Guild Chat - Episode 77

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 77th episode of Guild Chat aired on November 30, 2018. Host Rubi Bayer interviews some of the developers involved in the rollerbeetle racing and the Pet Dog Whistle: Basenji.
Transcription[edit]

Note: The text below hasn't yet been converted from raw subtitle text into pretty print like above.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K67N9rssIiE
hi everybody and welcome to guild chat
happy Friday
I'm your host Ruby and we have a lot to
talk about today so we're gonna go ahead
and get started we're gonna start
talking about the things so many of you
been doing all week which is roller
beetle racing let's jump in I'll
introduce our guests or let them
introduce themselves
thank you guys first for joining and
thank you for giving me some of your
time and giving them some of your time
why don't we just go down the line and
have each of you introduce yourselves
talk about what you do here at ArenaNet
and what you worked on for roller beetle
racing all right well I'm Joe chemists
I'm a designer on the current activities
team and for a little bitter icing in
particular I designed all the scripts
that run the courses constructed the
courses set up all the rewards and stuff
pretty much all the design work on it
nice your scarf is amazing by the way
you look fantastic trying to get into
the theme stay into the theme at Connor
and welcome to Gil chat for you for sure
thank you so I'm Connor day and the QA
analyst so I hand a lot a lot of testing
here and I handled most of the testing
for a roller beetle racing and my
biggest contribution was setting the
time trial times that all of you have
been enjoying that sounds like a
challenge to sound like yeah I'm sure
there are people faster but Bret how
about you so I'm Brett Nell mo I'm the
QA embed for the current activities team
so for the first like initial three
races and first run of achievements I
did the testing for roller wheel racing
as well as some of the rewards and hand
it off to Conor once it got to be a
little bit bigger of a release listen
thank you guys all real quick before we
move on we will be taking questions at
the end of the segment so if you have
questions about roller beetle racing for
these guys drop them in chat and we will
pick a couple of those out at the end
and give you guys answers if we didn't
cover them in the show
so well let's start I want to talk about
the origin of roller Beetle racing and
where it came from and how it got into
Guild Wars 2 so everybody yeah so this
one is a journey way back gathered round
to the land of Guild Wars 1 where so I
actually joined the company around the
time we were working on nightfall
which was the alonein expansion and the
roller beetles or in that day I think
rain and Rock beetles were a creature
native to Ilona that you encountered and
they were these like ridiculous looking
like Spinney beetles and they would
shoot rocks at you and chase you around
and travel in packs I remember and they
were they were just incredible they make
this little squeaking noise all the time
and so they were a really memorable
monster from that campaign and around
like Oh months later we were working on
a new festival for the game and one of
our programmers like I don't know what
started it if a designer was like hey
what if we did a racing minigame but at
some point kind of like out of nowhere
from my perspective because I was
working on something else we had this
downhill track where you got transformed
into roller Beetle and you raced
downhill with what was for Guild Wars 1
this completely you know
out-of-left-field system they had made
for you speeding up downhill and slowing
down uphill and we had a little like
speedometer and it all it was really
something we spent a lot of time
maintaining that and so I tried that out
and play tests and it was really fun I
loved it so skip forward years later and
we were talking about all right the next
expansion for Guild Wars 2 is going to
be path of fire it's gonna be in Ilona
and myself and a couple of the people
were like alright so when are we adding
roller beetles like that's the key
feature of Valona for me I mean
I'm having a hard time entirely arguing
with this so and they didn't quite make
it for the original release because we
were focusing on the crystal desert more
so than the South alona side right and I
think there was kind of a choice at some
moment between do we get roller Beatles
or hydras and even I was willing to vote
for hydras at that point because sir
it's just not the crystal desert without
those hydras chasing you around you're
shooting meteors at you I like when they
shoot beams that triple attack anyway so
a couple Story episodes down the road
yeah we did finally reintroduce the
roller beetle as a mount yeah and you
get to drive it around and it's got like
a much much more modern take on the
whole beetle physics and rolling fast
downhill slowing down uphill we finally
got that you know really working instead
of being this sure crazy workaround that
we had in Guild Wars 1 and immediately
of course players were like alright so
winter beetle races and the current
activities team as soon as we heard
about the roller beetle mount we
actually wanted to do roller the other
races but at the time we were working on
festival for twins
and we were thinking okay like can we at
can you incorporate this into the
festival and at the time roller beetle
was still very much in flux like we were
changing what kind of turn rate does it
have how fast can actually go
what is its special ability and so if we
had built any races it would have
actually turned into a nightmare of like
well we we thought you'd be able to make
that jump
sorry so you know yeah so we ended up
shelving it for a bit and then when
Festival for ones was done revisited it
and worked on it some more and
eventually we now finally got all the
track's out yeah it over time it kind of
built up into a bigger event with you
daily quests and stuff to do and awesome
prizes so yeah in and out of game I was
really glad we were able to give that a
lot of time and attention to get it well
that's awesome
feeling like well let's talk about
development a little bit you mentioned
we got all the tracks in how did you how
did you all decide where to put the
tracks how did that process go so the
first step of that process for me was
establishing some rules on where we
wanted to put courses so the current
activities team has done a bunch of
content in court area Maps kind of
trying to either bring people into the
old maps or in the case of some events
like to say the bandit bounty is we know
okay this has to be in krytie we want to
focus these certain maps and kind of try
to tell a story with where it's going on
so one rule we wanted to have for roller
Bueller racing was that it does not take
place in any of the level 1 to 15 early
zones of the game because if you're
still trying to learn the game and you
know 40 people come tearing pass on
needles it's a little extra confusing
sure wait what boss was that yeah
and similarly and this may change in the
future right like I hope to add more
races we didn't want to put any in the
highest level zones because there's a
higher risk of like we're trying to race
and then suddenly Club jour mag and it's
gonna put a damper on things
right the more difficult the zone is the
higher the risk of some event taking you
out yeah this is valid but I did Express
yesterday that I really loved the
thought of the club dramatic fight
happening and like you said 40 people
just come zipping through just crash
into this wall don't mind this will be
just a second so we end up settling on
kind of that mid-range zones and what we
did was at the time actually won one of
the big inspirations for doing roller
bitter racing was the number of players
who as soon as they got the beetle were
already going okay like I got to try
this out let's like will establish a
course using like
our raid markers or just having people
standing there and so we watched a whole
bunch of videos of player made courses
it's kind of get a sense of what do
people like doing on the beetle well
what are what is a good corner look like
and but after that ended up kind of
picking the zone first then a we would
go into zone and just drive around a lot
on the beetle sure and try to figure out
what is the like what are some cool
routes on this zone what can we show in
this zone like the one example on Gander
Enfield's was I was driving around the
lake a lot trying to find some places
where we could do the if the beetle hits
water going very fast and just the right
angle you'll get this kind of skip bring
along the water and I really wanted to
have that happen somewhere we ended up
ultimately with just a tiny little
section of water skipping or very small
because it turns out the leeway like if
you don't know about the water skip
before that section oh if we try to make
you go as far as you can you'll fail
every time if you don't if you don't
plan for it and like take a tiny little
hop right before you at the water if you
don't do it just right there's a huge
difference between how far do you make
it so we did a little one just teach you
hey here's something you can do it's
right after a straightaway it's
basically impossible to fail that said
we've gotten some incredible data back
from our analytics team showing you know
the heat map of people doing the races
and where people are
falling into the water basically because
because it shows you know where are
people getting off their mountain and in
general it's just you know the whole map
people drive around sometimes they get
dismounted but the water areas are just
bright red don't quite make the jump
Oh an end yeah yeah that one one good
earner Fields has the climax jump I
would guess that bridge where you yes
yeah people aren't free people don't
fail the little short section with that
bridge with the right turn yeah
some people think that isn't jump it's
definitely not the right speed the
fastest way through there I still think
is doing a little jump onto the bridge
but don't try to stunt jumping okay yeah
I wanted to mention maybe we had a
little bit of leeway in between vessel
before winds and whatever we're working
on next and there was a question that we
spent maybe a couple of hours on like
what maps feel good to race on and after
spending a couple of hours just going
around there was every map it it seemed
like it should be have to be relegated
to only specific areas but and ended up
feeling really nice every place we
checked it out yeah the other hurdle we
had a couple times with picking courses
was you launch into a map on the test
servers drive around for a bit and then
maybe like 10 or 20 minutes later
suddenly you know the flame Legion is
now attacking this town the chart closed
their gates and now that course you had
in mind doesn't work because you're
going through that yeah oh yeah on DSO
Plateau I had this you know the course
wasn't quite finished right but it was
starting to solidify I was like oh
there's this really scenic part where
you go zipping through one of
the char towns there this is really cool
like we get to see that chart
architecture and there's like
overarching pipes and like we're in
gears and the gates closed and I I spent
a little time going like okay what if I
force the gates to open if there's a
race going on or like we'll just let you
hit it with the beetle and we decided to
just go around it end up working out one
of my favorite courses yeah is funny um
you mentioned that you worked on the
time trials Connor says who's the best
beetle racer yeah I I kept we would be
on the test servers as soon as we had
the time trials set up and I'd be like
all right like I've I made the course
I've done it apart I feel pretty good
about my time this seems like a good you
know ballpark to base high scores on
right
none of the gold times are just
literally the best time anyone could get
we like figured out what do we think is
the best time back it off a couple
seconds back it off you know thirty more
seconds for silver and so on well yeah
that was and that's that was my question
for you I mean making the time to beat
be the best racer best racer internally
I wouldn't say I'm the seems absolute
best I mean one of the fastest that's it
like that doesn't seem like a good
formula like it's content that's gonna
be around for a long time this isn't
just gonna go away so we figured it
would be you know it's a good thing that
to be challenging sure something that
will be around for a while you can try
and improve your times for as long as
you wish
plus we have cool rewards one for a
average time silver which is a little
bit easier and then we have a
potentially more prestigious award for
having the very difficult time yeah one
point of feedback we got from we added a
sort of prototype beetle race during
Halloween in the mad Kings Raceway and
then ended up being much more of a like
kind of stunt track it didn't quite get
what it was very hard it didn't quite
get what a lot of people wanted out of
beetle racing because it was much more
about like doing a bunch of consecutive
drifts running into pumpkins and
exploding running into gravestones and
getting stopped yes we do but one really
common thing we saw was some people
liked the challenge they were like oh
man like I spent some amount of time
struggling and I finally got under a
minute and somebody were like I am NOT
going to like I'm never gonna be able to
do this so we wanted to be able to have
both of those player types have fun with
this and not feel locked out so we split
the meta into two parts there's the like
just kind of normal difficulty play the
tracks a bunch get the silver times meta
you get the cool scarf or and then
there's the rolling ace meta for getting
all gold times that you get basically a
slightly slightly different scarf and a
title for it so the hope is that anyone
can get in there and with a little
practice get that normal meta and then
if you're really inspired if this is the
content you really enjoy then you get
something your show for it and something
to say hey like I can do the fastest
times yeah definitely
so I'd like to hear about some of your
favorite parts of development what were
some of the most fun things while you
were getting this into the game well and
whoever can go with me well one of my
favorite things was we had an internal
flight test I had a pretty large amount
of participants and I spent most of it
winning of course just saying I'm very
humble I thought I was winning during
one of those play tests and it was just
that I couldn't see Connor what so
anyway on one of those somebody know
maybe somebody's sitting right here next
to me decided that I had won too much
and set me on fire
way too much maybe okay I got back on
and finished yeah the first time you
told me the story I was like did you
just like literally reach across your
desk with a letter I
a chat program with some of our other
testers and they said man we really hate
that Connor is winning every time I said
okay this is not definitely didn't count
as a buff it's on the subject of getting
set on fire one of my favorite moments
during development was one of the one of
the later tracks that we added was the
amount Maelstrom track that when we were
making it I knew from the start like if
at all possible we have to go through
the volcano right like that is the
centerpiece of that map it's the fun
area we can jump across the lava most
people will make it some people won't
you can survive a little bit of lava on
the beetle it's fine you can't skip
across the lava though unfortunately so
we came up with this course where you
get the chance to ramp over the lava and
go through the lava tunnels and there's
a particularly deadly corner at the end
of that lava tunnel you have a drift
through but we had the course all set up
we were starting to like set times on it
and Brett comes to me at some point and
he's like hey so if the Mount Maelstrom
meta event triggers with the mega
destroyer and players fail it and you
know the volcano is erupting then the
center like of the volcano core gets
this you know deadly heat effect that
lights you on fire and you take massive
damage and your screen goes really
blurry because of the heat and you're
burning and and he was like I don't
think it's possible to make it through
the core bring that I mean I'm bad at
Mill Stream and we tried it a couple
times and I think maybe we established
it was technically possible but you had
to fly through that section
it's not that you're bad it's that you
have room for you have opportunities and
challenges mmm
right and so we ended up if you are
doing the beetle race you actually get
an immunity to that effect you're not
immune to lava but you can't ignore the
core overheating so welcome my favorite
part is that Connor got a character
reference oh yes so in all of the
courses there is an asura named con co
NN who makes references to real-life
rady racing type of stuff because connor
is indispensable and that knowledge if
you see that character some people on
reddit I think cut the reference to Kimi
räikkönen there are a few others out
there that's awesome um what about the
winners Day gifts on the track I don't
remember who that note was from oh that
was also on Maelstrom right right next
to where you start the adventure if
winter's day is on in the open world
it'll spawn gift boxes that will fall
out of the sky and knock you over and if
you're too close to them it'll explode
and spawn squid so if winter's day
happened to be on and you were next to
this adventure you would get knocked off
well not knocked off your mouth but you
would start getting assaulted by squid
I've not seen the problem please tell me
this is like hey look at this awesome
thing we found we'll make it a feature
in the future race I'm saying that's
amazing
I have one more question about chicken
tonics oh the chickens
so one fun thing there is we did a poll
a while back I think that was with this
year I think it was with the second
release of and we added an NPC who just
we wanted to see you know how many
players we could get to participate so
we just kind of did it's light hearted
what is your favorite what
kind of animal would you like most as a
pet and I think we asked between cat dog
bear Choya
and chicken I can't believe almost
missed that remember and we actually got
a lot of responses to that some players
complained that the way we polled was
you know unfavorable to some of them
because we present them in an order and
that effects it and I learned a lot
about polling you have been some order
but so we had this data and we kind of
wanted to put it in the game somehow and
that ended up being and that we
implemented all of these transformation
tonics and then said their prices are
all based on that poll as well as the
fact that cat got two tonics because it
was the highest rank so that does mean
chicken had the least votes
oh so the bird fans in the audience
really need to get their friends to vote
for chicken next time weird thing to say
but the chicken tonic ended up being one
of the more incredible ones because I
didn't even realize as we were going to
implement it but there are a lot of
chicken models again there are there's
even more chicken varieties in reality
but you know so we can it can turn you
into some of those chicken models yeah I
think antastic
um and we so we had something like
nearly a dozen different chicken models
split between roosters and hens so I
made the tonic actually split you to
whether your wrist or a hen and so I
think there's like five each amazing
there's a lot of fun I now that I know
that we have all those chicken models
like we're gonna come up with something
yeah some of their chicken content right
now not sure what it is yet but we'll
get there well do you guys want to
answer some questions cuz I see some
yeah so you all see those yeah yeah so
there's one question about the mimosa
tree and Breanna tree wild lens
so that's do they know so there's a
funny thing or tragedy there is we never
when the zone spins up all of the
logging nodes are kind of randomly
assigned based on certain criteria to
where they are and we never had that one
interfere with the race during
development yeah I ran that race so many
times and I never more saw that tree but
in the middle of that route there's good
news on that so we went out on the
development servers and moved that
particular logging node so that's still
making its way through testing and up
the pipeline towards release but any so
we won't do an emergency change for it
but in a release soon that tree will get
moved also I got the artists to go in on
Brisbane wildlands and increase the some
of the draw distance numbers for some of
those routes to get in your way sneaky
so those will also be come up quite a
bit more visible in that same release I
look forward to that it it depends on
what you're like draw distances for
environment so if your draw distance is
still as low as you can possibly set it
it may be a little better so much
improved now but it'll be a lot better
if you are on medium measure settings
absolutely mhm it's good to know
emergency mimosa tree placement yeah had
to get that out of there what else let's
see how quick did we manage to implement
people races is a question somebody asks
so one thing that we focused on with the
alloys was making the core of it like
the base scripts that all of them share
and the concepts like how did the
checkpoints look how do we handle like
traveling between checkpoints we tried
to take as much knowledge as we could
from the other races we've made and make
the like best possible race and that
took a while it was like probably a
couple weeks of polishing just one of
the tracks trying to figure out how can
you make this as a responsive and
you know quick feeling off the gate as
we can but the nice thing is because we
did all that work front loaded
implementing a single race only takes a
couple days okay um I actually see one
that I'm interested in hearing from
Connor on this are there any secrets or
pro tips for getting gold and some of
those harder you want all my tips huh
you and you can't just set the other
people on fire yeah unfortunately I
can't do it it doesn't work in a live
environment doesn't give you a gold well
the first thing is you got to go fast
okay if nobody got that yeah but the
second thing probably the actual most
major tip I can give people and most
secret I guess I've watched a lot of
videos people doing these circuits and I
know drifting is fun but it's not
actually the fastest way to get around a
corner most of the time in real life and
in this game the shortest path is not
exactly the fastest one so going having
a higher speed over a wider turn is
often times faster than trying to drift
around that coursing okay
see that's real life racing advice oh no
that's the biggest one that'll save you
the most time let's see if I remember
correctly as you explained this to me at
some point you take the corner on the
outside and veer towards the inside of
it if it's beneficial to the next corner
to do so yes what about You Tube Brett
do you have any tips Conor mentioned
watching videos their guides people have
for playing through all of these with
and without masteries I'm pretty sure
I've seen that and I think Conor is top
50 without with default controls as well
so it's possible yeah watching videos
and seeing where other people take their
lines to get success sometimes when
you're playing especially for the first
couple of times it can be hard to divine
what we intend from you and if somebody
already has it down
some tips from them is very helpful it's
awesome yeah those are really good tips
so I would just throw in a lot of the
special boost power-ups that fill your
boost gauge first of all are placed with
the idea that as soon as you get that
hit boost it's never a bad idea
our time is that it's good to save it
like I like to save the one that's on in
darn fields there's one right in front
of the little water section there most
of the time you can hit that water
section fast enough that you won't you
don't need the boost for it but you'll
always lose a little speed going across
the water
so boosting out of it can actually be
really advantageous but also with those
boost power-ups if you pick up the boost
powerup and you had like 90 percent of
your boost gauge filled then you're kind
of wasting the power up I'm you turn on
the choice but try to figure out how you
could be having your boost filled right
before you get the powerup either or
either have your Bruce nearly empty as
you get the power-ups that you get the
full benefit from it or boost into the
powerup okay so that if your gauge is
still draining from boosting you'll get
most of the gauge back and that lets you
go fast and have be able to save the
powerup for when you start slowing down
of it someone asks we're planning to add
butyl races to other maps in the future
I'd love to I think we'll be looking at
how many people are enjoying this and
[Music]
you know hopefully we'll have the chance
to add a couple more maps and get even
more icing right here's a question for
me are you guys loving player reaction
oh and you have a favorite thing that
you've seen there's that one video from
Twitter of those every single person's
smashing into the bush let's judge me
that ones up there yeah all right I've
really liked seeing like we got into a
little earlier the Halloween race was a
little more contentious not everyone
enjoyed it sure I've seen some people
saying I didn't like the Halloween race
I do really
like these ones so that made me feel
like okay we feel we managed to bring
them back on the subject of beetle
racing so that's good how about you
Brett um mainly where we our strike zone
was for difficulty like our plan was to
make it pretty clear over the course of
both the training adventure and all of
the other races to have a pretty clear
delineation of this is the easiest one
and this is absolutely the hardest one
and it sounded like that caught a lot
more people they were able to try out
the much easier one and then work
themselves up to being more comfortable
to do very difficult ones so the fact
that we have more people that may not
have been as into beetle doing it now
and enjoying it is great to see I think
it helps too that you guys included the
rental amounts because that was
something that a lot of people I found
didn't realize on day one was that yeah
this looks great but what about me I
don't have path fire I haven't gotten my
roller beetle mount yet guess what I got
top 50 with those rental mounts and no
mastery have you guys seen the traffic
cone player oh yeah that was hilarious
and so nice
all right well do you guys have anything
else that you want to make sure we cover
before we head on well just forgot to
bring it up earlier but so we added
another pole with this release of the
same NPC asking well what do you like
about roller buta racing and the options
on that pole were pushing to finish
mowing the front runners competing to
get a record time the prizes racing
together with my friends and how cute
the beetles are so I mean they're not
wrong you can still go answer this
polling game just you can still answer
the animal one
the polls will stay open forever and
where did I find him at the beetle race
in da plateau yeah is the polling NPC
and the first poll the animal one is in
southsun Cove okay but I do have some
early results for the beetle racing poll
so does anyone that you can guess now
you know what do you think what is the
front-runner right now of the ones that
I just listed I already looked so unless
the change get your guesses in what has
let's see can we say what has the least
amount of votes and help them narrow it
down a little
all right sure I will tell you right now
the current lowest number of votes is
racing together with my friends because
you're not I know yeah this is not
you're not there to make friends yeah
yeah only one person can win mm-hmm it's
like the Highlander but you get a scarf
and only slightly okay all right so
they've all right the front-runner so I
won't
I won't go up the whole list but number
one drum roll is the prizes yeah yes so
I think your hand if you're surprised
everyone's enjoying that scarf so much
how do you get the real-life one or is
that like the only one that's it Joe
just made it well awesome well thank you
guys very very much for your time I
really appreciate coming in and talking
about this and it's been fun watching
everybody have so much fun with it in
game so yeah I hope to see everyone out
there on the track and give the tracks
we had on your scarf thank you some
other prizes you guys stick around
because we're going to change gears I
sorry just broken it sounds good I liked
it it's terrible I thought it was one
mean you said surprises
anyway I'm sorry for the terrible pun
we're gonna talk to Nick Hernandez for a
little bit about the Basenji dog whistle
that we put in the game recently so you
guys stick around you guys go back to
work thank you very much and we'll be
right back great talking with you I'll
see you later
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
come back all right so we have switched
over to talk about the Basenji pet and
you okay oh did you do that I didn't
know that was gonna happen either so
that's fantastic all right well why
don't you fool you've been on the show a
bunch of times before but for those of
you guys who are watching her new why
don't you talk about what you do here to
rain it up besides Dog Whisperer okay I
am a QAM but for looking world as my
primary role is to you know make sure
that all the episodes are running
accordingly my primary four episodes
three and six of the seasons and on the
side of this you will soon find out I do
some design work for for Internet and
all that fun stuff
yeah thank you and if you have questions
for Nick about the Basenji pet at the
end of this segment we will take those
and Nikhil maybe pick out a couple that
we have time for and answer them um why
don't we why don't we start though by
talking about this was kind of a
personal project so how did this come to
be so you know as as the with with as
being the person who does three and six
we enter there are some points where we
have a little bit more you know free
time than another points in development
and during those points I like to try
and find things to do you know to kind
of help bolster my education try to see
find areas where I can become better
learn more things that kind of stuff so
for this right around the beginning of
episode three of season four actually I
decided on making this
yeah and I've just been kind of working
on it every now and then a little bit
since then trying to get in like you
know minor minor requests every now and
then whenever we have a little bit of
bandwidth and yeah just trying to see
trying to see it if we could get a pet
dog in the game that is actually you
know fun interactive that kind of stuff
yeah yeah all right so this has been in
development for a while when did you
start working on this like way back one
yeah so around around the beginning of
episode three development I don't like
when so I actually requested their
Basenji is that we that we put into
episode three
yeah and you know we like them so much
that we decided to make them rewards
early on because you know why why not
give people some some sweet dogs and yes
I've been working on it like I said
since then kind of up until a point
where once once we kind of finally once
I finally showed it's like the the
design leadership you know we actually
had to put a pin in it because of course
once you hit a specific point in
development you know like you got to
ramp up and it's like okay focus time
you know make sure that there's not all
the subs great yeah
but then recently the MV MTX
commerce team approached me and they
were like hey we would love to be able
to ship this so can we like get it on
the cadence and on Rails to you know
come on like that yeah all right there
was I'm like trying to even figure out
where to start because there's so much
cool about this guy that there's a lot
of stories okay
pick your favorite to start with you
don't only have to pick one oh okay
well it depends there's there's so many
different facets to look at right so I I
could talk about absurdities like there
was there was a point where something
like the way the way s-curve did
something you know like
I I'm a key way but at but even I can't
find everything when it comes to things
I'm developing so when we actually had
this get a legitimate pass one of the
bugs that came back was like somehow
somebody found a way to make the dog
stay but the transform leave so they
could reactivate it so then what would
happen is they would get the dog do
something I think they would like log
out and then log back in and then they
would reactivate it but that old dog was
still there so they could basically just
get themselves a legion of Basenji x' to
run around the map with I fail to see
the problem performance that's the
problem
oh yeah I know it's it's unfortunate and
also it's an amazing bug though yeah
imagine the cleanup and like the the
feeding or all that w-well and for a
while I mean you were feeding this thing
like a side of beef that so the the side
of beef used to be a lot bigger for for
those who don't know the thing that you
see now used to be yeah huge yeah it was
a very large yeah and that was one of
the things when I was looking at it on
dev in development and you were asking
me you know what do you think which and
I was like well I'm concerned it's diet
it's like you know the sentries are are
very driven and energetic dogs so they
just need a lot of food I'm just but
where's this going like I feel like it
should look like a snake that swallowed
something big just a black void or a
black holes out of there you know that's
fine too so yeah that was that was a
thing that you had to work on yeah um
I'm a little sad about the loss of the
Legion of vicinities but I understand
server performance yeah as a report so
what else is important I mean there's
that it's a there are too too many
stories I mean I think like I said it
depends on which which angle you come at
it from well let's talk about the the
implementation of how your character
directs your Basenji friend to do
something because I remember being very
excited of when I realized there were
hand signals and how did that happen I
know you didn't just like have time to
build character extra character
animations so for
everything in your free time so the way
you know I with these things I try my
best to recycle without you know making
it seem like something is recycled or
without causing any sort of detriment
things like that so with this one I
basically just opened up the entire
character library and I looked at all of
the animations that players could do and
I was like and I'm like that that's a
good one for this skill and then I would
go through and I'm like okay that one's
a little too long so then I had like
five figure out ways to cut them because
like the handshake one for example that
that one is actually from I think
winters day 20 2014 if I'm not mistaken
going back it's like they're ringing the
bell and I was like well that's you know
shake oh hey yeah so that like I said
that that animation is actually about 13
13 or 14 seconds so I had to find a way
to be able to time correctly and what's
great about our engine is the fact that
we have animation blending so what it's
what happens is like the second a
animation gets gets told that it's no
longer to happen and the next one gets
kind of queued there's a like a rig like
blend phase that happens within a
specific amount of time so that way it
looks seamless that's why you can like
if you're like a great sword warrior you
can go from running to doing a crazy
spin to like then run and like do your
sword swing up to the back world like
dodge and things like that it doesn't
look Clippy yeah freaking so so thanks
about stuff I was I was able to you know
try to find the best ways to to add
these kind of minor polish details
without blowing out scope that's awesome
because your scope was for a while
they're kind of limited yeah and like I
said earlier it was mostly just like as
as we went through each episode I was
looking at like how much budget each
each thing kind of had and then it's
like okay well here's here things I like
you know like do we have time to maybe
get this stuff or this stuff and that's
actually how like you know the
lines came in yeah we had a little bit
of budget so we just put in those those
quick lines haven't recorded and then
it's not good to go yeah that kind of
thing works in well because we were down
there at the time we were doing via
recording anyway so hey can I get a
couple extra lines yeah and I mean like
the way you know I think it's never
meant to be kind of like this is just
all sort of happy accident to be it to
be fair all right that's kind of how it
started out and luckily for us you know
the way that we do it it's like there is
this block of time and then anything
thing inside of that block of time is as
possible so that's like I said all these
are just kind of that's perfect yeah do
you want to talk a little bit about the
system of teaching your dog yeah there's
a lot of shakes her chicks it's it's
tricks it can be I think we tried to
make it as gender neutral as possible as
you could tell by like whisk a dog and
or that's my dog that's my dog
so the way that it actually worked out
when I when I was trying to do this is I
was trying to make something that felt
lifelike but also you know was kind of
like fun and made you feel like you you
were ready to approach it again and
again and again um so there's the way
that I built it out was that there's two
systems within the within the dog itself
and one is the horizontal progression
which is what you see you know skills 1
through 9 and you unlock 3 4 5 6 3 or 3
through 9 on a daily gait and then
there's vertical progression which I
don't know I've been I've been reading
through all of the comments and all the
feedback and I don't know if Pete Lake
if people have quite caught on yet so I
might be spoiling this a little bit so
that is entirely up to you if you want
to spoil it but
spoiler alert right here if you don't
want Basenji spoilers okay yeah okay so
what basically this horizontal
profession in this vertical pressure
with the brutal progression system you
know the more you teach a dog or any any
animal trick the better they're gonna be
at it the more successful they're gonna
be at it that kind of stuff so the more
you use each skill the more likely you
know you are to not get that failure
state and it gets to a point where like
I'll use shake as an example you know if
you if you look at shake
there is the like you fail and then when
you don't fail for the first for the
first few times he shakes like this
entire body and then does give you the
paw and so like the iconography this is
disconnect between the iconography that
you're actually see on the skill and the
dog itself but if you keep using that
scale keep teaching it things there will
come a point where it does what the
iconography suggests and you will
actually hand you it it understands
you're not asking me to shake my body
you're not yeah
you want me to shake your paw shake my
paw yeah yeah it's it's a really cute
learning system and I got such a kick
out of that that you've got the system
in place where this your little pet
understands not only the command but the
context of the command yeah and it's
it's such an in-depth thing that I
wouldn't expect from this but this end
user very very smart breed in fact yes
we did
right very cool quick tangent we did we
did some research into the centuries and
I remember one time so we found out the
percentages don't actually bark Basenji
is they're called the bark versus dogs
so luckily you know when we had Joe Joe
Clark who absolutely killed this he's
the he's the audience designer for this
you know when we came to him we were
just like help because these parking and
we can't have him bark please and then
he's just like don't and then he I
remember he like pulled us all into a
room for the final audio review and
like for the entire week before that I
was you know I was nervous because this
is like this is like I said like a pet
project and it's something that it was
not going to go live sorry so so so it
froze you didn't realize Rubi disruptor
then there was a quick pause but I live
down there now yeah the carpet that
completely off my hair was I we were
talking about my pen no oh yeah so I was
nervous
up until up until then because you know
it's like this this didn't really have
any sort of like a solidified audio for
it itself but Joe was Joe just knocked
it out of the park like he he just did
such a great job he definitely had on
what it feels like to to be like like to
have a Basenji you know because they're
they're quiet until they're not quiet
and for those of you who don't know
instead of barking what they do is they
kind of like yodel and of course you
know you'll still get like the little
lycra like that that kind of stuff where
they'll never do like a loud bark yeah
just like the luff mm-hmm they're just
like little hoofs and stuff like that so
definitely like that the things like
that both add to the personality which
is one of the reasons why you know this
dog works so well is kind of like its
own one because it's it's a unique dog
breed to begin with yeah
yeah I don't know it's just things like
that that made me really excited for it
and kind of just helped up the the
quality of it like well we'll try to do
some questions here in just a moment so
if you've got them and haven't put them
in the net please do so we laughed it
but in while we were doing that we
laughed earlier about the that's my dog
yes yeah so as I said before
unfortunately not everything can be
caught there was a lot of feet so there
was feedback in the when we were three
and so playing through it and stuff like
that that the lines were of course
spammy so what I did was I did to pass
on all of the dialogues and the way the
dialogues work is that
there is a actually cooldown timer that
you can put on them to make sure that
you don't actually get that line spam
and my understanding of how how would
they kind of live on the server and
where they're called from was not was
that was not accurate with with the
actual implementation as you saw because
my thought process was these things were
all sharing a dialog with a percentage
chance to have different lines fire sure
so my thought process was these two
skills and the pet activation would all
share the same cooldown but that's not
the way it works because each skill has
its own individual script and the way
that actually works in the backend for
our system is that each script calls on
its own version of that dialogue and
that means that each one has its own
cool-down so because of that you were
able to hear those lines be very
repetitious which is something that
we've been looking into and kind of
helping rectify interesting yeah you
commented that not everything can be
caught and I thought of our conversation
about that earlier when Connor was
talking about the roller beetle racing
how they ran the race over and over and
over and like dozens of people were
running this race multiple times and
that logging node never spawned in that
one play literally nobody caught that
and probably people passed it hundreds
of times and then it hit live it was
like it's like hundreds of thousands of
players all hitting something at the
same time that might do it that might do
it yeah for sure well this isn't
technically a Basenji question but I'll
allow it if you will sure yeah okay so
the question from pack manners is do you
have any tips on becoming a QA tester
for aspiring game devs I would say
I'm trying to figure out like a good way
to put it playing a lot of games is
important but also kind of understanding
how these games are built out and each
part of the games is also really
important too because you know you can
look at a game and you can see when you
see a bug in a game you're like oh no
that happened how does that happen how
do how how could how could but if you in
my opinion if you want to see if you
want to feel out to see if you if you
want to be a QA tester or any or go
through the QA kind of pipeline
Department I would when things like that
happen I would take a step back and I
would try to figure out like how did
that happen you know like what did I do
what what about the environments might
have caused this what what about the
creature and the way that I approached
it might have done this and it's like
like it's that kind of stuff it's a lot
there's a lot of puzzle solving
mentality that goes into into here a
development so it's a good way of
putting it yeah that's that's less so
like jumping into it and more so like
preparing for it I guess mentality
question because at the end of the day
if you if you if you know that you want
to be a keyway or if you want to go in a
date game development at all what I
would just say is like you know go to go
to game jams participate however however
you can you know like a lot of people
want to go in as like designers or
writers or things like that you know but
at the end of the day it's just as fun
and just as useful to come in and be
like hey I want to make audio or like I
can I do like a QA pass on this or run
through it or you know or can I like hey
produce produce this thing for a game
jam and then just you know always be
looking and that kind of stuff you're
still making games yeah I mean yours is
amazing you're still making games for
sure yeah all right well I mean
realizing that we are almost at one
o'clock and I should probably let you do
your work it's fun so yeah all right
thank you guys for hanging out with this
for the past hour thank you so much for
giving us a little look behind the
scenes of this of this little pet yeah
because I love it yeah you know
hopefully we hopefully we get to do more
in the future
we've gotten a lot of a lot of good
feedback and a lot of things a lot of
comments that'll allow us to improve if
we do future ones but you know it's all
- it all depends on on people like it or
not so chakras seem to so far yeah so
far so good
awesome not to say that they won't in
the future yeah I love it
yes all right thank you very much thank
you all and I will see you on the next
Gil chat
External links[edit]

Guild Chat Episode 77 - That's My Dog! (And My Prize-Winning Racing Beetle) on ArenaNet's official channel on YouTube
Guild Chat - Episode 77

Transcription[edit]

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