Often, what limits technological progress is not a lack of a solid industrial base.
In many fields, especially in semiconductors, sometimes all that's missing is a sudden epiphany.
We found the solution that everyone had overlooked.
In 1990, such a tremendous opportunity existed in the CD-ROM industry.
In this day and age, everyone's common understanding is firmly bound by Moore's Law's Law.
"CPUs will get faster and faster in the future; if the algorithms keep up, encoding and decoding won't be a problem..."
However, according to c-cube, or rather, in Sun Yansheng's view, this matter seems to be more complicated than it appears.
With advancements in computing power, won't the amount of data continue to expand?
The need for encoding and decoding will always exist.
ASIC-based implementation is essential! Dedicated codec chips are necessary to truly unlock the full potential of our needs.
"They've recently been working on a JPEG codec chip, the CL550, which performs very well in image encoding and decoding."
Lin Lixin explained to Vivian, "What I want to develop is our own hardware encoding and decoding tools, and the corresponding standards. This is the cornerstone of our future gaming business."
There was something else Lin Lixin didn't say, but it was equally important.
That is, in this era where various standards are still vying for dominance, betting on MPEG in advance and placing your bet on this path that is destined for success.
By the time Sony and 3DO realized the importance of this direction, Gamenova had already established itself within the MPEG organization.
This is a huge pitfall.
"So... a new custom chip?"
Vivian quickly extracted the key point from his words and nodded.
Gamenova's exceptional execution capabilities are a consistent hallmark.
No matter how outlandish or fantastical this idea may seem, since it was proposed by Lin Lixin, it's definitely worth a try.
"That's right, Athena isn't suited for this job. The CPU has too many tasks, which would actually slow down its processing efficiency. We need to design a specialized chip that can handle everything in one cycle."
"Wait... you're going to design a completely new decoding chip from scratch? Starting now?"
Sun Yansheng understood the implication in Lin Lixin's words and was somewhat surprised. C-Cube already had a relatively mature architecture.
Sage Lin Shengtian, a powerful figure, injected a large sum of cash flow into them and took full control. He initially thought that the other party intended to directly use their existing technology stack for secondary development.
After all, according to Lin Lixin, the new project is already at least in the project approval stage.
What they need is a feasible solution that can be quickly developed and put into production in the short term.
While designing from scratch would certainly yield better results thanks to Gamenova's incredible technical capabilities, it would require a significant amount of time for debugging and adjustments in all aspects.
There's definitely no time limit for this project.
Upon hearing this, Vivian glanced at him silently, giving him a look that said, "You're still young," without saying anything more.
Newcomers to this place all go through this process, it's understandable.
The following day at noon.
Lin Lixin handed a new architecture plan to Vivian and asked her to complete the follow-up work. He then made a phone call and summoned Carmack.
" Carmack, I'll be leading Blizzard on their game development team. The codec software algorithms will be yours, okay?" "Of course, just you wait and see."
Carmack agreed without hesitation.
In fact, this is precisely his comfort zone, the part he excels at.
Carmack understood this very well, and Lin Lixin understood it even better.
Historically, John Carmack has been a leading figure in the field of encoding and decoding algorithms.
Cache hit, memory access pattern, sequence read, data arrangement...
Carmack was a complete fanatic when it came to algorithms.
This is a ruthless person who would completely overturn and redesign an algorithm that is commonly used in the entire computer industry just to reduce the need for one division operation.
Many people focus on Carmack and his id Software's outstanding contributions to the FPS field, and are misled by the Halo of the father of 3D engines, thus ignoring his truly terrifying aspects.
It is no exaggeration to say that Carmack was the founder of the modern game industry.
Occlusion culling rendering saves performance overhead, bandwidth compression reduces bus pressure, online prediction and synchronization technologies ensure smooth gameplay under high latency, RAM compression algorithms reduce memory usage, I/O optimization shortens game loading time, and fast square root reciprocal saves CPU resources...
This guy's influence can be seen in every aspect of the video game industry, from beginning to end. Some people in the computer world are even hailed as geniuses.
But genius is merely the threshold to seeing Carmack.
"Keep it up, you might get a big project soon. Haven't you always wanted to work on games?"
"Real?!"
Back to Blizzard, they've finally sorted out a bunch of things, both trivial and important.
This time, Mike and his team did not disappoint Lin Lixin's expectations, and they completely rebuilt the equipment system in a very professional manner.
The equipment attributes that were originally hard-coded have all been removed and replaced with random "affixes" from the pool.
"Depending on the type of affix, each piece of equipment will be randomly selected from the list; of course, the attributes will also fluctuate depending on the range."
Mike excitedly explained their new creation to Lin Lixin.
In fact, long before Lin Lixin arrived, they had already tried to implement the new equipment system into the demo for testing.
Both Mike himself and others at Blizzard were full of praise for it. To be honest, it was the most awesome equipment system he had ever seen in his life.
It made the act of swiping treasures truly meaningful.
Originally, the meaning of "treasure hunting" was simply collection.
Collect the equipment you were missing.
But things are different now.
Even the same piece of equipment can have vastly different attributes.
This item might have rolled a very high amount of power, that item might have a crucial cooldown reduction.
Driven by massive numerical values, it is, in a sense, like a snowflake.
No two pieces of equipment will ever be exactly the same.
As Lin Lixin described, winning the lottery is like winning a slot machine prize.
Even equipment you've already obtained can provide a constant sense of satisfaction when it reappears.
"Not bad, but it still has a fatal problem that needs to be solved." Lin Lixin nodded, noticing Mike's stiff expression, and continued,
"Don't be afraid. It's not about rebuilding it all over again, but about adding a little something extra to it."
"Why?"
"Come on, let's do a simple test and you'll understand."
Lin Lixin pulled out a chair and plopped down in front of the development machine.
I glanced at their source code and spent a few minutes sketching out two new characters.
"This is a mage class I temporarily created. Unlike the default warrior, whose damage output depends on Intellect, this is a ranger, which primarily benefits from agility."
As Lin Lixin spoke, he gave the command to throw the character into the test dungeon.
"Given the current situation, what problems do you foresee?"
"Question?"
Mike stared at the moving colored block on the screen, scratched his head,
"What problem?" "Like... bad luck."
As Lin Lixin spoke, he increased the equipment drop rate, and then killed a monster in the dungeon.
"Clang"
A piece of equipment dropped from the monster and landed there.
"See? I was playing a mage character, but I got an agility item. For me, this item is meaningless and doesn't contribute to any real enjoyment."
"Uh... but what's the problem with that? It all depends on the player's luck, right?"
"Have you guys played Gamenova's old game, ' The Tycoon '? It's the American version of ' Momotaro Dentetsu '."
"I've played it."
"Is it fun? How does it compare to the board game version of Richman?"
Mike fell silent.
He naturally understood Lin Lixin's meaning. The excellent gaming experience of " Momotaro Dentetsu " is absolutely inseparable from its cunning pseudo-probability design.
It deliberately protects the player's gaming experience.
By now, this is nothing new in the industry.
But for players, they don't care how you implemented it; they only know that " Momotetsu " is more fun than other Richman games.
but...
If this system were actually implemented in Diablo...
"But if that's the case, players will always be able to get the equipment they want, wouldn't that quickly deplete the game's lifespan?"
If you could just randomly get a piece of equipment that you could use, what's the point of farming for items?
Upon hearing Mike's words, Lin Lixin raised an eyebrow and looked at him with a puzzled expression.
"Why... are you so afraid that the players will have fun?"
Upon hearing this, Mike was taken aback.
Yes, why is that? Why am I so afraid that players won't have fun?
So what if you really enjoyed it? So what if you get tired of it quickly?
At least during this process, they were happy, instead of being tortured to the point of death, clinging to life out of resentment and unwillingness to force themselves to play a work that had already made them extremely angry.
A treasure-hunting game... isn't it supposed to be a fun and enjoyable game?
"If you're really worried that this design will bore players quickly, you should try to deepen the crafting system as much as possible, instead of nerfing it and making it harder for players to enjoy the game."
Dropped a god-tier item that lets you one-shot mobs, isn't that awesome? Pretty satisfying, right?
But if you assemble a specific set of equipment, you can wipe out a whole group of monsters with a single strike, isn't that even more satisfying?
What if we further enhanced it, so that one strike could take down a whole horde of elite monsters?
What if a single strike could deal explosive, invincible damage and instantly kill the boss?
The depth of a game's development should focus on how to make the player experience more enjoyable.
"If we're playing as a Ranger, the drop rate for bows and arrows will be significantly higher than for other weapons, and the affixes will also be closer to what the player wants to some extent."
"If you were to call your probability system 1.0, I would call it... loot 2.0, or... Inventory Check." It was this loot 2.0 mechanism that saved Diablo III from its disastrous launch and made it a masterpiece in the hearts of a generation of players.