Guild Chat - Episode 104

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.

The 104th episode of Guild Chat aired on August 25, 2020.

"The eighth anniversary of Guild Wars 2 is here! To celebrate our incredible community and many years of adventures in Tyria, we’ll look back at the past year of releases and events with members of the Guild Wars 2 development team—and gaze a little further into the future as well…"

Transcription[edit]

Introduction [6:42][edit]

Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria and happy anniversary. Thank you all for being part of our anniversary live stream today. I'm your host Rubi and I am so happy you guys are joining us for this. Eight years ago today, in a very different world, our team crowded into one of the common areas in the ArenaNet studios and counted down the final seconds until we could open the doors of Guild Wars 2 to all of you. Since then, the world of Tyria has gotten bigger and better. You in the community have forged bonds with each other, in and out of game, all over the world and you have helped us create something truly special. We have loved creating Guild Wars 2 and playing it alongside all of you for the past 8 years and we are so excited to keep doing that in the years to come. So, thank you all for being here. On today's anniversary livestream, we're going to look back on some of the past year with some of the Guild Wars 2 development team and we are going to talk about what's to come, and we're going to share a few surprises with you all along the way. Surprises are fun, so do you guys want one right now? Cause we can go ahead and do the first one now. Mark, do you want to show them?

On-screen: GUILD WARS 2 COMING TO STEAM.

Rubi: Yep, Guild Wars 2 is coming to Steam this November and we cannot wait to welcome even more Guild Wars 2 players. We know you guys have a lot of questions right away and there is a preview page up on Steam right now with more information. And so you can tell your friends to wishlist it now, which you should absolutely do. But I will touch on one big question right now which is: can we play together? If you log-in through Steam, you'll still play alongside your fellow Tyrians in the same maps and servers. Whether you log-in through Steam or the Guild Wars 2 launcher, everybody plays together. We're not going to split you guys up. Please do note that you can't convert an existing Guild Wars 2 account to a Steam account or vice versa. You can't convert a Steam account to a non-Steam account. So, that is our first surprise. We have more fun stuff to come.

Ester, Joe and Kirk [8:39][edit]

Rubi: But for now, let's get started on our first round of guests. Why don't the three of you introduce yourselves? Talk about what you do here in ArenaNet and what you've worked on for the past year. Let's go: Ester, Joe, Kirk.

Ester Ann Sauter: Okay. I am- Hi everybody. I am the QA Manager at ArenaNet. So I work with everything that goes out for Guild Wars 2. I don't make it, I don't develop it, but I help guide it and help make sure that it's the best product we can make.

Rubi: How about you, Joe?

Joe Kimmes: All right. Hey everyone. I'm Joe Kimmes. I do game design on Guild Wars 2 and work on some of the story updates, releases as well as festivals and the occasional Guild Wars 1 update.

Rubi: Awesome. Hi Kirk.

Kirk Williford: Hey. Hey folks. I'm Kirk Williford. I'm a Senior Game Designer at ArenaNet and a Team Lead here as well on Guild Wars.

Rubi: Cool. So all three of you have had a super busy year. You certainly haven't been bored, have you? Why don't you each give a rundown of what you've worked on the past year and what you've all had your hand in. And this time let's go: Kirk, Joe, Ester.

Kirk: Sure. So... past year. I-

Rubi: A lot.

Kirk: My brain has lost track of what time is at this point, so I guess I'll start off with-

Rubi: Start with Bound by Blood.

Kirk: It was- Yeah. Bound by Blood was the first thing in the past year in which I did a story instance and some of the meta events in that map as well some side events and stuff. From there, I helped work on some polish and touch-up stuff on Shadow in the Ice, episode two. And then I was Team Lead for episode three and four which was No Quarter and Jormag Rising, so.

Rubi: Cool.

Joe: Alright. I'm going next, right? I don't want to make it too complicated.

Rubi: Yes, you are.

Joe: Okay. So fortunately I can track it by festival releases. So we had Halloween last year, then Wintersday, Lunar New Year... See which came out first. I was the Team Lead on the team that made the Visions of the Past: Steel and Fire episode and then April Fool's Day, Super Adventure Festival, the Guild Wars 1 - what are we up to - 15th anniversary?

Rubi: Yeah.

Joe: Dragon Bash and we are, right now in Guild Wars 2, you can play Festival of Four Winds. So get in there and finish up your meta. You've got about one week left.

Rubi: I don't have time. Go ahead, Ester.

Ester: Well like I said, I don't make the game, I just help it become the best it can be, and so I've been involved with all of the things listed, and build and gear templates. Anything that goes out goes through QA and I rely on my embeds, my analysts, to tell me where our issues are and to make sure that everyone is aware, if we have enough time. So all of living world, all the quality of life. One of my people helped Joe with Guild Wars 1. I have a analyst who loves Guild Wars 1 and anything that comes up, he owns it. So basically I get to see everything everybody else makes and tell them how awesome it is.

Rubi: (laughs) That sounds good. And point of fact: you do in fact work on the game because you help us get it live. So it absolutely counts and you are awesome.

Joe: Yeah, you can list all that stuff.

Rubi: Yeah, totally. So I want to hear about what some of your highlights over the past year were. What were some of your favorite things? Joe, I'm going to have you go through some of yours first partly because I really like the pictures that you shared. (laughs)

Joe: All right, I got my highlights reel I think. Yeah. Okay, well let's see. So definitely for me one of the big highlights of the last year was, like I mentioned, the Steel and Fire episode coming out. We had a ton of fun making that and we kind of got the opportunity to play around a little and do something a little different for an update. The idea with that one was we put a team on doing a story kind of update that didn't necessarily have to have all the same components as we would normally do like, for example, it didn't have a new open world map or... and didn't click. It continued the story, but in sort of a side story fashion. So we had a little room to play around there and got to do a mission I really enjoyed helping build. In the Forging Steel mission where you get to play as one of the new recruits of the Steel Warband and meet Ryland and his team and kind of get a more intimate look at them than you would get to do as the commander. And it just turned into one of my favorite things because we got to have sort of the situation of being Ryland's warband and figuring out okay like, what challenges are they going to face? Like we want to have them going up through this mountain pass, and we want to use the mount technology that we've been developing to have a tank that you can actually jump into and like get on the turrets. And then we're like, all right like, who are you going to fight? Because we don't really want to have you fighting just whoever or fighting the same kind of things you've been fighting in previous episodes. And we ended up picking the Stone Summit dwarves who were a recurring villain from Guild Wars 1.

Rubi: Yeah!

Joe: And so we got to learn a little about what they've been up to and like you fight this kind of remnant faction of them that is somehow still around through dark magics and terrible decisions that they've made. Which also meant that we got to reuse the Forgeman as the climactic boss of that whole mission. So I kind of got to like live my personal dream of making a mission where we got to ride around in a tank and shoot a giant robot.

Rubi: And that's what it's all about.

Rubi: Yeah, I remember that Forgeman.

Joe: Yeah, that was good. We've got this picture of that showdown. I think this picture I fished up from some early prototype version of the map where... This was the first time we had all the art coming together on this guy and I got this picture to show to the rest of the studio. Yes, it was just the moment we had that all come together. I was like, "Alright, this is actually going to be really cool. I'm really excited about this."

Rubi: Yeah, that moment it starts to gel is always such a fun one.

Joe: Yeah. And the rest of my team just did an incredible job putting this together. We were kind of like, "Oh yeah, we'll use the Forgeman." And like, "I guess we'll have to change out its beam attack because it's kind of purpose built for the dungeon it was in before." And, you know, "Let's ask the artists if we can get a second arm on that guy." Cause you fought the Forgeman in one of the early dungeons in Guild Wars 2 and it only has one arm compared to the Guild Wars 1 incarnation, so we asked the artists, "Hey, like can we get this with a second arm? I know it probably doesn't have the animation for that, but you know. Don't spend too much time, it doesn't have to be... like, you don't have to fully convert it to the Guild Wars 1 version. We just want it to evoke the Guild Wars 1 version a little more."

Rubi: Right.

Joe: Cause the other one you fight is also kind of scrap built by the dredge out of parts, as far as you know. And like they came back with, "Okay, here's the version with two arms. We're going to work on it a little more." And I'm like, "Hey, this is looking great." And it's good at this point. And then they came back with just this incredible version of it that has like lava vents and all this stuff going on.

Rubi: I like when our teams get excited, and they're like, "But wait, there's more. I'm not done with this. I'm going to make it even more awesome." So you guys did a good job on that.

Joe: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Hope people enjoyed it.

Rubi: Do you want to talk about the sword from that episode?

Joe: Yeah! Sure. So that's another element where we really got to make kind of the best of what we were imagining. So a big thing we tried to hit on in the Steel and Fire release was fleshing out Ryland's character more, and letting you see more of him, because, as you know now, he was going to be quite a bit more important as the story continued, and up until then you'd kind of just seen him in passing. You see him during the Prologue release, just kind of around and he hangs out with Braham, but you don't hang out with him. He's just kind of standing around next to Bangar a bunch. And this was our chance to see him, for one, when he's not hanging out with Bangar, and you see another side of his personality when he's with his warband, and there's some camaraderie. But we also had to figure out- Like an early question we had was, "Alright, has anyone decided what class Ryland is? Do we know what his deal is?" We see him fighting a little bit, but it's just kind of generic greatsword stuff in the Prologue. So we had some brainstorms about what's Ryland's deal, what's going to make him exciting. We're going to have this story mission where you play as him so, what makes him interesting there? And the big thing we kept hitting on was there were a couple of incarnations where we wanted to kind of play off his relationship with Rytlock, and what's similar about them and what's different about them. And something that we kept thinking about to show that visually was, "Alright, maybe is Ryland more technological? Maybe he's an engineer. Or does he have gadgets that he uses?" And that sets him apart from Rytlock who, between his magical sword and revenant powers, has a much more kind of mystic feel to him.

Rubi: Sure.

Joe: And we kind of like went around on that. Like for a while he had grappling hooks and grenade launchers and stuff. We backed off that a little, but the thing that we kept from that series of braintorming was the idea that Rytlock has his magic sword Sohothin, the fiery dragon sword from Guild Wars 1, and we wanted to have the parallel of that, and that became "Alright, so Ryland will have his own fire sword, but it's technological, right?" And we went through a couple rounds of "Alright, so he has a flamethrower sword, that's cool!" And there was an earlier like "Alright, he's an engineer and he has a tech sword, so it'll be like a chainsaw sword." And at some point we put those together. This is my concept art that I drew on one of our whiteboards back in the office of the chainsaw flamesword that became the flamesaw later. We actually sent this to the artists, along with some other reference, and I was incredibly, incredibly pleased that they were like, "Alright, we'll make that I guess." There was an incarnation of it where we tried to have the torches on it spinning chainsaw-like. It didn't really work. You couldn't tell what was going on. But I am incredibly, incredibly happy about how that turned out, and it became this very, very unique and fun thing that you got to do as Ryland is break out the flamesaw and we've got a unique saw animation for him to like press it against things and burn through them.

Rubi: The concept art is fantastic. I personally would buy a print of that. I'm not sure what I'd do with it, but it would entertain me. So, you got your chainsaw flamesword concept art.

Joe: Yeah.

Rubi: And then it was time for April Fools, just about. And you got to work on things for that, too.

Joe: Oh yeah, okay. I sent some pictures of that, too. All right, so April Fools every year we try to do some kind of cool thing for the players or, you know, some little joke going on. In past years, we've done stuff like... Let's see. I think- Was it the first year or the second year that we had bobblehead mode?

Rubi: Oh yeah!

Joe: The Super Adventure Box itself was an April Fool's joke one year. And we've kind of gradually tried to migrate it towards being a festival rather than our April Fool's joke and the Super Adventure Box always fighting each other. We did sitting in chairs which was something I also worked on and I'm still a huge fan of the trailer for that. Go look it up.

Rubi: That was really good.

Joe: This year, we kind of fell back on one of my team's recurring jokes of like, "Cats are always funny." So, the April Fool's gag we did was, you get sent a letter by a character who has shown up occasionally in text, the King of All Cats, who tells you a bunch of really important things that you can't read, because it's written in cat, but also sends you a few tonics that you can use to, I don't know, peer beyond the veil and see invisible cats that you couldn't see before.

Rubi: Fantastic.

A looming cat visible with the tonic.

Joe: And so while you have this tonic, one: cats start just appearing around you at all times, and two: in certain areas of the game, I think all the capital cities and a couple areas around them, you can see these giant cats just like looming on the horizon. And the amount of work that went into making giant invisible cats was actually kind of surprising. There's some like, you know, engine details that made it resist the concept of giant cats. Like you're not supposed to see anything that's too far away from you. So you can see on the upper left there, there's the giant cat looming on the horizon. This is because when we made the giant cat, visible from very far away, the wall it's behind wasn't visible from that far away, so you just see the floating cat.

Rubi: Fantastic.

Joe: Also, I can't actually place a giant cat just floating. It's supposed to be on the ground because it's a cat. So all the giant cats have this like, hand-built offset where they are actually standing on the ground somewhere safe but, you know, have a buff on them that causes them to float 1000 feet up and 500 feet back or whatever for each individual cat.

Rubi: Yeah. Just to get them, each one, exactly where you want it.

Joe: Yep. And that all came together though and like one of my favorite details was the audio team came to us and they're like, "Hey, what's going on for April Fools?" And we're like, "Well, there's all this stuff with these giant cats. We've already kind of got cat sounds so... we figure we'll just use those?" And they're like, "Well, you know. We'll check it out. We'll see what we can do." And they came back a couple days later with... For one, as these cats phase in and out around you, they have this incredible- they make a kind of mystical sounding meow noise but also as they vanish it cuts out as if, you know, they were meowing and then got portaled and now you don't hear it anymore.

Rubi: Just disappeared. Yeah.

Joe: And every couple minutes I think, if you have the tonic effect on, enter in a zone with a giant cat, you will hear the giant cats like deep foghorn-like meow.

Rubi: Fantastic.

Joe: So that was way more than I expected and I really enjoyed it.

Rubi: You've had some fun highlights this past year. I know everybody's been- I know we're all been super busy. You guys have all been rolling from one piece of content to the next, to the next, to the next, right away so getting to pause and play around and do fun stuff like that is, I imagine, a nice breather.

Joe: For sure.

Rubi: So Ester, can we talk about some of your highlights of the past year because you've had a super interesting year.

Ester: It's... It's fine. You know, this year's been... No. This year has been awesome. I mean if you ask the things that stuck out in my head: Kirk's game, and hopefully you'll talk about it a little bit, in the prologue was a particular favorite because it was using technology that I am terrified of. And he made it work and work well and I'm much less terrified, everybody, now that everybody wants to use it. But collaborating with the teams, I get to work with each of the individual development teams on each episode or feature with the engineers, and the artists to a point, and so all of it is just been watching everybody just work really hard to get everything out has been amazing to watch and them being receptive to my team telling them there's issues. Like there's bugs and they are like, "Okay, we'll fix them." Like the relationship that we have as a team with QA and design and engineering and art and everybody else, it's just been really professionally rewarding at ArenaNet and this year especially as we've been- had all these extra challenges working from home.

Rubi: Yeah and we're gonna get to that too because I do want to touch on that. I know we've done a Guild Chat about working from home, but there's a lot there as far as how it relates shipping the game. Kirk, Ester mentioned those new tools and I do know you had it in your list to talk about. Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Kirk: Sure, yeah. I still remember how that first conversation with Ester went, it's like, you know, I walked over to her desk, so, I'd like to do an event where you're on a bunch of moving platforms in the open world and, uh, she's like okay, it's fine, yeah, you know.

Rubi: This is fine.

Kirk: All the credit there really goes to Joel, you know that was an event that when I was building it and blocking it out, I didn't think it would end up being as technically taxing as it might have ended up being, and he was my lifesaver more than once on that, I'm just trying to get that stuff working. You know, the thing that Ester is talking about in general is moving platforms, it's something that, you know, you don't, you kind of take for granted when you see them because it's like oh yeah, you know, it's just a platform that moves, but a lot goes into getting that working right, you know, for a while we had an issue where your character would, so if you're on a moving platform, and so to give some some context to it, in prologue there's an event where you're on a moving platform shooting targets in the air, just balloons, right, it's like a training exercise for adolescent charr, and essentially what happens is you stand on a platform looking around in like almost a third-person shooter mode and clicking targets to shoot at them, but you're not moving your character most of the time, and so what we're running into is that even though you're technically moving, your client, or the game didn't think you had moved until, uh since the last time that you actually physically moved like pressing your wasd or arrow keys or however you move around in the game, right, so, oh, hi cat, catbombed, so, essentially what happened is, yeah hidden cat, there you go, thanks, thanks Joe, press the button.

Rubi: Good work, Joe.

Kirk: So what happened is you'd shoot the gun and your missile that, you know, your projectile from the gun would come shoot out of the, the gun from way down where you used to be and it's like what, what the heck is going on, like we couldn't figure out what's happening, and then Joel, like i said, was just the savior there and looked into it a whole bunch, is like oh, this is what's happening and him and I worked together a whole bunch, you know, to get that thing working, and that was, that event is special to me from prologue along with the char chef event just because that episode a lot like, the team was able to do so many cool unique things in that episode that we haven't really done before, like those two events and like Connor's awesome concert, you know, and like Frosty's, you know, Flame Legion stuff, there's just a lot of cool little fun things here in the entire episode that was just exciting to make even though it was still technically challenging, so.

Rubi: Yeah, building, building a whole new event and trying to figure out how to use new tools was, was a thing that I know you had to fiddle with and terrify Ester for a little while, but I feel like you made it work, and this is, this is a little bit later episode I think, but do you want to talk about working with cinematics to get Bangar's speech up and running?

Kirk: Sure, uh. That actually was the same episode so, um—

Rubi: I was like, oh gosh, was it zero or one?

Kirk: [Laughs] It's the final instance of Bound by Blood, so, spoilers. If you haven't played the prologue yet, first, you should go do that. But, uh, at the very end of the episode Bangar gives a rousing speech to all of the, um, now Dominion charr, uh, that have followed him into the Shiverpeaks. And that was a moment that we wanted to have feel very cinematic and really, you know, build up Bangar for— for what he is and what his character is becoming, right. Um, but we didn't really have the time to make it a full-fledged cinematic, um, so that was a case of, um, I worked together with Chelsea, um, our cinematics lead, and she kind of coached— I'm not a cinematics artist by any means, so she coached me into the best, like, cinematography techniques, you know, the— the pans, the zooms, all that good— those technical terms. All that good stuff. And on my end, I was building a rather admittedly complicated, probably more than it needed to be, system of in-game cameras that kind of redirect and act as if it's moving around like a cinematic would. Um, and that was really fun and just— learning the cinematic technical side as well as trying to get that working in-game as an in-game cinematic, uh, that was another one that was like really tricky and it— you know, there's a lot of things to learn from it. But, as— you know, we used it in the first instance of that episode as well, um, because it turned out it's like, yeah, we could maybe, you know, get some more use out of this. And I think it was used in another episode as well. Um, but yeah, so just like. Really exciting going through that and iterating with her and, you know, she gave me so much helpful feedback and direction the entire way. Um, just being able to collaborate with cinematics more directly, uh, you know, than design might at other times. Um, you know, that was really fun and exciting so, yeah.

Rubi: So, I do want to— we have— we have a lot of ground to cover today so I'm trying to keep us on track, um. I want to make sure that you talk about a more community side thing, too, because you helped do the work to get the winners of our Friendships contest into the game, didn't you?

Kirk: Yes, yeah. I worked together with Annie, who will be on later, Shane Michael, one of our narrative designers, Bobby Stein, who's a— I don't know his technique, oh, our echo, my echo was going off. One moment, please. The good times of home living. [laughs] So, working with Bobby Stein, as well, you know, a narrative lead—I think he's actually a narrative des— manager? I don't remember his term, anyway, anyway, all of them work together getting the Friendships contest winners in. You know, trying to figure out the best way to have it feel like they're part of the world, and, you know, interacting with the world, and it's just really exciting, because, you know, it shows the passion of our players, of the game. They're really excited about it, which makes us excited about it, you know, we like to acknowledge that kind of stuff as much as we can. You know. So that's really fun, and, you know, Annie did an awesome job putting together the composites based on the looks that we were sent. You know, so it really looked like their characters, and then Shane Michael and Bobby both helped write their blurbs ingame,

Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. https://youtu.be/b5j0TPkYbmE?t=2110

Rubi: Yeah, definitely quick question. Did your echo go off for the? Reason I think it went off. I got excited.

Kirk: Yeah, I wish. No, it's telling me to close my windows.

Rubi: It it still might. We have 15 minutes. Well, I guess if you need to go do that, you can.

Kirk: Yeah, it's fine.

Rubi: I want to I want to spend a little bit of time talking to all three of you about. The challenges and how you've worked around having to work from home, some of us are thousands of miles away, but none of us are in the office where we can just walk over to each other's desks. Or, hey, can we grab a room real quick to talk about this or hey, random kitchen meet. Do you guys just wanna talk a little? Bit about the past. Like 8 months.

Joe: It's been like a week, right?

Rubi: And Esther, it's it's like the 350th of March. Time has no meaning for any of us anymore. Esther, I'll start with you, because yours is kind of wild.

Ester: It feels like. Ah, so I. Am actually not in Washington right now. I am down at my mother's house in Arizona. I left Washington on the. End at the end of. March and Marathoned it down here. I don't recommend. That, by the way. I had some family things I needed to help out with, and I've been. Here ever since. Kind of helping with families, so I am. Spending the worst. The the worst season to not be in Washington like this is when you want to be there. And I'm down here. It worked out because we're working from home, but it's hard. I I can't like Ruby, said Kirk. I can't go over and stare at someone until they write their documentation. It wasn't Kirk his was written. I can't just pull someone in a room and have a conversation or or anything like that, and so it's it's been hard, cool. Thing is, I'm going home on Friday. OK. I'm very excited and I when I go home to is I've been in this, this kind of larger home past since the end of March and I'm going back to my just kind of small and I think we have pictures of my house. Yeah, I live on a houseboat that's 343 square feet. I love it. I miss it. But I'm going like the that's all my stuff as we moved in. That's where my bed is. The descent into insanity that will happen. And there's there's the pooch and the lake. So we'll see. As and that was. Winner of 19 that those huge snowstorms that we had, I think that was my favorite. Picture of that. It has limited electricity. I can't wash clothes and heat at the same time. This there's a lot of challenges. It's wonderful, but my intent to dissent into insanity by Christmas may be entertaining for everyone else to watch because it is small and when it gets cold, there's not. A lot of time to spend outside. And I have a buddy that's. Going to hang out with me. So he makes it a little bit easier.

Rubi: So how are you getting back home? Are you marathoning back up?

Ester: I'm going to marathon to my brothers in the Bay Area and then kind of. Because California is burning take evaluate. I may be there for a little while and then I'll back the idea. I don't want to stay in a hotel. I want to have as little contact with other people as possible, and then I'll quarantine for two weeks when I get home.

Rubi: OK. Can I ask one more question? Can I ask that you share the name of your houseboat? What the name it is, or the name I.

Ester: Want to make it because those are. Two different things. So.

Rubi: Oh, I only.

Ester: When it was sold to me, it is totes my boats. It's on the legal documents. But I seriously, yeah. So I may or may not change it, but. So I'll tell a little bit story behind it. When I first started playing Guild, when I first started working at Arena net and was inside the game and everything, my brain. Took I I swore there was a a zone called Sparkle Fly Fenn for like a year. Right. Yeah, corrected me. I'm like no, and I actually pulled up the map I'm like, ohh, I'm totally wrong. So I've been trying to get something called Sparkle Fly fan in the game forever, and if I change the name of my boat it will be the sparkle fly.

Rubi: I love it. I I am on board.

Ester: And Ruby I. I think that'd be fun. I have the things. That came in the mail.

Rubi: Well, if you go for it. Yeah, go ahead.

Ester: We have masks. From bar fans, floor fans. It is the quiet the clock in these cane. Like yesterday I have the slogan and I have. My little cactus guise. What are they called? Trying to get it on the screen and these are. These are by fans. Fans that came in the mail. I'm happy with them. Excited to use them on my trip back home.

Rubi: Well, drive safe. Be very, very careful and we and the boat be glad to. Have you back home so? Kirk, how's how's pandemic life going for you? I see you got a home air conditioner.

Kirk: Yeah, that has been a necessary giant. It's it's, it's hot, you know, that's something that we kind of took for granted going into the office every summer is we're in an air conditioned office during the hottest part of the day. And now I'm in a smaller room with a very warm. Uh, so that's been fun, but. Uh pandemic life has been OK, you know, trying to help everyone stays safe and takes it seriously. But I still remember kind of how that conversation went back in first March, whereas now we're what in 7th, 5th? I don't know, some March.

Rubi: I have no idea.

Kirk: Yeah, because we're in the middle of episode 3's development at the time, and he was just like. How are we going to do this? You know, because we have obviously never had to deal with something like this before and just trying to like, like Esther said, you know, I can't walk over to her desk and say, hey, can we use using moving platforms anymore? I have to call her on teams and beg for forgiveness, you know, but we make. You and I, I've, as I've said before, you know our IT team and producers, they really did an awesome job of getting us online really quickly. So we were able to have. You know, not too much downtime and get back on track, you know? So just trying to learn how to communicate with folks and. Learn that you know I'm not as introverted as I thought I was in terms of no, I'm fine. I'm just not much. I'm at home. It's fine, you know. No, I need people. I need to see people. Cause as as a designer, I can't look, you know, turn around and be like. Hey, Annie, what do you think about this idea? I got a pitch for you, you know. Or, hey, Eric, come, you know, come take a look at this. I might need some some programming bits for it, you know. So it's it's a lot more complicated and more communication is necessary, but we've all learned to become better communicators because of it. You know, documentation has to be super clear. We have to be very precise in how. We're vocalizing or typing things in teams. Tone is impossible to tell on via text, so you know giving and receiving feedback. You need to be very aware of how you're doing that, so that's been interesting, but it's been a good learning experience, but I look forward to the day where we can all come back together and. Of a a waffle party or something so.

Rubi: Yeah, releasing waffles have not been anything. That is I do want to touch on. You mentioned that tone is impossible to convey and I was thinking about that a week or so ago I got I got a private message on teams from one of from another employee who just was like hey, I just wanted to apologize. I feel like I was really snappy with you. And I was rude. And I'm just. I'm very sorry. And I'm sitting there going. I don't know what you're talking about. But OK, and he clarified. And it was, if we were in the office that. Would have been a. Two second conversation shouted across our pod, so it is. I mean, it sounds like such a little thing, but it does add such an huge extra layer to every single interaction that we're having right now. Yeah, for sure. So in our last few minutes, how about you, Joe?

Joe: So I think for me. The big like excitement for working from home was. You know, back in March, we were like. OK. Hey, everyone like this might be a thing, you know, make sure you have your homework stations all set up. Like get this taken care of now because we don't want everyone taking care of in a hurry if it becomes a thing. And my team was in the midst of, you know, finishing up visions of the past, steel and fire at that moment where, like, alright, you know, OK, we'll fine, fine and fine. And I'll take care of it like, whatever. And then it became a thing. And we were like, ohh, OK, you know, everyone just, you know, just practices. Start working from home, right? And you know, we'll see where it goes. We'll reevaluate this next week and we're like, hey, we're like a week from shipping our thing. From steel and fire going out and.

Rubi: The concept, the concept of will reevaluate this next week now seems so weird.

Joe: We did that a couple of times. And so we were like alright, you know, no big deal. Since stuff is in the final stages of the pipeline, like we weren't going to change it much anyway, right? Or Esther would be. Really mad at us. We were like, you know, we're from home. We can be working on, you know, follow up bug fixing updates if we need to. And Shirley, we'll back in the office for the actual ship, right? Like everyone will just stay home for a week. This will all blow over and we'll be good to go. And it became increasingly like, OK, we're, we're not coming back to the office. And so like the release day, we were figuring out, OK, like how are we playing the game from home? Well, still checking emails and responding to bugs and coordinating all of that was hugely different. I think like the night before that release, we had a really severe bug show up and. Coordinating that with everyone who was. You know, in different states of working from home or different states of availability was a whole lot of fun. And I was really impressed by the team for coming together and getting that figured out and getting through it.

Rubi: Yeah, we were still learning at that point.

Joe: Just for yeah.

Rubi: We were still. Learning how to do this.

Joe: You would get to the final boss of the chapter, and if you happened to use stealth during a particular attack, they would just lock up and you couldn't kill them.

Rubi: Ohh so it wasn't like other stuff and now we can just blink them.

Ester: OK. Yeah, it was something we found at the last. Minute on live. And Joe's team was great.

Rubi: Ohh my gosh.

Joe: Yeah, we managed that.

Rubi: Yeah, we are.

Joe: We had to slow down the story a little, but it all.

Rubi: Worked out the cat is not having.

Kirk: It Kirk had no I had to. I had to.

Ester: But we all have our.

Kirk: She is she.

Rubi: We all have our work from home companions so.

Joe: I had my cat through.

Rubi: Yeah, it is hole.

Joe: The whole stream and she just left so.

Rubi: Did she take off? No idea where my pets are. They're around here somewhere. Yeah, it has been. It has been a learning experience. You guys have all handled it like. The dog is cooperating. The rest of us have cats and. They don't care. Alright, well, thank you all for your time. I appreciate it. And we're going to take a short break and then come back with our next round of guests. Thank you guys for spending some time with us again on the anniversary live stream. As we look over the past year of Guild Wars. New development and we have some more fun stuff coming for you guys, so stick around. We'll be right back.

48:43 Break[edit]

51:06 Continue[edit]

Rubi: All right, welcome back and thank you all again for spending some time on our anniversary stream. We are up with our next three developer guests and Nick, please be careful. Don't hurt yourself. I'll let you guys introduce yourselves and talk about what you do at Arena net. Let's go Annie, Cameron, Nick, because that's the order you are on my screen.

Annie: Hi, I'm Annie vandemeer. I'm a senior game designer and I worked on Living World chapter. Three and a little bit of help with four.

Nick: Nick, you're muted!

Rubi: Ohh, Cameron you're muted

Cameron: OK. Can you hear me now? OK. I'm a game designer and I work on sorry. Worked on Living World Episode 2 and some other cool things we'll talk about later.

Nick: Hi, my name is Nick Hernandez and I am a game designer here at Arena net. I have worked on episodes 1-2 and four and most recently The Citadel Siege and all the masteries. Episode four were my my sweet children.

Rubi: Perfect. All right, that works. Cameron, do you want to talk about some of your highlights over the past year?

Cameron: The big thing that we did for episode 2 that I took point on was Drakkar. The world bus that a lot of people end up going crazy over and killing their friends whenever they can't. Beat the boss. And that was a really fun release because we got to work with a bunch of different artists from all different professions, creature, art, animation effects, everything to really kind of bring that boss together. We've got a blog post out there if you're more interested in getting a behind the scenes look. But it was also one of the. First times that. We've shipped a whole bus and done a release afterwards. That kind of like tuned it up and brought some extra rewards to it, added some additional fun little flavor mechanics, including the aforementioned going crazy whenever you feel the events, and being able to have.

Joe: Open world PvP.

Cameron: Yeah, that was that was a lot of fun.

Rubi: That was all right, Nick. How about you? What were some of your favorites over the past year?

Nick: Before I actually go into that, I just also want to kind of touch on the fact that like, not only was it a world bus that we updated later on, but on top of that, it was, I think one of the First world bus that. We ever released alongside a living world episode. Which had its own trials and tribulations, which is also a huge feat because world bosses in and of themselves are a huge time investment. It it was, it was a big one. As for my my highlights, I think definitely, uhm. Of course, there's a citadel siege for Episode 4, and there's the masteries for episode 4. I was those. Those took a lot and I was really happy with the outcome. But of course, besides that, there's all the weird bugs that we'll get into because I do love me some bugs and that's. That's it for right now.

Rubi: How about you, Annie?

Annie: Well, I I actually I joined the team in the beginning of December, so I've. I think by this county, I've definitely spent more time out of the office than in the office now. I was lucky enough to go to PAX East where I spent a lot of time with really excellent fans and a lot of a lot of time with my beloved flame saw, which was a the incredible saw mentioned before. Islands amazing style was made into. An actual prop, which was heavy as heck and.

Rubi: It was 30 pounds, I think.

Annie: People got to pose with it and everything. Ohh, you actually. Yeah, that that tracks.

Ester: That that is what?

Annie: A lot of when I. Was told so that that makes sense. I was just like holding that thing the whole time. And As for every moment that I wasn't saying hi to people and was at the booth I was like, please let me hold the sword. Please let me hold the sword. There's like 17 pictures of me with that sword. I also it was very important to me to be involved in the friendships campaign and sees the awkward. It was a lot of fun. I felt really special being able to do as, as Kirk mentioned, the composites for the the winners of that was very special and I also really enjoyed in episode 3 making players do a war crime that was really great. Seriously, I I did enjoy. Having being able to participate, to being in putting together stuff with the the charts of war, bringing back snarl and Goleta, and having this like little bright light with them, even as everything else is falling apart into chaos and ruin. So I do like an occasional little bright light.

Rubi: That's that's allowed in between. Your board crimes? Yeah, the.

Annie: Bomb the down. The air shot, yeah.

Rubi: Yeah, that was. I was telling someone else that I was playing through with the Guild mate on that, and like every episode he kept being like man smokers, a jerk, sweaters, a jerk like increasing concern. And then we got to that part. And he was like. Well, that that sure did happen. So thank you from him and thank you for me because his reactions in real time were a thing of beauty. So it was, yeah, every time he was like ohh man smokers a jerk and I'm actually censoring a little bit there. But I'm just sitting there like you have. You don't know what's going. Yeah. So do you want? To talk about your team who?

Annie: Shipped the game I was at rennet from 2009 to 2013 and I'm always wary of being the person on the team who's like. Back in my day or like I. Love this one character that nobody you know things have happened in the interim. But it it was really cool that I didn't come off as being like random and old. What I mentioned those two that people seemed actually interested in them because there was a lot of. Focus on being able to to reach into the past and bring these characters back that people remembered, or even if they didn't make them worthwhile. And I liked having a sort of situation where it made it. It wasn't just me being like and now kids, it made sense. Bring them back. The whole reason that they had this. Friction before was over from two different legions and basically getting a chance to sort of highlight well, that doesn't really matter now, like there's Dragons of the world falling apart in the civil war and you know, let's let's hold on to what's good and that. Ended up being a little bit more prescient and be let's hold on to what's good than in a chaotic world then I. It kind of thought. It would be, but you know, hey. 2020 man.

Ester: What is a little on the nose?

Rubi: I did not. Yeah, that's that's just right there, isn't it? So, but they are they are good and they bring happiness to our. Don't touch it.

Annie: Also on the double sassafras.

Rubi: Nobody hurt them.

Annie: No, I will protect them with my life.

Rubi: So you also see you came back just in time for, like a mountain of snow to dump on us, right?

Annie: Yeah, that's right. It was like 3 weeks. In the office, and then we're supposed to come back in January. And then I was like, Nope, there's gonna be snow mageddon. It was like. A dry run for having having everything set up to have a Home Office already. And I I did the indie studio before, where I'd worked from homes or sort of. You know, knew the basic setup that I needed to have also unexpectedly helpful. But yeah such I know I need to stop being so flip and prescient. I don't enjoy it, but. But yeah, it was. It was interesting being able to to it was, it was amazing and surreal to to be back. And then I guess in a weird way, it felt fitting because in I think it was 2011, there was a kind of snowmageddon as well. Let me tell you, the ability to work from home was not as good then and we had like a video deadline. We were running up against, so there was definitely some crunch. Going back to the office back then, so it's much much smoother now, but count my blessings in that regard.

Rubi: Yeah, there's that. Do you want to talk about the scripting that you've had to deal with and how things changed in between your last tenure and when you came back home formally? By the way.

Annie: It is good feedback and yeah, I mean the in the early days of of duo, which is the internal tool set that we use. Stuff was built to have kind of a plug and play kind of. System to it, for lack of a better word, it was if you wanted functionality that didn't already exist, like you had to come to a programmer with a a pitch. Not just this is what I want to use this for, but hear other situations in which it could be used. So it was a longer process. Things were were simpler, but you turned out content. Really fast and and coming back to it later and seeing the millions of different ways in which people have taken these older simple systems like buffs and. You know the the magic of tripwires and and monkeyed with them so much to have these incredibly complex, occasionally frustrating, but really brilliant ways of of handling things like even the things deliberately added to the game. Like when I was first part of the. The very beginning part of living. World the main the the player character could not talk like the idea of having scenes in which the player character talk was impossible and they told us it was like functionally not a thing that could be done. And that changed really quickly and I was pleased to see that as a fan that it was that that changed. It's like steps like that, as well as how things are put together are much more complex, but much so much more robust. And the idea of even doing things like the diffusal mechanic on the submarines that I did for Chapter 3 that I blatantly. Just ripped off. Of something in chapter. Fear of a with a A like furnace mechanic. I think it was that I can't imagine. And being able to do that and what we had. To ship the game with. And I have been. I learned a lot. I have been learning a lot and seeing how everything is is coming along is really I open the doors. I think for a lot of designers to be really incredibly creative and probably we have to ask Esther about this QA to be incredibly frustrated. So good I. Would say not good, not very good.

Rubi: Waiting for and. Waiting for Esther to like, yell. Yes, in my ear. Yes, it's true. So what were some of your other highlights? What were some of the other your and you haven't been here the whole year, you haven't been back the whole year, but it has been a, it has been a. Packed few months so. Yeah, because it's set to. You get to make composites again.

Annie: Ohh, that was something that back. In the original campaign, it was, it was, I hate to say, like a desperation maneuver, but it was. I mean, you might have noticed Gilmore two has a lot of characters in it, and especially a lot in the personal story. And art was slammed with having to do an incalculable. Amount of things and having this sort of situation which. Basically the the view model. The thing that that things are put together. Imagine, just like the best paper towel kind of situation where you have all the shiniest things that are just put together and you get to just make this character look as cool as you want. And I'm also a nerd for stories, so I got to the fact that I got to go and. Chat with other designers and be like, what do you think they should have and and put these characters together and that we had a pipeline process for. You know, even be as a designer who should probably not be touching art to say, hey, I had this idea and pass it through an art pipeline and have somebody approve it. I mean every opportunity that. That I have. To get involved in as much of. Developing a character as possible, how they look. The few times I. Got involved with with casting like Tibolt. My boy that has been, that's been incredibly meaningful to me as a designer and I've always said that the more you can get more people excited about content, excited about a character, the better everything becomes. So yeah, I I'm very grateful that anytime I get to make a composite, when somebody mentions to me that. Ohh yeah, could you make this thing? I just get hugely elated like yes, because I play with some toys again.

Joe: Yes, yes. Awesome.

Annie: I do like things.

Rubi: And you like putting things in the game so it works out. Well, for all of. Us so, Cameron, how about you? You mentioned working under a car was one of your highlights. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Because that was a huge thing over the past year.

Cameron: Yeah, sure. Uh. So. Like Nick was saying, it's one of the first world buses that we've done in a long time and with living world, if I remember correctly, the last ones that we did were the vine wrath and silver wastes. And then we did the death branded shatterer, which was kind of like a mini wolf boss in Season 4. And then for jakar, we knew that we really wanted to do. Another big prop. Bus and we had this goal in mind of. OK, the thing that players remember the most about your car is to it is seeing him in in Guild Wars, one underneath the ice. So we definitely want to do something. With the ice. And when we went to the artists and. We're like, OK, what if he? Was like swimming under the ice and he would. Come out of. And you know, it'd be a super scary, like you're fighting a shark that can go through ice. That can also like come out of the ice and fight you. And they're like. Whoa, hold on a second there. And we didn't actually know if we had the the technology and the shaders possible to really show him underneath the ice swimming around just because of the way that materials work in our game. But everybody kind of came together behind this vision of what he was going to do and we we used a lot of. Honestly, really brilliant. Sorry, words really brilliant solutions to overcome some of the the bigger challenges that we had and I think it turned out really well. I think it's definitely one of it's one of my favorite encounters in terms of like, spectacle, just because you can see him like swimming through with the shadow, you see him pop out, yeah. And he's got. All of these, like attacks that kind of reach across the room, do a ton of damage to everybody around there. And he encourages people to move around the room because usually our prop buses don't actually like move a whole lot. And you know you end up like just sitting in one spot and waiting for their hand to come down. And then you're like, OK, everybody back up. Do this one thing, go back there. But with your car, we really wanted to have him moving around, going from left to right to middle. And that gets people. To be a lot more mobile and active, that was a lot of fun too.

Rubi: Yeah, it's interesting.

Cameron: And then, yeah. Sorry, no you.

Rubi: It was interesting hearing from Lee talking about getting those shadows moving. I know we did a Guild chat about that and. The amount of. Work behind something that seems that simple. It's like well. Of course, he just moves around like you or. I would you just get up and move. And what an endeavor that was behind the scenes really spoke to your guys's work, so. That was awesome.

Cameron: Yeah, there was definitely a lot of iteration between the two. And there, there were a bunch of different prototypes that we ended up doing to see if, like, can we have this model actually like, sit behind the ice and, you know, do we animate the actual model to do this thing or can we use shadow? There, there were a lot of different solutions that were thrown there and the other big thing with prop bosses is that because you have so many people on the screen at one time, because you have so many people in a map working together, performance is key and so you can't do anything like. Super ridiculously crazy. Because then everybody's frame rates are going to tank. So we had to be a bit more judicious about the the kinds of things that we looked into in terms of solving all those problems. But I think that the the solution with his shadow going across. Oops, sorry Mike. His shadow going across and. The The If you look at the floor, whenever he's kind of in his phase transition, seeing the shadow kind of like start to build up in an area and then he comes out of the ground and chomps like all that stuff is, is actually really, really perf light, which allows the fight to be. Pretty easy on the computer, and it also allows us to do a lot more in terms of like environmental effects where we have, you know, snow falling all over the screen kind of have like a little white out effect that kind of makes the and the atmosphere of that encounter feel a lot more tense and scary as you're going. So yeah, just overall it was. It was a pleasure to work with everybody to try and figure out, you know, how are we going to take this, this being that has so much potential and players have kind of run with their imaginations for the last, you know, 10 plus years ever since they saw their car. How do we? Take that and and really deliver it in a way that meets their expectations.

Rubi: So, Nick, how about you because you have been all over the place you have? Been so busy.

Nick: Yeah, I I really have, I think. I'd say the highlights for me are just kind of having gotten to experiment a lot and kind of being able to work with all the different teams and kind of see how everybody. Functions, for lack of a better word, and seeing like like, you know, everybody in at in, at our Internet, our Internet is extremely talented, but like each team, while solid like has its own unique flair and flavor. So being able to kind of hop between teams and do the things that I like. That I wanted to do creatively while also being able to work in tandem with with all these extremely amazing and creative. People definitely was was fantastic, but I think the the biggest thing for me was like all of the like discovering all of like the technical hurdles and like how to overcome them, kind of like what Cameron was talking about earlier with your car. You know it, big or small, there's always going to be technical hurdles with all of your content and being able to overcome those things is pretty fantastic.

Rubi: Yeah, Speaking of working from home, you did. Didn't you help some with getting our tools to work from home?

Nick: It depends on which tools you're talking about. I've I, so I like. I work on some accessibility stuff and so I had to help get those tools kind of up and running again. And also I do some so I am. The lead of one of our internal. Slake studio culture teams that kind of helps like our job, is to kind of help gauge the pulse of the studio and things like that. So I worked to kind of get the the framework for that stuff set up along with my team, and boy does COVID make things more difficult. But we pulled through it and I was extremely proud of us.

Rubi: Do you want to do you want to talk a little bit about some of the accessibility stuff that you've worked on? Because we've got a few of those things from live in the past to live. In the past year, haven't we?

Nick: Uh, yeah, so there is. There's some, like, photosensitivity stuff that we've been working on for a while that we've been able to kind of get into our pipeline to kind of help stave off the problem that we've ran into in the past where it's like our game is very effects heavy and. Like depending on the settings, things can actually change in the way that we hadn't really ever managed. So with these tools, it's allowed us to kind of help prevent any sort of like problems that could occur for people who have like photosensitive, like, photosensitive epilepsy or things like that. Along with that, we've done some work in trying to help make sure that people that are like. Color blind or you know, like, have cognitive disabilities have a better time and experience. In in our game, the content that we're shipping, so like we like and like there's one minor one that I can point to that I haven't recently, which is, you know, just a really simple switch of like. The malnourished buff from just being a color like a color change to being both a color change and also having different iconography to kind of help distinguish for those who are both. Color blind and have cognitive disabilities, things like that.

Rubi: Yeah, and it seems that sounds like like what you said it was just a, it was just a little small thing, but it makes a big difference to a lot of people. So I do want to take a second to thank you for working on that stuff and pushing on that. Because it has helped.

Nick: I mean, at the end of the day, it's, it's not just me, right? It's it's it's a bunch of people and I think you know, we also can think leadership for being like heck yeah, let's do it. And also like all of the fans who who bring up stuff. Because when it what? What I've learned is that when it comes to accessibility like no one person has all all the knowledge. So like seeing forum posts where people talk about these things and bring up their concerns or the problems they're running into definitely helps us to be able to take a look at it, evaluate how we can solve these problems, and then action on those items. So thank you to the community because they're the real heroes in this situation.

Rubi: Well, community and you and everybody who worked on it. So it is, it is absolutely team effort that has come through and made a difference to people so well let's talk in our in our remaining time here. Let's talk some about working from home. Again, I know we did a stream on it, but if we're looking back at the past. Year I feel. Like we kind of have to acknowledge it. Annie, you mentioned that working from home was a lot better than it was in 2011, which, yeah, it would be. What were some of the, what were some of the biggest differences that made it easier for you?

Annie: Well stuff like like teams, just if they existed. I was not aware of it. That was not a thing that was accessible, I mean. Stuff just wasn't as as fast. You didn't have the the same sort of processing power. If I tried to work in something like DW test, it was this hitchy nightmare where it was like. Broad strokes is even an exaggeration about what you could do in that it was. It was pretty much if you weren't working in text or in in very simple scripting where it was your your best guess kind of thing. You just sort of had to to flag things as. Or I I gonna have to fix this when I get back in the office? Always a sort of thing. Like this is this is a Band-Aid. This is a stopgap. This is something where you just hope to get something done. So it's not just like a a, a total waste of time sitting and looking out the window like boy, you know, there's a lot of snow out there, this is not possible and. Talking, talking with other people like like having a. A like even just like a a a chat over voice was weird and would have been different let alone like video it just God this makes me sound old. But yeah, I mean, this was I think that. Stuff with working from home has advanced so much just like the last five years, like stuff like. Teams and slack have become mainstream. People are using stuff like discord, like there's become a lot of options now, just in terms of non.

Rubi: Yeah, just for communication.

Annie: In terms of like non internal like like Internet did not have to develop the software to. Do working from home. It existed pipelines for doing remote work got got smoother things, things just improved across the board. Thankfully, without as much. You know effort specifically from one place needing to be as much a part of it. And I think people got. More used to this sort of. Like communicating online, being able to communicate. Through chat through through video stuff, through knowing what was beneficial to to say like in a quick message versus just, I mean the convenience of turning on like yelling over your shoulder and the camaraderie of having everybody in the office like you can't replace that. You can kind of. Have a a. Little bit of a facsimile. You know, group chats and stuff like that, but I think I think the intervening time was learning what working from home could do well and just trying to lean in that kind of direction. But Oh my God, the connections in 2011. Were not great. That's a big.

Rubi: This is true. You mentioned missing the camaraderie. And I've been out of town. I just got home late last night and we were coming home from the airport and we had to swing by the Factoria area for something. And I was like can. We just divert a little. I just want to drive past the office and see. It and I I miss the office. So yeah, I did that. That's probably sad, but I did drive by and. I like hi work and it's you. So Nick, you've talked a lot on Guild chat about working from home. How are, how's it going? How are you doing?

Nick: Sorry you you were like, talking about the office and I was.

Rubi: No, you're not wrong.

Nick: Like, oh, she's not wrong. Yeah, I, uh, I don't know. I miss people. Uh, I miss working with people physically at the office. I mean like teams is great. Like Annie was saying, our tools are are great and and being able to communicate and continue our workflows. But you know there there are a lot of things that have been sacrificed unfortunately like. Once again, Wayne, he said, yelling over your shoulder, telling everybody like like I miss. I missed the points. Where people were. Like like you'd hear an audible gasp. And everybody would just turn around, be like what? Then they're like, look, and you would see this screen and everybody would crowd around and then it would be like this, this crazy thing. Or, like, people would notice, like, something's going on here because, like, some, like, a program would be saying next to a designer like Joel would be sitting next to me. And then they're like, oh, that's what's going on here. Right. Like where are these two sitting next to each other?

Rubi: OK.

Nick: And then like, that's how the metazoa came to be, right? Like we were just sitting there, we were like. How can we make go up boom? And I just like I miss. I miss that level of camaraderie and also food trucks. I miss food trucks so much like first world problems. But I missed food. Trucks cooking, cooking for myself. Every single day. Is, is is valuable in in my skill set but not as valuable when it comes to diverse.

Rubi: Palettes, but it's not a food truck. Yeah, I have. I have a couple and food truck owners. Just because pandemic are starting to adapt a little bit. So they're food trucks like up here in suburbia where I live. Because they're like, well, I can't go to office parks anymore. So like, they're starting to branch out.

Nick: With the ice cream truck.

Rubi: Maybe there will be, huh?

Nick: Like an ice cream truck. Like they're they're driving through.

Rubi: Yes, I think. There is one that does coffee and pastries, and I haven't. I haven't patronized it yet, but there's one that does. Coffee and pastries in my area that drives around like an ice cream truck.

Ester: Does it play a little song?

Rubi: I don't know, just I haven't.

Nick: Like how else getting peoples attention.

Rubi: We find our fun if Facebook I.

Joe: You just like screaming to the megaphone like food.

Rubi: Don't know, they tell people. I think get the food. I think there are food trucks in. Your future is what I'm saying.

Kirk: I hope so.

Rubi: Yeah, I like. I have my favorites. I have like this, the smoothie truck and I haven't been there since I was at the office. So, Cameron, how about you? Do you miss food trucks too?

Cameron: I'm thinking of them right now.

Rubi: OK, come back, come back.

Cameron: Yes. Oh man. Yeah, I I definitely miss. I definitely miss food trucks. They're they're the best. But as as Nick was saying, I. I think the people and the environments are probably the things that I missed. The most for sure. There were definitely a lot of a. Lot of different. Problems to solve with the coming and when I'm working from home there is a ramp up time where like you know, early on there was some tech hurdles that we needed to get past and. You know, we did a really great job of getting past those and getting connection for everybody across the studio, which is great. Shout out to the C team. They pulled a herculean effort in order to get everything there, so good job on that. But there are also, you know, some case by case, just challenges to overcome, like getting a proper workspace set up. I have a desk here at home that I had customized specifically for like my own use, you know, with like a VR headset. And all of these other things that are. And yeah, it's it's super fun, except for it was not built for productivity, so I definitely needed to try and figure out how to how to get around that and beyond just the workspace. My I live, I live in a house with a bunch of other people and my desk was in the common area. So one of the things that I did not expect at all was a bunch of people in the kitchen at all hours of the day with pots clanging and like the sizzle of things being burned on the. And and just, you know, cabinets opening and shutting all over the place. And I actually ended up getting noise cancelling headphones and it still was just like driving me crazy. So I so I I tried to move my desk into my room and. That was great. For a little bit. And then I realized that I am absolutely an introverted extrovert and I need people. I need that human interaction, and it was just going nuts being in my room, which is already a super small room. So, you know, having another big desk area in there was really hard to fit in. But I had this idea a couple about a month ago now of OK well, it's very clear that I don't know how long we're going to be in this situation sitting at home. So I actually went and I got one of the desks, the standing desks that we have at the office. And I recruited, I bought this workspace at home and it has done wonders because it tricks my brain into thinking that I'm back there. And yeah, the only difference is. Just not being able to see all.

Rubi: You Beautiful people.

Nick: I can't wait.

Rubi: Yeah, that's that's. I was talking to some again. I'm afraid I'm gonna make Nick sad now, but I'm going to tell this anyway. I was talking to somebody the other day and I was like, yeah, a while back we had. This meeting at. Work and Nick Nick wanted to talk to me about something right afterwards. And we ended up just like grabbing a side room and we ended up talking for like, an hour and a half. And then I was like ohh. I can't do that. Do you remember that? And I was just like, ohh can't do that anymore.

Kirk: Yeah, it was productive.

Rubi: It was super productive. Yeah, it wasn't just like, let's not work. But it was like we got so much figured out. That's that's hard because we don't have that now.

Nick: And it's very hard to do now, yeah.

Rubi: Hopefully, hopefully side room conversations and food trucks will be in our.

Nick: And you ohh sorry.

Rubi: Future. Soon, hopefully. A bigger concern with living with people, and I don't know and I don't want to get you too much in the weeds, but I know what you're working on. Are these people that you live with people? That can see that stuff. Or do you just like work with a blanket over your head and your monitor?

Cameron: I specifically have. All of my monitor faced away from everything, and this standing desk right here.

Rubi: OK.

Cameron: I make sure that anytime that one of my roommates is over there and like. I will not do anything. I'm not going to work. On anything, please go. But actually if some of them that.

Rubi: Yeah, you were talking about.

Cameron: I live with. Have NDA's because they previously worked at the studio as well, so that's good.

Rubi: Oh, OK yeah. You said that and I was. Just like ohh hmm. That's that's an interesting conundrum. Do you solve that?

Cameron: It's definitely difficult because every now and then they'll just be like what you're. Working on and I'm like I can't tell you.

Rubi: Working. I'm not working. This is just shut off your machine. But yeah, I think I think talking to people, we've all basically looted our work desks and brought everything home as much as is humanly possible. And I know a couple of people have brought the standing desks home. I was talking with one of our one of the people on our localization team just asking, you know, how are you doing? Are you are you doing OK? And they were like well. My back really hurts because I have to sit on my couch. My apartment is small. I sit on my couch and I lean forward and I have my laptop on my coffee table and I was like, let me introduce you to things that can make that better, because I don't want your. I don't want you to be in pain for the foreseeable future, cause we're all working from home. So, well, thank you guys very much for talking with us about the past year. We have a couple more devs to talk about to talk with about things that we're working on now. So why don't you guys stick around? I will let the three of you get back to work. Everybody go outside. For just a little bit, it's nice out stretch. Don't just stay in your room all day. All right. Thanks guys. Stick. Around and we will be right back. Your wounds have mended. What are you waiting for?

Joe: The string pulls ready.

Nick: You're in the steel war band now. I expect nothing short of absolute perfection. Aren't you the sorriest bunch of recruits I've ever laid eyes on?

Kirk: All targets eliminated.

Nick: Magic or not, to take blast to the face works just the same. Happiness is a smooth tonic. Balmora, what are you doing here?

Rubi: All right. Welcome back guys. I love Joe's image so. Joel and Connor, thank you for coming to talk with us about the past year and something that we have. You guys have been working on for a while and is on Live Today. You guys worked on the underwater skimmer. Which super exciting that it shipped. I do want to touch on anything really quick because one of those lovely bugs that doesn't show up in testing and only shows up on live has manifested. So Connor, do you want to talk about that for just a second?

Nick: I mean just that's it. We're looking into it. We I see people could start talking about on chat like no, we're going to looking into it and gonna solve it as soon as we can.

Rubi: Love when they don't show up in testing, it's best.

Connor: Yeah. When? When it's, it's in. When it's on dev and everything's working fine. And then it goes to live. And it's like, well, here's this weird thing that's happening. It's like, alright. Time to time to time to get creative and problem solving.

Joel: I mean, I think just in general there's a million things can go wrong. You can only test it by. The 1000 so you know. We do our best.

Rubi: This is this is true. So with that out of the way, we know we're on it and. With that out of the way, if I don't, I have you guys.

Connor: Oh, go ahead, Connor.

Connor: I just want to say it might. I know we're obviously on the stream, QA is is doing a bunch of investigation right now, so it's not like we're not working. On it because. We're here, that's. All so yeah.

Rubi: It's actually an extremely good point. So, Connor, why don't you talk first about what you do at Arena net? And then, Joel, you?

Connor: So I'm a senior game designer here over the last year, I worked on the Metal Legion concert and a bunch of other stuff and bound my blood. And then I and then I switched over about halfway through the development of. Shadow in the ice and took that team over. So I was the I. Had my first taste of being a team lead on that and then I was working and then since then I've been working on the mysterious third expansion which you know, it's the thing.

Rubi: It it is a thing that you're working on.

Connor: Yes, it is the thing that we are.

Ester: How about Joe?

Connor: So, you know. And also I wait. There's one more thing I also helped out with voice and the the visions of the past, which involves and and. Over the last year I've been writing a lot of snuggle snuggle gold Club novels, so maybe I will tell the entire Snaggle Gold Club story at some point.

Rubi: OK, I love it. How about you, Joe?

Joel: So I'm a gameplay programmer. Ohh let me move my images on the screen. There there we. Wow, it's. All right, so I'm, I'm again. I'm I'm I'm a gameplay programmer. I mainly break stuff. It's my job. I do a lot behind the scenes things. They implement stuff that people then use like living world will use or past. Don't know seven months since start of the year. Been working on secret expansion things which involves. A lot of. It's secret things and sometimes is. Break stuff and that's fine, that's what. We do but. It it's just lots of interesting take. We have some time here. I don't know how long we've got, but we can talk about some of them. Might be interesting for people, we're. Like what do you do? It's hard to just. Summarize it's like I just. I make it makes things it's fine.

Rubi: You you break things and you make things.

Joel: Like trying to explain. To my parents.

Rubi: So let's, let's talk to you first. Connor, what were some of your highlights? What were some of your? Favorite things over the last year?

Connor: I mean, uh, you know, this has been a very char season. And so I think a lot of the really fun things that we have done are like diving into all the complications and different factions and char culture and, you know, different different cultural. Artifacts and people who diverge from the norm or conform in various. Ways and that obviously manifested in two very different ways. The most char of char, the metal legion, who are as ******** as you can possibly be, and the development of surgical claw into an actual speaking character who is definitely more atypical for the char as we tend. To think of him. Tend to think of them so like.

Joe: This is still true.

Connor: The the the the fact that I got. To explore both sides of this this you know both extremes of a of this group that we're exploring this season. I was really. A lot of fun, and I had a lot of fun with both of them and also, you know, so yeah, those are probably my main highlights, obviously like actually shipping this summer. Going underwater is really nice. You know, I've we've been, we've been mulling over and how how that. And yeah, so and and the little Side Story I gotta weave around that. So there's been a lot of different things and obviously. The other thing is also really nice so.

Rubi: So you can't. You can't see it. But I am wearing my metal Legion shirt today, so. Thank you for creating that. How about you, Joel? What were some of your favorite things to work on? Because you did a, you did a lot of things that sound like little features here and there, but make a huge difference in the game.

Joel: So uh, so again this. Is hard like. Well, I do a lot of. Things that most people don't, they're not. They're not big standout. Here's like I worked. On this episode. Like now but. So like recent example, so in episode 4 there's this great big tech boss, right? And what's interesting about that is it's actually here, let me. So this is what this space is for. So it's actually it's prop bus. So what we what we refer to internally is a prop bus, which is it's it's what we call a gadget. But it's this model sort of built, it's it's built a tank. So it looks sort of like it actually got treads, isn't it so it. Looks kind of. Like that but. All it actually is is. It's it's a. Yeah, point and then it has these little attached things called attack targets. There's the things you actually shoot at. And so history. So what what Nick wanted was like, hey, I want to take this boss and have a move around the. Right and the problem is what would happen? The boss would move, it would move. But the tech targets would stay.

Connor: I love this. I love this so.

Rubi: Much these are my favorite.

Joel: And so the legit point would move. Yeah, but the attack target would stay where? Where we left it. And so when? You, when a player would attack it. And they go cute and use it again, so they think they're shooting over here because on the client you'd say, oh, yeah, the the things over here. But on the server it's actually over here, so the actual missiles would go over here and they wouldn't. It would look really strange and terrible. And so, like one of the things I did I said, OK, well, let's let's add a thing that. Forcibly attaches all tech targets of prop buses. Whenever you create a proper bus that says, OK, well, we always have this relation between our gadget point and the tech target, since the around it's very similar to what I did with mounts like. Way back way way. Back the initial version of most of our mounts was as separate things connected together, and they still look like that, but under the hood they're mostly not, but. I was able to resurface a lot of that stuff that I wrote for way. Back and use. It here as like a had it. Here's here's the mechanism for attaching things and keeping their relation. You know, like it's always this relation, no matter. How it rotates? That's that's an example of like how it's kind of hard to explain, but. Sort of stuff I do.

Rubi: So that's why we give you Ms.

Joel: Yes, it's it's a fine. It's a fine program. It works great. But there's there's. Like we shipped like another French interesting one. I don't know how deep I want to go here, but because I don't know how much time we have, I could do this for a long time.

Rubi: Which one? Which one is?

Joel: I was going to. Talk about the animation locking like rotation, locking. So starting with the first, the first strike mission. So this this kind of bleeds back into last year, but it didn't ship until this. This span between anniversaries. So there's this. Let me address. So there's this great big gold bus, right? And I'll do a top down. So it looks like, yeah, actually he's facing that way and he's got. These arms, right? And so Brian Walter, the animator working on it at the. Time was like. Hey, what I want to do is I want to have an animation where he. Swings over his back. Like Sora and then ends up facing this way, which players who have played and he strikes the big Gold bus. Probably remember they've seen that before. And so the problem is running into. Is like, how do we get? The creature to actually turn around. So there's there's a like visible portion of the animation, but the actual creature itself has a facing, so he's facing this way at the end. Facing this way. So the problem is with the tools that existed at the time. If the animation said hey. I need you to turn around here. What would actually happen is for a couple of frames he would then be like flipped. And so it was very hard to get the very hard to impossible to get the timing right to flip, flip the creature around and then have the animation like counter flip so that it all still looks smooth because this the problem is the you couldn't rely on when the server. And send the hey, you need to update your facing creature and have having that line up with when the animation on the client side said. And now like here's what frame you're drawing. Not sure how well if that makes any sense so.

Rubi: It it actually does, and this is one of those things that those things that doesn't sound, I don't know. I I know it. You're not sure if it sounds. Exciting but it. Is interesting and adds a lot to the game.

Joel: So so anyway, So what what I. Added was the ability. To say you. Know what we will. When the animation starts, we will say animation. You now believe that the characters facing is always this way, so the animation now believes. Characters facing us this way. And So what we'll do is then he goes over his back and goes hits the ground.

Connor: In this box.

Joel: And then I guess we go over here and so then it starts to around. And it's not the most. Proportional thing, but that's OK. Now he's facing this way. And so for the duration of this animation, he believes he's facing this way. The animator is the one who's drawing. All of the. All of the rotation, it's all an animation, but it happens secretly. Is the character at some point in the animation flips, so it's not facing this way. Actually the animation just doesn't care about it until it's done. So at the very end. Image as though I'm done. Now I'm facing the. Actual character direction. So what it does? It lets the animators do a very smooth like any kind of smooth turning animation that blends into like and now it's. Actually facing this way. Hard to explain. Starting to use it. More, it's just kind of a this is neat.

Connor: I mean, all of these things that Joel does are like the secrets that allow us to do a lot of everyone is like an insane amount of new tools in the toolbox, right, like, and they make such a difference for content. Going forward and is what allows us to make. A bunch of new types of things. Like as Kirk said earlier the the.

Rubi: Yeah, this is what, anything.

Connor: Target practice event.

Rubi: About in the last segment.

Connor: Yeah. Like uh. That's the whole thing that we were only able to do because Joel was around. To help us with.

Cameron: Ohh yeah gosh we.

Joel: Even broke a set. Like there's well. There's there's something I. I. Don't remember what was broken. Oh, no it. Was I had. OK. Yeah, I remember. So like I said, I can. Do this all day. Uh, that was actually pretty funny.

Rubi: Kirk Kirk talks about knowing a little bit.

Joel: OK, like the basic. The basic problem is that the. So they have a player standing on the on the. Platform and they're like dude. Play with the gun. He's got a gun. It's a gun. And So what happened is normally in our game to save server resources. If someone sits still for more than a second, we shut what we call their Collider. But it's basically their havoc object their their physics object. We shut it off. OK, well, you're not moving. And then if anything comes up says, hey, we need to start moving again. You wake it. So there's this. See that color? There's this like. As it's more like this shape, it sort of. Represents the player. And So what happened is. The platform would move over here and my. Skills are lacking. The player go like, oh, I've, I've. I want to shoot now. But because they didn't move relative to the thing they were standing on, their Collider was still back here. And so the bullets would actually shoot from over here, even though they thought they were here. So they shoot from here, even though visually they thought they were here. So when you're trying to aim at a specific target, that makes them very challenging. So it was something like.

Rubi: That I don't know if that was actually.

Joel: What it was?

Connor: I mean, that's basically like.

Joel: I don't think it was actually. But it was. It's just it was, it was. In the Collider, but it was something. Where something was had had stale data anyway.

Connor: The things you solved for this event turned moving platforms from a thing that we really should not touch because they're scary and dangerous to. Thing that is still a little scary, but. Seems to work pretty. Well, so that's. A huge huge.

Rubi: But it happened and it worked, so yeah.

Connor: New tool in our toolbox. So and that events, a lot of fun. So I think that one. 'S really cool.

Rubi: Yeah. Thank you, Joe.

Joel: I mean, I had the, I mean like even recently we had the, the one moving platform thing that you were asking me about. I don't know if that fixed actually gone. That's that's getting deep in the. Bring that we'll bring.

Connor: Yes, it turns out some moving platform things lead to more moving platform.

Joel: That up if. It if happens.

Connor: So yes, that's all we will say on that.

Rubi: Hey, this works. Let's keep doing it. Let's do more. Uhm, I want to have you talk when something else you worked at roller ball starting at full energy, do you? Talk about that a little bit.

Joel: A small change but but significant one. I think my people in my my Racing Beetle Guild are very happy. About that, shout out to drift. So basically that the problem was. When when beetles shipped, we played a little conservative people. Who are making calls to the? We're like, well, let's be safe. And let's we don't want to like suddenly, magically outclass a terrible building. Suddenly outclass all the other mounts by just like, boom, you're on it. You go super. So we'll have it start at no energy. And then say. So basically we want to differentiate is between a Raptor this color Raptor. So Raptor start with. That's a Raptor, alright. Oh my God, alright. So Raptor starts a full energy and. It just like. Immediately your mouth and you jump, right? And so the difference is we want will be kind of a slow build up and then then you go and that's fine in the like. In theory, but in practice it it's it's very frustrating to have to sit there waiting for however long it takes for to try and remember anymore. But it feels like forever. And so at some point after we've been live welding and to just make it start full. And so now it's starting. Just small simple things, but like the the count, something that I thought we should have. From the beginning, and that was right, so you know. Sometimes I'm right.

Rubi: And that's a very corrupted. Sometimes you're. You're right, you're right. Fairly often it makes a difference, so keep doing that. Connor. You said that you could talk a little more about that whole story around. And and and I did see some people in chat offering to help you write snuggle stories. So if you ever had lost your ideas.

Connor: Ohh lovely I. I'm sure I could go browse the Internet and find many candidates for starco class stories. I might have to tone them down a little bit, but I'm sure that there are a lot of candidates.

Rubi: You think you're overwhelmed just with staff?

Connor: So the origins of Scargo gold. Cloth going back. Years to the episode. To guide us, we were working on Katori, returning to the story in a. Major way with that episode. And at one point my lead at the time Heather Conover, typoed proctoring as yeah, I Miss Heather. She's amazing as kralkatorrik D. And the my that was Heather.

Joe: That was Heather.

Connor: She typoed it, and my pun oriented brain was like, well, now, now I want to write a romance novel called the Proctored Affair, and and everyone's like haha, that's funny. I'm like, no, no, really. Like, I want to do this so. You know, there's a little bit of this. We've never done this before. It was obviously very hokey. There's a little bit of Hemming and hawing, you know, it was like with like, you know, like, like a writer. Samantha was like. You know, I'm all on. Board I wrote like roles and like Mass Effect and all this stuff but like. I I think you should just you know, get to the top top. So our butts are covered. So I I poked the and I'm like hey, do you have any objection to me writing like a one page romance excerpt and? And putting it in the episode and he's like. He pauses for a bit. Sure you can do that and so. But the whole idea was not to not distract, so that much we hit it somewhere that we, you know, it wasn't marked by any like, you know, gadget like mouse over things. So people would get it was. People would find it like a month in and. They did and they're. Like what is this? That was the first one a crowd toured affair, and then I was bitten by the terrible romance novel. So I wrote for the next episode I wrote, and Lily was my collaborator early on, and she was the writer for episode 5 as well. So I'm like Lily and I do another one. And she's like, yeah, like, sure. So I wrote one about and Norm falling in love with. Reg and I think that was when that was when they started to like, you know, the inner like species and like and playing with gender, things started to become more prominent, like come into a thing in his novel and idea was and that was when I was starting to form my headcanon for snark, which is like, yeah, he's this char who, like, just cares, believes in love. Right. And that's that. That's was like. So I started to have this mental model of who snuggle was. And all this cannon that didn't actually become cannon, like he was a he's married to a woman, a savari named Orchid. And they've adopted like 3 human. Children, none of that's cannon. But it was. Fun to think. But it was in cannon at the time.

Rubi: You know, you just made it cannon, man.

Connor: No, I didn't. That's not true, because we've shown stuff I mean anyway. But the so the, the, the biggest hiccup that and then I decided I was gonna write one for every episode. That was just what I decided. And and the biggest hiccup they hit was Episode 6, which was a quote very serious ex. So where where? You know the world's about to end and topics like landing on and there was some, you know that was the one where we're like there's the biggest clash between tone and having this romance novel to find somewhere in the world. There's one that comes up later. Which I'll talk about. The the conclusion that. That eventually the writer for that. So Neil comes back. To me, he's like, OK, I I have an idea. What if instead of putting it out in the open world, we hide it in the final instance when you're on the airship coming back and it's like, you know, you're having this moment of, like, looking to the future and you write one that's thematically about looking to the future, which is what led to misconnections, which is about someone who died returning from the mist to reunite with their love and like. Look to the. You know, and it ends with like and for the first time they felt hope like something super hokey like that. We then had to go back when we did the collection and put that book in the open world, but you know, whatever for it wasn't in there during lunch. And yeah, so then bound by blood, which was my favorite, the Evan lock covenant. That's my favorite. Of them all. Just it has my favorite line that I wrote which is like does. Does no one appreciate the gentle curve of a horn anymore like which just in the if you took Bangar.

Rubi: Oh my God.

Connor: You know, not very open minded and had him write about like moping about some char clearly having affection for someone who was not a char. That would be something that romance novel Bangar would say. So I I liked that. So then we get to shadow in the ice, not shadow in the ice whisper in the dark, which was a very creepy episode. And Samantha, I'm working with Samantha again. And I'm like, hey, I'm gonna write one about Savan here. Savon here, trying to be like discovering that maybe, you know, being a sex is not the way to go. And Samantha's like, OK, that's great, but. This episode is. Like even more than episode 6. Like it's it's just going to. Ohh and Samantha? In between things that started to snowball. So like is it. There's this thing in Guild Wars 2, which is lovely, where if one person gets like excited about things, other people will start to like. Build on it right and really meaningful, like collaborative ways. So example Samantha. Wrote that great. Uh summary of a snuggle Google novel that we later put in game for the like little magazine that we put out in the lead up here, she wrote. Which which we captain gridlock and or gridlock and and Captain Rogan which became a reoccurring theme of ship shipping characters in stories. But and then also there was there started there's a line for like Dragon Bash where they're like do you think the commanders are snorkel gold cloth fan? So he was starting to, like, become less than an Easter egg, more. Become an Easter egg that was being hidden in every episode and.

Rubi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Connor: So, but Samantha's like, OK, look, I've I've again comes to me is like I know how we'll split the difference. We're gonna start with the snuggle gold claw novel, and at the end it's gonna deteriorate into like Weird jar mag like horror stuff, right? So you're gonna be reading it. And you'll be like ha ha. I'm like that sounds great. But I'm worried people will think snuggly is dead. And she's like, oh, yeah, probably. But, you know, we can always just say he's not dead later. And I'm like, OK, do we? Do it first. The the the well I. Remember, checking the wiki and is like based on the title this. Is and this content? This is probably the last Margo Gold claw. So I'm like, OK, that cannot happen. So I talked to Joel. Quant and this was for visions of the past and. Joel, who is uh? Likes like definitely enjoys the goofier side of Tyria, and Kwan really attach the idea of having this character actually show up in person and like and spin. This whole story about him like having you know, the follow up to him having been lost in the whispers and only one and so I wrote a bunch of new of new ones for that one. Juan wrote some some amazing dialogue for snorkel, which honestly like exceeded my wildest dreams for how that character would feel. And the voice actor Fred was amazing. And the thing that's hilarious about it is like, I mean, obviously I'm. I'm deliberately writing purple prose when I'm writing those, but like. There's all those things. Not like muggles. Books are like, uh. So, like, obnoxious and like, yeah, like, that's that's that's my. That's my first writing review is from these in game characters.

Rubi: Yeah, they are.

Connor: There's I was a creative writing major back in the day, so I'm really putting that degree to good use and yeah, and now it's the now it's the thing where snuggle has is, is, is the thing that is everyone's like contributing to right and like it's it's just a great example of. That snowball effect of like how passion it can be contagious and snaggle would say and people can like add more and more to a thing to make and and and have something be a fully realized like. Of the world, like what does are the implications of this romance author existing right? Aaron wrote one for the last episode more than she bargained for, and yeah. We'll. We'll see. Spargo Book Club is definitely close to a. Lot of people's hearts. At this point.

Rubi: I love how much of a thing this has turned into, and I was like laughing the whole time you were talking about Samantha participating because I can hear her in my head. I I can hear her reaction to this stuff in my head.

Connor: Ohh, she had so much fun writing the captain gridlock and sorry, gridlock and and Rogan back in the air. And that's the thing I. Think there's a lot of like. You know, people really enjoy when you're building a map that mass a massive world. There's so much room to have interesting little side details like that. And those are really fun to flesh out and contribute to. And it's one of, I think, where. Like it's one of the things where I think the Guild Wars two team like really excels and I think has only gotten better over time is like. Making a world that feels diverse within itself, and like that, there's a bunch of, you know, there's. A bunch of. Yes, there's a dominant culture for each group, but within that culture, there's multitudes as well. And yeah, and it's just exciting to work on. Stuff like that.

Rubi: So honestly, I would be, I would be happy talking about snark golfer because he's so much fun and how he came to be with so much fun.

Connor: We I I will. I can briefly touch on one last thing, we which is what your composite creation we he was originally in. I I I knew we had to go with like traditional royal colors. I made and uh and I my my head cannon. One part of my head. Cannon that did. Is is that like he's kind of grizzled. Head but like then. He like said that, he said. That behind him for. To pursue like the art of love. And so, like anything that was. Uh, his face with I went for like looking kind of like worn down. Right. Like you can, if you look at his horns, they're broken and stuff. Like that but. His clothes are all as nice as possible. And I had to go with lavender as his dominant color, probably because I was. I just finished watching Jane the Virgin and Rogelio de la Vega is. A fabulous man and scenario snarl gold claw. It definitely has some influence from. That so yeah.

Rubi: I need to watch that. I've heard it's good, but that was that is a completely other sidetrack. One more thing that I want to touch on is the Bengar and Ryland instance in visions of the past and Almora punching out. And I'm going to quote you, Almora. Punching the dude off.

Connor: Yeah, that was, like a last minute. Like, we're working on this instance, and we just have this thing of, like, you know, amoras entering and like someones. Like I just. I wish, I think, frosty even said. Like, you know, I wanted to have more of an entrance. Like like, what if she could like? Yeah, like you know, just. Kill the dude up there and I'm like, I'm gonna and I'm. Thinking about it, I'm like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna amp it up, and I literally had her like, oh, yeah, like. Uppercut her off the the Savannah off the ledge and we had a line. We had originally had two versions of the insult that she throws at Bangor. When they're arguing and I just, when we had picked one of them. So I'm like, I'm gonna use the other one which. Was **** ***. And so she just yelled this as the savanna. Goes flying and it was. Just it was easy. To set up, but it was it. It made a much better intro for. Her. And it was again. It was one of those. Things that was just fun to do. And fun to add details to her. Like Amora is one of my. Favorite characters in Guild Wars 2? That's why when we did Metal legion like I'm like they I'd love to have a song about Amora. And it was it. Had been a. Little tough when we always knew that we were doing, you know, we were going to do this. Follow up where we go into how she actually dies. But it was a little tough. When shadow in the ice came out. Shadow on the ice. Whispers in the dark and people thought like that was the that, you know, that was all we were gonna say about how she died. So it was nice to be participate in that more, more complete send off, complete with an orchestral version of Ballad of Soul Keeper for when you're fighting her and just, you know, give her let let her go out with the bang. That she deserves. And and you. Know punch people off the ledge in the process.

Rubi: All right, so why don't we talk about what we're working on now, which is the Hummingbird skimmer that. The underwater skimmer. OK I have.

Joel: To also Hummingbird, but yeah, that's.

Rubi: I have to. I have to pause because there's two things the Hummingbird skimmer is the one that I use, and there's also a Hummingbird feeder to my left and there's one here right now. So yeah, Hummingbird just happened. The underwater skimmer is the thing that you guys have been working on, and I want to talk a little bit about. How you made that a reality and real quick for those of you who joined after Connor and Joel? We do know there's a bug with that right now and we are working on it. So got that out of the way. So how did this, when did we first have the idea who decided to bring it to life?

Connor: No, no, no. Please go.

Joel: Push buttons Sir and push buttons push the buttons while away, yeah so. So it actually wasn't. The original original idea from the way back wasn't that long after path of fire shoots my lovely that's that's how you blurred wings. You can you can tell because they're they're you can't see them anyway so.

Rubi: Ah, very cute.

Joel: Like the the first prototype I made because it's backing up a little more, the idea of of taking a a something underwater has has been around since like mounts were first conceived. We're like, well, we have this thing that drives on, like if it flies over the water, let me prototype it going under just to try. It that was back in. Got 2018 like 50 years ago, probably. I don't know. It's hard to what is time and. The version of it at the time, it's like to stand for some art. I do like this art, but it's it's here. I'll keep the skimmer part. There we go. So the the. Well, there's, there's, there's actually a history. Like, we could just kind of like sort of ad hoc this. So at the time when I first prototyped it the way it. Worked is here's. Here's water here is there. It had three states that had hovering, the normal hovering state. Had the had. A surface driving state. That's why I don't know why did that where you could, like, puts around on the surface. And then if you wanted, you could dive underwater. So like when I get normal characters swimming. On the surface. You can like look down and then you then. You dive right so it's. Like, well, let me replicate that with. The skimmer and so it needed some mechanism for. Getting to the surface and then from there it could move around so and so this. The original version of it had had a cut hovers. When they call it like it just basically shut the hover off and that's what the button did and then that would drop you on the surface and you hit your. And so it. Lived in this state for a while. There was actual interest in shipping. It was like, oh, great. And so art looked at. It was like hmm. Hmm, so here's the. Problem when you crash into the water surface, you would expect like splash right you and you have this like? Skimmer hitting the water like yay what belly flop. That's a skimmer. It basically looks like a skimmer, except not at all. And so you have this splashing at the water. And then as you drive around, you'd leave a pretty substantial wake behind you, like basically a boat driving around, right? And I was like, well, that's cool. But we don't want to do that. It seems hard and UM. Like Earths permanently busy. It's kind of one of the things I think it's probably true at every game company ever is. The art is permanently busy. And so like, OK, well. There's that problem. There's a second problem, which is. OK, OK, I'll get. There I'm making this up as I. Go here and so it's so the the. Compromise solution is like alright, well, since we're actually trying to ship this thing, let's let's reach compromise. And So what ended up happening is the way it works on live right now, which is you fly over the service and then you hit. You're like, I want to go down and it drops you all the vendor. And so the amount of time you're interacting with the service is very amenable. There's no driving on on the surface or anything, so that means. All we need is a single splash. Right when you cross or when you leave, there's a second one. You come out again. There's a second splash. And so you don't need any kind of surface wakes you. Don't need any. Kind of, but there was like, cool. There's a second issue which I also deal with, which is they're like, oh, great. Well, that's good. You can also drive right here, though you can drive really close to the service. In which case? You have your skimmer. And makes it minimum space. Also, I sound completely alien in my head. Right now I. Have I have headphones over one of my ears like I don't have sound feeding back through them, so I'm only like half hearing myself.

Rubi: You sound fun.

Joel: It's I I sound alien to me. Anyway, I just have to trust that my my words make sense. OK, so we have skimmer here. I don't know. There's a head over here. It just got like little mandible. Things up front, but. The player could be like hey my head. Sticking out of the water week. And will that. Be fun or is like, well, that's also good. That should generate awake when your head sticking out the water, right? And we want to do that. Either because we don't have time. Probably like honestly make like a like kind of like that anyway, so that is why there is a minimum depth that you must be under. Also when you. Dive it takes you down to a certain level and you cannot go above that unless. You want to. Completely surface, so that's where that comes from. Practical reasons of. Art said so. But anyway, so that that is not at. All what you originally asked, which was the development the like. How did this come about? But that is the how we got to where it is. Some of it anyways.

Rubi: But the question is also. How do you make it go? So I will take it.

Joel: Yeah, I mean so the the like. How did it come? There's basically there. Is a long and very, very drawn out. Do you want to ship this? Well, is it good enough? What else do? You need to do. Should it like to tie into some other something else that's happening, and then sometimes that takes a while it's it's just as a reality. Shipping stuff is sometimes it just it just takes a while. However, in the meantime, like in in that there's also a a period of. Let us let us convince other people this is a good idea, which is our counter factors into this is like hey Connor. Do you think that's a good? Idea is like, yeah I do.

Connor: Yeah, it did not take much convincing. Like, again, this is another story of like, something ***********, right? Like basically, I read tested this prototype and I was like, we need to do this. What is the what? What is the little but? But basically the comment at the time was like we're shipping? This it's cool. We need a little something around it, right? A little story or some content to like. And I'm like, OK. And so I. Came up with this story of like this. Rogue skimmer trainer who was so determined to teach like to figure out what else skimmers could do, which you can now see in game. For the most part and you know it was. It was just fun to. Look at all these different places out the world and all the other people who might have interest in skimmers or someone interested in skimmers might. And water might poke and and have a story that naturally. Escalates from there.

Rubi: It it works out well.

Connor: Can you guys can you? Hear me OK.

Rubi: Yes, yes, you sound fine. I know that's trying to get all of that is part of the fun part of working at home. And can you hear me? And there's lag and. All of that, but I promise you're good. Jill, something that you mentioned about things taking a long time while you were talking. I remember that it's been about a year and we were sitting in the live stream room and you were like hit this and you and you showed us the very first. This was off camera because we. Couldn't talk about it at. But you showed us. The first iteration of that underwater. So yeah, it's it's a while. So I think we might. Have lost Joel while we.

Connor: No, but I don't know.

Rubi: While we try to get him back.

Connor: How to live without his doodles?

Rubi: We will get Joel and his Ms. paint doodles back in the meantime.

Connor: Maybe he could write doodles if he can't speak like help me like they.

Rubi: Help. Yeah. So, well, Mark's trying to get him back. Do you want to talk a little bit about how they get this? About how they get the skimming game.

Connor: I mean, I can quickly switch to just streaming for a second. I'll only show the very beginning, but.

Rubi: Yeah, we can look in gameplay. Let's do that.

Connor: You are not receiving any gameplay.

Rubi: OK. If it doesn't work, you can just tell us where. To go and all that good stuff.

Connor: I can just talk. I can use my words. I'm I'm physically. Capable of speaking.

Rubi: Use your word, Connor.

Connor: So basically, pick a character that's finished path of fire and then head to any major city and you'll get a letter which basically calls you the summer camp. Like actually going to the map with the summer camps and also works. You touched the summer camp and she'll tell you a story about what's going on and basically the general thrust is. A step you get a hint as to where this character has gone to and what they're up to, and it's all about tracking them down and trying to decipher those. At this point, I think people have already figured out a bunch of it, but, but yeah, that's basically it. It's a log in with the character that finish path fire. Head to a major city, Oregon Desert River lands, and then begin your begin your.

Rubi: Can you give us a little hint or do you want to leave? It spoiler free.

Connor: I mean, there's a lot of I I.

Rubi: If you think. Most people, I figured took out.

Connor: Yes, I do know it. I I am. I'm sure the information is available at this point. If you need to look it up, I will say that they're the one that I've seen numerous people stubble on stumble on is when when someone mentions the famous water gin, there is a most famous water, gin and and. That's all I will say. It's not just our famous water gin, it's the famous water gin.

Rubi: OK, so go ahead. I see you.

Connor: And and I guess I could make like a flushing sound effect if you need another.

Rubi: Oh oh, was like which one?

Connor: For the missing toilet.

Rubi: And I'm like, mentally navigating around the map trying to remember. OK, so in the background we are navigating a few technical difficulties. Do we have Joel back for sure?

Joel: Do you have me back?

Rubi: For sure, yes.

Joel: Yes, all right.

Rubi: Yay, welcome back.

Joel: One thing I do not like. Working from home is this. Everything else wonderful, I have to come into the office. Working without any pants. This part sucks.

Rubi: You were so good.

Connor: That's the real reason. A doodle like.

Joel: You'll never know. The world may never know.

Rubi: So Speaking of working from home, how has it been for you guys? And I know, Connor, you were on the show where we talked about it a while back, but what are some of the what have been some of the difficulties aside from live streaming being weird and apparently it grabbing Joe's Oculus Rift microphone instead of his? Joel, how about you?

Joel: Honestly aside, so the the only negative thing I will say is. Having to work. Over remote desktop is a little clunky and have sometimes to get technical stuff you got latency. Try to chat with people and it's like, but like the way my work set works is if I just have a remote desktop window. Into my work machine and. Do everything over that and some things don't work great like. Trying to move your mouse. Like share and make it like show demonstration so. The most common and annoying problem there is, so you have like your desktop window and then you're playing. Guild Wars 2IN there, this is a Guild Wars two window. And you go, I'll move the mouse. And normally like you. Whatever you turn and you turn your mouse and then when you let go again, your mouse cursor stays where you left it. However, when working remote desktop, it's not true. It keeps moving, leaves the window and and so your mouse ends up somewhere. You don't tend to. Action cameras completely broken because it's you try and use the same thing. So that sucks and. But coming into work basically whenever, because no one knows or cares, fantastic. Not having to like I can if I have a meeting, I can literally roll out of bed and be there in 5 minutes. It's it's mostly working out pretty well. I mean, I'm like, I'm like, hard introvert so. Like this is. All pretty good for me and I. Don't mind it. So this.

Rubi: Is working out well for you.

Connor: Yeah, I guess I.

Joel: Don't have too many. I know that's not true for a lot. Of people, but it is working out for me so.

Rubi: It's it's been a huge mixed bag for people. How about you, Connor? Aside from you have a cat getting up in your workspace all the time, but.

Connor: Yeah, I do have a cat who has decided not to appear. We was going to be, but yeah. I mean, like uh, I so I in quarantine, decided to move back with my family because I'm not an introvert and I had just moved into an apartment. Solo apartment and that turned out when you no one can leave apartment. That really it was, you know, cause the idea was like, oh, I'll live by myself and then I'll go out and see people. And then it's like, no, that last thing was just. Removed from the equation. I'm not an introvert. So that's been being home has been nice. But you know there it is the factor of working like my office right now is this is the I am literally a stereotype who works in his parents basement at this point in time and sometimes like family members will like, come downstairs and they'll be like. We're talking me. I'm like, I'm in the middle of a work meeting like I am a I'm an adult doing professional things like.

Rubi: And doing something.

Ester: I feel like.

Rubi: A lot of the stereotype rules are lifted because pandemic.

Connor: Yes, it's true. And and and that's that's one of the things about it is all everyone I have talked to is. Like that's the like. Yeah, that's like Esther was talking about being with family. Like they're like, oh, man, I would either like that sounds like such a good idea. Or I wish I could do that. Right. Like it is. And I'll be out as soon as pandemic is over again. But but yeah, it is. It's it's, it's a thing, right? It's it's got a lot of perks. It's, you know, I get, I get we we can have like family movie nights and things of that kind of nostalgic. Nature to it. Just waiting for my my family to get sick of me. But I have. And then other than that, like as Joel was saying, like, it's mainly like. Work honestly goes pretty OK like, yeah, you can start, you can start and end late and basically like your hours are and just to just to get things done. If there's something that you wanna like pop in like. I think there was a study recently that people are working just weird hours as of is during quarantine. Like there's we still have court hours, so people around for that, but then it's like someone might be like, OK, I'm gonna do another hour from 7:00 to 8:00. Right. And and and and take a break. At 4:00 and like. That's a nice option to have, especially some. Especially in design, sometimes you just get stuck on something and stepping away for a little bit and coming back can actually be more productive because like, but you're not. Your brain hasn't really stopped working. Not 100%. It's like noodling on the problem in the background. Right and and that.

Joel: Is very true. Just supporting that.

Connor: And I, I've, I, I've Joel, is. I'm gonna throw you under the bus a little bit, Joel not too badly, but you definitely like I am to. Me like I'm working. On this thing at some hour and like. What are you doing? And he's like, oh. Yeah, well, I did. That and like they, it's what works right? And he's able to do it and he gets stuff done and it's great and we get amazing things. And yeah, yeah, so it's it. It it it, I think that's an advantage and that honestly, I think for many people it is a better work structure. As long as. You do have to be careful because the counterpoint of that is you can end up working 10-12 hour days and not realize it right or. And like it's funny, because people, I think a lot of people, their instinct would be like, oh, man, they're they're going to like, slack off and not work the full time. But it's actually like when you're working. Thing that you. Are passionate about like everyone at Guild. Everyone in the Guild Wars. Team is the real danger is you just get sucked into the vortex and you look. At the clock and it's like hey. And it's good. It's kind of accidental, unenforced. Uh, like I ended up working long, but people are really good at doing that and there's been a lot of good advice about like, you know, making sure you. Just leave your workspace, but yeah. I I will say like I've I think I've I've 99% of well people. Yeah, it's just it's just the thing it's it's the thing to. Adjust to and and be careful about.

Rubi: Yeah, shipping a game entirely from home is something that we've we've had to do a couple times here and there. I mean, there was a year or so ago when the snowstorm shut the office down and we had a release, yeah.

Connor: George, Meg destroyed the office.

Joel: Yeah, that's happened more than once, but yeah.

Rubi: And we were always like ohh man, we pulled it off. Thank God we won't have to do that again. And hey, we're shipping all of our releases from home now. So and I know everybody, I know everybody has different experiences. You guys in chat. I don't know who's working from home, who's having to go in, but navigating navigating this weird situation all around has been a thing that I feel like we've gotten better at. And the fact that we've kept our. Our content shipping cadence that we had planned has been fantastic.

Connor: The big thing for and I think I can talk about this safely is obviously I was working on some stuff, yeah, some, some stuff for, you know, the thing, the big thing that we're doing right now and we're making a lot of, you know, there's a lot of early pre production decisions that have to be made and that that that really emphasizes the.

Rubi: Who is? Let's find out.

Connor: Tone questions right when people are making big decisions about like what our key thing. Things I just find it's so important to have meetings right and talk to people like over voice so you can, like, get a sense of how they're, you know, they're feeling and not interpreting text. And I think that's been a huge advantage to us, was just doing.

Rubi: Voice chat we could. Yeah, that makes a difference. So all right, we're going to, we're going to wrap. Up on this segment, unless you guys have something else that you want to mention.

Joel: I I mean, again, I can talk about stuff I've worked on for 10 hours.

Connor: Yeah. Yeah, we could.

Rubi: And I kind of love it.

Connor: We should ramble for a while.

Joel: I mean, I I did draw. You if since I don't have the camera. And I actually.

Rubi: Kind of love it.

Joel: There's my room. And see it everyone is feeling missing, if anyone.

Rubi: Oh my gosh. But you see how pixelated we are so.

Joel: Yeah, my fan was missing out on like, well, I mean for. For the like people actually watching the stream, it's yeah. It's actually a little off center, yeah.

Connor: You're missing a fourth wall.

Rubi: He's breaking it to talk to.

Joel: I've broken the 4th Wall, Connor.

Rubi: Us. It's fine. Yeah, that's.

Joel: True yeah. Lol. We're we're very funny.

Rubi: So we do have time, Joel. We do have time for you to ramble a little bit more if you would like to talk about something else that you've worked on this year.

Joel: I mean, it's really it's it's kind of tangentially, really. So like I was, I was like, so I sent you that CHEAT SHEET sometimes, like, here are some things I worked on. I was just like going through my my checking history like. What have I done? One of I think one of the. Actual big ones that. Happened this year was mountain ability buttons. So those are the like like this. It seems like a small thing, but I feel like it's actually pretty big deal for new players coming in so. Like on your on your skill bar, right you have. I think you've got. Like oh wow, it's not straight out. Controls each many times, so you have like your skills over skills over here and you got your. Health heroes, whatever. So normally on a mount you'd have, like an engage skill over here and you got a couple skills over here. Nothing in here. And so we're like, well, we have this space, it would be kind of nice if we said. What can this thing do? So like on the Raptor we say, well, it's got this like leap ability and so or like on the on the Springer, it's got the Super jump ability and the idea is any new player coming in with CI, I can immediately know what this thing does. I don't have to go look up. I don't have to just assume. Well, there are mounted ability buttons in my key binds. So this is how I know how to do. It's like now it's on the skill bar. This is what's interesting. There's some history there of we went back and forth on this during, before Pacifier ship.

Guild Chat - Episode 104

Contents

Transcription[edit]

Introduction [6:42][edit]

Ester, Joe and Kirk [8:39][edit]

48:43 Break[edit]

51:06 Continue[edit]

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