Talk:2022-10-28 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Gathering Updates

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Raw transcript

• 0:28

hello everyone and welcome to another glorious live stream day I'm super

• 0:34

excited to be with you guys show you what we've been working on and I have the absolute privilege of being joined

• 0:41

by two of our Stellar developers helping bring the world of Vera to life for all

• 0:47

of us one of our glorious designers Mr Corey how are you doing Corey I'm doing great

• 0:54

super excited to be here excited to have you here I'm excited to to go through with the community and get some awesome

• 1:02

feedback on the changes that have happened since Alpha One Last year to a

• 1:10

lot of our resource systems to the economy as a whole and I know that you and the other

• 1:16

designers have been working hard um looking at the feedback that players

• 1:22

have given from recent games they played and and thinking about how with further

• 1:27

details along some of our systems like Land Management and how they've influenced some of these changes since Alpha One

• 1:33

and we are also joined by one of our absolutely phenomenal senior gameplay

• 1:41

Engineers Mr Alex how you doing buddy I'm doing pretty well excited to be here

• 1:46

excited to have you as well because of course the magic lives in the code and you have

• 1:54

done an awesome job in helping design and bring to life the desires that they

• 2:01

have for this system and we're going to get into I think some fun discussion about what it took to make some of this

• 2:07

stuff possible so community may already be aware

• 2:13

um this live stream this demonstration is going to be about our gathering and harvesting

• 2:20

systems and you know while we are hard at work and getting things ready for Alpha 2

• 2:26

there have been some um significant changes in the direction

• 2:31

of how we're approaching General harvestables within the world and we want to be able to to obviously show you

• 2:38

guys that um I think you know right now we're recording this on on Thursdays this is pre-recorded um tomorrow is live stream

• 2:45

day I've asked the community team to prepare some of the older references

• 2:50

from Alpha One and what Gathering looked like there and of course you guys knew that that you know in development we're always

• 2:57

showing you guys Works in progress and those Works in progress change over time

• 3:02

um and now you guys are going to get an opportunity to see um where it's at now you likely just saw

• 3:09

an example of where it was last year and I think you are going to be

• 3:14

pleasantly surprised and excited to see some of these changes where do you guys think we should start first Alex Corey

• 3:23

oh I think we should lock down one of those trees uh I think so though okay so my first question Corey

• 3:29

do I have to pick a specific tree or can I chop down any of these trees

• 3:37

you can chop down any tree you want just pick one that you like

• 3:43

and just take that Lumber oh my goodness all right so to that's that is probably

• 3:49

the first major reveal is that in Ashes of Creation

• 3:56

we have now expanded the resource Gathering system

• 4:02

to include a great many of what the world is

• 4:07

showing you of these resources so when you see a tree you can chop a tree if

• 4:13

you see a rock you can mine a rock and before we actually chop this tree down I

• 4:20

want to tell you that I have played a lot of MMOs I played a lot of games

• 4:26

and I don't think I have ever seen a tree fall

• 4:32

to this high of a visual Fidelity standard before

• 4:38

and let me just chop this down and then we can talk about what it took to get here

• 4:43

all right does this tree look good should we chop this one down has the angle here we're going to get a nice view from this angle okay all right

• 4:50

let's just chop them

• 4:55

I love the new UI oh I know and the sound get ready it's happening

• 5:04

oh my gosh look at the dust kick up look at the canopy of the tree get impacted

• 5:11

and when it falls wait wait that's not all as it dissolves it comes back and it

• 5:18

grows and of course we are speeding up this growth stage right Alex

• 5:24

yeah yeah okay yeah so we're speeding this up now to just to give you guys an idea of how these assets regrow in the

• 5:31

world and Alex talk to me a little bit about what it took to to get that

• 5:37

physics-based Collision actually working like that because that was impressive

• 5:43

oh let me just begin with the amount of visibility reviews we had to go through to in order to achieve this I remember

• 5:50

when I first talked to you about having the canopy get rigged and and actually

• 5:56

have that physics component I think your your eyes grew like 50 wider

• 6:02

uh yeah physics is a wild beast it's very hard to tame

• 6:07

especially in MMOs yeah absolutely so what what exactly did it take to to make

• 6:13

that that uh that canopy fold like that

• 6:18

uh well yeah basically what happens is um when you shop down the tree uh we

• 6:24

swap out uh the static mesh which you see in front of you um to a skeletal mesh which then we simulate physics and

• 6:31

apply force uh to the direction we want the tree to fall and when the tree falls

• 6:36

down we have colliders on tree branches that impact the ground and as they did

• 6:42

parks in ground it also impacts the stem of the tree and making this effect that

• 6:48

you just saw I mean it looks great I honestly I mean have you guys ever played an MMO with

• 6:54

that type of of tree visual falling

• 6:59

I don't no not really definitely not usually just mostly animations or it's

• 7:05

just converts straight into Lumber and then they just you know just drops yeah what I'm accustomed to is like just

• 7:10

watching the branches kind of you know intersect through the ground you know after it falls and then it just

• 7:17

disappears um but of course as you guys know you know in building ashes we're really

• 7:24

aiming for a very high visual Fidelity bar um and I think this type of system really

• 7:32

complements that goal it's incredibly immersive um

• 7:37

and it it feels good now of course this stuff is all a work in progress still right this is uh oh

• 7:43

this is going to land let's see that physics uh okay that's not bad that's

• 7:49

pretty good this is what I was telling you about taming the physics yeah exactly

• 7:56

oh that that felt pretty good now of course um you know there's a there's a lot that

• 8:02

goes into making a world that's filled with this

• 8:08

amount of of resources that can be gathered Corey talk to me a little bit about what this change

• 8:15

um in really widening up the amount of resources and changing those

• 8:21

classifications to to General resources that are harvestable what does that look like from an economy design perspective

• 8:28

well I mean it allows us to to leverage um some of some of our other systems

• 8:35

um like uh one of our previous live streams was it was about Seasons right and

• 8:40

um you know the the changes that could come from Seasons um what could be growing what could be

• 8:46

dropping in this season versus another one right um so uh the

• 8:53

the the change to have everything that you see uh gatherable kind of uh allows

• 8:59

us to attach the changes that you see during the seasons to all the gatherables that you see um so the information that you learn

• 9:06

from season to season and about each each gatherable um will be valuable to you as as a

• 9:13

gatherer and yeah absolutely and then the other thing

• 9:19

is you know when we talk about like for example looking at this this rock here I

• 9:26

don't know what that rock is before I actually complete the Harvest but after

• 9:31

I complete the Harvest I see that I collected Basalt in the bottom right hand corner talk to me a little bit about kind of

• 9:37

that decision and what that means yeah totally so so um you know there's a bunch of different

• 9:43

things in ashes that will be gatherable right we have good plants and trees and rocks and fish and uh that animals and

• 9:50

creatures that can be tamed right and um you know we're thinking to reach the visual

• 9:56

Fidelity bar and to have things a little bit more rooted in uh what we know is that um it wouldn't really make sense

• 10:02

for you to see gold all over the world the same way that you would like you know plant some trees so we wanted to

• 10:09

get feedback on what players think about um you know some of the different gatherable types having kind of

• 10:15

different things that you would have to know and expect from them so rocks are a good example of this where you know you

• 10:21

you can see a rock but until you crack that thing open you don't know if it's full of stone um crystals rubies gold

• 10:28

um so uh we wanted to try that out with with some of our gatherables to to have

• 10:34

players have to open this thing up and that's not to say that we players won't stumble on a nice load or vein or geode

• 10:41

of gold but most of the stuff that they would they would find to the world unless they they look hard enough

• 10:48

um would require them to crack that Stone open right and of course there are

• 10:54

additional systems some that we haven't really gone into too much detail on but

• 11:01

um as an example surveying play can play a key role in helping players to

• 11:08

identify locations of rare resources within an

• 11:13

area is that correct yeah definitely talk to me a little bit about surveying

• 11:18

yeah so surveying um is a way that players can um check out an area for for resources

• 11:25

um so players can learn where resources are that are that are static and that

• 11:31

grow back in the same location but we'll also have resources and Ashes that can

• 11:36

spawn anywhere so surveying will help players locate those those resources so

• 11:42

if they're looking for something specific they can hunt them down surveying will also allow players to

• 11:47

uncover hidden resources that players wouldn't be able to see with their with their naked eye

• 11:54

another thing that a surveying would provide is some of the information that we're talking about before right

• 12:00

um like for instance um if you survey uh and inside of your your survey area there's you know plants

• 12:07

um you might learn when that plant uh what season that plant likes to grow it um you might learn uh whether it likes

• 12:14

to be watered during the winter versus how it likes to be watered in the summer uh you might see I see that this the

• 12:22

interior of this rock now has ore in it uh yeah see you found one with some uh

• 12:28

with some iron so not all those rocks are are just you know slabs of assault you might might find some iron maybe

• 12:35

some gold maybe some copper we'll see oh that is super cool uh this one was also iron very nice

• 12:42

it looks like you found a little little iron deposit there and so so when players interact with the Survey System

• 12:49

talk to me a little bit about what that interaction looks like what exactly does

• 12:55

the survey gameplay layer feel like

• 13:01

yeah so um you'd work with a surveying tool and you set the the surveying tool

• 13:07

down and that tool would have a a specific area um in which it it's able to uncover and

• 13:13

extract information about the resources that are in the area um so you know as as a starting out

• 13:21

gatherer you might end up with one of the tools right but as you as you progress and become

• 13:27

more proficient with using the tool you might be able to set up additional pylons and extend the uh the area of

• 13:34

your survey um right and so that allows you to start

• 13:41

kind of making shapes and having more strategic areas that you're that you're surveying right if you could connect

• 13:46

multiple pylons to create a shape you know maybe you could follow the uh the

• 13:52

um the twisting caverns of the cave uh maybe if you're out in the open like we are here you could just try and make

• 13:58

yourself a a nice wide widen shape to uh scan as much of the area as possible so

• 14:04

it'll be it'll be up to the player to um to be tricky with their surveying tool to try and get the most uh

• 14:11

efficiency out of their survey okay I would like to to point out one thing is

• 14:17

that um are these Apple bushes I'm collecting apples and they're like

• 14:23

from a bush they are they are from a bush that is awesome

• 14:28

dude hey this is a Vera I know this is this is Vera there are apples that grow

• 14:33

on bushes uh so this the Survey System I think is one that's really cool because it also

• 14:41

all is a part of this kind of cohesive

• 14:46

um Land Management System right um is that resources spawn at a set rate

• 14:54

and that rate can be influenced by how other players are interfacing with the

• 15:02

resource system within a given area and if there is a high traffic and a high

• 15:08

volume of interaction that is yielding um these General resources or more

• 15:14

specific and bespoke resources then that can have a deleterious effect on the

• 15:21

Land Management score of the area and how does that affect the resource spawn

• 15:28

yeah it could be could be positive or negative or or both uh simultaneously so

• 15:33

um the the land house value right turns um ties into the health of a specific

• 15:39

ecosystem and the ecosystem can kind of scale with uh different different segment sizes of the world

• 15:46

um or the world itself a biome maybe a maybe a node maybe the a player's Freehold

• 15:52

um and the the things that a player does um uh in those areas will contribute to to Health in a positive or negative way

• 15:59

so you know doing something like rotating your crops might increase the the health of the

• 16:06

land because that's considered something good to do um and maybe apprehending

• 16:12

um or removing poachers that are over hunting a a certain species could be

• 16:18

helpful to the health of the land uh baby um you know the mayor puts out a request

• 16:25

for players to try and get rid of invasive species that are plants maybe they're maybe they're overgrowing weed

• 16:33

and it's um it's stopping other um valuable plants from growing yes

• 16:40

and uh um yeah so so you know every every

• 16:45

action would feed into to a positive thing in in one area for for the health

• 16:50

of the land but it could also have repercussions in another right if a few over hunt Predators

• 16:58

um the prey have no uh have no um uh Predators but

• 17:03

um picking them off so the spawn rates of those uh you know those rabbits that

• 17:08

the Wolves usually take care of could could go up um and maybe if you over hunt the

• 17:14

rabbits uh the the Wolves want to find another place to go so um the the ecosystem health and land

• 17:22

Health System allows us to really root players into the world and learn about their surroundings learn learn about uh

• 17:30

what um repercussions their their actions have and work together to work within

• 17:36

and manipulate that system all right are you telling me if my Land Management is poor and I cut down all

• 17:42

the trees my land would just be bearing for like long periods of time yeah I could definitely extend the

• 17:48

amount of time um that it would take for what you want to grow to grow back oh that's cool that is pretty cool and

• 17:56

that is another component of how player activity

• 18:03

or actions within the world have a visible and systemic effect

• 18:11

on that world's economy and that helps to simulate the ebb and flow of supply

• 18:18

chains of the prevalence in the locality

• 18:24

of certain resources being depleted and having extended

• 18:31

periods of time where the players go without that and that can spur the need

• 18:38

for transiting materials across the world right exactly exactly

• 18:44

that is pretty cool so are you saying I'm gonna have to travel to other notes and steal their Lumber

• 18:51

well now that's a decision you need to make you need any help with that you can

• 18:57

recruit me so I see here that um we have a particular type of flower

• 19:03

that I believe only spawns in winter is that right yeah totally this is this is the gloomy

• 19:10

Pro Set it's a beautiful flower but it can only be found uh in winter oh the next I love the uh I love I love

• 19:18

the uh the effect that it just that flower just got wrecked yeah that sickle's doing work I know let me see if

• 19:26

we can watch that flower regrow here does it regrow flower of course yes definitely should

• 19:32

are you coming back Little Flower oh there it is I've we found it oh and it's in a bulb State I can't interact with it

• 19:39

yet that is so cool it's not ready you want the petals so oh yeah and then actually to add to this each state has

• 19:46

its own physics profile like it's so trees like you sell the um flowers right here and some profiles

• 19:54

might not have any collision and some might have so for example as for trees sapling stage requires no Collision but

• 20:01

the young stage will have a collision which no longer can uh you know go through oh that is pretty cool now

• 20:08

um I mean sorry Slurpee is his gamertag uh Alex talk to

• 20:14

me a little bit about um what you had to do to kind of make all of this

• 20:21

performant right when you're when you're creating an environment with

• 20:27

so many of these terrain actors these foliage actors being interactable that can have some

• 20:35

potential performance issues how did you go about addressing that yeah you're correct uh this is a very

• 20:41

difficult task and luckily for us in real four and real five provide tools for environment artists called foliage

• 20:48

tool where you can just paint like trees paint flowers paint uh you know rocks

• 20:55

like everything you see and it's very very performant because um you know artists paid thousands of

• 21:01

them right and to make the world very immersive to make world like you know believable uh so what we've done is we

• 21:08

uh basically use the same system and introduced a few States and the main

• 21:14

point of that was to make it as seamless as possible for environment art to place

• 21:20

those assets in the world and design being able to modify those uh data

• 21:28

points to make it transitions between states that's pretty cool and you know

• 21:33

obviously when you have potentially hundreds of different players that might

• 21:39

be within close proximity uh as you and they're all in this environment

• 21:46

interacting with those different elements of the terrain those different resources and gatherables this

• 21:54

is a nice way for us to ensure that performance is is still good

• 22:02

um correct I think the biggest uh thing would be here also networking is being

• 22:07

able to uh have as less data as possible to uh send to the clients so it's more

• 22:15

performant on the server that's cool one other thing I want to talk about is um

• 22:20

is you will see here and I want to show you guys this that when you chop down

• 22:27

this tree previously you had seen it kick up dust

• 22:33

that was relevant for the season and the area and now what happens when we chop

• 22:39

this tree down in winter let us see I hope it doesn't hit the deer oh that

• 22:46

would be unfortunate I also hope it doesn't hit okay it's working we're good you're good dear don't you worry

• 22:54

it kicks up snow what is that is that a sandal is that a sandal

• 23:00

scarecrow it looks like it oh it's a sandal scarecrow up and we're in the face

• 23:07

I think there was a collision of a skeleton mesh that's right that was cool this is awesome oh I love that that is

• 23:15

so cool little sandal scarecrow oh and it's growing back yeah that is that is super cool

• 23:22

um so there are really two main points of player feedback from this demonstration

• 23:29

that I want you guys in the community to think about um when you are talking about what you

• 23:35

saw today the first one is how do you guys feel

• 23:41

about the change that is incorporating a much higher amount of gatherable

• 23:51

gatherables in the environment right now obviously like I said these are General

• 23:57

resources that are primarily geared towards construction and development of

• 24:03

nodes the transit of materials across the world through Caravans

• 24:09

repairs and then they are General resources uh that are used in a

• 24:17

um uh in a uh much more foundational way of creating higher tier mats that then

• 24:26

get used in recipes as well but how do you guys feel about that broadening of

• 24:31

the resource resources available out in the wild and then the second

• 24:39

thing that we want to get feedback on what was the second thing we wanted to get feedback on

• 24:45

the uh the visual Fidelity that we're trying to reach oh right yes the visual

• 24:51

Fidelity how do you guys feel about the visual Fidelity um of these trees and the Rocks

• 24:58

um that are oh my gosh this one is going to take a while get ready that's a big

• 25:04

tree it's a Timber oh my gosh now of course there are some

• 25:11

things that we that you guys are not seeing here because they're not yet implemented but professions will of

• 25:17

course um introduce layers of accessibility based on the type of resource the size

• 25:26

of particular resources isn't that right Corey yeah definitely yeah um your progression

• 25:32

within the the profession we'll uh we'll take account what tools you can use

• 25:37

um there might even be some opportunity to uh do some gathering with other players uh that you know typically in

• 25:44

other games that I play do you usually do the the Gathering alone you're venturing around alone and we wanted to

• 25:49

uh take a look at maybe having a friend to help you with a true person saw on a larger tree

• 25:56

um maybe there's uh some panning that you could do as opposed to just hitting

• 26:01

uh or with the pickaxe so we'll have other tools that are part of that progression path and then other

• 26:07

activities that uh players can do if they would like to gather together that is pretty cool and then on top of

• 26:15

that progression within your profession can also um speed up the Gathering times that you

• 26:22

have um and another important note is that like as these resources reach different

• 26:29

stages of their maturity in coming back right you see that plant kind of um growing back

• 26:35

you could potentially access the resources at earlier stages as well by

• 26:40

having high advancement within a certain profession is that correct yeah exactly

• 26:47

um the speed the the time at which you're able to access them maybe the the amount that the thing yields will all

• 26:54

kind of tie into your your expertise at that uh individual Gathering profession and also the uh the um

• 27:01

uh things that you're using to do the Gathering oh can I highlight one additional thing yeah I love I love the

• 27:08

new UI for interaction yeah thank you thank you so much to Colby and Natalie and Jeff and all the UI team and I'll

• 27:15

take this opportunity to thank engineering and and art at Tech art too like you know Stephen had mentioned

• 27:22

um that we came with the crazy idea of reaching this visual Fidelity bar and being Mia's being a gathering player

• 27:29

myself like I spend a whole lot of time um exploring the world and doing

• 27:34

Gathering and it means a whole lot to me that that it looks good that it feels good and Roots me in the world right

• 27:40

when players spend hundreds or thousands of hours exploring around and you know each time they interact with these

• 27:45

things over and over again they just you know disappear or um you know there's there's not the

• 27:51

level of touch that we're trying to put on here um it doesn't feel quite right so the fact that everyone kind of rallied

• 27:57

together to to offer something like this like absolutely but it just makes me super excited to play the game I want to

• 28:05

play the game I know we all want to play the game let us in Stephen

• 28:10

you guys are the guts of it come on now um okay

• 28:16

there is one other um one other thing I want to talk about is

• 28:21

um also how you guys feel about the interaction of surveying with revealing

• 28:27

resources within the world and without that element for example what we showed you today

• 28:33

with mining you may not know what you're gonna get until you complete that

• 28:39

harvesting action um how are you guys feeling about that we think that it creates an interesting

• 28:46

dynamic between utilizing resources necessary to initiate that surveying sequence

• 28:52

and what it represents for players as they choose to spend their time and or

• 28:58

uh the meaningful choice they might make in moving to a particular area based on

• 29:04

what resources are available in that location and discovering that through the surveying system that's another point of feedback that we

• 29:12

want to collect uh from you guys so with that being said um are there anything else that you guys

• 29:17

want to chat about before we close off I think we covered it all just uh thanks

• 29:23

for including me in the chat appreciate it thank you can't wait to hear everyone's feedback super super excited

• 29:29

it's gonna yeah this was fun this was lots of fun thank you for advice absolutely I think it's going to be a

• 29:34

lot of fun to watch players interact with the new Gathering systems um as people get to

• 29:39

um you know see how surveying and Land Management um accompany a player actions within the

• 29:45

world so with that being said guys we did want to give you this update on where Gathering has come to now both

• 29:50

from a visual bar as well as give a little bit of insight to the new systems like surveying and Land Management and

• 29:58

we want you to chew on that we want you to think about that and give us your feedback uh both in the YouTube video on

• 30:04

Twitch honor Forums on Discord all the places we of course appreciate that and it is a

• 30:11

very important step um in in bringing you guys Alpha 2 and ultimately Ashes of Creation so with

• 30:17

that being said Thank you guys hope you enjoyed and we will see you back on stream

• 30:23

bye-bye bye [Music]