Game Development Giant

While Nintendo and Sony are discussing how to prepare for Mars Entertainment's 16-bit home console at the end of the year, for Mars Entertainment, the most important thing this year is about to begin.

In the research and development center of Quake, six developers including Jester and Carmack each operate a flashing fluorescent computer. On the computer screen is the game screen, and the game is Quake. Now It is already the end of October, and the development of the carnival in early November has basically reached the point of imminence.

This game, however, has not yet been officially completed.

To be precise, the original version of the game, that is, the version without online battles, was completed late last month. This made Jester overjoyed, because it meant that it took more than a month to complete the game. To test and make corrections, and also to deploy personnel to improve the patch for online battles.

Because online battles are so important to this game, Jester was almost at the development center during this period, and the people who developed the online system were also like him, especially Carmack, almost two or three people Geniuses take a quick nap.

This kind of effort is very valuable. Carmack said before that the online system was not easy to develop, but Jester did not expect it to be so difficult to develop. In the first three or five days, he and Carmack led The development team has made almost no progress, not to mention making any progress, and has not even found any specific ideas. At first it was two people online, then four people online. Because the eight-player online battle was afraid that it would not be completed in a short time, so we decided to complete the six-player online battle as quickly as possible.

And today. The six-player online battle system has just been completed and is undergoing its first test.

The competing parties inside are still the anti-terrorist forces and the terrorists. There are three people on one side, and Jester controls a terrorist. There are naturally rich weapon systems in FPS games. Originally, Jester’s idea was to refer to the setting of Valve’s Half-Life in later generations and use realistic firearms as the basis. Prototypes can then be purchased in specific purchase areas.

However, after Carmack's verification, this system placed too much burden on the computer's performance, between the smoothness of the game and the real-world firearms. Jester still followed Carmack's suggestion and chose game smoothness as the first factor, and the number of firearms in it was reduced from the dozens he expected to a dozen. In order to reduce the pressure on graphics operations as much as possible, The appearance of these firearms is also very rough. Jester controlled a member of the anti-terrorist force, holding a firearm that could be vaguely identified as an American Ingram M10 submachine gun by its appearance, and was quietly walking through a narrow aisle. In this To purchase weapons in Quake, you need to go to two specific purchase points on each map. Not only can you buy guns and ammunition at these two purchase points, but you can even buy medical supplies.

One buy point is close to one party's spawn point, while the other buy point is close to the other party's spawn point.

and. This can be purchased and used by both parties.

There are even unique items for purchase. For example, at the purchase point of the anti-terrorist forces, you can buy body armor, and at the purchase point of the terrorists, you can buy shock bombs.

The purchase requires purchase points, and the only way to obtain purchase points is to obtain them by killing the opponent.

Jester has thought about a lot of game modes, which is also one of the characteristics of the Thor Arena he prepared. Jester named this killing mode after whoever destroys the other party first. There is also a rescue mode in which rescuing hostages is the winning condition, and there is also a mode in which terrorists install bombs at specific locations. Then the counter-terrorism team members released the mode called bomb disposal mode.

Only these three modes have been decided for the time being, of course. No matter which mode, in addition to the prescribed winning and losing gameplay, destroying the opponent's group is still the last resort to win.

There are only biochemical modes, zombie modes, apocalyptic modes, etc. that have been thought up by many FPS games in later generations. Jester has not mentioned them. First, the conditions are not mature. Even if he wants to do it now, it is impossible. Such a mode is not suitable for The AI ​​requirements of local NPCs are very high, and high AI requirements require high engine monster AI. The engine monster AI is firstly responsible for the algorithm. The algorithm in this Unreal I is not yet so mature. The second is that it is still The function of the hardware is needed to take charge. The current hardware function cannot support the complex monster AI.

This time, six members of the development team tested, and they chose the only map of Thor Arena, which is also the only mode that has been completed so far, which is the killing mode. The only victory is the one who destroys the other party first. standard.

Because the current map cannot produce motion on the z-axis, all battle scenes are on the ground. In order to reduce the computational pressure on the PU when simulating 3D scenes, the jumps that were originally planned were also deleted. .

On such a map that resembled a maze isolated by various walls, Jester controlled the character and found that he still felt very uncomfortable when he found that he could not jump like he had played before.

Just when the character controlled by Jester was about to approach the exit of this narrow aisle, Jester suddenly heard a sound of increasingly clear footsteps from his headphones, and he immediately realized that someone was approaching him. , but before he could turn around and look behind him, he suddenly saw the screen in front of him turn white.

Apparently, someone had thrown a shock bomb at him.

The so-called shock bombs are the flash bombs that appeared in the FPS games that Jester played before. The reason why the shock bombs are made to make the screen completely white after the explosion is just to simulate the effect of the shock bombs. That's it, it's impossible with current technology to produce the detonating effect of later generations of od4.

Jester, who has countless combat experience in FPS games, immediately realized that something bad was going on. Someone must be ambushing him. However, he calmed down after a moment of surprise and immediately made what he thought was the best move. The right choice.

Because there was no jump button, he pressed the left and right movement buttons so that his figure was not on the same straight line, and he did not retreat but moved forward, because before he was blown up by someone with a shock bomb, he was away from the The exit of this aisle is already close at hand. Under this situation, there is no way to stay in this narrow aisle and wait for death.

The effect of the detonation bomb disappears very quickly. Carmack uses an inverse asymptotic effect when dealing with the special effects of the detonation bomb. That is to say, the screen will be completely white at the beginning, but after After turning completely white, the completely white screen will return to its original appearance in a gradual manner.

When the character controlled by Jester rushed to the exit of the aisle, a series of gunshots appeared from behind him.

By the time Jester could see the screen clearly, the health of the character he controlled had dropped to 70%, and that was even when he was wearing a body armor.

Using the corridor as a cover, Jester immediately began to counterattack. He controlled the character, showing his head from the corridor from time to time, and then quickly fired several three-point shots, then quickly retracted it and continued to hide behind the wall.

However, it is obvious that the terrorist who just used the shock bomb to assassinate Jester is also very familiar with this game. He was not paying attention and was knocked off 40% by Jester's two consecutive triple bursts. After losing blood, he also changed his strategy.

He controlled the character, took out a cylindrical object with a red shell, and then threw it towards the wall where Jester was.

In Quake, the cylindrical object with a red shell is not a shock bomb, but a real grenade.

Jester didn't check for a moment. When he saw the grenade thrown by the other party, it was too late. The grenade exploded violently, and then the character he controlled was blown into the sky, and his health was instantly cleared. ——Of course, this is a competition mode in which the victory is based on the complete destruction of the opponent. Of course, it cannot end with the death of Jester alone.

However, with Jester being the first to die in battle, their anti-terrorism force would definitely be at a disadvantage.

Therefore, one of the team members who had been saying that he did not want to be with Jester immediately complained to Jester - after these few months of close cooperation, they all knew that Jester was approachable, so they interacted with each other. Complaining will not only make Jester angry, but will make the relationship between the two parties further.

Ha ha!

When Jester was killed, Carmack smiled proudly. Jester then pressed the operation button on the keyboard and called up a statistics menu. Sure enough, the person who had just killed him was the one who killed him. Said Carmack, and Jester just smiled and didn't care much.

Then he looked at the observation mode after he died in battle. Because there was no way to conduct 3D simulation of real-time tracking, so in the observation mode, he only used the map observation method. The dead players could be observed through the map. Observe the opponent's position, give prompts and instructions to your own side,

Jester was also looking at the flashing red dots representing terrorists on the map, while giving reminders to his teammates from time to time.

Looking at the few people who were still engrossed in it, Jester also smiled as if he was relieved.