Talk:2022-03-31 Livestream

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Raw transcript

Intro

• 0:19

hello everyone welcome and salutations we hope you are having a great and

• 0:25

glorious month uh we are here for our march march development update

• 0:31

i know and we're doing it on a thursday i know just some people who are like what's

• 0:37

this fan friday it's not friday and i was like ah normally we stream on fridays um but we needed a little extra

• 0:42

time as you can see on our current topics list we are going to be not only

• 0:48

doing our reminders on studio update our big focus for the stream is actually going to be the character creator and

• 0:53

yes you are going to see it in action yes fiddling with it um

• 0:59

i think we did one little edit that we had uh because the we had a crash i but i crashed it i was manipulating the

• 1:06

tattoos and the put too many tattoos on i put too many tattoos and scars and then we found a crash that qa was like

• 1:13

yeah you know we only really hit this crash like once out of like 40 times and i was like oh okay then it's safe and

• 1:19

then at the moment i did it boom so we did a little bit little edit but it's okay um yeah i know super excited with

• 1:25

that with the character creator today guys of course we're going to preface that this is the alpha 2 character creator so

• 1:32

there's a lot of features that still aren't going to be present in it but i think it's not done

• 1:37

yeah ui is not done there's still a lot of you know feature development that's necessary a lot of presets that aren't present some of the you know options and

• 1:44

we'll go through that stuff a little later but um what i will say is i played a lot of mmos

• 1:50

and i have very rarely ever encountered a character creator even at this state

• 1:55

that is as versatile and capable uh as what our

• 2:01

team has has been able to develop so i'm super excited to show that with you guys i was able to

• 2:07

record with margaret and zach mallett and clayton stamper and um and we had a

• 2:13

lot of fun and chris atkins as well yeah it was uh i'm sure you guys are gonna enjoy it we're a little silly at times

• 2:20

but we do get into some more technical details as well um our programmers nerding out which you know

• 2:26

is always a lot of fun and then we also have this very character heavy a stream we also have some more character art

• 2:33

updates if you've been watching and follow along with our journey the last couple months you may have noticed that

• 2:38

we've been showing a lot of the you know different races art uh because we're kind of finalizing some of those things

• 2:44

and getting them to the point where you know in alpha 2 you will be able to play these so we had another

• 2:51

new showcases and reveals as well on that front i was just going to say another really important thing on the art side at least as you're

• 2:57

seeing a lot of this character work um starting to get revisions and additional passes you're actually going

• 3:04

to start now seeing the real real kind of almost launch quality characters that we're

• 3:10

intending to have in Ashes of Creation so um that's always exciting because as we've as we told you in alpha one and

• 3:16

prior to alpha one during development like art is always a work in progress right it's always getting you know

• 3:22

iterated upon and and improved and um one of the great things about a transparent development

• 3:28

process of an mmorpg is you get to see that from start to finish and now we're kind of reaching a point in the quality

• 3:34

where you know we're feeling like this is this is where we want to be with our character art um so it's exciting to

• 3:41

share that with you guys yeah and last but not least we also have our q a as per usual and we'll probably also

• 3:48

during the character creator segment i'll be keeping an eye out for chat if there's any upcoming questions that i

• 3:54

notice that we don't answer throughout um and i will also bring those up at the end of that so let's get quickly into

Reminders

• 4:02

our reminders don't have a ton this time but we do have a little bit of a new segment

• 4:07

first and foremost we actually are going to be spotlighting a youtube comment every stream now so if you are a

• 4:14

subscriber on our youtube if you leave us a comment you may be spotlighted so today's one is from

• 4:20

josh23 and they said i love the diversity in the classes i know they already showed the value but i would but

• 4:27

i wonder if they will further diversify them from the klar like the other races

• 4:32

and their counterparts and i figured you could talk a little bit on that front stephen if you'd like

• 4:38

yeah absolutely so i mean you know the the classes

• 4:44

so the diversity in the classes i know they already showed the value but i wonder if they will further so we're talking about classes here are you

• 4:50

talking about character races i think they're talking about character races but there's some language barrier happening here i see sac yeah so

• 4:57

one of the cool things about uh Ashes of Creation is we have nine separate character races each of which have their

• 5:03

own defined cultural influences right um those cultural influences are seen not just from the armor sets and how those

• 5:10

armor sets get adapted when you don them as a different race right we have same we have essentially sets that exist

• 5:17

across all races and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation

• 5:23

of those particular sets so that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified additionally

• 5:29

our node structures in the way that cities get developed take into account the predominant experience that's gathered from the players around the

• 5:35

node so the more that one particular race contributes to a node's development it's going to manifest in that

• 5:42

particular node's architectural influences you're going to see the architectures of those races become

• 5:48

manifest within the nodes as well that's another way that we diversify each race and we present each race's culture in

• 5:54

the game as through those architectures through those props that exist through the tailoring of the armor sets that the

• 6:00

npcs might wear to the different factions that exist factions will have their own

• 6:05

affiliation with different races as well each race will also have you know some different um nomenclature

• 6:12

when it comes to the lore or comes to locations in the world um they're going

• 6:18

to have you know their own language influences as well um the way they kind of speak is something that's going to be

• 6:24

distinct between races when you have dialogue trees with particular npcs so all of those things really go into kind

• 6:31

of setting an immersive world where um the cultures have their own identity

• 6:37

yeah and uh i think that the main thing is here is that they're saying like the classes are so diverse that there's so

• 6:43

many different ones that they're wondering if the races were going to be that as diverse as the classes so that's

• 6:48

what they meant by that but thank you josh23 for being a subscriber on our youtube channel and for leaving us a lovely comment if you would like to be

• 6:55

spotlighted in the future uh just leave us a comment subscribe to us on youtube yes we know you're watching all right

• 7:02

next up a reminder that the uh secrets of shade glenn will be swapping over

• 7:07

april 6 2022 at 11 a.m pacific for the new set uh so if you'd like these snag

• 7:12

them while they're hot and of course we do have a dev discussion that just went live so if you uh would like to give us

• 7:19

some feedback and have a little say in what happens with our development uh we would love for you to pop over to our

• 7:26

forums and leave us a comment in regards to this this month's one is when it comes to enemy conning indication

• 7:32

systems in game what features do you like if you do like indicators to what extent

• 7:37

or delineation so this is like you come upon an enemy how do you know uh what level it is if

• 7:43

you are going to be able to take it or if you need to get a group together that kind of thing so definitely toss us your

• 7:49

feedback it's a heavy one some people love a lot of indicators some people don't so we definitely like to hear your

• 7:55

opinion on that and of course last but not least we do have our content creator program application still up we will let

• 8:01

you know when the application process closes and we begin to invite folks but right now we're just in the application

• 8:07

phase um we are getting you know closer to that point where we're going to be closing it up and uh replying to people

• 8:13

so get it in there if you are a content creator and you'd like to be part of our

• 8:18

program it's going to be a very different program from the others that you've seen probably yeah

Studio update

• 8:25

and with that that is our reminders so i'm going to toss it over to stephen to talk about our studio update i know how

• 8:31

anxious everyone is to get into the video that we have for the character creator so i'm going to make our update quick on the studio front um hiring is

• 8:38

going very well uh this year we have now we're in the end of march um since the start of the new year we've hired uh

• 8:45

just about 20 new uh heads at the studio um so very excited to have

• 8:51

you know the great talent that we're attracting to this project we have a lot more seats to fill um

• 8:56

but our our hr team john stacy um and uh

• 9:02

cameron are doing great jobs and midori are doing great jobs in hiring incredible talent for the studio

• 9:07

and you're going to be able to see their work soon uh in our development updates but other than that things are going

• 9:12

great at the studio yeah um i know that people want a tour when we're ready we will uh we still have some

• 9:18

beautification stuff happening our office is still pretty corporate office looking but we do have some art coming in as

• 9:25

well as uh some cool plants and things so i think that it's gonna we're getting there plants

• 9:31

cool plants man you know yeah yeah all right well i think with that let's get to the thing that everybody wants to see

Character creator

• 9:38

so i'll let you preface no yes play this all right so i said as i said in the

• 9:43

beginning uh there's still a lot of outstanding feature work that's necessary um the character creator is a

• 9:48

little bit unique for Ashes of Creation because a lot of times your experience with a

• 9:54

character creator is minimal in mmos because you're there on launch day you want to get through making a character

• 10:00

you don't want to spend too much time on it right um so you jump straight into the game one thing that we're going to

• 10:06

be offering is people will be having access to the character creator before launch day so they'll be able to create

• 10:11

their character spend time on it save that character and then um have that ready to go immediately when launch day

• 10:17

comes that is going to be something that i think is is very helpful um additionally

• 10:23

we're going to be running some contests i know that margaret's excited about some character creator contests and some

• 10:29

prizes that we're going to hand out as a result of those contests in the future um that's going to be able to get down the line when we're ready we're not

• 10:35

absolutely yeah absolutely we're not quite there yet still some work to do but what you're going to see in this video is our own custom created

• 10:44

character creator and um this was a feat of of great uh engineering work along

• 10:51

with our our incredible artists um and we're going to talk a little bit about that in this presentation but i

• 10:57

want you to keep in mind this is the alpha 2 character creator and one other component of this

• 11:03

character creator which we talk a little bit about is it has application just out not just for your character but also for

• 11:10

any npcs you may hire that exist on your freehold that you might want to create custom npcs

• 11:16

it's a great tool for our design team to create marquee characters within the within the game itself and this

• 11:22

technology is also applicable to our animal husbandry system and how we're going to manipulate creatures as well so

• 11:27

keep that in mind uh but otherwise i think we're ready all right we'll see on

• 11:32

the flip side i'm so excited [Music]

• 11:44

hey

• 11:54

[Music]

• 12:11

[Applause]

• 12:21

welcome everyone to our first look at the Ashes of Creation character

• 12:27

customization and creator character customization creator ccc yeah

• 12:33

how cool he looks i know we get to see the vec look at him in the model forum

• 12:40

super excited well we're happy that you're joining us and taking a look at this uh first look at our character

• 12:45

creator we have an awesome crew with us actually here today um some representation from the character team

• 12:52

with our lead character artist mr chris atkins how you doing buddy i'm doing great good to see the vec in there i

• 12:58

know it's your your your creations are coming to life your team's creations are coming to life it's so cool to see

• 13:05

and then we also have some of the brains behind uh creating all the cool

• 13:10

customization options that we have available to us in this creator uh two of our engineers mr clayton stamper and

• 13:16

mr zachary malott how you doing buddy hey uh clayton here

• 13:22

very excited to have you guys and then of course this wouldn't be a stream without our amazing and glorious uh

• 13:29

community marketing lead mrs or miss margaret crone

• 13:34

not misses yet i know not yet soon excited i'm very excited yeah and i know of

• 13:41

course um for those of you who are tuning in on the stream and who are seeing this for the first time on the stream we just uh we just cut to this

• 13:47

video but for those of you who are tuning in on youtube um you know as you're watching these customization

• 13:53

options please feel free to leave comments let us know your thoughts join in on our discussions on our forums on

• 13:59

twitter on all the places so that we can get your guys's feedback because that's why we showcase this stuff in

• 14:04

development is to get everyone's feedback so i'm excited to take a look at this

• 14:11

character creator with our glorious community this guy is looking pretty cool i'm

• 14:16

loving the model and it really stayed true to the concept yeah i mean manny's such a great artist

• 14:23

and you know i think that's why we picked him up is because he had such a strong sense of like overall silhouette

• 14:28

and style and so yeah you can see his work right here and then you know a little more realistic

• 14:34

direction for textures and yeah yeah i think he's i think he's looking pretty good into what you envisioned i i hope

• 14:41

anyway oh yeah no he's he's looking great i mean this is one of my favorite races actually in our in our

• 14:48

with our different cultures right because it's so different than what i'm accustomed to seeing from a character

• 14:54

race standpoint like most player character races don't look like these guys and this isn't even in their actual

• 14:59

like animated stance that they're intending to have that more crouched look right that hasn't been implemented

• 15:05

yet but just the model itself is is really cool yeah it's just i'm sharing right now

• 15:10

kind of with the klar and and same from a technical standpoint they shared sort of the same geometry and

• 15:16

uvs so we're trying to make things you know pretty efficient and intelligently as we go along

• 15:21

i like the tusks the tusks were such a great touch oh yeah no they're great and again

• 15:27

manny's concepts are awesome he does stick right to him you know once we get something approved he nails it have you

• 15:33

guys ever played oh go ahead go ahead i was gonna say the community definitely has opinions on the tusks and you know being

• 15:40

able to customize them or oh yeah i know some people have asked about removing them completely

• 15:46

uh things like that right or yeah drilling them down like significantly to the point where they're

• 15:51

barely noticeable right

• 15:57

okay so one of the cool things about um this demonstration today again want to preface this is a first pass on our

• 16:04

actual character creator um clayton and zach have done a an incredible amount of work along with

• 16:10

a lot of other people who have participated in making our character creator um but from a functionality

• 16:16

standpoint um what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at all the different customization options that are

• 16:21

presently available then we're going to talk a little bit about the customization options that have yet to be implemented but are still on um on

• 16:29

our course on our on our on our feature roadmap right um and to do that we're

• 16:34

actually going to select still very very early so keep that in

• 16:41

mind all the prefaces all the preface all the work in progress prefaces you guys our core audience who have been

• 16:47

following development of ashes creation you know this um you see our monthly updates as we show you you know ongoing

• 16:53

progress um but that's really part of the fun right you're seeing a massive massive mmorpg being made in

• 17:01

real time with regular updates on the monthly um showing you guys our movement from where we were to where we're going

• 17:08

and every step in between and that's part of the fun um but in order to show off some of these customization options

• 17:14

the vec aren't quite there yet with uh being able to be customized yet in the character creator we can randomize it

• 17:19

but actually let's go over to the klar oh i love that effects

• 17:27

jim did such a great job with those effects so when you switch over obviously you see the kind of you burn away that's uh

• 17:34

part of the lore and ashes uh it also is something that you see in death um you know if you played the game you kind of

• 17:41

have seen as your character dies you turn into these pile of ash but this guy's looking pretty cool what is he he's like almost looks like a viking

• 17:47

yeah like a viking cleric or something i love the detail on his face

• 17:54

yeah it's very cool it's been really fun to make these guys and yeah i mean you can start to see

• 18:00

kind of you know some of the imperfections that you're able to add and everything else i mean i'll let you keep getting into it but yeah no it's

• 18:06

it's looking really working yeah clayton i know uh and zach i know you guys have put a lot of work into

• 18:11

showcasing some of the scarring here and being able to like manipulate that scarring we're going to talk a little bit about that

• 18:17

yeah so i i i tend to focus on the art side of it um i work with the

• 18:24

artists pretty closely and i do some shader programming so i did a lot of the behind the scenes that's driving the

• 18:30

appearance of the scars um and uh atkins uh chris atkins did a

• 18:36

really good job uh getting us the assets that bring it all to life the loincloth

• 18:42

the loincloth yes yeah we had a little underwear thing

• 18:47

going on oh yeah get us some loincloth chris where's the or uh

• 18:53

maybe this should be better for uh yeah for chris where is the physics on this i would like when i twirl that the

• 18:58

loincloth flares up you know it does have it i'm not sure if it's enabled right now but it does it will

• 19:06

flap i promise accidental uh flashing of people wait i need to check something is for that

• 19:13

particular loin cloth is their customization

• 19:19

options let me see

• 19:25

[Music] [Laughter]

• 19:33

that is that's been a question that the community has asked for some time actually whether or not we're going to have certain sliders uh i guess this is

• 19:40

a little showcase of what's to come in the future with being able to manipulate aspects of the of the character

• 19:46

including chest cross crotch i don't know about the name crotch

• 19:51

that could be grat selection oh yeah that's true grat and kobe and tim uh

• 19:57

worked on the ui side of this for our character creator and that was it's that definitely sounds to me like a grand

• 20:03

selection and the wording there um but yeah i like that he went nice

• 20:09

nice and casual with the booty though he was like bottom bottom bottom yeah that's that's a fair that's i'm okay

• 20:15

with that one i just thought about the crotch one i know i know but i just i think it's funny that he went crotch but then for butt he went butt up bottom

• 20:22

so now some of these um options we're talking like body

• 20:28

type in here we can adjust height and weight [Music]

• 20:33

you can make them a little bit you know thicker looking right and of course there's gonna be sizes

• 20:40

here that we're going to kind of adhere to based on the race right we obviously we we incorporate some limitations on

• 20:47

that right yeah we're definitely going to be doing that i think clayton can speak more to

• 20:53

that oops are we losing there

• 21:00

we lost him well so so the the weight entitlement system for how

• 21:05

those inputs affect the bones is actually something that zach worked on more oh nice yeah it's a bone by bone

• 21:12

basis on a per race and per gender basis so so now people who don't know what

• 21:17

they should bonus zach can you tell them a little bit about what a bone is [Music]

• 21:22

each messed up so bones uh it's pretty much

• 21:29

you can visualize it just like you would visualize a bone in a skeleton but really what it is it's just a transform in space that describes how each vertex

• 21:36

should be transformed if that bone is also transformed so whenever the bone in the

• 21:41

arm moves all the vertices that are skinned or weighted to that bone will move the same way that that bone does in

• 21:47

a proportion to the weight with that bone in that vertex

• 21:52

ah so if you scale it up it makes all the vertices around it scale up and one thing that chris does very frequently is

• 22:00

he'll go in and like touch up the skin weight so that the vertices scale kind of how we want them to because

• 22:06

like originally we had kind of like a blockier look with the weight but he went in and like uh really tweaked that and got got

• 22:12

something that looks pretty good for the larger weights too oh very cool yeah and i think it's a

• 22:17

combination of that and what you and zach are doing under the hood because you guys are kind of averaging in between all these bones too to make

• 22:23

smooth transitions which really makes my job easier as well i'm just going to play around while kind

• 22:29

of you guys talk about all this fun stuff yeah and it's also um super awesome that we get to

• 22:35

do all these manipulations and get a really wide variation of body types and faces and characters

• 22:41

just from like one standard mesh you know um yeah so a lot of times some character creators they just swap it out and and

• 22:48

different meshes you know but we're really like manipulating and molding and sculpting a single mesh that

• 22:54

can achieve like a really wide array of results and he was showing some of the wrinkles

• 23:00

and the textures on the face i know you guys have are really excited about like the detail system i don't know if you

• 23:06

want to talk a little bit more about that i'm pretty excited about the detail

• 23:12

system right now we're just using it for wrinkles but that's a system for pretty much blending any texture detail holistically over the entire body of a

• 23:18

character so whether that's like scales on the renkai or uh doing like the you saw that the vec has like scar asian

• 23:25

over their body you could blend in like different starvation patterns and we could even use it for like body hair sliders for the dwarves and yeah all

• 23:32

sorts of things for something as crazy as the tulnar once yeah i keep forgetting about that body

• 23:38

here how do you feel catkins about

• 23:44

making holes for armpit hair and all the armor yeah going to be quite the authoring hey i

• 23:51

guess we have to figure out horns anyway so why not right true true fair fair

• 23:56

yeah i love the hair customization you're on right now oh i do too i love it

• 24:02

yeah i really haven't seen that actually very much in many character creators

• 24:08

it would be cool that over time when you're in game you have to get a haircut because your hair grows out

• 24:13

especially with all the combinations of your cheeks like hair your chin hair your lip hair

• 24:19

i i like the difference yeah the the the different um options that you can kind

• 24:25

of touch on right look at the look at the variance and just the lip length like yeah that is that is pretty cool

• 24:32

because in a lot of other character creators that many of us probably have experience with right these are presets

• 24:37

that you choose you don't really get to manipulate the preset itself like i would choose this super long length you

• 24:43

know mustard or the short one and i wouldn't have the variance in between that i could customize that's

• 24:50

pretty cool yeah i mean this is an impressive feat of engineering by the team i mean

• 24:56

they've really done some awesome stuff and they've really worked out a ton of the extra parts of the character pipeline that we didn't quite have

• 25:03

nailed down yet and and these guys have really flushed everything out and it's yeah it's really cool to see i mean i

• 25:08

think we all get mesmerized by this thing every time we play with it and we've been talking about

• 25:14

letting people customize each eye separately i know because that's going to be a question that comes up too but right now we don't have that feature

• 25:21

in yeah there's still so much more left to do having one blind looking eye would be

• 25:27

sick absolutely or different colors a hundred percent yeah in tandem with the scars you know

• 25:33

you put a scar over that eye and then sort of make it milky i also like that you can adjust the uh

• 25:39

fingernail colors as well i want to rotate them

• 25:45

you'll have to up the strength of the yeah yeah because you're transparent yeah

• 25:52

i was telling steven i want to be able to put like the tattoos on my nails to make nail art

• 25:57

so if you zoom out you'll see his toenails too yeah oh that's so cool

• 26:02

that is so cool i love that let me see if there's some other other

• 26:08

presets we can play with now you put in a guy needs like a trifold hat oh yeah for sure it looks like a

• 26:15

musketeer that's gonna be a very piratey yeah let me see here let me go to

• 26:21

some other presets oh there we go this one's my one of my favorites too because i love the hairstyle it's cool yeah

• 26:28

really good on that yeah the hairstyles are awesome uh jinzy as everyone knows is a favorite i think of the community

• 26:35

but yeah she's been leading a ton of the charge on the hair eye customization

• 26:40

stuff while i've been dealing with more of the body now let's talk about these so this is in

• 26:46

the appearance section right this is mainly like adjusting attachments to the character but when we

• 26:52

talk about the model itself and we move into things like being able to sculpt

• 26:58

sections of the face this is such a cool yeah

• 27:03

these are areas that we can actually touch up on so when i grab this and i pull it in a direction right it starts

• 27:10

customizing different segments of the body uh zach you worked on this yes

• 27:16

yeah clayton and i tag teamed on this one um we really wanted to give players

• 27:21

that feeling that they were grabbing and pulling and sculpting their own character

• 27:27

especially with like more minor details i mean it would have been easy to give character like players like 100 sliders

• 27:33

you know but it's it feels better to have a much more tactile response than like clicking and

• 27:40

dragging dragging and pulling all these like uh points around

• 27:47

i appreciate that i can have the the flat filipino nose

• 27:52

yeah i mean again not every game allows it so yeah so

• 27:59

i i remember zach mentioned uh how much variation we achieve through the

• 28:04

customization features a lot of that is achieved through what steven is playing with right now with these dots that are

• 28:10

appearing and the reason why those are dots instead of the little plates that you see highlighted on the character is

• 28:17

because these are actually changing the shape of the character's features all together very more micro level adjustment tool

• 28:24

yeah plates are used for moving things around and it sort of maps exactly to your

• 28:30

input and that's why that pick map or the the plates feel so nice

• 28:36

but then you can click on those dots and drag those around and actually change the shape of a feature altogether

• 28:41

you can go for some intense eyebrow cheeks and make like make a make them bigger smaller change the location and

• 28:48

then you can go in and refine the actual shape of it using those thoughts

• 28:54

yeah this is this is phenomenal sorry chris go ahead no i'm just saying they did really spend a lot of time i think

• 29:00

sort of getting the feel right you know we've all been playing with it till it felt kind of intuitive or kind of easy

• 29:06

to use and friendly yeah i mean watching the progress over just

• 29:12

even the last three weeks has been unbelievable um you know

• 29:18

i'm i'm excited to see the the backlog of features that are going to be incorporated as

• 29:24

you know we move forward with the character creator beyond alpha 2 um but if you guys you know are like i said

• 29:32

our core audience that kind of watches our development just from alpha 1 to alpha 2 this is an entirely different

• 29:39

thing right alpha one was was something where you know we had a number of preset options that were very

• 29:45

limited there was there was little to no manipulation that was possible at all and this is a fully fledged first pass

• 29:51

in alpha pass but nonetheless still is something i don't see every day in

• 29:58

games that i play or in mmos particularly right and that's really cool to see

• 30:04

one of the other things that's interesting about this and you know a lot of people sometimes beg the question you know you only spend so much time in

• 30:11

a character creator right like that's your initial experience a lot of people when they're trying to get into the game

• 30:16

and and uh level up as quickly as possible from a competitive competitive standpoint like they don't spend a lot

• 30:22

of time in the character but the cool thing about this character creator is that it's not just intended for your

• 30:28

character right it has application with npc's that you might hire that our

• 30:36

design team might leverage this tech and in order to create you know marquee characters um

• 30:42

uh it also has some application outside of just uh humanoids right um

• 30:50

zach or clayton you guys want to talk about that a little bit yeah i mean so we're going to use

• 30:55

similar tech uh for implementing things like animal husbandry or

• 31:00

even just for creating creatures i have some tasks slated for myself to

• 31:05

implement something similar to what i did for characters but for creatures um and yeah tooling is a big focus for us and

• 31:12

making sure that designers have everything that they need to build the game with a lot of variation in the content

• 31:18

yeah we spent a lot of time just working out the tech for this so it'd be nice to

• 31:23

use this tech in other areas of the game when it's applicable whether that's the husbandry system

• 31:29

or any more customization points we give players in the future

• 31:35

i would also like to add that we are not sacrificing a lot of runtime computational efficiency for

• 31:42

this we are making sure that optimization is always at the forefront of these decisions

• 31:47

i i was doing a lot of the optimizations that we shared a while back with uh the simulated siege with a thousand

• 31:53

characters and with just the early rendering test a thousand characters and this is using a lot of the or in a lot of these features

• 32:01

implemented with the same tech for merging the mesh and merging the materials and batching that data for the gpu so that it can just crunch it all

• 32:07

out at once so the first uh couple weeks was just spent making sure that this is

• 32:13

viable for an mmo because you really don't see this type of large scale and this detail of characters

• 32:20

uh with this level of customization in any game regardless of a large scale mmo so we had to do a large amount of

• 32:27

due diligence and tech to make sure that it can actually work yeah i think that if you look at how

• 32:34

like the facial hair we broke that into slots like that's an obvious example where we're achieving a lot of variation

• 32:40

by breaking those into components that you can select individually and build your own combinations where it's not

• 32:45

possible for a lot of other games because we're combining those meshes and combining those materials with our uh

• 32:51

utm slot pooling solution and to steven's point earlier you know when we had our sort of very limited

• 32:57

character creator you know in our previous versions this really is i mean you're able to do sort of what my job is

• 33:04

which was i was just making variants of characters to sort of put in you know and now that players can can do it it's

• 33:10

just really cool to see come together the tattoos you should show that you can change the color too oh yeah yeah

• 33:15

because i think you're showing the tattoos which is cool but tiny ux features which is just being able to click on a uh

• 33:23

and drag it anywhere on the body it's such like a good feeling experience but

• 33:28

a lot of character creators you click it and it's just there and then you're changing it on a slider in the ui you know

• 33:35

being able to like manipulate it on the character it just feels really good i agree this does feel good

• 33:43

yeah i mean it's the benefit of having so many gamers as developers right you guys know what feels good and what you'd

• 33:48

like to see and then you just get to actually implement it and another one of our core tenants is reusability of these

• 33:55

tech features and you can see that we have scars and tattoos available in this decal system a

• 34:02

lot of those are using the same technology to drive it and a lot of the details that you'll be able to place on

• 34:07

the character we're reusing the technical features that we've solved

• 34:12

to implement more features for you most of the hard hard work is done

• 34:18

in regards to tuck yeah sorry i'm just trying to find like a

• 34:24

nice little place for the scorpion tear drop the scorpion teardrop scorpion

• 34:30

teardrop that's what i'm talking about okay it's cool that that's pretty cool

• 34:36

i love that i love it all right let's talk about a little bit um let me see here

• 34:43

play with the scars oh the scars yeah let me play with the scars he did he was

• 34:48

messing around with it earlier when you guys were nerding out [Music] oh yeah talk to me a little bit about

• 34:55

the scars clayton cause i know you did a lot of work on that front with chris yeah yeah so i

• 35:00

it's using mostly the same system as the tattoos but it's using a little bit more texture detail um

• 35:06

and yeah it still uses the same direct manipulation and the scaling and rotation whenever you select it it highlights it for you so you know which

• 35:12

one you're manipulating but basically it's just uh adding some bump detail and some like roughness and metallic and it

• 35:19

has all this information that chris worked really hard on uh to uh show three-dimensional uh information on

• 35:26

the character and you can sort of just place that wherever yeah it's always a fun process too

• 35:32

working with clayton and zach because they're great at giving feedback and they're great at explaining exactly what

• 35:37

they need they're like hey could you just make a couple adjustments to this map or this input and then we end up

• 35:44

getting pretty much where i think everyone wants us to be with these especially when it came to uh i think

• 35:49

you reworking a lot of the color clayton and getting that into them yeah basically there's like a flat color

• 35:56

which is basically just a multiplication of the base skins color so we really try to make sure that the scars look and

• 36:02

tattoos look good on every skin color that was a focus for us uh and it so it takes a base color and like

• 36:08

multiplies it but then you also have a discoloration value that you can add to make it look a little bit more fresh or a little bit you know more aggressive

• 36:16

yeah i love the um kind of wrinkle setting too really aging these characters

• 36:23

yeah and i i will be adding um a lot more muscular detail as well so we will

• 36:28

be able to control that so that you can kind of make your gut more i want my if you'd like my one pack chris yeah no we

• 36:35

can do it you can get to the one pack also the one pack

• 36:40

that's awesome the keg your fantasy maggie

• 36:46

of course you know oh you know dwarf action

• 36:52

need need to look like i drink all the ale so have you shown off the hair color

• 36:57

controls yet i have not yet bring it down a little bit sorry i was just being entranced by all

• 37:04

the options and playing things trying to get people to just see the versatility um all right

• 37:09

let's go to the hair color options where are we going here the head head yes hair i love it i worked

• 37:16

pretty hard on that one with uh gen c and um so with you and the rest of the team

• 37:21

giving a lot of helpful feedback yeah but yeah you can pick two different colors and then it'll pretty much every

• 37:26

hair color uses the accent and fill differently but usually the fill is the root color and the accent is the tip color and you can adjust the gradient

• 37:32

both the softness of the gradient and the offset of the gradient to really blend those colors however you want

• 37:38

across the entire hairstyle yeah and jincy has a very scrutinizing eye so i know it's not easy clayton she

• 37:45

kept coming back but like it needs more sheen here but yeah it's she's great to have leading this up too for all this

• 37:51

hair tech let's see so this is now on the top though let me go to the beard

• 37:58

and play with the beard one so accent and filler so i'm going to throw a little bit of

• 38:04

white in there oh that's a lot of white bit of salt and pepper a little salt and pepper

• 38:10

look at that gradient too i like the highlighting though it looks cool yeah and we can control that through

• 38:16

sort of different uv manipulation and get that salt and peppery mix in there

• 38:21

let me actually turn off the hair and just do the beard

• 38:29

and so i'm playing with this gradient to kind of determine the strength of that highlight right

• 38:36

yeah so the contrast is sort of the the strength of that the differentiation between those

• 38:42

two colors and the gradient will shift it along the hair

• 38:47

i mean i could spend all day in this character i feel like that's how most people feel

• 38:53

and the beauty of it is that you can save your character and we already have some of those features available

• 38:58

and load them right and in the future we want people to be able to share those

• 39:04

characters uh amongst each other for sure

• 39:09

and not only that but you can save them for like we were talking about earlier like future npcs that you might hire on

• 39:16

your freehold um and have those npcs look a certain way

• 39:21

um i think that would be really freaking cool that would be cool yeah

• 39:26

very cool yeah i was even talking with the designers about integrating the character creator into the quest designer tool so that they can just

• 39:32

create npcs with the click of a few buttons and have that already assigned to the quest and data

• 39:38

all right i want to show off a sculpt tool can we use like a is there a preset that we have available let me see oh

• 39:45

wait we did this we want to show the blend yeah okay so we're going to body um let's see

• 39:51

yeah we did this guy a little bit um this guy looks pretty cool

• 39:58

[Music]

• 40:03

yeah that's pretty cool oh my god i know that guy oh my god i forgot about

• 40:12

this guy we were playing with the uh the functionality and how

• 40:18

we could get um how granular we can get in the customization

• 40:24

options to create you know different personalities out there

• 40:30

you know it's gonna like backfire on you stephen there's gonna be a ton of you and a ton of people making you in game no no no this

• 40:38

actually looks great i hope hopefully excuse me hopefully asmin likes

• 40:44

likes this little rendition of it right it looks cool it does look cool it's kind of creepy

• 40:50

how realistic it is too all right let's talk about blending so explain to me a little bit about the blending mechanic

• 40:58

yeah so blending is a little bit more um it's not so in-depth especially for

• 41:04

those players i don't want to spend you know time adjusting each angle of

• 41:09

like the ear tip this is more of a large scale macro tool that you can select a couple you know presets and then you can

• 41:17

get certain features from one preset or different features from a another preset

• 41:23

so you place down your your presets and then you can click and drag and morph between those

• 41:29

different presets oh yeah look at that that's pretty cool

• 41:35

yeah i'm i'm impressed with how many options and ways you've given the player to mess with this character

• 41:42

oh this would be cool for like a family so when you're creating npcs and you want them all to be similar like you

• 41:49

make a mom and dad and then it'd be interesting yeah so you're taking features from each

• 41:55

preset and you're making something completely new out of it oh that's looking great so weird

• 42:04

it's freaking awesome i love this

• 42:11

so you can add as many as you want and kind of pull between them huh not as

• 42:17

many as you want i think there's a max at some point oh yeah

• 42:23

for ui purposes

• 42:29

too far apart stephen that's so cool it does give me the uh yeah it gives me hope for the system i

• 42:36

will not name but that would be plenty of hope i'm the only one that's terrified of that one that catkins is having like

• 42:43

nightmares about no we love ourselves

• 42:49

i'm excited for that one

• 42:54

there you go that's looking good

• 43:00

i mean it's looking yeah that's the right word it's looking

• 43:06

like something i guess it's nice so you can make your guy like haggard for certain days of the week

• 43:13

wait what this is mondays excuse me your character differently yeah for each day like a monday

• 43:21

he looks like he's judging you no i i know what we can do here

• 43:26

okay what can we do oh my god i'm scared

• 43:34

oh yeah okay i see where it goes don't get us in trouble

• 43:45

i get where you're going zach said this is a fantasy game

• 43:51

oh my god on let's go back to the back to the beginning and let's see what

• 43:57

what it could have been hold on let me see real quick but it could have been what do you mean

• 44:02

you know just steve what

• 44:08

and bring this all in tune we gotta get the hair into there we go all right let's take a look at our options

• 44:14

now the length oh wow look at that i like the length that's not too bad that's not too bad

• 44:22

okay that's a lot of hair it's really heavy on the hair front

• 44:27

this is interesting this is like a bro version oh yeah

• 44:34

i kind of like that i like that too yeah that's pretty interesting

• 44:39

now let me go ahead and go back to the blend oh no actually the

• 44:44

sculpt and let me adjust the eyes real quick

• 44:51

no no no okay that's better

• 44:56

look at that yeah that's pretty good yeah yeah were we talking about clayton no

• 45:02

negative results yeah that's what you're talking about so yeah that is one of our coordinates

• 45:07

this is one of our core tenants that we want to make sure that the the user is always getting positive results with

• 45:13

whatever they're customizing of course you can go crazy with it and try to make it look as goofy as possible but i

• 45:19

definitely know monster factories no no factories i mean you could do some monster factories like

• 45:24

with the tattoo put the scarring like on the eye yeah we can just grab the scarring

• 45:31

and put that over the eye oh there we go let me manipulate this now wait for it

• 45:38

i think i can make it super crazy large and like pull it down

• 45:43

oh now that looks kind of creepy that doesn't look like it's slashed by

• 45:49

like an axe or something you might have lost that fight i know i did lose that fight now we can adjust in the eyes hold

• 45:56

on let me go back to the eyes and put this like weird film over it and make it maybe a little bit more sick yeah like a

• 46:03

mage hit him with a fireball in the face or something yes and then oracle vibes we can take the pigmentation here make

• 46:10

it a little bit little uh hold on let me see

• 46:17

now he's starting to look a little creepy right that doesn't look too bad

• 46:23

oh that's scary i like that i wouldn't mess with that guy

• 46:29

no he seems creepy give him some more wrinkles so now something interesting is that

• 46:34

you know unreal obviously is a phenomenal engine epic is such a such a great company with you know the

• 46:40

amount of resources that they pour in really to helping um you know out of the box this

• 46:47

there being options for developers to use but at intrepid we really like you know

• 46:53

creating the functionality ourselves i know that there's some some other character creators out there that people

• 46:59

probably have seen with unreal engine one of which is what what's it called meta human i think meta human yeah yeah

• 47:05

yeah and yeah it makes awesome characters but um yeah we we built all of this tech

• 47:11

in-house uh yeah zach and i worked pretty yeah we wanted a solution that was tailored for the experience that we

• 47:18

want to give players and especially the tech we needed to support it yeah especially for an mmo right because that that those technical requirements those

• 47:25

those limitations are very specific to a per project basis almost

• 47:30
• 100 if we want to render as many characters as we want to in large scale battles we have to
• 47:36

yeah well you guys did a phenomenal job and yeah everyone and even the people who

• 47:43

are not here in this call like right that's what i was about to say like great job this is a wide-ranging um

• 47:49

effort by not just clayton zach and and chris but with ginsee and brian gans

• 47:56

and tristan and uh jim and the effects side um colby

• 48:01

colby with the ui um mike with the yeah manny

• 48:07

um you know gotta list them all now stephen i'm listing the mom listen all the

• 48:12

production especially benoit uh very important role of course through any development as a production team and

• 48:19

benoit did an awesome job organizing um organizing a lot of it um

• 48:25

you're falling apart without him for one day one day he's great for morale too because we'll

• 48:31

be in the meetings and he's like i'm sorry i was mesmerized by the screen also let's not forget stephen

• 48:39

stephen was here with us through this entire process he was guiding the entire thing giving us tasks on how to make

• 48:44

this better it also is the driving force it was crazy enough to hear my pitch on

• 48:49

what i wanted to make for the character creator and actually give me the responsibility to make it happen

• 48:55

well you guys have done a phenomenal job and i hope that out there in the community you know you you guys are seeing the quality right

• 49:02

um that we're striving for in Ashes of Creation you're seeing that continual improvement the development i'm going on

• 49:08

a monthly basis right now on our march towards alpha 2 and you guys are going to have an opportunity to play with this

• 49:14

character creator to find the bugs in this character creator there's going to be additional functionality that we're

• 49:19

going to discuss probably back on stream when we get there um that wasn't included as part of this first offering

• 49:24

or this work in progress but is is the intent that we have for for this particular area of the game that we want

• 49:30

to showcase eventually um so you know we're really just excited to see this

• 49:36

this game come to life and to see you guys you know react to the hard work that our

• 49:41

developers are putting into it and that that's exciting for me and i know it's exciting for you guys too um margaret is

• 49:47

there anything else or guys doing randomization and also maybe the vec randomization so we can show maybe some

• 49:53

more of those like uh sure tusk options and stuff but yeah i think that you know you said

• 49:59

a lot of what i would resonate as well everyone worked really hard did an amazing job i mean look at this this is

• 50:06

phenomenal um and there's more to come in regards to i know there's going to be a lot of questions about the other races and the

• 50:13

different differences between them in character creation as well as you know uh the sexes we'll we'll be showcasing

• 50:21

more of that like as we progress in our development so stay tuned oh the textures here are taking a little bit

• 50:28

huh oh there we go perfect now this guy's uh this guy's a chunky vec little chalkiness here

• 50:34

he's got a little song going on

• 50:39

some of the face here if you go to the parents tab it'll

• 50:45

be a little easier for the randomization yes oh yeah there you go

• 50:52

cool to see the tusks change whenever you hit randomize yeah i love that so much since he did really good on the tusk

• 50:59

customization with a lot of variation yeah and that's something we'll make sure to bring into the other creature

• 51:04

races as well yeah it looks great i think one thing that's really cool about uh doing the

• 51:11

races and the features that we've done so far for the character creator is that it paves the way for the cooler things

• 51:16

that we're gonna be doing later yeah totally agree very excited you guys

• 51:21

have done a phenomenal job um and i know that i share the feelings of the

• 51:28

community when we say that we are very excited for the future and what not just a character

• 51:34

brings but watching all the other features for alpha 2 start coming online it's pretty exciting

• 51:41

awesome well we will see all of you back on stream and for those of you who are watching on youtube feel free to leave

• 51:46

us comments as i said before we're always excited to read feedback from all of our followers all of the people who

• 51:52

are excited for ashes oh my god look at that guy's face excited for Ashes of Creation we read

• 51:57

that we internalize it and we come back to the community with actions that represent those those feelings so

• 52:04

thank you for joining us during this video and we will see you back on stream

• 52:09

bye [Music]

• 52:22

hey

• 52:30

[Music]

• 52:38

well seems like everyone liked it from the chat i do know there are quite a few

• 52:43

questions so we're gonna try to answer some of those um for sure and before we get into the question i just want to you

• 52:50

know kind of express to you guys that it's been a long journey so far in our

• 52:55

development we're we're not creating something small mmos are obviously big things to make right

• 53:02

they're probably the biggest game you can make and ours is a particularly ambitious mmorpg but

• 53:10

what i do hope is that with the demonstration of our alpha 2 character creator

• 53:15

and as we lead up to alpha 2 and you start seeing these progress updates on

• 53:20

systems and on combat and on the world and on everything that goes into making an mmo

• 53:26

you understand the bar of quality that we are trying to hit with this project

• 53:31

that is something that is very near and dear to us as developers our hearts

• 53:36

right is that we want to make something that makes us proud that makes our community proud um and on the quality

• 53:43

front this isn't even its final form like we're not completely like there's still more stuff that's going to be

• 53:48

happening so absolutely and i i will say one very important thing it takes a lot of people

• 53:53

to build an mmrpg of Ashes of Creation size and we are hiring so out there this

• 53:59

is going to be a great tool for you guys to spread the word and help us spread the word about the project and intrepid

• 54:06

studios because we still have a lot of bodies to hire we want to be at a little over 200 people within this year

• 54:14

so um we have a great hr team that's helping on that front but please share

• 54:19

this stuff talk to the developers of your favorite games that they've made and let them know that ashes is hiring

• 54:26

it's very important that we get the best possible talent because when you acquire talent like we have at intrepid

• 54:33

you get these types of results and these are the this is the quality bar we all want to play in um and you know i can't

• 54:41

i can't say enough how proud i am of our developers i've intrepid of everybody on the team i know we mentioned some of the

• 54:46

names there in that video but um you know we are we are we are hard at work and there's a lot of

• 54:52

work still left to do and even you know within our team uh like during our last

• 54:58

like potluck i heard a lot of discussion of people talking about what they love about

• 55:03

working at intrepid and it just warms my heart to see that you know a lot of people have had bad experiences

• 55:10

but from from our what we're trying to achieve is making like really a home for people yeah where they can be passionate

• 55:16

and make and create the things that they want um absolutely obviously within line of what we're creating um and i know

• 55:23

that people have said are you guys going to create other games i'm like let's just let's launch one game focus on action

• 55:30

but you never know absolutely so with that i'm gonna play kind of some b-roll video in the

• 55:36

background uh will's tweet chat awesome but the first question we have here is

• 55:43

obviously where the female is at um so if you want to talk a little bit about why we're showcasing and obviously we

• 55:49

this we haven't even shown you all the races yet um so if you want to talk a little bit about why we focused on one

• 55:55

first yeah absolutely i mean there's a lot of technical hurdles that come into um setting up the you know skeleton and

• 56:02

the the rig for the each race and um you know the the different genders um right

• 56:08

now we want to kind of get this out in front as quickly as possible so we use kind of our base klr male model um to

• 56:15

stand up all of the tech that zach and clayton were working on um it just takes a little bit of time for us to convert

• 56:21

those over uh on the female side and as well as on the other races um so you'll

• 56:26

be seeing that those options uh probably as updates through our community team showcasing that on different social

• 56:33

channels in the future so stay tuned we'll be showing off more uh you know creation process as we get

• 56:40

further along with the creator beyond that i know there was a lot of comments and even internally i saw some devs talking

• 56:47

about it who are maybe not working on the character creator and in regards to blinking um because obviously when

• 56:52

you're creating your character and they're just like staring at you it's a little horrifying uh yeah i don't know

• 56:57

if you're gonna talk a little bit about it absolutely any any time you're in a scene where you really want to have

• 57:03

close control over the face that you're manipulating um it's sometimes a little

• 57:08

bit difficult to incorporate heavy animations in that right so the idol stance is is not really present and then

• 57:14

also as you're like manipulating the eyes um right now if we had like blinking or eye darting like following

• 57:21

the cursor or like oh my god you know what are you doing to my face kind of thing that that takes a little bit more time

• 57:27

to set up as well um but it is something that the animation team is working on yeah we did we definitely discussed it

• 57:34

we thought about you know if we'd be able to get the in by time but we weren't

• 57:40

we weren't feeling confident in regards to the quality that obviously we have a quality level that we're trying to meet

• 57:45

so and we want to make sure that when we showcase these things to you guys that you're not going to see weird wonky

• 57:50

stuff absolutely as much as possible there's some cases where you know uh

• 57:57

there will be bugs by the way i do want to mention um you know obviously we talked about a little bit about features

• 58:02

that are not currently present in this alpha 2 character creator but one important thing for all of us out

• 58:08

there who love experimenting with character creators and making cool creations is the ability to adjust the

• 58:15

environmental controls around the um the level that the character creator exists in this might include different scenes

• 58:22

that you can put your character in it'll include lighting adjustments that you can have in this b-roll footage you're

• 58:28

kind of seeing the emissive colors change in the background every now and then there's going to be a lot of environmental controls that are offered

• 58:35

to the character creator so that people can set it up their scene that they want to kind of grab screenshots or to grab

• 58:40

recordings or you know whatever they want to do that's also some additional features that tristan was working on

• 58:47

speaking of additional features um there's quite a few questions here in regards to that so i'll just go through

• 58:54

it i saw some people talking about asymmetry and we talked a little bit about the fact that we want to have this for eyes in the future

• 59:01

but just in general people would like to have some asymmetry in their body and things of that sort so yeah

• 59:06

absolutely i mean the asymmetry is going to be um you know functionality that's possible in manipulating either you know

• 59:13

different um components of the body or different features like hair the beard

• 59:18

we saw a little bit of that blending with highlights that you can do margaret talked a little bit about the

• 59:23

light excuse me the eye asymmetry that you can include um you know obviously those are going to exist within certain

• 59:30

parameters that we want to define on a per race basis um but it is something that we think is cool asymmetry is a

• 59:36

really cool thing and those will be available for other parts of the body as well next um a lot of people were looking at

• 59:43

the vec and being like it'd be really cool to have piercings is that something that we'll showcase

• 59:48

maybe not just for back but for the other races as well uh 100 i mean i think even um we had some of the body um

• 59:56

adornment or jewelries that were uh available on the vec model but we just

• 1:00:01

didn't have time to for this demonstration to bring those over into the character creator yet um but that'll

• 1:00:07

be also kind of culturally dependent as well but there will be options like that to customize with your character yeah

• 1:00:14

and when we were showing off the hair options and colors we showcased a lot of

• 1:00:20

very natural colors and people were wondering if they can have more vibrant greens and blues and stuff like that or

• 1:00:26

if they're going to be more specific to those cultures and races uh the options they can choose options are

• 1:00:32

definitely going to be um culturally dependent however with regards to the question about high saturation or you

• 1:00:38

know certain types of color ranges um obviously we have a style guide that we want to hit from our art from our

• 1:00:44

perspective right in the game um so those options will be dependent on whether or not they match with you know

• 1:00:52

excuse me whether or not they match with the kind of style that we want to have within the game

• 1:00:58

all right cool cool and um i know there's a lot of customization options that you guys want

• 1:01:03

we will we have a ton more so stay tuned as we showcase more of those features

• 1:01:08

the last question i have here before we move into our character art segment um

• 1:01:14

is people were asking about we've talked about this in regards to paintings and pictures in your freehold of being able

• 1:01:20

to upload images people were wondering when they were looking at the tattoos if they'd be able to upload images for

• 1:01:26

those that's a good question um it's a tricky one um

• 1:01:32

you know for me i think it would be cool if we could do that of course um you

• 1:01:38

know that does add an additional layer of customer service need on our side right we're gonna have to answer tickets

• 1:01:44

and reports that come in if people put questionable you know markings and then we have to do like um you know warnings

• 1:01:50

and removals and bans or you know whatever like that's a that's a whole other element so um

• 1:01:57

we will see we will see uh it is still an open-ended question in my mind yeah um from my perspective i've

• 1:02:04

worked on products where we did allow it and there were a lot of service issues that we had in regards to customer

• 1:02:09

service and we had to remove them in some cases so oh yeah it's definitely not an easy

• 1:02:15

thing to say yes or no to um but we'll see where we're at on that run but i know it was a question that was asked so

• 1:02:20

i wanted to make sure you you all felt heard um so moving from there let's go into our

• 1:02:26

character art stuff before the stream gets ridiculously long and by the way

• 1:02:31

yeah before we move into the character stuff i just want to also add one additional thing um for those of you in our core audience our in our community

• 1:02:38

who's been following development for a long time um and has had you know

• 1:02:43

the the outlook to anticipate the day you'll start seeing our quality bar hit the

• 1:02:50

area we want it to um i just want to thank you guys for the support um i know that you know a lot of

• 1:02:57

projects in the past have failed to live up to your standards they promised the world and they haven't they they didn't

• 1:03:02

deliver uh in many cases um our intent is to deliver so uh i hope you guys that are watching and

• 1:03:09

anticipating the future developments and seeing the progress on the work that we're all doing um that this level of

• 1:03:15

quality is is something that's speaking to you from a gamer's perspective and something you want to see and play uh

• 1:03:20

because that's our target goal um so really appreciative of your guys support continued support watching our

• 1:03:26

development giving us feedback it's so important like you know i go on like reddits and i go

• 1:03:31

on other channels and i i read feedback from pretty much everywhere we can get it um and in the early days of our

• 1:03:39

project there was a lot of skepticism now as people have seen our alpha one and they're starting to see more updates

• 1:03:45

on the monthly basis um it's nice to see that the the support from the community

• 1:03:50

is there our objective is to take the time that's necessary right we don't have a publisher breathing down our neck

• 1:03:55

i don't have investors breathing down my neck like our goal is to create a quality product

• 1:04:00

and your patience in that regard is very helpful your support in that regard verbally participating in the feedback

• 1:04:06

is extremely helpful so please make sure if you're watching this and you want to see these types of game designs come out

• 1:04:13

and at the quality that we're showing now it's important for you to get involved go on the reddit go on twitter go on our

• 1:04:19

forums give us feedback we're not looking for you know people to purchase into the game or to pre-order we're really just

• 1:04:26

looking for people who are mmo gamers to come out and talk about the ideas that we're presenting and the updates that

• 1:04:31

we're giving that's a super important thing that's part of the process and it's very important to us and almost

• 1:04:36

every platform that you go to where we are officially there you will get an interaction with the like one of our

• 1:04:42

development team um our whole community team is on staff during our core hours and you know if you come ask a question

• 1:04:49

in discord we'll answer if you're on our social media we will respond to you if

• 1:04:54

you head over to our forums we will engage with you so it's one of those things where

• 1:04:59

not only are you posting but you're also going to get a response from us i strive to build that as a team i think

• 1:05:05

i've worked on a lot of projects where you know that isn't something that was that was restricted from doing that yeah

• 1:05:12

exactly and so i think that you know we as gamers all want that interaction with a development

• 1:05:18

team and you can get that with us so yes um yeah very very proud of margaret very proud of the community team as a whole

• 1:05:24

you guys are doing an awesome job um interacting with our with our player base it's it's very important they kick

• 1:05:30

butt i love them all they are great beyond that um like stephen said in

• 1:05:36

regards to delivering on that quality that takes time so bear with us give us the time that we need in order to ensure

• 1:05:42

that we can we can release a product that is going to be what we've all been waiting for and dreaming of i'm going to

• 1:05:48

spend all my out of office hours playing so

• 1:05:54

um i'm excited you too yeah i mean we're the people who would play

• 1:06:01

all night i'm just ready to wander around as an npc like that would be fun oh yeah

• 1:06:07

i just want to like inhabit the body of an npc that somebody's fighting and just be like whoa where did that come from

• 1:06:12

why does npc start going crazy now i'm just kidding no i think it's great i wouldn't have

• 1:06:18

been a boss during a raid or something uh dynamic dynamic content a little

• 1:06:23

different it would be super sweet we'll definitely have events and stuff like that that's one of the things from a

• 1:06:29

community perspective that we've been putting in we're putting together some requests in regards to some tools we'd like and one of those tools is being

• 1:06:35

able to do something like what stephen had suggested which is you know spawning ourselves as a boss and fighting uh

• 1:06:42

having an apartment i'm totally just joking it's like i would do that on the public test server but yeah all right uh

Character art update

• 1:06:47

what do we got for character characters moving on so before we get into the character uh stuff

• 1:06:54

one of the things that has come up quite a bit from the community and even internally is how do we pronounce all of

• 1:07:00

the races so i was going to get a little steven sound bite let's start with our human races

• 1:07:08

so we have the klar and we have the value all right and then moving on to our

• 1:07:13

elven we have the empyrean and we have the pyre right and then our orcs

• 1:07:19

our orcs are the vek and the renkai and then our dwarves

• 1:07:24

are the duneer and the nakua and then the last and final our

• 1:07:30

conglomeration of madness the tulnar

• 1:07:36

all right there you guys have it um i've also sent uh our wiki folks lex over there um kind of

• 1:07:42

like the pronunciation for those so they'll be updating that um as well so you know just quick quick get that out

• 1:07:49

of the way because people have been asking um in regards to the character art you saw some of the wrinkles um in

• 1:07:57

the character creation but we kind of wanted to show you what this looks like um it's not in a final form but you know

• 1:08:03

they're still working on it very cool yeah i love the wrinkles and helping to establish age of character is

• 1:08:10

really cool and i won't have a turntable for this because you guys did see the vecmail um

• 1:08:15

in in the character creator already but i wanted to show some still images of them as well

• 1:08:21

um you saw the concept art for them and this is the first time we've been showing you guys the 3d models but our

• 1:08:27

concept art looks almost the same so one thing you do see here that you didn't see in the character creator is

• 1:08:33

hair options right so these are some of the vec hairs um that are possible as well and some more of the piercings and

• 1:08:40

bones and stuff right yeah the adornments are present as well yeah

• 1:08:46

and then the female that you all have been waiting for

• 1:08:54

oh yeah there we go some of the jewelry options another hair option

• 1:09:03

yeah and again the reason why obviously we didn't have the female characters present in the demonstration was because we got to hook

• 1:09:10

up a lot of those technical components uh that allow for the manipulation um within the character creator

• 1:09:17

and i do have a turntable for her so nice

• 1:09:22

you can see the full 3d y'all thirsty over those booties though

• 1:09:28

i know the beck booties i saw like the chat going nuts i was

• 1:09:33

laughing so hard oh no they really wanted to see us do the butt slider i'm

• 1:09:38

waiting for some creator as they review the chara the uh the presentation today to do the whole booty booty booty

• 1:09:44

everywhere song oh you know they're going to they've already done it um and then

• 1:09:52

we are going to be showing the male pi ray oh so this is the male pirate yeah the

• 1:09:57

concept art of them right but you can see the delineation between

• 1:10:03

the male and female in the ears and in the antlers or as some were calling the

• 1:10:08

branches or what were they called branch layers branch um as well but that's the that's the

• 1:10:14

pirate uh mail yeah very very cool um and if you have feedback for us on

• 1:10:22

the vec or the pirate we have some threads already up on the forums definitely pop over there give us some

• 1:10:27

feedback we love hearing from you guys obviously along our journey we've been continually making changes and updates

• 1:10:33

based on that feedback so keep it coming next up we have our fishy friend

• 1:10:40

maybe one that you might not want to engage with this is one of the alpha 2 i

• 1:10:47

believe this is one of the alpha 2 raid bosses that are going to be in the ocean um that'll be interesting when you come

• 1:10:54

across that what might happen yes good luck that's all i'm going to say

• 1:10:59

good luck good luck good sir we should have added a scale there because uh oh yeah it's a big boy like a little

• 1:11:06

fishy like next to his cheeks the number of ships needed for that one's going to be a lot all right

• 1:11:13

um and then we have our whispering watcher whispering watcher

• 1:11:19

um oh yeah i love this creature or this mount yeah it's a mount

• 1:11:25

yep very cool very sphinxy feeling

• 1:11:30

it was definitely inspiration this is one that i got to design so

• 1:11:35

it was very very exciting it was creepy but uh i know a lot of people were like this could be so creepy

• 1:11:41

but look at the 3d model it's so good i would really love if this mount had like a social action that it could do

• 1:11:47

where it like yells at somebody near you or something right or whisper what i want to see is that

• 1:11:53

it's like a dungeon where like you're going through the dungeon and you just hear whispering throughout the dungeon

• 1:11:58

and then you find that this is the creature that's been whispering to you the entire time you have to battle it

• 1:12:03

that's what i'd like to see all right and with that we will head on over to

Outro and Q&A

• 1:12:09

the questions that you guys asked over on the forums um obviously our artists are amazing we

• 1:12:15

show off their all the time but uh shout out to all of them they are

• 1:12:20

phenomenal amazing yeah it's crazy we love our team yes all of them

• 1:12:27

um so our first question is from uh azalea isaiah over on the forums and they wanted to know about world pvp have

• 1:12:34

you considered a high-stakes loot drop pvp zone slash area in vera

• 1:12:41

um i we have not and the reason for that is our current pvp systems already allow

• 1:12:48

for material and material risk essentially

• 1:12:54

that's either through the flagging system or through other event-based pvp opt-in systems as well um so yeah oh it

• 1:13:00

was as ezreal and the next one similar name as array wants to know about nodes will

• 1:13:08

infrastructural issues requiring reactive tasks be part of node gameplay

• 1:13:14

outside of monster coin siege weather and natural disaster events what was the

• 1:13:20

first part of that well infrastructural issues requiring

• 1:13:25

reactive tasks be part of node gameplay absolutely um there are f there are

• 1:13:31

three primary systems that deal with um building damage and or building

• 1:13:38

destruction within nodes um those are npc driven events that are a response to you know some type of either story arc

• 1:13:45

predicate or atrophy issues that happen with the node there

• 1:13:50

are node sieges and there are node wars all of those

• 1:13:56

the event system could be a hazard like a tornado or hurricane and that could deal damage to buildings which require

• 1:14:02

then the players in order to reactivate those services from a particular building to repair the building

• 1:14:08

there is the ability for buildings to take damage during wars or during sieges when those abilities take damage they

• 1:14:15

could potentially be destroyed at which point a rubble appears on that plot within the

• 1:14:20

node and the government has to clear that plot before they can either reconstruct

• 1:14:26

a new building or the previous building that was there buildings also live within a prerequisite system

• 1:14:32

so in order to build uh uh down the tech tree essentially of what these buildings provide as the node grows larger to

• 1:14:39

access more um to access stronger building types you

• 1:14:44

may get a kink in that chain if it's destroyed and you'll have to stand that back up in order to support

• 1:14:49

the service again so there's a lot of reactive type of systems that can interface with nodes and the

• 1:14:57

development of those nodes and players and governments will have to respond to that in order to keep their services

• 1:15:02

running right and this one is from its fame and it is regards to rare items with

• 1:15:09

unique and rare legendary items limited to one per server what will happen to an

• 1:15:15

item of such rarity when the player character in possession leaves the world or server

• 1:15:21

that item will then be available again for uh acquisition um through whatever means it was acquired previously

• 1:15:29

and then captivated would like to know about lore how do you plan to establish big characters and story arcs in an

• 1:15:35

ever-changing and node-driven world that's a hard one but yeah that's a that's a that's a very long

• 1:15:41

answer required um so our story arc system which is being championed by our lore and narrative

• 1:15:48

teams um scott wynn jeremy ime these are built in such a way

• 1:15:55

that and i don't want to get into too much detail but they're built in such a way where these marquee characters or these these story plots have multiple

• 1:16:04

um and i don't want to use the word nodes because nodes has a specific connotation to cities but within the

• 1:16:10

context of these story arcs there are specific points that they can pivot to tell a different story that different

• 1:16:17

story can be based on predicates that are in the world from a player decision standpoint from a cultural

• 1:16:24

representation standpoint from situational to which node gets developed there's a lot of different components

• 1:16:31

that interact with the way the dialogue and narratives play out on a particular

• 1:16:36

server and what that means is and i've said this from the beginning many sandbox mmorpgs

• 1:16:43

they they do not create as much curated content as theme park mmorpgs and their excuse for doing that

• 1:16:50

is because they incorporate player driven mechanics but that's a bit of a cop-out and it's the opposite approach

• 1:16:56

that we've taken with Ashes of Creation and the reason for that is if you give the player a door and there's nothing behind that door then opening the door

• 1:17:03

is meaningless so what we have to do is we have to create a very functional story arc system that provides content

• 1:17:10

in many different ways but is behind a door of world progress or world

• 1:17:15

development that is then executed by the player population um and that's how we construct uh our narrative systems

• 1:17:22

essentially with a short answer yeah um there's a lot that's going to

• 1:17:27

interact with our narrative stuff so stay tuned we may showcase some of those things

• 1:17:32

absolutely throughout the upcoming months so um our next question is from george black and they want to know about armor

• 1:17:39

since heavy armor will be strong against physical damage and cloth armor strong against magic damage what would make

• 1:17:45

players want to wear leather armor i think i think your armor is really

• 1:17:51

based on your threat assessment like what encounter are you going with is there a blend of incoming physical and

• 1:17:58

magical damage based on the types of opponents uh other players creatures that you're facing that's going to be

• 1:18:04

completely situational so that's how our armor systems essentially are you're not going to get one set of

• 1:18:10

armor that's going to be situationally relevant for every encounter you might face that's crazy um

• 1:18:16

and as a result of that you're going to have to uh succeed in acquiring sets that are

• 1:18:23

situationally relevant uh for the types of encounters you are intending to face leather gives you a blend between both

• 1:18:29

worlds it also will have different types of set benefits that aren't purely related to damage mitigation right

• 1:18:35

so that could be outgoing skill damage it could be critical chances it could be some water

• 1:18:40

some other waterfall stats that are associated with it um our armors don't just boil down to uh damage type

• 1:18:46

mitigation all right and uh our next question is from doug

• 1:18:52

bug27 and we're going back to a little bit of lore i'm not sure if you're gonna be able to answer this one but uh will

• 1:18:58

the racial capital cities such as ren for oryx ayla for human and amera for elves be player cities potential nodes

• 1:19:06

or has the cataclysmic cataclysmic event done something else to them entirely

• 1:19:12

so we have to remember that part of the the story and this has been expressed in the past is that you are returning to a

• 1:19:18

world that has essentially been destroyed and left untouched for many millennia and as a result those old

• 1:19:25

capital cities are essentially the ruins of which you're returning to and the new

• 1:19:30

cities that you are developing the node structures that exist these are brand new cities right they might be couched

• 1:19:36

within ruins of old you know empires so to speak um but they will not be

• 1:19:41

representative of the old capital cities there you go and then akatosh and zillan had the same

• 1:19:47

question in regards to instances will the instance content still have scripted and difficult boss fights that drop gear

• 1:19:55

and loot yeah um you know obviously that's our incentive wheel right that's why you do

• 1:20:01

content for the most part is as it relates to your progression as a character both in your vertical power

• 1:20:06

and horizontal capabilities um and in that sense even though we're mitigating the amount of instances that are really

• 1:20:12

relevant within the world to a 80 20 split is our objective um 80 open world

• 1:20:18

content 20 instance content really instance content is meant to provide

• 1:20:25

um rails for an experience right the designers want the experience either to

• 1:20:30

be like you know single player or or just a party and they want to control like that

• 1:20:37

environment and that encounter they use an instant if it's especially if it's important to a story line whether it be

• 1:20:42

class-based storyline culture-based storyline you know node-based whatever affiliation related to the character is

• 1:20:49

a path they want to take down the instance category there's not going to be too much of that but they will incorporate of course our traditional

• 1:20:55

reward structure yeah i'm just going to note that we're straying away from that as much as possible but in some cases it

• 1:21:01

is a tool that is useful for us now to be to be fair that doesn't mean that the reward structure of incentives will be

• 1:21:08

you know bis they won't be best in slot type items you will not accomplish that from in from instanced based content um

• 1:21:15

those will be found within the open world it'll be a competitive area for you to to achieve those things because

• 1:21:21

other forces will want to achieve them as well and because it's open world there will be a limited number of those

• 1:21:26

who can successfully complete on whether it be some timer for a world boss or some condition or other world state

• 1:21:32

predicate um those are things that people are going to have to contend with each other for and that's where that risk versus reward comes and you know if

• 1:21:40

you want the cool reward you gotta take the risks absolutely and speaking about gear uh song rune actually has a

• 1:21:46

question saying will accessories such as necklaces and rings be vertical power

• 1:21:51

changes or horizontal power changes both and it depends on how you engage

• 1:21:56

with them um but there will be options for both yes and then uh

• 1:22:02

tom tomb not sure how you want your name to be pronounced uh is asking about

• 1:22:07

mounts will some aquatic mounts have any utility skills that can be used in fishing

• 1:22:16

yes absolutely that will be a excuse fishing is a big part

• 1:22:22

of the game i personally love fishing um i think we're gonna have a really cool um system for fishing and um

• 1:22:30

mounts will have skills that relate to fishing in some way shape or form at least at least the water mounts right whether that be getting out to a

• 1:22:36

particular area whether it be like some type of fish finding or

• 1:22:42

uh um you know chumming the area um there could even be benefits while you

• 1:22:48

know fishing in the water while mounted right like you're on the back of your turtle out there just sitting in the water casting your rod uh or your line

• 1:22:56

and uh to fish um there can be some benefits conferred upon upon you based

• 1:23:01

on the mount yeah right and i'm probably not going to say this

• 1:23:06

person's full name because it has a like a little bit of a swear word in there so we're going to call you joker um

• 1:23:12

oh now i mentioned cody should have caught that they want to know about raid pvp and

• 1:23:19

they're asking how will raid loot be dispersed when pvp battles are involved

• 1:23:24

during the raid fight uh there is going to be there is already a complex system in place when it comes

• 1:23:31

to raid loot settings that each raid can have uh if we're talking about two

• 1:23:37

competing raids um we have a blended approach of damage done and a tag

• 1:23:44

benefit so um you know if you tag the boss first or you tag the

• 1:23:49

loot you know whatever the loot target is first you're gonna get a benefit in the damage overall determination so if

• 1:23:57

you need to have 51 percent of damage done in order to qualify your raid or the plurality of damage done if there's

• 1:24:03

even three or four raids um then tagging first might give you a five or ten percent edge we'll play with that

• 1:24:10

number uh balance it based on testing but generally that's our approach in competing loot rights and there's been

• 1:24:17

some quite i've actually seen a lot of discussion regarding this topic um people do have concerns in regards to

• 1:24:23

you know i go into an area and i just tag all the monsters and now i have some percentage of that i

• 1:24:29

know yeah okay yeah i know if you tag all the monsters you're really only going to be able to focus you damage a certain subsect of

• 1:24:36

them right um and and players will be able to over damage essentially the other monsters that you're tagging so that's that's what that's why we have a

• 1:24:42

blended approach so people can't do the tag all and now i own them all okay and i'm sure there will be follow-up

• 1:24:48

questions in regards to that but if your question didn't get answered here our amazing community team um roshan and

• 1:24:56

vakner bachner does a lot of work on this um he basically goes through every question to make sure that if you asked

• 1:25:02

a question that we've already answered he gives you the answer to that question and then also lets you know if your

• 1:25:08

question didn't get selected so that you can you know make sure to ask it again for the next month's

• 1:25:13

questions and possibly get picked as one of the random questions so thank you again to everybody for submitting them

• 1:25:20

and like i said check it out over the forums if you didn't get your answer here and i think that will wrap us up

• 1:25:26

for our march development update awesome how are you feeling that was i'm feeling

• 1:25:32

good that was i i i'm glad that you guys uh enjoyed watching the the character creator um you know there's like i said

• 1:25:39

a lot of work ahead of us for alpha two uh we're hard at work uh on that march um

• 1:25:45

but um stay tuned for our future updates because we're gonna have a lot of fun stuff to share yes a lot this is there's

• 1:25:52

so much more to come we are very excited uh so thank you all for joining us we

• 1:25:57

will see you next month for another development update and in the interim please follow us on all of the social channels we constantly keep you all

• 1:26:04

updated uh you know every day almost there's some social uh post up there peter does

• 1:26:09

an amazing job interacting over there so hop on uh give us your infos we might

• 1:26:14

have some other exclusive stuff to socials so since this was a very long stream as is there's some pieces that didn't quite

• 1:26:20

make it in here so stay tuned over there and of course if you want to join our

• 1:26:25

dev discussion we just had a new one go up so pop on over to our our forums and leave your feedback over there in

• 1:26:31

regards to um indicators for like conning and enemies and things of that sort and then of

• 1:26:37

course our april cosmetic swap overs on april 6th so get those sets if that's something you're interested in before

• 1:26:43

the swap over and the video for this we'll have two videos one is going to be the 4k video of the character creator

• 1:26:50

segment that will be going up probably later today and then we'll have the full video of the whole live stream go up um

• 1:26:57

probably on friday so stay tuned for both of those and then of course leave us a comment over on our youtube channel

• 1:27:03

if you're watching this right now um because you may get selected as the lucky winner as long as you're a

• 1:27:08

subscriber and you leave us a comment and then beyond that uh follow us on all the social we'll see you

• 1:27:14

next month bye everyone have an awesome weekend

• 1:27:21

[Music]