I received a message that a muscle car was carrying an older man and a young man; the two brothers had driven all the way to Southern California under the midday sun.
The people who came were Will Wright and John Carmack.
The reason these two suddenly came here is naturally because they heard about the new project at Rockstar.
Will's reasoning is simple:
"You said you're going to simulate a living city, including all the NPCs and vehicles? I absolutely have to come!"
This person, who advocates systematic design and once went to study Urban Dynamics to develop " SimCity," rushed over without hesitation after hearing about this.
As for Carmack, he saw the game's enormous potential in graphics technology.
Although it's described as 2D, the original " Morality and Rule of Law " actually had a significant amount of 3D rendering hidden within it.
The game simply uses a fixed top-down perspective, and the 3D elements are mostly just for visual effects.
But that was enough to convince him to participate.
Hmm... perhaps it's also related to Hacknet not long ago.
In a sense, Linus and Carmack occupied very similar niches, despite their completely different areas of expertise.
But the fact that Lin Lixin and Linus secretly developed a new game still irritated him to some extent.
Apart from those two, the rest of Gamenova have been relatively quiet, focusing on the development of NovaFusion and laying the foundation for the necessary hardware and software for the launch title.
The development of a game console requires more than just the involvement of hardware engineers.
In fact, game developers and players need to be more deeply involved.
This is a research and development model advocated by Cerny.
Whenever he has a new idea or progress, he simulates the actual usage environment from the different perspectives of developers and players.
If a problem is detected, it will be corrected quickly.
This can be seen as a way to avoid, to some extent, the problems that Gamenova encountered in its first two generations.
"So... even without player control, these vehicles will move freely around the city under the control of NPCs."
Several people gathered around the table, discussing the topic of "bringing the city to life." Will Wright was undoubtedly the most qualified among them to speak on how to create a living city.
" SimCity focuses on macro-level urban systems, using Urban Dynamics as a blueprint. I..."
He started with zero frames and went on and on about his creative state of mind.
Just as the group was starting to feel awkward, Will suddenly changed his tune.
"However! I don't think this model is suitable for the current ' Morality and Rule of Law ' project. We should focus on the micro level and SimCity."
"You mean... design an existing AI system where NPCs will act autonomously according to rules, instead of something we pre-set?"
Jones nodded thoughtfully.
In this respect, DMA and Will's ideas are highly similar.
Generally speaking, there are two approaches to visual design in video games.
Firstly, it is currently the most mainstream model, and one that Gamenova particularly likes to use.
Deceiving the players' eyes!
If you want players to see something, just leave that event there. Everything that seems to happen naturally is actually part of a pre-designed script.
All the entities in the game are simply performing according to a script.
This design has many advantages.
For example, it facilitates optimization, layout, and allows designers to control the game flow.
Often, when Gamenova wanted to cram things that were ahead of their time into current capabilities, this was the only way they could do it.
However, the drawbacks are also obvious.
The degree of freedom is too low.
If the designer fails to consider a certain situation, the entire stage design will be exposed immediately.
This chain reaction could destroy the game's immersion and sense of engagement.
This is a solution that truly tests a designer's skills.
Will and DMA, however, advocate for a completely different path.
Instead of pre-setting any content, we developed a simulation system to simulate a real city within the world of semiconductors.
Simulates real-world NPC intelligence.
When players are in this city, everything evolves spontaneously by this simulation system.
If a player bumps into someone, the NPC will become frightened and run away, and the police will sense that a case has occurred nearby and come to arrest them.
The entire city operates autonomously within a simulation system.
Its greatest advantage is its exaggerated degree of freedom.
Players' actions affect the system, and the system's feedback, in turn, affects the players.
The interactivity is incredibly strong.
Just like in Cities: Skylines, what the player does might just be casually building a road.
As a result, the originally smooth road network suddenly became a complete mess due to the chain reaction.
Because of a route change, trucks from the industrial zone now need to travel through residential areas, which in turn causes traffic conflicts between residents going to consumer areas and the industrial zone.
This necessitates players constantly optimizing the road network and attempting to design more grade-separated transportation systems such as overpasses. Go to Bing search for the latest chapter!
Any unintentional action could have various effects within this massive simulation system.
but...
This model is not perfect either.
Its drawbacks are equally obvious.
"Then what about the optimization problem? The number of individual entities in the SimCity is just too large..."
Jones scratched his head.
Their work, "Lemmings," is actually a similar design.
The lemmings have their own AI system; players simply need to assign them different professions and watch them evolve on their own.
But what if we broaden our perspective to the entire city?
That's a completely different matter.
Take, for example, their current tentative map [ San Francisco ]. Even if the scale is scaled up for the game, it's not a map that can be easily explored.
"You see, if you want to simulate a car, it will have its own coordinates, velocity vector, direction, route, vehicle type, and various other different data. Just maintaining a single car requires a lot of resources."
Not to mention that they also contain various data such as collision detection and damage.
Such a large list of entities would likely not run smoothly even if directly loaded onto the NovaFusion.
Only later superprocessors exceeding GHz had the capability to run such a large-scale simulated world.
"Hmm, that is a problem."
Lin Lixin nodded.
In fact, " Morality and Rule of Law " has never been fully simulated to this day.
Because that's really stupid.
It's a completely unnecessary waste of performance.
This applies to both processor performance and memory.
To fully simulate it, you'd need tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of memory. But to be honest, the initial version developed by DMA was actually a huge pile of crap.
In the original code version, the game would attempt to save the entire state of every NPC and vehicle.
Moreover, the implementation logic of many of these mechanisms is quite bizarre.
In the first game, trains required tons of memory but only appeared in a limited number of missions.
In order to port it to PlayStation, the engineering team was forced to remove and modify a large amount of content from the PC version.
"We don't need to actually simulate the entire city; we just need to make the environment around the player look authentic."
Lin Lixin recalled the optimization plan for the PlayStation version.
"First of all, this city should be empty, at least in its initial state; there are no NPCs or vehicles."
"The game will only begin to generate automatically and activate its AI logic where players have been."
This formula was used in all the subsequent sequels.
Even the lousy AI in the fifth generation that would deliberately cut off other cars at the drop of a hat is actually a derivative of this system.
To enhance the player's driving experience! "Referring to the streaming loading system in Sonic the Hedgehog, NPCs and vehicles that are out of sight can be unloaded directly, and as for corpses, running a counter for no more than 30 seconds is enough."
Players of this game rarely stand still for extended periods.
Even if it were true, the disappearance of a corpse after a certain time period is not a big deal.
With just this one modification, memory usage can be reduced to nearly one percent of its original level.
"But... that would make the city seem very rigid."
Will stroked his chin, frowning in thought.
This optimization strategy is very aggressive, but it is undoubtedly very effective.
However, when the player is stationary, the city's weaknesses are magnified.
Inflexible NPCs, a handful of cars, and monotonous buildings and roads.
A top-down perspective inherently detracts from the visual appeal.
"I see!"
Just then, Jones suddenly shouted, "The police! We've joined the police!"
"That's right, not just the police, but also Red Green, NPCs that can be run over, and wide, Kazuma roads... these are all part of this system."
Lin Lixin responded with satisfaction.
What Jones captured was a crucial part of it.
It's worth noting that the underlying framework of the game " Morality and Rule of Law " is "race'n'chase".
This is a city chase racing game.
"We encourage players to take initiative, whether it's the exhilarating feeling of driving, the interactivity of the city itself, or trying to evade police pursuit... Only by moving can the city truly come alive."
When players are traveling at high speed through traffic, due to the loading system, vehicles behind them will be continuously unloaded, while vehicles in front will be constantly refreshed.
Buildings are also flying by at high speed, and players will always see something new and different from what they've seen before.
Under the onslaught of massive amounts of information, players' brains will actively filter out the details and focus on the pursuit itself.
They wouldn't even notice whether AI had been simplified for performance optimization, nor would they notice those obvious shortcomings.
The only thing they could notice was... how lively this city was!