Talk:2022-12-23 Video - Meet the Devs and Year-in-Review

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Intro

• 00:00

Welcome and salutations to you all for our glorious development update for December.

• 00:16

We're coming to you live from our studio.

• 00:19

Obviously, I'm here today with some new faces.

• 00:24

Well, not really.

• 00:25

You've seen Langford here before.

• 00:27

We had him on during, actually it was your anniversary.

• 00:29

It was.

• 00:30

It was in February of this last year.

• 00:33

He's our executive producer and of course with me as always, Steven Tariff, our one

• 00:37

and only creative director.

• 00:38

Hello.

• 00:39

And I'm Margaret Crone, your Community Marketing Lead.

• 00:44

This is different.

• 00:45

It's different, right?

• 00:46

Actually, when was the last time that we did a stream in person?

• 00:50

It was in our old office.

• 00:52

Yeah, that was like almost two years ago or something.

• 00:54

A little over actually.

• 00:56

It's crazy to see how much we've grown as a company and I mean, this is the perfect

• 01:00

segue of what this stream is about too, is that you've just-

• 01:06

It's been a crazy year of growth.

• 01:08

Not even just a year.

• 01:09

During the pandemic, we grew an immense amount.

• 01:11

Yeah, but this year especially though has been pretty considerable as well.

• 01:16

We talked a lot about showing up at the studio and giving people a peek inside.

• 01:21

You guys saw some old, those of you who've been following since like circa 2018, 2019,

• 01:26

you saw- Steven walking around with his phone.

• 01:27

With my phone kind of doing that.

• 01:29

Now this is a little bit different, higher production quality, but of course-

• 01:34

We're still keeping the casual vibes.

• 01:35

Yeah, and the whole spirit of this is to invite you guys in, let you take a look under the

• 01:39

hood, meet some of the developers and actually it's been pretty fun to do some of these interviews.

• 01:44

Yeah, Steven's already done one earlier.

• 01:46

Yeah.

• 01:47

These are a little pre-recorded obviously so that we can make it before, but we're trying

• 01:50

not to cut as much.

• 01:52

We didn't cut as much as possible.

• 01:54

Right.

• 01:55

So we're very much just trying to have pre-flowing conversations, which is really fun.

• 01:58

And I think these types of things are really good actually because obviously we do our

• 02:02

monthly updates, but not everybody has an opportunity to kind of watch each month what's

• 02:07

happening and what those updates are.

• 02:09

And this is a great way at the end of the year to kind of concisely bring in what's

• 02:13

happened and give people a one segment kind of look at all that's transpired over the

• 02:18

last 12 months.

• 02:19

Yeah.

• 02:20

And then you get a little glimpse into areas in our studio so you can kind of see that.

• 02:25

And once we do have all of our cool murals up and our art, we will definitely do a proper

• 02:29

studio tour.

• 02:30

We just want to make sure that, we'll kind of give you a glimpse early on.

• 02:34

And I know those of you who are Kickstarters, who you're going to get like a real life tour.

• 02:37

That's right.

• 02:38

Of course.

• 02:39

We want to make sure that it's really fun for you all.

• 02:42

So that's probably going to be nearer to, you know, closer for a long time.

• 02:45

Yeah, for sure.

• 02:46

Right.

• 02:47

I mean, we're talking about the kind of busyness of this year.

• 02:49

But honestly, on the production side, you know.

• 02:52

Holy cow.

• 02:53

Your team has grown immensely.

• 02:54

Well, it did.

• 02:55

That's very true.

• 02:56

Yeah.

• 02:57

It doubled in size.

• 02:58

It did.

• 02:59

It did.

• 03:00

It doubled in size.

• 03:01

And it's like super duper cool to have all these people like actually supporting the

• 03:03

team.

• 03:04

You know, like we talked about this a long time ago when we were moving from like a small

• 03:06

company to like a bigger company.

• 03:08

And we were like, we're going to need a lot of support.

• 03:10

And we're kind of there now.

• 03:11

I mean, we still got a long ways to go with a lot of like a lot of growth still to come.

• 03:15

But it's super exciting.

• 03:16

I think it's been really cool to kind of watch quarter after quarter this year as we're doing

• 03:20

the production strategy meetings and going over the milestone schedules.

• 03:24

Just seeing, oh, new face, new face, new face, new face, you know, keeps on going.

• 03:28

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

• 03:29

And we talked about annual reviews last month, how we were moving into wrapping those up.

• 03:35

And you guys have like way more people that you have to do reviews for.

• 03:37

For me, my team is a little smaller.

• 03:40

But you know, we also are supporting the development team in order like we're different people.

• 03:44

Like the people who are talking to you on, you know, like Twitter and hanging out with

• 03:49

you on Discord.

• 03:50

We're a whole other team.

• 03:52

So when we get comments that are like, why are you talking to me and not developing the

• 03:57

game?

• 03:58

These guys are hardcore working super every day, really hard and passionately as you're

• 04:03

going to see when you meet some of the developers.

• 04:05

And our leads team has grown too.

• 04:07

Oh, it's significantly.

• 04:08

We did some leadership training.

• 04:10

That was fun.

• 04:11

It was incredible.

• 04:12

We had we had a few I think we did like almost six days between the two different groups

• 04:18

of those leadership meetings.

• 04:20

And they were a lot of fun just being holed up in a room for like 10 straight hours each

• 04:25

day.

• 04:26

It made us realize like where we're lacking things, where we need to work towards and

• 04:31

things of that sort.

• 04:32

And sometimes you need that reflection.

• 04:33

And for people who aren't haven't been leaders and leadership roles before, it also helps

• 04:37

you realize like how to talk to people or how to.

• 04:39

But you know, my most important takeaway, I think, from those particular leadership meetings

• 04:44

this year was just the level of alignment that existed already between us and the leads

• 04:50

and the development.

• 04:51

It was so cool.

• 04:52

She said to us, she said to us that like the biggest problem that most other companies

• 04:55

have is the camaraderie and sharing the same vision.

• 04:58

And she's like, that's the one thing you guys don't like.

• 05:01

That was the thing.

• 05:02

It was so cool to see her come in and then go like, wow, you guys already got this.

• 05:05

Like this is crazy.

• 05:06

Like how connected you guys are.

• 05:08

I do tons of these.

• 05:09

And you know, and then she like went off on some of the like ones that she's done.

• 05:13

And it was like, oh, my gosh, like you guys are gelling so much better than my favorite.

• 05:18

My favorite thing about that whole process actually was as we were going through each

• 05:21

categories and we were filling out like scaling one through 10 numerical values of like those

• 05:27

particular things.

• 05:28

And we put all of our stickies up on each of the categories like, wow, these are all

• 05:32

really close to each other.

• 05:34

Because that means we're all we all see where our problems are and we're all on the same

• 05:38

page.

• 05:39

Absolutely.

• 05:40

I would agree with you.

• 05:41

That was really good.

• 05:42

You know, it's really cool, though.

• 05:43

The whole point of this last month of the year is that we get to kind of look back on

• 05:47

everything that we've accomplished on all the things that we have plans for the future

• 05:51

and just reflect on on kind of the course of the studio over the last year.

• 05:55

Yeah, it's really a great opportunity for us to get kind of get that back looking perspective.

• 06:01

Absolutely.

• 06:02

Yeah, on our front.

• 06:03

So like my teams are looking at like the data from social media, what things went well,

• 06:06

what things didn't, how can we, you know, engage with you all in a better way?

• 06:10

And obviously, you've seen us continually progressing over that over the years.

• 06:14

I mean, even the way we do our live streams has changed.

• 06:16

And like next year, we do we plan to make more changes.

• 06:19

So that's we're definitely keeping an eye out on like the things that you guys say to

• 06:23

us, how you interact with us.

• 06:25

And obviously, on the development front, continually progressing and making sure that we are just

• 06:29

being more efficient with our production.

• 06:30

Yeah.

• 06:31

And of course, you know, I'm you know, we're all watching kind of coverage for the game

• 06:35

from our awesome content creators out there who constantly kind of, you know, review what

• 06:41

the live stream updates are and, and everything for the game for our audience.

• 06:46

And I think one thing that can be said that all of you are going to agree with 2022 was

• 06:52

a very different pace of year for our updates.

• 06:55

I know that you guys got to see each month, you know, significant progress.

• 07:04

And of course, that comes in part due to the company scaling over this last year, which

• 07:08

was very significant.

• 07:09

But in addition, just kind of as development continues, these things will ramp almost in

• 07:16

a in a very vertical way, right?

• 07:20

And that's something that I think people get to look forward to for 2023.

• 07:23

Of course.

• 07:24

And I think, you know, a lot of times you see games that are developed and you get to

• 07:28

see it like right when it betas, which their beta is like pretty much their games ready

• 07:31

for the launch and they're just testing and polishing for us.

• 07:34

Like you're getting to follow us on this journey and making an MMO is a big feat.

• 07:39

It is much bigger than people think.

• 07:41

And I hope that you are getting a glimpse into like all the little details and minute

• 07:44

details that takes to make what it takes.

• 07:46

Cause it's a lot more effort than sometimes I think people think.

• 07:49

Right.

• 07:50

And I know that's not for everybody.

• 07:51

And that's why we always say like we make different pieces of content for different

• 07:54

types of folks.

• 07:55

Absolutely.

• 07:56

I mean this phase that we're in from a development perspective is really catered towards those

• 08:00

individuals in the community who are interested in watching the development of a game.

• 08:04

Because like you're saying, this is not just something that many players experience, but

• 08:08

also development teams don't typically think about how they're actively working on features

• 08:13

and assets that get shared live, you know, essentially.

• 08:19

I cannot think of another company that has invested this much in their community this

• 08:22

far in advance of the product.

• 08:24

Like we've been bringing this, you know, going this, going on this for three, four,

• 08:28

five years now building this community and it's amazing.

• 08:31

Yeah.

• 08:32

So amazing.

• 08:33

I was actually in a, you know, obviously if you watch our streams live, you get to see

• 08:35

all the amazing fan art that people send us.

• 08:37

And I was talking to Zach, who you're going to see in an interview following this segment.

• 08:43

And I was actually saying how crazy it is that we have all this amazing fan art.

• 08:47

And one of the walls in our hallway actually like right near us over there is where we're

• 08:51

planning to do this huge cork bar where we're going to put all the fan art.

• 08:55

So keep sending us those things.

• 08:56

We love seeing them.

• 08:58

And we've already had people making cosplay and we're definitely going to put that up

• 09:01

there.

• 09:02

So we appreciate you all so much.

• 09:04

And we hope that, you know, this to kind of segue into what you're going to be able to

• 09:07

see for the rest of today is that, you know, you're going to get a glimpse into our studio.

• 09:11

We want to set expectations that, you know, we haven't quite decorated everything yet

• 09:15

in Trepid style.

• 09:16

We are planning to do that.

• 09:17

We have some cool murals.

• 09:18

I chatted with John about like what pieces we're going to do and stuff.

• 09:21

So once those things get put up and we have a little bit more of a, you know, a vibe that

• 09:25

we want to share with you, we'll definitely give you a proper tour.

• 09:28

And we also bought some equipment, like gimbals and stuff like that.

• 09:33

You've been seeing our production quality for Extra Life increasing and obviously this.

• 09:37

So we do have plans of showing you guys those things.

• 09:40

But you know, this is going to be an opportunity for you to kind of get cozy with the developers,

• 09:45

get to know them a little bit more, not just about what the work that they work on, but

• 09:49

like them as people and kind of what they like about games.

• 09:52

And so we'll be chatting with the folks who helped with the Unreal Engine update, character

• 09:56

creator, seasons and environments, combat, gathering, and of course crafting.

• 10:01

So we hope that you enjoy that.

• 10:03

And of course we're going to look back at the year and kind of do a little year in review.

• 10:07

Bring your tissues, get ready to cry.

• 10:09

Shout out to Mike Becchio, who also made this tree.

• 10:13

Oh, I love the tree.

• 10:14

Oh my gosh.

• 10:15

The attention to detail on the little ornaments.

• 10:18

This little guy's face for the ornament is so cool.

• 10:21

Yeah, and he even made you one with him.

• 10:23

I know.

• 10:24

I love that.

• 10:25

We showed that last month.

• 10:26

This guy, the little Vec down here.

• 10:28

Yes.

• 10:29

Oh, it looks so cool.

• 10:30

They're really, really cute.

• 10:32

Maybe someday we'll have ornaments that we sell for a holiday.

• 10:35

I know.

• 10:36

That'd be great.

• 10:37

We should totally do that.

• 10:38

Yeah.

• 10:39

So before we go into everything, I do want to spotlight our comment for YouTube.

• 10:42

And of course, if you want to be spotlighted, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube on our

• 10:47

development update and also leave a comment and you could possibly be this spotlight.

• 10:53

So today's spotlight is Eric634, and they wanted to know, I'm very curious what work

• 10:59

Intrepid is doing to capture valuable data in Alpha 2.

• 11:03

Has Intrepid built dashboards and data gathering tools?

• 11:06

And I feel like this is a great- Oh man, I was going to say, who gets this

• 11:09

one?

• 11:10

Yes.

• 11:11

I feel like we're all hyped about that.

• 11:12

Yes, of course.

• 11:13

Data.

• 11:14

Yes, well, we do.

• 11:15

We love data.

• 11:16

But here is actual work going into data and collecting and game logs and stuff that we'll

• 11:22

be using down the road a lot, especially during our Alpha to help us, to guide us to understand

• 11:28

where we're meeting our marks and beating our marks and what we want to be accomplishing

• 11:32

as far as where finding the fun is.

• 11:34

Right.

• 11:35

Yeah.

• 11:36

And of course, those come along with a complimentary set of tools that are created by our developers

• 11:40

to collect that data, not just from gameplay, because that's one important aspect of it,

• 11:45

what data players are doing in the game.

• 11:47

But another part of it which completes that picture is active community engagement with

• 11:53

those players as well to tell the tale from the player's perspective, not just the actions

• 11:57

in game.

• 11:58

Right.

• 11:59

And I feel like a lot of companies and many of us probably in the community have experienced

• 12:02

this in other games, decisions get made from just data points that are numerical, right?

• 12:07

It has to be a combination.

• 12:08

But it must be a full picture that requires some investment on the company's behalf of

• 12:13

that community outreach and engagement, right?

• 12:15

Yeah.

• 12:16

And that's what I mean.

• 12:17

That's one of the reasons why I started working here is the first conversation Steven and

• 12:20

I had on the phone.

• 12:21

At Milton's, we ate lunch at Milton's.

• 12:22

Well, before that, I had a conversation with you on the phone because McPee was like, you

• 12:27

need to come work with us.

• 12:28

And I was like, I don't know.

• 12:29

And chatting with Steven really like, and I think back on it, that was like four years

• 12:33

ago from me.

• 12:34

Yeah.

• 12:35

But the reason why I was like, this is a place where I want to go is because you really understand

• 12:40

community.

• 12:41

Totally.

• 12:42

And that we are gamers also, and that we are making games for gamers.

• 12:47

And I often work in the past with people who maybe aren't gamers, and they didn't really

• 12:52

get the perspective of that.

• 12:53

Or we'd be making decisions because it's like, hey, this is the bottom line, and we're trying

• 12:56

to hit that.

• 12:57

And if you don't hit this, you're fired.

• 12:58

Yes.

• 12:59

And there's nothing more frustrating from a player's perspective when something changes

• 13:03

in the game, and it changes for the wrong reason because some value in some cell in

• 13:07

some Excel sheet says, hey, this is the data that we scrapped from player activity.

• 13:12

Yeah.

• 13:13

And so what we're doing when we're sending reports over, we're like, hey, the numbers

• 13:16

are down for this because X and Y.

• 13:18

We give some analyzation to it.

• 13:19

And I think that sometimes that part is not read or looked into as much as it should be.

• 13:24

And it's so important to not just look at data and make decisions, but also understand

• 13:28

why that data is that way in the grand scheme of things.

• 13:32

Yeah.

• 13:33

All right.

• 13:34

So we're going to head on over and meet up with our Unreal Engine and Character Creator

• 13:39

folks who Steven was interviewing.

• 13:40

So we hope that you enjoy the rest of the stream, and we will see you all on the flipside.

• 13:44

I love the fireside feel to this.

• 13:46

I just got to say it.

• 13:47

It's so good.

• 13:48

We aren't going to stop that.

• 13:49

We definitely want the genuine vibe.

• 13:51

And I think hopefully you guys all feel that way through this.

• 13:54

All of our streams have been that way.

• 13:56

We want even just these types of ones to feel that way too.

• 13:58

Yes.

• 13:59

We'll see you guys in a little bit.

• 14:05

Hey, guys.

Meet a few of our Engineers

• 14:09

I am joined by three of our awesome developers.

• 14:14

We have some of our engineers here at the studio.

• 14:16

Why don't we take a second for you guys to introduce yourself?

• 14:18

Hello.

• 14:19

I'm Clayton.

• 14:20

You might remember me from the Character Creator live stream.

• 14:23

Hi, I'm Mitch.

• 14:25

I've been here at Intrepid for coming up on four years now, and I'm a senior engineer.

• 14:30

I'm Zach.

• 14:31

You might also recognize me from the Character Creator live stream.

• 14:34

And me and Zach are also engineers.

• 14:36

Yeah, we are also...

• 14:38

Also gameplay engineers.

• 14:39

Yeah.

• 14:40

So that was a fun live stream.

• 14:42

But let's talk a little bit about earlier in the year.

• 14:45

Actually it was at the end of 2021 and into January of 2022, we showcased our transition

• 14:53

over to Unreal Engine 5.

• 14:56

That was quite an endeavor.

• 14:57

Yeah.

• 14:58

We had a lot of things going on all at once.

• 15:01

Yeah, it was a lot going on.

• 15:03

There were a lot of people who participated in kind of getting the project over to Unreal

• 15:07

5.

• 15:08

Talk to me a little bit about what that process entailed.

• 15:10

Yeah, Mitch and I were at the forefront of that, especially Mitch.

• 15:15

I was helping out a lot with the version control.

• 15:18

We have a lot of additions to our custom version of Unreal Engine that allow our designers

• 15:24

to do what they need to do and allow custom features for our engineers.

• 15:28

And getting those reconciled with all of the awesome new features from Unreal Engine 5

• 15:32

was a lot of work.

• 15:33

Right.

• 15:34

Yeah.

• 15:35

The more custom changes that occur in the engine makes that process a bit longer and

• 15:39

a bit more intricate.

• 15:40

Right?

• 15:41

Right.

• 15:42

And when we get a new version, we have to make sure that all of the previous edits we'd

• 15:46

made to Unreal Engine still apply or still are needed.

• 15:51

So we had to step through, pardon me, basically everything we had done up to that point and

• 15:58

one by one say, do we need this?

• 16:00

Do we need something else?

• 16:02

And talk to us a little bit about kind of what benefits, I know the audience obviously

• 16:07

has had an opportunity over this course of this last year to see the benefits that Unreal

• 16:10

5 bring to the project from a visual fidelity standpoint, but also a little bit behind the

• 16:16

curtain on the tech side.

• 16:17

What type of benefits come from Unreal Engine 5?

• 16:19

Well, there's a lot finer control for one, for the map and for things like separating

• 16:26

out things into, they call it world partition, to greatly increase the performance of especially

• 16:34

the client in very cluttered areas.

• 16:37

Right.

• 16:38

The large scale additions to the engine have really helped us from the regards that we

• 16:42

were already going to have this massive world and the engine, the feasibility of it just

• 16:48

improved in that regard.

• 16:50

Yeah.

• 16:51

Like one thing that a lot of people don't consider is how you bring all of the people

• 16:54

on a massive team like this to actually work on the same thing.

• 16:59

Because previously a lot of the files would be saved in larger chunks versus now in Unreal

• 17:04

Engine 5, things are saved as individual actors.

• 17:07

So people can actually access the same level simultaneously and contribute work to the

• 17:14

same features of the project or the same parts of the content without stepping on each other's

• 17:18

toes.

• 17:19

Right.

• 17:20

And from a workflow perspective, that is very nice to have because previously you would

• 17:24

have to wait as a handoff for some particular checkout to be checked back in before you

• 17:29

could start working.

• 17:30

Yeah, we'd lock each other out as well as the environment team very often.

• 17:35

Yeah.

• 17:36

That was a big problem.

• 17:37

Yeah, the workflow side for the environment team was a big relief.

• 17:41

And then finding out that someone had something you needed to make a specific engineering

• 17:45

change and then having to wait a couple days at the worst case to be able to access the

• 17:53

file.

• 17:54

Now you can just work on the same thing.

• 17:56

It's beautiful.

• 17:57

And tell me a little bit about kind of some of the performance related benefits that come

• 18:01

on the asset side, things like Nanite or just the visual fidelity of the world with things

• 18:06

like Lumen.

• 18:07

A lot of people hear terms like Lumen and Nanite and they just see that it looks awesome,

• 18:12

but you don't realize that these are also actually just fundamental changes to how the

• 18:17

graphics are handled under the hood because with Lumen, so previously a lot of people

• 18:25

are familiar with hardware accelerated ray tracing and...

• 18:29

So many people are familiar with that.

• 18:30

Yeah, it's simulating...

• 18:31

In the audience especially.

• 18:32

Yeah, it's simulating global illumination and shadows and like...

• 18:35

Well, it was a really big thing whenever graphics card companies were coming out and saying,

• 18:40

you know, this is going to be the new amazing tech and they were showing off...

• 18:43

I remember that.

• 18:44

We tested some of that with Tristan, I think back in 2017 or 18.

• 18:48

And we had little side by sides and watched the performance.

• 18:50

They're like, oh, ray tracing on, ray tracing off.

• 18:52

And one thing that Lumen does is it allows you to actually simulate ray tracing on the

• 18:58

software side.

• 18:59

So, well, it's not simulating ray tracing.

• 19:00

They're solving the same problem with a different solution with software simulated global illumination.

• 19:05

Instead of hardware simulated.

• 19:06

So now it's more accessible to people.

• 19:09

And that's why Lumen looks so amazing.

• 19:12

And that's actually one of the reasons why in early in the year when we showcased the

• 19:16

video transitioning over to Unreal Engine 5, we used that cave area to kind of show

• 19:23

the benefits of that global illumination bouncing, cascading off of the environment.

• 19:27

Yeah, exactly.

• 19:28

And you combine that with the virtualized geometry.

• 19:31

Yeah.

• 19:32

And it's a win.

• 19:33

Yeah.

• 19:34

Not to mention, obviously, the performance gains as well.

• 19:36

Because Nanite is per pixel geometry, which is amazing.

• 19:40

Like for large worlds, a lot of the times you have massive textures that are considered

• 19:46

virtualized.

• 19:47

And this is like a very common practice previously for handling giant textures as you virtualize

• 19:51

the texture, which means that it's now streaming from disk instead of all being loaded into

• 19:55

the memory at once.

• 19:57

And Nanite now provides that for geometry so you can stream in the geometry more granularly.

• 20:01

Which is huge.

• 20:02

Yeah, it's a pixel geometry, so it's pretty incredible.

• 20:05

That's very cool.

• 20:06

Now obviously it doesn't end with Unreal Engine 5.

• 20:10

As the community is aware, starting next month we're actually going to be making the move

• 20:15

over to 5.1.

• 20:16

Yeah.

• 20:17

And talk to me a little bit about what that process is going to entail and also what types

• 20:21

of benefit it's going to bring.

• 20:22

It should be a fairly smooth process, smoother than our initial...

• 20:28

Initially we did the pre-release version of 5.0.

• 20:30

And that was a little rough.

• 20:32

But 5.1 should be better.

• 20:35

And we're looking forward to a lot of the performance gains, especially with things

• 20:38

like they're partitioning the nav mesh along the same lines as the world partition.

• 20:43

And talk to us a little bit about what partitioning nav mesh means.

• 20:46

It means that different servers and different clients will have to can load partial sets

• 20:53

of the nav mesh instead of the whole nav mesh.

• 20:56

And the nav mesh is...

• 20:57

So it's a lot less memory.

• 20:58

And the nav mesh is essentially for people who don't know.

• 21:01

That is how NPCs path around the world, essentially.

• 21:04

Correct.

• 21:05

And that's how they know where collision is and what they can move around and how they

• 21:08

get to a target location.

• 21:09

Exactly.

• 21:10

Don't walk through the tree, walk around it.

• 21:12

Right.

• 21:13

Absolutely.

• 21:14

And talk to me a little bit about the...

• 21:15

I know artists are very excited about 5.1.

• 21:17

Why is that?

• 21:18

Well, a lot of the features that were still in a beta form for the engine are now coming

• 21:24

online as more performant versions or more reliable versions.

• 21:29

So the entire studio will be able to move over to DirectX 12 for our primary graphics

• 21:35

API, which that's going to save the artist a lot of headache because a lot of the time

• 21:40

somebody will be like, hey, this looks bad or I'm getting these weird glitches on the

• 21:43

textures or I'm crashing.

• 21:45

And now a lot of it's just coming into maturity with 5.1.

• 21:49

And they're also incorporating Nanite as part, as I understand it, with the foliage actors

• 21:54

as well.

• 21:55

Yeah.

• 21:56

Yeah.

• 21:57

There's some talk of that.

• 21:58

Yeah.

• 21:59

I know tech art's a little excited about that.

• 22:00

Yeah.

• 22:01

Yeah.

• 22:02

They've been waiting for it for a long time.

• 22:03

Yeah.

• 22:04

Yeah.

• 22:05

I remember they were talking to me about it almost six months ago, I think.

• 22:10

Awesome.

• 22:11

So after we showcased our move to Unreal 5 earlier this year, we had a stream about

• 22:17

our character creator.

• 22:19

And this was something that for a long time we had been talking about kind of our goals

• 22:25

2017, what are some of the character creators that we've seen, that we've loved in other

• 22:31

games?

• 22:32

Talk to me a little bit about your experience as a gamer first.

• 22:36

What are some of the things that you look for in a character creator and why you were

• 22:39

excited to bring something a little bit that level and beyond potentially with ours?

• 22:43

For me, it's the freedom of expression to make the character that you want to make without

• 22:50

the limitations that sometimes seem kind of arbitrary that developers put in.

• 22:55

I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate, the creator.

• 22:57

I thought that was a lovely one that really made me feel like I was in a fantasy realm

• 23:05

crafting my own character.

• 23:06

As well from the purely tech side of Black Desert Online, I really enjoyed the more of

• 23:14

the tactile, the customized character.

• 23:18

The direct manipulation.

• 23:19

Exactly.

• 23:20

Yeah.

• 23:21

For me, it's usually, can I be green?

• 23:24

Can he be green?

• 23:26

Yes.

• 23:27

Oh, it's like a lizard folk or an orc?

• 23:30

I'm just kidding.

• 23:31

All of the above.

• 23:32

All of the above.

• 23:33

You know, actually on that note, that's a great segue into one of my favorite character

• 23:38

creator stories, which was actually Oblivion back in, I think it was 2006, Elder Scrolls.

• 23:44

It wasn't like an amazing character creator, but they had a lot of options and you were

• 23:47

able to sort of manipulate it in a way that you could push the limits by dragging one

• 23:52

slider back and one slider the other way.

• 23:54

And I would always make my person like red or green just for fun.

• 24:00

Of course, we don't allow for that in our character creator.

• 24:02

We talk about only allowing positive results or adding constraints that you can have a

• 24:08

high degree of control while making sure that the final result is going to look good no

• 24:13

matter what.

• 24:15

And of course, good can be somewhat subjective.

• 24:18

Yeah, for sure.

• 24:19

But I want to make Igor.

• 24:21

Yes, exactly.

• 24:22

But whatever you see yourself as in this fantasy role playing setting, you should be able to

• 24:28

make that in the character creator and express yourself.

• 24:30

Well, I thought, you know, the work that you guys did and that the artists did with bringing

• 24:36

kind of the first iteration of Ash's character creator to life was really phenomenal.

• 24:41

I know it got a lot of positivity and response from the community.

• 24:46

Talk to me a little bit about that process.

• 24:47

What did that entail?

• 24:50

That was a whole lot of R&D at first.

• 24:52

Yeah.

• 24:53

Yeah.

• 24:54

See if it was, I guess, possible within the engine we're working in, especially like what

• 24:58

we wanted for it.

• 24:59

Yeah.

• 25:00

Because we had a lot of demands that we couldn't really point to in other games and be like,

• 25:05

let's just do that, you know.

• 25:06

Yeah.

• 25:07

It was a lot of bespoke functionality that was novel to Ash's.

• 25:11

Right.

• 25:12

And it's one thing to make it work in the character creator.

• 25:16

And it's a completely different thing to take the character that you made in the character

• 25:20

creator and make that work in game.

• 25:22

Right.

• 25:23

And make it performant.

• 25:24

Mm-hmm.

• 25:25

And that's one thing that Zach played a huge role in was actually getting the assets gameplay

• 25:28

ready by threading the skeletal mesh merge process.

• 25:32

That was pretty awesome.

• 25:33

Yeah.

• 25:34

It wouldn't really be possible unless we did a lot of heavy tech in the background.

• 25:38

Yeah.

• 25:39

To make it feasible.

• 25:40

Very cool.

• 25:41

And then another aspect, obviously, is the tech you guys worked on doesn't just facilitate

• 25:47

the front-facing character creator for the player, but it's also something that can be

• 25:51

utilized internally as a tool when creating NPCs, correct?

• 25:55

Yeah.

• 25:56

When we were in the ideation phase of character creator, we always thought that it'd be great

• 26:01

to have a customization suite for design so they can go in and make quest NPCs, they can

• 26:07

populate the world with their custom characters, they can go in and give life almost to each

• 26:12

individual NPC if they wanted to.

• 26:14

Yeah.

• 26:15

And really make them unique and customized.

• 26:16

Yeah.

• 26:17

And designers, of course, love having that tool available to them.

• 26:18

Oh, they love it.

• 26:19

Because they don't have to go and make specific requests necessarily to character on a particular

• 26:25

type of NPC.

• 26:27

They can just jump into the tool itself and create those things.

• 26:31

And of course, that technology isn't just restricted to humanoid type NPCs, but also

• 26:36

can be able to leverage across creature creators as well, potentially.

• 26:40

Is that true?

• 26:41

Well-

• 26:42

Big plans for that.

• 26:43

Yeah.

• 26:44

Yeah.

• 26:45

So, yeah, it's still very much in the oven, but yeah, we want to leverage a lot of the

• 26:50

technology that we made for the character creator for things like animal husbandry and

• 26:57

for populating the world with unique variations of creatures as well.

• 27:02

Yeah.

• 27:03

Absolutely.

• 27:04

We're working towards that.

• 27:05

We're going to leverage that tech as much as possible.

• 27:06

Yeah.

• 27:07

Exactly.

• 27:08

Get the most out of it.

• 27:09

Yeah.

• 27:10

In creating the character creator, one of our biggest points of emphasis is while we're

• 27:12

making this is thinking about how it can be reused in other parts of the project.

• 27:16

Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:17

As long as I can edit the size of my pug's eye.

• 27:22

To make them really oversized.

• 27:25

Talk to me a little bit about what...

• 27:27

We obviously talked a little bit about one of the aspects of the future uses for the

• 27:31

character creator with creatures potentially, but what are some of the other things you're

• 27:34

excited about to continue working on getting the character creator to a point where it's

• 27:40

going to be live for launch?

• 27:43

What are some of those features?

• 27:44

I know we took a lot of feedback from the community when they gave us responses during

• 27:48

the discussions thread about what they're looking for.

• 27:51

They talked a little bit about more hair options, more abilities to do tattoos, perhaps even

• 27:56

to customize those things.

• 27:57

What are some of the things you guys are excited to add?

• 28:00

Yeah.

• 28:01

So one thing that I'm really excited to work on next is the hair customization.

• 28:04

Well, a lot of the functionality for the hair customization is there, but I think that you

• 28:08

saw in the demo, it was still using sliders.

• 28:11

We really want to expand how much you can customize individually on the hair and also

• 28:16

incorporate that same mechanic of direct manipulation so that you're dragging different parts of

• 28:22

the hair or actually configuring it that way.

• 28:25

Especially with longer braids and jewelry and more of the granularity you can use to

• 28:32

really customize your character.

• 28:33

Yeah, we saw a lot of commentary about that.

• 28:35

And of course, players, as you guys understand, those might not always be available at the

• 28:40

inception of a particular character, but might be unlocked through achievements in game that

• 28:45

you can then revisit the character creator through salon services and nodes and start

• 28:50

to customize further as your character's history matures within the world, right?

• 28:55

Yeah.

• 28:56

That's one thing that I'm super excited for is the gameplay integration of the character

• 29:00

creator in real time and how we integrate different customization features and tie that

• 29:06

into your character progression.

• 29:08

I can't wait to see the different scars that I can unlock from a deadly battle.

• 29:14

Like reputation-based tattoos.

• 29:16

Yeah, exactly.

• 29:17

Yeah, I've never seen that before.

• 29:21

Going into the tattoo parlor in the Dunir node and getting a special Dunir tattoo.

• 29:26

Oh my God.

• 29:27

It would be also cool as a feature if you're capable of inspecting other players' customization

• 29:32

options and what they represent.

• 29:33

So if you do add the scar from the dragon fight, another person can see, ah, they have

• 29:38

a scar and it's from that dragon fight.

• 29:40

Exactly.

• 29:41

Yeah, that is super cool.

• 29:42

There's a wealth of gameplay options that we're going to give designers to be able to

• 29:47

populate the world with quests and reputation and things like that.

• 29:50

Yeah, that's super cool.

• 29:51

Very, very cool.

• 29:52

Well, awesome.

• 29:53

You know, I guess one final question that I would have for you guys is, as someone who

• 30:01

takes a long time to create your character, do you generally just randomize and go or

• 30:08

do you sit there and fiddle with it?

• 30:11

I know that in an MMO setting, sometimes when you're making that character, and obviously

• 30:15

this is a service we've talked about offering, is prior to launch, players will be able to

• 30:19

access the character creator and prep for that launch time because you want to get into

• 30:22

the server as quickly as possible.

• 30:23

You don't want to lose any time, right?

• 30:25

And trying to progress.

• 30:26

But do you guys like to fiddle with the character creator, spend a long time doing it, customizing

• 30:30

everything or do you just randomize and go?

• 30:33

Well, at first I do both actually.

• 30:35

Really?

• 30:36

At first I randomize and go and I give the game, I'm super picky, I give the game an

• 30:40

hour and if I'm not captured in an hour, I get a refund.

• 30:45

Yes.

• 30:46

A lot of people do that.

• 30:47

Then I spend two hours in the character creator making my real character.

• 30:52

Okay, so first you vet the game, then if you like it, you spend the time.

• 30:55

Right.

• 30:56

What about you guys?

• 30:57

Yeah, no, so normally I'll randomize to find a starting point that I like and then I'll

• 31:01

customize from there.

• 31:04

But normally I don't actually put a lot of time into the character creator.

• 31:08

Really?

• 31:09

Oh my gosh, the sacrilege.

• 31:11

I'm just kidding.

• 31:12

I spend a lot of time in character creators and if there's ever an option to mod it, like

• 31:17

Skyrim, I'll add even more customization options like modded Skyrim just so I can have full

• 31:24

control and if it's not a time gate or I'm waiting to get into the game, if I have a

• 31:31

single player game, I will spend a full play session.

• 31:34

Oh yeah.

• 31:35

Just tweaking everything.

• 31:36

Yeah, I generally, if I'm starting a game, especially an MMO and I know that, I mean

• 31:42

in the past the MMOs that I've experienced, it was rare to kind of visit that character

• 31:45

creator again and get to change things so I would spend a lot of time building out the

• 31:51

character, customizing things.

• 31:52

I don't know, I'm kind of a guppy for the role play side.

• 31:55

One of the nice things that Clayton did was he worked on a really nice randomization feature.

• 32:01

Oh yeah, absolutely.

• 32:04

Like if you're not one of those players, like me, that spends a lot of time in it, you can

• 32:09

just randomize through and you're going to get amazing results every time.

• 32:14

And Clayton did a really good job with just the breadth of the customization with the

• 32:19

randomization and then you can always use that to go off of it.

• 32:23

Yeah, I was having a fun time just kind of spamming that randomize button and just watching

• 32:27

the different shapes and figures and faces just roll through the character creator.

• 32:32

That was actually pretty cool.

• 32:33

Yeah, seeing how many different ones you could generate in a short amount of time.

• 32:36

That's neat.

• 32:37

Yeah.

• 32:38

And that's also, that's going to be at the forefront of our content designer's ability

• 32:42

to populate the world with convincing good looking characters is a decent looking randomizing

• 32:47

feature.

• 32:48

Awesome.

• 32:49

Yeah.

• 32:50

Very cool.

• 32:51

Well guys, thank you for taking the time to chat with me and our audience.

• 32:53

We're going to have a fun little segment coming up next.

Meet our Environment, Art Tech, & Audio Lead

• 33:04

And welcome over into the environment and season side.

• 33:08

I am joined by three absolutely awesome members of the team and Tristan, you want to introduce

• 33:13

yourself?

• 33:14

I'm Tristan Snogress.

• 33:15

I'm the lead environment artist here at Intrepid Studios.

• 33:17

Absolutely.

• 33:18

We also have Brian Gans, lead tech artist.

• 33:21

And of course the amazing.

• 33:23

I'm Kat Nary and I am the audio lead at Intrepid.

• 33:26

Yay.

• 33:27

So we actually pulled off some fun feats this year and showcasing to the community some

• 33:32

pretty exciting stuff.

• 33:33

One of which was the seasons showcase.

• 33:37

And we did that in the Riverlands biome, is that right?

• 33:40

Correct.

• 33:41

That was the first biome that we actually implemented the actual tech that Brian and

• 33:45

Hal and James actually worked on.

• 33:48

And talk to me a little bit about that tech.

• 33:50

What did it entail?

• 33:51

We're just touching every single component of Unreal where a lot of things had to be

• 33:57

harmonized like the cloud, the volume cloud stuff and the particle effects for the rain

• 34:01

and the snow.

• 34:02

I think I mentioned it in the livestream for the thing.

• 34:07

There's so many parts to it.

• 34:08

I mean it was amazing to see.

• 34:10

We talked about it during of course the demonstration that I've never personally experienced any

• 34:13

type of tech like that in an MMORPG before where you actually get to see the biome change

• 34:18

in front of your eyes on a seasonal basis.

• 34:20

How difficult was that to achieve and how much did moving over to Unreal 5, we just

• 34:25

talked about in the previous segment, moving over to Unreal 5 help with that?

• 34:28

I think it helped with it a lot.

• 34:29

I think a lot of the cases in Unreal, the solve you're looking for is a button.

• 34:34

A button press or a check block or something but there are a lot of different systems to

• 34:39

harmonize and gameplay implications that and it's probably one of the hardest things is

• 34:44

the planning out of how to start it so that the whole approach is future proof and does

• 34:49

everything you want it to do or might want it to do.

• 34:53

And that of course has implications on the audio side because as an environment changes

• 34:57

of course the ambience doesn't sound the same.

• 34:59

Those things have to, those tracks have to change.

• 35:01

How was that implementing?

• 35:02

I mean first doing season tech is something I wanted to do for like 20 years in the game

• 35:07

industry so when I got to see what the artists were doing I was really excited to work on

• 35:11

this.

• 35:12

You know you would think that there's just four seasons and so you make your four sounds

• 35:17

of summer, winter, fall, spring but we're going to go high tech and we're going to do

• 35:22

eight variations that seamlessly go through.

• 35:25

Ideally you won't hear the changes because it'll be so seamless and they'll just kind

• 35:28

of go through.

• 35:29

Yeah it's something you don't get to see in the live streams right now because you do changes

• 35:32

in 30 seconds.

• 35:33

Right.

• 35:34

So when we do the sounds for them and as the audio team continues to grow like right now

• 35:37

I went out and recorded the rare rain in San Diego a couple of weeks ago.

• 35:41

Oh so good, I love listening to that.

• 35:42

Yeah so that kind of stuff gets into the game and as it grows we'll go do more field recording.

• 35:48

You know we try to make as much custom sounds as we can that fit the environment that we

• 35:51

see.

• 35:52

And I of course haven't received yet your itinerary of all the places in the world you

• 35:54

plan to travel to.

• 35:55

To collect those things.

• 35:56

To collect, yeah yeah.

• 35:57

I will be asking for reimbursement.

• 35:58

I can't wait when I go to Fiji and you know.

• 35:59

Yeah.

• 36:00

I'm going to Fiji and yes.

• 36:02

Yes exactly.

• 36:03

I am more than happy to travel all over the world.

• 36:05

To collect the perfect references for the different types of assets.

• 36:08

Of course, yeah, Fulver Graham Tree maybe we can do that as well.

• 36:10

Talk to me a little bit about that.

• 36:11

What were some of the inspirations?

• 36:12

I know James did a lot of work on the seasonal showcase for those assets.

• 36:16

How do you guys kind of derive what you're going to fill those biomes with?

• 36:20

So first it was just trying to find some real world references that we could take as you

• 36:25

know inspiration.

• 36:26

Then of course we do get concept images derived from that to add the fantasy flair that we're

• 36:31

going to have.

• 36:32

Right?

• 36:33

So then you know we want to do real world but we're also doing high fantasy.

• 36:35

Yeah.

• 36:36

What kind of elements to it.

• 36:37

So they chose Wales as essentially the biome for this which is basically like where my

• 36:43

family is from.

• 36:44

Right.

• 36:45

So I was like alright we're going with this.

• 36:46

I remember seeing your shots that you took while you were in Wales and you were posting

• 36:50

them all throughout the art channels.

• 36:51

And you're like alright this is great for this.

• 36:53

This is great for this.

• 36:54

Then when we need more references I called up my mom and was like hey you want to go

• 36:58

out to the garden and take some photos?

• 37:01

They want to know what the ground looks like during winter.

• 37:03

I was like I can get you that right now.

• 37:04

Do you fill out any Jira tasks for her when you ask her to do that stuff?

• 37:06

Yes she's still asking for her money.

• 37:08

We'll figure it out.

• 37:09

She's retired.

• 37:10

She's okay.

• 37:11

But yeah so then we moved on to the desert biome after that.

• 37:15

And so that wasn't necessarily seasonal tech implementation right there but we had a whole

• 37:19

bunch of stuff to kind of think about how we wanted to approach seasonal tech from a

• 37:24

very different environment.

• 37:25

Right especially like the one that's desolate as a desert.

• 37:28

Right and so how do we make that environment change over four biomes and make it feel like

• 37:32

unique and interesting and different but also not just do a traditional desert.

• 37:37

So we'd like to make like the winters maybe slightly different that you might see in a

• 37:41

desert.

• 37:42

I know we talked a little bit about that.

• 37:43

And there's some cool stuff that we've done for things that might come down the line but

• 37:48

one of the things that we wanted to do was also out here in Anza, Borrego we get the

• 37:52

desert super blooms which is where everything turns into like this beautiful painting of

• 37:57

color.

• 37:58

It's unbelievable.

• 37:59

Yeah the flower blooms are just mind-blowing.

• 38:01

Beautiful.

• 38:02

So there's some stuff that we have been trying to make happen that is going to probably blow

• 38:06

people's minds even more than we've already done with the river lane.

• 38:10

Absolutely and I think that people are gonna be really excited to see that stuff.

• 38:13

I think just the glimpse that we got actually at the desert area that desert biome there's

• 38:17

already I mean just such beauty and that you did with the oasis and the tech across the

• 38:22

rolling winds over the sand dunes.

• 38:25

Talk to me a little bit about how you kind of accomplished the wins for the sand dunes.

• 38:29

There's a couple of techniques I think a lot of times the environment artists will take

• 38:33

a stab at what they want to do and then I'll pick it up and work it and massage it in a

• 38:37

little bit better with some of the systems that are in there already.

• 38:41

Make it a little more functional than what an artist might do.

• 38:44

And perform it.

• 38:45

But yeah they know they have an idea what they want in their eye and I'm just like okay

• 38:49

I get it and let's kind of use that in a particle effect to do that as well and it's kind of

• 38:56

like use a different system but in the same way that they're envisioning.

• 38:59

I try to cover like all the different things Unreal can do like the grass, the foliage,

• 39:03

and the virtual textures and everything and there's a lot of ways to do things but there's

• 39:08

often the best way to do something and it's kind of like put that in there.

• 39:12

The heat distortion was done one way so let's put that in the particle system.

• 39:16

And they all kind of layer on top of each other these different systems that you're

• 39:20

utilizing.

• 39:21

Yeah if you take one out then the whole scene just kind of falls apart.

• 39:23

Loses that full vibe.

• 39:25

And now of course you know we have certain types of weather events that are of course

• 39:28

going to impact audio as well for these areas like we talked a bit about one of the boss

• 39:33

designs that are intended for the desert biome having this kind of whirlwind of sandstorm

• 39:39

and when players get inside of those things how does that kind of change audio?

• 39:43

Yeah no Brian's been awesome to work with because he's built a lot of systems that can

• 39:46

drive the audio dynamically so I'll go out and record various levels of sounds and then

• 39:52

they'll procedurally change in the game to really make you feel like you're in there.

• 39:56

Even the same with the trees if you go under the trees right now with the wind you know

• 39:59

the little leaves will kind of go up and down with the wind parameters that Brian set up

• 40:04

and it's really really neat and really interactive.

• 40:06

And not just the winds I noticed that as you know I kind of move through the game and I

• 40:09

get close to some of these particular foliage actors I hear birds chirping or you know some

• 40:15

type of cue that just happens in the background.

• 40:17

The birds are super cool too because they're going to be assigned to certain trees and

• 40:21

you know sometimes you'll find that really cool bird you want to sit under it and then

• 40:24

sometimes you'll find a bird that maybe you don't want to be near and so maybe you'll

• 40:27

chop down that tree and take away his home or move away.

• 40:30

Oh no that's terrible.

• 40:31

That's quite genius.

• 40:32

That is actually very genius.

• 40:33

I noticed also you know as we were kind of showcasing some of the ranger footage that

• 40:41

design and the combat engineers have been working on there was that almost pollen like

• 40:47

fog that was just throughout the level that you know created that almost morning dust

• 40:52

look in that area.

• 40:53

Yeah one of our newer artists John Winnick has actually been implementing all of those

• 40:57

kind of features to I mean that's just another atmospheric element that completely adds to

• 41:01

the mood.

• 41:02

Right.

• 41:03

And those are seasonal as well right like I mean those are going to be specific attuned

• 41:06

to specific seasons so.

• 41:08

And not just seasons also weather right you know so you might get a foggy morning you

• 41:12

know there's been several pretty amazing games recently that I've played that have some of

• 41:16

these elements and you know that really changes the vibe of when you're running around like

• 41:20

you know one day to another is completely different.

• 41:23

And that's a great you know point like we're all gamers we all play games in our spare

• 41:27

time that's why we're in this industry is because we love games we like seeing the smiles

• 41:30

on people's faces when we make something that excites them.

• 41:33

How much inspiration do you draw from the games that you play?

• 41:38

That's a tough question because there's so many different types of games that you play

• 41:41

obviously and I don't really stick to one.

• 41:44

And none of them have a shortage of awe-inspiring feats that their dead teams accomplish as

• 41:47

well.

• 41:48

Yeah and you know like for me in particular Red Dead Redemption.

• 41:52

Oh it's such a great game.

• 41:53

It's an amazing game where I could just ride around and enjoy the nature all day.

• 41:57

Or the shenanigans that the horses have.

• 41:59

All the little things you know.

• 42:01

But like yeah like that specific game has a lot of atmospheric elements for when I'm

• 42:05

running around I just really enjoy and not just the visual elements but then the sound

• 42:09

does kick in and sound to me is one of the things that really truly sells like a movie

• 42:14

or a game.

• 42:15

Oh yeah.

• 42:16

Especially the music and such like that but like if the audio doesn't feel right then

• 42:20

you know.

• 42:21

Oh yeah absolutely I mean that was something that was big for me not just in gaming but

• 42:26

like I find in many different forms of entertainment especially media, television, movies like

• 42:31

that that the soundtrack the music that accompanies what's happening more often than not elicits

• 42:39

stronger emotions from me than the visuals or the dialogue.

• 42:42

My goal for Vero Audio is you should be able to find a nice little safe place to sit down

• 42:47

and leave it on in the background as a nice ambient audio generator and you can go work

• 42:52

on your thesis or whatever else you're working on or just nice little go to bed to it and

• 42:57

I want you to like feel like you're always in there.

• 42:59

That's what we do.

• 43:00

10 hour loops of Vero.

• 43:01

Yes remember we used to talk about that so much.

• 43:02

We should totally throw up like a YouTube loop that people can just leave on.

• 43:07

Oh that would be a great idea.

• 43:09

That's one way to fall asleep.

• 43:10

Yeah absolutely.

• 43:11

So as we kind of you know look forward into 2023 what are some of the areas that you guys

• 43:18

have on your excited list of things to tackle right?

• 43:23

What's the biome you're looking most forward to?

• 43:26

So the redwood forest is something that we're aiming to push into.

• 43:29

Oh my god.

• 43:30

We've already kind of started pushing into it slowly but you know just being surrounded

• 43:35

by giant massive trees that just don't seem to be making any sense of why they exist.

• 43:40

Like when you're walking through a redwood forest in real life like up in Northern California

• 43:44

just it's awe inspiring and there's a lot of cool seasonal stuff that we can do with

• 43:50

that.

• 43:51

Yeah I was talking to design a little bit about group gameplay dynamics when we instituted

• 43:57

the gathering tech and having specific assets that require multiple players in order to

• 44:02

actually chop down a particular tree.

• 44:04

Yeah I don't think you can really take down a redwood with a simple.

• 44:07

That little tiny axe.

• 44:09

Ah six swings we're good.

• 44:11

We'll see how that plays out.

• 44:12

That's going to be an interesting feature to actually make work because from the tech

• 44:15

side of things I mean I guess we'll be talking more about that later on today but harvesting

• 44:21

tech is going to play into that.

• 44:22

Right and it's relevant of course to seasons because not just the ambience and the audio

• 44:27

changes but the assets that are available and spawn those change as well and those have

• 44:31

actual economic implications when it comes to the world economy.

• 44:35

So yeah that's super cool.

• 44:39

Talk to me a little bit about kind of how you blend the work between setting up these

• 44:45

zones these biomes for the seasonal aspects and working with design to determine which

• 44:50

assets spawn when, how it's affected potentially by time of day and a little bit about you

• 44:58

know working with design on setting up these biomes filled with different types of gatherables

• 45:04

essentially and how it's affected by season right?

• 45:07

They have cycles essentially.

• 45:09

There's going to be different types of plants, different types of foliage that you can harvest

• 45:12

during certain times of the year.

• 45:14

Brian I guess you're probably going to be plugging that tech into all the harvestable

• 45:18

assets in the sense that you know you might get a certain plant in winter but you're not

• 45:21

going to get it during the time where weather might affect that.

• 45:24

And we saw a little bit about that not just with the assets but also with the creatures

• 45:28

as well.

• 45:29

Correct.

• 45:30

Yeah and what went into making the creatures kind of change you know with the seasons?

• 45:35

It actually is not as difficult as it sounds.

• 45:37

Wait don't say that it's very difficult.

• 45:40

Very complex we can't give away the secrets.

• 45:43

It's probably hard for the guys at Epic to like put it on the engine but we just kind

• 45:47

of know every material every object has access to wind, direction, speed, time of year,

• 45:52

time of day.

• 45:53

It's up to the artist to just kind of tap into these accessible variables and say make

• 45:57

this color and the summer a different color in winter.

• 46:02

It gets complicated when you start putting in more dynamics with like we want a storm

• 46:06

in this area.

• 46:07

Just so we move across the world and has gameplay implications and everyone all the clients

• 46:12

know if they're in a storm or not and to that whole process of working with designers on

• 46:17

how to like integrate what we can do what they want to do.

• 46:22

I have to have like here's the ambitious goal what everyone's talking about but we've got

• 46:26

a fallback just in case.

• 46:28

I need like a fallback plan.

• 46:30

Bill of achievability.

• 46:32

Push the really ambitious thing that's gonna blow everyone's like, blow the socks off.

• 46:37

And we usually hit the ambitious ones though.

• 46:39

Yeah.

• 46:40

Somehow some way it always works out.

• 46:41

Yeah.

• 46:42

Right.

• 46:43

And then of course you have to think about kind of all of these things from an audio

• 46:45

perspective where essentially you're layering on these different sounds and when does it

• 46:50

become too much if I've got a storm coming I'm in combat with ten creatures I've got

• 46:54

players around me with abilities and effects and I got dynamic music.

• 46:58

A great code team and we're also using audio kinetics audio engine both those things with

• 47:03

the code team and the audio engine will allow us to do some really cool dynamic mixing that

• 47:08

we'll get to choose what needs to be in focus when you're in the storm you're gonna hear

• 47:12

the storm but if combat's coming on and bigger things that need to be focused on those are

• 47:15

gonna kind of come up while the storm will go down.

• 47:17

So it's gonna be all kinds of fire toys like that.

• 47:19

That's awesome.

• 47:20

That is awesome.

• 47:22

Well with that being said we are going to be moving over into our discussion about combat

• 47:29

and I want to thank you guys for joining us and chatting a little bit about the seasons

• 47:33

and what it takes to actually make this stuff exist in game.

• 47:36

So awesome job guys and we will be seeing you in just a second.

Meet some of the Combat Crew

• 47:48

And we are back with a fun little discussion with some of our awesome developers who are

• 47:55

involved in the development of our combat and classes and special effects all the fun

• 48:00

stuff that makes an MMO an MMO.

• 48:04

First thing I want to ask is for you guys each to introduce yourself.

• 48:07

Start with you Jim.

• 48:08

I'm Jim I am the lead effect art.

• 48:10

Yes.

• 48:11

Trad?

• 48:12

Yep I'm Trad Thompson I'm a senior combat designer on the project.

• 48:16

Awesome.

• 48:17

I'm Keenan I'm a gameplay engineer mostly work on combat and movement.

• 48:22

So we have shown some fun stuff this year and I think the audience of course would agree

• 48:28

that the look at Ashes development since the start of 2022 has ramped up in a very fun

• 48:36

and engaging way for the community to kind of take a look at how development works here.

• 48:40

You guys all are involved in a process of course that is very near and dear to many

• 48:44

players hearts which is the identity of their archetypes the abilities they have access

• 48:49

to those classes how they interact from a role perspective with combat in general in

• 48:53

the game.

• 48:54

What are some of the inspirations what are some games that you guys have played in the

• 48:58

past that kind of helped to influence decisions that we make on Ashes?

• 49:03

You know that's a good question because if you're playing an MMO you're going to have

• 49:07

to think of kind of the big players out there and I got thousands of hours in World of Warcraft

• 49:13

and that will definitely influence how I shape kind of some of the iconic imagery the colors

• 49:18

and shapes.

• 49:19

I think really a lot of that motivation comes back to the feedback I get from the community

• 49:24

and from the developers.

• 49:25

Like Tread is always kind of saying hey man what about this shape or this size or I'm

• 49:30

thinking about this mechanic.

• 49:32

So I guess it's a circular.

• 49:34

Absolutely I mean all of us have been experiencing MMOs I mean we're all MMO gamers that's part

• 49:39

of the question that I ask in the final interview when you come on board and you're like what

• 49:42

are your favorite MMOs?

• 49:43

The real qualifying.

• 49:44

Yes the qualifying question.

• 49:45

Tread what are some MMOs or games in general that you draw inspiration from?

• 49:50

There are so many I would have to narrow that down to.

• 49:53

I'll pick an MMO since that's the most relevant but I'd say the most influential MMO on me

• 49:59

on just you know as a gamer has been Dark Age of Pamela.

• 50:02

I remember actually our interview when you asked me about like my MMO experience that

• 50:07

was the one I chose to talk about.

• 50:09

I loved Daok it was such a fun game.

• 50:11

Yeah that was really the game I think that really well that and RuneScape if you qualify

• 50:18

RuneScape as an MMO that one as well but like Dark Age was really where I think I realized

• 50:23

the magic of an MMO and it really is what got me into like open world PvP and that's

• 50:29

what really excites me about this project is bringing that kind of thing back you know

• 50:33

just that really spontaneous gameplay that you run into out in the field and you just

• 50:37

never know what to expect.

• 50:38

Absolutely yeah what about you Keenan?

• 50:41

For me I think it's probably WoW.

• 50:45

Specifically the re-release of vanilla WoW classic WoW I thought that was a phenomenal

• 50:52

experience I actually never played in vanilla so when I tried.

• 50:55

Oh really?

• 50:56

So that was your first time with classic WoW?

• 50:57

That was my first time with classic and I feel like it brought back some of the old

• 51:01

school adventure that a lot of us have been missing.

• 51:04

Yeah the nostalgia.

• 51:05

We've got a group playing right now.

• 51:06

Oh yeah really?

• 51:07

Hopefully we'll start back up again on Old War.

• 51:10

Yeah that would be nice.

• 51:12

So obviously you know as our audience has kind of seen throughout the year and they're

• 51:16

you know kind of seeing now as we put little clips into this particular video you know

• 51:20

we've shown off a little bit of the ranger we've shown off a little bit of basic weapon

• 51:26

attacks and melee some of the fighter skills we've shown off the cleric most recently.

• 51:31

Tell me a little bit about the process that goes into actually making these archetypes

• 51:36

obviously the ability side is very important that needs to have support from engineering

• 51:40

and the effects and stuff but what typically goes into and we have a lot of classes to

• 51:44

make right and we're deep within the thralls of that process but what does it take?

• 51:49

Yeah I could start on that so obviously a class has to or an archetype has to start

• 51:54

on on paper right you know we don't you know a lot of the time we'll go into prototyping

• 51:59

and start building out stuff and see what's fun but just about always we start on paper

• 52:03

on a design document.

• 52:05

And we're talking about specific abilities when we start out on paper right?

• 52:10

First we actually go about establishing the class fantasy and the identity and the role

• 52:14

within the party right because that really helps to inform what those abilities then

• 52:20

are so that's usually the first step is you know what is this archetype what identifies

• 52:25

it what is the role that it's trying to accomplish.

• 52:28

Once that is done then we go into what you're suggesting there where you know we'll go and

• 52:33

brainstorm a whole wide list of abilities and class mechanics and then once we've got

• 52:39

all those you know a lot of them will get the chopping block and some of them will make

• 52:43

it through some will get iterated and you know kind of redesigned reimagined and then

• 52:48

after that stuff usually we go to you and we have a sort of review meeting and you know

• 52:55

you'll pick ones that you like you'll pick ones you want to change.

• 52:58

That's the second chopping block.

• 52:59

The second chop yeah there you go we try and filter it on our end as much as Steven makes

• 53:05

sure it gets done one way or another and then you know once that's done then we jump into

• 53:11

the prototyping right.

• 53:13

Then it starts down the pipeline process.

• 53:15

Yeah yeah and rapid prototyping is a really important step of the design process for combat

• 53:21

because we want to build and fail early or you know succeed early and we find the fun

• 53:26

we find what's not fun and we can all do that within you know the tools that are very talented

• 53:32

engineers provide us and we're always working to improve that stuff and the better tools

• 53:36

we have the better the designers can do their job.

• 53:39

And of course engineering kind of fields requests from a capability standpoint on what design

• 53:45

can actually provide a particular ability to do right.

• 53:49

Talk to me a little bit about you know how you field those requests how you incorporate

• 53:53

that as part of the ability system all those things.

• 53:56

Well we always do feasibility on any requests that we get but our designers are really good

• 54:00

about that and we don't usually have too many issues there.

• 54:04

Usually.

• 54:05

I like to run wild sometimes.

• 54:09

For me as an engineer though I think a lot of times the challenge is in you know they're

• 54:14

they're trying to get the fantasy right and the question is like how do you make somebody

• 54:20

who's playing a game feel like they are being delivered on that fantasy.

• 54:25

So when design asks us for something we usually play it a lot ourselves as we're making it

• 54:29

and we we search for that feeling and you know we're all gamers so we know what it feels

• 54:33

like.

• 54:34

Yeah we're looking for it as we build it.

• 54:35

That's one of my favorite things is I'm walking past your desk going to my office sometimes

• 54:39

you'll just be like hey Steven you got two minutes.

• 54:41

Yeah.

• 54:42

And then you put me at your desk at the keyboard and you're like how does this feel.

• 54:45

Do you feel like a ranger.

• 54:46

I know.

• 54:47

Do you feel like a ranger.

• 54:48

Does this sword slash feel good.

• 54:50

Yeah.

• 54:51

Yeah absolutely.

• 54:52

And obviously you know you guys you and Adam have had a very instrumental hand as part

• 54:56

of working with design and visual effects to kind of capture not just that role but

• 55:00

that feeling as you described and sometimes that incorporates working with animators to

• 55:05

get the right types of authored animations for like particular weapon attacks and or

• 55:10

abilities and the timing on those things is pivotal in creating the right feeling right.

• 55:16

There's so many technical components to it and as is often the case with engineering

• 55:20

it's like eliciting that right human response out of the very mathematical thing is the

• 55:26

challenging part.

• 55:27

Yeah.

• 55:28

And Jim obviously you know audio and visual effects they come in kind of near the end

• 55:32

of that pipeline where you know design and engineering has provided the tools to design

• 55:38

designs iterating with authored animations and then VFX comes in and says how can I make

• 55:43

this look spectacular.

• 55:44

I mean there's a tremendous amount of thought that's already been placed into this

• 55:49

mechanic or designer ability or whatever.

• 55:53

So on top of that we're thinking about how can we push the MMO space.

• 55:57

We don't want to recreate the other games we want to make it our own game.

• 56:00

Yes.

• 56:01

I mean we want to push the effects to a level that you just don't see in the industry period

• 56:05

but at the same time we don't want to create visual effects soon.

• 56:08

So we're working on creating a visual language something that the gamers here are playing

• 56:13

this are going to understand like hey that's like an arcane ability or that's like a tank

• 56:18

mix with this you know summoner or whatever.

• 56:20

So we have to figure out how to do all of this not make it too muddy but actually execute

• 56:25

in a way that looks cool.

• 56:26

So it's really really nice to have people like Trad and our engineer team to go back

• 56:30

and forth and be like hey can we connect this beam here can I parameterize it and can we

• 56:34

expose this to the UI guys so we can ramp it up or down to do stuff.

• 56:38

Yeah and you hit on a really interesting point which is visual effects is obviously not just

• 56:43

about creating things that are awesome but the language that communicates in the style

• 56:47

guide of how these effects translate to particular classes from just a silhouette perspective

• 56:52

shape language or visual fidelity and the hues and colors that are used to communicate

• 56:57

at long distances like hey I know what I'm going up against especially if it's a PvP

• 57:01

scenario or if you see your group kind of doing something their visual cues for you

• 57:06

to respond appropriately and synergistically from a rotations perspective.

• 57:10

And that's something I know early on you know we worked with each other kind of going through

• 57:14

you and the VFX team across you know what those shapes languages should look like for

• 57:18

particular types of abilities the colors that should be associated with particular types

• 57:23

of archetypes the symbology and iconography that's used as part of those particular visual

• 57:27

effects some of which obviously people saw in the last cleric demonstration but how has

• 57:32

that been for you kind of defining those things and creating that style guide I mean it's

• 57:36

a comprehensive list there's 64 classes right and how do you how do you steer make sure

• 57:42

that it doesn't become that visual suit that so many people I mean I've played games where

• 57:47

it does become visual suit yes and especially it starts to break down every tenth player

• 57:53

you add into the mix or every tenth you know actor NPC or whatever right how do we accomplish

• 57:59

that well I love that question so I mean I'm a gamer and I think that especially in MMOs

• 58:05

when you get to that in-game content and you're in this huge raid where there's like 10 people

• 58:09

or 100 people and all of a sudden it's like you can't find your mouse cursor you're like

• 58:12

if you don't hotkey you're lost right so but to answer your question we're not instead

• 58:18

what we're going to do is we're going to give that to the player so the player is going

• 58:21

to be able to tune that experience so we are going to create a very smart parameterized

• 58:28

subset of matrix particle systems that's a fancy way of saying that we're going to let

• 58:33

you tune what it's like in single player versus maybe you and your buddy versus a five-person

• 58:38

party or a giant raid not only that but let's make it where we can change the camera shake

• 58:43

and the post process and a particle intensity and then do a global one that scales all of

• 58:48

that and give that to the player because I mean really visual suit is a thing but there's

• 58:52

a scale that's subjective kind of to the player on how much they want to see of those things

• 58:57

happening in a particular area and this is something obviously you guys who've been following

• 59:01

the project for a long time is what we've talked at since the very inception of Ashes

• 59:06

is a desire to tackle that particular issue that many of us have experienced in other

• 59:10

games of course.

• 59:12

So talk to me a little bit about our 64 classes right in those roles those class fantasies

• 59:19

you know where do we kind of live when incorporating and obviously we have an eight member party

• 59:24

right and we have eight archetypes that are associated across our game and people know

• 59:28

it's kind of a matrix of eight by eight in which creating these classes the augment system

• 59:32

all that type of stuff people have just now been starting to peek under the hood of the

• 59:36

creation of these archetypes and these classes what are you most excited to kind of tackle

• 59:40

come 2023 I know that there's a lot of stuff in the works right now and building up towards

• 59:45

Alpha 2.

• 59:46

Of all 64 of them.

• 59:48

Probably the Dreadnought because that's my default character.

• 59:53

But actually like I don't know that there's any particular class yet I mean we haven't

• 59:57

even shown everybody all the archetypes yet but I will say I'm pretty excited to see what

• 1:00:03

the Summoner becomes we haven't shown anything on the Summoner and I'm not necessarily a

• 1:00:08

pet class player myself but I feel like every Summoner type class that I've seen in games

• 1:00:16

they usually fall a little bit flat in my opinion maybe that's why I don't play them

• 1:00:19

right but I'd like to see something a little bit more dynamic with like you know summoning

• 1:00:25

in real time in combat rather than oh I summon my pet right at the beginning of combat and

• 1:00:30

then that's it's done it's out there doing its own thing.

• 1:00:33

I think there's a lot left to be explored there and I'm pretty in fact we've already

• 1:00:37

written up some stuff about it.

• 1:00:39

Oh yeah absolutely and it's some stuff that we've shared a little bit with the community

• 1:00:42

just a little bit but I think they're gonna be excited to see next year kind of some of

• 1:00:47

the stuff that's gone into that.

• 1:00:48

What about you Keenan what are you kind of excited about from either a technical challenge

• 1:00:51

perspective when it comes to these ability systems or combat in general or class wise?

• 1:00:58

I think if you're talking about what I'm most excited to work on I would say all of the

• 1:01:02

bard classes.

• 1:01:04

I think that the bard seems to have been largely forgotten by modern gaming so I'm excited

• 1:01:10

to bring it back and show off some of the cool ideas that we have.

• 1:01:13

Yes I think next year as well people are going to be excited to see how that class interacts

• 1:01:17

from a support perspective for the party and how it kind of lives next to but doesn't encompass

• 1:01:23

the same space as the healer which is what a lot of previous games I think that tried

• 1:01:28

to bring in that bard perspective do they just throw it on top of the healers role and

• 1:01:32

that can be a little bit boring.

• 1:01:33

There's a lot more to support than health bar goes right.

• 1:01:36

Health bar goes right.

• 1:01:38

Whack.

• 1:01:39

Whack a mole pole too.

• 1:01:40

How about you Jim what about you on the visual effects side I know you guys got a lot of

• 1:01:44

fun tech working with the tech art teams for supporting visual effects not just from a

• 1:01:49

class perspective but also on the monster side NPC encounter side as well.

• 1:01:54

Oh yeah we're going to have so much fun like monsters and boss fights are going to be unreal

• 1:01:58

because we can just dial that up and really have fun with all the actual tech that's built

• 1:02:02

in the engine the custom tech.

• 1:02:04

I think from just like a real technical perspective I'm super excited about augments I want to

• 1:02:10

do the augmentations and see how these different classes interact and how we can create like

• 1:02:15

the difference between a cleric and a paladin for example but from just a selfish point

• 1:02:21

of view all about the necromancer man.

• 1:02:24

It's going to be incredible.

• 1:02:27

It's going to be amazing.

• 1:02:29

We showed off a little bit some of the augments I don't know if everyone picked up on them

• 1:02:33

during some of the demonstrations there were a few abilities that had some of the augments

• 1:02:38

associated with them but next year I think in preparation for Alpha 2 there's going to

• 1:02:43

be a lot of that stuff that players are going to get access to and kind of see.

• 1:02:47

You know something that's interesting to me is I think next month we're showcasing the

• 1:02:51

tank archetype and we're going to be showing some of those abilities and within the next

• 1:02:56

couple of months or I think it's the next two to three months we're also going to be

• 1:03:11

talking a little bit about showcasing one of the big raid bosses the cyclops and I know

• 1:03:16

that has a lot of visual effects that's going into that encounter as well as some unique

• 1:03:21

mechanics that are associated with supporting some of that ability that the actual cyclops

• 1:03:26

has available and I think people are going to be a little bit shocked by that because

• 1:03:29

it's pretty cool.

• 1:03:31

Well it's going to be epic.

• 1:03:33

It's going to be insane.

• 1:03:34

I mean you have this unique problem with big bosses in general.

• 1:03:39

Now I'm going to leak a little more.

• 1:03:41

Hopefully you guys don't have to edit this out.

• 1:03:43

Oh yeah I'm ready.

• 1:03:44

I'm scared.

• 1:03:45

We have this monstrous creature just going across our terrain.

• 1:03:48

It's not going to be your flat arena that you see in every MMO.

• 1:03:52

It's going to have different heights, altitudes, obstacles to climb on and we got to solve

• 1:03:56

for that.

• 1:03:57

We don't want our effects just hanging in there.

• 1:03:58

We want to mold to the terrain and do different stuff.

• 1:04:01

So I think that's going to be something that I'm really excited about.

• 1:04:04

It's really technical but it's also going to be something that people are really going

• 1:04:07

to dig.

• 1:04:08

They're going to enjoy it.

• 1:04:09

For sure.

• 1:04:10

I totally agree.

• 1:04:11

Every little edge case we missed is going to be scaled up.

• 1:04:13

20x.

• 1:04:14

Oh yes and that's part of the greatness of kind of showcasing.

• 1:04:17

It's how we figure it out.

• 1:04:18

Yes exactly.

• 1:04:19

As we get to encounter those problems as a course that we're bringing this to life and

• 1:04:24

as we're addressing them we're showing the community as well.

• 1:04:28

That's something that's super cool.

• 1:04:29

Another thing you know obviously we're building a massively multiplayer game and a lot of

• 1:04:34

our encounter design, a lot of the PvP scenarios that players are going to be subjected to,

• 1:04:40

those are very dense populations.

• 1:04:44

And when you're building out this concept of these ability systems, how much of that

• 1:04:50

massively multiplayer component gets taken into account when creating, ideating so to

• 1:04:55

speak these mechanics that are provided by engineering but also the class kits as a holistic

• 1:05:00

view, you know, what abilities we're actually authoring.

• 1:05:03

Do you take into that account or is this you know something that's really more focused

• 1:05:08

around solo gameplay, group gameplay, or massive gameplay?

• 1:05:11

We've got to think about all of it.

• 1:05:13

From the ground up in that phase I was talking about earlier, like the ideation phase when

• 1:05:18

we're brainstorming these abilities we always, always have to think about how does this scale

• 1:05:23

up.

• 1:05:24

A lot of games have the luxury of not having to do that.

• 1:05:26

You know they can design a number of abilities without even having to necessarily consider

• 1:05:33

the performance implications it would have in a networking environment.

• 1:05:37

There's a lot of additional things as designers and engineers and artists that we've got to

• 1:05:43

think about every time.

• 1:05:44

So it kind of blows up the scale of, you know, it gives you, it can be a little bit mind

• 1:05:49

paralysis sometimes when you think, but you know we get through it and we've gotten pretty

• 1:05:54

good at it.

• 1:05:55

From a performance as authoring kind of these visual effects, how useful has the migration

• 1:06:01

of Unreal 5 been with the use of Niagara in its system?

• 1:06:04

It's key.

• 1:06:05

It's very critical.

• 1:06:06

So every single effect that we author, we have to author for different scenarios.

• 1:06:10

How far away it might be, we might call stuff, how close it's going to be, we're also going

• 1:06:13

to call stuff.

• 1:06:14

There's no point in having something that just blocks your entire view.

• 1:06:18

So all this will happen like in real time dynamically.

• 1:06:20

So we can scale down particle systems based on how many players are active or how your

• 1:06:25

performance might be changing or anything really.

• 1:06:28

Maybe it's Thanksgiving Day and we want to have less effects.

• 1:06:31

We can do that.

• 1:06:32

But it's super robust with the amount of control we have over every aspect of visual effects.

• 1:06:38

And we'll be needing to do all of that to set all these things up because we don't want

• 1:06:42

to have a situation where, oh yeah, our game is really great until we got into the open

• 1:06:46

world PvP now stuff.

• 1:06:47

So we're not going to make this, the effects should be there but it shouldn't be.

• 1:06:52

That's all you see.

• 1:06:53

Right, it's complimenting absolutely the mechanics and the gameplay 100%.

• 1:06:57

Keenan, obviously on the engineering side, the gameplay engineering side, you of course

• 1:07:01

have to field these requests for different types of mechanics that need to be authored.

• 1:07:05

But when you think about performance related considerations for the ability systems, stats

• 1:07:11

to kind of quickly update, all of this stuff interacting with the network, how has that

• 1:07:16

been for you from a challenging standpoint?

• 1:07:18

Yeah, with the scalability requirement cranked to 10, it pretty much makes every aspect of

• 1:07:24

combat like three times harder than it would otherwise be.

• 1:07:28

But ultimately, I think we've got a handle on it and we've been very intentional with

• 1:07:33

our data and with our systems so that we can modulate how quickly they receive and send

• 1:07:40

updates based on who cares the most.

• 1:07:43

And so that's going to help us with scalability a lot.

• 1:07:45

That's something that I think a lot of players kind of are noticing in Alpha 1 last year

• 1:07:51

was just the sheer density that was achieved during some of the castle siege fights that

• 1:07:56

we had where there were 300 plus players in a particular area.

• 1:08:00

Not many people I think in today's age have experienced that and experienced in a way

• 1:08:04

that was performant, right?

• 1:08:07

And that was something that I think is wholly unique to this project and what we're trying

• 1:08:11

to achieve and accomplish, not just from the combat's perspective and these class kits

• 1:08:15

that we're creating, but how they harmonize with many players in a particular area.

• 1:08:19

So you guys have been doing an awesome job on that.

• 1:08:22

Well, thank you guys for joining us and talking a little bit about what it takes to make this

• 1:08:26

magic come to life.

• 1:08:28

I think I speak on behalf of the community.

• 1:08:30

You guys are doing an awesome job and not just you, of course, the teams that work in

• 1:08:33

association with you and that you're a part of.

• 1:08:36

We're really appreciative of that.

Meet a few of the developers behind Gathering and Crafting

• 1:08:45

Welcome over to our conversation, a little bit about gathering and crafting.

• 1:08:49

And earlier this year, of course, we showed some of the recent work that's been done towards

• 1:08:54

gathering, particularly around trees and the bushes and mining.

• 1:09:00

But I'm joined today by some of the developers who worked on those things.

• 1:09:04

So a little introduction, Hal.

• 1:09:07

I am Hal Anderson and I'm an environment artist.

• 1:09:10

So that means I work on things like rocks, trees, kind of anything you just see in the

• 1:09:14

environment.

• 1:09:15

Everything that makes the world beautiful.

• 1:09:18

We also have Alex.

• 1:09:19

Hello, I'm Alex Codoli.

• 1:09:21

I'm a senior gameplay engineer.

• 1:09:23

I'm a generalist.

• 1:09:24

I wear many hats.

• 1:09:26

I work with animation, environment, many departments.

• 1:09:29

All the things they say.

• 1:09:31

Exactly.

• 1:09:32

We have Corey.

• 1:09:33

Hi, I'm Corey Rice.

• 1:09:34

I'm a technical designer and I usually focus on artist and ship, do a little work with

• 1:09:38

AI and also our design tools.

• 1:09:40

Yeah, and a lot of economy stuff too as well.

• 1:09:43

So obviously a lot of people saw the gathering demonstration that we showed where currently

• 1:09:49

like harvesting trees and stuff we just talked about.

• 1:09:52

What goes into kind of inspiring you guys around, you know, the experiences you've had

• 1:09:58

in other MMOs or other games where you're out and you're gathering things and crafting?

• 1:10:03

What are some of the favorite experiences you guys have had?

• 1:10:06

I think for me personally, one of my favorite kind of like harvesting things that I really

• 1:10:12

love in an MMO would be just all the little plants you find around in elder schools online.

• 1:10:18

Yes, they're so good.

• 1:10:20

Oh my gosh, there's so many of them too.

• 1:10:23

I love just kind of scouring, you know, the environment kind of seeing what you can find.

• 1:10:27

I think they have such good design too.

• 1:10:28

You can always like visually really spot them.

• 1:10:30

Like, oh, that's gonna go over there.

• 1:10:32

Yeah, what about you, Alex?

• 1:10:35

For me, probably realism.

• 1:10:37

Yeah.

• 1:10:38

Specifically, ArcheAge.

• 1:10:39

I spent a lot of time scouring all the lands to find illegal farms, but like any trees.

• 1:10:48

But the fun part of it is like after a while you go outside and be like, oh, I know what

• 1:10:52

that tree is.

• 1:10:53

Oh, I know what that tree is.

• 1:10:54

A little bit of learning from the game.

• 1:10:55

Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:56

I was like, oh, this is an Aspen tree.

• 1:10:57

I know that.

• 1:10:58

I do like that too, where there's a hint of realism kind of in what you're experiencing

• 1:11:02

the game and how you can associate that with the real world.

• 1:11:05

What about you, Cory?

• 1:11:06

Yeah, totally.

• 1:11:07

I really like the exploration part of it, searching around for things and like how it

• 1:11:11

mentioned there being like things that catch your eye.

• 1:11:13

And oftentimes you're like, oh, there's some gold.

• 1:11:16

And then you find yourself at the bottom of the dungeon and you're like, oh, God, what

• 1:11:19

am I doing here?

• 1:11:20

Maybe make some friends.

• 1:11:21

Wait a minute.

• 1:11:22

That's not a friend.

• 1:11:23

Exactly.

• 1:11:24

This guy's trying to take my gold.

• 1:11:25

And then we fight.

• 1:11:26

And yeah, just get you into all sorts of different adventurous situations.

• 1:11:30

It's such an important part, obviously, of MMO design, right?

• 1:11:34

It brings kind of the environment that you're in, the world that you're in, and it makes

• 1:11:37

it a bit tactile.

• 1:11:38

It makes it something that you can leverage to further advance your character, your position,

• 1:11:43

the wealth that you might have.

• 1:11:45

And one of the things that I think was really interesting about our approach on these gatherables

• 1:11:52

out in the real world was even simulating a bit more of that realism, not just from

• 1:11:56

the type of thing you're gathering, but how that thing interacts with you in the world.

• 1:12:00

And one of the things that sticks out is the design of these trees falling and the physics

• 1:12:05

associated with them.

• 1:12:06

And I know we talked a little bit about during the demonstration, but talk a little bit about

• 1:12:10

what it took to get there from a tech feasibility perspective.

• 1:12:13

Oh, it's a lot of work.

• 1:12:15

I mean, it's a lot of cross departmental work.

• 1:12:20

For example, we have to work, figure out how we want to simulate the physics, what kind

• 1:12:25

of collisions we want to have to have on trees, as well as making sure that they simulate

• 1:12:33

on every client as well so that it doesn't feel off-putting for one player to see it

• 1:12:38

falling to the left, for another player falling to the right.

• 1:12:40

Like, oh my God, this tree just hit me.

• 1:12:42

No, it didn't.

• 1:12:43

It hit that guy.

• 1:12:44

Exactly.

• 1:12:45

Yeah.

• 1:12:46

So, but yeah, no, physics is, as I was saying before, it's a wild beast to tame.

• 1:12:50

It's just a lot of tweaks.

• 1:12:52

You have to have a lot of patience figuring out all the constraints, all the volumes.

• 1:13:00

It's just hard work.

• 1:13:01

And even from a performance perspective, right, we have thousands of foliage actors that might

• 1:13:06

live within a particular area that's very small, maybe one and a half by one and a half

• 1:13:10

kilometers zone, right?

• 1:13:11

Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:13

And you want to make sure it's per request.

• 1:13:15

So as you're chopping down, so it's not always there.

• 1:13:19

Otherwise, our client FPS is probably going to be pretty bad.

• 1:13:22

Right.

• 1:13:23

So we do a neat trick when you are coming up to the tree, we swapped it to skeletal mesh

• 1:13:29

and then you cut it down and then as it starts to fall, we start simulating physics.

• 1:13:35

And as it falls down, we kind of like freeze it up in the end and then slowly like dissipates.

• 1:13:40

Right.

• 1:13:41

And Hal, tell me a little bit about what it takes to actually bring one of those assets

• 1:13:45

with joints and a skeletal rig so that the impact on the tree can show the physics and

• 1:13:51

the branches moving.

• 1:13:52

What did that take from an environment perspective?

• 1:13:54

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:13:56

So I think definitely got a lot of help from animation, you know, we animated on our team

• 1:14:02

kind of setting that set up.

• 1:14:03

But I think from an environment perspective, our kind of most challenging thing was kind

• 1:14:07

of setting up the skeletal rig so they can all kind of communicate efficiently and kind

• 1:14:12

of finding a nice balance between so like, you know, one branch doesn't have all the

• 1:14:16

weight, you know, it's able to kind of fall and be in a fluid kind of way.

• 1:14:21

And you have to make different states as well, right?

• 1:14:23

Because it's not just about being able to gather this particular thing in the world,

• 1:14:29

but also at what stage is that thing?

• 1:14:31

Is it an adolescent?

• 1:14:32

Is it a young tree?

• 1:14:34

What type of harvest can I get from it if I were to, let's say, gather it earlier in

• 1:14:38

its lifespan, right?

• 1:14:39

That has some design principles associated with those.

• 1:14:42

Yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:43

Like, we wanted it to look good when it falls down, but we also wanted the environment to

• 1:14:46

look really good during different seasons and different stages of life of the thing

• 1:14:50

that you're harvesting.

• 1:14:51

So not only did they have to do that work one time making a tree look good, but we wanted

• 1:14:56

it to work on all the variants.

• 1:14:57

And we wanted it to work when it's a small little sapling or a mature tree.

• 1:15:00

So yeah, just figuring all that out and all the different permutations of it was interesting.

• 1:15:07

It's interesting.

• 1:15:08

And also not only that, but when you think about kind of showcasing those different stages

• 1:15:14

of life for a particular asset, that obviously creates an additional amount of work on the

• 1:15:18

asset side, right?

• 1:15:20

To create those particular stages of that meshes lifespan, right?

• 1:15:24

Yes.

• 1:15:25

Yeah, it does.

• 1:15:26

Yeah, I think that kind of like in a forest, like one thing that was really important for

• 1:15:32

the environment team was kind of showing not just one kind of monolithic tree, but having

• 1:15:37

different kind of varieties.

• 1:15:38

So you can see that it's just like a living forest that like grows and has different stages

• 1:15:42

of life.

• 1:15:43

And it definitely is a lot of work.

• 1:15:46

Yeah, because now you're not just making the tree at the adult stage, you're making it

• 1:15:50

at the sapling, you're making it at the other.

• 1:15:52

And then talk to me a little bit about kind of how we achieve that scaling between these

• 1:15:57

different stages.

• 1:15:58

I think the first thing we wanted to achieve is to make sure that environment artists can

• 1:16:03

place them at the painted stage so that it sets up the general environment and then creating

• 1:16:11

multiple states that it iterates over efficiently.

• 1:16:14

Once you can chop down like adult stage and goes, for example, to empty, it has to make

• 1:16:19

sure it replicates to every other player and then it transitioned into a sapling stage,

• 1:16:24

into young stage.

• 1:16:26

And all the data needs to make sure it propagates to every client that sees it and make sure

• 1:16:31

that also the bandwidth is not too large.

• 1:16:34

Because we want to, you know, keep that network traffic a little cheaper.

• 1:16:38

Exactly.

• 1:16:39

We don't want you to run through the forest in like 400 megabytes.

• 1:16:42

Oh my God.

• 1:16:44

Exactly.

• 1:16:45

Corey, obviously, you know, design has some significant intents when it comes to the variety

• 1:16:50

of the types of gatherables you have access to.

• 1:16:54

And as many of our players know, the professions that relate to these particular gatherables

• 1:17:00

and what you can do with them are also expansive.

• 1:17:03

How do you guys on design go about kind of architecting what that pyramid, so to speak,

• 1:17:09

of gatherables are within the world?

• 1:17:11

It is the base of the economy, right?

• 1:17:13

So all the processing professions and crafting professions kind of start with what's gathered

• 1:17:18

from the world.

• 1:17:19

So we start by like determining what needs to be fulfilled.

• 1:17:25

So players need armor and consumables and weapons.

• 1:17:28

So each one of those things sort of like fits in their lane and we need to define what things

• 1:17:33

should exist in the world so that we can make those, right?

• 1:17:35

So that was kind of the first step.

• 1:17:38

Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:17:39

Now, obviously, it's interesting to see when you go up to a particular rock and you mine

• 1:17:45

it and there's obviously some amount of time that it takes to gather that particular resource.

• 1:17:53

What types of profession related progression can influence that time that's spent?

• 1:17:59

But also, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, there's an element of prospecting

• 1:18:05

that occurs.

• 1:18:07

Talk to me a little bit about that and how it interacts with the system.

• 1:18:09

Yeah, so we definitely want progression, right?

• 1:18:12

Like the more time you spend mining and the more effort you put into understanding how

• 1:18:16

mining works in Ashes along with other gathering professions, we want you to get better at

• 1:18:20

it.

• 1:18:21

And there's different ways, right?

• 1:18:22

You can get gear, you can progress in the profession and like you said, get faster and

• 1:18:27

maybe find better stuff.

• 1:18:29

And one of the ways to be able to find better stuff is through surveying.

• 1:18:32

And surveying is a way of kind of scanning the area, narrowing down what you're looking

• 1:18:36

for.

• 1:18:37

You know, maybe there's one recipe for a golden sword that you're trying to fill for your

• 1:18:41

friend and he wants it to be of a certain level and certain power.

• 1:18:45

And so you need this specific gold ore.

• 1:18:48

So you're not looking around for any gold.

• 1:18:50

You want the specific gold.

• 1:18:51

So we want to give players the tools to be able to kind of find what they're looking

• 1:18:55

for.

• 1:18:56

And that'll be another thing that they can get better at and work with others to increase

• 1:19:00

their productivity.

• 1:19:01

Absolutely.

• 1:19:02

And with having such an expansive list of gatherables that are available, help walk

• 1:19:07

us through a little bit of what that pipeline looks like.

• 1:19:09

I mean, what does it take to actually make a specific type of tree or a specific plant?

• 1:19:14

How does that process begin?

• 1:19:16

Tell us a little bit about that.

• 1:19:17

I think kind of the first step in any type of kind of asset creation like that would

• 1:19:21

be kind of gathering like a reference board, kind of finding out what sort of like real-life

• 1:19:26

things we want to draw off of to make sure that's just kind of grounded.

• 1:19:30

And then also kind of deciding sort of what kind of like a mood we want to elicit, you

• 1:19:33

know, like, is it going to be a spooky tree?

• 1:19:35

Is it going to be more like, oh, it's going to be magical, you know, you feel like, oh,

• 1:19:41

and kind of establishing that so we kind of know what to go into the process.

• 1:19:44

The identity of the asset.

• 1:19:45

Exactly.

• 1:19:46

Yeah.

• 1:19:47

Yeah.

• 1:19:48

Get that like, get that mood.

• 1:19:49

Right.

• 1:19:50

And yeah, after that is kind of established, we would go into a program called SpeedTree

• 1:19:55

in the movie, which kind of allows us artists to set up kind of these like almost little

• 1:20:00

logic systems, you know, like, oh, we want trees with like branches that are approximately

• 1:20:04

the size, you know, and kind of randomize that.

• 1:20:07

So it has that kind of organic element that just, you know, kind of the human brain can't

• 1:20:11

quite, can't quite do as well.

• 1:20:13

But yeah, so after we have that and we have all our geo done, we would then, important

• 1:20:18

to Unreal, where we would set up all of our like wind data and all of our seasonal technology.

• 1:20:22

Yeah.

• 1:20:23

And there's a lot that goes into that, right?

• 1:20:25

Because when we talked about this in an earlier segment about seasons and how that impacts

• 1:20:30

kind of all the assets that are within the world, because they all have to not just have

• 1:20:33

stages of growth when they've been gathered, but they also need to reflect the season as

• 1:20:39

well.

• 1:20:40

So that tree might lose leaves, right?

• 1:20:42

Or that plant might not even be available within a particular season.

• 1:20:46

And that's something that ties into on the engineering side, which is something you have

• 1:20:51

to take into account on the spawners, right?

• 1:20:54

And how you're kind of bringing that up.

• 1:20:55

How does that work?

• 1:20:56

Well, we just need to hook, we basically hook into the seasonal tech and we query our service

• 1:21:03

to figure out, okay, is this a winter, is this spring, is this, you know, summer?

• 1:21:08

And when the tree transitions to state to another, we check, okay, oh, is this supposed

• 1:21:13

to happen during winter?

• 1:21:14

Is this supposed to happen during spring?

• 1:21:16

What kind of yield it's supposed to maybe give, right?

• 1:21:18

And that manager doesn't just take into account necessarily all that information as well,

• 1:21:23

but it also takes into account another system that we've talked a little bit about, which

• 1:21:27

is land management.

• 1:21:28

And that can also affect kind of spawn rate, frequency, density within a particular area,

• 1:21:35

length and longevity of time to promote to different stages.

• 1:21:38

Tell me a little bit about your expectations for land management as it affects things like

• 1:21:43

gathering and crafting as a whole.

• 1:21:45

Yeah, my expectations are that it creates cool entry points for content.

• 1:21:50

You know, players have different expectations of the things that they want to achieve for

• 1:21:54

themselves and they extend that out to groups like their guilds or their node and whatever,

• 1:21:59

right?

• 1:22:00

So, you know, you might not want to chop down every single tree outside of your node because

• 1:22:04

you like using those trees for harvesting the fruit, right?

• 1:22:07

And if another group of players wants to cut them down because they want wood before a

• 1:22:11

siege, right, like those are conflicts that players will need to work out and interact

• 1:22:16

with each other to solve, right?

• 1:22:17

And then we can hook up into content that we create ourselves, not necessarily player

• 1:22:22

to player where maybe you cut down all the trees and you piss off a tree ant.

• 1:22:25

It's a predicate, right?

• 1:22:27

Exactly.

• 1:22:28

So, that's why we think that land management is so interesting because it gives us a way

• 1:22:31

to hook into all these different content points and do cool stuff.

• 1:22:35

So much in the world of Vera is built around this idea of players committed action and

• 1:22:42

the action has a response from the system or from other players potentially, right?

• 1:22:46

And as we're talking about how land management is just another value that can represent some

• 1:22:52

predicate system in that event or in allowing a policy, perhaps you're a more industrious

• 1:22:57

node if you constantly keep the land management at a low value, right?

• 1:23:02

All of those things are just giving the tools that we get to implement around either from

• 1:23:06

a narrative perspective or from a systemic one.

• 1:23:09

And that I think creates a very dynamic atmosphere that not a lot of players are accustomed to

• 1:23:14

in the games that we play which offer things like gathering.

• 1:23:17

You know, typically it's a very kind of binary system.

• 1:23:21

I do a thing, I get a thing.

• 1:23:23

But here I do a thing and there's a whole host of stuff that can happen as a response.

• 1:23:27

Exactly.

• 1:23:28

And the non-binary part of it is very important because it's not always this action equals

• 1:23:34

bad, right?

• 1:23:35

It is a whole slew of options of things that can happen.

• 1:23:39

So even if you think that cutting down all of the trees is going to piss off the tree

• 1:23:44

ant, there might be a whole slew of positive things that happen after you defeat the tree

• 1:23:48

ant or when the tree ant spawns and becomes someone that you can interact with in the

• 1:23:54

world.

• 1:23:55

It's not always black and white whether an action is good or bad which I think is very

• 1:23:59

interesting.

• 1:24:00

It is very interesting.

• 1:24:01

And for example, that tree ant many years ago, I think circa 2018, we showed a big tree

• 1:24:09

ant model that Keith worked on.

• 1:24:11

You remember that guy?

• 1:24:12

Yeah.

• 1:24:13

I don't know.

• 1:24:14

Maybe we'll see him if people chop down a little too many trees.

• 1:24:17

That might be interesting.

• 1:24:19

So obviously you're all MMO gamers.

• 1:24:20

We've been talking with a lot of MMO gamers here at the studio.

• 1:24:22

Many of us are MMO gamers.

• 1:24:25

What is the profession you're looking most forward to?

• 1:24:28

Ooh.

• 1:24:29

Go ahead.

• 1:24:30

Oh yeah.

• 1:24:31

What type of thing do you like to do from a crafting artisan perspective?

• 1:24:38

I think my personal favorite would be kind of anything in line with the harvesting gathering

• 1:24:45

potions.

• 1:24:46

Oh, alchemist.

• 1:24:47

Okay.

• 1:24:48

Very nice.

• 1:24:49

You like getting the perfect ingredients to make some type of potion that's going to

• 1:24:53

come in handy during some engagement.

• 1:24:55

That's awesome.

• 1:24:56

I also love alchemy by the way.

• 1:24:59

Don't tell anybody that.

• 1:25:02

What about you Alec?

• 1:25:03

For me probably would be whichever corner is the market.

• 1:25:06

Oh, there you go.

• 1:25:07

Opportunist.

• 1:25:08

You're an economist.

• 1:25:09

I'm an opportunist.

• 1:25:10

There you go.

• 1:25:11

So whatever is most worthwhile.

• 1:25:12

Exactly.

• 1:25:13

Because especially with our node system, a lot of nodes are going to need a lot of materials,

• 1:25:17

resources.

• 1:25:18

We're going to have to, yeah.

• 1:25:19

It's just, you know.

• 1:25:21

And that actually brings up a really good point because the way that the environment

• 1:25:27

is constructed, a lot of these gatherables and ergo the craftable components of those

• 1:25:34

gatherables are determined by location.

• 1:25:38

And so you're not just creating one giant economy, you're also creating local economies

• 1:25:44

as well which relate to the transition of those goods across the world, which can make

• 1:25:48

it more opportunistic with some danger or risk involved.

• 1:25:51

Yeah, that's super interesting.

• 1:25:52

I like that.

• 1:25:53

I'm kind of there too.

• 1:25:54

What about you Cory?

• 1:25:55

For me, it would be really hard to choose just one.

• 1:25:58

I love fishing.

• 1:25:59

I'll try fishing in every game no matter what.

• 1:26:02

I really like crafting of equipment, whether that's like armor or weapons.

• 1:26:06

There's something special to me about like outfitting yourself or another person for

• 1:26:10

like an adventure that they're going on.

• 1:26:13

You have that interaction of like, what do you need?

• 1:26:14

Yeah, I could make that for you.

• 1:26:16

There's initial investment and they take that thing with them and they may trade it and

• 1:26:20

sell it and that item specifically has a story, right?

• 1:26:23

It's not the same as consumables where you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:26:27

You use like a hundred of them a day.

• 1:26:29

And then engineering is really interesting to me.

• 1:26:31

I like little gadgets.

• 1:26:32

Those usually end up being the things that like break some of the rules and you get to

• 1:26:36

do special funny things.

• 1:26:37

So engineering is always like very, very interesting to me.

• 1:26:42

Very interesting.

• 1:26:43

And it actually brings up something else that I was just thinking about, which is essentially

• 1:26:49

that you're working on something with engineering regarding kind of a gameplay layer around

• 1:26:57

crafting itself, right?

• 1:26:59

Talk to me a little bit about what that is.

• 1:27:01

So yeah, we're trying to put together kind of a more haptic or rooted in the world.

• 1:27:06

I guess the right word is like a diegetic experience for making weapons.

• 1:27:11

You know, oftentimes in other games or other MMOs I've played, there's a lot on the front

• 1:27:17

end of like you get stuff and you have the stuff and then you push a button and the item

• 1:27:22

comes out.

• 1:27:23

The execution is just a button.

• 1:27:24

Yeah.

• 1:27:25

And all of the, there is like skill and some gameplay to that portion, right?

• 1:27:31

And I think that that will also be great in Ashes where, you know, you have to acquire

• 1:27:34

all the things and there's risk and there's trade.

• 1:27:36

But I also think that it's interesting to have skill involved in the actual crafting.

• 1:27:42

So what we're trying to put together is a way to make weapons where it feels like you're

• 1:27:47

actually making the thing and how you do in making the weapon results in what the stats

• 1:27:53

of the weapon are going to be.

• 1:27:55

So that's what we're working on.

• 1:27:57

And that's something that I think players are going to have an opportunity next year

• 1:28:01

to kind of take a look at.

• 1:28:02

And we're going to have an opportunity to collect good feedback from you around whether

• 1:28:06

or not you like that element of gameplay layer associated with the crafting profession, right?

• 1:28:13

I think that's going to be super cool.

• 1:28:14

Well, guys, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me and our audience,

• 1:28:19

of course.

• 1:28:20

They're very grateful for your contributions to making Ashes of Creation a reality.

• 1:28:24

And you guys are doing a phenomenal job.

• 1:28:26

So thank you very well done.

• 1:28:27

We are going to be moving on next to a little video that showcases this last year with our

Year-in-Review video

• 1:28:34

studio and the project.

• 1:28:38

You know, building games is difficult.

• 1:28:43

That being said, we built an amazing team at Intrepid and it feels very much like a

• 1:28:48

family.

• 1:28:49

So getting up each day and going to into the office and working with, you know, the colleagues

• 1:28:56

at Intrepid is a delight.

• 1:29:24

What a year it has been.

• 1:29:27

The team has been hard at work.

• 1:29:29

You've seen the progress of Ashes of Creation over the last four or five years, and you've

• 1:29:34

seen where we've come from in that time to our Alpha One presentation, and you can see

• 1:29:39

how things develop.

• 1:29:43

Super excited with the character creator.

• 1:29:45

And I have very rarely ever encountered a character creator, even at this state, that

• 1:29:51

is as capable as what our team has been able to develop.

• 1:29:57

Every day that passes and I'm watching the tech continue to get refined and the environments

• 1:30:04

continue to get these passes.

• 1:30:06

And I'm just talking to the team and like, so good.

• 1:30:13

The new world map in all its 1200 square kilometer glory.

• 1:30:33

I love what the new skybox is doing.

• 1:30:36

I mean, it's just visually great.

• 1:30:45

I am so happy to see the excitement from the MMORPG community at large.

• 1:30:51

Like that looks crazy good.

• 1:30:56

That is just oh my god.

• 1:30:58

Like whenever people are talking about how they want fantasy games, this is what they're

• 1:31:03

thinking.

• 1:31:05

It grows into a horse.

• 1:31:06

I didn't know that.

• 1:31:09

This game looks amazing.

• 1:31:16

Way too good.

• 1:31:17

Ashes of creation.

• 1:31:18

It will be the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG ever attempted.

• 1:31:23

No, no.

• 1:31:24

It looks good.

• 1:31:25

It does look good.

• 1:31:26

Grab yourself a...

• 1:31:27

The team behind Ashes of Creation are some of the most talented developers.

• 1:31:42

What we're building in Ashes of Creation is the ultimate desire of a true MMORPG Ashes

• 1:32:05

team.

Outro

• 1:32:12

Thank you everyone so much for joining us.

• 1:32:14

That's going to be a wrap for us for our December livestream update.

• 1:32:17

We hope that you enjoyed it and loved getting to know our developers.

• 1:32:20

That was so much fun chatting with everyone.

• 1:32:23

They're so sweet.

• 1:32:24

Everyone's amazing and you can just see the vibe is just so...

• 1:32:27

Everyone's just passionate and loves what they do and that's kind of like the best part

• 1:32:30

of the game.

• 1:32:31

Super talented.

• 1:32:32

I know.

• 1:32:33

Just a great team.

• 1:32:34

Absolutely.

• 1:32:35

Of course, if you have feedback for us, head on over to our forums, forums.ashesofcreation.com.

• 1:32:39

We love hearing from you guys.

• 1:32:40

We interact with you always.

• 1:32:42

We're sending reports to our developers so they can continue to make sure that we're

• 1:32:45

on the same page as we move forward in creating the world of Verra.

• 1:32:48

Those reports are super important.

• 1:32:51

Really they are.

• 1:32:52

The community does such a great job of picking out all the tidbits of information from the

• 1:32:56

players on the forums, on Twitter, on Reddit, everywhere.

• 1:32:59

They read everything.

• 1:33:00

They compile it in a huge report and there's an hour that we kind of sit down with the

• 1:33:04

developments of particular features and or systems and kind of hear from the community

• 1:33:10

team all the thoughts that you guys give about these particular subjects.

• 1:33:13

So it's very important.

• 1:33:14

Make sure you guys go and give commentary on stuff.

• 1:33:17

And most often the thing is, wow, that's already stuff we're already planning and we're already

• 1:33:20

thinking of.

• 1:33:21

So I think that's the validation that we're all on the same page.

• 1:33:24

So thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:33:26

And of course you can follow us in all places at Ashes of Creation.

• 1:33:29

We are constantly posting and giving you guys updates on a daily basis and interacting with

• 1:33:33

you and we love all your fan art.

• 1:33:35

So please keep sending them back to us.

• 1:33:38

So good.

• 1:33:39

2022 isn't just the last year.

• 1:33:42

It's gonna say like it's really cool to just look back at what we accomplished this year

• 1:33:46

in 2022 as a team.

• 1:33:47

The growth of the studio has been huge, but it's not done yet.

• 1:33:50

We're still going.

• 1:33:51

We're going strong into 2023.

• 1:33:53

So keep that in mind.

• 1:33:54

You guys check out our page and come join our family and direct others, people out there,

• 1:34:00

your favorite developers, stuff that you've seen.

• 1:34:03

Make sure to go out on Twitter and share the careers opportunities that that interrupted

• 1:34:07

because 20-23 is going to be a huge year.

• 1:34:09

Oh my gosh.

• 1:34:10

Yeah.

• 1:34:11

I have done a big thing for Steven to put together a whole like spreadsheet.

• 1:34:13

We need to have all the albums all forward.

• 1:34:15

So we've got a lot to come.

• 1:34:17

It looks super good.

• 1:34:18

And guys, you haven't seen anything yet.

• 1:34:21

2023 is going to be an unbelievable year for the studio, for the project.

• 1:34:25

We have so much to show you.

• 1:34:26

I know Margaret is just chomping at the bits to get in there and get all this stuff and

• 1:34:31

share with you guys.

• 1:34:33

And you know, honestly, I just want to comment on the fact that this development that we

• 1:34:37

have, this rapport that we've built with you guys as a community and the safety we feel

• 1:34:42

in sharing works in progress with you, sharing the development along its lifespan of development

• 1:34:48

with each of you out there is very important and near and dear to our hearts.

• 1:34:52

So keep tuning in in 2023.

• 1:34:55

Keep commenting.

• 1:34:56

Give us your feedback.

• 1:34:57

Give us your thoughts.

• 1:34:58

Give us the experiences that you guys have had in the past because it makes the potential

• 1:35:02

for Ashes of Creation to be such that much more of a great game when you guys are participating

• 1:35:07

in it.

• 1:35:08

And that's why we do these things.

• 1:35:09

That's why we invite you in.

• 1:35:10

We show you what we're working on on a monthly basis because we want you guys to give us

• 1:35:14

your feedback.

• 1:35:16

And so we cannot thank you all enough for being a part of that in 2022.

• 1:35:20

And 2023 is going to be an awesome year and we will see you in January next month.

• 1:35:26

Bye guys.

• 00:00

Welcome and salutations to you all for our glorious development update for December.

• 00:16

We're coming to you live from our studio.

• 00:19

Obviously, I'm here today with some new faces.

• 00:24

Well, not really.

• 00:25

You've seen Langford here before.

• 00:27

We had him on during, actually it was your anniversary.

• 00:29

It was.

• 00:30

It was in February of this last year.

• 00:33

He's our executive producer and of course with me as always, Steven Tariff, our one

• 00:37

and only creative director.

• 00:38

Hello.

• 00:39

And I'm Margaret Crone, your Community Marketing Lead.

• 00:44

This is different.

• 00:45

It's different, right?

• 00:46

Actually, when was the last time that we did a stream in person?

• 00:50

It was in our old office.

• 00:52

Yeah, that was like almost two years ago or something.

• 00:54

A little over actually.

• 00:56

It's crazy to see how much we've grown as a company and I mean, this is the perfect

• 01:00

segue of what this stream is about too, is that you've just-

• 01:06

It's been a crazy year of growth.

• 01:08

Not even just a year.

• 01:09

During the pandemic, we grew an immense amount.

• 01:11

Yeah, but this year especially though has been pretty considerable as well.

• 01:16

We talked a lot about showing up at the studio and giving people a peek inside.

• 01:21

You guys saw some old, those of you who've been following since like circa 2018, 2019,

• 01:26

you saw- Steven walking around with his phone.

• 01:27

With my phone kind of doing that.

• 01:29

Now this is a little bit different, higher production quality, but of course-

• 01:34

We're still keeping the casual vibes.

• 01:35

Yeah, and the whole spirit of this is to invite you guys in, let you take a look under the

• 01:39

hood, meet some of the developers and actually it's been pretty fun to do some of these interviews.

• 01:44

Yeah, Steven's already done one earlier.

• 01:46

Yeah.

• 01:47

These are a little pre-recorded obviously so that we can make it before, but we're trying

• 01:50

not to cut as much.

• 01:52

We didn't cut as much as possible.

• 01:54

Right.

• 01:55

So we're very much just trying to have pre-flowing conversations, which is really fun.

• 01:58

And I think these types of things are really good actually because obviously we do our

• 02:02

monthly updates, but not everybody has an opportunity to kind of watch each month what's

• 02:07

happening and what those updates are.

• 02:09

And this is a great way at the end of the year to kind of concisely bring in what's

• 02:13

happened and give people a one segment kind of look at all that's transpired over the

• 02:18

last 12 months.

• 02:19

Yeah.

• 02:20

And then you get a little glimpse into areas in our studio so you can kind of see that.

• 02:25

And once we do have all of our cool murals up and our art, we will definitely do a proper

• 02:29

studio tour.

• 02:30

We just want to make sure that, we'll kind of give you a glimpse early on.

• 02:34

And I know those of you who are Kickstarters, who you're going to get like a real life tour.

• 02:37

That's right.

• 02:38

Of course.

• 02:39

We want to make sure that it's really fun for you all.

• 02:42

So that's probably going to be nearer to, you know, closer for a long time.

• 02:45

Yeah, for sure.

• 02:46

Right.

• 02:47

I mean, we're talking about the kind of busyness of this year.

• 02:49

But honestly, on the production side, you know.

• 02:52

Holy cow.

• 02:53

Your team has grown immensely.

• 02:54

Well, it did.

• 02:55

That's very true.

• 02:56

Yeah.

• 02:57

It doubled in size.

• 02:58

It did.

• 02:59

It did.

• 03:00

It doubled in size.

• 03:01

And it's like super duper cool to have all these people like actually supporting the

• 03:03

team.

• 03:04

You know, like we talked about this a long time ago when we were moving from like a small

• 03:06

company to like a bigger company.

• 03:08

And we were like, we're going to need a lot of support.

• 03:10

And we're kind of there now.

• 03:11

I mean, we still got a long ways to go with a lot of like a lot of growth still to come.

• 03:15

But it's super exciting.

• 03:16

I think it's been really cool to kind of watch quarter after quarter this year as we're doing

• 03:20

the production strategy meetings and going over the milestone schedules.

• 03:24

Just seeing, oh, new face, new face, new face, new face, you know, keeps on going.

• 03:28

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

• 03:29

And we talked about annual reviews last month, how we were moving into wrapping those up.

• 03:35

And you guys have like way more people that you have to do reviews for.

• 03:37

For me, my team is a little smaller.

• 03:40

But you know, we also are supporting the development team in order like we're different people.

• 03:44

Like the people who are talking to you on, you know, like Twitter and hanging out with

• 03:49

you on Discord.

• 03:50

We're a whole other team.

• 03:52

So when we get comments that are like, why are you talking to me and not developing the

• 03:57

game?

• 03:58

These guys are hardcore working super every day, really hard and passionately as you're

• 04:03

going to see when you meet some of the developers.

• 04:05

And our leads team has grown too.

• 04:07

Oh, it's significantly.

• 04:08

We did some leadership training.

• 04:10

That was fun.

• 04:11

It was incredible.

• 04:12

We had we had a few I think we did like almost six days between the two different groups

• 04:18

of those leadership meetings.

• 04:20

And they were a lot of fun just being holed up in a room for like 10 straight hours each

• 04:25

day.

• 04:26

It made us realize like where we're lacking things, where we need to work towards and

• 04:31

things of that sort.

• 04:32

And sometimes you need that reflection.

• 04:33

And for people who aren't haven't been leaders and leadership roles before, it also helps

• 04:37

you realize like how to talk to people or how to.

• 04:39

But you know, my most important takeaway, I think, from those particular leadership meetings

• 04:44

this year was just the level of alignment that existed already between us and the leads

• 04:50

and the development.

• 04:51

It was so cool.

• 04:52

She said to us, she said to us that like the biggest problem that most other companies

• 04:55

have is the camaraderie and sharing the same vision.

• 04:58

And she's like, that's the one thing you guys don't like.

• 05:01

That was the thing.

• 05:02

It was so cool to see her come in and then go like, wow, you guys already got this.

• 05:05

Like this is crazy.

• 05:06

Like how connected you guys are.

• 05:08

I do tons of these.

• 05:09

And you know, and then she like went off on some of the like ones that she's done.

• 05:13

And it was like, oh, my gosh, like you guys are gelling so much better than my favorite.

• 05:18

My favorite thing about that whole process actually was as we were going through each

• 05:21

categories and we were filling out like scaling one through 10 numerical values of like those

• 05:27

particular things.

• 05:28

And we put all of our stickies up on each of the categories like, wow, these are all

• 05:32

really close to each other.

• 05:34

Because that means we're all we all see where our problems are and we're all on the same

• 05:38

page.

• 05:39

Absolutely.

• 05:40

I would agree with you.

• 05:41

That was really good.

• 05:42

You know, it's really cool, though.

• 05:43

The whole point of this last month of the year is that we get to kind of look back on

• 05:47

everything that we've accomplished on all the things that we have plans for the future

• 05:51

and just reflect on on kind of the course of the studio over the last year.

• 05:55

Yeah, it's really a great opportunity for us to get kind of get that back looking perspective.

• 06:01

Absolutely.

• 06:02

Yeah, on our front.

• 06:03

So like my teams are looking at like the data from social media, what things went well,

• 06:06

what things didn't, how can we, you know, engage with you all in a better way?

• 06:10

And obviously, you've seen us continually progressing over that over the years.

• 06:14

I mean, even the way we do our live streams has changed.

• 06:16

And like next year, we do we plan to make more changes.

• 06:19

So that's we're definitely keeping an eye out on like the things that you guys say to

• 06:23

us, how you interact with us.

• 06:25

And obviously, on the development front, continually progressing and making sure that we are just

• 06:29

being more efficient with our production.

• 06:30

Yeah.

• 06:31

And of course, you know, I'm you know, we're all watching kind of coverage for the game

• 06:35

from our awesome content creators out there who constantly kind of, you know, review what

• 06:41

the live stream updates are and, and everything for the game for our audience.

• 06:46

And I think one thing that can be said that all of you are going to agree with 2022 was

• 06:52

a very different pace of year for our updates.

• 06:55

I know that you guys got to see each month, you know, significant progress.

• 07:04

And of course, that comes in part due to the company scaling over this last year, which

• 07:08

was very significant.

• 07:09

But in addition, just kind of as development continues, these things will ramp almost in

• 07:16

a in a very vertical way, right?

• 07:20

And that's something that I think people get to look forward to for 2023.

• 07:23

Of course.

• 07:24

And I think, you know, a lot of times you see games that are developed and you get to

• 07:28

see it like right when it betas, which their beta is like pretty much their games ready

• 07:31

for the launch and they're just testing and polishing for us.

• 07:34

Like you're getting to follow us on this journey and making an MMO is a big feat.

• 07:39

It is much bigger than people think.

• 07:41

And I hope that you are getting a glimpse into like all the little details and minute

• 07:44

details that takes to make what it takes.

• 07:46

Cause it's a lot more effort than sometimes I think people think.

• 07:49

Right.

• 07:50

And I know that's not for everybody.

• 07:51

And that's why we always say like we make different pieces of content for different

• 07:54

types of folks.

• 07:55

Absolutely.

• 07:56

I mean this phase that we're in from a development perspective is really catered towards those

• 08:00

individuals in the community who are interested in watching the development of a game.

• 08:04

Because like you're saying, this is not just something that many players experience, but

• 08:08

also development teams don't typically think about how they're actively working on features

• 08:13

and assets that get shared live, you know, essentially.

• 08:19

I cannot think of another company that has invested this much in their community this

• 08:22

far in advance of the product.

• 08:24

Like we've been bringing this, you know, going this, going on this for three, four,

• 08:28

five years now building this community and it's amazing.

• 08:31

Yeah.

• 08:32

So amazing.

• 08:33

I was actually in a, you know, obviously if you watch our streams live, you get to see

• 08:35

all the amazing fan art that people send us.

• 08:37

And I was talking to Zach, who you're going to see in an interview following this segment.

• 08:43

And I was actually saying how crazy it is that we have all this amazing fan art.

• 08:47

And one of the walls in our hallway actually like right near us over there is where we're

• 08:51

planning to do this huge cork bar where we're going to put all the fan art.

• 08:55

So keep sending us those things.

• 08:56

We love seeing them.

• 08:58

And we've already had people making cosplay and we're definitely going to put that up

• 09:01

there.

• 09:02

So we appreciate you all so much.

• 09:04

And we hope that, you know, this to kind of segue into what you're going to be able to

• 09:07

see for the rest of today is that, you know, you're going to get a glimpse into our studio.

• 09:11

We want to set expectations that, you know, we haven't quite decorated everything yet

• 09:15

in Trepid style.

• 09:16

We are planning to do that.

• 09:17

We have some cool murals.

• 09:18

I chatted with John about like what pieces we're going to do and stuff.

• 09:21

So once those things get put up and we have a little bit more of a, you know, a vibe that

• 09:25

we want to share with you, we'll definitely give you a proper tour.

• 09:28

And we also bought some equipment, like gimbals and stuff like that.

• 09:33

You've been seeing our production quality for Extra Life increasing and obviously this.

• 09:37

So we do have plans of showing you guys those things.

• 09:40

But you know, this is going to be an opportunity for you to kind of get cozy with the developers,

• 09:45

get to know them a little bit more, not just about what the work that they work on, but

• 09:49

like them as people and kind of what they like about games.

• 09:52

And so we'll be chatting with the folks who helped with the Unreal Engine update, character

• 09:56

creator, seasons and environments, combat, gathering, and of course crafting.

• 10:01

So we hope that you enjoy that.

• 10:03

And of course we're going to look back at the year and kind of do a little year in review.

• 10:07

Bring your tissues, get ready to cry.

• 10:09

Shout out to Mike Becchio, who also made this tree.

• 10:13

Oh, I love the tree.

• 10:14

Oh my gosh.

• 10:15

The attention to detail on the little ornaments.

• 10:18

This little guy's face for the ornament is so cool.

• 10:21

Yeah, and he even made you one with him.

• 10:23

I know.

• 10:24

I love that.

• 10:25

We showed that last month.

• 10:26

This guy, the little Vec down here.

• 10:28

Yes.

• 10:29

Oh, it looks so cool.

• 10:30

They're really, really cute.

• 10:32

Maybe someday we'll have ornaments that we sell for a holiday.

• 10:35

I know.

• 10:36

That'd be great.

• 10:37

We should totally do that.

• 10:38

Yeah.

• 10:39

So before we go into everything, I do want to spotlight our comment for YouTube.

• 10:42

And of course, if you want to be spotlighted, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube on our

• 10:47

development update and also leave a comment and you could possibly be this spotlight.

• 10:53

So today's spotlight is Eric634, and they wanted to know, I'm very curious what work

• 10:59

Intrepid is doing to capture valuable data in Alpha 2.

• 11:03

Has Intrepid built dashboards and data gathering tools?

• 11:06

And I feel like this is a great- Oh man, I was going to say, who gets this

• 11:09

one?

• 11:10

Yes.

• 11:11

I feel like we're all hyped about that.

• 11:12

Yes, of course.

• 11:13

Data.

• 11:14

Yes, well, we do.

• 11:15

We love data.

• 11:16

But here is actual work going into data and collecting and game logs and stuff that we'll

• 11:22

be using down the road a lot, especially during our Alpha to help us, to guide us to understand

• 11:28

where we're meeting our marks and beating our marks and what we want to be accomplishing

• 11:32

as far as where finding the fun is.

• 11:34

Right.

• 11:35

Yeah.

• 11:36

And of course, those come along with a complimentary set of tools that are created by our developers

• 11:40

to collect that data, not just from gameplay, because that's one important aspect of it,

• 11:45

what data players are doing in the game.

• 11:47

But another part of it which completes that picture is active community engagement with

• 11:53

those players as well to tell the tale from the player's perspective, not just the actions

• 11:57

in game.

• 11:58

Right.

• 11:59

And I feel like a lot of companies and many of us probably in the community have experienced

• 12:02

this in other games, decisions get made from just data points that are numerical, right?

• 12:07

It has to be a combination.

• 12:08

But it must be a full picture that requires some investment on the company's behalf of

• 12:13

that community outreach and engagement, right?

• 12:15

Yeah.

• 12:16

And that's what I mean.

• 12:17

That's one of the reasons why I started working here is the first conversation Steven and

• 12:20

I had on the phone.

• 12:21

At Milton's, we ate lunch at Milton's.

• 12:22

Well, before that, I had a conversation with you on the phone because McPee was like, you

• 12:27

need to come work with us.

• 12:28

And I was like, I don't know.

• 12:29

And chatting with Steven really like, and I think back on it, that was like four years

• 12:33

ago from me.

• 12:34

Yeah.

• 12:35

But the reason why I was like, this is a place where I want to go is because you really understand

• 12:40

community.

• 12:41

Totally.

• 12:42

And that we are gamers also, and that we are making games for gamers.

• 12:47

And I often work in the past with people who maybe aren't gamers, and they didn't really

• 12:52

get the perspective of that.

• 12:53

Or we'd be making decisions because it's like, hey, this is the bottom line, and we're trying

• 12:56

to hit that.

• 12:57

And if you don't hit this, you're fired.

• 12:58

Yes.

• 12:59

And there's nothing more frustrating from a player's perspective when something changes

• 13:03

in the game, and it changes for the wrong reason because some value in some cell in

• 13:07

some Excel sheet says, hey, this is the data that we scrapped from player activity.

• 13:12

Yeah.

• 13:13

And so what we're doing when we're sending reports over, we're like, hey, the numbers

• 13:16

are down for this because X and Y.

• 13:18

We give some analyzation to it.

• 13:19

And I think that sometimes that part is not read or looked into as much as it should be.

• 13:24

And it's so important to not just look at data and make decisions, but also understand

• 13:28

why that data is that way in the grand scheme of things.

• 13:32

Yeah.

• 13:33

All right.

• 13:34

So we're going to head on over and meet up with our Unreal Engine and Character Creator

• 13:39

folks who Steven was interviewing.

• 13:40

So we hope that you enjoy the rest of the stream, and we will see you all on the flipside.

• 13:44

I love the fireside feel to this.

• 13:46

I just got to say it.

• 13:47

It's so good.

• 13:48

We aren't going to stop that.

• 13:49

We definitely want the genuine vibe.

• 13:51

And I think hopefully you guys all feel that way through this.

• 13:54

All of our streams have been that way.

• 13:56

We want even just these types of ones to feel that way too.

• 13:58

Yes.

• 13:59

We'll see you guys in a little bit.

• 14:05

Hey, guys.

• 14:09

I am joined by three of our awesome developers.

• 14:14

We have some of our engineers here at the studio.

• 14:16

Why don't we take a second for you guys to introduce yourself?

• 14:18

Hello.

• 14:19

I'm Clayton.

• 14:20

You might remember me from the Character Creator live stream.

• 14:23

Hi, I'm Mitch.

• 14:25

I've been here at Intrepid for coming up on four years now, and I'm a senior engineer.

• 14:30

I'm Zach.

• 14:31

You might also recognize me from the Character Creator live stream.

• 14:34

And me and Zach are also engineers.

• 14:36

Yeah, we are also...

• 14:38

Also gameplay engineers.

• 14:39

Yeah.

• 14:40

So that was a fun live stream.

• 14:42

But let's talk a little bit about earlier in the year.

• 14:45

Actually it was at the end of 2021 and into January of 2022, we showcased our transition

• 14:53

over to Unreal Engine 5.

• 14:56

That was quite an endeavor.

• 14:57

Yeah.

• 14:58

We had a lot of things going on all at once.

• 15:01

Yeah, it was a lot going on.

• 15:03

There were a lot of people who participated in kind of getting the project over to Unreal

• 15:07

5.

• 15:08

Talk to me a little bit about what that process entailed.

• 15:10

Yeah, Mitch and I were at the forefront of that, especially Mitch.

• 15:15

I was helping out a lot with the version control.

• 15:18

We have a lot of additions to our custom version of Unreal Engine that allow our designers

• 15:24

to do what they need to do and allow custom features for our engineers.

• 15:28

And getting those reconciled with all of the awesome new features from Unreal Engine 5

• 15:32

was a lot of work.

• 15:33

Right.

• 15:34

Yeah.

• 15:35

The more custom changes that occur in the engine makes that process a bit longer and

• 15:39

a bit more intricate.

• 15:40

Right?

• 15:41

Right.

• 15:42

And when we get a new version, we have to make sure that all of the previous edits we'd

• 15:46

made to Unreal Engine still apply or still are needed.

• 15:51

So we had to step through, pardon me, basically everything we had done up to that point and

• 15:58

one by one say, do we need this?

• 16:00

Do we need something else?

• 16:02

And talk to us a little bit about kind of what benefits, I know the audience obviously

• 16:07

has had an opportunity over this course of this last year to see the benefits that Unreal

• 16:10

5 bring to the project from a visual fidelity standpoint, but also a little bit behind the

• 16:16

curtain on the tech side.

• 16:17

What type of benefits come from Unreal Engine 5?

• 16:19

Well, there's a lot finer control for one, for the map and for things like separating

• 16:26

out things into, they call it world partition, to greatly increase the performance of especially

• 16:34

the client in very cluttered areas.

• 16:37

Right.

• 16:38

The large scale additions to the engine have really helped us from the regards that we

• 16:42

were already going to have this massive world and the engine, the feasibility of it just

• 16:48

improved in that regard.

• 16:50

Yeah.

• 16:51

Like one thing that a lot of people don't consider is how you bring all of the people

• 16:54

on a massive team like this to actually work on the same thing.

• 16:59

Because previously a lot of the files would be saved in larger chunks versus now in Unreal

• 17:04

Engine 5, things are saved as individual actors.

• 17:07

So people can actually access the same level simultaneously and contribute work to the

• 17:14

same features of the project or the same parts of the content without stepping on each other's

• 17:18

toes.

• 17:19

Right.

• 17:20

And from a workflow perspective, that is very nice to have because previously you would

• 17:24

have to wait as a handoff for some particular checkout to be checked back in before you

• 17:29

could start working.

• 17:30

Yeah, we'd lock each other out as well as the environment team very often.

• 17:35

Yeah.

• 17:36

That was a big problem.

• 17:37

Yeah, the workflow side for the environment team was a big relief.

• 17:41

And then finding out that someone had something you needed to make a specific engineering

• 17:45

change and then having to wait a couple days at the worst case to be able to access the

• 17:53

file.

• 17:54

Now you can just work on the same thing.

• 17:56

It's beautiful.

• 17:57

And tell me a little bit about kind of some of the performance related benefits that come

• 18:01

on the asset side, things like Nanite or just the visual fidelity of the world with things

• 18:06

like Lumen.

• 18:07

A lot of people hear terms like Lumen and Nanite and they just see that it looks awesome,

• 18:12

but you don't realize that these are also actually just fundamental changes to how the

• 18:17

graphics are handled under the hood because with Lumen, so previously a lot of people

• 18:25

are familiar with hardware accelerated ray tracing and...

• 18:29

So many people are familiar with that.

• 18:30

Yeah, it's simulating...

• 18:31

In the audience especially.

• 18:32

Yeah, it's simulating global illumination and shadows and like...

• 18:35

Well, it was a really big thing whenever graphics card companies were coming out and saying,

• 18:40

you know, this is going to be the new amazing tech and they were showing off...

• 18:43

I remember that.

• 18:44

We tested some of that with Tristan, I think back in 2017 or 18.

• 18:48

And we had little side by sides and watched the performance.

• 18:50

They're like, oh, ray tracing on, ray tracing off.

• 18:52

And one thing that Lumen does is it allows you to actually simulate ray tracing on the

• 18:58

software side.

• 18:59

So, well, it's not simulating ray tracing.

• 19:00

They're solving the same problem with a different solution with software simulated global illumination.

• 19:05

Instead of hardware simulated.

• 19:06

So now it's more accessible to people.

• 19:09

And that's why Lumen looks so amazing.

• 19:12

And that's actually one of the reasons why in early in the year when we showcased the

• 19:16

video transitioning over to Unreal Engine 5, we used that cave area to kind of show

• 19:23

the benefits of that global illumination bouncing, cascading off of the environment.

• 19:27

Yeah, exactly.

• 19:28

And you combine that with the virtualized geometry.

• 19:31

Yeah.

• 19:32

And it's a win.

• 19:33

Yeah.

• 19:34

Not to mention, obviously, the performance gains as well.

• 19:36

Because Nanite is per pixel geometry, which is amazing.

• 19:40

Like for large worlds, a lot of the times you have massive textures that are considered

• 19:46

virtualized.

• 19:47

And this is like a very common practice previously for handling giant textures as you virtualize

• 19:51

the texture, which means that it's now streaming from disk instead of all being loaded into

• 19:55

the memory at once.

• 19:57

And Nanite now provides that for geometry so you can stream in the geometry more granularly.

• 20:01

Which is huge.

• 20:02

Yeah, it's a pixel geometry, so it's pretty incredible.

• 20:05

That's very cool.

• 20:06

Now obviously it doesn't end with Unreal Engine 5.

• 20:10

As the community is aware, starting next month we're actually going to be making the move

• 20:15

over to 5.1.

• 20:16

Yeah.

• 20:17

And talk to me a little bit about what that process is going to entail and also what types

• 20:21

of benefit it's going to bring.

• 20:22

It should be a fairly smooth process, smoother than our initial...

• 20:28

Initially we did the pre-release version of 5.0.

• 20:30

And that was a little rough.

• 20:32

But 5.1 should be better.

• 20:35

And we're looking forward to a lot of the performance gains, especially with things

• 20:38

like they're partitioning the nav mesh along the same lines as the world partition.

• 20:43

And talk to us a little bit about what partitioning nav mesh means.

• 20:46

It means that different servers and different clients will have to can load partial sets

• 20:53

of the nav mesh instead of the whole nav mesh.

• 20:56

And the nav mesh is...

• 20:57

So it's a lot less memory.

• 20:58

And the nav mesh is essentially for people who don't know.

• 21:01

That is how NPCs path around the world, essentially.

• 21:04

Correct.

• 21:05

And that's how they know where collision is and what they can move around and how they

• 21:08

get to a target location.

• 21:09

Exactly.

• 21:10

Don't walk through the tree, walk around it.

• 21:12

Right.

• 21:13

Absolutely.

• 21:14

And talk to me a little bit about the...

• 21:15

I know artists are very excited about 5.1.

• 21:17

Why is that?

• 21:18

Well, a lot of the features that were still in a beta form for the engine are now coming

• 21:24

online as more performant versions or more reliable versions.

• 21:29

So the entire studio will be able to move over to DirectX 12 for our primary graphics

• 21:35

API, which that's going to save the artist a lot of headache because a lot of the time

• 21:40

somebody will be like, hey, this looks bad or I'm getting these weird glitches on the

• 21:43

textures or I'm crashing.

• 21:45

And now a lot of it's just coming into maturity with 5.1.

• 21:49

And they're also incorporating Nanite as part, as I understand it, with the foliage actors

• 21:54

as well.

• 21:55

Yeah.

• 21:56

Yeah.

• 21:57

There's some talk of that.

• 21:58

Yeah.

• 21:59

I know tech art's a little excited about that.

• 22:00

Yeah.

• 22:01

Yeah.

• 22:02

They've been waiting for it for a long time.

• 22:03

Yeah.

• 22:04

Yeah.

• 22:05

I remember they were talking to me about it almost six months ago, I think.

• 22:10

Awesome.

• 22:11

So after we showcased our move to Unreal 5 earlier this year, we had a stream about

• 22:17

our character creator.

• 22:19

And this was something that for a long time we had been talking about kind of our goals

• 22:25

2017, what are some of the character creators that we've seen, that we've loved in other

• 22:31

games?

• 22:32

Talk to me a little bit about your experience as a gamer first.

• 22:36

What are some of the things that you look for in a character creator and why you were

• 22:39

excited to bring something a little bit that level and beyond potentially with ours?

• 22:43

For me, it's the freedom of expression to make the character that you want to make without

• 22:50

the limitations that sometimes seem kind of arbitrary that developers put in.

• 22:55

I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate, the creator.

• 22:57

I thought that was a lovely one that really made me feel like I was in a fantasy realm

• 23:05

crafting my own character.

• 23:06

As well from the purely tech side of Black Desert Online, I really enjoyed the more of

• 23:14

the tactile, the customized character.

• 23:18

The direct manipulation.

• 23:19

Exactly.

• 23:20

Yeah.

• 23:21

For me, it's usually, can I be green?

• 23:24

Can he be green?

• 23:26

Yes.

• 23:27

Oh, it's like a lizard folk or an orc?

• 23:30

I'm just kidding.

• 23:31

All of the above.

• 23:32

All of the above.

• 23:33

You know, actually on that note, that's a great segue into one of my favorite character

• 23:38

creator stories, which was actually Oblivion back in, I think it was 2006, Elder Scrolls.

• 23:44

It wasn't like an amazing character creator, but they had a lot of options and you were

• 23:47

able to sort of manipulate it in a way that you could push the limits by dragging one

• 23:52

slider back and one slider the other way.

• 23:54

And I would always make my person like red or green just for fun.

• 24:00

Of course, we don't allow for that in our character creator.

• 24:02

We talk about only allowing positive results or adding constraints that you can have a

• 24:08

high degree of control while making sure that the final result is going to look good no

• 24:13

matter what.

• 24:15

And of course, good can be somewhat subjective.

• 24:18

Yeah, for sure.

• 24:19

But I want to make Igor.

• 24:21

Yes, exactly.

• 24:22

But whatever you see yourself as in this fantasy role playing setting, you should be able to

• 24:28

make that in the character creator and express yourself.

• 24:30

Well, I thought, you know, the work that you guys did and that the artists did with bringing

• 24:36

kind of the first iteration of Ash's character creator to life was really phenomenal.

• 24:41

I know it got a lot of positivity and response from the community.

• 24:46

Talk to me a little bit about that process.

• 24:47

What did that entail?

• 24:50

That was a whole lot of R&D at first.

• 24:52

Yeah.

• 24:53

Yeah.

• 24:54

See if it was, I guess, possible within the engine we're working in, especially like what

• 24:58

we wanted for it.

• 24:59

Yeah.

• 25:00

Because we had a lot of demands that we couldn't really point to in other games and be like,

• 25:05

let's just do that, you know.

• 25:06

Yeah.

• 25:07

It was a lot of bespoke functionality that was novel to Ash's.

• 25:11

Right.

• 25:12

And it's one thing to make it work in the character creator.

• 25:16

And it's a completely different thing to take the character that you made in the character

• 25:20

creator and make that work in game.

• 25:22

Right.

• 25:23

And make it performant.

• 25:24

Mm-hmm.

• 25:25

And that's one thing that Zach played a huge role in was actually getting the assets gameplay

• 25:28

ready by threading the skeletal mesh merge process.

• 25:32

That was pretty awesome.

• 25:33

Yeah.

• 25:34

It wouldn't really be possible unless we did a lot of heavy tech in the background.

• 25:38

Yeah.

• 25:39

To make it feasible.

• 25:40

Very cool.

• 25:41

And then another aspect, obviously, is the tech you guys worked on doesn't just facilitate

• 25:47

the front-facing character creator for the player, but it's also something that can be

• 25:51

utilized internally as a tool when creating NPCs, correct?

• 25:55

Yeah.

• 25:56

When we were in the ideation phase of character creator, we always thought that it'd be great

• 26:01

to have a customization suite for design so they can go in and make quest NPCs, they can

• 26:07

populate the world with their custom characters, they can go in and give life almost to each

• 26:12

individual NPC if they wanted to.

• 26:14

Yeah.

• 26:15

And really make them unique and customized.

• 26:16

Yeah.

• 26:17

And designers, of course, love having that tool available to them.

• 26:18

Oh, they love it.

• 26:19

Because they don't have to go and make specific requests necessarily to character on a particular

• 26:25

type of NPC.

• 26:27

They can just jump into the tool itself and create those things.

• 26:31

And of course, that technology isn't just restricted to humanoid type NPCs, but also

• 26:36

can be able to leverage across creature creators as well, potentially.

• 26:40

Is that true?

• 26:41

Well-

• 26:42

Big plans for that.

• 26:43

Yeah.

• 26:44

Yeah.

• 26:45

So, yeah, it's still very much in the oven, but yeah, we want to leverage a lot of the

• 26:50

technology that we made for the character creator for things like animal husbandry and

• 26:57

for populating the world with unique variations of creatures as well.

• 27:02

Yeah.

• 27:03

Absolutely.

• 27:04

We're working towards that.

• 27:05

We're going to leverage that tech as much as possible.

• 27:06

Yeah.

• 27:07

Exactly.

• 27:08

Get the most out of it.

• 27:09

Yeah.

• 27:10

In creating the character creator, one of our biggest points of emphasis is while we're

• 27:12

making this is thinking about how it can be reused in other parts of the project.

• 27:16

Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:17

As long as I can edit the size of my pug's eye.

• 27:22

To make them really oversized.

• 27:25

Talk to me a little bit about what...

• 27:27

We obviously talked a little bit about one of the aspects of the future uses for the

• 27:31

character creator with creatures potentially, but what are some of the other things you're

• 27:34

excited about to continue working on getting the character creator to a point where it's

• 27:40

going to be live for launch?

• 27:43

What are some of those features?

• 27:44

I know we took a lot of feedback from the community when they gave us responses during

• 27:48

the discussions thread about what they're looking for.

• 27:51

They talked a little bit about more hair options, more abilities to do tattoos, perhaps even

• 27:56

to customize those things.

• 27:57

What are some of the things you guys are excited to add?

• 28:00

Yeah.

• 28:01

So one thing that I'm really excited to work on next is the hair customization.

• 28:04

Well, a lot of the functionality for the hair customization is there, but I think that you

• 28:08

saw in the demo, it was still using sliders.

• 28:11

We really want to expand how much you can customize individually on the hair and also

• 28:16

incorporate that same mechanic of direct manipulation so that you're dragging different parts of

• 28:22

the hair or actually configuring it that way.

• 28:25

Especially with longer braids and jewelry and more of the granularity you can use to

• 28:32

really customize your character.

• 28:33

Yeah, we saw a lot of commentary about that.

• 28:35

And of course, players, as you guys understand, those might not always be available at the

• 28:40

inception of a particular character, but might be unlocked through achievements in game that

• 28:45

you can then revisit the character creator through salon services and nodes and start

• 28:50

to customize further as your character's history matures within the world, right?

• 28:55

Yeah.

• 28:56

That's one thing that I'm super excited for is the gameplay integration of the character

• 29:00

creator in real time and how we integrate different customization features and tie that

• 29:06

into your character progression.

• 29:08

I can't wait to see the different scars that I can unlock from a deadly battle.

• 29:14

Like reputation-based tattoos.

• 29:16

Yeah, exactly.

• 29:17

Yeah, I've never seen that before.

• 29:21

Going into the tattoo parlor in the Dunir node and getting a special Dunir tattoo.

• 29:26

Oh my God.

• 29:27

It would be also cool as a feature if you're capable of inspecting other players' customization

• 29:32

options and what they represent.

• 29:33

So if you do add the scar from the dragon fight, another person can see, ah, they have

• 29:38

a scar and it's from that dragon fight.

• 29:40

Exactly.

• 29:41

Yeah, that is super cool.

• 29:42

There's a wealth of gameplay options that we're going to give designers to be able to

• 29:47

populate the world with quests and reputation and things like that.

• 29:50

Yeah, that's super cool.

• 29:51

Very, very cool.

• 29:52

Well, awesome.

• 29:53

You know, I guess one final question that I would have for you guys is, as someone who

• 30:01

takes a long time to create your character, do you generally just randomize and go or

• 30:08

do you sit there and fiddle with it?

• 30:11

I know that in an MMO setting, sometimes when you're making that character, and obviously

• 30:15

this is a service we've talked about offering, is prior to launch, players will be able to

• 30:19

access the character creator and prep for that launch time because you want to get into

• 30:22

the server as quickly as possible.

• 30:23

You don't want to lose any time, right?

• 30:25

And trying to progress.

• 30:26

But do you guys like to fiddle with the character creator, spend a long time doing it, customizing

• 30:30

everything or do you just randomize and go?

• 30:33

Well, at first I do both actually.

• 30:35

Really?

• 30:36

At first I randomize and go and I give the game, I'm super picky, I give the game an

• 30:40

hour and if I'm not captured in an hour, I get a refund.

• 30:45

Yes.

• 30:46

A lot of people do that.

• 30:47

Then I spend two hours in the character creator making my real character.

• 30:52

Okay, so first you vet the game, then if you like it, you spend the time.

• 30:55

Right.

• 30:56

What about you guys?

• 30:57

Yeah, no, so normally I'll randomize to find a starting point that I like and then I'll

• 31:01

customize from there.

• 31:04

But normally I don't actually put a lot of time into the character creator.

• 31:08

Really?

• 31:09

Oh my gosh, the sacrilege.

• 31:11

I'm just kidding.

• 31:12

I spend a lot of time in character creators and if there's ever an option to mod it, like

• 31:17

Skyrim, I'll add even more customization options like modded Skyrim just so I can have full

• 31:24

control and if it's not a time gate or I'm waiting to get into the game, if I have a

• 31:31

single player game, I will spend a full play session.

• 31:34

Oh yeah.

• 31:35

Just tweaking everything.

• 31:36

Yeah, I generally, if I'm starting a game, especially an MMO and I know that, I mean

• 31:42

in the past the MMOs that I've experienced, it was rare to kind of visit that character

• 31:45

creator again and get to change things so I would spend a lot of time building out the

• 31:51

character, customizing things.

• 31:52

I don't know, I'm kind of a guppy for the role play side.

• 31:55

One of the nice things that Clayton did was he worked on a really nice randomization feature.

• 32:01

Oh yeah, absolutely.

• 32:04

Like if you're not one of those players, like me, that spends a lot of time in it, you can

• 32:09

just randomize through and you're going to get amazing results every time.

• 32:14

And Clayton did a really good job with just the breadth of the customization with the

• 32:19

randomization and then you can always use that to go off of it.

• 32:23

Yeah, I was having a fun time just kind of spamming that randomize button and just watching

• 32:27

the different shapes and figures and faces just roll through the character creator.

• 32:32

That was actually pretty cool.

• 32:33

Yeah, seeing how many different ones you could generate in a short amount of time.

• 32:36

That's neat.

• 32:37

Yeah.

• 32:38

And that's also, that's going to be at the forefront of our content designer's ability

• 32:42

to populate the world with convincing good looking characters is a decent looking randomizing

• 32:47

feature.

• 32:48

Awesome.

• 32:49

Yeah.

• 32:50

Very cool.

• 32:51

Well guys, thank you for taking the time to chat with me and our audience.

• 32:53

We're going to have a fun little segment coming up next.

• 33:04

And welcome over into the environment and season side.

• 33:08

I am joined by three absolutely awesome members of the team and Tristan, you want to introduce

• 33:13

yourself?

• 33:14

I'm Tristan Snogress.

• 33:15

I'm the lead environment artist here at Intrepid Studios.

• 33:17

Absolutely.

• 33:18

We also have Brian Gans, lead tech artist.

• 33:21

And of course the amazing.

• 33:23

I'm Kat Nary and I am the audio lead at Intrepid.

• 33:26

Yay.

• 33:27

So we actually pulled off some fun feats this year and showcasing to the community some

• 33:32

pretty exciting stuff.

• 33:33

One of which was the seasons showcase.

• 33:37

And we did that in the Riverlands biome, is that right?

• 33:40

Correct.

• 33:41

That was the first biome that we actually implemented the actual tech that Brian and

• 33:45

Hal and James actually worked on.

• 33:48

And talk to me a little bit about that tech.

• 33:50

What did it entail?

• 33:51

We're just touching every single component of Unreal where a lot of things had to be

• 33:57

harmonized like the cloud, the volume cloud stuff and the particle effects for the rain

• 34:01

and the snow.

• 34:02

I think I mentioned it in the livestream for the thing.

• 34:07

There's so many parts to it.

• 34:08

I mean it was amazing to see.

• 34:10

We talked about it during of course the demonstration that I've never personally experienced any

• 34:13

type of tech like that in an MMORPG before where you actually get to see the biome change

• 34:18

in front of your eyes on a seasonal basis.

• 34:20

How difficult was that to achieve and how much did moving over to Unreal 5, we just

• 34:25

talked about in the previous segment, moving over to Unreal 5 help with that?

• 34:28

I think it helped with it a lot.

• 34:29

I think a lot of the cases in Unreal, the solve you're looking for is a button.

• 34:34

A button press or a check block or something but there are a lot of different systems to

• 34:39

harmonize and gameplay implications that and it's probably one of the hardest things is

• 34:44

the planning out of how to start it so that the whole approach is future proof and does

• 34:49

everything you want it to do or might want it to do.

• 34:53

And that of course has implications on the audio side because as an environment changes

• 34:57

of course the ambience doesn't sound the same.

• 34:59

Those things have to, those tracks have to change.

• 35:01

How was that implementing?

• 35:02

I mean first doing season tech is something I wanted to do for like 20 years in the game

• 35:07

industry so when I got to see what the artists were doing I was really excited to work on

• 35:11

this.

• 35:12

You know you would think that there's just four seasons and so you make your four sounds

• 35:17

of summer, winter, fall, spring but we're going to go high tech and we're going to do

• 35:22

eight variations that seamlessly go through.

• 35:25

Ideally you won't hear the changes because it'll be so seamless and they'll just kind

• 35:28

of go through.

• 35:29

Yeah it's something you don't get to see in the live streams right now because you do changes

• 35:32

in 30 seconds.

• 35:33

Right.

• 35:34

So when we do the sounds for them and as the audio team continues to grow like right now

• 35:37

I went out and recorded the rare rain in San Diego a couple of weeks ago.

• 35:41

Oh so good, I love listening to that.

• 35:42

Yeah so that kind of stuff gets into the game and as it grows we'll go do more field recording.

• 35:48

You know we try to make as much custom sounds as we can that fit the environment that we

• 35:51

see.

• 35:52

And I of course haven't received yet your itinerary of all the places in the world you

• 35:54

plan to travel to.

• 35:55

To collect those things.

• 35:56

To collect, yeah yeah.

• 35:57

I will be asking for reimbursement.

• 35:58

I can't wait when I go to Fiji and you know.

• 35:59

Yeah.

• 36:00

I'm going to Fiji and yes.

• 36:02

Yes exactly.

• 36:03

I am more than happy to travel all over the world.

• 36:05

To collect the perfect references for the different types of assets.

• 36:08

Of course, yeah, Fulver Graham Tree maybe we can do that as well.

• 36:10

Talk to me a little bit about that.

• 36:11

What were some of the inspirations?

• 36:12

I know James did a lot of work on the seasonal showcase for those assets.

• 36:16

How do you guys kind of derive what you're going to fill those biomes with?

• 36:20

So first it was just trying to find some real world references that we could take as you

• 36:25

know inspiration.

• 36:26

Then of course we do get concept images derived from that to add the fantasy flair that we're

• 36:31

going to have.

• 36:32

Right?

• 36:33

So then you know we want to do real world but we're also doing high fantasy.

• 36:35

Yeah.

• 36:36

What kind of elements to it.

• 36:37

So they chose Wales as essentially the biome for this which is basically like where my

• 36:43

family is from.

• 36:44

Right.

• 36:45

So I was like alright we're going with this.

• 36:46

I remember seeing your shots that you took while you were in Wales and you were posting

• 36:50

them all throughout the art channels.

• 36:51

And you're like alright this is great for this.

• 36:53

This is great for this.

• 36:54

Then when we need more references I called up my mom and was like hey you want to go

• 36:58

out to the garden and take some photos?

• 37:01

They want to know what the ground looks like during winter.

• 37:03

I was like I can get you that right now.

• 37:04

Do you fill out any Jira tasks for her when you ask her to do that stuff?

• 37:06

Yes she's still asking for her money.

• 37:08

We'll figure it out.

• 37:09

She's retired.

• 37:10

She's okay.

• 37:11

But yeah so then we moved on to the desert biome after that.

• 37:15

And so that wasn't necessarily seasonal tech implementation right there but we had a whole

• 37:19

bunch of stuff to kind of think about how we wanted to approach seasonal tech from a

• 37:24

very different environment.

• 37:25

Right especially like the one that's desolate as a desert.

• 37:28

Right and so how do we make that environment change over four biomes and make it feel like

• 37:32

unique and interesting and different but also not just do a traditional desert.

• 37:37

So we'd like to make like the winters maybe slightly different that you might see in a

• 37:41

desert.

• 37:42

I know we talked a little bit about that.

• 37:43

And there's some cool stuff that we've done for things that might come down the line but

• 37:48

one of the things that we wanted to do was also out here in Anza, Borrego we get the

• 37:52

desert super blooms which is where everything turns into like this beautiful painting of

• 37:57

color.

• 37:58

It's unbelievable.

• 37:59

Yeah the flower blooms are just mind-blowing.

• 38:01

Beautiful.

• 38:02

So there's some stuff that we have been trying to make happen that is going to probably blow

• 38:06

people's minds even more than we've already done with the river lane.

• 38:10

Absolutely and I think that people are gonna be really excited to see that stuff.

• 38:13

I think just the glimpse that we got actually at the desert area that desert biome there's

• 38:17

already I mean just such beauty and that you did with the oasis and the tech across the

• 38:22

rolling winds over the sand dunes.

• 38:25

Talk to me a little bit about how you kind of accomplished the wins for the sand dunes.

• 38:29

There's a couple of techniques I think a lot of times the environment artists will take

• 38:33

a stab at what they want to do and then I'll pick it up and work it and massage it in a

• 38:37

little bit better with some of the systems that are in there already.

• 38:41

Make it a little more functional than what an artist might do.

• 38:44

And perform it.

• 38:45

But yeah they know they have an idea what they want in their eye and I'm just like okay

• 38:49

I get it and let's kind of use that in a particle effect to do that as well and it's kind of

• 38:56

like use a different system but in the same way that they're envisioning.

• 38:59

I try to cover like all the different things Unreal can do like the grass, the foliage,

• 39:03

and the virtual textures and everything and there's a lot of ways to do things but there's

• 39:08

often the best way to do something and it's kind of like put that in there.

• 39:12

The heat distortion was done one way so let's put that in the particle system.

• 39:16

And they all kind of layer on top of each other these different systems that you're

• 39:20

utilizing.

• 39:21

Yeah if you take one out then the whole scene just kind of falls apart.

• 39:23

Loses that full vibe.

• 39:25

And now of course you know we have certain types of weather events that are of course

• 39:28

going to impact audio as well for these areas like we talked a bit about one of the boss

• 39:33

designs that are intended for the desert biome having this kind of whirlwind of sandstorm

• 39:39

and when players get inside of those things how does that kind of change audio?

• 39:43

Yeah no Brian's been awesome to work with because he's built a lot of systems that can

• 39:46

drive the audio dynamically so I'll go out and record various levels of sounds and then

• 39:52

they'll procedurally change in the game to really make you feel like you're in there.

• 39:56

Even the same with the trees if you go under the trees right now with the wind you know

• 39:59

the little leaves will kind of go up and down with the wind parameters that Brian set up

• 40:04

and it's really really neat and really interactive.

• 40:06

And not just the winds I noticed that as you know I kind of move through the game and I

• 40:09

get close to some of these particular foliage actors I hear birds chirping or you know some

• 40:15

type of cue that just happens in the background.

• 40:17

The birds are super cool too because they're going to be assigned to certain trees and

• 40:21

you know sometimes you'll find that really cool bird you want to sit under it and then

• 40:24

sometimes you'll find a bird that maybe you don't want to be near and so maybe you'll

• 40:27

chop down that tree and take away his home or move away.

• 40:30

Oh no that's terrible.

• 40:31

That's quite genius.

• 40:32

That is actually very genius.

• 40:33

I noticed also you know as we were kind of showcasing some of the ranger footage that

• 40:41

design and the combat engineers have been working on there was that almost pollen like

• 40:47

fog that was just throughout the level that you know created that almost morning dust

• 40:52

look in that area.

• 40:53

Yeah one of our newer artists John Winnick has actually been implementing all of those

• 40:57

kind of features to I mean that's just another atmospheric element that completely adds to

• 41:01

the mood.

• 41:02

Right.

• 41:03

And those are seasonal as well right like I mean those are going to be specific attuned

• 41:06

to specific seasons so.

• 41:08

And not just seasons also weather right you know so you might get a foggy morning you

• 41:12

know there's been several pretty amazing games recently that I've played that have some of

• 41:16

these elements and you know that really changes the vibe of when you're running around like

• 41:20

you know one day to another is completely different.

• 41:23

And that's a great you know point like we're all gamers we all play games in our spare

• 41:27

time that's why we're in this industry is because we love games we like seeing the smiles

• 41:30

on people's faces when we make something that excites them.

• 41:33

How much inspiration do you draw from the games that you play?

• 41:38

That's a tough question because there's so many different types of games that you play

• 41:41

obviously and I don't really stick to one.

• 41:44

And none of them have a shortage of awe-inspiring feats that their dead teams accomplish as

• 41:47

well.

• 41:48

Yeah and you know like for me in particular Red Dead Redemption.

• 41:52

Oh it's such a great game.

• 41:53

It's an amazing game where I could just ride around and enjoy the nature all day.

• 41:57

Or the shenanigans that the horses have.

• 41:59

All the little things you know.

• 42:01

But like yeah like that specific game has a lot of atmospheric elements for when I'm

• 42:05

running around I just really enjoy and not just the visual elements but then the sound

• 42:09

does kick in and sound to me is one of the things that really truly sells like a movie

• 42:14

or a game.

• 42:15

Oh yeah.

• 42:16

Especially the music and such like that but like if the audio doesn't feel right then

• 42:20

you know.

• 42:21

Oh yeah absolutely I mean that was something that was big for me not just in gaming but

• 42:26

like I find in many different forms of entertainment especially media, television, movies like

• 42:31

that that the soundtrack the music that accompanies what's happening more often than not elicits

• 42:39

stronger emotions from me than the visuals or the dialogue.

• 42:42

My goal for Vero Audio is you should be able to find a nice little safe place to sit down

• 42:47

and leave it on in the background as a nice ambient audio generator and you can go work

• 42:52

on your thesis or whatever else you're working on or just nice little go to bed to it and

• 42:57

I want you to like feel like you're always in there.

• 42:59

That's what we do.

• 43:00

10 hour loops of Vero.

• 43:01

Yes remember we used to talk about that so much.

• 43:02

We should totally throw up like a YouTube loop that people can just leave on.

• 43:07

Oh that would be a great idea.

• 43:09

That's one way to fall asleep.

• 43:10

Yeah absolutely.

• 43:11

So as we kind of you know look forward into 2023 what are some of the areas that you guys

• 43:18

have on your excited list of things to tackle right?

• 43:23

What's the biome you're looking most forward to?

• 43:26

So the redwood forest is something that we're aiming to push into.

• 43:29

Oh my god.

• 43:30

We've already kind of started pushing into it slowly but you know just being surrounded

• 43:35

by giant massive trees that just don't seem to be making any sense of why they exist.

• 43:40

Like when you're walking through a redwood forest in real life like up in Northern California

• 43:44

just it's awe inspiring and there's a lot of cool seasonal stuff that we can do with

• 43:50

that.

• 43:51

Yeah I was talking to design a little bit about group gameplay dynamics when we instituted

• 43:57

the gathering tech and having specific assets that require multiple players in order to

• 44:02

actually chop down a particular tree.

• 44:04

Yeah I don't think you can really take down a redwood with a simple.

• 44:07

That little tiny axe.

• 44:09

Ah six swings we're good.

• 44:11

We'll see how that plays out.

• 44:12

That's going to be an interesting feature to actually make work because from the tech

• 44:15

side of things I mean I guess we'll be talking more about that later on today but harvesting

• 44:21

tech is going to play into that.

• 44:22

Right and it's relevant of course to seasons because not just the ambience and the audio

• 44:27

changes but the assets that are available and spawn those change as well and those have

• 44:31

actual economic implications when it comes to the world economy.

• 44:35

So yeah that's super cool.

• 44:39

Talk to me a little bit about kind of how you blend the work between setting up these

• 44:45

zones these biomes for the seasonal aspects and working with design to determine which

• 44:50

assets spawn when, how it's affected potentially by time of day and a little bit about you

• 44:58

know working with design on setting up these biomes filled with different types of gatherables

• 45:04

essentially and how it's affected by season right?

• 45:07

They have cycles essentially.

• 45:09

There's going to be different types of plants, different types of foliage that you can harvest

• 45:12

during certain times of the year.

• 45:14

Brian I guess you're probably going to be plugging that tech into all the harvestable

• 45:18

assets in the sense that you know you might get a certain plant in winter but you're not

• 45:21

going to get it during the time where weather might affect that.

• 45:24

And we saw a little bit about that not just with the assets but also with the creatures

• 45:28

as well.

• 45:29

Correct.

• 45:30

Yeah and what went into making the creatures kind of change you know with the seasons?

• 45:35

It actually is not as difficult as it sounds.

• 45:37

Wait don't say that it's very difficult.

• 45:40

Very complex we can't give away the secrets.

• 45:43

It's probably hard for the guys at Epic to like put it on the engine but we just kind

• 45:47

of know every material every object has access to wind, direction, speed, time of year,

• 45:52

time of day.

• 45:53

It's up to the artist to just kind of tap into these accessible variables and say make

• 45:57

this color and the summer a different color in winter.

• 46:02

It gets complicated when you start putting in more dynamics with like we want a storm

• 46:06

in this area.

• 46:07

Just so we move across the world and has gameplay implications and everyone all the clients

• 46:12

know if they're in a storm or not and to that whole process of working with designers on

• 46:17

how to like integrate what we can do what they want to do.

• 46:22

I have to have like here's the ambitious goal what everyone's talking about but we've got

• 46:26

a fallback just in case.

• 46:28

I need like a fallback plan.

• 46:30

Bill of achievability.

• 46:32

Push the really ambitious thing that's gonna blow everyone's like, blow the socks off.

• 46:37

And we usually hit the ambitious ones though.

• 46:39

Yeah.

• 46:40

Somehow some way it always works out.

• 46:41

Yeah.

• 46:42

Right.

• 46:43

And then of course you have to think about kind of all of these things from an audio

• 46:45

perspective where essentially you're layering on these different sounds and when does it

• 46:50

become too much if I've got a storm coming I'm in combat with ten creatures I've got

• 46:54

players around me with abilities and effects and I got dynamic music.

• 46:58

A great code team and we're also using audio kinetics audio engine both those things with

• 47:03

the code team and the audio engine will allow us to do some really cool dynamic mixing that

• 47:08

we'll get to choose what needs to be in focus when you're in the storm you're gonna hear

• 47:12

the storm but if combat's coming on and bigger things that need to be focused on those are

• 47:15

gonna kind of come up while the storm will go down.

• 47:17

So it's gonna be all kinds of fire toys like that.

• 47:19

That's awesome.

• 47:20

That is awesome.

• 47:22

Well with that being said we are going to be moving over into our discussion about combat

• 47:29

and I want to thank you guys for joining us and chatting a little bit about the seasons

• 47:33

and what it takes to actually make this stuff exist in game.

• 47:36

So awesome job guys and we will be seeing you in just a second.

• 47:48

And we are back with a fun little discussion with some of our awesome developers who are

• 47:55

involved in the development of our combat and classes and special effects all the fun

• 48:00

stuff that makes an MMO an MMO.

• 48:04

First thing I want to ask is for you guys each to introduce yourself.

• 48:07

Start with you Jim.

• 48:08

I'm Jim I am the lead effect art.

• 48:10

Yes.

• 48:11

Trad?

• 48:12

Yep I'm Trad Thompson I'm a senior combat designer on the project.

• 48:16

Awesome.

• 48:17

I'm Keenan I'm a gameplay engineer mostly work on combat and movement.

• 48:22

So we have shown some fun stuff this year and I think the audience of course would agree

• 48:28

that the look at Ashes development since the start of 2022 has ramped up in a very fun

• 48:36

and engaging way for the community to kind of take a look at how development works here.

• 48:40

You guys all are involved in a process of course that is very near and dear to many

• 48:44

players hearts which is the identity of their archetypes the abilities they have access

• 48:49

to those classes how they interact from a role perspective with combat in general in

• 48:53

the game.

• 48:54

What are some of the inspirations what are some games that you guys have played in the

• 48:58

past that kind of helped to influence decisions that we make on Ashes?

• 49:03

You know that's a good question because if you're playing an MMO you're going to have

• 49:07

to think of kind of the big players out there and I got thousands of hours in World of Warcraft

• 49:13

and that will definitely influence how I shape kind of some of the iconic imagery the colors

• 49:18

and shapes.

• 49:19

I think really a lot of that motivation comes back to the feedback I get from the community

• 49:24

and from the developers.

• 49:25

Like Tread is always kind of saying hey man what about this shape or this size or I'm

• 49:30

thinking about this mechanic.

• 49:32

So I guess it's a circular.

• 49:34

Absolutely I mean all of us have been experiencing MMOs I mean we're all MMO gamers that's part

• 49:39

of the question that I ask in the final interview when you come on board and you're like what

• 49:42

are your favorite MMOs?

• 49:43

The real qualifying.

• 49:44

Yes the qualifying question.

• 49:45

Tread what are some MMOs or games in general that you draw inspiration from?

• 49:50

There are so many I would have to narrow that down to.

• 49:53

I'll pick an MMO since that's the most relevant but I'd say the most influential MMO on me

• 49:59

on just you know as a gamer has been Dark Age of Pamela.

• 50:02

I remember actually our interview when you asked me about like my MMO experience that

• 50:07

was the one I chose to talk about.

• 50:09

I loved Daok it was such a fun game.

• 50:11

Yeah that was really the game I think that really well that and RuneScape if you qualify

• 50:18

RuneScape as an MMO that one as well but like Dark Age was really where I think I realized

• 50:23

the magic of an MMO and it really is what got me into like open world PvP and that's

• 50:29

what really excites me about this project is bringing that kind of thing back you know

• 50:33

just that really spontaneous gameplay that you run into out in the field and you just

• 50:37

never know what to expect.

• 50:38

Absolutely yeah what about you Keenan?

• 50:41

For me I think it's probably WoW.

• 50:45

Specifically the re-release of vanilla WoW classic WoW I thought that was a phenomenal

• 50:52

experience I actually never played in vanilla so when I tried.

• 50:55

Oh really?

• 50:56

So that was your first time with classic WoW?

• 50:57

That was my first time with classic and I feel like it brought back some of the old

• 51:01

school adventure that a lot of us have been missing.

• 51:04

Yeah the nostalgia.

• 51:05

We've got a group playing right now.

• 51:06

Oh yeah really?

• 51:07

Hopefully we'll start back up again on Old War.

• 51:10

Yeah that would be nice.

• 51:12

So obviously you know as our audience has kind of seen throughout the year and they're

• 51:16

you know kind of seeing now as we put little clips into this particular video you know

• 51:20

we've shown off a little bit of the ranger we've shown off a little bit of basic weapon

• 51:26

attacks and melee some of the fighter skills we've shown off the cleric most recently.

• 51:31

Tell me a little bit about the process that goes into actually making these archetypes

• 51:36

obviously the ability side is very important that needs to have support from engineering

• 51:40

and the effects and stuff but what typically goes into and we have a lot of classes to

• 51:44

make right and we're deep within the thralls of that process but what does it take?

• 51:49

Yeah I could start on that so obviously a class has to or an archetype has to start

• 51:54

on on paper right you know we don't you know a lot of the time we'll go into prototyping

• 51:59

and start building out stuff and see what's fun but just about always we start on paper

• 52:03

on a design document.

• 52:05

And we're talking about specific abilities when we start out on paper right?

• 52:10

First we actually go about establishing the class fantasy and the identity and the role

• 52:14

within the party right because that really helps to inform what those abilities then

• 52:20

are so that's usually the first step is you know what is this archetype what identifies

• 52:25

it what is the role that it's trying to accomplish.

• 52:28

Once that is done then we go into what you're suggesting there where you know we'll go and

• 52:33

brainstorm a whole wide list of abilities and class mechanics and then once we've got

• 52:39

all those you know a lot of them will get the chopping block and some of them will make

• 52:43

it through some will get iterated and you know kind of redesigned reimagined and then

• 52:48

after that stuff usually we go to you and we have a sort of review meeting and you know

• 52:55

you'll pick ones that you like you'll pick ones you want to change.

• 52:58

That's the second chopping block.

• 52:59

The second chop yeah there you go we try and filter it on our end as much as Steven makes

• 53:05

sure it gets done one way or another and then you know once that's done then we jump into

• 53:11

the prototyping right.

• 53:13

Then it starts down the pipeline process.

• 53:15

Yeah yeah and rapid prototyping is a really important step of the design process for combat

• 53:21

because we want to build and fail early or you know succeed early and we find the fun

• 53:26

we find what's not fun and we can all do that within you know the tools that are very talented

• 53:32

engineers provide us and we're always working to improve that stuff and the better tools

• 53:36

we have the better the designers can do their job.

• 53:39

And of course engineering kind of fields requests from a capability standpoint on what design

• 53:45

can actually provide a particular ability to do right.

• 53:49

Talk to me a little bit about you know how you field those requests how you incorporate

• 53:53

that as part of the ability system all those things.

• 53:56

Well we always do feasibility on any requests that we get but our designers are really good

• 54:00

about that and we don't usually have too many issues there.

• 54:04

Usually.

• 54:05

I like to run wild sometimes.

• 54:09

For me as an engineer though I think a lot of times the challenge is in you know they're

• 54:14

they're trying to get the fantasy right and the question is like how do you make somebody

• 54:20

who's playing a game feel like they are being delivered on that fantasy.

• 54:25

So when design asks us for something we usually play it a lot ourselves as we're making it

• 54:29

and we we search for that feeling and you know we're all gamers so we know what it feels

• 54:33

like.

• 54:34

Yeah we're looking for it as we build it.

• 54:35

That's one of my favorite things is I'm walking past your desk going to my office sometimes

• 54:39

you'll just be like hey Steven you got two minutes.

• 54:41

Yeah.

• 54:42

And then you put me at your desk at the keyboard and you're like how does this feel.

• 54:45

Do you feel like a ranger.

• 54:46

I know.

• 54:47

Do you feel like a ranger.

• 54:48

Does this sword slash feel good.

• 54:50

Yeah.

• 54:51

Yeah absolutely.

• 54:52

And obviously you know you guys you and Adam have had a very instrumental hand as part

• 54:56

of working with design and visual effects to kind of capture not just that role but

• 55:00

that feeling as you described and sometimes that incorporates working with animators to

• 55:05

get the right types of authored animations for like particular weapon attacks and or

• 55:10

abilities and the timing on those things is pivotal in creating the right feeling right.

• 55:16

There's so many technical components to it and as is often the case with engineering

• 55:20

it's like eliciting that right human response out of the very mathematical thing is the

• 55:26

challenging part.

• 55:27

Yeah.

• 55:28

And Jim obviously you know audio and visual effects they come in kind of near the end

• 55:32

of that pipeline where you know design and engineering has provided the tools to design

• 55:38

designs iterating with authored animations and then VFX comes in and says how can I make

• 55:43

this look spectacular.

• 55:44

I mean there's a tremendous amount of thought that's already been placed into this

• 55:49

mechanic or designer ability or whatever.

• 55:53

So on top of that we're thinking about how can we push the MMO space.

• 55:57

We don't want to recreate the other games we want to make it our own game.

• 56:00

Yes.

• 56:01

I mean we want to push the effects to a level that you just don't see in the industry period

• 56:05

but at the same time we don't want to create visual effects soon.

• 56:08

So we're working on creating a visual language something that the gamers here are playing

• 56:13

this are going to understand like hey that's like an arcane ability or that's like a tank

• 56:18

mix with this you know summoner or whatever.

• 56:20

So we have to figure out how to do all of this not make it too muddy but actually execute

• 56:25

in a way that looks cool.

• 56:26

So it's really really nice to have people like Trad and our engineer team to go back

• 56:30

and forth and be like hey can we connect this beam here can I parameterize it and can we

• 56:34

expose this to the UI guys so we can ramp it up or down to do stuff.

• 56:38

Yeah and you hit on a really interesting point which is visual effects is obviously not just

• 56:43

about creating things that are awesome but the language that communicates in the style

• 56:47

guide of how these effects translate to particular classes from just a silhouette perspective

• 56:52

shape language or visual fidelity and the hues and colors that are used to communicate

• 56:57

at long distances like hey I know what I'm going up against especially if it's a PvP

• 57:01

scenario or if you see your group kind of doing something their visual cues for you

• 57:06

to respond appropriately and synergistically from a rotations perspective.

• 57:10

And that's something I know early on you know we worked with each other kind of going through

• 57:14

you and the VFX team across you know what those shapes languages should look like for

• 57:18

particular types of abilities the colors that should be associated with particular types

• 57:23

of archetypes the symbology and iconography that's used as part of those particular visual

• 57:27

effects some of which obviously people saw in the last cleric demonstration but how has

• 57:32

that been for you kind of defining those things and creating that style guide I mean it's

• 57:36

a comprehensive list there's 64 classes right and how do you how do you steer make sure

• 57:42

that it doesn't become that visual suit that so many people I mean I've played games where

• 57:47

it does become visual suit yes and especially it starts to break down every tenth player

• 57:53

you add into the mix or every tenth you know actor NPC or whatever right how do we accomplish

• 57:59

that well I love that question so I mean I'm a gamer and I think that especially in MMOs

• 58:05

when you get to that in-game content and you're in this huge raid where there's like 10 people

• 58:09

or 100 people and all of a sudden it's like you can't find your mouse cursor you're like

• 58:12

if you don't hotkey you're lost right so but to answer your question we're not instead

• 58:18

what we're going to do is we're going to give that to the player so the player is going

• 58:21

to be able to tune that experience so we are going to create a very smart parameterized

• 58:28

subset of matrix particle systems that's a fancy way of saying that we're going to let

• 58:33

you tune what it's like in single player versus maybe you and your buddy versus a five-person

• 58:38

party or a giant raid not only that but let's make it where we can change the camera shake

• 58:43

and the post process and a particle intensity and then do a global one that scales all of

• 58:48

that and give that to the player because I mean really visual suit is a thing but there's

• 58:52

a scale that's subjective kind of to the player on how much they want to see of those things

• 58:57

happening in a particular area and this is something obviously you guys who've been following

• 59:01

the project for a long time is what we've talked at since the very inception of Ashes

• 59:06

is a desire to tackle that particular issue that many of us have experienced in other

• 59:10

games of course.

• 59:12

So talk to me a little bit about our 64 classes right in those roles those class fantasies

• 59:19

you know where do we kind of live when incorporating and obviously we have an eight member party

• 59:24

right and we have eight archetypes that are associated across our game and people know

• 59:28

it's kind of a matrix of eight by eight in which creating these classes the augment system

• 59:32

all that type of stuff people have just now been starting to peek under the hood of the

• 59:36

creation of these archetypes and these classes what are you most excited to kind of tackle

• 59:40

come 2023 I know that there's a lot of stuff in the works right now and building up towards

• 59:45

Alpha 2.

• 59:46

Of all 64 of them.

• 59:48

Probably the Dreadnought because that's my default character.

• 59:53

But actually like I don't know that there's any particular class yet I mean we haven't

• 59:57

even shown everybody all the archetypes yet but I will say I'm pretty excited to see what

• 1:00:03

the Summoner becomes we haven't shown anything on the Summoner and I'm not necessarily a

• 1:00:08

pet class player myself but I feel like every Summoner type class that I've seen in games

• 1:00:16

they usually fall a little bit flat in my opinion maybe that's why I don't play them

• 1:00:19

right but I'd like to see something a little bit more dynamic with like you know summoning

• 1:00:25

in real time in combat rather than oh I summon my pet right at the beginning of combat and

• 1:00:30

then that's it's done it's out there doing its own thing.

• 1:00:33

I think there's a lot left to be explored there and I'm pretty in fact we've already

• 1:00:37

written up some stuff about it.

• 1:00:39

Oh yeah absolutely and it's some stuff that we've shared a little bit with the community

• 1:00:42

just a little bit but I think they're gonna be excited to see next year kind of some of

• 1:00:47

the stuff that's gone into that.

• 1:00:48

What about you Keenan what are you kind of excited about from either a technical challenge

• 1:00:51

perspective when it comes to these ability systems or combat in general or class wise?

• 1:00:58

I think if you're talking about what I'm most excited to work on I would say all of the

• 1:01:02

bard classes.

• 1:01:04

I think that the bard seems to have been largely forgotten by modern gaming so I'm excited

• 1:01:10

to bring it back and show off some of the cool ideas that we have.

• 1:01:13

Yes I think next year as well people are going to be excited to see how that class interacts

• 1:01:17

from a support perspective for the party and how it kind of lives next to but doesn't encompass

• 1:01:23

the same space as the healer which is what a lot of previous games I think that tried

• 1:01:28

to bring in that bard perspective do they just throw it on top of the healers role and

• 1:01:32

that can be a little bit boring.

• 1:01:33

There's a lot more to support than health bar goes right.

• 1:01:36

Health bar goes right.

• 1:01:38

Whack.

• 1:01:39

Whack a mole pole too.

• 1:01:40

How about you Jim what about you on the visual effects side I know you guys got a lot of

• 1:01:44

fun tech working with the tech art teams for supporting visual effects not just from a

• 1:01:49

class perspective but also on the monster side NPC encounter side as well.

• 1:01:54

Oh yeah we're going to have so much fun like monsters and boss fights are going to be unreal

• 1:01:58

because we can just dial that up and really have fun with all the actual tech that's built

• 1:02:02

in the engine the custom tech.

• 1:02:04

I think from just like a real technical perspective I'm super excited about augments I want to

• 1:02:10

do the augmentations and see how these different classes interact and how we can create like

• 1:02:15

the difference between a cleric and a paladin for example but from just a selfish point

• 1:02:21

of view all about the necromancer man.

• 1:02:24

It's going to be incredible.

• 1:02:27

It's going to be amazing.

• 1:02:29

We showed off a little bit some of the augments I don't know if everyone picked up on them

• 1:02:33

during some of the demonstrations there were a few abilities that had some of the augments

• 1:02:38

associated with them but next year I think in preparation for Alpha 2 there's going to

• 1:02:43

be a lot of that stuff that players are going to get access to and kind of see.

• 1:02:47

You know something that's interesting to me is I think next month we're showcasing the

• 1:02:51

tank archetype and we're going to be showing some of those abilities and within the next

• 1:02:56

couple of months or I think it's the next two to three months we're also going to be

• 1:03:11

talking a little bit about showcasing one of the big raid bosses the cyclops and I know

• 1:03:16

that has a lot of visual effects that's going into that encounter as well as some unique

• 1:03:21

mechanics that are associated with supporting some of that ability that the actual cyclops

• 1:03:26

has available and I think people are going to be a little bit shocked by that because

• 1:03:29

it's pretty cool.

• 1:03:31

Well it's going to be epic.

• 1:03:33

It's going to be insane.

• 1:03:34

I mean you have this unique problem with big bosses in general.

• 1:03:39

Now I'm going to leak a little more.

• 1:03:41

Hopefully you guys don't have to edit this out.

• 1:03:43

Oh yeah I'm ready.

• 1:03:44

I'm scared.

• 1:03:45

We have this monstrous creature just going across our terrain.

• 1:03:48

It's not going to be your flat arena that you see in every MMO.

• 1:03:52

It's going to have different heights, altitudes, obstacles to climb on and we got to solve

• 1:03:56

for that.

• 1:03:57

We don't want our effects just hanging in there.

• 1:03:58

We want to mold to the terrain and do different stuff.

• 1:04:01

So I think that's going to be something that I'm really excited about.

• 1:04:04

It's really technical but it's also going to be something that people are really going

• 1:04:07

to dig.

• 1:04:08

They're going to enjoy it.

• 1:04:09

For sure.

• 1:04:10

I totally agree.

• 1:04:11

Every little edge case we missed is going to be scaled up.

• 1:04:13

20x.

• 1:04:14

Oh yes and that's part of the greatness of kind of showcasing.

• 1:04:17

It's how we figure it out.

• 1:04:18

Yes exactly.

• 1:04:19

As we get to encounter those problems as a course that we're bringing this to life and

• 1:04:24

as we're addressing them we're showing the community as well.

• 1:04:28

That's something that's super cool.

• 1:04:29

Another thing you know obviously we're building a massively multiplayer game and a lot of

• 1:04:34

our encounter design, a lot of the PvP scenarios that players are going to be subjected to,

• 1:04:40

those are very dense populations.

• 1:04:44

And when you're building out this concept of these ability systems, how much of that

• 1:04:50

massively multiplayer component gets taken into account when creating, ideating so to

• 1:04:55

speak these mechanics that are provided by engineering but also the class kits as a holistic

• 1:05:00

view, you know, what abilities we're actually authoring.

• 1:05:03

Do you take into that account or is this you know something that's really more focused

• 1:05:08

around solo gameplay, group gameplay, or massive gameplay?

• 1:05:11

We've got to think about all of it.

• 1:05:13

From the ground up in that phase I was talking about earlier, like the ideation phase when

• 1:05:18

we're brainstorming these abilities we always, always have to think about how does this scale

• 1:05:23

up.

• 1:05:24

A lot of games have the luxury of not having to do that.

• 1:05:26

You know they can design a number of abilities without even having to necessarily consider

• 1:05:33

the performance implications it would have in a networking environment.

• 1:05:37

There's a lot of additional things as designers and engineers and artists that we've got to

• 1:05:43

think about every time.

• 1:05:44

So it kind of blows up the scale of, you know, it gives you, it can be a little bit mind

• 1:05:49

paralysis sometimes when you think, but you know we get through it and we've gotten pretty

• 1:05:54

good at it.

• 1:05:55

From a performance as authoring kind of these visual effects, how useful has the migration

• 1:06:01

of Unreal 5 been with the use of Niagara in its system?

• 1:06:04

It's key.

• 1:06:05

It's very critical.

• 1:06:06

So every single effect that we author, we have to author for different scenarios.

• 1:06:10

How far away it might be, we might call stuff, how close it's going to be, we're also going

• 1:06:13

to call stuff.

• 1:06:14

There's no point in having something that just blocks your entire view.

• 1:06:18

So all this will happen like in real time dynamically.

• 1:06:20

So we can scale down particle systems based on how many players are active or how your

• 1:06:25

performance might be changing or anything really.

• 1:06:28

Maybe it's Thanksgiving Day and we want to have less effects.

• 1:06:31

We can do that.

• 1:06:32

But it's super robust with the amount of control we have over every aspect of visual effects.

• 1:06:38

And we'll be needing to do all of that to set all these things up because we don't want

• 1:06:42

to have a situation where, oh yeah, our game is really great until we got into the open

• 1:06:46

world PvP now stuff.

• 1:06:47

So we're not going to make this, the effects should be there but it shouldn't be.

• 1:06:52

That's all you see.

• 1:06:53

Right, it's complimenting absolutely the mechanics and the gameplay 100%.

• 1:06:57

Keenan, obviously on the engineering side, the gameplay engineering side, you of course

• 1:07:01

have to field these requests for different types of mechanics that need to be authored.

• 1:07:05

But when you think about performance related considerations for the ability systems, stats

• 1:07:11

to kind of quickly update, all of this stuff interacting with the network, how has that

• 1:07:16

been for you from a challenging standpoint?

• 1:07:18

Yeah, with the scalability requirement cranked to 10, it pretty much makes every aspect of

• 1:07:24

combat like three times harder than it would otherwise be.

• 1:07:28

But ultimately, I think we've got a handle on it and we've been very intentional with

• 1:07:33

our data and with our systems so that we can modulate how quickly they receive and send

• 1:07:40

updates based on who cares the most.

• 1:07:43

And so that's going to help us with scalability a lot.

• 1:07:45

That's something that I think a lot of players kind of are noticing in Alpha 1 last year

• 1:07:51

was just the sheer density that was achieved during some of the castle siege fights that

• 1:07:56

we had where there were 300 plus players in a particular area.

• 1:08:00

Not many people I think in today's age have experienced that and experienced in a way

• 1:08:04

that was performant, right?

• 1:08:07

And that was something that I think is wholly unique to this project and what we're trying

• 1:08:11

to achieve and accomplish, not just from the combat's perspective and these class kits

• 1:08:15

that we're creating, but how they harmonize with many players in a particular area.

• 1:08:19

So you guys have been doing an awesome job on that.

• 1:08:22

Well, thank you guys for joining us and talking a little bit about what it takes to make this

• 1:08:26

magic come to life.

• 1:08:28

I think I speak on behalf of the community.

• 1:08:30

You guys are doing an awesome job and not just you, of course, the teams that work in

• 1:08:33

association with you and that you're a part of.

• 1:08:36

We're really appreciative of that.

• 1:08:45

Welcome over to our conversation, a little bit about gathering and crafting.

• 1:08:49

And earlier this year, of course, we showed some of the recent work that's been done towards

• 1:08:54

gathering, particularly around trees and the bushes and mining.

• 1:09:00

But I'm joined today by some of the developers who worked on those things.

• 1:09:04

So a little introduction, Hal.

• 1:09:07

I am Hal Anderson and I'm an environment artist.

• 1:09:10

So that means I work on things like rocks, trees, kind of anything you just see in the

• 1:09:14

environment.

• 1:09:15

Everything that makes the world beautiful.

• 1:09:18

We also have Alex.

• 1:09:19

Hello, I'm Alex Codoli.

• 1:09:21

I'm a senior gameplay engineer.

• 1:09:23

I'm a generalist.

• 1:09:24

I wear many hats.

• 1:09:26

I work with animation, environment, many departments.

• 1:09:29

All the things they say.

• 1:09:31

Exactly.

• 1:09:32

We have Corey.

• 1:09:33

Hi, I'm Corey Rice.

• 1:09:34

I'm a technical designer and I usually focus on artist and ship, do a little work with

• 1:09:38

AI and also our design tools.

• 1:09:40

Yeah, and a lot of economy stuff too as well.

• 1:09:43

So obviously a lot of people saw the gathering demonstration that we showed where currently

• 1:09:49

like harvesting trees and stuff we just talked about.

• 1:09:52

What goes into kind of inspiring you guys around, you know, the experiences you've had

• 1:09:58

in other MMOs or other games where you're out and you're gathering things and crafting?

• 1:10:03

What are some of the favorite experiences you guys have had?

• 1:10:06

I think for me personally, one of my favorite kind of like harvesting things that I really

• 1:10:12

love in an MMO would be just all the little plants you find around in elder schools online.

• 1:10:18

Yes, they're so good.

• 1:10:20

Oh my gosh, there's so many of them too.

• 1:10:23

I love just kind of scouring, you know, the environment kind of seeing what you can find.

• 1:10:27

I think they have such good design too.

• 1:10:28

You can always like visually really spot them.

• 1:10:30

Like, oh, that's gonna go over there.

• 1:10:32

Yeah, what about you, Alex?

• 1:10:35

For me, probably realism.

• 1:10:37

Yeah.

• 1:10:38

Specifically, ArcheAge.

• 1:10:39

I spent a lot of time scouring all the lands to find illegal farms, but like any trees.

• 1:10:48

But the fun part of it is like after a while you go outside and be like, oh, I know what

• 1:10:52

that tree is.

• 1:10:53

Oh, I know what that tree is.

• 1:10:54

A little bit of learning from the game.

• 1:10:55

Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:56

I was like, oh, this is an Aspen tree.

• 1:10:57

I know that.

• 1:10:58

I do like that too, where there's a hint of realism kind of in what you're experiencing

• 1:11:02

the game and how you can associate that with the real world.

• 1:11:05

What about you, Cory?

• 1:11:06

Yeah, totally.

• 1:11:07

I really like the exploration part of it, searching around for things and like how it

• 1:11:11

mentioned there being like things that catch your eye.

• 1:11:13

And oftentimes you're like, oh, there's some gold.

• 1:11:16

And then you find yourself at the bottom of the dungeon and you're like, oh, God, what

• 1:11:19

am I doing here?

• 1:11:20

Maybe make some friends.

• 1:11:21

Wait a minute.

• 1:11:22

That's not a friend.

• 1:11:23

Exactly.

• 1:11:24

This guy's trying to take my gold.

• 1:11:25

And then we fight.

• 1:11:26

And yeah, just get you into all sorts of different adventurous situations.

• 1:11:30

It's such an important part, obviously, of MMO design, right?

• 1:11:34

It brings kind of the environment that you're in, the world that you're in, and it makes

• 1:11:37

it a bit tactile.

• 1:11:38

It makes it something that you can leverage to further advance your character, your position,

• 1:11:43

the wealth that you might have.

• 1:11:45

And one of the things that I think was really interesting about our approach on these gatherables

• 1:11:52

out in the real world was even simulating a bit more of that realism, not just from

• 1:11:56

the type of thing you're gathering, but how that thing interacts with you in the world.

• 1:12:00

And one of the things that sticks out is the design of these trees falling and the physics

• 1:12:05

associated with them.

• 1:12:06

And I know we talked a little bit about during the demonstration, but talk a little bit about

• 1:12:10

what it took to get there from a tech feasibility perspective.

• 1:12:13

Oh, it's a lot of work.

• 1:12:15

I mean, it's a lot of cross departmental work.

• 1:12:20

For example, we have to work, figure out how we want to simulate the physics, what kind

• 1:12:25

of collisions we want to have to have on trees, as well as making sure that they simulate

• 1:12:33

on every client as well so that it doesn't feel off-putting for one player to see it

• 1:12:38

falling to the left, for another player falling to the right.

• 1:12:40

Like, oh my God, this tree just hit me.

• 1:12:42

No, it didn't.

• 1:12:43

It hit that guy.

• 1:12:44

Exactly.

• 1:12:45

Yeah.

• 1:12:46

So, but yeah, no, physics is, as I was saying before, it's a wild beast to tame.

• 1:12:50

It's just a lot of tweaks.

• 1:12:52

You have to have a lot of patience figuring out all the constraints, all the volumes.

• 1:13:00

It's just hard work.

• 1:13:01

And even from a performance perspective, right, we have thousands of foliage actors that might

• 1:13:06

live within a particular area that's very small, maybe one and a half by one and a half

• 1:13:10

kilometers zone, right?

• 1:13:11

Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:13

And you want to make sure it's per request.

• 1:13:15

So as you're chopping down, so it's not always there.

• 1:13:19

Otherwise, our client FPS is probably going to be pretty bad.

• 1:13:22

Right.

• 1:13:23

So we do a neat trick when you are coming up to the tree, we swapped it to skeletal mesh

• 1:13:29

and then you cut it down and then as it starts to fall, we start simulating physics.

• 1:13:35

And as it falls down, we kind of like freeze it up in the end and then slowly like dissipates.

• 1:13:40

Right.

• 1:13:41

And Hal, tell me a little bit about what it takes to actually bring one of those assets

• 1:13:45

with joints and a skeletal rig so that the impact on the tree can show the physics and

• 1:13:51

the branches moving.

• 1:13:52

What did that take from an environment perspective?

• 1:13:54

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:13:56

So I think definitely got a lot of help from animation, you know, we animated on our team

• 1:14:02

kind of setting that set up.

• 1:14:03

But I think from an environment perspective, our kind of most challenging thing was kind

• 1:14:07

of setting up the skeletal rig so they can all kind of communicate efficiently and kind

• 1:14:12

of finding a nice balance between so like, you know, one branch doesn't have all the

• 1:14:16

weight, you know, it's able to kind of fall and be in a fluid kind of way.

• 1:14:21

And you have to make different states as well, right?

• 1:14:23

Because it's not just about being able to gather this particular thing in the world,

• 1:14:29

but also at what stage is that thing?

• 1:14:31

Is it an adolescent?

• 1:14:32

Is it a young tree?

• 1:14:34

What type of harvest can I get from it if I were to, let's say, gather it earlier in

• 1:14:38

its lifespan, right?

• 1:14:39

That has some design principles associated with those.

• 1:14:42

Yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:43

Like, we wanted it to look good when it falls down, but we also wanted the environment to

• 1:14:46

look really good during different seasons and different stages of life of the thing

• 1:14:50

that you're harvesting.

• 1:14:51

So not only did they have to do that work one time making a tree look good, but we wanted

• 1:14:56

it to work on all the variants.

• 1:14:57

And we wanted it to work when it's a small little sapling or a mature tree.

• 1:15:00

So yeah, just figuring all that out and all the different permutations of it was interesting.

• 1:15:07

It's interesting.

• 1:15:08

And also not only that, but when you think about kind of showcasing those different stages

• 1:15:14

of life for a particular asset, that obviously creates an additional amount of work on the

• 1:15:18

asset side, right?

• 1:15:20

To create those particular stages of that meshes lifespan, right?

• 1:15:24

Yes.

• 1:15:25

Yeah, it does.

• 1:15:26

Yeah, I think that kind of like in a forest, like one thing that was really important for

• 1:15:32

the environment team was kind of showing not just one kind of monolithic tree, but having

• 1:15:37

different kind of varieties.

• 1:15:38

So you can see that it's just like a living forest that like grows and has different stages

• 1:15:42

of life.

• 1:15:43

And it definitely is a lot of work.

• 1:15:46

Yeah, because now you're not just making the tree at the adult stage, you're making it

• 1:15:50

at the sapling, you're making it at the other.

• 1:15:52

And then talk to me a little bit about kind of how we achieve that scaling between these

• 1:15:57

different stages.

• 1:15:58

I think the first thing we wanted to achieve is to make sure that environment artists can

• 1:16:03

place them at the painted stage so that it sets up the general environment and then creating

• 1:16:11

multiple states that it iterates over efficiently.

• 1:16:14

Once you can chop down like adult stage and goes, for example, to empty, it has to make

• 1:16:19

sure it replicates to every other player and then it transitioned into a sapling stage,

• 1:16:24

into young stage.

• 1:16:26

And all the data needs to make sure it propagates to every client that sees it and make sure

• 1:16:31

that also the bandwidth is not too large.

• 1:16:34

Because we want to, you know, keep that network traffic a little cheaper.

• 1:16:38

Exactly.

• 1:16:39

We don't want you to run through the forest in like 400 megabytes.

• 1:16:42

Oh my God.

• 1:16:44

Exactly.

• 1:16:45

Corey, obviously, you know, design has some significant intents when it comes to the variety

• 1:16:50

of the types of gatherables you have access to.

• 1:16:54

And as many of our players know, the professions that relate to these particular gatherables

• 1:17:00

and what you can do with them are also expansive.

• 1:17:03

How do you guys on design go about kind of architecting what that pyramid, so to speak,

• 1:17:09

of gatherables are within the world?

• 1:17:11

It is the base of the economy, right?

• 1:17:13

So all the processing professions and crafting professions kind of start with what's gathered

• 1:17:18

from the world.

• 1:17:19

So we start by like determining what needs to be fulfilled.

• 1:17:25

So players need armor and consumables and weapons.

• 1:17:28

So each one of those things sort of like fits in their lane and we need to define what things

• 1:17:33

should exist in the world so that we can make those, right?

• 1:17:35

So that was kind of the first step.

• 1:17:38

Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:17:39

Now, obviously, it's interesting to see when you go up to a particular rock and you mine

• 1:17:45

it and there's obviously some amount of time that it takes to gather that particular resource.

• 1:17:53

What types of profession related progression can influence that time that's spent?

• 1:17:59

But also, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, there's an element of prospecting

• 1:18:05

that occurs.

• 1:18:07

Talk to me a little bit about that and how it interacts with the system.

• 1:18:09

Yeah, so we definitely want progression, right?

• 1:18:12

Like the more time you spend mining and the more effort you put into understanding how

• 1:18:16

mining works in Ashes along with other gathering professions, we want you to get better at

• 1:18:20

it.

• 1:18:21

And there's different ways, right?

• 1:18:22

You can get gear, you can progress in the profession and like you said, get faster and

• 1:18:27

maybe find better stuff.

• 1:18:29

And one of the ways to be able to find better stuff is through surveying.

• 1:18:32

And surveying is a way of kind of scanning the area, narrowing down what you're looking

• 1:18:36

for.

• 1:18:37

You know, maybe there's one recipe for a golden sword that you're trying to fill for your

• 1:18:41

friend and he wants it to be of a certain level and certain power.

• 1:18:45

And so you need this specific gold ore.

• 1:18:48

So you're not looking around for any gold.

• 1:18:50

You want the specific gold.

• 1:18:51

So we want to give players the tools to be able to kind of find what they're looking

• 1:18:55

for.

• 1:18:56

And that'll be another thing that they can get better at and work with others to increase

• 1:19:00

their productivity.

• 1:19:01

Absolutely.

• 1:19:02

And with having such an expansive list of gatherables that are available, help walk

• 1:19:07

us through a little bit of what that pipeline looks like.

• 1:19:09

I mean, what does it take to actually make a specific type of tree or a specific plant?

• 1:19:14

How does that process begin?

• 1:19:16

Tell us a little bit about that.

• 1:19:17

I think kind of the first step in any type of kind of asset creation like that would

• 1:19:21

be kind of gathering like a reference board, kind of finding out what sort of like real-life

• 1:19:26

things we want to draw off of to make sure that's just kind of grounded.

• 1:19:30

And then also kind of deciding sort of what kind of like a mood we want to elicit, you

• 1:19:33

know, like, is it going to be a spooky tree?

• 1:19:35

Is it going to be more like, oh, it's going to be magical, you know, you feel like, oh,

• 1:19:41

and kind of establishing that so we kind of know what to go into the process.

• 1:19:44

The identity of the asset.

• 1:19:45

Exactly.

• 1:19:46

Yeah.

• 1:19:47

Yeah.

• 1:19:48

Get that like, get that mood.

• 1:19:49

Right.

• 1:19:50

And yeah, after that is kind of established, we would go into a program called SpeedTree

• 1:19:55

in the movie, which kind of allows us artists to set up kind of these like almost little

• 1:20:00

logic systems, you know, like, oh, we want trees with like branches that are approximately

• 1:20:04

the size, you know, and kind of randomize that.

• 1:20:07

So it has that kind of organic element that just, you know, kind of the human brain can't

• 1:20:11

quite, can't quite do as well.

• 1:20:13

But yeah, so after we have that and we have all our geo done, we would then, important

• 1:20:18

to Unreal, where we would set up all of our like wind data and all of our seasonal technology.

• 1:20:22

Yeah.

• 1:20:23

And there's a lot that goes into that, right?

• 1:20:25

Because when we talked about this in an earlier segment about seasons and how that impacts

• 1:20:30

kind of all the assets that are within the world, because they all have to not just have

• 1:20:33

stages of growth when they've been gathered, but they also need to reflect the season as

• 1:20:39

well.

• 1:20:40

So that tree might lose leaves, right?

• 1:20:42

Or that plant might not even be available within a particular season.

• 1:20:46

And that's something that ties into on the engineering side, which is something you have

• 1:20:51

to take into account on the spawners, right?

• 1:20:54

And how you're kind of bringing that up.

• 1:20:55

How does that work?

• 1:20:56

Well, we just need to hook, we basically hook into the seasonal tech and we query our service

• 1:21:03

to figure out, okay, is this a winter, is this spring, is this, you know, summer?

• 1:21:08

And when the tree transitions to state to another, we check, okay, oh, is this supposed

• 1:21:13

to happen during winter?

• 1:21:14

Is this supposed to happen during spring?

• 1:21:16

What kind of yield it's supposed to maybe give, right?

• 1:21:18

And that manager doesn't just take into account necessarily all that information as well,

• 1:21:23

but it also takes into account another system that we've talked a little bit about, which

• 1:21:27

is land management.

• 1:21:28

And that can also affect kind of spawn rate, frequency, density within a particular area,

• 1:21:35

length and longevity of time to promote to different stages.

• 1:21:38

Tell me a little bit about your expectations for land management as it affects things like

• 1:21:43

gathering and crafting as a whole.

• 1:21:45

Yeah, my expectations are that it creates cool entry points for content.

• 1:21:50

You know, players have different expectations of the things that they want to achieve for

• 1:21:54

themselves and they extend that out to groups like their guilds or their node and whatever,

• 1:21:59

right?

• 1:22:00

So, you know, you might not want to chop down every single tree outside of your node because

• 1:22:04

you like using those trees for harvesting the fruit, right?

• 1:22:07

And if another group of players wants to cut them down because they want wood before a

• 1:22:11

siege, right, like those are conflicts that players will need to work out and interact

• 1:22:16

with each other to solve, right?

• 1:22:17

And then we can hook up into content that we create ourselves, not necessarily player

• 1:22:22

to player where maybe you cut down all the trees and you piss off a tree ant.

• 1:22:25

It's a predicate, right?

• 1:22:27

Exactly.

• 1:22:28

So, that's why we think that land management is so interesting because it gives us a way

• 1:22:31

to hook into all these different content points and do cool stuff.

• 1:22:35

So much in the world of Vera is built around this idea of players committed action and

• 1:22:42

the action has a response from the system or from other players potentially, right?

• 1:22:46

And as we're talking about how land management is just another value that can represent some

• 1:22:52

predicate system in that event or in allowing a policy, perhaps you're a more industrious

• 1:22:57

node if you constantly keep the land management at a low value, right?

• 1:23:02

All of those things are just giving the tools that we get to implement around either from

• 1:23:06

a narrative perspective or from a systemic one.

• 1:23:09

And that I think creates a very dynamic atmosphere that not a lot of players are accustomed to

• 1:23:14

in the games that we play which offer things like gathering.

• 1:23:17

You know, typically it's a very kind of binary system.

• 1:23:21

I do a thing, I get a thing.

• 1:23:23

But here I do a thing and there's a whole host of stuff that can happen as a response.

• 1:23:27

Exactly.

• 1:23:28

And the non-binary part of it is very important because it's not always this action equals

• 1:23:34

bad, right?

• 1:23:35

It is a whole slew of options of things that can happen.

• 1:23:39

So even if you think that cutting down all of the trees is going to piss off the tree

• 1:23:44

ant, there might be a whole slew of positive things that happen after you defeat the tree

• 1:23:48

ant or when the tree ant spawns and becomes someone that you can interact with in the

• 1:23:54

world.

• 1:23:55

It's not always black and white whether an action is good or bad which I think is very

• 1:23:59

interesting.

• 1:24:00

It is very interesting.

• 1:24:01

And for example, that tree ant many years ago, I think circa 2018, we showed a big tree

• 1:24:09

ant model that Keith worked on.

• 1:24:11

You remember that guy?

• 1:24:12

Yeah.

• 1:24:13

I don't know.

• 1:24:14

Maybe we'll see him if people chop down a little too many trees.

• 1:24:17

That might be interesting.

• 1:24:19

So obviously you're all MMO gamers.

• 1:24:20

We've been talking with a lot of MMO gamers here at the studio.

• 1:24:22

Many of us are MMO gamers.

• 1:24:25

What is the profession you're looking most forward to?

• 1:24:28

Ooh.

• 1:24:29

Go ahead.

• 1:24:30

Oh yeah.

• 1:24:31

What type of thing do you like to do from a crafting artisan perspective?

• 1:24:38

I think my personal favorite would be kind of anything in line with the harvesting gathering

• 1:24:45

potions.

• 1:24:46

Oh, alchemist.

• 1:24:47

Okay.

• 1:24:48

Very nice.

• 1:24:49

You like getting the perfect ingredients to make some type of potion that's going to

• 1:24:53

come in handy during some engagement.

• 1:24:55

That's awesome.

• 1:24:56

I also love alchemy by the way.

• 1:24:59

Don't tell anybody that.

• 1:25:02

What about you Alec?

• 1:25:03

For me probably would be whichever corner is the market.

• 1:25:06

Oh, there you go.

• 1:25:07

Opportunist.

• 1:25:08

You're an economist.

• 1:25:09

I'm an opportunist.

• 1:25:10

There you go.

• 1:25:11

So whatever is most worthwhile.

• 1:25:12

Exactly.

• 1:25:13

Because especially with our node system, a lot of nodes are going to need a lot of materials,

• 1:25:17

resources.

• 1:25:18

We're going to have to, yeah.

• 1:25:19

It's just, you know.

• 1:25:21

And that actually brings up a really good point because the way that the environment

• 1:25:27

is constructed, a lot of these gatherables and ergo the craftable components of those

• 1:25:34

gatherables are determined by location.

• 1:25:38

And so you're not just creating one giant economy, you're also creating local economies

• 1:25:44

as well which relate to the transition of those goods across the world, which can make

• 1:25:48

it more opportunistic with some danger or risk involved.

• 1:25:51

Yeah, that's super interesting.

• 1:25:52

I like that.

• 1:25:53

I'm kind of there too.

• 1:25:54

What about you Cory?

• 1:25:55

For me, it would be really hard to choose just one.

• 1:25:58

I love fishing.

• 1:25:59

I'll try fishing in every game no matter what.

• 1:26:02

I really like crafting of equipment, whether that's like armor or weapons.

• 1:26:06

There's something special to me about like outfitting yourself or another person for

• 1:26:10

like an adventure that they're going on.

• 1:26:13

You have that interaction of like, what do you need?

• 1:26:14

Yeah, I could make that for you.

• 1:26:16

There's initial investment and they take that thing with them and they may trade it and

• 1:26:20

sell it and that item specifically has a story, right?

• 1:26:23

It's not the same as consumables where you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:26:27

You use like a hundred of them a day.

• 1:26:29

And then engineering is really interesting to me.

• 1:26:31

I like little gadgets.

• 1:26:32

Those usually end up being the things that like break some of the rules and you get to

• 1:26:36

do special funny things.

• 1:26:37

So engineering is always like very, very interesting to me.

• 1:26:42

Very interesting.

• 1:26:43

And it actually brings up something else that I was just thinking about, which is essentially

• 1:26:49

that you're working on something with engineering regarding kind of a gameplay layer around

• 1:26:57

crafting itself, right?

• 1:26:59

Talk to me a little bit about what that is.

• 1:27:01

So yeah, we're trying to put together kind of a more haptic or rooted in the world.

• 1:27:06

I guess the right word is like a diegetic experience for making weapons.

• 1:27:11

You know, oftentimes in other games or other MMOs I've played, there's a lot on the front

• 1:27:17

end of like you get stuff and you have the stuff and then you push a button and the item

• 1:27:22

comes out.

• 1:27:23

The execution is just a button.

• 1:27:24

Yeah.

• 1:27:25

And all of the, there is like skill and some gameplay to that portion, right?

• 1:27:31

And I think that that will also be great in Ashes where, you know, you have to acquire

• 1:27:34

all the things and there's risk and there's trade.

• 1:27:36

But I also think that it's interesting to have skill involved in the actual crafting.

• 1:27:42

So what we're trying to put together is a way to make weapons where it feels like you're

• 1:27:47

actually making the thing and how you do in making the weapon results in what the stats

• 1:27:53

of the weapon are going to be.

• 1:27:55

So that's what we're working on.

• 1:27:57

And that's something that I think players are going to have an opportunity next year

• 1:28:01

to kind of take a look at.

• 1:28:02

And we're going to have an opportunity to collect good feedback from you around whether

• 1:28:06

or not you like that element of gameplay layer associated with the crafting profession, right?

• 1:28:13

I think that's going to be super cool.

• 1:28:14

Well, guys, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me and our audience,

• 1:28:19

of course.

• 1:28:20

They're very grateful for your contributions to making Ashes of Creation a reality.

• 1:28:24

And you guys are doing a phenomenal job.

• 1:28:26

So thank you very well done.

• 1:28:27

We are going to be moving on next to a little video that showcases this last year with our

• 1:28:34

studio and the project.

• 1:28:38

You know, building games is difficult.

• 1:28:43

That being said, we built an amazing team at Intrepid and it feels very much like a

• 1:28:48

family.

• 1:28:49

So getting up each day and going to into the office and working with, you know, the colleagues

• 1:28:56

at Intrepid is a delight.

• 1:29:24

What a year it has been.

• 1:29:27

The team has been hard at work.

• 1:29:29

You've seen the progress of Ashes of Creation over the last four or five years, and you've

• 1:29:34

seen where we've come from in that time to our Alpha One presentation, and you can see

• 1:29:39

how things develop.

• 1:29:43

Super excited with the character creator.

• 1:29:45

And I have very rarely ever encountered a character creator, even at this state, that

• 1:29:51

is as capable as what our team has been able to develop.

• 1:29:57

Every day that passes and I'm watching the tech continue to get refined and the environments

• 1:30:04

continue to get these passes.

• 1:30:06

And I'm just talking to the team and like, so good.

• 1:30:13

The new world map in all its 1200 square kilometer glory.

• 1:30:33

I love what the new skybox is doing.

• 1:30:36

I mean, it's just visually great.

• 1:30:45

I am so happy to see the excitement from the MMORPG community at large.

• 1:30:51

Like that looks crazy good.

• 1:30:56

That is just oh my god.

• 1:30:58

Like whenever people are talking about how they want fantasy games, this is what they're

• 1:31:03

thinking.

• 1:31:05

It grows into a horse.

• 1:31:06

I didn't know that.

• 1:31:09

This game looks amazing.

• 1:31:16

Way too good.

• 1:31:17

Ashes of creation.

• 1:31:18

It will be the most ambitious fantasy MMORPG ever attempted.

• 1:31:23

No, no.

• 1:31:24

It looks good.

• 1:31:25

It does look good.

• 1:31:26

Grab yourself a...

• 1:31:27

The team behind Ashes of Creation are some of the most talented developers.

• 1:31:42

What we're building in Ashes of Creation is the ultimate desire of a true MMORPG Ashes

• 1:32:05

team.

• 1:32:12

Thank you everyone so much for joining us.

• 1:32:14

That's going to be a wrap for us for our December livestream update.

• 1:32:17

We hope that you enjoyed it and loved getting to know our developers.

• 1:32:20

That was so much fun chatting with everyone.

• 1:32:23

They're so sweet.

• 1:32:24

Everyone's amazing and you can just see the vibe is just so...

• 1:32:27

Everyone's just passionate and loves what they do and that's kind of like the best part

• 1:32:30

of the game.

• 1:32:31

Super talented.

• 1:32:32

I know.

• 1:32:33

Just a great team.

• 1:32:34

Absolutely.

• 1:32:35

Of course, if you have feedback for us, head on over to our forums, forums.ashesofcreation.com.

• 1:32:39

We love hearing from you guys.

• 1:32:40

We interact with you always.

• 1:32:42

We're sending reports to our developers so they can continue to make sure that we're

• 1:32:45

on the same page as we move forward in creating the world of Verra.

• 1:32:48

Those reports are super important.

• 1:32:51

Really they are.

• 1:32:52

The community does such a great job of picking out all the tidbits of information from the

• 1:32:56

players on the forums, on Twitter, on Reddit, everywhere.

• 1:32:59

They read everything.

• 1:33:00

They compile it in a huge report and there's an hour that we kind of sit down with the

• 1:33:04

developments of particular features and or systems and kind of hear from the community

• 1:33:10

team all the thoughts that you guys give about these particular subjects.

• 1:33:13

So it's very important.

• 1:33:14

Make sure you guys go and give commentary on stuff.

• 1:33:17

And most often the thing is, wow, that's already stuff we're already planning and we're already

• 1:33:20

thinking of.

• 1:33:21

So I think that's the validation that we're all on the same page.

• 1:33:24

So thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:33:26

And of course you can follow us in all places at Ashes of Creation.

• 1:33:29

We are constantly posting and giving you guys updates on a daily basis and interacting with

• 1:33:33

you and we love all your fan art.

• 1:33:35

So please keep sending them back to us.

• 1:33:38

So good.

• 1:33:39

2022 isn't just the last year.

• 1:33:42

It's gonna say like it's really cool to just look back at what we accomplished this year

• 1:33:46

in 2022 as a team.

• 1:33:47

The growth of the studio has been huge, but it's not done yet.

• 1:33:50

We're still going.

• 1:33:51

We're going strong into 2023.

• 1:33:53

So keep that in mind.

• 1:33:54

You guys check out our page and come join our family and direct others, people out there,

• 1:34:00

your favorite developers, stuff that you've seen.

• 1:34:03

Make sure to go out on Twitter and share the careers opportunities that that interrupted

• 1:34:07

because 20-23 is going to be a huge year.

• 1:34:09

Oh my gosh.

• 1:34:10

Yeah.

• 1:34:11

I have done a big thing for Steven to put together a whole like spreadsheet.

• 1:34:13

We need to have all the albums all forward.

• 1:34:15

So we've got a lot to come.

• 1:34:17

It looks super good.

• 1:34:18

And guys, you haven't seen anything yet.

• 1:34:21

2023 is going to be an unbelievable year for the studio, for the project.

• 1:34:25

We have so much to show you.

• 1:34:26

I know Margaret is just chomping at the bits to get in there and get all this stuff and

• 1:34:31

share with you guys.

• 1:34:33

And you know, honestly, I just want to comment on the fact that this development that we

• 1:34:37

have, this rapport that we've built with you guys as a community and the safety we feel

• 1:34:42

in sharing works in progress with you, sharing the development along its lifespan of development

• 1:34:48

with each of you out there is very important and near and dear to our hearts.

• 1:34:52

So keep tuning in in 2023.

• 1:34:55

Keep commenting.

• 1:34:56

Give us your feedback.

• 1:34:57

Give us your thoughts.

• 1:34:58

Give us the experiences that you guys have had in the past because it makes the potential

• 1:35:02

for Ashes of Creation to be such that much more of a great game when you guys are participating

• 1:35:07

in it.

• 1:35:08

And that's why we do these things.

• 1:35:09

That's why we invite you in.

• 1:35:10

We show you what we're working on on a monthly basis because we want you guys to give us

• 1:35:14

your feedback.

• 1:35:16

And so we cannot thank you all enough for being a part of that in 2022.

• 1:35:20

And 2023 is going to be an awesome year and we will see you in January next month.

• 1:35:26

Bye guys.