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Talk:2022-06-30 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Basic Melee Weapon Attack Update
Raw transcript
- 0:28
hello everyone and welcome to another live stream day for Ashes of Creation
- 0:34
super excited to be with everybody today we have a pretty awesome showcase i think it's something that the community
- 0:41
has been asking for for a little while actually i think the last time we showcased uh some combat gameplay was a
- 0:49
year ago roughly almost um but i am very excited to show you guys what we have in the
- 0:55
works today um i have joining us with me today two of
- 1:00
our extraordinary engineers adam and kenan how you guys doing hello
- 1:07
stephen doing well how are you i am doing very good running around like a chicken with
- 1:12
its head cut off but otherwise very good keenan how you doing buddy
- 1:19
i'm doing good glad to be here awesome i'm excited to have you this is your first stream i believe correct this is
- 1:25
my first stream very cool adam you've been on a couple ones before this yeah yeah yeah it's good to be back
- 1:31
very cool and then i also have joining us today one of our senior game
- 1:36
designers mr trad how you doing buddy i'm doing great i'm glad to be back on
- 1:42
stream welcome back very excited to show what you guys have been working on what the team has been working on
- 1:49
i know i probably already said this on the stream but i'm going to reiterate it
- 1:54
here that this what you're about to see is not the final combat in ashes
- 2:00
this is a portion of the combat systems obviously a lot goes into making combat
- 2:06
right from a visual effects perspective from mechanics and functionality on the engineering side
- 2:12
the design elements and how it synergizes with our class kits and ability systems the
- 2:18
you know balance of these things the audio component the ui there's a lot that goes into making
- 2:24
combat for an mmorpg and the combat you're going to see today is very focused on
- 2:30
one component actually two components i'm sorry um the first of which is our
- 2:36
basic melee weapon attacks in addition to our floating text ui
- 2:44
so keeping that in mind that is the context of today's presentation previously
- 2:50
i had decided that i wanted to wait to showcase combat until
- 2:55
excuse me until we had um pretty much everything done and ready to
- 3:01
show and as time grew i decided what i wanted to do
- 3:07
instead was showcase little portions of each uh component of the combat system
- 3:13
starting with the basic melee weapon attacks and then we'll move into in a later live stream
- 3:19
the ability systems and the class kits and of course we're not going to show every class kit and you know everything
- 3:24
that's going to be in alpha 2 we want some of that to be a surprise right but we do want to showcase
- 3:31
the work that's been done and the direction that's been taken so that we get player feedback and
- 3:37
personally you know playing this i think it feels amazing i think it looks great i'm super
- 3:44
impressed continually by our team's talents um as i know a lot in the
- 3:49
community are after having seen the character creator and the weather systems and season systems um
- 3:56
you know there's a there's a very high quality bar that we're we're setting ourselves up for uh with ashes of
- 4:02
creation and i i think it is it is what you know the community wants um but it's
- 4:07
great to have these touch points where we get um where we get your feedback so focus today is going to be on basic
- 4:13
melee weapon attacks um it's going to be on root motion versus split body the types of agency that's provided to the
- 4:19
player while also respecting the weightedness we want from certain weapon groups and also talking about the ui
- 4:25
element and showcasing floating text and the types of customization options that players are going to have so keep that
- 4:31
in mind that's the context of of today's presentation and when you give the commentary let's
- 4:36
let's focus on what you like and what you think there could be improvements on from that perspective so without further
- 4:43
ado we are in probably an area that you guys are familiar with um
- 4:48
this is the riverlands biome yet again um you saw this in the the last month's
- 4:55
stream but we are in an area that is known to harbor um some scary things
- 5:02
um so i'm just gonna start kind of walking down in this area and um adam
- 5:08
keenan tratt if you guys want to talk a little bit about how this process began
- 5:13
all those months ago on defining good combat for Ashes of Creation
- 5:22
uh sure um i would say you know it starts with you know all of the hundreds of
- 5:29
thousands of hours cumulative hours of mmo we have under our belt right we have a lot of hours of mmo gameplay
- 5:38
we just got to push a couple buttons and we're immediately like oh it feels good or it doesn't feel good you know it's funny keenan actually you say that um
- 5:45
one of the koala i mean you guys all know this because every one of you went through an interview with me but one of the qualifying aspects of joining the
- 5:52
team is what type of mmos do you like to play [Laughter]
- 5:57
nice yeah so it starts there uh and then from there we sort of do our research you
- 6:03
know we have to take a look at the state of the art and then we [Music]
- 6:09
we study it we form hypotheses about what exactly it is that makes things
- 6:14
feel good or not feel good and then we make those things in as
- 6:19
controlled a manner as we can and then we turn the knobs we tweak things we see what feels good what doesn't feel good
- 6:26
we come up with some rules some processes and then uh we put them to the test
- 6:32
and this is this is what comes out yeah it's um it's very iterative iterative process right like you know
- 6:39
none of these things are like you form your theory on paper and then you go and you make the thing and it comes out to
- 6:45
be exactly what you see now right like it starts out the first time not super great and then
- 6:50
what we have to be able to do is engineer the designers is identify what's
- 6:56
not great about those things and then just continue to integrate on those things as long as you keep making it better
- 7:03
each time eventually you're going to end up with something good yeah and for uh this exercise and
- 7:09
finding what makes ash is great specifically we wanted to approach it from the ground
- 7:14
up uh answering individual questions about uh our hypotheses and what we
- 7:20
think is good right so we we really um focused on individual aspects
- 7:26
that we think makes good combat and answered them one at a time in a very tightly uh
- 7:32
very tight iterative process and uh we ended up at something that uh
- 7:38
we think feels really really good so yeah just just playing this i am loving
- 7:43
the hit reacts the visual effects all the ancillary components that go into making
- 7:49
the combat but but more importantly the pacing of this kind of heavier
- 7:55
weapon group um also as a side note uh outside of the combat
- 8:00
one of the things i've not necessarily liked about mmos traditionally in the past is that
- 8:07
excuse me every portion of land is covered by some type of monster right it
- 8:12
kind of gives you this weird feel but here like this is a very dangerous area that we're in the
- 8:18
environment and part of it gets communicated by the you know aspect of these rocks and like
- 8:24
the specific types of materials that's represented here but you don't know exactly where the threat lies per se
- 8:31
right you kind of move up into an area and if you move too far you get the
- 8:37
audio cue of the of the monsters like arising your character gets into the combat stance they have some really cool
- 8:44
aspects of of animation the animation team did an amazing job with the roles here i am
- 8:49
loving and also they're like death just like swinging away and then flying off that is so great
- 8:56
yeah i really like like the camp feel of of this area where you know you don't just see these guys scattered around all
- 9:02
over the world no matter where you go there's like something that's going to aggro you it's more like i'm gonna grind
- 9:07
here for a bit yeah steven you were talking about how you like
- 9:14
how heavy the wet the sword feels and um that weight impact that is one of the combat pillars
- 9:22
that we have been studying and honing in on in our development process the other side of it is um
- 9:29
the other side of it being also like agency you know to what extent does this weapon respect your intentions
- 9:35
and that's the part that's important to me i'm a i'm a classic player i come from traditional mmos right like i i want to
- 9:42
be able to move and attack at the same time right yes and that was a huge point of feedback actually that we received
- 9:48
during alpha 1 was that we started with this more root
- 9:54
motion approach to the basic weapon attacks and ultimately we
- 9:59
we called an audible mid test i remember it was in that that end of july or beginning of august month um
- 10:06
where we decided to implement a a completely split body approach and get player feedback and of course the
- 10:12
feedback was was very positive or soundingly positive right um that players prefer that agency
- 10:19
over that weightedness but they also there's a little bit of a conflict there because they also didn't like the floaty
- 10:25
feeling which comes along with not having the weighted approach so how
- 10:31
did that play into your guys's defining this current approach on the
- 10:37
weapon attacks how did you blend those two yes so we kind of approached it from looking at
- 10:44
player agency primarily as kanan had said and the games that really handled uh player
- 10:50
agency the best are those like classic mmos right players really like how smooth uh the
- 10:56
classic mmo feel how much player agency they get out of it and then we we took that and we tried building this sort of
- 11:03
impact and weight on top of it really making attacks feel satisfying making it
- 11:08
feel like the inertia of the weapon and your movements are are accurate you know physically accurate
- 11:14
and we accomplished that through a number of ways uh really again talking about the process we we try to identify
- 11:20
each individual aspect of uh of what we got out of these you know
- 11:25
more modern action games and tried incorporating that into our classic mmo bass um
- 11:32
you know i think i think it all comes down to looking at it not as a binary of
- 11:39
you know are we doing split body or are we doing root motion combat it's looking at everything as modular pieces and then
- 11:45
dialing in those numbers to make something that feels
- 11:51
high in player agency feels very impactful like it has a lot of inertia it feels very physical
- 11:58
yeah my litmus test for agency in combat is take any moment in combat pause time
- 12:04
look down at your hands look at the keyboard the buttons that you're pressing should be the directions that your character is
- 12:10
moving so with these weapons even though there are little uh [Music]
- 12:15
like little bits of root motion here or there they're always respecting your was the input and i think that's what makes
- 12:21
them feel good i think another thing that you guys did that helps with that is the
- 12:27
timing of what that gets registered right like it's not you know at one point one iteration we had it where
- 12:33
it detected what your input was at the beginning of the attack and that just
- 12:38
felt like if i decided to change my mind and go left instead of right in the middle of that attack
- 12:45
it's too bad it already kind of cued that and so i think now what you guys are doing is
- 12:50
having it happen at like swing time right yup it's constantly looking at your
- 12:56
input and adjusting now i've equipped these these daggers this dual wielding uh
- 13:03
these dual daggers talk to me a little bit about the differences between the heavier um weapon group and the light
- 13:10
weapon group yeah um so initially in our uh
- 13:16
investigation we wanted to start with the the light weapons to figure out
- 13:21
how to really blend uh the the weight of an attack um
- 13:27
and and introduce or start with player agency and then introduce that weight of the attack into it we figured the least
- 13:34
risky plot bin to start with would be the lightest weapon possible you know little daggers that move very fast very
- 13:40
high player agency and uh not necessarily focused on big weight much like a heavy sword so
- 13:48
um we started with that and tried introducing little bits and pieces here and there uh like small bits of root
- 13:53
motion to get that nice like dashy feel in when you're when you're attacking and uh play into that inertia um i know kena
- 14:02
might want to talk more about the animation timing sheets we introduced
- 14:08
for figuring out these uh timings that feel good yeah that's part of our process for
- 14:15
communicating cross department is using frame timing diagrams and being specific about how we not only want to animate
- 14:21
but also how we want to move during different frames of the animation and we found that to be very successful
- 14:28
but one of the things that makes the daggers different than the sword is that the daggers never really slow you down
- 14:36
they're both respecting your directions but the swords will actually slow you down at certain times like leading up
- 14:41
into the strike your split body movement is sort of uh blending down towards zero and then you
- 14:48
strike and then it blends back up toward the one the daggers are are not doing any blending like that you're just split
- 14:54
body and then you're striking and then you're back into split body and it's sick of seeing this process
- 15:00
yeah i'm just playing with the directionals here i mean on the animation team they did a a phenomenal job i'm loving
- 15:07
the kind of foot placement and movement the strafing feeling on the body there i
- 15:13
know alexi did a lot of work on the ik as well that we can see like when you're you know kind of stepping up different
- 15:18
portions um that's it feels really good to to play
- 15:24
oh yeah considering how uh physically based we are and animation driven our combat system is
- 15:30
uh it was super important that the animators you know get all of that right and they absolutely knocked it out of
- 15:35
the park i mean one of the biggest things i think uh to making good feeling attacks is
- 15:41
getting all of the departments involved in what feels good and on the same page right
- 15:46
getting everyone iterating so you know like in the process we started with chopping up animations to build an
- 15:52
ability that we thought felt good and then we wanted to pass that off to animation to finalize those animations
- 15:58
by chopping up our abilities and making animations that feel good and then we can all loop everyone back together and
- 16:03
finalize that ability you know vfx has the same process too so you know it's
- 16:08
it's a bunch of different departments iterating on a very micro scale to build something that is just awesome
- 16:16
yeah the animation team definitely had to take a deep breath when we went to them like hey
- 16:21
you know those three-part weapon combos that we like so much uh we want different ones for each direction that
- 16:27
you can move in oh and also you need to be able to weave between the directionals at any time
- 16:34
that is pretty funny um one of the things that's uh interesting and is always a point of contention for those
- 16:41
of us who have perhaps played different games and have become accustomed to a specific
- 16:48
visual representation of these these damage floating text right
- 16:53
and i want to showcase a little bit i'm going to let them hit on me for a little bit just so you can kind of see
- 16:58
directionally damage you take which is indicated in this red number floats towards your left hand side and when you
- 17:06
do damage to a target they float to your right hand side now
- 17:12
one of the very important aspects of these floating texts is providing the player with
- 17:18
customization options that they can adjust the size of the floating text they can adjust the color composition on
- 17:26
how these texts are represented they can also include damage icons to indicate
- 17:31
the ability that's used for those floating texts um and importantly
- 17:37
excuse me we also call out the um uh the crits that you do in a separate way how they
- 17:43
pop in they're slightly above those um the other numbers um and then more so we
- 17:49
also have additional functionality for cumulative damage uh value so i'm going to kind of go through that you'll see
- 17:55
here as i press uh you know different option now we've changed the colors
- 18:01
um whoops hold on let me see make sure is that color going off differently or
- 18:07
am i just do i not have my hold on
- 18:12
is it okay let me try this quick
- 18:21
oh maybe that's not oh let me find a different monster i hope that's working if it's not we can
- 18:27
show that a little bit later let me press this button oh here we go
- 18:33
okay so you see the color is changing now and that's something that the player has agency over right you can assign
- 18:40
different types of colors that you want um that was changing i think the one i was
- 18:45
pressing actually was changing the size so let me try to change that size again there you go you can see that size now
- 18:52
is larger you can showcase xp if you want you can bold it um the numbers a little bit as well but
- 18:58
providing kind of maximum flexibility and character customization um excuse me player customization options for these
- 19:04
floating text i think is super important but i love the way that they feel that kind of classic um very almost um
- 19:12
uh what are we saying canon very vanilla vibe oh yeah sometimes the best flavor is
- 19:17
just vanilla absolutely totally heavy
- 19:22
yeah but the ui team's done a great job on the functionality for that i think it's feeling pretty good
- 19:30
yeah that's very cool so where are we now when it comes to kind of the the
- 19:36
spectrum of light to heavy attack options on these basic weapon attacks
- 19:42
um what's kind of next for this as we showcase it to the players
- 19:48
well i think we've sort of defined our spectrum with the light and the heavy when it comes to agency versus weight versus impact
- 19:56
when you look at the heavy i think we're we're close to saying that this is sort of the most we want to compromise agency
- 20:04
for weight and impact and once we have that upper bound we can sort of play with all
- 20:09
of the different uh intermediate points right as we start to build out other weapons
- 20:15
but we have interesting explorations as well and how all of this translates into ranged and um also ultimates we might we
- 20:22
might take the limiters off for ultimates and just see what the coolest things we can make are yeah that that's
- 20:28
going to be pretty interesting another component by the way of defining um kind of this weapon attacks is also the
- 20:34
visual effects side um and weapon trailings the intensity of those weapon trailings how they scale based on the
- 20:41
type of weapon the level of weapon that you have uh but not just the trailing on the weapon per se but also the grand
- 20:46
ground decals like for this heavy weapon that first strike you see that kind of that decal in the ground is i love that
- 20:54
look and even on the back swing like when i hit the ground behind me it's causing that decal
- 21:02
yeah a lot of that stuff gets down into the really low level systems details like we want to pass
- 21:08
the artists as much information as we can about actual combat ongoings so that
- 21:13
they can inform the effects as precisely as they can or as precisely as they need to rather
- 21:19
yeah and we really wanted to um build the on a technical side we really
- 21:25
wanted to build the combat system to like like i said earlier be as physical as possible so we have it very animation
- 21:32
driven um everything is handled uh based on a reference of animation as opposed to uh like
- 21:40
nebulous timings right which allows it to feel very impactful and very
- 21:45
responsive so when you hit the ground the ground decal actually appears on the ground when it should uh
- 21:52
you know that's something that may not be seen in other mmos so we really wanted to make a big
- 21:58
focus on that and and focus on the responsiveness yeah one thing i failed to mention by
- 22:03
the way apologize for that is actually um you guys are seeing the pirate male for the first time in
- 22:11
game i know we've showed him on this on the stream before um as these character races get further
- 22:16
fleshed out but here you're seeing him in full flesh and blood so to speak virtual flesh and blood i guess um
- 22:23
in the game that's that's pretty cool to see i can't wait for players to kind of get a look at the customization options
- 22:28
and the character creator for this for this race um uh also another thing
- 22:33
that's um you know really important i think is uh the audio
- 22:41
component and cat has done a phenomenal job in both the sound design
- 22:48
for creatures as well as for the the weapon and actually you guys haven't seen anything yet
- 22:54
because we have a lot in store on that front that i think is going to be is going to be pretty cool and it and it's
- 22:59
all part of the presentation right it's all part of what makes combat feel good is also the auditory
- 23:06
component um in that talk to me a little bit about the capabilities that that the
- 23:12
audio team has when it comes to accessing combat and
- 23:17
the abilities yeah similar to vfx we plan on piping in a lot of information you know that's
- 23:23
something we've been working a lot on recently is tooling for vfx and sound effects
- 23:28
right it's a super important part as you said of the package in order to sell that weight and that immersion in the
- 23:34
game and there's going to be a lot coming online so i'm you know really excited to see
- 23:41
what we have in store for for that so yeah yeah i don't know if we'll ever show it
- 23:46
on stream but we've we're we're building a sort of a singular tool that all of the teams can
- 23:52
use to build abilities and tweak them uh sound of their sound effects visual effects animation
- 24:00
design engineering all using the same tool grip grounded in animation
- 24:06
you know to build these abilities yeah absolutely another component um
- 24:13
adam which um you guys worked on is camera controls and adding
- 24:18
um talk to me a little bit about the the kind of visuals that are provided
- 24:23
through these cam additional camera controls for abilities and combat yeah so i mean the word of the day has been
- 24:29
impact and weight right and a lot of that is sold through what the the player sees you know we didn't want anything to
- 24:36
be uh nauseating or over the top and you know certainly people can adjust it in option settings but we wanted something
- 24:42
that would uh that would sell a lot of the weight without you know being too over the top
- 24:48
and too sort of cartoonish right and so we implemented a few different camera effects you know things like
- 24:55
camera shake radio blur and a few other things involved and really tried to
- 25:02
maximize uh you know our bang for the buck with those to to sell the weight of these
- 25:07
attacks and it really adds a lot uh especially um i've noticed a lot of how
- 25:13
your peripheral interprets the way that the attack really sells it for me as a player
- 25:19
so that's something we've been focusing on and it's it's made huge improvements to the feeling of these attacks
- 25:27
yeah absolutely i love it um so
- 25:33
looking forward as we continue to flesh out both the medium
- 25:38
melee weapons and we'll be showcasing our ranged weapons in combat in a future stream we're also going to
- 25:46
be talking a little bit about and showcasing uh which you guys got a little sneak peek on a few abilities um some class
- 25:53
kits and the ability systems as a whole um and what we're able to accomplish for
- 25:58
alpha 2. um of course you know we promised at the beginning of this year that you guys would be getting some
- 26:04
pretty exciting showcases of all the work that's being done on the project towards alpha 2 you
- 26:10
got that with the character creator you got that with the seasons and weather systems now you're starting to get a little bit of touch on the combat side
- 26:17
and i know that there's a lot of stuff that design has been prepping around you know the work that's been
- 26:23
done on these class kits and and the the different archetypes that are going to be playable across alpha 2. um but
- 26:29
there's a lot in store and there's a lot of functionality that the engineering team has provided our designers when it
- 26:34
comes to both the functionality of certain types of abilities as well as the
- 26:40
synergies possible between them you want to talk a little bit adam keenan and trout about um what's possible given our
- 26:47
ability toolkit definitely man um i mean we've
- 26:53
so this whole you know prototype process has been kind of you know two steps one of those steps was what you know adam
- 26:59
and keenan were talking about a bit there with you know their hypotheses on you know what makes good
- 27:06
feeling combat and they've done a great job on that but the other side of that was also just you know
- 27:12
coming up with these almost mock class kits um and you know the idea was this might not be the final
- 27:19
class but there will be things that we can take from it that would like and then get rid of that we don't like unless we make something
- 27:26
and you guys have kind of seen some sneak peeks of that already from the assassin in the previous stream and now you're seeing
- 27:33
something from weapon master uh that was the other one that we took to experiment with and contrast these
- 27:39
different types of combat and um what i was kind of going for here
- 27:45
was you know getting fast energies in place where you know maybe you know for example you've got a
- 27:52
thing that if you kill someone with one of your other abilities it'll reset the cooldown on one of these abilities and there was a lot of that kind of stuff
- 27:58
going on in this kit whereas there wasn't so much of that interaction in the kits and you
- 28:03
know the previous outfit it was an area that we felt could really improve and the good thing about that um whole
- 28:10
exercise that we did is we came up with a lot of cool abilities you're not seeing them all here but um
- 28:16
they you know what it really did for us is it developed our tools because we realized oh we can't do this or we can't do that
- 28:24
and so like the designers and adam and keenan here would kind of go back and forth and say like
- 28:30
you know designers need to be able to do this particular thing that we can't currently do and then they would take that and
- 28:35
make it possible so we're really putting our method forward here now we're
- 28:41
going into like the full class design we're gonna have a lot of stuff that we can get the crowd running absolutely
- 28:47
oh go ahead kevin oh i was just gonna sort of build on tracks point like all of these exercises
- 28:54
or throughout all of these exercises we're very careful on the ability system side to make sure that
- 29:01
when we're adding something new we make it as modular as possible we really want to think of these abilities as being
- 29:07
made out of like lego pieces not being sort of like molded from a
- 29:12
single block of clay so whenever we're trying something and we build something new that's a new piece that we can have
- 29:18
that we have to explore and combine with all of the other pieces that we've already made absolutely um the other thing that's
- 29:24
important and is important probably for players to understand with regards to alpha 2 is that this is another testing
- 29:30
ground right alpha 2 is a test and in alpha 2 we're going to represent components of the class kits and the
- 29:37
ability system that may not make it to launch but it is a perfect area for us
- 29:43
to kind of get both player feedback as well as for us to log data
- 29:48
around its usage its impact its um you know feasibility as essentially a component of our class kits right we're
- 29:54
going to be experimenting a lot with regards to that for alpha 2.
- 30:00
so it's very exciting um definitely we're just getting started yes absolutely well
- 30:06
guys this has been a fun stream i think um i really enjoy
- 30:13
obviously talking about this stuff and showcasing the hard work that you guys are doing everybody on the team is doing across um everyone that makes combat a a
- 30:20
fun and tactile thing for us to play with um there's a lot that goes into it but
- 30:26
i think the team is hitting it out of the park with these showcases as we show you know essentially what our quality
- 30:31
bar is for Ashes of Creation so i want to thank everybody for tuning in and watching
- 30:37
please make sure it's very important that you guys give feedback uh with regards to kind of what you saw today
- 30:43
um you know it is always something that we are iterating upon uh but
- 30:48
generally based on what feedback we already received out of alpha one and the pursuits that our
- 30:54
engineering side as well as our design side have been have been examining and and and playing
- 31:00
around with we feel really confident in this approach for the basic weapon melee attacks um but we want to hear your
- 31:06
guys's feedback what you thought of today so make sure to comment both in the youtube section as well as on stream on our forums on
- 31:13
our discord connect everywhere we value your feedback very much it is an important part of creating ashes of
- 31:18
creation and remember this is a work in progress this is something that we are still expanding upon something that we
- 31:24
are still improving um it is never truly finished but of course uh it is getting
- 31:29
close to to alpha 2 ready um thank you guys again for tuning in uh adam keenan
- 31:35
trad thank you guys for being a part of it always appreciate the insight and the talents you guys bring to ashes of
- 31:41
creation as a as a game um we're very happy to have you guys so everybody in chat give a give hearts for our awesome
- 31:48
guests today and i will see you guys back on stream
- 31:59
[Music]