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Episode 16: Phoenix Stroh (The Electrifying Incident)
206 Plays26 days ago
In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Phoenix Stroh from the Electrifying Incident development team. Topics include the development of The Electrifying Incident, working with Godot, and working with your former professor.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:13
Speaker
you
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknuck and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them.
Meet the Guests
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm Seren, the producer at Drakknuck and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakknuck at Drakknuck and Friends.
00:00:35
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Hey there. Today we're joined by Phoenix Stroh, who you may know from the newly announced game Electrifying Incidents dev team. How are you doing today? um I'm doing pretty well.
00:00:47
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Awesome. So can you sort of introduce yourself with... sort of your background, what things you've worked on how my listeners know you. Yeah, so I'm a technical artist and just generally all around for game development.
Phoenix's Journey in Game Development
00:01:04
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And so I'm just coming out of college, Maine College of Art and Design, who has kind of exhibited some of ah games that I've done, like my work on Cubic Chess and other games like Pose Patches.
00:01:22
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And I'm coming into Drakknack on um Electrifying Incident and an unannounced game that working on. Awesome. What got you into game development in the first place?
00:01:34
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i I got into game of development quite early. i always have been interested in game design to some certain extent. The earliest memory I could think of working on a game was a horrible Monopoly ripoff for my dad's birthday that was themed around making robots because my dad builds robots.
00:01:58
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What did he think of it? I cannot remember what he thought about it. I just remember that it was a slog to get through. But I definitely got better at it.
00:02:12
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Eventually, I worked on a project for way too long called Cubic Chess in high school in Unity. And I went through the whole steps of someone that wants to go into game development.
00:02:26
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and doesn't realize how much effort it takes to get there. And so that didn't change until I went to Maine College of Art. Yeah. And we we got put in touch with you through Adam, who is the art director on A Monsters Expedition and also on The Electrifying Incident.
00:02:44
Speaker
And yeah, he's he was one of your teachers. Yeah. Like, what's he like as ah of a teacher? He's fantastic. um I think that ah he specifically is ah big reason why I was able to do so much with game development, I think.
00:03:01
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I originally learned, or originally went into the college either to do graphic design or game art. I wasn't sure at the
Inspiration and Influences
00:03:11
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time. I already had a background of programming, and I wasn't really sure if I could do games.
00:03:17
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like I didn't know if that was a possibility for me. And so i think it was after taking a 3D modeling course and realizing, hey, I'm not too bad at this, that I realized, oh, this i could I could actually do this.
00:03:32
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I may not be perfect at drawing or whatnot, but this clicks, you know? And so working with Adam on some other ah smaller game jam style projects was really valuable.
00:03:46
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He was able to give insight about how stuff worked besides a surface level, this is what it looks like and these are what the assets look like. Being able to break down some of the techniques for like how particles are made or how you're able to fake specific perspectives for games made it really really insightful to have that background and be able to do it myself.
00:04:11
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Yeah, for sure. And when you're thinking about sort of that technical art and how to implement it, was there a specific style that you were gravitating towards as you were exploring, like how different things worked, what the different pipelines were for different processes and like perspectives?
00:04:31
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Yeah, um I think I was naturally gravitating towards a a simpler style and ah and also practicing, experimenting with unique styles as much as I could.
00:04:42
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um a lot of my process was working with a colleague, Rita Bredesen, on most of my games during college. They are a lovely artist, and we experimented with, like, how can we make this most visually unique as possible? And that often comes down to, oh, this is a weird shader trick, or, oh, this is a weird 3D thing.
00:05:04
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I can remember one of the short game jam style games that we worked on, Creatures in Caverns, had us wanting to make a creature, a very long ome that would like skitter around the cave walls.
00:05:21
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And we were imagining it with tons of legs and lots of segments. And we realized, oh, that would be a pain to turn into a traditional 3D model with bones for each of their legs.
00:05:35
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And so at that point, it was either we don't do this or i figure out a way to make it easier so we don't have to 2,000 legs. so at that point,
00:05:46
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and so at that point i took the two weeks to learn to ask Adam DeGrandis to just get any form of information about how I could do this.
00:05:58
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And that turned into learning how curves work and splines work and storing information into textures, non-color information into textures.
00:06:09
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And so each of my projects is a way for me to learn more about what I could do and game development. What do you think that you learned the most throughout the development of the Electrifying
Learning Level Design with PuzzleScript and Godot
00:06:21
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Incident?
00:06:21
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For the Electrifying Incident, it was a lot of things. I think one of them was the process for taking level design and bringing it over to Godot and how to manage that kind of workflow.
00:06:37
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The ability for stuff not to be actually created, ah levels not to be designed specifically inside Godot, but rather brought in through a different medium like PuzzleScript, means a different workflow in terms of how do you organize those assets for import into Electrifying Incident, and how do you keep stuff self-contained and how do you reference things so that you can then bring in a level and nothing necessarily changes or breaks.
00:07:07
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that was That was a difficult one, especially given that the game has cut scenes that kind of break the intended flow of like this perfectly regimented puzzle script gameplay.
00:07:19
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And so figuring out a balance between that was really important. And what was something that you worked on the game that you found particularly interesting to do? I think the menuing was particularly interesting for me, especially coming from a background of designing a menu beforehand for a DDR style game um so that you can edit songs.
00:07:43
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um Having this background of UI and trying to apply it into something more robust and more thorough was something that was particularly driving for me.
Improving UI in Godot for Electrifying Incident
00:07:52
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It introduced some of the limitations of the game engine that we were using, Godot, with their ability to create more fluid, animated elements meant a lack of rigidity with their current system that needed ah solid building blocks that couldn't be moved or changed that fixed the UI layout in place.
00:08:15
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And so that required having to develop extra tools to introduce the ability for these elements to be animated in a more fluid way ah while still keeping the benefit that Godot provides for structure, allowing some for some more ah fluid paneling and buttons to be implemented.
00:08:37
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That's interesting. Goto provided it decent tools for like making something functional, but to polish it required working with it in a way that you hadn't you hadn't previously done.
00:08:50
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Yeah, absolutely. i think that can be true for most Godot, to be honest, is I think a lot of, there's a few systems, of course, but I think a lot of the systems for Godot ah provide a really good framework to to work off of, but a lot of the polishing step comes in by yourself.
00:09:10
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And so you need to come in and create specific tools to be able to add that bit more flourish to it. And I think that was my workflow for a lot of this was something that needs to get past that initial 50%. And then I have to look into what that means and what we need to do to get this looking nicer than it currently is.
00:09:31
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On the Godot subject, so we haven't recorded an episode with Adam yet, so this will go out before that. But he, you know, as as the art director on this game, he has, let's call them, strong feelings about the art pipeline in Godot.
00:09:52
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And so I think I'm curious about like, as a broader overview, from the perspective of a tech artist, how do you find the actual process of plugging in our assets and making them behave correctly in this engine?
00:10:12
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That is a really good question. And future Adam, I hope you are generous to Godot. But the my personal workflow, I actually find the the process to not be all to frustrating for me, whether that's because I've done it so many times or it's actually a not bad system if you're getting used to it.
00:10:36
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It is very confusing. um And it's something that I'm still trying to figure out what the best process is.
00:10:47
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For the 3D modeling workflow, it's something that I have invested, i think, the most time into trying to perfect. Because this is a relatively newer game engine, there isn't a lot of documentation on best practices within the engine, which is a shame. Sure isn't.
00:11:07
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Yeah. And so the need to make, to like figure out those best practices and create concrete steps to recreate them um is something that I'm very invested in working on.
00:11:23
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Awesome. Coming in and working with the DracNech team on a Electrifying Incident, what do you think surprised you the most about working with DracNech?
00:11:35
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Hmm. So also for this context, this was um my current experience working for DracNech was also my first big experience working in a commercial industry.
00:11:48
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space working with a bigger team of people on a official game. And so a lot of my initial thoughts on that also stem from the realization on how projects may run in general.
00:12:04
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And so I had the idea in my head that commercial projects or official official game development projects were very regimented where you had Like, this person is specifically gonna do this, this, and this. This person is gonna specifically do this, this, and this.
00:12:25
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And that wasn't the case. I think working on Electrifying Incident was the realization of, oh, I can do my natural instinct, which is to kind of go everywhere a little bit,
00:12:38
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And that was really that was a really freeing feeling because I think my natural state is when I am able to do a little bit of artwork and a little bit of programming and a little bit of shaders.
00:12:51
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And when I'm able to then provide answers to other people on the team, that is that is just a joy to do, to be able to have that knowledge and quickly get it to people.
00:13:03
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Yeah, I mean, i I feel like every game is very different to every other game and every team is very different to every other team. So what you got was different to what you're expecting.
00:13:14
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But also, if you go to it another studio and work on a different game, it'll probably be completely different again in ways that you do and don't expect. But yeah, suddenly that's... ah Like, yeah, a dracnec, if there's something that needs doing and somebody wants to do it, like, yeah, great, go for it. If if if you don't have anything more important to do.
00:13:35
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And yeah, like we, guess we brought people onto the project with like an idea of like, okay, well, if if everyone does just this one thing, then will be fine. we have We have the people, we need to do this.
00:13:48
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But Like, even when we were initially talking to you, was very clear, like, oh, yeah, you can do tech art. You can do art implementation. But like you can also do programming.
00:13:59
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And like you have that generalist interest of like being able to dabble. And so as we got past the first like week or so of like, hey, we have this art, and it needs to be in the game, and started to be more like, oh, there's these different programming things.
00:14:13
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ah it's it's It's also a lot of like reaching stretch goals. Like Alan was saying, like, Sort of the mentality was staff up for what you need and then take advantage of what you have.
00:14:26
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Yes. And so there are certain levels of polish that are like... the The intent always for the electrifying incident was to make it polished in spite of its like it's very short dev time.
00:14:41
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But there are... certain hyper-specific elements of polish that we would not have pursued if we didn't have people who have the ability to do them and had the time to do them during those during those six weeks.
00:14:59
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Like, there are stretch goals in development that we absolutely met. And, you know, part of that is when you look for a tech artist and the tech artist is also has generalist capabilities, just as a very clear example, you can go forward a little bit more and, you know, plug in some different UI as an example.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, um that's really awesome. Also, as a producer on this project, it was so funny because I was so... he i was keeping my ear to the ground ah for the people that had not worked with Draknek before potentially having any questions about the way we do things here or the work process or like, what should I be doing now?
00:15:42
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And everyone just very, very seemingly quickly picked up. No, just jump in where you feel like you can. Like, that's just the natural role that I think I fit into oftentimes is having these previous projects where you are in an art school full of art peers who know how to do really cool art, but no one's necessarily coming into this with the knowledge on how to do programming.
00:16:11
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And so I'm naturally going to fall into this ah realm of the programmer on the team while also being fed principles of artwork and um knowledge on how to do 3D and how to work on the game engine. And so i think my experience naturally molded me into being able to kind of be this generalist and have a lot of knowledge about pipelines and about Godot specifically.
Favorite Games and Artistic Inspirations
00:16:39
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I guess stepping back from a Electrifying Incident specifically, I'm curious what your what you take is on puzzle games. Like, ah do you have any favorites you want to gush about? oh Yes, I do. There's plenty of puzzle games that I could gush about a lot.
00:16:56
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And I think that's... Something that I have been thinking about in terms of what kind of game would I hypothetically want to make.
00:17:06
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And there's obvious classics like Baba Is You or The Return of the Obra Dinn, which I think are both stand out as...
00:17:18
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wonderful puzzle games on their own, but also i find to be quite interesting in their own regards. Return of the Obra Dinn for being able to utilize such an interesting art style as also a way to service the gameplay of that puzzle game.
00:17:39
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And Baba is you with... their ability to create interconnecting puzzles that kind of go into layers one above the other.
00:17:50
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And i think those two elements is something that I consistently try to find in both the kind of games that I make um and the kind of games that I play.
00:18:04
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the soft puzzles kind of genre, um ones that are more about exploration of a space and learning about people.
00:18:15
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um The murder mysteries of the puzzle games and things like that are what I kind of gravitate towards for puzzle games. If you could, if there's like one game that you could work on or like one franchise or gameplay style that like would be your dream project to work on in the thinky space, do you think that it would be kind of like a detective-y thing? Or is there something else that you think would just be more satisfying from a work perspective? Yeah.
00:18:50
Speaker
That is an interesting question, because there is definitely a difference between the kind of game that I would like to make and a kind of game that I would like to work on.
00:19:01
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As in, like, the distinction there being, like, whether it's your game or just something that you're getting to work on? Yeah. And also a difference of, like...
00:19:13
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and Maybe this is an idea that I'm writing up on a paper, but I'm not the person that has to actually put stuff into a real game engine. ah Versus, oh, I'm the one that's responsible for figuring out how to make this actually work functionally.
00:19:30
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i think, like, a dream opportunity to make a game with... whatever kind of team in the um in the space would be probably a kind of mystery-style game in the regards of Return of the Obra Dinn or Outer Wilds, something that...
00:19:54
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has a lot of um story built into it that asks the players to not think just rigidly about like a Sokoban kind of style puzzle or about um the logistics of moving specific blocks around, but asks about motivation and purpose on like, why are people doing these actions?
00:20:18
Speaker
What would this person be doing? I think very people focused in general. But that's not the exact kind of game that I would... Maybe I i would want to actually make the...
Ideal Games to Design vs. Develop
00:20:36
Speaker
Designing and writing for people, like characters, is something that is just daunting in general, where most other technical limitations or hurdles don't seem as daunting.
00:20:48
Speaker
And something that is a lot more small scale is something that seems a bit more fun to actually implement, like... Oh, I'm blinking on the name.
00:20:58
Speaker
ah Style of games from one of the authors who has a lot of games about automation. Zaktronics. Yeah, thank you.
00:21:09
Speaker
Zaktronics. A Zaktronic style game is something that I would find a joy to work on. That is something that is, it would just be super fun to sink my teeth into development wise.
00:21:22
Speaker
So a little bit split between two sides of me there. Yeah, do you think some of it is like some some kinds of games are more or less intimidating to like take that first step on?
00:21:36
Speaker
or is it kind of something Obra Dini is kind of much more clearly a combination of like so many different disciplines like converging on on one cohesive thing? Or like is it something else that makes one of those more intimidating or less intimidating?
00:21:54
Speaker
I think that one of the things that I find consistently intimidating is just dialogue in general. I think the problem of dialogue is one of those multidiscipline fields that is something that plenty of games want to have is some form of dialogue system with characters. But...
00:22:15
Speaker
going down the rabbit hole of how to best organize, manage, and create dialogue-driven games for dialogue-based puzzle game, for example, is something that experiencing it feels like a lot.
00:22:31
Speaker
And thinking about and knowing about like what things that I would change, I can feel the the dread crawl, uh, creep in.
00:22:43
Speaker
That's one that has it has the focus on elements and file management and, ah system design and the possibility of managing audio and having creative decisions is something that feels like it is underestimated a lot of the time when i I talk with others about having a dialogue system.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, for sure. It's not easy. I mean, nothing in game dev is easy, but like it has its it it has its own bespoke challenges. and Absolutely. Do you have any sort of questions for us?
00:23:23
Speaker
It could be anything just like questions for the Draconec team. Yeah, I'm mostly curious about, um so going into this, this was a six week project and I believe this was with, ah it was ah me and Izzy ah new to Drakknack.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yes. What was the kind of expectation going into this with such a small deadline with new people? ah what What did you expect to happen for this project?
00:23:55
Speaker
I mean, I... So I was the person that pitched that we do this. And then Alan sort of chose... made made the creative decisions about what the project would be.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I can't really speak to how polished Alan thought this was going to end up being, but from my perspective, we had been talking along with, let's say, what feels like half the indie game industry for the last few years about wanting to leave Unity behind for, let's call it, about 80 different reasons.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yes. And... Godot was becoming more and more mature over time. We hadn't developed a from scratch internal project since A Monsters Expedition shipped in 2020.
00:24:47
Speaker
So this was middle of 2024 that we were kind of solidifying our plans for this. We knew that we wanted to make unannounced game.
00:24:58
Speaker
that audience will hear about later this year. And so that that came first. We had been talking about that game for two years or so. I mean, we we'd been talking about that game. I don't think at the time we started Electrifying Instant, we'd actually decided was definitely going to be that one. But like that was one of the few options we'd been throwing around. Yes, we were... That that was a game... there there had There was a lot of back and forth about what exactly is the next game going to be? The the one that we ended up making is the one that had been in sort of the ideation chamber the longest.
00:25:34
Speaker
And then... Really, basically, my pitch on this whole project was, let's figure out what we can do in six weeks.
00:25:48
Speaker
let's make Let's work on a project where we're not really going to need to make ah new puzzles, a lot of new game design decisions. lets Let's just like lock our scope before we do anything, before anyone is brought onto the project, have it very clearly defined...
Evaluating Godot vs. Unity
00:26:06
Speaker
And then everything is going to stem from we are evaluating Godot as is this a viable engine or are we going to need to retreat back to Unity?
00:26:19
Speaker
The word Unreal was brought up about four times and it was never it was never deeply serious. But so it was really like we want to do Godot because but for for a lot of reasons. But like there is the mentality of we want to be using this open source project that just feels better. It's not being used for military contracts in the US. Like this there's a lot of reasons.
00:26:44
Speaker
And so we really kind of tried to figure out. how we could do this. And then once we did, we were pretty comfortable bringing people on because we were able to that identify, all right, no one that we have worked with in the past has significant Godot experience.
00:27:13
Speaker
ah so So if we just decide, like oh, well, we can pick up Godot without bringing in people who have actual expertise in it, then sure, like probably we can make something, but it's going to go a lot slower.
00:27:27
Speaker
It's going to go lot slower, and we're we're going to get an incomplete evaluation, because the evaluation there is going to be how easy is it to pick up Godot in six weeks versus do we want to use Godot going forward?
00:27:40
Speaker
Yes. And that was the actual true goal to discover the answer to. And so in doing so, yeah we brought on you and Izzy, who both had experience with Godot.
00:27:53
Speaker
I had been Izzy's manager at my previous employer, so I i already knew her. And you came highly recommended from Adam. And so kind of from there, we really just hit the ground running.
00:28:10
Speaker
And honestly, by three and a half to four weeks in, we had hit where I thought we were going to be at six weeks. And so that's why it became a lot more clearly what stretch goals can we hit? What levels of polish can we hit?
00:28:26
Speaker
What other things can we explore trying to do as like stretch goals for feeling out our comfort levels with Godot? and that still happened even while asking Alan to redesign half of the... Oh, no, no, no, no.
00:28:42
Speaker
Sorrent, nobody asked me to. i decided to. Sorrent asked me nis to not asked him not to. To be very clear, yeah, no no no no, no, no, no. That was against my wishes very clearly.
00:29:00
Speaker
that was That was a bold decision that he was like... Seems like we're ahead enough on schedule that I'm going to throw some curveballs in here. i mean, it's not like I had anything else to do.
00:29:14
Speaker
can't shut
00:29:19
Speaker
i mean I mean, on this game, like on this game, ah like I was a creative director, like making making decisions on like, oh, is this this this working or do we need to change approach? But like that's not like, that's like a one day a week thing.
00:29:35
Speaker
i said I send you an update and you go, okay. yeah And then i go, okay, that's cool. Let me work on the next one. That's not like keeping me busy. oh Yeah, no, you have, I mean...
00:29:47
Speaker
Look, just to be very clear for everyone in terms of the timeline, ah this game was in development during the peak final out like final development of design considerations for the daily puzzles in Luck Digital.
00:30:04
Speaker
Those were happening simultaneously, and Alan's saying, I didn't have anything to do. And I'm like, come on. Like, let's not even, don't even get me started on Bonfire Peaks.
00:30:17
Speaker
oh so Bonfire Peaks has just been a small, ongoing simmer for so long. That's not even in real work anymore. All right. Well, everyone, that's how Alan views it, since this episode is coming out in a couple of weeks.
00:30:34
Speaker
Bonfire Peaks, Last Memories, Part 2 and 3 may be already out by then. you know No, they won't. Just click click our fingers. No, yeah, no. no But there's there's not long to go really, this time. as As an aside to anyone who is waiting for yes, those are coming soon, and we are we will have Corey on the podcast to talk about that when that is closer to...
00:30:58
Speaker
shipping, but promise it's worth the wait. Anyways. ah Yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to ask us, Phoenix? Anything else you wanted to touch on? um I don't think so. I think that was mostly it. um I guess what is, what's the final evaluation on Godot? um this Well, what engine is our next project in?
00:31:20
Speaker
Can I... can i yeah Dare I share? Yeah, you can
Godot's Triumph for Future Projects
00:31:24
Speaker
say it. Yeah, the next the next project is also in Godot. yeah Sorry, Adam. Literally, you asked about expectations ah for for this project earlier, and like I didn't really have a specific expectation of like, oh, well, we're definitely going to hit this quality bar.
00:31:45
Speaker
But I think that... like it was It was very flexible, but like that was going to be a big, big part on how I would evaluate this game. It's like, oh, what quality bar can we hit in this tight deadline?
00:32:00
Speaker
So it's not that we had like a, oh, well, like this is the thing we're aiming for, but more that like, Well, if in six weeks we can just about get a functional game that is kind of janky, then like, okay, well, this this works, but I might not be excited for it.
00:32:20
Speaker
But if we can get something that like feels nice and is polished and looks good and like feels like, yeah, yeah, we could release this with like just a little bit more work. And I was like, okay, that's pretty promising.
00:32:31
Speaker
And yeah, we hit that bar. Yeah, no, I'm, for listeners, like, we did go a little bit over the six weeks. We didn't come to literally the final executable in codebase that are you'll play at launch within the six weeks, but we got, like, 95% of the way there.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, it it is amazing, I think, on how much was able to get into that window. Yeah, that is copious amounts of pre-production to make sure that production goes incredibly smoothly.
00:33:04
Speaker
Awesome. Well, where can people find you online, Phoenix? I have my ah portfolio with my work on ArtStation under my name Phoenix Stroh.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I also have a Itch page with some ah projects currently open under the name Game Queen, G-A-M-E-K-W-N-G.
00:33:29
Speaker
um Those are the the main two places that you can find me. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for taking the time and jumping on the podcast with us. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
00:33:42
Speaker
And thank you for listening to the Draknek and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis.
00:33:53
Speaker
Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawodniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:34:10
Speaker
you