game trailblazer

Chapter 147 The New Generation Appears

Zhang Lexing didn't have much ambition in integrating the motherboard, and he didn't think about how much market share he wanted to occupy. He just hoped that the integration of the motherboard would be an opportunity, coupled with the cooperation of the operating system, so that the evolution of the PC would be a little faster. That's fine. Using Zhang Lexing's dream combination of dual-core button meat + GeForce8800GTX as soon as possible, the technical constraints on game development will be less.

After the matter in Hong Kong was over, Zhang Lexing returned to BJ. Not long after getting off the plane, he received news from the United States. The final budget of "Jedi Men" is determined to be 300 million US dollars, of which DreamWorks invests half, and the other half comes from East Star Fund, which was spun off from Red River Fund and specializes in film and television investment. Producer Jerry selected The director is Michael Bay recommended by Zhang Lexing, and the leading actors are Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, who are said to be third-rate actors.Zhang Lexing didn't have much idea about this. Anyway, there were professionals working on it, and the director didn't change, so the result shouldn't be too far off.

Not long after, news from Blue Information Market Research Company and Russell Market Research Company also came back.In their investigative report, they wrote:

"3DFX is located in San Jose, California, and was founded in March 1994 by three founders, Scott Sellers from SGI (Silicon Image) and Gary Taroli and Ross Smith from MediaVision. 3DFX company has received 3 million US dollars of venture capital at the beginning of its establishment. According to investigations, the company is developing a 550D accelerator card common to game consoles and PCs. It is said that its code name is 'Voodoo (voodoo)'...

NVIDIA (NVIDIA) was founded in January 1993 by Huang Renxun, Curtis Prim and Chris Malachalsky. The office is located in Santa Clara, California. The venture capital at the beginning of its establishment came from Red River Fund, the first investment is 1 million US dollars, in exchange for 220% of the equity.According to investigations, the company is researching multimedia acceleration chips, which are likely to include 25D/2D graphics cards, sound cards, and game controller interfaces...

Considering the demand for hard disk-related technologies, two suitable R&D teams were selected after screening. One is Konas in Silicon Valley, which is mainly good at miniaturization and energy consumption control, and the other is a microdrive company in San Jose. Mainly good at recording density and data transfer rate.These two companies are both smaller companies with strong technical strength, and the difficulty of acquisition is very small.

There are many R&D companies related to PC and server power supplies, which will be listed in a table below, and companies with acquisition value will be marked with asterisks in the table...

……

At present, RB has not found a company engaged in the research and development of force feedback technology. The United States has currently investigated two companies engaged in related technology research. One is a research institute under the VisualSystem Group, and the other is Immersion, a company located in Silicon Valley... Immersion was established in 1992. Mainly engaged in the research of new technologies of human-computer interaction, including [-]D digital input, medical simulation and game control, etc. One of the company's research code-named 'I-Force' is closely related to force feedback technology. Immersion is currently small in scale, and the difficulty of acquisition is very small. "

After reading the investigation reports from Blue Information and Russell, Zhang Lexing knew that 3DFX, the pioneer of the 3D era, and NVIDIA, the future graphics card leader, had just started at this time, and they could not be compared with the current ATI company. , no one can imagine that the future changes will be so great. 3DFX company Zhang Lexing is not worried, it is just the fate of being acquired, but NVIDIA (NVIDIA) cannot be underestimated at all. Thinking that ATI was forced to merge with AMD in order to survive, Zhang Lexing couldn't help but tremble with fear.But what I didn't expect now is that the first venture capital of NVIDIA (NVIDIA) actually came from Honghe Fund. It seems that I can slowly bring this company into my own control in the future, so that I don't need to worry about future investment. There has been a two-power struggle for hegemony.

The hard disks and power supplies needed for the blade server are not planned to be produced by Zhang Lexing himself in the future. After all, the scale of the production plant is not so easy to grow, and everything is invested and produced by himself. One is that the effect is too slow, and the other is that it takes up too much money. .Zhang Lexing's goal is actually to develop related interfaces and standards, so there is no need to think about some future hard disk manufacturers. According to the survey report, one or two R&D teams will be enough to buy. Of course, this matter can be handed over. For the future blade server R&D team to choose.

Zhang Lexing was a little surprised by the force feedback technology. He didn't expect that his company's research institute was already researching it. It seems that the usual attention is still too little, and maybe a lot of good things have been missed.The application of force feedback technology in the future is quite extensive. It is no longer the simple application of the steering wheel in the early days, and even the mouse and LCD touch screen can be used.A mouse that supports force feedback technology can give users different feelings through vibration feedback. When the mouse pointer passes over objects on the screen, it can be felt from the mouse.The LCD touch screen that supports force feedback technology allows users to feel the touch of buttons being pressed and released, instead of the cold screen and tactile experience of the past.What makes Zhang Lexing most interested is the application of force feedback technology in games. Although it is relatively primitive now, I believe that as force feedback technology becomes more and more refined in the future, it will be able to bring real touch to players in games. At that time, there may be some game scenes that completely rely on touch to pass the level.Zhang Lexing did not intend to let go of the Immersion company that is also doing force feedback technology research. Although Zhang Lexing doesn't mind competitors, he doesn't like competitors from outside the system, because it will bring unsafe feelings. , so Immersion must acquire, at least the controlling stake must be mastered.

Putting down the investigation report, Zhang Lexing thought about it, and it seemed that what he had to arrange now was only related to Immersion.So I picked up the phone and dialed the 24-hour exclusive phone number opened by Honghe Fund for myself, assigned the task of acquiring or holding Immersion, and reminded me by the way that I would gradually expand my investment in NVIDIA (NVIDIA) at the right time. equity.

……

After a day off, Zhang Lexing returned to the creative workshop on August 8th. The "Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Obsidian" project teams are still wandering in Shenzhen, but they sent back a CD containing some cutscenes of the game. After watching it, Zhang Lexing felt that it was much more beautiful than before.Domestic games have the same common problems as domestic movies—the production is relatively rough and the details are not fine enough. This will reach a peak in a future game under the banner of patriotism. A semi-finished product like garbage is actually high-sounding. Zhang Lexing does not want this to happen again, at least the games produced by his company must become the benchmark of quality, no matter which part of the game it is, it must be as good as possible.

Since the "Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Obsidian" project teams set off to Shenzhen, the creative workshop had nothing to put on the table except for the 3D engine project. It's some development work similar to casual games, and I don't expect to make anything, basically it's used to accumulate some initial experience.The reason for this is also because project managers lack confidence in newcomers, and some project managers are even beginners themselves.However, he has never been involved in big projects, and the growth of newcomers is relatively slow, so Zhang Lexing also has the idea of ​​starting a new project when he comes back this time. Anyway, in the first few years, he never thought that he could make money from this, just like some online games. Just like practicing skills with money, I hope to create more excellent development teams.

So on the first day Zhang Lexing returned to the creative workshop, he summoned Zhao Yuanhuan and several project managers, Chu Ge, to discuss the opening of a new game project.

When they came to the meeting room, Zhang Lexing said first after all the people arrived, "Wang Mengyao, please take the minutes of the meeting, and Zhao Yuanhuan, please tell us about the current situation of the development team."

Wang Mengyao spread out her notebook, picked up a pen and got ready to record.Zhao Yuanhuan thought about it for a while, and then said: "Well, boss, the total number of developers in the company has reached 210, including 42 planners, 98 programmers, 36 artists, 24 QA, and 10 music. "Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Obsidian" project teams, as well as the 3D engine R&D team, can mobilize 102 people after deducting QA and music. At present, most of these people are developing small practice projects, which are expected to be completed within five days. "

"Well, how many project managers are there in the company?" Zhang Lexing asked again.

"Boss, including me, there are seven people in total, but the others only have experience in small projects, and they still need to be honed."

"Well, I really need to practice more." Zhang Lexing nodded: "So I plan to participate in a few formal projects to give everyone a chance to exercise. Since there are still seven project managers, let's participate in six projects, Zhao Yuanhuan You will be the general coordinator."

When the other project managers heard that there are seven people and six projects, and Zhao Yuanhuan has to be the general coordinator, doesn't that mean that everyone has a project to start, and it's not the small practice project like before, and they all get excited immediately up.

Zhao Yuanhuan is very calm, and he can even be said to be a little worried: "But boss, everyone is not very experienced. Is it a bit rash to start a formal project now, and it is easy to cause project failure."

"It doesn't matter. Even the experience of failure is very precious. If there is no opportunity to accumulate experience, it will never be possible to achieve great growth." Seeing that Zhao Yuanhuan wanted to open his mouth again, Zhang Lexing waved his hand and said, "No need to persuade me anymore. After careful consideration, the current investment is also for future development.”

Seeing that everyone's interest was very high, Zhao Yuanhuan stopped insisting. In fact, he was also very envious when he saw Zhan Jun and others working on the project alone, and hoped that he would have a chance, but Zhao Yuanhuan knew that he and Zhan Jun Zhan Jun is different. Zhan Jun is good at leading the team to fight, and he is better at personnel scheduling, so it doesn't surprise him to be the general coordinator.

"Everyone, in the next period of time, each of you will master a project. As for what game to develop, you can decide on your own, but in order to train everyone to the maximum, everything will follow the formal process. Your own Look for ideas, make a budget, and after approval, Zhao Yuanhuan will dispatch the staff. But I have a requirement that everyone can’t make the same type of game. If this happens, I will only approve one game, except for composite types of games. Okay, do you have any questions?"

Everyone looked at me and I looked at yours, but no one stood up to answer. After waiting for a while, just as Zhang Lexing was about to announce the end of the meeting, a relatively thin man stood up: "Boss, my name is Ren Haoqiang. Well, I would like to ask whether there is a cap on this budget."

"Ren Haoqiang, right? There is no limit to the budget this time, but everyone please note that no limit does not mean that you can report the budget at will. Your project budget must be reviewed for rationality. For example, a project only needs 100 million yuan. It can be completed, but you report 500 million without giving a reasonable reason, then the budget of this project will not be passed. Of course, since everyone is doing a formal project for the first time, I will give you a little more lenient In the environment, it doesn’t matter if there is a certain deviation when reporting the budget. You are allowed to make certain corrections during the project, and you will not be assessed because of this deviation after the project is completed. If the project is successfully released and gains income, the development team of the project can also Get the corresponding dividends according to the company's regulations."

"Boss, my name is An Xintong. May I ask if there are really no restrictions on the subject matter this time?" Someone stood up again, but this time it was a woman, and she was the only woman among the group of project managers.

"Well, that's right, you can make any theme you can think of. I won't make restrictions. The only thing I want is to ask everyone to choose different types of games. Well, do you have any questions?" Zhang Lexing waited for 2 minutes and saw Everyone had no intention of talking anymore, and announced: "Since there are no problems, I will give you two weeks to come up with the themes, manpower requirements, and preliminary budgets that you each want to do as soon as possible. Your information After the submission is submitted, it will be publicly reviewed, and the progress will be posted on the company's internal BBS (electronic bulletin board), so please pay attention to it. Alright, let's end the meeting."

……

In less than a week, everyone submitted the project application reports one after another.For example, Ren Haoqiang submitted an application for a Three Kingdoms game, but it is not a traditional strategy game, but a real-time strategy game like "Dune II".In his report, he wrote: "...with the novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" as the background". The required manpower is 15 people, including four planners, six programmers, and five artists. The initial estimate of the project budget is 180 million, of which The equipment cost is xxxxx yuan, the art production cost is xxxxx yuan... the cutscenes of the game are planned to be part of the TV series "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" that is currently being broadcast, and the copyright purchase fee involved is xxxxx yuan...

The game is divided into the plots of Wei and Shu, starting from the rise of Cao Cao and Liu Bei respectively, and ending with the third division of the world. In the process of this plot, it is planned to arrange fifteen to twenty battles..."

And what An Xintong submitted was indeed a different theme as she said. In her report, she wrote: "...The name of the game: Happy Farm...The required manpower is 12 people, including three planners and five programmers. people and four artists. The project budget is initially estimated at 80..."

At first glance, Zhang Lexing thought that she was going to do a flash game "Happy Farm" in the future, but after a closer look, it was not the case.

The back of An Xintong's report reads: "...Andy (the protagonist) lives in Tianxiang Town, and there is a farm on the edge of the town. One day Andy's parents went out for a trip, so the important task of taking care of the farm is It fell on Andy...

In the game, players can raise several kinds of livestock (sheep, cattle) and poultry (chicken, duck), and can also plant some crops (rice, wheat, corn, potatoes, Chinese cabbage, tomato), and of course there will be some to make trouble Guys (prairie dogs destroying crops, wild dogs stealing poultry), players can reduce the occurrence of these incidents after getting dogs..."

Taking a closer look, Zhang Lexing felt that if he added a part of chasing girls, it would be very similar to the game "Harvest Moon" he once played, which is an interesting game.

The project applications submitted by several other people are also very interesting. For example, a person named Yan Dali submitted an application for an FPS game, and his inspiration came from the Build engine verification *** of the 3D engine R&D team. This game was named by him For "Blood Battle on the Bund".The most special one is Zhou Zhehan. He proposed a card battle game "Mythology" (with the background of Shan Hai Jing), which is similar to the "Game King" that Zhang Lexing has seen, but I don't know how Zhou Zhehan came up with it. .The two foreign project applications are Chen Shunde's "C + Detective" (a decryption game with an urban detective background) and Zheng Hongwen's "Rage Tank" (a barrage shooting game).

Although the project managers were inexperienced, they worked very hard on the application and the budget was not exaggerated. So after careful review, Zhang Lexing approved all of them with a stroke of his pen.Under Zhao Yuanhuan's scheduling, the six projects began to start in an orderly manner. Of course, the ten people in charge of music were not idle. In the future, the soundtracks and sound effects of these six projects will all come from their hands, which is also true for them. A great opportunity to exercise.

(End of this chapter)