52
Right.
- 34:53
Yeah.
- 34:54
And that, of course, has implications on the audio side because as an environment changes,
- 34:57
of course, the ambience doesn't sound the same.
- 34:59
Those things have to...
- 35:00
Those tracks have to change.
- 35:01
How was that implementing?
- 35:02
I mean, first, doing season tech is something I wanted to do for like 20 years in the game
- 35:08
industry.
- 35:09
So when I got to see what the artists were doing, I was really excited to work on this.
- 35:13
You know, you would think that there's just four seasons and so you make your four sounds
- 35:17
of summer, winter, fall, spring.
- 35:19
But we're going to go high tech and we're going to do eight variations that seamlessly
- 35:24
go through.
- 35:25
Ideally, you won't hear the changes because it'll be so seamless and they'll just kind
- 35:28
of go through.
- 35:29
Yeah.
- 35:30
It's something you don't get to see in the live streams right now because you do changes
- 35:32
in 30 seconds.
- 35:33
Right.
- 35:34
So when we do the sounds for them and as the audio team continues to grow, like right now,
- 35:38
I went out and recorded the rare rain in San Diego a couple of weeks ago.
- 35:41
Oh, so good.
- 35:42
I love listening to that.
- 35:43
So as the audio stuff gets into the game and as it grows, we'll go do more field recording.
- 35:48
You know, we try to make as much custom sounds as we can that fit the environment that we
- 35:51
see.
- 35:52
And I, of course, haven't received yet your itinerary of all the places in the world you
- 35:54
plan to travel to.
- 35:55
To collect those things.
- 35:56
Yeah.
- 35:57
I will be asking for reimbursement when I go to Fiji.
- 35:58
Yes, exactly.
- 35:59
I am more than happy to travel all over the world for you.
- 36:05
To collect the perfect references for the different types of assets.
- 36:08
Of course.
- 36:09
Yeah.
- 36:10
We can do that as well.
- 36:11
Talk to me a little bit about that.
- 36:12
So, the biomes, the animations, I know James did a lot of work on the seasonal showcase
- 36:15
for those assets.
- 36:16
How do you guys kind of derive what you're going to fill those biomes with?
- 36:20
So first, it was just trying to find some real world references that we could take as,
- 36:24
you know, inspiration.
- 36:25
Then, of course, we do get concept images derived from that, the add the fantasy flair
- 36:30
that we're going to have.
- 36:31
Right.
- 36:32
So then, you know, we want to do real world, but we're also doing high fantasy.
- 36:35
Yeah.
- 36:36
What kind of elements to it.
- 36:37
So, they chose Wales as essentially the biome for this, which is basically like where my
- 36:43
family is from.
- 36:44
Right.
- 36:45
So, I was like, all right, we're going with this.
- 36:46
I remember seeing your shots that you took while you were in Wales, and you were posting
- 36:50
them all throughout the art channels.
- 36:51
Oh, yeah.
- 36:52
And you were like, all right, this is great for this.
- 36:53
This is great for this.
- 36:54
And when we need more references, I called up my mom and was like, hey, you want to go
- 36:58
out to the garden and pick some photos?
- 36:59
I got a task for you.
- 37:00
They want to know what the ground looks like during winter.
- 37:03
It's simple.
- 37:04
I can get you that right now.
- 37:05
Do you fill out any Jira tasks for her when you ask her to do that stuff?
- 37:07
Yes, she's still asking for her money.
- 37:08
Okay.
- 37:09
We'll figure it out.
- 37:10
She's retired.
- 37:11
She's okay.
- 37:12
But yeah, so then we moved on to the desert biome after that.
- 37:15
And so, that wasn't necessarily seasonal tech implementation right there, but we had a whole
- 37:19
bunch of stuff to kind of think about how we wanted to approach seasonal tech from a
- 37:24
very different environment.
- 37:25
Right, especially like the one that's desolate as a desert.
- 37:28
Right.
- 37:29
And so, how do we make that environment change over four biomes and make it feel like unique
- 37:32
and interesting and different, but also not just do a traditional desert.
- 37:37
Yeah.
- 37:38
So, we'd like to make like the winters maybe slightly different that you might see in a
- 37:41
desert.
- 37:42
I know.
- 37:43
We talked a little bit about that.
- 37:44
And there's some cool stuff that we've done for things that might come down the line,
- 37:47
but one of the things that we wanted to do was also out here in Anza, Borrego, we get
- 37:52
the desert super blooms, which is where everything turns into like this beautiful painting of
- 37:56
color.
- 37:57
It's unbelievable.
- 37:58
Yeah, the flower blooms are just mind blowing.
- 38:00
Beautiful.
- 38:01
And there's some stuff that we have been trying to make happen that is going to probably blow
- 38:06
people's minds even more than we've already done with the riverland.
- 38:09
Absolutely.
- 38:10
And I think that people are going to be really excited to see that stuff.
- 38:13
I think just the glimpse that we got actually at the desert area, that desert biome, there's
- 38:17
already just such beauty that you did with the oasis and the tech across the rolling
- 38:23
winds over the sand dunes.
- 38:25
Talk to me a little bit about how you kind of accomplished the winds for the sand dunes.
- 38:29
There's a couple of techniques, I think.
- 38:31
A lot of times the environment artists will take a stab at what they want to do and then
- 38:35
I'll pick it up and work it and massage it in a little bit better with some of the systems
- 38:39
that are in there already.
- 38:41
Making it a little more functional than what an artist might be.
- 38:44
And performant.
- 38:45
Might perform as well.
- 38:46
But yeah, they know, they have an idea of what they want in their eye and I'm just like,
- 38:49
okay, I get it.
- 38:50
And let's kind of use that in a particle effect to do that as well.
- 38:54
Sometimes it's kind of like use a different system but in the same way that they're envisioning.
- 38:59
I try to cover all the different things Unreal can do, like the grass, the foliage, and the
- 39:04
virtual textures and everything.
- 39:05
And there's a lot of ways to do things but there's often the best way to do something.
- 39:10
And just kind of put that in there.
- 39:12
The heat distortion was done one way, let's put that in the particle system.
- 39:16
And they all kind of layer on top of each other, these different systems that you're
- 39:20
utilizing.
- 39:21
If you take one out, then the whole scene just kind of falls apart.
- 39:25
And now of course we have certain types of weather events that are of course going to
- 39:28
impact audio as well for these areas.
- 39:31
Like we talked a bit about one of the boss designs that are intended for the desert biome,
- 39:36
having this kind of whirlwind of sandstorm.
- 39:40
And when players get inside of those things, how does that kind of change audio?
- 39:43
Yeah, no, Brian's been awesome to work with because he's built a lot of systems that can
- 39:46
drive the audio dynamically.
- 39:48
So I'll go out and record various levels of sounds and then they'll procedurally change
- 39:53
in the game to really make you feel like you're in there.
- 39:56
Even the same with the trees, if you go under the trees right now with the wind, the little
- 39:59
leaves will kind of go up and down with the wind parameters that Brian's set up.
- 40:04
And it's really, really neat and really interactive.
- 40:06
And not just the winds, I noticed that as I kind of move through the game and I get
- 40:10
close to some of these particular foliage actors, I hear birds chirping or some type
- 40:15
of cue that just happens in the background.
- 40:17
The birds are super cool too because they're going to be assigned to certain trees.
- 40:21
And sometimes you'll find that really cool bird, you want to sit under it.
- 40:24
And then sometimes you'll find a bird that maybe you don't want to be near.
- 40:26
And so maybe you'll chop down that tree and take away his home or move away.
- 40:30
Oh no, that's terrible.
- 40:31
But you know, it's really cool.
- 40:32
That is actually very genius.
- 40:33
I noticed also, as we were kind of showcasing some of the ranger footage that design and
- 40:42
the combat engineers have been working on, there was that almost pollen-like fog that
- 40:48
was just throughout the level that created that almost morning dust look in that area.
- 40:53
Yeah, one of our newer artists, John Wainick, has actually been implementing all of those
- 40:57
kind of features to get...
- 40:59
That's just another atmospheric element that completely adds to the mood.
- 41:03
And those are seasonal as well, right?
- 41:04
Those are going to be tuned to specific seasons.
- 41:08
And not just seasons, also weather in general.
- 41:10
So you might get a foggy morning.
- 41:12
There's been several pretty amazing games recently that I've played that have some of
- 41:16
these elements.
- 41:17
And that really changes the vibe of when you're running around, like one day to another is
- 41:22
completely different.
- 41:23
And that's a great point.
- 41:24
Like we're all gamers.
- 41:25
We all play games in our spare time.
- 41:28
That's why we're in this industry is because we love games.
- 41:30
We like seeing the smiles on people's faces when we make something that excites them.
- 41:34
How much inspiration do you draw from the games that you play?
- 41:38
That's a tough question because there's so many different types of games that you can
- 41:41
play, obviously, and I don't really stick to one.
- 41:44
And none of them have a shortage of awe-inspiring feats that their dev teams accomplish as well.
- 41:48
And for me in particular, Red Dead Redemption is an amazing game where I could just ride
- 41:54
around and enjoy the nature all day.
- 41:57
Or the shenanigans that the horses have.
- 41:59
Yeah, all the little things.
- 42:01
But yeah, that specific game has a lot of atmospheric elements for when I'm running
- 42:05
around.
- 42:06
And not just the visual elements, but then the sound does kick in.
- 42:09
And sound to me is one of the things that really truly sells like a movie or a game.
- 42:16
Especially the music and such like that.
- 42:17
But if the audio doesn't feel right, then you know.
- 42:20
Yeah, absolutely.
- 42:21
I mean, that was something that was big for me.
- 42:24
Not just in gaming, but I find in many different forms of entertainment, especially media,
- 42:30
television, movies, like the soundtrack, the music that accompanies what's happening,
- 42:38
more often than not elicits stronger emotions from me than the visuals or the dialogue.
- 42:42
My goal for Vero Audio is you should be able to find a nice little safe place to sit down
- 42:47
and leave it on in the background as a nice ambient audio generator.
- 42:51
And you can go work on your thesis or whatever else you're working on, or just nice little
- 42:55
go to bed to it.
- 42:56
And I want you to feel like you're always in there.
- 42:59
That's what we need to do.
- 43:00
That's what I'm saying.
- 43:01
Yes, remember we used to talk about that so long ago.
- 43:02
First we'll do that.
- 43:03
We should totally throw up like a YouTube loop that people can just leave on.
- 43:07
Oh, that would be a great idea.
- 43:09
That's one way to fall asleep.
- 43:10
Yeah, absolutely.
- 43:11
So as we kind of, you know, look forward into 2023, what are some of the areas that you
- 43:18
guys have on your excited list of things to tackle, right?
- 43:23
What's the biome you're looking most forward to?
- 43:26
So the Redwood Forest is something that we're aiming to push into.
- 43:29
Oh my god.
- 43:30
We've already kind of started pushing into it slowly, but you know, just being surrounded
- 43:35
by giant massive trees that just don't seem to be making any sense of why they exist.
- 43:41
Like when you're walking through a Redwood Forest in real life, like up in Northern California,
- 43:45
it's awe-inspiring.
- 43:47
And there's a lot of cool, seasonal stuff that we can do with that.
- 43:51
So that's my...
- 43:52
Yeah, I was talking to design a little bit about group gameplay dynamics when we instituted
- 43:57
the gathering tech and having specific assets that require multiple players in order to
- 44:02
actually chop down a particular tree.
- 44:04
Yeah, I don't think you can really take down a Redwood with a simple person in their hands.
- 44:09
Ah, six swings, we're good.
- 44:11
We'll see how that plays out.
- 44:12
That's going to be an interesting feature to actually make work, because from the tech
- 44:15
side of things, I mean, I guess we'll be talking more about that later on today, but harvesting
- 44:21
tech is going to play into that.
- 44:22
Right.
- 44:23
And it's relevant, of course, to seasons, because not just the ambience and the audio
- 44:27
changes, but the assets that are available and spawn those changes well, and those have
- 44:31
actual economic implications when it comes to the world economy.
- 44:35
So yeah, that's super cool.
- 44:39
Well talk to me a little bit about kind of how you blend the work between setting up
- 44:44
these zones, these biomes for the seasonal aspects, and working with design to determine
- 44:50
which assets spawn when, how it's affected potentially by time of day, and a little bit
- 44:56
about working with design on setting up these biomes filled with different types of gatherables,
- 45:04
essentially, and how it's affected by season, right?
- 45:07
They have cycles, essentially.
- 45:09
There's going to be different types of plants, different types of foliage that you can harvest
- 45:12
during certain times of the year.
- 45:14
Brian, I guess you were probably going to be plugging that tech into all the harvestable
- 45:18
assets in the sense that you might get a certain plant in winter, but you're not going to get
- 45:21
it during the time where weather might affect that.
- 45:24
Right.
- 45:25
And we saw a little bit about that, not just with the assets, but also with the creatures
- 45:28
as well.
- 45:29
Correct.
- 45:30
Yeah.
- 45:31
And what went into making the creatures kind of change with the seasons?
- 45:35
Actually, it's not as difficult as it sounds.
- 45:37
That was probably the easiest answer.
- 45:38
Wait, don't say that.
- 45:39
It's very difficult.
- 45:40
No, I'm just kidding.
- 45:41
Very complex.
- 45:42
We can't give away the secrets.
- 45:43
Yeah, I can't give away the secrets.
- 45:44
It's probably hard for the guys at Epic to put it on the engine, but we just kind of knew
- 45:47
every material, every object has access to wind, direction, and speed, time of year,
- 45:52
time of day.
- 45:53
It's up to the artist to just kind of tap into these accessible variables and say, make
- 45:57
this color in the summer, a different color in winter.
- 46:01
It gets complicated when you start putting in more dynamics with like, we want a storm
- 46:06
in this area.
- 46:07
So we move across the world and it has gameplay implications and all the clients know if they're
- 46:12
in a storm or not.
- 46:15
To that whole process of working with designers and how to integrate what we can do and what
- 46:20
they want to do, I have to have like, here's the ambitious goal that everyone's talking
- 46:25
about, but we've got to fall back just in case.
- 46:28
I need a fallback plan.
- 46:30
A scale of achievability.
- 46:31
Push the really ambitious thing that's going to blow everyone's socks off.
- 46:37
And we usually hit the ambitious ones.
- 46:39
Yeah, somehow, some way it always works out.
- 46:41
And then of course, you have to think about all of these things from an audio perspective
- 46:45
where essentially you're layering on these different sounds and when does it become too
- 46:50
much if I've got a storm coming, I'm in combat with ten creatures, I've got players around
- 46:55
me with abilities and effects, and I've got dynamic music.
- 46:58
A great code team and we're also using audio kinetics, audio engine, both those things
- 47:03
with the code team and the audio engine will allow us to do some really cool dynamic mixing
- 47:08
that we'll get to choose what needs to be in focus.
- 47:11
And when you're in the storm, you're going to hear the storm, but if combat's coming
- 47:13
on and bigger things that need to be focused on, those are going to kind of come up while
- 47:16
the storm will go down.
- 47:17
So it's going to be all kinds of fire toys like that.
- 47:19
That's awesome.
- 47:20
That is awesome.
- 47:21
Well, with that being said, we are going to be moving over into our discussion about combat.
- 47:29
And I want to thank you guys for joining us and chatting a little bit about the seasons
- 47:33
and what it takes to actually make this stuff exist in game.
- 47:36
So awesome job guys.
- 47:38
And we will be seeing you in just a second.
- 47:48
And we are back with a fun little discussion with some of our awesome developers who are
- 47:55
involved in the development of our combat and classes and special effects, all the fun
- 48:00
stuff that makes an MMO an MMO.
- 48:04
First thing I want to ask is for you guys each to introduce yourself.
- 48:07
It was you, Jim.
- 48:08
I'm Jim.
- 48:09
I am the lead effect art.
- 48:10
Yes.
- 48:11
Trap.
- 48:12
Yep.
- 48:13
I'm Trap Thompson.
- 48:14
I'm a senior combat designer on the project.
- 48:16
Awesome.
- 48:17
Keenan.
- 48:18
I'm Keenan.
- 48:19
I'm a gameplay engineer.
- 48:20
Mostly work on combat and movement.
- 48:22
So we have shown some fun stuff this year.
- 48:25
And I think the audience of course would agree that the look at Ashes development since the
- 48:32
start of 2022 has ramped up in a very fun and engaging way for the community to kind
- 48:38
of take a look at how development works here.
- 48:40
You guys all are involved in a process of course that is very near and dear to many
- 48:44
players hearts, which is the identity of their archetypes, the abilities they have access
- 48:49
to those classes, how they interact from a role perspective with combat in general in
- 48:53
the game.
- 48:54
What are some of the inspirations?
- 48:55
What are some games that you guys have played in the past that kind of helped to influence
- 49:00
decisions that we make on Ashes?
- 49:01
Oh, you know, that's a good question because if you're playing an MMO, you're going to
- 49:07
have to think of kind of the big players out there.
- 49:09
And I got thousands of hours in World of Warcraft and that will definitely influence how I shaped
- 49:15
kind of some of the iconic imagery, the colors and shapes.
- 49:19
I think really a lot of that motivation comes back to the feedback I get from the community
- 49:24
and from the developers.
- 49:25
Like Tread is always kind of saying, Hey man, what about this shape or this size?
- 49:29
Or I'm thinking about this mechanic.
- 49:31
Yeah.
- 49:32
So I guess it's a circular, circle.
- 49:34
Absolutely.
- 49:35
I mean, all of us have been experiencing MMOs.
- 49:37
I mean, we're all MMO gamers.
- 49:38
That's part of the question that I ask in the final interview.
- 49:41
You come up with your favorite MMOs.
- 49:43
The real qualifying.
- 49:44
Yes, the qualifying question.
- 49:45
Tread, what are some MMOs or games in general that you draw inspiration from?
- 49:50
There are so many I would have to narrow that down to.
- 49:53
I'll pick an MMO since that's the most relevant.
- 49:56
And I'd say the most influential MMO on me, on just as a gamer has been Dark Age of Camelot.
- 50:03
I remember actually our interview when you asked me about my MMO experience.
- 50:07
That was the one I chose to talk about.
- 50:09
I loved it.
- 50:10
It was such a fun game.
- 50:11
Yeah.
- 50:12
Yeah.
- 50:13
That was really the game I think that really, well that and RuneScape, if you qualify RuneScape
- 50:18
as an MMO, that one as well.
- 50:20
But Dark Age was really where I think I realized the magic of an MMO and it really is what
- 50:27
got me into open world PvP and that's what really excites me about this project is bringing
- 50:31
that kind of thing back.
- 50:33
Just that really spontaneous gameplay that you run into out in the field and you never
- 50:37
know what to expect.
- 50:38
Absolutely.
- 50:39
Yeah.
- 50:40
What about you, Keenan?
- 50:41
For me, I think it's probably WoW.
- 50:45
Specifically the re-release of vanilla WoW, Classic WoW, I thought that was a phenomenal
- 50:52
experience.
- 50:53
I actually never played in vanilla.
- 50:54
Oh really?
- 50:55
So that was your first time with Classic WoW?
- 50:57
That was my first time with Classic and I feel like it brought back some of the old
- 51:01
school adventure that a lot of us have been missing.
- 51:03
That feeling back, yeah, the nostalgia.
- 51:04
Yeah, we've got a group playing right now.
- 51:06
Oh yeah?
- 51:07
Really?
- 51:08
Hopefully we'll start back up again on Old War.
- 51:10
Very cool.
- 51:12
So obviously, as our audience has kind of seen throughout the year and they're kind
- 51:17
of seeing now as we put little clips into this particular video, we've shown off a little
- 51:22
bit of the ranger, we've shown off a little bit of basic weapon attacks and melee, some
- 51:27
of the fighter skills, we've shown off the cleric most recently.
- 51:31
Tell me a little bit about the process that goes into actually making these archetypes.
- 51:36
Obviously the ability side is very important that needs to have support from engineering
- 51:40
and the effects and stuff, but what typically goes into, and we have a lot of classes to
- 51:44
make, right, and we're deep within the thralls of that process, but what does it take?
- 51:48
Yeah, I could start on that.
- 51:51
So obviously a class has to, or an archetype has to start on paper, right?
- 51:57
A lot of the time we'll go into prototyping and start building out stuff and see what's
- 52:00
fun but just about always we start on paper on a design document.
- 52:05
And we're talking about specific abilities when we start out on paper, right?
- 52:10
First we actually go about establishing the class fantasy and the identity and the role
- 52:14
within the party, right?
- 52:17
Because that really helps to inform what those abilities then are.
- 52:22
So that's usually the first step is, you know, what is this archetype?
- 52:24
What identifies it?
- 52:25
What is the role that it's trying to accomplish?
- 52:28
Once that is done then we go into what you're suggesting there where, you know, we'll go
- 52:33
and brainstorm a whole wide list of abilities and class mechanics and then once we've got
- 52:39
all those, you know, a lot of them will get the chopping block and some of them will make
- 52:43
it through, some will get iterated and, you know, kind of redesigned, reimagined.
- 52:48
And then after that step usually we go to you and we have a sort of review meeting and,
- 52:55
you know, you'll pick ones that you like, you'll pick ones you want to change.
- 52:58
That's the second chopping block.
- 52:59
The second chopping block, yeah, there you go.
- 53:02
We try and filter it on our end as much as Steven makes sure it gets done one way or
- 53:07
another.
- 53:08
And then, you know, once that's done then we jump into the prototyping, right?
- 53:13
Then it starts down the pipeline process, right?
- 53:15
Yeah, yeah.
- 53:16
And rapid prototyping is a really important step of the design process for combat because
- 53:21
we want to build and fail early or, you know, succeed early.
- 53:26
And we find the fun, we find what's not fun.
- 53:28
And we can all do that within, you know, the tools that our very talented engineers provide
- 53:33
us and we're always working to improve that stuff.
- 53:36
And the better tools we have, the better the designers can do their job.
- 53:39
And of course engineering kind of fields requests from a capability standpoint on what design
- 53:45
can actually provide a particular ability to do, right?
- 53:49
Talk to me a little bit about, you know, how you field those requests, how you incorporate
- 53:53
that as part of the ability system, all those things.
- 53:56
Well we always do feasibility on any requests that we get, but our designers are really
- 54:00
good about that and we don't usually have too many issues there.
- 54:04
Usually, yeah, I like to run wild sometimes.
- 54:09
For me as an engineer though, I think a lot of times the challenge is in, you know, they're
- 54:15
trying to get the fantasy right and the question is like, how do you make somebody who's playing
- 54:21
a game feel like they are being delivered on that fantasy?
- 54:25
So when design asks us for something, we usually play it a lot ourselves as we're making it
- 54:29
and we search for that feeling and, you know, we're all gamers so we know what it feels
- 54:33
like so we're looking for it as we build it.
- 54:35
That's one of my favorite things is I'm walking past your desk going to my office, sometimes
- 54:39
you'll just be like, hey Steven, you got two minutes.
- 54:41
And then you put me at your desk at the keyboard and you're like, how does this feel?
- 54:45
Do you feel like a ranger?
- 54:46
I know, do you feel like a ranger?
- 54:48
Does this sword slash feel good?
- 54:50
Yeah, absolutely.
- 54:51
I mean, and obviously, you know, you guys, you and Adam have had a very instrumental hand
- 54:55
as part of working with design and visual effects to kind of capture not just that role,
- 55:00
but that feeling as you described, and sometimes that incorporates working with animators to
- 55:05
get the right types of author animations for like particular weapon attacks and or abilities,
- 55:11
and the timing on those things is pivotal in creating the right feeling, right?
- 55:16
There's so many technical components to it and as is often the case with engineering,
- 55:20
it's like eliciting that right human response out of the very mathematical thing is the
- 55:26
challenging part.
- 55:27
Yeah.
- 55:28
And Jim, obviously, you know, audio and visual effects, they come in kind of near the end
- 55:32
of that pipeline where, you know, design and engineering has provided the tools to design,
- 55:38
designs iterating with authored animations, and then VFX comes in and says, how can I
- 55:43
make this look spectacular?
- 55:44
I mean, there's a tremendous amount of thought that's already been placed into this mechanic
- 55:50
or designer ability or whatever.
- 55:53
So on top of that, we're thinking about how can we push the MMO space?
- 55:57
We don't want to recreate the other games.
- 55:59
We want to make it our own game.
- 56:00
I mean, we want to push the effects to a level that you just don't see in the industry period,
- 56:05
but at the same time, we don't want to create visual effects soup.
- 56:08
So we're working on creating a visual language, something that the gamers here are playing
- 56:13
are going to understand like, hey, that's like an arcane ability or that's like a tank
- 56:18
mixed with this, you know, summoner or whatever.
- 56:20
So we have to figure out how to do all of this, not make it too muddy, but actually
- 56:24
execute in a way that looks cool, so it's really, really nice to have people like Trad
- 56:28
and our engineer team to go back and forth and be like, hey, can we connect this beam
- 56:32
here?
- 56:33
Can I parameterize it and can we expose this to the UI guys so we can ramp it up or down
- 56:37
to do stuff?
- 56:38
Yeah, and you hit on a really interesting point, which is visual effects is obviously
- 56:42
not just about creating things that are awesome, but the language that communicates in the
- 56:47
style guide of how these effects translate to particular classes from just a silhouette
- 56:52
perspective, shape language or visual fidelity and the hues and colors that are used to communicate
- 56:57
at long distances like, hey, I know what I'm going up against, especially if it's a PvP
- 57:02
scenario, or if you see your group kind of doing something, there are visual cues for
- 57:06
you to respond appropriately and synergistically from a rotations perspective.
- 57:10
And that's something I know early on, you know, we worked with each other kind of going
- 57:14
through you and the VFX team across, you know, what those shapes languages should look like
- 57:18
for particular types of abilities, the colors that should be associated with particular
- 57:22
types of archetypes, the symbologies and iconography that's used as part of those particular visual
- 57:27
effects, some of which obviously people saw in the last cleric demonstration.
- 57:32
But how has that been for you kind of defining those things and creating that style guide?
- 57:36
I mean, it's a comprehensive list, there's 64 classes, right?
- 57:40
And how do you steer and make sure that it doesn't become that visual suit that so many
- 57:45
people I mean, I've played games where it does become visual suit.
- 57:50
And especially it starts to break down every 10th player you add into the mix or every
- 57:55
10th, you know, actor NPC or whatever, right?
- 57:58
How do we accomplish that?
- 57:59
Well, I love that question.
- 58:01
So I mean, I'm a gamer.
- 58:03
And I think that especially in MMOs, when you get to that in game content, and you're
- 58:07
in this huge raid, whether it's like 10 people or 100 people, and all of a sudden, it's like
- 58:11
you can't find your mouse cursor, you're like, if you don't hotkey, you're lost, right?
- 58:15
So, but to answer your question, we're not.
- 58:18
Instead, what we're going to do is we're going to give that to the player.
- 58:20
So the player is going to be able to tune that experience.
- 58:24
So we are going to create a very smart parameterized subset of matrix particle systems.
- 58:31
That's a fancy way of saying that we're going to let you tune what it's like in single player
- 58:35
versus maybe you and your buddy versus a five person party or a giant raid.
- 58:40
Not only that, but let's make it where we can change the camera shake.
- 58:43
And the post process and a particle intensity and then do a global one that scales all of
- 58:48
that.
- 58:49
And give that to the player because I mean, really visual soup is a thing, but there's
- 58:52
a scale that's subjective kind of to the player on how much they want to see of those things
- 58:58
happening in a particular area.
- 58:59
And this is something obviously you guys who've been following the project for a long time
- 59:02
is what we've talked at since the very inception of Ashes is a desire to tackle that particular
- 59:08
issue that many of us have experienced in other games, of course.
- 59:12
So talk to me a little bit about our 64 classes, right?
- 59:16
In those roles, those class fantasies, where do we kind of live when incorporating?
- 59:21
And obviously we have an eight member party, right?
- 59:24
And we have eight archetypes that are associated across our game.
- 59:27
And people know it's kind of a matrix of eight by eight in which creating these classes,
- 59:31
the augment system, all that type of stuff.
- 59:33
People have just now been starting to get a peek under the hood of the creation of these
- 59:36
archetypes and these classes.
- 59:38
What are you most excited to kind of tackle come 2023?
- 59:42
I know that there's a lot of stuff in the works right now and building up towards Alpha
- 59:45
Two.
- 59:46
Of all 64 of them.
- 59:47
Yes, yes.
- 59:48
Probably the Dreadnought because that's my default character.
- 59:53
But actually, I don't know that there's any particular class yet.
- 59:57
I mean, we haven't even shown everybody all the archetypes yet.
- 1:00:00
But I will say I'm pretty excited to see what the Summoner becomes.
- 1:00:04
We haven't shown anything on the Summoner and I'm not necessarily a pet class player
- 1:00:09
myself, but I feel like every Summoner type class that I've seen in games, they usually
- 1:00:16
fall a little bit flat in my opinion.
- 1:00:18
Maybe that's why I don't play them, right?
- 1:00:21
But I'd like to see something a little bit more dynamic with like, you know, summoning
- 1:00:26
in real time in combat rather than, oh, I summon my pet right at the beginning of combat
- 1:00:30
and then it's done.
- 1:00:31
It's out there doing its own thing.
- 1:00:33
I think there's a lot left to be explored there.
- 1:00:37
In fact, we've already written up some stuff about it.
- 1:00:39
Oh yeah, absolutely.
- 1:00:40
And it's some stuff that we've shared a little bit with the community.
- 1:00:42
Just a little bit.
- 1:00:43
Just a little bit, but I think they're going to be excited to see next year kind of some
- 1:00:47
of the stuff that's gone into that.
- 1:00:48
What about you, Keenan?
- 1:00:49
What are you kind of excited about from either a technical challenge perspective when it
- 1:00:52
comes to these ability systems or combat in general or class wise?
- 1:00:58
I think if you're talking about what I'm most excited to work on, I would say all of the
- 1:01:02
bard classes.
- 1:01:03
Ah, okay.
- 1:01:04
I think that the bard seems to have been largely forgotten by modern gaming.
- 1:01:09
So I'm excited to bring it back and show off some of the cool ideas that we have.
- 1:01:13
Yes, I think next year as well people are going to be excited to see how that class
- 1:01:16
interacts from a support perspective for the party and how it kind of lives next to but
- 1:01:22
doesn't encompass the same space as the healer, which is what a lot of previous games I think
- 1:01:27
that try to bring in that bard perspective do.
- 1:01:29
They just throw it on top of the healer's role.
- 1:01:31
And that can be a little bit boring.
- 1:01:33
There's a lot more to support than health bar goes right.
- 1:01:36
Right.
- 1:01:37
Health bar goes right.
- 1:01:38
Whack.
- 1:01:39
Whack a mole pole too.
- 1:01:40
Agreed.
- 1:01:41
How about you, Jim?
- 1:01:42
What about you on the visual effects side?
- 1:01:43
I know you guys got a lot of fun tech working with tech art teams for supporting visual
- 1:01:49
effects, not just from a class perspective, but also on the monster side, NPC encounter
- 1:01:53
side as well.
- 1:01:54
Oh yeah.
- 1:01:55
I mean, we're going to have so much fun.
- 1:01:56
Like monsters and boss fights are going to be unreal because we can just dial that up
- 1:01:59
and really have fun with all the actual tech that's built in the engine, the custom tech.
- 1:02:04
I think from just like a real technical perspective, I'm super excited about augments.
- 1:02:10
I want to do the augmentations and see how these different classes interact and how we
- 1:02:14
can create like the difference between a cleric and a paladin, for example.
- 1:02:19
But from just a selfish point of view, all about the necromancer man.
- 1:02:23
It's going to be incredible.
- 1:02:24
I don't think you're alone there, buddy.
- 1:02:25
It's going to be amazing.
- 1:02:26
And we showed off a little bit, some of the augments, I don't know if everyone picked
- 1:02:33
up on them during some of the demonstrations.
- 1:02:35
There were a few abilities that had some of the augments associated with them, but next
- 1:02:40
year I think in preparation for Alpha 2, there's going to be a lot of that stuff that players
- 1:02:44
are going to get access to and kind of see.
- 1:02:47
You know, it's something that's interesting to me is I think next month we're showcasing
- 1:02:51
the tank archetype and we're going to be showing some of those abilities and within the next
- 1:02:56
couple of months, I might have actually just leaked that.
- 1:02:59
I'm so sorry.
- 1:03:00
Okay, so a little leak in today's video.
- 1:03:03
But within the next couple of months, or I think it's the next two to three months, we're
- 1:03:11
also going to be talking a little bit about showcasing one of the big raid bosses, the
- 1:03:16
Cyclops.
- 1:03:17
And I know that has a lot of visual effects that's going into that encounter, as well
- 1:03:20
as some unique mechanics that are associated with supporting some of that ability that
- 1:03:25
the actual Cyclops has available.
- 1:03:27
And I think people are going to be a little bit shocked by that because it's pretty cool.
- 1:03:31
Well, it's going to be epic.
- 1:03:33
It's going to be insane.
- 1:03:34
I mean, you have this unique problem with big bosses in general.
- 1:03:39
Now I'm going to leak a little more.
- 1:03:41
Hopefully you guys don't have to edit this out.
- 1:03:43
Oh yeah, I'm ready.
- 1:03:44
I'm scared, but I'm ready.
- 1:03:45
So we're going to have this monstrous creature just going across our terrain.
- 1:03:48
It's not going to be your flat arena that you see in every MMO.
- 1:03:52
It's going to have different heights, altitudes, obstacles to climb on.
- 1:03:55
And we got to solve for that.
- 1:03:56
We don't want our effects just hanging in there.
- 1:03:58
We want to mold to the terrain and do different stuff.
- 1:04:01
But I think that's going to be something that I'm really excited about.
- 1:04:04
It's really technical, but it's also going to be something that people are really going
- 1:04:07
to dig.
- 1:04:08
They're going to enjoy it.
- 1:04:09
Oh, for sure.
- 1:04:10
I totally agree.
- 1:04:11
Every little edge case we missed is going to be scaled up 20x.
- 1:04:13
Oh yes.
- 1:04:14
And that's part of the greatness of kind of showcasing.
- 1:04:17
It's how we figure it out.
- 1:04:18
Yes, exactly.
- 1:04:19
And as we get to encounter those problems as the course that we're bringing this to
- 1:04:24
life, and as we're addressing them, we're showing the community as well.
- 1:04:28
That's something that's super cool.
- 1:04:29
Another thing, obviously we're building a massively multiplayer game.
- 1:04:34
And a lot of our encounter design, a lot of the PvP scenarios that players are going to
- 1:04:39
be subjected to, those are very dense populations.
- 1:04:44
And when you're building out this concept of these ability systems, how much of that
- 1:04:50
massively multiplayer component gets taken into account when creating, ideating, so to
- 1:04:55
speak, these mechanics that are provided by engineering, but also the class kits as a
- 1:04:59
holistic view, what abilities we're actually authoring.
- 1:05:03
Do you take into that account?
- 1:05:04
Or is this something that's really more focused around solo gameplay, group gameplay, or massive
- 1:05:10
gameplay?
- 1:05:11
Oh, we've got to think about all of it.
- 1:05:13
From the ground up, in that phase I was talking about earlier, the ideation phase when we're
- 1:05:18
brainstorming these abilities, we always, always have to think about how does this scale
- 1:05:23
up.
- 1:05:24
A lot of games have the luxury of not having to do that.
- 1:05:27
They can design a number of abilities without even having to necessarily consider the performance
- 1:05:34
implications it would have in a networking environment.
- 1:05:37
There's a lot of additional things as designers and engineers and artists that we've got to
- 1:05:43
think about every time.
- 1:05:44
So it kind of blows up the scale of, it can be a little bit mind paralysis sometimes when
- 1:05:51
you think, but we get through it and we've gotten pretty good at it.
- 1:05:55
From a performance as authoring these visual effects, how useful has the migration of Unreal
- 1:06:01
5 been with the use of Niagara in its system?
- 1:06:04
It's key.
- 1:06:05
It's very critical.
- 1:06:06
So every single effect that we author, we have to author for different scenarios, how
- 1:06:10
far away it might be, when we might call stuff, how close it's going to be.
- 1:06:13
We're also going to call stuff.
- 1:06:14
There's no point in having something that just blocks your entire view.
- 1:06:18
So all this will happen in real time dynamically.
- 1:06:20
So we can scale down particle systems based on how many players are active or how your
- 1:06:25
performance might be changing or anything really.
- 1:06:28
Maybe it's a Thanksgiving day and we want to have less effects.
- 1:06:31
We can do that.
- 1:06:32
But it's super robust with the amount of control we have over every aspect of visual effects.
- 1:06:38
And we'll be needing to do all of that to set all these things up because we don't want
- 1:06:42
to have a situation where, oh yeah, our game is really great until we got into the open
- 1:06:46
world PvP and all that stuff.
- 1:06:47
So we're not going to make this...
- 1:06:49
The effect should be there, but it shouldn't be.
- 1:06:52
That's all you see.
- 1:06:53
Right.
- 1:06:54
It's complementing absolutely the mechanics and the gameplay 100%.
- 1:06:57
Keenan, obviously on the engineering side, the gameplay engineering side, you of course
- 1:07:01
have to field these requests for different types of mechanics that need to be authored.
- 1:07:05
But when you think about performance-related considerations for the ability systems, stats
- 1:07:11
to kind of quickly update, all of the stuff interacting with the network, how has that
- 1:07:16
been for you from a challenging standpoint?
- 1:07:18
Yeah.
- 1:07:20
With the scalability requirement cranked to 10, it pretty much makes every aspect of combat
- 1:07:24
like three times harder than it would otherwise be.
- 1:07:28
But ultimately, I think we've got a handle on it and we've been very intentional with
- 1:07:34
our data and with our systems so that we can modulate how quickly they receive and send
- 1:07:40
updates based on who cares the most.
- 1:07:43
And so that's going to help us with scalability a lot.
- 1:07:45
That's something that I think a lot of players kind of were noticing in Alpha 1 last year
- 1:07:51
was just the sheer density that was achieved during some of the Castle Siege fights that
- 1:07:56
we had where there were 300 plus players in a particular area.
- 1:08:00
Not many people, I think in today's age, have experienced that and experienced in a way
- 1:08:04
that was performant.
- 1:08:07
And that was something that I think is wholly unique to this project and what we're trying
- 1:08:11
to achieve and accomplish, not just from the combat's perspective and these class kits
- 1:08:15
that we're creating, but how they harmonize with many players in a particular area.
- 1:08:19
So you guys have been doing an awesome job on that.
- 1:08:22
Well, thank you guys for joining us and talking a little bit about what it takes to make this
- 1:08:26
magic come to life.
- 1:08:28
I think I speak on behalf of the community.
- 1:08:30
You guys are doing an awesome job and not just you, of course, the teams that work in
- 1:08:33
association with you and that you're a part of, we're really appreciative of that.
- 1:08:45
Welcome over to our conversation, a little bit about gathering and crafting.
- 1:08:49
And earlier this year, of course, we showed some of the recent work that's been done towards
- 1:08:54
gathering, particularly around trees and the bushes and mining.
- 1:09:00
But I'm joined today by some of the developers who worked on those things.
- 1:09:04
So a little introduction, Hal.
- 1:09:07
I am Hal Anderson, and I'm an environment artist.
- 1:09:10
So that means I work on things like rocks, trees, kind of anything you just see in the
- 1:09:14
environment.
- 1:09:15
Everything that makes the world beautiful.
- 1:09:16
And we also have Alex.
- 1:09:19
Hello, I'm Alex Cudoli.
- 1:09:21
I'm a senior gameplay engineer.
- 1:09:23
I'm a generalist.
- 1:09:24
I wear many hats.
- 1:09:26
I work with animation, environment, many departments.
- 1:09:29
All the things they say.
- 1:09:31
Exactly.
- 1:09:32
We have Cory.
- 1:09:33
Hi, I'm Cory Rice.
- 1:09:34
I'm a technical designer, and I usually focus on artist and ship, do a little work with
- 1:09:38
AI and also our design tools.
- 1:09:40
Yeah, and a lot of economy stuff too as well, yeah?
- 1:09:43
Yeah.
- 1:09:44
So obviously, a lot of people saw the gathering demonstration that we showed where currently
- 1:09:49
like harvesting trees and stuff.
- 1:09:51
We just talked about what goes into kind of inspiring you guys around the experiences
- 1:09:58
you've had in other MMOs or other games where you're out and you're gathering things and
- 1:10:02
crafting.
- 1:10:03
What are some of the favorite experiences you guys have had?
- 1:10:06
I think for me personally, one of my favorite kind of like harvesting things that I really
- 1:10:12
love in an MMO would be just all the little plants you find around in elder schools online.
- 1:10:18
Yes, they're so good.
- 1:10:20
Oh my gosh, there's so many of them too.
- 1:10:23
I love just kind of scouring the environment, kind of seeing what you can find.
- 1:10:27
I think they have such good design too.
- 1:10:28
You can always like visually really spot them, like, oh, that's gonna go over there.
- 1:10:32
See what I can find.
- 1:10:34
Yeah, what about you, Ock?
- 1:10:35
For me, probably realism, specifically ArcheAge.
- 1:10:40
I spent a lot of time scouring all the lands to find illegal farms, all of that, but like
- 1:10:47
any trees.
- 1:10:48
But the fun part about it is like after a while, you go outside and be like, oh, I know
- 1:10:52
what that tree is.
- 1:10:53
Oh, I know what that tree is.
- 1:10:54
A little bit of learning from the game.
- 1:10:55
Yeah, exactly.
- 1:10:56
And then you're like, oh, this is an Aspen tree.
- 1:10:57
I know that.
- 1:10:58
I do like that too, where there's a hint of realism kind of in what you're experiencing
- 1:11:02
the game and how you can associate that with the real world.
- 1:11:05
What about you, Cory?
- 1:11:06
Yeah, totally.
- 1:11:07
I really like the exploration part of it.
- 1:11:09
Searching around for things and like how mentioned there being like things that catch your eye
- 1:11:13
and oftentimes you're like, oh, there's some gold.
- 1:11:16
And then you find yourself at the bottom of the dungeon and you're like, oh god, what
- 1:11:19
am I doing here?
- 1:11:20
Maybe meet some friends.
- 1:11:21
Wait a minute.
- 1:11:22
That's not a friend.
- 1:11:23
Exactly.
- 1:11:24
This guy's trying to take my gold.
- 1:11:25
And then we fight.
- 1:11:26
And then we fight.
- 1:11:27
And yeah, just get you into all sorts of different adventurous situations.
- 1:11:30
It's such an important part, obviously, of MMO design, right?
- 1:11:34
It brings kind of the environment that you're in, the world that you're in, and it makes
- 1:11:37
it a bit tactile.
- 1:11:38
It makes it something that you can leverage to further advance your character, your position,
- 1:11:43
the wealth that you might have.
- 1:11:45
And one of the things that I think was really interesting about our approach on these gatherables
- 1:11:52
out in the real world was even simulating a bit more of that realism, not just from
- 1:11:56
the type of thing you're gathering, but how that thing interacts with you in the world.
- 1:12:00
And one of the things that sticks out is the design of these trees falling and the physics
- 1:12:05
associated with them.
- 1:12:06
And I know we talked a little bit about during the demonstration, but you know, talk a little
- 1:12:09
bit about what it took to get there from a tech feasibility perspective.
- 1:12:13
Oh, it's a lot of work.
- 1:12:15
I mean, it's a lot of cross departmental work.
- 1:12:20
For example, like we have to work, figure out how we want to simulate the physics, what
- 1:12:25
kind of collisions we want to have to have on trees, as well as making sure that they
- 1:12:32
simulate similarly on every client as well, so that it doesn't feel off-putting for one
- 1:12:37
player to see it falling to the left, for other players falling to the right.
- 1:12:40
Like, oh my God, this tree just hit me.
- 1:12:42
No, it didn't.
- 1:12:43
It hit that guy.
- 1:12:44
Exactly.
- 1:12:45
Yeah.
- 1:12:46
So, but yeah, no, physics is, as I was saying before, it's a wild beast to tame.
- 1:12:50
It's just a lot of tweaks.
- 1:12:52
You have to have a lot of patience figuring out all the constraints, you know, all the
- 1:12:57
volumes.
- 1:12:58
It's just hard work.
- 1:13:00
And even from a performance perspective, right, we have thousands of foliage actors that might
- 1:13:06
live within a particular area that's very small, maybe one and a half by one and a half
- 1:13:10
kilometers zone, right?
- 1:13:11
Yeah, exactly.
- 1:13:13
And you want to make sure it's per request, so as you're chopping down, so it's not always,
- 1:13:18
you know, there, otherwise, you know, our client FPS is probably going to be pretty
- 1:13:22
bad.
- 1:13:23
Right.
- 1:13:24
So we do a neat trick when you are coming up to the tree, we swapped it to skeletal
- 1:13:28
mesh and then you cut it down and then as it starts to fall, we start simulating physics.
- 1:13:35
And as it falls down, we kind of like freeze it up in the end and then slowly like dissipates.
- 1:13:40
Right.
- 1:13:41
And Hal, tell me a little bit about what it takes to actually bring one of those assets
- 1:13:45
with joints and a skeletal rig so that the impact on the tree can show the physics and
- 1:13:51
the branches moving.
- 1:13:52
What did that take from an environment perspective?
- 1:13:54
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
- 1:13:56
So I think definitely got a lot of help from animation, you know, all the animators on
- 1:14:02
our team kind of setting that set up.
- 1:14:03
But I think from an environment perspective, our kind of most challenging thing was kind
- 1:14:07
of setting up the skeletal rig so they can all kind of communicate efficiently and kind
- 1:14:12
of finding a nice balance between so like, you know, one branch doesn't have all the
- 1:14:16
weight, you know, it's able to kind of fall and be in a fluid.
- 1:14:20
Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:14:21
And you have to make different states as well, right?
- 1:14:23
Because it's not just about being able to gather this particular thing in the world,
- 1:14:29
but also at what stage is that thing?
- 1:14:31
Is it an adolescent?
- 1:14:32
Is it a young tree?
- 1:14:34
What type of harvest can I get from it if I were to, let's say, gather it earlier in
- 1:14:38
its lifespan, right?
- 1:14:39
That has some design principles associated with those.
- 1:14:41
Yeah, definitely.
- 1:14:42
Like we wanted it to look good when it falls down, but we also wanted the environment to
- 1:14:46
look really good during different seasons and different stages of life of the thing
- 1:14:50
that you're harvesting.
- 1:14:51
So not only did they have to do that work one time making a tree look good, but we wanted
- 1:14:56
it to work on all the variants.
- 1:14:57
And we wanted it to work when it's a small little sapling or a mature tree.
- 1:15:00
So yeah, just figuring all that out and all the different permutations of it was interesting.
- 1:15:07
It's interesting.
- 1:15:08
And also, not only that, but when you think about kind of showcasing those different stages
- 1:15:14
of life for a particular asset, that obviously creates an additional amount of work on the
- 1:15:18
asset side, right?
- 1:15:20
To create those particular stages of that mesh's lifespan, right?
- 1:15:24
Yes, yeah, it does.
- 1:15:26
Yeah, I think that kind of like in a forest, like one thing that was really important for
- 1:15:32
the environment team was kind of showing not just one kind of monolithic tree, but having
- 1:15:37
different kind of varieties.
- 1:15:38
So you can see that it's just like a living forest that like grows and has different stages
- 1:15:42
of life.
- 1:15:43
And it definitely is a lot of work.
- 1:15:46
Because now you're not just making the tree at the adult stage, you're making it at the
- 1:15:50
sapling, you're making it at the other.
- 1:15:52
And then talk to me a little bit about kind of how we achieve that scaling between these
- 1:15:57
different stages.
- 1:15:58
I think the first thing we wanted to achieve is to make sure that environment artists can
- 1:16:03
place them at the painted stage so that it sets up the general environment.
- 1:16:10
And then creating multiple states that it iterates over efficiently.
- 1:16:14
Once you can chop down like adult stage and goes, for example, to empty, it has to make
- 1:16:19
sure it replicates to every other player.
- 1:16:22
And then it transitioned into a sapling stage, into young stage.
- 1:16:26
And all the data needs to make sure it propagates to every client that sees it.
- 1:16:30
And make sure that also the bandwidth is not too large.
- 1:16:34
Because we want to, you know, keep the network traffic a little cheaper.
- 1:16:38
Exactly.
- 1:16:39
We don't want you to run through the forest in like 400 megabytes.
- 1:16:42
Oh my God.
- 1:16:44
Exactly.
- 1:16:45
Corey, obviously, you know, design has some significant intents when it comes to the variety
- 1:16:50
of the types of gatherables you have access to.
- 1:16:54
And as many of our players know, the professions that relate to these particular gatherables
- 1:17:00
and what you can do with them are also expansive.
- 1:17:03
How do you guys on design go about kind of architecting what that pyramid, so to speak,
- 1:17:09
of gatherables are within the world?
- 1:17:11
It is the base of the economy, right?
- 1:17:13
So all the processing professions and crafting professions kind of start with what's gathered
- 1:17:18
from the world.
- 1:17:19
And we start by like determining what needs to be fulfilled.
- 1:17:25
So players need armor and consumables and weapons.
- 1:17:28
So each one of those things sort of like fits in their lane.
- 1:17:31
And we need to define what things should exist in the world so that we can make those, right?
- 1:17:35
So that was kind of the first step.
- 1:17:38
Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:17:39
Now, obviously, it's interesting to see when you go up to a particular rock and you mine
- 1:17:45
it.
- 1:17:46
It takes obviously some amount of time that it takes to gather that particular resource.
- 1:17:53
What types of profession-related progression can influence that time that's spent?
- 1:17:59
But also, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, there's an element of prospecting
- 1:18:05
that occurs.
- 1:18:07
Talk to me a little bit about that and how it interacts with the system.
- 1:18:09
Yeah, so we definitely want progression, right?
- 1:18:12
Like the more time you spend mining and the more effort you put into understanding how
- 1:18:16
mining works in Ashes, along with other gathering professions, we want you to get better at
- 1:18:21
it.
- 1:18:22
And there's different ways, right?
- 1:18:23
You can get gear, you can progress in the profession, and like you said, get faster
- 1:18:27
and maybe find better stuff.
- 1:18:29
And one of the ways to be able to find better stuff is through surveying.
- 1:18:32
And surveying is a way of kind of scanning the area, narrowing down what you're looking
- 1:18:36
for.
- 1:18:37
You know, maybe there's one recipe for a golden sword that you're trying to fill for your
- 1:18:41
friend and he wants it to be of a certain level and certain power.
- 1:18:45
And so you need this specific gold ore.
- 1:18:48
So you're not looking around for any gold, you want the specific gold.
- 1:18:51
So we want to give players the tools to be able to kind of find what they're looking
- 1:18:55
for.
- 1:18:56
And that'll be another thing that they can get better at and work with others to increase
- 1:19:00
their productivity.
- 1:19:01
Absolutely.
- 1:19:02
And with having such an expansive list of gatherables that are available, walk us through
- 1:19:07
a little bit of what that pipeline looks like.
- 1:19:09
I mean, what does it take to actually make a specific type of tree or a specific plant?
- 1:19:14
How does that process begin?
- 1:19:15
Tell us a little bit about that.
- 1:19:16
I think kind of the first step in any type of kind of asset creation like that would
- 1:19:21
be kind of gathering like a reference board, kind of finding out what sort of like real
- 1:19:26
life things we want to draw off of to make sure that's just kind of grounded.
- 1:19:30
And then also kind of deciding sort of what kind of like a mood we want to elicit, you
- 1:19:33
know, like, is it going to be a spooky tree?
- 1:19:35
Is it going to be more like, oh, like, is it going to be like a little bit more like
- 1:19:39
it's going to be magical, you know, if you feel like awe and kind of establishing that
- 1:19:42
so we kind of know what to go into the process.
- 1:19:45
The identity of the asset.
- 1:19:46
Exactly.
- 1:19:47
Yeah.
- 1:19:48
Yeah, get that like, get that mood.
- 1:19:49
And yeah, after that is kind of established, we would go into a program called SpeedTree
- 1:19:55
Normally, which kind of allows us artists to set up kind of these like, almost little
- 1:20:00
logic systems, you know, like, we want trees with like branches that are approximately
- 1:20:04
the size, you know, and kind of randomize that so it has that kind of organic element
- 1:20:09
that just, you know, kind of the human brain can't quite can't quite do as well.
- 1:20:13
But yeah, so after we have that, and we have all our geo done, we would then import into
- 1:20:18
Unreal where we would set up all of our like wind data and all of our seasonal technology.
- 1:20:23
Yeah.
- 1:20:24
And there's a lot that goes into that, right?
- 1:20:25
Because when we talked about this in an earlier segment about seasons and how that impacts
- 1:20:30
kind of all the assets that are within the world, because they all have to not just have
- 1:20:33
stages of growth when they've been gathered, but they also need to reflect the season as
- 1:20:39
well.
- 1:20:40
So that tree might lose leaves, right?
- 1:20:42
Or that plant might not even be available within a particular season.
- 1:20:46
And that's something that ties into on the engineering side, which is something you have
- 1:20:51
to take into account on the spawners, right?
- 1:20:54
And how you're kind of bringing that up.
- 1:20:55
How does that work?
- 1:20:56
Well, we just need to hook we basically hook into the seasonal tech.
- 1:21:01
And we query our service to figure out, okay, is this a winter?
- 1:21:05
Is this spring?
- 1:21:06
Is this summer?
- 1:21:08
And when the tree transitions to state to another, we check, okay, is this supposed
- 1:21:13
to happen during winter?
- 1:21:14
Is this supposed to happen during spring?
- 1:21:16
What kind of yield it's supposed to maybe give, right?
- 1:21:18
And that manager doesn't just take into account necessarily all that information as well,
- 1:21:23
but it also takes into account another system that we talked a little bit about, which is
- 1:21:27
land management.
- 1:21:28
And that can also affect kind of spawn rate, frequency, density within a particular area,
- 1:21:35
length and longevity of time to promote to different stages.
- 1:21:38
Tell me a little bit about your expectations for land management as it affects things like
- 1:21:43
gathering and crafting as a whole.
- 1:21:45
Yeah, my expectations are that it creates cool entry points for content.
- 1:21:50
You know, players have different expectations of the things that they want to achieve for
- 1:21:54
themselves and they extend that out to groups like their guilds or their node and whatever,
- 1:21:59
right?
- 1:22:00
So, you know, you might not want to chop down every single tree outside of your node because
- 1:22:04
you like using those trees for harvesting the fruit, right?
- 1:22:07
And if another group of players wants to cut them down because they want wood before a
- 1:22:11
siege, right?
- 1:22:12
Like those are conflicts that players will need to work out and interact with each other
- 1:22:16
to solve, right?
- 1:22:17
And then we can hook up into content that we create ourselves, not necessarily player
- 1:22:22
to player where maybe you cut down all the trees and you piss off a tree ant.
- 1:22:25
It's a predicate, right?
- 1:22:27
Exactly.
- 1:22:28
So that's why we think that land management is so interesting because it gives us a way
- 1:22:31
to hook into all these different content points and do cool stuff.
- 1:22:35
And so much in the world of Vera is built around this idea of players committed action
- 1:22:41
and the action has a response from the system or from other players potentially, right?
- 1:22:46
And as we're talking about how land management is just another value that can represent some
- 1:22:52
predicate system in that event or in allowing a policy, perhaps you're a more industrious
- 1:22:57
node if you constantly keep the land management at a low value, right?
- 1:23:02
All of those things are just giving the tools that we get to implement around either from
- 1:23:06
a narrative perspective or from a systemic one.
- 1:23:09
And that I think creates a very dynamic atmosphere that not a lot of players are accustomed to
- 1:23:14
in the games that we play, which offer things like gathering.
- 1:23:18
You know, typically it's a very kind of binary system, I do a thing, I get a thing.
- 1:23:23
But here I do a thing and there's a whole host of stuff that can happen as a response.
- 1:23:27
Exactly.
- 1:23:28
Yeah, the non-binary part of it is very important because it's not always this action equals
- 1:23:34
bad, right?
- 1:23:35
Right.
- 1:23:36
It is a whole slew of options of things that can happen.
- 1:23:39
So even if, you know, you think that cutting down all of the trees is going to piss off
- 1:23:43
the tree ant, there might be a whole slew of positive things that happen, you know,
- 1:23:48
after you defeat the tree ant or when the tree ant spawns and becomes someone that you
- 1:23:53
can interact with in the world.
- 1:23:54
So it's not always black and white, whether an action is good or bad, which I think is
- 1:23:58
very interesting.
- 1:23:59
It is very interesting.
- 1:24:00
And for example, that tree ant, many years ago, I think circa 2018, we showed a big tree
- 1:24:09
ant model that Keith worked on.
- 1:24:11
Remember that guy?
- 1:24:12
Yeah.
- 1:24:13
I don't know.
- 1:24:14
Maybe we'll see him if people chop down a little too many trees.
- 1:24:17
That might be interesting.
- 1:24:19
So obviously you're all MMO gamers.
- 1:24:20
We've been talking with a lot of MMO gamers here at the studio.
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Many of us are MMO gamers.
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What is the profession you're looking most forward to?
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Go ahead.
- 1:24:30
Oh yeah.
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What type of thing do you like to do from a crafting artisan perspective?
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Oh, I think my personal favorite would be kind of anything in line with like the, like
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harvesting, gathering potions.
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Oh, alchemist.
- 1:24:47
Okay.
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Very nice.
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You like getting the perfect ingredients to make some type of potion that's going to come
- 1:24:53
in handy during some engagement.
- 1:24:55
That's awesome.
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I also love alchemy by the way.
- 1:24:59
Don't tell anybody that.
- 1:25:02
What about you Alec?
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For me, probably it would be whichever corner is the market.
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Oh, there you go.
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Opportunist.
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You're an economist.
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I'm an opportunist.
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There you go.
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So whatever is most worthwhile.
- 1:25:12
Exactly.
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Especially with our node system, a lot of nodes going to need a lot of materials, resources.
- 1:25:18
We're going to have to, yeah, it's just, you know.
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And that actually brings up a really good point because the way that the environment
- 1:25:27
is constructed, a lot of these gatherables and ergo the craftable components of those
- 1:25:34
gatherables are determined by location.
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And so you're not just creating one giant economy, you're also creating local economies
- 1:25:44
as well, which relate to the transition of those goods across the world, which can make
- 1:25:48
it more opportunistic with some danger or risk involved.
- 1:25:51
Yeah.
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That's super interesting.
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I like that.
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I'm kind of there too.
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What about you Cory?
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For me, it'd be really hard to choose just one.
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I love fishing.
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I'll try fishing in every game no matter what.
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I really like crafting of equipment, whether that's like armor or weapons.
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There's something special to me about outfitting yourself or another person for an adventure
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that they're going on.
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You have that interaction of like, what do you need?
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Yeah, I can make that for you.
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There's initial investment and they take that thing with them and they may trade it and
- 1:26:20
sell it and that item specifically has a story, right?
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It's not the same as consumables where you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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You use like a hundred of them a day.
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And then engineering is really interesting to me.
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I like little gadgets.
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Those usually end up being the things that break some of the rules and you get to do
- 1:26:36
special funny things.
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So engineering is always like very, very interesting.
- 1:26:41
Very interesting.
- 1:26:42
You know, it actually brings up something else that I was just thinking about, which
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is essentially that you're working on something with engineering regarding kind of a gameplay
- 1:26:55
layer around crafting itself, right?
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Talk to me a little bit about what that is.
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So yeah, we're trying to put together kind of a more haptic or rooted in the world.
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I guess the right word is like a diegetic experience for making weapons.
- 1:27:11
You know, oftentimes in other games or other MMOs I've played, there's a lot on the front
- 1:27:17
end of like, you get stuff and you have the stuff and then you push a button and the item
- 1:27:22
comes out.
- 1:27:23
Right, the execution is just a button.
- 1:27:24
Yeah, and all of the, there is like skill and some gameplay to that portion, right?
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And I think that that will also be great in Ashes where, you know, I have to acquire all
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the things and there's risk and there's trade.
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But I also think that it's interesting to have skill involved in the actual crafting.
- 1:27:42
So what we're trying to put together is a way to make weapons where it feels like you're
- 1:27:47
actually making the thing.
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And how you do in making the weapon results in what the stats of the weapon are going
- 1:27:54
to be.
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Very cool.
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So that's what we're working on.
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And that's something that I think players are going to have an opportunity next year
- 1:28:01
to kind of take a look at.
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And we're going to have an opportunity to collect good feedback from you around whether
- 1:28:06
or not you like that element of gameplay layer associated with the crafting profession, right?
- 1:28:13
I think that's going to be super cool.
- 1:28:15
Well guys, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me and our audience,
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of course.
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They're very grateful for your contributions to making Ashes of Creation a reality.
- 1:28:24
And you guys are doing a phenomenal job.
- 1:28:26
So thank you very well done.
- 1:28:27
We are going to be moving on next to a little video that showcases this last year with our
- 1:28:34
studio and the project.
- 1:28:42
Building games is difficult.
- 1:28:43
That being said, we built an amazing team at Intrepid.
- 1:28:47
And it feels very much like a family.
- 1:28:49
So getting up each day and going into the office and working with the colleagues at
- 1:28:57
Intrepid is a delight.
- 1:29:24
What a year it has been.
- 1:29:27
The team has been hard at work.
- 1:29:29
You've seen the progress of Ashes of Creation over the last four or five years.
- 1:29:34
And you've seen where we've come from in that time to our Alpha One presentation.
- 1:29:38
And you can see how things develop.
- 1:29:43
Super excited with the character creator.
- 1:29:45
And I have very rarely ever encountered a character creator, even at this state, that
- 1:29:51
is as capable as what our team has been able to develop.
- 1:29:57
Every day that passes and I'm watching the tech continue to get refined and the environments
- 1:30:04
continue to get these passes.
- 1:30:06
And I'm just talking to the team and like, so good.
- 1:30:13
The new world map in all its 1200 square kilometer glory.
- 1:30:33
I love what the new skybox is doing.
- 1:30:36
I mean, it's just visually great.
- 1:30:45
I am so happy to see the excitement from the MMORPG community at large.
- 1:30:51
Like that looks crazy good.
- 1:30:56
That is just oh my god.
- 1:30:58
Like whenever people are talking about how they want fantasy games, this is what they're
- 1:31:03
thinking.
- 1:31:05
It grows into a horse.
- 1:31:06
I didn't know that.
- 1:31:09
This game looks amazing.
- 1:31:16
Way too good.
- 1:31:17
Ashes of creation.
- 1:31:18
It will be the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG ever attempted.
- 1:31:23
No, no.
- 1:31:24
It looks good.
- 1:31:25
It does look good.
- 1:31:26
Grab yourself a...
- 1:31:27
The team behind Ashes of Creation are some of the most talented developers.
- 1:31:42
What we're building in Ashes of Creation is the ultimate desire of a true MMORPG Ashes
- 1:32:05
team.
- 1:32:12
Thank you everyone so much for joining us.
- 1:32:14
That's going to be a wrap for us for our December livestream update.
- 1:32:17
We hope that you enjoyed it and loved getting to know our developers.
- 1:32:20
That was so much fun chatting with everyone.
- 1:32:23
They're so sweet.
- 1:32:24
Everyone's amazing and you can just see the vibe is just so...
- 1:32:27
Everyone's just passionate and loves what they do and that's kind of like the best part
- 1:32:30
of the game.
- 1:32:31
Super talented.
- 1:32:32
I know.
- 1:32:33
Just a great team.
- 1:32:34
Absolutely.
- 1:32:35
Of course, if you have feedback for us, head on over to our forums, forums.ashesofcreation.com.
- 1:32:39
We love hearing from you guys.
- 1:32:40
We interact with you always.
- 1:32:42
We're sending reports to our developers so they can continue to make sure that we're
- 1:32:45
on the same page as we move forward in creating the world of Verra.
- 1:32:48
Those reports are super important.
- 1:32:51
Really they are.
- 1:32:52
The community does such a great job of picking out all the tidbits of information from the
- 1:32:56
players on the forums, on Twitter, on Reddit, everywhere.
- 1:32:59
They read everything.
- 1:33:00
They compile it in a huge report and there's an hour that we kind of sit down with the
- 1:33:04
developments of particular features and or systems and kind of hear from the community
- 1:33:10
team all the thoughts that you guys give about these particular subjects.
- 1:33:13
So it's very important.
- 1:33:14
Make sure you guys go and give commentary on stuff.
- 1:33:17
And most often the thing is, wow, that's already stuff we're already planning and we're already
- 1:33:20
thinking of.
- 1:33:21
So I think that's the validation that we're all on the same page.
- 1:33:24
So thank you so much for joining us.
- 1:33:26
And of course you can follow us in all places at Ashes of Creation.
- 1:33:29
We are constantly posting and giving you guys updates on a daily basis and interacting with
- 1:33:33
you and we love all your fan art.
- 1:33:35
So please keep sending them back to us.
- 1:33:38
So good.
- 1:33:39
2022 isn't just the last year.
- 1:33:42
This is going to say like it's really cool to just look back at what we accomplished
- 1:33:45
this year in 2022 as a team.
- 1:33:47
The growth of the studio has been huge, but it's not done yet.
- 1:33:50
We're still going.
- 1:33:51
We're going strong into 2023.
- 1:33:53
So keep that in mind.
- 1:33:54
You guys check out our page and come join our family and direct others, people out there,
- 1:34:00
your favorite developers, stuff that you've seen.
- 1:34:03
Make sure to go out on Twitter and share the careers opportunities that that interrupted
- 1:34:07
because 20th is going to be a huge year.
- 1:34:09
Oh my gosh.
- 1:34:10
Yeah.
- 1:34:11
I had done a big thing for Steven to put together a whole like spreadsheet.
- 1:34:13
So we've got a lot to come.
- 1:34:17
It looks super good.
- 1:34:18
And guys, you haven't seen anything yet.
- 1:34:21
2023 is going to be an unbelievable year for the studio, for the project.
- 1:34:25
We have so much to show you.
- 1:34:26
I know Margaret is just chomping at the bits to get in there and get all this stuff and
- 1:34:31
share with you guys.
- 1:34:33
And you know, honestly, I just want to comment on the fact that this development that we
- 1:34:37
have, this rapport that we've built with you guys as a community and the safety we feel
- 1:34:42
in sharing works in progress with you, sharing the development along its lifespan of development
- 1:34:48
with each of you out there is very important and near and dear to our hearts.
- 1:34:52
So keep tuning in in 2023.
- 1:34:55
Keep commenting, give us your feedback, give us your thoughts, give us the experiences
- 1:34:58
that you guys have had in the past because it makes the potential for Ashes of Creation
- 1:35:03
to be such that much more of a great game when you guys are participating in it.
- 1:35:07
And that's why we do these things.
- 1:35:08
That's why we invite you in.
- 1:35:10
We show you what we're working on on a monthly basis because we want you guys to give us
- 1:35:14
your feedback.
- 1:35:16
And so we cannot thank you all enough for being a part of that in 2022.
- 1:35:20
And 2023 is going to be an awesome year and we will see you in January next month.
- 1:35:26
Bye guys.