When an impending release rears its head, roughly how much of the company would you say is devoted to getting the release out (Bugsmashing, testing, and so on)? Conversely, how much of the company isn't impacted by the release cycle and simply continues to make content (SQ42 levels and so on)?asked by SloanWarrior

This one right here is kind of a mixed bag and I can't really answer it because this is a case-by-case, for instance, this release – we're working on persistence, we're working on shopping, we're working on Item 2.0 here specifically and then we're working on refactoring little things here and there and then the Art side, they're actually working on the Caterpillar – and then Jeremiah and Omar are on more character stuff, Shane was working on a cool jetpack that's supposed to be going in this release too.So every single person is working on tons of different things, tons of different aspects and they're not necessarily all working on the same thing but they're all working towards the goal of the release and every single release we have a goal.Like, "these are the main high points we want to put into this release" and then we go from there and it goes back to even bugfixing, it's same thing with task fixing and management of going through and making sure "alright, what support does this task need?" and then going from there.So I know you've actually been pulled off, sometimes, from doing feature stuff cause I know you were working on seats, controller manager with some of our new engineers-Mark Abent: Yeah.

And the links and stuff, and piping, and making sure all that stuff is situated but then Abent here gets pulled off and is like "Oh, well, 2.4 needs help with this. So I'm going to go help out with that." so he will take a day or so here or there and Paul has been a madman, he's been crazy.

He's been breaking out those..

Yeah dude-MA: It's been crazy.

He's been really helping out the 2.4 stuff and he's been focused on that so that way his team can continue just focusing on the feature and-MA: Mhm.

But he's a beast anyways like-MA: He is.

I mean, like, he- the amount of stuff he knows about the engine and the amount of stuff he knows globally is just insane. Like, my brain can only fit so much-MA: You could talk to him and say something and he'll like "Give me a second, brain starts ticking and then spits out the answer" and you're like "OK".

Yeah. it's- basically, everything, and that's every release, it's completely different. So the stuff we've got planned for 2.5 and going forward it's going to need different resources and this is going to be spread across all the different studios that we're working with, whether it's Frankfurt, UK, Austin or here in LA. Even the guys in Turbulent and stuff, we're all just working on different aspects of it and different things even for each release. So every release is it's own little snowflake.

And to add on to that, I can be working on this subset of stuff from the new items things and then I can't work on the next thing because I'm winning some from Patrick or even Chad so I take my code and put it on Preview and next thing I go "I'm blocked with this, is there anything I can help with?" and then I'll just help with some 2.4 stuff or some other things and then once I get unblocked I'll swap back.

And right now, I think I'm actually between you- between Paul, you and Chad Z now are the old people here, for engineers.

[nods]

You guys are basically the old crew and now we have a-MA: a new one..

a new engineers are coming and then hopefully when we can Humphreys he'll be kind of an old hat too because he knows the engine very well – he'll be another senior here.

He's not a Paul.

Yeah, It's going to be crazy having you three together. Alright, hope we answered your question. Let's go onto the next.

But I like rambling – I just got to give the details, man.. Last time...

I did.

I got this.