Otherworldly Architect

It turns out that "Nightmare Man and Machine" will be late, but never absent.

During the small meeting the next day, Mingyan smiled kindly and said to the person in charge of the League of Legends, "Recently our players seem to be a little 'dissatisfied'. Why don't we use 'Nightmare Human-Machine' as The special rotation game mode will be launched next week."

Person in charge: "Okay, boss, I'll take a look at the arrangement."

Then he silently lowered his head and made a sign of the cross for the players.

——What do you think you provoked the devil for!

The so-called "nightmare man-machine" is a very difficult man-machine battle mode.

Under normal circumstances, the human-machine battles provided by League of Legends only have simple and normal difficulty for players to quickly familiarize themselves with the game or practice heroes.

The computer AI in the battle is actually quite stupid, it will only come up to fight hard stupidly, and it will just run away when the blood volume is below a certain level.

Therefore, only novices and players with special hobbies will always play man-machine mode.

It is also tacitly accepted among players that this is an extremely simple "novice tutorial".

There is also a stalk on the forum, which says: "This fight is like a man-machine."-It refers to the fact that the situation is too one-sided, and the victory comes very easily.

but!

Here is another key piece of information that players don't know: In fact, when the computer AI was first born, it was extremely powerful!

It's not as clumsy as people imagine, and it needs designers to "teach" it to play games bit by bit.

no.

In fact, the vast majority of game AI, as long as they "know" how to play games, they are born to be game masters.

As long as the skills that can be avoided in theory, the AI ​​can dodge 100%; the skills that can hit in theory, the AI ​​can achieve a hit rate of 99.99%.

Moreover, the computing power of AI is terrifying. It can estimate tens of thousands of endings of a battle every second, and then choose the most suitable strategy for you to easily get the ending you want most.

For example, when a player sees the residual blood of the AI, he may use his feeling to judge whether his set of skills can kill the opponent in seconds.

But AI is not based on feeling, it is based on calculation.

The attack, defense, distance, and even the accuracy of skills and the reaction speed of human players can be calculated in an instant.

If the player can't drop it in a second, the AI ​​will go directly to it. It seems that it is extremely anti-killing the player, but in fact it is as stable as an old dog;

A set drops in seconds, it doesn't bring anything that appears in the player's field of vision at all.

This is still the case of MOBA games, if it is changed to FPS, that is, shooting games.

As long as an AI is not weakened, there are basically no human players in the world who can beat it.

——99.99% gun hit rate, understand?

——Seamless movement, one mind and one hundred tasks without pressure, understand?

—— 0.001 seconds to open the mirror, press the gun, and turn around in an instant, understand?

——The sound of footsteps can be heard at 1 decibel, and the entire flight trajectory of a grenade can be predicted in the air. Understand?

With a complete computer AI in this kind of game, it is not a dream to beat a hundred human players.

The AI ​​of MOBA games is not so exaggerated, but it must also be weakened to a certain extent.

For example, let the AI ​​deliberately not move, or even let it face the player according to certain rules.

Programmers are also very tired——

Let AI hide skills, it may only take two hundred lines of code to achieve;

But in order to take care of the player not to be hanged, it is necessary to use an additional [-] lines of code to let the AI ​​learn to act, and the acting should be realistic and realistic.

The acting is in place, the acting is really like a weak rookie, being beaten by the players...

Then just this group of players, what are they still talking about, "the food is like a human machine"?

Ah.

Naive.

Even if it is a "nightmare man-machine" designed explicitly, it dare not release a complete computer AI.

In order to take care of the self-esteem of this group of pure players, the computer AI still has to move around to pick up skills, so that players can't feel the gap between them—it's just that the probability of picking up skills is reduced a little.

As for the difficulty of the game itself, it has to be compensated by additional mechanisms.

For example, deliberately let the player know that the mana consumption of the AI ​​is only the same as that of the player, and that the AI ​​​​has "full map cheats"... and other "extra enhancements".

In this way, even if the player loses, he will not feel that he is really better than the computer, but the computer is turned on!

After all, it's just a messy AI in their impression.

So, it was exactly as expected by Blue Star Studio.

In the first week of the launch of the "Nightmare Human-Machine" mode, players were mourning and scolding the AI ​​for cheating everywhere.

[Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooery!Let's crowdfund and kill him, shall we? 】

[Sure enough, it was a nightmare, I tm dreamed of being tortured and killed by the computer every night in my dreams]

[In the future, whoever says that the man-machine is simple, I am in a hurry! ! 】

[The devil finally proved his true nature... @TTTX, come out and get beaten! ! ! 】

The high-end players rushed to tell each other, and collectively formed a land reclamation brigade, trying to achieve the first pass achievement of their own server.

——They regard the first clearance of "Nightmare Human-Machine" as an important milestone to be overcome!

Even professional clubs are ready to let their players try to clear the mode after training, and it is best to clear it during the live broadcast.

The reason why players are so keen on the first-pass achievement is also very simple.

It's already the third season, and the top players in the League of Legends can easily become famous overnight. This is something everyone knows.

And now the honor of "Global No.1" is in front of them!

E-sports is all about strength, whoever is the first to achieve this achievement will be undisputedly strong.

Any traffic, any honor, they are all at your fingertips.

How can people not be jealous?

Although this "Nightmare Human-Machine" mode is difficult, it is not so difficult that it is impossible to get through.

It can be regarded as a test of Bluestar Studios for game masters. According to the explicit statement, the difficulty is almost at the level of "players with the Platinum segment can get through it".

Of course, according to the person in charge's translation, the clear meaning is: "Platinum and below players will all suffer" difficulty.

On the fourth day after the new mode was logged in, a team from the sixth star province announced the world's first pass.

This team is led by a professional player, and they are divided into King Master teams. After several rounds of running-in, they have almost figured out the rules of AI battles and how many cheats have been used in total.

After that, it was a matter of course, and the "Nightmare Human-Machine" was opened according to the pre-booked strategy.

After the video of the first pass was posted on the Internet, it went viral overnight as no one expected!

By the second day, the number of views had reached tens of millions.

Even a passerby king player in the team has received the favor of the club and invited him to participate in the youth training.

After the first pass, due to the experience imparted by the pioneers, other players also began to clear the new mode one after another.

Soon, this difficulty will truly meet the designer's expectations, and players with low tiers can also go up and have fun.

——Of course, everyone will definitely suffer when they play for the first time and are not used to it!

——Dare to say that the man-machine is very simple?Hehe, feel the fear of being dominated by nightmares!

At the new Blue Star meeting, he was very happy, expressing that he was very satisfied with the new model.

principal:"……"

He felt that he suddenly understood how to make the boss happy.

And when Mingyan is happy, he can continue to explode happily.

He silently revealed the initial plan of "Soul", and handed over the design of several subsystems to the following designers.

The game is getting bigger and bigger, and the design of one person alone can set the tone and theme of the game, but it is impossible to cover everything.

In the new game, Mingyan decided to do the most important battle and level design by himself, and distribute other content appropriately.

At the same time, through the internal voting mechanism of the studio, the new game finally has an official name.

——"Mortal Soul".

This name was chosen because everyone has read the outline and outline of the story given by the plot planner.

There are currently five plot planners working in Blue Star Studio, and four of them participated in the writing of the world view and the main plot in the early stages of the new project.

Together with Mingyan, these people walked around the different world provided by Ling Lingqi.

In that different world that has been conquered once, although the players have already withdrawn, there are still a large number of aborigines left.

That planet was originally a place of polar night, and none of the aborigines had seen the light.

Therefore, Ling Lingqi's father directly named it "Dark Planet".

The former developer brought light to this planet, and at the same time, many undead players descended. These players leveled up step by step by completing the tasks issued by the system, killing dangerous creatures in the dark, and looting the native land. resource.

The short aborigines are still in the unenlightened medieval stage, they regard the players as gods, and even extended the sects that worship these gods.

At first, everything was fine.

But soon, with the rapid decline of the game, players began to evacuate.

The game bases on the planet are also abandoned one after another. The things left by the players are regarded as "relics", and the bodies left behind are called "holy bodies", which are enshrined in temples by the aborigines.

The final main base of the game also gradually lost its light due to lack of energy.

The entire alien world will soon be plunged into darkness again.

But having seen the "age of the gods" full of light, the aborigines are full of fear of the coming darkness...

Through the only remaining probe robots and communication stations in the game's main base, Blue Star's staff learned the basic situation of this second-hand alien world for the first time.

Then Mingyan led several main designers to turn on the communication, controlled a drone, and looked down on this dark land from a high altitude.

The tall mountains rise and fall faintly in the dark night, and the invisible horror is ready to fall at any moment. The monsters with strange shapes are greedily staring at the flesh and blood, while the short aborigines are tremblingly snuggling up to the few remaining fires...

Looking at such a scene, the designers generated a lot of inspiration.

After seeing Mingyan's plan, several plot planners immediately expressed their inspiration.

The birth and polishing of a script also takes time. For literary creators, inspiration is fleeting and needs to be grasped in time.

So they applied for the small black room by themselves, and they resolutely refused to go out until they had finished the first draft of the script.

This decision is simply articulate.

By this time, it was already the end of June, and Mingyan received a unique invitation from the IPP family.

——It was delivered by Xia Cheng himself.

The two had a big meal outside by the way.

Xia Cheng said: "I submitted this proposal at the beginning of this year, and it's only now that it's done."

Ming Yan said with a smile: "Then I will definitely support you. The planning you personally made will definitely not be bad."

While chatting, Mingyan casually flipped through the invitation letter to get a general idea of ​​the situation.

The IPP family held a new online event this year called "Game Star Show Contest".

The theme of the event is to let a group of game production enthusiasts, regardless of age, education, and industry, form a team of 2-5 people and make a small game on the mobile phone within three days.

The team can be formed in advance, or it can be made by the officials after signing up on the spot.

There are no requirements for game production either, there is no limit to the subject matter or volume, as long as it can be played on a mobile phone.

In addition to the pre-preparation, post-play trial and awarding work, the competition lasted for a week.

The corresponding funds, sponsors and contractors have already been contacted, and the promotional activities have been going on for a while.

According to statistics, more than 200 teams and thousands of fans have signed up for the first "Star Show Contest".

Although most of the participants are amateurs, but the channels and prestige of IPP are there, many professionals will also participate.

The three games that Gein finally won in this competition can be promoted on the IPP platform!

For ordinary gamers, this is already a very rare opportunity.

Mingyan just finished reading the general introduction of the competition, and would like to read the competition rules in detail.

Xia Cheng on the opposite side smiled and said: "You don't need to read the rules. I'm not here to invite you to participate - if you participate, all the remaining contestants will not have to compete for the championship. The third place game."

Mingyan blinked his eyes: "That's it?"

"Judges."

Xia Cheng said briefly, and turned to a certain page of the document in front of Mingyan.

The "Star Show Contest" has reached its final stage, and it is obvious that the three best works will be determined.

As is customary for this type of event, the final game score is a combination of two data points.

One is in the trial play session, the various data of the player during the game, as well as the votes and scores given by the player;

The other is the judges' scoring, which will remove the highest score and the lowest score, and then take the average.

The former accounts for 70%, and the latter accounts for 30%.

In the planning case, several judges to be invited have been determined.

Among them, three people have already accepted the invitation, and they are all bigwigs in the game industry in the Sixth Star Province; the remaining few are still under negotiation.

And Mingyan was probably the youngest one among the judges, he couldn't help but said, "If I were to be a judge, would my qualifications be less than..."

Xia Cheng shook his head and said, "Do you know how many works with perfect scores have been produced in the Sixth Star Province?"

Ming Yan said honestly: "I don't know, I guess there are thirty or forty of them?"

Xia Cheng smiled, and said: "Thirty or forty are the treatment of the Central Star Province. In the Sixth Star Province, there are a total of 21 works, including your "Blue Star Doom."

Mingyan let out a low "ah", a little surprised.

Xia Cheng counted with his fingers: "Among the judges we invited, only one of them is the chief designer of a full-score work like you. The rest are either designers who have participated or made Classic games with a score of 9.5...but none of them have presided over the design and development of three games with a score of 9.5 or higher like you."

Mingyan blinked, not knowing what to say.

Xia Cheng smiled and said: "If it weren't for the fact that you live in a secluded place, the various activities, associations, and company organizations that want to hook you up and invite you now... have already lined up outside the star system. You should really come out and see more .”

Said plainly: "I have to make a new game, I don't have time to go out and play."

Xia Cheng said: "...This is really an unsurprising answer."

In fact, Xia Cheng was right.

As early as more than a year ago, when Blue Star Studio gradually became famous, Mingyan received many invitations in his mailbox.

There are many game design-related associations and organizations in Sixth Star Province, all of which have tried to invite Mingyan to join; for many award selections, Mingyan has also been notified to receive awards and bonuses in the past.

Some even directly want to grant him some "Honorary Vice President" or something like that...

But Mingyan refused because he thought it was troublesome.

After all, he is a workaholic who doesn't even want to have the most basic social interaction.

Like the invitation from the IPP family this time, if Xia Cheng hadn't personally delivered the invitation letter, it is basically impossible to open the letter to take a look at it.

As for those organizations that want to invite Mingyan to join, or want to take a stake in Blue Star Studio, there are even more organizations.

With Bluestar's business capabilities at the time, super-capital giants like cruise lines saw its potential and wanted to get a share of it, let alone other venture capital companies.

But until this year, none of them expected that Blue Star's ability to attract money was even several times more terrifying than the cruise line's estimate.

Had I known that "Blue Star Doom" could be so successful, the cruise line would never have given up on this line easily!

IPP is now the only designated business partner of Blue Star Studio.

Many people in the company are actually secretly glad that it was really great to be able to turn around and sign "Minecraft" back then...

It's really great that Manager Xia Cheng can recognize the pearl with his eyesight and decisively make friends with the chief designer of Blue Star...

The current Blue Star Studio is already a well-known blue-chip stock in the local area, and cooperating with it is a guarantee of performance and a bright future.

The holding of the "Star Show Contest" this time is also an olive branch thrown to Mingyan by the IPP family.

They are able to carry out some other cooperation in areas other than game distribution, which is the embodiment of intimacy and friendship.

In other words, if he explicitly accepted the invitation, it means that he has a high degree of affection for the IPP family.

Xia Cheng's heart: That's right, he is willing to sacrifice his working time to accept my invitation, which already shows that he has a high degree of affection for me.

Mingyan really struggled a bit in his heart.

But considering that the design of "Mortal Soul" has come to an end for the time being, he still has a little time before entering the stage of developing the small black room for the ALPHA version, and there is really no intense work recently...

Then he looked at Xia Cheng's expectant expression in front of him.

Xia Cheng continued his efforts and said, "I promise that it won't take you long. It's just the last day of grading work. A total of eight works need to be tried. We have also prepared a generous amount of appearance fees."

Hmm... It's a kind of work to carry out activities with business partners.

Of course, the most important thing is to look at Xia Cheng's face.

Mingyan finally nodded.

Xia Cheng laughed, and then, as if by magic, he took out another small gift box.

Mingyan originally wanted to refuse, but thought that this might be the tradition of the IPP family.

When he went to the IPP branch for the first time, he received a pen as a gift. The big company is still very considerate to the partner.

So, he took the box and opened it, and found a set of liqueur chocolates inside.

——Every piece is made into a very beautiful shape, some are white shells, and some are cyan pebbles.

Xia Cheng smiled and said, "I saw that you brought CW's liqueur chocolates with you before. Recently, I just heard that their family has released this new one, so I brought it here for you to try."

Mingyan blinked his eyes and said, "Um..."

Actually, he doesn't like chocolate.

It's just because the calories in the liqueur chocolate are high enough, so that he can quickly replenish energy after staying up late and bursting his liver, without hypoglycemia.

That's why he took it with him.

But Mingyan looked at Xia Cheng's expression, took a piece inside and put it in his mouth.

The chocolate on the shell melts quickly in the mouth, and the red wine wrapped inside brings a special stimulation to the taste buds.

Two different flavors of sweet taste, perfectly intertwined.

delicious.

Mingyan looked down at this set of chocolates, and saw a pink heart in the middle.

Suddenly, he thought of something, and his eyes lit up.

When Xia Cheng saw his expression, his heart skipped a beat.

as predicted--

Ming Yan said happily: "By the way, the League of Legends has not released a candy-themed skin series yet. You can add bonbon elements to it, um..."

He was lost in thought.

Xia Cheng: "..."

Sure enough, the Ming chief designer was still the same Ming chief designer.

There will never be any strange ideas because of seeing hearts, chocolates and other elements.

Seeing Mingyan gradually falling into design thoughts, Xia Cheng said decisively: "Do you have any other plans for tonight?"

Mingyan raised his head in a daze: "Go back to work overtime?"

Xia Cheng supported his forehead and said: "It's rare to come out to play with me, why don't you do me a favor and choose two suitable ties."

Clearly said: "Okay. But I have to go back before ten o'clock."

Xia Cheng said: "How obsessed are you with working overtime!"

Ming Yan shrinks his neck and protests in a low voice: "You seem to be obsessed with going out to play! Everyone has their own living habits, what's the matter..."

Xia Cheng was speechless for a moment!

How to refute Mingyan's seamless, black-and-white logic?

Anyway, Xia Cheng managed to pry out the fossil of chief designer Ming.

The two walked around the mall.

Xia Cheng took more than ten ties one after another, and compared them on his chest, it seemed that he really had a choice phobia.

So Mingyan had no choice but to help him make a decision, and finally bought a blue and white striped one and a solid color one.

Xia Cheng raised his chin: "I don't know how to tie a tie by myself, can you help me?"

Mingyan teased: "Okay, young master, please sit down."

Mingyan didn't tie a tie for anyone else, and it took a long time to tie it for him.

In the end, the waiters came to check out, and Xia Cheng was still fiddling with the tie in front of the mirror, looking like he couldn't put it down.

Ming Yan said: Now that I know I like it, why was it so difficult to choose before?