Hey, what's going on guys, welcome to another video. So in this one, I've got two drop shipping products that are currently selling really well on Facebook. In this video, I'm going to take you through the process that I go through when it comes to selecting products that I want to test in the coming months. So all of the products that I'm going to show you in this video are current and working right now. I will prove that to you. I will show you how I know that as well for a fact as well. So when you're doing your own research, then you know the kind of things to look for in a product before you then kind of jump in and commit to it. So the first product I'm going to start with is a very much kind of typical, stereotypical drop shipping product. What most people would instantly think of when you mention the word drop shipping. And then the second product I'm going to show you, it's a bit of a strange one to be honest. But again, the numbers don't lie. So whenever I'm trying to analyze something, then I try and take all emotion out of the decision and look at what the numbers are saying because numbers are very black and white. If they are good, they are good. Next thing I want to mention very quickly is the mentorship program that I started up recently. I say recently in the past kind of six to eight months. We've got a couple of spots left for January. If that's the sort of thing you're interested in, make sure you stay tuned until the end and I'll show you how you can apply for that to work with me on a one-on-one basis. It's really exclusive. I only work with five people every single month. So if that is the sort of thing that you'd be interested in, make sure you stay tuned until the end of the video and I'll show you, like I said, how to apply for that. So enough said, let's jump into the first product. This is from a company called SPV Lights. This particular post went live September 29th of 2023. So it's not really been around for that long. You've probably seen what the product is by now. It's in the background. Like there is a genuine kind of use case value for this product in the fact that there's no drilling or porting it up. I'm not sure how it quite works, but it just sticks to the wall, which is pretty cool. And then obviously it's solar charges. So it's very low maintenance and that's definitely kind of where, they're kind of like the two main benefits. When it comes to marketing this product, you want to focus on the fact that it's low maintenance because it's solar powered and the fact that it requires no tools to put up either. I don't know if you saw that as well. If I can go back to that. Easy installation. Let's just mute this down. So 10 million views, it goes without saying, like they're obviously seeing some form of results here. But at the beginning, if I can get it back. Where was it? They've actually got their logo there. Look, SPV Lights. They've actually got their logo printed on the product. So that is also another indicator of how successful this product has been for them. They wouldn't go to that lens of getting their logo private label in a product unless there was some kind of profitability in it. So 4.3,000 likes, 2.8,000 comments and 480 shares. We'll start with the most relevant then. So this is the kind of thing I'm looking for before I commit to a product or before I do even more research into it. So Elizabeth, these are fantastic. Pip, best thing I bought last year.  We bought a couple of last year. Just received today. Got mine up and working great. I just received mine. I just put two of these up. Brilliant light, very pleased. Bought two, so on and so forth. Pretty much, I have bought three sets now. Just received four of these today. Absolutely brilliant. We'll be buying more. I have these around for two years now and still going strong. So there's no, no, no doubt about this. It's a product people are buying and it's also a good quality product as well which is super, super important of course. Let's just double check. It is still working right now. I mean, when it comes to the time of year you sell things and drop shipping. To be honest, it's not really that important because you're never secluded or forced just to sell to one particular area of the globe or one particular country. You can literally just go from country to country as the seasons change, making sure that you're always selling it in a country where demand is strong for it. So three days ago, I've just got mine and just ordered two more. So when you see the price of the products you might be thinking, ah, it's a cheap, crappy product. There's not gonna be that much profit in it. But look at the comments. He's ordered two more. So he's ordered one, went back for two more. People are buying two, three. I think we even saw a comment. I've been buying these for years. They're brilliant. I think we even saw a comment of somebody who'd bought four of these. So there's lots and lots of potential there to kind of bump up those average order values. Let's jump onto the website then. Their website is like super, super basic, but I think it accommodates or it's designed and targeted well at the target market. There's no, there's nothing on here that doesn't need to be on here. Everything is kind of very minimalistic to the point. There's no kind of fluff or rubbish that you would see on a lot of typical drop shipping stores. It's in stock. It tells you when you can expect delivery. It tells you their accepted payment methods and what their promise is. It gives you all of the information upfront that you need to know to make an educated purchase there. And then for the people who wanna do a bit more research and so on into it, they can read through all of this text. So when it comes to the typical kind of product page strategy, I would typically avoid all of this text because it's a lot to read. It put a lot of people off, but I would guess that it's probably an older generation to some degree that's gonna be buying these things and they tend not to mind so much reading through paragraphs and paragraphs with text. But anyway, moving on to price wise. So 20 pounds for a pack of two, which I think is a pretty good deal. They do free delivery as well, so that's all in. If we actually jump onto AliExpress. So AliExpress is purely for example purposes, you probably hear me say it time and time again. It looks to me like the exact same product. So it has the hole at the top, like these ones do. This one doesn't have a gutter on like this one does actually, but has a sensor at the front. It's basically the same product. Seven euros 50 plus 187, so you're looking at 10 pounds. So there's 10 pounds profit on the upfront for every person you convert if obviously minus your marketing costs, I should say. But every time somebody buys an extra pack of these, obviously it bumps up that average order value. And I think it goes without saying that, obviously making this work very, very well for themselves. So that was product number one, the guys. Before we move on to product number two, I want to offer you something for free. So it's 100% free.  There's no course or funnel or anything like that. I'm not going to ask you to give me a single penny. All I want to give you is 127 trending product ideas for the next 12 months. Free download, stick your name in, stick your email address in, click, send me the list. Within two minutes, this will be in your inbox ready to download for free. And you'll have 127 vetted when your product ideas are working right now. Just like this light that I've just shown you. If you want to get yourself a copy of that then, just head to the video description and it'll be this top link here. So free list of 127 trending product ideas and just go ahead and click that. Back to the video then, back to product number two. I said it was a weird one, something that you've probably never seen before. I've certainly never seen this been dropshipped before, but again, the numbers do not lie. So I remember these back when I was a kid and my younger sister got one of these and it was frequently real. Like really freakish, like how real it looked. I'm not sure if you'll hear that in the background, but it's making like cooing noises and like this really kind of weird sort of like chucky type horror music, but people are absolutely loving it and I'll show you that in a second. So September 1st, 2023 has been going a few months now. 15,000 reactions, 2,000 comments and 3.7,000 shares. People are obviously liking it. And these are the newest comments. So 13 hours, 14 hours, one day, two days. Every now and again you get one of these like rogue old comments, two days, four days, three days, four days, four days. Let's keep going a week, a week, a week, a week, a week. So we can see still active, still going pretty strong. Let's go for most relevant and let's see if we can find anyone who's bought one of these things. So many options. This is from the company itself. You should always be commenting on your own posts, by the way. Yes, I love this baby. I want one, I have one on the way. Love her, so there's somebody who's bought one. Love this baby, love it, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Love it, so cute. Mine is on its way to see my granddaughter's face when it give it to her. So that's definitely, or that's probably where you should start with grandparents. How do I order, please? There's intent for people wanting to buy this. And lots and lots of people just saying how cute and how much they want it. She's in my car, I love her. So I think it's pretty safe to say people are enjoying this product. Let's jump onto the website then. The website is an absolute just explosion of color and excitement. So many different things to take in here. There's lots and lots of different variations of the doll so people can pick and choose whichever one they're looking for, they've even got an avatar version, which is just weird why anybody would buy this for their child. I just do not know unless they like avatar obviously. But yeah, I won't spend too much time on the stores because you guys can go across and look at things yourself, but to kind of point out them, not the obvious, but the most important things is everything is custom to the store. They have taken the time, weeks if not months to put this store together or they've developed it over time, putting their logos on it, making sure everything is branded towards the product. This is not just a pop-up drop-shipping store, this is a legit business that have built a brand around these products. To give you an idea then of what they cost. So 57 pounds for this one. We can jump onto AliExpress and you can buy this one for 25 pounds. I know it's a different one. Let's get something that looks a bit more similar. But do your own research on AliExpress, do your own research with your agents. There's lots and lots of different variations of this product and your nearest dammit can get the exact same thing if this business applies to you. Majority of people watching this video probably doesn't. The point to take away from this is that you can build a brand in pretty much any space that you want if you do it correctly. If you have a product and a market that wants to buy that product and then you advertise it in a decent way, in the correct way, you've managed to put together a really nice looking ad creative that in this instance plays on the heart strings of your audience and then directs people to a really well designed and branded Shopify store. And so with that being something guys, that is it for the first two products. If you've stuck with me this long, thank you very much. I will fulfill my promise of letting you know how to apply for the mentorship with myself. So I'm pulling the message at the end because I don't want every man and his dog booking in a call with me. I only want to work with people who are super serious about starting a legitimate drop shipping business that can genuinely change your life and you are ready to go all in on it. If this is just something that you're gonna give up after two weeks and bounce from one shiny thing to the next shiny thing and try crypto one week and try affiliate marketing the next week, then I don't want to work with you to be honest. Only if you have got your heart set on drop shipping, you're the type of person that I want to talk to. So if that sounds like you and you want to jump on a call with myself, you're not offloaded onto some pushy salesman, it'll be me that you are talking to, then what you need to do is below this video in the video description, you'll see this secret link. If you click that link, it's gonna take you to a booking page. Before you get to the calendar though, where you can pick a time and date in my calendar to speak with me, there's gonna be half a dozen questions or so for you to answer. It takes two or three minutes. The questions are there again to filter out the lazy people who aren't serious about this, but also for me to get to know you a little bit, to see where you are now, see where you wanna be with my help and then see if I can actually be that person to help you reach that goal of yours. If you can, then you'll get to the end. You can book a time and date in oneself. We can have a chat, see what's what and go from there. Thanks for watching the guys and I will see you in the next video. Cheers.


Yeah, I'm Aaron and this is my colleague Nina and we are going to be giving the talk on developing a mental model of Istio and so at At solar organization There are you know a number of people who are contributors to Istio or leaders like we are on Definitely in the user camp and so this kind of chronicles our journey for understanding, you know, how how ambient Istio works And how to interact with it So yeah, let's get started So Yeah, so we will so in this talk Yeah, we'll talk about our journey of how we learned The differences in Istio's API so ambient is not a drop-in replacement So there are differences in how The API is used in sidecar versus ambient mode and this was a difficult thing for us to wrap our heads around and So it kind of helped to dig a little bit deeper and understand what's happening under the hood in order to develop that mental model of exactly why Why we're seeing what we're seeing and like how to effectively use ambient so that hopefully you should get that out of this talk So I'm gonna start here just thinking about some of the abstractions of kubernetes And we're gonna focus on the service abstraction since it's the most relevant for service mesh And so these abstractions can be implemented in a number of ways under the hood We'll use that to motivate our journey so we start off with a service in plain kubernetes And even here there are many different ways to implement it, but this is one that I think We're all familiar with and so What I'm doing here is I'm actually breaking the abstraction a little bit And so how many of you have programmed with the go programming language? Yes, okay, so when learning that Learning how interfaces work and learning how slices work The way my mind works I kind of had to think of them as Like the structures that they were under the hood like an interface being like a pointer to data and then a pointer to Like type information stuff. I don't really care the details, but but just knowing that kind of explained some of the weird behaviors that that that go can can That you can see and go so this is kind of similar like knowing what's under the hood can explain a lot So here we go with with plain old kubernetes And when you have a service you typically interact with it via a URL right which is written according to some convention and the idea is that your application will hit this URL and Kubernetes will route it correctly So a service is an abstraction for a number of pods and you don't care how many pods there are or What's happening to them? You just wanted to go to one of those pods and kubernetes delivers right and so the way that works under the hood for example is By writing this URL that follows a convention. So it's like the service name dot namespace dot SVC dot cluster dot local or whatever the the you know domain is Your application makes a DNS request and kubernetes has a DNS server Which answers that request and it returns a fake IP address? so Called of a VIP or virtual IP right and so there's nothing in the cluster that actually has this address like no pod No node. It's just a value It's a value that kubernetes picked in order to associate this this value with with a service, right? so you you get this this fake IP back and Then your container makes a request and this is where the magic happens under the hood So there's another component called kube proxy which configures the Linux kernel to take that Fake IP address and then do something interesting with it in this case. We load balance it across a number of services so some complexity on the hood, but just having a General high-level idea of what's happening under the hood is helpful here Now let's introduce Istio with sidecars into the mix So the picture looks fairly similar But there's some key differences number one our pods grew so we have our application container in it But we also have a few other containers One of which is pilot agent and envoy But they serve some of the similar roles so you make a request to the URL hasn't changed, but this time you go to Istio's DNS you can enable this DNS capture in Istio So this is Istio's notion of what DNS should be and so it can override what kubernetes thinks and this is actually a rather powerful thing But in this case, we're just looking at the service of action. It doesn't so let's say it returns the same virtual IP and Then some the same magic happens under the hood with IP tables rules and The traffic goes somewhere else so it goes to a kind of proxy So instead of going to kube proxy which load balances it it goes to an envoy instance This is the sidecar that's in the pod and that envoy instance does a similar thing It load balances that request and picks a pod to send the request to The key what a key difference here is that it just doesn't send the traffic Unaltered it wraps it in an MTLS connection. So a secure connection to the other pod, right? So it's encrypted It reaches the envoy instance the sidecar in the other pod is decrypted and once it is decrypted it is sent to the To the destination container. So We added some some value add here, but it's fundamentally the same pattern and he uses the same abstraction So it's it's not all that different. Okay But now we can push the boundaries of that abstraction Let's say we want to have this URL Linux foundation org slash Baz, right and we want a container in our our mesh whenever Makes a request to that URL We don't want it to go to like whatever the public DNS is for that and through an ingress gate We mean what have you we want a short circuit that and just send that to the pod that will that will answer it You know, we just want that to stay in the mesh and be simple So that's something you could do in Istio and it's a very similar path, but you have a different URL The request goes to DNS and maybe it returns like a different a different virtual IP But ultimately at that point Istio does the the same thing as before and the request goes to its It's it's it's it's intended destination But this starts to like then we can start to break out of this this this service Substraction because that's not really something that you can easily do with with the with the service The service custom resource in Kubernetes and then we can add things to this like let's say that there are 20 pods that that That's like implement slash Baz and let's say another path Foo or something has a different set of pods and we want to route traffic to you know different You know different sets of pods based upon the path And so that's like a form of routing and that definitely brings us out of the the comfort zone of the service abstraction in Kubernetes So this is where we get into Istio's API itself So like these are some selected Resources in Istio's API in this talk. We're going to focus about on virtual service and authorization policy But when thinking about Istio's API, it is very helpful to Consider where this API is being implemented. What proxy is this happening in so these on On one side the virtual service destination rule and service entry These all happen in the envoy instance of the pod that is making the request the client or consumer Sidecar there's various different terminologies that are used so like that routing decision Okay based upon based upon the path or maybe maybe you're doing a canary rollout or or like blue green testing and have Shifting traffic to some percentage like that in in the sidecar base mesh that happens That happens on the requester side in their envoy instance and it's doing something, you know more complex than just plain old low balancing Now as far as the destination pod the server or producer sidecar These apis pure authentication authorization policy request authentication are kind of inherently Inherently happen on the server side. So like we'll be focusing on authorization policy You know it makes it just it makes sense for the the sidecar of a pod to Determine who gets who gets in it. That's something you would not delegate to the requester so With sidecar based Istio, this is kind of your mental model of the API and where it's implemented and all is good so ambient changes things a little bit and You know with with with Istio With with sidecar base, you know the envoy proxy is kind of doing both L4 level like not like just just IP based and Layer 7 Processing in the in the envoy instance Istio splits that apart so It has a secure overlay layer which is implemented through Z tunnels which basically is Responsible for point-to-point security and not a whole lot much else and this is this is kind of I think that's where the name Ambient came from I mean it's just around these each tunnels are just around and you know magic happens under the hood and you get secure Communication point-to-point between pods in the mesh But layer 7 is where they really start to differ and layer 7 is where you do policy that requires Knowing about things like what HTTP is what an HTTP method is what a path is and all that sort of stuff So like routing is an example, but let's go back to our service abstraction, right? So here we have Here we have our service abstraction in an ambient and Fundamentally it doesn't look all that different from the others the pods shrunk We no longer have sidecars in it, but we have a DNS. We have a virtual IP We have some IP tables rules or something which is directing these fake IPs to to to a Z tunnel, okay, and the Z tunnel is what does the load balancing and encryption it does a slightly different spin on MTLS called H-Bone Takes HTTP based overlay network, and I don't remember what the e is so let's just say it's excellent So so yeah, so basically it's it's it's it's essentially just tunneling the traffic Still MTLS encrypted and it goes to a corresponding Z tunnel and then to the application There are some differences here in the sense that in In ambient Z tunnels are a daemon set so they exist on each node But as far as our mental model is concerned like we don't care all that much like the Z tunnel like Could be could be a sidecar for all we care could be like who like who cares where it is it basically is responsible for For providing this point-to-point Secure communication it does not do any l7 stuff and you know We really don't need to think about it all that much or at least as far as like our mental model is concerned, okay Now when we think about l7, that's when things really start to get different So the sidecar model up in that corner We have one pod communicating to another and we see the client has virtual service destination rule, etc That's the old sidecar model now with ambient you have to explicitly opt into l7 and furthermore That occurs Only on the server side, so there is no sidecar on the client side So if you look at the traffic it goes from your pod to a Z tunnel and Then if the destination has a waypoint it goes through that waypoint Policy is enacted and then it goes on to the pot. So if you look at the API That's implemented in the waypoint. We see authorization policy peer authentication request authentication Everything that previously was on the server side, but now we also see virtual service and destination rule on the server side But they're not exactly the same okay, they they Are scoped differently So the waypoint in ambient is scoped to a service account or a namespace So it's like a given app. This is my waypoint. I deployed it It is it is it is my security umbrella or such It's in my namespace and I control it I'm the only one that controls policy for us and all traffic has to go through my waypoint And so that does place some limits on what you can do with virtual service or destination rule, right? But here's the analogy that like really worked for me at least when trying to figure out We're trying to think of this thing So like imagine if some of the patterns we see in service mesh happen in the outside world, right now Obviously it doesn't but let's let's just think about it this way. So we have Lars and Anna here okay The top scenario Lars's scenario is similar to the sidecar world in Istio and in that world Lars's computer would need to know would need to know stuff like routing rules Like it would need to know that if you're going to cncf.org slash project slash spire There it would need to know the possible endpoints for it and like maybe other policy like maybe there's a canary rollout going on So it would need to know to send 90% of its traffic here 10% there like all the routing decisions are made on the client side, right? But that that really can't work in the real world right because like an internet scale like you would you know You would have almost infinite policy that that that the clients would need to Need to implement and like there'd be a lot of a lot of trust thrown around like you would need to Believe that the clients are are Enacting this policy so this this wouldn't work in the real world in a constrained environment like a mesh Yes, real world. No, so the real world is more like the lower picture Anna. She Follows a URL and it goes through an ingress and that ingress then knows the the various Policy routing rules etc. It knows that the slash spire endpoint will load balance between two endpoints and it's in a canary rollout and 90% of the traffic will be going here So, you know that analogy is kind of powerful for understanding, you know, what happens in in in ambience So in the sidecar based API you can create a virtual destination and and say, okay I want you to route your traffic in this way and where you is any other pod in the mesh any other namespace Okay, so like so me You know can can can tell you what to do in the Ambient way If you opt into a waypoint, I mean it is basically an ingress and it's something that you control and You create policy in it and any traffic that comes to you Goes through your waypoint and you are solely responsible for the policy that is in that waypoint And like there are various aspects of the of the existing Istio API that like that don't that don't work in that model like Export to for example is a field on virtual service. That's that's the one that tells like hey you namespace you have to route it This way etc So like this is this is for me at least this was kind of the the key analogy or insight which explains Which explains a number of things like this also explains why Istio decided to use the gateway API Because that's basically what you're doing You're essentially creating an ingress to a service a gateway to a service as such and so it's it's a it's a really it's a really good fit But you know, I think in general it You know it helps to understand Given a service mesh and an API Where is it implemented like find the proxies and and figure out is a client side server side and then like Once you go through that in your head you can develop a mental model of how things work so for like, you know For sidecar for for ambient for something like linker D for something like silly a mesh when that's out You know that type of thinking for us at least was very illuminating for understanding how to How to use the API of the mesh and why the API of Istio Differs a little bit between Sidecar and ambient So if this is a little bit cerebral Nina's going to take it to with some concrete examples and show like some of these differences in action And we have a couple of local VMs running and we'll give a little demo here. Yeah, so Yeah, let's so all of this hopefully demo gods are with me today But I have so let's reload or is that I have a repo if you want to follow along or do it on your own later Which walks through the examples I'm going to do today And if everything falls apart we also have recording so Without further ado, let's get started. So like Erin mentioned we have two VMs both running to a kind cluster each So on the left here I have my sidecar cluster and this is running Istio in sidecar mode So if you notice the example I'm going to use is the classic Istio one so book info And I have everything in book info deployed and all of these have a sidecar right so the Istio proxy here has been injected already and it's injected for everything in book info and then Looking here. I also have Istio D. So that's that's my control plane. That's running Then if we take a look at cluster 2 we have Ambient installed here. So in ambient mode the first thing you might notice is that there are no sidecars So the only things I have for everything in book info is my curl container and the actual book info app Cool, and then In this example, we actually have two nodes So on the first node you might notice because the z-tunnel is running on a daemon set each node has its own z-tunnel and the Book info has been split across those like that cool, so now demo time so hopefully sidecar And then So I scripted it up so I don't have any butterfingers But again like you can look at the steps on the GitHub repo. Is that fun too small? Let's let's make it a little bigger Okay, cool So what I'm gonna do is apply the same policies in both clusters and see what happens So the first thing we're gonna do is apply and a layer 7 authorization policy So the layer 7 authorization policy we're applying in both clusters is completely identical And it's only gonna allow product page to hit ratings. So let's apply that now by this one So the first run in parallel We're gonna send our first request from product page and hit ratings So this should go through because the l4 policy will allow it So we're gonna run that and run that in a ambient and we get the same response and now we're gonna do the same thing but you know try curling from a Pod that doesn't have permissions, right? So we're going in this case from reviews, which isn't allowed to ratings. So let's see what happens So in the sidecar mode, we get an RBAC access denied 403 in the ambient mode We get this command terminated with Exico 56. So what's happening here? If we go back to our ambient cluster, you can notice that we don't have any waypoints right now So all of this access policy is getting enforced at the z-tunnel level So that's why you're getting the different response in sidecar versus ambient Cool, okay, so now let's let's go up to level level seven later seven So The policy we're gonna apply first is gonna be completely identical So we're gonna try matching on the ratings app and then We're gonna try adding a header match So if Istio is cool is present in the header and we're coming from product page We allow the traffic if it's not then we block it So let's apply it. So we applied it Put it there and now let's send some traffic. So remember right now in ambient We don't have a waypoint. So there's no way of actually enforcing that this header is there But in sidecar we don't really care because the sidecar is injected to everything. So If we run the sidecar request first going from product page to reviews with the header passes And then when we go from product page with the incorrect header, this should be blocked So we see that our back axis tonight again But in ambient if we go from product page to ratings with no waypoint We get the same response were blocked So before when we didn't have the header we were allowing that traffic now because we can't enforce it We're blocking it. So and you can see the same thing when we do a Similar experiment going from reviews to ratings. You're still being blocked there as well All right, and then the last thing that we want to check on the sidecar case is can we still go from reviews? So is this still being enforced the principles? We're going from reviews to ratings and then having the correct header and then this is also denied So let's fix the ambient case the way we we're gonna fix this is we have to change first We have to apply our gateway. So the we're gonna use the gateway API to create a waypoint So the waypoint is gonna be the fault policy enforcing point. That's gonna enforce our L7 authorization policy. So let me apply that And you can notice that the one I'm gonna use for this example is per service account So I'm gonna select the book info ratings service account and scope the waypoint to that Well, okay, and then the second thing we have to do is I will first let's check that the waypoint came up because Cool, so we looks like we have our waypoint already running since five seconds ago But if we go back to canines and look at the waypoint YAML We can see that we're actually in our authorization policy We're gonna select the waypoint and apply the L7 authorization policy there instead of using the app ratings Like pot labels, right? So we're gonna use this Istio gateway label to apply a policy Let's apply it So this is the policy. We're gonna apply again. Like I mentioned, we're switching the the label here and Then let's let's on some traffic. So let's do the same three tests. We did before product page to Ratings with the correct header first. So this should go through right? So we get our ratings response and now we're gonna do the same thing product page to ratings with the bad header so not Istio We get our back denied So this is again like you can notice that now that's going through the waypoint we actually get the 403 response It's not the exit error that we're getting earlier. Okay, last test. Let's go from reviews to ratings with the correct header just to sanity check that nothing broke and We're denied again Well, so the next thing I'm gonna show is how the authorization policy and an L7 policy works together So I'm gonna create a virtual service and again It's gonna be the same virtual service in both the sidecar case and the ambient case because the API hasn't changed, right? So we're gonna create a virtual service for ratings where we're gonna add a fault injection to turn 14 when we hit ratings So let's apply that and we already have the ratings waypoint, right? So the waypoint is what's gonna be enforcing it in the ambient case So applied it now. Let's send some traffic So the first thing we're gonna do is same test again product page to ratings with the correct header And in both cases, we're gonna get the correct response Now we're gonna do the same thing but go from reviews to ratings With the correct header too, but doesn't really matter for that So What do you think is gonna happen in the sidecar case? How many people think we're gonna get fault filter report? No, how many people think we're gonna get the RBAC? Okay, let's let's try it. So in the sidecar case we get fault filter abort But in the ambient case we get RBAC access denied So the reason this is happening is what Aaron explained instead of having the sidecar do the routing or apply the You know fault injection policies and things like that on the client side Now we have a waypoint that scopes it to the service account So you don't have a sidecar which applies the fault injection before you hit the server Side sidecar now all of that is getting applied at the waypoint. So this is why you're getting two different responses in both cases All right, last example we're gonna run through is we're gonna do a traffic shift so We're gonna apply a new virtual service to reviews and reviews is gonna go 90% to v1 and then 10% to v2 so let's go apply that and The other thing we have to do in order to get this to work is we have to apply destination rule So the destination rule is going to select which subsets we care about on the service So the same destination rule in both cases again So we're gonna apply that And the extra thing we have to do in the ambient case is we have to create a waypoint for reviews because the last gateway We created the waypoint with was only scope to the ratings service account, right? So we need a new one for reviews so the same idea as before we're gonna use the the service count here Don't need create a waypoint for reviews And let's apply that cool, and then Let's double-check that the waypoint actually got created so it looks like now we have a new waypoint for reviews running and Now let's actually send some traffic. So I have Prometheus port forwarded here on 9090 for ambient and then I have Prometheus port forwarded here for the sidecar case on 9091 So let's go go to Prometheus Copy that over and we're gonna see how many is do total requests that we're getting from going to reviews v1 Versus the total so when I execute this might take a couple minutes to get Yeah, so Like we looked at the policy before 10% is going to v1 or to v2 And then 90% should be going to v1. So if I execute that that's about it's hard to see let me zoom in about 90% going to v1 and then 10% to v2 and then in ambient the same thing so v1 About 90% and then the same thing for v2 About 10% so that's all I had to show demo wise I encourage you to try it out on your own. This is based on the getting started with Istio ambient And uses the 118 alpha version there and it has instructions on how to set everything up And you know set up a local client cluster yourself So without further ado, let's go back to the slides I Think all we have left is like is the QR code for feedback. Yes Well, I think we also have a we're promoting our panel so Getting started with Istio and then if you're interested in asking more questions. There's a panel coming up About the future of service mesh. So feel free to also attend that but I think we have some time for questions, right? Yeah, I think so Great. Yeah, so are there any questions? Question there Is there some logistical necessity for mics? Oh, there's mics right there. I think standing in the hall Okay, in the first seat tunnel slide you show the IP tables through probably you are there somehow configuring the Not entries for the services and redirecting the traffic To the Z tunnel at the way point. Yeah. Yeah, right And so like it's the Z tunnel that knows whether a way point exists and whether it needs to Send traffic to the To the way point but also like even IP tables is kind of an implementation detail because like there's different ways You can implement it you do that part in ebpf you can do like you can do it in it tables Just I think that's the first implementation. That's there And Does this also work on it? It's so it's the so I guess the question is like Could it go to waypoint if you have like another another C&I or something in there? So the thing is that so the Z tunnel is is specifically the component that has the logic in it that That so it knows whether there is a waypoint and it knows if traffic needs to be directed to that waypoint So if something else is like it exists that can have such logic that in theory like you You know that component could send it to the waypoint instead But as far as like where ambient is right now Z tunnel is right now the one thing that that that knows that logic and knows where Like if it needs to send the request to another Z tunnel or to a waypoint so there's actually a number of of opportunities for for implementing it differently or like putting other twists on it But it's still the early days and so like this so what I described is you know how it exists now So I think Yeah, we have a few more minutes Just a request to go to this line with the github Yeah, I have a question. When when do you? How do you choose where to scope the waypoint service account or the namespace? Ah, yes. Well, I mean that is so as it stands now You are allowed to choose both and I think so it depends upon the layer of the level of granularity You want in some cases? There's really no distinction between them like you have one service account for a namespace and so like a namespace Wanted to be sufficient so it's it's in those cases where you have a namespace and for whatever reason you do have Pods from a number of service accounts in them. That's just an additional tool for providing the appropriate granularity the the underlying concept is that the Is that like the granularity of So thinking of the waypoint as a kind of in the ingress I mean you are kind of at the whim of the granularity that it defines for that for that waypoint and the tools that are given to you right now are namespace or service account, but you know who knows what where we'll go in the future But you would choose for example this the namespace, but you have service accounts And you want to enforce policies in between the service accounts. Can you do that still? Well, yeah, you mean you would need to deploy the waypoints with with service across granularity for that And I don't know I don't recall if any of our Workshops have that as as an example No, okay, but no they do with book info because there is we do have an example with book info and Different service accounts for product page ratings and reviews. And so like in that scenario Maybe we'll be we'll be in touch because we did we did we had our booth We did have an instruct workshop that I think showed that scenario where you do have Multiple apps with different service accounts in the same namespace and enforcing policy between them, okay Yeah, okay But because if you would deploy a peer service account and you would have in every single service service account And it'd be the same as like kind of side scar because you would have the same amount of waypoints as well not necessarily Yeah, you mean you might I Mean it's it's decoupled because like if you have one service per service account Then yes, it reduces to something that is very similar to sidecars But in in the case where you have like 20 pods or so that that are behind that service Yeah That's where you you know and imagine the ability to scale the waypoint differently like suppose that one waypoint will serve 50 pods just fine or maybe in your use case You're heavily l7 biased and so like you have to configure it so that like maybe Five waypoints can serve like a pool of 50 pods you you have the ability to dial in the the you know what what? the the amount of Waypoints to pods which can totally vary based upon Situation and the example I gave you could also have it like on the book and phone namespace Because all yeah all the virtual services are the things doing the routing and applying the authorization like you know You're applying it to ratings in that example. So I could have shown the same example and just created a Gateway for the namespace and it would have worked in that case It just depends on like you're the way you want to scale right? Okay. Thanks Hi, it's still time to ask a question. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for a joke. First of all, I really really enjoyed it My question is with is the own sidecar mode Usually if you have some kind of batch processing in kubernetes like a job You have to wait for the side cat to come up before you can actually do your thing and make requests Is that something I still have to care for with the ambient mesh or is it so fast that I well? So so what happens is that? You know in an ambient you label namespaces So the question is like do you do you need to wait like with sidecars? You kind of need to wait for the sidecars to start before before they can start an acting policy in waypoint because Because the z tunnels and because the waypoints already exist It's actually very very fast Loop because you you you label a namespace for ambient and then like the CNI is constantly watching for pods that appear and disappear and you know basically at the point that a pod Comes into existence and you know gets its networking all set up then you know the redirection to the z tunnel Which is already up or waypoints if the z tunnel needs to route to waypoints. That's that's all That's all already there So it's really just that initial step that sets up the capture like either an IP tables rules or whatever it is That's implementing that and that's that's really fast. So there's nothing There's no pod that you need to wait for it's just you know waiting for the you know the correct read the redirection to the z tunnel Thanks Thanks for the do you still have time? Yeah, thanks for the talk. I really appreciate it and it gave me a good insight to Istio My question is when would I want to use ambient mode versus sidecast? Till now I only see I get less pots less memory usage. Are there any other benefits? Yeah, you should definitely attend the panel Late late later today, but but yeah resource usage is you know is is a major one You know, there's like there's you know, what's that my greeting? Yeah So also like you in sidecar mode you you know inject everything with the sidecar here You can like add you know l7 as you need it, right? And add you know things to the mesh more gradually So if you just care about like basic l4 observability and like MTLS Then you can just have you know no policies in place in all seven But get like pretty good, you know performance less memory consumption And not have to you know inject pods everywhere. So it's There's also other benefits of like slowly migrating like as you need you add the pieces you need And so we're heading into break and so we'll have time if you would just want to you know Cluster together here to answer questions, but I think you know the session is officially over


What's up everybody? I'm the hook, and I'm the blade, and I am the bracer, I suppose Together we're you know welcome to the adventures of hook blade and friends a show about all things Assassin's Creed With me as always is my co-host Tim. How are you doing today, Tim? Pretty great. How are you? I'm pretty great. How are you wait? Joining us as our first-ever guest host is none other than the moldy man the moldy myth the moldy legend himself first name putrid last name moldy man Thank you so much for joining us putrid. Yeah, thanks for having me on putrid. Tell me why does having you on as a guest Feel so wrong and yet so right Well it feels like our time and Remember back when we played a unity.  That's how friendships are built is unity free roam co-op Experiencing I think probably 12 glitches per hour Yeah, it was really something like climbing up in the air.  Yeah, like they based the ranks on the amount of comment karma you had on the subreddit and I'm just I guess they assumed that I had the most because I commented all the time Basically, yeah, you're kind of a big deal. Yeah is what we're saying. I mean future was the first person I ever spoke to you in the community ever. Oh, that's that's like one-on-one.   I was talking to putrid and him and I developed a friendship and that's how I met you Lawson Essentially, thank you Cuz I know that I messaged you separately But when we actually started talking was through putrid if I'm not mistaken. Oh, I don't remember any of this Honestly, we would have those Skype calls, you know, yeah, I do remember those believe me I just don't remember how I met people like I don't remember who the first person I talked to was I want to say Yeah, either Greg or aftermath. Yeah, I think it was putrid for me because I bought him on Twitter I believe and I sent him a DM. I was like, hey sexy I Tried also Also was a team member on the assassin's creed marathon, which you know, yep is my favorite thing and He was also a collaborator on the bureau and I think unlike Tim you actually managed to get on an episode of that, didn't you? Yeah, you lucky. Yeah, I think I got on Yeah, one episode I believe hey, that's that's one out of five. I mean My only goal for this show was that we beat the the bureau's record of episodes and we've done that so everyone pat yourselves On the back.  All right So first up on the hate mail from Jace's Hobbes 018 Jace's Hobbes, you got to tell us how your username is pronounced because we gotta tell us keep saying it like this, but feature hate mail fan of the show The show I meant to say that that fan obviously whatever Incoming hate mail Unity's modern day is literally pointless and it tells you as much it is not better than origins because at least something happens You have crossed the line with that opinion I Have to say this is tough for me because like I get like unity's Present day is just unequivocally terrible and I agree at the same time. I feel like comparing it to origins Origins, there's like there's like 18 minutes of modern day content It's playable the expectations that you have when you see playable modern day You think it's gonna be like really great Desmond tear stuff, right? And it's so not it's so bad Whereas I think unity by the time I realized it was all gonna be cut scenes I kind of was like strapped in for terribleness and Origins, I didn't realize how fully how bad it was until I was done Yeah I mean I feel like I agree with you because at least with unity's once you see that first little bish up a bit You know what you're getting into you're like, oh that they made it they made it dog shit this time Yes, you think of your hopes up, you know, yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna stand strong on my opinion here, but but I don't know I'm open to changing my mind if I'm presented with facts and logic.  She says oh, I guess he or she not They say they They say hate mail. I doubt you can say that syndicates modern day is the best We've ever seen when you compare a choreographed cutscene to the gameplay of Desmond wrecking shit in the episode There you go office and rescuing William brotherhood and AC3 modern day is still on top. Oh I'm actually going to change course entirely and say that the best modern day is a C1 But I think syndicate is easily the best we've had since AC1 I'm sorry, but the the playable stuff in AC3 really didn't do it for me No, I didn't do it didn't do it for me either. I Like the gameplay the fact that there's gameplay that's kind of a novelty I guess like oh, we're actually killing people in the modern day, which they did that in roughly every game I think other than maybe revelations out of those five. Yeah, but is the actual story content compelling? I don't know about that for for either AC3 or brotherhood. I feel like AC3's Modern day was pretty good In the sense that wait, hold on. I need to come up with a way to phrase this. Take your time. Take your time This is why we pay editors Pay them and kisses. Okay. So I feel like AC3's modern days good in concept But as with quite a few things in the story of that game the pacing was a bit of an issue Yeah, for sure. I I don't want to get too in the weeds on the hate mail We've got a big subject today because essentially what's happened is We got a letter from Eve Guillemot the CEO of Ubisoft and he was like he was like first off sorry about all the abuse and harassment and Misogyny allowed to happen under my nose for Decades and decades, but you guys have a really great show and I just want to know what you guys would do to save Assassin's Creed so our mission today is we need to save Assassin's Creed we have to come up with some ideas for what they could do next that would both Fit the vision that Ubisoft seems to have for the franchise But also make some you know crucial concessions to what hardcore fans are clamoring for or just really at the end of the day The things that we the three of us would want to see To be really happy about an Assassin's Creed game. Yeah, because it feels like now more than ever at this moment even Compared to when we started this show. There are some forces that are acting upon Ubisoft And on the next game in particular that seem to put it in a unique position Right, we're becoming aware of these sexist practices the chief creative officer has been ousted and Ghost of Sushima just proved that you can make a classic Assassin's Creed game and make money with it So it feels like we have an opportunity for things to change for the better so we've each kind of made our own lists of things that we want to see and Tim why don't you get us started with the first thing you want to see to save Assassin's Creed for sure So something that's been apparent to me probably since the yet to do games is the lack of Multiple games from one assassin or main character So that would be the and I don't necessarily have a particular order in this obviously some things I would I would pick over other things but I think this is very important and why I have a number one on my list is because I think It's you're you're let you're missing so much opportunity to not include an assassin over multiple games I mean you and I were just talking about how That like little graphic that they put out every year adding in new characters and new assassins that thing is so filled up right now It's because everyone in that graphic is gonna get coronavirus because they're not But it's just it's filled to the brim because yeah, it's like if Connor had two or three games Then it would just be Connor there for three years worth of assassins creeds But you know so it would feel more momentous to have a new character to exactly wow I can't wait to see who the new assassin is which is how it felt when they started talking about Connor after Etsy It was like oh my god new protagonists. This is amazing right and and then once once they had Connor in an actual game it was just that game and then No word on him and then they just kind of dropped casually on the side somewhere else Oh, yeah, he had a kid, but his wife left him and he died alone and that that's all we have I mean actually I think they've retconned that by now They have conned it in the comic really they put out a comic about Connor one of the I think assassins creed reflections issues Yes, and part of the story of that is that the I may be talking out of my ass here But I know that part of the implication is that when the Abstergo employee handbook said he died alone It was like it was Templar propaganda wasn't the truth.  Absolutely, you know, so and that is pretty much what's happened with Almost every other protagonist. I see a new game coming out like we see a vor It's hard to be really excited because I know that pretty much the entirety of a vor content I'm ever going to see in my life will be over at the end of the hundred hours or so that I spend playing the game Yeah, like it's hard to Really get invested and I mean obviously you can get invested in a character and there have been some great Protagonist Edward was awesome, right? I would even settle though like like for an a Kenway style family saga over multiple games Like I would be cool with that Especially if they were smart about it and they allowed those other games to answer questions about You know to conclude the stories of some of those characters outside of their own games, you know Have them be side characters wouldn't it be great if like Someone from a game we've already played shows up as a you know Cameo in another game or actually as a side character or mentor figure Like there's a lot you can do if you stay within the same story world for a couple of titles And and I mean that that yeah, that's a big part of like why I think it's important to just stick with a main Character or multiple throughout a few games because you can see the same cast of characters again. I mean mm-hmm I think it's I think what makes the etio games in particular very compelling is Because you see the same people who etio has been fighting with for decades You see them throughout the games you see them age with him and it's and I think and so when something tragic happens to one of them You you feel it and so it's yeah, it's hard to wrap my head around Like oh who an a force life am I never gonna see again when I've spent maybe two hours three hours playing with them before they Before they bite the dust, you know Yeah, and and I think that the the other thing the bigger thing Is that it sort of robs them of the opportunity to create iconic and memorable Long-lasting characters. I mean I do think that The reason etio the primary reason etio is heralded as the the greatest character in Assassin's creed what I'll say is that if etio had only gotten one game. I don't think that would be the case Um and that if other characters had gotten multiple games They might be in that spot not that it's because etio is not a great character, but you know, there are things about him where He is kind of a stock character Like it's just the fact that we get to spend so much time with him And we get to see him through multiple stages of his life that we form this attachment to him And we consider him this epic legendary Not just in the assassin's creed world, but in gaming culture as a whole Yeah, he's definitely just like a sort of Standard likable character If you look down on it, but they were able to flesh him out so much due to all that time Absolutely, and then to go back to Characters being in multiple games If you played rogue, you would assume that she would show up right unity But I guess they Didn't think to do that or Arno doesn't care about his dad dying My thing like the number one thing on my list I think follows on pretty Pretty logically from your thing tim Which is that I want to see in the next game a single female protagonist No gender choices Just here's a woman play as her if you don't like it Deal with it. That's what I want to see because I think that if there's going to be a time that that will happen It's now Ubisoft is going to want to be seen as progressive and not be you know derided by The games industry for their sexist practices And I think that that means that not only is the likeliness at an all-time high. I think it's Necessity is at an all-time high. I want to see it and Yeah, all the problems that we have with the gender choice setup. I think are pretty well litigated in the sense that It kind of robs the character of an ability to have a distinct identity If you could just swap to be a completely different character model and voice actor And retain all the same personality traits It just it weakens the character in terms of how you perceive it as the player. I think for sure. Yeah and one thing that was very apparent in Odyssey and I'm sure it'll be in Valhalla to an extent as well Having so much choice in who you are and what the character is It changes how the characters interact and talk to the protagonist So they might say in Odyssey they would say Eagle Bearer. Yeah at the very least they'll say Evar now, but yeah, they still can't interact in a more proper way That was actually one of my points too because it's just like let these Let the creative people stick to their guns and actually write a story with an actual character For sure. I mean we are seeing though in some Valhalla footage that uh, they sometimes will refer to at the very least female avar as Wolf kissed So expect a bunch of that. Huh? Oh boy. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that I mean, I can't say in my list or I can't like I because like I said part of the premise is that we are Asking for things that feel like Ubisoft could do them next year and it wouldn't be completely out of the You know blue So like I don't think we're going to get rid of dialogue choices as much as I might think they should Uh, but I think at least giving us a character that is Fully embodied as one character with one design one performer And one story. I think that that would be that would be that'd be beautiful Especially if they get multiple games like tim wants That really would be the opportunity if you're creating a next gen You know only assassins creed saga With multiple games with a single protagonist where each game is getting the development time that they need and each game is getting Uh, you know a well orchestrated story Uh, that is the opportunity to create an etio level iconic character for all time for sure and keep in mind that Because we know pretty much like at the moment right now as we're talking There are three assassin screed games that are in development. There's by holla the one after that the one after that So if there is one single protagonist that might inject some You know coherence and they can all be like, okay So like this game is what happens to this person and then the next game this happens to the same person again and like I feel like you could have a lot of You know just Precision because yeah writing is flexible Yeah, like you're not worried about the third like the third game in development because they're doing because they're not going to be dealing with a new protagonist in new world they're dealing with the same protagonist and you know, so anyway, so uh Putrid what's number one on your list? Um, that can change by the second but uh But one thing that I really would like to see is for the games to be Or at least in the future to be uh a bit more grounded into reality for longer periods of time Because if you look back at say ac1 and ac2 you have stuff It's somewhat realistically going on and then you have over the top piece of Eden fight at the very end and that feels like very Rewarded. Yeah.  Yeah, if you're fighting a Cyclops every 12 minutes It doesn't it isn't going to feel rewarding or exciting to do any of that No, I yeah, I mean you're so right putrid because you're so right. You're so right Because like back in the day like the pieces of the pieces of Eden used to be like these mysterious objects And now we have like a thousand of them that we know of It was so cool to learn about a new one. Exactly like it was like, oh my god. There's an apple.  We should probably put a piece of Eden in there somewhere I guess they like pieces of Eden in their assassin's creed game I don't know. What's this one a blanket? Maybe this one's a sword This one's a building Man And yeah, when it comes to stuff like fighting a Cyclops that that was It's it's stretching it.  You fight a witch. Yeah Ah Yeah, that I I was very I was pretty surprised to see that they were keeping that stuff in after Yeah, so was I some of the things they were saying too at the time I feel like any it's like they it seems like they were implying in interviews and stuff that they were gonna draw back on that Maybe they will.  Right now the answer is right for sure. Yes 100% That's one thing that I always really liked about the series that it stayed in its own rules And it had a sort of explanation for why things happened even like why you couldn't swim. Oh, it's Right, dude.  I mean you could have a king arthur dlc for val howlin That'd be fantastic But if I see like a lady of the lake in the main game, I'm gonna be like This is bullshit Yeah, but putrid What you were saying I I I I completely agree because Like even just swimming in the first game is explained somehow and so Like I I don't need everything over the explain to me But I think it's important to keep in mind That the mysticism used to be Very subtle and very like ambiguous And now they just use the mysticism just to explain everything because it's it's in your face all the time Like as far as I am aware in the odyssey dlc Uh and in an odyssey dlc, like you are literally like in first siv Atlantis and you're just interacting with them and and like that takes away all of the mystery Yeah, it's a sort of thing where Earlier on in the series You wouldn't imagine that you'd ever see right straight up what the first Yeah, that's a good point. Like I don't know. It's like the mystery is gone Tim, what else you got so uh number two on my list I've got Encourage expiration A kin to maybe syndicate's World war one rift I think um And it's funny because that's a more recent like that's a more modern assassin screed game as we would consider it But it's still yeah kind of nailed the um like the intrigue of Exploration for that reason. So I think there needs to be a a greater focus on like why am I bothering exploring? There needs to be things that populate this world that make me want to go out and I think in more recent games They kind of they don't like to give you a good reason. They just give you a reason I would like to see like things that respect the player and respect my time to go out and explore So finding like it's kind of like what we talked about earlier in the podcast of like the mysteries and secrets Yeah, how about they are just mysteries and secrets and I find them on my own You know, I actually think Valhalla could do a pretty good job with this Like the animus anomalies seem interesting and they could be very rewarding things to discover If it's giving you some modern day content and some parkour content Hopefully, yeah, and I have a point that kind of goes off of that. Yeah I'd like to see the parkour Very much changed from what it is right now number two on my list behind single female protagonist is revive and revitalize parkour because In odyssey, I'm not it seems very similar in Valhalla. Yeah, but in odyssey it is just run and hold x And once you get to a certain level, there's no fall damage It's completely mindless When you get to that point and it's just like you could Climb anything without needing to worry about anything.   That's true. Yeah, and also boring. I really like Yeah, I I really enjoyed in the older games You had to look to see Where you could climb It it kept your mind going as you were going from place to place and it was a lot of fun You had to like kind of find the routes and pathways you could take Yeah, I mean right now. Sorry go ahead. No you Uh, just uh, well right now I I'm in the middle of ac1 again and While the parkour isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination It or great. I I I do find myself like Being on a rooftop and I'm like, okay So I'm gonna go this way because that's where the buildings connect the best and all that and and so It does keep your mind active and also I think What goes hand in hand with revitalizing parkour is also revitalizing areas in the map that can house parkour well Yeah, because Even in even in parts of ac3 Parkour isn't exactly the most fun to do because the streets are very wide and the buildings are far apart and So slopey and you'll get shot right even like rogue doing new york did a better job of it than AC3 by a significant margin So it wasn't impossible to make that area Fun to parkour right just happened that way Once you get to unity At that point in the series, it feels like the way you moved in parkour Was a lot more just luck. Yeah 100 rather than knowing how far you could jump and being able to There is some element of that. I agree Grab onto ledges like grabbing onto ledges Manually in a consistent way because I believe it's still technically possible. Yeah, but yeah I mean what I what I think has not really known how to do it as much I think what adds to this problem is having like an automatic sprint I know Lawson would disagree with me on this, but I think removing the need for rt and a at the same time No, I don't I don't disagree. I prefer I I think I may have misspoke what I when we were arguing about this the other day I prefer the the style of walking by default but holding the trigger to run I do like that I don't like how the the one thing that I was criticizing about assassin's creed one Is that the speed changes too? Like if I'm going forward and holding the right trigger I should be at maximum speed The a button should just be to indicate that I want to climb something But in assassin's creed you have to hold the trigger and the a button to sprint Holding the trigger without holding the a button is faster than walking, but not the fastest you can go That's my only complaint because yeah, so I think it was that way until like well I think three changed it officially, right? I think three made it just a trigger or am I wrong at least three by three But I it wouldn't surprise me if that happened earlier I think well because I remember revelations essentially that is a very similar in rt and a but I remember alex amansio specifically being like We used to call it the assassin's claw when he wanted to change it for unity He was like yeah holding you're holding holding down three buttons at once, but you like to call it the assassin's claw So you didn't change X button to indicate that you're free running up.  It's like There's no middle ground either Which again like I don't think there should be in the way that there is in Assassin's Creed 1 But it's like either walk at a snail's pace or run blazing fast through the fucking I'm not an expert on controls control design I just know that I want our core to be good and fun and the only real way to do that is designing a system Which encourages you to actually look around and think about where you're moving and then Create a set of animations that are, you know, beautiful flow into each other well The way that I think unities and syndicates animations do I do think they should be new and more realistic and more You know detailed because they can they should if they want to revitalize parkour I'm tired of looking at the same set of animations for the last five games but also Giving you just a little bit of control over the actual process of parkour Such that you feel like you're doing something because the the more automatic it is the less fun it is Yeah, I mean, I think we could agree that no matter if it's if it's like SEO games version of parkour or ken way or unity I think we can all agree that either one of those we just want it to be present and enjoyable for everyone so and focused on and made a part of the the gameplay design because I mean a lot of people I feel like the ubisoft teams They they have lost sight of the fact that for a lot of the general public and especially the people playing these games parkour and assassin's creed like parkour is the first thing you think about I was playing uh, I think origins on my on my ps4 the other day and um, my My brother-in-law was was at our house and he was like Oh, what game is this and I was like this is assassin's creed and he was like really because I was in a fucking desert He was like, where's the parkour and I was like dude exactly Dude, that's that's that's so like accurate Yeah, we're like we're first thing the first thing I think of when I think of assassin's creed is is parkour Yeah, it's like, where's the city? Yeah one of the things that excited me so much uh, and the build up to unity is just the fact that they were talking about Hey, we're we're doing all this parkour stuff. We're We're revamping it and I would love to have that excitement again of Knowing that the parkour is being worked on again because yeah, yeah, I'm right with you on that Let's see whose turn is it next. I forget so I think well because putrid was adding on to something that I think I don't know who was saying it and then you would like yeah, that's I think it was There's a lot of overlap in our lists if you couldn't tell yeah, yeah And that's fine. That's good. I think that means yeah. Yeah, that's preferable I'll go ahead and throw out something that was occurring to me, you know tim and I talk a lot about making targets and and gameplay moments memorable and I feel like they kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater when they Sort of forgot about the whole black box mission thing Because I get that what they tried to do with origins is they said well the world is your black box, right?  Here are your points of interest here your points of entry distractions things like that You lose the Idea that there's actually something handcrafted happening at all and so every time you kill anybody in any of these last couple games There's nothing memorable about the circumstance the location the design the story Because you are pretty much for hours and hours just showing up at a copy and paste fort And stabbing some guy who might as well be any other guy Yeah, that happened to me time and time again in odyssey I was just free roaming and I killed someone who turned out to be a cultist and it's like oh Guess i'm a step closer to upgrading my sphere Yeah, that's a great point. I mean no, I mean I mean that's that's such a good point because That was one of the best things that unity kind of introduced was the black box missions And they were like, okay, never mind. They still had a long way to go I think I mean syndicate for sure did a lot of great stuff with them But it still felt like oh, it's the same checklist you do in the open world But but smaller like I think that if they Approach the idea of a black box mission with a couple of new ideas, right? One being expanding the area so that maybe instead of a single building being your black box You might be in a whole village or town or fort or whatever and the other thing would be Integrating those opportunities in a way that you have to more naturally Discover them find them on your own have strategies you can use to look for them The more that you have to exert your own player agency to discover those things The more rewarding it's going to be to unlock.  You could have just air assassinated that dude and knowing that you could have done it the cool way and you could have done it A normal pedestrian way Made it more rewarding when you did it the cool way now. There's no cool ways.  I mean, yeah, I really really feel like some of those black box Like unique kills Were some of the most memorable moments in their respective games in unity and syndicate like the Notre Dame one in unity and then The one in the medical facility in syndicate where you like Pretended to be dead and stab the doctor like and those characters a lot of them were memorable too I'll never forget the Maxwell Roth stuff in syndicate Um ac1 subrand was a really memorable one. Oh my gosh every like that's the one where I think I don't know. I'm mixing it up. Whatever the one is where everyone's poisoned. That was cool. Yeah. Yeah, dude That's the one I just did.  I will enjoy that so much more I would really love to see an assassin's order And a protagonist with a beaked hood.  I know I know And it's like it's like It feels like sometimes that they forget that the beat hood Exists and is an iconic thing You you know, it's bad when the first trailer for an assassin's creed game comes out I'm talking about fohalla and it's just like at the very end. Oh my god. It's a hidden blade. Yeah social stuff That's the reaction You know what this means and this is the other side that we have to look at is Now that we've been deprived of these things for so long Whichever brave soul that ubi soft says oh, that's what I want to do I want to get back to that as soon as that happens We're all going to lose our collective minds and it's like It'll have been built up to yeah I kind of give a shit about being a viking. I really don't They want to make the the world's foremost viking simulator and that's fine but Put me in that beat hood put me in those mossy off robes Mwah Mwah Mwah Speaking of where where the legacy outfits. Yeah Yeah, ubi soft.   I'm running around ancient Greece looking like motherfucking etio. That's so cool Why why not why not every other protagonist who's ever existed because you have 17 of them And some of them look really cool and I just want to be them. Okay. It's not that big a deal I don't even think there are legacy outfits I don't even think there are legacy outfits and There is an etio unlockable. I'm pretty sure but that's so annoying That's so annoying.  They they will disgrace them But it shows you that ubi soft knows the only character they've ever created worth a damn in this franchise is etio Like so why not do the same things that made etio great? You can do them. You're allowed No one's stopping you from making a great character and giving us multiple games It's like it's like they perceive etio as like a fluke Like yeah, it's like they themselves are like oops. We made an iconic character. Whoops Damn, let's go ahead and do the opposite of what made that character work for the next 10 years If if in Valhalla I could wear every legacy character outfit I feel like that'd be cool even though I would not do it just to be clear I wouldn't wear any of them. I would just like to know that they're there if I want to it would make it the best game ever made Here's a little random one I've got I've been paying a lot of attention to HUD designs lately because something that really Really got me going about Ghost of Tsushima is that 90% of the time if you're navigating and exploring There's no heads up display whatsoever And I just I love that because I could just sit there writing my horse through the hills of Tsushima and Not see any shit on the screen that was distracting. I played a bit of The Witcher 3 the other day There are so many useless HUD elements In that game. I don't know why I have to have a big old bar at the bottom of the screen that says horse stamina over it When I'm writing my horse Like just let it slow down when it gets tired. I'll notice then there's literally an icon in the upper right hand corner That never goes away that tells you what time of day it is. I'm like dog. I can see the sky I can tell what the weather is. There's an icon like showing you an icon that says, oh, this is what a sunset looks like Yeah, I know the sun setting in front of me I can see it It seems that having a limited HUD is something that they've been scared to do ever since the first game They're scared to do it.   I feel like I heard someone say I don't know if it was an interview or a leak That it was like okay in Valhalla. They want to have a cleaner HUD. They want to have like more You know as as as small amount of HUD as possible. That's clearly not true it's got Just as much HUD as any other Assassin's Creed game of the last three years, so This is like a weird tangent, but I needed to bring it up. The puppeteer is really really silly Yeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy how the first game of the series did that pretty like retroactively Like allowed you to play the game without the HUD like if you're going through The uh, like the world not the wilderness, but if you're going through in between cities There's little signs that say this way the Jerusalem or this way the opera and Then if you the point of a viewpoint is to get high enough to be able to see what buildings you have to go to It sounds like ac1 was designed to be played exactly that way And then Ubisoft was like people are dummies. You need to put big ol icons on everything. I think that's what happened I think I think that's exactly. Yeah, I think that's exactly what they did I think the game was about like was going to ship that way and they were like, okay. Well, hold on We need to make sure that people wait dawg you want them to look at signs.  So, uh future what what's next on your list? It's okay if you don't have a list.    I wasn't sure I forgot that I told you. It's fine. We're also at an hour of recording. This episode's gonna be massive It might but we'll be fine. There's stuff I can edit out I've pretty much covered everything in my list at this point. Yeah, I've got three more in mind Oh god I I would really like for both I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead Share with the class. What are you laughing about? No, just what the way you're like, oh god All right, go ahead Not just for the next game, but kind of going forward. I would really like for the stories to be Good independently. Well, yeah, I would like these stories to be good We said I didn't think we were gonna say that at the same time But I want them to be like good independently regardless of the rest of the series because So like especially in the context of the modern day It's always kind of like stringing us along But then like oh, we're gonna have the major story beat that was introduced after Desmond's death We're just gonna relegate it to a fucking comic Yeah And we're not gonna mention that in the game or make that very clear at all Yeah, no, that's a great point. So it's just if maybe I don't know the best way to handle that but right Well, I I do know that Say, I know that this has been meant this game has been mentioned a few times before but and like I think red dead redemption 2 was a great They did a great job at having a story that's really good on its own But if you played the first game, there's a lot of stuff that you would be able to pick up on and know about To make the experience a lot better I really like what you're saying because I feel like that's kind of a sentiment that I shared in the brahman episode that we did Because brahman is a good story on its own and there are nice little, you know, easter eggs and stuff for the assassin's creed universe But it feels like instead of devoting Hours on hours just like what can we put in here that fans are going to recognize? They after they good story in the universe You know, like you can read brahman or read the fall or the chain And you can enjoy them without having played every single assassin's creed mobile game that's came out You know in all that stuff I completely agree with what you're saying. Yeah, it it feels like Maybe like have a plan, you know in this in this game This will happen and the next game this will happen and then do that I don't know but no, I mean you're completely right. It would be better than what they're doing Or what they have been doing for the past few years of We're gonna use We're just gonna string you along With the idea that something is going to happen But then it doesn't or if it does it's in a comic. I was gonna say this earlier There is nothing about the To my knowledge, there's nothing about the development process and what it requires That would stop them from saying, okay here. Here's our team. Here's our people That are going to oversee the assassin's creed, uh, you know the brand the franchise and Then creating a plan to say, okay, this is the narrative arc We want to tell over multiple games whether that's in the modern day or that's in the present day Wow, um Whether that's in the modern day or the past, uh, you can Make things overarching and I think the only thing that gets in the way is actually ubisoft's corporate structure, right? They don't have like a dedicated lore master for assassin's creed at all and they don't have Like I think that really what happens is There are developers and teams that they pitch to the the creative executives at ubisoft And they say oh, this is the game we want to make and then ubisoft says yes or no That process happens independently for every assassin's creed game that happens So no one is saying oh the next three games we're going to make we're going to hit egypt Uh grease and and you know viking right they're just these three separate teams that are going Oh, you know what I'd really like to do is make a viking game and then ubisoft says cool But yeah, it's not like this would be impossible. The very first assassin's creed games was You know patrice desi lay and jade ramond and those people saying okay Here's a roadmap ubisoft said do more and they said okay. We'll go from three games to five games. That's cool And then now we're in this place where it's a free-for-all But I really feel like the dividends that they would make from in terms of like fan engagement and series Goodwill in in the public and in the gaming community For just putting that effort in would be immense. Yeah, I completely agree. Thank you tim me too Thank you future. What was next on your list? If I had to pick multiple distinct cities behind a loading screen and with next gen technology It'll be less likely but still or one big map. I would pick the former So do you want me to argue with you about this because I'm ready to argue with you about oh, yeah Sure. Um, so I'll just lay out like why I think so like go for it because especially with playing ac1 just now like every city feels distinct and has a dialect and The people look different the buildings look different the atmosphere the color of the sky everything looks so much different and new when you would go between cities And I feel like that is lost on games like syndicate or unity And unity I'm not saying these games do a bad job of differentiating different neighborhoods or boroughs or what have you but nothing to me Beats the uniqueness of those cities or ac2 cities And I think it's because you can't just waltz from one end to one city to another city and I think Excuse me. I mean you can just there's gonna be a loading screen It's not just the loading screens obviously that make that so excuse me they make that so I think it's the philosophy of that Okay, so venice Is going to be a lot different to play in Than florins and I think as they've even and like I think this is why rome is considered like the best city in the in in in the games because it was the first game To go away from the multiple different cities that you would travel to and so even in ac2 When you go between oh, sorry ac3 when you go between the frontier and in boston and all that like There still is a distinction between the two even though I don't love those particular maps as much I love constantinople revelations, but I don't think the games have hit on That kind of distinction between the maps since the first two games I have a I have an idea that's like kind of similar um One thing that I really enjoyed is how um Especially in the first two games Which was also somewhat present in brotherhood revelations and three less so on three More of the map opened up as you progress through the story And I actually really liked that because it helped you You get more content and you don't feel like there's so much. Yeah, you don't get overwhelmed meanwhile in origins and odyssey After capa docha, I believe it's called you just have the whole World open and it just feels like there's oh kefalonia too much Kefalonia that capa docha is the burn. Yeah, but those are the grounds that he in revelation. Yeah. Yeah The cave city That was so cool Right. Well, so you see what I mean being able to travel between distinct areas like that is and hey The hell is doing that because you're gonna have some are they the action You're gonna you're gonna have norway and it's gonna be completely like separate from the map of everything else I suppose but like being able to go between versailles and in paris like that's kind of what i'm talking about even though I don't think it's as it's it's obviously not as different as what i'm saying, but I I don't Like here's my thing I don't think the loading screens are necessary in the in the next gen world like They'll still happen mind you if you're going to go from norway to england I'm sure there's some sort of transition there even if it's a cute animation of you being on a boat It's not going to be like you you're you know, it's not going to be seamless, right? Yes, but my thinking is this like You can have All of the goodness like you can have everything you want It doesn't have to be the the old way or the current way like I think that I would be okay with a big open fuck-off map like the ones of the last few games if the cities in it were really like content hubs and were were substantially sized and That the majority of the content of the game could be you know enjoyed in those cities that would do it for me like I'm okay with having an open world like frontier-esque area that can be exciting Um, especially if there's meaningful content to do in it But it really feels like even in origins in odyssey though They make a big deal about the fact like oh you can go to alexandria or oh Memphis or whatever these there's big hub cities those cities are like 10 percent not even 10 percent of the stuff you'll do in the game So like that's the problem more than anything else with that approach to me But I do think that I fully agree with you on the level that if we could get back to a zone where We have like Different distinct cities I would be cool with that As long as and I do think they should use the whole aesthetic trappings that they have available to them They should change the color of the sky. They should make the npcs look unique They should do everything they used to do in those games right So and I want to get to hung up on the fact that like they there needs to be a loading screen separating them I just feel like lately in these big fuck-off maps The cities aren't given up attention And I think it's because they spread themselves too thin they spread the world too thin So if I had to pick between an ac2 style of like three to four cities going between them all the time I would prefer that over here's giant world with a couple cities peppered throughout Yeah, that's fair. What was next on your list? My thing is like if they're if there are any boss like enemies in the game They should be like the Templar Knights from ac1. I agree. That's it. That's a cool idea Look because ac1 combat to me is the best and it's most It's most challenging when you're facing enemies like that It's like a really good thing about the Templar Knights is that You are pretty much forced to like stealth them. Yeah, and it's a perfect example of If you can't stealth correctly, you're going to be in for a bad time because it's very difficult to kill them Outside of it because they're very strong and very skilled warriors So you need like a you need a perfect hidden blade counter and an ac1 the window for that is very tiny But also some of them are Impossible to stealth because some of them are like up against a rock. You can't like quite get that's true And there's not a lot of room to air assassinate in like the In the space between the cities, there's not a lot to climb I think if you're talking more like, you know, if you have like smoke bombs in the whistle and all that then yeah Now we're talking. Yeah Like not Medusa Templar Knights. Yeah, so I so my last point really is just to encourage side content Completion licking it to the main objective So I think Brotherhood is the prime example of how to do side content in these games Because oh, yeah, it's all very Um fun and enjoyable and there's a and there's a lot of it. There's a lot of there's a lot to it For just from a quantity sense But it's all like linked to your time in Rome and with characters that you've Spent with in previous games and stuff. So it all is linked to like for instance There's like 50 para stories Not one of them I ever did and felt like wow, Paris is a better place because I've done that Even in Brotherhood, you can renovate the city itself like you can help the city itself There's a quest line in Brotherhood where you are just playing flashbacks of ac2 All of Brotherhood's side content feels meticulously crafted and rewards you for doing it.  Yeah, exactly like that You get your crossbow and stuff like exactly that's exactly what i'm saying like there is this there's this um tangible progression while um, you are doing all the side content and It also happens that with some of the side content you're interacting with characters Who haven't fleshed out throughout the previous game in this game, right? And you're doing stuff like for the factions that Within the main story you're partnering up with So it is a perfect balance and I think because um I think because like your mission as soon as you step foot in Rome is to liberate it and to make it a Better place all the side content for the most part is linked the objective the closest we got From to that was syndicate because it was also jephew jephew. Heylem But I think that was but I don't think syndicate nailed it But it had a similar like Philosophy and so I would like to see that again And it doesn't have to be like a liberation story or I am liberating the city But I want my side content To like whenever i'm taking a break from the main quest line I want to feel like what i'm doing on the side is still worth my time and effort and you know what I mean?  Are you a really good guy who's just gonna do it for the good of your heart?  You just get some exclusive gear sometimes which ultimately isn't the best stuff By a milestone watch all the murder for me and you can grab a gun out the bin So yeah, we just keep a lot of weapons in here. Just grab one So that's essentially like I think bringing back like narrative length gameplay progression Would be attractive because like and while AC one doesn't necessarily handle it perfectly because the game is kind of hard to play without certain mechanics But I do like how over time you get new weapons and better weapons and new skills and stuff So if they could do that in a more streamlined way, I'd appreciate it and also you have ac2 Where etio learns the climb leap through a character in the story, you know And I'm pretty sure it's like four sequences in that that happens It's not like it's the start of the game, you know, and it's like It it keeps you on your toes and I think it keeps the player involved and I like the idea of like The gameplay staying fresh By new things coming at you new mechanics and stuff like and just like putrid mentioned But in terms of the brotherhood side content with you helping leo You get upgrades and stuff through it. You're able to purchase upgrades again. So I don't know I think it's worth I think it'd be a worthwhile effort Yeah, in terms of applying all of this stuff to you know, the future games These are all just things that would bring the games back around to feeling Like they're at least accomplishing goals that the assassin's creed franchise had set for itself I think there's a really interesting discussion to be had about how we make these things fit with the Ubisoft MO of like, okay, they have to fit microtransactions into these things. Where does that come into play? But we've talked for two hours about this now and we've got a lot that we've said Hopefully listeners it all makes sense as a conversation about you know, what our ideal version of assassin's creed is I think that's going to wrap it up for this week As always guys, there are things you can do to support us if you like listening to this podcast Like or subscribe to our youtube channel leave us a comment on our youtube video Um recommend the podcast to your friends who love assassin's creed Or who just think it might be cool to listen to a couple of uh, of funny and smart guys talk about a video game Don't forget handsome, you know, don't forget Ridiculously handsome at least in the case of tim and putrid.  I have to say um No offense putrid. You're also beautiful. Thank you so much putrid for joining us. Thank you putrid on the podcast Yeah, so Thanks for having me and we hope uh, you you join us many more times in the future Oh for sure. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on We will uh, see you next week