Game Development Giant

Jester talked to Pardo on the phone for about seven or eight minutes.

In fact, there is nothing to talk about.

I just hope that if Pardo has the opportunity, he can contact the people in Ximutou and convey a subtle message to them, that is, if they are not happy with EA, they might as well come to Mars Entertainment.

Because Pardo has a pretty good relationship with several core development members of Ximutou. Pardo had several meetings with them at GDC.

Pardo also agreed to this matter. He was also worried about the fate of his friends in the future. EA was not a good place to go, but this was also someone else's own business, and it was not easy for him to ask about it. Moreover, the other party had not asked about it before. I didn't tell myself this, maybe because I didn't want to dissuade them.

I try my best.

Pardo said to Jester seriously, that was all he could say, and it was not certain whether he could convince the other party.

In general, EA's acquisition of Westwood is a small matter in the industry. Although it caused a while, it was not a big deal. If Jester hadn't remembered the tragic experience of Westwood later, otherwise, he wouldn't have even thought about it. Let Pardo contact some of his friends in Ximutou. After all, for a game studio like Ximutou with endless creativity.

It would be such a shame if, as in the original history, such a studio was wiped out.

Of course, it is impossible to save Westwood Jester. After all, EA has completed the acquisition, but allowing those talented designers to complete the games they want to make in a new place, Jester is confident that he still has the ability. of.

The pre-order numbers for Monster Hunter are staggering.

Even Jester and Mars Entertainment felt a little surprised, because Jester had previously said that the difficulty of this game would make the sales of this game not quite in line with some people's predictions.

However, judging from the pre-sale, the pre-sale has only been open for three days and has received more than 300,000 orders. This is no less than any previous Jester game. Although Jester has The player community has emphasized again and again that you must clearly know that you like this type of game before pre-ordering. Otherwise, it is very likely that after you get the game, you will only be able to complain about why the game is so difficult, which is meaningless.

But the enthusiastic response from the player community still left Jester a bit unprepared.

They said it clearly. Many of them knew that this game would be difficult, but this was the way the game was designed. This was the design goal determined at the beginning of the design. The reason for this was to express the essence of this game type. Make the game better.

for a game like this. They are willing to give it a try. If it really suits them, then continue playing. If it doesn't suit them, it is also a good choice to sell it as a second-hand game.

The most important thing is that Jester's games deserve us to do this because his games have never let players down.

Regarding this answer, even Jester was very emotional and excited when he saw it. For a game developer. There is probably nothing that makes me feel happier and happier than seeing a group of players who can identify with me.

The player community of Mars Entertainment is a very large comprehensive game discussion forum. Of course, the discussions are all games of Mars Entertainment. Jester will not only browse the game section developed by himself, but he will also find some games that he is not responsible for. Check out the game section. For example, the most popular Counter-Strike has seen a huge increase in the number of people after this game launched its independent client.

Coupled with the nearly free game settings, you can buy the game for fifteen dollars and play it frequently. Purchasing the game for $15 will also come with eight box opening keys, and each key costs $2.99.

Therefore, there are many players involved.

Jester recently read a statistical report released by the technology department, which was mentioned above. In the past week, the number of players playing Counter-Strike through the Mars Battle Network platform reached five million, and most of them were active players. These players had played the game for at least three hours. experience. And play games frequently.

The sales of game keys are also unexpectedly good, although most players do not buy keys in large numbers.

But those players who are willing to buy keys can buy dozens of them at a time. Moreover, many players are also willing to put their own weapon boxes in the market for sale, and many players buy a large number of them in order to get their favorite gun skins. to purchase these weapon chests.

Although these skins have no other function besides looking good.

Especially on the weapons trading market of Counter-Strike, a Kasimov-painted sniper rifle has sold for more than a thousand dollars, and there are many buyers.

This makes the developers feel extremely unbelievable. They can't imagine why players would be so tempted by something that can only show a different appearance but has no different attributes. You know, it is sold on the Battle.net trading platform. For weapons, the Battle.net platform charges a 20% transaction commission.

This also made the development team admire Jester even more. They had previously believed that not many people would be willing to spend a lot of money for the skin system Jester mentioned, because the only function of these skins is to look good, but Sure enough, according to Jester, it is to make players look different from others - but being different from others is precisely the great appeal of a game.

Jester thought about the popularity of Counter-Strike during this period, so he entered the Counter-Strike section. The discussion here is even more popular than Monster Hunter, because gun games will always be mainstream.

One of the most popular posts is a player complaining that Mars Entertainment has not been responsible for the server during this period. He has become very stuck while playing the game. He often hides behind the wall, but is still shot to death, and he agrees with it. many people.

Of course, many people ridiculed the poster, saying it was because of your technical skills.

Because the player community account is directly connected to Battle.net, your game character and achievements will be visible to everyone if you do not choose to hide them. The person who posted this is visible to everyone. His ladder ranking shows that the group is Silver. He is definitely not a rookie. After all, there are Bronze and Black Iron groups under Silver.

But masters are not considered either.

In the general community, it is believed that those with a high level must be at least in the gold group or above.

certainly. Like many subsequent domestic player communities, the average level of Mars Entertainment's Counter-Strike section is not something that the average player can achieve.

The poster who was ridiculed for his food was not angry at all. He just asked the other party, are the current servers getting worse and worse?

Then, the two parties started to spray each other.

Jester basically read the entire post. He also thought it was really funny, because he was obviously not expecting a small matter to turn into a war of contention across the board, and because the exchanges between the two parties did not obviously go beyond the forum's fixed rules, the random community manager did not come out to lock the post. .

Jester happened to have read the report of the Counter-Strike department during this period, so he still had some understanding of server problems, so he wanted to explain it by the way.

Therefore, he replied below this post, I can share some information that I have learned recently, that is, the server has been flooded with a large number of players during this period, which has caused a huge load on the server. Pressure. We had expected it before, but the expectation may be different from the reality. We misestimated the enthusiasm of the players. In the next few days, the development team of Counter-Strike will announce the players who have poured into the server during this period. Number of people.”

Believe me, this is a number that will surprise everyone.

He greatly exceeded our expectations and left our server team under-prepared. Therefore, during this period, I feel that problems such as card issues are indeed due to negligence on our part. However, we are in the process of contacting new servers and We are technically dealing with the optimization of server pressure, and I believe we can do this well.

The effect of the blue sticker issued in Jester's name is outstanding.

It was noticed almost as soon as he posted it, and countless people quoted it in reply.

Some people joked before that Jester, as the boss of a company, often comes to the forum to interact with players. As a result, a development team like Counter-Strike only has one community manager to answer some questions, and I don't know most of the replies. I need to ask the development team for instructions, which I cannot disclose...

In this case, why do we need such a community manager?

As a result, it is actually Jester who now answers the questions of players in the Counter-Strike section.

However, Jester also explained it. He said that during this period of time, he happened to be at a time when the old game was completed and the new game had not yet been officially developed. So she has more time, and she personally prefers to answer some questions on the forum, but other development teams don't have as much time as she does.

After Jester explained it, the players also expressed their understanding.

However, many people are curious about the unexpected number of player participants that Jester said. How many people will make the servers prepared by Mars Entertainment in advance insufficiently prepared.

Jester said: This news should be announced by the development team, not me.

Afterwards, seeing many players discussing the reasons for the lag, Jester simply explained what the cause of the lag in the game was, or rather why it caused this phenomenon.

I have seen many people discussing the fact that I am not smooth in playing games, so it is necessary for me to share some of the knowledge I know about this aspect, just as a popular science. But before that, I It is necessary to clearly explain some boring terminology of the game, because only after clarifying this point, you will be able to clearly understand why my game feels unsmooth.

Even, why did I obviously shoot before I died, and according to my shooting skills, I must have hit the target, why was it that I died but the other party was fine?

This type of problem.

First of all, it's Tick. Tick refers to a data snapshot sent by the server to the player. This data snapshot contains the data information of all players in the server data - displacement, position, action, etc. The server takes continuous snapshots of the game world Together they form a coherent picture, which is everything we see. You can say that the server is just a snapshot of the game world being connected together.

The continuous shooting speed of snapshots is called Tick rate. The higher the Tick rate, the more coherent the world the server sees, and the more accurate the world rendered.

Secondly, Latency, delay, this concept is usually understood or misunderstood as Ping.

It actually refers to the time it takes for a data packet to travel from your client to the server and back again - this process is called RTT.

The reason people always call it Ping is because in the 1980s, there was a tool called ping that was used to test the delay of ICMP feedback. The Ping command is still alive in most operating systems today. In other words, a ping It is a test that measures latency by using an ICMP feedback. It should be noted that the time for a single packet transmission (ping) is not always equal to 1/2 of the RTT value. But for convenience, we usually equate both sides , so for the time being, RTT latency is simply regarded as latency, that is, the single packet transmission delay is understood as 1/2 of Latency.

Third, Client-Update-Rate, as the name suggests, client update rate, this rate refers to the rate at which the client will receive updates from the server. For example, if the client update rate is 20, the server snapshots are continuously taken If the rate is 6~4, then the client may still play the game on the server with a snapshot continuous shooting rate of 20. This can usually be modified locally on the client, of course, not all, some games prohibit modification.

Then there's the number of frames, also commonly known as FPS, the number of frames per second that your client can achieve.

Then there is data about the monitor. The refresh rate is the frequency at which your graphics card updates the picture on your monitor per second. The unit of measurement is Hz (hertz). If your frame rate is 30, then if your monitor is 60Hz , your monitor will display each frame twice. But if you have 120 frames displayed on a 60Hz monitor, then the monitor can only display 60 frames per second.

When the terminology was explained here, Jester paused for a moment, and then added this sentence - These are some concepts that are easier to understand. What I am going to say below may be a little more complicated, so I will give you some time first. .”

Then he posted this post. (~^~)