In Hollywood, specifically with Lucasfilm.
Upon learning that it was a film scheduled for the Christmas season, Lucas naturally set up the studio immediately.
As required, most of the location shooting only required a few office sets.
The remaining transition scenes can also be synthesized using the green screen compositing technology currently being tested.
The only problem is...
Why?
Lucas, the producer, glanced at the provisional proposal submitted by Lin Lixin.
If you really take the photos one by one as required above.
That was practically a science fiction TV series with a war theme.
For a game, especially given Lin Lixin's emphasis on gameplay, this design style seems a bit... out of place.
"Are you sure? Cramming so many live-action cutscenes into the game? The file size..."
"I'll solve this problem, even if it means splitting it into two disks." Lin Lixin nodded.
There's no need to hesitate about this.
Westwood's high standing in history is undoubtedly inseparable from their consistent use of live-action cutscenes.
Even during the era of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 1, they still pushed the limits of the hardware at the time to force in complete videos of both factions.
Computer-generated imagery combined with live-action footage.
The campaign mode is incredibly immersive.
"RTS games have a hard time telling a good story, Lucas, we need these things."
Seeing the confusion on Lucas's face, Lin Lixin still offered an explanation.
After all, his relationship with Lucas was only truly and firmly bound together during the Command & Conquer era.
For Lucas, Command & Conquer was the true starting point for his entry into the gaming world.
As for Temple Run, it was more like a licensed collaboration between the two parties.
"I understand, that's why we prepared an adjutant and filmed those simple transition scenes." Lucas remained noncommittal.
In the original game, they did indeed use a lot of fmv.
It even won the title of "the world's first video game to use live-action video."
In a sense, the current trend in the industry of including full-length videos (FMVs) in games is largely influenced by C&C.
Unlike RPGs, RTS games don't involve players controlling a unit on a map; instead, players act as a commander directing operations from behind the scenes.
No matter how elaborate the battles are, players will always have a sense of detachment, like they are just observing from the sidelines.
So... how do we solve this problem?
The answer is simple: it's about creating a storyline.
Present the story to the players, preferably from a first-person perspective.
The general communicates directly with the camera and issues tasks.
From the player's perspective, this naturally gives them the feeling that they are actually undertaking a mission.
This is something that any producer would easily come up with. Even a producer like Lucas, who is already involved in the film industry, understands this very well.
It would be even better to have him and a group of directors in his network design these things.
But here's the problem.
The CG technology of the 80s and 90s... is really not something to be proud of.
In other words, the resolution of monitors is generally not very high, so a slightly blurry image can mask details.
Otherwise, it would be quite eerie to see a bunch of low-poly models moving around in an environment with very rudimentary textures and lighting.
Forget about immersion; the scene would look like a child's doodle.
To solve this problem, the FMV approach was naturally proposed.
However, it sounds simple, but it took Westwood a lot of brainpower to take that step back then.
The 1990s were the era of large-scale upgrades from floppy disks to CD-ROMs.
Especially for PC games, the upgrade of storage media has made many things that seemed impossible in the past possible.
CDs were never a faster medium. They were much slower than hard drives of the same era.
However, its advantage is something that no other medium can provide at this time.
A terrifyingly large file size of hundreds of megabytes!
Let alone hard drives, even cold storage media like magnetic tapes will only catch up in capacity once the new standard becomes widespread.
For this era, optical discs are undoubtedly the king of storage.
In the civilian sector, it holds an absolute dominant position.
Perhaps this is precisely the source of Sony's confidence in leading an era.
Westwood is not actually the first game to use FMV.
In fact, in the original timeline, Myst was created before Command & Conquer in 1995.
Not to mention the numerous interactive movies available on 3DO.
Although not the originator, Westwood did something extremely great.
To set things right. Please bookmark the only website for this novel: www. deqixs. org. This is the only website; other websites may stop updating at any time.
The emergence of 3DO has led to a large number of interactive movies on the market.
It's somewhat similar to the popular movies and games like "I'm Doomed! I've Been..." in East Asia, except the underlying engine is more primitive.
Westwood astutely identified the problem here.
These games all treat the movie as part of the game itself.
This... seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse, neglecting the essentials?
So Westwood Studios had a sudden inspiration and decided to organically combine live-action footage with the video game itself.
Based on the RTS experience accumulated during the Dune II era, we are developing a brand new RTS game.
Its name is Command & Conquer.
A shining jewel in the history of RTS.
Its groundbreaking live-action animated storyline gives it a level of immersion that is difficult for any other work of its time to surpass.
Even though the player is still just a controller, just a commander, this sense of immersion is not diminished in the slightest; on the contrary, it becomes stronger. It's like truly commanding an army in a positional war.
Westwood knew he didn't have the ability to create cinematic-quality CG, and he was also aware of the potential problems with live-action footage.
Knowing yourself and your enemy, I thoroughly explored a large number of error correction sets on the market.
That's their greatest skill.
Unfortunately, they lacked the ability to judge character and ran into an unlucky superior like EA. In the end, they could only fade into obscurity over time and were reorganized and disbanded.
Live footage, something that seems somewhat out of place from a modern perspective.
In today's world, this is actually a very cutting-edge technology.
It can effectively solve the visual disadvantages caused by the inadequacy of CG technology.
There's absolutely no need to view it with any prejudice.
"It's not that I distrust Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas, after all, I'm practically the Godfather of Industrial Light & Magic. I just hope we can make it as perfect as possible, on a movie-level scale."
Lin Lixin patted Lucas on the shoulder.
Industrial Light & Magic's current level of development wouldn't have been possible without Gamenova's Support. Gamenova typically sends them its various graphics technologies as soon as they become available.
Aside from the true offspring of Gamenova itself, Lucas definitely benefits the most.
Today, with the iteration of graphics cards and workstations, and the dissemination of technologies such as motion capture, graphics codec chip technology, and audio and video compression technology, Industrial Light & Magic has long been the only leading visual effects company in Hollywood.
It truly belongs to a class of its own.
For Hollywood, if they want to do CG, there are only two options.
Industrial Light & Magic, and others.
"Of course, then... let's consider the casting issue."
"I do have a few people I'm interested in, but I don't know if they're available."
Lin Lixin chuckled; wasn't this exactly what he had brought Lucas over to do?
It would be more appropriate for Master Lu to handle the task of recruiting people than for him to do it himself.
Even if they didn't... knowing it was you making the game, they probably would have come anyway...
Lucas smirked. No availability?
Mr. Lin wants you to film a movie, but you're unavailable? How are you going to survive in this business?
He took out a pen, turned to the blank space on the back of the draft, and winked at Lin Lixin.
"Speak."
"I want Harrison Ford to play the Allied president, Linda Hamilton to play Agent Tanya, Madonna Ciccone to play Lieutenant Eva, Arnold to play the general, and Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Kelly Fisher..."
Lin Lixin rattled off a long list of names in one breath, as if reciting a menu.
They are all top Hollywood stars today.
Can you remember it?
Lucas silently capped the pen and tucked it back into his chest.
If this cast were used to make a movie, they could dominate Hollywood for years.
"I don't have any good candidates for the Soviet side right now. Let's try out some acting opportunities in Eastern Europe, pick a few... reliable, obedient, and someone we click with." "Hmm, I have a few good options in that regard. Their status might not be a perfect match, but it wouldn't hurt to give them a try."
"That's good. We don't need to worry about saving storage space. We'll consider that during post-production editing and compression. Right now, I need to figure out a way to solve the storage space issue."
Lin Lixin nodded, left Hideo Kojima, who had just arrived from San Francisco that day, on set, gave him a few more instructions, and then got into his Corvette and left.
It wasn't that he didn't want to stay here a little longer, but the capacity issue really needed to be resolved.
I didn't realize it when the project was first started, but now that we've gradually expanded the scale of FMV, I'm finding that this thing isn't as simple as I imagined.
Either cut the gameplay and give it to the movie, or cut a large portion of the movie and focus on developing the gameplay.
Want both?
With a capacity of 650MB, after deducting error correction redundancy and various miscellaneous expenses, the remaining usable capacity is actually not enough.
Especially since Hans Zimmer hasn't even started yet.
Once music is added, that will be another huge expense in terms of storage capacity.
We need to come up with a reliable solution...
"The last time we encountered such a severe capacity crisis was so long ago?" Lin Lixin shook his head helplessly.
CDs are great, but their capacity is not unlimited.
Now, unexpectedly, we've reached a point where capacity is a constant constraint.
Thinking back to the floppy disk era, early versions of " The King of Fighters " only had character packs that were a few megabytes in size, so they had to split them into several sheets...
"Why?"