 Hello everyone and welcome back to the Minions episode 26, the weekly show where we look forward to some of the possible Paragon replacements out there. As always, we have news and updates, a little light on the news and updates. We got nothing for Metabuff and we got nothing for Visionary, but we do have some really cool stuff for Ethereal and Predecessor is moving along quite nicely as well. After that, we're going to talk about the poll results that I posted. The poll was what your preferred version of Paragon was, and then we have Tech Time with Ruba as always where we're teaching you how to load the assets up into the Unreal Engine and play around with them yourself. Then our topic for discussion this week is the effects of sound design on overall player immersion. And then we got our community builder this time, and that's going to be it. I am your host, the one and only Mangus joining me as always is Mandy Mal. How are you doing, Mandy? I'm doing good. I was actually expecting a soccer mom joke, so I'm proud of you. No, I'm done. I got them all out of my system. You got them all out before we started recording, so it's good. I'm doing great. We have a really special guest this time. We have a member of the Ethereal team, Mr. Tricolorstar. Why don't you introduce yourself a little bit, tell us what you do over there at Ethereal, and then you can tell us a little bit about how you got started with Paragon as well. Awesome. Hi, I'm Tricolorstar. I do the voices and the sound effects for Ethereal. I work with voice actors. I write scripts. I do a lot of the sound effect processing, the voice processing. Basically, if it has audio, it's me, it's all me. As for my experience with Paragon, I was going through a really big phase with MOBAs and MOBA-type games, because I really fell in love with League of Legends, and I was like, there has to be more, there has to be more. So bought a PS4, played Paragon for about three or four weeks, and then it shut down. So, that was the one that got away. That sucks. Yeah, but I really loved the game, like if all it was around, I really, really loved it. So I hope that we can replicate a little bit of that lightning in the bottle that we got with the original Paragon with some of these remakes or successors, I guess. Cool. Who was your favorite hero in Paragon? Muriel. I loved Muriel. I'm a support main in heart. Really loved Muriel, mostly because of like, when you used a reversal of fortune, like her ultimate, it just felt really cool, because you just fly out of nowhere. And not on my watch, it just felt really cool. Yeah. I also liked the Countess, and I really, really liked Zynx too, so like, yeah. Very good. No, I'm glad to hear Zynx get some love. Yeah. She didn't get enough love, did she? I love her personality. So sad none of her voice lines got in the game. She was extremely sassy. Aw. I don't think I've ever heard any of Zynx's voice lines. I'll have to dig those up and play a few. Yeah. She sounds like a 1950s TV show announcer, like a game show host. Oh, really? She just really hates everyone. It's hilarious. That's awesome. I really loved it. I think her intro was probably one of the best character intros that they ever did. It was so well made. Yeah. It was really cool. They seem to put a lot of time into that character intro and no time into testing her out because she was broken on release in a bad way too. She was, I had some success with her, but for the most part she was just absolutely terrible on release. They buffed her. They buffed her. She had a weird design because she was like, she was to be like this manager in tank with some CC, a lot of durability and kind of some damage. So what was the truth Paragon? What was she supposed to be? I don't think they knew. Yeah. No, it didn't sound like it. But speaking of law, you recently did some voice lines for law, right? Oh, yeah. Well, I was working on, I'm working on some new things that I can't talk about, but I do do some fan stuff on the side with installable voice packs and sound effect mods and stuff. Because sometimes, you know, Riot, small indie company, they sometimes forget to put things in their own game. So yeah, sometimes I release like free patches to fix that stuff up because why not? Right? That's awesome. That's very cool. I did some stuff for, I did some sound effects for Niko. I did some sound effects for Kale. I did a few, it was all freelance work. So unfortunately, I don't actually work with the company yet, but hopefully one day once I get, you know, more experience under my belt and finish my education, then I'll be able to be a rioter. So. So tenacious. Right on, man. Right on. So let's move on. We don't, like I said, we don't have anything for Metabuff, but let's, let's get straight to a theory of this. We got Tri-Color here and Tri-Color brought some voice lines with them. These are voice lines that you worked on, right? And who do you got for us today? We've got Noxus and we've got Malware. I included six lines from each character to like give you a spread of their personality. Some of the, some of the voice lines are attacking. Some of them are jokes. Some of them are movement. Malware has had, I put some of his ability lines, his abilities in game have a much heavier vocoder filter over them because the enemy is hearing them. So it's supposed to be a lot more menacing and a lot. I need to get the hell out of here like right now. So you'll hear the difference in robotic-ness as we go through the lines. All right. One. So let's start off with some of Noxus's lines here. Your fate is sealed. Very awesome. Fate is sealed. Dazzling. We are nothing if not luminous. So we're going to go through these one at a time here. What dazzling brilliance destiny reveals. My aura shines through dimensions. Is my armor too heavy? No. It's light. So those are very cool and if you guys don't know Noxus is one of the mages of the game. So it sounds like she's going to be very light based according to those voice lines. I'm not going to put you in a position tricolor where you have to confirm or deny that. I'm just going to speculate. Oh, I can. I have some information to talk about both of them. Oh, okay. Excellent. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little about Noxus then. Yeah. Yeah. Noxus is a, she's a, the seer of light. So like she is like not just like spiritual light based but like literal light based. She can like bend the spectrum around her and project light as like physical manifestations of her power. Her chosen goddess is Mara. Like Mara is this being of peace and love and I picked her specifically and she can see through time and space and she is trying to prevent a disease that drains magic from people. She's doing a lot of things because when you see the future you're like there's a lot of bad crap about to happen. I have to go fix it. In games she's like, she's a mage. She's like, I don't want to call her a hyper carry but I can't really give much about her like her gameplay but she's really cool. I like her a whole lot and well, and her voice actress is named Sarah Dunham. And she's actually worked with me before on League of Legends things. So like I was like, hey, you want to voice this light girl? And she was like, yeah, totally. So she did an awesome job. Yeah. She's yeah, she's has the fastest turnaround time of any voice actor I've ever worked with. Like I was like, these are 200 lines for Noxus and she was like, hey, next day. Boom. Here you go. That's like, how do you do this? Wow. Yeah. But Noxus is really fun. Noxus is my favorite. So I really hope that we could gameplay of her soon. Yeah. It really sounds like her lore got tied into her voice lines really well. I like that a lot. Thank you. Let's move on to Malware. We already heard some voice lines from Malware on the show but these are going to be new ones. So let's go through these. I'll just play these one at a time. Mandy, if you want to play them too so you can kind of hear them. Sure. Instancing Dimension of League. So that was his ability three and attacking. And then buff, we have a couple of movements. This world's matter is the clay I will use to forge my own universe. Do you say we? Perhaps. And then here's my favorite one. This is the Malware taunt. This is the favorite out of all the voice lines that you sent me all of this one. And find me in your thoughts. That is so good. Wipe your hard drive and find me in your thoughts. That is so awesome. Oh man. If you guys don't know, Malware is an ADC. He's like a sentient computer virus that can just, I forget all of his lore but it's really cool. He's basically hacked into his own spirit so he's a, you know, corporal in our world now. So that's very cool. What can you tell us about Malware, Tricolour? Well, his voice actor's name is just Gil Thyme, doesn't go by first or last name on the internet. It does not have a website or a Twitter. But I have worked with him on other projects. He does a really good Kozik's impression if anyone knows League. But Malware is like a computer virus that can bridge the gap between the physical and the digital so like he can infect anything, pretty much anything. And when I, Malware kept me up at night because I was like, how am I going to make this a robot voice without making it extremely generic and like cliche because like, you know, you can make a robot voice by just slapping a filter on it and calling it a day. But when I saw his design, I was like, he looks like a geth from Mass Effect. Yeah. Flashlight head guys. Yeah. So I was like, let me look up how they made that voice. And I looked at, I had to download a whole bunch of like extra extended universe crap about Mass Effect. And eventually I got to the point where they were like, so in order to make Legion's voice, they'd use a vocoder effect. So whenever you're hearing Malware is like clicking and weird glitching and stuttering, it's because there's a endless stream of like randomized vocal utterances playing underneath his voice and it's contouring and morphing the voice to that as he speaks. And there's also just like some pitching down some like chorus effects and stuff. But I was, I was like, should I go in the grotesque, like evil, garbled, distorted robot or should I go like glados from Portal? So those are my two, those are my two things. And I submitted one pass and the guys at a three were like, actually can we go this way? And I was like, okay, I'll go this way. He has the most most lines of any character so far. He has like his voice files, like 3.2 gigs or some crazy shit like that. But, um, yeah, he's really, really fun. Uh, I can't wait to play him. I actually, uh, he was like the first character they brought me on to do and like, uh, write and do SFX for and they all just kind of progressed from there. I feel like he's going to be a favorite of mine. And it's probably the most favorite of mine. But, um, he's just so, what a cool concept. And you did an incredible job with those voice lines and that sound effects, because that like glitchiness you're talking about is so, it's like terrifying and just amazing. You did a really good job. Thank you so much. It's really hard. Like I do a lot of robot voices. It's so hard to make them like glitchy, but understandable. I feel like he's going to be a favorite of mine and it's probably going to make them like glitchy, but understandable. I'm getting better at that as I make more. Um, but, uh, thank you guys so much. Yeah. If I had to sum that up, I would say ominous. He sounds very ominous. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. He makes me interested in lore and that's hard to do because I want to know more about how he came to be and what he's going to do. What, you know, it's just kind of big plans. It's so creepy. All right. Um, and do you have anything else for, uh, for ethereal tricolor? Uh, I know we're working on a lot of other things. We, uh, we don't really have a date for the, the pre alpha yet, but, um, we're getting really close. Like it's starting to crunch down on me. So I'm like, uh, oh, but, um, uh, some things got soft around some things got changed, but everything's coming together really, really nicely. Can't wait to show everyone what we got because, um, the release skins look awesome. The, the gooey looks awesome. So I just can't wait to show everyone that. Oh, right on, right on. I can't wait to see it myself. Yeah, definitely. So let's move on to a meta studios with their project, which is predecessor. Um, smokey finished up with gadget and now he's working on Muriel. He's been streaming a lot of his progress and, uh, gadget look, he made a few slight changes to gadget, which I thought were really cool. Seek and destroy. Uh, that's the ability where you kind of toss it out and then it makes a cone that slows people down. Um, a lot of times the targeting for that was a little weird. So what smokey did is, um, once you toss it out, if it looks like it's going to go too far, you can reactivate it and it'll explode and you know, start, start, um, doing its conal slowing effect thing that it does. So I think I thought that was a really cool idea. I think that's a neat concept. It's just one of the small changes, one of the minor changes they're making to the, to the heroes. So, uh, yeah. And then, um, he did a lot of work with making sure that, you know, the enemies abilities are different colored than, uh, hero abilities, which was kind of a problem in the little bit of the pre alpha that we had. So, um, yeah. What do you guys, what do you guys think? Have you guys been watching smokey streams at all? Have you been tracking predecessor or anything? Yeah, I've been tuning in occasionally. I'm a, I'm really happy with like how the game looks. Um, I think that's the closest we're going to get to like a Paragon replacement, like a, uh, fill the hole, the void that it left behind. Um, I didn't, I, I like that they're adding this little quality of life changes because, uh, little, little things like that can really, really affect player experience. So I'm glad that they're taking the time to add those little kind, little like changes and fixes, not necessarily buffs, but like just make life easier for everybody. Um, uh, I really like that they're adding Muriel next because as we said, Muriel is my favorite. I can't wait for that. Yeah, I tuned into his stream today a little bit when he was working on Muriel and he actually was demoing, um, pretty much all of the heroes and made a couple of little, like you said, adjustments to some of them that all to me seem really great, but he's also really taking into consideration what the, um, not only what the community has to say, but his team, like, you know, he has picked this team for a reason and they all seem to really have good reasonings behind because a couple, a couple of people were saying that like, um, Murdoch's minds look a little small and he said, look, that's changeable. We can, we can always work with that. Um, but we're kind of, there's a reasoning behind it and we're testing it and stuff like that. And I'm so happy that he's streaming again because you get those little like nuggets of knowledge of why they're doing the things they're doing through those streams and they're really, really, uh, entertaining and informative. So I highly recommend checking them out if you're not. And speaking of the team, they've officially added Ruba to the team. Ruba is now officially a part of Omega Studios. He was, um, kind of a consultant with them for a while, but now he's a full blown member of the team. So, Grats to Ruba, you, uh, if you guys don't know who Ruba is, you can watch the show. You know, we do the tech time with Ruba. He obviously knows a lot about Unreal Engine and how to, how to program the Paragon assets to make them as close to the original as possible. So that's a great pickup for Omega Studios. Um, and just, you know, from, from the, he's part of the four of the Minions team too. So we're really proud of him. We're really happy for him and just, you know, two thumbs up. Great job, Ruba. Great job, Smokey, for picking Ruba up because, and then, um, the other thing, the other way you guys might recognize Ruba, he's been a moderator for the Paragon Reddit for like ever. So. Yeah, he's such a gem. He is going to be such an asset to that team. That's amazing. And then, uh, I think that's good. That's going to sum it up for the news and updates for this week. Um, and yeah, unfortunately we did, like I said, we didn't have anything from Visionary or made a buff, but hopefully next time, if you guys are interested in learning anything, anything more about any of these games, I'll have, uh, several links in the comments below. You can check out their discords, YouTube channels, all that kind of stuff. But, uh, we're going to move on now to the poll results. The poll that I put out this week, I'm changing it up every week now, is the preferred version of Paragon and the options I gave were Legacy, Monolith, and then version 42 Monolith, which was kind of the, the new card system. Um, the poll results were Legacy at 44%, Monolith at 47%, and the version 42 of Monolith at 9%. So, I kind of expected Legacy to take it, but it looks like Monolith did. However, I will say that a lot of people, you know, commented and saying that they never actually got to play Legacy, so they can't really speak to Legacy. They, um, I think most of the player base only played on Monolith, and then, um, uh, I was, you might be surprised to see 9% for version 42 Monolith. There are a lot of people that did like the new card system, and for good reason too. Um, I always talk shit about it because I didn't like it personally, and that doesn't mean that I can't see how other people would like it, so. If you, if you're surprised to see that 9%, maybe don't be so surprised. It's, it's, you know, it's a matter of personal preference and opinion, so. I don't know, these polls are kind of fun. I like doing these polls. If you guys have any suggestions for polls that I could do in the future, just let me know in the comments below, and we'll, uh, we'll hook it up. Just make sure it's not like, you know, 10 to 15 options or something like that. I'd give it like, like four or five options. So with that, uh, with the poll results out of the way, let's move on to Tech Time with Rubo. What we've been doing with Tech Time is trying to teach you guys how to load the Paragon Assets into the Unreal Engine, so you can just kind of horse around with them yourself and play around and maybe bring back the feels a little bit, and, uh, we're going to go, go ahead and get into that right now. So, uh, enjoy Tech Time. We'll be back. Welcome back to Tech Time, everyone. We're going to pick right up where we left off last week with our ongoing process of bringing again Tech to life in the Unreal Engine. There we go. Okay. Nice. So next thing, and this can get a bit confusing, um, to, to, to move around. If you go up to the top where it says in animation blueprint, anim graph, ground, local motion, click on the button that says, um, ground, local motion. Yep. And that'll take us back up a level. Okay. So, um, our entry point as we start, and we're idle. This is like your, where do I begin? Imagine this is like a maze. This is the first point we're going to go. So we're going to go into idle and there's two different places that we can go, um, as we start moving around. So the first one is you see there's an arrow that moves from idle to jog start. Okay. And that's known as the conduit, and that's basically go from this type of animation to this one. And if you see the little, um, button in the middle of the line, the one that's got the two arrows back and forth, this is, um, your transition rule. So what this says is this is basically if this stuff happens, go from idle to jog start. Um, so for this one, it's just saying if your speed is greater than zero, so you're not stationary, and you're not in the air, so you're not jumping, and you, uh, are not accelerating, you can go like not accelerating. Oh, no, sorry. I can't read. It says, uh, double click it and you can go into it. It says not in the air and is accelerating. So this is the logic that kind of controls when we go from idle into the jog start. And the jog start is the animation where it's like you start moving. You're not running yet, but you're kind of like, you put your weight into your move and you start moving. And what this will say is so if our speed, which is, um, as a variable, so that's a float number that we have on our character, so that basically says how fast am I going? If that's greater than zero, then it means we're moving. So if that's happening and then we're not in the air, so you see where it says as an air, that is something that another variable, this time the red ones are known as bullions. So that's like true or false. So if we're not in the air and we're accelerating and our speeds greater than zero, we can go from idle into jog start. That's all this does. Um, and for example, if you wanted one where you're in the air, you'd have am I in the air and not moving and then it would just do the jump and stuff like that. Okay. So this is kind of your logic. So if we go back to ground locomotion and go into jog start this time, double click on it or double click on it. Yep. Okay. So here is where the problems start. So this is a, this is the kind of the run and the problem we have here is that it's going to play jog forward start regardless of the direction we're going in. So there's nothing actually here in terms of the logic that says if you're going left play left. If you go to the right, the asset browser where all the animations are and then filter if you type start. I think that's the best way to do it start. Here we go. This will give you all of your, like different animation. So if you double click and jog forward start. Okay. So you see that that's Yen when she kicks her feet off and move forward. So you can kind of see where it loops where she kind of pushes forward. If you close that and then go into the, I don't know, pick a different one, like jog back or start or left start or right start. You'll see now, like those are the different animations that we've got. So they're the different parts. What we have to do is we have to be able to tell the game, this is the way I'm going and this is the direction I'm moving. Now, I don't know if it comes in Yen, it comes in some of the assets. Can you get rid of where it says start on the right and instead just type in jog and then scroll down. I think I see it. Please, please, please. Oh, keep going. Oh, epic. Should I have picked a different hero? No, it's fine. We can fix it. That's just going to do a bit more work. Basically, I'll explain what these are anyway. So if you double click on jog forward slope plane, I'm going to quickly, very quickly explain what these are before we build it. So yeah, double click on it. Okay. And I don't know if you can see it on your screen, but there should be below that box. There should be a panel. You might have to make that window smaller so we can see it. That's probably a bit too small. There we go. It's hiding right in the middle of your screen. It's right in the middle of your screen. And then if you hover over the bottom of that window and like on the edge of the window. We try to expand it this way. Oh, there we go. Okay. I see what's happening. And you might have to make the animation window, that black bar at the bottom. If you hover over the up a little bit, actually the one between that's, there you go. There we go. Keep going, keep going, keep going. There we go. Perfect. Okay. It's going to be a bit awkward to see, but hopefully we can see. So this is what's known as a blend space. And there's a couple of different types of blend spaces. And what this does is this lets you blend animations together. We don't unfortunately have any that we can use. So we're going to have to build some. At least for the start animations. Now the way this works, if you hold down shift and move your mouse all over this box, you can see that the animations change. Oh yeah. She's leaning around. Yep. So the up and down axis. So from top to bottom back, that covers the angle. So if you imagine that when you go to the top, you're running up hill. And when you go down to the bottom, you're running downhill. You can see how her weight shifts on her feet from forward to back. So she's still running forward. So she's running forward the whole time here. Left and right are the leans. So you can see how she leans to the side for it. So what this blend space does is basically takes. What's it got there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. But it's actually not nine. It's like six or something. Six different animations and it pulls them all together into like a set of animations. So this is like a blend space. So what we can do is we can use something like this to control our stops. So what we're going to do, Mongoose, is we need to close this window and we need to close, or we can, yeah, we'll just close this and then close the animal blueprint. We're very quickly going to go make a blend space. Okay. So we need to go make our own blend space. If you go into the animations folder, because we are about to make an animation. And then there's a folder called blend spaces. I think it's the second folder on the left. There we go. We're going to blend spaces. Okay. So here we have, what do we have? Okay. Go into, go into jog combat 1D for a second. I think we can use that. We can't use it now, but we can use it later. There we go. And then do your shift thing and move back and forth. Oh, no. This is, what the, what is this? No. Oh. Okay. So we're back. And as I said to Mongoose, in the cut, if your Unreal Engine editor does crash, it's fine. It's perfectly normal. Save regularly. Save frequently. If you've done a lot of work in your project and you don't want to go make changes, take backups, do go into your folders, do all that. But if it crashes, don't worry. You probably didn't do something wrong. If you actually go back into animations, Mongoose, go back into your animations and go back into blend spaces. Oh. Yeah. Still working on this type. I know it's working on this screen so everyone can see. It doesn't make it easy. This is probably much what all the Unreal live streams look like. Go back in. So that jog combat 1D, do not go back into it. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Let's close it. Close it. It's fine. It's fine. Actually, if you double click it, double click it, expand it but then don't do anything else. Expand it out and hopefully this doesn't. So the reason this crashes, do you see those red markers on that line? Don't go anywhere near them. Just look. Those red markers are missing animation assets. It's sort of telling you that there's a problem with those animations. I don't know what. I have to go and dig, but that's why it crashed. I feel like I'm on a minefield right now. So yeah. So I just close that. Just go up and just close that and then just don't use that one. Okay. So we're going to create our own blind space to handle start animation. So if you right click and I'll cut it off here, be sure to tune in next week as we continue to try to make these assets work. Okay, everybody. Welcome back from tech time. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I tried to keep it again under about 10 minutes. So we're going to move on now to the topic for discussion, which is the effects of sound design on overall player immersion. I thought this would be a good topic to discuss. Since we got tricolor with us today and tricolor, why don't you get us started on this? Why don't you let us know from the sound designers perspective here? Well, you know, everyone's always going to say that their part is the most important to game design, but my part's the most important to game design. My mantra is like, if they can, if they notice the sound design, you're doing it wrong. Like if they like, oh, this sounds terrible, then you're not, this isn't, you're supposed to be unnoticed. That's like the best way you can do sound design. But if we're talking about player impact, like every action has to have a audio feedback. So like, even if they're clicking, even if it doesn't do anything, they're just clicking and you, they need to hear it. Well, I did that panel on a sound design over at Colossal Conn and a lot of the questions was like, so, so like, how do, how does voice acting work? I'm like, that's not the important part. The important part is, are they even going to hear it? Like if it's drowned out in a team fight, there was no point for those lines to even be there. So timing and implementation are some of the most important parts of sound design. A lot of it is foley work, like going out and hitting things together and hoping that you get a sound that you can somehow morph into an appropriate sound. In fact, like malware is basic attacking is a bow and arrow sounds, but chip crush to sound a bit. So it's so you like, immensely associate that with a bow and arrow, which is what he has, but it sounds like very crunchy and Game Boy color ease. So when I was working on that Dark Star Karma voice pack, it helps to play or at least be like familiar with the character that you're, you're working on because there are power highs. There are power lows. There are certain things that the character does that are more important than others. And you had to be familiar with those while you're designing a character, even, even not just sound design, like our assets and stuff like that. It's very, very important. So karma has like a, a tether where she like attaches herself to somebody and after a delay, she roots them, right? But she has to keep up with them and it looks like a draining kind of effect because she's connected to them. When I was doing the Dark Star Karma voice pack, something that I thought would be really cool is if when she attaches to somebody, you hear the echo that's normally present in her voice, but it goes down in pitch to signify that she's like draining from them. Like she's like attaching herself to them physically. Basic attack lines like, you know, you're, they're called action exertion noises or vamping noises where they got like ha, ha, ha, like basic stuff like that. Typically don't have as much effects on them because that causes audio noise and most audio engines, a sound file cannot play until one is done. So if you have like, if they basic attack and you hear ha and it has like a lot of echo, then it's going to take an eternity for that line to finish and for the next one to begin. You see what I mean? I'm not really familiar with how Unity audio engine work. I let Mikhail over at the programming suite deal with that. But in a League's engine and in a lot of other engines like Overwatch's engine, sound files can't play on top of each other. So like managing, it's like a printer queue. You know what I mean? Like one has to happen for the next and managing that kind of order is super, super important. You also don't want to overload your players. Like a big, big problem in League of Legends right now is that voice files are not working to where they're supposed to. And I can't fix that. Sorry guys. But some characters just speak way too much or they're way too loud or they say the same line over and over and over and over again. And that could be very frustrating for players because they have over 900 voice lines but they're only hearing three, you know? And not to mention that you put resources and money into hiring a voice actor to voice these lines. So proper implementation is like the first step. And then the second step is finding a right sound for the character. You have to associate the character with a certain, like not even just like a feeling and not even just a sound but like a feeling. So like for Noxus, she has like an angel chorus in all of her voice lines. And I'm doing SFX work for her right now and like a big thing that I'm like really latching onto her is like, not wind chimes, but like when you take like a glass bowl and you hit it and it goes... That's something I'm really into with her. And then Malware of course is the... I'm trying to do like a sort of dark 8-bit kind of feel, it's really hard to make 8-bit not feel cartoony. So a lot of it is like a bit crushed beyond recognition and it sounds really crunchy and like disturbing. But something that is... Animation needs to come first and then sound effects and voice lines because you can't time things or get the right intonation or inflection without animations. And if you do it before the animations are done or you lock in on something like hardcore when the animation is done, it will all be misaligned. Nobody likes that. That is like the worst feeling in the world when your character winds up or something and the voice line plays before or after the action. So it's so frustrating. But yeah, sound design is like really, really, really, really important and I kind of think it's overlooked. Like I know everyone thinks it's overlooked but I think it's really overlooked. Yeah, that's it. Go ahead, Mandy. It's so interesting that the first thing you said was that the best sound design goes unnoticed because I actually didn't notice and appreciate how good the sound design in Paragon was until... And this isn't a knock on the alpha for predecessor but obviously it's an alpha. They don't have all those kind of final touches in there. So until I played a game that didn't have all those little touches, it was like, oh, wow, yeah, it makes a difference. Not only in immersion but like you were saying, every little thing you do, whether you were locking in a card or there was a ping on the map or you killed a minion, there was kind of like these conformational sounds that there's so much going on. Those sounds really help you know what's going on in all of the clamor. And that's just kind of underneath the more important things like the ability sounds and even voice lines and things like that. I thought it was so interesting because I had taken some notes before the show so I could really kind of have my thoughts gathered for this discussion and everything you said was like a note that I had kind of written down like, oh, I just thought that was really, really interesting. So I was kind of itching to talk. So I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It really does bring player immersion if the sound effect goes off way after something the animation happens or way before the animation happens. And it's just, it's terrible. I thought Paragon did a great job with it. And another thing you kind of hit on their tricolor that is getting the correct sort of feel for each hero. Like thing now, you know, you had kind of that crang, clang sound whenever he hit with the spear. I thought that was really cool. I think you could go the other way with that and have like sort of a squelchy meat tearing sound. Like he's actually cutting somebody with a spear. I think a lot of people would love that. But for the most part, that would be very off-putting if it actually sounded like he was slicing someone with a spear every time. So I think they went the right route there and kind of a clang sort of metal on metal sound every time with his spear animations. But yeah, I think, I really think sound design is very important. And I've said it from the beginning, well, from the end of Paragon, I should say, that it's one of the things that made Paragon special is that everything tied into each other. And like a Richter hook, it sounded really good. It looked really good whenever you got hit with it. You know, your camera shook a little bit. It was very disorienting. And I think as well, it should be. And then some of the other things, like when your sound dampens, whenever you get hit by certain abilities, like when you're stunned or whatever, it kind of sounds like you're underwater. I always thought that was kind of cool. How do you do that, tricolor? Do you mean like muffling sounds when you get hit by things? Right, yeah. So there are certain cutoff filters in the sound design world and there are things called high pass filters and low pass filters. A low pass filter lets low frequencies pass through. So if you're stunned or CC'd, you're going to apply a low pass filter to your environment. So you're only going to hear the low frequencies. It's like walls are natural low pass filters, like dry walls in a lot of apartments. So that's why whenever someone's playing music next to her, all you hear is the... because it's letting the low frequencies through but cutting out the high ones. And that's a... it's very disorienting and very like... I'm restrained or CC'd in some sort of way because I can't hear everything. I can only hear the low frequencies. So that's how they do that in the sound design world. There's also like... I thought Aurora's sound design was very, very good. Mostly because all of hers had... Like you said, if you were playing against Aurora, you heard that low pass filter a lot. And I liked how all of her abilities had a delayed... most of her abilities had a delayed sound effect, like cryo-size them, like her ult. She would send out that pulse of ice and then it would slowly freeze everyone. Like I love that because it's like, hey, did anything happen? Oh, there it is. Oh no, like... It had an escalating ice-popping effect associated with it too, which was nice. Oh, it's like candy for my ears. I always thought Moragesh had a really interesting... Yes. With her feet, it sounded like bare feet patting all around. And it sounded different from like when Faze would run, where it sounded like someone wearing like shoes or boots and her hive ability. It sounded like, you know, like bugs. It was really cool. And whenever she whipped her knife too, there was like a... Yeah. You want to talk about Faze? Let's talk about Faze. Yes. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Did I hit... I love Faze. Like I completely forgot about her. Like we were talking about her favorite paradigm. I can't believe I forgot about my girl. I can't believe. I just love her so much. Like she had those EDM beats in her tether. Everything was like... She sounded kind of like an iPhone interface, because it was like... There was a lot of like clicking sounds, because it sounded very modern. But it was dampened and like echoed. So it sounded really cool. Paragon sound design was so good, everybody. It really was. Sorry, I'm like nerding out over here. Yeah. Yeah, that's stuff that would add to my immersion. However, I would never notice it. I'd never would have noticed any of that. But yeah, you're absolutely right. I'm hyper-focused on it. I'm like, everyone's like, Hey, did you see this new champion? And I'm like, they sound like crap. Yeah, they sound like crap. They don't look like crap. That's so funny. Oh, I love it. That's awesome. What about announcer packs? Like how they're different from in-game voices and stuff. Well, in general, you're going to have to tone down a lot of the effects. Like you're going to have to somehow differentiate the announcer from, like if you're playing as, for instance, malware, and there's a malware announcer pack, you need to be able to differentiate which malware is talking. You know what I mean? Like, is it the player? Is it the malware you're playing as, or is it the announcer malware? So like, if I were to do an announcer pack of a character that is playable in the game, I would usually like, I would make them louder than the player character. And I would pull back on the effects and echoes just a little bit to make it. So that's the first thing you hear. They're more understandable. Um, announcer packs typically, um, I know in league, they're stored in like a totally different location. So they're not even anywhere near the voiceover files. Um, uh, there's this, there was this craze back in the day. I know from, I don't know if this still holds true, but all the announcers were like, slightly British females and now they're all deep males. So I don't know what's happening. You know what? You're right. You're absolutely right. But, um, uh, I, the announcer for, uh, for ethereal that I still, I'm like, I can't decide. There's so many cool like options for announcers because it can be literally anything you want. It could be like a clean female robot vocal. It could be an evil robot vocal. It could be, um, like a really deep like demon. It could be so many things because it's a non-corporeal entity that's supposed to be narrating the game. So I think the announcers probably going to be like one of the last things we finish because, uh, I want to personally me, I want to make sure it like kind of unifies everyone together and doesn't sound like any one character in the game for pre-alpha anyway, because apparently there's going to be like 32 characters and I cannot wait. But, um, what did that answer your question? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's brought up some interesting points. Um, man, I'm really like, I'm really enjoying talking to you, Tri-Color, because it's a lot of stuff that I didn't know and I like learning about these things. Yeah, this has definitely been really. That's, and that's funny that you brought up of the slightly British female versus the deep, you know, manly voice. Um, when Madeabuff initially released their announcer voice packs, the first one they released was kind of a, you know, the high-pitched female voice and people went ballistic. They didn't like it at all. They're like, oh, we want the Paragon announcer pack back. So they had to, they kind of had to make a, another announcer pack that was sort of a deeper masculine voice. Um, it really matters to people, you know, sound design definitely matters to people. Well, you're going to be hearing that announcer every day, every time you play. So it's got to be one you like. Um, I think, I think the reason why people stopped using the British ladies because League of Legends is the British lady. And, uh, there could be only one British lady. Um, I really liked Paragon's announcer because like, uh, he sounded like he was, uh, like out of this world, you know what I mean? Like he was like, I'm super bored with all of this, but I'm going to narrate it because I love watching you guys kill each other. I like, I like the announcer a lot. Um, I also liked how it had, he had a stereoscopic audio. So it played in both headphones separately as compared to like how the characters in game would play in both headphones at the same time. So whenever you would hear the announcer, it kind of like rotated between your headphones really fast with like a chorus effect. I don't know if anyone like picked up on that, but that was like that. That's like another way to like be like, Oh, this is an announcer that's happening because it's like chorusy and it's way different quality. It has a different, it's not, it feels like it's not in the game. It feels like it's in your headphones. Yeah, not until you said that, did I notice that? Cause I went back and watched some old Paragon gameplay so I could like remember what the things sounded like. And it's funny that you say that because I, I noticed that, I didn't notice I was noticing it until you just said it just now that yeah, there was that kind of like chorusy feel or sound to, um, to the announcer when he would say things. You knew it was him and not just by his voice. Yeah. It just sounded different from the rest of the game. One of the community suggestions we had on an episode a long time back, I of course have no idea which episode it was, um, was the ability to record your own announcer packs and then import them into the game. How hard would that be? So in Unreal, I, I don't know if Unreal like compresses or converts voice files, but in a lot of game engines, they use a proprietary audio engine so it doesn't come with the game engine you're working with. The most popular one right now is called Wwise. It's made by AudioKinetic and that's one League users. I'm pretty sure, um, Smite uses that one and Paladins uses that one and, uh, Battleborn used that one before, you know, it died. Uh, so it, it's easy if you provide them the tools to do it. Um, there's a lot of potential for like little kinds of like software incompatibilities, windows architecture incompatibilities. Um, the, if, if you were to just record your own voice pack or, or announcer and like export them all and wave files, like there's a lot of, it depends on how big the announcer pack is. So let's say it's like 50 lines. That's not very big. You would have to record them and then if you wanted effects or audio cleanup or anything, you'd have to do that. Then you would have to split the lines into each segment. Like you'd have to go in and like isolate pentakill, isolate double kill and like export that. Um, depending on how the engine works, it might hash the voice files into numbers. Um, game engines don't read letters. A lot of them don't read letters. A lot of them convert, um, letters into numbers because it's easier for computers to read. So instead of it being like a solo kill or double kill, it's like 0x535258EBA. And that's really hard people to keep track of. Um, there's also the, how would you regulate that sort of thing? Like is it on the Steam Workshop? Can everyone download it? Is it just you? Is it client side? Is it server side? Like if it's client side, then only you can hear it. And if it's server side, that means the server has to load all that. And what's stopping someone from uploading a 60 gig voice pack, a 60 gig announcer pack forcing the server to handle it. And then everyone has to sit in the loading screen for like three hours because there's a 60 gigs. Um, so it's, it's, it sounds like a really good idea on paper. You know what I mean? But, um, there are a lot of hurdles in implementation. Um, I can see, I can see Unreal handling it a lot better than a lot of other engines would simply because, um, Unreal is very open. You could probably provide like a tool for splitting it. Like you could do a, a queue recording. So it'd be like, record this, press R, save it, record this, press R, save it. Um, that sort of thing. But again, like Unreal only takes 16 bit 44,000 hertz wave files. Uh, not MP3 files. A lot of people use MP3 files. So yeah, it's, it is doable, but it requires a lot of end user hassle and work. So they'd have to want it. You know what I mean? And there would have to be like, um, things in place to prevent abuse of that system and like standard setup and all that sort of, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. It's, um, and honestly, announcer packs kind of fall on the developers. Like they're not very hard to make because they all fall the same basic template, like the, you know, two solo kill lines, two double kill lines, a pentakill line, that kind of thing. Yeah. Like, what's, you know, fork over that extra money for that, the few of those like 50 extra lines and, you know, then charge, charge money for like charge two bucks for it. Like it's easy peasy. Um, but yeah, I think and like another thing is like the ethics of it. Like what if someone like makes a voice pack that's super racist or super like offensive and I don't know. I think that I think chances that are very small, but you know the server side. Oh, and there's also proprietary problems. Like what if someone like makes like a like a SpongeBob SquarePants and they take clips from the show and put it in exact and then you know, you have lawyers on us and then lawyers on them. So it's just, it's a good idea in theory, but in practice it just would not work. Good to go. Thanks for crushing my hopes and dreams. I'm so sorry. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. This is interesting. So, um, did you guys have anything else you wanted to say on the, uh, on the topic for discussion? I think I got everything that I wanted to say. All right. I'm all talked out. All talked out. Oh, he's all talkered. So let's move on. Community Builder this week. This guy, uh, it's two house phones. Mandy introduced me to him. He is absolutely hilarious, has nothing to do with Paragon or anything we talk about on the show, but he's just a funny dude that I think you, uh, you should check out. And I'm all about, you know, clueing you guys into something that might be fun and interesting. And he certainly is fun and interesting. So check out two house phones. If you haven't already, I'll have his YouTube channel linked in the description below. So thank you, Mandy. Thank you for introducing me to him because he is really funny. No problem. Yeah. I have never, I guarantee if you don't laugh watching his videos, you'll get your money. That's my guarantee. Get your money back. So let's move on to plugs. Mandy, you got anything to plug this week? Um, let's see. Uh, I think the last video I did was out last week at, I can't remember, but if you haven't watched it, go watch it, please. Um, other than that, I've still just been streaming over on Twitch. Um, so yeah, that's that. Check out Mandy's Instagram. Oh yeah, check out my Instagram. The gram. There's some truly, my whole, my whole stick is I'm very mediocre. So if you like mediocre, you're gonna love me. You're gonna love me. My follow is a Furby Instagram. The Furby one. The Furby. Try and call her. You got anything to plug? Uh, oh yeah. Uh, the, my Dark Star Karma voice pack is, yeah, coming out today. Uh, anyone who comments on the video is actually going to be interested in giveaway for the skin and the icon. I don't know if you guys know that, but you should tell us. Wow. Very exciting. It's, um, it's, works with all regions. That's a new, that's a new function, darling. So, uh, um, yeah. So go ahead and check that out, please. I will have that link down in the description below, of course, as well as, uh, Tri-Colors Twitter and, uh, anything else you want me to link? Uh, no. All right, cool. Um, I actually have something to plug this week. Uh, I did two new T-shirt designs. Um, the first one is just the basic, uh, mangoes. Just my logo on the front says mangoes on the back. The other one though, the barbarian goose is pretty sweet. Uh, I'll show that. I'll put a picture of that up there. So, uh, I'll put the links down in the description below if you guys want to grab one. I'm definitely going to get one myself. It's probably one of my favorite designs I've ever made ever. So, that's it for my plugs. Um, thanks for coming out and enjoying the show with us this week. Uh, thank you very much, Mandy. And thank you. Thank you so much Tri-Color for coming out. You're such an interesting guest. Thank you. Uh, I just, I really want to have you back again, man. That was, uh, it was a great show, I think. I hope, uh, I hope everybody out there enjoyed it. But for now, this is the Four of the Minions team signing off. You guys have a good one. Mandy Goose. Mandy, you look like you just got done shooting a commercial for Totino's pizza rolls. Yeah. I'm not going to dignify that. I'm not kidding. I will go change. What's wrong? What's wrong with my kitty cat shirt? Nothing's wrong with your kitty cat shirt. I bought this in the little boys section at Walmart. So how could, how could it look like a mom? You're shopping for your son at the same time? No. I just like, they have better selection. Okay. I don't like to wear a girl. God damn you both. One for you. One for me. Oh my God. I shouldn't admit this, but sometimes I wear his clothes. What? They have, they have cool clothes. Okay. Okay. This shot took a weird turn, but that's okay. It is okay. I mean, from what little I know about women's fashion, women's clothing tends to have pockets that fit perfectly, but also they, they've jazzed up beautifully running around and stopping things, swinging her Rockefeller faces up. He's only Diaz and Ke Zi制 will be two of these other options. I completely understand that. That is the vein of my existence. I will never understand fake pockets. Cause you got to put it not, it's the aesthetic of pocketbook. Ew. I don't carry a pocketbook. I'm not doing this show anymore. What a dynamic I quit