"You bought SGI??"
Vivian looked at Jim Clark, whom Lin Lixin had brought back, and the several technical staff following behind him, her mind filled with questions.
She thought Lin Lixin was planning to poach some key personnel from SGI.
Strictly speaking, it's more like they've taken a stake.
Lin Lixin corrected her statement.
Tens of millions of dollars were poured into SGI, which had not yet entered its business growth phase, making Lin Lixin the largest shareholder.
SGI will retain its original business, operating independently as a wholly-owned subsidiary, Jim will retain his positions as CEO and CTO.
SGI needs substantial R&D funding and advanced technology to maintain its top-tier graphics performance.
GAMENOVA, on the other hand, requires a large number of chip designers and graphics workers.
There is so much overlap between the two businesses that there is no reason not to reach this strategic cooperation.
"Was NovaWonder designed in this office?"
Jim glanced at the tiny studio, barely bigger than a garage, and was just as surprised as Vivian.
This is so shabby.
During the conversation, Carmack was taken to Micro-Nova by Sam.
"Perfect timing, Carmack, a new project has arrived."
Lin Lixin's eyes lit up, and he pulled Carmack close to him, looking at Vivian and the others.
Project codename: Open Graphics Library, abbreviated as OpenGL.
Acquiring SGI brought him a lot of good things.
Not only are several founders of 3df, the future giant of 3D gaming graphics cards, now working at SGI, but even OpenGL, an important graphics API in the gaming field, was written by SGI in the 1990s.
"I've already handed over the relevant information to Carmack. Vivian, you coordinate with everyone. Oh, and make sure the VGA display specification is finalized."
Lin Lixin shoved Carmack forward, "I'll lend Carmack to your graphics department for a few days, and I'll find you two more talented people."
"There's more?" Vivian was stunned by this series of punches.
That day, a headhunting firm poached an unknown, ordinary engineer named Curtis Prim from Sun.
That day, Canada headhunting firm recruited two of Ho Kwok Yuen's fellow villagers.
On this day, Lin Lixin visited Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Engineering College Building.
Jim Clark led Lin Lixin down the corridor.
For Jim, coming to Stanford University was just a return visit to familiar places.
Before founding Silicon Graphics, he was an associate professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at the same institution.
"This is indeed a good place."
Jim nodded to the students who recognized him and remarked to Lin Lixin, "SGI's initial technical backbone consisted of several of my outstanding students."
Jim felt a sense of pride and honor at Lin Lixin's decision to come to Stanford to find suitable new talent.
He had assumed that Lin Lixin would return to his alma mater, University of Southern California, to find a suitable candidate.
Lin Lixin smiled, said nothing more, and kept glancing at the passersby and the other students in the laboratory.
Finally, he stopped in front of an inconspicuous laboratory.
An Asian youth was sitting at a table, his eyes fixed on a circuit board covered with components.
His silver-rimmed glasses and the elegant watch on his left wrist gave him an air of refinement.
His name is Jensen Huang, and he holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
"This kid's not bad."
"He's Jensen, right? I remember him; he worked at AMD for a year."
Jim was surprised by Lin Lixin's sharp eye and his gaze fell on Jensen Huang.
After working briefly for a year after graduation, this young man immediately decided to pursue further studies at Stanford University.
When he was looking for a suitable candidate for SGI, he paid close attention to this guy who was exceptionally talented in graphics processing chips.
"Get him a letter of recommendation, and um... also, go buy him a leather jacket; I think it would suit him well."
"Leather jacket??"
Jim felt like he couldn't quite keep up with Lin Lixin's train of thought.
This is such a contradictory statement, one foot in the sky and the other in the ground.
"Winters in the Bay Area are quite cold, so buying this is definitely the right thing to do."
Lin Lixin chuckled, not intending to explain further.
It's a pity that Lisa Su is only 17 years old now, otherwise she could collect all the stamps in one go.
With the hardware issues finally resolved, Lin Lixin was able to officially begin developing Fire Emblem.
Lin Lixin stared at the screen in front of him, pondering how to write the plot of this work.
Looking at the entire Fire Emblem series, it doesn't seem to have a coherent grand narrative.
Each work seems like a completely unrelated entity.
The original Fire Emblem, limited by the capabilities of the Famicom, didn't have a particularly exciting storyline or a particularly refined presentation.
This is just a very classic and classic revenge story.
The protagonist Marth, is a prince of Altea. After the kingdom is conquered by the villains, he escapes with the help of his father and knights and goes into exile.
During his exile, Marth made new friends, liberated city-states, and grew in the process.
Even in the 1980s, this was a very formulaic plot design.
But this formula has become the core hallmark of the Fire Emblem series.
A storyline driven by the constant introduction of new companions, or rather, new playable characters.
Every character appearing in the story can be directly reflected on the battlefield sand table.
Even the farmer who interacts with the player can transform into a key piece that can influence the course of the battle after entering combat.
" Sam, send this draft to Satoshi's side for a look."
Writing these kinds of scripts is something Ash and his Satoshi are better at.
I only need to keep a general direction in mind; as for the individual stories of my dozens of companions, I'll leave that to the professionals.
So many characters?
Sam glanced at the outline and was startled by the long list of names in the character section.
There are a total of 52 characters marked as "playable characters"!
"Weren't we making an RPG? With so many characters—can we really create them well?"
The scope of a game is limited; the more characters there are, the more detail will be devoted to them.
For an RPG game, successfully creating a few memorable characters is the right path.
It is numerous but not refined, flashy but not substantial, reminiscent of Atari's early days of prioritizing quantity over quality.
"The story is only one part of character development."
Lin Lixin did not dismiss Sam's idea.
In fact, the problem Sam was worried about has always been a common flaw in the Fire Emblem series.
Storyline has never been a strong point of the Fire Emblem IP.
Fortunately, Fire Emblem is not an anime or a novel; it's a game.
It's fun enough.
"We want to shape the characters through the gameplay itself."
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