Before the Christmas season ended, the relocation of the entire development department was almost complete.
It's not just the guys at headquarters.
Even the subsidiary studios of Activision, Blizzard, Bullfrog, RCKStar, and others, which are located as far away as Los Angeles in Southern California, have now moved into the ranch.
Compared to the old townhouse rental apartments, it's a complete upgrade.
Of course, the N Graphics Studio, as the technology department, and its affiliated NE Engine Team are also indispensable.
Led by former Bethesda CEO Christopher, the entire team moved into the new headquarters.
This group was naturally the first to get busy.
At Carmack's excited call, the group quickly set up their workstations and immediately began developing the engine.
After all, it's a secondary development based on the Qake Engine, so there's no need to start from scratch, which saves them a lot of trouble.
In particular, Christopher comes from a background in physics engine development, Bethesda is indeed quite accomplished in this area.
As for the development department headquarters, they immediately moved on to the map design phase.
"Ding!" The elevator doors slowly opened, Sam stood in the center of the car.
Directly opposite them were Hideo Kojima and Lin Lixin, carrying cameras and a large pile of documents.
"Very good, Sam, now take the elevator down."
Sam pressed the button and waited for the elevator to descend.
He's done this action countless times today.
According to Lin Lixin, it is impossible for a complete game to load all three worlds.
Not to mention the involvement of a complex physics engine and sound field.
Therefore, the overall development strategy for the game was established from the very beginning.
The world of Hakoba.
Therefore, their task today is to determine the switching methods between the sandboxes.
This is crucial for a streaming world, much like the Biohazard they made with much worse hardware.
Pre-rendering can make the world look realistic.
However, every time the location needs to be changed, a completely new pre-rendered base image is required.
Accordingly, the game will also need some time to reload.
The cutscene where the door opens was quite stunning when I first saw it.
From today's perspective, it's just far too tedious.
Lin Lixin chatted with Kojima and the others.
The current approach was quickly determined.
The new engine itself supports occlusion culling.
This means that only what the player can see will be rendered and loaded.
In addition, whenever a player reaches a node, the game will unload the old map and switch to a new one.
They had used this technique in their " Morality and Rule of Law " course not long ago, so they were quite familiar with it. "Very good, diagram A ends with the elevator car, diagram B starts with the elevator car, and loading can begin once the elevator doors close."
"Hmm... we can actually start preloading before the elevator doors close. That's about it, let's leave this part as it is."
Lin Lixin nodded in satisfaction.
The core map of the original Half-Life, Black Mesa Research Facility, is essentially a giant miniature garden.
Thanks to its highly modern and futuristic design, Amenva's new headquarters building is a natural source of inspiration.
"The passageway is easy to build; it's just a door, especially a safety gate like this, which requires a certain opening time. If we make the performance more elaborate and secretly pre-load the map, it should reduce a lot of the jerking."
Lin Lixin pointed to the sketch on the blueprint and discussed the entire loading issue with Kojima.
The Half-Life series has always had a minor, much-criticized flaw.
To be honest, it really affects the gaming experience.
That's loading.
A noticeable loading lag occurs whenever the player switches between different miniature gardens.
With older storage media that were already slow, this lag was even more noticeable. Even with a modern computer and a solid-state drive with a loading speed of several thousand MB/s, it still had to wait patiently for the data to load.
That brief pause...
For players of this era, it's not necessarily unacceptable.
But for Lin Lixin, it was a bit difficult.
It's like watching a reed, but the campus network is so slow it's terribly laggy, causing every movement to freeze.
This is a total downer.
After watching it, not only did my hormones surge, but my blood pressure didn't drop at all; it all went straight to my head.
I'm so angry I could die.
This kind of lag is actually a typical engine technology problem, and it can also be considered a legacy issue.
From the very beginning of the Lsrc Engine, its map loading mechanism has been very clear.
Once the player reaches the boundary, a pre-set trigger is activated, and the game begins loading the next map.
This is related to the underlying design philosophy of Half-Life. In order to achieve sufficient freedom in performance and rich extensibility, Half-Life implemented a system called "script" in its engine.
In other words, a script.
In-game entities, triggers, and the scripting system.
These three elements together constitute the unique freedom and expansiveness of Half-Life.
Of course, this also laid a solid foundation for the later "m".
But that's where the problem lies.
Scripting means that all triggers need to be executed through triggers.
Map switching is part of the trigger itself.
However, now that Lin Lixin knew about this problem in advance, he could easily find a way to avoid it.
The simplest approach is naturally asynchronous loading.
No modifications are needed to the underlying architecture.
However, the map loading process needs to be broken down into several different parts, such as map loading, map switching, and map unloading.
This finer granularity, while requiring more Kung-Fu Master in map creation, results in better loading performance.
It can even achieve near-seamless map switching.
More importantly, because it was first published on nvafsin, all the hardware requirements were known.
Under these conditions, the development team can certainly make some specific optimizations.
"The engine team should be able to get this sorted out soon, so we can focus on finishing the map and move on."
Lin Lixin flipped through the stack of sketches in his hand, then tossed them into Sam's arms as he stepped out of the elevator.
"I'll go and think about the handling."
This is certainly not an excuse to avoid the issue; it is a genuine and significant problem currently facing the project team.
The NF host differs significantly from the previous NX.
That is, it's a real game console. That sounds a bit strange, but the reason lies in the NX... a very bizarre machine.
It boasts a wide range of expandability, supporting all sorts of strange and wonderful peripherals, software, and games.
It can be used to play video, open a browser, and most importantly, play games.
It's almost exactly what Trip envisioned 3 should look like.
But in Lin Lixin's eyes, who had gained a keen eye, the NX was definitely not an "elegant" machine.
It carries more of the weight of countless "helpless measures".
Amenva's many wild ideas are neither suitable for PC play nor for arcade testing.
In the end, it turned into these strange and wonderful things and was sent into NX.
Rather than a game console, the NX is more like a terminal.
But NF is different.
It is a game console truly designed for gamers.
The design of wireless gamepads brings a new problem: what about the mouse?
In the past, gamers could freely plug in their mice and keyboards when playing games on the NX.
Thanks to the advantages of a universal serial port, it can really be used like a PC.
But now.
If they want to continue like that, then the players will have to sit in front of the TV again.
Even if Amenva were to develop wireless mice and keyboards, it would only significantly diminish the elegance of NF.
But...
When NF was first conceived, it had already made preparations for this part.
Lin Lixin sat down in front of the development machine and casually picked up the handle on the CK.
Its dual-joystick design inherently gives it the ability to handle various environments.
"Aiming is the biggest problem..."
He tried gripping the controller, using his left and right thumbs to operate the two joysticks respectively, simulating the experience of actual gameplay. To ensure a stable grip, in this gesture, the player's index finger would naturally rest on the trigger.
From a modern perspective, it's actually quite easy to find a relatively good layout solution.
Left hand controls movement, right hand controls the view; left trigger to aim, right trigger to fire.
The two shoulder buttons can be used for some auxiliary functions, such as switching weapons or throwing items.
There's actually nothing wrong with the gesture layout.
That being said, it was entirely thanks to Lin Lixin's futuristic vision.
Humanity truly mastered the standard operating paradigm for dual-joystick FPS games around the early 2000s with Microsoft and their flagship title, Halo.
It wasn't until then that humanity finally understood how to play FPS games with a controller.
But in any case, these are all problems that can be solved easily.
The real challenge lies in aiming.
This is something that's very difficult to control.
Unlike mice, joysticks are fundamentally different in structure, making it difficult for players to achieve the same level of precision as mice. This means that in FPS games, the experience of using a gamepad can never match that of a mouse.
(Unless you're using a green-based converter)
To this day, manufacturers still do not have a unified answer to this question.
"Automatic adsorption is definitely necessary, but how to set this intensity is worth further testing."
Lin Lixin pondered.
While there may not be a truly perfect answer, he can provide a "relatively perfect" answer for players of this era.
The standard input paradigm, and the aim assist system, also known as the aim assist system.
When the crosshair gets close to an enemy, the game will make a slight adjustment.
Once the crosshair is aimed at the enemy, the camera's rotation speed will slow down slightly, allowing players to make more precise adjustments.
"It's a pity that the conditions don't allow it; we must develop an adaptive trigger in the next generation."
Lin Lixin looked at the controller in his hand.
While you can't do anything fancy with the trigger, it does have a fully integrated vibration motor.