The countdown to the official start of the game progressed slowly, tick by tick.
A corner of the map finally came into view.
What came into view was a vast desert.
In the distance, a cloud of dust was billowing up, making it difficult to discern the view.
In the foreground are undulating Dune.
Apart from the uniform sand, there are occasional patches of withered grass and pebbles.
These are not actual scene objects, but rather part of the texture.
When filling pixels, the graphics card will occasionally select textures with different variations, depending on the needs.
Otherwise, if the entire desert were filled with the same texture, it would be very easy to cause visual fatigue.
Whether it's physical or psychological.
A row of metal anti-tank barriers stood not far away, forming a defensive line.
"Thump thump thump! Thump thump!" The music started its powerful drumbeat loop again.
To be frank, the theme song that Hans Zimmer wrote for Battlefield 1991 is not complicated in structure.
Although he is very skilled in electronics and industrialization, that doesn't mean he would carelessly pile up a bunch of redundant elements.
The style of the entire piece is very strong and distinct.
That's just his style.
A simple yet powerful sense of "drive".
With just a few notes, the atmosphere can be fully created, exerting a terrifying influence on the listener.
He is a demagogue hiding behind the scenes.
The work they do isn't as obvious as that of the producers and technical artists, but it's especially important.
Emma unconsciously shook her leg, tapping her feet to the beat, silently watching the countdown to the official start tick by second by second.
This style of soundtrack has never been used in war-themed works in the past.
They make extensive use of brass instruments, snare drums, and other similar instruments, and are designed in a symphonic style. Heroic narratives and grandeur are the most important elements in this type of soundtrack.
But Battlefield 1991 is different.
Well... strictly speaking, Hans Zimmer did not abandon the traditional "march style".
The snare drum and brass instruments have been preserved to some extent.
Hans Zimmer is more like he took the original traditional "World War II-style soundtrack" and covered it with a skin of modern warfare.
The repeated crescendos create a simple yet catchy melody.
More importantly, this increasingly complex and strong main theme naturally has the effect of stirring emotions.
It's like the preheating of an engine or boiler before it's officially started.
Even though the game hasn't officially started yet, Emma already feels her blood boiling.
Battlefield 1991 has a lot of tracks.
Thanks to the Vorbis compression algorithm, the game has enough space to accommodate multiple tracks.
Each piece of music is distinctly different in style. From the beginning until now, the background music on the main screen, the background music in the opening animation, and the background music when you officially enter the game all have completely different emotional tones.
Suddenly, the drumbeats stopped, and the rousing music came to an abrupt halt.
But there's no abrupt interruption; instead, it's a perfectly timed pause.
It's as if there should have been a pause here, but it's been stretched out infinitely.
At that moment, Emma's cortisol levels spiked, and she opened her eyes wide and sat up straight.
The game has officially begun.
Fortunately, although the desert was vast, the game didn't actually throw them directly into the wilderness.
The spawn point is one of the U. S. military outposts.
The area is not large, but the ground has been compacted and is very flat.
Apart from a few sparse sheds for parking vehicles, there was only a makeshift anti-armor defense line made up of sandbags and Czech hedgehogs.
Emma's first impression upon entering the game was... lag!
The frame rate is probably less than 30 FPS, maybe around 25-30, and it's likely dropping below 20 FPS. It's not that the game is unplayable at this frame rate.
For video games of this era, even 20 frames per second is already considered a stunning performance.
She was just a Quake player.
Compared to Quake's consistent fast-paced, high-speed combat and high frame rate, Battlefield 1991 seems to have completely abandoned optimization, with the frame rate halved.
This is the latest Hermes Pro, a genuine high-end device, equipped with a Novara Deon 9000 graphics chip.
But after a brief period of discomfort, all her attention was instantly drawn away.
m16a2
The Colt M16 series automatic rifle is the standard issue weapon of the United States.
With a 5.56mm caliber, high precision, and fast firing rate, it is an essential product for home and travel.
It was held in one's hand, with its sights, grip, barrel, and handguard. Although the accuracy was not high, there were obvious reductions in polygon count in many places, and there were even cases where textures were used to fill in the gaps in polygon count.
But... it really is here.
Emma wasn't the only player who had just started playing. There were four or five other people in her base besides her.
At this moment, apart from one player who had clearly played a couple of rounds and was already familiar with the game, the others were just like her, wandering around aimlessly.
Enjoy the spectacular scenery of this base, and admire the mannequins and weapon models.
And armored vehicles parked in the shed.
The sandstorm was huge; looking into the distance, all that could be seen was a vast expanse of sand and dust, almost orange-red, that completely obscured the sky.
Another base that was relatively close could be vaguely seen.
Even so, just one glance was enough to freeze everyone present in place.
"This map... is way too big!"
Vincent exclaimed in surprise.
He had also seen the battle line map on the loading screen.
Although he didn't know what the actual battlefield would be like, judging from the distance between the two bases on the map...
The actual size of the map is frighteningly large. If it's so large for a child, it goes without saying that it's even larger for Emma and George, the two adults.
Emma felt this most deeply.
Look around.
By simply comparing the scale with the satellite image from the overhead view, it's not difficult to determine the approximate proportions.
"Oh My God..."
Compared to the arena-style maps in Quake that she was familiar with, their spawn point, a small frontline base, was already larger than an entire map in Quake.
Although the amount of content and the density are completely different things, the sheer scale and sheer size of this place is enough to make one tremble with fear.
With such a vast game world... it's no wonder there are frame drops.
Damn, for a game of this caliber to run at 20 frames per second, Gamenova is practically a god, okay???
Just as she was pondering this, a figure darted out from beside her, ran a few steps, and jumped onto a Hummer not far away.
"Wait... what?"
What would seem like an ordinary scene in modern times was, at this moment, like a bolt from the blue in Emma's eyes. Holy crap, vehicles can drive!
The vehicle can be driven!
Driving is nothing new; whether it's Gamenova's Need for Need for Speed or Sega's racing arcade games, they all do a great job in terms of driving.
Even when it comes to flying airplanes, there are excellent works like Ace Combat and G-LOC.
Can...
Battlefield 1991 should theoretically be an FPS game.
The vehicles in this game are actually drivable!
It's like combining three of Gamenova's signature IPs: Quake, Need for Speed, and Ace Combat.
This isn't an FPS game at all; it's a battlefield simulator!
This is a fucking simulation game!
[simon]: "Follow me!"
A voice suddenly came from the car. This wasn't the game's voice chat system; with current bandwidth, it simply couldn't support adding an extra real-time voice chat line.
This is a shortcut, or rather, a tagging system.
In the actual Battlefield 1942, the entire radio command system was actually very primitive.
From f1 to f8, each corresponds to a different piece of information.
Examples include confirming receipt, detecting the enemy, and requesting Support.
While it can indeed cover most of the needs on the battlefield, there is a small problem.
The operation is cumbersome.
This was probably a common problem with early video games.
They have always put a lot of effort into interactive design.
Due to hardware limitations, developers often lack the extra energy to design UIs from a human-computer interaction perspective.
More often than not, simply implementing these features is already a great achievement.
This is one of the main reasons why Lin Lixin values Mark Cerny: a developer who has perfectly absorbed the different game styles of the European and Japan markets and the Japanese market.
While the Japan video game industry excels in these user-friendly designs, it consistently lags behind in technology, disliking both technical advancements and hardware improvements.
In the United States, the opposite is true. Geek culture is prevalent, and the overly strong nerd vibe and PC gaming heritage make the overall style of video games tend to be hardcore, far removed from family life.
Only by integrating the strengths of both approaches and complementing each other's weaknesses can we create truly future-oriented and modern works for the new era.
While ensuring operability, we must not abandon the pursuit of technology and hardware.
Influenced by this idea, Lin Lixin simply abandoned the radio system in Battlefield 1942 and adopted a more modern marking system instead.
The original complex multi-key layout has been simplified to a single 'q' key.
You can use the 'q' key to handle any needs, and the game itself will make some inferences.
If you briefly tap to mark an enemy unit or vehicle, the game will automatically report "Enemy infantry spotted" or "Enemy tank spotted".
For more precise control, you can also achieve this by long-pressing.
A tiny bit of extra processor performance overhead brings absolute comfort.
Hearing the sounds from the vehicle, Emma hesitated for a moment, then quickly ran a few steps and got into the vehicle. To be precise, she got into the machine gun position.
A machine gun was mounted on the Humvee, a truly functional machine gun.
George, sitting to the side, frowned and watched the scene unfold in silence.
Just as Emma gripped the machine gun, a fleeting shadow streaked across the horizon.
That was an F-15 fighter jet.