0:00

That's the big thing we wanted

0:02

to change in the original was

0:04

make the progression more organic feeling

0:06

and less formulaic and less grindy.

0:08

And make everything matter basically, you

0:10

know. Yeah, which we did at

0:12

great cost. Hey

0:19

everybody, welcome to episode 514 of Coffee

0:21

with Butterscotch, the Game Dev Comedy

0:23

podcast of Butterscotch shenanigans. I'm Seth and

0:25

I'm the games programmer. I'm Matt

0:27

and I'm the miscellaneous programmer. I'm Sam

0:29

and I'm the artist. And this

0:31

is a show where we talk about

0:33

life, business, and working in the

0:36

games industry. Today is April 4th, 2020

0:38

vibes. And before we get started,

0:40

we have a warning that there's probably

0:42

going to be some profanity in

0:44

this show because there always is. So

0:46

be ready for that. That the

0:48

main reason. We'd also like to thank

0:50

our recurring supporters over at moneygrab

0:52

.bscotch .net. Thank you so much for

0:54

donating to help keep this podcast

0:56

going. So it is, as we're

0:59

recording this, six days to launch.

1:01

And when it comes out, one

1:03

day till launch. So I think

1:05

what we're going to do this

1:07

episode is we're going to talk

1:09

a little bit about just kind

1:11

of what's it like in the

1:13

studio right now? What's the vibe?

1:15

What's the vibe? And then we'll

1:18

take some questions from the discord,

1:20

from the Be Scotch discord, from people

1:22

about crashants 2 and kind of get

1:24

into the weeds a little bit. And

1:26

if we have any new listeners, because

1:28

we do have a link in crashants

1:30

2 that goes to the podcast. So

1:32

we're assuming that we're going to have

1:34

a little bit of an influx of

1:37

new listeners. So this is your first

1:39

time listening. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks for stopping

1:41

by. So let's talk about crashants 2.

1:43

Let's talk about the launch. Hey, guys,

1:45

feeling, what's it like? What's the vibe?

1:47

Where are you at? What is the vibe?

1:49

It's pretty good. It's what

1:51

it's cautiously optimistic as sort of

1:54

the vibe. I feel like

1:56

it's been the vibe, you know,

1:58

but the on the back. and

2:00

you know, we're always looking at

2:02

like what's what's happening to the

2:04

game on the various platforms, right?

2:07

And I think at this point,

2:09

we've kind of like we've secured

2:11

all the stuff that we really

2:13

wanted to secure as far as

2:15

the launch goes. Yeah, all three

2:18

platforms are supposedly going to be

2:20

doing some amount of feature. Yeah,

2:22

launch day. No, that's ever guaranteed

2:24

until, you know, the day happens,

2:27

but at least is all very

2:29

promising. Good, and then we did

2:31

some searching around to see, you know,

2:33

the preview embargo lifted, which internally we'd

2:35

always roughly guess was going to be

2:38

like kind of negligible because we didn't,

2:40

I don't know, preview is weird for

2:42

in the games in general. Yeah, the

2:44

preview embargo just means like they

2:46

can show some gameplay basically, but

2:48

gameplay videos are already out there because

2:50

there was a demo and stuff like

2:52

that. And so it's not really that

2:55

big of a deal for press to

2:57

be like, we're going to post a

2:59

video of gameplay. So. There's not too

3:01

many preview videos coming at least at

3:03

this point. Yeah, it's not a strong

3:05

incentive for that. Yeah, but what has

3:07

happened, sort of, in some ways I

3:09

think without us, you didn't really quite

3:11

knowing it, is we've landed on like

3:13

all of the lists for all of

3:16

the like biggest games coming out in

3:18

April, sort of five, right? Yeah, top games

3:20

of 2025. Well, and importantly, when we

3:22

were deciding on our launch date, we

3:24

were trying to find a date that

3:26

was earlier in the month. And whenever

3:28

people are like, hey, here's the top

3:30

games coming out this month. They order

3:33

them by date, usually. And so if

3:35

you're coming out toward the end of

3:37

a month, you're at the bottom of

3:39

every list and nobody sees your game.

3:41

So I think what's interesting there is

3:43

I think probably there's some interaction between

3:45

that and like what we're seeing as

3:47

far as the like, you know, unique

3:49

preview coverage for it, which is like all

3:51

of these lists come out actually, final couple

3:54

days in March, first couple days of April,

3:56

right. It's the most prominent one we've gotten

3:58

was, I think, the game ranks. Top 10,

4:00

which has like 60,000 views, I've

4:02

been on that video, which is

4:04

great. Yeah, it was like, you know,

4:07

number seven, just hanging out in

4:09

there. So I think part of

4:11

it is there's, there's already kind

4:13

of like a little machine there,

4:15

you know, picking up all the

4:17

smaller game, like all the indie

4:19

games, not the AAA stuff, to into

4:21

these lists and stuff like that.

4:23

And so we did manage to

4:25

get all those. We kind of

4:27

went all hands on deck for the

4:29

beta, which, you know, ended up

4:31

a few weeks ago, I guess.

4:33

Just about to go. Yeah. Because we

4:36

put a lot of pressure on ourselves

4:38

for the beta because it's a time

4:40

limited thing. And if something goes wrong

4:42

in the beta, you know, if a

4:44

player's saved data goes the way, if

4:47

they get stuck on a quest that

4:49

doesn't work, you know, if we have

4:51

100 beta testers and the beta runs

4:53

for a few weeks, if we lose

4:55

a bunch of testers because they got

4:58

stuck and then wandered off or the

5:00

game broke or whatever, then we

5:02

can't test the game, right? And so

5:04

we're like, okay, let's just treat the

5:06

beta as a launch. So we put

5:08

all the work in for the beta

5:11

and we were just on the grind

5:13

for that. And then once the beta

5:15

is done, the game's just in a

5:17

good spot because we constantly updated and

5:19

fixed stuff throughout the beta. And we

5:22

kind of hit this weird intermediate phase

5:24

where it's like, all right, so between

5:26

the end of the beta and the

5:28

launch, it's going to be hard to

5:30

improve the game in a meaningful way

5:33

that's low risk. Yes, right, because at

5:35

that point, yeah, because if a change

5:37

that does something interesting, then it won't

5:39

have gone through the beta testers. So

5:42

we won't have, which we did, we

5:44

did still do a few. Yeah. I

5:46

think the most notable one is the

5:49

change to being able to dynamically switch

5:51

between researching, which, oh, I totally forgot

5:53

that, that, yeah, it got in there.

5:55

Yeah, you can. Yeah, so, so the way that

5:58

it works, like you had these. these

6:00

buddies who you can have do research

6:02

for you and up until just pretty

6:04

recently once they started researching something you

6:06

couldn't have them pause that and switch

6:08

over to researching something else. Yeah which

6:10

is like which isn't that big of

6:12

a deal except that as you progress

6:15

at the game it takes longer longer

6:17

to do research you know up to

6:19

like seven minutes or something and you

6:21

got a bunch of buddies doing research

6:23

and they kind of cross like if

6:25

you finish one research from one buddy

6:27

it might unlock new research in a

6:29

different buddy and so if they're already

6:31

researching it or researching it well yeah

6:33

then you're like fuck the thing I

6:36

won is the new thing but I

6:38

can't get it because I gotta wait

6:40

until the research is done and that

6:42

was that was it We all felt

6:44

as ourselves playing the game, but we

6:46

were just like, eh, it's probably fine.

6:48

But it was like, it was like

6:50

probably the remaining complaint left in the

6:52

beta by the time we fixed like

6:55

everything else was just. Just kind of

6:57

just chipping away at like minor annoyances,

6:59

little things like that. But otherwise, it's

7:01

just kind of trying to not fuck

7:03

it up. You know, it's like, we

7:05

got all the translations in, we got

7:07

everything, it's all been. kind of locked

7:09

and loaded then for we got proper

7:11

PlayStation controller support plugged in so you

7:13

get the icons and everything because it

7:16

also wasn't wasn't there. Yeah we had

7:18

it it was just showing the Xbox

7:20

controller visuals instead and we are all

7:22

or through all of our reviews right

7:24

on every platform yep yeah we've made

7:26

it through with our yeah we have

7:28

a build all the way through reviews

7:30

that is launch ready I believe there

7:32

was there was a iOS bug that

7:34

we found yesterday even I think but

7:37

I think that would already Also might

7:39

have already made its way through review,

7:41

but even it's it's a pretty weird,

7:43

it doesn't result in like a big

7:45

problems or anything. So even if we

7:47

don't get that one in by the

7:49

time we get to launch and get

7:51

it right after launch. It's not going

7:53

to affect anything. Yeah, it makes you

7:56

like work totally ready. And so I

7:58

think it's also just, it's just, it

8:00

is weird because, you know, I mean,

8:02

it's, it's, it's different from like back

8:04

when we work. on the first Crash

8:06

Lands, which you talked about a lot

8:08

of just like kind of the chaos

8:10

of that, where we did the, we

8:12

started the beta like one month before

8:14

the launch. We ran that beta for

8:17

two weeks, got 2,200 bug reports, and

8:19

we were aggressively fixing bugs and screaming

8:21

all the way up to the minute

8:23

we launched the game, and then for

8:25

the following six weeks afterwards. And now,

8:27

like, we're better at making stable. games

8:29

and testing and we have we have

8:31

QA and all that stuff and so

8:33

the beta yeah there were there were

8:36

some bugs in the in the beta

8:38

but nothing like the volume we saw

8:40

before and now it's fine yeah I

8:42

thought that you know even with levelhead

8:44

we had we had we had either

8:46

basically game maker changes that we needed

8:48

for the actual runtimes like the engine

8:50

had yeah we had some yeah all

8:52

the way up to like I think

8:54

it's like four weeks before launch or

8:57

something it was tight it was tight

8:59

it was tight or something it was

9:01

to be two, three X. And so

9:03

we were emailing internal people at. So

9:05

they go on Xbox, Expeditis, like it

9:07

was, because Nintendo's used to, like, pre-cove

9:09

it when we were getting Level Head

9:11

ready for Nintendo. It used to like

9:13

two or three days to get through

9:16

certain, which is a lot longer than

9:18

we would like, but you know, not

9:20

bad. But once, like, beginning of COVID,

9:22

it was taking like four weeks, I

9:24

think, to, to, yeah. That's at a

9:26

company at that scale. That's a huge

9:28

change. And so trying to figure out

9:30

how do they run things through their

9:32

certification process while also developing new ways

9:34

of communicating and tracking everything. And you

9:37

know, so a lot of things are

9:39

also like all of these consoles are

9:41

just obsessive about security and access to

9:43

devices and access to their networks and

9:45

those kind of stuff. I mean, the

9:47

one like the one we can't get

9:49

into you know. all the details but

9:51

back when we were trying to put

9:53

original crash lands on PlayStation a million

9:55

years ago and we're looking into it.

9:58

Holy shit that documentation like just to

10:00

get access to stuff there was like

10:02

three networks we had to get into

10:04

and each one had like different like

10:06

a IP address that was static that

10:08

they could then like white list on

10:10

their so there was just like it

10:12

was just it's probably probably getting access

10:14

to a PlayStation is probably harder than

10:17

getting access to a nuclear silence. I

10:19

would bet. There's a lot less stress

10:21

than on just like the what I

10:23

call like that the technical rigmarole associated

10:25

with launching our game this time around

10:27

right because like got much better at

10:29

it, we're more lean on the platform

10:31

target to start with, so we're not

10:33

doing the consoles, right, which honestly takes

10:35

so much nonsense out of the equation,

10:38

it's great. And then like we said

10:40

at the top of the hour, like

10:42

the, you know, the wishos numbers are

10:44

looking good. So it's like, okay, this

10:46

seems all good, but it is weird.

10:48

It's sort of like, I think the

10:50

sensation I have is maybe something like,

10:52

like, imagine you, you're like, you run

10:54

a competitive competitive marathon. Okay, that you've

10:57

been trading for for a long time.

10:59

But you actually can't see anyone else

11:01

in the race. Right. So you're just

11:03

waiting for the scores to come up.

11:05

Yeah, and you've actually, you've crossed the

11:07

finish line, but they're like, we gotta

11:09

wait like literally weeks. Not only that

11:11

didn't even tell you how much time

11:13

it took you to finish. You know,

11:15

correct. All you know is that you've

11:18

finished and you're like, you know, you're.

11:20

tired, right, for one. You definitely worked

11:22

hard. He definitely did something. And you

11:24

know you did it vaguely, right? But

11:26

any of the results of that are

11:28

still just kind of out there. My

11:30

wow gill man. So like, so you're

11:32

coming back, come back to rate after

11:34

April 10th. I was like, here's the

11:36

deal. April 11 onward. on my calendar

11:39

is a black void. I do not

11:41

know what my life is going to

11:43

look like after that, right? Because it's

11:45

like, if things go super well, then

11:47

that changes the equation. Then it's all

11:49

about, okay, we'll probably start getting offers

11:51

to. to bring the

11:53

game to other

11:55

platforms and then we

11:58

need to think

12:00

about that, right? And

12:02

managing all that

12:04

stuff. Potentially

12:06

a patch for Crash Nets

12:08

2 to deliver some new

12:10

cool stuff. Then

12:13

there's like also thinking about what we're

12:15

doing for the next game and starting

12:17

to kind of get revved up for

12:19

all of that. And like the sort

12:21

of urgency and intensity of all of

12:23

those things is gonna be contingent on

12:25

so many uncontrollable factors, right? Yeah. And

12:27

so it's like, it's very easy sort

12:29

of a vibe, you know? We don't

12:31

know what's gonna happen. And it does

12:33

that whole like, it's not just that

12:35

it kind of dictates what comes next

12:37

and like that kind of narrow sense

12:39

of what the studio is up to.

12:41

It's literally what do our lives look

12:43

like for the rest of our lives,

12:45

right? Well, in a weird way, we

12:47

kind of know largely what's the possibility

12:49

space of what's coming next, right? It's

12:51

more just a question of wide though

12:53

in terms of like - It's more

12:55

of how is that gonna look? How

12:57

intense is that gonna be, are we

12:59

gonna be potentially like basically going on

13:01

tour, right? Cause like, for example, like

13:03

after we released the original Crashlands, we

13:05

went to stuff like PAX West cause

13:07

we got into like the PAX 10,

13:09

right? There's like all these different, suddenly

13:11

there's like the game has a bunch

13:13

of attention and we're out like promoting

13:15

it and doing interviews and talking to

13:17

people and whatever. Giving talks, trying to

13:19

strengthen the sort of brand name of

13:21

the studio by leveraging the success of

13:23

the game, which is on the one

13:25

hand just fun because we get to

13:27

meet lots of people we otherwise wouldn't

13:29

get to, but also that helps to

13:31

stabilize the future of the business with

13:33

business to business relationships. Yeah, just to

13:35

meet people. And I mean, in a

13:37

way, it's kind of like, somebody publishes

13:40

a book and they do their book

13:42

tour. It's not like they send on

13:44

that email to send the final draft

13:46

to their publisher and they're like, well

13:48

done with that. Don't have to think

13:50

about that again. Like it's a new

13:52

phase of follow up tasks basically associated

13:54

with it. And we don't know what

13:56

that's going to be. I've

13:58

been wanting it to

14:00

be just. interesting that, because on the one

14:02

hand it is, it's really nice to have this

14:05

window where we're just like, yeah, we've got to,

14:07

we've got to build ready and we have extreme

14:09

confidence that it's a solid, ready to launch. Oh,

14:11

to be cool. I very much prefer this to

14:13

ever literally every other launch. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But

14:15

it's one of those, it's like, whenever everything is

14:17

still a trade-off, right? Like I would

14:19

absolutely rather must be in the snare

14:22

than any past launch nare than any

14:24

past launch nare that we've had, launch

14:26

nare that we've had. for perseverating on

14:28

things. And also having this one where

14:30

it's like we technically could launch it

14:32

because again it's launch ready, right? But

14:35

if we, like, there are all these

14:37

things that are in motion that like

14:39

we have a date that's gotta go

14:41

out on that date, right? And so

14:43

as I'm like watching, you know, the,

14:45

the. these idiotic tariffs take effect and

14:47

I'm like we still can we make it

14:50

a week right before yeah the global economy

14:52

not collapse for just like we just need

14:54

one more week yeah and so watching this

14:56

stuff unfold and we get this like Sam

14:58

we're getting these videos of like who the

15:01

top games coming out in April whatever and

15:03

one of them was by it was a

15:05

Korean video and our game isn't in Korean

15:07

and on one hand it was cool to

15:09

be featured in there anyway another hand I

15:12

was like oh and I started thinking about

15:14

like all the languages we don't have like

15:16

was that a mistake and so there's just

15:18

there's so much room to perseverate on things

15:21

because nothing is on fire right and again

15:23

same a good problem to have I would

15:25

rather this be the set of problems that

15:27

we have yeah it's a different kind of

15:30

discipline that's required at this point right which

15:32

just to say the goal is to basically

15:34

do some of that reflecting frankly do some

15:36

of that rejuvenating work of like take a

15:39

fucking beat right and then ideally you know

15:41

think try to think some big thoughts that

15:43

aren't getting strictly into like the more negative

15:45

you know in remediation territory but just

15:47

like what could happen well yeah but

15:50

just like okay it is the annoying

15:52

thing though right of like of doing

15:54

this kind of work is that there's

15:56

no such thing as being able to

15:58

fully chill there's just unless you you

16:00

have a blockbuster that just puts infinite

16:02

money on your bank account so that

16:04

all decisions are fine, you know? Even

16:06

then you got stuff to worry about,

16:09

but like. Well, yeah, even then it's

16:11

still, I mean, it's still a case

16:13

that like every day that passes that

16:15

you're not, that you're not like working

16:17

toward something is just money burned as

16:20

a studio, right? And so, you know,

16:22

like, I won't speak about what we

16:24

are working on right now. that we're

16:26

hoping to get out in the near

16:29

future, but it's kind of a weird

16:31

state to be in because we're not

16:33

fully working on them. Like we're kind

16:35

of bouncing back and forth between a

16:37

couple different things, keeping an eye on

16:40

questions too. Making sure we play questions

16:42

every day, keep it fresh, keep it

16:44

just generally tested, you know? Be ready

16:46

to talk about it a lot, because

16:48

that's the other thing like you guys

16:51

were saying. If things go well, we're

16:53

doing. interviews for things. We're talking up

16:55

the game in various contexts. We're talking

16:57

to, you know, potential business partners about

16:59

the game and so on. Like, we

17:02

have to just pitching GDC talks. Yeah,

17:04

we just have to have our brains

17:06

fully online about the game all the

17:08

time, you know, which is also kind

17:10

of a struggle too, because there's this

17:13

like push and pull between being like,

17:15

oh, finally it's done. I want to

17:17

just be like kind of step away.

17:19

past titles I felt a lot more

17:21

like what I know kind of washed

17:24

my hands of it because it was

17:26

so stressful getting it across the finish

17:28

line. But since this one has been

17:30

we get to we get to cross

17:32

the finish line and it really chill

17:35

kind of away. It has a lot

17:37

less of that like can we can

17:39

I just do it right away because

17:41

it's gotten because there's too much fire.

17:44

Yeah I actually I still like talking

17:46

about it and also the other games

17:48

too in the past like I kind

17:50

of didn't want to play. Every day

17:52

when I'm playing crash on steel for

17:55

a couple hours, I'm like, fuck yeah,

17:57

this is this is a good game

17:59

that we made. I think that's part

18:01

of it. it's important right now, because

18:03

yeah, there's very much like a sense

18:06

of just kind of burning cash in

18:08

terms of just like, more or less

18:10

doing a variety of smaller projects that

18:12

are like somewhat related to crash ones

18:14

too tangentially related to what's happening next,

18:17

whatever. But like, I think having this

18:19

window post beta, post or internal play

18:21

throughs, where there's not anything that like,

18:23

there's only a few marketing things that

18:25

like have to be happening. And otherwise,

18:28

it's a bit more loose. Yeah. I

18:30

know for me personally like, like, like,

18:32

like, like, like, like, like, like, You

18:34

know, you kind of like love a

18:36

thing to death in the case of

18:39

like a five year, very intense, like

18:41

very fucking intense dev journey with crash

18:43

eyes too, right? And so I know

18:45

after I finished my playthrough and then

18:48

you know, we're still we were still

18:50

grinding out a bunch of stuff in

18:52

the weeks it followed and it really

18:54

wasn't until like last week where it's

18:56

like a week or two post, me

18:59

doing anything on the game where I

19:01

was interested in looking at it again.

19:03

Yeah, and like working on something else

19:05

then like getting fully into something else.

19:07

It's that same, it's like, you know,

19:10

distance makes to heart growth under is

19:12

sort of the vibe. Well, there's a

19:14

good feeling of like when you when

19:16

you play through the whole game as

19:18

the developer, start to finish and you,

19:21

you know, you beat it, you get

19:23

to the very end, you've done everything.

19:25

There's always a million, like we still

19:27

have a list of, I think, maybe

19:29

a hundred things. We should do these,

19:32

right? Because no matter, like everywhere you

19:34

look, you can find something to change.

19:36

No matter what. And so, we always

19:38

say, you know, a game is never

19:40

done, you just stop working on it

19:43

at some point. And once you play

19:45

through the whole thing and you get

19:47

that sense of closure of like, this

19:49

is a complete game. then it does

19:52

make it a lot easier to be

19:54

like, I need to stop. It's okay

19:56

to stop, to stop fiddling with this

19:58

thing. Yeah, they just let it be

20:00

what it is, you know. Yeah, so

20:03

we're feeling pretty good. It's it, like

20:05

we said, it's a little bit of

20:07

an eerie calm period, but very excited

20:09

about we're watching the wish list numbers

20:11

accelerate because, you know, we're getting more

20:14

of that exposure on steam and we're

20:16

out on the lists and everything is

20:18

just kind of set. Yeah. All right.

20:20

So these questions come from our Discord

20:22

at Discord. G. G. slash B. Scotch

20:25

slash invite slash B. Scotch. I think

20:27

is that I think that's what it

20:29

actually is. I think it's just I

20:31

think it's just slash B. Scotch. Does

20:33

that work too? And you're not. Yeah.

20:36

Oh shit. Yeah. Yep. So. We just

20:38

kind of put out a call for

20:40

questions to see if people wanted to

20:42

know about crashes too, so we'll just

20:44

kind of burn through them. And normally

20:47

if you're new to the podcast, usually

20:49

we take questions from podcast up, he's

20:51

got a shot on it. But we

20:53

got like an we got like an

20:55

upvote system so people can up what

20:58

they want to hear us talking about

21:00

what they want to hear us talking

21:02

about. So you can we got like

21:04

an upvote system so people can up

21:07

vote what they want to do. the

21:09

questions people had. So first question comes

21:11

from a pure Knicks who says which

21:13

gameplay feature required the most unexpected amount

21:15

of work to implement? Unexpected. I feel

21:18

like every single one of them had

21:20

some big nonsense in it. I do

21:22

know we were looking back at a

21:24

bunch of stuff this last week or

21:26

two and one of the ones that

21:29

Seth pointed out was our research system

21:31

which is like kind of the bedrock

21:33

of you know I don't know progression

21:35

like the whole central kind of main

21:37

artery of the game. went through, I

21:40

don't even know, like just a tremendous

21:42

number of iterations as we were trying

21:44

to figure out exactly how to both

21:46

conceptualize it ourselves, but then also like

21:48

how to have the player interact with

21:51

it. It started off as like a

21:53

tree, like a node tree basically almost

21:55

like final fantasy style. So you'd research

21:57

something and then I would unlock some

21:59

next thing and you could see it

22:02

kind of radiating outward in a big

22:04

circle. And then we had a bunch

22:06

of problems with that, which was like,

22:08

the reality was there's so many nodes

22:11

in it. I think now I don't

22:13

know how many of the insights that

22:15

are now, but there's a lot. A

22:17

lot. That even in the very beginning

22:19

of the game, whether or maybe like,

22:22

maybe 20. Very quickly a lot of

22:24

the time spent in the interface was

22:26

just trying to try to find the

22:28

nodes that you wanted to investigate. It

22:30

had two core problems. One was the

22:33

navigation, what you're talking about Sam, which

22:35

is like. It's getting lost in a

22:37

giant maze. Yeah. If you think about

22:39

it as like something that starts in

22:41

the center and you know originates outward

22:44

as you unlock more research nodes. And

22:46

that means that that your available research

22:48

will always be sort of on the

22:50

circumference of an ever expanding circle. And

22:52

so if you're panning around trying to

22:55

find what you can research, you can

22:57

never see all the options at once

22:59

because they're on opposite sides of this

23:01

giant fucking circle that keeps getting bigger.

23:03

So that was a problem. And then

23:06

the other problem was the connection of

23:08

notes, which is that this is kind

23:10

of an interesting kind of fory into

23:12

like the way that you build a

23:15

visualization or a tool kind of. constraints

23:17

how you're able to think about things.

23:19

So in the original formulation of the

23:21

research system, it was kind of, it

23:23

was just, it was isolated in the

23:26

sense that like you'd research, it was

23:28

like a tech tree, you'd research one

23:30

thing, and because you researched that, it

23:32

would open up new nodes. And it

23:34

was, so you couldn't connect a research

23:37

node to a quest or to something

23:39

else, it was like one research node

23:41

led to another. And so that meant

23:43

that we just we always had to

23:45

think about the research system sort of

23:48

as a self encapsulated thing that didn't

23:50

really talk to the rest of the

23:52

game. But they got really weird, as

23:54

you'd imagine, pretty quick, right? Because as

23:56

soon as you get to point. where

23:59

it's like, okay, we need to tether

24:01

the player's progress on the narrative side,

24:03

or even like in the world itself,

24:05

to some of the stuff that they

24:07

can research, right? So like, okay, I

24:10

come across this new thing, now I

24:12

have some new insights for it. Well,

24:14

we can't do that, right? Because it's

24:16

just, it's already in the tree when

24:18

we're talking. So it was like, it

24:21

was too decoupled, right? And because you

24:23

research something, that would open up a

24:25

quest. But the problem there is like

24:27

if you're trying to tell a story,

24:30

then having no concept of the order

24:32

in which the player will encounter things

24:34

or do things, makes it so that

24:36

you kind of can't tell a story.

24:38

Instead, you can tell like a bunch

24:41

of sort of self-contained micro stories, but

24:43

it's very hard to do, you know,

24:45

like a bigger narrative, right? So we

24:47

kind of think that about like, okay,

24:49

if research is. a method of getting

24:52

you know crafted things getting new recipes

24:54

getting new drops whatever and then quests

24:56

are a method separately because it seems

24:58

like they need to be able they

25:00

both need to be able to do

25:03

that and both can start each other

25:05

then how do we display that we'll

25:07

just yeah just first like for the

25:09

player like just to change up this

25:11

research tree thing so that you're not

25:14

hunting around a menu, you're not like

25:16

lost in a fog of, it's not

25:18

like path of exile, right, where you

25:20

got this node map that is literally

25:22

as a search bar. Just keeps growing.

25:25

Yeah, we don't want that. So okay,

25:27

so how do we change this? And

25:29

then it was, there are like three

25:31

or four iterations forward after that before

25:34

we landed on kind of the really

25:36

simple approach, which is like, we just

25:38

put in a list. what you can

25:40

research instead of spreading it out visually

25:42

across a tree. Well, and the other

25:45

aspect of the research system was one

25:47

of the ways that we tried to

25:49

to gate it by quests was research

25:51

actually took material inputs. Oh, yeah, yeah.

25:53

That was like. one of those at

25:56

sea early because that was like part

25:58

part. Yeah so the way that it

26:00

works now in the game is you

26:02

just you know you're you get a

26:04

new insight we call them insights and

26:07

you look at your list and you'll

26:09

have your different your different buddies who

26:11

can research different things and each one

26:13

will have a selection of various insights

26:15

you choose the one you want to

26:18

research and you just press the research

26:20

button you don't spend anything it just

26:22

you just say research this and then

26:24

it just takes a certain amount of

26:26

time. And they unlock each other or

26:29

they can be unlocked by quest moments

26:31

in the game. Yeah, but you don't

26:33

have to give something up to

26:35

research something. Just a little time. Well,

26:38

yeah. So in order like what we what

26:40

we did then to try to make it

26:42

so that like when it was a tree,

26:44

just because you've gained access to a node

26:46

doesn't necessarily mean that you've acquired the material.

26:48

that needs to go in to that for

26:51

the research to happen. And that was how

26:53

we were trying to gate it at that

26:55

time. But it had this really bad feeling

26:57

where the things that made the most sense

26:59

for material costs, like let's say you're unlocking

27:02

a new armor set and that armor set

27:04

is made out of a pop bark. The

27:06

thing, the material that makes the most sense

27:08

as a requirement for that research is pop

27:10

bark, right? It's like, oh yeah, let's see

27:13

if we can. Let's research if we can

27:15

use pot bark to make this arm. You

27:17

get this like bullshit double dip feeling where

27:19

you're like. It's double dip. I got to

27:21

turn in like all my bark just to

27:24

get the recipe and now I got no

27:26

bark ledge. And then you got to go

27:28

get more of it to craft the thing.

27:30

Even with the current research system, as we

27:33

all got to set up, like a lot

27:35

of the tuning of the game was just

27:37

through basically figuring out basic combinations of things

27:39

to unlock simultaneously. compound is just basically a crafted,

27:41

a crafted component that then goes into something else,

27:44

right? Which we still have in some cases. Yeah,

27:46

we occasionally have, but largely what you'll see, especially

27:48

if you unlock like a new station or something

27:50

like that, is that oftentimes a new station will

27:52

come along with at least one recipe just immediately.

27:55

You can at least see and start thinking about or

27:57

do something with. Yeah, because who cares about a workstation

27:59

if you can't? anything. Exactly. Well, you got a

28:01

chicken egg problem. There's only unlock a

28:03

new material and I spent time researching that.

28:05

And then that unlocks an insight to

28:07

use the material on something. Then there's no

28:09

reason for me to craft or care

28:11

about that material until I've researched the next

28:13

thing. Right. So it's kind of this.

28:15

And we did that kind of fine -tuning

28:17

all the way, like literally up until, you

28:19

know, a month ago, because it's like,

28:21

well, I'm including really after the beta, there

28:23

were a few little like final tweaks.

28:25

There was bunch of them actually. Yeah. Just

28:27

kind of collapsing some of those nodes

28:30

down. And so I think that research system,

28:32

the reality is like the work on

28:34

the research system, I think it had to

28:36

me probably the most sort of, the

28:38

most ripple effect into just like the overall

28:40

experience of the game while also being

28:42

simultaneously won. It was like, it's a completely

28:44

new system. It's not from the original

28:46

game. Yeah. I was going to say, actually,

28:48

I think, I think of the reason

28:50

why it was so, because in general, I

28:52

felt like, because the question is, you

28:54

know, what was like surprisingly hard, right? In

28:56

general, it kind of felt like everything

28:58

was about as hard as we expected it

29:00

to be with kind of this exception.

29:02

And I think it's actually an important point

29:04

that this was also a system that

29:06

was not in the original game. It's like

29:08

the one fully kind of new way

29:10

that the game works, right? And it didn't

29:12

have a conceptual underpinning that we were

29:14

like pulling on from the original. So even

29:16

though we had to make a lot

29:18

of false starts, I think, on figuring out

29:20

how it would fit. Well, I think

29:23

there's an important discovery element there of what

29:25

you guys were talking about from like,

29:27

from the original design of this kind of

29:29

graph that grows. And like, and what

29:31

you see in a lot of games with

29:33

these like research trees and stuff, right?

29:35

Is that a lot of why they are

29:37

so kind of hard to manage because

29:39

they're they're trying to show you all of

29:41

it all the time, right? Yeah. And

29:43

one of the things that's that crash lands

29:45

is fundamentally about is showing you stuff

29:47

when it makes sense to show you that

29:49

stuff, right? That's why you don't you

29:51

can't just peek into your inventory because who

29:53

gives a shit, right? But you can

29:55

see if you have what you need for

29:57

a recipe, right? And those early iterations

29:59

of the research tree would show you stuff

30:01

you already researched, but who cares, you

30:03

know, right? Yeah, but or they show you

30:05

stuff, you know, 700 years in the

30:07

future that you can't research also who cares,

30:09

right? And that that final end result

30:11

was like it's just the list of things you could research, right? And that's it.

30:13

And behind the scenes, there is a complex tree of things that kind of all

30:16

interact with you. That's kind of the next piece we want to get to. Because

30:18

I think there's other stuff that was surprisingly hard, but it didn't have the same

30:20

kind of lasting, like constantly working on a thing. So like build, also to work

30:22

on like build mode roofs and like calculations of buildings. We end up tweaking

30:24

in a variety of places like figuring out

30:26

better ways to do it, figuring out how

30:28

to include other kinds of things in those

30:30

calculations and it was hard to do. It

30:32

was hard to figure out building the roofs

30:34

was insane. I knew it was going to

30:36

be really hard though. So like it wasn't,

30:38

yeah, it wasn't surprising, it was hard. And

30:40

then like, there were a large variety of

30:42

like more or less stable states with it,

30:44

right? Where it's like, we would kind of

30:46

break down like certain scenarios, but it got

30:48

like work around it. Right. But that was

30:50

it works. It just works forever. Exactly. You

30:52

don't have to constantly touch it. Yeah. Yeah.

30:54

And so the research pathway to me is

30:57

like is the one. It makes sense because

30:59

it literally is like how we it's how

31:01

we drove progression through the whole game like

31:03

will of everything together. It is all woven

31:05

through that thing. So it makes sense that

31:07

it's like the hardest thing to do. Yeah,

31:09

but we had just for it. Yeah, and

31:12

for reference, kind of the way that we

31:14

delivered stuff in the original crash lands was

31:16

when you would craft a new workstation, that

31:18

would just come with probably like 10 recipes

31:20

usually, which was always like the next set

31:22

of armor, the next weapons, and then maybe

31:24

the next tool potentially. I'm trying to

31:26

remember, did it also come with the

31:28

recipes that you didn't have yet that

31:31

you then would find or like get

31:33

out in the world? It would show

31:35

sort of like blacked out. Yeah, so

31:37

yeah, so the recipe was still there.

31:39

So you're basically like unlocking kind of

31:41

puzzle pieces, right? Yeah. So as you,

31:43

so then there were, once you did

31:45

that, then there were essentially just two

31:47

ways to get more recipes. One was

31:49

pre-planned ones where we said like, this

31:51

is a recipe for a legendary item.

31:53

So it drops, you know, at a

31:55

low chance from these or whatever. Otherwise

31:57

then it was just kind of like

31:59

random drops. So we just had an

32:01

automatic algorithm in the background that said

32:03

like, if you destroy a tree, does

32:05

this tree have materials in it used

32:07

by a recipe that you don't have

32:10

yet? But you could have because you

32:12

have the station or something. So if

32:14

yes, then you just do a dice

32:16

roll and maybe you got like a

32:18

2% chance or something like that. And

32:20

sometimes just a recipe pops out. I

32:22

got a bean bag. That's sort of

32:25

like the time. So that made it

32:27

real easy for us at the time

32:29

because we didn't have to plan when

32:31

somebody would get the bean bag chair.

32:33

they just would get it at some

32:35

point. Right. And that was useful. It

32:37

meant that sometimes you would unlock stuff

32:39

in a weird order, just random. Well,

32:42

it's also the case that like the

32:44

reality was that most of just the

32:46

vast majority of the stuff actually in

32:48

the original crash lands didn't matter in

32:50

the sense of progression, where it was

32:52

like, you didn't, the only things that

32:54

really matter were like station, next tool,

32:57

and even then the reason they were

32:59

the reason they matter is because they

33:01

were hard. locked right is like you

33:03

couldn't use a low level saw on

33:05

the next thing so there's no yeah

33:07

you can't the environment to get things

33:09

exactly so there's just no way to

33:12

get those things unless you had the

33:14

very next there's very like a lock

33:16

and key approach right yeah and that's

33:18

a big part of the reason why

33:20

the original game I think has that

33:22

it just doesn't keep opening up It's

33:24

why we were able to make it

33:27

so much faster because like it it

33:29

has it's like a similar I think

33:31

like number of things but most of

33:33

them would just kind of exist like

33:35

they like The decorations for your base

33:37

they don't talk to any system like

33:39

you just you get the recipe you

33:41

make your your bubble machine or your

33:44

beanbag chair and nothing requires it nothing

33:46

talks to it it's not hooked in

33:48

it's not integrated it's just there right

33:50

yeah good questions too even even even

33:52

items that go into your base They

33:54

are connected to quests and stories and

33:56

stuff like that. So everything is like,

33:59

I mean, we've said this a million

34:01

times, but like almost all the hard

34:03

parts in games are integration challenges. Yeah.

34:05

And question to see what happened to

34:07

me by that is just. Yeah, we

34:09

happened to make a thing that was

34:11

like, Mike, just like the most. intense

34:14

weaving exercise, no demand. Just like. Well,

34:16

it's that if you want, if you

34:18

want any given item to matter, then

34:20

that means it has to be connected

34:22

somehow to meaningful things going on in

34:24

the game. And most things in crashes

34:26

to matter. At least somehow, right. Yeah.

34:28

And in the original crashes, most things

34:31

didn't really matter. And so it was

34:33

easy for us to make a lot

34:35

of them. and just kind of let

34:37

the chips fall where they may really.

34:39

If you just keep chabbing out trees

34:41

eventually you'll get all the recipes for

34:43

the sawmill. You don't need any of

34:46

them because who gives the shit? Yeah,

34:48

but you're attacking creatures. You're going to

34:50

get some eggs. You're just going to

34:52

get an egg. You can build a

34:54

base, but that's like a big thing.

34:56

Actually, it's not even a base. It's

34:58

literally just... Just disconnected floors and balls

35:01

actually encode like it doesn't know that

35:03

it's a base. Yeah, it's just stuff.

35:05

Just a base in your mind. So

35:07

yeah, so with the with the deep

35:09

integration that everything has in in questions

35:11

too, yeah, that meant that like how

35:13

the insights worked was a huge, huge

35:15

undertaking. And then we also have this

35:18

comfort system which, which gets to another

35:20

question that somebody had, uh, so I'll

35:22

just. So this is a question asked

35:24

by Morful, who said, I think you

35:26

mentioned that building in Crash Hents 2

35:28

is not only for aesthetic purposes, that

35:30

it serves an actual gameplay purpose. Could

35:33

you elaborate on that? How did you

35:35

balance buildings that is meaningful from a

35:37

gameplay perspective, but also leaves enough freedom

35:39

for customization? So this is then where

35:41

the comforts system comes in, which is

35:43

the other completely new thing in Crashions

35:45

2 that didn't exist before, which is

35:48

that as you, as you recruit. companions.

35:50

You know, you made these different characters

35:52

and they joined your base basically. And

35:54

each one of them has their own

35:56

story and their own questline and personality

35:58

and all these different characteristics, which means

36:00

that you can't just like throw them

36:03

at a closet. Yeah. They're not a

36:05

workstation. We didn't want them to feel

36:07

like a workstation. You know what I

36:09

mean? Where they're just like. Yeah, they're

36:11

people. And so they have things that

36:13

they want in their space. Maybe like

36:15

one of them wants a certain type

36:17

of a workstation. Maybe one of them

36:20

is really interested in companionship. And so

36:22

they want to have like a space

36:24

that's set up for socializing. You know,

36:26

so it's like, oh yeah, well, like

36:28

a big table with like a bunch

36:30

of chairs around it in case that

36:32

would like, you know, you know, And

36:35

so the base building then is you

36:37

basically kind of like as you unlock

36:39

all these different recipes for decor items

36:41

and stuff, you can just craft them

36:43

as you like, but. a lot of

36:45

times your companions will specifically ask for

36:47

some of those things in their space

36:50

and in many cases for you to

36:52

arrange those items in certain ways or

36:54

to like have certain relationships. So it's

36:56

kind of like a nice meeting of

36:58

like your companions will ask for specific

37:00

things that if you want them to

37:02

research faster or to advance their stories,

37:04

then you meet those comfort requirements. But

37:07

then you also have lots of stuff.

37:09

that you've unlocked that your companions maybe

37:11

don't ask for, you know, different styles

37:13

of things and things like that. And

37:15

you're free to build your base, sort

37:17

of like around all of those constraints

37:19

as you like. I guess the way

37:22

I think about it, like the constraints

37:24

aren't, so especially in the early game,

37:26

they aren't particularly onerous, right? Like the

37:28

whole goal with it was like, I

37:30

want a big room. Exactly. It can

37:32

be whatever shape you want. It just

37:34

needs to be a certain flight. It's

37:37

big. Yeah, like, you know, footprint. And

37:39

so there's, there's a bunch of those

37:41

that are, they're vague where it's like,

37:43

we have, we have a tag system

37:45

in the back where it's like, someone

37:47

might be, might say something like, I

37:49

want some tables in my room, like

37:51

Seth mentioned. There's a bunch of things

37:54

that are tables. So, yeah, so you

37:56

can just pick one that you like.

37:58

far to go in terms of that

38:00

specificity because it was more and more

38:02

likely basically that as you went deeper

38:04

in the game that you kind of

38:06

already had set up some maybe some

38:09

of those items in a way that

38:11

the comfort were just like auto complete

38:13

basically you know because it would be

38:15

hilarious yeah buddy would be like I

38:17

really want like three of this type

38:19

of a light and then you already

38:21

had that so as soon as they

38:24

ask you for it they're like so

38:26

anyway thanks a lot that really helps

38:28

a bit more about arrangement of specifics,

38:30

right? Because we had to have some

38:32

way of being like a pretty sure,

38:34

there's like very very low odds that

38:36

someone has already done this this way,

38:38

right? In this particular configuration. And so

38:40

we found those like, it was definitely,

38:42

it was definitely a concern of ours

38:44

with the original conception. But we knew we

38:46

wanted to do this with the buddies, those whole

38:49

idea, like you bring the buddies in your base,

38:51

they do research for you, and you provide comforts

38:53

for them in your base. That was like the

38:55

high level design thesis design thesis of a

38:57

thesis, expiration we did is basically how far

39:00

we needed to push it or how specific

39:02

we needed to be on those comforts. What

39:04

we largely found is, is as soon as

39:06

you provide just like a reason. Like a

39:08

lot of the comforts are one or two

39:10

things. It's like, oh, it's a barrel's in

39:13

my room. That's it. Just wants the barrels,

39:15

right? A lot of people need barrels for

39:17

a lot of different reasons. I mean, because

39:19

you got to have a storage. You need

39:21

storage. the what we saw then as far

39:24

as the results is like if it's usually

39:26

just you know a craft or two typically of

39:28

an item one the items don't cost too much

39:30

and then two all we were trying to do

39:32

really was like essentially just jumpstart people's own creativity

39:34

in space right which is to say hey you're

39:36

already you really need to build this thing and

39:38

it's actually it's not too hard so yeah this

39:40

person asked for like two barrels and while you're

39:42

at it you're like well I'm gonna arrange these

39:45

because I'm a person, you know, so I need

39:47

like almost set him up and then I think

39:49

about him like, oh well, sometimes. But you may

39:51

not care and that's fine. You could just throw

39:53

it in the room and yeah, you may not

39:55

move on, you know. So it has enough flexibility

39:57

in it where it's like it's not, it's

39:59

just not. Yeah, good. Because we also

40:01

use this system for pets. Yes. So

40:03

pet egg hatching requires incubation. And this

40:06

one's a little bit more temporary. Yeah.

40:08

So for every single egg, every egg

40:10

has some environment that you need to

40:12

sort of cultivate for it so that

40:15

it can hatch. So, you know, I

40:17

think then it might be like a

40:19

noisy like put stations near me. Yeah,

40:21

this egg should be in a room

40:24

with like with people and workstations because

40:26

it's like it responds to. energy you

40:28

know and so but once it hatches

40:31

then it's you can put you can

40:33

put the hatched pet wherever you want

40:35

it it doesn't really matter but but

40:37

to get the egg hatched there's a

40:40

certain set of circumstances you need to

40:42

create using the base building system and

40:44

all that is kind of connected to

40:46

how like like Sam was saying one

40:49

of the early challenges was like in

40:51

the original crash lands the game didn't

40:53

have a concept of a building or

40:55

a base it's just there's just stuff

40:58

that you just And in questions too,

41:00

if we wanted to make this system

41:02

work, then we had, the game has

41:04

to know what a building is and

41:07

what a room is. It has to

41:09

know the relationships of the items within

41:11

that room, how many there are, you

41:13

know, so if a buddy says, hey,

41:16

I want like a cooking area that

41:18

has like a spice rack next to

41:20

it, then the game has to know

41:22

what's in like that those two items

41:25

are in that room and that they

41:27

are adjacent to each other. And so,

41:29

yeah, what's a room is, yeah, yeah,

41:32

what's a room? Yeah, how do you

41:34

know, how do you know, how do

41:36

you know these things? And so figuring

41:38

that out in an optimized way was

41:41

definitely a challenge. But again, like once

41:43

we have that tally and relationship system

41:45

in that it's done, and then it's

41:47

all like using it to create these

41:50

comforts and requirements and stuff like that.

41:52

So then on the on the back

41:54

end to manage all this complexity, you

41:56

know, I mean, I mean, And like

41:59

actually where all of it sort of

42:01

everything circles back to and originates from

42:03

certainly like when we start out with

42:05

the design because Again, as we're talking

42:08

about, that's a new system. You don't

42:10

think about like putting a new system

42:12

at the heart of the thing, right?

42:14

Because it doesn't seem correct, so to

42:17

speak. But like, the- Well, yeah, we

42:19

kind of, we tried not to in

42:21

a bunch of ways, but it just

42:24

kept ending up there. There's an important

42:26

note there, which is in the original,

42:28

we had tried something like there. think

42:30

it's like you could pick from a

42:33

little blue science balls would pop out

42:35

of stuff. We had well we had

42:37

we had like we had like several

42:39

levels this is also why the why

42:42

the original game even had the compendium

42:44

which eventually just turned into like a

42:46

wiki basically but originally it was that

42:48

you would you had like bronze silver

42:51

and gold sort of like knowledge about

42:53

something but again it's a chicken egg

42:55

problem because if you Don't have any

42:57

use for the materials that a whomp

43:00

it drops then the way and if

43:02

the way that you would unlock a

43:04

batch of recipes is by killing a

43:06

bunch of whompets to get your science

43:09

points, right? Then you're just running around

43:11

killing whompets in a one-dimensional purpose, which

43:13

is like I'm just getting science points

43:16

and I hope I hope that there's

43:18

something useful that I get from reaching

43:20

bronze level knowledge or whatever and so

43:22

you would have to go out and

43:25

do this do this kind of like

43:27

grind for an unknown reason it wasn't

43:29

good I guess it did feel good

43:31

I think we cut that in the

43:34

first like six months of crash lands

43:36

yeah it was like we always wanted

43:38

some other it was clear we needed

43:40

some other mechanism right for delivering progression

43:43

other than just question random bullshit right

43:45

because it was just not quite you

43:47

know I think after the first year

43:49

where we were still only two tiers

43:52

by two levels of content in. So

43:54

if you're playing the game currently. It's

43:56

basically we only made it through stone

43:58

stuff. We had stone armor, we had

44:01

a stone station. And conceptualizing how to

44:03

put everything together going forward became completely

44:05

impossible. Like we couldn't think about all

44:08

of this interrelatedness because quests for opening

44:10

comforts, comforts for opening insights and other

44:12

quests, insights themselves are opening quests. Everything

44:14

was just talking to each of these

44:17

three progression systems could unlock each other.

44:19

And every time we tried to simplify

44:21

it, or we were like, okay, let's

44:23

just not do it, then it immediately

44:26

felt kind of grindy or rote in

44:28

that particular, whatever that avenue was that

44:30

we did, or it was separated in

44:32

some way where it didn't let us,

44:35

you know, deliver like a more epic

44:37

full experience of you adventuring and like

44:39

a growing programming. Probably a way to

44:41

think about it is that. Like in

44:44

the original game, there's an obvious formula,

44:46

right? You make a station and that

44:48

unlocks this batch of types of recipes

44:50

and then what, you know, your goal

44:53

is, all right, I need to craft

44:55

the next station. And then that unlocks

44:57

the next batch, right? And so it's

45:00

station station station. Which is also why

45:02

like we would see this kind of

45:04

fall off around, around when people get

45:06

to act two and people got to

45:09

the bog, where at that point they

45:11

had been through that loop. six times

45:13

in the Savannah and like station armor

45:15

weapons blah blah blah and then you

45:18

get to the east of the bug

45:20

and now you're weak because you're in

45:22

a whole new zone so you're now

45:24

the weakest thing around and once you

45:27

let you say okay Now I just

45:29

got to do this again, like you're

45:31

going to craft the station and craft

45:33

that point, right? It's like knowing exactly

45:36

what you got to do to get

45:38

a reward is not. And then you

45:40

just go through it. And so what

45:42

makes the big change in crash ends

45:45

too, which also kind of gets to

45:47

the question from glorious cashew, who asked

45:49

if you could only change one thing

45:52

about the original crash lands, what would

45:54

it be? And how did you address

45:56

that the sequel? The most consistent negative

45:58

commentary we got was the girl. grindiness.

46:01

People are just like, yeah, it just

46:03

kind of turns into a grind, you

46:05

know. And we talked in the past

46:07

about how we tried to tweak different

46:09

things about the crafting formulas and drop

46:11

rates and stuff. But at the end

46:13

of the day, it's a system's problem,

46:16

which is, you know, once you can

46:18

kind of forecast the time for something,

46:20

and you know that it's just a

46:22

matter of time, right? You're like, yep,

46:24

it takes about this much time to

46:26

work through this tier, just like it

46:29

last tier. you just kind of go

46:31

through the motions. So in questions too,

46:33

the fact that we've got insights, quests,

46:35

and comforts, and that none of them

46:37

are, as far as what the player

46:39

can see, none of them are obviously...

46:41

connected in a repeating way, right?

46:44

Like you do a quest and you

46:46

don't know whether that quest is going

46:48

to give you, that's going to open

46:50

up a new comfort or a new

46:52

set of insights. When you complete an

46:54

insight, you don't know if that's going

46:56

to open up a new comfort or

46:59

a new quest chain, right? Like, you

47:01

just do what seems interesting to you,

47:03

and stuff just happens as a result

47:05

of this, right? Yeah. And it all

47:07

happens in a... Like in retrospect in

47:09

an obvious way, like oh yeah I

47:11

did this and so this next thing

47:13

happened but you didn't know that that

47:16

next thing was going to happen. Yes.

47:18

And so it feels much more organic

47:20

and kind of natural and less video

47:22

gamey and less of a grind, but

47:24

it also means that like from our

47:26

end trying to design those systems and

47:28

plan out for us to understand how

47:31

the progression of the game works, fucking

47:33

hard. Yeah, so this progression map is

47:35

what I do when I give said

47:37

big kudos, because we had this problem

47:39

and I was like, I literally, I

47:41

cannot think about what this next chain

47:43

of insights is gonna do. I was

47:46

like, I couldn't, I can't visualize. It

47:48

was a possible when the scale was

47:50

small. And the scale is going to

47:52

get really big, right? Yes, it was.

47:54

Yeah, I think we just started doing

47:57

like Quest integration stuff and it was

47:59

just, there's. this other layer all of a

48:01

sudden, because we didn't have a quest until

48:03

like a year and a half in, right?

48:05

So that was as soon as that other

48:07

layer showed up, then it was just like,

48:09

okay, we need to reweave all the stuff

48:12

back together that we already have. And then

48:14

going forward, plot it all. And it was

48:16

like easy to reweave the things that already

48:18

existed and already had been laid out, but

48:20

then like forecasting forward just was impossible. So.

48:22

I don't know where you got the idea,

48:24

but we ended up building this progression map,

48:26

and it makes me feel like a red-string

48:28

conspiracy theorist in a basement, sort of a

48:31

five, where it's like... Yeah, well, I got

48:33

this idea because I was trying to use

48:35

mermaid, which is a Markdown tour? Mermaid J.S.

48:37

It's actually not specifically a markdown, it's basically

48:39

a markup language, its own language called mermaid.

48:41

that basically just you just write in plain

48:44

text there's just like a way of writing

48:46

that represents some kind of a graph or

48:48

a workflow or a chart. It's like a

48:50

flow chart. Which it's just there's like what

48:52

leads to what right? Yeah you just like

48:54

write it all out and then there's an

48:57

engine that you can run that through that

48:59

will convert it into a cool little HTML document

49:01

that has it or an SB or a P&G

49:03

or whatever. Yeah. So, well, so first, first, my

49:05

first move was like, all right, well, there are

49:07

already things out there like mermaids that show how

49:09

to connect you. Yeah, we did actually start making

49:11

some tools that like suck the data out and

49:13

tried to make mermaid graphs. Yeah, we were talking

49:15

about like things like Neo4J, which is a graph

49:17

database. We were like, can we pull the data

49:19

out of here and put it in this database

49:21

so we can look at it? Yeah. There were

49:23

a whole bunch of things we're trying to figure

49:25

out how to figure out how to figure out

49:27

how to figure out how to figure out how

49:29

to figure out how to figure out

49:31

how to figure out how to figure

49:33

out how to just one of the

49:36

hardest problems out there. And there are

49:38

lots of good tools to help you

49:40

do it, right? But none of them

49:42

necessarily specifically help with our specific problem

49:45

related to this. Yeah. So the problem

49:47

there was twofold. One is that in

49:49

these tools, oftentimes you don't have that

49:51

much control over the layout of it.

49:54

It'll just kind of decide where things

49:56

are going to go based on how

49:58

they kind of fit. That's kind of

50:00

their point, right? Is that if you

50:03

have to make those decisions, then now

50:05

you're doing that. I said, yeah. And

50:07

then the second problem is they showed

50:09

they showed all connections at all times.

50:11

And what we found was that in

50:14

this system, let's say you've got like,

50:16

I'll just use the pop bark reference

50:18

again. Let's you got this item called

50:20

pop bark and it's used in 25

50:23

different recipes. all over the place. And

50:25

that's true of every, everything. Yeah, it

50:27

was like every material. Yeah. So yeah,

50:29

so you'll pop up in this flow

50:31

chart and you're just like, this is

50:34

just, this is just a ball spaghetti.

50:36

Yeah, you're like, I'm back in hell,

50:38

but now I can see it and

50:40

the flames. Do we ever do edges

50:42

count just like count the number of

50:45

connections between things? Just so we had,

50:47

mostly for fun. Oh God. Just to

50:49

see what number is. We should do

50:51

that. It's going to be in the

50:53

hundreds of thousands. That's going to be

50:56

a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So,

50:58

so we ended up doing then was

51:00

came up with our own visualizer for

51:02

this, which we just called a progression

51:04

map, where it's all about first establishing

51:06

dependency chains, which is to say like,

51:09

okay, if this quest asks for this,

51:11

this item, then the quest is dependent

51:13

on that item. So. we're going to

51:15

move it to the right of that

51:17

item. Yeah. So, and if you follow

51:19

those dependency chains back, then you can

51:22

essentially just come up with a number,

51:24

which we would call it the tier

51:26

of that, T-I-E-R, or you can think

51:28

of it as the depth or whatever.

51:30

It's just like how far in to

51:32

the progression map is it. So we

51:34

then we then just sort everything by

51:37

tier and. just arrange it left to

51:39

right in in columns so so you

51:41

can actually like the goals make it

51:43

so you could essentially by walking left

51:45

to right and following connections that you

51:47

can toggle on and off yeah poorly

51:50

it doesn't show connections at the outset

51:52

you can click on any given node

51:54

and see what specifically that yes like

51:56

so you don't know why something is

51:58

in tier 17 right Right. But you

52:00

can click and then open up the connections

52:02

and follow it back. Yeah. So then you

52:04

could, on the design side, you could basically

52:06

walk mentally, right? Start at the beginning. You

52:09

see the crash landing. You see what resources

52:11

are available to flux because she can slap

52:13

them, right? Or they're just on the ground.

52:15

So you could see them immediately there in

52:17

Tier 2. tier three, you see the conversation

52:19

with, we're all about getting ratio as well

52:21

as the items dropped by those things that

52:23

you can slap because you can slap them,

52:25

right? So yeah, what basically what components you

52:27

might have available at that time, etc. You

52:29

then see the result of that quest,

52:31

which be getting the racetti for the

52:33

first time, then you see the popwood

52:36

tree, because now you can actually collect

52:38

stuff from the popwood tree, but you

52:40

also see other resources, right, that like,

52:42

technically would become available at that time.

52:44

So there's like, manual moving of things

52:47

around to better reflect what you could

52:49

sort of like the average play experience,

52:51

even if technically they might be open

52:53

earlier. Because there's some which is like,

52:55

for example, there are plants and trees

52:57

in Act 2 that technically you could

53:00

chop down with the Rachete, which is

53:02

the first chopper you get. But because

53:04

of Quest Gates and stuff, you can't

53:06

get to that region until you've done

53:08

some stuff. So those are those cases

53:11

we manually. Create dependencies so that it

53:13

gets updated into the correct place in

53:15

the in the progression map right so

53:17

then by using that tool then we're

53:19

able to walk through and I think

53:21

it's like 200 Fucking tears deep at

53:24

this point. We're talking like a dozen

53:26

plus things oftentimes like in in one

53:28

of those columns in those years so

53:30

180 there's how many how many research

53:32

how many insights are there I have

53:35

no I actually don't know the account

53:37

several there's several hundred I want to

53:39

say there's I want to say there's

53:42

four or 500, but I can't remember.

53:44

And then similar number of recipes, and

53:46

then there's like 1100 quests, and then

53:49

there's pets, there's creatures, pets, there's all

53:51

the components, everything. There's all the comforts,

53:53

there's boss fights, there, yeah. So all

53:56

of it, all of it is in

53:58

there in this progression map. It's only

54:00

the only reason we could build the rest

54:02

of the thing because it was impossible at

54:04

that time to figure out how it is.

54:07

Yeah, well, and the other problem is loops.

54:09

The loops. Right, which is like, if you,

54:11

if you're making a game with this level

54:13

of complexity where anything can kind of unlock

54:15

anything, then it, unless you have some way

54:17

to check for this, it can be very

54:20

easy to make a quest that's like, oh

54:22

yeah, this quest needs this item, but you

54:24

don't realize that, you know, 10 layers, That

54:26

like that same item said and needed that

54:28

quest or yeah Yeah, yeah, somehow you create

54:30

like a circular relationship somewhere Because the

54:33

circle right because the circle is it

54:35

to be like the direct one right

54:37

where it's like oh, this says it

54:39

requires that but that said it required

54:41

the same thing It can be really

54:43

Yeah, you can create a loop. That's

54:45

like you'd have to explore like 20

54:47

levels deep before you're like, oh shit,

54:49

that's also over here, right? So yeah,

54:51

so it has to be fully discoverable

54:53

that you've made a circular relationship between

54:55

things. Yeah, so this is part of

54:57

our validation process where whenever when we

54:59

are composing that progression map, which when I

55:01

say that like when the game is composing

55:03

that progression map on its own, it does

55:06

loop checking to try to figure out like,

55:08

is there. Did you? I mean, because the

55:10

thing is, if there's a loop, then the

55:12

progression map cannot be composed. Yeah, it's broken.

55:14

Because, because now we don't, like, if something

55:16

is supposed to come both before and after

55:18

something else, then we don't know where that

55:21

goes, which means we also don't know where

55:23

the other thing goes, which means we don't

55:25

know where the things go that depend on

55:27

that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et

55:29

cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

55:31

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et

55:34

cetera, anywhere kind of exercise have it

55:36

sort of exercises itself out of the

55:38

whole system right so that it doesn't

55:41

have a story anymore yeah and since

55:43

everything is so connected then even if

55:45

you got a tiny loop where it's

55:47

just like literally the simplest case you

55:50

know which is like two things next

55:52

to each other that you know but

55:54

one requires the other and vice versa

55:57

if any other thing in the tree

55:59

is connected anything in the tree. Yeah,

56:01

it's a sort of thing we're like,

56:03

I think we didn't, again, we didn't

56:05

know that was gonna be all, like

56:08

all that stuff was gonna be the

56:10

result of those changes to, again, just

56:12

saying, like, we want base building to

56:14

matter, so we want, and we want

56:16

this, like, other, this research tree way

56:19

of getting stuff to be able to

56:21

support the whole game, right? I guess

56:23

the best way I could put it

56:25

is non-linearizing or parallelizing the progression tracks

56:27

because like you said in the first

56:30

game you'd get your materials, you get

56:32

your station, that opens up the next

56:34

set of materials and the next station,

56:36

next set of materials, next station. Once

56:38

you no longer have a one-dimensional track

56:40

like that you've got three or four

56:43

different ways of progressing that can happen

56:45

in parallel with each other. Boy. Yeah,

56:47

I mean, it's a lot. It's so

56:49

much. It's so much to think about.

56:51

And honestly, it really makes me want

56:54

to kind of, kind of peer behind

56:56

the hood of, like, when I think

56:58

about a game, like, wow, that has

57:00

all these different professions systems and currencies

57:02

and all these different items and stuff,

57:05

it's like, how do they think about

57:07

that? You know? And in a lot

57:09

of ways, they do simplify. progression tracks

57:11

into that more kind of like linear

57:13

way. But yeah, it's even at a

57:15

game, like, because Crescion's too is the

57:18

biggest thing, like it's the most complicated,

57:20

biggest game we've ever made, but it

57:22

isn't as big as a grand theft

57:24

auto, which is orders of magnitude larger.

57:26

Like, how does that work? Depending on

57:29

how the systems work, right? It's like,

57:31

because you can have like, you can

57:33

have a bunch of progression tracks, but

57:35

that are. largely parallel, right? If you

57:37

just don't be able to talk to

57:40

each other. If you do a couple

57:42

stuff that you can kind of go

57:44

as big as you want and it's

57:46

fine. That's true. Yeah. So I think

57:48

it's the trick is like when you're

57:50

making like a big RPG, especially as

57:53

students. you start being like, there's crafting

57:55

too. Oh boy, better buckle in, because

57:57

there's gonna be, even just with those

57:59

two things, even if you don't got

58:01

buddies, you don't got research, just figure

58:04

out how to visualize that thing, because

58:06

that'll, that'll make or break you, by

58:08

the end of death, I think. Yeah,

58:10

you just need good tools. There's, yep.

58:12

There's no possibility otherwise. Like, that's like,

58:15

I think what the questions do, too

58:17

much of it, to build it. we

58:19

had to we had to make those

58:21

things because it would have been if

58:23

Sam was a force it with pencil

58:25

and paper trying to be like okay

58:28

where the fuck was this recipe in

58:30

the like and try to like mentally

58:32

work through like just impossible can't do

58:34

it yes that's I mean that's that's

58:36

the big thing we wanted to change

58:39

in the original was make make the

58:41

progression more organic feeling and less formulaic

58:43

and less grindy and make everything matter

58:45

basically you know yeah which we did

58:47

At great cost. Yeah. After these five

58:50

years, my whole soul and body are

58:52

charred on all sides. Like a nice

58:54

burnt end. This is why I got

58:56

to relax in this void space before

58:58

the launch, you know, because we've got

59:00

a, I don't know, like deflaked the

59:03

burns on the outside of the body.

59:05

Yeah. And honestly, though, like, so in

59:07

around November, I told my Wow Guild

59:09

that I had to step away from

59:11

raiding to... get questions to wrapped up.

59:14

And it actually didn't have that much

59:16

to do with time. It had a

59:18

lot more to do with brain. Yeah.

59:20

Yeah. Which is like having a hobby

59:22

like, wow, means like once I'm done

59:25

with work, then my mental energy shifts

59:27

over to solving a whole bunch of

59:29

really complicated problems in this in this

59:31

game, right? Like guilt organization stuff, reviewing

59:33

logs for boss fights, blah, blah, blah.

59:36

And that means that like your brain

59:38

doesn't have, if you do as stuff

59:40

like that, if you do as stuff

59:42

like that. then your brain doesn't really

59:44

have the capacity to be sort of

59:46

like... passively churning on other problems, because

59:49

you're just feeding it new problems, right,

59:51

in a different context. And so I

59:53

felt like I needed, like crisis two

59:55

is complex enough that yeah, I just,

59:57

I needed that extra mental space to

1:00:00

be able to let things churn, and

1:00:02

I just couldn't do it otherwise, you

1:00:04

know. So I mean, I feel like

1:00:06

it worked. And the jury's out. We'll

1:00:08

see what players. I guess the thing

1:00:11

is like, it feels like it worked

1:00:13

building it, but yeah, did it work

1:00:15

in that big, big question mark sense?

1:00:17

Like, does anybody care? Well, we'll find

1:00:19

out. Yeah, was it worth it to

1:00:21

solve the problem? Yeah, was it worth

1:00:24

it? Was it worth it? Was it

1:00:26

worth it? We made our thing really

1:00:28

hard for ourselves, and then we solved

1:00:30

it. It's like, but did... But didn't

1:00:32

nobody actually care? Did you have done

1:00:35

that? Yeah. All they care about is,

1:00:37

is it fun? Yeah, did they like

1:00:39

it? And that's, that's just it. Yeah.

1:00:41

So, I think we'll probably have to

1:00:43

wrap there, because we got a whole

1:00:46

bunch of other stuff we gotta take

1:00:48

care of today. But once again, welcome

1:00:50

to all of our new, all of

1:00:52

our new listeners from, from the Crash

1:00:54

Oins 2 launch. And yeah, so we'd

1:00:56

like to thank our producers Fatbard and

1:00:59

Sopter Costa for putting this podcast together.

1:01:01

And thanks to our community moderators who

1:01:03

keep our Discord running to get more

1:01:05

involved in the Butterscotch community. You can

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just go to podcast.bscotch.net where we have

1:01:10

links to the Discord, a way for

1:01:12

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1:01:14

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because when this episode comes out, it's

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buy it and please wish, or please

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leave a review, because that helps drive

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life blood. Yeah. Yeah, you you

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could just don't

1:01:45

worry about you worry

1:01:47

a piece of paper

1:01:49

You write you know, a

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piece of paper, burn it, you know?

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You show us that. Just

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on over just buy Play

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appreciate all those thank

1:02:22

you all for listening.

1:02:24

us out a see you

1:02:26

next week it.

1:02:30

Oh