game trailblazer

Chapter 71 The Call of the Ocean

Orem used to be an avid game console player. As he grew older, especially when "Sim City" was launched last year, he gradually began to like computer games, which are more interesting new gadgets. Yu went to the software store to see if there was anything new.Today is no exception. Christmas is coming soon, and he is going to buy an attractive game, which can be regarded as a Christmas gift for himself.

Olem came to his base - a Lohas software store on the seventh street. When he was about to open the door to enter, a game poster on the right side of the door caught his attention.Under the blue sky and white clouds, a huge medieval warship is sailing in the wind and waves. There are several large characters printed in the middle of the poster, "The ocean is calling you!"

Olem suddenly felt a very strange feeling, as if he saw the newly transferred blonde girl in his class for the first time when he was in school. He felt his blood was boiling, as if some kind of blood had been sleeping for hundreds of years. consciousness is activated.

Pushing open the door of the software store, Olem couldn't help shouting when he was still at the door: "Old man Jim, where is that thing at the door of your store?"

"You go to the shelves and have a look first, I'm busy right now." Jim poked his head back among the crowd.

Orem walked to the inner shelf, which was a special shelf of EA, and he could often find his favorite games, such as last year's "Sim City" and this year's "Railway Tycoon".When Olem walked to the shelf, he was about to look for it carefully. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. There were many new products that he hadn’t seen before on the upper part of the shelf, especially the top row. It was printed exactly like the sailboat on the poster outside the store.He couldn't help but picked up a box and looked at it carefully. Well, the upper left corner is the familiar "EA" logo, the front is the big sailing ship on the poster, and there is a line of artistic title "Uncharted Waters (Great Navigation Age)", below The printed production company "BlueDragon (Blue Dragon)" is also very familiar, and several good games that Orem has played are made by this company.After seeing the front, Olem turned the box over to see what was there.

On the back of the box is an introduction about the plot of the game: "Leon Farrell was born in a family of navigators, and his father, stimulated by the success of da Gama's voyage to India, decided to take an adventure in India as well. Princess Christina of Portugal was also there. Among the seeing off crowd, Leon fell in love with the princess at first sight and was determined to make the princess his future lover. However, his dream was shattered by the ruthless reality a year later: his father's first mate Locke brought the bad news of his father's shipwreck. Fulfilling his father's last wish, Leon Farrell's sailing career began..."

Orem felt very good. The game in front of him was the best gift he was looking for. He picked up the game and turned to Jim's counter.The crowd around Jim was much smaller than before. After queuing for a while, it was soon Olem's turn. He handed over the game, looked at the tired Jim, and said with a smile: "Old man Jim, It seems that your business is very good today, it seems to make you tired."

"Fortunately, this is just in time for the release of the new game." Jim also smiled. Although he was a little tired, he seemed in good spirits.

Jim took a look at the game that Orem handed over, and whistled, "Olem, you want to buy this game too. It seems that almost all the buyers who entered the door today are here for this. Thank you for your patronage, 35 Dollar."

Olem swiped his card, took his Christmas present, and went home happily.As soon as he got home, he couldn't wait to unpack the package, took out the floppy disk inside and tried to install it on his computer.

Orem's computer was just updated this year. It is the best 486 computer now, with a 14-inch color display, 4 megabytes of memory, and a 500 megabyte hard drive. Last month, I bought a SoundBlasterPro (Sound Blaster) sound card.In fact, Olem didn't think about buying this sound card at first. At that time, he just thought the music coming out of that store was very pleasant, so he wanted to go in and have a look, but the salesman in the store was too enthusiastic and kept introducing it. No matter how good this newly released sound card is, one will be "the latest industrial bus standard interface", and the other will be "up to 8-bit sampling, which is comparable to the stereo output of professional audio".Maybe because he saw that Orem was a game lover, the salesman also boasted that after adding a sound card, he could hear the most realistic sound effects and the most beautiful music when playing games.Only after Olem paid for it and bought it home did he realize that there are not many sounds in this game. At most, there are some fighting "hey ha" sounds, which makes Olem depressed for a long time. Every time he turns on the computer I regret that I shouldn't have listened to that salesman.

After venting his anger towards the salesman in his heart, Olem calmed down, took the six game floppy disks in his hand, and inserted them into the floppy drives one by one according to the installation method written in the manual.The installation progress on the screen slowly increased to 100%. Olem suddenly thought of what happened to some games before, and couldn't help but feel a little guilty.The prompt that the game installation was completed flashed on the screen. Olem gathered his mind and followed the method of starting the game written in the manual. Soon the game started, and the long-silent speaker suddenly released a burst of passionate music.This is real music, not the simple "ding ding dong dong" of those previous games. The electronic music sounds like a symphony to Orem's heart. Watching the flashing game opening animation, his tears trickle down...

Zhang Lexing sat quietly in his study and played with the computer, his eyes filled with tears.An exquisite CG image flashed on the computer screen showing the process of Leon Farrell encountering a princess, encountering bad news, and determined to sail. With the elaborate background music, people immediately have an urge to explore new worlds.With the appearance of the subsequent game screens, Zhang Lexing was even more surprised. This is definitely not the simple "Great Voyage 1" that used to be. Except that the plot is roughly the same, the game screens have undergone earth-shaking changes. 640×480 screen resolution, 256-color rendering on the same screen, this kind of expressive power beyond VGA image quality, well depicts the characteristics of different ports, and also shows various emergencies during sea navigation The game brings detailed naval battle pictures.The different soundtracks of different ports show the national characteristics of each region. The relaxing music supports the fun of sailing, the tense music highlights the depression before the storm, and the passionate music shows the enthusiasm in naval battles. Lots of fun sound effects.Zhang Lexing is sure that this is the best game he has ever played since his rebirth.

A white jade hand patted Zhang Lexing's shoulder, and at the same time Yang Xinxin's voice came from behind: "Isn't it just a game, as for the tears streaming down my face."

Zhang Lexing didn't look back, his eyes were fixed on the screen, afraid of missing a wonderful journey, he said unconvinced: "Sister Xin, a good game is like a life experience, but you won't understand it, except minesweeping and playing cards , you don’t play other games.”

Suddenly Zhang Lexing's back became quiet, and after a while, Yang Xinxin's calm voice came again: "You mean I don't understand..."

Zhang Lexing suddenly realized that he had said the wrong thing just now, and his back was covered in cold sweat. He was thinking about how to remedy it, but it was too late. "Ah", a shrill scream pierced the night sky...

The next day, Zhang Lexing came to his office as usual, but with a band-aid on his forehead.When he came to the desk and sat down, Zhang Lexing found an extra envelope on the desk. When he opened it, he found that it was the production cost list of "The Age of Voyage 1".Zhang Lexing took a closer look and became excited again, even more excited than when he was playing the game yesterday, and said angrily in his heart: "These guys really don't know how to manage their families...".

That's right, Zhang Lexing promised to pay for the production fee himself, but the problem is that money is not such a way to spend, just to make such a game, Zhan Jun and his group actually spent almost 300 million US dollars, if EA or Blue Long's own project is probably cut off long ago.Zhang Lexing flipped through the detailed list at the back, wanting to see how the money was spent.My God, the music production cost $100 million, no wonder the soundtrack of the game is so good, it is estimated that a well-known composer was hired.The animation production costs 80 U.S. dollars. After using a graphics workstation and looking at the actual effects in the game, the money spent is worth the money.The last thing left is some equipment usage fees (renting the game production room of Blue Dragon Company), technical support fees (applying for audio and image processing technical support from the Game Research Institute), etc., and the odds and ends can exceed 100 million US dollars .

Zhang Lexing finally couldn't help venting his anger with words that are not suitable for appearing on paper: "@#￥%..."

The high production costs, high-quality game effects, and the most direct consequences, Zhang Lexing can figure out with his toes, the retail sales of the game will definitely not be much better, the starting point of this game is too high.Market feedback soon after confirmed this point. After the peak Christmas sales season, the game barely reached [-] units, not even passing the passing mark.But what is surprising is that under the impetus of this game, the sound card, which was almost no one cares about, suddenly became a hot seller.

Many game magazines have dubbed this game as a "hardware killer" and "hardware development promoter", and wrote in a review article: "If you don't look at the hardware requirements, this game is definitely eligible to be selected for the best picture of the year , the best soundtrack, can be called the most amazing game, but its hardware requirements are also very surprising, not 486 computers can't run, graphics cards can't run, and without a sound card, most of the game experience will be lost. In order to enjoy a better game effect, many players have to buy a new computer with a better ATI graphics card, not to mention a sound card. I believe that those who like this game the most must be those computer dealers... ..."

What was lost was lost in the east, and the retail market failed. However, Blue Dragon unexpectedly got an order from Dell, which hoped to bundle a new high-end 486 home computer (with sound card). The Age of Discovery 1", because they feel that this game can fully demonstrate the characteristics of the new product, and it is very likely to drive sales.

The new order finally made Zhang Lexing feel a little better, but Zhan Jun and his group still had to learn a lesson, otherwise they would keep doing this in the future, and it would be impossible for them to be so lucky every time that a computer vendor would like it.

Blue Dragon Company meeting room...

The atmosphere was a bit depressing. It seemed that Zhan Jun and his team members had inquired about the sales of the game. According to the previous high production cost, this game would definitely lose money even if the bundled sales were included. Everyone was a little worried about their own In the future, everyone is cautious, not daring to take a breath.

Zhang Lexing smiled: "Why are you so downcast? I've played your game before, and it's pretty good."

Hearing Zhang Lexing's words of comfort, everyone's expressions relaxed a lot.

Zhang Lexing went on to say: "But you still made a big mistake in commercial game production this time, that is, you didn't consider what the current mainstream platform is, and you paid too much attention to the performance of the game, so that you spent too much production costs, and the sales of the game were low. Not good. In fact, the quality of the game itself is still very good, I can feel that you are working hard on it, but you have to think about it, how many people are able to play the game that you have made?"

Everyone nodded, with serious expressions on their faces, as if they had listened.

"Forget it this time. Your experience is insufficient, and I usually pay little attention to it. I hope to learn from this. While making game effects in the future, pay attention to reasonable control of costs, especially choosing a good game platform. Your next I will not intervene in the project anymore. You need to find your own ideas and apply to Blue Dragon Company according to the normal process. This time the production fee will be limited to 50 US dollars. I hope you can perform well and strive to be in this condition. Make a good game."

Zhan Jun stood up and said, "Boss, don't worry, we will plan well this time, and we will try our best to do our best."

Not long after, Zhan Jun and others, who have learned from previous experience and lessons, embarked on a new development journey again...

(End of this chapter)