Reborn America, this is my time

Chapter 198 "Tom and Jerry" "James Bond"

"Dangdangdang~"

"Dangdangdang-"

"Dangdangdangdang~dangdangdang~"

When Ethan powered on the "Tom and Jerry" electronic arcade machine produced by MGM, the theme song of "Tom and Jerry" composed by Scott Bradley played from the arcade's built-in audio system. passed out.The classic music that almost all American people have heard made Ethan smile helplessly. It was really too extravagant for him to amplify his moves at the beginning.

When he stood up again and cast his eyes on the arcade screen, the Tom and Jerry depicted in pixels were not exactly the same as the images in the animation, they were also lifelike.

Even if there is no game name on the entire screen, there is only a PLAY logo, but the classic music and well-known patterns can show everything.

And this behavior...

"This is really amazing confidence!" Ethan complained enviously.

He took out a 25-cent coin from his pocket and threw it in, and slammed the red button on the operation panel, only to hear a "Dang", the background music stopped instantly, and three options popped up on the game homepage, The first is Tom, the second is Jerry, and the third is Tom and Jerry.

Without hesitation, he chose Tom, and then the patterns on the menu interface disappeared like snowflakes falling to the ground, followed by a game map that filled the screen.

The map is surrounded by white pixels as a fence, and the inside of the map is filled with many vertical and horizontal white walls. In the middle left of the map, there is a big headshot of Jerry, and on the corresponding right, there is It was a photo of Tom, and in the middle of the two, there was a vertical white wall, which was like a moat, separating the two.

After a countdown of Three, Two, One, the game on the screen seemed to be injected with life in an instant. Jerry on the left started to run wildly, not wanting to fall into the hands of natural enemies, but when he found that his old friend Tom was not chasing him Finally, it stopped in doubt, hiding behind a wall, as if wondering why that silly Tom would be so passive and sabotage.

While waiting for Ethan to shake the joystick to manipulate Tom to catch up, as if he heard the sound, Jerry started to run away again, trying to get rid of Tom's pursuit with the help of the power of geography.

"Oh Sxxt! This game can do it!"

After concentrating on playing a game, Ethan murmured to himself full of emotion, "Jerry's code is written in a very humane way. This behavior of stopping and waiting really feels like in a cartoon."

Even though Ethan didn't catch Jerry in the first round and didn't experience the thrill of winning, it didn't stop him from feeling that the game "Tom and Jerry" was done well.

The important thing is that the gameplay of this game is actually different from "Snake". "Snake" is constantly eating and growing up, while "Tom and Jerry" is an aboveboard hunt.

After the real subdivision, it is actually similar to the "Life and Death Speed" in Jinshan Typing made by Rebs later, except that in "Life and Death Speed", all progress is achieved by players typing short English sentences in the game Yes, but in Tom and Jerry, moving forward is just flicking the joystick.

This kind of feature that was copied but not completely copied made Ethan smile and shake his head. To be honest, he actually admired the designer of this game.Because according to Roy Disney's description, when he said that the game "Tom and Jerry" is very similar to "Snake", the designer who preached on stage was a little reluctant. It can be seen that MGM wants its designer to directly copy the success of Ethan Jones, but the designer does have some ideas of his own.

'It seems that there are conflicts between Party A and Party B all over the world~'

Ethan complained in his heart.

Then, he continued to test the game.

Since he didn't catch Jerry in the first round, he still played Tom in the second round. After he re-entered the game, he was surprised to find that the map of the game had changed.

This situation cheered him up, and he tested several times in a row. The expressiveness of the game made him look dignified. There are more than ten guaranteed maps in this game. When the AI ​​plays Jerry, the player's success probability of catching it should be It is 50.00%, because Jerry's stop seems to be related not only to Tom's capture speed, but also to the designer's design, and this situation...

Then you have to look at the code.

Thinking of this, Ethan turned off the machine directly, and then got into his sister's office.

Pushing the door open, he saw a girl in suspenders and ponytail staring intently at the Apple II in front of her. A huge green circuit board was scattered on the floor, and the CPU and memory that were soldered to it were all cut. It came down, and then the girl soldered her own board in an unknown way, and strung it into the Apple II, so that she could directly see the programming content in the game.

If MGM saw all this, they would definitely curse.

but……

What does this have to do with Ethan?

Roy Disney helped him get these things.

Well, that's right, in order to show sincerity, after MGM's new product launch conference, Roy Disney asked people to buy a few arcade machines, and then sent them to Palo Alto without any concealment.

"You finished the test over there? So fast?"

The sudden voice made the girl ask directly.

Perhaps it was because only Ethan would come in her office, so she didn't even raise her head.

"I haven't finished the test, I just played a dozen rounds as Tom."

"Then why did you come here?" The girl was a little curious.

Ethan told the truth, "MGM's game is pretty good, they made me eager to know how the character of Jerry was designed."

While explaining, he also leaned behind the desk and sat on the armrest of the girl's boss chair. When he put his hands on the back of the chair, he saw a pile of codes that looked like a bible on the monitor.

His doubt also provoked Evelyn to lean back, raised her head and said, "They did a good job."

"They're smarter than you."

"What?" Ethan was startled, "You said they were smarter than me?"

"This is impossible!"

Ethan doesn't accept this kind of evaluation. After all, he didn't make the games of Destiny Games himself. When he copied the inspiration of the previous explosion games, Evelyn said that these natives are better than him?
Ah--

Then in his previous life, why didn't these guys fight Taito, Namco, or Nintendo?
"I am telling the truth."

Evelyn saw her brother's dissatisfaction, smiled and stretched out her right hand, pointed to the code on the screen and said, "Their inspiration may not be comparable to yours, but their ideas are very simple, take this Jerry code For example, in this aspect of writing, MGM staff played a lot of tricks."

"Do you think Jerry in the game is as agile as Jerry in the animation?"

"That's because they reverse-wrote our code in Pac-Man."

"There are two ghosts in our "Pac-Man", one is red all over, has a bad temper and keeps chasing the player, the other likes to be lazy, and will rest there after not detecting the player's approach, and "Tom" Jerry in "And Jerry" uses a combination of these two codes."

"In MGM's design, Jerry's intermittent stop is the inverse of the lazy ghost in "Pac-Man". After it does not detect the player approaching, it will rest, and once it detects the player, it will stop. According to the writing idea of ​​the red ghost in "Pac-Man", locate the farthest coordinate and keep running. Among them, it also has a tired setting. When Jerry runs for ten seconds, the tired setting will be triggered, and then their program will pick a random number between one and ten to make it Jerry's last escape time. For example, if the number drawn by the program is three, then Jerry will Then stop and rest, if it's seven, Jerry will stop in seven seconds."

"This procedural combination is indeed more complicated than the single ghost in "Pac-Man" we made before, but if four ghosts are added together at the same time, then the total algorithm of Jerry in this game is Much less than Pac-Man."

"When they make a character with a recurring personality with a string of codes that are moderately difficult, it's definitely smarter than your subdivision idea... right?"

Although Evelyn asked rhetorically, her tone was full of affirmation.

After listening to his sister's description, Ethan frowned.

"You mean, they copied our code?"

"Uh—I just made a metaphor—" Evelyn shrugged, "The real content of the metaphor in the final result is different."

"Oh, all right." Ethan nodded.

"Why, you have some regrets?" Evelyn asked with a smile.

"hold head high."

Ethan showed his heart unabashedly.

"If we can legally confirm their plagiarism, wouldn't we be able to strangle them to death?"

Ethan admitted that the game "Tom and Jerry" did a good job, but as a competitor, it was Ethan's job to directly blow them up in a simple and clear way.

Not to mention……

MGM's group of brats even put their own hand on the movie project!
But when Evelyn said these people didn't copy...

Ugh!
What a pity!

Why don't you copy it!
After hearing these words, the girl laughed helplessly.

Instead of continuing with this topic, he turned his head and continued to introduce the game.

"The code they used when designing Jerry was interesting, and Tom's code was even more interesting, because the code of these two guys is literally copied..."

If Jerry's code is a combination of fish-catching ghosts and fiery ghosts, then Tom's code is a combination of chasing ghosts and fishing ghosts. In "Tom and Jerry", when players play the role of Jerry, what they face Tom is actually a lazy guy who feels tired from time to time.

Like Jerry's code, after ten seconds of chasing, the whole program will select a chasing time for Tom. If it is two, it means that Tom will continue chasing for two seconds before resting. If it is five, then It means that Tom will chase for another five seconds.

Of course, if it’s a simple rest, then when the player plays Jerry, Tom’s rest will suddenly reduce the difficulty of the entire game. They will treat their pursuers like monkeys.

cough cough...

Although Tom in the cartoon is not very smart.

But you can't do that in the game, right?
In order to give the player a certain sense of urgency, after Tom rests, his movement speed will suddenly increase. This process will last for five seconds. It is precisely because he will increase the speed suddenly that the player will be caught off guard in many cases. Defense, causing the player to be caught.

After reading the codes of the two characters, all the highlights of "Tom and Jerry" can be seen at a glance, and their maps, as Ethan guessed, there are 25 in total.

It seems a bit small, but that's not the point, right?

The real selling point of this game is still Tom and Jerry.When they have the distinct personalities in the animation in the game, they also have the highlights in the promotion.

"What about the other game?"

After listening to his sister's introduction, Ethan asked again: "Which "007"?"

When big companies are trying to get out, they can't just make one game.

In addition to "Tom and Jerry", they also pulled James Bond.

And this game-

"It's basically the same gameplay as Star Wars."

Evelyn knew what Ethan wanted to know, so she said, "But the code is not plagiarized."

"James Bond" is a shooting game. Maybe they thought the design of "Tom and Mouse" was good, so they directly designed the character controlled by the player as a Bond head.

This head is located at the bottom of the game interface, and it can move horizontally like "Star Wars". After pressing the button on the operation panel, he will shoot a bullet with a bang.

What he needs to eliminate is the enemy from above.

The enemy designs are actually the same as the alien spaceships in Star Wars, except they're all humanoid, er...well, different mosaic heads actually.

When the player controls James Bond to destroy an enemy, he will get one point, but if an enemy rushes to James Bond, then James Bond will lose one life. After losing three lives in total, The game will be declared over.

To be honest, compared with the sophistication of "Tom and Jerry", the production of this game is indeed a bit rough, but with the name of James Bond... it should be easy to sell.

"Is it stressful?"

Looking at Ethan standing in front of the electronic arcade machine in a daze, Evelyn asked with concern.

"what?"

This question brought Ethan back to his senses, then shook his head with a smile, and said, "No pressure."

As if to make his words more credible, he continued to explain: "If MGM releases the game with us, then I will definitely worry, because the head-to-head competition will definitely have an impact on sales, but What if we have gaps in when we release games?"

"Then this impact will be minimized over time!"

"Our machines have been sold!"

"How can their new tour pose a threat to us under such circumstances?"

Such words made Evelyn look at Ethan a few more times.

Under the girl's stare, Ethan also showed a confident smile.

But after he left his sister's office, the smile like the rising sun disappeared in an instant, replaced by the freezing cold of winter, and when he returned to his office, Ethan immediately called Steve Ballmer and told him He issued his latest mission.

"In the next period of time, you have to keep an eye on our products."

"Once there is an unreasonable drop in sales, just tell me directly."

"Okay?"

He stared sharply at the bald head.

Ballmer nodded immediately and said Okay, "Good boss, I sleep in the company these days."

(End of this chapter)