"Oh, you're here."
Lin Lixin smiled when he saw the familiar figures appearing in front of the door.
This time, he specifically instructed all the core members in charge of the 3D department to come along.
To fit a scene of Biohazard caliber onto the NX, a top-tier technical team of experts would be required to conduct a consultation.
His gaze passed over Carmack and Ben Gorcy, looking outwards.
Sam was directing a group of people to move a whole cartload of development equipment.
Much of the subsequent development work will require materials sourced from this mansion.
Instead of having to travel back and forth frequently, Lin Lixin simply had them move over temporarily, bringing the development equipment with them.
After all, this place was originally a place where people lived.
With a simple cleaning, it can fit at least a hundred people.
"How so? Do you have any thoughts?"
Lin Lixin led Carmack to the main hall.
This is the central hub of the entire villa, with corridors on both sides and an upward staircase at the front, revealing the core structure of the villa.
"Are you going to include the entire building in the game?"
Ben Gorcy stared wide-eyed, scanning the luxurious surroundings.
Before joining Activision, he had been doing development work in his own dilapidated garage.
Even after being officially hired, I would at most travel between Activision and my residence in California.
Although Ben Gorcy had seen the modern GAMENOVA headquarters a few times, this intricately detailed old house better matched his stereotypical image of a "mansion".
Although Carmack appeared much more composed, some of his surprise was still evident.
It was bigger than he had imagined.
When Carmack received the news before coming, he thought it would be at most a detached villa.
On the way here, he was still wondering why Lin Lixin didn't just buy a house in California.
After all, Hollywood has the most villas and such.
Looking back, I realize I was being too conservative.
However, this also brings with it some concerns.
"Very difficult to manage----"
Carmack frowned slightly. Just considering the situation in the lobby, making it into a game would require squeezing every last drop of performance from the current Nova Radeon chip.
OpenGL has hardware acceleration, which makes NX's 3D performance very impressive.
But that doesn't mean that thing is truly invincible.
Due to limitations in video memory, the number of polygon faces it can process is actually very limited.
The situation depicted in "Quake" is actually the limit.
If there were even a little more, the video memory would be squeezed to the point of bursting, not to mention it would severely slow down rendering efficiency.
But here----
One of its main halls is equivalent to the entire map of Quake.
He mentally estimated the size of the model and pondered for a moment.
"Capacity isn't a problem; the CDs have enough capacity to fit the entire mansion inside."
"The problem is the graphics card; even with real-time rendering of this lobby, it will cause very severe lag."
Lin Lixin nodded, not denying it.
He didn't rush to answer, but instead looked at Ben Gorcy, who was silently following behind Carmack.
This talented individual, even younger than Carmack, is now completely under Carmack's control.
What do you think?
"Well----"
Ben Gorcy hesitated for a moment, then looked up again and surveyed the entire hall, especially the beautiful large crystal chandelier overhead.
He thought for a moment before speaking, "Perhaps we can compress the texture quality as much as possible? Hmm... we could also try to reduce the number of faces."
He walked to the staircase in front of him, pointed to the steps, and said, "Like here, we can simplify the steps into a slope, and then use methods like normal mapping to simulate that sense of unevenness."
Ben Gorcy's idea was very simple, but his angle was ingenious.
If a full-featured version isn't possible, then let's make a basic version.
With just one parallax map, a staircase with an astronomical number of faces can be simplified into a simple geometric shape.
If handled skillfully enough, the impact on the player's experience will not be too severe.
That's an interesting idea.
Lin Lixin nodded.
This trick actually works; it's a lower graphics quality option that reduces the graphics settings for a smoother experience.
"However, I also have an idea that might allow us to preserve as much detail in the scene as possible."
Lin Lixin rubbed his chin, pondering whether or not to adopt this plan.
This is definitely not a perfect solution; in fact, it could be said to have many flaws.
This is also the most infuriating aspect of the early Biohazard.
However, if you want to create a true 3D game on a device like the NX with more limited capabilities, sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
"We're not doing first-person 3D anymore."
Lin Lixin sighed, but ultimately brought it up again. "Abandon the following perspective and adopt a fixed-position camera."
Just as money should be spent wisely, the allocation of functions requires even more precise skill.
Seeing that the two were deep in thought, Lin Lixin simply explained it to them directly.
"The pre-rendered background is what I specifically wanted to achieve by buying this mansion."
"During the development phase, we built a fully detailed and exquisite map, including complete models, textures, lighting, shadows, and reflections."
"But we're not going to just throw it directly into the game—"
Lin Lixin saw their eyes light up and realized they understood what he meant.
"Just like making a movie, we don't use the complete model directly. Instead, we present the players with a pre-rendered scene. We capture the scene from a specific angle and render it as a static image file."
The core concept of this technology is to transform complex environments that are originally difficult to render into a single image.
Or rather, it's a background image.
For players, as long as the perspective doesn't change, the room will always maintain its perfect three-dimensionality from the original design, and will even preserve various visual details as much as possible.
However, for the characters and monsters in the game, they are actually floating in the air; they just have a static background image behind them.
Depth maps allow the game to check the character's z-value in real time and determine which parts will be displayed in front or obscured.
Carmack's breathing became rapid.
The advantages of this approach are obvious, and it doesn't even require any rehearsal.
To achieve the highest possible precision in the game, this scene would likely require at least several million polygons.
This level of space complexity is astronomical for NX.
Let alone NX, even if you use an Industrial Light & Magic -specific rendering machine, it would take a lot of time to render a single frame.
After adopting this solution, excluding character and monster models, the total polygon count of the scene is ----
0!
Because it was just a photograph.
No spatial rendering calculations, lighting calculations, or shadow reflections are required.
All the freed-up 3D capabilities can be used on the character and monster models.
Even more so—this design would cleverly fit into the horror games Lin Lixin wanted to make.
The fear stemmed from insufficient firepower.
It also comes from the unknown.
A fixed perspective creates numerous blind spots, but also a strong cinematic feel.
It's like a carefully crafted trick by a horror movie director.