Talk:2022-07-29 Livestream

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Intro

  • 0:20

hello and welcome salutations everyone welcome to our Ashes of Creation july development

  • 0:27

update we hope everyone has been well and safe over the month as always it's exciting months for us

  • 0:35

a lot we blink and the month goes by uh but we always have so much excitement in the office and

  • 0:42

hubbub as we're uh you know prepared to showcase all the cool stuff

  • 0:48

for you guys very exciting it's been hot actually in san diego this july yeah my

  • 0:54

plants uh oh no having the struggle bust but it's okay plants are struggle busting

  • 1:00

it's okay i'm giving them a lot of water and nutrients um

  • 1:05

minus the birds trying to eat them which i didn't even know birds birds eat plants they are attacking my tomato

  • 1:12

plant leaves but oh no yeah so i bought a little greenhouse and put them in it that's odd

  • 1:18

and i wonder what kind of bird bird is attacking the tomato tomato plant yeah man yeah the tullnar attacking

  • 1:24

[Laughter] but you know as always we'll just go through

  • 1:31

all of our quick reminders today we are going to be showing off some more techie stuff you all said you want to see more

  • 1:36

so we're going to be showing off a tech art tool and we have a few different people joining from our team who will be

  • 1:42

discussing that with stephen and so we'll be playing a video for you all on that yes very exciting stuff and by the way

  • 1:50

you know we uh in the past we've we've seen as the community responded positively to any technical discussions

  • 1:56

and you guys have asked for us to kind of do a little more of that in the future and so today's that day we're going to have a very technical

  • 2:02

discussion and if you have questions and stuff pop them in chat i know we'll try to answer what we can

  • 2:10

i usually try to pull questions as well if they're pertinent to what we're discussing um but yeah it's going to be

  • 2:16

exciting and then of course we have a character art update which includes a race that you haven't really seen much

  • 2:23

of so i'm sure you guys will enjoy that and it's one that people have been discussing a lot lately um bachner and i

  • 2:30

were chatting about that so i think it would be exciting for you guys to see where we're

  • 2:36

and then of course we have our studio update which will be pretty quick and then we'll do our q a which will try to

  • 2:42

answer as many as we can from the forums that were new questions but as always if

  • 2:47

you ask a question that we've already answered vechnar is amazing and goes through and answers all of them for you

  • 2:53

so or it gives you the direction of where you can find the answer as well so yeah very cool so to kick things off we

  • 3:01

have our reminders first and foremost we have our spotlight question from

Reminders

  • 3:06

youtube and we do this every stream so all you have to do is subscribe to us over on youtube and leave a comment on

  • 3:13

the video that is our development update and you can do that for this one it's too uh as well whenever we upload it but

  • 3:21

today's highlight is from wyatt parks and they're they actually have a question this time they said here's a

  • 3:26

question as a crafter artisan etc well i be able to give my

  • 3:33

goods to someone else and pay them to transport it via caravan system or

  • 3:38

something to market or will i have to be one or will i have to be the one to

  • 3:45

do the caravan myself that's a very good question actually and i don't think we

  • 3:50

have talked about since that system has had a little bit of a redesign um several

  • 3:57

months ago but yes there is a

  • 4:02

um system driven way for players to co-op um caravan

  • 4:09

trips and essentially you have the driver or the owner of the caravan

  • 4:14

preps the caravan for launch at the caravan series which is the node building

  • 4:19

that launches the caravans and he can make a selection to allow

  • 4:25

designated players or members of his party excuse me

  • 4:31

to uh to reserve space within the caravan and they may then upload their goods into

  • 4:38

the caravan at the carabantry by interfacing with the ui there and there can even be an agreement for

  • 4:45

insurance should the caravan be destroyed let's say you find a driver who's run many successful missions and

  • 4:52

you're confident in their ability to deliver you may not ask for insurance but if this is a new person who doesn't

  • 4:59

have an established reputation on the server for being a successful caravan driver um then you can request insurance

  • 5:06

and that's an option that the uh that the owner of the caravan has to enable uh and when you interface with that ui

  • 5:12

window um there will be the amount of insurance that will be uh placed in escrow and

  • 5:18

given to you should the caravan not make it to its destination or or should the caravan's goods be lost um so there is

  • 5:26

there is mechanical systems in place uh to provide that type of interaction we feel that interaction is good it's fun

  • 5:32

it helps encourage um um the social interaction that's important to an mmorpg but also it provides an outlet

  • 5:38

for players who may not wish to actually drive a caravan or launch a caravan or own a good caravan to transport their

  • 5:44

goods to kind of piggyback with other players as they do those things as well so steven um

  • 5:50

have you paid your caravan insurance because i wanted to collect

  • 5:55

i didn't lose a caravan i don't have to make pay i don't have to make good on that payment

  • 6:00

i'm good i'm just imagining all the memes um of course and that is from

  • 6:08

wyatt parks thank you wyatt for being a subscriber over on our youtube channel we super duper appreciate it and we look

  • 6:14

forward to the next questions that will or comments that will be coming our way from this update

  • 6:20

and of course we have our reminder that our thunder at the gate cosmetics will

  • 6:25

be swapping over august 10th at 11 a.m pacific little turtle dude i like his tail and

  • 6:31

his little mouth look at that it looks like a baby turtle but actually it's big yeah it's it's a mount uh so

  • 6:39

yeah it would be interesting if it was a little baby turtle um

  • 6:44

and a reminder that all of these variants all the variants that are made from these you'll see in-game as npcs

  • 6:49

creatures buildings etc which is really very exciting for us you're helping us build the world of

  • 6:55

vera and we also have our latest dev discussion up which is about world map

  • 7:01

discovery we'd like to know would you like to see a traditional map world or mmo world map that once

  • 7:08

explored updates with the ever-changing state of the world or would you prefer to see more innovative ways of keeping

  • 7:14

maps up to date and you all have already provided a ton of feedback but we would love to see some more so if you haven't

  • 7:20

headed over on over to our forums please do so and of course our next topic will be regarding tank participation and i'm

  • 7:28

sure y'all will have tons of feedback for us on that uh so prepare yourself it

  • 7:33

has been a lively discussion in the on the design team as well actually that's why we have it as a dev discussion i

  • 7:39

know yeah it's going to be exciting to see what people think about that stephen's like let's see if you guys agree with me no no no we cannot load we

  • 7:47

just have to load the question nobody knows who stands where i know i'm not saying i'm not saying how

  • 7:53

what you think i'm just saying like it'll be interesting to see if people's ideas or thoughts uh coincide with what

  • 8:01

you guys as a development team think and of course for those of you who are content creators you're always asking us

  • 8:08

you know where you can apply we haven't started invitation phase yet but we are accepting applications so if you head on

  • 8:15

over to our website and or even our support page and you type in you know content creator

  • 8:21

program it'll come up with a link where you can apply for a part of that which will be very

  • 8:27

exciting and without further ado uh we are ready to

Desert Biome Preview

  • 8:33

head into our tech art tool discussion do you want to preface this first video and then we'll

  • 8:39

i would love to so what we're going to see first here is a very brief preview a sneak peek

  • 8:47

at the desert zones in alpha 2. and um

  • 8:53

you know they're we don't want to obviously give away all the secrets and show you know everything

  • 8:59

that's that is intended there for alpha 2. uh but you will likely see some interesting um uh

  • 9:07

buildings that might be indicative of some points of interest of some dungeons you might see a little glimpse at a raid

  • 9:15

boss that lives in the desert um it's really kind of uh you know

  • 9:20

tristan snodgrass our lead environment artist did an uh an outstanding job uh

  • 9:25

putting together this this little um uh video showing you guys what the

  • 9:31

environment team and the tech art teams have been have been working on and building as part of the alpha 2 world um

  • 9:37

so big big hearts in chat for tristan he spent a lot of time on this he was up late last night getting the final

  • 9:43

touches uh put on it and everybody who participated in it um but i think you

  • 9:48

guys are going to enjoy it it's going to be a brief showcase and then after that we will show

  • 9:54

a technical discussion uh about one of our internally created tools from some

  • 9:59

of our very talented senior technical artists and how we are developing these internal tools

  • 10:07

to really help build a giant mmo world like Ashes of Creation

  • 10:12

and um you know create better efficiency in our workflow processes right in the in

  • 10:18

the pipeline of what goes into making these beautiful environments and and these beautiful places in the world um

  • 10:25

so you know incredibly impressed always with with the talent that our team has

  • 10:31

and is constantly showing and i think you guys are going to be impressed as well they are amazing i mean

  • 10:38

we all talk about it every day but uh even in the office when you're like eating lunch with someone it's just great to work with people who are super

  • 10:44

passionate because you know every time you talk to somebody or ask them for something it's not you know like a chore it's like everyone's

  • 10:50

excited to do it which i think is you know great absolutely no and it's always so fun to

  • 10:56

to really just see you know these these dreams that we've talked about um you know for years now

  • 11:03

starting to come to a a quality level that's indicative of what players yeah i want to play

  • 11:08

students what do you want me to do you need to see me everyone

  • 11:18

i know i'm just saying from like just so the players realize like we also want

  • 11:24

this just as badly as you guys we want to create the game that we all want to play so just

  • 11:29

just we're bearing with you all as well um but with that i'm going to play a

  • 11:34

cinematic video and then we'll return and we'll chat a little bit and we'll head into the tool discussion keep an

  • 11:40

eye out for some interesting things you might discover in this video what are these structures

  • 11:47

all right we'll see in a moment [Music]

  • 12:01

so

  • 12:28

[Music]

  • 12:48

[Music]

  • 12:56

[Music]

  • 13:28

[Music]

  • 13:50

[Music]

  • 14:13

[Music] all right well it seems like people liked it also they love this the

  • 14:20

whispering well the yes it is the snores as the community has

  • 14:26

called it oh my gosh the sounds so good i love it so much cat did a great job

  • 14:34

everybody did a great job kind of in this in this sneak peek i i can see the the absolute excitement from the

  • 14:41

community just dying to get into this zone um but you know just to give you guys context next

Desert Biome Video

  • 14:47

video we're going to show is about 20 minutes long and it's going to talk about some of the tech that's been

  • 14:53

internally developed uh to work in concert with unreal engine and helps remove some of

  • 15:00

the workflow barriers that typically exist as part of the process of making

  • 15:05

these virtual worlds and our tech our team has done a phenomenal job um in in

  • 15:13

in helping create um tools that our artists can use um to

  • 15:20

to essentially keep that creative process within the engine as much as possible um so you're going to hear a

  • 15:27

lot of technical jargon and and words perhaps that that might be a little foreign we'll do our best to try

  • 15:33

to clear some of that stuff up after the video but i think you guys are going to enjoy watching you know what goes into making

  • 15:40

such environments like this you know what what goes into making the world of vera

  • 15:45

all right we'll see on the flip side hello everyone and welcome to another

  • 15:52

live stream day very excited to be with you we have a little bit of a different demonstration to show you all today we

  • 16:00

you know we've in the past we've shown kind of um tech that we're using to help build the world of vera and today i am

  • 16:07

joined by three of our extremely talented senior technical artists on the

  • 16:13

team i am joined by john bruno and alan hey guys how are you

  • 16:18

doing hey good stephen

  • 16:24

now you guys have been working on something um for the past little while that

  • 16:29

um is actually is very excited and as i understand it um

  • 16:34

alan this was something that you began to think about um as a tool that

  • 16:42

our artists could use in the studio to help with the development of a world like ours as big as ours of an mmo

  • 16:49

that of course is a difficult difficult world to build amongst the games that are out there tell me a little bit about

  • 16:56

where this idea came from for our landform tool

  • 17:01

hello uh yeah sure uh so i was in the studio um

  • 17:07

just trying to figure out a way to kind of speed up

  • 17:12

my process other artist process of creating uh you know art essentially and

  • 17:18

then i know essentially how big our world is going to be

  • 17:23

so you know i really wanted to kind of think about that as well as my constraints you know

  • 17:29

and so it kind of just dawned on me as i was working through building art for us

  • 17:35

um about this idea i had which is land form which you know thankful uh you

  • 17:41

know hats off to bruno for um you know the name i think it's fantastic it's awesome

  • 17:48

i like it too it's it's perfectly app for what it does too yeah totally for

  • 17:53

sure um and so i was just trying to think of you know those ideas and so i was like

  • 17:59

just trying to think of like uh the the awesome programs or the softwares that i use

  • 18:05

and you know how can i speed up that that flow right so and tell me a little bit about the

  • 18:11

flow right um john bruno allen you guys have have been working for a long time

  • 18:17

in this industry and you've built a lot of games and you know i think you guys even have some mmo

  • 18:22

experience some of you in the past that i think alan you worked on um new world uh was your last project correct yep

  • 18:29

yeah and tell me a little bit about what that workflow actually is on other projects that you guys have worked on

  • 18:36

so with you know other projects i worked on essentially you would build your asset

  • 18:41

you know your model essentially in a third uh third-party application like my or

  • 18:46

something and then you would actually start going in and start detailing it up like in programs like zbrush

  • 18:54

or whatever programs that you want to use and then go in and start um texturing after uv and so then you could

  • 19:00

jump into like quicksilver mixer or substance painter or you know if you're even trying to do like a tileable or

  • 19:06

something like that you go into designer and make that so you're going to a lot of these different programs

  • 19:13

and um you know you're spending your time doing those processes to create your art but essentially each time and

  • 19:19

each time you kind of move to a different middleware program that's that's an interruption in the workflow

  • 19:25

right yeah yeah so like as i'm building something i'm you know artists have like

  • 19:30

this rhythm you know it's like this flow that we get into that kind of just help create a create this thing that we're

  • 19:36

making you know and for me it's like as i'm building something i'm in this flow and it's like i'm getting in this rhythm if i have to

  • 19:42

separate and go to another application i'm starting to do like really technical work i start that idea that that flow

  • 19:49

kind of like dissipates you know it kind of gets more uh softer and vague you know and then before you know it's like

  • 19:55

out in the midst and it's really hard to grab it and then bring it back into vision uh once you're going through all

  • 20:01

these applications [Music] so this workflow allows us to

  • 20:06

essentially speed that up and so that's what i was working looking through uh in my ideas and stuff about like you know

  • 20:13

how can we stay in an engine you know build a material a process as well that

  • 20:19

allows us to create art um but really get the high fidelity that we're looking

  • 20:24

for and as well speed right iteration that we just talked about for like you know hey does

  • 20:31

this look good oh no that looks great but what about this and you're like oh yeah yeah change that up and then before you know it you're like

  • 20:37

okay and then you have to go back and you're out of that application or out of you know the engine into another application and then it just goes

  • 20:43

through this big long process so if you can do that and build it inside the world that you're you're making then

  • 20:49

that flow like really that rhythm starts to come a lot easier and before you know it you know if you come to me stephen

  • 20:55

you're like hey alan i want this cliff to be you know a little bit higher you know i would have to get out of the

  • 21:01

application or the engine and into my application and do that but now with this tool that we're making in this process that we

  • 21:07

have really defined uh now we don't have to do that bruno tell talk to me a little bit about

  • 21:13

what made this possible with unreal engine 5 our migration over to ue5 as

  • 21:19

opposed to previously with ue4 yeah absolutely so um

  • 21:24

that is something that of course became available quite recently with uh with uh uh uh

  • 21:32

geometry scripting within uh uh u5 and that's basically like the two set that we're using to

  • 21:38

create landform so that's actually something that's like really really fresh and new and like

  • 21:43

like cutting edge technology kind of thing so before of course you could like like

  • 21:50

alan said we could do this uh outside of outside of unreal and go to external programs and stuff like

  • 21:57

that but of course we wanted to keep that to keep that flow going we wanted to keep the artist uh uh really

  • 22:04

connected with the the asset that they are working with

  • 22:09

so uh yeah we use this this like fresh new tools from from ue5 to to create uh

  • 22:14

live form and uh yeah you know we're it the two is here now and it's it's

  • 22:20

been amazing too to work with them yeah just having a really good time it's seeing

  • 22:25

exciting um you know kind of seeing our artists react to

  • 22:31

this tool's availability now as part of their workflow and kind of replacing as you guys described that

  • 22:37

that external sculpting software like zbrush or or maya and and creating really high

  • 22:43

resolution geometry to break it down in this in this making it usable essentially in the game

  • 22:48

in the actual engine itself john talk to me a little bit about um you know how how this has impacted

  • 22:55

um the team's workflow and and where it's really viable for an mmorpg like

  • 23:02

ours well so one of the things that makes it really viable for an mmorpg

  • 23:09

in this case is the performance side of it so

  • 23:15

i remember i was mentioning something earlier about how like i've been wanting to work on an mmo

  • 23:20

since i was eight years old but once i became an adult and became a 3d artist i

  • 23:26

realized i wanted to work on an mmo but i didn't want to be an artist on an mmo

  • 23:31

because of the limitations now one of the things that our tool does here is it allows us to grab that higher

  • 23:39

fidelity not just in the textures but the actual geometry so you see

  • 23:46

the silhouettes of all the details that you know you might go and play your

  • 23:52

favorite mmo that you've been playing for 15 years and everything's all flat

  • 23:57

um you know there's no bumps there's no ridges or anything like that but then now here we are trying to

  • 24:06

bring in that extra dimension essentially and uh absolutely right

  • 24:12

before you know joining intrepid i spent some time in film

  • 24:18

and doing a lot of you know that film level scenery

  • 24:24

and you know i wanted to bring that into the game and i didn't think that was

  • 24:31

possible and so we until we started really working on this and then so

  • 24:37

you know alan's got his ideas that he's putting forth and bruno is building these tools here that's actually making

  • 24:43

it possible and then one of the main things i'm doing over here is uh you

  • 24:49

know making sure that it's optimized and we're reaching that level of performance

  • 24:54

that is still going to be able to run on mmo you know i've i've got a lot of friends

  • 25:01

that want to play this mmo so badly but they're still

  • 25:07

yeah they're still running their 10 series graphics cards you know they they haven't been able to uh either find

  • 25:14

their rtx's or afford them even you know because they got really expensive there and so for me

  • 25:21

it's really important that we reach that fidelity

  • 25:26

but we do it in a way where you know those people can still play it

  • 25:32

because when every time you try to increase the fidelity in a game you run the risk of alienating a part of your

  • 25:38

potential player base right and for me the most important thing you know

  • 25:43

yeah i wanted to look good but i also don't want to alienate any of these people that want to enter the world of

  • 25:50

vera absolutely part of our community yeah i mean we've all played mmos right we're all mmo gamers i remember um

  • 25:57

you know we we've talked about the kind of games that we played and and one of the biggest components of a fun experience

  • 26:04

in an mmo is having a very high population having a lot of people around you and the more that are capable of

  • 26:10

playing an mmo that's in unreal engine 5 which you know this this this type of

  • 26:16

tool allows us to as you just described make this a viable application on lower

  • 26:23

end spec machines and that's and and that is really alleviating a barrier to entry that a

  • 26:30

lot of newer generation games have that that we're trying to lower

  • 26:36

um so so tell me a little bit about um you know what we're seeing here with uh

  • 26:42

with this modeling you know you guys are watching um you know some of these demonstrations of the

  • 26:47

of these uh of the manipulation of the tool actually in the in the engine itself talk to me a little bit about

  • 26:53

what we're looking at sure yeah we yeah we can jump into uh looking

  • 27:00

at the tool here and uh you know essentially what we're doing is we're taking a lot of

  • 27:06

uh if we have any 3d artists or you know game developers out there watching today

  • 27:12

we're taking a lot of that external painting aspect and bringing it into

  • 27:20

the engine you know we're we're not using painter we're not using mixer for this uh but both of those were

  • 27:26

inspirations on what we're doing here absolutely and just you know the end result is going to

  • 27:33

be that we're essentially displacing

  • 27:38

this texture into actual geometry but i'll let alan

  • 27:45

jump in and talk a little bit about what we're looking at here sure sure um

  • 27:50

so i think the one of the things that uh was big for me is is the ux part of this right is bringing the

  • 27:57

the the user experience of how these programs work within unreal so what we're looking at is essentially me

  • 28:04

painting texture sets on this model that allows us to basically duplicate

  • 28:12

how you know painter would be uh or mixer essentially but now we're able to do

  • 28:19

that within unreal and i'm able to use mega scans assets you know they're tileables essentially

  • 28:25

and i'm able to paint layers on this which are you know what we're looking at right here and then

  • 28:31

you know you have a way to blend between uh the height so in and out there's a lot of dynamic masking going on

  • 28:39

and all this is basically allows the artist to create the thing that they want to in

  • 28:45

engine which is fantastic and right now what you're looking at is i was able to sculpt inside of unreal push in the

  • 28:52

inside before i'd have to go to like zbrush you know and then you know with the tool i'm

  • 28:59

able to uh get the things i need to to bake out and i'm being a little you know

  • 29:05

descriptive there you know um so we can hide a little bit of our secrets

  • 29:13

and i'm able to displace it and then i can keep on using unreal's tools to keep

  • 29:18

on refining my process you know in the mesh and the asset you know in any time

  • 29:24

through this and the big part of this and bruno can talk about that and even john is that this is a non-destructive

  • 29:30

workflow and that was really important to us because this allows me to be free

  • 29:36

of that i don't have to worry about oh shoot did i do the wrong thing you know am i iteration is king right exactly

  • 29:44

so this just allows us to to move forward and then also move back um

  • 29:49

without any hiccups and it's just fantastic [Music]

  • 29:54

a little bit more about that yeah i can yeah i can comment on it real quick uh but basically uh what alan's saying is

  • 30:01

that you can always go back to your your original matches and to your original assets and and

  • 30:07

redo the process or create an entire new match based on that same you know starting point um and it's always going to be there for

  • 30:13

you it's not like uh basically this is what a non-destructive workflow is you can always go back and

  • 30:20

undo or or you know start again from scratch if you if you want to do another iteration of it uh it's just really

  • 30:26

powerful it gets that that that uh uh gets the artist like more relaxed

  • 30:31

about like oh i'm not gonna break anything you know and so i say like go and break things because you can always go back

  • 30:37

right and and john you were talking about you know iteration as king and and boy is that true especially on an mmorpg

  • 30:45

where let's say designers might come to you and want this cliff face to be

  • 30:51

looking a little bit different for the needs of their quest or the pathing that they might want to have a certain

  • 30:57

monster take around a particular poi or some statue like this right and you guys

  • 31:03

have with the ease of this tool the ability to make those iterations actually an engine

  • 31:08

yes absolutely so one of the things here you know going through and you know

  • 31:14

painting on something and you know sculpting on it and trying to get all

  • 31:19

those details and you know you spend a lot of time doing that and in traditional workflows where you do it in

  • 31:26

external sculpting software and things like that you know it was a headache when somebody

  • 31:31

would come to you and want some kind of iteration but that's the reality of the

  • 31:37

industry it's it's all about inter iteration you know the first version is never the version that makes it in

  • 31:43

um and if anybody tells you it is and they're lying to you absolutely you know so it's like

  • 31:49

one of the things uh i always tell my students that i mentor is that you know

  • 31:56

the key to being a 3d artist in this industry is you cannot get married to

  • 32:02

your work you have oh you know what that's so funny john

  • 32:08

at the start of every design meeting i make each of our designers go through and say i am not my design and my design

  • 32:16

is not me this is my asset there are many like it

  • 32:23

that's fine that's fantastic yeah so but but that's the thing you know there's there's the iteration side

  • 32:29

of it but then there's also uh the variation side of it one of the things that i

  • 32:36

personally wanted to use this tool to approach was variations so

  • 32:44

like one of the things we can do with it is we can take an asset that's essentially built clean

  • 32:49

and then we can go in and we can use the landform tool to essentially

  • 32:56

create a duplicate of that asset go in and start doing sculpting on it

  • 33:02

we can add these um extra details we can add damage we can add a buildup of some

  • 33:08

kind of gunk or something like that save that out and then

  • 33:14

set that aside as variant a then we can go back in grab the asset again start over paint it

  • 33:21

a completely different way create another variant of it so we could

  • 33:27

uh boy is that important for an mmo where reusability is key into in

  • 33:33

managing this giant world we have to make yeah and so let's say that you have

  • 33:39

uh you have a hall of statues like 10 statues on either side in you know

  • 33:45

traditional games you walk through there and you see 10 repeating statues on each side 20

  • 33:51

repeated statues now you could go in and you could sculpt in

  • 33:57

all kind of damage detail to create variants but a problem that you run into on the

  • 34:04

performance side is that now you're adding a lot of resource overhead and

  • 34:09

then that tanks things down your frames per second goes down some engineer comes screaming at you yeah or

  • 34:16

the the tech artist starts like shooting you with a nerf gun and you know giving you

  • 34:23

the but what we can do here is we can have

  • 34:28

uh an artist sculpt out something beautiful and then we get it into the engine you

  • 34:34

know they sculpt that beautiful statue and then you take that statue

  • 34:39

and you can create even 19 more variants of it right quickly

  • 34:44

and you can go through and you can use the tool to paint it in a different way to create damage in different places

  • 34:52

and then have those all lined up but every single one of those

  • 34:58

is using the same set of textures tileable textures and everything

  • 35:04

that were used to use the tool on it and so traditionally you couldn't do this

  • 35:11

because you would have to have 20 different bespoke texture sets and now you have one

  • 35:18

that is used across all 20 of those statues but they still look different because of

  • 35:24

you know the extra detail that we're adding for the variations so yeah iterations and

  • 35:30

variations i think are the key component here yeah the other thing let's go ahead sorry i was just going to see if i can

  • 35:37

add to that a little bit there's a there's a big aspect of this tool that is a you know like the procedural

  • 35:43

workflow that we're using here uh but i just wanted to comment real quick that even though yes we're using

  • 35:49

like all of this like procedural uh uh uh techniques in it it still gives

  • 35:54

the ex the the artist all of the power so there's still someone curating that

  • 36:01

that procedural workflow right so it's not like we're pressing a button generate statue there's someone still

  • 36:07

going in there and painting that detail and adding that detail where where it needs to be right there's an artist behind every part of it yeah it's

  • 36:13

observated absolutely and that's exactly what i was going to mention too is that it's basically procedural with hand-painted

  • 36:20

work so you're able to get a best of both two worlds you know get something that's done very quickly

  • 36:26

because it's procedural and then have the artist control that and paint out what they want to see

  • 36:32

absolutely phenomenal well guys i i think i speak for the community when i

  • 36:37

say that we are incredibly impressed with not just the the hard work that you're

  • 36:43

putting forth in helping make Ashes of Creation reality but also the way in which you're you're using

  • 36:49

your minds to create more efficient workflows so that the task of creating a

  • 36:55

world as big as ashes as big as hello and welcome back

  • 37:01

um we hope that you all enjoyed a little bit more of a tech heavy uh piece i know

  • 37:07

there weren't a ton of questions i didn't have i had a feeling that there weren't going to be a ton there are a

  • 37:12

lot of people asking who is she the sand mom statue lady

  • 37:18

yeah well we can't answer that um that's something that you will need to discover

  • 37:25

in the world [Laughter] but uh she does have significance absolutely oh my gosh sandal queen i

  • 37:31

like that one too it was it was great um but yeah i thought i would ask it

  • 37:39

even though i know we won't won't believe you to answer quite yet but you'll you'll find out i'm sure

  • 37:45

uh absolutely yeah no you know it's it's always great to have these um you know technical showcases as well i know in

  • 37:51

the past we've done developer diaries and we want to get around to doing those again but um you

  • 37:57

know there's a lot that goes in to making an mmorpg but especially in making a

  • 38:03

large open world and there are not a lot of

  • 38:09

out-of-the-box tools that help with that process so it's important that

  • 38:16

you know as a studio as a development team that we're conscientious of our workflows of the pipelines that require

  • 38:23

us to think outside the box in making um specially curated tools to improve

  • 38:30

that to make it scalable to make it possible within the amount of time we

  • 38:35

want to build the types of things that we want to do and a lot of that for especially the

  • 38:42

creative realm of game creation you know it is about keeping the consistency of

  • 38:49

that creative workflow in place and oftentimes some you know

  • 38:54

the middleware software that's available out there is amazing it is incredibly versatile there's never going to be a

  • 38:59

way that you will entirely remove that from i think the process elite at least not for some time but

  • 39:06

where we can mitigate that at least on an iterative level that's where it's very fruitful to an

  • 39:14

artist or to the development team to be able to stay within the engine for those

  • 39:19

iterative processes right um and and the landform tool is is really useful and in

  • 39:27

fact you know this is and i know it was said in the in the discussion but this is just

  • 39:32

the early application of that landform tool um there's a lot more that's

  • 39:38

planned to make that tool very versatile in its capabilities within the engine

  • 39:45

and it's going to be exciting to see it incorporated further in our pipelines

  • 39:52

so very impressed by the incredible work that uh our technical art teams as well as

  • 39:59

our teams in general are doing to bring Ashes of Creation the world of vera to life um and i know you guys appreciate

  • 40:06

kind of getting insight under the hood especially those of you who are amateur developers or who are just getting

  • 40:12

started in the industry or who might be at other studios this is also an incredible recruitment tool so that you

  • 40:18

know one thing that is the lifeblood i think of any project out there in game

  • 40:24

development is the tools the tools that you have access to to help ease uh to help scale to help uh

  • 40:32

inform what it is that you're developing and you know here at this studio we we put

  • 40:39

tools on a pedestal right we we want to make sure that um we are providing our

  • 40:44

developers with the tools that they need and that's why we have a very we're very technical teams that are that are

  • 40:49

conscientious of how we can apply the the the technical art knowledge or the engineering knowledge um to facilitate

  • 40:55

that tools development um and we also want that to be uh a high point when we prospect new

  • 41:03

developers to join our team that they get to see the types of tools that are available when working not only with

  • 41:09

unreal engine 5 which is an incredible engine created by epic but also within the

  • 41:14

the tool sets that we're creating internally as well to interface with unreal engine 5. um and that's a very

  • 41:20

important aspect so um happy to share that stuff with you guys and i hope you guys are excited to

  • 41:26

to see that and learn about it and and it's it's a fun aspect of making games

  • 41:31

and i think one of the main things that we've been trying to show you guys is like the journey of creating a product

  • 41:37

creating an uh a game you know i don't think a lot of people get to experience that um and you're getting to see not

  • 41:44

only you know the outcome of what is the creation but the process of creation um

  • 41:50

and also if you want to see more of those things do let us know um we all know this because we're all

  • 41:56

gamers but yeah games are the future i mean the gaming market today is larger than

  • 42:03

any other form of entertainment combined um and it's only going to continue to grow as

  • 42:09

you know more and more people get access and familiarity with computers and consoles and whatnot so um you know it's

  • 42:16

kind of like being on the cutting edge of you know the advent of the internet or of computers gaming is in and of itself

  • 42:23

something that is the future and we're going to see more and more development teams continue to

  • 42:29

to become uh you know worthwhile investments on the gaming side um for us to participate in the

  • 42:36

development and the journey of and it's it's great that you guys i think it's great that

  • 42:42

one of the things i love about ashes is the ability to interface with the community and being having that open and transparent development process because

  • 42:49

i just think about how you know 15 20 years ago when i was playing games you

  • 42:54

know at 18 years old that i didn't you know get this type of insight right i just i just grabbed the

  • 43:00

title when it released now there's an opportunity to kind of watch the progress to watch the development to

  • 43:06

learn and understand um and i think that's a really cool aspect not for everyone of course um but it is

  • 43:12

something that those of us who are interested in have the opportunity to do so now more and more today than we ever

  • 43:17

did in the past and i think from a developer standpoint as like a person working at a company

  • 43:25

i've worked you know at quite a few and when you don't have the right tools it can be very frustrating so you know

  • 43:32

praise stephen for allowing developers to have the opportunity to spend time to create tools i think a lot of the times

  • 43:39

were you know they're like okay well access is your tool you have to use that and you're

  • 43:45

basically just like pasting spreadsheet data and then like you're crossing your fingers hoping stuff doesn't break right

  • 43:51

and that's that's the age that i've come from is you know you know 16 years ago it was not this way uh having tools that

  • 43:58

we can utilize and make processes faster i think you mentioned being scalable you know as we pull more people on or not

  • 44:05

needing as many people because you have great tools that do things faster i think it's just trying to like you know

  • 44:10

explain that to folks who you know maybe don't get to you know be in the day-to-day of

  • 44:16

creating a pro like a game or any product absolutely all right with that

Character Art Update

  • 44:23

uh unless you have anything else you want to add stephen we shall move on to our character art

  • 44:30

update which to preface first we will be showcasing

  • 44:35

a new race that we haven't really well we've shown some things

  • 44:40

on the interior in the past no we're not showing the toilet oh okay oh the tool noir we're gonna show you like a toe to

  • 44:48

start with

  • 44:54

so cool my team is just like losing their mind but not today not today

  • 45:01

i know maybe we can just show them the the concepts let's just maybe we can just show them the concepts can you pull

  • 45:07

that in like live maybe do you have that i don't have it

  • 45:12

i can i can send it to you right now if you want me to uh i feel like that we could do something cooler yeah i don't know i

  • 45:18

feel like maybe dispersing parts to conte creators and they have to like put the puzzle

  • 45:23

together or something do you want to do that or do we want to show them the concepts

  • 45:29

it's i'm going to leave it in your hands what do you want oh my gosh that way i'm not the bad guy no no if i choose not to

  • 45:35

i'm not the bag it's all you now okay well let's start with what we've got and then we can decide at the end uh

  • 45:43

and i'll let um maybe bacnar can dm me and tell me he's like i wasn't prepared for this uh what

  • 45:49

he thinks um in a dm do it live so first and foremost let's show off the

  • 45:56

imperium i'm gonna be having so much trouble after this you guys if you don't see me for a week call for help no i'm

  • 46:01

just kidding i mean i work for you man you tell me what you want

  • 46:08

so here's a look at the empyrean we've had a lot of questions about the mirroring i've heard a lot of people

  • 46:15

asking about them people want to have that more high elf elven look

  • 46:21

there were some questions in regards to whether the headpiece part is part of them but i think margaret

  • 46:27

someone just screamed give us the toe just the toe all right

  • 46:33

wagner get me an image of the toe i would love to showcase the tower now but guys so remember the important part here

  • 46:40

is we've always said this that that art is is always improving it's always a work

  • 46:46

in progress um and and part of the art that

  • 46:52

excuse me manny and the character team have been doing has been taking a doing an audit of our character

  • 46:59

races and you guys saw this first with the um with the pi i think

  • 47:04

was was it first with the pirate or first no first was the dwarves yeah

  • 47:16

um now you're seeing the empyrean and these are these are updates to to give some more character

  • 47:23

unique character to each of the individual races um and also to to bring

  • 47:28

them up to a quality level um that is that is um respective of the of the

  • 47:35

world we're creating um so you guys see this concept these concept pieces right here which is the reimagining that that

  • 47:42

manny's done kind of of the empyrean um uh elves uh and you guys will recall

  • 47:48

when you saw the pirate concept to the pirate model it is very similar it is

  • 47:55

almost one to one between concept and model so this gives you a very good idea

  • 48:03

what these what these models are going to look like which we will show you soon they're they're almost done not quite

  • 48:09

yet as a matter of fact margaret you threw them on the uh run of show but i think i

  • 48:14

took them off uh because they have a little just a few other things the um empyrean

  • 48:21

models oh yeah the models yeah i had the actual models but you yeah you had me pull them

  • 48:28

they're almost almost done almost done um i always like showing you guys the

  • 48:33

concept and then what the what the ink name looks like because it's like they look so similar it's so good

  • 48:39

um next we have shown the renkai before you all gave us a lot of feedback on it um

  • 48:47

we are making a lot of changes to all of the races to make them more unique um

  • 48:52

each of them having their like i mean you've seen like the building culture and how different each of those are and steven's really driving the direction

  • 48:59

for the art now so this is kind of the new direction of the renkai

  • 49:05

um it's not finished but yes and yes you will be able to still have red skin too

  • 49:11

um but this is just the green skin showing you that yeah you know there's going to obviously be

  • 49:17

a lot of customization options where uh you know you will have some direction

  • 49:22

on skin pigmentation for uh the different races you're not just going to be delegated to green orcs you're going

  • 49:28

to have options there where you can where you can customize those things

  • 49:33

and but this is the recently work in progress touched up

  • 49:39

concepts for the renkai and i i love it i think they're i love it matches kind

  • 49:45

of the vibe they have with all their architecture like the very swampy like pagoda style like i feel like it just

  • 49:52

this feels more like what they should be like absolutely absolutely

  • 49:59

that's cool all right and of course we will have threads going up for both of these as

  • 50:04

well as for our um desert biome goodness so if you do have

  • 50:11

thoughts on any of these things please please uh feel free to pop over to our forums and give us some feedback

  • 50:18

next just in case just in case you choose to pull that trigger um on the telner i've added it to uh yours mine

  • 50:25

and rise um dm and slack so you have it there oh ryan's out today he's oh okay sorry here

  • 50:33

let me i'll send it i'll send it directly to you okay there we go

  • 50:41

i will download that um okay so this is the guys of the negotiator

  • 50:48

set very very cool

  • 50:54

i love this set who worked on this one by the way um i believe this was jeremy

  • 51:01

jeremy no for design uh but eli worked on it for

  • 51:07

the arts eli nice yes jeremy on the design side and eli on the

  • 51:12

modeling side so this i love this set it's it's just so and it's and it's appropriate that it actually

  • 51:18

lined up with the desert bio it did it's perfect yeah

  • 51:23

um yeah and i got to see my whispering whelk that i designed

  • 51:28

[Music] i thought you were gonna say no the first time i was putting that together because i was like is he gonna think i'm

  • 51:34

crazy i'm putting a horse and a snail together i didn't know that you love snails until after like i like

  • 51:39

kickbashing real animals together into a fantasy uh you know that's where the bagora they brought it to life and it's

  • 51:47

just like it's when you design something and then when you see the art and then the like the concept and then the art

  • 51:52

and then you get to see it like working and oh my gosh makes you cry

  • 51:57

i like the little shoes on this guy by the way yeah the little like pearl

  • 52:06

it's very good eli you killed it nailed it um and then of course the lovely desert

  • 52:12

statue that you've all seen in the video but here's the model of it desert

  • 52:19

the sand mama yeah the sand mama who is this yeah i don't know and jincy worked

  • 52:24

on this one yes jinzy modeled this one and then we've got

  • 52:30

our lightfoot leverage i'll give i'll give a hint there is some importance to

  • 52:36

the um iconography on her circlet on her um oh

  • 52:43

sorry i didn't mean to no i just hit the wrong button there we go so there there is some there is a symbol that is present on the front of

  • 52:50

her of her circlet and there is a there's something relevant there everyone's gonna be zooming in and

  • 52:57

looking i know all right all right uh and then this is the light but uh

  • 53:04

leverage which is actually i don't know if i'm saying i cannot wait for the animations

  • 53:10

but i don't i can't wait for the animations for this one oh i know it's gotta have

  • 53:17

it's gotta hop it's gotta hop and be a fast little little rabbit oh i'm so

  • 53:22

excited i love the ears yeah they are great it'd be cool if you could grab the ears as part of the

  • 53:28

writer's isolation like when you sprint you grab them and pull it and it's just like you're holding on for dinner

  • 53:33

instead of having rains you grab the ears that'd be cute

  • 53:39

next up we've got a little farm ducklings they're so cute

  • 53:45

this reminds me of the ducklings that john and i had over last summer that all got eaten by those falcons stephen

  • 53:53

well short but sweet lives

  • 53:59

it's a circle of life you know that kind of stuff happens you know we looked it up actually afterwards only 10 percent

  • 54:05

of ducklings born in the wild survived to adulthood doesn't surprise me i see lots of like

  • 54:11

peregrine falcons in my backyard and they just like take babies or oh yeah

  • 54:17

mama birds it's crazy we walked outside like the day they were born there were falcons just circling above

  • 54:23

and i and i totally tried to like steal the ducklings to raise on our own but

  • 54:28

john did not allow me to do that he was like you're never at home you're always at the office there's no way we're going

  • 54:34

to be able to care for these things you just have to let them be eaten and and it was really difficult it was hard for

  • 54:40

me but it was what it was um and stephen did kind of give you a

  • 54:46

little teaser of the shade duckling um on twitter

  • 54:52

if you saw that oh look at him and his flower i like that when you teased it someone

  • 54:58

replied and tagged me and was like this seems like something margaret would have gotten i was like yeah i did

  • 55:04

i love the blue i love the blue the blue i think it's purple it's like a yeah it's like a purple

  • 55:10

purple something it is it is very soft it is nice it's

  • 55:16

watery and i love the animation for it yeah here you go oh

  • 55:23

ginseng did such a good job it's so cute i think i need to get my screen checked on the

  • 55:28

to your monitor if it's showing blue for you having problems it's like a a purpley blue so i could see that if if

  • 55:35

your monitor is a little more blue yeah it's very cute

  • 55:41

um and that is that i'm just kidding give me a second and we will be showing

  • 55:49

are you guys ready for this i don't know sorry we're ready i don't think they're ready fechner you're gonna have to

  • 55:55

put another thread together can we just breathe together first before yeah we can breathe together let's just breathe

  • 56:00

for a second okay so i want to talk about the tallner before we show this okay

  • 56:06

or the toenail

  • 56:11

okay so now remember the had to suffer

  • 56:17

you know some significant amount of time

  • 56:22

left to their themselves as they were essentially left behind during the

  • 56:28

exodus from from vera and it wasn't a pretty existence for the

  • 56:33

first several hundred years um and there was a culmination remember the

  • 56:39

background for the culinary there's a number of minor races and major races

  • 56:45

that all sought refuge within the underrealm and

  • 56:51

um we talked about how this particular player character race was going to have

  • 56:56

a a pretty unique approach when it comes to character customization because

  • 57:02

with that background there comes different species influence

  • 57:08

in the race itself and we want players to be able to dial up or down those influences as they see

  • 57:16

fit between the uh you know the humanoid the

  • 57:22

simian or mammalian and the reptilian influences

  • 57:27

and as you dial those things up your base body if it if it exceeds

  • 57:34

a certain percentage threshold threshold will assume the form and stance

  • 57:40

of one of three primary types of influences that exist for the tulnar

  • 57:45

and now what you're going to see is those three distinct

  • 57:52

influences and you can be of course a hundred percent in one if you wish and

  • 57:57

you'll be very similar to what you're going to see um you'll be very similar what you're going

  • 58:03

to see here from the concepts uh or you can mix and match and you can blend between the different influences

  • 58:10

um so you guys are about to see and it's been how many years and we've never actually shown

  • 58:15

the tolnar so wow i had a big plan for this for the toner

  • 58:21

well hold on now we can do that we can do that for the model this is just okay all right so the when the models are

  • 58:27

ready and we do the character customization that's the big pomp and circumstance we can show them

  • 58:33

um and whatnot but here this is just i'm showing you more than a toe i'm going to show you an entire face

  • 58:40

three faces so and this is not the limited edition yeah necessarily

  • 58:45

uh all right you ready are you prepared take a deep breath i can't believe you're making this

  • 58:51

decision that's crazy here we go

  • 58:57

there we go i'm waiting oh my god there they are

  • 59:04

they have arrived they are so cool welcome

  • 59:10

to the talnar a proud noble underground dwelling race

  • 59:19

they bring with them the history and background of those who came before their ancestors

  • 59:26

all from different walks of life and you get to carry those footsteps forward

  • 59:33

maybe now all the hate for the telner will stop yeah i think that i think i think people are going to be changing

  • 59:39

180 yeah i think we're going to see a little bit of a 180. yeah the toner are really cool so

  • 59:47

uh and that's this is this is just concept so far so um just

  • 59:53

wait till you see the models it's madness and again those of you who want to see what the what the transition from

  • 59:59

concept to model is going to look like a great reference is to take a look at the pi ray concept and what became the pi

  • 1:00:06

ray model because you have those available and you can see how similar uh you can do that with the dwarf for the

  • 1:00:12

junior and the nikuen and those are getting some updates as well which we'll showcase once uh steven approved the

  • 1:00:18

approve those uh obviously empyrean as we go forward with those the pirate

  • 1:00:24

and you know we do have the klr and the value as well so uh yes and wait until you see how the

  • 1:00:31

blend occurs between these three very distinct and unique racial influences

  • 1:00:38

within one race the tulnar i think it's going to be exciting yeah i'm very excited

  • 1:00:44

all right with that we're going to move over to our q a where we're going to try to power

Outro and Q&A

  • 1:00:49

through as many of these forum questions as we can uh so if you submitted a forum question thank you so much we always

  • 1:00:56

appreciate you guys doing that we try to get to as many as we can

  • 1:01:02

first and foremost our first one here is from george black and they want to know about mounts will mobs knock back people

  • 1:01:09

off their mounts or will mounted players bypass all mobs easily no no

  • 1:01:16

there is danger to traversing areas with enemies nearby and there are

  • 1:01:22

specific abilities uh that uh knock a rider off of their mount um should they

  • 1:01:29

venture too close to enemies oh yeah good point someone in chat was like studio update oh yeah do you have

  • 1:01:35

any updates for on the studio front i'm i got too excited after the tournament i just got last question mind frame yeah

  • 1:01:43

i went into question mind frame after the the tool nar sorry um studio updates is relatively short i mean um we've been

  • 1:01:50

of course continuing uh to have incredible results from our recruitment processes uh again cameron stacy and the

  • 1:01:57

hr team in general have been doing an incredible job in in sourcing talent um we have

  • 1:02:03

you know several hundred natural applicants that come in each month i believe in july we've hired so far

  • 1:02:09

about eight people a little bit slower than the beginning of the year at the end of the year of course that's natural when it comes to job searches i do

  • 1:02:15

however want to take this moment to note um those of you who are watching and can help spread this word we did put out a

  • 1:02:21

psa announcement a few days ago on our aoc support twitter if you're not uh-oh

  • 1:02:27

my light just went out oh i thought you lost power i'm like and there goes the stream

  • 1:02:34

being weird and these are like wi-fi lights oh interesting um to to once again uh state we did put out

  • 1:02:42

a a psa on this there are some very unfortunate people in this world who

  • 1:02:48

take it upon themselves to attempt and scam others we all sometimes get those

  • 1:02:53

spam calls that are pretending to be people they're not but now it's begun to encroach in on the

  • 1:02:59

territory of job recruitments and there are some people out there on linkedin and other platforms that are pretending

  • 1:03:04

to be Intrepid Studios recruiters and they are asking for information that Intrepid Studios would never ask for as

  • 1:03:11

part of the job application process so i want to make sure that those of you who are out there who are looking for jobs

  • 1:03:16

not just you know within this industry but any industry always be cognizant of the information that you share with

  • 1:03:21

others um it is it should never be appropriate that um you pay a fee or you're requested to pay for equipment um

  • 1:03:28

or provide social security numbers or identification or copies of passport in order to apply for a job um and and one

  • 1:03:36

other thing that's very unique to our studio um i think is that no one ever gets an offer from Intrepid Studios

  • 1:03:42

unless you've had either a video chat or an in-person uh interview with myself um so these people have been pretending to

  • 1:03:48

do actual interviews as well full-on interviews which is just crazy madness

  • 1:03:54

it is crazy yes so so help us spread that word um it it breaks my heart when i see you know

  • 1:04:00

we've we've had a few couple dozen people who've been affected by this uh we did put out that announcement on our twitter we are updating our

  • 1:04:07

intrepidstudios.com website to reflect some um also that psa and it is a part of our um

  • 1:04:12

knowledge base article uh yeah we put it on our knowledge base article it's up on twitter pinned on our support we

  • 1:04:18

retweeted it we have it pinned on our linkedin um and it is on our intrepid site but

  • 1:04:24

we're having a little problem with the hyperlinks that the web team is fixing but it is on there and links to it so

  • 1:04:30

and and i am going to say i i you know i'll just take this very brief opportunity to to say something if you

  • 1:04:35

are one of the people who perpetrates this whether for you know our industry or any other industry or you're part of

  • 1:04:41

anything along those lines just try to remember we all have families we all have moms who all have you know children

  • 1:04:46

or brothers or whatever and and now is a very difficult time in our economy um there's other stuff you can be doing

  • 1:04:52

with your life on this so let's think about that

  • 1:04:57

that is the studio update yes um all right we'll get back to the other

  • 1:05:02

questions robert said we all have toes including toner taller well some people don't have toes so now

  • 1:05:08

they're going to be called tonar i'm sorry i'm just kidding i was joking i was like we just show

  • 1:05:15

mattel or something you know cheese give them a tease we give you more than a tease

  • 1:05:20

next up we have a question from uh zivan and magic man about combat abilities

  • 1:05:26

considering the recent update we've seen to combat has the team decided on if there will be a global cooldown or not

  • 1:05:34

that's a very good question was a hot topic several months ago um as we've been refactoring um

  • 1:05:39

yes i think that um you know we've we've kind of gone back and forth of this it's something that we're going to be testing

  • 1:05:45

as part of alpha 2 and and combat in general is how we surface these these global

  • 1:05:51

cooldowns um and whether or not we categorize um these um

  • 1:05:56

uh gcds across essentially uh different types of abilities so i would look

  • 1:06:03

forward to more of our combat demonstrations in alpha 2 to understand you know what approaches we're going to take and then offering feedback as part

  • 1:06:09

of those approaches from our testers is going to be very important in in that decision

  • 1:06:15

all right and our next question is regarding animal husbandry from ultra red and they

  • 1:06:20

want to know will there be a cap on how many times an animal can be bred in animal husbandry

  • 1:06:27

um yes there will be a cap absolutely that cap is going to be defined by both the type of animal the quality of that

  • 1:06:33

animal and for what purposes it's being used in the animal husbandry system

  • 1:06:39

and then we have unknown one who wants to know about naval content will we be able to fly flags on ships

  • 1:06:46

such as coats of arms indicating association to guilds nodes or other groups such as pirates

  • 1:06:53

that is a very interesting question um we actually uh are not likely going to

  • 1:06:59

have it be a flag based system but i believe there will be within our sales the opportunity to um utilize

  • 1:07:07

unique emblems and custom images potentially for players to designate as well as

  • 1:07:13

potentially some locations on the hull for names and emblems as well

  • 1:07:20

as a decal all right and then nick would like to know about combat corruption we

  • 1:07:25

know that party raid guild ally maids can't flag against each other but what about if one of them is a pk or in other

  • 1:07:33

words can your guild mate help you remove corruption by killing you

  • 1:07:39

you're like can i exploit this that is that's a very good question um we've

  • 1:07:44

also gone back and forth on that in the past as well um as it stands currently yes the uh the affiliation uh between

  • 1:07:52

guilds or citizenships um is is trumped by the uh uh status condition of your um

  • 1:07:59

uh corruption and anybody can kill a corrupt player um but again that's that's something that

  • 1:08:06

we're going to be testing as part of alpha 2 um as well uh there are some different approaches that we can think

  • 1:08:11

about for that system um and how it interfaces with our uh uh affiliation system um but it's important to note

  • 1:08:18

that you know even if you are capable of let's say killing your friends we have very unique systems in place with

  • 1:08:25

regards to the bounty hunter systems that locate individuals where they are

  • 1:08:31

on the map and there is always going to be that that tense that anxiety even as

  • 1:08:37

you're facilitating the kill from from other players that someone can drop in on you and pick

  • 1:08:44

up the items you may drop or kill you themselves all right

  • 1:08:49

and then our next question here is from lineker asking about alpha 2 primarily

  • 1:08:55

because i think a lot of content creators have been talking about this will alpha 2 be feature complete before

  • 1:09:01

betas or launch before beta yes the game will be feature complete before beta um

  • 1:09:09

that is something that is necessary uh beta really is intended to to

  • 1:09:15

identify last minute bugs to kind of make sure that everything is

  • 1:09:20

ready for launch um and it's important that all features are complete by beta one yes but we'll be making updates to

  • 1:09:27

alpha two while as it's live to get to that two will not be alpha two will not be feature complete at the

  • 1:09:32

start of alpha 2. um there are going to be updates that are going to be incorporated as part of the alpha 2

  • 1:09:37

process um and there are going to be additional features that come online that get fleshed out between that time

  • 1:09:42

and and beta 1. um there's going to be regions of the maps that aren't going to be accessible of course during alpha 2.

  • 1:09:48

um so so that is absolutely an important distinction yeah and alpha 2 is kind of

  • 1:09:54

like our persis the start of our persistent world where you're gonna the servers will be up

  • 1:09:59

day and night until and the other thing is that we go to launch but we'll have some down times in between for patches

  • 1:10:04

and stuff right yeah and the other thing that's important to note is that alpha 2 will remain even post launch as our

  • 1:10:10

public test server um and that's an important thing to note as well

  • 1:10:15

just wanted to clear things up on that front because there was some extra additional content or context um and

  • 1:10:22

then we have our next question from schwann36 who wants to know about naval ships will larger ships both frigates and

  • 1:10:28

galleons have a minimum capacity requirement in order to be mobile

  • 1:10:35

um in order to be mobile no you need a you need a captain to drive the ship um in

  • 1:10:40

order to be effective there is a scaling amount of additional personnel that are required on each ship type or class

  • 1:10:49

in order to be most effective and that scales of course based on the size of the ship

  • 1:10:56

yes and we don't have an alpha 2 day yet yet when we are ready we will let you know but i i see all the albuquerque

  • 1:11:02

yeah i see all the alpha 2 wins uh trust us when we are ready to tell you we will

  • 1:11:08

tell you we've we made a commitment uh several years ago not to mention dates until we are we're

  • 1:11:14

as close to certain as we can be with those dates actually being hit um and we want to make it that way also we don't

  • 1:11:21

want to be rushed in this process we are we are a quality first game studio not a

  • 1:11:27

dates first game studio and what that means is we will take the time that's necessary to ensure the product is ready

  • 1:11:33

for those release cadences um and alpha 2 is a big one and we need to make sure that that alpha 2 hits all the marks we

  • 1:11:41

want it to hit both from an internal testing perspective but is also representative of the promises we've made to the community and

  • 1:11:48

as a result of that we are going to continue working on the product until we feel it is ready and when we do that's when you guys will hear it especially

  • 1:11:54

since alpha 2 is when basically we're up for you all right our game for a long time so uh we just

  • 1:12:02

want to make sure we're fully ready and we're going to it's going to be a great experience for you all um absolutely

  • 1:12:08

this is a marathon not a race yeah our next question is from fatal syndicate asking about castle events

  • 1:12:14

um when it comes to castle nodes and castle sieges are the weekly node events

  • 1:12:20

and or monthly castle sieges a guarantee or is it possibly that a castle siege

  • 1:12:25

slash castle note event uh i think they mean siege event uh could have no

  • 1:12:31

challenger and therefore not take place at all um so castle sieges are on a monthly

  • 1:12:39

um schedule and those sieges will will always occur on the monthly

  • 1:12:45

schedule um events and node-based events those are predicated upon certain world

  • 1:12:52

state conditions right certain world conditions being met so it's not always guaranteed that a

  • 1:12:57

node is going to suffer some type of event unless a predicate for that particular event or story arc is met within the

  • 1:13:04

world but castle sieges aren't a regular cycle all right

  • 1:13:09

and then uh our next question is from warth asking about node leveling when it comes to mayoral construction projects

  • 1:13:16

that players can bolster how long would you say it will take players on average to fill slash build up a node completely

  • 1:13:24

so that's you know from wilderness to metropolis

  • 1:13:30

oh so the question is uh uh node level advancement or within the

  • 1:13:36

level building all the buildings that they have i mean i'm sure people will want answers to both of those stephen if you're willing oh i just want to make

  • 1:13:42

sure i'm giving the right answer um okay so we've we've already discussed in you guys great resource to utilize as the

  • 1:13:49

Ashes of Creation wiki um you should go take a look at that for some of these questions because there's a lot of

  • 1:13:54

content there even if not all of it is still up to date um it is constantly

  • 1:13:59

kept up to date by lex and his team so uh amazing job to dem a little shout out to lex yes go check out the wiki it's

  • 1:14:06

amazing yeah so when we talk about what's the expected time range for node advancement um

  • 1:14:12

you know it ranges from from hours from a crossroads perspective to to several

  • 1:14:18

weeks from a city excuse me a city to metropolis

  • 1:14:24

perspective um and the reason for that is of course you know these are the dials in which the worlds advances um so

  • 1:14:31

we want it to be something that is both gradual but also uh reflects the effort

  • 1:14:36

that players have to incorporate as part of of of getting nodes to those next stages when we talk about what it takes

  • 1:14:43

to actually develop a node at a certain stage and the available

  • 1:14:49

uh progression points that that node has access to whether it's establishing embassies or relationships with the

  • 1:14:54

castles or reputation with other nodes so that alliances can form or trade agreements

  • 1:15:00

can be utilized and mayoral caravans can be kicked off or building up certain types of player buildings so that new

  • 1:15:06

services can be unlocked or developing the story arcs out so that there's hooks into the relevant pois and

  • 1:15:13

dungeons nearby you know that is a big process it's one thing to get a node to

  • 1:15:18

a certain level it's another thing to develop the node and i can't really give you an on average expectation because

  • 1:15:25

there's a lot of variables at play there there's how many citizens does the node have attracted to it what's the type of

  • 1:15:31

traffic that the node is um is attracting to it based on like things like it's uh it's uh tax rates or the

  • 1:15:39

specialization that it's chose to spec into based on the building types it's chosen to build all of those things are

  • 1:15:44

variables that that that can affect the average quote-unquote average um build

  • 1:15:51

out time of a particular node so it's kind of difficult to give you an average when there's so many variables along

  • 1:15:56

those lines um but the idea is that if there is a particular project that players are interested in in developing

  • 1:16:02

based on the node stage that they would have the ability to complete several of those projects as

  • 1:16:07

projects within a single term of a mayor and a term of a mayor is one month

  • 1:16:12

and that's an important heartbeat for the node's progression internally

  • 1:16:20

all right it's cool hopefully that answered your questions i mean

  • 1:16:25

i think people will experience it in game and obviously as we go into alphas and betas we'll be adjusting those

  • 1:16:31

timelines you know and making sure that we test them and getting a lot of feedback on on

  • 1:16:36

that stuff as well so things are subject to change too uh from classes or from

  • 1:16:43

about classes sonic explosion's asking if a martial dps archetype takes a

  • 1:16:48

magical dps secondary archetype for example a knight spell which is a rogue plus a mage will its scale off of the

  • 1:16:56

physical stats magical stats or both when it comes to damage and ability and

  • 1:17:02

abilities and i want to reserve the answer for

  • 1:17:07

that when we do our deeper dive into combat because that is a particular point of contact or particular point of

  • 1:17:13

information um that's related to some future demonstrations we have regarding combat um that i think is going to be

  • 1:17:19

important people going to be very interested in so look forward to to when we do deeper

  • 1:17:24

dives into the into the combat and that'll be we'll be showing class kids stuff yeah in the next few months which

  • 1:17:30

is exciting um and then we have kraken who wants to know about inventory management will

  • 1:17:35

there be an in-game tool for keeping track of where you store your items so for instance like if i have items in my

  • 1:17:42

stash or in my freehold versus like in a bag or at a bank like is there a one

  • 1:17:48

place i can look and be like search to find where i can where i have the item so i know where to find it yeah

  • 1:17:53

absolutely i mean that is just a user experience that we don't want to make cumbersome right we want you to know

  • 1:17:59

where the things are and then the meaningful aspect of that thing is traveling to those locations

  • 1:18:05

to access some of those things particularly as it relates to materials

  • 1:18:10

and raw gatherables that's the important thing one thing that we are absolutely including is when you're within a a node

  • 1:18:18

or an economic region when you're within the node you are at let's say you go to a crafting station you have access at

  • 1:18:25

that crafting station to pull from your personal storage and warehouse storage at the node um and you don't have to do

  • 1:18:32

the run back and forth constantly that all of us are accustomed to in games where ah damn i forgot the four pedal

  • 1:18:38

leaves that i needed to make this you know oil or something i need to run back to the warehouse grab the thing run back

  • 1:18:44

to the workbench and start the thing um that is something that is a just a uh uh

  • 1:18:50

um what's the word cumbersome no what is that time

  • 1:18:55

constraint yeah yeah but um my mind is tedious this morning yeah

  • 1:19:01

it's tedious but it's an ease of ease of like quality of life thank you it is a quality of life feature that i

  • 1:19:08

think is important say words out of him and tell you it's the one but that's where i was going my mind is like i said

  • 1:19:14

it's been a long week oh yeah for sure i'm not uh doubting that

  • 1:19:19

um and i think that on the inventory management side just in general we're

  • 1:19:25

going to have a lot of ui customization options for you all so i know that that

  • 1:19:30

is a question we don't want to allow add-ons so if there's things you want and features you

  • 1:19:35

want our goal is to implement those features absolutely yeah especially when you know we were talking a little bit

  • 1:19:41

about user experience and ui a second ago and and part of that is is

  • 1:19:46

really coming to life with what the ui team has been doing at the studio and boy is our ui team kicking butt i can't

  • 1:19:52

wait to show you guys what they have in store for you um here with the with the new ui rollout um but

  • 1:19:59

you know part of that is of course providing as much customization option

  • 1:20:05

as possible um to the user i know that that leads a little bit into the into the add-on

  • 1:20:10

world um but i i think it's it's you guys are going to be pleasantly surprised with that yeah i just wanted

  • 1:20:16

to make it clear because people were like uh talking about it in chat uh there's a lot of new people joining us so welcome new folks um next up we have

  • 1:20:24

for noni pony who wants to know about monster coins during monster coin events will

  • 1:20:29

the hate list for npcs restrict or affect the buildings players can target

  • 1:20:35

and disable this is very specific i hate lists i'm

  • 1:20:40

sorry say one more time will the hate list for npcs restrict or affect the

  • 1:20:47

buildings players can target and disable for monster coin events

  • 1:20:52

interesting it's a very specific question that i'm uncertain i'm not sure the i'm not sure the correlation between the hate list of the

  • 1:20:58

npcs and the objectives of the event but it is important to note that when events occur there are very prescribed and

  • 1:21:06

specific uh number of objectives that can be targeted right you aren't streamlined

  • 1:21:12

into one particular you have an option in front of you to select from

  • 1:21:17

but those aren't affected by any type of hate list that might be incurred from npcs

  • 1:21:24

so when you're playing as a as a monster from the monster coin uh use as part of

  • 1:21:29

an npc event that might be targeting a node um or other some other open world

  • 1:21:35

objective or poi or dungeon you get to participate as a monster and

  • 1:21:41

your your focus is is completing objectives that have already been prescribed as part of the event um and

  • 1:21:47

that so for instance like if you are part of a monster coin event that is attacking a node and you're specifically

  • 1:21:54

to take down a specific building yeah like let's just let's just workshop it let's say for example you have an

  • 1:22:00

event that is um you know the predicate for this event kicking off was that a a

  • 1:22:05

raid boss was killed in a nearby dungeon and it was killed for the you know 50th time or it was killed by uh some

  • 1:22:12

particular storyline end or whatever whatever the predicate system is in the world state to say hey kick this event

  • 1:22:18

off well when that event kicks off a number of spawners activate around the node and npcs start uh moving towards a

  • 1:22:26

node the node is notified like hey there's something happening here you guys should put up your defenses focus on this thing and those with monster

  • 1:22:32

coins who are within the area and are not a citizen of the node or an affiliated node can choose to activate the monster coin

  • 1:22:38

to become one of the monster types that exist within that event and that event has a number of targets and let's say

  • 1:22:45

for this particular story arc um the thing was we need to find you know artifacts and better weapons in order to

  • 1:22:50

defeat these bosses at the bottom of this dungeon and a lot of players went through that process they found those weapons and whatnot well those things

  • 1:22:56

might be stored in three buildings that exist within the node they might be stored within the armory they might be stored within the barracks and they

  • 1:23:02

might be stored at a workshop that has access to a workbench that they've chosen to build and that could also potentially serve as a predicate and

  • 1:23:08

when you become the monster those are your three objectives and you don't need to destroy all three you potentially

  • 1:23:14

just need to destroy one or you destroy as many as you can if it's a time selected event

  • 1:23:19

and you might have targets that are npc related as well such as the uh blacksmith that's at the workbench or

  • 1:23:26

the captain of the guard who's at the barracks or whatever who's at the armory right and you get to go in and you get

  • 1:23:31

to kill other players potentially during this who are helping to defend the city and you can also make it to the

  • 1:23:36

objectives and potentially help in destroying the building or killing the npcs that is the type of objectives that

  • 1:23:42

would exist within a monster coin system for an event all right all right so there will be

  • 1:23:48

some semblance of restriction to answer their question incorrect depending on what the event is yes uh

  • 1:23:55

the next question is from lashing and they want to know about ai behavior will mobs be able to buff each

  • 1:24:02

buff each other up when grouped up like an npc bard buffing its allies

  • 1:24:07

oh yeah absolutely there are social ai systems they want to yeah it's important to note that our

  • 1:24:12

that our ai system that russ and and chong have been working on is extremely versatile um and it also

  • 1:24:20

provides the capability of having a scoring system when it when it comes to the behaviors that the monster is going

  • 1:24:27

to utilize and it can do some of those behaviors in parallel depending on how that scoring

  • 1:24:32

system comes out and part of the interaction that we want to have existing between

  • 1:24:38

groups of of ai or groups of monsters is the ability to support other monster

  • 1:24:44

types or classes that might be a part of that social group not just from a social agro perspective but from a social

  • 1:24:50

support perspective as well um that is an important component of the ai system absolutely

  • 1:24:56

and our final question is regarding leveling up and this is from min 0

  • 1:25:02

with with leveling set to take a while will each level have a reward attached

  • 1:25:08

to it such as learning an ability a talent point or perhaps class quest etc

  • 1:25:13

or will there be levels where you don't get something no i think um

  • 1:25:20

i mean they're gonna you're gonna get something for each level um there are going to be

  • 1:25:25

some levels that are more monumentous in your progression than other levels um

  • 1:25:31

but i don't like the drought between leveling process where you get nothing for a level um i think that's

  • 1:25:37

anticlimactic climactic i think it is um it is not indicative of a of a good

  • 1:25:42

reward system or a good progression system um i think you can emphasize some levels more than others and that's a

  • 1:25:48

great way to do progression um but i think ultimately that you should see a reward for your progress or effort spent

  • 1:25:55

um at a granular level um and that's something that's that's quantitative and

  • 1:26:01

compels you to continue progressing yeah of course we want to keep you wanting to level up

  • 1:26:07

yep um and of course uh that is going to wrap things up for our july development

  • 1:26:13

update we hope that you all enjoyed it you got a little ex something a little extra than what we had

  • 1:26:19

originally planned but of course we will have some feedback threads up please head on over to our

  • 1:26:25

world map discovery dev discussion we would like to kind of start putting that report together so if you have thoughts

  • 1:26:32

please go over there and pop them over there and of course we'll have a feedback thread up for the desert biome

  • 1:26:37

empyrion rankai and now the newly revealed tulnar as well so please

  • 1:26:43

provide your feedback and we'll be putting those reports together for our teams um and as a reminder the thunder

  • 1:26:49

at the gate cosmetics will be swapping over on august 10th at 11am and we will see you all next month for

  • 1:26:55

another dev update and thank you for tuning in thank you to stephen for his time it's

  • 1:27:02

very valuable uh and of course be you know stay safe and healthy and if

  • 1:27:08

you are watching this live we will have this video over on our um youtube channel so you can relive the action and

  • 1:27:15

of course if you're following us here on twitch it will be up immediately once we close this down and don't forget for the

  • 1:27:22

youtube video if you go over to a dev discussion and you subscribe to our youtube channel and leave a comment your

  • 1:27:28

comment could be spotlighted and answered or mentioned uh if you leave us a question

  • 1:27:35

or comment and of course follow us on twitter facebook instagram snapchat all the things we're there we post almost daily

  • 1:27:42

for you uh we love interacting with you all we always ask you a lot of feedback and thoughts over there so if you have

  • 1:27:48

any please uh head on over there and interact with us and have fun we also have a discord where we chat all the

  • 1:27:54

time factor and roshan are always in there interacting with folks our forums as well so come hang out with us we're

  • 1:28:01

excited for you to join our journey and we will see you next month as we show some more progression for ashes of

  • 1:28:06

creation yay have an awesome weekend everyone

  • 1:28:12

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