Some brothers have it.
Theoretically speaking, what Lin Lixin is trying to do is not to recreate Battlefield 1942.
All he needs is the soul of the Battlefield series.
By abstracting the problem completely and focusing on the multi-service coordinated operations on a large battlefield, some breakthroughs become possible.
"Sixty-four people is indeed a bit difficult. We can cut it in half and try starting with 32 people."
Don't be fooled by the fact that 16 against 16 sounds like a small number.
But it's important to know that in this day and age, only Quake is truly capable of creating a multiplayer online multiplayer FPS game.
The others are either concept-driven titles like Mazewar or single-player FPS games.
When it comes to online gaming, Gamenova is truly one of the few companies that understands it all.
In Japan, it goes without saying that there are no commercial ISPs, and most users rely on telephone lines for daily use.
It's a real telephone line, the kind you dial up to make calls; it's not even a modem.
If you want to use a "network line" in Japan, you really need to actively dial in. This was in the early days of the internet.
Let alone 16 against 16.
Even considering Quake's main selling point of a 5v5 mode without mods, it's still incredibly impressive.
If they could actually make a 16v16 game, it would be a truly groundbreaking achievement that would shake the world.
"Maps... can also be scaled down to some extent."
If 4 square kilometers is impossible, surely 500 meters by 500 meters shouldn't be a problem?
If 500x500 is achievable, is it possible to push it to the limit, like 800x800, with a little more effort?
If it can achieve 800x800, could a more aggressive optimization approach potentially yield a 1000x1000 resolution?
We have to give it a try.
Even if the final product is much smaller than planned, it must still be made as large as possible.
The size of the map is the most crucial element.
"Remove the real physics, Chris. We're not doing any physics simulations or realistic ballistics." Lin Lixin looked at Christopher.
He had recently moved the entire Bethesda over here.
The entire physics engine team is now working at ng, or more specifically, within ng's Nova ne Engine Department.
"Just keep the collision boxes and... animations? That would definitely save a lot of processor resources."
Christopher nodded thoughtfully.
Physics simulation is one of the most processor-intensive features in a game.
Collision detection, ballistics calculation, physics effects...
Everything is squeezing the meager remaining performance from the already pitiful processor.
Unfortunately, these things are game-specific, so there's no way to design dedicated circuits for the processor specifically for them.
Unless it's a processor like the Athena, which is also specifically designed for gaming.
"Yes, we've removed the complex trajectories and reverted to a simple parabolic algorithm, prioritizing 'smoothness' above all else."
"What about the graphics card? Rendering is the real bottleneck." "... Downgrade the graphics settings."
Lin Lixin hesitated for a moment before giving his answer.
Lowering the textures to 1990s levels, from higher resolutions to 128x128, or even 64x64, results in fewer pixels and a significant reduction in rendering pressure.
The number of faces in the model doesn't actually need much adjustment.
The current modeling precision is not high enough to create things with too many polygons or too complex designs.
For a game, what is the most important thing?
If we must categorize them into different factions, there are roughly four directions.
The first group, represented by Shigeru Miyamoto, Mark Cerny, Sid Meier, John Carmack, and others, prioritizes "playability."
The core idea is very simple: if a game isn't fun, no matter how well it's made, it's still garbage.
The second group places greater emphasis on "sensory experience," or feedback, prioritizing tactile feel.
They highly value the feedback that video games provide to players; every time a button is pressed, the game must offer ample feedback.
Whether it's splattering blood, making sounds, or experiencing vibrations, everything must be polished to the extreme. Within this sect, there's even a classic text called "Gamefeel" that specifically studies "feeling," which can be considered a kind of sect secret manual.
The third school of thought prioritizes immersion, pursuing the ultimate sense of presence and atmosphere, making players feel as if they are truly in that world.
The fourth school of thought is somewhat similar to immersion, advocating for narrative as the primary focus.
The goal is to make video games more "cinematic," to view and handle problems in games from a director's perspective, to design shots and performances, and to place great emphasis on the expression of emotions.
So, which category does Battlefield belong to?
The answer is to get a little of each.
But its gameplay is probably the most important part.
Its soul lies in its large-scale, cooperative combat that sets it apart from other FPS games.
Everything else can be compromised to some extent for this true core.
but...
Compromising on the game itself due to limited hardware has never been Gamenova's style.
Otherwise, why would Lin Lixin go to such great lengths to establish a dedicated engine department? Optimization is a complex and demanding field.
"Regarding the issue of large-scale battlefields, I actually have a few ideas."
Lin Lixin silently approached the whiteboard.
How to fit as much of the world as possible into limited display performance has always been a problem that developers are keen to solve.
He didn't rush to write anything on the whiteboard, but first scanned the people present.
The team here consists of top talents in the fields of graphics and hardware, forming Gamenova's most important technical think tank.
However, in such situations, it is easier to "engineer" when considering problems, neglecting those things that are actually very simple.
"First, we don't actually need to make overly complex maps, because this time the subject is... the Gulf Crisis."
Why does a map consume so many resources?
Because the entire map needs to be loaded into memory.
When players load a map, it needs to be cached first to ensure a smooth gaming experience.
If there isn't enough memory, developers will need to consider some unconventional methods to solve this problem. For example... block partitioning.
A typical example is the block loading mechanism in Minecraft.
Load only the necessary blocks and unload the useless parts to ensure that memory is not crammed with more and more things until it overflows.
Of course, due to Minecraft's incredible optimization and memory leaks in some mods, there will occasionally be situations where all allocated memory will be used up, but that's a completely unforeseen case.
This streaming loading strategy is very common in video games.
Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog also uses a similar concept to dynamically load maps, thus achieving a smooth and fast-paced experience.
The so-called "memory exhaustion" is actually just this kind of thing in many cases.
Both CPUs and graphics cards need RAM as a high-speed cache to help store data.
Otherwise, reading all the content from the hard drive would be so slow it would make you want to bang your head against the wall.
The same applies to video memory.
If frequently used resources are in video memory, then video memory can be used on-the-spot when rendering the screen, and the reading speed is incredibly fast.
Conversely, reading from memory is much slower. And what about reading from the hard drive?
That would be a complete and utter disaster.
Therefore, when dealing with a large map, memory usage is definitely the biggest issue.
Therefore, the search for a breakthrough point should naturally begin here.
This subject matter provided Lin Lixin with an excellent opportunity.
What was the Gulf War?
That's the University of Tokyo desert.
And the desert... is precisely the most energy-efficient choice.
The most resource-intensive elements in a game map are often the complex models, with numerous occlusions, shadows, lighting, and texture transitions...
If it were a battlefield in a Europe city, tons of buildings would completely overwhelm the already limited graphics card and memory.
But the desert is different.
There weren't even any trees, let alone buildings. The terrain was gently undulating and orderly, without any chaotic or complex lighting.
The textures are almost identical; the ground of the entire map can even be represented by the same texture, so the video memory doesn't need to cache anything more complex.
The performance saved is more than enough to add some simple fortifications or anti-aircraft guns to the desert.
"Indeed... the desert is naturally an environment with scarce and simple elements, making it very suitable for video games."
"Wrong."
Carmack shook his head.
What Lin Lixin said is absolutely true; the desert is indeed much easier to navigate than a normal town.
However, there is also a very fatal problem.
"What about visibility? There's nothing to block the view in the desert, so rendering culling is pointless."
This is the desert, and the sky is cloudless.
With a thunderous leap, one could land on Dune and, with a single glance, see for Eri around.
It scared the GPU to tears, okay? "Hehe... that's the important point I'm about to make."
Lin Lixin didn't rush to refute him, but instead asked in return,
" Carmack, have you ever been to a real desert?"
How so?
"Heat haze occurs when the air density changes after the surface is heated by solar Fallout, causing light to refract and making distant objects appear blurry and distorted, making them difficult to distinguish."
Upon hearing this, Carmack was taken aback, then his eyes lit up.
Why bother going to a real desert to see this?
California is such a lousy place, it's hot all year round, especially Southern California, where the sun beats down directly on the ground, and you can easily see the heat haze.
"You mean... blurring things in the distance?"
"That's right."
Lin Lixin laughed and wrote the first line on the whiteboard.
[Levels of detail -- LOD] LOD technology is not a new concept. As early as 1976, LOD had already been applied to some extent in the field of computer graphics.
However, its use in video games is indeed a first.
Its concept is very simple: each model has multiple versions with varying levels of precision, which are dynamically switched based on the player's distance.
The closer you are, the higher the model's accuracy and the richer the details, and vice versa.
Erasing everything that would be difficult to observe from a distance, leaving only a very coarse low-poly model, is sufficient.
"In addition, we can add something to work in conjunction with it."
Lin Lixin raised his hand again and wrote the second line.
[Distance fog]