game trailblazer

Chapter 310 The Legend of the Clover

"...SNK America has officially closed its business on June 6... The SNK subsidiary of the Aruzhi Group announced the comprehensive launch of the European and American video game markets, and withdrew all forces to focus on the RB market. Its spokesperson said: 'The restructured SNk The company will adjust its global marketing strategy. All product business related to handheld NeoGeoPocketColor, DreamBox22, Dreamcast and PlayStation in Europe and the United States will be canceled soon. The European SNK branch is discussing the aftermath with its partners. Party is satisfied. And RBSNk company will continue to operate in the past, there will be no change'..."

"...Because of the layoffs after the Aruzhi Group came to power, many former SNK employees felt dissatisfied. We have secretly contacted some of them. Among them, the main members of KofTeam have agreed to leave after completing "KOF2000". Mori Kilou, the queen painter of the "KOF" series, will also join, and we plan to place this team in Shanghai..."

"... DarkWorks, the production company of "Haunted House 4", announced yesterday that it will develop a game called "128: Arctic Othello" for the DreamBox1906 game console. The game is written by the famous French science fiction novelist Jules Van Influenced by early science fiction novels such as Erner's "[-] Leagues Under the Sea", "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "From the Earth to the Moon", this will become a survival adventure game with many unexplored regions and destructive forces in the game world. Amazing mechanical equipment..."

"New World Computer plans to use the Visual System Group's GameLiveNetwork platform, and intends to launch the online version of "Magic Gate", a multiplayer online game similar to "Online Genesis", but with a larger world..."

"According to the news from VisualSystem Group, a week ago, they acquired NetGamesUSA, a company located in Kansas, USA. After that, NetGamesUSA's game statistics technology will be applied to new games, and it will also be used on the two platforms of GameLiveNetwork and DreamBoxLive..."

"A report from Blizzard shows that "Diablo 2" has sold 100 million copies worldwide within two weeks of its launch... This achievement is once again comparable to the game "Legend of Black Stone 2" developed by Creative Workshop... "

Zhang Lexing turned the mouse wheel, looked at the emails that appeared on the screen, and occasionally attached his own opinions to the necessary emails. Now he rarely leaves Hong Kong. Just let your subordinates deal with it directly, and they can write an email back after they are done.Zhang Lexing only needs to understand the current situation, know what happened, and understand that those things are still being dealt with. Of course, there are also things that he cares about, such as the promotion of the Independent Games Festival and DreamBox128.

……

One late night in early July, Li Wenbo, as usual, chose to turn on the ISDN dial-up connection at this time when the number of Internet users was relatively small and the Internet speed was relatively fast, and he connected to the Internet to surf.Usually, he would first open the portal to see what news there is, and at the same time open FoxMail to receive emails, then hang up ICQ to see if anyone has left a message, and then go to the "Game Making" section of the "Vagabond Tribe" forum to fill in the water.But this time is slightly different. A friend has been recommending an online game called "King of Kings" for a while, but he has no time to spare because he is busy developing the game. It just so happens that the debugging of the game has basically been completed today. His girlfriend Mi Xiaonuo flew to South Korea again. He was bored for a while and remembered the online game his friend mentioned, so he found the official website of "King of Kings" according to the URL sent by his friend.

At first glance, this game seems to be quite troublesome. There are a lot of command lists, such as say, reply, kill, and follow. If it is not for these commands, there are icons Optionally, Li Wenbo thought he was seeing Mud. When he saw that there were almost three versions of expression commands in the game, his feeling became more obvious.

The occupation system is also very complicated. According to the instructions on the official website, there are 25 occupations at level 9, including a lot of knights, berserkers, rangers, sages, etc. If the level is higher, according to the official website, it can still be done. A so-called second turn.In addition, there are teleportation crystals, hostile declarations of war, national subjects, etc., which Li Wenbo has not fully figured out for a while.What's worse, when he opened the "Related Downloads" column, he found that the King of Kings client had been downloaded, but it was as big as 244M bytes.Li Wenbo uses ISDN to access the Internet, which is the fastest way now. When billing the B channel, it is 64Kbps, which means that in theory, 8K bytes can be downloaded per second, so 244M bytes is what is needed. 31232 seconds, which is equivalent to about 520 minutes, or 8 hours and 40 minutes.

In order to play such a complicated game, it took more than 8 hours to download the client first. Li Wenbo scratched his head, thinking that it seemed a bit too extravagant. It's fun to play stand-alone games for a while or go to "Lianzhong Game World" to play two sets of arch pigs.Thinking of this, Li Wenbo closed the official website of "The King of Kings" and clicked on "Lianzhong Game World". Unexpectedly, the "Lianzhong Member" advertisement banner he saw a while ago has been changed, and now it says "Indie Game Contest, A Place to Create Dreams".

Looking at the title written on the advertisement, Li Wenbo muttered, "Indie game? What kind of thing is this? I don't think I've heard of it before, but it looks a little familiar, as if I've seen it somewhere."

Li Wenbo felt very strange and very curious, so he moved the mouse and clicked on the advertisement bar, and a new browser window popped up, and within a minute, the content of the web page appeared...

"Have you ever played games?" [Li Wenbo nodded unconsciously. 】

"Have you ever been excited, sad, or frightened by a game made by someone else?" [Li Wenbo couldn't help but nodded when he thought of playing "Mistlock" by himself two summer nights and almost being too scared to go to the toilet. . 】

"Have you ever thought about developing a game yourself?" [Li Wenbo nodded his head hard, he has been working on developing games recently. 】

"Have you ever thought about what to do after developing and playing the game? Should it be shelved, put on the Internet for people to download, or sold to some intelligent agency company?" [Li Wenbo frowned slightly, honestly speaking, their job room to develop games together, I really didn't think too much about the future.Now is the time to think about this matter. It is definitely impossible to put it on the shelf after it is finished. It seems that the size of the game is a bit large. It's not easy. Finding someone to distribute it as an agent seems to be... more difficult. 】

"Then what are you waiting for? Come and participate in the first independent game competition in China. There is no age limit, no education background limit, no limit to subject matter, and no limit to platform. As long as you can develop it, you can participate in the competition..." [Li Wenbo His eyes lit up, this is really a good place to go, not to mention the issue of winning or not, at least there is a chance to communicate with colleagues. 】

Li Wenbo clicked the "Participate in the Competition" button with the mouse, and opened a new page again, which wrote: "The Independent Game Competition is one of the contents of the first independent game festival in China. This competition and the independent game festival are sponsored by the Chinese game industry. Every participating individual or group (hereinafter referred to as 'entrant') agrees to abide by the terms of the 'Official Rules' and respect the binding final decisions made by the sponsor and the judging committee on all matters related to the competition.

……

How to enter:

All entrants meeting the requirements of the 'Official Rules' must submit all of the following materials by May 2001, 5 ('Entry Deadline'):
*Accurately and completely completed official registration form

*Submit an electronic version of the game entry ('entry game') by any of the following methods:

1) Upload the participating games to the official competition website (after submitting the entry form, you will get a specific FTP account);
2) Post eight (8) copies of the entry, which must be copies of the playable version of the participating game, eight (8) copies in one copy, and the storage medium can be a disk or CD (CD is recommended), together with some demo games that must be included Eight (8) copies of special equipment and hardware and any other supplementary materials.

Address: Room 33, BJ Hotel, No. 8012 East Chang'an Street, BJ City, China (Zip Code: 100004)

Tel: 86-10-64561234, ext. Room 8012

Recipient: Miss Yao

Note: All entry materials are owned by the sponsor (not involving the copyright of the game itself) and will not be returned.

……

Finalists require:
Chinese citizens who are in good health and whose residence is in the mainland can participate in this competition...Developers who pass the first round of screening and whose games do not contain content that does not violate the current laws of our country will be finalists...Each finalist must submit The independent game festival will display the shortlisted games on site. The organizer will provide a uniform standard display stand and bear the relevant expenses. If you need to build a booth by yourself, the cost will be borne by the finalists... The food, lodging and round-trip travel expenses during the period will be borne by the organizer of the conference... …

Any individual finalist who is unable to attend the meeting for some reason needs to formally nominate a proxy participant. The finalist must send the proxy participant's name and contact information to the email within ten (10) days after receiving the nomination notice send to[email protected].

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prize settings;

*Best Game: A comprehensive score will be given based on the overall creativity, production quality, highlights and entertainment experience of each participating game.

*Best Sound Effects: A comprehensive score will be given based on the overall creativity, production quality and highlights of the music and sound effects of each participating game.

*Best Technology: Composite scoring will be based on the technology utilization and innovation demonstrated by each game in the game engine and coding base.

*Best Visual Art: A comprehensive score will be given based on the creativity, production quality and highlights of each participating game’s screen and visual effects.

......"

The rules for the competition are very long, but Li Wenbo read it carefully from beginning to end. Sure enough, as advertised, there are almost no restrictions on participation (the only restriction is that commercially released games are not allowed to participate in the competition), and the organizer also bears the responsibility Not only can food and housing be managed in other places, but even travel expenses can be reimbursed.More importantly, it was also mentioned later that "each finalist will receive three VIP participation certificates for the 2001 China Game Developers Conference and up to six exhibition visitor certificates", as well as in magazines, websites and China's first independent game festival. Finalists' games are mentioned in awards ceremony flyers and post-event reports.

These are exactly what Li Wenbo dreamed of. He doesn't care about food and housing. Anyway, [-]% of the independent game competition will be held in BJ. The key is that if you are shortlisted, you can show your work at the independent game festival, and also Being able to obtain the participation certificate of the China Game Developers Conference, not only to introduce his own game to others, but also to learn from those seniors in the game industry, this kind of opportunity is not often available, and of course he will not let it go.

Li Wenbo copied the rules of the Independent Game Contest into WPS, printed two copies through the newly purchased black and white inkjet printer, and then closed the two browser windows that popped up. At this moment, he suddenly remembered that there is a place that must be visited. After taking a look, he opened the "Homeless Tribe" forum that he often went to, and sure enough, there was the same advertisement on the homepage that said "Indie Game Contest, A Place to Create Dreams", which was exactly what he thought.

Li Wenbo is very excited now, a kind of excitement that his dream has a chance to be realized. If we say that when Clover Studio was first established, they just wanted to fulfill a wish and develop a game by themselves, but after this period of time, After tempering and tasting the ups and downs of the game development process, their ideas are no longer limited to making a game.Although they don't have much confidence in their own games, they still hope to be appreciated by others. Even if only a few people like it, it is at least a kind of recognition. At least Li Wenbo knows that he definitely thinks so.

If he could make his own decision, then Li Wenbo would definitely choose to participate in this independent game competition, but the Four Leaf Clover Studio is not his alone. It is still necessary for several people to discuss major matters first, especially now that the members of Clover Studio are not only the original four people, the necessary respect is still needed.

(End of this chapter)