Talk:2022-05-27 Livestream

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Intro

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[Music]

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hello everyone uh salutations and welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation made

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development update we hope everyone is well and safe and has been having a good

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time i know on our front we've been busy bees as per usual i'm sure you uh

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as we say every month we're like in shock that a month has passed but with me as always is stephen sharif our

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creative director and of course i'm margaret crone your community marketing lead and today we'll be going over a

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whole slew of things it's going to be a little different uh it's going to be very art heavy as you can see in our

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topics i cannot i cannot tell you how excited i have been for this i'm

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really excited i mean i like every day that passes and i'm watching the tech

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continue to get refined and the environments continue to get these passes and i'm just talking to the team

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and like holy smokes how are you guys doing these things it looks so good

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yeah but oh my gosh i mean we'll be sending lots of thanks uh in in the future here uh of

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the stream but the team has been doing crazy work there's a little internal competition from the character creator

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to the environment art team is the best kind of competition we want uh we want the devs to be in competition it's it's

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who can one up the other in the amazingness category 100 we have we have a good time it's all

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in good fun but of course we have some quick reminders i will try to be quick with them of course and then we have our

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studio update we just like to give you guys some info on what's going on and give you a little behind the scenes

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infos and then of course we'll be going over environment art update which is going to be

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the big uh piece of information for this stream and then we do have some character art updates as well we just

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want to share a couple things with you all and then we'll wrap up with a q a of course from all the forum questions that

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you guys have submitted so thank you to those of you who have partaken in those um so without further ado i'll get

Reminders

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through the quick updates because i know you guys want to see all the cool stuff so first and foremost

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we have our you youtuber subscriber comment here which is from dan duffy and

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of course if you want to be the person who's spotlighted here uh all you have to do is leave a comment on

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this video when we put it up on youtube and you could be the person and of course you have to be subscribed to our

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channel that's the other key here so they say hey guys i have a question about large scale sieges and raid groups

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in the majority of game modes of this of the scale there's very little meaningful communication or tactics among players

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and it often degenerates into random death balls uh doing random things or one supreme rate leader

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screaming to 49 muted people in discord could you guys give us an idea of what

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types of communication systems and hierarchies might be present in-game to help large amounts of players make

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decisions and communicate uh them on the fly in combat if i had a

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dime for every time i was in an mmo with a rage shot caller that was screaming at 50 other people

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to do certain things as this hectic ball of rages ran into each other i'd have a

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few dollars but that's a good question and it's at the forefront of a lot of our administrative

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tools and functionality that we want to incorporate both from a ui perspective um as well as from a voice over

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perspective from an indicator in the world with um location markers with

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some symbols you can use above target heads um uh for granting administrative

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functions on the voip in in raid and in party there's a lot of things

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excuse me that we want to do from our experiences as playing these

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games in the past and sharing that kind of experience that we think can help alleviate that

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and a big portion of these systems are going to be coming online as part of alpha 2. um so it's important for those

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of you who are participating in testing in alpha 2 to get a handle on those systems to feel them out and see how

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much they mitigate those types of experiences or at least streamline them into a not so chaotic environment um

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uh but it is something that we are focusing on for sure yeah and we'll

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you know our ui team will work on a lot of cool tools for developers for you guys to utilize i'm sure when when

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design gets their hands on all the goodness and of course uh as always we have our cosmetic swap over

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that will be happening on june 8th 20 to 22 at 11 a.m reminder that these help us

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build and shape the world all the variants made from these sets you'll see them in game as npcs as creatures as

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buildings etc and i mean you see that in every one of our development updates as we showcase more and more of the game

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and we have our dev discussion which is which systems do you feel utilize rng

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the best where do you feel rng does not belong what rng based systems or features have you enjoyed the most and

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of course our next one is going to be on time dedication so if you have thoughts on rng which i know

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y'all do because every nerd does we we love and hate it at the same time but

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there's a place and a time for rng um and we'd love to hear what you guys think to make sure that we're all on the

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same page in regards to that and then of course last but not least uh

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just a reminder that if you are a content creator we do have a content creator program it is still in the application phase we will let you know

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when that closes and when we begin the invitation phase but if you're curious about that you can

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find all that information over on our site and in our support section as well and without further ado

Studio Update

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let's hand it over to stephen to talk a little bit about studio updates studio updates we have been on a hiring

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extravaganza um i i know i've said this probably in the last three streams streams teams um

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three three last three streams uh but our hr team and our internal recruiters

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cameron stacy midori um they're doing a phenomenal job in um

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in guiding the troves of applicants we've had to the studio uh through the interview process and

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i just this week we had five people start on monday and

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they are amazing top quality candidates with incredible amount of talents

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and it is so good to see our team continuing to grow um

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obviously ashes is a huge project and we need as many of the talented people out there in the development world as we can

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get and we are actively recruiting so keep on helping us from the community's perspective sharing the sharing our um

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our socials that we send out that our glorious community team helps with um with the recruitment message and shoot

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that out to other people who you know in the industry are extremely talented um so that's going very well uh we are very

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close to getting our graphics done in the in the interior of the studio and getting the uh logos and the 3d um wall

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mounts and stuff implemented across the studio um that's going to be very soon um and then we'll hopefully be getting

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some stephen's already got orchids he always has everything right well john loves orchids and he he's he

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has a very he has a very good touch when it comes to keeping those orchids alone uh but anyways um yeah so things things

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are going really good on the studio front yeah it hasn't bloomed oh no not yet that's sad

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sometimes um yeah i can't think of anything else i think that's pretty much the studio update yeah we we have some

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cool art that we picked out for all the different spaces too which i'm excited to see come to fruition and that means i

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can bring back the dev diaries which i hope folks enjoy it's kind of like a little peek and

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insight into you know all the people that work here and what we do and what we create

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and with that i think we're on to the big the big portion of the stream which is the environment

Environment Update

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do you want to play a little teaser cinematic first and then oh yeah we could do the little then we'll do a

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little chat we could totally do that okay but let me just give a real quick preface uh to the to the teaser and then

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we'll talk about so we have two videos for you guys today we have an environment update for alpha 2

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showcasing the riverlands biome um this is a major area in alpha two you

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might see some boats in the game you might see some new creatures you're gonna definitely see some weather you're

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gonna see some seasons you might see some transitions here's what i will say to you

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i have and i'm not trying to hype this i'm just i'm trying to just he's just

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authentic feelings on it right okay um i love every day my job coming to work

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here being with other amazing talented developers who are who are

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creating many of our dreams um in what Ashes of Creation is trying to achieve

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and so much of what makes an mmo a good mmo is the gameplay i mean you can have

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the best looking game out there and if the gameplay is not good if the systems don't make sense if there's problems

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with the economy and whatnot like all of that beauty goes to waste and at the same time you can have a game

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that has amazing systems and has amazing um gameplay and and that can keep a game

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going for a very long time but if you also have with that

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beautiful sceneries and immersive world environments and awesome visual

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effects and and just stuff that brings you into the world that's like the holy

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grail right that's and especially if the company that publishes that game doesn't put in pay to convenience or pay to win

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items you're like oh my god we've done it we've built it they will come you know

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that is something like from our perspective that is what we want like me and stephen and the team like all of us

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want that like we yearn for an mmrpg where we can just enjoy the systems and the gameplay but

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also live and like love the art like so much that we're like we want to live there i think at one point stephen was like can

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we move there yeah i know right no abs absolutely and so so before we show this little video you're going to see a

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preview of the riverlands biome and then we're going to have a 30 minute long dev chat developer chat

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where myself our lead environment artist our senior technical artist

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one of our very amazingly talented environment artists james as well we chat about what goes

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into making seasons and weather and and weather has been done in a lot of games right we've experienced like you know

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snow and rain and thunderstorms and and they're really cool like um

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breaking points between the norm in an environment you might have but what the environment team has

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developed from a technology perspective when it comes to these biomes these

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environments and how they permanently change and how that change can be dynamic and how it's affected by in-game

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systems and how it changes the economy and the rotation of goods in the world how it

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changes skill interactions how it can affect many design related things

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is that synergy of looks and gameplay that we are striving to achieve and this

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discussion today is going to be about the immersive looks of it and we'll talk a little bit about how it interfaces

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with the systems but really it's going to be to show you something that you probably haven't experienced before in

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an mmorpg to this quality and to this effect so um and that's my

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event stream uh yes uh yesterday it feels like yesterday last development

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update we talked a little bit about how the weather and seasonal systems can interact with events and in-game game

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play so if you're if you didn't get to watch that i you know recommend watching that after after the stream um as

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another option for you over on our youtube channel because we do go way more into depth on that system as well

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so without further ado we'll play a little cinematic and we'll see you after that

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[Music]

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[Music]

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hey [Music]

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[Music]

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ah

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[Music]

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wow [Music]

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[Music]

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ah aah

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[Music]

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hmm [Music]

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[Music]

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oh i am still getting goosebumps just watch first time this was played not gonna lie

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teared up like we got to see this like a couple months ago when we were um

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watching it for our internal town hall and it was it made a lot of people emotional like we were all crying it's

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chilling it's chilling to see just the quality i mean you i don't play mmos

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that look like this and that have these type of systems so okay next video we're

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gonna show you get to see the walkthrough of this like yeah sure it's cinematic it's beautiful people can make

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cinematics look great but like what like you're gonna see this like in-game where you're gonna go through in-game right

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now and you're gonna watch the walkthrough okay just a preface i i have god controls when i am driving this okay

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so i can access the console i can rapidly change the weather i can create uh seasonal changes we speed up the

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transition so that you get to see what it looks like when the world transitions in these biomes from one season to

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another and then when weather events occur and how those weather effects um happen so you're going to watch that for

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the next 33 minutes i want to emphasize something very important

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this is the tech that's servicing alpha 2 and that means that there is still a

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ways to go from both a quality perspective a performance perspective and a detailed perspective right it

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hasn't had polish uh really and and there is still so much more to do if you've been following the project for a

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while now you can go back take a look at our early videos and you can watch the progression of these of these things

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over time but alpha 2 is really going to be something else in how this system

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interfaces with other game systems other mechanical components that you as players will will

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experience as a result of these visual changes they they're a symbiotic kind of relationship the art and design they

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live together you want to you want to telegraph these events through more

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immersive means such as weather systems and seasons so that players are indicated in a very immersive way what

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they need to do to react do i need to go harvest my crops on my freehold because it's changing seasons soon or because

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there's a weather event coming in are my skills and abilities going to be affected by

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how the weather is is currently um uh present so keep that in mind as you're watching this is still something that's

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building but i think you guys are gonna enjoy uh this one other thing um we did also want to include the you guys saw

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the vec in the character crater you saw the vec from their concept this is something we're going to be rolling out in the future as we get more of the

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races done for alpha 2. um we wanted to uh put the vec in here that's the character i was playing um the vec is

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still getting implemented though in the game with some of the uh um some of the clothing sets and some of

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the uh armors so that stuff's still getting touched up be aware um but otherwise i think you

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guys are going to enjoy this all right and i know i did see someone

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say they would like to see the video in 4k we will have the cinematic as well as this walkthrough or this chat

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developer chat um over on our youtube channel at max resolution so if you want

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to go watch that right after the stream yeah yeah we will have it available see that 4k

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so without further ado shall play it enjoy

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so [Music]

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hello everyone and welcome to another update with Ashes of Creation and today

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is going to be a special one i am joined by three amazing artists

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uh our lead environment artist tristan snodgrass hey tristan how you doing buddy

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hello i'm doing very well thank you now this is is this your first recording even though you've been with

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us you've been with us since the beginning six years ago almost right yeah it's been yeah since 2016 and i

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don't think i've ever actually been on any of the live streams that's outside of our our studio tour where i think i

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think we had one where you were a sriracha bottle for halloween yes that's correct

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uh yeah i've been mostly behind the scenes behind all the cinematics that's right i i think our community often asks where

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nodes three is at because because one time i remember i was at that i was at that we were at that panel

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at pax and people were like when's note 3 coming out i'm like tristan's back at the studio and he's editing it

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oh yeah i remember that and i was like that's so good we decided to go different direction

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part four here soon there you go we're just gonna skip three um and then we also have one of our

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technical artists our senior technical artist mr brian ganz hello everybody hello steven welcome

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welcome to the to the show sir this is also your first time it is although you have been doing a lot of uh

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a lot of work behind the scenes as well making our world look pretty and performant and making sure artists have

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their tools that they need all the fun stuff i'm all over the place in this game running running back and forth

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between character environment everything um and then we also have an of one of

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our environment artists mr james is it kurowski krowski right

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yeah it's uh karowski welcome aboard buddy you are this is your first time as well it is my first

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time yeah we have a whole new a whole new crew on the live stream and this this video is all about

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showcasing what everybody here is going to see here is something i don't recall having ever

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played a game where this is done do you have you guys ever played a game that has had these features we're about

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to see not that i can recall now um i mean i can't even think of a single player game that does this that's that's what i was

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trying to think of i was trying to think of like a single-player game that had done this and i'm sure our community is going to be like oh you know they had weather here or there but this is more

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than weather right yeah i think it's been done to a much lesser extent elsewhere

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i feel like we pushed the envelope quite a bit here yes and and people actually so viewing this video people just saw on

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stream the teaser that kind of goes through and and shows the cinematics in the engine

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in the game uh for this area right so they already know there's some transitioning here but it's it's really

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more than just a transition it is actually a dynamic season tech that

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changes the state of the world across our biomes um and what biome are we in right now

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we are currently in the riverlands biology one of the primary focuses of alpha one

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alpha two yeah no that's right it's actually it's the largest biome in alpha two right correct and it's gonna be where like the

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main uh taylor uh you know well sorry alan uh portal exists so ah

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i'm looking at this this snowy wintry location and even

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though we're in the wither land with our lands weatherlands it's weather and river

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lands even though we're in the riverlands um that is one of the biomes that can experience

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kind of really traditional season change like what we're accustomed to right that people are going to see across all four

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seasons yeah um i mean this is kind of we we decided to take this to the extremes um

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so extreme weather you know everywhere from like harsh snowy blizzardy kind of

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environment feels to lush green landscapes so we decided to tackle the hardest part

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first which is making it very very different between seasons yeah this is oh by the way i'm playing avec right now

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some of you uh saw the vec and the character creator but haven't seen it yet in game

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this guy is just wanting to experience the amazing immersive world that you guys have have created here

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um okay so we are we are in the riverlands and we are currently in the winter season so we have obviously a

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couple things going on here we have the landscape itself the the environment itself has changed where there's no

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leaves that are on the trees there's snow that's piling up on the rocks um the ground i mean go over what kind

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of what you have to do to transition a biome like the riverlands into a

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winter season so it's the terrain materials and uh

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you know there's many many materials that get applied to the terrain and each one you know accepts snow at a different

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rate of different intensity and there's the assets that all get kind of the same material function that applies snow to

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the tops of them uh there's a particle effect that moves with the player camera that

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handles both snow and rain and any kind of precipitation there's the volume fog that just went

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away as we saw as it cleared up the volumetric cloud in the sky has a material that needs to respond to season

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changes and weather changes uh there's a wind back to making i could keep going for a while

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there's a lot suffice to say there's a lot of stuff that goes into changing a region of the

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world into is that a little bit of thunder oh oh take a moment and just enjoy the

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view oh is this okay so right now we're transitioning into like a storm as well

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as the climate this has been kind of sped up right for to showcase the different season transitions correct yes

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so right now we're getting some rain which will usher in springtime and so you'll see all the flora that's growing

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up right now the ground where did the sun go snow's gone no snow this is unbelievable and now

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we've added some additional particle effects with the with the um the butterflies and the bees and the

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insects yep and in addition it's like the all the leaves now have grown on there's a bunch

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of flowers that are present james talk to me a little bit about kind of how you're determining the flowers that are appropriate for each

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season yeah um so one of the hardest things for setting this up was

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essentially making four biomes and one every season and we kind of started with

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whales as like a reference point my home my home country oh

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not whales whales but the country whales yeah oh i thought you said well technically both are both are relevant to you

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tristan because not only uh are you our lead environment artist but you also are a very avid professional

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environment film guy right you i've seen some of your stuff as unbelievable yeah um uh outside of this kind of stuff

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i tend to uh spend my time filming nature so it's kind of appropriate how often how often do you give that to the

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environment team as reference material uh not often yet but i'll be visiting wales next week so i'd be taking plenty

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of photos for reference this is no joke tristan got right up into the eyeball of this giant whale

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it's staring right into the camera it was so cool dude that was that was very crazy okay i've noticed that the that

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the animals have changed the ambient sound has changed and cat uh has done an amazing job with the

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ambience and in the riverlands biome it is i feel like i am here and not only that but also kept it adaptive for the

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seasonal changes as well right yeah um i think we also actually missed the winter bear back in the day or back

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in the winters at the bottom but that's okay we can we'll see another one there's more

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sorry i think we kind of cut you off no that's cool if you want to continue uh talking about how you went about

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the art process for this oh yeah no it's just you know iterative like all artists and uh

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you know hal one of our really great environment artists and myself kind of worked really closely together to try to

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homogenize everything for the seasons um and

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i don't know there's not much else to say you kind of can see it that's true did the flowers bloom at a

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particular time of year they do no um yeah all the flowers will you know

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decay and die in the fall and turn colors and even the animals like karen right there

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will shift based on the time of the year i love the glow on the carrots antlers

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good job yeah let's get some movies in oh it looks great

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yeah we'll see that carrying change in real time later on that's right so so part of you know the relevance of this

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you know not just from a beautiful aesthetic perspective here but

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what makes it so unique is the dynamic element of these seasons and the weather

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systems changing to the behavior actions of the player right so

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you know part of the triggers that can create seasonal change is not just time related for each of our biomes but they

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are also indicated by events that occur on the server whether that be certain

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raid bosses forming or a relic being acquired by a particular node and being activated

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to change potentially the weather out of a winter state into a spring state and

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the reason why a node might have interest in doing that of course is because weather ends and the seasons also affect

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skills and abilities they affect crops and gatherables vehicles and mounts

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ships creatures and loot tables change their behaviors might change

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resistances and weaknesses or or synergies might be relevant in certain

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seasons or weather systems targeting might change the aoe radius might grow for a fire effect if you're

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in the middle of summer or it might shrink if you're in the middle of a storm um you know the

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there's so much that goes into this system and that's why you guys really spent a lot of time

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making sure that the environment reflects both at the quality we want and isn't

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just kind of an afterthought weather system because a lot of games that i've played you know you get just the visual

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effects kind of playing and you get some rain or you get some snow but what what we've seen here in that

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transition from winter to to spring was significant and it persists and each of these zones exists

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in these different states at different times across different servers i saw those those birds just fly by and it

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scared the crap out of it like what was that you didn't expect that um yeah i mean this is definitely

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one of the more traditional uh weather biomes i guess you could say in terms of seasons but we will be taking things a

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little weird with some of the other biomes as well um all right here you're gonna see yeah i think there's fall coming yeah it's

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shifting the phone oh i see the leaves starting to spawn oh my gosh and the little dust devil oh that looks great

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oh boy oh i love it wow look at the color challenge that's

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the my favorite part about everything is just the colors it was really hard to nail down the color change but i think we pulled it

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off yeah i think you guys more than pulled it off yeah even internally like when we showed

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a very early version of this uh to the entire company but it was maybe like three weeks four weeks ago

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there was people that were like crying practically yeah that i i mean i'm watching the updates every week every

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day actually yeah and i just keep getting like goosebumps watching this thinking and

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again just to reiterate these trends and i'm sure i've already said this on the stream which is tomorrow um but these

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transitions are sped up in order to demonstrate you know what that move for

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the world looks like but ultimately these seasons exist on a weekly basis

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unless they're event driven or have other triggers right they might last longer if you don't deal with the dragon

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or if you do or if you keep that relic active um but these these on a cycle on a cyclical

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perspective as a normal season transition might be exist within a one week time frame right and then

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it transitions over a period of hours but right now you're seeing it sped up over the course of 30 seconds

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uh yeah correct um i mean in real time it's going to be almost unnoticeable to the naked eye you know

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like kind of naturally how it is in real life um we're not going to do it over the course of the year of course but you

• 32:50

know a couple hours maybe half a day oh is that a dragon yeah it is a dragon

• 33:03

i love that so the weather events will usher in the different seasons as well so you'll

• 33:08

you'll know when the new season is going to change um just based on the weather that's happening but

• 33:15

to the naked eye you're not really going to see it happening this quickly obviously this is just a

• 33:20

very visual demonstration of what's available and how we can work with it oh my gosh

• 33:26

this is beautiful there's the bears the bears oh that guy's probably cold right now

• 33:33

yeah he's no he's out of here i love the i love uh the dirty coat underneath the mirror

• 33:40

it sells it so good they're currently planning with weather to have like

• 33:45

rain and snow be kind of a thing where it snows more often in the winter and you know rains more often in the winter

• 33:52

and some other places and uh basically leveraging some of the new features of unreal engine like uh

• 33:58

the being able to sample the global distance field and the material to be able to have the snow accumulate in the crevices of objects as

• 34:06

you know as the summer as summer comes on and melts away the snow it melts and the crevices last or if it starts to

• 34:13

snow then it kind of accumulates in the you know outer areas first and the crystals fill in later kind of thing

• 34:21

or even saturates the earth while it melts right it's so soggy

• 34:27

oh this looks great and it looks like though even the ground is getting wet

• 34:32

i can hear the footsteps change to the water that's so good yeah well i mean one of the things that

• 34:38

makes like you know a world come alive is not just did the wind pick up in the storm it did

• 34:44

my hat is going crazy but yeah you know like all the elements coming together really sell it like you

• 34:50

know you can take away one of the things and everything just kind of falls apart like no wind

• 34:55

the life or the environment just doesn't feel alive but you know add some wind and suddenly everything comes to life oh

• 35:02

this is beautiful guys yeah this is unbelievable one of the

• 35:07

things that is huge about this season system and how it affects crops and and the gatherables in the game is the

• 35:14

impact it will have on the economy right when a particular area no longer is

• 35:21

capable for a week's period of time or even potentially longer of producing a certain type of crop or

• 35:27

harvestable and that has to change across the world regionally now the

• 35:33

transit system of those materials of those gatherables they become more relevant and they're

• 35:38

subject to potential risk and the prices might go up in certain areas

• 35:44

it is something that is actually very instrumental in the overall design of the economy in the game speaking of

• 35:50

economy are those two merchant ships yeah i mean who knows like maybe the straight opens up and suddenly they're

• 35:55

able to transport goods a little faster right we're playing with the idea of freezing over rivers and things but the

• 36:02

implications it opens up a lot of can of worms like someone could get trapped under the ice but we'll figure it out if it's possible

• 36:08

i think you should trap them yeah or even also something that's very easily done that we've talked about

• 36:15

since 2017 and such a big component of this system coming to life and seeing it at the quality bar that it's at i mean

• 36:22

like again i i say this i haven't seen this really in any other game let alone

• 36:27

mmorpg where seasons impact so much of the design

• 36:33

and part of that also again on the economy front is you might have a mountain pass and during winter that

• 36:38

mountain pass is always closed and so the trade routes on land change with caravans

• 36:44

and that's something that can not only exist on a cyclical level but also dynamically based on player

• 36:50

activity i mean that that is a very big difference i mean you know can i

• 36:56

play with the wind can i help those ships out a little bit yeah i mean i believe so we definitely

• 37:01

gave steven some uh god mode controls here to demonstrate some more the system was more dynamic

• 37:16

look at this this is great i love how the distance visibility changes and the

• 37:21

night the kind of overhead cast comes online yep you're gonna sink the boats with all

• 37:28

that water i know oh yeah i forgot my bad guys oh no no it's good they needed the fresh water anyways

• 37:34

oh can i play let me dial up the wind a little bit make it a little bit crazier

• 37:40

oh i love the grass movement this is crazy look at my hair

• 37:46

my hat is going i love the cloth physics too

• 37:52

when the rain dies down when the sun hits the grass when it's windy looks really cool let me do that i i have i

• 37:58

have some god controls that they gave me for this demonstration so let me turn the rain off

• 38:05

and turn on maybe the wind by itself there you go

• 38:10

oh look at the like wave movement across the grass how did you get that to occur

• 38:17

so there's a noise function that we we've got at both materials and

• 38:22

in blueprints so that eventually it needs to be converted to c plus plus because it's like 300 times faster when

• 38:27

it goes in the super plus but basically the same function is duplicated in two places so we have it in the materials that

• 38:35

generates the noise in ripple that goes across the player and in the program the cpu side of

• 38:41

things the value of the wind at the player location gets sent to the audio system so the

• 38:47

wind picks up in audio uh as a wave of uh snow or a wave of uh winds passes by

• 38:54

the player i'm just going through i'm going through the seasons like that i just did a quick transition for the for the audience to

• 39:01

see how much control i have right now yeah so we gave steven a a sped up

• 39:07

timeline of the ability to forward and also reverse seasons we want to you know get a little crazy with it oh yeah i see

• 39:14

that so you can go from i could pause it yep

• 39:21

i love the winter feel i should check

• 39:27

for out let's see some snow oh yeah oh again look at that i love the fog and

• 39:33

the effects now start kicking off the ground oh yeah so everything's built into the system and with the sense that

• 39:39

like they can change dynamically like yeah you're not going to get that guess the wind uh in certain locations when you

• 39:45

know it's summer but when it's winter it kicks in oh sh we should watch this

• 39:51

kieran real quick can we do that so go into the ones actually turn around and get the view in the background i think

• 39:57

yeah follow some of the ones down there let me go see these guys hopefully they they play next karen

• 40:04

they're a little friends there they are all right i need you guys in the shot i need you guys to step over here

• 40:12

i just hey can you move to the left please we need a feeding system where you can just like walk up and like hold

• 40:17

out your hands or some type of husbandry where i can make my own that's right there we go he listened it just took him

• 40:22

a second yes all right did a great job on those guys

• 40:27

these are fantastic models watch the cure and change oh

• 40:33

look at them they changed with the seasons that was fun for me to figure

• 40:38

out oh yeah oh that looks so good james and see like you know in our original

• 40:44

cinematic that i believe we've shown or we will be showing during the live stream like where we

• 40:50

you know talked about seasons in our kickstarter yes those were just dissolves between environments that we did in

• 40:56

post-production and sure people think we're doing the same thing in our new cinematic but you know no it's actually happening real time there's no trickery

• 41:03

no figuring it's all yeah this is all authentic beautiful and authentic i love

• 41:08

it this is the major leagues now heck yeah i love it um

• 41:14

okay tell me a little bit about the um the weather effects and i know

• 41:21

that the effects team isn't here right now but we might be getting some insight to their

• 41:26

their work next month maybe on stream we'll see um but you also have the effects

• 41:32

interacting with the environment like i was seeing some streams of uh rain that was coming down that adrian

• 41:38

did some work on um on some of the pork collises yeah there's a individual particle

• 41:44

effects that can be placed on some of these assets that kind of responds to changes in weather that look like you

• 41:50

know rain collecting in areas or like sheeting off of flat surfaces if you go underneath like

• 41:56

a tunnel or something and see it dripping more intensely i think we'll have a tool to auto place

• 42:01

that but uh worst case we can have it be hand placed

• 42:07

yeah it looks pretty cool same thing with the dust devils the butterflies the bees

• 42:13

the leaves

• 42:19

i love the tree movement too you know it's it's so funny a lot of the games that i played

• 42:25

the wind effects can either look really really good or they can look really really bad

• 42:32

and usually not much in between but but i like how our trees you have this

• 42:37

variance and movement from the trunk itself to the leaves

• 42:43

how do you guys do that we actually had to home roll our own solutions so

• 42:48

the trees were made in a program called speech and we had a little bit of trouble

• 42:54

getting the speed tree nodes and the materials for the trees to function correctly so we

• 43:00

just made our own version of wind for now but yeah we just kind of take the tree

• 43:05

position and a lot of information about the tree is encoded to the

• 43:11

uv coordinates there's about seven or eight uv coordinate spaces

• 43:16

uh and each one has like you know is it a leaf is it a frond or branch how far down the branch is it and we just use

• 43:21

that data to drive a bunch of rotations some of the information

• 43:26

encoded in the uv coordinates is what's the pivot point of this branch so i just kind of rotate around that branch

• 43:34

yeah that looks great that works looks really cool

• 43:40

i love that and then another thing we're talking about was having like wetness effects and snow

• 43:47

pile up on you know rocks and buildings and stuff that's one thing we're doing for

• 43:53

wetness with the terrain if you look at the dirt path as it gets wetter i'm not sure how visible this is because

• 43:59

it also gets cloudy and dark and maybe they could stream compression but as it gets wet we use the height element of the terrain

• 44:07

materials to figure out where puddles should form and it should you should be able to see it

• 44:13

it doesn't do it so much on a slope so it might look more visible on a flat train there we go right here

• 44:21

at the lower areas of the terrain height it gets kind of glossy like puddles

• 44:27

oh that looks great and a similar thing for snow as the snow is melting it it evaporates

• 44:34

or it is removed from the areas of uh where there's high material ambient

• 44:39

occlusion and it removes it from the high immediate occlusion places last

• 44:45

very cool that's amazing um let me switch to snow i want to i

• 44:51

want to talk a little bit about the building thing here yeah so i was going to say we also had

• 44:57

our other artists working on some modular sets and various things that we can use to construct a lot of the

• 45:03

ancient ruins of the ayla race that were once here in

• 45:08

vera before the how would you describe it the event where everyone left the

• 45:14

uh exodus the apocalypse the end of the world yep

• 45:20

wait hold on wait a minute what is this oh this is an example of like obstructions

• 45:26

yeah so in design you might not be able to access certain areas and wait but there's something there open

• 45:33

open for me i command you you might want to oh yeah there guys

• 45:39

yes smell too oh there's a door why is it so bright in there i don't know what

• 45:45

is going on wait a minute i don't even know if i want to go in

• 45:50

there to be fair hold on you might have to change the weather here

• 45:56

reveal yourself snow i command you to stop

• 46:02

i feel like there is sometimes during certain seasons what is that oh oh my goodness oh it's a sandal

• 46:12

yes that is so awesome who did put that in there uh yeah that was done by our amazing uh

• 46:19

artist how she uh oh how that out real quick for you with a little nice little inscribed s there that is so cool

• 46:27

oh that's that is stephen sandal i think i'm sure we're going to auction off like your

• 46:32

sandals i found i found my sandal but to be fair it's missing oh is it is

• 46:37

there another one there's there's two the sandals come in pairs so wait a minute i assume there's some uh mantle where is

• 46:44

this where is this other oh can i make can is this like a little uh a little

• 46:50

uh jump puzzle jump little jump puzzle for you little jump puzzle all right let's see if i can do this wow

• 46:57

let me up let me up sir it's just a bit of parkour so oh there

• 47:02

we go okay do i like jump across this way oh no i think it's your left there you

• 47:08

can get either way there's always oh my god oh just barely a small heart attack skin of my teeth

• 47:15

lift me up here oh there's stairs that's dark i can't see oh there's a little dark right now

• 47:21

it's getting better okay lumens found it i think i have found it

• 47:28

ah there you go my other sandal collector's editions yes

• 47:33

i love it that is so cool that is awesome well i have to say

• 47:40

back when we talked about seasonal changes and weather systems

• 47:46

and all of these things being interconnected with with design elements and systems in the

• 47:52

game i remember that we showed off the kind of you know very early prototyping that we

• 47:59

were doing back in like 2017 and we probably actually just showed that on the stream well um

• 48:05

um i i never thought that it would come to this level of quality

• 48:12

yeah in fact when i first kind of faked this kind of seasonal attack

• 48:17

back before the kickstarter even happened i think i was a little intimidated to myself right

• 48:23

yeah the prototype that we that we did like that was there were significant challenges of

• 48:29

making that possible but this is next level oh yeah

• 48:35

yeah yeah big shout out to uh james and hal and brian for cranking out all the biome stuff and then

• 48:42

brandon and adam for cranking out these amazing ruins uh scott for the new trees

• 48:48

too scott scott allen our new foliage go-to guy is the one that cranked up

• 48:53

some of these pretty epic uh the ash trees yes those bugs

• 48:58

don't mind my god powers i have god powers this is not powers you will have players this is just what i can do

• 49:04

and also not to uh forget uh han's our new landscape master he's uh took a swing at

• 49:11

this landscape for us and did us some of the epic views so all around an amazing job by everybody

• 49:18

yeah we were we were all pretty intimidated when we were having the initial meetings to start working on

• 49:23

this but everyone pulled together and you guys really are dynamite team

• 49:29

you guys have done a tremendous a phenomenal job i think the community will let you hear this in chat

• 49:36

um that this is a next level presentation for seasons of weather and for an environment really in an mmo that

• 49:42

i've ever seen and not to forget of course like you know that's not just us but also you know the entire effects

• 49:48

team our new audio artist cat and you know the character team for getting

• 49:54

that cloth physics and all the other goodness going so and and and this is a work in progress still this is this is

• 50:00

nowhere near complete this is actually still the great thing about our development that i that i personally love is that we

• 50:07

invite the community to watch right and over the years they can go back and they can look on

• 50:12

our youtube and they can see the quality of art continue to improve over time right and that's the cool

• 50:19

thing about art is that it's never really finished like there is always elements you will be tweaking and you

• 50:26

will be touching up and you will be taking second third fourth tenth passes on even as the game launches and we go

• 50:32

through expansions like these are things that that art continually to improves upon uses new technologies for i mean

• 50:39

that's you guys are the masters of the visuals here yeah my favorite thing is okay

• 50:46

go ahead okay so like many heads are better than one a lot of people are gonna see this and they'll be like wow

• 50:51

this one looks great but it could be maybe slightly better in this area they'll have a screenshot or video to show us you know our different way to

• 50:58

look at it and just we just leverage the hive mind of all of humanity when we're doing this and we're just getting the best of

• 51:03

everything that's right i like that that's very cool

• 51:08

well we are going to go back to stream but everybody uh i hope that you enjoyed this video you enjoyed this presentation

• 51:15

the best is still yet to come because this is stuff that we are constantly working on as we said and we have some

• 51:20

amazing artists at intrepid and by the way we are hiring so if you have any favorite devs or projects out there that

• 51:27

you know of please send them our way intrepidstudios.com um this i cannot express enough just how excited

• 51:34

i am to live inside of vera and i think i think that our community is chomping at the bits to live there

• 51:40

with me uh and all of us it is um yeah i was just gonna say like i mean we could

• 51:46

probably just sit here and let this run for 10 hours straight and put it on youtube and totally do that monetize it

• 51:51

or something like that monetize it you know this 10-hour like ambient loose

• 51:59

oh my gosh that is hilarious we were talking about it today how we like just left this running yesterday after one of

• 52:04

our tests and we came back to the conference room and it was still running and it was still windy and it was perfect it was just like oh wow it's you

• 52:10

know still alive and running absolutely i constantly get distracted but it's just staring i'm just oh yeah it

• 52:17

should be working it's actually kind of um yeah it's calming and you know great to just when you're working just

• 52:23

sit there and stare at it for five minutes i literally have this exact scene on my computer desktop right now just running

• 52:29

who needs to go outside when you go to vero absolutely love it all right guys we are going to

• 52:36

see you guys back on stream tristan james brian thanks for hanging out with me and explaining your really cool

• 52:41

amazing job at making vera a place that we all want to live in um i cannot express enough how much i appreciate the

• 52:47

work that you guys do to making this dream a reality and how much our community loves it as well um so thank

• 52:53

you for joining us thank you for all your hard work uh stream give us hearts for tristan bryan and james and all of

• 52:59

the team on the environment side on the art side everybody at intrepid we're working a way to make this stream a

• 53:05

reality i will see you guys back on stream shortly all right see you bye everybody bye

• 53:14

[Music]

• 53:20

i'm not crying i know the hearts make me emotional too

• 53:26

you guys are so sweet the team work very hard there are a lot of a lot of

• 53:32

hard work is going into ashes and very proud of the team uh from the

• 53:38

start of this year i think you guys are are in for a treat for what's to come um

• 53:43

and it is it is our pleasure to do this hard work for you guys because at the

• 53:48

end of the day that's why we're here right um so we appreciate you guys tuning in and

• 53:54

giving us your hearts and and giving us your feedback and being a part of this development journey it's been a long

• 53:59

journey and there's still a ways to go but at the end of the road there is going to be something that i think is

• 54:05

pretty special um and you guys get to see it every step of the way so

• 54:11

kudos to everybody on the team intrepid you guys know you're having a little watch party in the rec room we love you

• 54:18

john got some pastries and some cookies for you guys hopefully you they didn't all get snagged up too fast but you see

• 54:24

this community and how how impressed they are with the work you're all doing very very very exciting i mean we all

• 54:31

get to play it too so that's that's our reward as much as their reward but there were some questions in

• 54:37

chat that i wanted to uh get answers on some of them we might not have answers right now but i'm tossing them steven's

• 54:44

way we'll see if we can if i don't have an answer i'll just tell you i don't have an answer not yet but all right the first one here

• 54:50

is from julian ache and i apologize in advance if i get your names wrong uh they asked will the

• 54:57

vegetation spawn be static or will it look different after every iteration so like as seasons change will

• 55:04

those vegetation um yeah it's it's possible um i

• 55:10

we can get clarification on this afterwards but i believe that um from the environment side it's possible that we unmask certain vegetations on

• 55:18

certain cycles of seasons right and that way we get a little bit of a variance um

• 55:23

but ultimately they need to be placed right these aren't dynamically or yeah and i think that's the other element of

• 55:29

it is like if the mushroom spawns here every spring is it going to spawn in that same spot is kind of what they were

• 55:34

going right no you could you could have a few spots that only activate during certain cycles um and that way you could get some variants but they won't be

• 55:41

procedurally spawned right they it's it they will be painted by the by the artists

• 55:47

and then the next one is from aerispdx and they want to know does it also affect node resources so

• 55:53

let's say you know you have veins or something like that or you have trees that spawn and now it's changing is it

• 56:00

going to affect what kind of resources i'm gathering absolutely so it won't likely affect too much on the

• 56:06

on certain resource spectrums like veins of ore right those might not be um

• 56:12

might not be affected by the seasons or weather systems but there might be blockages to cave networks that

• 56:19

house those types of ore veins alternatively it is going to be significant impact on any type of

• 56:26

herbology or plant-based types of gatherables it's going to have significant impacts on

• 56:32

crops that players can plant themselves on their properties and that they'll be able to harvest they're going to need to time the crop placement and its maturity

• 56:42

window so that it's harvestable and available to be harvest before the change of seasons that might adversely

• 56:48

affect certain types of crops and not every biome will experience the same

• 56:54

type of effects caused by the seasonality of the world right

• 56:59

like the desert biome might instead of snow have significant more winds that

• 57:04

pick up that could be damaging to more fragile types of crops if you have a freehold in that location

• 57:09

you know these are these are the impacts that they have on the system and the reason for that is because as crops change

• 57:16

as those resources become less available in certain regions of the world based on

• 57:21

the seasons you're going to place a demand on other regions to bring those goods via caravan to your locations why

• 57:29

because the prices might sell they're higher and that's going to naturally incentivize those providers to bring

• 57:35

their supply to this location so they can get a higher return on their work now of course that

• 57:41

carries risk and that's partly why that value goes up is because they're assuming that risk in moving those goods

• 57:46

over and it creates a very interesting dynamic in fluctuation for the economy

• 57:52

um and and relevance that certain you know sectors can't be entirely controlled by just one individual

• 57:59

i was telling stephen i was like i want to build my my freehold there and i want to be out there farming and watering my

• 58:04

plants i was like i can envision it now our next question is from magic o3 and

• 58:11

they want to know will there be animals that are more likely to come out through the different seasons or like will

• 58:16

animals hibernate things like that yeah one of the things that the excuse me one of the things that the

• 58:22

season and and weather techs provide is a trigger effect for

• 58:27

the spawners within a particular area uh they tell those spawners to spawn

• 58:33

different types of creatures that are more appropriate for certain seasons um not to spawn certain creatures or to

• 58:39

spawn them in different locations um like the bear in the cave uh during

• 58:44

winter or during autumn you know that that gives a little bit of replayability to these areas within

• 58:51

mmorpgs a very common trend that many of us have experienced is zones that die

• 58:56

because either the level relevancy changes as you progress or it just it is not the new zone right the new we go to

• 59:03

the new zone um we already addressed some of the level composition stuff by the way nodes

• 59:10

affect your surroundings and the spawners and advance some of the creature types right

• 59:15

but on the flip side of this it also gives different strategic importance to certain locations based on how the

• 59:21

spawners populate those those areas right this alcove might now have a bunch of

• 59:27

new types of monsters that are like aoe focused and you might want to bring your aoe team there during winter because you

• 59:33

can get that spot in this hunting ground and you can pull really easily all the creatures into that little spot but in

• 59:39

summer maybe that population isn't as close and it's no longer a viable hunting ground it gives a little bit of

• 59:46

change feeling two zones and that's why i said this is you know to my knowledge at least what i've played really never

• 59:52

been done in mmos before um and i think mmo's being a persistent virtual world

• 59:58

where you exist at all times it's nice to have a little bit of dynamicism there right to have something

• 1:00:04

that changes well the permanency of the chain of the effects that you have on the world is not something that you see

• 1:00:10

very often a lot of it is very much like a theme park where you go and like there are things that are there and they

• 1:00:16

change but like and you can change actions to make those things happen but they're not necessarily in the same way that you

• 1:00:23

know we're implementing them a follow-up question uh someone else had

• 1:00:29

that is kind of pertinent to that question is from mr silver and they want mr civil 31 they want to know does this

• 1:00:35

allow for like herding of creatures so let's say there are deer but maybe in

• 1:00:40

this other biome there aren't deer can i herd deer into that area and now there are no you can't really heard uh npcs like

• 1:00:48

that we do have yeah i mean we have leash leashes are relevant there's there's

• 1:00:53

other gameplay implications that happen when you're able to actually move populations around we don't want to really and give that to the players

• 1:00:59

perspective there but with that being said we do have the concept of herds

• 1:01:06

and that's a little bit of a different gameplay system so that again goes back to resources and gatherables herds are a

• 1:01:12

source of certain types of wild gatherables but they're in animal form and they're animated right and they

• 1:01:18

exist in like you know a group of the golden fleece sheep that uh might only spawn very rarely in certain hillsides

• 1:01:25

right and only during spring and if you can find that vein so to speak of

• 1:01:31

resource you can interact with the herd and you can gather from them um and you can um you know process uh some other

• 1:01:38

things so herds exist in that sense but not in what they were describing where you can actually manipulate the population movement of the world um and

• 1:01:45

then the next question here we're almost wrapping up here uh was from okay pandy

• 1:01:50

pandyoka wanted to know uh is the grass going to move out of the way or like

• 1:01:56

look like it is stepped on um so for instance

• 1:02:01

russian will the grass move with my momentum i don't think i don't think we'll do that on the grass the blades of

• 1:02:06

grass but um i don't know i might be wrong on that i'll chat with environment on but um

• 1:02:12

there will however be player collision capsules that do interact with plants so like as you move through a plant you're

• 1:02:17

not just gonna go straight through the plant like it will move around on the client for you like you'll see that plant move because you intersected with

• 1:02:24

it and and passed through it so there's there's collision with foliage there but i'm not sure if it's going to be as

• 1:02:29

granular on blades of grass we do have footprints and footsteps right and those you can see even in the video you can

• 1:02:35

see them on the dirt surfaces you can see them on the um snow surfaces um

• 1:02:41

yeah and then the next question is from jawa chief and they wanted to know can we get snow effects on our armor in the

• 1:02:47

winter because the i think they noticed that the bear had snow on him and he shook it off and people were really

• 1:02:52

excited we were we were talking about that early on there are some performance implications when we try to

• 1:02:58

um show weather effects on individual armors because you can upwards have hundreds of

• 1:03:04

players on your screen and of course we can call that and we can do some performance checks and that but i'm not sure that's something we're going to go

• 1:03:10

down the path of i know that there are a couple very eager graphics engineers on our team that are that are wanting to talk me into that um and we've had yet

• 1:03:17

to go through their proposal uh review uh definitely performance yeah i know

• 1:03:22

performance is paramount we already we already are leveraging a lot of very next generation technology with our

• 1:03:28

application of unreal engine 5 which by the way is a great engine and epic is is an incredible company people are saying

• 1:03:34

what about if it was just client side like only on the client side versus like so yeah you could totally do it but then

• 1:03:40

there's rendering cost right um and if you're seeing many players with that i mean obviously it's something you can

• 1:03:45

scale you have scalability for um but again you know it's it's a it's a not not an easy amount of work to do to

• 1:03:52

make that happen all right and my last one here is a little troll is it true that you have two right feet

• 1:04:00

no it is not true that i have two right feet i had to throw that one in just the chat

• 1:04:07

was cracking me up i'm like you can't run past anything for them they notice all the little details that those were

• 1:04:12

two right foot sandals um the next thing and environment team's

• 1:04:17

not done they have more stuff for you uh the next thing i'm going to show you and i don't know if you want to preface a

• 1:04:23

little bit about the alien city i don't even know what we're seeing the alien cities oh gotta go together uh yes so

• 1:04:29

this is now you'll be seeing more as we get closer to alpha two uh but this will give you a little bit of insight to the

• 1:04:37

capital city of the aylin empire prior to the exodus um and this is one of the

• 1:04:42

starting areas that players enter into this will be this one of the starting areas in alpha 2. um and

• 1:04:49

there's a lot of stuff going on here it's like waterfalls statues bridges

• 1:04:55

like bridges that ships can come into like a harper it's madness that's crazy yeah it's

• 1:05:02

quite beautiful i'm excited and of course moving on from there we do

Character Art Update

• 1:05:08

have some stuff to show off from our character our team as well so i'll toss on i'll tell you something and by the

• 1:05:14

way i just i just want to say something um back in when did we do the character creator

• 1:05:20

demo was that january or was that february february so that that at that time i said look

• 1:05:26

one of the great benefits towards our trek to alpha 2 is you get to start seeing art do a lot more passes on the

• 1:05:31

stuff that we got stood up very quickly or in the uh in the early days of the project

• 1:05:36

and i told you that um from a quality bar perspective this is getting near

• 1:05:44

you know what we would be comfortable with on a shipping perspective for the project when we launch right

• 1:05:50

and when you see concept art like that city i just want you to imagine the quality bar we've set for the characters

• 1:05:56

with the character creator the quality bar you just saw for environments and weathers and seasons that are present in

• 1:06:01

the game and now expand that out across the cities that you've experienced and other

• 1:06:07

mmos and the points of interest and the dungeons and you know we of course want to reveal

• 1:06:12

all the magic of the game through our development updates we want to give you updates that you know keep you abreast

• 1:06:18

of kind of progress and and and what we're trying to do um but there's going to be a lot of

• 1:06:23

discovering and adventure that's in Ashes of Creation and it's going to be at a quality level that i think is going

• 1:06:28

to blow a lot of people's minds and we'll show some little teasers of you know dungeon crawls maybe not all of

• 1:06:35

them but some of them so you can see um but stay tuned we got plenty more for

• 1:06:40

you all to look at um and of course this is the karen you saw them uh this is one

• 1:06:46

of jincy's amazing creations um this is the summer and winter versions and you got to see that

• 1:06:52

transition like live in game which is just mind-boggling and awesome

• 1:06:59

i feel like the chat lost lost their their marbles during that um but i do have a joke for you stephen

• 1:07:05

this comes to you from mike vecchio i'm ready graphics designer oh he says

• 1:07:11

why is she named kieran why is she named kieran

• 1:07:17

um i don't know does she ask to speak to you to your manager oh my

• 1:07:26

i'm sorry it's too funny i was like i'm sharing that one stupid because it's too funny uh next up we've

• 1:07:33

got and i feel a chat would love it uh the next one we have is from eli the

• 1:07:39

cloak of the seaside mom our our social media

• 1:07:44

manager is like mike yeah like i'm in chat we should have a meme that's like don't be a kirin at the

• 1:07:50

top and then under it is just the face of the kieran like looking at you but the kieran's so cool

• 1:07:55

i know it is it's like the opposite i don't know um but yeah this is the seaside ma goodness

• 1:08:02

and i believe we have a turntable for this spell at some of these look at the detail on the fish and this seaweed so

• 1:08:10

sick yeah it is very cool the detail of course on these is is

• 1:08:17

next level love it yeah can you imagine fishing you got this on your back i can imagine

• 1:08:23

accidentally getting knocked down and when i land on my back like the vertebrae stabs through my skin or something

• 1:08:28

[Laughter] dark yeah

• 1:08:34

that's that's a dangerous coat to wear dangerous cloak to wear or the front the front and the front has this yeah the

• 1:08:40

horns or the teeth what if i like accidentally tripped and i fell forward and the teeth like pierced my jugular

• 1:08:48

this is this is where stephen's mind goes

• 1:08:57

the next one we have is our royalty outfit we had a lot of questions regarding this so here you go

• 1:09:02

this is another one that eli worked on which looks amazing um

• 1:09:07

got some close-up shots and then i do have a turntable of it as well very cool

• 1:09:13

yeah it's beautiful

• 1:09:19

i like the back piece for her but again if she falls i'm more concerned about her shoulders

• 1:09:26

piercing someone else yeah that's true maybe it's a defensive weapon there you go

• 1:09:31

um and then from the one and only keith we have forrest druid action which

• 1:09:39

you get to kind of see this being created and modeled and then all the textures and then i do oh yeah this guy's creepy

• 1:09:47

i like him you may see him in a forest near you if you don't respect the area ooh can you

• 1:09:54

give us a little bit more design details or oh i don't know he is a he is a shepherd of the woods

• 1:10:04

yes very cool and then these are kind of the different

• 1:10:09

variants that you can see oh he doesn't have any clothes on there

• 1:10:15

and the one yeah he's naked we should have given him some like underwear he's a little a little nakey a little nakey

• 1:10:21

[Laughter] he's ready for notes 3. what

• 1:10:28

there was a joke in the community where they would say send nudes oh the news okay that went over my head for a moment

• 1:10:35

[Laughter] i got you that makes one hundred percent now

• 1:10:41

very cool i love the emissives on the staff oh that's going to look great in the in the level lighting

• 1:10:46

when it's dusk or dawn and you just see this like approaching moat staff it's like glowing

• 1:10:53

yeah and like the the little incense thing like light like making like a slight

• 1:10:58

you know movement in the forest be cool all right

Outro and Q&A

• 1:11:04

and with that we shall move on to our final uh q a here and then we'll be wrapping it

• 1:11:10

up um so for our forum questions we've got our first one is from lash which is

• 1:11:16

regarding pvp um i'm gonna forward this video a little bit more

• 1:11:22

but their question is will pvp activities with a deactivated death penalty reward

• 1:11:28

or death penalties reward players with any experience points yes uh there will be a diminishing

• 1:11:35

return on that experience point over a period of time but you can gain experience through participating in pvp

• 1:11:41

events and then talents wants to know about combat in terms of combat what changes are you discussing or implementing

• 1:11:47

internally that will make combat in alpha 2 different from the combat in alpha one and i know this is a lot but

• 1:11:54

yeah that's uh maybe you could give us five things that are gonna be different or two um slim it down

• 1:12:01

uh additional archetypes uh significant additional ability support

• 1:12:06

from a functionality perspective augment systems we'll be playing around with

• 1:12:12

we are implementing our new prototyped root motion split body approach to

• 1:12:20

basic weapon attacks um and then on top of that the just sheer expansive itemization table that's

• 1:12:27

going to be available in alpha 2 that wasn't in alpha 1. got it that there is a lot and there's

• 1:12:33

more than that he's just given us a quick quick rundown uh then we have drunk ninja who wants to

• 1:12:38

know about naval combat hopefully you're not drinking and driving your boat at the same time when it comes to your

• 1:12:44

systems for ship hijacking how can we take control of another player's ship

• 1:12:49

and do we get to keep that ship i know i don't want to actually expand

• 1:12:55

on this too much because i think this is going to be great material for the future um but essentially to answer your

• 1:13:01

question yes there will be lots of things uh uh yes to both questions yes to

• 1:13:07

hijacking yes to you get to keep the ship oh you can't keep the ship no no no you can destroy the ship right

• 1:13:13

clarify um yeah you can't keep the ship that'd be crazy like some gta naval fantasy game

• 1:13:19

yeah you just like punch them off the board and then you're like yeah let's get a a sea of thieves mod

• 1:13:26

that's like gta version 50's is so good i know um shout out to them you guys are

• 1:13:32

great um but yeah you can you can definitely steal ships and destroy them and then take what they had on them

• 1:13:39

okay the next question is about day and night cycles from allocrate allocate

• 1:13:45

alec right uh they want to know with varun year cycles being every four irl

• 1:13:51

weeks and one varan hour being 15 irl minutes they're getting very specific here will there be four varying day

• 1:13:58

cycles within one irl day and i don't even know if i'll stick to those yeah i was gonna say so those

• 1:14:04

those numbers are from a while ago they may change a little bit i'm not gonna say they're gonna change drastically but they'll be around kind of that area um

• 1:14:12

one to two weeks per season um the idea is for it to be a change

• 1:14:18

that is also harmonious with what the um

• 1:14:23

uh what the shoot i can't think uh harvestables and

• 1:14:29

crops um uh mechanics are um so we want there to be a relatively

• 1:14:35

cyclical influence on the in-game material market economy um that that is going to be indicated by

• 1:14:41

how seasons interact with crops and harvestables and also wild gatherables

• 1:14:46

and this question is very relevant it's from nelson regarding weather system

• 1:14:52

what if any effects will biomes and the change in weather have on dungeons raids

• 1:14:58

and other non-instanced events as well as their loot will their loot change

• 1:15:04

so um weather events can affect

• 1:15:09

skills and abilities uh so that's something that we're gonna be uh playing with um

• 1:15:15

that might be present in alpha two the actual effects on the abilities and it or it might not but um that's one

• 1:15:22

component second component it might restrict access to a particular area um so that the that raid hall might not be

• 1:15:27

available during winter unless some something is done right um it might also um

• 1:15:35

uh affect the mechanics of the boss uh what types of behavior trees and skills and

• 1:15:42

abilities it favors in one season over another and that could add a little bit of dynamicism to the encounter so that

• 1:15:49

it it might be variable encounter mechanics based on the time you do the encounter and those variable encounter

• 1:15:55

mechanics might service one raid composition or another um so in that sense yes it could affect those things

• 1:16:01

as well all right but not um not not probably the loot tables blue

• 1:16:07

table is going to be predicated upon the monster type you kill and then the monster type is pretty predicated upon

• 1:16:12

the time of season potentially or the advancement of story arcs and notes

• 1:16:17

solid the next one is from uh as a here and they want to know about family

• 1:16:22

summoning can a corrupted player use the family summon system to call their family

• 1:16:29

i'm not gonna comment on that yet um again uh this is something in the past

• 1:16:34

that um you know i've had ideas about and there's a reason for those types of

• 1:16:39

systems to exist but at the same time um Ashes of Creation is very

• 1:16:45

dependent on movement across the world um and limiting that movement um because

• 1:16:51

we've experienced problems with that as players in the past games that are highly teleporty um

• 1:16:56

and so you know it's something we're going to test we have a few ideas we're probably going to prototype those out as part of alpha 2 focus group them a

• 1:17:02

little bit and see how it changes the state of player behavior

• 1:17:08

all right and then we've got a combat question from sorf how will ground target spells

• 1:17:14

like the cleric hollowed ground work underwater will no ground with no ground

• 1:17:19

to put the spell on that's a good question actually we had some prototyping that i believe we did

• 1:17:24

um a few months ago perhaps i might be wrong on that um on the design team and

• 1:17:30

thoughts about how to use template-based abilities that might be normally telegraphed with the decal system on top

• 1:17:36

of you know terrain or whatever in 3d space combat like water or air

• 1:17:43

there's a few things that can be done um on that front you can have a scrollable wheel and the 3d space for the template

• 1:17:50

effect that lives that's a little bit cumbersome because you would have to you know scroll your your my stop your mouse

• 1:17:56

style back um so not sure if that one was a good one but we have a few other ideas as well um that we're going to be

• 1:18:02

prototyping for under underwater combat and of course it would apply to um in air combat as well so still underway on

• 1:18:09

the decision for that and then three other threather wants to know about

• 1:18:15

caravans when a player goes to hire mpc mercenaries do they hire generic npc

• 1:18:20

titles like warrior archer mage get a random assortment of npcs or archetyped

• 1:18:26

npcs like summoner cleric etc yeah we were talking about um with the

• 1:18:31

caravan sri building having upgrade pass or at the barracks having upgrade paths

• 1:18:38

for the node to invest into that gives greater selection of roles that you can hire for your caravan um or for quality

• 1:18:46

of items that the guards who come as mercenaries might have available to them uh it'd be cool if they were like

• 1:18:51

actually like mpc's like chad the warrior and he's like oh you won two

• 1:18:56

championships and like yeah we'd call those heroes right those would be hero mercenaries and hero

• 1:19:03

mercenaries would be the top of the unlocked path so you might start out with like a warrior you know or an adept

• 1:19:10

and when you invest more into your barracks through construction materials taxation and upgrade paths that the

• 1:19:16

mayor and the and the citizens participate in you unlock additional higher levels and more specific classes

• 1:19:22

and roles and then um once you have um unlocked the height of

• 1:19:27

that path you might gain access to things like heroes who are named people uh that would only be available for

• 1:19:32

certain caravans right so like if they it's first come first serve if you're going to launch a caravan and that

• 1:19:38

hero's available for that for that caravan you'll get them for x amount of time and then they'll become available again anyways is spitballing just kind

• 1:19:44

of the ideas that we've had in the past about the system of course as you guys always know everything we talk about

• 1:19:49

here is from a development perspective and is subject to change um but it is

• 1:19:55

there's a lot of fun stuff that we can do with upgrades and building types and these caravans it's really cool awesome and then nick wants to know

• 1:20:02

about enchanting and their question is is enchanting itself an artisan

• 1:20:08

profession or something else entirely um enchanting is not an artisan

• 1:20:13

profession no it is created by a few different professions participate

• 1:20:19

in the creation of enchantment scrolls those enchantment scrolls are primarily going to be interfaced on the profession

• 1:20:24

side with scribe but once that scroll is created then

• 1:20:30

it's in the hands of the open economy and players may utilize them to enchant weapons and stuff all right and golid wants to know about

• 1:20:38

boss fights this is our final question how challenging will raid boss mechanics be given the given that players may need

• 1:20:45

to simultaneously fight other players while also fighting the boss it it depends um

• 1:20:52

so the great thing about our encounter system is that it has a wide scalability

• 1:20:57

from encounters that some might consider easy given their composition

• 1:21:03

to encounters that some might consider impossible until they get their gear level to a certain stage

• 1:21:09

the level of interaction with other players is really predicated on the encounter itself we may have some

• 1:21:15

encounters that are in instances although the predominant portion of those will be in the open world in which case they do have the potential being

• 1:21:21

contested um and these encounters especially the the big

• 1:21:26

ones that might land in contention land um are giving some of the best in slot

• 1:21:31

gear you can get in the game so it's important that they are contested um

• 1:21:36

because it is a significant victory point and one of our core pillars is risk versus reward

• 1:21:43

and the higher that risk the higher that reward should be so um you know those two things seem fitting and then in

• 1:21:48

addition we do have the concept of winners and losers not everybody in Ashes of Creation is going to be a winner and that sucks if you're not i

• 1:21:55

guess but there is opportunity for you to continue to excel and become one right uh but it gives much more meaning

• 1:22:01

to an achievement when not everybody gets the achievement um that's our philosophy i mean we have a lot of

• 1:22:07

systems in place that you know rotate out and you know only a couple people or a few

• 1:22:12

people can have those roles which is exciting all right and with that that's all

• 1:22:18

that's it that's a wrap oh my god i feel like after the after after the uh uh

• 1:22:24

show which or the movie that we showed we should just drop the mic and edit the stream but that's yeah people were like just end the stream there

• 1:22:30

yeah but we still had some other cool things to share with you all and of course we want to answer some of your burning

• 1:22:35

questions that you have if your question did not get answered our community team cody and ry are

• 1:22:42

amazing they go through every single question and give answers to ones that we have already answered as well as if

• 1:22:48

your question didn't get picked they will let you know like hey you know submit this for next month's stream and

• 1:22:54

maybe you'll get chosen for that so we really appreciate all their hard work in regards to that

• 1:22:59

and of course if you haven't gone over and left us feedback

• 1:23:05

on rng and what kind of rng systems you like and don't like what you'd like to see in Ashes of Creation what you'd like

• 1:23:11

to not see please go over to our forums and give us a little little feedback in that thread

• 1:23:17

we will be wrapping up that and getting that over to the the development team shortly as well so

• 1:23:23

get them in while you can and we'll have more of those coming down the line as we go i believe we had a little discussion

• 1:23:29

regarding enchanting and it's gotten so crazy that now we're like well we're going to put together a report possibly

• 1:23:34

for that as well for our team um and of course yeah something that we're just like we're going to chat for

• 1:23:40

fun turned into like you know what this is actually solid feedback for the design team we're going to send it over

• 1:23:45

um and of course we do have our windswept wonders cosmetics if you'd like to grab those and help us build the

• 1:23:50

world of Ashes of Creation every single one of those helps us create more npcs more creatures more caravans etc into

• 1:23:57

the world of Ashes of Creation and without further ado we'd like to thank you all for joining us

• 1:24:04

whether you're watching us here live on twitch you can give us a follow right here if you're watching us over on youtube hit the subscribe button and of

• 1:24:10

course we thank you to all of our development staff who are amazing and do phenomenal work bringing ashes of

• 1:24:17

creation to life we hope that you all stay safe and healthy give us a follow on all of our social channels we'll have

• 1:24:23

the video up over on our youtube channel we're gonna right after this stream a little shortly uh we'll have the two 4k

• 1:24:30

videos for you for the cinematic and also the dev chat and then we'll have the full development video for you and

• 1:24:37

the article up on saturday as per usual and of course follow us on twitter facebook and instagram we post daily we

• 1:24:42

always give you cool little snippets so if you're not following us over there definitely do so and we will see you

• 1:24:48

next month for another development update thank you so much thanks everybody

• 1:24:53

[Music]