Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 News

Hello All – my name is Austin Maestre, and I am a producer on Bloodlines 2. I’m one of the newer producers at HSL, but I have been in production roles for about six years. In my experience, production can be a bit of a black box – in or outside of the games industry – so I want to take some time to share a bit about the role and how it has changed during the pandemic.

First, let me acknowledge that the following breakdown of production is based off my own – and some friends’ – experiences and that there may be things that don’t apply to everyone who has ever worked in production. I intend to do my best to accurately paint a picture of production that fits with general understanding with a hint of personal experience.

@kchironis

[h2]WHAT IS PRODUCTION?[/h2]
At its core, the role of a producer is to make sure the game/project is completed and delivered. While the baseline seems simple, it gets increasingly more complex and ambiguous as constraints are put on the project. For example, in the pre-production (planning) phase of any projects work has to be to done to figure out: what is the intended scope/size of the project, how many resources (people) do we need to complete it, how long should it take us, what will the cost look like? These are all questions that production is often responsible for figuring out the answers to and then creating a plan informed by them.

Unfortunately, no project will ever stick entirely to the estimated time, cost, scope, or resourcing in each project plan. Maintaining, changing, and updating this plan – in real-time – is akin to being a bus driver on a crowded bus, where there’s no clear road to your destination, and most of the passengers have thoughts on how to get there. In some cases, the destination isn’t even really known. Continuing the bus analogy - it’s the job of production to listen to those giving directions and then filter, mediate, and align those voices to one direction; while also marking it down on the map so everyone knows the plan.

Each studio will define the responsibilities of production or project management differently. This is where the ambiguity comes in. At some studios, there is only one producer who oversees high-level planning and project maintenance. At the same time, each department (ex: animation, engineering, UI, Narrative) take on the planning and delivery work for themselves. At other studios, there is a robust fleet of producers that are helping on all levels, from specific teams to large chunks of the game, to the entire studio. Since there isn’t a single standard of what a producer’s day-to-day responsibilities are, it’s often up to individual producers to figure that out as they go. The resulting scenario is frequently a mix of concrete “paperwork” type stuff and filling the gaps for the project or studio as needed. Because in the end, a producer’s job is to produce.

[h2]PRODUCTION FROM THE HOME OFFICE[/h2]


“But Austin, those all seem like things that can be done remotely and regardless of WFH mandates. Have things changed that much because of the pandemic?”

Great question, faithful reader. The short answer is yes; they have changed. The shorthand definition I gave for production is centered around concrete fundamentals of production. Specifically, planning, organizing, facilitating, coordinating, and filling gaps.

Those things are not the sole makeup of production, however. They are just the building blocks. The other parts of production come from soft skills that revolve around integrating with teams, understanding their needs, and supporting them in more profound ways than planning. To me, a producer should be someone who can advocate for their team (or teams) and affect real change because they genuinely trust and understand their perspective. They should also have built trust with the members of their team because it has to go both directions. A good producer should be listening to and supporting the developers they oversee - but at the end of the day, they are responsible for getting the project across the finish line. This can result in a conflict between what their department leads want and what the budget, timeline, etc., allow for. Building trust with their team(s) is crucial because it helps make those conversations more about the project’s quality and less about the business aspect of development.

That trust and understanding is not usually something that is easily cultivated or maintained. Like any relationship (work or otherwise) effort needs to be applied to keep things in a healthy state. This has become more difficult in the age of COVID-19 because popping over to someone’s desk to chat or taking a coffee/lunch/walking break with a coworker isn’t possible the same way it used to be. Those types of human interactions help build a relationship more organically and naturally.

This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to build those connections, but more effort is required to develop and maintain them. I guess the easiest way to put this is: the same types of learning and adjusting that we have had to do socially – during COVID - also applies to how production staff have had to shift to maintain the aspects of our jobs that are less about “paper work” and more about “people work”.


So, what could that look like? Let’s say a producer is working with a lead to define a spec for a feature. Pre-COVID times, it’s likely that the producer and lead would have an in-person meeting to kick off the conversation and then set some dates to follow up or complete it. Let’s also say that this particular lead isn’t a super communicative person by nature. If the pair have the relationship I talked about, there likely wouldn’t need to be any follow-ups until the due date or next meeting because the two would have an understanding of how the other works or what their needs are. In the year of our lord Corona, this interaction takes more time and energy. Nowadays, the producer and lead will still have a call – and will set dates – but if they haven’t had time to build rapport, there’s a high chance the producer ends up checking in more frequently. Not because they don’t trust the lead to get the work done but because they don’t have that same understanding of each other’s work habits. The higher number of check-ins mean more time disturbing the lead to get info. More disturbances to the lead means less time spent on work. Less time spent on work means… you guessed it… less work getting done. It’s the producer’s job to keep the work on track, but it’s also to support the people doing the work. It gets precarious to try and build relationships and trust at a distance while regularly needing to bug people about progress.

[h2]TL;DR[/h2]
Production is an integral part of video game development for many reasons and, there are aspects of the job that got more difficult because we have less access to the types of interactions that help us work well with our teams.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk and I want you to know I’m super excited to be a part of this team and this project. I can’t wait for you all to have a chance to see what the team has been creating. I think it’s really special.

Today we have an important announcement in regards to the release date of Bloodlines 2.

When you hear Visual Effects (VFX), images of giant explosions and magic missiles might come to mind, but VFX for games goes far deeper than that. From a mundane leaky pipe or blowing leaves to supernatural Tremere blood magic, VFX is responsible for bringing the dynamics of the game world to life.

VFX artists must be very versatile. It’s our job to bring the vision of the Art Director to life. One day that could be creating realistic blood, the next it might be communicating an idea like Toreador Celerity, or it might be making trash blow around. It might also be something you never even considered, such as our Christmas Lights which are actually VFX!



Inception
Every effect starts as a need from a department. Let’s look at the Tremere Acolyte’s Blood Orb attack. VFX usually happens toward the end, so first Design will come up with the parameters of the effect, Engineering will make The attack work as expected, and Animation will create the enemy character animations that are needed, and then VFX comes in.

We start with a kickoff meeting with the Art Director and designers so we understand what the effect needs to look like and what information it should communicate to the player. Understanding the context of the effect is really important. Next, we get concept art from the Art Director so we have a visual target and general quality part to aim for, and schedule out the work with the Production team.



Block-out
In the block-out phase, we do some fact-finding. What are the technical requirements for the effect? Is there anything we need to build or other unknowns that have to be tackled to be successful? One of the questions for this particular effect was how we wanted to handle the light effect when the Orb is activated, so we prototyped a solution and synced up with our Lighting engineers to make sure everything was going to work ok. Once all of our questions are answered, we can move on to the next phase.



Iteration
This is where we polish our effects to a shine. We work on improving the look of the effect, then we get feedback from the Art Director and improve it even more. Does the effect meet the quality standards of the Art Director? Does it tell the right story, have the right timing and tone? Once the effect is meeting all of our needs, we can move on to the final step!

Audio / QA / Final Review
Now Audio can come in and add the cherry on top. QA will hammer on the effect to make sure nothing is broken. The project directors will review it and could also have points of feedback to address.

And Ship!
Now we have a finished effect ready for the players to enjoy!



Built by a small team
Throughout the project, the VFX team has been very small. There have been times when no one was working on FX at all! We’ve had some talented people come and go from the project, and the final result is a blend of everyone who has touched Bloodlines 2. At our height, working with outsourcing partners, we had 7 VFX artists working full time on the project, but for the majority of the time it has been a single VFX artist with Tech-Art support. (Hiring VFX artists is hard!) We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve given the limited resources we had throughout the project.

Every visual effect is a new set of artistic and technical challenges, and solving those challenges can be a lot of fun and very rewarding, and we are very excited for everyone to see what we’ve conjured up for Bloodlines 2!

-Hardsuit Labs VFX Team

Hey Everyone, it is me again, Andy Kipling, CEO of HSL and sometimes Producer on Bloodlines 2! I am here to give you an update on Bloodlines 2 development; or more specifically an update on how us developers are getting along.

First, let me start by saying that I hope you are all navigating these trying times brought on by this global pandemic in as safe and as best way you possibly can. At Hardsuit we have been working diligently to first and foremost ensure for the safety and health of all our employees while conforming with the Stay at Home orders of the state government. Second, we have been hard at work developing Bloodlines 2!

These times have introduced us to a whole host of new experiences, emotions and workflows: some good, some bad and some ugly. I figured it may be of interest to describe some of those to you.

First on the good side, full time exclusive WFH has been a pretty massive change for us; we typically favor in person interactions and the natural collaboration that takes place when you get multiple people in the same room together. But, at the same time we have taken this opportunity to become a better employer and developer and have fully embraced it. As a result, we have stood up new processes and workflows to foster and support creative development even when remote. We have updated and improved our back-end infrastructure to more easily support 100+ employees remotely pushing and pulling gigs of data to and from our servers. We are now more capable and flexible towards catering to individual needs by – be it mitigating a terrible commute through Seattle traffic, or working with individual talent outside of Seattle and outside of our time zone. All these things make us nimbler, and more adaptable in an industry that is constantly changing.

The bad part of the whole “never get to go into the office” (other than the Covid19 realities and its consequences) is that we miss out on a lot of what we have strived so hard to create, foster and cultivate at HSL: the positive work environment, the friendly random interactions with your fellow co-workers, and the general social dynamics of having a bunch of incredibly talented and creative people working together towards a common goal, all together in the same space. We, as a species, are without a doubt social creatures (much like our Vampire brethren…) and the day to day human interactions of being in the office can be very beneficial to our mental health. So, there are lots of discussions and considerations around staying healthy (both physically and mentally); trying to balance enough social interaction, while also stepping away from your computer – which may also be the only opportunity for social interaction.

In terms of examples this means that our in-person MTG games are now having to move online. Our tabletop gaming groups and campaigns are being conducted via Teams and even our after-work happy hours are shifting into video chat land where we can sit at our computers and enjoy each other’s company.

As a studio that strives very hard to separate and respect work and life for a healthy work/life balance, and generally frowning on the idea of “bringing your work home with you…” is seriously complicated when your work is unavoidably in, and inseparable from, your home. It can be challenging for the individual: suddenly finding yourself working 12 hour days, or waking up and going straight to your computer; and it can be challenging for the organization: how to support individual’s personal lives and time and ensure they are not overworking or burning out, but still being flexible to support what works best for them, be it working early or late. Disciplined communications, encouraging people to sign off and leave when the workday ends, respecting online status, managing co-worker expectations and more are all important steps we have taken and continue to take to mitigate this. But it is definitely the case that the “bad” of the full-time WFH means that work life balance is precarious and something we need to be ever mindful of.

Lastly, we have the ugly. Across the board we have all kinds of new offices and workplaces, new co-workers and office mates, and new protocols and processes. A few examples:

We have augmented our code review process to allow for external third parties; it has sped things up considerably and generally made us more efficient:


We have been able to bring on some highly qualified individuals who we previously didn’t have access to because they refused to relocate out of Scranton, Pennsylvania:


Additionally, we have even been able to take on a few interns while we WFH, though training them has proven more challenging:


We have had some new types of problems and issues to troubleshoot and debug:


Maybe from time to time we just need to shift gears from debugging our game to de-catting our workspaces. But honestly, George does love his cat.


We have also discovered a new species of cat who keeps popping up on our slack:


And finally, Nvidia’s new RTX noise cancelling support is pretty amazing. It can help convince your co-workers that, behind that Star Wars background in your Teams call, there are in fact no small children screaming and fighting. Just what we need when we are all stuck working from home.

But enough about us, and what we are up to. What about the game you say! Well first off, here is someone else’s WFH setup. Cannot say I know who it is though:


But seriously, stay tuned, we’ve got more developer diaries to look forward to, and we have some new media dropping Soon™.

Thanks for taking the time to check in on what we have been up to and how we are doing.

Otherwise, stay safe and healthy (mentally and physically)!

~Andy

Hello everyone!

 February and March have been intense, for many reasons. Like many others in the US and around the world, the COVID-19 outbreak has changed how we work in the last few weeks. To help mitigate this unprecedented illness, our developers are all working from home. We have provided infrastructure and hardware support for that to happen, as well as provided more tools and procedures to help facilitate communication. The biggest challenge to us has been the separation. We shockingly like each other in this studio and have found it a little difficult not to be able to hang out during the week. But we also want to keep our developers and their families safe, so this is a small price to pay. The new working from home paradigm seems to be agreeing with people, and development is proceeding from the comfort of our own homes.

Speaking of which, we are seeing more and more of the game come together. On the road to “content complete” many features are getting locked including side quests, systems, and animations. We're getting to the point where the game you'll get to play at release is clearly recognizable through the construction dust. 

Side quests are where you really get to meet the World of Darkness in Bloodlines 2, just like the first game. They're also one of the main rewards for stepping off the beaten path and exploring our version of Seattle. Most of our side-quests are written, scripted, and locked down in the game, and we are very excited to share them with you. The narrative design department has been hard at work making sure these side quests feel every bit as integral to the fabric of the game as the main quests.

The game grew in other ways as well. It always was central to our vision to make players feel like a vampire through gameplay. One side of it is to create this freedom in movements that a mere mortal could never experience. This led us to the decision to expand your baseline Thinblood abilities to traversal - you can use Chiropteran Glide, Mentalism Pull for specific objects or Nebulation through vents at any time, regardless of your primary Thinblood Discipline choice. We went through the game, particularly the hubs, and investigated all the ways we could make them even more exciting and seamless for you to use. These powers have been with us for a long time, and we can fully leverage their potential uses throughout all levels for puzzles, rewards, and perhaps some secrets for you to find.

 We organized a mocap session in February, focusing on facial and dialogue animations. Our animation team has been polishing things like the feeding animations, combat, Discipline usage, and other vampire mainstays (no devs were hurt in the recording of this mocap session, proof in images). 



Thanks for reading and stay safe!