Game Development Giant

Jester basically spent the first ten days of July on the plane, and this level of running around almost exhausted his energy.

When Jester read the rebirth novel before, it said that the protagonist could make a lot of money just by falling in love with beautiful women, but when it was his turn, that was not the case at all.

He has been flying from Tiannan to Haibei every day for the past few days, and he has hardly slept at all. He has been getting on the plane to sleep, and getting off the plane to work. He is so tired that he has no time to take a deep breath.

Almost as soon as I stop to think, I feel like I am going to sleep. I sit quietly for a minute and I will fall asleep.

He first went to Northampton, Massachusetts to negotiate an acquisition agreement with Illusion Studios, a small comic studio that was only founded in September last year. It has gained a bit of fame with "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". With one million US dollars in cash and a promise to invest in the animation of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", he obtained 70% of the shares of this studio, and the remaining 30% is still with the author of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" , also in the hands of Kevin Eastman and Peter Larter, the two founders of Illusion Studios.

This is not because Jester cannot acquire the remaining 30%, but because Jester feels that only when a person is working for his own immediate interests can he devote all his energy and control 100% of the shares. Seventy percent of the shares, for these two people, the energy invested in power is absolutely impossible to be equal.

After all, Jester doesn't know how to run a comic company, he just wants money.

Then, Jester rushed to Toronto without stopping to meet with He Guoyuan, who was staying at home because he couldn't find a satisfactory job.

In an ordinary Toronto coffee shop, Jester met the three future founders of ati, He Guoyuan and his two friends Benny Liu and Liu Likai.

The negotiation process went smoothly. Having had enough of this kind of life, He Guoyuan and Jester hit it off almost immediately. However, He Guoyuan, who had long been tired of working as an ordinary wage earner, asked him to serve as the head of the newly established display chip research and development company for at least ten years. CEO, this must be written into the contract, and there must be at least 10% dividend rights.

On these two points, Jester also agreed. Ta originally did not want to sideline He Guoyuan. This would not be good for him. He only needed to find Huang Renxun to check and balance He Guoyuan after the development of ATI was on the right track. But not now, a company In the early stages of development, the most fearful thing is internal strife such as power checks and balances. Such an enterprise has no future at all.

If you want a company to have the highest execution efficiency, you must let the company's CEO stick to his word so that everything can be done without hindrance.

And he knows nothing about how to develop display chips, but He Guoyuan has already proven his success in future history.

He Guoyuan received only 10% of the dividend rights of the newly established company ATI. In addition, his two friends, Benny Liu, the future vice president of product development at ATI, and Liu Likai, ATI's vice president of strategic planning, also received 7% each. Jester guarantees that as long as the three of them do not leave the company in the future, these dividend rights will become equity belonging to the three of them after ten years.

After listening to Jester's parameter requirements for the PPU he requested, the three people immediately said that it was basically not difficult. They had mature technology in their hands and would definitely come up with a design plan within a month. Two I'll definitely have samples out within the month.

In this way, Jester's investment of nine million US dollars was spent.

After that, Jester, who had put aside his worries for the time being, immediately flew to Round Rock, Texas, where he met Mike Dell, who was as old as him.

Mike Dell is very interested in his investment plan, but not interested in the purpose of his holding. Mike Dell believes that Dell is his company, and he will definitely be successful in the future, and he has absolutely no control over the company. Allow anyone to interfere.

Jester is also not interested in discussing more holding issues with Dell, a maniac who would rather spend 20 billion US dollars to delist from Nasdaq or privatize Dell Group in the future. He just wanted to talk about it in advance. There is more room for regression.

He has no interest in controlling the Dell Group. What he values ​​​​is Dell's development potential. The computer industry is in a development period now, but not in the future.

After two full days of negotiations, when both Jester and Dell were exhausted, they reached a final agreement. Jester invested US$8 million to acquire Dell, a garage company. owns 30% of the company's shares, but has 35% dividend rights.

Both parties are extremely satisfied with this price. Jester spent a small amount of money to get one-third of the shares of a computer giant that will definitely skyrocket in the future, while Dell got a large amount of cash, which can be used for more Kuaidi continued his computer direct sales business throughout the United States.

Judging from the current situation, it is a win-win situation for both parties.

Of course, in the eyes of many people, Jester was stupid, but Jester knew that he would not sell such a large stake of 30% unless he offered a price that Dell could not resist.

I can't bear to let the child trap the wolf.

The future? Haha, if Dell knew how big his business would develop in the future, he would definitely not feel that he was making money.

In just ten days, more than one-half of the US$35 million he just received from Mars Entertainment was lost. This also made Jester lament that money wasted money. Originally, he wanted to visit New York. His grandfather's best friend, Sandy Weill, wanted him to help him find a reliable manager of an investment fund, but a phone call he just received disrupted all his plans.

The content of the phone call was very simple, ABC wanted to interview him.

As a topical company in the past month, Mars Entertainment and its "American Cube" have caused a great response in the United States. Everyone is curious about the identity of this company that has achieved sales of 100 million US dollars just one month after its establishment. Where did it come from? What is their charm? What are their plans next? And most importantly – who founded this business?

Jester has recently received requests for interviews from several media outlets, but he rejected them all. However, he also knows that it is not an option to continue to refuse like this. It just so happens that the three games of his company are in the elimination category like "American Cube". Elimination-type games have entered the beta testing stage, and several test machines have been prepared. Now that elimination-type games are hot, why not take advantage of this opportunity to promote it?

In fact, when it comes to elimination games, the earliest one should be Atari's "Brick Breaker". Many people think that this is the work of Steve Jobs when he was working at Atari. In fact, Jobs has no such ability. The idea for this game was Bushnell's, and it was Wozniak who completed the game. Jobs' role was just to act as a lobbyist in the middle, convincing Wozniak for Bushnell. Jess I often see videos saying that this game was designed by Steve Jobs, but that is not the case at all.

It's just that Jobs is the most famous, and fans attach his name to him.

Jester inquired carefully and found out that it was not ABC that wanted to interview him, but a newly revised talk show from Chicago AM, a TV station affiliated with ABC. However, ABC said that although it was only a local TV station, this They will also broadcast this program on the entire TV network and to the entire United States. Jester heard that they said it was good, so he agreed.

As a result, Jester had to return to Costa Mesa early.

During Jester's absence, the development team of "Snowman Brothers" was mainly in charge of Sean Dabbili. This is a young man from Texas who has the free-spirited spirit of a Texas cowboy. After observing his personality for a period of time, Jester found that he was very talented and savvy, so he simply made him the leader of the design team he set up specifically for "Snowman Brothers".

The development process of "Snowman Brothers" was uneventful and progressed extremely smoothly. The theme of the entire game was designed by Jester. Even the levels were sketched and detailed on manuscript paper. The rest was just the program. change.

And Dabili is also very skilled at coordinating the work of the entire R\u0026D team, always able to get all team members to concentrate their efforts and complete as much work as possible in the shortest possible time - of course, Jester has to pay extra for this. Spend a lot of overtime expenses.

Of course, he was also happy to do this, and these designers were also immersed in the brand-new game completely designed by Jester. They had not seen Mark Cerny's "Avengers" design plan and they exclaimed on the spot. , one of the greatest games the world has ever created.

Yes, "Snowman Brothers" can indeed live up to such a reputation in this era.

And because it is a still-image game, there are no technical difficulties that cannot be overcome. What's more, the research and development team that Jester established, which he named "Origin", also includes several people who have participated in scrolls at Atari. As a master of game development, it is easy to program "Snowman Brothers". You must know that it is not too difficult for a person who has experience in high-level game engines to make a low-level engine.

It is worth mentioning that since Jester named his R\u0026D team 'Origin', Mark Saini also thought it was a good idea to give the design team a nice name, so he named his design team He chose a name that was very vulgar in Jester—the-king.

It is said that this is the result of their own voting.

Jester almost laughed out loud.

Of course, the remaining dozen people and the seven or eight new employees also formed a temporary team. They are now responsible for the final aftermath of the three games "Bejeweled", so they call themselves As a 'scavenger', in Jester's opinion, this is quite an image.

In fact, making an engine seems to be unattainable in the future, and it will be difficult for ordinary people to do it. In fact, game engines also have difficulty levels.

For example, the game "American Cubes" that Jester made before also needed a game engine. Of course, this engine has very few functions. It only needs to make those cubes appear randomly, fall at a certain speed, and rotate when the player presses the button. That's it. The engine for this function is very simple to write, but the engine for "Super Mario" is very complicated. It needs to consider the smooth scrolling of the screen, the movement of the characters, the lighting, and even the jumping. When it comes to gravity issues, etc., writing such an engine is very troublesome, because this engine needs to load many more functions than "American Cube".

Of course, it is not too difficult to build these 2D engines now. Generally, several people, or even one person can do it for some talented people, but it will not work at all after the 3D era. After all, there is a world of wizards like Carmack. There are only a handful of people on the scene, and even Carmack can complete the early 3D engine by himself, but if he is asked to complete the level of Unreal 3 and Frostbite 4 in the later maturity stage of the 3D engine, it will be impossible. Because this work is too complicated and arduous.

The game engine is the heart of a game. All the effects you want to do, whether it’s lighting, drawing, sound effects, or even movement, all the functions in the game you can imagine need to be completed by the game engine. .

What makes up a game engine is the paragraphs and lines of code.

Jester also consciously asked his young programmers to develop the habit of creating modular engines when programming "Snowman Brothers". The entire game engine is composed of developers responsible for different functions. It consists of program modules, and these program modules are complete components with certain engine functions. If you need to use the same engine for other games in the future, you can just use it directly.

It couldn't be more convenient.

This is Jester’s advantage. He may not be as good as these people in specific technologies, but his grasp of future technologies is the best in the world. In other words, he knows which technology is the best in the world. The final winner.

The current games are still simple 2D flat pixel blocks, which require low technical content. The advantages of this kind of modular programming are not yet apparent, but after a few years of accumulation, the 3D wave, or the arrival of high-pixel 2D screen games At this time, the advantages of the modular engine will be fully reflected.

Simplicity and versatility are the biggest advantages of modular engines.

Of course, Kujest has not forgotten to start building the physics engine. Now he is just starting from the simplest ones, such as gravity effects, parabolic trajectories of objects, elasticity, acceleration, etc., and it will take several years to accumulate , when this database becomes complete and large, its role will be very obvious.

You know, the reason why a game engine can simulate many physical effects is because they load the physics engine library, and the physics engine database has not been built over time. If you want to build it again in the future, it will be very troublesome and even costly. , it’s a very time-consuming thing.

Jester knows this deeply. The construction of a database never happens overnight. For example, it is the latest physics-based racing game.

Back then, "GT Racing" was a huge success after its debut, selling 11 million copies on a single platform. However, it did not have the technical accumulation of Kazunori Yamauchi in the previous "Cartoon Grand Prix" and "Ultimate Recommendation". impossible.

In addition to these, "Snowman Brothers" including the original painting, soundtrack and modeling are also progressing in an orderly and steady manner. There are no flaws, but there are no surprises, including the redesign of Mario's image. Neither of them suited him very well.

Jester also discovered the shortcomings of his design team. Among these people, there are experts in programming and level design, but there are basically no professional painters, music composers, design experts, or even background writers.

It cannot be said that there is no one, but there is no one who is good at this aspect.

The reason Jester also knows is that game designers in this era are basically one person, or two or three people working on their own. These people basically have to wear multiple hats. To give an extreme example, in the early days Touhou series of games, the producer zun (Ota Junya) took care of the entire game development work by himself - programming, music, art, and scripts were all completed by zun alone.

Such an extreme environment places very high demands on game designers. In fact, designers who can gain experience from this era will all become famous figures in the industry, far beyond the reach of future generations.

However, such a research and development environment is still barely feasible now - in fact, when developing more sophisticated large-scale games, such as "Avengers", which is being developed by Mark Cerny, such a small team of one or two people The team will be completely unable to play. Even if it can barely do it, the research and development time will be stretched very long, so long that even if the research and development is successful, it will be meaningless.

At this time, Jester felt that he still had a lot to do, and even the game development team he had established was not perfect enough.

"I really envy Blizzard's Sons of the Storm!" Thinking of his own team's shortcomings, Jester couldn't help but envy the most famous art design team in the future gaming world.

Perhaps the first time domestic players heard of this team was when it was announced at BlizzCon 2010 that their first Chinese artist, Wang Wei, officially joined Sons of the Storm. At that time, Wang Wei was called the Eighth Son of the Storm by fans, which meant that he was the eighth member of the Sons of the Storm team. In Jester's impression, before he was reborn, the ninth member of the Sons of the Storm had also returned.

This team is overall responsible for the image setting of the entire Blizzard game, original painting albums, logo production, and plot writers. There are two people here who have to be mentioned, both of whom have made great contributions to the game industry.

One is the soul of Son of the Storm, Samvis Didier, a great artist. He joined Blizzard in 1991 when it was still called Silicon and Synapse. It can be said that he is the founding father of Blizzard. Almost all of Blizzard's game designs, basically all the Blizzard game images you can think of, are related to him. It is worth mentioning that the concept of Pandaren, and even the earliest image of Pandaren, was first proposed by him. .

The other one is more familiar to Blizzard fans, Chris Mason, nicknamed the father of Thrall, because he wrote King of the Clans and made Thrall the son of Blizzard, and later the plot of StarCraft , participated in the plot of Diablo. It can be said that he is the most important plot writer of Blizzard.

However, the founders of Blizzard are still in high school, and Sons of the Storm are out of the question.

Thinking of the Sons of the Storm in later generations, Jester's heart became excited. Could he also create such a specialized art and design team? Just called Son of Mars?

Although he knew that Samvis and Mason were just teenagers now, it didn't mean that there was no one else who was an excellent rule designer or original artist.

Just say the rule setter.

For example, Lake Priestley, the rules designer of the first edition of Warhammer, and Richard Garfield, the inventor of Magic: The Gathering. The former is still just a small designer working in a little-known game workshop, while the latter is just a student at the University of Pennsylvania who is still one year away from graduating.

Jester has been coveting these two settings for a long time. The Warhammer world view is so easy to be compatible with. No matter what background game he plays in the future, it can be compatible with the Warhammer world view. It is simply a panacea, and Magic Card, the world's first tabletop card game alone is necessary to get it, not to mention that it will steadily have a large number of hard-core die-hard players in the future, and the net profit generated every year will be hundreds of millions of dollars. .

At this time, Jester remembered a rebirth novel he had read, and why he could complete the 3D engine writing, the establishment of the physics engine library, the capture of anthropomorphic movements, the 3D modeling of characters and buildings, and the several kilometers of sand table map all by himself. It is simply incomprehensible that highly skilled people such as the creation of advanced NPC AI, high-fidelity sound effects, dubbing, and soundtrack production can only work as coders in a small mobile game company.

Is this a masochistic tendency? Or has my IQ dropped to a negative number?

It’s really puzzling.

Jester has been dreaming about this kind of rush now. Would he do it with an annual salary of one hundred thousand, no, five hundred thousand dollars? If I give you money to help you build your own studio, will you do it?

Such a technical guy can't get an annual salary of more than $100,000 by sending his work to any game company? Do you deserve to be a street coder?

However, Jester, who could never find such a technical dog, could only sigh. Could it be that such a talented person could only exist in a crazy fantasy world?

Forget it, let’s not think about this for now.

The am TV program required Jester to go to Chicago to record, and the time was set for three days. However, the other party agreed to come to Costa Mesa to film the trial play of Mars Entertainment's latest three games, so Jester wanted to achieve the maximum The promotion effect is to put the games that are still in beta testing within the company into the exhibition hall and invite players to participate in the testing in person.

Jester is still very confident in the quality of these three games, and their hidden charm cannot be resisted by players who have just fallen in love with elimination games.

Because AM is far away in Chicago, it was too inconvenient to send a film crew, so the mission to Costa Mesa was filmed by ABC's Los Angeles headquarters, and then when Jester went to Chicago, he took the master tape with him. There was a location document for that talk show.

ABC has a small film crew of three people this time. The leader is a regular employee of ABC, a young man under thirty years old named Jack Aston. The other two are internships at ABC during the holidays. All of them were students from the University of Southern California, which made Jester’s eyes light up. He thought again of the girl he met in a bookstore in Los Angeles who was also studying at the University of Southern California.

"Find an opportunity to ask them and see if they know that girl." Jester thought so.

The three people who came here are all young people, and they have all played "American Cube" by Mars Entertainment. They also love this game very much. They are also very excited to come to Mars Entertainment for this interview.

They can play their favorite games for free.

Naturally, Jester would not disappoint their expectations, allowing the three of them to experience the three latest games that he would test on players tomorrow half a day in advance.

Ever since Jester turned the first floor of the original supermarket into a game display area for Mars Entertainment, it has never been made public. It has been used as a rest room for employees. There is no shortage of tables, chairs, and tea. However, It still seemed extremely empty.

This time fifteen more game consoles were added, which made the hall look a little less empty.

The three games "Bejeweled", "Zuma" and "Bubble Bobble" each have their own characteristics and are all very easy to get started, but it is not that easy to become very skilled in playing them.

This is also in line with Jester's consistent tendency to play games. A good game must be easy to play but difficult to master.

An intern named Austin Francis was fond of Bejeweled, a curved mouse that Jester specially designed to imitate the appearance of this later mouse. , especially he was full of praise for the exquisite mouse. To put it bluntly, the person who designed this mouse must be a master of industrial design.

This also made the employees of Mars Entertainment who were also resting nearby and playing games burst into laughter. After asking, Austin Francis found out that this was completely different from the square box mouse of Apple's Macintosh computer. The appearance design was actually also done by Jester.

"I didn't expect that you are not only a master of game design, but also have some considerable attainments in industrial design." Jack Aston, the leader, sincerely sighed to Jester, "Those appearance designers at Apple They should all worship you as their teacher!"

"hehe!"

Jester didn't care much, he just smiled and didn't say anything. To him, this was just a simple mouse design, and it was just a layer of window paper. After he pierced it, other manufacturers also I'm not a fool. In the future, all kinds of trendy mice will inevitably appear in large numbers. By then, my own design, which can only be said to be second-rate, will be nothing.

What Jester wants to know most now is how the three original players feel about the three games designed by their team.

Is it the same as their own feelings, that these are three great games?

Mark Saini clearly stated in his methodology that only players are the only criterion for judging the quality of a game. Only players say your game is a good game, then your game is a good game.

"It's great!" Jack Aston was still full of praise this time, and even talked a little gushingly, "That game called "Zuma" is really interesting, I think it is more fun than "American Cube" , what an amazing game!”

"Thank you!" Jester nodded. He actually didn't want to hear anything good. He had two purposes for letting players test. First, he wanted to see the market response. Second, the most important thing was to see it. If there is anything that can be improved, Jester has already figured out the first point, and the second point is what he values ​​the most.

While talking, two other interns from the University of Southern California also gathered over. They have to complete their on-location interview tasks this afternoon, and then they will shoot the grand trial of Mars Entertainment's new game tomorrow and will return to Los Angeles immediately. , and they don’t have much time.

"Do you think there is anything that can be improved?" Jace asked directly when he saw the other two people gathered around.

The three of them frowned and thought carefully for a while, then shook their heads, unable to think of anything that could be improved.

Jester had already expected this. After all, he directly took the mature design of the future and improved it himself when using it. Now, this person who has not experienced the game trend is naturally ugly. Find out where improvements can be made.

Even in Jester's eyes, the three games his company designed based on the plans he provided have achieved the best that can be done in this era.

Maybe the only thing that can be said is the picture?

As for the picture issue, the processing power of the 8-bit substrate is only so large. If you want more realistic images, more vivid colors, and more colors displayed on the same screen... Jester said that he can think of other than 16-bit substrates. , I really can’t think of any other better method.

that's all.

Jester thought so.

ps: Please vote for recommendation! ! ! In addition, I saw some people saying that I don’t update enough. I averaged more than 7,000 a day this week, and this chapter has 8,000. It’s just that when I write, I finish it all in one go. I don’t like dividing it into chapters, so don’t say that about me. There are too few updates! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !