Wonderbelly Game Designer & Artist AMA

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Hi everyone! I’m Andrea Roberts, game designer / artist / animator / biz dev / lead tea drinker and resident druid at Wonderbelly Games.

Before founding Wonderbelly Games, I worked at Xbox in narrative, UX, and game design for nearly a decade. I worked on the writing teams for epic AAA games like Fable III and Ninja Gaiden II, I spiffed up the UI for some gorgeous (but sadly short-lived) MOBAs like Fable Legends and Gigantic, and I led the design of experimental prototypes for multi-screen experiences, interactive TV shows, and other fun oddities.


But I always had a deep attraction to indie games. I love working on small teams and wearing one too many hats, and I had a lot of ideas that didn’t quite fit the AAA mold. Bob, Kurt, and I released a few hobby games in our spare time under the label Kindling Games (now lost to the ravages of fallen servers and back compat), and I’d stalk the Indie MEGABOOTH every year asking indies how they were surviving.


In 2016, Bob and I had a kid, and I decided it was finally time to try something new. We founded Wonderbelly Games, and with a baby strapped to my chest, I set to work on Roundguard. Four years later, here we are! And now even get to use the shortie in my own marketing.

(Oh look, here are two of the t-shirt designs you could win in our giveaway!)


For Roundguard, we all contribute to the design, but I lead the charge on the nitty gritty mechanics tuning, spreadsheet wrangling, and level building. I make all of the art (vector-based, in Adobe Illustrator) and I do the VFX and animation (in Unity). I also do much of the writing, vocal sound effects, and late-night tweeting.


If you have any questions about the game design and art of Roundguard, the business end of running a tiny indie studio, which video games are the best to play with a preschooler, or anything else -- don’t hesitate to post! I’m looking forward to chatting with you all!

 

[SWard]

Welcome to the forums! We're so happy to have you!!!

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Welcome to the forums! We're so happy to have you!!!

I'm so happy to be here! Thanks for having us <3

 

[MHaag]

You wear a LOT of hats at Wonderbelly Games, which role is your favorite?

 

[CParsons]

Hi @wonderbelly_andrea, thanks for joining us. I Know Roundguard is available across many platforms such as Steam, Switch, Xbox One, and PS4, and I've always been curious about the possible 'limitations' of porting games to different systems. Was there anything in Roundgard that was harder to get right on one platform vs. another?

 

[SHaines]

I think folks who love gaming often have questions about what it takes to get started. While this comes up a lot, I suspect every story is a bit different, so it bears repeating:

What specific skills/tools do you use the most? Have any good resources you can recommend for learning how to use them?

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

You wear a LOT of hats at Wonderbelly Games, which role is your favorite?

Ooh, that's a tough one, because it totally changes depending on the day. I love the variety! Game design is my coziest hat -- it's at the heart of everything I do and it's always why I've wanted to work in games -- but animation is the hat that has surprised me the most. Before Roundguard, I really hadn't done much animation and I found it super intimidating. But as I've worked at it, it's become one of my favorite tasks to relax with. There's something meditative about the process -- I play an animation loop over and over, and as I keep making little tweaks, it takes on a life of its own. Pure magic.

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Hi @wonderbelly_andrea, thanks for joining us. I Know Roundguard is available across many platforms such as Steam, Switch, Xbox One, and PS4, and I've always been curious about the possible 'limitations' of porting games to different systems. Was there anything in Roundgard that was harder to get right on one platform vs. another?

Designing for different platforms is tricky! There are huge differences between screen sizes, input controls, hardware capabilities, and even audience expectations and accounting for all of that takes a lot more work than a simple UI reskin. For Roundguard, we started development on the PC but I'd hoped we'd be able to bring it consoles too, so I planned around that from the beginning.

We made sure to get controller support as soon as we could so that every new menu or skill we added, I could make sure it felt right with either a mouse or a gamepad. You have so much freedom to move around a menu with a mouse that it can often lead you down a trap that's hard to work your way out of when it comes to adding controller support, so I always think through menus first from the perspective of a controller. On the other hand, with the two joysticks and multiple buttons and triggers at easy reach on a controller, it can be easy to make game controls too complicated or analog for a mouse and keyboard, so I like thinking through the KBM side first with game skills.

Then there's screen size. As developers, we sit with our faces pressed right up to a monitor all day, and it's easy to forget that even though a TV screen is much larger, we sit much farther way on the couch, so it takes up a MUCH smaller percentage of our view space. One of my favorite stupid tricks to prove how much "smaller" a TV screen is than your monitor is this: sit on the couch and then hold your phone out until it's the same viewing size as your TV screen. Now go sit with your chair tucked in at your desk and do the same thing with your PC monitor. It's night and day. Whenever we added new menus and text to the game, I'd plug a laptop into my TV and sit on my couch to make sure I could still read everything okay. Usually I feel like you need to bump text sizes up at least 33% more than you think to make them legible from the couch.

But by far the hardest challenge was bringing Roundguard to the phone! None of us had done much work on phone games, so we weren't planning on mobile originally. But people kept telling us they wanted it. And then about six months before launch, Apple talked to us about bringing Roundguard to Apple Arcade. It was a very exciting opportunity -- but then we had to figure out how to pull it off! There were some very tiny phone screens we needed to support, so we did an overhaul to the UI to make everything bigger so that the text could be read and buttons could be pushed even with the biggest fingers. We changed how our in-game camera worked so that on the phone, it zooms in when you're bouncing around so you can see all the details. One of the biggest challenges was getting the real-time physics system to perform well on even the oldest phones. Kurt had to work a lot of black magic to streamline everything!

It was a huge effort, but well worth it. I've heard folks say that Roundguard was obviously designed for the [PC/console/phone] from the ground up, so I take that as a sign that we pulled it off!

 

[CParsons]

It was a huge effort, but well worth it. I've heard folks say that Roundguard was obviously designed for the [PC/console/phone] from the ground up, so I take that as a sign that we pulled it off!

Certainly did. Personally, I enjoy it on the Switch. Thanks for the fantastic insight.

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

I think folks who love gaming often have questions about what it takes to get started. While this comes up a lot, I suspect every story is a bit different, so it bears repeating:

What specific skills/tools do you use the most? Have any good resources you can recommend for learning how to use them?

Ooh, this is a good one. Apologies in advance for the loooooooong answer...

Development & Game Design: We build the game in Unity. For design, I'll sometimes write up a design doc, but most of my ideas are collected in spreadsheets and my trusty notebooks. They're not pretty -- my notebooks are a ratty mess of scribbles, scratch outs, and sketches -- but I feel like pen & paper is usually the fastest and most flexible way to get my ideas out at first.

Unity has a ton of great tutorials and sample projects to help you get started and the internet is full of tutorials. Really, though, the best way to learn is to get your hands dirty. Pick some small -- like VERY SMALL -- and start moving a character around. When I first got started with Unity, I just copied a simple endless jumper type game to play with tool and learn the basics. Once you prove to yourself you can make something move, then look for a local indie group to join and try a game jam! These days groups that would have been local to a city and meeting up in person are mostly functioning online anyway, so there's a lower barrier than ever to connecting with helpful folks who are often eager to share tips and knowledge.

Art: I use Adobe Illustrator, and almost all of the game assets are imported as vector art, which means they're rendered as polygons not pixels. For those of you who aren't familiar with vector art, I think of it lovingly as the most truly nerdy art form. Every line, curve, and shape is stored as a mathematical formula, which means anything you make is very flexible -- you can do all kinds of transformations, including completely re-scaling the art without losing any sharpness. The assets are also very lightweight, so our install package is tiny compared to something with the same amount of pixel art.

There are lots of great YouTube tutorials out there for Adobe Illustrator and other vector art programs. Almost all of it is aimed at web or graphics designers though, but I'm huge believer that more games should be playing with it. Unity is actually working on native vector support right now, so hopefully we'll be seeing more of it in games. Probably the hardest part of getting comfortable with vector graphics is that you have to think of lines in a completely new way: instead of just drawing the line, you instead lay down points and bend the curves to make the line shape you want. It takes practice to get used to. I recommend taking photos or art you like and just trying to trace the lines to get the hang of it.

Animation: I use Unity's native animation tools. Unity has a timeline-based animation system (like good ol' Flash, RIP). Like I mentioned above, I used to find animation very intimidating to learn, but now it's one of my favorite parts of game dev. For me, I think the breakthrough was getting comfortable with timeline style animation instead of frame-by-frame animation. In frame-by-frame, you literally draw each frame and play them in a sequence, flipbook style. That creates some amazingly beautiful animation, but I think takes a TON of practice to really get the feel of it. With timeline animation, you instead take your art pieces and lay down keyframes on a timeline. You say I want this piece to be over here with this rotation at this point in time, and then you let the computer "tween" from keyframe to keyframe. You get immediate feedback on each little change in the animation and you can easily adjust over and over as you go. For me, this was a much more comfortable way for me to get started and learn the basics of animation.

There are definitely some weird ins and outs of using animation tools, but the best starting place is just getting comfortable with basic animation principles. Do a search on animation principles and you'll find everyone referencing the holy grail of Disney's 12 principles and tons of great examples. My favorite: squash & stretch.

Business: There's making a game, and then there's selling a game, and oof! That's a whole topic on its own and I've already written a novel here. But I'll point quickly to a few of my favorite resources:
- Simon Carless from GDC, Gamasutra, and the No More Robots studio writes a fantastic newsletter covering Gamer Discoverability issues. Here's a primer for some of his best stuff : https://gamediscoverability.substack.com/p/your-complete-game-discovery-primer
- Tanya Short and Victoria Tran of the amazing Kitfox Games have written a ton on growing a studio and a community -- how to do it in a way that's both smart and ethical. Check out their articles on Medium: https://medium.com/@kitfoxgames
- Ryan Clark from Brace Yourself Games does a regular analysis of what's popular on Steam and general industry trends with his show, Clark Tank. You can catch the show live on Twitch, or dig through the edited catalog up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUPKuAVC8PO7uIGiDCHUZGDNYAyRmW6NC

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

I know from my own personal experience I'll hand things off to my kids and ask them their opinion on whether a game is fun or not. If they say it's fun, I'll give it a go but if they say it's boring or seem unimpressed I'll pass. You ever just create some levels and hand them off to your kiddo to do the fun testing and watch their reactions?

Yes! Our 4 year old has played her share of Roundguard and has LOTS of opinions about what we should do with it. Although her design process is often something like "I keep dying in Spider rooms... I have an idea! Maybe you shouldn't have spider rooms!"

Seriously though, listening to her verbally process the rules and her strategies has been amazing. She's a good usabilty check -- if a 4 year old gets it, hopefully most Steam players will too. And we're constantly filled with parental pride as she articulates her growing strategic understanding and tells us why she's gonna aim at which target (she's managing her resources well!), why she's gonna take or drop this piece of equipment, etc.

Really, she's been a huge influence on the game. She's a fountain of ideas. (Rainbow gelly cubes in one of the elite fights? That's all her.) She's often our first playtester on fresh builds and has found her fair share of bugs. We recorded her voice to use in the Will o' Wisps spell. And she's basically our producer. She literally came into the office one day and said "You need to make more characters. I'll put it on the list." And then she wrote on our whiteboard in adorably kid misspelled huge letters "MOR CAREKTERS" alongside our other tasks. She was back a couple days later with the producer follow up... "Are you done with the new characters yet? Come on!"

 

[Vialixia]

Hey Andrea! You have such an interesting history in the industry and you seem to have had your fingers in all the pies haha, that's super cool.

I started my own studio recently and I wanted to ask you; what were the main challenges/hurdles you faced when you started your own studio, and how did you overcome them?

What are the things you know now that you wish you'd have known before you set it up? Hoping to zap some wisdom from you that can help me too! <3

[PS I also work part-time for No More Robots so thank you for the shout-out!] ✨

Thanks!~

 

[PCG Evan]

Oh man, tons of good info here so far. Thanks for being with us, Andrea.

What's the hardest part about making games that isn't widely-known, or isn't talked about much?

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Hey Andrea! You have such an interesting history in the industry and you seem to have had your fingers in all the pies haha, that's super cool.

I started my own studio recently and I wanted to ask you; what were the main challenges/hurdles you faced when you started your own studio, and how did you overcome them?

What are the things you know now that you wish you'd have known before you set it up? Hoping to zap some wisdom from you that can help me too! <3

[PS I also work part-time for No More Robots so thank you for the shout-out!] ✨

Thanks!~

Oh, that's awesome! Congratulations on starting your own studio! Just making that leap is a hurdle of its own.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of founding a studio, there were a ton of hurdles for us just to learn the business basics around legal documents, tax filing, accounting, insurance, etc. I knew next to nothing, so we spent a lot of time researching and reaching out to all of the small local devs we knew to figure out what they were doing and who they recommended. The details here are so specific to the country / city you're in and your own studio structure that I hesitate to give any specific advice. Definitely reach out to folks near you to learn about what they're doing.

Planning for cash flow is super tricky. It's not just that indie game sales are wildly unpredictable, it's also that there are so many cuts along the way that are easy to forget. First the platform is going to take 30%, and then your publishing partner if you have one. But then there's also the fact that you're probably going to make most of your sales when your game is on a discount. Market prices are very different in different regions, so if you sell a lot in somewhere like China or Russia, you're selling the game for much less than what you might expect in the US. You're lucky if you've got back half of your selling price after all this... and then there's taxes. We pay city, state, and federal taxes and also international taxes for copies sold in other countries. That all depends on your region and your income bracket, but at the end of the day, you should expect to see a fraction (in all likelihood, much less than half) of your total sales income actually make it to your bank account. Plan and price your game accordingly.

Giving advice is hard because everything in this industry changes so quickly and so much depends on your unique circumstances. I'd say that one of those most important things we did was go to events (both consumer and industry) -- we learned how to market and tune our game by getting it in front of people and we made important connections with folks who helped us land the deals we made. But the coronavirus has thrown a real wrench in that advice. Mike Rose at No More Robots is a genius at community development and building excitement and you should listen to everything he says. (I do!) But remember, it might not apply to you and your game at all. Take a hard look at yourself and your game: What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? What do you get excited about doing, and what are you going to hate doing no matter what? Figure out what makes you and your game special and then find other devs who are similar and ask them what's working for them right now. Be brave and ignore a lot of the general wisdom from folks who made it big -- focus on who you are and your own strengths.

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Oh man, tons of good info here so far. Thanks for being with us, Andrea.

What's the hardest part about making games that isn't widely-known, or isn't talked about much?

Hah! I think the hardest part of making a game is actually selling it, but we've all heard enough of that. Hmm...

Here's one: Localizing a game. A ton of work goes into localization that most players never notice and most devs forget about until the last second. First you've got to make sure that every bit of text in your game is being read from a well-organized file (hah!) and that you have a system in place that's ready to swap files depending on the language setting. Then you hand that off to the loc team... at which point, you learn about a bunch of ambiguities from your own language that don't work in others. What is the gender of that monster being referred to? Hmm, this whole conversation relies on the misunderstanding of a pun that makes no sense in Japanese. Uh oh, trying to insert the name of different objects into this sentence totally breaks in French because they need all their prepositions to match the object gender and plurality.

Then you get the files back and you put them into the game. Did all your fonts break with the extended character sets? Whoops, go find better ones. Something that might be expressed with two characters in Chinese might take 25 in Portuguese, so now you need to comb through every menu in the game in each language and rebuild them all to fit. And uh oh, did you find a last minute tuning change or a missing message that you need to get in before launch? Better rush an updated file to the loc team and hope they can turn it around in time!

I've spent a good chunk of my career working on game writing and UX design -- and I majored in linguistics way back in college! -- so I was very familiar with the process... and I was still caught off guard with a bunch of these for Roundguard. For the last couple months of development, a good chunk of my work was just to support localization. It's a huge challenge... but it's so rewarding to be able to share your game with people all around the world. I'm particularly proud of our German translator. We've heard the jokes are really funny, and I know the translator had to work some magic to make that all work.

 

[MaddMann]

Some great info in here! I will pose you the same question I did your co-worker as I love DnD stories.

could you regale is with your favorite memory of playing DND? That scene with friends that always brings a smile and odd looks from non dnd players when you tell the story over a few pints (back when we were able to do that)

Here is part of the response that I would love to hear more about =P

Andrea might have a good "how Bob accidentally thwarted all my DM plans" story, but here's a little nugget from my time playing DnD on the Monolith twitch stream with friends from work before I left to do Wonderbelly full time..

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Here is part of the response that I would love to hear more about =P

wonderbelly_bob said:
Andrea might have a good "how Bob accidentally thwarted all my DM plans" story

Oh man, Bob does nothing but thwart my plans. It's not that he's trying to -- he just never backs down and he can talk his way out of anything.

In the last game we played, he was a halfling rogue without enough hitpoints to survive being spit on. He still managed to intimidate a hobgoblin who was literally holding him by the hair with nothing but a glowing rock, a bit of thaumaturgical help from Kurt who was hiding around the corner, and way too much confidence. He scaled an unclimbable wall by creating a human catapult to land on top of my sentry who was supposed to trigger the trap. In a kidnapping scene, I thought I had telegraphed a clearly unwinnable fight, expecting Bob to witness the scene, and then have to track down the kidnappers' hideout and mount a rescue. Instead, Bob climbed up to a high roof, started rolling hot, and sniped the bandits until the rest of the party got there to clean up. I had an encounter with a green dragon that I thought would end with either a nasty fight or the party having to make a big sacrifice to get out. Instead, Bob convinced her to join the party on their current quest with the promise of a trumped up reward waiting at the end. She ended up going along... with her own ulterior motives, of course. I can't let him get away with everything.

 

[JSimenhoff]

Thank you so much for joining us! This is like a professional game design course. There is so much helpful info here for anyone working in the games industry.

Roundguard is a really unique concept, at least I've never seen a game quite like it. Are there any games that inspired you leading up to or during development?

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

Thank you so much for joining us! This is like a professional game design course. There is so much helpful info here for anyone working in the games industry.

Roundguard is a really unique concept, at least I've never seen a game quite like it. Are there any games that inspired you leading up to or during development?

Thank you!

The most obvious inspiration for Roundguard is Peggle. Peggle was one of the first games Bob and I played together obsessively, and it's been one of our go to examples for wonderful game design: a simple concept executed with so much juicy, joyful feedback and satisfying feel. We'd often use "Peggle" as a verb in our game design conversations. "You should really Peggle up that end sequence!" There was so much fun in the bones of Peggle, but it's been thirteen years since it came out, and no one else has really played with the formula.

And of course, we're also a bunch of strategy and RPG nerds. Around the time when we starting up Wonderbelly, we'd been playing a bunch of roguelikes that were pushing the genre and mashing it up with new ideas: FTL, Darkest Dungeon, Enter the Gungeon, etc. We had just had a baby, and as a new parent, I really connected with the roguelike genre. These were deep games, but with short play sessions. I didn't need to remember where I was in a 60 hr epic. Instead, I could come back when I had the time, get a couple of hours in, probably die, and start again fresh next play session -- hopefully with some better strategies.

When we started brainstorming, we knew we wanted to play with physics, so that was the starting ground. After a handful of tossed ideas, I said the words "Peggle RPG" and it just clicked. We were running from there. About three months later, we brought our first playable prototype to a local Seattle gamedev show & tell. The MegaCrit guys were there showing off their progress on Slay the Spire, and we all played their demo and totally fell in love. It was another huge burst of inspiration for us -- and we've been following along with them and playing Slay the Spire ever since.

 

[Synack]

What are games you suggest for toddlers?

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

What are games you suggest for toddlers?

For toddlers, I think the hardest parts of videogames are the input controls and the reading. Our daughter Claire started first with the phone/tablet because touch controls are by far the least abstract and easy to understand. Her first favorites weren't really games, but more interactive toys. Metamorphabets and Toca Boca Kitchen were two really good ones. The first actual game she fell in love with was Monument Valley. The puzzles were tough for her at first, but we worked through them together, and she learned the patterns and practiced on her own. (She loved that game so much and would build her own "levels" out of Duplo blocks.) Over the last couple of years, we've had good success with some other chill puzzle-y mobile games, like Donut County, Sneaky Sasquatch, Assemble With Care, Pilgrims, and What the Golf.

After that, I tried out a few different PC games to see if I could find something she could handle. Anything with camera controls or two-handed mouse + keyboard controls was a big no. One of our best successes was with Piku Niku. It's a pretty simple, low-risk open world-ish platformer and she was enthralled with being to go anywhere she wanted. Like many games, it starts with a screen that says "Press any key to start." She asked me to read that to her, and then she was like, "I can press any key?" She was delighted that she could have that much power over a game. After that, she had so much fun at start up testing every different key to prove that yes, any key really worked.

When she turned four, we started practicing using game controllers and our Switch. The thumbstick is particularly tricky. There are a handful of different Nintendo games where a second player can tag along and help out while the first player directs most of the gameplay, and that's been great for helping her get the feel for how to play. Super Mario Odyssey and Pokemon Let's Go were a couple of good ones for that co-op play. Since she turned four and half, her interest in videogames has just exploded. She rules our Animal Crossing island and has done some pretty amazing decorating. But she also really enjoys watching us play games now, and we've been having awesome family game nights. Recently we played through all of Breath of the Wild together and she's a total Zelda fangirl already. I've been on a recent binge of Oxygen Not Included, and she's been sitting on my lap through a lot of it, asking about all the different systems and materials, and we've been having some excellent science conversations. I'm so excited I get to share all this with her -- my little gamer buddy. <3

 

[Synack]

For toddlers, I think the hardest parts of videogames are the input controls and the reading. Our daughter Claire started first with the phone/tablet because touch controls are by far the least abstract and easy to understand. Her first favorites weren't really games, but more interactive toys. Metamorphabets and Toca Boca Kitchen were two really good ones. The first actual game she fell in love with was Monument Valley. The puzzles were tough for her at first, but we worked through them together, and she learned the patterns and practiced on her own. (She loved that game so much and would build her own "levels" out of Duplo blocks.) Over the last couple of years, we've had good success with some other chill puzzle-y mobile games, like Donut County, Sneaky Sasquatch, Assemble With Care, Pilgrims, and What the Golf.

After that, I tried out a few different PC games to see if I could find something she could handle. Anything with camera controls or two-handed mouse + keyboard controls was a big no. One of our best successes was with Piku Niku. It's a pretty simple, low-risk open world-ish platformer and she was enthralled with being to go anywhere she wanted. Like many games, it starts with a screen that says "Press any key to start." She asked me to read that to her, and then she was like, "I can press any key?" She was delighted that she could have that much power over a game. After that, she had so much fun at start up testing every different key to prove that yes, any key really worked.

When she turned four, we started practicing using game controllers and our Switch. The thumbstick is particularly tricky. There are a handful of different Nintendo games where a second player can tag along and help out while the first player directs most of the gameplay, and that's been great for helping her get the feel for how to play. Super Mario Odyssey and Pokemon Let's Go were a couple of good ones for that co-op play. Since she turned four and half, her interest in videogames has just exploded. She rules our Animal Crossing island and has done some pretty amazing decorating. But she also really enjoys watching us play games now, and we've been having awesome family game nights. Recently we played through all of Breath of the Wild together and she's a total Zelda fangirl already. I've been on a recent binge of Oxygen Not Included, and she's been sitting on my lap through a lot of it, asking about all the different systems and materials, and we've been having some excellent science conversations. I'm so excited I get to share all this with her -- my little gamer buddy. <3

Thank you so much! My kids love games. My 9yr old started off with a tablet at about 2 1/2 just using touch as well. I showed it to him as more off an experiment. Then when he was about 3 1/2 we got him a nambi. My 4yr old wants to play Minecraft but with console controls he isn't really able to do it yet. But uses phone touch without issue (YouTube for kids).

It definitely shows an area where there is huge market potential ;-)

I'll try some of those games out as well as your game. My son would probably love it, he's already more creative at Minecraft than I and I've played since alpha.

 

[wonderbelly_andrea]

I'll try some of those games out as well as your game. My son would probably love it, he's already more creative at Minecraft than I and I've played since alpha.

Haha, yes! They're amazing creators! And thanks for checking out Roundguard. I forgot to mention our own game as a fun one for kids, but that was always one of our goals -- to make a game with nerdy depth that families could play together. While there is a bunch of strategy for adults to go deep, young ones can pretty much skip by it and have fun bouncing around. If you want to make the game a fair bit easier, go to the Relics menu (available when you're picking your character) and equip the Mercy relic. It's basically our easy mode setting.