Guild Chat - Episode 106
Guild Chat - Episode 106
- Title
- Sunqua Peak Development
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Cameron Rich
Lee Bledsoe
Jasmine Serrano
Matthew Burke
Meagan Glennon - Date
- September 18, 2020
- Official video
- YouTube
The 106th episode of Guild Chat aired on September 18, 2020.
"Go behind the scenes of the new Sunqua Peak fractal! Host Rubi Bayer is joined by Game Designer Cameron Rich, VFX Lead Lee Bledsoe, Sound Design Apprentice Jasmine Serrano, QA Analyst Matthew Burke, and Environment Artist Meagan Glennon."
Transcription[edit]
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Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. |
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria and happy Friday. Welcome to Guild chat. Thank you guys for coming and watching. I'm your host Ruby and today we're going to go behind the scenes of the new Sunco peak fractal with some of the developers. So let's jump right in with Cam and Lee. Why don't you, Kim, why don't you and Megan, why don't you? Start by introducing yourself Cameron, and talking about what you worked on for this fractal.
Cameron Rich: Sure. Hi everybody. My name is Cameron Rich. I am a game and I was game designer for distract.
Rubi: Megan, how about you?
Meagan Glennon: Hey, I'm Megan, and I was the map. Artist Slash environment artist for this fractal.
Rubi: And Lee, how about you?
Lee Bledsoe: Hey, I'm Lee. I'm the lead visual effects artist on Guild Wars and I was responsible for managing the effects resources that we had for this fractal.
Rubi: Alright, well we have. So we have a lot that I want to go over. Why don't you guys, let's start and just talk about some of your favorite things that you worked on this time around, some of the things that you most enjoyed?
Cameron: Ohh ma'am, that's kind of everything.
Rubi: Make it right. It's a lot. Go ahead, Megan.
Meagan: Oh, I thought I. Thought you called me, but I thought Cam was going. To go all right, so. It was just really fun to like because the the fractal was broken up into the different elements. It was also. Really, it's just. Really fun to have, like distinct zones for each one and get to style them and light them and. Make them up to be their own distinct thing each, and they're so different from each other, but it's also really nice to like kind of be, you know, the first little user for Tampa. So working with some newer crops and be super secretive about it still. But that was really cool. So.
Rubi: Yeah, absolutely. Lee, how about you?
Lee: Yeah, this was a A. Fun fractal from a leads perspective, we have capacity and scope that we have to work with and it was really interesting to figure out how to. Do a lot of effects with very little time and resources, and I think for me it was interesting and and fun kind of working with our apprentice to figure out what that what that would look like for us as we tackled the the requests that came in from Cameron on this.
Rubi: Definitely. Hey, Speaking of Cameron.
Lee: Thank you.
Cameron: I meant everything was. About this from the very beginning of just kind of like coming up with the idea to knowing that we really wanted to do another challenge mode that was like at the very top of the list. And so getting to do another challenge mode encounter was just super fun. And the surprises we were able to put in there, that was super fun. I think my favorite part of it. Though is a the story. Wanted to do something a lot more human and emotional and. That allowed us to kind of tap into more of the artistry of game development, more so than we did with nightmare and shuttered observatory.
Rubi: Yeah, now you guys started work on this before we all went into lockdown. I mean, this this began pre pandemic, right. And we've talked about that a lot on the show over the past few months because it's such an enormous element of what we're doing these days. Excuse me. It's also very smoky, just in general up here. Working at home during the pandemic has been a huge part of what? We're doing these. Days, but making that transfer from hey, being in the office, figuring this out too. OK, we all have to do this at home now. Transitioning into production during that was a huge thing, wasn't it, Cameron?
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely. We I mean, we were definitely lucky enough to start this in in the office where we could get together, we could get into rooms, have these meetings about like, OK, what is what is it we're doing from a very high level perspective and then transitioning over to working from home. Like I love being able to see other people face to face. It's so much easier to read emotions and so much easier to communicate back and forth. And you don't accidentally interrupt the other person because you you get the body language that they're going to speak and you don't have Internet latency. So there were a lot of struggles with.
Rubi: It's OK.
Cameron: There were a lot of challenges to overcome though, but it was a.
Rubi: Yeah. You had mentioned talking about how this could be. This fractal was more of a let's let's get into the emotions of the thing. You talk a little bit about how you made that decision and how that translated into design.
Cameron: Yeah. So. From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to tackle a more emotional story, or rather more emotionally intelligent story. And one of our goals, like from the very beginning, was try to get our players to think a little bit more about the human aspect of things. And to maybe inspire some empathetic responses from people. But also to kind of lean into tragedy and and tell a story that pulls that people's heartstrings a little bit more. We did that a little bit with Shadow Observatory and Arc. And I just personally really like emotional storytelling. So when Aaron, the writer and I got together and just kind of like. Figured out what we were doing. It was always very much like OK, how can we balance? The fact that we are a tee for team game, so we can't just like. You know the. Full Last of Us, you're going to go on a roller coaster in every single emotions going to be crazy. How do we balance that with our own storytelling, our own Guild Wars two universe? And what can we do with that?
Rubi: Yeah, Speaking of the working within the universe, there's something that Megan had touched on in the notes that I was looking at about working on this map and you had to switch out some assets because we're trying not to spoil things for cantha.
Meagan: So I actually have worked on this map entirely. It worked from home because it was started by another map artist when we were still in the office and. Then I took. Over and at that time, it was billed to me as, hey, this is mostly done, you're just going to be like finishing it, bringing it home, right? And then marketing was. Like hey. So you're losing a lot of assets from the new expansion. That's a bit spoilery, don't you think and I'm like? No. So we had to, we had to go.
Rubi: Ohh no.
Meagan: Through and and change it and. I worked with the art director and. Other artists to like come up with this more. Ancient can't then ruin style, so it would still be cantha, but it wouldn't be exactly what you see in the expansion, so it is. Literally a teaser. So it is literally like in between what we've done and what has come. Next and so. But that was like a huge like pulling our hair out of, Oh my God, that's so much work. That's like most of the. Math is this. And and it was like I said, because I was also working on the episode 4 living World map at. The same time, yeah.
Rubi: I have two mega maps in a row.
Meagan: Yes, we do and that is.
Rubi: OK.
Meagan: Technically, I asked for it and I was. Like hey. Ignore the world right now, so please give. Me a a buttload of work so. But it was that, and like I said, it was supposed to be just like a a side thing of like, oh, you're going to finish this. But then it became like. Two full time jobs at the same time and I'm alive. So yeah, that was that was an interesting. An interesting bridge to cross with that so.
Rubi: Yeah. And in the midst of all of this, something that Cameron had mentioned was, was that the narrative themes and the emotional aspects that you were incorporating into that map? So how was that for you guys weaving all of that in?
Meagan: Yeah. So I think the major point or we started doing where I started doing that in like the environmental storytelling is in the little spot right before the final boss that we were calling the Grove where we added a bunch of gravestones and a bunch of decoration in that area to really make it a pause like a. A peaceful area to just remember everything that we've gone through and everything that's that's happened and we really wanted it to be. A very beautiful and serene part of the map.
Rubi: Yeah, that kind of that feels more meaningful as as the year went on, I feel like. Yeah, there's a. Yeah, there's a lot that I don't know how much. If you wanna go into that a little bit, Cameron, I'll kind of leave that up to you.
Cameron: Well, so.
Rubi: This whole year has just been a thing.
Cameron: Yeah, this this year has been a bit of a roller coaster for everybody and. There's been a lot of loss. People have experienced a lot of loss through the events that have transpired from the pandemic and from everything that's happened since March, and there were some of us on the team that also experienced that as well. And I don't want to. Get too into it because. You know, personal, but you know working, we experienced the same human experiences and. When we originally pitched this fractal back before walked down in pandemic and everything, we specifically wanted to focus on stages of grief and going through the process of. Coming to terms with loss going through, you know, depression, denial, anger, acceptance. And trying to incorporate that both into the map itself and so you've got like wind for for denial and fire, for anger. And then finally the finale for acceptance. But we knew we wanted to have that from the very beginning. And then everything happened this year and it was like. Whoa, this is it's super serendipitous in a bad way. Almost, but not like I I think it really allowed us an outlet to take all of the emotions we were feeling from all the events that we were experiencing and really. Channel them into the fractal, into the story, into the mechanics and into the artistry.
Lee: Of it all.
Rubi: Well, worked out extremely, extremely well on the finished product side. So there's that. Lee, do you want to go into? You had a lot of work done on the asset side and trying to maximize your time because there was a lot to do in a relatively short amount of time. Do you want to talk about that?
Lee: Yeah, sure. It's everything that we tend to do in the Gilders universe requires some amount of visual effect support to it, and this fractal was. The same in that regard and we had a certain amount of resources and a certain amount of capacity and scope that we had to work with. And so we had to get really crafty and resourceful with how we leveraged our time and the resources that we had. And so to accomplish this, we leveraged our. Apprentice Chris was a recent hire for us about six months prior to this fractal starting. And we decided to employ tactic to identify and reuse previous assets from the game. But in new and creative ways that we haven't. Done before, so this allowed Chris to focus the majority of their time on crafting high quality hero asset. And to focus our time and investments wisely on the stuff that's going to give us the most bang for the buck and reuse textures and particle systems and other various supporting secondary assets to cut a lot of the technical setup. Time allowing Chris to focus on the the artistry of of the work that they were creating.
Rubi: You mentioned Hero assets can. You what are what are hero assets?
Lee: Hero assets are things that the players are going to encounter a lot. They're often the the big thing that a boss is gonna be doing. So a hero assets isn't something like a sword swoosh or a projectile. Although, depending on where that projectile is coming from, if it's. Coming from a. A big dragon, maybe? That that is a hero asset. But in this case it's it's more of the player or the the. Your boss's main ultimate skill would be a hero asset, and everything else is secondary to that.
Rubi: OK. And we've talked some about reusing assets on the show before, but one of the examples that you gave were like there are like water effects are a thing that we have, what years worth of we have, how many I don't know is that you don't have an exact count of how many. Like water splash effect.
Lee: Hundreds of water. Yeah, we, we've got hundreds of water examples ranging from waterfalls to projectiles to impacts to creatures, everything right under under the ocean.
Rubi: Yeah, so throwing those, throwing all of those out just for the sake of being able to say we made a brand new water splash effect.
Lee: And we.
Rubi: Probably the worst use of your time.
Lee: Yeah, it it it really is. Because if we if we take the mindset of crafting something brand new for every little thing that we make into the game, that takes away time from our our hero assets, the things that the players interact with the most, the things that's that's the most important to the encounter or the boss that you're fighting. And so why not? Leverage the textures that we have in the game that are that players are already used to. They they they already have seen and if it's tied to a gameplay mechanic then that's reinforcing the the previously established gameplay. Expectations that those players have and the other thing that that with in the case of water, you know, setting up a particle system to make a water splash on the on the surface it might seem. Quick but really. There's there's dozens of settings and dials and and connections that we have to make. Just to to make a. Water splash. And so since we've done hundreds of these in the past, we can leverage the foundation connections of how that affect moves, how it scales over time, and that allows us to then focus on polishing the. The timing and the gameplay aspect of how that effect is integrated into the encounter versus spending a few hours setting up that system from scratch.
Rubi: So you have an example of like reuse of a water splash effect, don't you? And how we use that to build something new? OK, let's look at that and tell us what we're looking at.
Lee: Yeah. So here you're you're looking at. There's a mix of reused asset and new assets here and this was an important asset. The the the important part of this asset was not so much the the water splash coming out of out of the center there. The really important asset was that central spiral Whirlpool, because that was directly tied to the gameplay mechanic. The area of effect that this impact was. Defining and so to. To maximize our time in. In this instance, we grabbed that splash, the upward moving out splash stuff from other assets. There's, I think two or three different splash effects that we pulled from, from a texture perspective for the the stuff that's in meeting upwards and and then that allowed Chris to focus really on defining the, the, the look for the the important part of the game. Part of this, which is that. How that Whirlpool looks and how that Whirlpool is communicating the area of effect to the player, and so we generated new textures. For that. We generated new movements for that and that. Is that allowed Chris to focus really on just the the timing and the gameplay aspect? As what was important for this specific asset?
Cameron: And just to kind of build off of that, if I can, something that's really awesome about that asset in particular, you mentioned how the spiral kind of denotes the area of effect that it's that the like attack actually affects.
Rubi: So go ahead, yeah.
Cameron: And the really great thing about designing it like that is that it's scalable. So if we needed to tweak the attack to be a little bit larger, then all we had to do was just go into the effect itself and just tweak the scale of the effect to match the. Back. So by having it standardized to where it's like 100 units on the effect 100 units on the attack, we can save a lot of time in the scripting and get a huge amount of bang for our buck from just that one effect.
Rubi: Very cool. So you did something similar with like the wind effects, didn't you, Lee?
Lee: Yes, we did. We did do something similar. Yeah. So uh, wind is definitely something that the players are used to seeing in the game, especially when that pushes the player upwards or knocks them upwards. We have a whole library of wind effects ranging from our jump pads. Our updraft currents for gliding.
Meagan: All right, so we want to look at that.
Lee: And so we're able to borrow that the same language, the visual language from those assets. So you'll see the central error. Street things moving upwards, that is from from other up, up draft currents and and and though. And that particular portion of that effect is one of the more technically challenging aspects to set up because it uses our flux system and it's just one of our more challenging systems to use in the effects. Toolkit and so by leveraging an already built asset in this new way, we're saving some time and allowed Chris to really focus on the textural qualities that you see in here and tuning the. Colors and the and the movement of the animation that you're seeing to work with the skills or the skill that Cameron needed for this knockout. And so something like this, if we would, if we look at that effect, if we made that from scratch, that would be several days worth of creating brand new textures in several days of setup and scripting on our end. But instead we're able to knock that down to about a day's worth.
Rubi: Yeah. And and you guys need those days?
Lee: Yes, yes, we all, we all need the days, but VFX is especially yeah burdened with with a lot of stuff that we have to do across the game. Everything in the game needs effects.
Rubi: Yes. So in this particular fractal, we looked at the, we looked at the water effects. We looked at the wind effects, there were a lot of elemental effects in here and a lot going on on the screen at once. How did you guys? How did you guys get what you needed to across without making it so noisy? How did you kick that down?
Lee: That's a challenge.
Rubi: As much as possible.
Lee: Yeah, that's that's a big challenge and some of that is smoke and mirrors, internal dev stuff that we don't wanna share too many secrets on. But you know, in this instance, we're seeing dozens of of effects on screen in the same location at the same time sometimes. 20 to 50 of these at once, and so we had to really focus on making simple effects that get really clear. Without conveying too much noise. So in in the example of wind or water well water especially you could get if you're not careful, you could go overboard with the fine detail of water droplets and frothy stuff that that that you see in in water. And if you every bit of every drop of water that you add into an effect. Adds to the performance of that effect and how it impacts the game. And so it was a a real challenge for Chris to back. The visual need to communicate what that element is meant to look like, whether it's water or wind or fire with the performance aspect of of what is too much for our game to handle and also the gameplay aspect. What do we need to clearly? Show for the player to read and so part of that comes from experience and working with a a really talented team of visual effects artists that come with a come with a wide variety and and background in in the game industry as well as working with our designers to identify early on what is important for the player. To see here what is important for us to. Communicate to the. Players and then we just focus hyper focus on that.
Cameron: Yeah, we mentioned it a little bit.
Rubi: Well, it worked out pretty well. Go go ahead.
Cameron: We mentioned it a little bit in the blog post, but you know, like one of our big goals with this was to focus on really high power, high fidelity, powerful attacks and so design wise in order to be able to meet that goal and not overwhelm the player with a bunch of stuff. On the field, we essentially just tried to create moments where. Where all of that stuff can play and it's OK because there's nothing else that's going on. The player isn't needing to deal with all of these other mechanics. That is the moment in gameplay. That's the spectacle that's happening, and it doesn't override the player feeling like they need to rush over here and do this thing. They just, you know, they get to a safe place and then they watch the spectacle happen.
Rubi: Can you think of an example of that from the fractal? That's what you're talking about. Because I'm curious.
Cameron: Yeah, definitely.
Rubi: I'm I'm thinking of a couple but.
Cameron: So her her big sweep attacks where she, like, puts a bunch of circle a leaves down on the field. There's really not a whole lot else that's going on during those attacks. Those attacks are really just there to be like, OK, if you're arranged, find a safe location between these circles and then whenever they go. Like to to to, to, to, to two. And if you are standing in them, you take damage because you're in the effect, but there's no other mechanic that's happening at the same time and and the same thing with like her, her line attacks, where she creates a pattern of projectiles either to her left or her right, or both, and sends them out the the thing that the player. Focuses on. There is OK. There's a Telegraph on the ground telling me where this projectile is going to go. I need to make sure that I'm between those projectiles and then the skill fires. Boom, they go across. It's really visually interesting, but it's not overwhelming because there's nothing else that I need to focus on.
Rubi: Yeah, that makes sense. So there are a couple more. Excuse me, there are a couple more things that you guys shared with me that I want to get out there. Cameron, you talked about working with Megan on the environment and on the maps and you gave us some examples. Do we want to run through those fractal environments examples and talk about those?
Cameron: Sure. What do you? So these are these are just really kind of from different points in development screenshots from how the map looks and how it kind of progressed over time. Oh, hey, look, there's the monkey.
Rubi: Ohh hey, I didn't even notice him when I was like skimming through. Yeah, that's that's not an Easter egg on live though, so don't look for him.
Cameron: I think so. Yeah, those guys just help us test so this, this one in particular, this is a a shot of the the kind of jumping puzzle that you use to get to the very end plus and one of the things that you really wanted to do with this puzzle is have the the blocks. Move around. Have the different parts of the puzzle actually kind of rearrange itself, and I think Megan can speak a little bit to how that process actually ended up turn.
Meagan: Yeah. So this was originally made with like hundreds of different rocks and props and. Stuff like all like. Hobbled together to make it look the way it does, and so we had to basically take them all and there's a way we can export them as one solid thing. And then we had prop art divide them up into chunks that were. Easier for us to manage instead of having to move hundreds of rock tiny rock. At the same time, we only had to. Move like 3 so. So I would set. It up in the map as it is completed and then Cameron would go in and separate them in the way that he needs them to be for design purposes so that they can float into place. And then I would go back in and make sure that the collision is all correct. And Ohh boy was that a thing and and that's how that's how we made that. It was definitely a lot of back and forth of the technical side of the environment, art and the design side of where it needs to be in order for this to work so.
Rubi: So what were some of the challenges?
Cameron: Yeah, definitely a lot of collaboration.
Rubi: Yeah. Because you mentioned that like collision was a whole thing was just getting them to line up properly.
Meagan: Right. Well, it was. Part of the whole like export thing that I had said where it was originally a whole bunch of tiny props that we exported and made into one big prop, but then they would have like all those tiny props coming together to make one collision mesh and. It didn't really like it that much because it was very complicated. So like you don't need that much information and then. And so the engine would be. Like oh, I don't want to draw this. It's too complicated. And so we kept getting bugs of people like sinking like their knees through the rocks and. And like we had to, we had to like. At some point like, it just wasn't building and like our map art intern had the idea Garrett, he had the idea. Just delete it and. Put it back. So we did the old, turn it off and turn it on again. Solution for some reason that worked so.
Rubi: OK, so that works for everything.
Meagan: Yes, does.
Cameron: It would be joyful.
Rubi: Yeah, really.
Cameron: We're stuck on it for weeks and. It's just.
Rubi: Like seriously. Yeah, yeah.
Cameron: What's happening? I don't. Understand why is it not updating and then Sarah was like I'm going.
Meagan: You're sending each other in French like.
Cameron: To try this.
Meagan: Like this is what it looks. Like it's fixed and then you're. Like, no, it's not. Look. At this and I'm like.
Rubi: So ohh no. And then Garrett was just like deleted and put it back and see what happens.
Meagan: Yep it works.
Rubi: OK, that's incredible. Hail Garrett. Yeah. Yeah, I think in the next segment, I was just thinking back to some of the things that we have a QA analyst in our next segment and he had one of those pictures where it was just like a small player head poking out of the rock. And I, I I don't have the full context yet, but I'm guessing that's. What it is?
Meagan: Yeah, there's a there was a lot of. Screwy bugs I I. Had sent you some some notes about that. There's a lot of scary bugs. And then also being worked from home, like really compounded. Of like like I said, a lot of back and forth between Cameron and I of him being like this is broken and then me looking at it in the map and saying no, it's not. And he goes, yes, it is. I'm not crazy. And then we go back and forth. And then I'm like, no, it's not. I'm not crazy and. And no. Yeah, it's just weird.
Cameron: Several times. There were times where I actually went in and and I opened up our method at software because I was like, OK, is this, is this a thing that's on my computer and only my computer. And then I saw it and I saw exactly what Megan saw. And I was like. What's happening? Is reality breaking down?
Rubi: Is that right?
Meagan: There was just like some some screwing communication between the map tools and the design tools that were just making some weird disconnect, and this is the perfect time to have like that level of bugs, right when you're work from home and everyone is like away from each other and you're not really able to troubleshoot.
Rubi: Yeah, but. Yeah, you can't be like, just come over to. My desk and look.
Meagan: Yeah, yeah, we had.
Rubi: That's it.
Meagan: To send our screenshots and be like this. Means nothing to me. I. Don't so.
Rubi: So, well, you had mentioned you had mentioned a lot of weird bugs, something else you were talking about like random Gray boxes popping up and calling in the waterfalls.
Meagan: Yes. So well, the culling in the waterfalls thing is actually an effects issue that has that we've had before. Where like if you have a creature that has like a certain effect on it, and then it passes in front of another effect that has an alpha channel, they're going to clip each other. Like you can't. They're going to override each other, and it's not going to work. And so we had to put up in the wind area. It used to be like, open to everything. But then we had to put up that wall of rocks in order to stop the wind elementals from clipping with the waterfalls, because there's just no way that could fix that because I was a thing that's been in the game. Still really long time. It's just something to do with the sorting on the effects and then the other the Gray box one. I have no idea why that happened, but there's like there's these little files that we put in the map called zone files that procedurally generate stuff like graphs, so I don't have to sit there and. Like hand. Draw every blade. Yeah, right. And for some reason on CAMS machine it was not having the file for the grass and so it replaced all the grass with Gray boxes. Nope, I don't know why and I. Think the I think the answer for that one was again just delete it and draw it again. And it works.
Cameron: Yeah, that fixed it. Yeah, just one of those things that happened like.
Rubi: Seriously. Ohh my gosh why?
Cameron: It happened like a week before release too.
Meagan: Yeah, it was like. OK. Well, like Kim was like, oh, no. And I'm like.
Rubi: So, Oh no, I didn't. Know that happened that close to release.
Meagan: Ohh yeah yeah.
Rubi: Ohh gosh OK, I'm slightly stressed out. Listening to the story I. Don't like it?
Meagan: Oh, no. Well, we can laugh about it now, it's. Fun now. OK, that's fair.
Rubi: So doing this, it's gone. Don't don't summon it back. I do want to. I do want to clarify something. You mentioned you mentioned alpha channels. What are alpha channels?
Meagan: It can't hurt you anymore. Oh, so like alpha channels. They're like how you get transparent stuff like glass or some of our crystals are kind of see through and a lot of the effects are like that too, where? Like well of. Trees in most games use use alpha channels not in the same way, but it's so that it has like transparency in the texture. Yourself so you can see through it, the ice and the glass is is pretty water does that too. So OK, that's what it was that wasn't.
Rubi: OK, so if they were passing in front of those?
Meagan: Lee probably probably understands a bit more of that, especially in as it affects as it relates to effects and what we were seeing. But yeah.
Lee: It's just a texture map that's a grayscale image, and the more black it becomes, the more transparent or see through it becomes so. Or feathers or leaves. You'll have the the shape of your leaf or feather is mostly white. If it's going to be opaque and anything that is scale between fully opaque to fully transparent transitions from. Gray to black.
Rubi: OK.
Meagan: And in our instance.
Rubi: So those were.
Meagan: It was. The the effects on the creature for the air elemental and the effects of the waterfall were fighting each other whenever they would go on top of each other.
Lee: So our engine does sorting well, a lot of engines do sorting. Similarly. Ours has sorting challenges. When you have textures that have distortion or perturbs on them and. So when you get those things overlapping with one another, then they fight for what gets drawn on top, or what gets drawn first. And so that's what was happening in that instance.
Rubi: Ohh, well. Well, congratulations on untangling all of that. I know there was.
Lee: That's a big team effort, right?
Rubi: A lot of work. Yeah, I know you guys had to do a.
Lee: To do it.
Rubi: Lot of work on that. And doing it far apart from each other.
Cameron: A lot of it also just came down to. A lot of it also just came down to looking at it and being like, OK, the work involved to fix the core problem. Is definitely not something that we can do. So let's just. Put smoke and mirrors around it and then no. One will see.
Rubi: Like we did with that sorting issue, we just let's build a wall of rocks and no one will ever know. Fantastic. All right, well, before we take a break and go into our second segment. We also. Have a a handful of design development images that I would love to show off to everybody because those little behind the scenes things are fun. Do you want? To go through those for us.
Cameron: Yeah, sure.
Rubi: OK, sweet.
Cameron: Ohh, so here's the fun one. So when we design a boss fight, we try to have a standardized boss arena size because a lot of our skills. A lot of our animations are driven by a very particular unit value and in order to get like the most bang for our buck for whenever we design skills and and just boss fights in general, we try to keep things roughly around the same. So those of you who play a lot of fractals and raids and. You know any other instance content with the boss fight on the platform, you'll notice it's probably around the same size and so this is just a a look at one of the tools that the map artist can use to look. At what is the size of this platform, let me make sure that what I currently have in here fits with our standardized size. And then this. Ohh man, it's a little hard to read on my end, but if you can read it, this is just a a flow chart that. We made a really, really early on. We kind of figured out, you know, hey, we want this boss fight to feel a little bit more methodical. We want to have a a rotation of abilities that then goes into a a signature attack for each individual phase. And so we plotted. This out and made a a flow chart here just to kind of visualize everything. And it's one of the one of the big things as well is that we didn't want each individual phase to feel vastly different from each other because we wanted players to feel like they're they're learning and then they're executing on these skills, that they're learning. And so you can see in phase one and then after transitioning to. Fire and then after transitioning to water, the core of it is the same. The differences come from what abilities are introduced as the complications like fire has the meteors and water has the the title bargain and the plea of the tides. And so we we tried to go for a more cohesive. Sure, throughout the fight. And then here's just some fun looks at really early prototyping of the skills that the boss uses. A lot of these, you'll see.
Rubi: I just want to say it. It doesn't feel entirely fun because I haven't gotten out of the way of that in time often, so I'm just looking at like, oh.
Cameron: Hey, don't feel too bad. This was after about 200 attempts of me, just like OK. I need to. OK, that was a little bit too late. OK, what's going on? Why is this person hitting me? And by the end of it, I was the master. But you don't want to know the amount of. And so that I actually died to all of these things. But fun facts players will will see here that she's targeting me with these abilities when we prototype abilities like this for a boss fight, especially for a boss that goes through a lot of behaviors, a lot of scripted sequences. That's a lot of work, and it takes months of fine tuning. And so when we set up the individual skills, it's more important for us to. To just test that that's still works in a closed environment, so we have commands that we can use that say, hey you creature use this ability on me and that really helps to test the just the general functionality. So while she's using this ability. On me, if you go into the fractal, this is one of the abilities that she uses to move around the arena to go from point to point. And then this was one of the early one of the early skills as well. We knew we wanted this to be mobile and I've always wanted to have a boss disengaged from players while still somehow attacking them, and with this boss creating all these projectiles that kind of like go out from her whenever she engages and then she has the line attacks that go across the field. We came up with this idea of like, OK, So what if we use this engage and. And as she's doing this, she's creating energy behind her that once she passes the threshold, they fire off towards her target. And so I I just absolutely loved how this came out and it pretty much just got put into the fight wholesale. And so you can actually see this ability in the encounter yourself.
Rubi: Yeah, I recognize it.
Cameron: This was a very early look at kind of just testing out the the line combo. We call it where she creates projectiles that have the telegraphs telling you where they're going to go. We used a the effects that's. Currently being used, there is actually from the war Beast encounter and Path of fire and we just kind of scaled it down a little bit. You can see the kind of like blue fire flames coming off of the trail and. We've I I fell in love with this effect. I fell in love with the idea of like man laser beams. That's awesome. Let's try to find a way of taking something like this and giving it its own unique spin. And we did actually end up getting unique effects for it. And and then here's the the sweep attack that I was talking about. So it's a little bit earlier of a version. So it's it changed a little bit before it got to life where that last attack that she does in the rotation, she creates a bunch more areas that kind of go around. We took that specific part of the design and kind of try to apply it to some other. But you can see here that when she sweeps across from left to right and right to left, there is a bunch of these circles that all differ in size. Get a little bit bigger as it goes out, and this is an example of how we can use one effect, not multiple effects at multiple sizes, but one. Effect and in script as long as the effect is built in the correct way, we can. Change the scale of the effect with the scale of the attack and it comes out looking super clean like this. So even though it's all just one asset being used and the game only has to ever load one asset, you get, you know these really cool patterns of AOE's and attacks that feel very different. From your standard attacks.
Rubi: That's awesome. I'm glad we got to look at how that scales up like you were talking about. Oh hey.
Cameron: Yeah. So this is a look at the the high jump mechanic. So a really early on while we were kind of like brainstorming ideas for, OK, we know we're going to have air, we're going to have fire, we're going to have water. What's really fun about air? Well, I like jumping. And so you know what if? I could give players a buff that allows them to just hit the spacebar and jump higher, and I set up a really janky version of this. And I I showed it to to one of our programmers and they were like oh man, no, no, no. No, no this. Is not the right way.
Rubi: Ohh no.
Cameron: To do this. Hold on. I will. I will make some changes to a system that we currently use for mounts and and and allow you to be able to hook into that with buffs and skills. And I've mentioned this a couple of times on stream, but this is the the product of that, where instead of having a special. Action skill that allows you to click it and jump or hit the key line and jump. You can just use your normal movement ability so it feels a lot more fluid. It feels a lot more natural and it's not like you're learning an entirely new thing, you're just your character is is changing the. Way that it moves.
Rubi: Something you mentioned and one of the things I love about the way that our teams generally work together is hey, I tried I I worked on this thing, I I like cobbled something together. What do you think? And the person whose area of expertise it is, yes, this is. This is a start. Let me do it right for you. And that collaboration makes such cool.
Cameron: It it really does because like as a designer I I don't have a whole lot of expertise in the back end code of our game and so there are. There are ways that a programmer can look at something and say like, OK, I can do exactly what you're trying to do in a much more efficient manner or I can. Give you the tools. To do what you're trying to do in a much more efficient manner, and that collaboration is absolutely key whenever we're making new mechanics like these.
Rubi: Yeah, it's it's continually a little bit surprising to me that it's it's sort of common knowledge, but not entirely universally known that designers and programmers are completely different things.
Cameron: Yeah, sometimes they crossover, sometimes we do have like technical designers that that kind of, you know, cross the bridge between that they do have the knowledge of programming and they're incredibly useful and a very valuable. That's that. And just incredible people in general, incredibly smart, but not everybody has those skill sets and and it's tough to learn. It's like learning multiple languages, you know, so it's very, very important that these teams work together as we're building the game out as we're, you know, defining the game play to make sure that it's as. Polished and well feeling as possible. Really quick just to kind of, you know, give context as to what's going on, on the screen, the the meteor mechanic.
Rubi: Yeah, point.
Cameron: This was this. Was something that I've I've been really wanting to see about getting into our game for a while is having meteors fall down create gadgets that the player needs to hide behind for some big attack and. And making that series of events that series and mechanics was definitely one of those core goals from the very beginning. So this is just an example of. Very early, early, look at how we put that together just to get the meteors to spawn at because it's there's a lot of smoke and mirrors here. The gadget that you see that pops up whenever the the explosion happens, that gadget just kind of appears it's not, actually. Part of the effect of the meteor coming down, and so the explosion that happens at that point hides the spawning of that gadget in that area.
Rubi: I did not even consider that, but yeah, they just show up. It's not. Hey, this thing is falling from the sky.
Cameron: Yeah. And it's it's usually like it's something that if you know about it and you look for it, you're like I see haha. But we I think we did a really good job of of just using effects to to hide that as well as possible because I haven't heard a whole lot of people be. Like I saw this thing. And then.
Rubi: Until we told them.
Cameron: Yes. Now the secrets out and then this. This gift here is just this is showing off the the first look at us setting up that. OK, now the meteors are down. We need to hide behind them in order to get away from this really devastating. Tech that she's going to throw out. And yeah, it goes out and explodes all the meteors. We wanted to make sure that you know it. It felt like it had weight. It felt like it, you know, really affected the environment around it. And so all of them explode and they pop, and then they go away. But you're safe because you hit. You did the mechanic correctly. Good job.
Rubi: Yeah, kudos on that. Two stage thing too.
Cameron: Oh man, spoilers.
Rubi: OK. Where does?
Cameron: OK so. When we designed challenge mode, one of the biggest things that. We wanted to do was we knew we had an elementalist that tapped into fire, water and air, and we. Knew that we. Wanted to tell the emotional story of her turmoil. And so the concept of like fighting your inner demons directly came. And that was just such a cool concept and we ran with it. And so this is just a GIF that I took that earlier on in development when we decided that the sorrowful spellcaster was going to have to deal with her inner demons Incarnate. How would that look right? And this is another example of. We want to reuse assets that we currently have in game in order to get the aesthetic that we want. And then from there look at it as a whole and say, OK, where can we spend our budget on making this even better? And so this was kind of our first look at, like, OK, there's the inner demons. They're all there. They're all looking at her. They're all floating around her. It's it's super scary. It's super, just like creepy and tense. And so this was kind of just like our our visual development. Look at how. This would go on.
Rubi: It's extremely cool and extremely creepy.
Meagan: I have.
Cameron: I think it turned out really well.
Rubi: Yeah. And and I was here, yeah.
Meagan: The hours.
Rubi: All right, he looks.
Meagan: He's like, why don't you wake me for? My nap.
Rubi: All right. So that seems like a most seems like a good point to send us into a short break. Thank you all for taking us a little bit behind the scenes of development and showing us some of how this got done and some of your. Ups and downs and challenges Einstein. We are going to Kim, we're going to keep you Megan and Lee. We're going to let you guys get back to work and we're going to talk to Cameron and some of our team members from audio and QA. As soon as we come back. So stick around, we'll be back in just a second.
Cameron: Ruby, I believe. You are muted.
Rubi: Ohh no I I muted I I. Like OK, Mark was also muted, so I couldn't hear, yeah, I muted for the coughing fit during break. It was great. Welcome back. Thank you guys for sticking around. Let's start with Jasmine and let you introduce yourself and talked about what you worked on for Sunka peak.
Jasmine Serrano: Yeah. Hi, I'm Jasmine. I actually just joined the studio about three months ago and for Sunka peak, I was involved with a lot of the audio aspects of it. I worked, I worked alongside with Sangha Han and this was our project that we worked on together. So, uh yeah, I mainly worked on starting area Airbus skills and stuff and. Really, a bunch of things I. There's a lot of audios work for this, so it was it was a lot of fun.
Rubi: All right. I'm looking forward to talking about that, Matthew. How about you?
Matthew Burke: Yes. Hi, I'm Matthew Burke, QA analyst. This is, I'm actually pretty new to about 3 months. This was kind of the first big thing that I got handed. So I got to kind of see it from. Relatively close to what it was when it came. Out, but just kind of seeing it through that. Final Polish, which is quite frenetic.
Rubi: All right. Well, I am and Cameron, I'm not ignoring you. It's just that we already know what you. Worked on literally everything. So why don't we start with talking about what working on audio was like? Since Jasmine, you mentioned there was a lot going on. What were some of your favorite parts? What were some of the most fun things?
Jasmine: Yeah, I I being on the audio team like so. This is my first industry job and so I've mainly have a movie, motion picture background and so learning about game audio and all this. It's been such a wonderful experience and this map was definitely. Great challenge for us to really dive into this material and to learn everything. And my favorite thing was really working with the final boss. She had so many cool moves and just so much really awesome stuff. Going on and she was visually pleasing to look at and so we wanted to make sure that. Just like how VFX was saying that there's so much stuff going on, we had to make sure that audio wasn't gonna be very overwhelming. Since we see a lot of orbs and rocks and stuff just constantly appearing. So we had a system that we did, it's called making audio rails. So all these orbs kind of have their own emitter. To where it plays sound. And so if you have like 20 of these things on the map, it's a lot going on. And So what we do is we make a script so that it's just one emitter just coming out from the center of that. So say if it's like a group of four orbs instead of four emitters, this is gonna be 1 emitter and so having this process and and linking all these things up, it it definitely took some time, but it was great to learn and it was. It was a great time to really be like.
Rubi: Ohh my.
Jasmine: God, there's just so many skills.
Rubi: There's a lot. Yeah. And welcome both of you, by the way, and talk about jumping into the deep end. Jasmine, you mentioned. Yeah. This was like, a little bit of trial by fire.
Jasmine: Absolutely. Yeah, I'm. I'm still really learning the the software and all that. I have a good grasp of everything and I'm so happy to be here and I love working on the audio like the the team has been great for helping me get everything in and. Upon she started as well, she's four months in. I'm about just started my three months and she she did such incredible work, especially with the. The final boss there was a great sound that she made. For the big explosion that she did, but yeah. It's been it's been a crazy three months.
Rubi: I'm sure you had mentioned trying trying to keep the audio from drowning everything out because there are so many audio cues going on and there's so much physically happening in the map like the weather was a big part of it. You have. You have the rain, the wind, you have everything. On how did you, how did you keep that in balance? How did you keep that just from being? Hey, here's a weather simulator now with pretty pictures and some murder.
Jasmine: Right. Yeah, yeah. There's the storm. Head was big thing that we had to make sure that. So there's about 3 layers of storms going on. So it's very heavy at first. But then when you beat the air boss, it's a little lighter. Not as noticeable, but it is a little lighter and then. When you free the water the the water skimmer, the spirit that that the water. The rain ends up going away and so. During uh, during all like this, just so much wind. And there's all these trees going around, we made sure to mainly put it in specific places that we knew there would be a moment, so that the player could actually hear that. So we hear Dessa and then we hear like, all the elementals speaking. But. There's good moments like. Right before. Oh yeah. So like during the the two waterfalls that are there right after the air boss that that that's a great moment to really connect with the with the ambience because we we hear these two waterfalls and they have these surges too. So even here it's speed up and so we wanted to make sure that the the player was feeling. Uh, the immersion is much really as much as possible.
Rubi: Those are. It's funny, you mentioned the waterfalls because I honestly had not even noticed the noises of the surges, because every time I'm so heavily focused on watching for the visual cues of, OK, Now it's safe to go and you won't get shot off the mountain for the 10th time. But the the audio cues. Not having those surges have got to be helpful to people who listen better than I do.
Jasmine: I would hope so. Putting that together was kind of crazy. The scripting for it was it was a little challenging, but we made it work.
Cameron: I'll definitely say I was running with the group last night and at least one person was just like, Oh my gosh.
Rubi: That's awesome.
Cameron: The the sound changes. What's going on? And then they figured out the actual mechanic and strictly due to that change, because they weren't able to really kind of put the pieces together visually. So I think it did a good job.
Jasmine: Thank you. Yeah, that's. That's one of the cool things about audio. You know it it's good if no one notices. Most of the time.
Rubi: A lot of the time, yeah, honestly, those waterfalls. And this is a small sidetrack from audio, but when you and I were running it the first time, you were like, OK, do you get the mechanic? And I was so confident. It was like, well, clearly you dodged through the water and and then you just watched me go sailing off the edge. I was like, OK, I'll come back and I'll listen better. I'm sorry. Please explain to me.
Cameron: I was like, stay silent. Stay silent. Don't say anything. Just.
Rubi: What to do? Don't tell her how to do it.
Cameron: Breath in this moment.
Rubi: Yes, I was just, I was so confident and obviously you dodged. Duh. No, no, that's not right. Probably should have listened to the audio cues also. So. Well, Matthew, how about you? What were? What were some of those highlights and some of the challenges cause you guys have been working? From home, your entire reading at career.
Matthew: I said one of the the biggest challenges, you know. I'm working with cameron and it's like sometimes QA is the bearer of bad news so specific incident that came up very very close to launch is the entire fractal pretty much stopped working so I have to go. I have to like you know message Cameron be like so keywords the outsource QA. Confirmed it like you just, it just stops like nothing happens. I'm sorry I don't have any details like what is supposed to happening is not happening here and you know you don't have that kind of rapport because you never work with them face to face before. So it's like you just have to be blunt. Sometimes. I just feel like it's not working. I'll write something up for.
Rubi: Oh, no.
Matthew: You. Here you go. Let me know. If you need help.
Cameron: I always appreciate candor and bug fixes, especially that late in the the development process because it's like. OK. My entire focus is now on this thing. What is going on? What's happening? I must figure this out. Luckily, it was a very simple. But RG is fixed.
Rubi: Ohh man so. I did. I did not know that happened and I'm like finding this out along with the viewers, that and that sounds terrifying. So good job. All of you for not completely losing it.
Matthew: It was. It was a panic, panic attack that morning.
Jasmine: Oh boy, maybe one tear was shed.
Rubi: It's a very large tier. It's just the one. Wow, sorry, that was just hate the fractal broke. Which part of it? No. The fractal. The part with the fractal is broken. Matthew. Something else that you mentioned that was so gratifying to hear players talk about, too, is that there's video.
Matthew: Yeah, you don't. It's one of the things you don't really think about. I mean, I've I've tested you for about 3 years now.
Rubi: OK.
Matthew: And you're going through the content, you know, over and over. And over and over again. It's not an exaggeration to say hundreds of times. Hearing voices versus just checking the text out like during the last couple when rolled up. So it's just checking the text, making sure the text is is appearing when it should, but actually you know hearing the voice actors add a little bit more weight to that just makes testing so much easier. Like when you get to the final boss and she screams at you.
Cameron: When you approach her.
Matthew: Like try to picture that but with no audio at all, because that is, you know, when I first started, there was no audio. It was added. Then later it just makes it that much easier to get through that fight. You know, the next dozen times to check one particular mechanic and make sure it's working it it's it's so hard to like, describe the difference. Between those two states.
Rubi: Yeah, but it is there. It there's been a very much you don't miss it until it's gone and suddenly it's, uh, it's so hard. Go ahead, Cameron.
Cameron: Audio and audio and and video in general, just like elevate, the experience, just exponentially right, like. I had of all the content I've worked on by the end of development before VO gets in. I'm always like this is trash. I've played through this like 1000 times and I'm not having fun anymore, so obviously this is trash and then video comes in and. It's like.
Rubi: Sounds amazing. Oh my God, this is good.
Cameron: It's it's really. Awesome. The audio team like once they come in Jasmine like once you you once your work goes into the game, it's just like it's an entirely new experience. Again, it's great.
Jasmine: I'm. I'm really glad to hear that.
Rubi: And I do I. I do have to give you guys enormous applause. Applause Because we haven't. We've been under these constraints and. We're we're, you know, like with the fractal and the end of Dragons teaser, we got video and those and we're working on video for the upcoming episodes and for the episodes that don't have them and you guys. In audio, we're working under such constraints of look we we just flat don't have the O. None of us could have predicted this pandemic. We're working on it. And getting getting in whatever audio cues you could was was such a fantastic feat of working with what you have when it's not much so big kudos for that. You guys did really good work under a hard circumstances.
Jasmine: Yeah, that it goes straight to the audio team like I've I joined like at the end of episode 4, so I was mainly working on some open metas. And stuff. So it was. Really, the entire audio team just doing doing such great work under really crazy conditions and. Many things breaking as well. It's they're they're on fire. They're such a great team.
Rubi: In a good way. Yeah, they are. Our audio team is fantastic. So let's talk about Matthew. You had shared some bugs that you worked out that I. Am kind of excited to show off because bugs aren't necessarily fun, but after you fix them, it's great to look at that. So can we can we take a look? OK. What are we looking at?
Cameron: Fun 1. I think it's one of. Camerons, actually, yeah. So. Games have skyboxes and our game has a moon object in the sky box and with challenge mode the skybox changes and the mood changes and the moon changes.
Rubi: This shrinks the moon, this challenge mode.
Cameron: And so it's. Yeah, it was one of those things where like every now and then I'd look up and I'd be like. Is that? And then I would. Go to our testing monkey. You can see the conversation. That's what our test monkeys are for is we can put like, hey, I want to activate this trigger and not have to. Go through and type it all and so I put it a a conversation on it that activated and deactivated challenge mode and I was.
Rubi: Right.
Cameron: Like I'm going to see this and I'm going to see if I'm crazy. And sure enough it it changes size.
Rubi: Honestly, I have to say the question is the moon smaller is like the most 2020 question. Did the moon change size?
Cameron: Ohh hey and and here's that alpha sorting issue that Megan was talking about.
Rubi: Ohh that's what that looks like.
Cameron: Yeah, so here's the weird thing. Here's the thing that we didn't understand. The waterfall on the left. Occludes the the model of the creature, the waterfall on the right does not. Why? I have no idea. I've I've asked so many different people and they're just like, yeah, that's just our sorting system. I'm like. Oh, OK. So you can see that the the wind platform here used to not have those walls around it. And so like Megan was saying, you know, to to fix this issue, which we just were just like.
Rubi: Oh no.
Cameron: We we were like, OK, just block line of sight. It never happened. There is no book.
Jasmine: Sure. OK.
Rubi: The inconsistency is going to drive me up the wall.
Matthew: Next stop.
Cameron: Oh man. First, you want to talk about this.
Matthew: Sure. So this is was actually talked about a lot in the in the last session where this is the the part of the level that changes once you get past it and all the other all the other steps are fine. But this last one. Like had probably like 4 separate pubs on it because people kept noticing that you were just walking right through it. So I would kind of merge them all together and I would send. It off and be like, hey, I can walk through this problem, get it back. It's fine. Megan mentioned this where, you know, it looks fine there, and it's just end game. It's just not working and that. You know, it was a back and forth for. At least several weeks, I think even more than that, where eventually Gary. Just came in. And just like kind of brute forced it and then just was. Like all right. We're just turning it off and on and I and I did the trick, but. It just the entire time just being like, OK, I'm going to send it back. Here's whatever information I can provide, but it's just like the same thing is occurring over and over again, and there's only, you know, so much info we can provide from the Qi side of things.
Cameron: So I'm glad it.
Matthew: Was eventually worked. Out, but it was just this. This one prop was kind of the the pain of my existence for a few weeks.
Rubi: Ohh no, you're just walking through the rock. Hey.
Cameron: And here's uh, yeah.
Rubi: Great boxes are super adventure clouds.
Cameron: These are the. These are the revenge of the boxes. They they're gathering together for their weekly congregation to plan the. End of the world.
Rubi: It's a stand up. It's fine. So so this was all supposed to be grass.
Cameron: Yeah. So each of those boxes represents a place on this area where some sort of blade of grass or other, I think we call them set dressing props or foliage. Jobs we're supposed to populate as part of that environment zone that Megan was talking about, but for some reason the week before we like shipped, we we loaded in and it was like.
Rubi: Ohh no.
Cameron: What? No one's no one's touched this. No one's done anything to this. We didn't do anything. Why is this broken? And it was just another case of one of those things where we had to be like, well, so we fixed the prop by just deleting it and putting it back in. So.
Rubi: Ohh no.
Cameron: Let's just go ahead and do that this time and see if it does it and it did.
Rubi: Ohh my gosh. There was so much weirdness.
Cameron: Oh man, OK this bug this is 1.
Cameron: Of my favorite bug. So in testing and testing the meteor we. I created an infinite loop. I created an infinite loop and I also messed up the positioning of where the meteor lands because I don't know if you can see on the stream, but there's a there's a circle that drops right where the player was standing at the very beginning. That's where that meteor should have been. But instead through the script and through the shenanigans of probably very tired me doing this, this script work to try and get it to work. I I made the most ******** mechanic in the world. It's gonna you're just gonna have to live through it. Guys. Like I don't know if you really want something like this in the future, I mean.
Rubi: It's just fire hose of meteors.
Cameron: They just never stop. They never stopped. It actually got to a point where it was happening so much that the server started to slow down.
Meagan: And I'd love.
Cameron: To design for it.
Rubi: And then things.
Cameron: Started to just break over, yeah. Yeah, because it's just constantly like. I'm like, OK, alright, well. Control Z, it started.
Rubi: I need you to calm down with the challenge mode, Cameron. That's that is too much. That is fantastic. Mark, do we have? Do we have some bugs from Matthew or? Were those included? OK, alright. I was like, do we have more or are you guys is that enough? Bugs for us, we. Are we all good? Well, I have. I do have one more thing that I would like Jasmine to run us through. From the audio side. And then I have some viewer questions for mostly camera. And I think that I want to run through and make sure we get answered. So just when you were talking about working on some of these awesome huge boss skills and you guys work together to create a video to kind of run us through how one of those worked, right?
Jasmine: Yes, uh sangha Han. She made this awesome uh sound for this great uh attack that one of the that the final boss does that that includes all the meteors. So once all the meteors are set and the. She's bringing up the big AOE and she's like. This uh this. Beautiful sound that she made. Uh, it's these. It's, UM, well, the the video will explain, but it's. Yeah, it's so cool. And like I told her, like, we have to show this off because it's just so, so awesome.
Rubi: Yeah, seriously, by the way, I didn't get that until I got it this morning and I hadn't had a chance to tell you that I was just expecting, like, ohh, we just hopped in game and captured video of this thing and I'll explain it and then. I started watching it. I was like ohh. They made a production. I I am kind of overwhelmed at how good this is, so let's.
Jasmine: Don't worry. Yeah, I I didn't know either. So somehow shorter to me, like, wow.
Rubi: It was amazing. So good. All right. And then 7000 meters from Cameron.
Cameron: Holy cows.
Rubi: Now wait now. Wasn't that awesome?
Cameron: That's incredible. That was the first time I've seen that. That's seriously. Oh my gosh.
Jasmine: Is she's a wizard with the plugins that we use. If anyone is familiar with audio, DWS and stuff like that. We love sound toys on this team we love. And so we, we see a lot of tremolo and little plates and. Which is it's it's just so beautifully crafted. And even like during our our team chats and and all that we're always telling. Her like oh. My God, this is so cool. So yeah, kudos to sungha. She did such a fabulous job.
Rubi: Yeah, it it stresses me out in the best way. That sounds like it is. It indicates what it needs to indicate so well. And I have to note that. That when the audience like, like you're in, you're right in there with the consistency. Whenever the audio team gives seems to give us a breakdown of something like that, it's always something that, like, wildly stresses me. Out and. I think the last one that we looked at was like the the warning noise and drizzle would coast about. Hey, everything's about to get really bad. You need to move and there was a breakdown and at the end of so many of these audio videos, I'm like, oh, I want to map out. I I need to leave so good work on.
Jasmine: That I get it. I totally get it. I I really do after like a. While of when you're like designing some stuff and your brain is just really going and going and going, you have so many references on your mind and you want all these expressions and stuff. There's so much. So much room with audio, and really, it's up to everybody's interpretation. Like if you gave that sound, if you gave that test to all of us, we'd all come up with something different. So it's it's such a creative medium to really express yourself.
Rubi: Yeah. Well, thank you guys for for both building it and for showing us how that got put together. And I assume that these were all sounds that you had and you were just like in your. Home with a fireball.
Jasmine: No. Well, these were, yeah, these were in our library. We have a very extensive library full of.
Meagan: Great. Awesome.
Jasmine: And stuff. I know that one I believe is from because I remember behind the scenes from this, I think it's actually on the Guild Wars YouTube. It's our audio director drew. He has. He's literally had. Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure it's from that. He's holding a fireball and just waving it around a microphone.
Rubi: Yes, I thought that's what it was.
Jasmine: And that's how you.
Rubi: Do it. Yeah, that was that was actually one of the things I wondered when I saw that video that you sent for the first time I was like, is that from that really old video of drew with the fireball? And I'm. I'm so glad to know it is and. That we're still using that.
Jasmine: Oh yeah, it's a great sound.
Cameron: Turns out the best way to get the sound effect for a fireball is to make a fireball and then start having it move.
Rubi: To make an actual fireball. All right, theory Drew is an elementalist. All right, so we are getting a little bit on in time and I do I have some questions from the Community that Cameron, you kind of looked over. So let's get through those. From the mechanical standpoint, what was the motivation for removing unstable cosmic essences?
Cameron: OK, so this is a two-part answer the 1st. Sorry this is a little bit of a divisive change. The first is that we needed to do. A little bit. Of upkeep. Adding a CM currency that was shared around all of the CM's allows us to have a cohesive reward structure for challenge mode fractals, which is similar to how magnetite shards and gating charts work in Ray. And so this future proves us. It gives us a system that we can then very cleanly build off of, and then also, and this is the divisive part. Unfortunately, like unintentionally having an item in your inventory that you get as like a currency for completing ******** content has the potential to be used to kind of discriminate between players. A lot of players will refer to this as like kill proofs. That's not really behavior that I I like seeing or I want to encourage, and I inadvertently enabled it by having this item there. And so it's been off for a while and people have hundreds of them and the, you know, I knew that putting in this change. Was going to ruffle some feathers and it was going to end up causing this discussion, but I think the the goal here is that with these challenge mode fractals with in game content in general. You shouldn't need to have completed it 250 times in order to participate in groups, right? If you do want to make sure that, like the people that are in your groups are of high enough DPS or have the the healing potential or good enough at their class. And that's totally fine, right? But there are there are much healthier ways of gauging that than just a static like link me this item at this amount because that can also be faked. And so it was just creating this really unhealthy loop in the game for player behavior. And so with this change, we we made a currency that goes straight into your wallets. You can't link it and and then we allow for players who currently have the cosmic essence to trade it for the new currency at a rate that kept the cosmic. Presence at the same level of. Value that it previously had, while also you know because people have amassed so many, also a rate that didn't allow them to just you know go in in day one and get everything. And so that it's it's a really tough change, but I think overall the goal is is that if you want to make sure that the people in your group are the best of the best, there are other ways that you can check that you've got titles that you can check. You've got just like, you know, going through and and checking their gear. But for the average player. Or the average hardcore player. Even it really should just be. Hey, I've beaten this content before. I've done this content before. I know what I'm doing and I might mess up like once or I might, you know, accidentally. Kill the crew. Hopefully not, but you know it, it should be fun. For everyone to play together. That being said, I do want to say I know that. Kill proofs will always. Exist and players are going to find the next thing. But the goal here is to try and curb the accessibility to that behavior rather than completely destroy it.
Rubi: Ok. All right, So what about let's talk about instabilities. The are the current instabilities we have on Tier 4 permanent, are those going to stay, are they going to rotate?
Cameron: No, they are not permanent. I can kind of talk through that a little bit. So this is the first challenge from the fractal that we've released in a while. And so we wanted to ship it in a state where we could gather data for a period of time like 2 to 4 weeks and. Gather data in an environment that's not changing all that much so that we could see like, hey, do we need, do we need to make major balance tweaks and with the instability system there are it introduces the possibility that like this combination of instabilities makes it just so much. Harder and so it kind of makes it more difficult to parse through that data to really figure out, you know, like how well is the balance sticking? What are the pain points currently in the fractal? What can we do to make this experience better? But I will say in a future patch soon. We are going to be adding more instabilities to this fractal. This is not a permanent thing. It's just here for the the current cycle of playing. With it.
Rubi: Awesome. Thank you. All right, and a little more story geared side. There seems to be a typo on the monuments dates with the graves and that they appear to be 1020 years off. Was this on purpose?
Jasmine: It's mystery.
Cameron: I leave it up. To player interpretation, alright you guys, you guys have the best theories and I'll I'll I will not tell you the the full truth you guys are going to have to craft your own.
Rubi: OK. Was this a one time fractal story or will it be like the chaos aisles and others?
Cameron: If players show a lot of interest in seeing more sides of this story, it might influence future decisions. No promises.
Rubi: Jasmine's nodding. She's like, yeah.
Cameron: I I really like the story that we've created here. I think there's a lot of potential to expand on it. And so yeah, if it's something that players like really want to see then.
Jasmine: That'd be cool.
Rubi: Alright, I like that answer.
Jasmine: We love small maps.
Rubi: All right. On that note, I will thank all four of you. All five of you for your time and I will thank you guys watching for hanging out with us. And thank you guys for taking us behind the scenes and showing us some of what you worked on the past of however many months. I don't know. We've been in lockdown. For like what, 10 years now? It's been a little while.
Cameron: This is the 6th. March, I believe.
Rubi: I think so, yes. All right. Well, thank you guys. Yes, right. Alright. Well, thank you guys for your time. Thank you all for watching and enjoy the fractal. We'll see you next time.
Jasmine: It's March in my mind forever.
