The capacity issue has been temporarily resolved.
But the problems we face have not diminished at all.
Of course, this applies to Blizzard's Mike and his team.
After all, such large-scale projects are only done a few times a year.
"It would be great if we could use novareadeon's libraries..."
Alan ran a hand through his hair and complained to Mike, who was standing next to him, with a hint of helplessness.
As per Lin Lixin's request, this project will first be launched on NX and Hermes, followed by porting to IBM-compatible machines.
That's nothing to worry about. After all, it's their own platform, so it's normal for them to have exclusive rights for a month or two, or even half a year.
But Hermes is one thing, but developing games on the NX is no easy task.
Back when 16-bit machines weren't widespread, things were fine. At that time, NX's performance was unparalleled, and even casual work could achieve quality that was ahead of its time.
But things are different now.
As times have progressed, players have increasingly higher demands for game quality, making development on the NX platform more challenging. This is especially true considering the extensive use of special effects in the Red Alert series.
For example, explosions, smoke, flames, and all sorts of random tech units, like cloaked units and Iron Curtain, and of course, shadow effects.
These effects may seem bizarre, but they all actually rely on the same technology.
alphablend, transparent blending.
In the world of computers, transparency is actually very difficult to handle.
Generally speaking, modern hardware makes it very easy to do these things.
In addition to the RGB three-color channels, an extra alpha channel is added, which is the alpha transparency channel, to form RGBA.
Assuming 50% red covers 50% blue, the system can directly calculate the purple result through color mixing.
This idea is not complicated, and theoretically it shouldn't have been only widely applied in modern times.
The reason why this technology couldn't be used in the 1980s and 90s is actually very simple.
The hardware can't keep up!
The CPU's weak performance simply cannot support such a large-scale computation. It reads the foreground color, background color, and alpha channel, performs RGB blending operations, returns the results, and renders.
This entire process is repeated for almost every single pixel.
If there are more layers, the computational cost will double.
That's simply impossible.
It would be better if Nova Radeon graphics cards were involved.
After all, this thing natively has full support for transparent blending operations.
With it, many things can actually be done with just one line of code.
But that's not realistic either.
So now a group of developers are stuck here, unable to move forward or backward.
Carving patterns on a limited amount of hardware!
Damn it, next-gen consoles, hurry up and come! I can't take it anymore!
"What if we ask a senior engineer to customize a dedicated ASIC?" "A special external chip for handling transparent hybrid circuits? Uh... I have a feeling Mr. Lin will definitely yell at us."
Mike shook his head vigorously.
Hearing him say that, the group of developers nodded in agreement.
They were all familiar with Lin Lixin's style.
Lin does like working with specialized circuits, but they're usually for arcade machines.
Furthermore, what specifications do games require Lin to personally design ASIC circuits for?
That's what a product like " Mirror's Edge," which is completely ahead of its time, needs.
"So what do we do now? We can't possibly draw a separate semi-transparent version for every background."
If we were to do that, how many different terrain map variations would that be?
Two discs might not be enough.
However, the engine they had was very limited in functionality, lacking many native graphics capabilities.
As they were arguing, Lin Lixin pushed the door open with a bang. He walked in carrying several boxes of pizza, a slice still rolled up in his hand, which he was stuffing into his mouth.
"Ugh, what's all this noise about?"
"Lin! Thank goodness, we've run into a tiny technical problem."
After his explanation, Lin Lixin sighed and rubbed his forehead in exasperation.
The people at Blizzard are great in every way, except they always like to complicate simple problems.
In this respect, they are the complete opposite of Activision.
"Well, once the infrastructure improves in the future, this might actually be an advantage."
Striving for perfection!
Their pursuit will be worthwhile when hardware performance becomes excessively high in the future.
"If that's all there is to it, the solution is actually very simple, requiring no additional hardware; it can be solved at the software level."
Lin Lixin said, plopping down in front of the development machine. Please bookmark this novel's only website: www. deqixs. org. This is the only website; other websites may stop updating at any time.
There was a significant difference in displays between the 1980s and 90s and the present day.
CRT televisions held absolute dominance.
99% of users are using CRT televisions.
The widespread adoption of LCD screens came much later.
To achieve the size of a monitor, the current manufacturing process cannot guarantee the yield rate of LCD screens, making large-scale commercial use difficult.
Even if it could be made, the price would far exceed that of a cathode ray tube.
This... is technically a disadvantage.
Because CRT televisions produce blurry, chaotic, and severely distorted images, have poor brightness, poor contrast, excessive power consumption, generate excessive heat, are huge in size, and are incredibly heavy...
Its shortcomings are numerous; you could talk about them for a whole day and night and still not finish.
In comparison, LCD screens are what modern technology should look like.
Elegant, efficient, stable, and slim. Two monitors placed together are like a plump middle-aged woman and a young, beautiful, and slender girl.
but!
The CRT monitor wasn't entirely useless.
Compared to LCD screens, it has a very serious flaw, but this flaw is also its unique advantage.
paste!
The pixel boundaries are extremely blurry!
Due to the difference in display principles, a cathode ray tube (CRT) is not composed of countless dynamically controlled pixels like an LCD.
Instead, electron beams fired from a ray gun excite phosphors, which then display colors.
Each pixel on the screen is like a light bulb, constantly radiating a faint light to the surroundings.
This makes the pixel boundaries of CRT televisions less angular, and instead softer, more blurred, or even blended together.
At the software level, merging light together requires complex calculations.
But the real world is essentially a supercomputer with insane performance. Merging two light sources together doesn't require consuming any of the computer's own computing power.
In particular, the VGA standard is essentially an analog signal, and it can even control the intensity of the electron beam at the hardware level, allowing phosphors to emit light of different intensities, thus achieving a more delicate effect.
So... how can this property be used for transparency?
"Although I estimate that this technology won't be used for more than a few years, I think it's still worthwhile to integrate it into the engine."
A unique image appeared on the screen.
Two cubes, one red and one blue, overlapped in the center of the screen.
The overlapping areas clearly show the dark, purplish hue resulting from the mixture, while the rest retain their original colors.
Only a faint transition boundary appeared in the fused part.
The overall transparency blending effect is very natural, so natural that it doesn't seem like a typical 16-bit effect.
"Dithering, a technique that can only be used on cathode ray tubes, produces results that are absolutely comparable to true transparency blending."
"What? How?" Mike and his team weren't known for their technical skills; they were all planning talents. They were doing development work entirely for Lin Lixin to help them cultivate their character and solidify their foundation.
At this moment, this performance appeared to them no less than a magic trick.
"We apply a uniformly random template with blue noise sampling to the overlapping area, and proportionally reduce a portion of pixels on both sides of the overlap."
Blue noise ensures that random results are sufficiently uniform and reliable.
In this situation, the overlapping objects will each be missing a portion of pixels.
If it's an LCD screen, such pixel loss will be very noticeable.
However, in CRT televisions, this deficiency is softened by the self-illumination of the pixels themselves.
A gap between two red pixels will appear as a darker red to the human eye, rather than as two separate pixels.
But what if we use the overlapping side to fill this space?
Their light sources interfere with and mix, merging into colors that shouldn't exist.
At the software level, the colors remain the same, but to the human eye, the game creates new colors out of thin air.
This creates true transparent blending. And all it takes is a few minor custom adjustments to the intensity of the light sources on both sides...
Theoretically speaking, the number of colors that nx can create is infinite.
"Learn to use your weaknesses, Mike. Sometimes weaknesses can be our powerful weapons."
--Lin Lin's Sayings, 1991
For modern gamers, many older video games exhibit a very strange phenomenon.
The screenshots don't look as good as the actual device.
There's something odd about how the images are presented.
The pixelation is also unpleasant, and the color scheme is bizarre.
This is the difference between display terminals.
Video games of that era were designed specifically for CRT televisions.
Before the image actually reaches the player's eyes, it has already undergone a little trick carefully designed by the technical artists.
"Dithering is good. Use it more often and make good use of the advantages of pixel art. Sometimes it can create visual effects that are even better than high-definition textures," Lin Lixin added.
In the realm of pixel art, Gamenova is considered an authority.
The high-quality visuals of Metal Slug are inseparable from its pixel art style.
In particular, Akio, the lead artist at NASCA, took the new sketches by Lin Lixin and further developed them, pushing pixel art to its limits.
"If you need assistance in this regard, you can contact Satoshi and bring over the Nazca Studio."
After reviewing the project's progress, Lin Lixin got up and went to the door.
They can handle the rest themselves.
Hollywood should also ramp up its preparations for promotional videos and transition animations.