Guild Chat - Episode 37
Guild Chat - Episode 37
- Title
- Super Adventure Chat
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Josh Foreman
Maclaine Diemer
Dustin Branscum - Date
- April 1, 2016
- Official video
- YouTube
The 37th episode of Guild Chat aired on April 1, 2016.
"Join host Rubi Bayer and developer guest Josh Foreman, along with fan composer ItStartsAtDusk. This week's episode will feature a festival dedicated to Tyria's favorite—and only—virtual reality bouncing simulator, the Super Adventure Box!"
Summary[edit]
Transcription[edit]
Introduction (0:27)[edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hey everybody. Happy friday and welcome back to Super Adventure Chat. We are going to call everything "Super Adventure" today. I am your host Rubi and we are going to talk about Super Adventure Box today, of course and some of the music in it. With me today is. I wanted to call you Super Adventure Environment Design Specialist Josh Foreman, but there was no room. So, I am sorry if.
Josh Foreman: Super Design Specialist Box Art.
Rubi: Well, you just keep taking all the words and moving them around until satisfied.
Josh: Yes.
Rubi: But there still wasn't room, so you just kept your title.
Josh: Okay. I can live with that.
Rubi: Alright. So Josh is hanging around with us today. I appreciate you taking some time off. I know you have a lot to do. So.
Josh: I know.
Rubi: We have stolen hours of your time.
Josh: You know. We are still building creatures for Super Adventure Box. We make them all out of legos and we 3D scan those in. And that takes a long time.
Rubi: That's valid. You should get Stefan to help. I mean, he put that whole thing together, when we were scared that he would not make it.
Josh: He is making the levels like a million times bigger than that. So many legos.
Rubi: He was working in super fast forward.
Josh: True.
Rubi: Alright. Before we start I want to talk about your bee-dog lamp here. Cause.
Josh: My bee-dog lamp.
Rubi: You made the thing. It is amazing.
Josh: I made a thing.
Rubi: Alright. How did you do it?
Josh: Oh.
Rubi: You don't have to give the comprehensive thing. You can give like a really short breakdown.
Josh: Well, it's a 3D print. And so I took the game asset that was made by Jeff Webber and messed with it a bunch and exported that and submitted it to Shapeways.com. They were able to print out the pieces and sent it back and then I assembled it and wired up with a light and all that stuff.
Rubi: Nice. Alright, so are you keeping this for your very own?
Josh: Well, I made several copies for the core team members and
Rubi: Very sweet of you.
Josh: I made one extra to give away. Yes.
Rubi: Give away to?
Josh: To anyone and everyone. Anyone who goes to my YouTube channel or either subscribes or shares it, so. Yeah.
Rubi: Alright. So one of you guys can win the bee-dog lamp for your very own.
Josh: Are we going to show a close up of the bee dog lamp?
Rubi: Yeah, let's take a, take a close look at that.
Josh: It is so cute.
Rubi: He is adorable.
Josh: Oh my god.
Rubi: I am already, already begging Josh so I could reimburse you for the cost of the materials to maybe have one for the set. But this one is the give away for you guys. We have a little preview of Josh's video. It's how you made it and that is where you can go to win it, so let's take a peek at the preview video and tell you where to go for the full video.
Preview of the creation of the bee-dog lamp (2:55)[edit]
Josh: Look, I 3D printed my very own super adventure box Bee Dog lamp, but I don't have a 3D printer. Stay tuned to find out how I did it and how you can win it. So that's a very shortened version. The full video is 15 minutes and goes all the details of how to upload it and do the textures and all that good stuff. Assemble it.
Ruby: Yeah. All right. So I think we have a link on where you can go to see Josh's video.
Josh: It's probably down there somewhere?
Ruby: Yes, it is.
Josh: Or is there?
Ruby: It's down there. You can see it. You just point downward and you're all good. This you can do. This causes you problems.
Josh: Yeah, pointing is hard.
Ruby: Pointing is hard. All right, let's talk about something you're more familiar with, Super Adventure Box. We brought it back yesterday, it was so much fun. Everybody felt, everybody thought that we were lying to them. I had to tell so many of you guys seriously log in and look. I swear we are not screwing with you. We wouldn't do that. Why don't we talk...
Josh: Would we, would we not?
Ruby: Not about, not about this.
Josh: Yeah, that's true, this is super real, yeah.
Ruby: We would not be like super adventure boxes back haha. Just kidding we. Wouldn't we really wouldn't so?
Josh: You know, whenever we pass around ideas for April 1st, it's always the 1st 5 minutes is people throwing out the most trolly awful things that we could do.
Ruby: And half of us going God no. OK, you can't do that.
Josh: Be mean is probably not the spirit we want to go with.
Ruby: Yeah, cruelty is not where we want to go with our April fools jokes. We did release our patch notes. We had April Fools day patch notes today, so if you go to our forms, you should go check those out cause those are pretty good. But I do want to talk to you about the process bringing Super Adventure Box back as we brought that out four years ago, three years ago today?
Josh: It was the first April Fools that Guild Wars 2 had. Was that 2013?
Ruby: OK. First April fools day in Guild Wars 2. Yeah, it was four years ago, I Know, right?
Josh: How old are we? We are so old.
Ruby: Let's not. I don't want to talk about how old we are. But why don't we talk a little bit about the process of bringing that up to date? Because it wasn't just a "OK, let's just turn the switch on and everything ttill works."
Josh: Wouldn't that be nice? No.
Ruby: That's a happy dream world.
Josh: So yeah, I mean, that's the weird thing about working on an MMO is it's not a stable engine. It's something that's always being tinkered with and added to and improved and lots of other technical words that I don't know.
Ruby: You just do them.
Josh: And so yeah, when there's a piece of content that hasn't been in the game and live updated, all that stuff just kind of, kind of falls apart, yeah.
Ruby: It doesn't look so great.
Josh: So right after heart of Thorns, a lot of people are really tired and most of the studios get a chance to just kind of do something that your passionate about for a couple weeks and just chill do something cool.
Ruby:Right, right.
Josh:And so everyone who has worked on Super Adventure Box in the past, and even a few new people were like, yeah, let's do this, so you know. It was a couple of weeks, it's not enough time to make a full new world, but it's enough time to fix the stuff that was busted.
Ruby: Right, that was. That was the thing that you had talked about in your blog post yesterday, you didn't have time to "OK, let's build another from scratch."
Josh: You know, really several several core members were like we can do it if we just work all day and all night we could.
Ruby: It's OK, It's OK.
Josh: We could probably do this and I just I had to say no, even though I was very tempted we should not kill ourselves.
Ruby: We destroy our health.
Josh: There's no way we can make something. That kind of lived up. To our, you know, our standards of Quality so. But you know the things that we were able to make and and mostly just selling the idea of this as a festival. So that we know it's recurring makes the team really happy, so that people, you know, just like winters day and Halloween, people can count on this coming back and can plan their reward schedule accordingly because, yeah, that was awful. Leaving everyone in limbo, you know, with with the the SAB, you know, specific stuff from the last couple releases, you know it was just like, well, people are holding on to this stuff. They don't know if it's ever coming back. So yeah, that was that was frustrating and I'm really glad it's resolved this way.
Ruby: By the way, as we're talking, if you have questions for Josh at the end here, we are going, there are some people that you can put questions in chat and there are some people collecting them. We'll pass those on and Josh will try to answer a couple at the end. So as we talk.
Josh: Specifically anything about world v world or the tower that we can't talk about.
Ruby: OK.
Josh: That's my specialty.
Ruby: I we've talked about this and I told you you can't actually make things up.
Josh: Oh, OK. In that case, if we better stick to SAB then.
Ruby: You have to tell the truth, OK?
Josh: OK. Sorry about that.
Ruby: Ask Josh questions and he will lie to you. Thanks, man. Ask Josh questions about SAB. He will answer some of those at the end there. And you know if you want to lie to them about SAB that's on your head.
Josh: OK. Fair.
Ruby: Alright, we've got that covered. All right. So as you were bringing all of this stuff up to date, what was some of the hardest stuff that you ran into to get pulled back together? Because I know it was kind of broken in there.
Josh: Yeah, I mean well. So there's there's just like physics related stuff like things have been improved and what's that word when you make something more efficient, I guess. And so a lot of the little tricks that we pulled off to make certain things work were built on less efficient systems. And so they just didn't jive with anyone. So yeah, a lot of that I think there was some like hit detection stuff that changed. There's a big list I can't remember.
Ruby: It's a lot.
Josh: It's just a lot of cleaning stuff, a lot of technical stuff. The thing I was super excited about fixing wasn't technical, but just design wise. When we started world two, we were so experienced and I guess you could say good at world one that to us, the natural difficulty progression was to make it pretty hard and we learned that was just way too hard.
Ruby: Not a good idea.
Josh: So so getting to go back and and soften out a lot of those difficulty spikes was really exciting to me because you know, as a game developer, what I'm excited about is giving people positive fun experiences, except for tribulation mode, which is made for a very certain subset of people.
Ruby: Of People that you want to enrage.
Josh: Right, so, so yeah, that was very exciting to me and really great to get that in and probably continue to iterate on that over the years just to just to keep we, we're always collecting feedback and seeing where people get stuck and frustrated, and just annoyed because there's a certain threshold of people who are interested, they enjoy the aesthetic or, you know the idea behind it or just want to participate with their friends, but there's a certain skill gate that comes with all jumping related activities. And so trying to find that nice balance where it's still fun and engaging for people who are experienced at jumping, but they can also bring their friends along. That's the challenge that we try to overcome. Almost as hard as keeping my earpiece in.
Ruby: Yeah. I lost mine too and I Was just like "Forget it. I'm done" All right. So I know a lot of you guys are newer to Guild Wars 2, and weren't around for the first couple of rounds of Super Adventure Box and maybe you haven't been in. I want to kind of take a few minutes and show people. Alright, let's hop on to live real quick and show them. Where do you go, how do you get in and how do you get started. Do you want to do that real quick?
Josh: OK. I don't have live queued up here. I am showing Guild decorations on this computer.
Ruby: Well, I'll tell you what? Why don't we go. We can go backwards. This is a thing that's new for everybody anyway, so it's more fun. All right, if you have experienced the first two, this is going to be new to everybody. You didn't. You guys didn't have time to make a whole new world. You did have time to Add something to Guild decorations.
Josh: Yes, I'm super excited about this.
Ruby: All right, let's take a look.
Josh: So yeah, this is a set of new Guild decorations that you can that you can get by, you know, normal, normal Guild decoration crafting means.
Ruby: These are great.
Josh: But you also use furniture coins that you get in new shops that we've hidden throughout the Super Adventure Box.
Ruby: You get those from dailies too.
Josh: Yes. And so we've got these like large wall pieces, this big ramp, basically when I was choosing which props we could put as these decorations, I was thinking if I wanted to build my own little super adventure box challenge, you know, in my guild Guild, what would what would best facilitate that? So these are a lot bigger than most of the other Guild props that are in the game, but yeah, it it really. You can make a super big long spread out level with this. I'm pretty excited about that. So there's these some more like traditional decoration decorations. I probably should angle that better so it could be in the light. But yeah, there's a Princess Miya portrait there. And if you flip it around you can get...you can kind of see it there, yeah. There's Moto on the back so.
Ruby: So that one is different two pictures depending on how you place it.
Josh: Exactly. We like efficiency at SAB, there's a pagoda pillar here, a rock. And then there's there's these king frog statues you can get, which really are.
Ruby: Not entirely impressed by that.
Josh: Yeah, it's really unimpressive. So we thought is there a way to make an impressive King frog statue and and yes, if you get enough and you really work at it, you can make your Guild this incredibly impressive King Frog.
Ruby: The golden, impressive king.
Josh:Solid gold statue and it is made out of solid gold. If there was a way to break this down. All your Guild members would probably have a million gold pieces, so.
Ruby: Or your Lost Precipice guild hall would just turn into the Gilded Hollow.
Josh: Here you go.
Ruby: Alright, I do have to go back and point out, if you guys haven't seen this one yet, this decoration is literally titled unimpressive King Frog. Who did that? Because it makes me happy.
Josh: I think that was Sarah Sperry.
Ruby: Thank you, Sarah. I like it. Alright, so how many different pieces have we added to the decorations? Was it 10?
Josh: I want to say there's, I think we ended up with 11 because when we were alpha testing it, people were frustrated that they couldn't make just like little things. So we included this, this Little Rock nubbin here as a separate piece so.
Ruby: Why didn't we call it rock nubbin? I'm unhappy.
Josh: You know, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.
Ruby: Well, fine.
Josh: We won with the unimpressive King frog, we lost with not having Rock nubbin.
Ruby: Yes, we all lose without having a rock nubbin, alright, so the way you get these, you find the furniture stores, which I haven't done yet. So I'm not entirely sure where. Do we get a hint? Specifically do I get a hint?
Josh: There are hints in the game.
Ruby: No, I want a hint from you. I want help me because I ride around in this like dark hole of death and spikes and bombs.
Josh: Oh, oh from me. OK.
Ruby: Help me because I went around in this like dark hole of death and spikes and bombs last night.
Josh: Right.
Ruby: I found nothing.
Josh: So so there's varying levels of difficulty to to get to the shop, the fancy proprietor down there and that one with the spikes and bombs is one of the hardest, the easiest one that I'm most excited about is shopception because originally we had a secret shop and then inside that secret is a secret shop. You've got to burn the rug, bomb a hole in the floor, go down there and there's another secret shop. So we decided to put another secret shop in that secret shop.
Ruby: What's wrong with you?
Josh: So you bomb through a waterfall in the back of that store and I went to the audio department and was like we have got to do shopception music. We have to slow the music down by half every time you go in there and so they came up with this brilliant way of doing that. So yeah, it goes down to The secret shop in the secret shop and it's this regular shop music, but like pitch down, slowed, however they do it with their audio magic, then you go into further one and it's just you just feel drugged. It's super bizarre and surreal, I love it.
Ruby: I need to go play this all the time.
Josh: That is in world 1-3.
Ruby: 1-3. Duly noted. OK. So you, I guess bomb things and blow them up and burn them and you know so. (Slowed down shop theme starts playing). Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
Josh: Yeah. There it is.
Ruby: That's hilarious. All right, come back to us. come back. There we go. We have to turn it off, we're going to lose Josh. OK, so you can find the fancy furniture shop and there are furniture coins there. You can get them by doing your SAB dailies. Is that every day? Or did I just happen to get lucky yesterday?
Josh: I can't remember how we set it up now. It's one of the things when you're designing the reward structure, you run it by the alphas. You play it a lot and so things are always changing up to the last minute.
Ruby: Alright, so you get from dailies, you get them from the fancy furniture guy, you take your furniture coins to the vendor in your guild hall and turn them in, and you get the clouds. At this point, I think I know more about rewards than you do.
Josh: My head's been all over the place.
Ruby: You get the clouds, your Guild scribes can make them into bigger things. I found the scribing cost to be pretty reasonable. I was Really happy to see that.
Josh: Yeah, that was the topic we had with several different teams to make sure that everything seemed to feel right?
Ruby: OK. Well, why don't you set up to show us where to go to get into super adventure box on live?
Josh: OK.
Ruby: While you're doing that, I'll remind you guys if you have questions, I haven't actually been looking to see if we have. Oh, we do have questions. if you guys have some questions for Josh, go ahead. We're going to run through a couple more things really quickly and then we will have Josh answer some questions. But for your furniture coins, that's how you get them, and Josh is ready to go.
Josh: Almost ready.
Ruby: So let's take a look. Yeah, this is for those of you who haven't gotten to play super adventure box in the past and Kind of want to know where to go where to go in and how to get started. So that's actually.
Josh: So actually, that's taking me to, I think I'm in the hub right now, so I should back out to Rata Sum.
Ruby: You're in the hub and you're in the hub with like the entire free world right now.
Josh: Yeah, I tweeted this when I when I first went in and I saw just hundreds of people streaming past me and jumping on it. It felt like, you know, recess had been called and everyone was just jumping around, having a blast.
Ruby: School's out. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to watch.
The Hub (17:55)[edit]
Josh: OK. So, yeah, this this is the crazy hub. This was designed to just make people happy. OK, let me show you. This is where you come from.
Ruby: So I was working on Dailies last night and I didn't realize they getting shot out of cannon thing was around before wasn't. I didn't know. So this is my first experience getting and for super veterans.
Josh: Just about.
Ruby: You guys are probably laughing. I just kind of running around having a lot of fun with it last time and didn't really dig into stuff like OK, go down in The Cave, do the jumping puzzle.
Josh: Yeah, that was there. Just kind of as a as a weird little Easter egg. And yeah, it's like you can get up there, but there's nothing really to do except be up there, which in and of itself is kind of fun just looking down at the crowd, moving around and having a lot of the people in the crowd saying how the heck you get up there and you have a secret to tell. And that kind of hearkens back to the old news days where, you know, playground tips, you know, about how to get through that secret cave in Zelda or whatever. That's what we're trying to do up there. OK. So Rata Sum this is where you go if you wanna get in the box. It looks like there's people lined up or queued up if you're British and there's actually no technical reason to get in a queue, but OK down here is getting swarmed and he's the inventor of the Super adventure box within the fiction of the game, which he designed as an educational tool for young projenny.
Ruby: Pretty fun.
Josh: And that you go up, it gives you a warning that you're going to, you know, not have your butts in touch with you because we were trying to make this a real game within a game. And as such, you know doesn't make sense if you're bringing in all these all these extra buffs to yourself. And such.
Ruby: No gliding by the away.
Josh: Well, I mean, this came out before gliding and. If we put it in it would completely break it.
Ruby: All right. By the way, I kept trying to glide. Hey, people waving at you.
Josh: So yeah, and and once you're in, there's these two worlds here. So this is this stump will take you to world one. And this log cabin here will take you to world two so you can form up the party, or you could go ahead alone. You can go with any number of people. People are free to drop in or join you at will. One of the really fun things about it is the that ability to to just kind of. Go in and just wing it and experience it in lots of different ways on how many people are with you, so there's advantages and disadvantages. Having lots of people, this is our unskippable cutscene, made so by Lisa, who was very insistent that it have to be because we're doing an. Old school and it has to be unskippable.
Ruby: Sounds great. I'm sitting here. You guys can see. But I'm looking at Josh like, why is that again?
Josh: This is one of the feedbacks that we've probably received, probably the second most asked question about Super Adventure Box. Why can't I skip cinematic and every time? I'm like Lisa, Are you sure we could just. Skip this. And then she's just like, no, no.
Josh: This is the only zone. Just one one. All the rest of the. You don't have to suffer through somatic, but I feel like.
Ruby: I feel like when you get back to your desk. Lisa's gonna be waiting for you, and there's gonna be, like, a reckoning for throwing under the bus just now, so you can also, if it's your first four. Range super adventure. You can go a little easy with.
Josh: That's right. You this little fellow and do infantile mode and that will give you one Rainbow Cloud friend who help you through all of the really tough challenges. They basically make bridges that you walk over to get over tough, bad guys or difficult to jump areas. Also, for beginners, a lot of people don't realize that they see a creature and like I better kill creature.
Ruby: Oh yeah.
Josh: This creature, right? But The thing is, these are just innocent bunnies, and there's really no reason to kill them. In fact. If you do let's see if I can. Get them all. This was, let's see one more.
Ruby: I haven't done this time.
Ruby: Is there a threshold or Is it random?
Josh: I think it's if you clear out everybody in the area. Is the way we set that up. Yeah, my idea was just that I wanted. I wanted something like the the chicken swarm in a lot of the Zelda games. It looks like looks like it can't find these last one.
Ruby: Just speak.
Josh: Yeah, but if you kill them all, you will end up with with...
Ruby: Angry bunnies?
Josh: Yeah, terrifying tornado of Bunnies, which we call the Bunado chasing you down. Then the world is yours for exploration and it's got lots of exploring things like, here's a here's a secret cave when you can afford bombs, you can. You can bomb certain areas and these these are baubles. That's the currency that you get in the game and you use that to buy your super venture box upgrades. And also you can save up for outside the box. Stuff like weapon skins and other fun rewards let me talk about ridiculous jump inside that hidden cave.
Ruby: Later, by the way, because I can't do it, all right.
Josh: Yeah. OK.
Ruby: So that's kind of that's kind. Of where you go if you are wanting to start an infantile mode, you can just kind of run over the run over the rainbows and explore and not have too difficult a time. When you first go to the hub, if you hate yourself for whatever reason, you can go tribulation mode and it's.
Josh: So there's three modes basically.
Ruby: Not this fellow, yeah.
Josh: I mean, it's a really simple concept. It's just easy, medium and hard. So yeah, and hard is just excruciatingly hard.
Ruby: It's tribulation mode for a reason.
Josh: Yeah, I specifically chose that type of difficulty because it's not. It's not like a Dark Souls difficulty where it's fair and things are telegraphed. It's completely the opposite of that. And I was inspired by games like Cat, Mario and "I Want to be the Guy" and just just wear random things will be randomly and it's kind of the fun of exploring and being shocked and surprised when those things happen and that's only fun to some people, and that's fine.
Ruby: Yeah, you don't.
Josh: It's not.
Ruby: You absolutely don't have to do it. All right, well, do you want to answer some questions? Because they're here waiting for.
Josh: There we go. Should I read them out and answer?
Ruby: Go for it.
Ruby: OK, so Blunt, James asks I'm in SAB at the moment and I need to know, how do I keep from Spending every waking moment in SAB?
Josh: Maybe the answer is to sleep more.
Ruby: Again we can't help you with that moment. You would think we're the opposite of helpful here.
Josh: OK, create a burden.
Ruby: That's a good name. Ohh.
Josh: What were the biggest aspirations, inspiration, inspirations for SAP, especially the Bee Dogs?
Ruby: Tell about the inspiration for. Bee dogs. That's a good story.
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Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. |
To contribute from where we left off https://youtu.be/PLRQWkcDiCI?si=h2828anF3ZUM-Uja&t=1599
Josh: So yeah, actually talk about this on a YouTube video, but I'll reiterate it here. So Byron Miller was our QA and he was just loved Bdogs.com and it used to be websites down, but there's a subreddit for for big dogs. No, they're they're just dogs dressed as bees. I mean, you can't get much more simple than that. And I wanted to have bees in the game because I specifically wanted this up on the side thing to be. If you don't kill them and follow them as they collect their pollen bubbles and go through a maze, then you get to see how to get through the maze and you get to their treasure trove at the end. And as we were developing, the creatures were thinking back to old games and like, what made them fun? A lot was just how random. The enemies were, you know, like they'd be eggplants or they'd be. Turtles with, you know, just like random things, right? And so we wanted to put some kind of weirdness on all the creatures, and we had bees out of there. Actually, dogs dressed as. But that's how it came about.
Ruby: Because why not?
Josh: Plus, it allowed us to make the queen dog shoot bees when she barks. And you can't ever pass an opportunity like that.
Ruby: It's really something you can't you can't do without.
Josh: With those we got. And I cannot say that name.
Ruby: Can we look forward?
Josh: OK, you just.
Ruby: Read it aramu aramu. We look forward to world three at Worlds three and four in future years now that. This is an annual festival.
Josh: So I mean, yeah, I kind of address this in my blog post.
Ruby: Why Josh?
Josh: It really comes down to it takes 6 to 8 developers four to six months to make a world. And it's like when you're working on Guild Wars two like you have to have a healthy Guild Wars two and distributing the resources. It's so tricky to balance that. And so just realistically. A window of opportunity where we can afford to just throw 68 people away for four to six months.
Ruby: Right.
Josh: It's just it's very unlikely. I mean, it's one of those things where we're not, we're not cutting off the option. Completely but. I would say. Chances are very slim.
Ruby: Yeah, that's understand. I mean, you got to bring SAP as it is up to snuff because you. Happen to have some downtime way.
Josh: Back when we happen to have six months of downtime, maybe.
Ruby: OK. All right.
Josh: Yeah, this is one of the things, right? Tough choices are always made and you know, but having it as a holiday to me is like, yes, it's legitimate. It's in the game for good. It's got it's like its rightful place. So to me that offsets the kind of deployment of that and also being able to have people create their own kind of jumping super adventure box jumping puzzles will definitely be bringing more decorations out through subsequent festivals.
Ruby: Really all.
Josh: I mean, that's just a no brainer right?
Ruby: How about? Oh, question from tennis.
Josh: I want to know what the Gray Cave monster in the lobby is. Saying when it shakes its finger at you. So that's internally, we just call it the no cloud. So I guess he's just saying, no, I think it's probably that's probably a bit of an homage to Jurassic Park where the programmer has you know when they try to hack into his console.
Ruby: Oh, that guy. I was like what? Is she talking about?
Josh: Yeah, I mean we just need, we just need a guy to not let you. The backstage where the creatures you know dress and undress and.
Ruby: Have smoking breaks and can make something real quick. What do you want him to say? I don't know what you guys think he's saying.
Josh: What's one of those really good? Oh, I paid it a fool. That's what he said. I'm RT. That's what. I feel, yeah, I paid a fool.
Ruby: All right, who tries to come?
Josh: Back here? Let's say says that.
Ruby: All right. Perfect. Did you hear, Mark?
Josh: Ah, yes, maybe he's seeing King Cinderella.
Ruby: You did it. Yeah, alright. This last question is. A perfect one.
Josh: OK, I love the way you guys put fans music in SAB, specifically the remixes of all the B music. Are there any plans to do something similar in the future?
Ruby: I have the best way to answer that question.
31:30 Start of “SAB Retro Trailer” Video
Josh: Well, you know, I'll just say real quick, someone like me at some point super venture box first came out to to dustins metal covers and I was super excited cause I've always been a metal head. Yeah, you would think, look at me. Right, you probably think. More like a classical music or smooth jazz by the guy. Yeah, exactly. But no, I've always loved metal. And when I heard that was like and yes. So when we start doing this this iteration, yeah, we're just looking to like to really emphasize the things we want to emphasize previously in time. Like there's a few tweaks to the King boss frog, like some of his sounds are a little bit different and stuff like that because you know, you run out of time and you have to cut things. But in this case we had a tribulation cloud. That that configuration mode that chases you around and throws like bolts at you, and that was just the perfect bombastic place that I wanted to ramp up that experience in some way to make it really feel terrifying and like heavy metal is just that perfect aesthetic for that. So yeah, that's we, we, I I went to the auto department. It was like is there a way we can we can do this, can we put metal in the game like there's this. Guy making his and thinking about saying like, you know, and so yeah, that's that's what I came about so. As for future stuff, yeah, maybe anyone else. Nobody knows.
Ruby: You know what we should do to answer that question?
Josh: Even better. Yes, you just. **** it, Dustin. Not real quick. Hey, can we get another?
Start of SAB Retro Trailer Video (31:30)[edit]
Video: No, almost. $1,000,000. Now the journey continues with a silver adventure box. That's where I keep you. What happened? Not the rabbits. Your hands. Move the song off you're you're super veterans from.
Start of Talk about the Music[edit]
Ruby: And we are back with two awesome visitors to Arena net McClain.
Maclaine Diemer: Hi, thank you. Be.
Ruby: Welcome back. I am.
Maclaine: Back. Always a pleasure.
Ruby: I am glad to have you back in for a couple days and Dustin is visiting us here to arena at 40 few days. Dustin, I'll let you introduce yourself and a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Dustin Branscum: I am a video game remixer composer, primarily known on the overclock remix. You know website. I don't know things on the that's. Where most people know me.
Ruby: So Justin talk or just talk a little bit about how we have been hearing some of your music and he loved these metal remixes. We reached out to you to get some of your music in our game, and that's been your dream of yours for a while. I wanted to hear. I actually deliberately not asked this question of you until now. I wanted to hear are reaching out to. You from your side. I wanted to hear your side of the story.
Dustin: It it was a, it was.
Ruby: It was.
Dustin: I scared the crap out of my wife. Here's what happened. You know it's it's been kind of like running like every now and then like somebody from and will see, you know, they'll see the albums that release, you know, hard benches wanted two and I'll say, like, you know, some for Marina, that pop up and the band camp receipts and whatnot. And an e-mail from James Ackley shows up, and he's just like, I really, really like this. Can I get the music in the game?
Maclaine: James actually is the audio director at the. Studio important to.
Dustin: And I had, like, I was playing a game, I think some game, and I put the game down. Know I was. I was. It kind of had, like, this internal freak out, like, and my wife was actually kind of worried about me.
Ruby: OK.
Dustin: And then when? I kind of regained my composure. I'm just like, you know, this, this, something's happening. Something really, really important is happening. And then, of course, I was just like James. Yes, please. So and and after that you know it's just a matter of, you know, just me, you know, signing, signing. My soul and then and then I was gonna go. We have.
Maclaine: We have a soul now.
Ruby: OK, we didn't actually do maybe a little, but so how about since you were kind of involved in processing, you were aware of what was going on?
Maclaine: Yeah, well.
Ruby: What was this from your point of view?
Maclaine: Just kind of told the story about how Dustin got on a radar and I think I think Josh might actually sent the original hard venture box to me. Way back when. And it's funny because, you know, as a as a composer, like, I listen to other people soundtracks and I'm always a big fan. And then when I write my own music, I'm always like I'm not failing. It's this is terrible. The next one be better and it's never be as good as the other thing.
Ruby: You're way too hard.
Maclaine: But maybe.
Ruby: On yourself? Yeah.
Maclaine: But it's it's a. It's fairly common among just wonder if creating something as good as things that inspire you right and you don't think about when that moves down the chain and and the other people listen to music and don't have that sort of, Oh my gosh, this is terrible. So it's always really flattering to have somebody say, you know, take the time and say this is good enough. This meant something enough to me that I'm willing to reinterpret and invest my own time and energy and creativity into it. So you know, Dustin was the 1st and probably the highest. Profile still of people who have taken anything I've done for the game and and made it their own and it's an amazing thing to see. And so I'm really happy that now it's permanently enshrined in the game. You know, I think for the for Josh's request to have this kind of metal music for the for the tribulation modes, it doesn't do a better job than I could, so I'm I'm happy. To share the share the limelight, you know it's it's well deserved, yeah.
Ruby: It's really neat to see your interpretation of the music that originally from clean.
Maclaine: It's incredible. It's incredible. I mean, you know, when you are, when, like I said, when writing, I think it's only I have to get it out the way it exists in my mind, you don't ever think that it could be turned in something totally different. And I could never have. Written the music. You know, it wouldn't sound the same if I'd written it, you know?
Ruby: Yeah, but you artist on it.
Maclaine: Put another. Yeah, exactly.
Ruby: By the way, if you guys have questions for Dustin McLean, we'll be answering a few questions. At the end too. Pass along to us. There was something else that I don't think you knew we were going to do until you saw it in game. That was the start of dusk. So how did you find that?
Dustin: Well, I knew I. Knew I knew. Obviously it's gonna be in eventually. I think it was gonna be soon, like, super box relationships. Like I was actually sitting in the hotel room like, oh, this is cool. Hopefully this means that music will be in the game soon. I went on the Guild Wars two, read it, and somebody actually posted a screenshot of disk. And I was like, alright, they did it. They actually they actually went ahead and did this and like I should have, I guess I should have kind of put it together before but like it was still really, really huge surprise and like right away like the first thing I did was, you know, text my wife. I'm like it finally happened. It's finally happened. But it's that's that's basically how I found it. And then of course you know, as far as actually seeing it in the game, a friend of mine code might some of you guys know I'm going to read it. He actually recorded a video. Of it and sent it to me and was like, OK, this this is awesome.
Ruby: That's fantastic. Now this is an item. Did we get this playing tribulation mode? OK, this is an item that you can get in game tribulation mode and since I'm not good enough to play Tribulation mode, I wasn't sure.
Dustin: Neither am I neither am I.
Ruby: But you can double click it and it will play your version of the 7th box. Music, which is kind of amazing.
Dustin: And then I guess it's also something with the cloud as well like. As it gets closer. Oh man.
Ruby: So look at that game. That's that's another of Justin little marks on our game. So and I have to tell too, it was really, really hard not telling you why you were coming out here.
Dustin: It was really, really hard to not tell everyone. Else that was coming out.
Ruby: Did I? I'm trying to think. When I emailed you, it's. Been at least a. Month or two at least. A month? So we asked us to come out. We knew we wanted on the show. We we knew why. And it was like, so we'd like you. To come out and visit for a couple of days. Yes, it's April 1st. It's just a coincidence I'm not messing with you. We really do want you to come out.
Dustin: That's like the first thing is like. OK. Is this real?
Ruby: If you ask somebody to do something unusual on April 1st, the first thing they do is be like you're an absolute liar. And I was like, you know, just, you know, we really like your music and, you know, excited about the contract. We like to talk to us and it was a couple of weeks later, I think you emailed were like, hey, I'd like to let people know you know, how soon can I tell?
Dustin: Yeah, because yeah, because I wanted to build up buzz. You know, I wanted to. I wanted to. Get over creams. Behind this as well, yeah, I want to.
Maclaine: Training we got moving.
Dustin: Get the train going. Yeah, but we wasn't allowed.
Ruby: But we had the secret to keep. Yeah, we had the secret key, and I had this moment of panic in the in the room where we sit. And I was like you guys, Dustin just emailed me and he wants to know when he can tell that he's coming out. What do I do? And everybody was like, oh, God, hell no. So we had to, you know, we not only are sitting on this enormous super adventure box. And it's so hard to. Keep the. We wanted to tell everybody and we couldn't. Now I have to tell Dustin. You can tell right before you get on the plane. That's what you can.
Dustin: Didn't even do that.
Ruby: And I felt terrible. I felt awful. Your your live tweeting was very, very good. I'm super impressed. You did well.
Dustin: Yeah, I figured that would be fun. But yeah, I like. I really wanted to. Just like, as soon as I. Woke up, got on the plane. I just want to build right there, but it was incredibly hard telling you that you.
Ruby: It was incredibly hard telling you that you couldn't. I wanted to, so I apologize. You did great.
Dustin: No, no, it's fine.
Ruby: A hero. So all right, I have a question that I always ask this really hard question. What's your favorite track that you've done?
Dustin: My favorite track that I've done as far as guitar supermix as far as I actually I mean as far as like the like.
Ruby: Are they the worst 2?
Dustin: What I'm proud of as far as like how it came out, how it actually sound and my ability to actually pull it off is I did a remix called One Winters Day night of it's a remix of Lena Chappelle's, you know, the great. Here and I gave it like this feel of like Transurban orchestra, heavier super, super proud of how it came out easily easily my favorite one.
Ruby: That's awesome.
Dustin: And of course, you know that one that I released when I when I got. Here as well as far as like, you know, the energy that I put into it, the production values that came out of it. I'm really proud of that as well. So those are definitely my top two. But I think on the top.
Ruby: That's awesome. You have a favorite. Justin's work.
Maclaine: Well, I'm seeing so a question here from creator burden that ties into this.
Ruby: Sort of excited about that.
Maclaine: So, yeah, yesterday Dustin sent me his remix of the heart of Thornstein, which already is like, it's like tailor made for a heavy metal cover because it's pretty hard.
Dustin: It it is.
Maclaine: Yeah, it's pretty hard. So I listen. I finally got a chance to listen to it last night and it's awesome again. Incredibly flattering that it exists so until.
Ruby: So we brought Dustin over yesterday and he said hang on, I said I didn't want to do this until I stepped in the building. We got inside the office and he got out his phone and set. This new track to public and I'll let you tell about that one.
Dustin: And it's more or less it kind of it kind of Harkins back to my earlier works where I wasn't really genre blending or anything like that. It was just straight up metal like just complete metal iterations with like. If you change to like the. The overall song structure and whatnot. It took a few creative liberties more into the remix that remixes that I used to do a lot, but now I'm a lot better. At it. So I just really wanted to sort of like have something that sort of embodies me going like full circle with that music. I more than anything, I was just really, really proud of how I managed to just capture my own signature style with that music. And managed to pay homage to. Everything that like that Hawthorne theme was originally it's like to me like I feel like if if the entire Guild Wars two soundtrack were to replace be replaced by metal like the entire thing for some strange reason, it wouldn't make any sense. But if it were, that could very easily be the new title screen, so I wanted to keep that energy.
Ruby: I find myself hoping that's. A hint, yeah.
Dustin: No, no.
Maclaine: If you're signing yourself all the work, please. Be my guest.
Dustin: Yeah, heart of Thorn soundtrack is like a like a full disco music. Soul's tracks were like 4 disks. Yeah, I can't do that much. I don't have enough time.
Ruby: Mcleans like I understand.
Maclaine: Yeah, I don't have time either, but I figure. How to do it?
Ruby: So that was that was like. Ahead of time as a creator, burden was. Asking Justin.
Maclaine: Oh, I spilled beans. I'm sorry.
Ruby: It's totally totally fine. Do you plan on remixing any of the hockey? And the answer is yes, he already did.
Dustin: I already did.
Ruby: Good job.
Dustin: There's another one on the list here.
Maclaine: Sorry was a question for me.
Ruby: You think it may?
Dustin: Be no, I'm the next one up that I'm planning. On remixing, yeah.
Ruby: I love that one. This question is maybe for. You I don't know how much you. Know I certainly don't know.
Maclaine: OK, so I read it. So this is Koog Merrick sounds right. Any chance we'll see more music items like the card in the game, like the Shark Dust Shark? That is a great question, that whole thing. We've created and exists outside of my sphere of influence, so I. Speaker: OK.
Maclaine: Have to learn. About it today, but post it on Reddit. OK, so it's it's likely, but I I don't. Know so it.
Ruby: You're asking three people who don't know.
Maclaine: Demanded yeah, shout shout loudly into the sky and and see maybe someday that's the answer will be yes. I have no idea.
Ruby: All right, can I'll just start with you and then move to Dustin. You guys tell us where can you? Tell us where we can find the hot soundtrack.
Maclaine: So there's there's a handful of tracks that are out on the arena net SoundCloud page, which was just sort of planting a seed and seeing how it grew, but.
Ruby: Really. Yeah.
Maclaine: Like a, you know, like a vine of some sort, you know, planting the seeds for a vine.
Ruby: No, I get it.
Maclaine: But it's on iTunes and it's on Amazon for digital download, which you can get today. And then if you want a physical version of it, there is a vinyl release. Which includes a download code for the full digital soundtrack. That is, it's kind of still in pre-order. It's being. I actually talked to them last week and it's it's coming.
Ruby: Oh really?
Maclaine: I don't have a date, but they said May. So let's say may.
Ruby: OK, OK.
Maclaine: Yeah, it's official. I think it's in production right now, but it's this beautiful package that they designed with. It's a two LP set of these incredible green records and it's amazing gatefold. Cover with incredible art from art team here.
Ruby: It's beautiful.
Maclaine: So that you can order that now on I-8 bits, Guild Wars two merchandise page. And I don't know if it's on board two.com or if there's a portal to the.
Ruby: It is there is a portal. To the ambit site so.
Maclaine: OK, so you get it there. And like I said, it comes with a full digital download code which includes tracks that aren't. We had cut a few from the LP because of running time. Physical constraints.
Ruby: Physical space limitations.
Maclaine: So yeah, to get there. And it'll be out in a month or so.
Ruby: And we're can we find you, Dustin?
Dustin: Obviously you know it starts at dot com is where kind of my hub on the Internet is. You can find me on YouTube you know YouTube slash and starts at dusk. That's where I post like all of my music for the most part. I'm also on SoundCloud, but I don't post everything there and then of course you know if you follow me on social media for whatever crazy reason, Twitter, Facebook, all that stuff. It's all the same username starts.
Ruby: I really like the consistency it makes. I've asked some people like, OK, well here this is my name. Over here is my name and like forget.
Maclaine: It underscores and you know, like, OK, look sometimes.
Ruby: You need under score some got. Twitter first took your name. Alright, you.
Maclaine: You need a name like mine. Nobody's got my name, so it's really easy for me.
Ruby: Wouldn't think people would take mine. But they. Yeah. That's like a whole other well of bitterness. Sometimes the under score has to happen. All right, so it starts at dusk. Dot com is a good home. All right. Thank you guys very, very much.
Maclaine: Thank you, Justin.
Ruby: I appreciate your time. I appreciate both of you too.
Maclaine: Thank you. Of course, yeah.
Ruby: All right. We are good and we will see you guys again very, very soon on your chat.
