Otherworldly Architect

The current development progress of "Mortal Soul" is not high, but the boss with the highest degree of completion is obviously "Sisyphus".

This monster is called "blocking mentor" in Blue Star, which is also the original intention of Mingyan's design.

This is a boss that must be blocked and dodged well to pass!

In the teaching level, mobs can teach players how to use combos; while bosses teach players how to survive...

If you don't use blocking or dodging well, you will be taught by "Sisyphus" to be a man, so he is called "blocking instructor".

In fact, there is currently a highly completed NPC called "Adam".

He was placed in the official level, so the test players have not foreseen it yet.

After the teaching level is over, players will come to one of the temple ruins in the game world and use it as their stronghold.

All subsequent levels will start from this stronghold and explore the outside area step by step.

And Adam is an important NPC in the stronghold. In the setting, he was originally a Templar guarding the temple, but after the light of the temple disappeared, he has been fighting against the invasion of darkness...

Adam is a character created entirely based on Ling Lingqi.

His screenplay was the first to be written.

Everyone at Blue Star Studio has read that script, and they portrayed Adam as a hero who stubbornly fights against darkness (disease) and is not afraid of sacrifice.

The story of Mortal Soul will go through several twists and turns, going through the first game where you know nothing, and then the second week when you know the truth, and until the third week, it is possible for the player to play a better ending.

This is the wish of the designers.

They hope that Adam can finally defeat the darkness. No matter how many difficulties and obstacles he has to go through, his efforts will definitely be rewarded...

The hero will surely get his wish.

……

After the verification test of "Mortal Soul" ended this time, the game development quickly got on a high-speed track.

Blue Star's strength in game development is recognized as one of the best in the Sixth Star Province, mainly due to the experienced and energetic production team...

Of course, the leadership of the wise and powerful boss is also indispensable.

At this time, Mingyan temporarily put down the development work of Blue Star Studio.

Because he received an invitation letter from Central Star Province.

——It's an invitation from the First League Association!

——They nominated "Blue Star Doom" as this year's "Game of the Year Award", and it is one of the twelve candidates!

As the producer of the nominated work, Mingyan naturally received an invitation.

Every year, the League of A will select the best games of the year.

In addition to the most important "Best Game of the Year", there are also various small items such as graphics, soundtracks, and plots.

"Blue Star Doom" was also nominated for the "Best Game Plot" award, which is a rare double-nominated VR work.

In previous years, 80% of these awards belonged to otherworldly games, and only a small part will be awarded to particularly outstanding VR games.

This is also a matter of course, because the expressive ability of alien games is inherently stronger than that of VR games.

This is the difference in hardware level.

In addition to the official annual game selection of the League, there is also a League of Players Association.

The First League itself is a first-level association of the league, while its affiliated Players Association is one level lower, but it is still the most well-known and authoritative professional association in the industry.

Just like the Actors Association and the Workers Association, they are only public welfare organizations on the surface, but their actual influence is far more than that.

Now, the League One Players Association also sent an invitation to Mingyan.

They nominated Bluestar Studio for the "Most Popular Player Award" and included Mingyan himself in the list of "Excellent Young Architects".

This "excellent young architect" is not just as simple as being excellent.

Today's Chaoyang League has an average life expectancy of more than 200 years, and the range of "youth" spans from 20 to 50 years old.

Among the Chaoyang Alliance's 3000 billion population, there are more than [-] million game-related practitioners, and tens of millions of people crowd their heads every year to compete for this honor.

In other words, the official word "excellent" actually has a subtext: a genius who is one in a million.

To enter this list, light talent may not be enough, because the game itself depends on luck.

The outlet, the outlet has the greatest influence on the game - no matter how good an idea is, it needs the traffic support of the market itself.

That's why it has happened before that a new designer became an instant hit, and his first work became popular all over the province, but after that, many works were released, but each one was not as good as the other, and finally he withdrew from the big game industry. stage.

In the age of the Internet, a person who rises as fast as a shooting star is not necessarily a genius, and his fall may only happen overnight.

Therefore, the list of "Outstanding Young Architects" is actually architects who have been famous for at least three years and have had at least two excellent works with a score of 8.5 or higher.

Coupled with the needs of age and popularity, there are actually very few people who meet the requirements, only single digits every year, and even no one in a few years.

Once on the list, it is an officially certified "genius", which is an irrefutable fact.

With Mingyan's qualifications in the game industry, he actually already has the qualifications, but it's a pity that he hasn't reached the age of practice——

Speaking out, it would shock many people's jaws.

Most of the people on the list have been working in the industry for many years, accumulating their own experience and qualifications, and trying to make two good enough high-quality games.

By the time they were nominated, many of them were in their 40s, and they won this honor almost by chance.

This can already be said to be "genius".

But Mingyan is completely the other way around!

"Minecraft" scored 9.5 points, "League of Legends" scored 9.5 points, and "Blue Star Doom" scored 10 points.

In three years, he has released three works, all of which have achieved outstanding results, which is enough for him to be included in the history of the game.

But he is not old enough to work!

Others have reached their age and are waiting for their own better works;

However, he has already saved enough works, and the people of the First League Game Association are waiting for him to reach the age, and then quickly send a notice...

It's really dumbfounding.

This time, two invitations were sent, along with some instructions on the process.

The award ceremony of this year's League One is located on an artificial planet in a second-level star field in the Central Star Province. It can directly go to the nearest space port through the superluminal navigation channel.

The round-trip travel expenses are reimbursed by the League A afterwards.

Of course, if you don't want to go in person, you can also apply for a FTL communication channel to participate in the entire ceremony online, and the expenses will be reimbursed as well.

The six star provinces of Chaoyang Alliance have quite a large territory, and each has different customs and inter-provincial laws.

For example, the Sixth Star Province where Mingyan is located is a relatively traditional and mixed area.

The people here are not used to living on the virtual network, which is very different from other places.

It is said that in the second star province—a province with the most serious virtualization, people basically don’t move around offline anymore. Some people even complete the whole process of getting married online.

The Sixth Star Province is very different. People like to work, study and socialize offline, and occasionally go online to play games.

After the invitation from League One this time, the entire production team of "Blue Star Doom" must be leaving.

It is stated clearly that more than 60 people have to be brought along.

Most of these employees have never traveled faster than the speed of light, let alone directly cross-province, and went to the central star province tens of millions of light-years away.

After Mingyan announced the news at the morning meeting, let them decide for themselves whether to go with the regiment or not.

Of course, several key figures still cannot be absent.

On this day, the Blue Star Studio was particularly lively, and everyone was discussing the annual awards ceremony of the League One Association.

This is the annual event in the game industry!

The "Best Game Award" of the League One is the most watched award every year, and there is no one.

Regardless of the industry, the player group, or even the people who eat melons, they all regard it as the top prize in the game industry.

Every year, the audience rating of the live broadcast is above 10%, and it will definitely be rebroadcasted on the whole network afterwards, with more than 150 billion viewers.

There is no doubt that every employee who is invited wants to go.

——I really want to go, okay!Being invited to participate in the ceremony is itself a symbol of status and honor.

In the end, it is clearly stated that there are 62 people in total including myself.

You have to apply for a passport for interstellar travel first, and then book a boat ticket to the Central Star Province in advance...

When it comes to the matter of the boat ticket, it is beyond the scope of the stated knowledge.

While he was still worrying about whether he could leave it to the secretary to take care of it, it happened that Xia Cheng called again.

Xia Cheng was straight to the point as always, and said, "Congratulations, Blue Star Doomsday double nomination!"

Mingyan was not polite to him, and asked, "I happen to be worried about the boat tickets to the ceremony, do you have any recommended flights?"

Xia Cheng smiled and said: "There is a class recently, I will send you the code name later, you can see if the time is suitable."

What Xia Cheng recommended was a luxury spaceship, the one that departs from a dedicated space port, and only VIP access is available for boarding.

When Mingyan saw half of it, he was still looking for how much a ticket would cost.

——Although A-League's father reimbursed the whole process, it can't be too much, can it?

Just then, there was a knock on the office door.

"Please come in." Mingyan said casually.

The door was gently opened, and there were several employees crowded together outside.

Varian was pushed to the forefront by them—he recently worked overtime in a small dark room playing games, so his face was covered with beards again, and two small eyes were embedded in the beards.

Varian: "Boss, we want to discuss something with you..."

"???" Ming Yan said, "A discussion is a discussion, you put Xixi down first."

That's right, Varian is holding a big golden retriever in his arms.

Xixi was in a daze, her feet were hugged so as not to touch the ground, her little head turned left and right to look at the crowd.

Varian said awkwardly: "Boss, you see that our entire production team is going to the Central Star Province, isn't it best to bring our press spokesperson too?"

Xixi pricked up her ears, as if feeling that everyone was talking about her, she wagged her tail happily.

This is Blue Star's little angel, one of the spiritual pillars of how many people work overtime...

Mingyan fell into deep thought.

A moment later, in a certain club.

Xia Cheng received another application for an active communication from Mingyan.

Young Master Xia, who was drinking afternoon tea, was so happy that he smiled, made a gesture, and answered the phone.

There are a few rich kids beside him, and they took the initiative to avoid seeing this situation.

Xia Cheng's voice said softly: "Xixi? Is that your golden retriever dog?... On the spaceship, no problem, no problem, FTL passage is also possible. Hmm, no problem..."

The communication was brief, but Xia Cheng's mood suddenly became very good.

"Okay! I'll eat at your place tonight!"

After the communication was hung up, a companion asked Xia Cheng curiously: "Dogs and people are allowed to board the spaceship together now? Which airline allows it?"

Xia Cheng said blankly: "I don't know."

"Then you just said 'no problem'?"

"Oh," Xia Cheng said with a smile, "Private spaceship, you can bring anything."

"..."

On the other hand, Mingyan was very happy.

——Obviously, the Fossil contestant Mingyan classmates don’t have such a wide range of knowledge in this area.

After getting an affirmative answer, he nodded to the eagerly waiting employees.

"Oye!"

Everyone cheered and left, not forgetting to hug the bewildered Xixi again.

"Let's go to the buffet hotpot tonight to celebrate!!"

The canteen of Lanxing Building has been gradually completed. Recently, there is a self-service hot pot restaurant on the second floor. More than 60 people can form three super large tables to eat together.

And after the celebratory dinner, Ming Yan rushed to the Tulong Baodao studio without stopping.

Compared with Blue Star's treatment, this dragon-slaying sword can be said to be "raised by a trumpet".

There are not many people on the job, and Ming Yan, the boss and chief designer, doesn't go there often, and the daily affairs are managed by the deputy chief designer.

It is clearly stated that this time I have to go to the Central Star Province, and it is conservatively estimated that I will be away for a week.

After all, it is a trip across star provinces, and the news will definitely not be delivered quickly at that time, so it is clearly stated that the schedule here should be prepared in advance to avoid any troubles if you are not there.

The project that Tulong Baodao Studio is currently working on is the follow-up to the idle game "Fingertip Man".

At that time, after cooperating with Mingyan, Yu Bing first conducted some "practice" inside Tulong Baodao, and had in-depth discussions with senior designers.

In the end, they basically overthrew the original game framework and redone it, started from scratch, and started to make an idle game called "Idle Heroes".

——The name chosen is indeed the style of Tulong Baodao.

They don't pay attention to any mysterious connotation, profound truth, or beautiful style when they name their names.

Just one point: highlight the key points!

This idle game is mainly a card-drawing mode.

Players draw all kinds of "heroes" from the card pool, and after matching them into a lineup, they can let this team of heroes set out to fight...

The core element of idle games is of course placement.

Just put it there and hang up. It doesn’t matter if you turn off your phone. No matter how long you wait to go back, the heroes are still working hard to fight monsters and level up, accumulating resources for players...

A skit-level game like this is most suitable for working parties and light gamers who don't have much time to pass the time.

When they are not working, they only need to take a minute or two to look at their mobile phones, and just click on the screen.

It's not like hiring a group of heroes, in fact, it's more like raising a group of small slaves, mining for themselves all the time.

After a busy day of work or study, when you return home and turn on your mobile phone, you will see the slaves working hard to save a box of raw materials for themselves.

This is the joy of harvest!

Players then distribute the raw materials to strengthen the old slaves... oh no, heroes;

Or save a little more and use it to draw new heroes, which can make the speed of capital accumulation a little faster.

Day by day, the slave team itself is getting stronger, and the resources harvested every day are also increasing, and there will be a kind of happiness like watching bank deposits making interest.

Therefore, in the design of this type of idle game, elements such as graphics and plot are secondary.

The most important thing is the value!

In what kind of range can players feel the joy of a good harvest without disrupting the balance too much?

How much time is spent hanging up, and how much can be gained, so that players are willing to go online for about 15 minutes a day?

What is the ratio of the card pool for drawing cards, how many resources are needed to upgrade a hero, and how strong the team's total combat power is to hang up at a certain level?

Every numerical curve is very important and needs to be carefully adjusted.

In this regard, the Interstellar Age has an obvious advantage:

Numerical analysis tools are particularly advanced!

This is also the first time that Tulong Baodao Studio has used the artificial intelligence core to measure and iterate these values.

The game design AI "Redstone No. [-]" donated by Ling Lingqi was used.

This artificial intelligence can horizontally compare all the values ​​​​of similar games on the market, characterize them and substitute them into the new game "Idle Heroes", and then start to calculate based on them.

For each calculation, a numerical expectation map will be obtained. According to this chart, he will modify the initial data and iterate again.

After each round of such iterations, calculations, and corrections, the game data will be one step closer, more accurate, and more suitable.

In this way, this quantifies a design work with a high threshold, and turns it into a process that can be optimized step by step as long as the workload is stacked.

——What's even better is that it's all artificial intelligence workload, and human employees don't have to work overtime!

"Redstone Seven" made three iterations in the first night, and then worked non-stop at the efficiency of 9-11 iterations per day.

On the day when Mingyan came to see the progress, the value of "Idle Heroes" had already passed the acceptance of the deputy chief designer, and the internal testing of the studio had begun.

The lightweight game was originally expected to be released later this year.

But unfortunately, at this moment, it was stated that he was going to the Central Star Province to participate in the award ceremony of the First League, so the release date had to be postponed.

At present, it is tentatively scheduled to be in mid-January next year, in time for a wave of enthusiasm before the New Year's Eve.

In contrast, Blue Star Studio's "Mortal Soul" is scheduled for the summer vacation in June next year.

Blue Star's official website has not yet announced the finalization of "Mortal Soul", but in the interview, the designer vaguely revealed the current development progress.

But at the end of this year, even the much-anticipated new game "Mortal Soul" failed to occupy the top position on the bulletin board.

Because everyone's eyes are on "Blue Star Doom"!

[Warmly celebrate "Blue Star Doom" being nominated for the "Best Game" award of this year's League One! 】

A total of twelve games were nominated, and "Blue Star Doom" was the only one from the sixth star province.

The moment the nomination list was released, countless news media were already brewing.

For one week in a row, all major self-media websites in the Sixth Star Province had relevant hot spots on the top, and soon even the melon-eating people outside the circle also learned the news.

At the entrance of the Blue Star Building, there are countless guns and short cannons standing guard 24 hours a day.

Even a daily photo of "Mr. Ming worked overtime until one o'clock in the morning and left the company" can be published as news. ,

The gate of the Blue Star Building had to be closed to the public, and all employees even started to wear masks to work.

On the forum, there is a phenomenon of universal celebration. Those who don't know it think that this year's New Year's Eve has come so much earlier.

[The leader is awesome! !Blue Star is awesome! ! 】

[I'm so nervous right now that my wife is having a baby. The final winner will be announced on the 10th. Can Blue Star get the best game of the year? 】

[Don't have too much hope, most of them are running with you.This year's Simulated League 16 in the second star province is also a masterpiece with full marks, and they have achieved the present in a whole series, their qualifications are incomparable]

[I cried three times in 36 hours after clearing the customs, I am really only convinced that "Blue Star Doom" won the best of the year this year]

[If Blue Star can win an award, it can be any one. I will buy 100 copies of each game for it, and I will post it as proof! 】

[When Goddess Russell first appeared on the stage, I knew it must be the best plot game of the year]

December 12th is the official announcement of the winners list, and it is also the day when the League One holds the awards ceremony and dinner.

And on the afternoon of the 3rd, everyone from Blue Star Studio had already boarded the ship—yes, from the VIP luxury passage.

Seeing that spaceship moored in the port was a sight to behold.

Even the flight of the big company next door carrying 3000 passengers is smaller in comparison.

Everyone was also trembling.

Master Xia's private spaceship is actually a super-sized 757 model, the kind that can be used directly as a passenger spaceship to run flights.

The inside has been transformed into an ultra-luxury set of leisure and entertainment equipment.

Restaurant, reception room, dance hall, swimming pool, entertainment hall, study room, home theater, indoor hot spring and sauna...all are available.

Xia Cheng felt that the spaceship was nothing special, so he casually proposed that he would send the message directly.

Ming Yan was actually cowardly, and said, "Would it be too much trouble for you?"

Xia Cheng said: "No, no, you know that I happen to go home at the end of every year, and this time is also on the way."

What I said was like driving a colleague off work, the clouds are calm and the wind is light.

Indeed, the Xia family was not from the Sixth Star Province, and they didn't have the habit of celebrating New Year's Eve. Xia Cheng would go home around mid-December every year.

——Every time he made it clear, he thought that he was like everyone else, bought a ticket to go home on the boat, and bought a luxurious first-class cabin at most.

——I never expected that he moved out of his private spaceship and left!

It's really "poverty limits my imagination".