User talk:Matthew Medina

From Guild Wars Wiki

Hay- Its pretty cool to see some of the profiles of the people behind only the best game ever. Besides maybe basketball, now that I think of it. Anyways, welcome to the wiki. -elviondale (tahlk) 06:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 yhalthar 2 Hourglass Staff animation glitch ? 3 Ola and 2 Questions 4 Hehe 5 not only Gaile deserves creds 6 Statues in the Hall of Monuments 7 Out of curiosity... 8 Hall of Monuments armor statue 9 Languages are good! 10 Concept art question

[edit] yhalthar

Welcome to the wiki. -FireFox 06:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm welcome! Looking forward to being active here as much as my schedule allows. --Matthew Medina 13:11, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hourglass Staff animation glitch ?

Hello Matthew - would you perhaps have a chance to look at this: Hourglass Staff animation issues and/or be able to do something about it ?? Clan Yumemiru 13:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen a couple different reports of this being bugged, and I'll follow through on it to make sure that it gets resolved. --Matthew Medina 22:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

This issue should now be fixed. The hourglass animation still hitches sometimes when playing an idle animation, but I think that's due to the code implementation restarting the animation when it plays that sequence. --Matthew Medina 17:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ola and 2 Questions

First comment: "I am an atheist in a family of devout Roman Catholics." We call those recovering catholics in St. Louis. =)

Heh - yeah I think Denis Leary did a whole bit about that too - it's kind of funny because no matter how hard I try, all those years of programming has hard-wired me to still think like one, so maybe I am still "in recovery". ;-P--Matthew Medina 22:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

First question: What font is used for the area name when entering the area?

You know this one I'll have to get back to you on - I know where our fonts sit in the data structure, but most of them have been named something that only programmers understand. Let me investigate and I'll see if I can dig up the answer.--Matthew Medina 22:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Second question: What do you think of Mudbox in relation to zbrush, or have you tried the other?

Yes I've had a chance to try both Zbrush and Mudbox. From a preference standpoint, I much prefer Mudbox for its ease of use and interaction with other 3D applications, but I also think ZBrush has a lot to offer. In a way a lot of it comes down to each artist's workflow, and for me the less time I have to dig through the UI to achieve the results I want, the better. It will be great when Mudbox supports painting textures right on the mesh. --Matthew Medina 22:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Rock on, the art team is one of the most complimented things I see in reviews and articles! --Ravious 19:43, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! We are definitely proud of our achievements, although as a team, we are never quite happy resting on those accomplishments. We're constantly looking to raise the bar for ourselves, and push the Guild Wars art style in bold new directions. --Matthew Medina 22:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Ravious, if you look at the PDF manual for Nightfall, there's an option somewhere to let you see what fonts are used for the document. I checked a while ago, but unfortunately the font was a commercial one. --Santax (talk · contribs) 12:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hehe

Reading your page, particularly the bits about designing parts of Ascalon, I was reminded of Slartibartfast :P --Santax (talk · contribs) 12:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh - yes well Douglas Adams is a personal hero of mine, so that's quite a compliment. Thanks! And like Slartibartfast, I've "signed" a few of my works over the years, though I've yet to work on a fjord! Maybe in GW2... ;-)--Matthew Medina 14:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

If I see a fjord in GW2, I'll know who it came from now :P --Santax (talk · contribs) 21:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] not only Gaile deserves creds

I want to thank you as well for all the fine work on HoM ;-) love it! -- (Tribina / talk) 17:29, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

PS can you enlighten something for me? I got a very nice new pet in HoM Rainbow phoenix but what are the requirements to get him? Coz not everyone has him...? thx -- (Tribina / talk) 17:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. As far as the Rainbow Phoenix, I do know that's something of a rarity - so much so that I couldn't even get an answer on how to acquire it from some of the guys here. On this score, I would say to keep a watch on the wiki to see what information pops up (it's what I do more often than not!).--Matthew Medina 14:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Err, yeah I guess I could have checked the wiki before posting. ;-P The requirements seem to be up there now. --Matthew Medina 14:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

That information is incomplete I'm afraid, because my officer has all those requirements and doesn't have a phoenix (and I created that page ^^). The only thing that differs really between him and myself is that I have a different background on the "Honor" monument... I have "People know me" title while he has "Kind of a Big Deal" title. I have obsidian armor, and he has not.. I displayed more pets than him.. Now I'm really anxious to get the answer on the requirements for that phoenix^^. BTW mine is lvl 20 already and happily accompanying me everywhere ^^. You wouldn't happen to be able to find out pwetty pwease? =) grtz -- (Tribina / talk) 15:18, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the interest of exploration and discovery, I'll wait and see how long it takes for people to figure out those requirements before asking again. Sorry. ;P --Matthew Medina 13:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe no problem, I think we got it, or pretty close anyway ^^ -- (Tribina / talk) 11:14, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

To get it, you must have People Know Me (2) and have all 4 tapestries up, i believe.Killer Revan 01:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statues in the Hall of Monuments

Dear Matthew,

on the HoM talk page you said that if we had any suggestions for the stutues, we should post them on you talk page. Therefore, I'd like to be the first to make a suggestion: Why not make the legendary survivor statue depict Melandru instead of Dwayna? When I think of survivor, I always think of wilderness survival, of rangers and especially of Aidan's background story, of how they entered the wilds and survived there on their own. By the way: I really like the HoM. In fact, my whole guild does, and we're thinking of adopting the HoM as a secondray guildhall for our guild. We think of it as claiming an outpost. :-) Nicky Silverstar 05:47, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I have a few Legendary Survivors, and I think the statue was a good choice. Dwayna is all about life and healing, and you bloody well need healing to stay alive. ;) - BeX 06:18, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

This was a tough one - because I wasn't sure whether to use a God statue, or try and find some other paradigm to represent the title track. In the end, I settled on Dwayna because as BeXoR stated above, she is the Goddess of Life, and I thought that would be the most appropriate choice since Legendary Survivors must surely be "blessed by Dwayna" to achieve such a title. I had considered Melandru for the reasons you stated, but decided against her because of her strong ties to the Ranger profession, as opposed to Dwayna who is a tad more "all-encompassing". But thanks for the feedback. :)--Matthew Medina 13:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I really liked the Defender of Ascalon statue - not only it's beautiful (the emblem of Ascalon was really pretty), but it's also very fitting for Pre Searing as a whole. Even the whole "being more lively" thing is a good reminder of how Ascalon used to be. That was a very good work : ) I would like to suggest a change on a few other statues, though - the Vanquisher ones. Right now we have four title statues that use the maps for each continent (Protector, Guardian, Cartographer, Vanquisher), and for most of them I think the maps are very fitting (nothing would be better for the Cartographer, and the Protector ones, using the icons for a completed mission, are great), but using the same motif so many times feels a bit...Odd. I would suggest changing the Vanquisher ones so they look like one enemy of each continent, like the current Skill Hunter statues are. They would still be linked to killing stuff, and they would look more different from the other titles currently using the maps. Plus, it would be a good excuse to show off some of the great monster skins in the game : D It would be a bit time consuming, though, so I don't know if you would have time for that kind of change. Erasculio 00:49, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I've got an image in my head that I think could work for one of the Legendary group of titles (I'm thinking Guardian). Statues for the Tyrian, Canthan, and Elonian would be Glint, Kuunavang, and Kormir, respectively, and the Legendary title have Kormir in the front, Glint laying down behind her, and Kuunavang raised up over both of them with wings spread. If you wanted a similar theme for Protector, Cantha would have to be Togo, Elona could be Kehanni, and there are plenty of candidates for Tyria, but I'd say Rurik would be the top one (with Evennia and Brechnar Ironhammer as runners-up) - Tanetris 01:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that having the maps for all 4 campaign-specific title tracks is a bit redundant. And in all honesty the main motivation in making that decision was for time: I had a lot of statues to do in 2 days. ;-) But looking back, yeah if I were going to change 1 of those 4, the Vanquisher titles would be the ones. I had thought of picking a monster from each campaign, but unlike the skill hunter tracks, where I had pretty good read on monsters with badass skills, trying to determine which monster would best represent each campaign's explorable areas was a tough call. So I opted for the maps in the end. And yeah the Defender of Ascalon is my favorite of the pieces, because I have a special place in my heart for pre-Searing. I'll keep thinking about those map statues...--Matthew Medina 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I was wondering if using the maps had something to do with time - and that's something very easy to understand, given how the statues were created and implemented in an amazingly short time (that was really impressive : D). I think the problem about there not being monsters that represent the explorable areas may actually be a good thing - if there isn't anything that would directly represent those areas, maybe we could have the prettiest monsters from each campaign : D We would end with statues that are pretty (wohooo!), while representing monsters we do find in explorable areas of the games. Of course, which monsters are pretty or not is a matter of point of view...I'm afraid I'm going to clutter this page too much, but I would like to suggest enemies for each chapter:

Prophecies: The Jade Armor or the Mursaat Necromancer. Both are pretty : D, both are very iconic of Prophecies, and they are moderatelly hard to kill on Hard Mode.

Factions: The Shiro'ken, but not the Warrior or the Assassin (we see those on the Skill Hunter statue and on the miniatures), but rather the Shiro'ken Mesmer or the Shiro'ken Elementalist. Both use really pretty "bird-like" models that we don't see often, and both are very hard to kill on Hard Mode (I swear, I'm afraid of those Shiro'ken Elementalists o.O). Alternatively, the Afflicted Ritualist - the Afflicted are very iconic of Cantha, and those big, twisted and fleshy things are too awesome to be left out : D

Nightfall: The Ruby Djinn (the main reason why I always keep Jin with Broadhead Arrow when vanquishing Elona) or the Margonite Reaper. Both are pretty models that we don't see too often, while being powerful enemies on Hard Mode. Erasculio 13:55, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

(Resetting indent) I have to both agree and disagree with Erasculio's first post ^ ^. The map idea IS very fitting for the Cartographer titles, but I disagree that they're the best for Protector and Guardian. My main issue with how they stand now is that with a limit of displaying only 5 titles, people may not have room to display Hero, Protector & Guardian for each continent. And because Protector is more prestigous than Hero, and Guardian more prestigous than Protector, I think the trophies for these titles should keep within the same vein (i.e., displaying the Lich, Shiro & Abaddon) but become more elaborate. I think the statues of the bosses from each campaign are more striking than the maps, but I also want to display the Guardian title because it took harder work than just beating the campaign. Perhaps use the crossed swords and crossed swords with helm as a backdrop for the end boss statues for Protector & Guardian? (Similar to how Defender of Ascalon has a statue and a flag behind it.) Also, for Legendary Cartographer I'd like to suggest a Globe showing all three continents (Tyria, Elona & Cantha going from north to south, no one but designers know what's on the rest of the planet :) The dead monster idea seems more fitting for Vanquish than for Skill Hunter IMO --Ctran 18:30, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Out of curiosity...

You say you "always play female avatars." Does that mean your Warrior named Matthew is female? ;P Capcom 11:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed it is. That was the one character name that I wasn't able to alter, because we needed to reserve our personal names on the server. I suppose I could have changed the character to a male, but really...I wanted that character to be a warrior, and I just don't care for the "beefcake" look, personally. ;-P --Matthew Medina 21:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see, that makes sense. I actually expected it to be male though, since I assumed basically every ANet employee's "main" character that's named after themselves was basically supposed to represent themselves. Not that I find anything wrong with yours being female, of course; I have characters of both genders and my "main" character is not the same as me... though the name isn't the same either. ;) Capcom 11:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hall of Monuments armor statue

You probably know this already, but just to make sure. If you have armor dyed before the new dye system, the armor in the Hall shows up as default profession color from prophecies (i.e. not gray but the standard color of the armor before everything was set to gray as default). --Life Infusion «T» 15:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Languages are good!

Genji asked this to Gaile, but she pointed us here. My turn to ask.

As can be seen in this screenshot, there is indeed a sort of "tyrian alphabet". I have some experience with the runic alphabet, and as you can see, this writing is similar, but not identical, to the Old Norse runes.

What really intrigued me, however, was the fact that the runes on the Sunspear and Lightbringer bounties are also in a type of runic alphabet, again similar to the Old Norse runes (this was something I noticed a while ago, back when I first began learning runic) - and yet, the runes on the bounties and the runes in the screenshot are different!

What say you, is there any connection between the three?

-- Armond Warblade 09:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, so you're all discovering my little easter eggs, huh? ;-P Actually, while there are other languages in the Guild Wars lore that are close to old Norse runes, the choice for "Old" Ascalonian was to base it in Phoenician because of its importance to many of our own languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek scripts. I didn't change the shapes of many of the original runes, and added a few of my own, so that it would be easily translatable into English, and hopefully recognizable to even non-English speakers. This is probably the first and last Guild Wars language to follow a real language so literally, but since this was an exercise to see how many players would spot the language and translate it, I wanted to make this first test fairly easy to read. As Guild Wars has evolved so have the languages - so far I haven't seen that anyone has translated the 100 or so Canthan symbols. One word of caution though - not EVERY language in the original Guild Wars universe actually translates into anything - I believe I was the only artist on the team that actually made readable languages, so some of the runes, glyphs and scripts you see in the game will be just for "show".--Matthew Medina 15:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like I have some work ahead of me... :D -- Armond Warblade 18:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

*hands Armond a dozen sharpened pencils and a notepad.* ;) -- Gaile 23:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Concept art question

I realize you might not come much in contact with the concept art since it seems you work more with the 3D-parts of Guild Wars and images used in the actual game, but I still have a question regarding the concept art. I've just looked through the art-books for the gazillionth time. As it happens, art is quite a hobby of mine (I've got all four concept art books!) and even though I've never done anything as detailed as the concept art in the art books, I know it takes a fair amount of time to do pretty much anything (though I guess I could be slower since I'm such a darn perfectionist :P). With all the details in the concept art, and with all the well-planned lines there's bound to be some underlying work, and with underlying work comes additional time. The actual question would be; how long does it take an artist on average to complete a piece of concept art? Both the smaller ones that only shows one monster and the bigger ones that even make it into the loading screens of the game. If I had to guess I'd guess the art team didn't have anything on their hands but concept art. Any insight would be appreciated. :) — Galil 13:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Galil, you're right that I don't have any real experience with the concept art here, so I referred your question to our Lead Concept Artist, and he quoted half a day to a day for the smaller pieces, and two or three days for the larger more finished paintings. And yeah, our concept artists are full-time meaning that they almost never get hands on with any of the 3D aspects, although every now and then we have them paint something for an in-game texture, such as murals, banners and the like. Hope that answers your question! --Matthew Medina 18:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it does! Thanks for going through the trouble of "snooping around" for me. :P — Galil 19:04, 18 January 2008 (UTC)