Play Game of Life

Lu Zhixing entered the VR game cabin and began to use the resources of "Ordinary Life" to pre-build the levels of "Walk with Darkness".

At that time, as long as all his acting tasks are completed and the corresponding material template is obtained, he can directly and quickly replace it.

Of course, the role-playing tasks may not be given so well, and then they can only obtain materials or exchange points.

In fact, everything Lu Zhixing said to Li Rushan was true, and he wasn't trying to fool the poor little fat man on purpose.

It's just that some important details have been concealed.

For the level design of the game "Walk with Darkness", Lu Zhixing did adopt the "saturated design" method. It must be a mess for others to use this method.

After all, the levels of levels designed by different level designers are uneven, and the level leader wants to select useful levels from them, and then integrate them, adjust and optimize according to the difficulty. How much work is this?

Most likely slower than traditional design methods.

But Lu Zhixing is different.

He already has many classic level designs of previous games in his mind. If he is allowed to recall them slowly, although it is not completely impossible, the efficiency will be relatively low.

Now through saturated design, let the company's level designers each come up with a set of design plans, then Lu Zhixing can quickly filter out those relatively excellent modules from these plans, and compare them with the classic levels in his mind, quickly to integrate them.

The premise of this "saturated design" is precisely that the person in charge of the final checkpoint has enough level templates in his mind and has a high level of design.

And these, Lu Zhixing happens to have.

As for the dynamic difficulty design of this game, it refers to the classic dynamic difficulty design of some previous games, such as the "Resident Evil" series.

Although this dynamic difficulty system has been complained by some players, overall, it is still very successful. Especially in this kind of resource-limited games, it can improve the player's game experience very well.

The technology in this world is more developed, and the AI ​​technology is more advanced, so this dynamic difficulty system can also be made smoother, without giving people a feeling of being too forced.

And with this dynamic difficulty system, it is meaningless to distinguish between easy, normal, and difficult difficulties.

For ordinary players, regardless of their level, they can experience just the right level of difficulty in the first pass, focusing on experience.

For those real master players who want to play speedrunning, expert difficulty is their stage.

Lu Zhixing concentrated his mind and began to continuously call various resources to generate the levels in his mind one by one.

The distance between different floors, the location that can be climbed, the specific climbing route, the area where the puzzle is set...

At present, there must be a lot of unfinished designs, such as the layout of some puzzle elements, but only level design and route planning are completely enough.

During this period, Lu Zhixing spent a lot of time surveying routes and parkour in reality. He has a clear understanding of the combination of the difficulty of different obstacles and parkour routes, and then superimposed them on the classic level templates already in his mind. The game Each checkpoint in the process takes shape quickly.

Of course, it is impossible for Lu Zhixing to design all the levels at once.

"Walking with Darkness" is divided into three main parts: the bottom layer, the middle layer, and the upper layer, which are somewhat similar to the villages, castles and islands of "Resident Evil 4". In each part, it can be divided into several different small levels.

What Lu Zhixing made this time is just a small level in the bottom layer.

Soon, various buildings rose from the ground, scattered high and low, walls for climbing, cracks, exposed steel bars, and incomplete platforms...

Lu Zhixing was busy for a while, and soon built a small level in the game.

Of course, it is not the initial scene, and the specific location of this small level needs to be re-planned. But as an experience, it is enough.

The dynamic difficulty system in "Walk with Darkness" not only changes in resources, but also includes subtle changes in the scene.

When the dynamic difficulty changes, not only the amount of resources that players can obtain will change, but also a series of attributes such as the distance between buildings, height difference, depth of rock cracks, damage received when falling, etc. will also change.

After all, this is a mind-connected VR game, not a traditional PC or console game.

In the traditional game mode, players only need to press a specific button when facing obstacles, so it is impossible to distinguish the difficulty of obstacles. At most, it is to set some restrictions on the input time, but it will Lose the fun.

Consciousness-connected VR games play very close to reality, so the difficulty of level design can be more refined.

Just like many rock climbing competitions, the position and distance of each stone are calculated. Rock climbers must have a certain ability to "interpret intentions". the climb.

The so-called line setter is to draw a route map according to the specific conditions of the rock wall, install rock points on the rock wall for trial climbing, and finally determine the competition route based on factors such as difficulty, safety, and skills.

At this time, Lu Zhixing's role is very close to that of a line-setter.

In addition, there are some special designs for low difficulty. For example, there will be yellow paint as an indicator at some key positions, so that players can quickly find the future travel route.

Otherwise, it would be too difficult for players to have black eyes in a real scene.

Of course, in expert difficulty, there is no such yellow paint for indication, it all depends on hard power.

Lu Zhixing quickly pieced together the first small test level. At this time, this level is completely made up of the urban background resources in "Ordinary Life". For the time being, no monsters and obtainable resources have been added, nor has light and darkness been added. Variety.

It is a scene purely used to test parkour and climbing gameplay.

Lu Zhixing came out of the VR game cabin and greeted Li Rushan who was playing the game: "Mr. Li, the test level is set up, let's feel it?"

Li Rushan looked at the time: "So fast? It's only been two hours!"

He felt a sense of vigilance for a moment.

He already knew that Lu Zhixing was frighteningly fast at playing games, but it was too fast! Could it really come up with some genius design?

Lu Zhixing continued to greet other people: "Everyone can also come to the virtual space to have a try."

Everyone was also looking forward to what the first scene of their game would look like, so they put down their work, put on VR helmets, and entered the deep world of 404 Studio in the "Taiqing" virtual space.

Then, they appear at the entrance of this test scene.

This is the entrance of a building. Looking up, some broken windows and cracked gaps can be seen on the outer wall of the building. Yellow paint signs can be seen on these key climbable positions. Farther away, there are ziplines connecting buildings, exposed steel bars, collapsed skybridges between buildings, and various other buildings.

These buildings together form an organic whole, hiding more than one climbing route.

Li Rushan opened his mouth slightly: "Mr. Lu, is this the scene you spent more than two hours spelling out? I don't read much, so don't lie to me!"

Lu Zhixing smiled: "After all, it's just a test scene. It's a bit faster, but the quality is not guaranteed. Don't be surprised if it gets stuck in a while."

Hearing this, Li Rushan was slightly relieved.

It’s okay, it’s okay, if you just pursue speed without ensuring the quality of level design, then it’s acceptable.

Liu Bo raised his hand and asked weakly: "Brother Lu, what if the player is also stuck?"

Lu Zhixing smiled slightly: "The player will not get stuck. After all, we have a dynamic difficulty system. If the player cannot jump over a certain position and dies too much, then its distance will gradually shrink under the effect of the dynamic difficulty.

"We can also collect player data in real time, find some unreasonable places in the level in time, and make timely adjustments.

"So, don't worry about players getting stuck. As long as they keep playing and fail a few more times, they won't get stuck."

Lu Yixiao thought for a while: "But isn't there no dynamic difficulty for expert difficulty?"

Lu Zhixing looked like he was planning to pass: "At that time, we will test it casually, as long as one person can pass the expert difficulty once, then there will be no problem.

"After all, I've already reached the expert difficulty level, so who would be ashamed to dislike the difficulty of the game being too high?"

Everyone was dumbfounded: "Mr. Lu, what you said is so reasonable, you can't refute it at all!"

But Li Rushan's previous worries vanished in an instant: "Mr. Lu, I knew that I've always been a good judge of people, and you're such a genius!

"I'm here for the first time!"