Visual Technology Beyond Even the Regular Army's Level

"Ah, Furukawa- kun."

Shiori Fujisaki, dressed in a swimsuit with her long hair tied up, was drying her wet body with a towel.

"Thump, thump..."

"Buzz, buzz..."

In an instant, Furukawa felt as if his heart had been pierced yet again.

With that kind of appearance, every smile and frown could probably capture the hearts of countless young men.

Every glance, every character illustration, and every movement was meticulously designed by multiple animation supervisors and character designers.

This isn't an animation.

Video games, especially in this era where storage is more valuable than gold, will not waste any storage space.

Every character illustration and every piece of voice acting was carefully selected and arranged by the production team.

Furukawa stared intently into Shiori's eyes.

She would even blink occasionally, as if she were truly alive, as if she were really standing in front of me and talking to me. "Buzz, buzz..."

He suddenly felt a vibration coming from his fingertips.

Powerful yet gentle.

It's the vibration from the vibrating pack...

"You want to join this club?"

"Yes, from now on I'll be looking forward to your guidance, Shiori- san."

Having gone through this experience, Furukawa felt as if he had discovered a new continent.

Whenever it comes to choosing a course of action, as long as you have the physical strength and can handle the pressure, you must choose to participate in the swimming club activities.

For no other reason than to have a chance to talk to Shiori, even if it's just to sneak a peek at Shiori in her swimsuit.

Unfortunately, perhaps due to some misoperation on his part, Furukawa was unable to trigger a dialogue with Shiori Fujisaki again for several weeks.

Then, in the middle of the following month, on a certain Monday, after finishing club activities as usual, a cutscene suddenly popped up in the game.

Furukawa immediately got up from the ground and sat up straight.

Here it comes!

The plot is finally starting.

Presumably, my efforts over this period of time have finally been recognized.

[Furukawa]: "Phew--Finally, it's time to rest."

[Nijino]: "Furukawa -kun?"

"Why?"

Furukawa paused, then checked the displayed name several times.

Nijino?

Who the hell is this?

Where am I, Shiori Fujisaki? The scene shifts, and a girl with short to medium-length blue hair appears before him.

Her voice actress is Noriko Hidaka, who was directly recruited from Gainax's "The Secret of Blue Water" project team.

Her clear, energetic, and high-energy voice, combined with her very approachable tone, instantly established the image of Saki Nijino as a vibrant and youthful schoolgirl.

Although puzzled, seeing the other party's appearance, Furukawa's guard instantly relaxed.

[Furukawa]: "Yes, that's me. May I ask who you are...?"

[Nijino]: "Ah, I'm Saki Nijino, the manager of the baseball club."

I see.

Furukawa nodded to himself.

Based on his years of experience in dating games, this is probably a sporty woman selling a vibrant persona.

Generally speaking, this applies to typical dating games available on the market.

Now that we're here, it's only a few words Kung-Fu Master from starting the excavation.

But unfortunately, this is * Tokimeki Memorial *, so things certainly won't proceed so lightly. [Nijino]: "You seem to have a lot of perseverance. Let's work together towards our goal of reaching Koshien!"

[Furukawa]: "I'm sorry, I'm not interested in baseball."

Actually, I'm not really interested in swimming.

Furukawa thought of it.

Why did I choose to join the swimming club?

Need I even ask? Of course it's for Shiori Fujisaki!

After their conversation, Saki seemed a little disappointed, but she quickly recovered, thanked them sincerely, and left in a hurry.

Despite the suddenness of the incident, Furukawa didn't take it to heart.

Nijino- san does seem quite nice; she has a lively and cheerful personality and is a very good girl.

But...

Now that I've decided to pursue Shiori, I must forge ahead without hesitation!

Other women would only slow down his advance! Furukawa had already made up his mind that even if the other party wanted to ask him out, he would never waver.

I'm fantasizing again, imagining myself as the male protagonist in a dark corner of the world, surrounded by a bunch of girls all day long...

The minor incident did not interrupt Furukawa's actions.

The route ahead is still quite clear.

Since Shiori is in the swimming club, I'll just keep going there and making myself known as a member.

As the saying goes, hard work pays off; perhaps the god of games noticed his efforts.

After yet another round of club activities, he finally triggered the event.

Evening, in front of the school gate.

[Furukawa]: "Ah, Shiori's over there."

[Furukawa]: "Hey~, Shiori."

"That's really bold..." Furukawa scratched his head, not expecting the conversation to proceed this way.

That's true, they're childhood sweethearts.

Unlike himself, he would never dare to shout Yaguchi's name so openly at the school gate.

The character art of Shiori Fujisaki has appeared, her sailor uniform perfectly revealing her collarbone.

The specially formulated pre-baked twilight raster effect ensures just the right amount of light and shadow.

Against the backdrop of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's unique style, which lies between realism and fantasy, Shiori Fujisaki appears as if she were in a dream.

Don't let the fact that Tokimeki Memorial is just a dating simulation game fool you; Gamenova has used a lot of advanced technology in it.

Rather, it's more accurate to say that it's one of the few recent works that fully utilizes the capabilities of the NX series.

During the development of Gamenova, a texture was not simply inserted.

Well... not entirely.

In a sense, the technology stack used in this game is even inherited from the Biohazard era.

Thanks to the new Vorbis compression algorithm and optimizations throughout, even after all the voice recordings are completed, Lin Lixin still has enough space to include a large number of images. In particular, the images themselves can also be compressed and optimized to a certain extent.

So, after much thought, he put a seemingly insignificant little gadget into "Tokimeki Memorial".

It's possible that by now, the vast majority of players are still unaware of its existence.

Layered rendering + 2D lighting system.

This was a suggestion that Lin Lixin brought up incidentally when discussing character design with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.

In his words, this is called "splitting".

Simply put, it's about breaking down a character's complete artwork into various parts such as hair, face, eyes, clothes, highlights, and so on.

From a modern perspective...

It's actually just a "suit" for Live2D.

Perhaps this is the difference between traditional animation studios making dating sims and actual game companies.

In fact, the early Tokimeki Memorial 1, and even the later PS version Tokimeki Memorial: Forever with You, were essentially made up of a large number of still images.

Want your character to react? Sure, just draw a few more.

One expression when shy, one expression when angry...

Whether you're changing poses or expressions, all you need to do is create the corresponding static image.

Even the blinking effect was handled using traditional animation techniques.

Ultimately, it's just a matter of switching images.

To be honest, this technology isn't bad at all.

Ultimately, it's just animation. The ability to achieve extremely low standards and extremely high potential depends entirely on the artist team's skill and the production timeline.

but...

For Gamenova, this approach is neither healthy nor elegant.

So Lin Lixin waved his hand and immediately launched the Live2D project.

The Yoshiyuki Sadamoto" aims to bring players the ultimate visual experience.

The current Shiori Fujisaki is, in a sense, a huge "body part". Her eye alone has been dissected into various parts such as the pupil, highlight, eyelid, eyelashes, and eyelid.

Through sophisticated programmatic control, gamenova can be dynamically controlled directly using a specially written "timeline syntax".

The form of expression is, of course, very simple.

By simply specifying parameters such as ["part id":"Change"] in the editor, you can animate the character using pure text or encoding.

Want to blink? Then move your eyelids and eyelashes to dynamically adjust their position and the way they cover each other.

It may sound complicated, but on the contrary, this technology directly freed up the entire project team's timeline.

Animations that originally required countless character illustrations can now be fully realized with just 1kb of code.

It's even more lifelike than what those novice artists draw.

There's no need to worry about inconsistent art styles anymore.

Theoretically, if the character is broken into enough pieces, it can perform any action possible within the 2D realm.

They can even pull off exaggerated martial arts moves like those in "The King of Fighters" and "Street Fighter".

Changing clothes can also be done by drawing only the corresponding parts and applying weights. Of course, besides this core technology, there is another technology that, although it seems less prominent, is no less important.

In traditional visual novels, the scenes are often pre-drawn.

Night is the backdrop of night, and dusk is the backdrop of dusk.

So how did Gamenova do it?

Of course, there are corresponding backgrounds, but in addition to them, Gamenova also has a complete 2D lighting baking engine embedded in it.

It directly calls NX's NovaRadeon display chip, leveraging OpenGL to fully utilize the hardware's capabilities for real-time 2D lighting rendering.

Designers can set up light sources within a scene using code or a scene editor.

Various effects such as point light sources, skylights, and floodlights.

By simply adjusting parameters such as brightness, angle, color, and color temperature, you can achieve a variety of drastically different lighting effects.

It can even be used to set the skylight of the sun in the background to achieve a hyper-realistic lighting effect.

Of course, this applies only to 2D.

If this technology were to be used in 3D, the computational load would increase exponentially. As for the actual effectiveness of this system...

Just look at Furukawa's dazed expression now.

As dusk fell, Shiori Fujisaki from Live2D stood in front of the school gate, the dim Red light of the sky falling on her shoulders.

Shiori's face was warm-toned on one side illuminated by the light, while the other side was a shadowy dark area.

With each blink of her eyes, even her eyelids and eyelashes seemed to Flash the sunlight.

Even the highest-quality OVA animations probably can't achieve this level of quality...