"I plan to experiment with a new technology that no one has tried before in this new game."
Lin Lixin considered the feasibility and slowly said, "I want to add live-action movies as cutscenes to the game, replacing the original scrolling text or pixel animations."
This was an extremely bold decision.
However, for optical disc systems with capacities already upgraded to hundreds of megabytes, this doesn't seem impossible.
"Ha?"
Incorporating live-action animation into a video game is a design that is absolutely unique in the world.
This is not as simple as just casually shooting a promotional video as before.
Lucas really needed to mobilize his entire production team, studio, and actors for the official filming.
"I see----"
If this thing can be made, the workload would be no less than making a Star Wars spin-off.
but----
Absolutely worth it!
It's even better value for money.
Given Gamenova's current influence, the release of such a title could potentially boost sales of Star Wars videotapes.
It would be a good way to maintain buzz during the lull before the next main feature film is released.
This work could also leverage the Star Wars fanbase to try and attract people who have never played video games before.
"I'll arrange for the production team to schedule things properly; the content to be filmed will depend on your arrangements."
The project was officially named " Command & Conquer ".
Command & Conquer: Dawn of the Kyber Crystal
Blizzard, having just completed its integration with Westwood Studios, immediately began development.
Following Lin Lixin's instructions, this time they abandoned using NovaEngine directly and instead started developing the project from scratch using the N Language.
While NovaEngine is powerful, it becomes somewhat overly bloated when 3D is not actually needed.
While lower-level development may reduce development efficiency, saving on hardware performance is particularly important in performance-sensitive projects like this.
Everything seems to be going very smoothly.
But Lin Lixin couldn't relax.
The most serious problem facing the RTS game genre comes from outside the software itself.
The inherent limitations of the hardware remain an insurmountable obstacle.
This problem has also been troubling Quake, which has been released for some time.
communication.
Unlike Civilization, which uses a turn-based system, Quake and Command & Conquer are both real-time combat games.
This means the game cannot simply increment and synchronize changes every turn like Civilization.
Every action a player takes needs to be reported back to the other player in real time.
Only in this way is it possible to have a two-player battle.
That is impossible.
GAMENOVA headquarters, third floor.
Gerald shook his head and rejected the idea before Lin Lixin could finish speaking.
"Impossible, Lin. This isn't a problem that can be solved by piling up materials."
NovaXeno's Modem is fine for things like running Civilization, where speed-based data exchange and score uploading aren't critical.
According to Lin Lixin's idea, that level of exchange should at least reduce the latency to around 100 milliseconds.
Even the most advanced modems on the market today only have a speed of 9600bps, which translates to about 1KB per second. The amount of data that can be exchanged is extremely limited, averaging down to the millisecond level.
For RTS games, which involve massive data exchange every moment, this is absolutely impossible.
Not to mention that such high-end modems won't be cheap either.
"Even switching to a higher-spec modem and adding a more sophisticated prediction algorithm didn't work?"
Lin Lixin frowned.
Unexpectedly, after all the twists and turns, we were ultimately held back by hardware limitations.
Gerald shook his head and said, "It's difficult, but if it's Quake, it should be barely enough for a two-player environment; any more than that wouldn't be enough."
Lin Lixin remained silent for a long while.
If RTS games can only be played against AI opponents, even if they use a new AI architecture similar to that experimented with in " Mahjong Academy," they will eventually become boring.
If there's no way to play against each other, what's the point of an RTS game?
It's like Street Fighter has become a single-player beat 'em up game.
Lost its soul----
"Huh?"
Lin Lixin was taken aback. "If we can't get the internet working, we can set up a local area network!"
Connecting several local devices with cables and using a custom protocol can eliminate a lot of redundant handshakes and headers.
At the same time, the latency is much lower than that of dialing a phone because the physical distance is also closer, and data can be transmitted directly face to face without going through multiple intermediaries.
More importantly, they had already tried this method before.
Fire Emblem multiplayer gameplay.
This thing was created when they were testing the local area network connectivity function.
Going back further, NovaPocket's communication cables also use the same principle.
That thing can even be used to run a stripped-down version of Street Fighter.
"There's still some trouble—NovaPocket can handle Street Fighter communication because it only transmits the input signals between the two devices."
Gerald thought for a moment, then shook his head again.
The online connection principle of NP is not the same as the online connection principle of these games now, so it is not very relevant.
Each RTS update involves processing a large amount of unit movement information.
"That telephone line?"
"The bandwidth is still insufficient."
Lin Lixin was truly speechless this time.
Before the widespread adoption of the internet, getting anything done was incredibly difficult.
"Do we really have to design a special cable and dedicated peripherals just for this game?!"
He rubbed his temples, and out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly caught sight of a small gadget on the workbench.
That's a 6.35mm to MIDI converter.
This is something I came up with while working on the hardware development for " Rocksmith ".
The moment he saw this thing, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck Lin Lixin.
"Hey! That's it!"
Lin Lixin grabbed the thing, his eyes gleaming.
Gerald was completely baffled, unable to understand Lin Lixin's unconventional way of thinking.
We were just talking about online play, how did we suddenly jump to this converter?
"Weren't we supposed to be working on a console port of Rocksmith?"
In order to make this game available on consoles, they have actually been planning to develop a dedicated peripheral for NovaXeno for some time now.
It includes a built-in 6.35mm to MIDI converter and an external sound card with a 16-bit SPU audio chip.
And it was this very thing that gave Lin Lixin a wake-up call.
Telephone lines are not the only thing that can transmit data.
There is a game in history that claims to be the first online FPS game.
MIDI Maze
A game released on the AtariST computer.
As its name suggests, this thing is closely related to MIDI.
Unlike the NovaXeno, Atari's PC has a built-in MIDI interface that can be used to connect music devices.
The developers then came up with the brilliant idea of using MIDI cables to transmit game data.
MIDI's transmission rate can easily reach more than three times that of the most advanced modems currently available.
We're using the sound card as a modem.
"Clam?"