True 3D and discrete graphics cards

Hiroshi Yamauchi quietly read the contents of the magazine, scanning it line by line.

To be honest, he'd gotten somewhat used to GAMENOVA's dominance.

Fortunately, Shigeru Miyamoto's "Dr. Mario" and Enix's new RPG "Dragon Quest" prevented them from suffering a complete defeat in the first quarter of this year.

But the appearance of Castlevania really caught the entire company completely off guard.

Because they are developing a project called "Metroid".

According to the plan, the game can be officially taken offline and released to the market in two or three months at most.

But now we've encountered an extremely awkward problem.

The themes are overlapping.

And the impact was extremely severe.

"Ability Locking—that's the core selling point of our new game—"

Hiroshi Yamauchi sighed. This was a real problem. "Some people in the company are already calling it a 'Castlevania- like' gameplay—"

The game hasn't even been released yet, and the right to define the genre has already been stolen.

This is definitely not a good thing.

This kind of thing is not uncommon in the gaming community.

Since the release of "1942", countless works have imitated it. Overnight, all flight shooting games seemed to have grasped the essence and replaced the original template of "Xevious" with it.

Minoru Arakawa was well aware of the implications of this matter.

Although in terms of sales, having Castlevania lead the way and generate early buzz actually benefits the sales of their new game.

However, a company cannot only focus on immediate profits.

The term "Castlevania" hangs like a dark cloud over this work.

"Releasing it now would only make it a foil for Gamenova—the first to create it is the true innovation; those who follow will merely be imitators."

"Hmm... Yokoi-san, do you have any thoughts?"

Hiroshi Yamauchi looked at the man sitting in front of him.

Gunpei Yokoi is the head of Nintendo's First Development Department and a key member of the Hardware Department.

The D-pad, Game & Watch, and Famicom were all designed by him.

This time, "Metroid" is the new work he led the development of.

"The design philosophy behind Castlevania is different from ours."

Gunpei Yokoi's voice rang out, "I just played Castlevania again downstairs. Its focus is on combat, while it only scratches the surface of exploration itself."

"Our ' Metroid ' is different; it doesn't have RPG elements, and its focus is on exploration itself."

"President, GAMENOVA certainly made a brilliant first move this time, but we haven't lost yet."

John Carmack, covered in sweat, flung open the office door with a loud "Ugh!"

I'm done!

His voice carried the excitement of something that had been suppressed for a long time finally being released.

Only Carmack himself knew how heartbreaking it was to be transferred from the headquarters of the great company, Gamenova.

With new games constantly being released while he was stuck writing graphics libraries in MicroNova, Carmack was practically going crazy.

If it weren't for that line, "Wait for you to come back, there's a big job waiting for you," which kept him hooked, Carmack probably would have skipped work and sneaked back countless times already.

Lin Lixin grabbed Carmack, who was about to pounce on him, and looked at him with satisfaction.

This kid, not even twenty years old yet, took on the responsibility of developing GAMENOVA's crucial graphics library.

"Well done! Trust me, this project you're working on is far more important than developing one or two games."

Lin Lixin's gaze passed over him and looked at the position behind him.

Where's Vivian? Why didn't she come?

"I'm saying—can't you pay more attention to me? I actually wrote OpenGL!"

When Lin Lixin pushed open the door to MicroNova, he was taken aback by the bustling atmosphere inside.

The office was subtly divided into two groups of people. One group was the hardware department, led by Ho Kwok Yuen and Jensen Huang, whose workbench was piled high with various electronic components, and white smoke from melting soldering irons could be seen from time to time.

On the other side, a large group of developers, starting with SGI, are still trying to debug various OpenGL functions.

"Hey, what kind of mess is this? I was only gone for a little while and you've ruined everything! Redo it!"

Carmack rushed up to the group and started pointing at the content on the screen.

The developers who heard his reprimand showed no resentment whatsoever; they simply nodded repeatedly, displaying their obedience.

"What did I tell you to adjust it to?!"

Lin Lixin's lips twitched slightly.

"You've arrived?"

Vivian's voice came from beside me.

Lin Lixin turned around.

She was walking down the corridor, wearing a white lab coat, but her hair was tied up rather casually.

"Nova Radeon is almost finished."

Vivian waved the circuit board in her hand, "VGA specification, 256 colors, 256KB video memory, already written to OpenGL."

Lin Lixin's eyes lit up, and he walked up to her.

This board is completely different from the brick-like graphics cards of later generations.

It has no casing, and it doesn't even have a cooling fan.

Besides the gold fingers of the obvious ISA slot, a trapezoidal slot extends from the card via a ribbon cable.

This is the VGA interface.

Lin Lixin glanced at Carmack and teased, "You haven't been holding back on software, have you?"

"Hey! How is that possible!"

"Ha, it's more accurate to say that the hardware is the hindrance."

Vivian smiled helplessly.

The 256KB of video memory severely limits many things.

The processor's performance is too weak to handle more complex calculations.

It met expectations, but it wasn't perfect.

"Video memory—this problem should be solved soon."

Lin Lixin was actually quite satisfied with this graphics card.

Going from 0 to 1 is far more difficult than going from 1 to 100.

Anyone can pile up materials, but taking the first step from scratch is the hurdle that has stumped countless heroes.

Vivian plugged the Nova Radeon graphics card into a PC on her desk, then opened a window and wrote a few lines of code.

"OpenGL is now fully compatible with N Language. See, we can just write a few lines to define the vertices of a triangle, and then—"

"Clatter"

As Vivian typed on the keyboard, the bars on the screen flashed, and a perfectly symmetrical triangle was drawn.

In the past, drawing a solid triangle on the screen using assembly language would require hundreds or even thousands of lines of code.

Now, with just a couple of simple lines of code, using the already concise N Language to call the encapsulated OpenGL, you can do all of this in a fraction of the time and effort you used to.

"This is too much—"

"Hey, get out of the way, Lin! I'll show you the true power of OpenGL!"

Before Lin Lixin could finish praising him, Carmack volunteered to step forward, grabbed the keyboard, and began typing furiously.

He finished writing the program in just two minutes.

The number of lines of code is only about twenty more than before.

When Carmack pressed the compile and run button, a completely new image appeared on the screen.

Strictly speaking, it's animation.

It was a rotating cube.

A 3D, rotating cube!