 What's up everybody, I'm TheMangoose, you are awesome and Project Stamina has announced an estimated alpha release for this summer along with quite a few other updates. If you don't know what Project Stamina is, they are a group of fans devoted to creating a spiritual successor to the game, Gigantic. If this is the first you're hearing about the game, I suggest checking out an introduction and overview video done by Cruf, a fellow YouTuber who did a great summation of the project that is far more current than my own. I'll have that video linked in the description as well as Project Stamina's latest livestream. Today I'm going to be talking about the alpha, some information brought to light during the livestream, and reviewing information I received during a collaboration between Project Stamina, Cruf and I that was done a few months ago. I'll have the various topics time stamped in a pinned comment if you want to jump to anything in particular as well as the social links for Project Stamina that will allow you to track the game's updates, sign up for their newsletter, and register yourself for potential alpha access. First off, let's talk about the biggest news, the alpha. An estimate for an alpha release this summer was announced at the very end of the latest Project Stamina livestream. The team will announce more solid dates and information pertaining to the alpha the closer they are to release. I've been tracking Project Stamina for a while now, and if there's one company that I'm confident in being able to set a firm date and meet it, it's Project Stamina. However, they are building this game from the ground up without having access to pre-made assets the way many of the Paragon successor projects do. Many of my subscribers have been a bit spoiled by fairly polished alphas of late, so I do want to mention that this game will truly be in an alpha state. Think more along the lines of something like early access spellbreak than a fully realized game with a few bugs. Expect to see some placeholder assets and accessible game modes. With that being said, I have played pre-alpha builds of this game, and even in an incomplete state it was extremely fun. If you enjoy gigantic, or if you just want a fun game to experiment with, I highly suggest you head over to Project Stamina.com to sign up for the newsletter which will simultaneously provide your email address to the team, and enter you for a chance to experience the game's alpha. Just be aware that as an alpha tester you will be expected to contribute towards the game's development via bug reporting and providing feedback to the team. I'm looking forward to facing off against you guys on the battlefield and smashing your face off with R4's Mace. Project Stamina also revealed their fifth character, Akka. We've seen some of Akka in the past under his development name, Notch. Akka is slated to be an assassin that employs both ranged and melee attacks. He wields an atlatal and short spear. If you don't know what an atlatal is, it's a fairly primitive device used across the world, but mainly by the tribes of Central and South America. It allows you to throw a spear a little harder and further than you can just with your arm. The spears Akka uses are spines generated from his own body. His left mouse button is a melee attack performed with both the launcher and the spear. His right mouse button will load the atlatal with one of his spines and throw it. This will be a fast-moving projectile affected by gravity instead of a hit-scan snipe. His Q attack is a pounce that deals damage and reduces armor in an area. E allows Akka to spit venom onto his spear that gives his basic attacks a stacking slow. If you throw an Invenom spear, the target will receive full stacks of the slow. He has a passive that gives him a stacking power boost when his abilities come off cooldown, which ties into his ultimate. Akka's ultimate will immediately refresh all of his cooldowns. If he scores a kill during his ultimate uptime, his abilities are refreshed again, including his ultimate. I imagine that proper timing of this ultimate will lead to some pretty exciting highlight reels. I like this addition to the game. He's a bit more feral and aggressive looking than the rest of the lineup. We got some new information about the game's quick match style mode called Tribute. The goal of Tribute mode will be to provide people with more casual, short duration games. Two teams will square off in the battlefield and attempt to impress an as-yet unnamed entity by offering Tribute. Tribute can be attained by killing members of the enemy team and planting Shrines. The Shrines will contribute Tribute throughout the match, however they can be attacked and killed. Be careful though, the Shrines bite back. You can also power your team's ultimate abilities in this mode by attaining offerings placed throughout the map. The location of the offerings is indicated by a beam of light reaching towards the sky. An open map with plenty of focal points for battle should provide for a pretty exciting brawl. We also discovered a bit about the as-yet unnamed main game mode. This mode will function along the same lines as Gigantic with a few differences. The Guardians will be known as Goliaths. The Goliaths will be massive inanimate relics that you can bring to life by empowering an entity that will inhabit and animate your Goliath. Gigantic's stamina has gone this route as opposed to the Living Guardians to not only tie in better with the lore of the game, but to also avoid some of the bugs and game imbalance caused by having huge assets traversing normally inaccessible areas of the map. What you see here is an updated UI, however it isn't the final iteration. Valeco talked through some of the examples of the UI and pointed out a variety of features. They are using math systems, that's math, M-A-T-H, to generate the interface as opposed to image assets. I'm a bit lost as to how that works, however I did understand that by minimizing on-screen assets they'll be able to provide a functional UI that displays all the necessary information you need while cutting down on system requirements. What you see is reminiscent of what was used in Gigantic, which makes sense with stamina's game being a spiritual successor. There was some talk of making the UI customizable, however there are other priorities that need to be addressed first before that happens. In fact, Fancy laid it out there and said that most of the features you would expect from a game will eventually be implemented, however they need to follow their roadmap and create the more important components of a functional game before moving on to things like customization. One of the key points that I like to drive home about this project is their attention to creating modular systems that will help optimize the game and increase future production times. They have spent a great deal of time laying out a proper foundation, building prefabricated walls and putting everything in place so that when it comes time to build a house, it's as easy as snapping the pieces in place. Several examples of this type of thinking were discussed during the live stream. As far as art goes, they are currently using and still creating master materials that can be applied and then masked out. This will allow for easier reorganization of map structures while reducing the workload of your GPU. The programming department has been creating templates for everything they do. Character abilities, game modes, how the player interacts with the system, everything. These templates will make it easier to implement anything they want to do in the future. Think of it as writing down a recipe. You could take that recipe and substitute different ingredients to produce different results, but as long as you follow the same basic recipe, it'll be easier and faster to make different kinds of food. For the rest of this video, I'm going to go back into the co-lab that I did with Project Stamina and Cruf. Most of the talking is going to be done by Fancy and Cruf, so enjoy these little tidbits of information from those two. These are called shrines. In addition to scoring kills on the enemy team, shrines passively generate tribute for your team and you can destroy your opponent's shrine for more tribute than you get for killing an enemy player. I think it's three right now. So you see these big beams of light in the sky. These are the orbs. We're still working on a better name for that than orb, but you can collect those. And right now what they do is give your whole team an ultimate charge and we're working on doing other buffs or maybe even just making these be worth points to sort of push the game to a faster end. So if someone wants to grab it. Me. Go for it. Oh, you have to hold it down. Yeah. I'm very greedy. So now my team, and I don't have my ultimate because we haven't put our fours all back in the game yet. My team has an ultimate charge. So Cruf, if you want to like press F. Oh, yeah. So that has like a big AoE knockback. And now that we have these big beams of light, you can see where the next orb is. Looking up into the sky. Quality of life. Nice. That's what I call quality of life. So crew of flit mangoes get this one. Oh, the the new effects for Matani. Very nice. Yeah. Yeah. You can thank Killboy for that. He's the one running around. He's our lead engineer and is the one making sure that the servers stay running. And yeah, he's been he's been starting to spin up some VFX in a spare time and they're looking really good. Can we see that again, Killboy? He's not in this chat. The crew has it, too. It's the button on Q. Yes. Whoo. Right. And they're pretty bad. That is Matani's Wind Walk. It speeds up allies and slows down enemies. And mangoes, if you want to see some of the latest results of our VFX, go ahead and fire your ultimate. I'm scared. OK. Oh, OK. Oh, wow. Oh, that did a lot of damage. Yeah, it's a fat stack of damage. Very nice. I like that. As you can see, we are both passively generating tribute for our teams right now. So even if we're just like turtling in our own bases, it does push the game towards an end, which is nice. Oh, I just made them all. That's OK. More orbs spawn pretty quickly. And you can track them down via the lights in the sky again. Very nice. Exactly. So one of the other things that we put in since you have last played is we don't have the selection process built into the menus yet, but we have the base Omen ability, which is the Super Jump, and you can get that on R. OK, so everybody has the. So that's only if you select that Omen for Super Jump, right? That will be how it works in a future version. But right now, you just automatically get Super Jump. OK. In the future, we'll bring more of the other Omen online and have a selection screen for them. And so Omen's are something you select before the match to empower your character to either increase their offensive power or maybe shore up some some of the weaknesses that they may have. Yeah, or even like do something really specific to synergize with your team. Like, you know, they're they correspond with the. The Celtic and Nordic Ruins, which are an source of inspiration for some of our games, lore and magic systems. And so just in the Elder Futhark, there are 24 of those. So we're looking at eventually this is probably not until post release having 24 different abilities to select from. But for now, it's just Super Jump. OK, and I do see that it. That is in the middle of my bar that does go on cooldown and then fills back up to let let me know when my Omen is off cooldown. Correct. Catching on maybe also other aspects of a game and other quality things. Do you guys have any information or updates about audio design or music, things of that nature? So we're really slow rolling audio and music. We got asked this about this in the in the public discord recently. So it's it's something that we're very aware is on people's minds. But we're going to be using a a piece of audio middleware that actually. That responds to a lot of very technical and unique game state information. Like it will. And this is not a system that we are designing. This is a system that we are going to acquire and build into our engine. It's like ready made for Unreal 4. So it's going to be like a plug in and a consultation with with an ambassador is their program's description of who these like who people that help on board new studios are, but it will like pay attention to the geometry of a map and provided you've like set materials for. Oh, you're standing on stand. Oh, you're standing on stone. So you're going to be able to do that. Set materials for. Oh, you're standing on stand. Oh, you're standing on stone. So your footfalls sound different. It will map like what direction people are in and. Like how many like how many corners sound has to bounce around and. Automatically change, you know what you're getting in your headphones based on like math geometry, which is super cool. And then the music is going to run on a like dynamic state based system. So as you get into a fight with more people, the music, the intensity, the music ramps up and then when you run away and you're on the other side of the map and there's nothing threatening you, it ramps back down to just like some ambient sound based on the map. And that's like a lot. Yeah, work. I can imagine it's a really it's a really unique style of composition that even a lot of very experienced game composers don't necessarily do because most games don't need that kind of thing. You know, it's a very specific ask of. A game to need. State based music for so many different states. And it's pretty much only like a versus multiplayer thing. So it's not, you know, like Final Fantasy has brilliant music, but it's all. Just, you know, oh, it's the boss battle. Oh, it's the it's the main character's theme. Oh, it's the sad time. Let's play the sad time music. And they're they're they're brilliant pieces, but they're not written to be like deconstructed and reconstructed in layers so that so that they they can come apart. Oh, we hit 40 points and the game ended. Game. Oh, that was a game in condition. So that's where we're at with music. Our sound engineer is quietly putting together a bunch of stuff and quietly. That's ironic. I know putting together a bunch of stuff in the background so that when our systems are online, we can just drop a bunch of stuff in. And I don't I guess I haven't told you this directly. But your your audition showed the exact kind of brass that we cannot possibly look away from. So I am I am actively talking to our sound engineer about getting getting an announcer pack with your voice in it set up proof. Good job. Breaking the mold, you know what I call that a hustle. Provided you are like everybody else who puts anything into this project willing to work for free and the joy of knowing that you contributed to a game. Absolutely. Congratulations, crew. Oh, my God, my party. I'm so glad I bought cake today. I'm going to have a slice. Speaking of cake, good transition, crew, why don't we talk about cake a little bit? Oh, OK, so cake is our Patreon created character. We've been working on this design as we the Patreon community has been working on this design for over a year. And they've built a kit that I think is really awesome. It's definitely not something that I would have built, but the way that it shook out looks like it's going to be a lot of fun to play. What I can say, because if you're paying a lot of attention to how we do things, there's a lot of symmetry in all of it. The one class that we don't have covered so far in our in our exist in our announced roster is a caster. And the one faction that we don't yet have two characters from is the Melanarch. So cake is a Melanarch caster. And they have their their kit is designed. It's really cool. And we also built in one upgrade to resolve a tiebreaker on their on their like mobility, utility ability. That was fun to say. It sounded good to the ears. Thanks. And we're working on on visuals for the character right now. So what the patrons are seeing is a week by week walkthrough of the project stamina character design process right now. There's there's too many like really nuanced and hard to define scenarios to account for in the artistic side of character design. You know, we have to look at how does their silhouette fit in with the existing cast? Is it like portraying the personality of somebody from the Melanarch correctly? Does it fit with our game world and our lore? And that's just not stuff that I'm prepared to put to a vote because I don't know how like game design is something that I've been working on very intensely for about a decade now. And I'm like prepared to break down the process of designing a kit. Artistics is something I can give input on, but it's not something that I lead. That's why I have an art director that's not me. So the the polling portion has stopped for now because I can't put it to vote and still guarantee something that is the best possible thing for the game like I could with the way that we were designing the kit together. But it's looking awesome and we're really excited to share more about it. Um, as it nears completion, I I'm trying to really give the community as much ownership of this as possible. And that includes how we handle the PR around it. And so far, the community has voted to mostly keep things really under wrap and do a big reveal all at once, which is kind of a shame for me because if we were talking about it more, more people might get interested in the Patreon and like join, which is good for our bottom line, clearly. But I don't want to take agency away from the people that have already signed up to kick a couple bucks our way. So that's the way we're doing it. Good to hear. Are you guys queued up, by the way? Oh, no, I'm just sitting here at the main menu. OK, thank you for three minutes. But yeah, cake is really it is really fun. If you guys didn't know, don't know, I am a Patreon supporter for Project Stamina and I have been voting on cake. I'm not as into it as a lot of the other people are. I'm more of a hands off. Let let, you know, nature take its course, let everybody I think with the the server party kicked us out there. But yeah, I'm more of a hands off sort of guy. But yeah, if you do want to get involved with with the creation of a character, it is a vote process. Some people get their feelings hurt a little bit when when the thing they want they want doesn't get voted for and but, you know, and other things that they do want does get voted for. And then they feel really happy and they get to see that in the game. And it's really fun to to affect the the the development process of a character. Everybody always has their own hero designs that they want added into a game. And this is a fun way of doing it with an entire community. Is the character's name actually Kate? No, no, I was like, that's an awesome name. Kate stands for and this is like just to just to show how much we can we can close and re queue by the way. Just completely close the game out. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I was I was. So this was actually a patron's suggestion that we call it cake. It stands for community architected kit experiment. While the alpha for this game is just over the horizon, there are still some things that need to be completed before we can get this one in our hands. Project stamina still needs to build in character stats with unique modifiers, add in more status effects, introduce a practice arena and build the last set of characters. All of that, of course, will take some time. However, the momentum of this project continuously increases. The more they do, the better they get at doing it. The better they get, the faster they get. I truly hope the project stamina is successful in their endeavors. Yes, they have spent the time to lay out the tracks and their train is currently building momentum, but there are outside factors that can derail even the most well built engine. This is where we come in is up to us to keep encouraging the team, letting them know that we appreciate their efforts and spreading the word about the project. If you have the ability to do so, hit up their Patreon and support the project monetarily. Financing the game is appreciated and necessary, but what they really need are the fans of this game to keep pushing them forward. You don't need to be a patron to support the project. You just need to be involved. Be there for them because they're trying to do something special for the entire gigantic community. For now, this is the man goose signing off. You guys have a good one. A man goose. Quick question for Kroof. OK. Have you noticed? I'm on the spot. Have you noticed that I didn't notice this for frickin ever? Have you noticed that R4 really has one arm? I did. I didn't notice it. How did you not notice that? I don't know. It seems so ridiculous now that I know. I mean, he could like a really small arm that's like under the game. You never know. It's just like just a baby arm. There's it's just it's just a hand. There's no forearm. There's no upper arm or shoulder. Please don't give me a baby arm. There's a hand where his shoulder socket is. That's cannon. I'm now a writer for the game. You're welcome. That's what his charge is. It's actually a punch with his tiny hand. Oh, my God. Yes. He has a really hard time opening jelly jars.