If I had to find something that could represent the spirit of the internet in the 1990s...
Then PBEM will definitely be one of the highest-ranked ones.
You might only need to log in for a few minutes a day to complete all the operations for this round.
However, ending a game can easily take several months.
The real battleground happens outside the game, in emails and chat rooms.
Its emergence solved a most crucial problem.
It's even a problem that continues to trouble many players in later generations.
That is, adults are not children; they do not have fixed and uniform schedules, nor do they have a matching rhythm of life.
Getting together with friends or playing games together is harder than climbing to the sky.
It's fine for two people, but if there are three, four, or even more, then it will take a while.
It looks like a stack of cheese slices tightly packed together.
We need to find a common opening. Today this person has to go to work, tomorrow that guy has to pick up his child, and the day after tomorrow someone else has to go on a business trip.
Thus, pbem was born, and asynchronous online connections were born.
If you have to work during the day, then wait until you get home from get off work before taking your own step.
If I'm not free today, I'll download it tomorrow.
The game will not truly move on to the next round until all the commands have been uploaded.
Although it's slow, it ensures that everyone has a chance to participate and no one is left behind.
At the same time... it also provides players with ample time to think.
This naturally links it to 4x games.
If you were to create a PCEM game for a modern gaming environment, it would be suicidal.
For modern gamers accustomed to fast-paced, casual games, a game that doesn't provide positive feedback within 10 seconds is practically doomed.
But things are different now.
In this golden age when the spirit of the internet is still flourishing, people have plenty of patience and are willing to invest in and enjoy it.
Do you know why I approached you instead of Sid for this project?
Lin Lixin and Carmack sat in Nexus's private office, talking in hushed tones.
The 4x strategy is, by all accounts, Sid Meier's specialty.
Carmack was better at technical things.
For example, how to manually create a pseudo-3D environment in a purely 2D setting, and still make it into a shooting game.
"Why?"
"Because this is a very 'nerd' work; it doesn't have flashy graphics or stunning sound effects, but rather a huge, complex programming project."
Lin Lixin made a quotation mark gesture with his hand.
When it comes to these things, someone with a purely technical background like Carmack is the most suitable.
In fact, it doesn't even require much planning.
Theoretically, this project could have been fully developed with just Lin Lixin and Carmack; it's an independent game in every sense of the word. However, there's an even more important reason why Carmack was chosen as the lead programmer.
"Our project this time... will be web-based, and will be developed entirely based on NovaScript."
This will be their first web-based project since "Screeps".
Novascript is not JavaScript; from its inception, it was designed with a more modern and mature architecture in mind.
Their browser also natively supports a complete and perfect interpreter.
The only drawback is that CSS stylesheets are still not available, which makes the page design always feel a little lacking.
Using it for making games is basically without any problems, except that it's a bit cumbersome.
Of course, this only applies to light, casual games.
I'll write you a proposal later. Before that, I need to get my email account sorted out.
"Wait... I suddenly remembered..."
Carmack grabbed Lin Lixin, his expression one of surprise.
"Lin, the free email you mentioned... you're not going to make it a web-based service, are you?" "Hehe, of course! Floppy disks and stuff like that are outdated relics that should have been swept into the dustbin of history long ago."
Lin Lixin chuckled.
With the current bandwidth available for home Nexus devices, while achieving true online gaming is unrealistic, running a relatively static webpage... is not impossible.
He pushed open the door and walked out, arriving at Nexus's development department.
There were only a few young people sitting in front of their computers, idly writing something.
Despite being called a development department, its size doesn't match that of a company as large as Nexus.
There are far too few people here; it's about the same size as Gamenova's main development department.
But that's the reality; this scale is more than enough.
Because all these guys do is develop the " Nexus Browser " and maintain the homepage.
Such a small-scale operation, especially since Lin Lixin had already prepared the general framework in advance, did not require a large-scale operation.
Lin Lixin walked up to one of the young men and gently patted him on the shoulder.
"Come on, let me use the computer for a bit." Perhaps Lin Lixin's aura was indeed too strong these days, because the young man shuddered, and his already tense body became even more rigid.
He stood up stiffly, almost like a Lego miniature, performed a bizarre bow, and then stood shakily to the side.
Mr. Lin felt very hurt!
When did my public image become this awful?
I said...
"Eek... yes! Yes!"
Lin Lixin fell silent again.
A glint flashed in his eyes, and the attribute panel, visible only to himself, quietly popped up.
" Connor, right?"
Connor was around twenty years old, about the same age as Lin Lixin, and looked like he had just graduated. At first glance, although his programming skills couldn't compare to the bunch of cheaters in his own company, he was still considered outstanding among ordinary people.
"They came in through the Gamenova Education Foundation?"
Lin Lixin raised an eyebrow and carefully examined the shy young man.
Brown hair, blue eyes, freckles on his cheeks—a very typical Caucasian appearance.
At this age, being able to join Gamenova, even if it's just a subsidiary, is no small feat.
It's highly likely that they were recruited by that education foundation.
Since taking over the foundation from Westinghouse Electric, Gamenova has invested a lot of money in it, sponsoring various research and competition projects at universities around the world.
"Yes... yes! Software Engineering from USC, and I participated in computer competitions in California..."
Connor nodded repeatedly in agreement and recited his resume.
His hurried manner suggested he was afraid Lin Lixin would be dissatisfied and fire him on the spot.
"Wow, an alumnus? But you're going to USC, and you're not choosing a game-related major?"
"It's quite difficult to pass..." Connor explained, forcing himself to be honest.
Damn it, who doesn't know that University of Southern California's game design program is highly regarded?
But the question is, how many people can actually get in?
Dreamers across United States are desperate to get into film school.
After all, this is where Gamenova was born.
Historical records indicate that the top two leaders of Gamenova, and even the CEO of Micronova, were all graduates of this institution.
With three top-tier members from one family, Gamenova is undoubtedly University of Southern California's enduring flagship brand.
Connor is, of course, one of countless dream chasers.
It's a pity I couldn't get into the popular film academy.
Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, because he settled for second best and entered the engineering college next door, majoring in computer science.
Unexpectedly, this adjustment turned out to be a lucky break for him, allowing him to successfully infiltrate Nexus.
If he were to return to school now, he would be a "distinguished graduate" whom professors would vie to bring to their classes to give lectures. Just recounting how he worked so hard to get closer to Nexus would be enough to warrant an entire lecture.
And it will definitely be packed.
"Hey, I guessed so."
Lin Lixin laughed and nodded.
"Alright, alright, let's not talk about that anymore. Come on, I don't have anything else to do today, this is a rare opportunity, let me see the project you've been working on?"
He stood up, pressed Connor's shoulder to make him sit back down in front of the computer, and stood to the side with his arms crossed.
"Ah?"
Connor's heart began to pound.
It's here! It's here! A great opportunity has arrived!
If you can't handle it, you'll regret it for the rest of your life.
"Projects... which ones would you like to see? Nexus Browser, perhaps?"
"Anything's fine. Don't you have any little trinkets you casually make yourself?" "Uh..."
Upon hearing this, Connor hesitated for a long time.
He quietly raised his head, his eyes sweeping over his other colleagues in the office.
Seeing their encouraging and envious gazes directed at him, he gritted his teeth and made up his mind.
"Have!"
He did a few things on the PC and brought up a project.
"This is a version control tool I developed internally for our team... but it doesn't have an official name yet; we like to call it BVS internally."
"A better version system?"
Lin Lixin raised an eyebrow, looking at the screen in surprise.
Version control is actually a very common requirement in software development.
When faced with requirements such as collaborative development by multiple people, code backup and rollback, business maintenance, and releasing different versions, the absence of version control would be a huge disaster.
Programmers have clearly noticed this problem as well. As early as the late 1960s, those brilliant engineers had already begun to think about proactive version control.
However, due to the ease of use of computers at that time, no professional software had yet been developed.
It wasn't until the advent of SCCS in the 1970s that programmers were finally freed from manually managing and updating content.
New content written?
Let SCCS handle it!
It will proactively check the differences between the two documents and only save the changed content.
This extremely avant-garde idea saved a lot of disk space and laid a solid foundation for version control.
Its successor, CVS, was still in use by various software companies as late as 1990.
The first software that truly natively supports multi-user collaborative development.
It allows multiple developers to modify file content simultaneously and automatically performs the merge process.
And Connor's "BVS" is clearly a counterpart to CVS.
"Actually... actually, Nexus had a big problem before..." Connor scratched his head, and after thinking for a while, he explained.
"That time we were planning to test some new features for the browser, so I tried submitting the new file, and then..."
He pursed his lips, his expression still showing lingering fear.
"There was a problem with the network; one of the central servers went down, causing our files to only be half updated, and the entire project crashed."
"Fortunately, the maintenance department carried out emergency repairs and restored the files. After that, I started the development of this project."