00:00SPEAKER- I wanna show you something cool.
00:01SPEAKERTake a look at this picture.
00:03SPEAKER- What am I looking at?
00:04SPEAKER- You're looking at the new maximize window screen
00:07SPEAKERin Windows 11.
00:08SPEAKERI think I'm on one of the insider builds.
00:09SPEAKER- Wait, what is that?
00:11SPEAKER- So look for, okay, for the people who are playing along
00:14SPEAKERat home and can't see the picture.
00:16SPEAKERWell, it's probably the show art this week, I'm gonna bet.
00:18SPEAKERBut also instead of just maximizing the window,
00:21SPEAKERit lets you like fancy zone your window
00:24SPEAKERinto different panes.
00:25SPEAKERSo like I can make this window go in the middle
00:27SPEAKERof two big wide panes.
00:29SPEAKEROr I can put it in the corners or I can put it in the half
00:31SPEAKERand then put two other ones in the corners.
00:33SPEAKERAnd I can control it all from the maximize button.
00:36SPEAKER- Does that happen?
00:37SPEAKERYou literally just click maximize and you get this grid?
00:39SPEAKER- I hover over it. - Every time?
00:40SPEAKER- It's a hover over.
00:41SPEAKER- I see.
00:42SPEAKER- I like this a lot.
00:43SPEAKER- Hang on.
00:44SPEAKER- Yes, hello?
00:45SPEAKER- So it's like, okay, this is a three by two grid.
00:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:49SPEAKER- The first option is like two vertical panes side by side.
00:52SPEAKERThe second one is like a fat vertical pane and a thin one.
00:55SPEAKER- Yeah, like one's 50/50 vertical split,
00:57SPEAKERone's a two thirds, one thirds vertical split.
00:59SPEAKER- But hang on, I mean, this is the maximize button
01:01SPEAKERfor a single window.
01:02SPEAKERWhere do the multiple panes come in?
01:04SPEAKER- Well, then when I maximize another window,
01:06SPEAKERthen I can put it in the adjacent pane.
01:08SPEAKER- I see, man.
01:10SPEAKER- It's fancy, right?
01:11SPEAKER- Are you saying that Windows 11 has finally delivered
01:13SPEAKERits first worthwhile feature?
01:18SPEAKER- I like that the sound thing works now.
01:21SPEAKER- Wait, what sound thing?
01:22SPEAKER- The directing sound to specific outputs
01:24SPEAKERfrom a single application works right.
01:26SPEAKER- You can do that on the OS level.
01:27SPEAKER- You're talking about the thing where it's like,
01:28SPEAKERhey, I want Chrome to come out of this device
01:30SPEAKERand like OBS to go out of this one
01:32SPEAKERand that actually works now?
01:33SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a low percentage feature.
01:35SPEAKER- Are you, dude, I use that app volume thing all the time
01:38SPEAKERand it never works.
01:39SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:40SPEAKER- Like it literally just arbitrarily works or doesn't.
01:42SPEAKER- So that works and notepad dark mode is fantastic.
01:47SPEAKER- Pad dark mode, what?
01:49SPEAKERCould you, I wanna see that too.
01:51SPEAKER- Okay, no, actually don't show me that.
01:54SPEAKER- I'm happy with Windows 10.
01:55SPEAKERI'm good where I am.
01:56SPEAKERI am not going to upgrade.
01:57SPEAKER- Are you sure?
01:58SPEAKER- Nothing you have can entice me.
01:59SPEAKER- Pretty good.
02:00SPEAKERI'm gonna show you stuff
02:01SPEAKERthat I probably shouldn't show you here too.
02:02SPEAKER- Dude, notepad dark mode, really?
02:04SPEAKER- Notepad dark mode.
02:05SPEAKER- I'm just gonna make that the title of this episode.
02:09SPEAKER- Check that shit out.
02:10SPEAKERIt's dark.
02:11SPEAKER- Man.
02:12SPEAKER- Uh-huh.
02:13SPEAKER- Wait, what is this font?
02:14SPEAKERWhat is this font?
02:17SPEAKER- That is Lucida console.
02:20SPEAKER- No, I mean like how are you using
02:21SPEAKERlike a high pixel density?
02:23SPEAKER- It's a new, it's an updated version of Notepad.
02:26SPEAKER- I know, but like, am I the only one,
02:30SPEAKERwould it surprise you to know
02:31SPEAKERthat every time I reinstall Windows,
02:33SPEAKERwhich is not that often these days to be clear,
02:35SPEAKERbut the first time I opened Notepad for anything,
02:39SPEAKERI immediately go into the font settings
02:40SPEAKERand change it back to fixed SIS.
02:43SPEAKER- That doesn't surprise me at all.
02:44SPEAKERAnd also you are insane.
02:46SPEAKER- Notepad is for, the fixed SIS is for Notepad
02:49SPEAKERand vice versa and.
02:50SPEAKER- Okay.
02:52SPEAKER- Okay, so I was using Windows 3.1.1 for work groups,
02:55SPEAKERnot four hours ago and opened a file in Notepad there.
03:00SPEAKERFixed SIS was good enough for Windows 3.1.1.
03:03SPEAKERShould be good enough for anybody.
03:04SPEAKER- Okay, so this is the full disclosure.
03:05SPEAKERThis is Notepad 11.2111.0.0 preview,
03:10SPEAKERwhich is I think part of an insider track build
03:12SPEAKERin Windows 11.
03:14SPEAKERI am a person that uses Notepad for this,
03:19SPEAKERjust like if I need to jot some stuff down
03:20SPEAKERand keep a running list where the window
03:23SPEAKERis always really easily accessible.
03:25SPEAKERI sometimes use OneNote or something like that for that,
03:26SPEAKERbut for the most part, Notepad is where I go
03:28SPEAKERand then if I need to keep it,
03:29SPEAKERI dump it in a Notepad or OneNote or something else.
03:32SPEAKER- Notepad is pretty much just for viewing,
03:35SPEAKERopening and viewing ASCII text files
03:36SPEAKERand maybe jotting something in briefly for me at this point.
03:39SPEAKERBut like I've got tiers of other text editors
03:41SPEAKERthat are better, I mean.
03:42SPEAKER- Yeah, if I'm editing, I use Notepad++
03:44SPEAKERor something like that.
03:45SPEAKER- I've got Notepad++, I've got Sublime.
03:47SPEAKER- Wow.
03:48SPEAKER- Got a couple of simple note clients
03:50SPEAKER'cause there are no good simple note clients out there,
03:52SPEAKERso I just oscillate between the less bad ones.
03:55SPEAKER- I think at some point I installed nano on the terminal.
03:57SPEAKER- Oh yeah, dude, I've got an old ass Windows build
04:00SPEAKERof nano right here.
04:01SPEAKERLet me see what it is.
04:02SPEAKERNew nano 2.5.3 and they are up to five point something now.
04:06SPEAKERSo, oh wow, that's whatever got built for Windows
04:08SPEAKERand put in chocolatey.
04:09SPEAKER- So anyway, the upshot is this maximize window thing
04:16SPEAKERis the friggin' business and I'm very excited about it.
04:19SPEAKER- Honestly, this is one of the better things
04:20SPEAKERI have seen out of Windows 11 so far.
04:22SPEAKERI'm not going to lie, Notepad, Dark Mode also pretty good.
04:25SPEAKERActually, can you see does fixed sys work in Dark Mode?
04:29SPEAKER'Cause if not.
04:29SPEAKER- Is this gonna be a deal breaker for you?
04:31SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely.
04:33SPEAKER- Let's see.
04:34SPEAKER- Dude, Notepad has looked the same for 20,
04:37SPEAKERwhen did I start using Windows, 27 years?
04:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
04:42SPEAKERI don't see a fixed sys.
04:43SPEAKER- Oh, what the fuck?
04:45SPEAKER- I'm sure I can do like Courier or something.
04:47SPEAKERLike there's Courier new, if you want to get crazy.
04:50SPEAKER- Low res, monospaced only.
04:51SPEAKER- Oh, no thank you, sir.
04:53SPEAKER- Is there really no fixed sys in Notepad anymore?
04:55SPEAKER- I mean, it's probably just 'cause I don't have
04:56SPEAKERfixed sys installed on my computer.
04:58SPEAKER- I bet you could install it.
04:59SPEAKER- I can hook you up.
05:00SPEAKER- I can hook you up, yeah, let's talk later.
05:01SPEAKERI can hook you up.
05:02SPEAKER- It's just the true type list is what it looks like.
05:04SPEAKERIt's like all the non-Adobe fonts on my system.
05:07SPEAKER- Monospaced or nothing, I don't know what to tell you.
05:09SPEAKER- Ugh.
05:11SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:17SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:38SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.
05:42SPEAKER- I'm Brad, I'm still scandalized by that ugh
05:45SPEAKERthat you dropped on the way in here, come on.
05:49SPEAKER- When I have a fixed width terminal,
05:50SPEAKERI use a fixed width font.
05:51SPEAKERWhen I have a modern computer with modern ass fonts,
05:57SPEAKERI use a modern ass font.
05:58SPEAKER- How many times do you open a file in Notepad
06:00SPEAKERand want all the columns to line up?
06:02SPEAKER- Never, literally never.
06:04SPEAKER- All right, let's move on.
06:06SPEAKER- That's what Notepad++ is for, man.
06:09SPEAKEROkay, anyway, what are we talking about today, Brad?
06:11SPEAKERWhat's going on, anything happening with you?
06:12SPEAKERAnything exciting going on?
06:13SPEAKER- We're talking about you here, actually.
06:16SPEAKER- Oh, more navel gazing, great.
06:18SPEAKER- Will Smith, this is your life,
06:19SPEAKERat least for the last, what's it been now?
06:22SPEAKER- Six months, seven months, eight months, May.
06:24SPEAKERI started in the middle of May.
06:25SPEAKER- Started in May last year, at Stravon day.
06:27SPEAKER- Indeed, such makers of our first title,
06:32SPEAKERThe Anacrusis, out now in early access on Steam, Xbox,
06:36SPEAKERWindows, Microsoft Store, and Steam Pass.
06:39SPEAKER- You did this last week.
06:39SPEAKER- You can't do this multiple times.
06:40SPEAKER- No, I gotta do it at the start of the show
06:41SPEAKERwhen people are actually listening.
06:42SPEAKER- Cannot do this two weeks in a row.
06:44SPEAKERI promise Will is not here to shill his new, wait.
06:48SPEAKERYou're literally taking a drink out of an Anacrusis
06:52SPEAKERthermal mug, right?
06:54SPEAKER- As I was saying, it was our lunch gift.
06:58SPEAKERLet me just take off my t-shirt
06:59SPEAKERand the Anacrusis shirt will be on on my knee.
07:01SPEAKERThat'd be really funny, but we don't have those.
07:02SPEAKERAnyway.
07:03SPEAKER- The idea was not for you to come in here
07:05SPEAKERand shill your game again.
07:07SPEAKER- HTTPS colon slash j.mp slash The Anacrusis.
07:11SPEAKER- The idea here was, I mean, A, very busy week for you.
07:14SPEAKER- It has been.
07:15SPEAKER- Getting this thing out the door.
07:17SPEAKERB, I have spent-
07:18SPEAKER- It's for the entire team, in fairness.
07:20SPEAKER- I've spent a large chunk of a career covering video games,
07:23SPEAKERwondering about the development of video games,
07:25SPEAKERasking people questions who make video games.
07:28SPEAKER- Me too, it turns out.
07:30SPEAKER- Well, okay, sure, you've also been in that world.
07:32SPEAKER- Not as much as you, though.
07:33SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, I mean, like, you know,
07:35SPEAKERwe figured why not just roll in here
07:37SPEAKERand have an informal chat
07:38SPEAKERabout your first time shipping a video game
07:40SPEAKERand let me ask a bunch of questions
07:41SPEAKERabout technical nitty gritty,
07:45SPEAKERyou know, about all the different stuff you did
07:47SPEAKERalong the way.
07:48SPEAKERI mean, do you like, you know, we chitchat all the time,
07:49SPEAKERobviously, as we're doing the show and stuff,
07:51SPEAKERand like, a bunch of the stuff you have told me about
07:53SPEAKERbehind the scenes sounds like exactly
07:55SPEAKERwhere I would like to live in terms of, like,
07:58SPEAKERwriting shell scripts and having to, you know,
08:01SPEAKERI'm trying to think like that flat page press kit fork
08:06SPEAKERthat you got that one time that you were dealing with
08:09SPEAKERand, like, setting up remote play tests with PCs
08:12SPEAKERthat are in another state and stuff like, like,
08:13SPEAKERthose all sound like really fun
08:14SPEAKERtechnical challenges to solve.
08:16SPEAKER- I got to learn how to use our hosting provider
08:20SPEAKERto do domain aliases the other day.
08:23SPEAKER- Oh, wait, so that was fun.
08:25SPEAKER- Talking about CNAMEs here, what do you want to go into?
08:26SPEAKER- No, no, no, that would be easy.
08:27SPEAKERThat would be, like, the '90s way to do it.
08:29SPEAKERWe were using Netlify and I had to build the redirects
08:34SPEAKERusing their, it's a, they're a React host,
08:36SPEAKERso we were, basically, I had to, look,
08:39SPEAKERI had to just start a little, that was easy,
08:41SPEAKERbut it took a little bit of googling.
08:43SPEAKER- Is this, I wanted to ask, is this the kind of situation
08:46SPEAKERwhere, like, underneath Netlify,
08:48SPEAKERare all those '90s technologies that run things anyway?
08:52SPEAKER- So, I mean, probably, I don't know.
08:57SPEAKERLike, basically, Netlify is a,
08:59SPEAKERso Netlify is a single service, sorry,
09:02SPEAKERa, what is it you call them when you pre-render the web pages
09:05SPEAKERand then just give a flat file and then it serves
09:06SPEAKERthe flat files?
09:07SPEAKER- Oh, they're on the JAMstack.
09:09SPEAKER- Something like that, yeah.
09:10SPEAKERSo anyway, that is what that is, actually.
09:13SPEAKERThat's, like, there is a move back toward, like,
09:15SPEAKERpre-rendered flat page serving, from what I understand.
09:19SPEAKER- So, basically, in order to use subdomains
09:23SPEAKERon the Netlify controlled domains,
09:26SPEAKERwe have to write these little tiny files
09:29SPEAKERthat basically tell the single serving containers
09:32SPEAKERfor subdomains where to point.
09:34SPEAKERAnd that's how you get from support.theanacrusis.com
09:37SPEAKERto our Zendesk group, if you're curious.
09:40SPEAKER- What are you writing in those little files?
09:42SPEAKERIs that some YAML, is it TOML?
09:44SPEAKER- Hold on a second and I'll tell ya.
09:46SPEAKER- Oh, do you have some, did you write them?
09:48SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, I had to write them.
09:49SPEAKERThis is stupid easy, there's no complexity at all here.
09:52SPEAKER- This is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.
09:55SPEAKERAll the little glue that you have had to apply
09:57SPEAKERto different creaky joints to make things stick together.
10:00SPEAKER- I mean, it's, so part of, there's a thing about being,
10:04SPEAKERworking at a small studio, right,
10:09SPEAKERwhere you basically learn how to do,
10:13SPEAKERlike, the job that I have would be
10:15SPEAKERfour different departments' jobs
10:17SPEAKERat Activision and Bungie or something like that,
10:21SPEAKERor Activision and Blizzard, and as a result,
10:25SPEAKERbut we don't have four different people,
10:27SPEAKERfour different departments full of people,
10:28SPEAKERwe have me and Chet and kind of, like,
10:31SPEAKERwe figure it out, right?
10:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, that is also the way that I have worked
10:35SPEAKERfor the last 13, 14 years on small teams, right?
10:39SPEAKERLike, it's like, there aren't enough people
10:41SPEAKERto do all these jobs, so it's like,
10:43SPEAKERover here maintaining relationships with PR people
10:46SPEAKERat publishers one minute and then, like,
10:48SPEAKERmessing with video codecs the next, right?
10:50SPEAKER- So literally, all of this is,
10:53SPEAKERlike, this file isn't even, like, a syntax,
10:55SPEAKERit's just formats for the expected URLs coming in,
10:59SPEAKERand then the redirect URL,
11:01SPEAKERand then what kind of redirect it is
11:02SPEAKERwith an exclamation point at the end.
11:04SPEAKERIt is very simple stuff, nothing complicated or fun.
11:07SPEAKER- No markup.
11:08SPEAKER- And just to be clear, like, this is a,
11:10SPEAKERit's a 20-person studio, we have just over 20 people
11:14SPEAKERworking on the game, it started out as four people
11:18SPEAKERand then grew most of what was in, like,
11:20SPEAKERthe launch trailer this summer was made with 12 people,
11:23SPEAKERand then we hired up over the, from the time I started
11:25SPEAKERuntil now and we're up to about 20 people these days.
11:27SPEAKER- Okay.
11:29SPEAKER- So it's a big studio and, like,
11:31SPEAKERthe people who make the game are smart
11:33SPEAKERand have skills and are able to do things, so.
11:37SPEAKER- It's nice to work with people who are smart
11:39SPEAKERand have skills and are able to do things.
11:41SPEAKER- Yes, it's unlike, look, words are hard at this point,
11:44SPEAKERbut yeah, no, it's good, it's been good,
11:47SPEAKERand, like, I am, it is awesome.
11:52SPEAKERLike, I look at, so there's a thing
11:54SPEAKERthat Robin Ismail has always said,
11:56SPEAKERwhich is, like, every game that ships is a miracle.
11:59SPEAKER- I've heard similar from other developers, for sure.
12:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it is 100% true.
12:05SPEAKERThere was a period of time this summer
12:07SPEAKERwhen every single external playtest we had in,
12:11SPEAKERlike, some of them didn't get past the first level,
12:14SPEAKERthe game was so difficult, we were trying to figure out
12:17SPEAKERwhat the difference between difficulty and intent,
12:19SPEAKERlike, how to separate difficulty
12:20SPEAKERand intensity of the experience,
12:22SPEAKERlike, difficulty of the combat
12:23SPEAKERand intensity of the experience,
12:24SPEAKERand as a result, we were just kicking people's asses
12:26SPEAKERover and over again, and, like, that was in August,
12:29SPEAKERwhen we were thinking we were gonna ship
12:31SPEAKERin the fall sometime, and, you know,
12:35SPEAKERit was scary, because we were like, we can't,
12:37SPEAKERthere's no, if we ship the game like this
12:39SPEAKERwith people who are, like, on voice chat
12:41SPEAKERand friends of ours and willing to take some abuse
12:43SPEAKERbecause they're friends of ours
12:44SPEAKERand wanna help us make the game better,
12:46SPEAKERlike, we're gonna be hosed if we release the game like this
12:49SPEAKERwhen people can't get past the first level.
12:52SPEAKERBut, like, we sat down, we, everybody got together,
12:55SPEAKERand people applied their big brains to it,
12:57SPEAKERand, like, we figured it out,
12:59SPEAKERand, like, I feel like we're in a pretty good place
13:01SPEAKERfor an early access game with, like, the core,
13:04SPEAKERwith the core game loop, like, the actual combat
13:06SPEAKERand the gameplay is pretty fun.
13:08SPEAKER- So, I mean, obviously, you came in, like, what,
13:09SPEAKERseven, eight months before ship,
13:11SPEAKERso the game was largely there, I mean, not entirely,
13:14SPEAKERbut it was largely there when you came in,
13:15SPEAKERbut was Stray Bombade before the pandemic?
13:18SPEAKERWere they in office, like,
13:19SPEAKERa fully local in-person operation?
13:23SPEAKER- Yeah, so Stray Bombade started in the,
13:25SPEAKERearly in 2019 as a really small team,
13:27SPEAKERlike Kim Voll and Chet and a handful of other people came in
13:31SPEAKERto do, like, the initial concepting and prototyping
13:33SPEAKERand stuff like that, and they played a lot of, like,
13:35SPEAKERgray box, you know, here's the,
13:37SPEAKERChet posts screenshots of the old builds on Twitter
13:41SPEAKERfairly regularly with, like, gray box environments
13:46SPEAKERand stick figure, unreal store assets or something,
13:50SPEAKERyou know, just the kind of mannequin
13:52SPEAKERthat ships with the engine and characters coming at you.
13:56SPEAKERBut yeah, they did a ton of prototyping,
13:58SPEAKER'cause the thing that they realized is that the director,
14:01SPEAKERlike, this kind of game, the co-op four-player PvE game
14:04SPEAKERlives and dies by the quality of the director
14:06SPEAKERand, like, the cadence and the feel of the game
14:09SPEAKERthat that creates for you.
14:10SPEAKER- Right, so were they in all in-person operation
14:13SPEAKERat that point? - So, yeah,
14:14SPEAKERwe have offices in Seattle still.
14:15SPEAKER- So before, was it the pandemic
14:17SPEAKERthat started decentralizing things,
14:19SPEAKERor were they already starting to hire remotely before then?
14:22SPEAKER- No, so we were a, everybody comes into the office
14:25SPEAKERevery day studio for a long time.
14:26SPEAKER- That's what I was, okay, 'cause--
14:28SPEAKER- Well, or until, you know, March of 2020,
14:30SPEAKERat which point everybody was like,
14:32SPEAKERhey, like, we're not gonna make anybody come to the office,
14:36SPEAKER'cause that's inhumane if you have kids
14:37SPEAKERor you have family members or whatever,
14:39SPEAKERor you just don't wanna expose yourself to this bad disease.
14:42SPEAKER- Right, and then we had just, I think,
14:45SPEAKERwhen the pandemic started, we had just hired somebody
14:47SPEAKERwho was gonna move up from L.A., and he was like,
14:50SPEAKERhey, the border situation, he's Canadian,
14:53SPEAKERthe border situation is such that if I move,
14:56SPEAKERI'd like to move to Canada so that I can be with my family
15:00SPEAKERand I can get help with family stuff and some other things,
15:03SPEAKERand they had a team meeting, this was before I started,
15:06SPEAKERthey had a team meeting, and we're like,
15:08SPEAKERhey, we're, you know, if so-and-so is able to work remotely,
15:11SPEAKERwe think everybody should work remotely,
15:13SPEAKERhow do we feel about this?
15:14SPEAKERAnd everybody kind of voted, and we're like,
15:17SPEAKERyeah, let's figure out remote.
15:21SPEAKERI think the thing that they did,
15:22SPEAKERI don't know if they did it intentionally,
15:23SPEAKER'cause I wasn't there, but it seems like,
15:26SPEAKERA, that we're pretty egalitarian
15:28SPEAKERabout how things work internally,
15:30SPEAKERand everybody, you know, it's flat,
15:32SPEAKERso everybody gets to have input on things if they care to.
15:36SPEAKERBut also, it was important that if somebody wants
15:40SPEAKERto be remote, then everybody has that option as well,
15:44SPEAKERand so now we have people, you know, I'm in San Francisco,
15:49SPEAKERwe have people in Texas and on the East Coast,
15:51SPEAKERand we have people, we have a person in Norway now.
15:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I wanted to clarify,
15:56SPEAKERbecause some developers star out that way,
15:58SPEAKERlike I distinctly remember seeing the first Ori
16:01SPEAKERin the Blind Forest at E3, and Moon at that time,
16:06SPEAKERlike it was kind of part of the pitch, you know,
16:07SPEAKERit's like they literally pitched this as like,
16:11SPEAKERhey, this is a game made entirely by people
16:12SPEAKERwho work remotely, like some of them work
16:14SPEAKERin completely different countries around the world,
16:16SPEAKERsome of them have never met face-to-face before,
16:18SPEAKERlike it was a whole thing, you know,
16:19SPEAKERlike the narrative behind that game.
16:21SPEAKER- We did that at FU.
16:22SPEAKERI didn't meet, like I haven't, I never,
16:25SPEAKERI still haven't met the artist
16:26SPEAKERthat we worked with there in person.
16:28SPEAKERNo, he's in Norway.
16:31SPEAKER- At FU. - At FU.
16:32SPEAKER- And so you paid this person for some point in time,
16:36SPEAKERnever actually met them, that's wild.
16:38SPEAKER- But I mean, we talked, we spent a lot of time
16:39SPEAKERin the VR studio, which is weird.
16:42SPEAKERI didn't meet our lead developer there
16:43SPEAKERuntil we'd been going for a year and a half,
16:46SPEAKERalmost, when we went to XO together,
16:47SPEAKERand so like, I mean, the reason I didn't ask all this
16:49SPEAKERis because, I mean, we both worked at Whiskey Media,
16:51SPEAKERobviously, like you also did FU,
16:53SPEAKERI mean, like we've worked on a bunch of small teams,
16:56SPEAKERand like-- - But, I mean,
16:57SPEAKERI started out that way.
16:58SPEAKERAt ours, we did, we did all of the first,
17:01SPEAKERI worked at ours for a year
17:03SPEAKERbefore I think I spoke to those people,
17:05SPEAKER'cause like, in 1998, voice comms over the internet
17:08SPEAKERwere bad. - Oh, sure.
17:09SPEAKER- We mostly worked on like ICQ and IRC at that point.
17:12SPEAKER- Okay, so that's a pretty different experience
17:13SPEAKERthat I've had then, because like I had started a game spot,
17:16SPEAKERwell, yeah, I freelance for them, but you know,
17:17SPEAKERI went there and it was very much like a local, tight,
17:20SPEAKERin-person office culture, and then--
17:22SPEAKER- Yeah. - Like, especially thinking
17:24SPEAKERback to like the early days of Giant Bomb,
17:25SPEAKERlike, I don't think any of that would have come about
17:29SPEAKERthe way it did if we hadn't all been
17:30SPEAKERin this one small basement together, you know what I mean?
17:33SPEAKERI guess like where I'm going with this is like,
17:36SPEAKERhow do you keep that spirit of organic collaboration
17:39SPEAKERand just like that, you know, that culture
17:41SPEAKERof just like wandering over and seeing what people are doing
17:43SPEAKERand like kind of spitballing ideas and you know what I mean?
17:46SPEAKERLike, it seems like that might be tough
17:48SPEAKERwhen everybody's spread out.
17:50SPEAKERLike, you can only like Zoom happy hour so many times, right?
17:54SPEAKER- There's a little bit more of a,
17:57SPEAKERlike you have to be deliberate about it.
17:59SPEAKERI mean, so like part of the social stuff
18:01SPEAKERand getting to know your co-workers thing happens
18:04SPEAKERjust because we do play tests three times a week.
18:06SPEAKERLike, we do organize play tests at 10 o'clock in the morning.
18:09SPEAKEREverybody who's available jumps in which,
18:12SPEAKERand like it's, when we say available,
18:16SPEAKERit's like if something's on fire,
18:17SPEAKERyou should go do something else.
18:18SPEAKERBut if you don't have, like if you're not blocking
18:21SPEAKERa bunch of people, then you should go play and play test
18:24SPEAKER'cause this is how we decide,
18:25SPEAKERthis is how we make the game better.
18:27SPEAKERAnd so you have like an hour, hour and a half every week,
18:30SPEAKERevery three times a week where you can kind of goof around
18:33SPEAKERand do stupid video game stuff with your coworkers.
18:36SPEAKERAnd that helps a lot.
18:38SPEAKERWe also do like, we do like Friday afternoon.
18:40SPEAKERWe've tried a bunch of different Friday afternoon stuff.
18:42SPEAKERSometimes we just get in Discord and play games
18:44SPEAKERto get able to play co-op or multiplayer games together.
18:46SPEAKERWe play Risk of Rain and Deep Rock
18:48SPEAKERand other co-op games, other multiplayer games.
18:52SPEAKERI think when that Quake thing landed, we played some Quake,
18:54SPEAKERwe played some Halo, you know, kind of whatever
18:56SPEAKERthe game of the moment,
18:58SPEAKERoften whatever is on Game Pass at any given time pops up.
19:03SPEAKERBut you know, it's, and then like the meetings
19:07SPEAKERare a lot less freewheeling than they would be
19:11SPEAKERif we were in person, I think.
19:13SPEAKERI mean, we're pretty deliberate about culture
19:16SPEAKERand you know, it's a game studio.
19:18SPEAKERSo we have a mixture of real extroverts and real introverts.
19:21SPEAKERAnd we've made a really concerted effort to make sure
19:25SPEAKERthat the people that don't like talking in front of groups
19:27SPEAKERof people don't get squelched.
19:30SPEAKERSo for example-
19:31SPEAKER- Can you define the term squelch?
19:33SPEAKER- Oh, squelch.
19:34SPEAKERSo squelch on a CB is when you turn the thing that peak
19:37SPEAKERthat it's like, it's like the voice gate, the noise gate.
19:40SPEAKERSo like, you have to be louder to get past the squelch mark.
19:43SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that was a literal CB term.
19:45SPEAKERThat's wild.
19:46SPEAKER- It's a radio term.
19:47SPEAKERVinny could give you the ham radio definition, I'm sure.
19:49SPEAKERBut sure, and I'm sure I messed that up, so I apologize.
19:51SPEAKERBut the upshot is like we, when we do meetings
19:55SPEAKERwhere there's feedback or we're worried it's gonna be
19:57SPEAKERdivisive or something like that, then we have a couple
19:59SPEAKERof tools that allow like anonymous comments to come in
20:03SPEAKERand stuff like that.
20:04SPEAKERAnd you know, we use, God help us, we use Teams,
20:08SPEAKERwhich is not, it's bad for so many reasons.
20:12SPEAKERBut the one thing that they do really well
20:13SPEAKERis the actual meeting stuff.
20:14SPEAKERLike the hand raise feature puts everybody in order
20:18SPEAKERand we just go down the list of who has their hands up
20:20SPEAKERand then people get to say their say and we move on.
20:25SPEAKERWe're flat, but we do owners for like big chunks
20:29SPEAKERof the game.
20:30SPEAKERSo like we have a difficulty slash director owner,
20:34SPEAKERwe have gameplay owners, we have gunplay owners,
20:37SPEAKERwe have level design owners, stuff like that.
20:41SPEAKERAnd the rule is that we defer, we expect those people
20:45SPEAKERto get feedback from the group.
20:47SPEAKERBut at the end of the day, we all trust everybody else.
20:49SPEAKERWe all trust the owner of each particular thing
20:53SPEAKERto make the decision that they feel is best
20:56SPEAKERand for whatever, you know, they're the owner
21:00SPEAKERbecause they're the person in the position
21:02SPEAKERto understand what's best for the game.
21:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess it's a slightly different model.
21:05SPEAKERI mean, obviously like you guys have a product
21:07SPEAKERthat you are going to deliver at the end of a period
21:10SPEAKERof years, right?
21:10SPEAKERLike versus like, like when I think back
21:13SPEAKERto like early Giant Bomb, it was like,
21:15SPEAKERwe were delivering a product every day or two, right?
21:17SPEAKERLike it was content was just going, pieces of content
21:19SPEAKERwere going out in a stream, right?
21:21SPEAKERBut like, I don't know, I just, I think back
21:23SPEAKERto how many ideas, how many things we ended up doing
21:26SPEAKERthat started as a joke, you know?
21:27SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
21:28SPEAKER- It's just like somebody was bullshitting about something
21:31SPEAKERand not remotely serious about it.
21:32SPEAKERAnd then you sit there for a second and like,
21:34SPEAKERwhy don't we actually do that?
21:35SPEAKERThat kind of thing.
21:36SPEAKER- I mean, and that stuff still happens, right?
21:39SPEAKERLike we do, for example, like we have,
21:42SPEAKERthe game has perks that are distributed randomly
21:45SPEAKERthrough a device when you hit them in the game.
21:48SPEAKERAnd that literally started as, hey, what if we added,
21:51SPEAKERlike somebody was like, hey, what if we added some modifiers
21:54SPEAKERto make this different every time, right?
21:55SPEAKERTo give people a reason to come back and play again.
21:58SPEAKERAnd one of the engineers just went out and jammed them out
22:01SPEAKERand put them in the game when they were tested
22:03SPEAKERfor the next test.
22:04SPEAKERAnd people went bonkers for it, people loved them.
22:07SPEAKERAnd then that became part of like,
22:08SPEAKERwe iterated through that and got to a point
22:10SPEAKERwhere like they didn't break any of the pillars,
22:12SPEAKERdesign pillars of the studio.
22:14SPEAKERAnd like people, players seem to really like them.
22:20SPEAKERSo, you know, it's interesting
22:25SPEAKER'cause I've worked on things like at ours,
22:26SPEAKERwe were on a daily or sometimes even hourly cadence.
22:30SPEAKERAt the magazine, we were on a every three
22:32SPEAKERto four weeks cadence.
22:34SPEAKERAt Tested, we were on a daily cadence, right?
22:36SPEAKERLike it turns out, I think I like working
22:39SPEAKERon a slightly longer cadence.
22:41SPEAKERI feel like, you know, we're gonna do, I don't know what,
22:44SPEAKERI don't know, I always say biweekly,
22:46SPEAKERbut I think everybody thinks biweekly means twice a week.
22:48SPEAKERWe're gonna do, we're starting with updates
22:50SPEAKERevery other week is the goal cadence for the game.
22:54SPEAKEROnce we get out of the kind of launch,
22:56SPEAKERwon't launch, let's smash bugs in quality of life
22:58SPEAKERas fast as we can get builds through cert phase.
23:02SPEAKER- Yeah, doesn't biweekly actually basically mean
23:04SPEAKERtwice a week now?
23:05SPEAKERLike hasn't the dictionary officially picked that up
23:07SPEAKERas an alternate definition because it's futile?
23:11SPEAKER- I think it's like irregardlessly
23:13SPEAKERin that they fucking caved to the Philistines.
23:16SPEAKER- That's what I'm saying is if you look up biweekly,
23:18SPEAKERI think it will both, it will say both every other week
23:22SPEAKERand twice a week, which is just terrible.
23:25SPEAKERBut anyway.
23:26SPEAKER- But yeah, so, but the upshot is we're,
23:30SPEAKERlike that stuff still happens and like we have both,
23:35SPEAKERI mean, we intend to work on the game forever, right?
23:37SPEAKERThis is gonna, we're treating, this is the first season,
23:40SPEAKERbut it's named season zero
23:42SPEAKER'cause there's gonna be more seasons
23:43SPEAKERand they're all gonna keep going in this game.
23:45SPEAKERWe're not charging players
23:47SPEAKERfor more stuff from Stray Bombay, right?
23:49SPEAKERIf you wanna, we don't wanna bifurcate the audience
23:52SPEAKERby releasing new content that then puts you in,
23:55SPEAKERlike have and have not cues and makes matchmaking,
23:57SPEAKERlike it's all gonna be in there.
24:00SPEAKERSo it's gonna be something we work on for a really long time
24:02SPEAKERwhich actually is kind of freeing in a way
24:05SPEAKER'cause it means that you can say,
24:07SPEAKERhey, like this is something we really wanna have,
24:09SPEAKERbut we're gonna have to get to it later
24:10SPEAKER'cause we gotta do all this other stuff first.
24:12SPEAKER- Sure.
24:13SPEAKER- Do they even have the office anymore?
24:15SPEAKER- We still have the office.
24:16SPEAKER- Is that lease still on, is that still on paper?
24:18SPEAKER- Yeah, we still have the office.
24:19SPEAKERI think Chet had bought a fish tank
24:21SPEAKERor was thinking about buying a fish tank
24:23SPEAKERto put in the office right before the pandemic.
24:25SPEAKERWe really dodged a bullet there for the fish.
24:28SPEAKER- Dodged a bullet, yes.
24:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
24:32SPEAKERPersonally, I think, look,
24:33SPEAKERdentists are allowed to have fish tanks.
24:35SPEAKEREverybody else that has a fish tank in an office
24:37SPEAKERprobably is some sort of evil genius.
24:39SPEAKERIt's like a max power situation.
24:43SPEAKER- Yes, so I feel like I remember early on
24:46SPEAKERlike you were in charge of running play tests, right?
24:48SPEAKERDo I remember you were trying to run play tests
24:52SPEAKERwith the game running on PCs like very far from here?
24:55SPEAKER- We did, we did a lot of play tests.
24:57SPEAKER- So did you have, did you ever have to have,
24:59SPEAKERwell, first of all, were those PCs in that office?
25:01SPEAKER- Those PCs are in that office.
25:03SPEAKERWe have good internet in the office.
25:04SPEAKER- Did you ever have to have somebody go in there?
25:06SPEAKERAnd so this is what I actually would,
25:08SPEAKERdid you achieve the feat of never having to have somebody
25:11SPEAKERgo in there and press a button for you?
25:12SPEAKERDid you do it all remotely?
25:13SPEAKER- Oh, so in order to do the initial installs of the client,
25:17SPEAKERsomebody had to push the button.
25:19SPEAKERAnd occasionally if something went janky
25:21SPEAKERand the machine would like reboot
25:22SPEAKERor like the graphics driver would lock up or something
25:25SPEAKERand I couldn't access the machine remotely.
25:27SPEAKERSeveral of our team,
25:30SPEAKERlike one of our team members lives like four blocks away
25:32SPEAKERand likes to come into the office
25:33SPEAKERjust 'cause it's nice to be in a different place to work.
25:37SPEAKER- So he would occasionally mash a reboot button.
25:39SPEAKER- Okay, I think you're allowed a graphics driver crash.
25:43SPEAKER- Yeah, like for the most part,
25:45SPEAKERlike if you wanted to play remotely
25:47SPEAKERon one of those machines right now,
25:48SPEAKERI can have it up and running in about five minutes.
25:50SPEAKER- That's pretty awesome.
25:51SPEAKER- Yeah, and we had, so we had four of those.
25:52SPEAKERI don't think we ever had all four of them
25:54SPEAKERrunning at the same time.
25:56SPEAKERSome of the engineers use them for things
25:57SPEAKERthat are computationally expensive or time consuming.
25:59SPEAKERLike if they want to do a light bake or something like that
26:01SPEAKERand don't want to tie up their machine for 10 hour,
26:04SPEAKERfour hours, whatever it takes now,
26:06SPEAKERthen we'll run those on those machines overnight or whatever
26:10SPEAKERand let them do their stuff.
26:13SPEAKERYou keep using their computer for real work.
26:15SPEAKER- What were you using for remote administration
26:17SPEAKERjust straight up remote desktop or?
26:19SPEAKER- No, so we're using Parsec.
26:21SPEAKERParsec's great, we're using Parsec for Teams
26:23SPEAKERfor all of that stuff.
26:25SPEAKERIt integrates with our domain stuff,
26:29SPEAKERyou know, our Active Directory business
26:32SPEAKERand lets us basically give access
26:36SPEAKERto external people.
26:38SPEAKERSo we used it for external play tests.
26:40SPEAKERI also used it to capture marketing footage
26:43SPEAKERso that we could get real players to play
26:46SPEAKERand have fun and yell and scream
26:47SPEAKERand do all the stuff that they do.
26:49SPEAKERAnd then we would just capture the footage locally with OBS.
26:52SPEAKER- Wow, so you were capturing from a Parsec window.
26:54SPEAKERSo it was essentially, it was encoding
26:56SPEAKERon the remote end, sending to you,
26:58SPEAKERand then you were encoding it again.
26:59SPEAKER- Other way.
27:00SPEAKERSo I had OBS running on the remote machine.
27:03SPEAKERI had the players playing over Parsec
27:04SPEAKERand I was capturing OBS locally on the machine.
27:06SPEAKER- Oh, that makes way more sense.
27:08SPEAKER- Yeah, so then we would get high quality footage
27:10SPEAKERout of them, high bit rate.
27:11SPEAKER- That's smart.
27:12SPEAKER- And also I could upload, you know,
27:15SPEAKERthe 22 gigabyte file to my, to our share server
27:21SPEAKERwithout me having to do it on my network at home.
27:24SPEAKERWhich is nice.
27:26SPEAKER- I'm gonna mention real fast,
27:27SPEAKERI know very little about this.
27:28SPEAKERI just saw people on the Discord talking about it yesterday.
27:31SPEAKERApache, excuse me, Apache Guacamole.
27:34SPEAKER- Holy Guacamole.
27:36SPEAKER- As far as I know is the same Apache
27:37SPEAKERthat makes, you know, the web server.
27:39SPEAKER- Okay.
27:40SPEAKER- There's even a free and open source
27:42SPEAKERclientless remote desktop gateway.
27:45SPEAKERApparently it's quite hot.
27:47SPEAKER- Remote desktop gateway.
27:48SPEAKERDoes that mean you've run it on like a proxy machine
27:49SPEAKERand you can use it to get?
27:51SPEAKER- Well, I don't know what it runs on.
27:52SPEAKERThe support standard protocols like VNC, RDP,
27:55SPEAKERwhich is, I guess, remote desktop and SSH.
27:57SPEAKERWe call it clientless because no plugins
27:59SPEAKERor client software are required.
28:00SPEAKERIt runs in a browser is the point.
28:02SPEAKER- Gotcha.
28:03SPEAKER- That's why they call it clientless
28:03SPEAKERbecause it doesn't run any browser with HTML5
28:07SPEAKERand remote desktop into whatever.
28:09SPEAKERI kind of want to set it up.
28:10SPEAKERI just wanted to mention it.
28:11SPEAKERIt sounds awesome.
28:12SPEAKER- So the low key awesome thing about using Parsec
28:16SPEAKERand doing the remote testing like that is
28:18SPEAKERlike we're making a PC and console game, right?
28:20SPEAKERLike we're on Xbox and we're on Game Pass.
28:22SPEAKERSo we expect a pretty significant number
28:24SPEAKERof our players to be console players.
28:27SPEAKERAnd it's hard to get, it's hard to recruit.
28:30SPEAKERIt's really easy to give people a steam key
28:32SPEAKERfor external testing and have them download the thing.
28:34SPEAKERBut most of those people are going to be mouse
28:36SPEAKERand keyboard players, or they're going to be at best kind
28:39SPEAKERof ambidextrous, but maybe prefer mouse and keyboard.
28:43SPEAKERIf we wanted to get console, you know,
28:46SPEAKERgame pad native players who don't like, it's hard to give,
28:51SPEAKERunless you have people with dev kits or test kits
28:54SPEAKERfor the console, it's really hard to give a work
28:57SPEAKERin progress game for external testing to a console player.
29:01SPEAKERSo what we were able to do is set up the Parsec client
29:04SPEAKERand have them set it up with the game pad
29:06SPEAKERand they were able to play remotely.
29:07SPEAKERAnd as long as they were kind of on the Western half
29:10SPEAKERof the United States, it worked pretty well.
29:12SPEAKERWe had a couple of Parsec people test it
29:14SPEAKERfrom the East coast and that was a little bit more dependent
29:16SPEAKERon the quality of their internet.
29:18SPEAKERBut for the most part, like people on the West coast
29:20SPEAKERhad no problem, had no complaints when we were testing.
29:23SPEAKERPeople as far away as Texas seemed to be fine.
29:26SPEAKEROnce we got further than that, it got a little hinky.
29:28SPEAKERAnd if we were going to continue doing external tests
29:31SPEAKERwith Parsec, I probably would set up on cloud services
29:36SPEAKERon either like EC2 or Google cloud or something like that
29:40SPEAKERwith GPU, big GPU instances and run it off of those
29:44SPEAKERrather than actual hardware machines
29:46SPEAKERin an office someplace.
29:47SPEAKER- That sounds like so much fun.
29:49SPEAKERSetting all that up would be so much fun.
29:51SPEAKER- It was neat figure.
29:54SPEAKERIt was fun figuring it out, like the actual running it
29:57SPEAKERand keeping it going is a little up and down.
29:59SPEAKERAnd Parsec, frankly, Parsec actually just fixed this
30:01SPEAKERthe other day, but they didn't have a good way to open up.
30:05SPEAKERWhen you're using Teams, their old solution
30:09SPEAKERfor inviting an external tester in was,
30:12SPEAKER"Hey, we're going to give you a ticket
30:13SPEAKERthat costs X number of dollars."
30:16SPEAKERAnd those are consumables when you want to do
30:18SPEAKERan external play test, which I get where they're coming from
30:23SPEAKER'cause this is also the solution
30:25SPEAKERthat some of the big game publishers use
30:26SPEAKERduring the pandemic to do like demo days
30:28SPEAKERand stuff like that.
30:29SPEAKERAnd it kind of makes sense in that context,
30:32SPEAKERbut in the context of we're a 20 person studio
30:36SPEAKERand we don't have infinite budget,
30:38SPEAKERcosting four times X dollars per play test was like not,
30:43SPEAKERit's not like realistically when you balance it
30:47SPEAKERagainst the cost of the engineering,
30:49SPEAKERthe human cost of us all gathering around
30:52SPEAKERto watch the play tests,
30:53SPEAKERwhich we did for the vast majority of them,
30:55SPEAKERit's pretty low, but it doesn't feel great.
30:58SPEAKER- Sure.
30:59SPEAKER- And they've actually since fixed that.
31:00SPEAKERThere's now a, hey, invite somebody external
31:03SPEAKERin a role in the Parsec for Teams service, which is nice.
31:09SPEAKER- Cool.
31:11SPEAKERGames on Unreal Engine 4, did you touch the Unreal Engine
31:14SPEAKERin any significant way?
31:15SPEAKERDid you dig in there and have to do Unreal Engine-y stuff?
31:19SPEAKER- So when I say I don't have skills, this is what I mean.
31:22SPEAKEROne of the things I learned at FU when I,
31:25SPEAKER'cause I had a unity access there
31:28SPEAKERand was able to push stuff to our GitHub instance,
31:32SPEAKERour GitHub repos rather,
31:34SPEAKERis that I should never ever be allowed to push code
31:37SPEAKERback into the repo.
31:38SPEAKER- Why is that?
31:39SPEAKER- Ever, ever, ever.
31:40SPEAKERI made some mistakes and causing people,
31:42SPEAKERnot a massive amount of time,
31:44SPEAKERbut more time than I was comfortable with.
31:46SPEAKER- Hang on, were they code mistakes or Git mistakes?
31:48SPEAKER'Cause I feel like-- - Git mistakes.
31:49SPEAKER- You're saying you push over top of things
31:51SPEAKERyou shouldn't have?
31:52SPEAKER- No, it was more that I just fucked up the repo in general
31:55SPEAKERand then-- - I see.
31:56SPEAKER- And then we had to,
31:57SPEAKERlook, people who use Git know what I'm talking about.
32:00SPEAKERThere's always a post-it note next to somebody's monitor
32:03SPEAKERthat's like, hey, if shit gets really bad,
32:05SPEAKERhere's what you type in.
32:06SPEAKERWe had to use the post-it note, Brad.
32:08SPEAKER- I see. (laughs)
32:09SPEAKERNever use the post-it note.
32:11SPEAKER- You don't wanna use the post-it note.
32:14SPEAKERSo the closest I came is doing all the,
32:17SPEAKERlike Chet and I one afternoon
32:19SPEAKERdid all the copy for localization.
32:22SPEAKERIt turns out, here's the thing you don't think about.
32:26SPEAKERThere's an unbelievable number of words
32:28SPEAKERin every video game you've ever played.
32:30SPEAKER- I believe it.
32:31SPEAKER- Menus, description of what,
32:33SPEAKERthe reason nobody ever puts description
32:34SPEAKERof what settings do in video games
32:36SPEAKERis 'cause then you have to get them localized
32:37SPEAKERand they're technical terms and they're complicated
32:40SPEAKERand it's just a lot.
32:43SPEAKERSo we have all that in, all the subtitles,
32:47SPEAKERall of the menu text, all of the pop-up text,
32:49SPEAKERall of the hover text, all of the like the friends list
32:54SPEAKERand, or not in-game friends list 'cause we don't do that,
32:57SPEAKERbut like the party join text and all that stuff,
33:00SPEAKERerror messages, all that stuff has to be localized.
33:03SPEAKERAnd luckily Tim, who rules,
33:09SPEAKERwas the keeper of those tables.
33:12SPEAKERAnd then basically we would just give him,
33:15SPEAKERwe use a Wiki thing called confluence,
33:17SPEAKERwhich is basically like a closed,
33:21SPEAKERit's not exactly a Wiki, but it's kind of,
33:24SPEAKERit's the closest I've ever gone to having a,
33:26SPEAKERbeen having a Wiki of my own, it turns out.
33:29SPEAKERIt's the, that was a whiskey media joke for all of you.
33:32SPEAKER- Ah, yes, sorry. - All people.
33:34SPEAKER- Yeah, Dave. - Sorry, that's been so long
33:36SPEAKERthat even I forgot about the whole tested needs a Wiki thing.
33:39SPEAKER- Shout out to Dave. - Sorry.
33:41SPEAKER- No, it's okay. - Sorry, apologies to tested.com.
33:46SPEAKERBut the upshot is like we have,
33:49SPEAKERit's where we keep our internal docs.
33:51SPEAKERSo like the engineer who writes the perks
33:54SPEAKERhas a big long list, a table, a page with the table,
33:57SPEAKERwith all of the perks that are in the game.
33:59SPEAKERAnd it has like the Unreal Engine,
34:01SPEAKERthe tag in the Unreal Engine.
34:04SPEAKERIt has the, all the different descriptors
34:07SPEAKERthat we might use in the game.
34:08SPEAKERIt has the label text that needs to be localized.
34:11SPEAKERIt has the description text that needs to be localized.
34:14SPEAKERAnd then it also has like the thumbnail image
34:17SPEAKERand stuff like that, or the icon that's used for it
34:19SPEAKERin the game and all that kind of stuff.
34:21SPEAKERI think menu items too, for things that have like kill feed.
34:25SPEAKERKill feed has to be localized.
34:26SPEAKERIt's just, it never ends.
34:27SPEAKERThere's an infinite number of things
34:29SPEAKERthat need to be localized.
34:31SPEAKER- Should I assume most or all localization
34:33SPEAKERis outsourced at this point?
34:34SPEAKERLike probably by necessity, right?
34:37SPEAKER- Big studios do localization in house
34:39SPEAKER'cause it turns out it's way more efficient.
34:41SPEAKERIf you're doing constant updates to like a big giant game.
34:44SPEAKER- Oh, well sure.
34:45SPEAKERI mean, obviously like a, like a riot or a bungee or a unit,
34:48SPEAKERlike, you know.
34:49SPEAKER- Like Valve had people at house that even did.
34:51SPEAKERAnd they're relatively small in that scale.
34:52SPEAKER- Yeah, right.
34:53SPEAKERLike multi-hundreds, two thousands of people,
34:55SPEAKERcompanies obviously have the resources to hire internally
34:57SPEAKERfor stuff like that, but.
34:58SPEAKER- Yeah.
35:00SPEAKERBut, but I mean, we, so we do,
35:02SPEAKERwe do outsource localization for that stuff.
35:05SPEAKERAnd then some of the partners do the localization
35:08SPEAKERlike of store pages and stuff like that for you.
35:14SPEAKER- Build servers.
35:15SPEAKER- You want to talk about build servers?
35:16SPEAKER- I wrote the phrase build servers in here.
35:18SPEAKERI listen, there's no greater joy in my life
35:22SPEAKERthan starting a job, like setting a thing up
35:26SPEAKERand pressing a button and watching it go.
35:27SPEAKERWhether it's like compiling a piece of software,
35:30SPEAKERrunning scripts, like even just sitting and watching
35:33SPEAKERlike cores bounce up and down as things happen.
35:34SPEAKERYou know what I mean?
35:35SPEAKERLike just making a computer do a complex thing
35:39SPEAKERand just letting it, letting it rip.
35:41SPEAKERSo, so I want, I want to know what generating new build is.
35:46SPEAKERI want to know what like compiling new build of the game is
35:48SPEAKERlike, I don't know how much you actually got exposure
35:51SPEAKERto that process though.
35:52SPEAKER- I see the output of that fairly regularly.
35:55SPEAKERCause I do a lot of the steam settings.
35:58SPEAKERThe, the, I don't do the other end of it.
36:04SPEAKERLike since I'm not pushing stuff to our Perforce instance
36:06SPEAKERor whatever, I don't, I don't know exactly
36:08SPEAKERwhat the process is.
36:09SPEAKER- I know that we manually kick off builds
36:11SPEAKERwhen we want builds.
36:12SPEAKERThere are also fixed builds at certain times of day
36:14SPEAKERthat run based on whatever the current thing is.
36:16SPEAKERI believe that might've stopped now.
36:19SPEAKER- Do you know how long it takes?
36:20SPEAKERCould you, could you ballpark like a,
36:22SPEAKERif you needed to produce a new build?
36:24SPEAKER- It depends based on what has been changed.
36:26SPEAKERSo if there are like art changes at a level,
36:28SPEAKERit can take a long time because the light bakes
36:30SPEAKERhave to happen and all of that kind of stuff happens
36:31SPEAKERwith that.
36:32SPEAKER- Sure.
36:33SPEAKER- Usually I believe we do the light bake separately
36:35SPEAKERbecause it's time consuming and we don't want to type
36:37SPEAKERthe build servers indefinitely.
36:38SPEAKER- So those, those can all be generated ahead of time?
36:40SPEAKER- Those can be generated ahead of time,
36:42SPEAKERthen checked in and put in the right place
36:43SPEAKERin the, in the, the engine, the build server
36:45SPEAKERwill look at me like, oh yeah, the light bakes here,
36:47SPEAKERthat looks good.
36:49SPEAKERThe, it seems like you start seeing output
36:53SPEAKERfrom the build server as shortly as like 20 minutes
36:55SPEAKERafterwards, because, because the thing is we have,
36:59SPEAKERwe have Xbox series, Xbox one, Windows, Microsoft store,
37:04SPEAKERSteam and server clients.
37:08SPEAKERAnd, and, and, and the server are the things
37:11SPEAKERthat get spit out.
37:12SPEAKERSo, you know, they come out at different times.
37:16SPEAKERThere's complexity about how those are made.
37:20SPEAKERYou can dedicate machines to,
37:22SPEAKERlike you can run that in the cloud,
37:23SPEAKERyou can run it on local metal,
37:25SPEAKERyou can run multiple machines and dedicate one machine
37:29SPEAKERto a specific task.
37:31SPEAKERLike if we, like if we were, if we were on eight platforms,
37:34SPEAKERwe might have more machines because we need more different
37:38SPEAKERbuilds at any given time, if that makes sense.
37:40SPEAKER- Especially if you're on different architectures.
37:42SPEAKERI mean, I assume at this point there was no version
37:43SPEAKERof the game that doesn't run on x86, right?
37:48SPEAKERYou can think of, I can't think of.
37:49SPEAKER- Well, the Xbox one doesn't, right?
37:50SPEAKERIsn't it?
37:51SPEAKER- But I'm thinking, you know, like a couple of generations
37:53SPEAKERback, like the consoles were still risk or power PC
37:57SPEAKERarchitecture and stuff like that.
37:58SPEAKER- You know, we're not doing 360 or.
37:59SPEAKER- No, obviously I'm just, I'm just saying,
38:01SPEAKERI can't think of, there's nothing out there that,
38:03SPEAKERit's not like there's some arm based version of the game.
38:05SPEAKER- People who make Switch games have different architectures.
38:07SPEAKER- Yes, that is.
38:08SPEAKER- Yeah, what is, I think that is an arm, it's Tegra.
38:11SPEAKER- Right, right.
38:11SPEAKERYes, right.
38:12SPEAKER- So, you know, it's like, but you can compile a arm app
38:17SPEAKERon a x86 machine.
38:18SPEAKER- Oh yeah, you can cross compile, it's just more,
38:20SPEAKERit's more stuff to manage, I assume.
38:21SPEAKERLike, do you know, I mean, you guys are building stuff
38:23SPEAKERlocally, not in the cloud, like.
38:26SPEAKER- We have machines set up locally, yeah.
38:28SPEAKER- Do you know, is that basically just running on like
38:30SPEAKERcommodity PC hardware these days?
38:31SPEAKER- Just normal ass computers.
38:33SPEAKER- Man, that's crazy.
38:34SPEAKERI'm just still thinking back to like, I'm sure on some,
38:37SPEAKERon some level I'm always stuck in the 90s,
38:39SPEAKERbut thinking back to, you know,
38:40SPEAKERreading about the softwares of the world,
38:42SPEAKERbuying like a giant deck alpha back in the day
38:45SPEAKERto do stuff like that, like heavy, like legitimate,
38:48SPEAKERbig iron type machines to do stuff like that,
38:50SPEAKERbut you don't need that anymore, right?
38:52SPEAKER- So I was talking to Dorian,
38:53SPEAKERwho's one of our level designers and he does a ton
38:56SPEAKERof other things too, but he, his, like the, like the big,
39:01SPEAKERthey did that for light map baking back in the day.
39:04SPEAKERNow we can run those, the light map baking is GPU accelerated.
39:07SPEAKER- Oh, that's awesome.
39:09SPEAKER- It goes a lot faster than it used to.
39:12SPEAKERI, like, I still, I look at, I look at like our,
39:15SPEAKERour levels are relatively manageable compared to, you know,
39:19SPEAKERsay like a PUBG or a Fortnite or something like that,
39:21SPEAKERthat has a big giant outdoor area with lots of glass
39:24SPEAKERand lots of windows and infinite ray,
39:27SPEAKERinfinite opportunities for rays to bounce in
39:29SPEAKERand come around places.
39:31SPEAKERLike I, I'm, I would be really curious to know what,
39:33SPEAKERlike a PUBG light map render system looks like.
39:38SPEAKERAnd, and, you know, they have eight or nine maps now
39:42SPEAKERand different times of day for each one.
39:44SPEAKERSo if they make art changes to those maps,
39:46SPEAKERit's gotta be something that they plan out well in advance.
39:51SPEAKERWe don't have that.
39:52SPEAKERIt's less complicated for us because it's, you know,
39:54SPEAKERindoor levels and a little bit more manageable.
39:56SPEAKER- Right, right.
39:58SPEAKERGosh, what else is there to talk about?
40:03SPEAKERAny other fun tech stuff you had to do
40:05SPEAKERover the last few months?
40:06SPEAKERLike, like again, I just felt like every other week
40:08SPEAKERwhen we would get together to record,
40:10SPEAKERyou'd be talking about, you know,
40:12SPEAKERsome script you had to write or some,
40:13SPEAKERsome fun little tech puzzle to figure out.
40:16SPEAKER- I mean, it's, it's like, it's weird.
40:18SPEAKERCause like my job is always, my jobs are always like,
40:22SPEAKERat the end of the day, sometimes I look up and like,
40:24SPEAKERI have no idea what I did today,
40:25SPEAKERbut I did like 20 little things.
40:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so I'm very familiar with that.
40:30SPEAKER- So yeah, like I don't think there's any,
40:32SPEAKERthere's not any huge stuff.
40:33SPEAKERThe, like a lot of it is just, honestly, it's just like,
40:39SPEAKERhey, somebody has a problem with something
40:40SPEAKERand here's what can I, what can I do to help?
40:42SPEAKERI mean, I also like ostensibly, my job is communications.
40:45SPEAKER- I was, I was going to ask like, what is your actual title?
40:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so I'm, I'm the director of,
40:50SPEAKERwe don't do titles internally,
40:51SPEAKERbut I'm the director of communications on LinkedIn.
40:54SPEAKER- Like we don't either, of course we don't obviously,
40:56SPEAKERbut even a giant bomb, like, you know,
40:58SPEAKERonce we got into a corporate hierarchy,
41:00SPEAKERwe had to have something right.
41:01SPEAKERBut prior to that, it was just like, who fucking cares?
41:03SPEAKERLike, we're just here doing a job, whatever.
41:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:06SPEAKER- But you realize very quickly,
41:08SPEAKEReven when you're in a situation like that internally,
41:10SPEAKERwhere it doesn't matter,
41:10SPEAKERlike you realize almost instantly,
41:12SPEAKERonce you start interacting with the outside world,
41:14SPEAKERlike people want you to call yourself something, right?
41:17SPEAKER- Yeah, so like, like the last couple of weeks for me
41:20SPEAKERhave been talking to streamers and talking to press
41:22SPEAKERand playing games with people.
41:23SPEAKERLike I, like I came and played Anacrusis with you all
41:27SPEAKERon Nextlander on what, Tuesday or something?
41:29SPEAKER- It seems like Monday.
41:30SPEAKER- Monday, yeah. - Yeah.
41:31SPEAKERIt seems like an eternity to go.
41:33SPEAKER- Yes.
41:34SPEAKER- But I did a lot of that.
41:36SPEAKERChet and I both did a lot of that this week.
41:38SPEAKERWe've been playing with community a ton.
41:41SPEAKERI set up the how to stream to the Steam page thing yesterday,
41:44SPEAKERwhich was really fun 'cause we were streaming with,
41:47SPEAKERwe were playing with streamers and we were running archives
41:50SPEAKERof other playthroughs with streamers and friends
41:53SPEAKERand community members and stuff like that
41:55SPEAKERon the Steam page.
41:58SPEAKERIt turns out you can, it's just an RTMP feed
42:02SPEAKERwith a bunch of weird requirements about the video
42:04SPEAKERthat go onto the Steam page.
42:07SPEAKERWe, I mean, what else?
42:10SPEAKERI don't know.
42:11SPEAKERI spent a lot of time on the Steam forums,
42:12SPEAKERdeleting bad posts from angry people
42:15SPEAKERwho haven't played the game, it seems like,
42:17SPEAKERfor the most part.
42:19SPEAKERI spent a lot of time in our Discord
42:21SPEAKERhelping people with problems.
42:22SPEAKERI set up Zendesk.
42:23SPEAKERThat was exciting.
42:24SPEAKERSo what do we got here?
42:24SPEAKERPublic relations, support, influencer relations.
42:29SPEAKERCommunity.
42:30SPEAKERCommunity, community management.
42:32SPEAKERPress.
42:33SPEAKERYes.
42:34SPEAKERWe work with an external PR agency too,
42:36SPEAKERso that's been really great.
42:37SPEAKERThey've been incredibly helpful.
42:40SPEAKERIt seems like at one point you were doing,
42:41SPEAKERlike fielding a lot of calls with other territories.
42:44SPEAKERLike I remember like, oh, you had a call at 10 p.m. at night
42:47SPEAKERwith I forget which country.
42:49SPEAKERWe have partners.
42:51SPEAKERI mean, we were talking to publishers in different regions.
42:54SPEAKERWe have partners.
42:56SPEAKERYou were working with Overwolf for mod stuff in the future,
43:00SPEAKERand they're based in the Middle East in Israel,
43:02SPEAKERso like time zones are challenging for them.
43:05SPEAKERI help chat with biz dev stuff sometimes
43:08SPEAKERjust 'cause I've done that in the past,
43:10SPEAKERand like it's always nice to have two people
43:13SPEAKERin those conversations so that like you can go,
43:16SPEAKERdid they really say that?
43:17SPEAKERThey really said that.
43:18SPEAKEROkay.
43:19SPEAKER- Does that mean what it sounds like?
43:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:23SPEAKERBut yeah, it's been like, I don't know.
43:27SPEAKERIt's always like for me, like for me professionally,
43:32SPEAKERI've always been a generalist, right?
43:34SPEAKERLike I know how to do a lot of things pretty well,
43:36SPEAKERbut I'm definitely not like,
43:39SPEAKERyou know, I'm a multi-tool, not a specific tool.
43:44SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:46SPEAKER- So it's been, it's really been great for me
43:48SPEAKERas a role so far.
43:50SPEAKER- That's very much been my experience of work
43:53SPEAKERfor most of my career as well,
43:55SPEAKERand like that's what I enjoy
43:56SPEAKER'cause it's just a lot of variety, right?
43:58SPEAKER- Yeah, like I like doing something different every day,
44:00SPEAKERand I like talking to people,
44:01SPEAKERand these are all things I get to do in the current role, so.
44:05SPEAKER- The thing I would love to ask about,
44:06SPEAKERwhich we probably can't get into now,
44:08SPEAKERor maybe ever, is CMSs.
44:11SPEAKER- You wanna talk about CMSs?
44:12SPEAKER- Like dude, there's nothing I would love more
44:15SPEAKERthan to like upload a build of a game to Xbox Live
44:18SPEAKERor the PlayStation Network or something,
44:19SPEAKERset up a store page or,
44:21SPEAKERI mean like I've been publishing website stuff
44:23SPEAKERfor, since 2002 or whatever.
44:26SPEAKER- It's pretty much like that,
44:28SPEAKERbut made even more by engineers and less by humans.
44:31SPEAKER- Ooh, actually, when you put it that way,
44:33SPEAKERmaybe it's less glamorous.
44:34SPEAKERLike, you know, like I've uploaded 10 bajillion JPEGs
44:39SPEAKERto websites and published them, you know?
44:40SPEAKERI've put a bunch of text in and published that,
44:43SPEAKERand mixed the two together.
44:44SPEAKERI've never uploaded a build of a video game before.
44:47SPEAKER- Well, but I don't ever get to upload the build of a game.
44:49SPEAKER- Oh, I know, I'm sure it does that.
44:50SPEAKER- Yes.
44:51SPEAKEROh, is that actually all just automated at this point?
44:53SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that's all just happens in the back.
44:55SPEAKERSo basically, okay, so I figured it spit out
44:59SPEAKERlike some kind of bundle or package thing
45:01SPEAKERthat you then had to manually kind of sync
45:04SPEAKERwith whatever storefronts.
45:06SPEAKER- So on some platforms, that's how it works.
45:09SPEAKERI will tell you, I feel like this is probably safe
45:12SPEAKERto talk about, but hopefully I don't get in trouble.
45:15SPEAKEROn Steam, Steam provides a series of command line tools.
45:18SPEAKERIt's very similar to the stuff they use for like Linux GSM.
45:20SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Steam command is public.
45:23SPEAKERLike anybody can actually grab that and mess with it.
45:26SPEAKERSo that should be fine to talk about, I would assume.
45:29SPEAKERI'm sure I can give you clearance
45:30SPEAKERfor how to communicate at your job.
45:32SPEAKER- Thanks Gabe Brad.
45:34SPEAKERSo yeah, the Steam command stuff,
45:37SPEAKERI assume is how we upload the certain stuff
45:39SPEAKERfrom the build servers to Steam.
45:46SPEAKERAnd then you go into the Steam backend
45:48SPEAKERand it has a list of, I think they call them depots
45:50SPEAKERor builds or something like that,
45:52SPEAKERthat basically you say,
45:53SPEAKER"Hey, I wanna put this one on this branch of,"
45:56SPEAKERyou know the beta page in Steam where if somebody said like,
45:58SPEAKER"Hey, I want you to try an early release of my game.
46:00SPEAKERHere's a key, go to this page, type this code in,
46:03SPEAKERpress the blue button."
46:04SPEAKERYou get access to the beta branch of whatever game it is.
46:08SPEAKEREach of those is a build on a depot
46:10SPEAKERand a backend of the Steam UI.
46:12SPEAKERAnd it's just a dropdown.
46:13SPEAKERYou're just like, "Hey, I want build 22859
46:16SPEAKERto be the default branch."
46:19SPEAKERAnd then you press that button and all of a sudden
46:21SPEAKEReverybody who has access to the default branch has that.
46:24SPEAKERThey get a little Steam update thing
46:26SPEAKERwithin the next 30 or 40 seconds
46:27SPEAKERand start downloading the game.
46:29SPEAKERAnd it's frigging bonkers.
46:31SPEAKER- Okay, you're kind of bringing me back down
46:33SPEAKERto earth a little bit as you describe dropdowns
46:35SPEAKERand so forth.
46:36SPEAKERLike it's like, okay, yes, I've used many CMSs in my life.
46:40SPEAKERThis sounds like another one.
46:41SPEAKER- I will say that the thing that's,
46:44SPEAKERso I pressed the button for Steam yesterday
46:46SPEAKER'cause we were dealing with some stuff
46:48SPEAKERand I was the one who had time.
46:51SPEAKERYou press a big green button that says,
46:53SPEAKER"Hey, prepare, ready for launch."
46:56SPEAKERAnd then it's like, "Hey, are you sure you wanna do this?
46:58SPEAKERType this in."
46:59SPEAKERAnd it's like a passphrase.
47:01SPEAKER- Okay.
47:02SPEAKER- And then you have to press enter and click the button
47:04SPEAKERand then the game goes out to everybody on Steam.
47:06SPEAKERAnd it was funny 'cause it was available for sale so quickly
47:11SPEAKERthat I didn't get to go,
47:12SPEAKERI had the message that the game was live,
47:14SPEAKERpasted into Discord.
47:16SPEAKERAnd by the time I switched from the Steam window
47:18SPEAKERafter it was like, yeah, after the little thing spun,
47:20SPEAKERit was like, "Okay, you're all good."
47:21SPEAKERAnd I clicked over to Discord,
47:22SPEAKERpeople were already like, "It's live, go download it."
47:24SPEAKERSo that's like on the other platforms for the most part,
47:29SPEAKERjust it happens automatically, I think.
47:31SPEAKER- Okay.
47:32SPEAKER- That's based on the times you set in advance
47:34SPEAKERand all that stuff.
47:35SPEAKER- That's a different kind of fun.
47:37SPEAKER- The other, here's the other fun thing
47:39SPEAKERthat nobody thinks about, all of those images.
47:42SPEAKERSo when you, if you ever meet somebody who's like,
47:43SPEAKER"Hey, I work on graphic design for games."
47:46SPEAKERGive them a hug because--
47:49SPEAKER- I bet the range of dimensions and aspect ratios
47:51SPEAKERand stuff they're having to satisfy is endless.
47:53SPEAKER- Sweet mother, there are so many different ranges,
47:57SPEAKERthere's so many different resolutions.
47:59SPEAKERAnd like the documents are, the documentation's great.
48:03SPEAKERLike the platforms do a pretty good job saying,
48:05SPEAKER"Hey, this is where this is gonna show up."
48:08SPEAKERBut inevitably you get the game out
48:09SPEAKERand you're like looking on one of the platforms
48:11SPEAKERand you're looking on the store page, you're like,
48:12SPEAKER"Oh crap, this is the wrong,
48:14SPEAKERthis is the picture without the logo,
48:16SPEAKERwith that way it is, it's the picture with the key art,
48:19SPEAKERbut without the name or the logo.
48:21SPEAKERAnd this one should definitely be the one with the logo."
48:23SPEAKERSo then you have to go into the CMS
48:24SPEAKERand figure out which one that is
48:26SPEAKERand then update it and push it back to public.
48:27SPEAKERAnd it's just a, it's a process, but there are,
48:31SPEAKERI have a folder, I will tell you how many,
48:34SPEAKERI have a folder that's like five subfolders deep
48:36SPEAKERwith all the different marketing images
48:39SPEAKERfor the different storefronts
48:41SPEAKERin a bazillion different resolutions and aspect ratios.
48:45SPEAKERAnd our UX designer, UI designer Bailey helped me
48:52SPEAKERby making this amazing series of nested Photoshop scripts
48:57SPEAKERthat all use links to all sorts of other,
48:58SPEAKERlike it uses links to the core source key art
49:01SPEAKERand then generates that,
49:02SPEAKERgenerates all of the sub files using those links,
49:06SPEAKERusing Photoshop links in a way
49:07SPEAKERthat I've never seen anybody do before and it is magic.
49:10SPEAKER- That sounds cool as hell, that almost makes me wonder,
49:12SPEAKERI mean, maybe this already exists,
49:14SPEAKERif there's like room for sort of either middleware
49:17SPEAKERor third party services, I guess I would call it
49:21SPEAKERlike a third party company to handle that layer for you.
49:24SPEAKERJust say like, hey, we will grease all the wheels
49:27SPEAKERof getting all this art made
49:28SPEAKERand getting all these things onto the right storefronts.
49:30SPEAKERAnd like, you won't have to think about any
49:32SPEAKERof the meeting requirements of platforms things.
49:36SPEAKER- There is, there are definitely,
49:38SPEAKERI'm sure at big publishers they have tools
49:40SPEAKERfor this stuff built up.
49:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that kind of goes, I think that goes without saying
49:43SPEAKERlike big publishers do all of this stuff themselves.
49:46SPEAKER- I mean, it's a weird task 'cause it's the thing you do,
49:48SPEAKERlike, I mean, how often do you change the key art
49:51SPEAKERfor your game?
49:51SPEAKERIt's like, maybe you might do something special
49:53SPEAKERfor like a big holiday update or something like that.
49:56SPEAKERBut for the most part, like you do the key art
49:58SPEAKERand then you don't touch it.
50:00SPEAKERSo I would be curious to hear if people know
50:04SPEAKERof the other solutions.
50:07SPEAKERI do know that like big studios,
50:09SPEAKERlike there are as many people working
50:12SPEAKERon getting screenshots and getting video
50:15SPEAKERand the tools that they use too.
50:17SPEAKERSo like, we don't have a tool to,
50:19SPEAKERwe don't have a screenshot tool in the game.
50:20SPEAKERJust because it's a multiplayer game
50:22SPEAKERdoesn't really make a lot of sense.
50:23SPEAKERAnd it makes getting screenshots really,
50:26SPEAKERlike you have to just get lucky versus setting up the scene
50:30SPEAKERthe way you want it or pausing the game when you're in,
50:32SPEAKERwhen you have a good action moment happening
50:33SPEAKERand then finding the right camera angle or whatever,
50:36SPEAKERwhatever your strategy happens to be.
50:38SPEAKER- There is, there are no tool in UE4 to kind of help.
50:41SPEAKERThere is, but it requires, you know,
50:44SPEAKERlike it's always with a small team, especially,
50:46SPEAKERit's always a, how many programmer,
50:49SPEAKERis this worth a programmer spending two days
50:51SPEAKERand engineer spending two days figuring out?
50:53SPEAKERAnd the answer is probably no,
50:55SPEAKERespecially since as we're launching in early access,
50:58SPEAKERwe'll, my guess is that will,
51:00SPEAKERmy hope is that will change over the, you know,
51:02SPEAKERthe time that we're in early access, but.
51:05SPEAKER- I do have to tell you that you join a long line
51:08SPEAKERof people that I have known who have been in a position
51:10SPEAKERto have to take screenshots of games,
51:12SPEAKERtalking about how taking screenshots of games
51:14SPEAKERis the hardest thing ever.
51:16SPEAKER- Good, I've spent, I mean, so it's a four player game.
51:19SPEAKERWe want to have pictures of other players
51:21SPEAKERin the screenshots, getting other players
51:24SPEAKERto position themselves right, getting the alien,
51:26SPEAKERlike I'm just jealous of people who have deterministic games
51:29SPEAKERso they know, okay, this moment in Breath of the Wild
51:32SPEAKERwhere you walk out of the thing
51:33SPEAKERand you see the whole kingdom of Hyrule lay down from you,
51:35SPEAKERthat's a cool moment, we should take a screenshot of that.
51:37SPEAKERThat sounds great.
51:39SPEAKER- Our stuff spawns in different places every time.
51:41SPEAKERThere's always different enemies.
51:42SPEAKERThey jump based on what the AI thinks they should do.
51:45SPEAKERIt's challenging for him.
51:48SPEAKER- Especially, I mean, you guys are a small team,
51:49SPEAKERbut I've definitely heard like larger games
51:51SPEAKERor especially when there is some kind
51:53SPEAKERof external rights holder involved.
51:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
51:57SPEAKER- Getting the approvals process of taking shots
51:58SPEAKERand having them shot down and then having to take more
52:00SPEAKERjust over and over and over sounds like a lot.
52:04SPEAKER- Well, look, the thing that I am grateful for
52:08SPEAKERis we are an indie studio,
52:09SPEAKERso the people we're beholden to are us
52:12SPEAKERand we do not have a publisher or a partner that's saying,
52:15SPEAKER"Hey, we want approval on everything that you say and do."
52:18SPEAKERSo that is really good.
52:20SPEAKERAnd then the other fun stuff,
52:21SPEAKERI wrote an Xbox Wire article the other day,
52:23SPEAKERwhich is really funny 'cause I've seen this for years.
52:25SPEAKER- Like that seems kind of cool to do as well.
52:28SPEAKER- It was like a fun, easy thing to do
52:30SPEAKERand I sat down and jammed it out when I was like,
52:32SPEAKER"Oh, I used to do this.
52:33SPEAKER"I remember this stuff."
52:35SPEAKER- I kind of had a similar feeling
52:37SPEAKERwhen I wrote my "Game of the Year" top 10
52:38SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago.
52:39SPEAKERI was like, "Oh yeah, I used to do this."
52:41SPEAKER- Yeah, still got it, baby.
52:42SPEAKER- Yep, that's right.
52:43SPEAKER- So yeah, that's it.
52:44SPEAKERThe game's out.
52:46SPEAKERLike we wanted to do,
52:48SPEAKERlike the big thing that I've been doing a lot of
52:50SPEAKERand I'm gonna communicate it here
52:51SPEAKER'cause I don't want people to go like try the game out.
52:54SPEAKERIt's on Game Pass, so you can just try it.
52:56SPEAKERI don't want people to get the wrong,
52:58SPEAKERlike we're an early access slash game preview
53:01SPEAKERdepending on which platform we're on title.
53:03SPEAKERAnd like the brunt of the,
53:07SPEAKERthe reason we launched that way is 'cause we want feedback
53:09SPEAKERon like level design and gunplay and gameplay
53:14SPEAKERand director difficulty and like all of the parts
53:17SPEAKERthat make the game, we feel like the core game
53:20SPEAKERis in a really good spot, you know,
53:22SPEAKERgiven where we are in development
53:23SPEAKERand we think it's really fun.
53:25SPEAKERLike if you get on the game with three friends
53:29SPEAKERand get on voice and you have a beer
53:31SPEAKERand you shoot some aliens, you're gonna have a good time.
53:34SPEAKERWe do also know that there's a ton of stuff
53:36SPEAKERaround that core kind of gameplay nugget
53:39SPEAKERthat needs a lot of work.
53:40SPEAKERAnd, you know, that's gonna happen gradually
53:42SPEAKERover the next, you know, over 2022, realistically.
53:47SPEAKERWe're planning to leave early access
53:49SPEAKERby the end of the year.
53:51SPEAKERAnd we have two new, two episodes to add to the game.
53:54SPEAKERWe wanna add mods.
53:55SPEAKERWe have modders working on it already,
53:57SPEAKERbuilding like we have a couple, two different level creators
54:03SPEAKERworking right now.
54:04SPEAKERSo we have a new mod campaign,
54:06SPEAKERhopefully coming up for too, too long.
54:10SPEAKERAnd then mod tools and, you know,
54:13SPEAKERall the other stuff that comes with a launch of a game
54:17SPEAKERlike this coming this year.
54:18SPEAKERSo it's like, you know, this isn't gonna be,
54:21SPEAKERit's not a finished product.
54:22SPEAKERIt's an early access in the sense of we are doing this
54:26SPEAKERbecause we wanna collect feedback
54:28SPEAKERbecause it's a game that's hard for us to test
54:31SPEAKERand get real feedback on internally.
54:33SPEAKERAnd external testing doesn't,
54:36SPEAKERthe way I was doing it before,
54:37SPEAKERthe way we were doing it before
54:39SPEAKERwith the people on par second, whatever,
54:41SPEAKERdoesn't scale as fast as we wanted to.
54:43SPEAKERSo we want players to get in and bang at it
54:45SPEAKERand see what works and see what doesn't for us.
54:48SPEAKERCool.
54:48SPEAKERHelp us make it better.
54:49SPEAKERYeah.
54:50SPEAKERCongratulations on reaching this milestone.
54:52SPEAKERObviously the game's not done, so you're not done.
54:54SPEAKERNo, the game's never gonna be done, Brad.
54:57SPEAKERIt's not that kind of game,
54:58SPEAKERbut hopefully we'll get to a place
55:01SPEAKERwhere everybody can play and have a good time.
55:05SPEAKERAnd yeah, I mean, that's kind of it.
55:08SPEAKERWe just want people to, like the whole point,
55:09SPEAKERyou don't make a game if you don't want people to have fun.
55:12SPEAKERWe want people to have a good time.
55:13SPEAKERMaybe you don't.
55:14SPEAKERNo, look, okay.
55:16SPEAKERActually, I mean, now that you mentioned it,
55:17SPEAKERthe freedom to make a game that nobody ever had to play
55:20SPEAKERsounds kind of awesome, actually.
55:23SPEAKERWell, I was always really interested.
55:24SPEAKERWhat's the game that like they,
55:25SPEAKERit's just a case that gets sent around
55:28SPEAKERand there's one copy of it,
55:29SPEAKERyou send it to the next person
55:30SPEAKERthey can choose to send it on or not.
55:31SPEAKERIt's been moving around and I don't know.
55:33SPEAKERIt feels like something Patrick wrote about
55:34SPEAKERa few years ago.
55:35SPEAKERSounds like some kind of urban legend.
55:37SPEAKERI mean, that's also entirely possible.
55:39SPEAKERAt this point, I could be hallucinating.
55:41SPEAKERWho knows?
55:42SPEAKERGame development legends.
55:43SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
55:45SPEAKERBut yeah, thanks for having me on the show this week, Brad.
55:47SPEAKERThis was really great.
55:48SPEAKERIt's good to have you here.
55:49SPEAKERMaybe we'll have you back in a few months.
55:52SPEAKERI mean, I'm still gonna be working on the game, I think.
55:54SPEAKERSo, and again, just to like,
55:57SPEAKERI wanna reiterate this 'cause it's important,
55:58SPEAKERbut like is a team of really, really smart people.
56:01SPEAKERAnd I am the doofus who stands up in the discord
56:05SPEAKERand asks questions and talks to people
56:07SPEAKERand like, you know, figures out how to point a sub domain
56:10SPEAKERat a partner's website without having to use C names
56:16SPEAKERbecause our hosting provider is weird.
56:18SPEAKERYou know, I don't do anything real.
56:19SPEAKERGod, I actually didn't think about how intimidating
56:21SPEAKERit probably is to work with a bunch of people
56:23SPEAKERwho are so specialized in these
56:24SPEAKERvery highly complex disciplines.
56:27SPEAKERWell, and, but also a lot of them are also generalists
56:30SPEAKERin ways that are really interesting.
56:31SPEAKERSo like, you know, the person who like,
56:35SPEAKERpeople have released games of their own before.
56:37SPEAKERWe have people who were indie developers on different scales
56:41SPEAKERand people who worked at huge studios that you've heard of.
56:44SPEAKERAnd, you know, it's just really cool.
56:47SPEAKERSo it's a good group of people.
56:49SPEAKERVery good.
56:52SPEAKERSo I guess this is the time where we thank our patrons.
56:53SPEAKER(laughs)
56:55SPEAKER- Thank you, patrons.
56:56SPEAKERNow it feels like a regular podcast again.
56:58SPEAKER- Thanks, patrons.
57:00SPEAKERBut no, Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod
57:02SPEAKERis a 100% listener supported show.
57:05SPEAKERAnd we really appreciate everybody who,
57:08SPEAKERall of the patrons who support us
57:10SPEAKERby going to patreon.com/techpod.
57:13SPEAKERAgain, that's patreon.com/techpod.
57:18SPEAKERAnd there you can gain access
57:20SPEAKERto the fabulous Tech Pod Discord,
57:22SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful, beautiful people there.
57:24SPEAKERI was really excited to see
57:26SPEAKERthat they'd made an anacrusis looking for group channel
57:29SPEAKERthe other day, which is fun.
57:31SPEAKER- I had someone message me literally yesterday,
57:34SPEAKERjust saying, "Hey, the server rules."
57:36SPEAKERThey had just gotten help with, I think,
57:38SPEAKERsetting up an audio interface.
57:39SPEAKER- It is.
57:40SPEAKER- And yeah, it's a heartwarming community.
57:44SPEAKER- It's a good group of people.
57:47SPEAKERWe have good conversations there all the time,
57:49SPEAKERwhether it's about space stuff or cars or fixing your home
57:53SPEAKERor whatever. - Or my 66 cans of sardines.
57:56SPEAKER- Oh yeah, man, those Alabama sardines were really cheap,
58:00SPEAKERman. - Did you see that?
58:01SPEAKER- Somebody was posting pictures of your sardines
58:03SPEAKERand they were a buck a can in Alabama or some place.
58:06SPEAKERI know Louisiana.
58:06SPEAKER- Is that where those were, Alabama?
58:08SPEAKER- Alabama or Louisiana, I can't remember.
58:09SPEAKERThey were someplace in the South.
58:10SPEAKER- Look, we do what we can here.
58:12SPEAKER- Yeah. - A buck 54 can,
58:14SPEAKERthat's, you know, I feel pretty good about it.
58:16SPEAKER- That's pretty good, that's a good deal.
58:17SPEAKERI think that's a good sardine deal.
58:18SPEAKER- And I've calculated.
58:21SPEAKER- Yes.
58:21SPEAKER- If we eat a can, what was the number?
58:24SPEAKERI believe if we eat one can every 16.59 days,
58:28SPEAKERwe will eat them all before they expire.
58:31SPEAKER- So, I mean, you should, look,
58:33SPEAKERif you can't knock down a can of sardines every two weeks.
58:35SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's nothing. - It's two days.
58:36SPEAKER- It's nothing.
58:38SPEAKERI've been forbidden so far from opening my own can, however.
58:44SPEAKEREvery can, every, I mean, granted-
58:46SPEAKER- It's a Splitsky?
58:47SPEAKER- We just got the bulk shipment in like two days ago,
58:49SPEAKERto be fair.
58:50SPEAKER- Okay. - We haven't even cracked
58:50SPEAKERinto those yet, but I've never been allowed my own can.
58:52SPEAKERIt's always been a, we'll just split this.
58:55SPEAKER- So, did you ever go to Kakari, the Greek place
58:58SPEAKERdown by our old, the whiskey office on Front Street?
59:01SPEAKER- Oh, that name sounds familiar.
59:03SPEAKER- It's a fancy Greek restaurant.
59:04SPEAKERLots of times, like, people, this is totally off topic,
59:07SPEAKERand we'll get back to thanking patrons in a sec.
59:11SPEAKERThey, it's a Greek place, it's a fancy,
59:14SPEAKERit's a fancy Greek place.
59:15SPEAKERIt's like the suit and tie crowd
59:17SPEAKERfrom the financial district comes in
59:18SPEAKERand sits down there for dinner and-
59:19SPEAKER- Okay, yeah, we never want to sit down and rest
59:21SPEAKERuntil our games press lunch is go get the food
59:24SPEAKERand get back to your desk as fast as possible
59:26SPEAKERand eat it and then get back to work.
59:27SPEAKER- Oh, no, no, no, I mean, if somebody was like,
59:29SPEAKER"Hey, I wanna come, I wanna show you something.
59:31SPEAKER"Do you wanna grab dinner afterwards?"
59:33SPEAKER- Yeah, entertaining some kind of relationship, okay.
59:35SPEAKER- I feel like Jean and I also went there
59:36SPEAKERfor our anniversary or something, it's a nice,
59:38SPEAKERif you're in San Francisco, it is one of the,
59:40SPEAKERit is a very good restaurant.
59:42SPEAKERThey do a sardine there.
59:44SPEAKER- Ooh.
59:45SPEAKER- That is maybe the best sardine I've ever had.
59:47SPEAKER- Fancy sardine, how big is an actual sardine?
59:51SPEAKER- Like a big one?
59:52SPEAKER- Like a full-size sardine?
59:53SPEAKER- I don't know, like a foot probably.
59:55SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
59:56SPEAKER- It comes on a longish plate.
59:59SPEAKERThey, you can eat it bone in 'cause the bones kind of,
1:00:02SPEAKERthey're not substantial.
1:00:05SPEAKERAnd it was grilled with some stuff,
1:00:07SPEAKERlike some olives and some tomatoes and stuff inside.
1:00:10SPEAKERIt was delish.
1:00:11SPEAKER- I have, it took me longer than it should have
1:00:14SPEAKERto get here, but I have fully decided
1:00:16SPEAKERthat Mediterranean cuisine is my all-time
1:00:19SPEAKERunassailable favorite cuisine.
1:00:21SPEAKER- I think it's the best part about living
1:00:22SPEAKERin Northern California is we get all the olives
1:00:24SPEAKERand the cheese and all that stuff, yeah.
1:00:27SPEAKERAnyway, I can't eat any of that stuff, right?
1:00:29SPEAKERAnyway, I totally forgot about that, I'm so sorry.
1:00:33SPEAKERIt's okay.
1:00:34SPEAKERThank you, patrons, we really do appreciate you.
1:00:36SPEAKERAnd we, whether you can support the channel or not,
1:00:39SPEAKERwe really appreciate tweets and Discord messages
1:00:44SPEAKERand letting your friends know about the show.
1:00:46SPEAKER- Yeah, spread the word.
1:00:48SPEAKER- We especially, of course,
1:00:49SPEAKERappreciate our executive producer to your patrons,
1:00:51SPEAKERincluding Paddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Vale,
1:00:55SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, #bunnycrimes, Jacob Chappell, Joel Krauska,
1:00:59SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, David Allen, and James Cammack.
1:01:02SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:01:03SPEAKER- Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
1:01:05SPEAKERI always say thank you very meekly.
1:01:07SPEAKERI don't wanna get in the way of you reading the list
1:01:09SPEAKERand stuff, but thank you, thank you.
1:01:11SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you.
1:01:14SPEAKER- You think it's, you do emphasis on the thank or the you?
1:01:16SPEAKER- Thank you.
1:01:17SPEAKER- Thank you. - Thank you.
1:01:18SPEAKER- Thank you. - Thank you.
1:01:19SPEAKER- Thank you. - Thank you.
1:01:20SPEAKER- Okay. - Thank you.
1:01:21SPEAKER- Uh-huh. - Thank you.
1:01:22SPEAKER- Yes. - Thank you, thank you,
1:01:23SPEAKERthank you.
1:01:25SPEAKERBut that'll do it for us this week.
1:01:26SPEAKERThank you, now I'm solving it out.
1:01:30SPEAKERIt sounds weird when I say it.
1:01:31SPEAKER- You gotta stop saying it now.
1:01:32SPEAKER- What, thank you?
1:01:33SPEAKERThank you, Brad.
1:01:34SPEAKER- No, never stop saying thank you.
1:01:35SPEAKER- No.
1:01:36SPEAKERWe will be back next week with another episode
1:01:39SPEAKERof "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
1:01:40SPEAKERI hope everybody has a lovely, lovely weekend
1:01:44SPEAKERand, you know, maybe check out "The Antichrist."
1:01:47SPEAKERIt's pretty good.
1:01:47SPEAKERAll right, buddy. - You can never say
1:01:48SPEAKERthat again. (laughs)
1:01:50SPEAKER- I'm not on this show. (laughs)
1:01:54SPEAKERBye.
1:01:55SPEAKER(upbeat music)