game trailblazer

Chapter 291 The Big Thousand World
PS: When I uploaded yesterday, I accidentally uploaded the wrong chapter. I uploaded Chapter 68 in advance, and re-adjusted it today. Please forgive me!
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Zhang Lexing still prefers the "RealTown" project, and he will not ignore its development potential and its possible relationship with Game2.0 (players create game content).However, before investing, he still needs to have a good chat with the creative provider of the "RealTown" project to ensure that the "RealTown" project is what he wants. After all, no one can Make sure there is no misunderstanding between the two parties.

The creative providers of the "RealTown" project obviously also had this consideration in mind. At the end of the entire creative draft, they provided their own contact information. Coincidentally, the contact numbers inside are all Hong Kong local numbers, which means Maybe it won't be long before Zhang Lexing will be able to meet the creator of the "RealTown" project.Sure enough, in the afternoon of that day, Zhang Lexing met the initiators of the "RealTown" project, or the initiators, in the cafe downstairs from his company, because there were three people who came, one with chestnut hair and wearing A high-nosed foreigner in a blue and white striped long-sleeved T-shirt, a sunny-looking man in a white shirt, and a young woman who looks like an office worker in a simple and neat professional suit, there are two men and one woman.

When Zhang Le walked past, the three of them clearly recognized each other, and immediately stood up to say hello, but what surprised him was that the mandarin words that came out of the foreigner's mouth were similar: "Zhang Le Hello, sir, my name is Andy Streeter, you can also call me my Chinese name Qiao Ansheng, or simply call me Asheng."

Zhang Lexing was taken aback for a moment, and then laughed: "Ah Sheng, your Mandarin is pretty good. It seems that you have been in China for a long time."

"It's not short. I have stayed in BJ and Shanghai for many years... I also came to Hong Kong in the past two years." Andy Streeter still had a look of nostalgia on his face when he said it. As if he remembered something that impressed him deeply.

The sunny man stood aside and introduced himself: "Mr. Zhang, hello, my name is Chen Kewen, and I am Ah Sheng's partner. I was in Shanghai before coming to Hong Kong..."

The OL girl also introduced herself at this time: "Mr. Zhang, hello, my name is Ye Yutong, and I am also Asheng's partner. I am a native of Hong Kong..."

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the two sides sat down respectively, ordered a few more cups of coffee, and began to enter today's topic.Zhang Lexing said straight to the point: "Guys, I have read the draft game ideas you submitted, and I think your ideas are still very innovative, but I still have some doubts about the description of some places, so I hope everyone can communicate face to face, so as not to cause any misunderstandings and affect future cooperation."

"Yes, Mr. Zhang, what you said is very reasonable." Andy Streeter nodded again and again: "I don't know what aspects you are talking about?"

Chen Kewen and Ye Yutong also nodded at the same time, their eyes turned to Zhang Lexing, expecting his words.Zhang Lexing took a sip of the coffee in front of him, then put down the cup and said: "First of all, I need to determine the future development direction of your creative draft, whether it is going to a specific game, or to the technology of virtual reality Walk?"

After the three of them looked at each other, Chen Kewen explained: "Mr. Zhang, our idea is to develop the game engine, and to transform 'RealTown' into a general-purpose virtual world construction system as much as possible if conditions permit." ..."

Maybe it was because of his professional scope, Chen Kewen seemed a little excited, and began to talk endlessly, words such as world system, human body modeling, action design, artificial intelligence, and emotional simulation popped out of his mouth. I understand, but I feel a little dizzy when I follow the more detailed description. In short, it is a lot of professional-sounding words "stacked".

Zhang Lexing had to deliberately cough a few times, and then interjected and asked: "I roughly understand that your research direction should be the general construction engine of the virtual world, and there should be more technical aspects of virtual reality."

Ye Yutong nodded, smiled and said, "Yes, Mr. Zhang, that's what we mean."

"Well," Zhang Lexing nodded slightly, and continued to ask: "So do you have any goals for this 'RealTown' project, such as what kind of effect can be achieved in the short term or within three to five years, and what kind of effect can be achieved in the medium term , What kind of effect will it achieve in the long run?"

This time it was Andy Streeter who came forward to explain. He took out a prepared document and handed it over. Zhang Lexing took the document and looked at it. It was the forecast chart of the research situation of the 'RealTown' project. .According to this chart, their short-term (three to five years) goal is to simulate a small town close to the real one on a computer with performance equivalent to that of dual R-4502A processors (250MHz, 6.2GFLOPS). The area does not exceed 0.6 square kilometers (calculated according to the real environment), the number of residents in the town is not less than 5 households with 20 people, and there are no more than 5 family pets, and the intelligent and emotional simulation of characters and pets is realized through "virtual multi-threading technology" , and try to expand the scope of simulation to the wild animals and plants within the town, focusing on building the data flow model and external interactive access interface of the town world.The medium-term simulation goal has two directions, one is a larger town, which can evolve to the city level, and the other is the coexistence of multiple towns, focusing on data exchange between towns.The long-term goal is to develop towards a larger-scale world simulation, and finally reach the virtual world at the planet level.

After reading this chart, Zhang Lexing couldn't help being silent for a while. Sure enough, a virtual world that is close to nature is not so easy to do. In fact, this is also understandable. After all, in the original 2008, not to mention online games, the most successful virtual world in China, even The stand-alone game with the fastest technological progress cannot achieve a complete simulation of the real world. Whether it is due to development funds or technical reasons, there are always certain trade-offs in the game, even in the "Sims" series. .

Zhang Lexing sighed slightly in his heart, and asked: "What is the form of the external interactive access interface you mentioned? Is it the AI ​​simulator described in the creative draft? Through the perspective of the simulator, we can communicate with the people in the town. people to communicate with?"

"Yeah, Mr. Zhang, this should be the most exciting part of our creativity. You can think about it," Andy Streeter waved his hands and said, "When this town grows to a certain size , you walked into the town as an outsider, you can feel the peaceful idyllic atmosphere of the town, talk to the residents in the town, learn about their simple daily life, and try to take care of the cats and dogs in the town Dogs, build a close relationship with them, and it won't disappear when you leave, when you come next time, people in the town may already take the initiative to call you by name, cat cat dog They will also automatically run up and rub their heads against your shoes..."

"It is undeniable that the scene you describe, Asheng, is very attractive, especially for people living in big cities, but from the perspective of investors, it is not easy to convert your research projects into final products. And now you are probably not too sure when you will reach the situation you described." Zhang Lexing paid attention to the expressions of the three while he was speaking, when he was speaking the first half of the sentence, the emotions of the three appeared It was very high-pitched, but when he said the words after the "but", the three of them were obviously discouraged, and the disappointment could not be concealed on their faces.

"However..." When Zhang Lexing spit out another turning point, the three of them immediately cheered up, their eyes full of expectation, and they looked at him together.

"...Well, I hope that while you are conducting your own research, you can help me research something else along the way. If you agree, I can help you provide the necessary equipment and funds for your research."

The three looked at each other, hesitated for a while, and Andy Streeter opened his mouth and asked: "Mr. Zhang, can you tell me about the project you want to research first? If it is within our capabilities, naturally it will not There is something wrong, but if it exceeds our ability, then I'm afraid..."

"I think you can do it. To put it simply, what I need is a common data exchange module between virtual worlds." Zhang Lexing explained.

"A general data exchange module between virtual worlds?" The three of them repeated in unison.

"Yes, a general data exchange module between virtual worlds." Zhang Lexing nodded and explained in detail: "Take the town you imagined as an example, assuming that there are two towns at the same time, we activated an AI simulator to arrive There were some changes in the first town (changed costumes, increased character attributes, etc.), and then went to another town, but the two towns are somewhat different in world description. For example, the previous town is a real world The idyllic town that exists is very calm and peaceful, with nothing out of the ordinary. The latter town is magical, with elves, dwarves, orcs and other non-human creatures, or simply a foreign town. The world of the planet is completely irrelevant to the reality of the small town. In this extreme case, the data exchange between the two towns, especially when our AI simulator travels between the two towns, It must be controlled and converted, otherwise all strange problems will appear. I wonder if everyone I mentioned understands what is going on?"

After finishing speaking, Zhang Lexing picked up the coffee and tasted it slowly while waiting for the response in front of him. After the three nodded, they all fell into deep thought.After a while, when Zhang Lexing almost finished his cup of coffee, Chen Kewen seemed to have figured it out, and said, "Mr. Zhang, I roughly understand what you mean. You hope to establish a relatively common At the level of data exchange, when a character shuttles between different virtual worlds, the data exchange level will filter out irrelevant data and fill in the required data. For example, an AI simulator first took After arriving at a scroll of fireball magic, and then traveling to an environment similar to the real society, then this scroll of fireball magic is an item that should not exist. If the data is directly transmitted from the magic era to the real society without processing, then When you are lucky, the fireball magic scroll may turn into other useful things, but when you are unlucky (for example, the data bit of the fireball magic scroll happens to occupy a key system data bit), it may cause the collapse of the entire virtual world. Therefore, in the process of data transmission into the real society, it must be processed by the data exchange layer to filter out these data that may cause accidents, and to make up for things that exist in the real society but not in the magical society..."

Zhang Lexing nodded. What Chen Kewen said was indeed what he thought. Of course, strictly speaking, this thing should not only be used to develop games, and it is not even the MMORPG online games that will be common in the future, but a composite game he imagined. A game platform, a kind of "game" that he called "Big Thousand World".

The so-called "big world" is actually a game world composed of many virtual worlds of different sizes. The first world called "Safety Island" is located in the center. This is a virtual world hosted by cloud computing. It is also where all players appear after logging in.Here, players can exercise their game characters (virtual avatars) in a certain career direction just like playing "The Sims".

Each profession has its own game mode. For example, if you are in politics, you may become the mayor of your city (supported by more than two-thirds of the citizens, including player citizens and NPC citizens), and then use a similar " To plan the development direction of the city where the player is located, to formulate various laws (for example, the threshold of citizen qualification can be stipulated, for example, the tax rate of different enterprises can be adjusted, for example, whether to allow a certain industry to be legalized, etc.) .

Another example is that as an entrepreneur, you can start from a roadside stall and develop into a large-scale enterprise with strong influence in the entire city like "Business Tycoon", or even a corporate empire that extends its influence to other cities.And if you are a sports player, such as a football player, you can develop the attributes of your game character just like developing a game, and then find a way to start from an amateur club, and then rely on your wonderful performance to attract players from professional clubs. Scouts pay attention, and eventually land in a professional club and become a professional athlete.

Most of the games in the first world are relatively casual and entertaining games like this, and the competitive ones are just competitions between cities, or the cruelest ones are business competitions, but it is not like "Financial Empire", " A large collection of simulation games such as "Theme Hospital", "Pro Evolution Football", "NBA2K", "Golf", "Infinite Flight", and even some "CM0304", "Basketball Manager", "China Ball King" and the like game, but the more exciting parts of "Big Thousand Worlds" are actually in other subsidiary worlds.

According to Zhang Lexing's idea, the affiliated world of "Big Thousand World" should be divided into two categories. One is the "model world" produced by authorized professional game development companies, which belongs to the category with better effects of large-scale productions. Conventional online games, even stand-alone games that support multiplayer mode (running on Yungui computing platforms similar to OnLive technology), must have a "universal game data exchange interface", which is the "virtual world" mentioned above. With the support of this interface or module, players can enter different "mode worlds" through the transfer window of the first world, and can play like ordinary stand-alone games. The results can be fed back to the first world, for example, a reward for a special item can be obtained in the "mode world".

The other is a world created by players themselves. It can be very complicated or simple. It can be a romantic pink beach or a small house. If players have the energy, they can make it by themselves. Create a complete game world, and even hang it on the first world, just like Qidian’s Chinese novels, earning income based on the subscription status of players after trial play, as if players can also operate their own games.

This is also the future development direction of the game industry guessed by Zhang Lexing. The wind of entertainment niche will eventually blow into the game industry. After all, people’s needs are actually all kinds of strange things. Depending on your mood, you may make different choices. Maybe you will find "stealing food" very enjoyable today, but maybe you will find this kind of thing boring when you wake up tomorrow morning.At that time, it may become more and more difficult for large game companies to make games that are liked by enough people. Instead, some relatively small and medium-sized game development studios with strong planning and art capabilities, and even some The great people can survive better if they fight alone, because the people they need to satisfy are only one-thousandth or even one-ten-thousandth of the big companies, just like the online novels that are about to become popular.

Perhaps at that time, the most famous game platforms on the market are large-scale game platforms like "Starting Chinese" and well-known game "writers" who shine on these platforms. When technical obstacles are caused by cloud computing, virtualization technology, and virtual control technology Waiting for the maturity to be cleared, maybe the era of blowout in the number of games will usher in, maybe many people's daily work is to find ways to conceive their next game, how to attract more subscribers, and even become Chinese It is a new way to earn money for foreigners by working part-time. After all, games like this sometimes have no national boundaries. This can be seen from the "Cloud" and "Floating World" developed by Chen Xinghan.

And from Zhang Lexing's point of view, perhaps only under this kind of system would it be possible for games like "Infinite Horror" to appear, and it would be possible to create that weird main god light ball to meet the conditions for multiple entry into that perverted world.Of course, Zhang Lexing's main purpose is not to develop games like "Infinite Horror", but to occupy this market in advance, and such a large game platform circles not only computer users, but even TV game users (via DreamBox128 or its follow-up Upgraded game consoles), film and television entertainment users, etc., this may be his greatest ambition ever.

(End of this chapter)