April 12th, 2022 Livestream

Tools Video FAQ

https://youtu.be/WaUSBDeZsmc

Topics

• Embracer Group > Coffee Stain Holding > Coffee Stain Studios

Transcript

let's talk about the past because last week we put out a a video that we were working on for a long time, yeah as you can see that was recorded when I was back in sweden which was like you know like a month and a half ago or something like that like well over a month ago so that video has actually been and then like we scripted that before that as well so like that's been we've been working on that video for quite some time, so let's let's so what we intended to do here is, there was a bunch of we we showcased like if you guys didn't see it, we put up a video about all the tools that we use to make our game, and it was more of like a general like game development video so it's not it's it's it's in the context of satisfactory but it's not like necessarily specifically just about it's not a satisfactory video it's more like about game development, and yeah we showcase all the tools that our different disciplines used and, a lot of people liked it but there were a couple of questions that some people had so we thought we'd just yeah sort of go through those things, and have yeah talk more about it yep so there were like three major recurring questions and then we can we can also take some extra questions from people in the chat afterwards but I'm just gonna go over these three things real quick I've only got one monitor so I kind of have to cut out chat I'll see if I can try and keep it on what you guys are saying while I'm not saying anything important anyway all right so anyway if you didn't watch that video it was a massive video it was like 41 minutes long or something like that where we talked about 69 tools that we use, to make to make satisfactory basically and, also included some behind the scenes shots of of those tools and satisfactory stuff that, you know you know using those tools, yeah nice exactly right and you know that wasn't actually intended that actually wasn't intended when I made the script the way that we did this right was- I had a document and I put some of like the disciplines there and I was like if your discipline isn't there you know I sent it to everybody and I was like if your discipline isn't there add your discipline add the tools that you use under your discipline and then we'll have a big list and we did that and it actually just came to 69. that was unbelievable right I was like well you know what I don't even want to ask for any more tools we're just going to leave it there, so we rolled with 69 tools that's how that worked out okay so and this sort of leads me to the first question that a lot of people ask was like where's the qa tools like you know qa tester discipline wasn't even in the video at all where the tools, and so I thought I just mentioned the deal with that okay so like first of all we sort of like we do have a qa person their name is uzu they came on board at coffee center's qa first and foremost but they now do like stuff in a producer role so they're kind of a producer too but they still do qa management too so that usually, consists of them testing the game a bunch, but then also keeping an eye on like things like the qa side etc as well but the reason there was no qa tools there or no qa was in the video at all, is actually pretty simple it's just that when I put that document out that I was telling you guys about, no qa discipline was was created there and no tools were no qa tools were added right and, that's actually just because he didn't he actually didn't see that the document was shared for starters, and then also you know after all the tools came in from everyone and all the disciplines were there I figured I figured we'd probably have everything because because you know we have a lot already, and so I forgot to even- I forgot about qa and didn't ask him about it so you know- I could have jumped in there and asked him about it to figure out what he has to say, even though it wasn't it wasn't just you it's also all the people involved in making that video too so like yeah sure yeah yeah but you know I sort of just feel a little bit responsible the person who tried to organize the video that like you know maybe I should have caught that I think I should have but I didn't that's that's you know a little bit on me but it was simply just because there were no qa tools added to the list if there was then we would have included it there were other disciplines that I hadn't included initially but then those people went and added their disciplines and then we added them to the to the to the video so that's the only reason why there was no qa stuff but I went and asked the qa guy, you know like if we had included it like what tools would we have included and it actually would have just been monday.com for issue tracking and the qa site for bug tracking as well and then video recording software like obs and shadow play and that was pretty much all he had to add so you know that would have you know we could have added the qa site to that, video and that would have brought us up to like I guess 70, tools, you know if we did that so, that's pretty much that's pretty much the qa the qa side of things fired yes yes so the next question that a lot of people asked was, why did we switch from maya to blender so if you've seen the video you'll see that we talked about that we used to use maya for 3d modeling, in animation we still use maya for animation, but we switched from maya to blender for modeling and the reason we switched was, so like we switched when blender 2.8 came out it had a bunch of improvements to existing features and overall stability, we had some people in the studio who were already using, blender namely simon specifically and simon was like a big sort of evangelist for blender and really like yeah so basically y'all can hashtag blame simon for the switch, so there are some pros and cons for example blender is free, for example and, the team felt that blender was you know a little bit more reactive to the demands of the industry as well so, yeah the team gave blender a try and they liked it so they switched, however our animator kind of preferred maya for animation and also like I think, one of the cons as well is that I think maybe uv wraps might be a bit weird in blender or something as well but yeah it's you know yeah yeah but but for the most part they preferred blender, animator still wants to use animation, like some of the plugins there in in maya so, you know and we have no issue using two different softwares either because, maya and, blender they can export to the standard fbx formats, format which you know works pretty much universally and is also what ue4 requires anyway so like there's no issues when sharing files between maya and blender between the animators and the 3d artists so that's the answer to that question okay and last last but not least is why perforce over git, so I asked the programmers and we got a bunch of reasons for why we went with perforce, but also a bunch of reasons why you know git would also work so, first of all like we've just been using perforce forever at coffee stains so there's the first thing, ever since I got there they've been using befores, but anyway the two have like their strengths and weaknesses performance strengths include, better handling for, large binary files, it's also better integrated in ue4 at least by default and, also the ability to lock files which is important for files that cannot be merged so when you have certain binary files it's important to lock them when you're working on them otherwise you're never going to be able to merge them, although that might be possible with git if you do some stuff I think snook, yeah to lock but yes yeah but some people felt that like git actually handles like merging and branching a little better too so you know there were reasons for and against different things but, you know we used weeds before us, so like overall though I think like the important takeaway is that like from the video is is not that like the tools that we use are better than other tools and I don't think that's necessarily what people were saying when they're asking questions of like why this over this but it's just that like it's better to just be familiar with a bunch of different tools and then use what makes sense for you for your particular game for your particular studio and your setup, you know you could probably you could probably just, you can achieve the same things in different ways using different tools so you know like asking like why do you use this over this rarely results in like a clear answer because you can find reasons for and against pretty much everything but it all comes down to just like weighing those decisions for yourself and figuring out what's right for you, yeah so that's pretty much that's pretty much that yeah and and I can add as well on the because I think a lot of people when they were asking about gear as well is like you don't see get a lot in game developments and I mean you can use git for game development my old studio we use git for game development they have different like you said they have different strengths and weaknesses and, but I think like at least for in perforce's case like also unreal like epic use performs internally and you know they build their tools around that and I think one like one huge strength with unreal engine in general is the fact that like epic made unreal engine to be a game like the the engine is is unreal like how do you explain it like the editor is is a is built in unreal right it's running its own like thing so they really go the whole like thing where they want to develop tools that are actually used you know and and they develop their own games in unreal engine so they can you know develop tools that are actually useful I think it's kind of that that ties into the whole thing with perforce as well where like the tools they've made in unreal engine are really good in performance because that's what they're using themselves, so, yeah and and another thing also I wanted to add is like I don't think there's any like tool at the studio that like we decide that everyone has to use, I think it's very much up to sort of people in their own disciplines kind of like you know what tools they prefer, because I think blender was really that one of those things where like we because it's not like we we needed to cheap out and like we gotta get blender because it's free it was more that like we tried blender and then we did the thing we're like hey everybody can try it and see if you like it or not, and then everybody just preferred it so I mean yeah sometimes actually like that yeah, and so like, something with like writer and visual studio and stuff right so it's like our programmers some people just prefer visual studio some people prefer rider so we're not going to force anyone to do what they don't want to do yeah we just we just make it work so yeah because I think there's a couple that use visual studio and a couple that use writer, and sort of same deal like there's reasons why people prefer one tool of the over the other, it just, I think at the end of the day it always boils down to like how do you what do you need to make a game right and that's kind of like we're always fitting around everything because like you can make a great game in any engine or whatever, you just have to like pick the tools that you need for what you're making or what you prefer there's always a mix, and and your preference is a really valid point and argument as well right for sure like I think I think a lot of people sort of sleep on that like I think a lot of folks I know that like when I was studying game dev like people were very absolutist about like tools that are being used or what programming they would just use like this one is objectively the best therefore you should use it like- I don't think that's like a very useful mindset at all like I think I think like what you prefer after trying things is a very very valid thing to, to acknowledge, and to factor in yeah and I think it's also important to showcase as well that like there are a lot of tools needed to make a game of this scale like, it might seem that like you can do everything in unreal engine and you can do a lot of stuff in the real engine but look at all the extra tools we also use around that to make the game, yeah so yeah it's it's it is it is a beefy beefy like process in terms of like you need a lot to make games I think that's something that I was kind of like when I started working with games is you you kind of get like sidelined a little bit by the fact that there's so much you need to learn, there's so many components to game development and you know our us putting out a 40-minute video of just like name-dropping tools I think hopefully paints yeah we didn't even go into much detail like we we literally just kind of said what we use it for then moved right on yeah and, so so that's why you know like, some people have asked me like what what programming language should I use if I like it doesn't matter like it because what's more important is that you understand the concepts of game dev and like how to tie things together and well even even before you know how to tie things together you need to know that that you need to tie things together yeah like how do you get sound to interact with other parts of your game you know like those are the you know like the languages or specific tools don't even don't even matter at that point you just need to know what you need to do first and then you find solutions and oftentimes different tools offer the solutions you need and then you use those tools yeah because it's been very often where I think even at coffee stain we had a couple of people that never used unreal engine before coming on but like it's not like it's a tool that is hard to learn if you already know the core concepts of like you know graphics rendering or any any general, tool pipeline or anything like that it's not it's not that it that takes a long time to learn what takes a long time to learn is like how to apply knowledge into the the overall like concepts of making games and stuff so, yeah I counted and there wasn't 69 total I was very disappointed well I added the list of every single thing that we included and it came to 69. it's in the video description there is like a plug-in I guess that makes it 70 with the but you also mentioned that it's a plug-in no I think I think that was included as a I can't remember I think that was actually included was initially as a bonus but then I saw that I doubled up something so then I just classified it as a as a tool okay and then it came to 69 again yeah six times playing confirmed there we go outed yeah I beat it, so yeah

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let's see if there's any questions about tools didn't make my own devs last week say most of it was initially done in blueprint yeah I think they said that most of it is still in blueprint is that what they said maybe they did, yeah yeah but yeah I took a peek like at the when they were pitching to us I took a peek at like their code base and they I didn't have it code based I thought that was really cool actually like that was impressive actually the fact that like there wasn't a single line of code written for that game or like technically I mean it's visual scripting so like it's it's still coded you know it's programmed but it's all visual scripting right but I thought that was impressive to say the least that you can make such a because that game was like even at the time when when they pitched it it was still like that was a complete what's it called vertical slice of the game which is like you can see all the elements of it and and I think they did say that most of it is still in blueprint I think some of their, that's where I remember them yeah because I know I know that some of their networking solutions were remade in c plus, because I also helped consult a little bit on that but I think the majority of like the game loop is still in blueprints, so yeah you can you can make big-ass games like that in in just blueprint as well so yeah you'd be surprised I mean it's the same thing there's a bunch of games like that like hotline miami was also made in in what's it called, I can't remember the name of that tool, the game engine anymore but it's also like a game and a lot of people just kind of glance over and like, you can't make real games in that you definitely can you you really really can like there is that that's the absolute absolute sort of mindset right where it's kind of like well this is technically more performant than this like x is more technically more performant than y therefore y is bad it's like no y is not bad x is just more performant if you know how to use it if you don't know how to use it it's probably not quicker, but you can also go pretty far with why anyway you know so it's like you you just work with what you got and you can kind of you know if if you don't use the best tools then that means okay sure there's a limit to what you can do but the limit might still be big enough it still might be there might still be enough room to move yeah there's certainly like a a degree of sometimes you kind of have to adapt your game to the engine a little bit or maybe you have to pick an engine based on what kind of game you're making that's certainly true in some cases like it's it's harder to make I don't want to give an example because like it's it's also I've also seen exceptions to that rule but like you can do definitely do it it might just be a bit of a more of a hurdle doing something in a particular way in one engine or another or using one tool another but you can definitely do it like it's not not possible I saw a comment here about like how writers intended the c sharp and you mentioned you use c plus plus so, writer made a special like ide that I think they're going to integrate into the general writer but they they came out with a tool that was specifically for a real engine development that was something that I because I jumped on board immediately when I saw that at that time I was still a programmer because one thing that always annoyed me when it comes to like visual studio and coding for unreal engine is that vg studio is just a general performance like ide the what's that what was the what does ide stand for again js integrated development environment I didn't know that until I saw that video I just you said just you just say id I don't know, anyways, so ryder came out with like this, offhand like, tool for specifically unreal engine and coding from real engine and it's really lightweight because it's it's you know unreal engine has their own like c plus formatting the one strength of c plus is that it's very you can kind of change the language a lot you can change how you use it, epic uses a lot of macros to like redefine how their code base is set up and it it's not jiving that well with like natural c plus, they kind of have their own way of doing things, so yeah ryder for unreal engine is like made specifically for that, it's really nice it's it's like you know it's a lot faster to boot up than visual studio which is like the main reason why I switched because I just didn't want to sit out waiting for our because our project is huge it takes like I think it takes an hour to compile the entire game with the engine and all on your own computer and then as you mentioned in the video we have created incredible to sort of distribute the build process so instead of taking an hour it takes maybe like 15 minutes or something to compile our friendship, so, yeah it's just, it's just neat to use and and I think they're integrating it to, to the general writer tool line so now it's no longer because it's been in like early access or or whatever they called it, for a long time it's coming so yes, do you have anything else on this topic or should we move over I don't think so is there any other questions about the tools video if you don't know what tools video I'm talking about there it is we can always come back to this topic, if you guys have any more questions about this at the end yeah in the community oh I just realized derp well yeah never mind I just forgot to update from midnight ghost and in the agenda I thought people were commenting about the title, but they were coming about the agenda so oh my bad all right make sense yeah yeah anyways let's let's dive into some some of that community highlights you guys let's do it let's do it let's do it, well there's some questions here one second well actually you know what I think this is maybe worth talking about now because it is somewhat related some people have been asking have we been looking at ue5, you know since you know since we're talking about tools and stuff like that, we have a couple people that have been looking into unreal engine 5 but we're just kind of looking into it we don't know like because because we have modified unreal engine 4, and the other thing to to note is that to take advantage of all the really cool things that unreal engine 5 has it doesn't you know it's not like you just open that engine and then like you get all that like you have to make everything with all of that sort of in mind and and you know to use those systems and we currently don't have any allowances to use those systems that doesn't mean necessarily that we couldn't but that requires a lot of investigation before we can know whether or not we can but like there's a couple people that are looking into it but like- I like I don't know what that means really I don't think it means anything actually that's that's what it means it doesn't actually mean anything but like to answer the question yeah there are people who are looking into it because we're curious like what would it take I mean like yeah I mean I guess I guess we're looking at it from the perspective of like what would it take to get our game running on 105 that doesn't mean we would then get everything that unreal engine 5 has to offer immediately but like maybe we'd get something for it maybe we wouldn't I'm not sure yeah, maybe this investigation will just be useful for future games that we plan to do and like it's not going to be useful for satisfactory who knows but there are no likes but there are no like plans that we want to move over to unreal engine 5 or anything like that there's nothing like immediately right now because like there's because like nanites that the two main like technologies in relation five that a lot that a lot of buzz is around it's nanite and lumen right nanite we don't really have like we would have to convert our existing props to that for it to make sense but we also don't have that much detail in our prop so like it also I'm not sure if that makes any sense, so that one is but lumen is kind of interesting I guess, because they would they would change but that would completely change our entire like, rendering pipe, and you know there's there's a lot of stuff that we've made custom to work with the game as it is, and it's possible that like that might need to be completely revamped like we had to move over all those systems to to the current the unreal end and five five pipeline and it's not like it's hard to to just say like it's worth that or not, because it might take like a full year to do that maybe or maybe it's faster I don't know but, yeah no plans at the moment but you know we never we never like kind of disregard like it's always a door that's open so to speak but yeah yeah we'll see what happens, and I saw another question I just want to answer very quickly is somebody asked if I would ever release the stream assistant tool that I have no this you would have no use of that tool that is very specifically built for our stream, I also would not be proud putting back on this one it's like made like in between things so like it's kind of rough,

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yeah but it's really useful for me