Video Game Designer

What can you do in three months?

For example, the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Professional Invitational Tournament ended perfectly, and the domestic OMG team successfully won the championship title.

For example, DNF's New Year's event has ended, and a wave of leeks has been successfully harvested.

For example, the domestic sales of Gu Jian Qi Xia successfully exceeded 1.5 million copies.

For example, Hideo Kojima tweeted a text message saying 'I've been thinking for 24 hours'.

And there is new news about Red Dead Redemption, a delicious and crispy pie that has been missed by countless players.

In a villa in Shanghai, Jiang Cen, who weighs 200 pounds without a head, has just finished two bowls of beef noodles. He sits in front of his familiar computer and opens the rotten orange platform, wanting to enter the Jedi Island to fight.

At this moment, the WeChat on the mobile phone on the side issued a notification sound.

"Fat head, fat head, don't worry about the rain, is fat head there? Is fat head there?"

Looking at the jingle message sent by WeChat, Jiang Cen narrowed his eyes, picked up his phone and began to reply to the message.

"Little leg, can you swim?"

"??? Yes, what's wrong."

"The Huangpu River is a bit cold in winter, I don't know if you can hold it." Jiang Cen tapped his phone to send a message.

"..., stop talking, hurry up and go to the game starry sky, there is the latest news about Red Dead Redemption."

Any news about Red Dead Redemption?

Seeing the message on the phone, Jiang Cen couldn't help but shiver.

Hastily quit the Rotten Orange platform, opened the Google browser, and entered the game starry sky section in the favorites.

Looking at the headlines on the front page in bold red letters, Jiang Cen's eyes widened, just like when he saw the beef in the beef noodles.

"Damn it, is it sure that Red Dead Redemption, the stationmaster of Huabing, will announce the latest news at E3?" Jiang Cen hasn't read the content of the article, but the headline with the bold red mark on the news has already made the news go away. He was surprised enough.

As a standard gaming geek, apart from the two-dimensional paper figurine wife, the thing that excites him the most should be games.

Especially for the game Red Dead Redemption, since I missed a face at last year's E3 exhibition, and the press conference later, I basically want to know the news about this game, only through Chuhe's twitter Weibo, but Chuhe's Weibo didn't reveal anything about the progress of the game at all.

The whole article is just doing it. If you don’t believe it, you can see how hard our staff is working.

Although there are other masterpieces worth looking forward to, such as Sony's God of War, Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding, Microsoft's Halo, Capcom's Devil May Cry and B's The Elder Scrolls.

But for Jiang Cen, or more broadly, for all Chinese gamers, the meaning of Red Dead Redemption is different.

Because this is a game developed by Tianhe Networks, and it is China's first 3A masterpiece in the true sense.

As for what you have to say, most of the developers are foreigners. This cannot be regarded as domestic games, including familiar masterpieces such as Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Call of Duty, and The Elder Scrolls, as well as OEMs from Chinese outsourcing groups. Woolen cloth.

It is common for a 3A game to have a team of hundreds of people, spanning several countries and studios, especially in the game industry where outsourcing is also common.

Even some of the top studios specializing in outsourcing foundry, their own technology is world-class level.

"No way, the red and bold title is just a simple sentence with a Weibo screenshot?" Jiang Cen's mouth twitched after he clicked in and glanced at the content of the article.

Glancing at the comments below, there are already more than 10,000 comments.

‘When I woke up in the morning and opened the app, I saw this news feed. I was so excited that I ran to the toilet and sat on the toilet, and then watched a world full of articles, which lasted longer than I could pinch. '

‘Stone hammer, is it true that Mr. Chu is the stationmaster of Game Star? Normally tweeting and Weibo can be news, but now Weibo is directly promoted to headlines? '

‘I only listen to Tianhe Network for making cakes. I only listen to the thunder and don’t see the rain. Others will show some demos anyway. Mr. Chu’s drawing cakes rely on words to fool. '

While domestic players were attacking Chuhe, the instigator was testing in the black light studio in Los Angeles.

Of course it's not an EA stage game. If they can really do it so fast, then they are not humans, but gods.

It was just a simple testing phase, and besides the original staff, Chuhe also found another game outsourcing company in Sweden during this period, and hired him to join in the development of Red Dead Redemption.

According to the statistics, there are currently more than 1,500 staff members in Red Dead Redemption, and this does not include cleaning aunts, motion capture actors, and voice actors.

At the same time, the personnel in the entire project are distributed in ten different countries to perform their duties, and at such a price, the development process of the game is also very fast.

"The numerical value and AI system are wrong, and the test team will conduct a retest." In the black light studio, Chu He visited the test work.

For such a huge project, for example, in terms of testing, it is impossible to say that after all the games are finished last night, the staff will create a new archive and test slowly from scratch.

In that case, the efficiency is too high, and the cost is far higher than most people think.

Most of them are tested through instructions and commands after a certain function is completed in the game. For example, the AI ​​feedback of the NPC in the game will be specially tested through instructions after it is formulated.

Rather than wait until the entire game is completed, and then slowly test it, using an inaccurate but more vivid metaphor, the production of a large-scale game.

Just like the assembly of robots, the studios of different departments such as art and programming have different tasks. Some make robot hands and some make feet.

When all the parts are assembled, assemble them together to form a finished robot.

This has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it can save a lot of time and cost, and the disadvantage is that there is no problem in the original test, but after combining, some unpredictable bugs may occur.

For example, an NPC's action trajectory command, there is no problem when tested alone, but after adding scene collisions and trigger conditions, some strange bugs will appear.

And usually the bigger the game, the harder it is to detect these bugs.

Even if the game is completed in the later stage, there is a dedicated testing team to test the game bugs, it is difficult to find all the bugs, more is to check whether the main line of the game itself can be carried out, so as to ensure the most basic game experience for players.

As for why some games even get stuck in the main task after the release, or this situation did not appear in the test, but after patching to fix other bugs, there was no secondary test, which led to the emergence of new bugs .

Or they simply conducted BUG testing during the game production process without inviting a dedicated testing team, thinking that the game was released without any problems.

Of course, Chuhe will not be stingy about the cost, but the most important point is trouble and low efficiency.

Therefore, the current test mode adopted by Red Dead Redemption is still the same single command test as most game manufacturers.

"The promotional CG of the game has been produced." Gabre said to Chuhe.

It took the team two and a half months to produce the 4-minute E3 promotional CG and game promotional CG.

Although there is still a short period of time before E3, the invitation has not yet started, but there is no doubt that the invitation is certain, unless Tianhe Network does not go by itself, otherwise there will be a presence of Tianhe Network at E3.

It is still a bit difficult to release the real machine demonstration for a while, although it is possible to enter the full overtime mode, but Chuhe doesn't want to do this.

Compared with manufacturers such as EA, CDRP, and Ubisoft, it can be said that the environment of Tianhe Network is very abundant, but it is only a direct line of Tianhe Network, including outsourcing and third-party contract workers. Tianhe Network can't control it. To, as long as the task is completed on time and with quality.

Leaning on the chair, looking at the big screen hanging in the studio hall, Chu He looked at the promotional CG of the finished product.

Going to the hospital for an examination has an item called finger examination...o(╥﹏╥)o