Jason H (@crasong) / X

Jason H

335 posts

Jason H

@crasong

Sometimes I do funny voices. Opinions are my own. He/Him Prev: Software Engineer on @LeagueOfLegends Champions team. Bel'Veth, K'Sante, Briar, Ambessa

Planet Earth

Joined July 2010

Jason H
@crasong
Oct 23, 2024
That's a wrap! My 4th and final champion, and I'm so proud of what the team accomplished with Ambessa. It's bittersweet that my time on LoL was cut short by layoffs, but I have no regrets knowing I gave it my all. GGWP, onto the next adventure!
League of Legends
@LeagueOfLegends
Oct 22, 2024
Ambessa hits PBE today. Hard. With twin drakehounds.
00:00
2.5M
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
As promised, I'll be sharing some info about Bel'Veth's tech - challenges we faced, and the solutions we came up with! First up, let's talk about her voidlings
Spideraxe
@Spideraxe30
Jun 29, 2022
@_nyanbun_ did Bel’Veth need any crazy new tech
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
we began exploring the idea of "Bel'Veth spawning void lane minions" very early on. The goal was to be able to convert a dying lane minion into a voidling, and a voidling would behave exactly like a lane minion.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
Another of Bel'Veth's key defining features is her uncapped attack speed. Historically, reworked Kayle has had the most complex auto attack setup, due to her evolving states and similarly high attack-speed identity
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
A lot of love and care was put into these voidlings, and I feel so grateful to have worked with people who, besides being amazing at what they do, go above and beyond to iterate and get things right!
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
However, VFX was unable to tie their particles into our animation blending system, which meant that the swipe VFX would continue playing even if her auto attacks were canceled midway. Here's me spamming attack and stop to illustrate this
GIF
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
Voidlings would have the same stats as a lane minion. So everything from health, to resistances, attack range, etc. So a melee minion would become a melee voidling, and so on. Simple enough that we had a working prototype at the start.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Next up, let's talk about one of her most endearing aspects -- Her SLAPS!
Spideraxe
@Spideraxe30
Jun 29, 2022
@_nyanbun_ did Bel’Veth need any crazy new tech
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
So instead, we tried to spawn regular melee and ranged minions, and simply disguise them as voidlings. This didn't work for two reasons:
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
1. Spawning and disguising minions was expensive. Spawning a whole wave at once would cause framerate drops that are unacceptable by our standards. 2. Lane minions have bonus stats that grow overtime, and these bonuses were siloed. This meant we were spawning level 1 minions.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
Until now, we had been spawning a voidling, and then copied each stat from the dying minion over to the voidling, and that worked fine. However, for cannon and super minions, we can't simply copy their stats over, since they are significantly more powerful.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
The solution was to refactor our barracks system to allow designers to spawn custom lane minions easily with very little script. The result is that spawning ~100 voidlings at once would be similar to spawning 15 in the original prototype.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
Our first hurdle came from the decision to cut the cannon/siege and super voidlings, and have just the melee and ranged/caster ones, in order to address gameplay and scope feedback from stakeholders.
Jason H
@crasong
Jul 1, 2022
Replying to @crasong
Another bonus is that the refactor sets us up to create new kinds of minions in the future more easily!