Talk:2021-12-23 Livestream

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Intro

• 0:02

[Music]

• 0:19

hello everyone welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation december development update we

• 0:25

hope that you have all been having a wonderful december and uh we're excited

• 0:31

we've got a lot of cool things to showcase um but first and foremost obviously welcome to our creative

• 0:37

director stephen sharif as per usual i'm excited to be here oh yeah john

• 0:44

never goes light on christmas we now have four christmas trees in the

• 0:50

house did you have it already set up before thanksgiving even uh yes technically actually i believe

• 0:56

the first christmas tree went up on halloween so uh yeah he was super super festive and and

• 1:02

we watched the uh nightmare before christmas so this is perfect that's so cute

• 1:09

brian you're watching i want i want that kind of relationship no i'm just kidding i'm just calling him out i'm just

• 1:15

kidding i love i love the uh the stream overlay yeah oh this is your

• 1:21

first time maybe seeing it yeah i haven't seen this yet mike's great mike did an amazing job mike is our graphics

• 1:27

designer he if you've seen a lot of the graphics that we've done over the past few years um he's he is the the one that

• 1:35

does it all so amazing we also have our video editor too who has been putting together a lot of cool

• 1:40

stuff too so it's been exciting it's cool seeing our team grow um

• 1:45

and of course uh i'm margaret crone i'm your community marketing lead and today we have quite a few things but

• 1:52

we want to i want to remind you if you're watching this over on youtube to make sure to subscribe to us there's a bunch of you who are watching but you're

• 1:59

not subscribed you don't want to miss out on any cool videos because we might have some coming in the upcoming days um

• 2:05

and also following us on all of the places all of our social channels get that out of the way

• 2:10

i'm not used to i'm not used to wearing this by the way do i have to wear a little stream because

• 2:15

margaret texted me this morning and said you have to wear something festive and i said i don't have anything festive

• 2:25

yeah i think that's actually at the office because i took that off right after i don't have anything to give some context it's a

• 2:32

magic the gathering shirt that says yes because you tap hannah yeah tap mana to give context for people

• 2:38

who don't know right what i'm going on about uh it's kind of like a ugly christmas sweater

• 2:44

but honestly no one's shirts were very ugly this year for christmas we gotta call it something else but

• 2:51

yeah i i i didn't see anybody with a knuckley sweater actually yeah was there somebody without a sweater oh you know

• 2:56

who had an ugly sweater i think alec alexie had an ugly sweater no his uh his was cool it had like little pepes

• 3:02

everywhere oh yeah well if i was voting i would have voted his number one basically i hope everyone has their

• 3:09

eggnog i don't have eggnog but i have a coco moco latte

• 3:15

like a hot cocoa with coffee ooh that eggnog that's pretty good

• 3:21

i think john snuck some like whiskey in that or something john

• 3:26

you know usually you're drinking out of like a wine glass with water in it i'm like it's like it's not wine guys it's just water i have my christmas glass

• 3:33

it's a little uh i don't know little gnomes i was going to say dwarves but yeah i guess they're not they are not dwarves do not start those are

• 3:41

fighting words sir dumb dwarves do not ever cook

• 3:48

no no me neither we should think of that [Music]

• 3:54

what okay anyways reeling it back in um too much whiskey we're very excited uh

• 3:59

for today obviously um it's kind of the end this is our last day of work for the season and then

• 4:05

we're going into like a little bit of a holiday for us at intrepid um and then everyone's gonna come back refreshed and

• 4:11

revived for the new year we have a lot of cool stuff planned for 2022. uh two yeah 2022. got the you're right uh 2022

• 4:19

have we time traveled it will be it will be we're hoping to um so

• 4:24

we're going to go over some quick reminders studio update design update environment art update and character art

• 4:29

update and we'll also do a q a um we do have a lot of videos to show you today so uh so many videos

• 4:37

um the delay the delay is gonna be worth it i think so i know we delayed a week

Reminders

• 4:44

but uh i was like stephen this is the first time i've had to like fully displace no and i and i was i was

• 4:51

i was really trepidatious also um and i like texted margaret the day

• 4:57

before the stream and i was like margaret i mean this is a really off chance you know it's likely not gonna happen maybe

• 5:03

five percent for it i was like it's five percent chance but i just need to know is it gonna be okay if we push the

• 5:09

stream a week and i was like no she was like well my staff is gone

• 5:15

next week all my staff is gone next week so i'm alone uh but i think factnar is actually here in chat assistant from the

• 5:22

airport what a what a badass um because he said he was bored and i was like all right we'll just change

• 5:27

your time off on the clock thing um so thank you vagner from for working for

• 5:33

uh working on chat moderation via the i guess airport

• 5:39

yep i don't know um but yeah we have amazing staff i think a bunch of them are actually watching this little watch

• 5:44

party at the office too you know to uh yeah i think benoit brought in some

• 5:49

like chocolate croissants i'm actually sad i didn't i'm not there but i think there's a little watch party going on in

• 5:55

the office hi guys we love you thank you for all your hard work um so i'll just quickly go through

• 6:01

our reminders and we'll get to it um so of course we had a web update on december 14th if you didn't know

• 6:08

this may have caused some of you guys to have to put some uh information in when you log in the first time

• 6:13

after this update the reason for that is we've done a lot of sso optimizations

• 6:19

we've also changed contact emails so they're now unique per account this is going to solve a lot of issues that we've we're having with people's

• 6:25

accounts i think there were some people who had multiple accounts and didn't realize they did so we're just trying to fix that

• 6:31

and adjust things because from like legacy stuff that was going on prior um we've also uh made a lot of error

• 6:38

message changes and copy changes in order to ensure that um you know that it's a little bit more clear of what's

• 6:44

going on and then also for security reasons some of those things have been a little bit more blanketed so um they're

• 6:50

not as obvious and of course we fixed a bunch of bugs that were coming up throughout the

• 6:55

updates that we've been doing and we have some future updates in future sso uh changes that we're going to be doing

• 7:01

in the upcoming months so stay tuned for those um and we'll have probably a few other pages that are going to be updated

• 7:07

like the support page uh the designs i mentioned were are approved and now those have been

• 7:13

starting to be implemented and we're testing and doing a lot of back-end testing on those uh for ourselves

• 7:18

internally before we push it live similarly to what we did with this update for the changes so if you

• 7:24

encounter any issues please contact us via either our support twitter or you can put in a ticket yourself and um

• 7:31

for most things we will want you to put a ticket in because we'll have to like look at data stephen's like playing around with the

• 7:38

scarf you don't like it around your neck huh no actually i've never really been a scarf person yeah it's weird to wear

• 7:45

like uh like a scarf around the neck for sure yeah um so the next thing we have here

• 7:51

is uh we do have our cosmetic swapping over this will be the frozen festivities

• 7:57

on january 12 2022 at 11am so if you want to get grab these snag them up also

• 8:03

something that i noticed was that uh the the costume is actually supposed to be blue but it was read in in the

• 8:10

concept that we put out uh so we're gonna keep it red but yeah something that i noticed too late

• 8:16

um we also have i believe new emotes so if you hop on over to our

• 8:23

discord and i think they're actually doing like a discord watch party right now if you want to chat with people at the same time as watching this um we

• 8:29

have some cool new emotes available for you guys based on some recommendations so if you have other emotes that you'd

• 8:35

like to see let us know and we'll see what we can do about them uh you know fee and nick are always ready to uh help

• 8:42

you express your emotions and anger and love i like the rip ashes pile yeah you

• 8:48

like that i want an animated version of it where it like the ashes like like

• 8:53

yeah um of course we have our latest um

• 8:59

dev discussion that went out which is how do you feel about in-game holidays that line up time-wise with out-of-game

• 9:05

holidays do you prefer that your game world has a matching celebrations or would you prefer to keep your real world

• 9:11

holidays away from the keyboard and you guys gave a lot of great feedback on this we've been compiling

• 9:16

data on it and we've been we'll be sending that over to our lovely development team

• 9:22

and they'll be taking all of that into consideration but if you still have ideas or thoughts feel free to hop on

Studio Update

• 9:27

over there and provide those to us we always continue to keep those things updated

• 9:32

and our next one is going to be on griefing i know this is a huge topic in the mmo space so if you have thoughts be

• 9:39

prepared to bring them in our january's dub discussion because it's gonna it's gonna be fire i'm sure

• 9:46

and we also have kind of our last guild gatherings we may bring these back again

• 9:52

but uh that will be if the design team feels they need them uh but this last one is how do you feel about spies and

• 9:59

double agents so very spies and intriguing vibes definitely give us your feedback as much

• 10:05

as possible over there and we'll be wrapping up that shortly as well mike my guild always had uh ongoing joke

• 10:12

that whenever we were in the middle of a raid or some type of like operation or whatever and somebody would join the discord or

• 10:19

the team speak late and they'd be like hey guys where you at where am i porting to everyone would be like spy spy espeon

• 10:28

because whatever we know we'd have always often often times in our my play

• 10:33

history we would have spies constantly in the guild you had spies in other games okay this

• 10:40

is uh this is karma but i had to no it wasn't karma mine was reactive i had to

• 10:45

have spies because they had spies um but yeah whenever we would show up for

• 10:50

something and there would be a giant raid of people all prepared to fight us we knew what was happening

• 10:56

yes um and like the last thing that i have for reminders is that our content creator program applications are still

• 11:02

open we may be closing those in the future so if you're a content creator feel free to update that or if you

• 11:07

already have applied you can also edit if you have updated information that you want to share um

• 11:13

and we'll keep you guys informed about that whenever we close it and we start going through those and inviting people in the future

• 11:19

so with that i'm going to toss it over to you steven to go over studio updates awesome the studio update is

• 11:28

amazing things have been going very well um this december we've gotten a lot of stuff actually

• 11:34

it's interesting how as the year end kind of wraps up everything kind of that you've been working on and has been kind

• 11:41

of in pieces in like november and october and you're like oh we're gonna push this to january it all just seems

• 11:46

to like shore up and get in a nice spot in a good space and kind of you know close up especially with what

• 11:53

we've been working on that you guys are gonna see you know in this video we're going to show you here shortly multiple videos multiple videos

• 12:00

um so it's been exciting to see the the team hard at work you know all of our accomplishments that we've had this year

• 12:06

2021 was a huge year um and you know really the the

• 12:12

the motivation at the studio the um the morale is very high uh and that's

• 12:17

always great to see you know whenever you're part of a team that has incredible passion and you get to share

• 12:22

that passion so sweet i know they were all sending messages to each other

• 12:28

congratulations yeah big p is like we're not done with the game yet guys yeah i know he's like no no no congratulations yet

• 12:36

yeah so who's a mcp our lead programmer he's he comes into one of the one of our uh uh

• 12:42

channels that we use to kind of focus on certain efforts or

• 12:47

projects or whatever he jumps into the channel after everyone's like yeah great job you know i went in there there's an outstanding job everyone's like great

• 12:54

job they're all little emotes and make pea pops and it's like we're not done with the game yet there's no need to congratulate each other now

• 13:00

he's such a troll though everyone i know he's trolling but i told him i said mcp don't be a

• 13:05

scrooge for christmas congratulations are in order but yeah um

• 13:10

especially mcp because he did a lot of hard work on one of those um one of the things we're going to talk about today yeah um but yeah i know the

• 13:17

studio updated things things are going great it's it's nice to be back in studio obviously we're keeping an eye on you know covid and what's been happening

• 13:23

with that we're taking precautions but you know it's great to be great to be part of a team where

• 13:28

everyone's passionate about what they're doing and um this year has been a particularly illuminating one um

• 13:35

because of the accomplishments and uh you know things things are going

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good on the hiring front things are going well there we've had a few new additions to the team that started in december we have a few new that are

• 13:47

coming up in january we're going to be kicking off the new year with a pretty heavy focus

• 13:53

on um staffing up even more uh significantly more um the project is is

Design & Engineering Update

• 14:00

obviously ash's making an mmo is a big thing and making Ashes of Creation is a particularly big thing so

• 14:08

you need a lot of hands on deck and um you know it's great because we already have such talented devs and

• 14:14

we're getting a lot of a great talent pool um in the applications that we receive and interest from the industry

• 14:20

and the community and you guys all helping um on that front so on that front you know the big question that

• 14:26

everyone constantly asks us is uh in regards to a lead designer i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about

• 14:32

that yeah i just know that that's the question that's going to be asked that's not what we're announcing today

• 14:37

no no no no that's a great question um you know obviously a lead designer is very important aspect to the development

• 14:43

right now i've been assuming a lot of those responsibilities also delegating a lot of those responsibilities out to my senior designers who are very talented

• 14:49

our design team is is an awesome fantastic team we have incredible talent there um for me you know i am i'm a very

• 14:57

calculated individual when i move forward on something i i don't need to rush it i don't need to settle so

• 15:04

um for me it's a it's a it's a process that's going to take time and you know when i have landed on an

• 15:10

individual either internally from a promotion standpoint or externally of candidates that we've gone through and met with and

• 15:16

interviewed uh several of them who have even flown out to the studio and gotten pretty far in the process um for me this

• 15:23

is ashes is my baby and you know i want to make sure that one of the very most important roles is

• 15:30

is held by an individual that i can trust with that baby so it's going to be a process but when you

• 15:36

when when we find someone that i'm comfortable with you guys will be made aware

• 15:41

took him how many years to get me for community management

• 15:46

so um i think but we good thing we waited i don't know

• 15:51

it was a it was a lot for for us to come in and work on it was great yeah it was i actually saw

• 15:57

a comment in the chat that was like how is this community so lovely already and i was like oh our community is just amazing obviously

• 16:04

the community team and our volunteer mods have been wonderful at you know

• 16:09

building up this community and the content creators within our community like we just can't express how thankful we

• 16:16

are we like constantly tell you guys this but um it's just awesome to have a community

• 16:21

that's very invested and you know when we give you answers you spread those answers to other people so we're not

• 16:27

having to be in there 24 7 like answering stuff we do try to be um and i think people notice that we are kind of

• 16:33

in all of the spaces we have a very small team but we are we try our best to be on every social platform and

• 16:39

interacting with you guys on a daily basis and answering your questions so um we hope that you enjoy that

• 16:46

um anything else on the studio update side no i think that's it i think people want

• 16:53

to know why we delayed by a week the stream yeah for

• 16:59

an announcement yeah let's talk about that and move into the design segment

• 17:06

you know i've had actually had a lot of fun my heart's racing

• 17:12

don't say that you're going to make my heart we're always races before our live streams i'm always so nervous but i know

• 17:18

i i'm a little bit nervous too but honestly it's it's very exciting and and i'm i'm really happy with uh you know

• 17:24

the opportunity to share this with the community it's been it was really fun watching over this last

• 17:30

week since we made the delay announcement for the stream all the speculation and i would say i

• 17:36

would say of that speculation there were quite a few people who got it oh absolutely i would say about i was going

• 17:41

to say about 40 or 50 of the people the conversation was about the correct thing

• 17:48

um so kudos to you guys yeah kudos to you so before we show it

• 17:54

um i will talk a little bit about this obviously

• 17:59

the decision that we're going to reveal to you here shortly was something that we have been

• 18:05

contemplating over the last since last year actually

• 18:10

and it took a lot of evaluation and it took a lot of um

• 18:15

uh well actually you know i'll explain it after the video let's kind of have a strike team that we're working with yeah

• 18:21

yeah let's let's i think people are excited and want to see the video so let's we

• 18:26

can cut to the video too so we'll answer those questions and i'll also take note of any questions

• 18:31

that you guys ask in chat um if they're not part of that uh list um and i'll also ask those as well now i wa i want

• 18:38

to be clear um this video is about i'm gonna preface it just a little bit this video is about 20 minutes long um it's

• 18:44

me running through uh a new environment actually that you guys haven't seen a new area of the world

• 18:50

um one particular point of interest and a very large tower or whatnot

• 18:56

um i know everyone loves to see the new mount so i did make sure to include some of that in this video

• 19:02

you're such a troll when when i was watching the video and i saw i was like stephen so really the announcement is

• 19:07

about how we actually go about making that mounts so well those of you guys who guessed how mounts are made this

• 19:14

you really were spot on so well done there anyways i was like stephen i will beat

• 19:22

you up no more mouths uh but yeah we cut to the video we'll we'll talk a lot about it

• 19:28

afterwards um and yeah we'll see you in about 18 minutes

• 19:35

[Music]

• 19:49

[Music]

• 19:59

welcome everyone to our final update video for the year of 2021

• 20:05

and what a year it has been we are ending it with quite a significant update yes as you saw we

• 20:13

have officially begun the migration for Ashes of Creation to unreal engine 5.

• 20:19

now we've actually been evaluating the move to e5 since last year but our focus was really on getting the

• 20:25

project ready for alpha one so we didn't have much time to evaluate uefa no no

• 20:31

bad dear not like this hold on i'm sorry um

• 20:37

yes okay go away go back

• 20:43

perfect why are you stopping there all right um

• 20:48

so as i was saying uh we didn't really have time to evaluate ue5 until actually after

• 20:55

uh our alpha one finished in august the decision obviously was an important one and right after our alpha concluded

• 21:03

i created a strike team to assess our options and the best path forward for ashes

• 21:08

the team spent much of august and september weighing the benefits and risks with such a move and ultimately we

• 21:14

ended up with a unanimous decision to move forward with the initial migration so in october our engineers began the

• 21:22

process of merging our custom code base over to uv5 spearheaded by our glorious

• 21:27

lead programmer mcp and i am happy to now show you ashes in

• 21:32

unreal engine 5. as you can see we are in a

• 21:39

different biome one that you may not have seen before actually you might have seen this you may have seen some glimpses of it in the past videos but i

• 21:46

figured this area would uh would be a pretty good one given the holiday season uh if

• 21:52

you're in the northern hemisphere of course shout out to our aussie and kiwi friends

• 21:58

but as you can see the weather systems actually are present in this area at the moment which normally would give me some

• 22:03

pause as a player you know would have to consider the type of effects that cold weather would have

• 22:10

on my spells and my character's well-being but here is

• 22:16

ash's inn unreal engine 5. it's pretty cool pretty cool to be here um

• 22:22

now there's some creatures here obviously that we need to steer clear of but i

• 22:27

wanted to show off some of the initial work on implementing lumen and nanite into the world i heard there's a cave up

• 22:34

ahead uh we should check out maybe some massive tower with a giant dungeon underneath it you know who knows what we

• 22:41

might find um actually you know what maybe

• 22:48

we should change our clothing this guy looks he looks like he might be a little cold

• 22:56

see if i okay i might blend him in the snow though

• 23:03

let's see

• 23:19

oh

• 23:26

um now i'm not going to show off um

• 23:33

some of the updates to combat obviously there's been a significant amount of work that's being done from a

• 23:38

prototyping perspective on a lot of the combat changes and there will be

• 23:44

opportunities for us to kind of show that in the future over the coming months but i did want to

• 23:51

show off oh actually speaking of changes what you just saw there was some changes

• 23:58

to the locomotion in the game let me turn off ui

• 24:26

be gone

• 24:34

all right we shall not be bothered any further with them um oh my god

• 24:40

i just told you to leave me alone

• 24:45

um so we're going to enter this cave conflict uh and as i was talking a little bit about the uh locomotion the

• 24:52

character's locomotion you can see there's been some changes we have footsteps we have some tilting to the

• 24:57

side when you move around you can crouch must cram

• 25:04

you can also do some cool

• 25:13

a little bit of mantling maybe but as you can see the

• 25:19

lumen which is one of the global illumination features that ue5 um

• 25:25

offers and is likely going to be most noticeable in dungeons as it's going to do a better job than the skylight actor which historically

• 25:31

was exclusively used for world indirect illumination everywhere

• 25:37

the lumen actually provides a pretty realistic approach to lighting uh

• 25:42

utilizing dynamic global illumination makes the world come alive as you can

• 25:48

see here oh okay we have some more plants even doing here

• 26:07

i can stay back there there's more of them

• 26:36

they were attacking me all right let's take a look at some of the changes with the mantling

• 26:44

we can now jump up these cool obstacles oh it looks like there's been some corruption kind of

• 26:50

seeping in here that's kind of concerning just a little bit

• 26:59

but as you can see the effects of oh my

• 27:05

okay let me god dodge these guys real quick so i can get a stupid spot

• 27:12

get us up here

• 27:18

there we go all right as you can see taking a look up here

• 27:25

lumen has done a great job in

• 27:30

really bringing to to life this area

• 27:36

as you can see there's light bouncing off of the surfaces and kind of

• 27:42

casting into the rest of the cave which is a pretty cool

• 27:49

effect

• 28:10

oh

• 28:16

it feels terrible killing these guys but you know what am i going to do so take a look at the visual differences

• 28:21

i mean the great thing is you know you can go back i love how you can also see the detail

• 28:27

in the costume and the cloth that we have now

• 28:33

but you can you can go back and compare kind of the graphical fidelity that's that's in

• 28:39

alpha one and take a look at this video and i think we'll have another little trailer that kind of goes through the

• 28:46

the area and the world showing off

• 28:52

a lot of this updated visual stuff i mean honestly i've played a lot of end

• 28:59

of those in my days and i cannot tell you just how exciting

• 29:04

it is to see these types of graphics now especially with the hard work of

• 29:10

really talented individuals over at epic um who do a great job with unreal engine

• 29:15

and now this latest development with ue5 is really

• 29:20

presenting some next generation visual

• 29:26

come through here i mean look at this

• 29:33

i love the effects that jim did with the falling rocks

• 29:39

it's like a stream of dirt what is happening to these rocks oh yes shower me

• 29:45

shower me looks like corruption's kind of seeping in all over the place actually in this

• 29:51

area which is concerning

• 29:58

there we go okay i was told that there is

• 30:03

somewhere over here no here's one other thing about the mansion by the way you can kind of jump and attach to the surface

• 30:12

so as you're like jumping off of a ledge or falling down the side of some crazy mountain you can uh

• 30:19

you can grasp on to something maybe

• 30:32

can't you see i'm trying to record a video

• 30:39

um let's see oh

• 30:44

oh that was masterful masterful i tell you

• 30:51

just literally by the skin of my teeth

• 30:58

i mean i i love the lighting

• 31:09

let me through look at this it is beautiful

• 31:20

all right go away oh my god they're subterranean

• 31:28

yup i know there's so many plants in here

• 31:36

where is this tower

• 31:42

whoa do they not have a leash range

• 31:58

all right

• 32:03

[Music]

• 32:08

i think i you know what we're see do

• 32:15

i think it's time perhaps

• 32:21

perhaps that we take flight

• 32:33

oh that's beautiful is that the tower that's not the tower this is the

• 32:38

entrance to some type of dungeon oh by the way drake of the canopy

• 32:47

i believe you've seen this guy in the past he is a

• 32:52

beautiful beast a loyal beast

• 32:58

you're smart loyal um

• 33:03

i i mean honestly this is you guys got to let me know what you

• 33:09

think of this in chat and in the comments this video

• 33:15

but it is beautiful and you know the great thing is i'm running a 2080 right now i upgraded

• 33:22

um and the frames uh are doing great let me

• 33:29

then i turned off nameplate

• 33:37

there we go all right i think there's a tower up ahead

• 33:47

is this the tower reveal that my friends

• 33:54

is a tower you know

• 33:59

the levels inside and the dungeon that lies beneath this

• 34:15

but i heard that there's some great surprise for us up at the top

• 34:28

you know what we might just fly up what do you guys think oh you know

• 34:34

actually this would not be an update without some mounts let me show you some mounts

• 34:42

it's a skin walker say hello to this little guy

• 34:54

very very pretty

• 35:06

this is the

• 35:14

dear friend carmine chameleon

• 35:20

i believe he has a crazy tongue

• 35:25

oh that guy's great let's see his run oh my gosh i love his run

• 35:35

this guy's so cool all right wait for it it doesn't have steps for some reason it

• 35:40

steps out let us fly

• 35:55

cheating to the top of the

• 36:11

there's no towers over here what is that

• 36:19

is that what i think it is is that a christmas tree

• 36:26

that looks awesome oh you know what no more

• 36:32

i'm straighter he's very festive look at him

• 36:44

oh it's a christmas tree

• 36:49

yes how awesome is that what is in this present over here

• 36:59

let me walk up to it

• 37:05

oh my goodness it's a ue5 surprise

• 37:10

oh well everyone i hope you guys enjoyed this little glimpse of a new biome new

• 37:17

area the announcement for unreal engine 5 there's a lot of amazing and exciting things coming up in 2022

• 37:23

um the team has been hard at work in prepping for alpha 2

• 37:28

and we cannot wait to show you more of everything we've been working on

• 37:36

you all stay well and safe enjoy the holidays and have an awesome new year

• 37:48

[Music]

• 38:02

she [Music]

• 38:26

[Music]

• 38:38

[Music]

• 38:50

[Music]

• 40:28

[Music]

• 40:36

hello we hope that you all enjoyed it from the looks of the chat we think you did

• 40:42

um but i did see quite a few questions so um if you don't mind me stephen going ahead and asking those

• 40:48

yeah absolutely first and foremost is how does this upgrade to ue5 affect the

• 40:55

Ashes of Creation release timeline we knew that this question was going to be a question that came up i saw a couple of people asking it

• 41:01

yeah that's a good question so first before i get into the question i just want to say that um you know while we

• 41:08

completed the majority of uh migrating from ue4 to ue5 and

• 41:15

officially the entire development team will be on ue5 come the first or second week of january

• 41:24

what we wanted to show you here was that a lot of that legwork had already been done now that doesn't mean that the art

• 41:31

teams have had an opportunity to really employ lumen and nanite across the entirety of

• 41:39

the game yet but we did take this area in the world and we did incorporate

• 41:45

some of the lumen and nanite in that giant tower structure

• 41:50

and the dungeon assets that you saw the entrance stuff so

• 41:56

you're seeing lumen and nanite at work there and obviously you know this is going to get in maybe into a little bit

• 42:01

more on the technical side you know not every obviously not everybody's interested in hearing a lot of the technical stuff but

• 42:07

um you know i'm happy to go into it a little bit yeah we do have our uh recommended specs on our kb articles on

• 42:13

our support page if you want to check that out that has not changed but if those update if those do change at any point we will update them for you guys

• 42:20

and we'll make sure you're all notified of that absolutely so on the question of timeline and how ue moving to ue5 will

• 42:27

affect kind of what our internal anticipated delivery date is

• 42:32

um so a big portion of this is there's a lot of front-end work that's necessary

• 42:38

um for us front loaded so to speak as we're doing the migration over as we're taking a look at our assets and

• 42:46

you know convert them over into nanite but in the long run what this provides Ashes of Creation

• 42:53

what it provides the project is continued support on a new engine from epic for ue5 right you have to

• 43:00

understand ue4 began development like i think 2004 or 2005

• 43:07

and released and i think it was about eight or nine years ago so while ue4 is is a great engine um

• 43:15

you know there are certain focuses and then and technological endeavors that epic is doing on ue5 that won't

• 43:23

necessarily be supported by ue4 and we want to make sure given the lifespan of ashes and how long we intend this mmo to

• 43:30

last that when we made this decision early on during the development process

• 43:37

that we weren't going to exacerbate the amount of effort it would take to move over

• 43:43

later in the lifespan or after launch for the mmorpg so it made most sense for

• 43:48

us to do this now during our alpha stage of development right

• 43:54

there's a few things that are really integral to what ashes is doing um so first and

• 44:00

foremost um you know the there's large world support that's

• 44:06

intended in ue5 that was not present in ue4 previously in ue4 there were some

• 44:12

constraints on the size of an open world that you could have available before you ran into some issues

• 44:17

and you know obviously we were supplementing that constraint which was around 20 kilometers squared

• 44:23

with an under realm right um however one of the other main components that

• 44:29

and ue5 doesn't have that constraint right we're able to do a much larger world in that sense so um that's an

• 44:35

important aspect the other thing is is the the pipeline the way in which developers work in ue4 was through a

• 44:42

sub-level system right where you had to check out a sub-level and you only one developer at a time could work within

• 44:48

that sub-level however ue5 now utilizes uh the world loading in cells rather and

• 44:56

this allows for artists and designers uh working to be able to work in the same

• 45:01

level without having to lock it to just one person at a time uh that's a huge

• 45:06

benefit given the nature of what an mmo is right and how much exists really in these sub

• 45:13

levels or it now sells um yeah from a really slow standpoint it's like basically imperfect i have to check

• 45:19

something out and then in order for someone else to check it out they have to like message me be like hey can you check that in so that i can check that

• 45:24

out because i need to implement my thing it's or this person left for the day and they won't be back until the morning and i

• 45:30

that yeah right yep so is need there's a is a major pipeline improvement um in just the sheer

• 45:37

capacity of people who can work on it on a particular location in the world at one time

• 45:42

um so so as i was saying what effect does this have on the timeline of Ashes of Creation as i said

• 45:48

there's going to be a few months where we're going through we're taking stock of everything that needs to be migrated

• 45:54

over and we're addressing some of the bugs that come with that type of migration and moving the project over

• 45:59

there's going to be some bugs and stuff that's present but in the long run

• 46:04

um it will significantly improve the development process um and that was a

• 46:10

major point in in kind of you know how he came to this conclusion and just to give you a little bit of background

• 46:15

right um you know obviously last year we we have a very close relationship

• 46:21

working relationship with epic great great team over at epic very talented

• 46:26

individuals an amazing company and you know we

• 46:32

we kind of you know it's important for us to always keep on top of the latest technologies

• 46:37

it's important for us to you know we pride ourselves in keeping up with that latest tech and people have been asking

• 46:43

us about unreal five for like ever i mean you guys have been asking and we've been continuing to tell you

• 46:48

every live stream for the past few months that we're looking into it but we don't want to make hasty decisions right

• 46:54

right absolutely i mean we have the luxury of not having to make hasty decisions right we don't need to rush something out to the public that's not

• 47:01

going to be a good experience and ultimately the purpose of priding ourselves and keeping up with the latest tech is that we can deliver so that we

• 47:08

can deliver the best experience to our players right that's a a very im important you know point for us

• 47:16

um so you know when alpha two alpha one ended in august um i commissioned our

• 47:22

strike team which was which consisted of some artists our leads and engineers to go take a look

• 47:29

at what it would mean to migrate over to ue5 and they spent the better part of

• 47:34

august and september doing that and then presenting me with a

• 47:40

recommendation which was unanimous to make the move to ue5 you know vetting all the components that

• 47:46

ue5 has to offer and the benefits it would bring to the project so that's kind of

• 47:51

you know over october and november that's when mcp and the engineers uh began to

• 47:58

to do the base migration of our custom code base into ue5 see where there were any major

• 48:05

issues the great thing about ue5 is that it's it's mainly focused around updating the renderer

• 48:11

right giving access to nanite bloomin global illumination like those are those are big components there's other great

• 48:17

got great aspects of it but really it's a front-end change um and it

• 48:22

doesn't affect uh our networking layer it doesn't affect our back-end um you know uh code so

• 48:29

um yeah yeah um and we're going to talk a little bit more about the benefits too of it um

• 48:37

there are some questions here uh actually well let's go through all the ue5 ones and then i'll ask about some

• 48:42

other stuff that people asked in chat uh this one's a pretty quick one well the upgrade to ue5 affect the support opera

• 48:49

supported operating systems uh a lot of people are like linux question mark

• 48:54

no that's not that really doesn't play a factor um you know our unfortunately there's the

• 49:01

harsh reality of those of that additional operating system support is that there's just not a lot

• 49:07

of of players there's not a lot of you know linux users out there

• 49:13

from a player base so you know it's something that we'll evaluate in the future i haven't ruled it out necessarily would see how much work it

• 49:18

would take to do that but really like less than one percent of the player base is using you know linux as an operator

• 49:24

and we constantly get the console question as well and we're always telling you guys like currently we're

• 49:30

focused on pc and you know if we do end up later down the line you know expanding to console we'll let you guys

• 49:36

know let's let's do one thing at a time uh next up we have how will the upgrade to

• 49:41

ue5 impact the games required and recommended specs we just talked about that a little bit but i don't know if

• 49:47

you want to go into more details about that um you know

• 49:53

the thing about the spec is obviously we want to make it the game as accessible to everyone and in that sense the

• 49:58

scalability settings and the and the options that players will have to play the game at different quality levels um

• 50:06

is going to be is going to be the the big part of that question our goal is still

• 50:11

to that end to make it as accessible as possible so i don't yet know what

• 50:17

impact it's going to have on our recommended minimum spec i know we have some guidance on that in

• 50:24

our knowledge panel and faq section of the website um it's possible that that may

• 50:29

change um and you know we'll update obviously as soon as we

• 50:34

know what those changes are yeah if they're changed we'll let you know uh we'll post on the support site as well

• 50:40

as on the support twitter and stuff like that we'll let you guys know um but right now as is that is our min spec you

• 50:46

can go check it out over on our uh support page um yeah uh beyond that uh i

• 50:51

know you kind of talked a little bit about this but i don't know if you wanna it's a big question and it's uh

• 50:57

we could be here all day talking about it but um what is the process for upgrading from ue54 to ue5 um people are

• 51:05

kind of wondering if that's going to that's a that's a that's a big question is it going to

• 51:11

take us longer for development versus uh you know yeah the the process begins initially

• 51:16

obviously with with you know vetting what aspects of our code base and project um you know have bugs in part of

• 51:25

this migration that's something that engineers have obviously been spearheading as part of october and november's work um got a lot of that

• 51:32

addressed especially by mcp he did a great job on that front so

• 51:38

you know i think that we will likely be releasing some blog come the new year

• 51:43

um that kind of details out what that process looked like

• 51:48

moving from ue4 to ue5 it might be something that we do in collaboration with epic and they you know showcase

• 51:55

we'll see um but uh you know it is it is a comprehensive process and you know it

• 52:01

does have implications on the art side you know we have a significant amount of assets that have you know been created

• 52:07

obviously for Ashes of Creation being as large of a game as it is um and you know

• 52:13

there's going to be some some taking stock of those and seeing what's compatible from an anti perspective um

• 52:20

as well utilizing chaos and you know there's a lot of stuff there that that we want to take advantage of um and is

• 52:26

going to take some a little bit of front end time like i said front loaded time to uh to do

• 52:32

all right um now to go into some more things um are we using ue5 early access or waiting

• 52:38

for the full release i think we're using earlier obvious that we're using the early access um and

• 52:44

now i'm gonna go into like kind of some questions in regards to like what are some of these pieces that are beneficial for us um so obviously the first part is

Environment Update

• 52:52

what is nanite and how will that improve the visual effects that people are seeing um right here on the stream

• 52:57

actually yeah absolutely um nanite brings us really an entirely new approach to to

• 53:04

rendering and art workflows um you know now we can render more actors

• 53:09

with extremely high detail while eliminating the need to bake out normal map textures for artists essentially you

• 53:16

know what this means uh is that they can import high quality sculpted meshes directly into unreal five without really

• 53:22

having to reduce the poly count uh making the workflow more efficient while simultaneously improving the quality of

• 53:29

the art [Music] for example the tower scene that you saw that's made up of over i think it's like

• 53:36

five or six million polygons so the level of detail that the assets would

• 53:41

normally have had to make for that tower are automatically handled by nanite um

• 53:47

you know it's a it's a pretty powerful tool awesome my next question here and i think after

• 53:54

this question i may have another video that i want to show people and then we'll talk about that as we're as we're

• 54:00

showing that video um so what is lumen and how will that improve the lighting

• 54:06

um lumen lumen gives us uh a much more realistic approach to

• 54:13

lighting uh it utilizes a dynamic global illumination um that as you can see in

• 54:19

the video really brings the the world to life the previous global elimination methods

• 54:26

such as ray tracing gi were too expensive but lumen helped solve that problem in unreal five

• 54:34

global illumination essentially stimulates light by bouncing off of a surface and reflecting that light and the color

• 54:40

from the surface into the surrounding area so lumen's effects are most noticeable in dungeons

• 54:45

um it does a better job than the skylight actor which historically was exclusively

• 54:51

used for world indirect illumination everywhere skylight you know captures the lighting contribution of the sky

• 54:57

except the direct light coming from the sun and it uses that in a dungeon it was very inaccurate

• 55:03

right so what you don't actually have the sun in the dungeon right exactly and and

• 55:10

essentially what it boils down to is that lumen is going to greatly improve the visual fidelity and performance of the game um with the reduced work and

• 55:18

effort that's required by the art team making Ashes of Creation much more beautiful than in ue4

• 55:25

yeah um i do have a couple other questions that were asked from the community so i'm going to ask those and then we'll go

• 55:30

into this video that i want to show you guys next um so the first question is as you're kind of seeing in this video well

• 55:37

earlier you were seeing it um steven had showcased some of the new locomotion uh

• 55:42

changes that are happening which you're seeing when he's like climbing on things and touching objects and interacting

• 55:47

with them and jumping over them or under them um how do you think that those locomotion

• 55:53

changes will affect pvp some of the pvpers were concerned uh had a little bit of concern in regards to that

• 56:00

sure can you talk a little bit about that yeah i mean i mean i think obviously the intent behind anything we

• 56:06

implement in the game is going to be towards the end of our systems pvp is a very important system in ashes of

• 56:12

creation um so as we kind of play with this new ability

• 56:17

from a design perspective you know we're going to want to make sure obviously it doesn't impact negatively the idea of pvp so

• 56:24

really what it provides in my opinion as a as a person who enjoys pvp is it adds

• 56:29

additional dynamics to what is possible from your opponent or from yourself um

• 56:35

you know if there is a ledge and jumping off that ledge is going to deal a lot of damage to me when i hit the ground and

• 56:42

that puts me at a significant disadvantage maybe i have an option to jump off the ledge at a point where i can mantel onto

• 56:49

the side of a cliff or something now the give and take there is i won't be able to use my skills while i'm mantled right

• 56:54

i won't be able to react easily but i didn't have to take the fall damage per se or if there's an obstruction and you

• 57:01

know i'm going to take a significant reduction in speed so that i can crouch and make it past that and now i have a

• 57:08

effective you know line of sight has been obstructed as a result of that decision you know i think it adds

• 57:14

interesting elements to the battlefield um and you know the the key here is

• 57:21

going to be making sure that it's not cumbersome that it doesn't feel

• 57:26

you know opposite of the flow of combat in pvp right that's something that's

• 57:32

going to take some finesse it's something that's going to take some testing it's something that we're going to prototype with

• 57:37

but the functionality that's been implemented with the efforts of alex cadoli one of our senior engineers and

• 57:44

our lead animator chris myers you know they've done a great job in getting this implemented and now it is a tool in the

• 57:51

tool set that design has to work with and is it possible that we might come back and design says look there wasn't a

• 57:58

way for us to make these additional functionalities congruent with our flow

• 58:03

of pvp yeah of course there's always that there's always that potential um

• 58:10

but uh you know it's been interesting to play with thus far

• 58:15

all right and then the next question here we have is is ue5 going to change any aspect of

• 58:21

class abilities spells etc that need to be completely reworked

• 58:27

um nothing i can think of no

• 58:34

um one thing that might be incorporated as part of the class skills and abilities you know going forward is the

Character Art Update

• 58:39

application of lumen and how those abilities from a visual effects standpoint kind of interact with the

• 58:45

surrounding area and its illumination um that could be interesting

• 58:50

but um from a functionality standpoint no i wouldn't say that there's going to be any implications from a change to ue5

• 58:56

yeah all right i think that kind of encompasses a lot of the the ue5 specific questions that we're being asked in chat um and to kind of recap

• 59:04

because i think some folks were a little confused about like whether this is going to affect our timeline uh in the

• 59:09

long run of things and basically to like kind of recap what stephen was saying is uh in the forefront right now we will

• 59:15

have a couple months where we are fixing bugs and as we integrate and change over to ue5 but in the long run this is

• 59:21

actually going to save us much more time one of the examples that he gave is a really good example of being having

• 59:27

multiple artists be able to work and check out a area and work on that that means multiple

• 59:32

people can be working on that area at the same time versus right now they would or not right now previously when

• 59:37

we had ue4 they could only one person could check out those places at a time in order to build out the world so just

• 59:43

giving that as an example he gave a few other examples as well we are going to be in the long run able to produce the

• 59:50

project in a much faster timeline yeah i think i think it's important to note that

• 59:56

you know our objective with Ashes of Creation is to create an amazing game that is going to in the

• 1:00:03

words of sid meier stand the test of time right i'm sorry i'm a huge zip man um i love

• 1:00:09

taxes games their development team is cool too good people um so in that sense

• 1:00:15

um you know we're not compelled by some you know publisher-imposed uh launch

• 1:00:21

date or some investment board you know coming and saying this has to

• 1:00:27

be done by this day you know the focus here for me and for our team is to create a

• 1:00:33

product that the users are going to love that you guys in the community have been asking for for a long time something

• 1:00:40

that's not inundated with pay-to-win mechanics something that um you know is not predatory and

• 1:00:46

monetization that doesn't have you know aspects of gameplay and mmo something

• 1:00:52

that answers the call about mmo players right and in doing that we want to make the best product possible ue5 from a

• 1:00:58

support standpoint is is very important in that regard right when we talk about the timeline of the game

• 1:01:05

i've i have said since 2020 uh or since the end of 2019 that uh the game is

• 1:01:12

going to be ready when it's ready and and we're going to keep you abreast of the updates the changes the development

• 1:01:19

the progress every month as we've done and our amazing community team has helped to facilitate right

• 1:01:25

so you guys get to see the game evolve and the game come to life over time

• 1:01:30

and you know one of the promises that i want to keep is that that launch is not

• 1:01:36

going to be mired in problems that that that that the game is

• 1:01:41

going to stay true exactly the game is going to stay true we'll have bugs everyone has of course yeah

• 1:01:48

i just want to i think i think the player base knows what i'm talking about with certain games oh yeah for sure for

• 1:01:53

sure that should not have been launched when they were launched and we've seen a lot of games have a lot

• 1:01:58

of server problems and i think that's why we focus so much on those server stability problems and issues during our

• 1:02:04

alpha 1 and previous pre-alpha testing and i want to make sure i'm not i'm not trying to be salty and i'm not

• 1:02:11

trying to like call out any specific games because it's not just one there's been many if you've been an mmo player for any amount of period of time you

Outro and Q&A

• 1:02:18

have experienced the games that should have been kept in the oven not even mmo games

• 1:02:23

no yeah it's it's a i mean this is days are rough it's not just launch days it is the

• 1:02:29

project themselves that needed more time to develop oh for sure problems are understood that's fine we

• 1:02:35

know there's going to be a lot i think players you're saying when like a project launches and it isn't quite ready for launch it's getting rushed

• 1:02:40

because of the timeline players are going to be forgiving of launch issues especially when those launch issues are derived from high

• 1:02:47

player populations right and being inundated with a lot of players i think we're really forgiving of that but it's

• 1:02:55

when you get into the details of the game's designs when you get into the details of you know what bugs made it

• 1:03:01

past qa like those types of things you know anyways my point is is that um

• 1:03:07

long-term gains in the development process i we feel and the assessment fields are going to make up for the

• 1:03:13

short-term front loaded work that's necessary for this migration

• 1:03:18

yeah and i guess the follow-up question to that because i do see a lot of people ask this question even on like

• 1:03:23

non-stream days is in regards to the long-term aspect of

• 1:03:28

it you know funding i think is always the concern there obviously you've said that um you know

• 1:03:34

we're not going to launch till we're ready so basically until stephen's like i love this game it is my future and i'm

• 1:03:40

going to play it every day of my life um we're not launching and so what coincides with that is how are you

• 1:03:46

funding that and i think a lot of people have questions in regards to that i don't know if you're willing to share sure

• 1:03:52

the bottom the bottom line is i am committed to this project success and completion and that means that when it

• 1:03:58

comes to uh funding for the additional years that perhaps were not planned for uh that's

• 1:04:03

coming out of mine and john's pocket and we're okay with that because what we see in front of us is not only a team of

• 1:04:10

extremely talented individuals but also a community that is extremely passionate about the project and wanting to see it

• 1:04:16

come to fruition um you know it's not just about what our personal desires are john and myself being mmo players

• 1:04:24

but really it's about the fact that we've created a following a community of players who want the same thing or

• 1:04:30

similar to the same thing um and that's something that's at the forefront of my mind anytime i walk into work is how is

• 1:04:38

what we're doing today going to impact the players tomorrow um that's a very

• 1:04:43

important question it's a product driven development aspect and you know i i believe based on the

• 1:04:50

millions of players we already have pre-registered for the game that Ashes of Creation is going to be

• 1:04:56

one of the most successful and largest launches in mmo history so um you know i think i think

• 1:05:04

hey let me just tell you real quick i operate real well under pressure so please bring on all the pressure

• 1:05:10

um but yeah um and to give some context john is our cfo

• 1:05:16

um because people are asking people i noticed there's a lot of new people if you're new here give us a good follow uh

• 1:05:23

and follow us on all of the other places on youtube john is technically our president and cfo oh

• 1:05:29

yes that's right um and as folks said in chat that's also steven's husband yes that's true but hey it's fun to work

• 1:05:35

with your husband yeah i think so it can uh be both intense and also fun

• 1:05:42

um all right so let's i think that covers the questions and i think i did enough

• 1:05:48

follow-up on some of the ones that weren't clear to folks uh so if you have others feel free to cha pop those into

• 1:05:53

chat and i will snag them in regards to ue5 i know you guys have lots of other questions um

• 1:05:59

and i want to show off this other video that we have i know clayton worked very very hard on it

• 1:06:05

and so i don't know if you want to give a little bit of a preface of what people are about to see and then we'll showcase it and talk over the video as we're

• 1:06:12

showing it yeah absolutely um so i think we gave actually a little bit of an update on

• 1:06:18

this stuff back in what was it september or was it october uh it was

• 1:06:23

i believe september yes so this was about um

• 1:06:31

essentially uh you know how we're going to perform from a rendering perspective um

• 1:06:38

all of the characters we want to see in battle on screen right now obviously this goes above and beyond

• 1:06:44

what most players are going to want to see anyways right you're probably only ever going to see a few hundred on your

• 1:06:49

screen at a given time but the idea is for us to create i mean our objective was 250

• 1:06:56

verse 250. um i believe we have accomplished a significant majority of

• 1:07:02

that objective in alpha one more

• 1:07:07

well you want to put i mean you know the technology that allows us to scale

• 1:07:14

right scales to a point and i think that that point is beyond what our objective was and that's a good thing um so now

• 1:07:22

let's see how far we can push it and part of what clayton stamper has been working on is one of our engineers

• 1:07:27

um with regards to you know combining the player materials which was previously

• 1:07:32

you know requiring um you know draw calls for chest shirt bracer shoulder legs boots

• 1:07:39

helmet face body you know that that that's all now been um combined into a

• 1:07:45

single material um and every single character is rendered using a single material um

• 1:07:51

and you know essentially the gpu only gets to uh expect one call per player instead of

• 1:07:57

the one call per piece of equipment on that player um so i don't know if we have the video

• 1:08:02

of his update i'll play it while we're while you're talking over it awesome yeah so like i said in september we showcase

• 1:08:08

that merged material shader which brought draw calls from 12 previously per player down to one draw call per

• 1:08:15

player by accepting material parameters from each modular section the gloves the legs as i described before

• 1:08:20

uh the next step obviously was excuse me implementing that shader for the player so that they could change

• 1:08:26

pieces of armor and have that update the material parameter dynamically the the final step which is what you're seeing

• 1:08:32

now was extracting that code from the player and re-implementing it in a generalized

• 1:08:37

way that can be used for any object in the in the game that needs a modular appearance so what you're seeing here

• 1:08:43

showcases the new modular appearance component which can combine any set of meshes and materials into a single mesh

• 1:08:49

and single material at run time what you're looking at is over 1300

• 1:08:55

uh different entities different actors these are simulated players essentially

• 1:09:00

previously you saw the example they were just standing still there was no animation there was no effects there was no environment thousand right and it was

• 1:09:07

a thousand right this is thirteen hundred playing animations playing effects now this isn't again just to

• 1:09:14

clarify this plus the environment which is um uh nanite in this uh example

• 1:09:21

um so what you're seeing is all of these players moving around and doing something and you're seeing the frame

• 1:09:27

rate at about 30 on clayton's rig which i think is running at 1080. um

• 1:09:33

and uh obviously i told him i feel like i'm on a roller coaster

• 1:09:38

you might want to take some drama before you watch this video um the merge process by the way here is

• 1:09:44

a multi is multi-threaded and it won't cause any hitching thanks to something that zach mallet has done and

• 1:09:51

it could theoretically work for any modular appearance from characters to mounts weapons even boats um since this

• 1:09:57

was built as a data-driven component designers and artists get to make the infinite combinations of the appearances for any object without support from

• 1:10:04

engineering which is a big process aspect yeah um yeah absolutely um so

• 1:10:09

what you're what you're seeing in this demo isn't players they're entities as i said before they have two to three modular different appearance components

• 1:10:15

attached to them with data telling each component to generate a random character appearance and play combat animations um

• 1:10:21

an example of how this can be applied to the actual siege that each player you know will have modular appearance

• 1:10:26

components for their body they'll also have modular appearance components for their custom built weapons and writing amount with you know custom appearances

• 1:10:34

as bred through the animal husbandry system all of which are running on a single draw call

• 1:10:40

and that allows the gpu to render modular meshes pretty efficiently so this is this is work to to

• 1:10:46

accommodate the rendering side so this is this isn't server side stuff right this is rendering this is your computer

• 1:10:54

showing you other players and how many other players we can show you and the different

• 1:10:59

costumes that they'll wear and the different mounts that they'll have and still be performant right it's one thing

• 1:11:05

to say we're going to have 500 player battles and it's another thing to only see 30 people at a given time in that

• 1:11:10

500 player battle so we want to make sure that we're avail uh able to allow

• 1:11:15

players to really see these massive battles

• 1:11:20

hopefully that explains a lot yeah i think the follow-up question people did have was in regards to network traffic

• 1:11:27

and the impact of that having that many players on it um i know that's separate from the users yeah yeah that's that's a

• 1:11:32

totally different thing than even what we're seeing here right yeah that's something that that is on the on the back end on the network layer how we're

• 1:11:39

optimizing the traffic between you know the the the client's computer and the

• 1:11:44

and the um uh and the network and the server and then we're replicating that data down to

• 1:11:50

other players movement's a big component of that you know there's a lot of aspects of uh custom code that's been

• 1:11:56

done from the team to help facilitate these large battles and everything that we do

• 1:12:01

um you know from a um from even starting at design right is with the objective of

• 1:12:08

having these large battles so when we talk about our server architectures when we talk about our networking layer when

• 1:12:15

we talk about you know those types of things how they facilitate these ideas of having large player battles hopefully

• 1:12:22

that helped you and answered your questions um and i do see a lot of repeat questions in there so hopefully

• 1:12:27

mods can answer some of those um but yeah so this is a more technical stream i apologize for those those of you guys

• 1:12:34

who are falling asleep and just like just show me more videos i'm sorry

• 1:12:40

and obviously this is going a bit longer so thank you for bearing with us a little

• 1:12:46

extra longer treat for you this december um i think that's all i have really on

• 1:12:52

the design side unless you have anything extra you'd like to talk about that was a little bit on the engineering i know

• 1:12:57

that design and engineering are also working on a lot of other things beyond just what we're showcasing today

• 1:13:04

with unreal i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that um yeah there's a lot

• 1:13:10

how long do we want the stream to be yeah um yeah i would say one of the other things that probably will be coming up next

• 1:13:17

month or the month thereafter if it isn't ready by next month but it probably will be um is a lot of a huge

• 1:13:22

update on the character customization um zach adam um uh ginsee atkins um

• 1:13:31

the animation team uh with myers and you know there's been a a lot of work put into um character

• 1:13:38

customization getting that ready and it's been actually really fun to see zach's been sending me you know examples of um and clayton's

• 1:13:45

been working on that front as well a little bit um has sent me over examples of like uh custom faces that he's made

• 1:13:51

that are like celebrity faces you know i asked them last

• 1:13:56

i think i asked them was it last month what are we what is this december i asked them at the beginning of this month um when i was getting a review

• 1:14:02

update on the character customization work i was like you know one thing we need we should consider is as this is ready to in a standalone client

• 1:14:09

to hand out and get people start working on character customization it'd be great to hand that out to like focus group

• 1:14:14

testers who can go and make like custom um uh

• 1:14:21

um examples of celebrities or whatever that people want to do contests so yeah

• 1:14:26

exactly we were thinking like we could do like put like some nice photos of like some of our staff and then have a

• 1:14:33

contest right who could make it as close oh i'd be really concerned about that don't include me in the photo but um you know anyways but giving that out and

• 1:14:40

seeing what limitations they experience right what were they not capable of doing and then we adjust the parameters

• 1:14:46

of the customization to accommodate those uh desires um so yeah

• 1:14:53

yeah and they did share with me a little bit of an update on that front but um like steven said it's not quite ready to

• 1:14:59

share uh yet um we also have um a lot of other things down the pipeline

• 1:15:05

for you guys some more prototyping that's happening on the develop on the design side and engineering side so we

• 1:15:10

will be showcasing those in the future months as we get closer to being ready for that

• 1:15:17

without further ado i think we move on from the design side um we will have these videos available over on our

• 1:15:22

youtube channel um after this live stream is done we will have the walkthrough available for you in the 4k

• 1:15:28

resolution so you can go ahead and watch that some of the other content will come out later and the full live stream

• 1:15:35

will probably be up on youtube tomorrow because it's going to take some time for it to render especially uh for how long

• 1:15:41

we're going right now um so yeah i think that the 20 minute long video um is that going up after i

• 1:15:47

already have it uploaded and ready so i just have to push live when we're done and that's in 4k so when the stream is

• 1:15:52

over um go for it feel free to take a look at the youtube video that we watched here again you can see it

• 1:15:58

subscribe over there too i know a bunch of i see the stats there's a bunch of you watching who

• 1:16:03

aren't subscribed um margaret's gonna come after you she's coming for you i'm just kidding i was we

• 1:16:10

were just looking over our monthly reports and i was like man that's a lot of people that aren't subscribed uh but they're watching so thank you for

• 1:16:15

watching um moving on to environment art our environment art team

• 1:16:21

as we have mentioned previously have been working pretty hard on some cool

• 1:16:26

empyrean objects as well as klr that's been their focus um we they did a bunch of other stuff for

• 1:16:32

previous races in the past and so now they're just kind of like making the world really feel vibrant and you know

• 1:16:38

uh unique per race and right now these are the imperial ones you're going to be seeing um

• 1:16:46

dummies podiums little spices and wine that was that little box that you saw earlier a stool which is so pretty

• 1:16:53

um a street sign and a table that is

• 1:16:59

yeah very cool stuff um obviously the more things that we have in the world the more we can fill

• 1:17:04

up the world with beautiful stuff for you guys to see uh we know that a lot of you want to see very unique

• 1:17:11

spaces every time there's a new city so that's definitely something we're trying to uh portray but also keeping them

• 1:17:17

within the racial um and cultural uh kind of guidelines that we've set for

• 1:17:23

ourselves um with like the materials that they use and the gemstones that they use and the

• 1:17:29

style and the just kind of like how everything comes together is quite beautiful

• 1:17:34

and then we have the kayla stuff which you're going to see is a little bit more blocky less like sharp pointed edges and

• 1:17:40

things of that sort this is a work in progress boat you've seen a few work in progress boats

• 1:17:45

in the past this is like early early stages of it um there's a chest road sign a sofa and some table stuff as well

• 1:17:55

but yeah these look all great i love i mean they are we have such talented artists um just just over this last

• 1:18:02

you know a couple of weeks um there were

• 1:18:07

tristan and mia and hal um you know everybody on the artist

• 1:18:13

michael bacon everybody on the artist on the art teams are are incredibly talented and

• 1:18:19

really threw in a lot of um a lot of hours over this last week to get

• 1:18:24

um you know this ue5 announcement uh ready um and showcasing some of the

• 1:18:31

lumen and nanite um uh features in this in this little walkthrough that we did um so big big

• 1:18:38

shout out to them you guys did an awesome job um amazing we love you we need hearts in chat

• 1:18:45

hearts and chats lots of hearts and chat for our artists they are quite wonderful moving on from there uh we'll move on to

• 1:18:51

our character goodies um we have this is by danny this was the vestiges of the

• 1:18:58

steel bloom and i have a turntable of it as well so you can kind of see that the 3d model

• 1:19:04

yeah it looks great love it yeah and you know i think a lot of you saw in games steven's armor how like reflective

• 1:19:12

things were in the world it's just quite gorgeous once you see everything like actually in the game and how the cloth

• 1:19:17

feels and looks um as you move and interact and you know even how weather

• 1:19:22

is going to affect that stuff is very very neat just brings everything to life little small details that you notice

• 1:19:28

um and i think this one steven showed off in game as well which is the carmine

• 1:19:35

uh carapis we have a 3d render of that as well and you got to see it in game as well

• 1:19:42

with in-game lighting obviously when you're going down i have that on the uh game yeah this one was the one that i

• 1:19:49

really had a lot of fun designing so it was very cool very cool

• 1:19:54

the face really reminds me of shredder yeah it should be it's very much like a

• 1:20:00

renkai um all right yeah um and then we have the moonstrider

• 1:20:07

which you also saw in game here are some like more high-res images of the moonstrider with someone writing them

• 1:20:15

and a new hairstyle if you i hadn't seen that hairstyle

• 1:20:20

this was one of the first i think this is one of the first mounts actually that we concepted

• 1:20:27

in addition to the it was before me into the yeah in addition to the dawnbreaker

• 1:20:32

very cool um and i think i have a 3d

• 1:20:38

uh yeah turntable of that

• 1:20:43

very very cool and last but oh not nevermind not

• 1:20:48

last i have a couple more we have the pet the wretched uh

• 1:20:56

let's go here the wretched battle ruffles

• 1:21:02

rafflesia there we go reflection yeah i'm like i designed this but

• 1:21:08

saying the name is hard english is hard but really cool

• 1:21:15

very neat and you kind of get to see that somebody said feed me see more

• 1:21:23

yeah i could only see that vibe for sure oh yeah um and then moving on you saw steven riding

• 1:21:31

this bad boy which is the drake of the canopy i so want this as like a little model

• 1:21:38

piece that i can use when i'm doing uh tabletop stuff

• 1:21:44

i think i think uh there's still some effects needed on that i i told jim it might be cool if after some of the flaps or something

• 1:21:50

little like particles come out yeah yeah

• 1:21:59

i like to imagine uh this as you know you see a leaf kind of floating down the

• 1:22:04

sky from far away but as it gets closer you're like that's not a leaf that's not a leaf that's not a leaf

• 1:22:12

it's a leaf dragon so manny worked on this one which is cool

• 1:22:18

um yeah great job manny looks great very beautiful

• 1:22:24

and i believe we can move on to our q a from there again awesome thank you all so much for putting all the love in chat

• 1:22:30

for our artists they are quite amazing we try to showcase some of the stuff they're proud of each month um

• 1:22:36

and you know we'd be here forever if we showed off every art piece plus we want to keep some stuff a little bit more um

• 1:22:42

you know exciting for you guys to experience as you as you see them in game

• 1:22:47

um and i think there have been some questions in regards to like cosmetic items and and that front i think we've

• 1:22:53

explained this quite a few times but just to kind of reiterate that just because i know that it has come up more recently because we've got a lot of new

• 1:23:00

people into our community um really what you're helping us do if you decide to do that you do not have to back or support

• 1:23:06

us we completely understand if you don't want to um you know put your money where your mouth is type of thing um but i

• 1:23:13

think that from our perspective we're going to be creating these creatures we're going to be creating these npcs we're going to be creating these

• 1:23:18

buildings to build out the world and the cultures of our world and really what you're doing is just helping support that uh each one of

• 1:23:25

those creatures these creatures that fills the world each one of those buildings are buildings that are going to you know make the world come to life

• 1:23:30

and so we're going to need a lot of those and these are allowing us to kind of create variations and

• 1:23:36

do them a lot faster and we're already going to do it anyway so and as i have said many times in the

• 1:23:42

past the whole purpose of our development process being transparent being open

• 1:23:49

is that you don't have to buy a package actually to participate you can be a

• 1:23:55

voice from the community you can observe people playing you can give your

• 1:24:00

experiences and feedback or you cannot um nobody should feel that they have to

• 1:24:06

back the project to see it come to life it's coming to life regardless of that you do it because you want to support us

• 1:24:13

and that's fine and if you don't want to that's also fine as well we want to hear your voice

• 1:24:18

and we want you to be part of the community so that's a very important aspect nothing we offer in the pre-order

• 1:24:23

packages are power driven they don't give any competitive advantage to an individual who backs the game you can

• 1:24:29

observe the alpha tests and the beta tests um and learn what other people who

• 1:24:34

are participating in those tests can learn um so and people won't just be able to use those cosmetics like right

• 1:24:41

off the bat at level one i think that's the cons that's what people think is going to happen you have to own the items

• 1:24:47

and the item has to have a cosmetic slot on it that correlates with that item so it's not like you're going to see 100

• 1:24:52

million people running around with it and for those of you who are familiar with the project you hear you hear us say this a thousand times but we

• 1:24:58

obviously always have new people who join the community and we want to make sure you know that they're aware of that

• 1:25:04

as well yeah i just wanted to reiterate it because i did notice like on reddit and a few other spaces that it was coming up again

• 1:25:09

and i know we've gone in there our community team's amazing they've already been replying to those comments and i saw that even you guys uh as community

• 1:25:16

members have been doing that so we really appreciate you reiterating that message it's super i've you know this

• 1:25:21

i've said this in the past i'll say it again we have an amazing community already and the game hasn't even launched

• 1:25:26

so you guys you guys helping out kind of explain stuff to new users you know give

• 1:25:31

them the links to the to the knowledge bases so that they can catch up the cool video links like being a welcoming

• 1:25:38

community is a very good thing um and really it's it's what you know mmos are

• 1:25:44

all about no not a hundred million players per server i was exaggerating oh my goodness did

• 1:25:50

you say a hundred million players i was joking i i don't even think i said server but yeah people people took it that way so i

• 1:25:57

saw a comment i'm like no i'm quelching that right now no

• 1:26:02

no not like this like this yeah okay okay let's move on to our questions and then we'll wrap up this has been a long

• 1:26:09

one so thank you all for enduring it with us and we hope that you really have enjoyed it and that we've answered a lot of your questions

• 1:26:15

and if we don't answer your questions uh here live a lot of them are probably repeat questions so if you asked a

• 1:26:20

question in the forums i will be replying to that thread today all my staff is gone so i have to do it today

• 1:26:27

but i will be replying and answering your questions um so if you didn't get answered here live please

• 1:26:33

check that and so these are the these are the non-rupee questions um first one is from

• 1:26:39

emberstone and they want to know about escort quests are there escort quests planned where the escortee is walking

• 1:26:46

and running at the same movement speed we are so often in a lot of mmorpgs you'll be

• 1:26:52

like you'll have an escort question you're like oh my god i have to walk like so slow with this person

• 1:26:58

or they're running too fast and you have to keep up with them i foresee if uh i foresee these you know if there are

• 1:27:04

escort-oriented quest lines um utilizing different speeds at different portions

• 1:27:10

of the escort um i think that makes it interesting um but short answer is yes there are going

• 1:27:18

to be different speeds that are going to be utilized so you might be walking through one area and then they might

• 1:27:23

start running and you might have to keep up and that might be time for certain like you know ambushes that are intended

• 1:27:29

along the design path right like if you don't address that ambush in a quick manner your escortee has already started

• 1:27:36

running off to the next thing and now he's getting ambushed by the next thing right oh my gosh the chat's like can i kill the person i'm escorting you guys

• 1:27:43

are so mean i mean maybe you can who knows what if what if what if questing

• 1:27:49

had a pass or fail and both were legitimate rewards in the sense that

• 1:27:54

right perhaps if it fails and you kill some i'm just joking but if you kill the

• 1:27:59

person some other person finds out that you killed them and is like hey or not even that maybe you accrue corruption

• 1:28:05

not corruption points maybe you accrue like negative um reputation right um and that might be a

• 1:28:12

a predicate for you to accept a a more seedy quest line in the back alleys of a

• 1:28:18

node like you know you might have to hit a certain negative reputation before you get some badass tell them

• 1:28:26

people out there that are going to do some evil stuff just because they want to find it

• 1:28:31

he's like yes yes i mean it's it's good because you know we literally we were having a

• 1:28:37

discussion like three or four weeks ago with jeremy guess and the design team on reputation scores and what those

• 1:28:44

reputation scores mean on a per faction basis right the more you know good aligned or or

• 1:28:51

you know civilization building align tasks that you complete you get higher positive reputation but if you get low

• 1:28:57

or bad reputation you could be deemed enemy of the state of a node you could be deemed kind of a

• 1:29:03

bad actor and it might raise prices for you but it also might open up certain quest lines that

• 1:29:10

uh you know the darker seedier side of the world are interested in communicating with individuals like yourself right and this could be

• 1:29:16

reputation on a per node basis right it's you see you're not just start seeing thieves can't like on the walls

• 1:29:22

yeah sorry i'm going off in a total tangent regardless it's okay um people like it our next question is from

• 1:29:29

knowlesy noelsey noelsey noelsey let me know how how i'm supposed to pronounce that uh

• 1:29:35

it's about dueling will you be able to initiate a duel within a freehold or a city

• 1:29:41

yeah yeah duels won't be considered a part of the flagging system right the duels are going to be self-contained

• 1:29:47

event that gets opted into by the inviter and the and the participants and that sounds

• 1:29:53

like an agni kai in in airbender right it's a little the guards

• 1:29:58

look at you in the city and they're like oh my god not these larpers again [Music]

• 1:30:04

i would be like stephen i call upon you for a battle duel me a dog slap the player yeah

• 1:30:11

exactly slap you with a sandal no uh as a matter of fact we should include whenever there's like a duel we should

• 1:30:17

include some like texts from the guards as they walk by is like not these larpers again you know i don't know

• 1:30:22

everybody we should have like a sandal duel as just like a fun just just slap each

• 1:30:29

other with a sandal it's like the melee version all right our next question is from

• 1:30:36

nostra nostra who wants to know about siege scrolls do completed siege scrolls expire or can you hoard them forever so

• 1:30:43

can you do the questline so they do expire um and

• 1:30:48

the method right now is when you complete a quest line and you're going to receive the scroll

• 1:30:56

you must stipulate the node that that scroll is valid for and then there is a lifetime on the

• 1:31:03

scroll right so um yes there is a life a lifetime and the scrolls are are

• 1:31:09

determined by you at completion of quest with a name on it

• 1:31:14

all right uh and george black and uh pika dollover want to know about max level and by the way the mayor has made

• 1:31:21

a i'm sorry real quick the mayor is made aware of what scroll has been generated

• 1:31:27

if their node is the one that's named on the scroll so like you may not have placed it yet

• 1:31:32

and it has a lifetime but the player the mayor gets some informant that tells them you know hey

• 1:31:40

someone's out there and they're trying to gun for you right now so you better be prepared or you can try to diplomacy

• 1:31:47

your way out of the situation if you if you can figure out who it is yeah

• 1:31:53

she was like yeah that's not happening if someone goes through the effort to attain the scroll it's unlikely they're

• 1:32:00

going to have i don't know some people are pretty ballsy they're like look what i got they were waving it around

• 1:32:07

so uh george black and piccadolover want to know about max level as an mmo player

• 1:32:13

what do you consider a good carat on a stick to keep players once you've

• 1:32:18

reached max level slash gear progression yeah i think that um you know there's a

• 1:32:25

lot of elements in different progression paths in the game whether it be accomplishments through the crafting

• 1:32:31

system and becoming a master of the economy whether whether it be political player driven systems and achievements and

• 1:32:38

trophies that you can hold on to or lose like castles um aspiring to become mayor

• 1:32:44

um you know the types of wars and and you know different pvp elements the um

• 1:32:51

you know the raids that you can help to gear out your guild it's like you know there's a lot of traditional mm-hmm

• 1:32:57

house you're free you're absolutely you have there's the way that ashes is constructed is

• 1:33:03

there are multiple paths of progression from a from a pvx perspective a kind of wide net perspective that players have

• 1:33:10

interest in and you're not going to be able to you know become the master of everything right so you're going to have to pick and choose but even picking and choosing

• 1:33:17

that gives you a place within that within that aspect of the world at a place that's going to to be something

• 1:33:23

that you can build up a reputation around um and a lot of those are player driven and and are cyclical in nature

• 1:33:30

the gameplay loop right um they don't necessarily have an end game state right because that can fluctuate that can

• 1:33:36

change from moment to moment and it's those types of fluctuations it's those types of of you know

• 1:33:43

unexpected outcomes that keep you involved that keep you interested that keep you emotionally invested in the

• 1:33:50

outcome of of these types of more player driven aspects and you could totally go out and be a fisherman i think someone

• 1:33:56

was mentioning that in chat you can totally do that just be careful there might be some pirates out there or some big creatures in the ocean

• 1:34:07

where our next question is from dante uh machiavelli and they want to know about costumes will there be any cosmetics or

• 1:34:13

armor pieces that are more revealing than the default appearance of a character when they're not wearing

• 1:34:19

anything then the default appearance

• 1:34:24

what does that mean like if you were is there any is there gonna be more room can you be naked or wearing like a swimsuit i don't

• 1:34:30

know i'm not sure about their exact specifics but basically okay we're gonna have more showy body part

• 1:34:37

armor there i mean there's going to be there's probably going to be armors

• 1:34:42

probably no i don't know there's going to be probably armors or costumes or clothing sets that you can

• 1:34:48

you know wear that are going to be more revealing but they're they're not going to be you being naked um

• 1:34:56

that's a different type of game i know we keep getting we keep getting

• 1:35:01

people asking about sliders for certain body parts and stuff too oh there might be sliders yeah but you're not gonna

• 1:35:06

they're not gonna be naked sliders um we're not rated um for mature um

• 1:35:12

we're definitely trying to make sure with sliders our game is accessible to a variety of people yeah and that is all

• 1:35:19

of our questions for today um so we've got i guess we would make it to 12 30 and it's 12 35 it's not bad yeah i

• 1:35:27

messaged steve and i was like i think that we could do it in an hour but if we keep tangenting we'll probably be over

• 1:35:33

for sure but i think we're we're good um it's kind of our last day of the the

• 1:35:39

work working oh it is today today is the last day of the work week and then we're off

• 1:35:45

until january 3rd yeah so it's very generous of of you and john to to give that to the team i know everyone at the

• 1:35:51

company has been very thankful so um yeah so i think that that's it for our

• 1:35:57

december development update we had a lot of stuff to showcase to you all and obviously our teams have all been

• 1:36:03

working very very hard on everything um so thank you for uh tuning in thank you

• 1:36:09

for supporting us thank you for sharing information with other people we saw a lot of new faces today too so for those

• 1:36:16

of you who are just joining in there's a lot of places to keep in touch with us you can follow us on all of our social

• 1:36:21

platforms um you know discord and forums we're talking to people daily even on all of our social platforms with twitter

• 1:36:27

facebook youtube you can follow us right here on twitch so you don't miss out on any

• 1:36:33

future streams but yeah we're doing a lot of stuff we're keeping in touch with you guys on a daily basis we continue to put out

• 1:36:39

content so um if you're interested in following along with our journey please do so and of course we will have another

• 1:36:45

one of these in january we're probably gonna go back to our normal uh last friday of the month uh time frame these

• 1:36:52

last few months have been a little bit weird because of the holidays so we appreciate you guys kind of working around our schedule a little bit

• 1:36:59

and we hope that you all have a wonderful holiday and new year absolutely thank you guys for tuning in we hope you guys had an awesome year and

• 1:37:04

next year is going to be amazing for ashes and i hope it's going to be amazing for you guys as well we really love and appreciate all of your support

• 1:37:11

um tuning in each month and and and participating in our discussions and being on the discord and

• 1:37:18

it means a lot to us and it is a big motivation factor for everyone on the team so we love you guys and we hope you

• 1:37:24

have an awesome holidays and a great new year yeah we don't get to express the thanks from all of our team but they

• 1:37:31

seriously it's very very loving it means a lot to them and we try to share as

• 1:37:36

much as we can with them you know all of the wonderful things that you guys say and we send out reports every month to showcase a lot of

• 1:37:42

all of that as well so keep sending us your feedback keep sending us the love and of course don't forget we will have

• 1:37:48

a new dev discussion coming in january about griefing so you know i know a lot of you pvpers out there and non-pvp

• 1:37:55

years will want to get your say in that so please please do keep an eye on it and of course our december cosmetics

• 1:38:01

will swap over on january 12th and we will see you in the new year thanks everybody

• 1:38:11

[Music]