 I would be one and welcome back to enter the ether the podcast all about the upcoming third person mobile a three-year-old clash of I am your host the one and only mangoes joining me as always is my friend co-host and all around swell guy jelly knees How you doing jelly? I'm pretty good mangoes Happy to be back doing easy Were you miming me again? No, I would never Notice till I was done. I was so into it. I don't know what you're talking about No, but I'm excited to be back with ETE man. I've missed it, and I'm glad that the community's missed it as well Like it's a warm fuzzy feeling that like everyone's like where's ETE. It's like it's coming. I promise I think that's both of our faults. I was going I was going to complain. I was going to take full responsibility for my absence, but uh you also Hey But it's all good. We're back now at least it happened at the same time. Mm-hmm We're gonna catch up tonight We're gonna talk about a lot of the stuff that's been going on with ethereal since we since our last episode Which was about a month ago. Maybe more than a month. I'm not even sure and Yeah, that's it's we're gonna talk about the Kickstarter. We're gonna talk about the cinematic overview the There are cinematic trailer. I should say we're gonna talk about some of the videos They've been releasing and we're talking about the UI and the improved UI that they've had they've had all kinds of stuff going on And we haven't had a chance to talk about it. So jelly. Let's get into it tonight um, I Guess we should start off with probably the biggest thing and probably the saddest thing which is the Kickstarter Did not work out for them Yeah, I mean so the Kickstarter was running for about 30 days and it had a $75,000 goal And I think at the end it got to about 30,000 was where it hit just before the end of the Kickstarter happened But it gave a lot of insight for the ethereal dev team of like what the community wants to see what they expect to see And just where we're at in terms of development, but we can expect For lack of a better way to put it from the community and their response So even though the Kickstarter didn't make it, I think it's a very positive direction for the Fuji team To like be like, okay, we know where we stand, right? That's the most important thing We know where we stand now. We know where to go and improve on all the different aspects So it's sad that it didn't make it, but I think it will be a good thing moving forward As good as it can be, right? It's it's still sad, right? But um, there will be alternate funding methods coming in the future So that's something we're still working on the initial details for There's been talks of doing like a patreon where it'll be Lower barrier to entry or the majority of the community members. You can do like $5 a month Just show your support and get some rewards in the meantime But this like I said details are still being finalized and all that kind of stuff Well, it sounds like you're trying to purify a turd because uh You're pouring sugar on shit. It's not good that they didn't meet their patreon goals. However I don't think that I don't think they ever were going to go to meet that goal of $75,000 Like that was a very high goal to set for a moba In 2021 mobas are a dying breed. Um, I have full faith that ethereal will kind of um Bring that back a little bit. I think this is going to be the next big game, but To ask people to Get involved in a kickstarter for a moba is a lot to ask and $75,000 is Quite a bit to ask Especially seeing as how they've already made like over a hundred thousand dollars on nft sales So I think that's probably the route they need to go if they do If they do like restart on like indiegogo or something Then they need to set a much lower goal and then set stretch goals Like this is the goal we want to meet and then if we reach this goal, then we'll and you know, We'll implement this or we reach this goal will implement this um, that's the way kick starters work quite a bit like You you rarely see a kickstarter that has met its goal that didn't have also have stretch goals Like they didn't set their initial actual funding goal From the beginning and I think ethereal set their initial funding goal from the beginning and I think that was a mistake Yeah, I mean something you and I talked about before I joined the ug team because you and I got a preview of the kickstarter back in a while ago I don't remember when that was it's been a while but Something you and I talked about and that we mentioned to the ug team is that that goal may have been a little high right like that That's something that's feedback that we gave To them and by the time I joined the team that had been all solidified. So that wasn't something I could influence uh, but That's a big thing that we have to ug has to take into consideration going forward is like what like I said, what the expectation from the community is in terms of what ug can expect and also just where they have to go from here in order to Take those those things more of a reality for themselves Yeah, I think um I think patreon is the way to go I think there's enough people interested in ug That they can give them a monthly flow of income to start spending on a variety of things If they if they do a patreon, I'm on board. I'm going to sign up for that patreon. Um, but what I expect though Is something in return for that money um Kind of like I guess project stamina at this point is kind of a bad example But the way they did the pay their their patreon posts I would love to see something like that from ethereal some some exclusive content coming only via patreon and uh, you have to buy in to receive that content whether that be lore or Actual game updates. I don't really care, but I think patreon is the way to go for them Yeah, like I said, it's something something we're definitely looking into as patreon That's kind of the one that I think I prefer the most as for a plethora of reasons Uh, but I think exactly like you said, it's it's something that the community can have more direct instance in right We can do posts over time make them exclusive Um, something we're looking into as well is doing cumulative rewards So even if you mangoes come in at five dollars a month Right, if you over the course of the time you've backed whatever we go with Decide to you've backed a total of twenty dollars you get certain rewards for meeting that twenty dollar cumulative goal Rather than just your individual five dollar monthly um trying to Offer a more incentive to doing that even though it's got a lower Barrier to entry for a lot of community Mm-hmm. I think that's a great idea Because yeah, it feels bad that somebody that can contribute Fifteen dollars a month gets more than somebody that contributes five dollars a month even though That person that's been contributing five dollars a month has been doing so for much longer You know, I mean everybody has A different financial situation sometimes you can afford fifteen dollars a month sometimes you can afford five dollars a month And I would really love to see the five dollar a month people are rewarded for their loyalty Yeah, I definitely think that that's something I have not seen other Companies doing in terms of those cumulative rewards That's something I really want to do for the ethereal community being someone that came from the ethereal community That would be such a thing For me that I would have been like that's rad right I can do five dollars a month and slowly earn those of those bigger rewards that I can't afford to do in a lump sum I think that's just a great option for the community It's like playing a free play free to play game and only accumulating in-game rewards sort of thing But yeah, I mean so unless you had anything else on the Kickstarter or the future for that I want to get on to the gameplays man goose No, that's it. Let's get on to the gameplays go for a jelly So we started out with the Talos gameplay then we did Dante and Leah. I believe so far um the Talos gameplay came out alongside the cinematic And the Talos gameplay no sugarcoating here Got a lot of uh constructive criticism from the community Um And it was a good thing to see right it shows a the community that the game is playable Right that we had a game playable Full kits the whole nine yards Right, but there's still a lot of work to go. It's still a pre alpha build. I know you've played at man goose, right? It's but the abilities are there the general animations are there Even though those need some work once the mo cap suits come in But all in all it's a playable game Then we took a lot of that feedback and then into the Dante gameplay showcased a lot of the the other elements and a different character Then Dante gameplay got feedback and we implemented that stuff into the lea gameplay and then showed lea as well as flying And not how all of that is going to work And the more gameplays are coming in the future that'll do the exact same thing and show the updates So this we kind of We knew to an extent that the Talos gameplay Was going to look the way it did But we wanted to show like this is where we started now. We're here right like we we've Every time we're one upping ourselves saying like okay. Yeah, you're right. Those things were an issue They're fixed look how quickly we fixed them for one thing And look at the new implementation of those ideas In a week later two weeks later, whatever the time for me I'm glad you said that because now I don't have to be the bad guy Because I was going to say like the like start with Talos like what the fuck why did you might just start with Talos because Talos is On a scale of one to ten as far as animations go for all the heroes And then take this from somebody that has played as the game Talos has by far the worst animations of anybody So if you had a problem with Talos's animations, but they weren't that much of a problem You're going to accept everybody else much much more So if you looked at the Talos gameplay and you just had some slight reservations Then you're good to go because it just gets better from Talos like And I can also kind of understand leading off of Talos because god he is so much fun to play Like he's my personal favorite. So I avoided him forever and then you kept playing him and like I kept seeing how well you were doing with him So I tried him out and holy shit is he fun. It's like playing crunch I love playing crunch and Talos is like Playing crunch to like another level like another level of crunch and I fucking love it When you land those combos just right in the multi-stage abilities. Oh, it just feels so good And just just weaving those auto attacks in between all those abilities and like since he has abilities that recast Oh Like q basic q basic. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's so good Oh, yeah, so much fun Um, and radio severer has so much range on it and then applies the bleed. Oh, that's so much fun So I'll actually give all the e to e washers listeners Whoever you are and you man goose a little blooper about Talos that we realized recently His radio sever had an infinite vertical hitbox Oh, really? So we were in testing the other day and I lia flew overhead But she was like one hit And I hit r just because I was and she died and it was like, oh This is great. I love this. Can we keep this? Oh, and yeah, she managed to die from it greatest feeling ever as a talos. I was like, haha, I got the flying lady screw you That's what tall axe We got it fixed right afterwards, right, but it was like, oh interesting. I didn't realize that was a thing So it was a cylinder instead of a cone exactly Oh, that's amazing so much fun I think that's going to be a big challenge going ahead for ethereal is cylinder versus cone And when it comes to abilities Because when you're good like right now lia is the only one that's that flies around but there's still a lot of verticality in the game but um Yeah, there's going to be more people flying so you're definitely going to have to pay attention to that to those uh those capsules It'll be interesting. That's for sure to go through all that kind of stuff So, uh All right, let's let's get into talking about their um their cinematic slash gameplay reveal trailer. Yeah, like They said from the beginning they weren't going to start their Kickstarter until they had The trailer ready with some gameplay and that's exactly what they did and um jelly I've definitely got to compliment you the gameplay portion Of that cinematic was amazing like the way You synced everything up to the music the way like Like you see Dante you seem targeted in and then you see then you see the next target. Oh, it was just really good Really good. I'm not crying. You're crying And then um God, what's the foot? What's the voice actors named Daniel Daniel hodge. Yeah Daniel hodge Such a great job on the lore when he was voicing the lore portion such a great job I only wish I only wish That they had started with a little bit of gameplay And then led into the lore Because I think that hurt them a lot in the Kickstarter is because somebody looking into the game They're getting like Four or five minutes of lore before they ever get any gameplay to find out any indication of what the game's going to be I'll be going to be all about I think that really hurt them in the end. I love their lore They have great lore, but I think that should have been weaved in amongst gameplay and cinematics But they they went full force from the start Lore for like three minutes Which is cool for like a follow-up trailer But not the initial trailer and definitely not the one you want to post On Kickstarter because you got to hook people in you got to hook people in Yeah, I mean so the one I had influence on was the third the gameplay section, right? So I love hearing all the good things about that um But absolutely like it's it's Like I was saying before there's a lot of things that ug is learning from that whole aspect right of the cinematic kickstarter itself and Knowing what to do in the future going forward of posting gameplay Like like you said hooking people in then maybe dump a little bit of lore And kind of keeping that cycle going Um because new people coming to the game have a hard time when they see Five minutes of lore and then five minutes of gameplay afterwards, right? It's just that little bit of like I have to sit through how long of this before I can see what I'm backing what I'm putting my money into So learning experience across the board, but definitely good insight for sure It's like subverse whenever you play that and You came for one thing and then when you get 10 minutes of backstory It's like come on now You know what i'm here for oh, yeah Oh, yeah, but overall the cinematic trailer if it would have been the second in a series Fantastic fantastic um I really like the little cutscenes they had the little cinematic cutscenes They had a lot of really good stuff going on. I just don't think it was right for the very first I don't think it was right for the kickstarter video. That's that's about all i'm saying And I wish I had Daniel hodge's voice Don't we all seriously Don't we all I would just like walk around places talking like him Make people like this epic voice walking around. I love it Do you want to get into the ui improvements? Yeah, so the ui got basically completely overhaul um Before in the talos video and dante's video there's a lot of feedback on the ui And we were already working on it by that point, but it was it was kind of that like great We are making the right decision by reworking this ui Okay, the people Disliked the first version for a number of reasons And so the goal of the new version of the ui was to make it much cleaner and take up way less screen real estate than the previous one Uh, I don't remember the exact figures but If I remember correctly we about have The amount of screen space that was being taken up by the ui While still keeping almost every detail that was on it before on screen so That just was a change that had to be made because when you're taking up A certain percentage of screen real estate, right? It's harder to see the game itself And that's what we're there for we're not here to play ui the game We're here to play a theory that has a ui, right? So it's That change was absolutely something we were excited to implement and change And then when the new ui went out with lia's video a lot of people were like this is way better Like this fixes a lot of the issues that we had with it Certain small tweaks here and there health bar is bigger or items looking slightly different That's fine. Those are tweaks we can absolutely make being in the stage of development we're in Um, but no knowing that the community responded well to that ui change Spends a lot on our end to see those changes having an effect I'm really happy to see that because I'm really happy to see that you guys Are taking input from the community Internalizing it and then making it a realization because you guys have really good heads on your shoulders, but You know a thousand heads are always better than 10, you know and uh The community has a really great idea stuff that will just blow you away And i'm really happy to see you guys taking that input from the community and making it a reality Yeah, that's something that I being as part of the marketing team That's I look at almost every comment on every youtube video I look at any post facebook reddit instagram the whole nine yards. I'm looking at the comments of like What is what are these people saying? What is the like outlier? Thing that they really want changed something we did internally was we actually created a a excel sheet and ranked each like comment for criticism about things and like percentage based on percentage went okay This is the thing that has the biggest thing. Let's work on that first. This is the next biggest thing Let's work on that next like Truly ranking these in terms of importance For the community and then going down the line of of implementing those fixes and changes right Is that your official job title is just as um marketing? Yes uh Because I think of you as everything but coding I mean I don't think that's my everything but coding is my official job title But whether or not that's what I do is a whole different story Yeah, because I think you have a massive amount of input in the game that makes me really happy because You are a gamer's gamer. You are You fully commit to the games that you participate in Um, you're very good at gaming whereas I am not very good Actual gaming. I'm just good at having a personality of being entertaining. I guess and uh And you are as well, but you're also just very good at the games you play and uh, I'm excited about what you're going to bring to the team as a UG member I know you've been a UG member for a while now, but I don't know. I just feel like maybe Maybe it's the alcohol talking But I feel like uh, just give you a good shout out because you have definitely had a positive impact on UG's development so far. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I'm not again. I'm not crying. You're crying. It's fine. It's fine Uh, but I guess what you could say is I'm a man of many tinfoil hats, so But I Titans now that you're an inside man. I don't know. Well, somebody's got to step up and take over Tinfoil task force needs a new leader Des take that shit As you heard it. You've been nominated Can't back down now. I think sardy might be a better candidate for tinfoil titan Oh, dude, sardy sardy's on top of it sometimes. Yeah I'll be like dropping hints since there'll be the first one in my discord being like I figured it out. It's like, oh, thanks sardy. Okay Yeah Yeah, sardy This was the first come to mind because I've I've been looking forward to playing some streets of rage with him, but uh Yeah, sardy Oh, I said that's so weird. Okay, so I think is is that about all we wanted to cover tonight or are there some more stuff? Think that's everything. I mean, there's always so much so much stuff Oh mo cap we can talk about the mo cap and I can give a little more information on that Uh, so we talked about that. We're gonna have a mo cap Suit that'll help with a lot of those animations. We are updating some of the animations in the meantime to make them feel better overall But they're not going to be perfected or polished to the fullest extent because we know this mo cap suits coming Uh because of delays due to the ponderosa we're in the Company that that's purchased the mo cap suit Is actually hiring credo's mo cap actor to do some animations for us Which is currently in the works. We should be getting those relatively soon Which is just a cool thing to be able to say like we have animations from god of war The credo's mo cap actor. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, like that's In in my marketing brain. I'm like that is such a huge like check mark. We can add to our thing add to our list That is so worth the delay in getting the mo cap suit So worth it 100% like it's just one of those things And so once we get the mo cap suit It's gonna be full bore into mo cap getting all the all the animations updated making them feel better polished out The whole nine yards So we're just waiting for that to come in But it's it's super exciting. I think for ug and it'll help Level up the the feeling of the game. I think once we have all those new animations I mean I'm sure he's great at his job And I'm sure he's going to do some great animations but just Oh my god, just the name attached Exactly Like there's an indie game like an indie metroidvania that I'll follow called steam dolls And they have david hater the voice of solid snake that does all the The voice acting for that game. That is a huge draw for that game like Otherwise that game would be just another metroidvania Again, I miss they see a metroidvania's but they got david hater. Exactly and right now ethereal's got creative Like it's such a big thing We could be like, yep, that's us. We got that guy. Like, what are you gonna say? Super super cool for Dallas not so great for noxus Well, you don't want a big muscly guy doing animation work for noxus. What are you talking about? Here comes my beam Exactly, exactly Yeah, that'd be great though. Oh, man I love it. I'm sold. We're we're changing everything. He's noxus from now on. He's just gonna be Ah He's just going to do animations for not. Oh, I'd be so pissed. We'll get him on noxus malaya Kalea like we'll just go down the line of the female the like Super small female characters. Those are the ones. He's going to be the mocap Oh my god, if we could get peaches to do um, god, I forget what her name she she changed her name to Pares Oh, I was thinking of bears not yeah claire If we can get her to do the like evil Kalea boy. Yes. Oh my god It didn't have david hater do the animations. Oh my god Not david hater. Fuck the craters guy I'm so in yeah evil kalea is now even more endorsed by me What Inviscera my favorite dude Like everybody thinks that she's going to come out there and throw a magical spells and stuff She's just out there suplex and motherfuckers and like clothes lining people Like what is this character exactly? I mean you guys haven't seen her kit yet. So you never know Secretly kalea suplex and people Oh, I love that idea so much. I love that idea Oh All right shit. All right jelly. Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about tonight? I think that's everything just keep an eye out for updates that are going to come from the ug team pretty quick here try to one um Uh, any plugs you got you've been doing anything. Uh, I have not I've been working on ethereal mostly so And play in the rocker. Yep. That's those are the two things I've been doing. That's about it What about you man goose? Uh, I I have stepped into the uh, the realm of animation. I released my first animation um tonight as we're recording it will be Two days ago if you're watching this live so um If you want to check that out, I think it's pretty cool. It's kind of cute And then like there's the members only which is kind of uh A little more brutal But yeah, if you want to check out my animation videos, I really appreciate that I would love for them to take off because Just animation is really interesting to me. But uh, yeah, that's about it Oh man Yeah, go watch this stuff. I got the notification about the members only thing. I was like, oh Oh, did you really right on yeah, check it out. It's a little more brutal than the uh In the original Okay guys, uh Great to get back up with you guys Great to get to to get back into doing into the ether really loved on this show Really love hanging out with jelly. I haven't been doing The tests as much as I should be but This is a really good chance to reconnect with jelly. We really are I like this dude. I like jelly. I really do and it's and it's fun to hang out with him it's fun to do these shows but We're all looking forward to this game that we can all play together But until then I hope you all join us as we enter the ether Man goes