"Stop joking around. What kind of game are you guys planning to play? Have you got any ideas yet?"
Lin Lixin looked at Lucas.
Infocom's true strength doesn't lie in new-concept Adventure games like Myst.
Their true comfort zone is still traditional American Adventure games.
This genre, which demands a high level of textual quality and visual expressiveness, is well-suited to Lucas.
"I'd love to make a Star Wars movie. To be honest, I'm still thinking about your Stars!", which is such a crucial project."
Lucas glanced at Lin Lixin with a slightly reproachful tone.
That PBEM game really left a deep impression on him.
As a game that was born alongside free email, Stars!, despite its limited gameplay, didn't achieve the same level of popularity as these mainstream titles.
But its group stickiness is truly frightening.
Perhaps this is precisely the advantage of niche themes; they are simply a powerful tool for cultivating user engagement.
"I don't own the rights to Star Wars."
"Ha?"
Lin Lixin was taken aback, not expecting such an answer.
Star Wars is Lucasfilm's crown jewel, standing alongside Raiders of the Lost Ark as two of its most important protective films.
What does it mean when the copyright is not in your own hands?
Could it be that Lucas sold the rights to Disney without Lucas's knowledge?
"Oh, don't get me wrong, I wasn't talking about the film and television rights to Star Wars, I was talking about the video game adaptation rights."
Lucas explained, "Hey, we were young and naive. Ten years ago, who could have imagined that Atari, at its peak, would become like this in just a few years?"
He shook his head helplessly.
Around the 1980s, Atari was still the king of the video game industry.
Back then, Gamenova hadn't even appeared yet; Atari dominated both the home console and arcade markets.
In an era when video games were just beginning to become commercialized, Lucas saw the commercial potential of video games at a glance.
It can succeed in the same way, and it can also fail in the same way.
Lucas firmly believed in his vision. While everyone in Hollywood was still wondering what video games were, he had already taken the lead and handed over the license to the person who knew games best.
That is, Atari.
At least from the initial period of cooperation, this decision wasn't wrong.
Many excellent arcade games were created during that period.
Atari made a fortune from the popularity of the Star Wars IP, and Lucas also injected fresh blood into Star Wars through video games.
But looking at it now, that would be very painful.
Although the contract between the two parties has gradually become more lenient through repeated negotiations due to Atari's decline, the intellectual property has not yet been fully freed.
"It won't be long before Atari Games are all gone, and there's no point in Atari clinging to it now."
" Atari —well, maybe."
Lin Lixin nodded.
It's estimated that the Star Wars copyright will be completely regained in the near future.
Lucas is now fully capable of going toe-to-toe with his opponent.
However, his words served as a reminder to Lin Lixin.
Besides the 3D0, there seems to be another interesting model waiting for him in the not-too-distant future.
Atari's swan song, the true first 64-bit game console in the original timeline.
Atari Jaguar, the Atari Americas Leopard.
A device that is amazing in every sense of the word, even more abstract than 3D0.
"How about we make some Adventure games to practice first? Our consoles also need some top-tier Adventure games to bolster our lineup."
Lin Lixin plopped down on a beach chair, stretched, and lay back. "I need to familiarize myself with the workflow of video games. I'll need your help later."
"Um?"
Lucas understood the implication in Lin Lixin's words, and raised an eyebrow with a slight hesitation, "----A new model?"
Sure enough, although Lin Lixin never took 3D0 and his team seriously, it seemed that the appearance of that next-generation console had given him a sense of urgency to some extent.
"Yes, but there are still some issues that need to be resolved."
The ATHENA Processor has been tested on Sega for quite some time now, and we have obtained most of the necessary data.
Once he resolves the last few issues, perhaps he can truly take the first step towards the next generation.
"You're also going to build a 64-bit machine?"
"Of course not, Lucas, bandwidth isn't important."
Lin Lixin shook his head.
Even though no project has been approved yet, the main direction of the next-generation console is very clear.
It certainly won't be a flashy, high-end product like the 3D0.
The Atari Americas Leopard case has proven that 64-bit processors are not suitable for the present era.
What exactly does bit width represent?
The jump from 8-bit to 16-bit represents a significant leap forward for the NX compared to traditional Famicom and notebooks.
Larger register width, wider integer operation width, and larger address space.
These are all benefits of high-bandwidth connections.
In the 8-bit era, numbers couldn't even exceed 255. To use larger numbers in games, you had to concatenate multiple 8-bit integers.
However, if it's just a matter of adding or subtracting a few small integers, theoretically, a wider bit width won't actually help much.
What truly determines processor performance is frequency.
This is also the most important factor that truly makes ATHENA stand out from the crowd and become invincible in the field of video games.
Do you know how fast our Athena can run?
"In short, it's faster than most general-purpose processors on the market; I know that much."
"Yes, under specially tuned conditions, Athena can reach a frequency close to 80MHz under ideal circumstances."
"Oh—that's really—fast?"
"In short, all you need to know is that she's very strong."
Lin Lixin smacked his lips, looking slightly disappointed.
This is the real determining factor for processor performance.
An 80MHz 32-bit processor absolutely crushes a 30MHz 64-bit processor.
A faster frequency means that she can process more instructions and do more things in the same amount of time.
Especially considering that ATHENA's instruction set contains a large number of optimized circuits specifically for video games.
In terms of architectural efficiency, it is indeed ahead of its time.
However, a wider bit width isn't necessarily without its advantages.
The most significant improvement is, of course, the increased memory limit.
In the 8-bit era, the maximum memory was usually only a few KB. Even models using 16-bit addressing space could only run a maximum of 64KB of memory.
This number successfully rose to the MB level in the 16-bit era.
Many 16-bit machines now have the capability to expand their memory to around 4MB.
In 32-bit systems, this unit becomes GB.
But this doesn't really mean much.
Given current technological capabilities, no one has the ability to produce memory chips of such high specifications.
Even if it were possible to achieve this with all our might, the cost would far exceed what we could control.
Furthermore, since GAMENOVA's own SDRAM patents are already more expensive than traditional memory modules, the final product will likely be even more exaggerated than the 3D0.
This is so unhealthy.
GAMENOVA is designed to make game consoles, not to build wonders.
Under these conditions, 32-bit becomes a more suitable choice.
In fact, the struggle between 64-bit and 32-bit systems has countless typical cases throughout history that can serve as lessons to be learned.
The most representative and valuable reference among them is probably DEC-AIpha21064 from 1992.
DEC manufactures all-64-bit RISC processors.
In 1992, an era when semiconductors were just emerging, this thing was able to run at a terrifying 150MHz clock speed.
A fast and powerful 64-bit processor, a true performance monster.
But it lost to Intel's 86, like many other challengers of this era.
It lost to a 32-bit processor with a clock speed of only 66MHz, which was released the following year.
The reason lies in its exorbitant price and the ecosystem fragmentation caused by completely abandoning the old architecture.
While the performance of the 86 is significantly worse, it boasts a complete ecosystem, with all developers and a mature software marketplace present.
Ultimately, Alpha could only become another shell of the Wintel alliance.
As it turns out, a good ecosystem and affordable prices are the most important qualities of a consumer electronics product.
And these two points are precisely what GAMENOVA excels at.
at the same time.
Helsinki, Finland.
Linus sat in front of his beat-up PC, typing at lightning speed.
A dual technology stack of C Language and assembly code.
Although this i386 PC has poor performance, it's more than enough for an experienced craftsman like him who doesn't rely on high-end compilers.
He is trying to develop his own operating system kernel based on Mini and Uni.
For this future liberal pope, all the systems on the market make him feel uncomfortable.
Uni is too expensive; MacOS is exclusively for Apple; DOS is too outdated; and Windows carries too much historical baggage.
NeXTSTEP is advanced, but also expensive.
If it were someone else, in this situation, they would probably choose the one that best suits their needs.
But Linus is no ordinary person.
He decided to write one himself.
A free spirited and rebellious hacker, geek, or tech enthusiast always has boundless passion for this kind of thing.
Linus's fingers clattered across the keyboard.
Suddenly, his finger stopped, hovering in mid-air.
A new file has been added to the project.
In just a moment, goosebumps rose on his arms.
Someone planted a file on his PC without him noticing!
This is not a good sign.
Although there was nothing else on his computer besides this project, the feeling of being spied on still made him somewhat uncomfortable.
Of course, there was also a sense of defiance.
As a hacker, how could someone accidentally drop a file into my system right under my nose?
He's always the one stirring things up on the University of Helsinki's network, but this time he got messed with by someone else.
Who is it?
Could he be a hidden master in the school?
He carefully isolated the area and examined the contents of the document.
Hello Linus,
It began with a greeting, as if the other party had issued a challenge to him.
I have reviewed your project files.
[An interesting project]
[But i386 and C Language limit your potential]
[I have some better ideas, and considering you probably don't like others messing with your code (like I do), I've sent the optimized version to your public email address.]