bloom america

Chapter 338 "Red Alert" and game balance

Homan looked at the time. It was already 8 o'clock in the morning. At this time, the ship from the other side of the Atlantic finally stopped in the Port of London.

"Uncle Homan!"

When he got off the ship, he saw Lily, who came to pick him up, and his old friend, Lily's father, Mr. Padkar.

Angel Clothing Design Company was considering going public some time ago. For this matter, Homan had been working day and night for a long time. Now, Angel Clothing Design Company's listing plan is a certainty. At this time, Homan also

It was rare to give himself a vacation. It happened that his friend Padkar was in the UK, so he chose to take a vacation in the UK.

"Lily, why are you here?"

Logically speaking, Lily should be in college at this time...

"Just taking a little leave."

Lily raised the camera in her hand.

"And I can't miss this week's fashion show. After all, Lisa is also participating this time!"

Homan smiled.

"Ah, I really didn't expect that she could reach such a height. I think I'm really old... Hahaha..."

Homann is already nearly fifty years old. Compared with people today, he is indeed old.

…

Catherine was playing a game at this time.

Although she is playing games, Catherine is focusing more on the system's support for games at this time. As of now, no game has really gained her favor.

The game Catherine is playing now is the half-finished "Red Alert".

Although it is a semi-finished product, the underlying structure of this game has been completed. What needs to be improved mainly is the plot, as well as the balance between units and forces.

The game "Red Alert" took into account the use of the CUDA architecture from the beginning of its design, so it has supported the use of the CUDA architecture from the beginning, so it can be used at this time.

Although there is no graphics card yet, the core of the GPU can still be used, which is suitable for replacing the original experimental version of the GPU that is unstable and has poor performance.

"Red Alert" has very high system configuration requirements. If you only use the current SFC CPU, although you can barely open the game "Red Alert", you will not be able to play it to the fullest.

Although previous GPUs sometimes experienced freezes, they were still able to play games reluctantly.

Now that new GPUs are used, the performance of the game has been improved again, and the current computer is completely able to play the game smoothly.

"The Soviet Union is too fragile..."

As Catherine was playing with it, she started to complain about balance.

The Soviet Union's arms are all high attack and low defense types. This should not be suitable for the Soviet Union's situation, right?

According to Catherine, the Soviet Union should be a typical representative of "stupid, big, black and rough". In terms of defense, it should be not low.

Although games are games and reality is reality, sometimes it does seem too strange.

Catherine's attention to detail is very high.

For example, the Allied forces' primary arms are mainly American soldiers, which are very fragile and can only be used in the early stages.

But in reality, the performance of the real U.S. Army is much more powerful than that in the game.

Take the U.S. Army during World War II as an example. Each infantry squad consisted of 12 people, 10 M1 rifles, 1 bar, and 1 Chuntian M1903.

The infantry company has 193 people, including 3 3-shift infantry platoons and an weapons platoon. The weapons platoon contains 2 30mm air-cooled light machine guns, 3mén 60mm mortars, 3mén bazooka rocket launchers, and 1 50mm water-cooled heavy machine gun...

But in "Red Alert", the powerful US military only has poor light infantry...

There is no way around this, after all, it is impossible for games to be based on real history. If it were really based on reality, I am afraid that 99% of the games in the world would be eliminated.

But sometimes, it is also necessary to pay attention to basic "features".

For example, in reality, the Soviet Union's scientific and technological achievements are not as fruitful as that of the United States, and its scientific and technological strength is not as strong as that of the United States. If in the game, the Soviet Union's technology is strong enough to crush everything, but the United States is just a weak player in the game.

A group of people who are separated from primitive society... Such a game is probably too ridiculous.

Starting from reality, the United States has the highest technological level. If the game is a continuation of reality or a plot similar to reality, in a sense, it is necessary to adopt the same "tone" as reality.

The abilities of characters and the country itself can be modified, but in terms of "general trends", this is not the case.

In the game, the Soviet Union has high attack, low health, and low defense, while the United States has a three-dimensional balance. As for the Empire of the Rising Sun, it has high attack, high health, and almost no defense.

.

On the surface, it seems that the entire game is balanced, but this balance is abnormal and cannot give people a very balanced feeling when playing. The so-called game balance is just to allow the three parties to develop at the same time.

They are evenly matched, not that one side can gain an overwhelming advantage.

In Catherine's opinion, the game is not like this.

Originally, Catherine just wanted to study the effects of GPU, but at this time, she decided to take a closer look at the game "Red Alert".

After all, this game was proposed by me. If this game failed in the end, wouldn't it be a slap in the face?

Fortunately, this game is still a semi-finished product and can still be modified.

In the game, each force should have its own characteristics, and this characteristics must adapt to the game.

"What on earth are they thinking?" Catherine finally complained while playing the game Empire of the Rising Sun.

The people of the Empire of the Rising Sun have very high attack power, but low defense power and very little health. When an infantryman from the Empire of the Rising Sun meets an American soldier, the soldier from the Empire of the Rising Sun can kill nearly half of the opponent's health in one go.

, and the opponent was able to kill nearly half of the soldiers of the Empire of the Rising Sun with half of their health - because the soldiers of the Empire of the Rising Sun had very weak defenses and too little health.

"What's wrong with this game?"

Elsa, who had never seen an RTS game before, seemed quite interested.

"This game is very interesting, but if you play it for a while, you will find that something is not right..."

Not only does it feel wrong, it just makes people complain.

The percentage of damage caused by both parties each time is still about the same, or almost exactly the same. As long as the specific values ​​are removed, the three parties are really exactly the same. How can such a situation not make people want to complain?

In this case, the three forces actually have no characteristics of their own at all. Playing such a game at the beginning, because it is the first RTS in the world, is of course very interesting. But after this interest passes, the game is basically

There is nothing attractive about it.

——Obviously, this is the designer being lazy.

At first glance, the soldiers have armor and so on, but the so-called armor and attack defense must be nominal. The specific HP deduction is definitely calculated as a percentage.

"it is as expected……"

After comparing the source code, Catherine discovered that the designer was indeed lazy.

Each country has ten regular arms and two special arms. The data of these ten regular arms are exactly the same. Except for the two special arms, they are only different in their textures.

In this case, can this game be unbalanced? Even the arms are the same!

"I'm really lazy..."

Catherine pouted.

After all, Blizzard is a big company, and there will always be some people who fish in troubled waters, and there is no way around it.

Although the game design is worth complaining about, other aspects can be seen to be thoughtful.

For example, every character, tank, and building has a shadow. Of course, this is not just a pure shadow, but something placed on the same layer as the character - in other words, it is actually the same layer as the character.

It is placed on a picture, rather than having a light source and real shadows like 3D...

Catherine knew that the artists who painted "Red Alert" were Japanese artists.

I have to say that the Japanese have some talent in painting. Although they are purely 2D pictures, they already have a 3D feeling.

Moreover, the entire background is drawn quite perfectly. Although there are only 256 colors, the terrain looks very perfect and has a sense of layering. This kind of painting method is really impressive for ordinary American painters.

It's very difficult to do.

Catherine prepared a piece of manuscript paper, and then listed all the shortcomings of the game on it, and also wrote her own opinions on it.

The current storage capacity of optical discs is 210mb. Today's computers cannot handle fine textures at all, so it is very difficult for a game to be very large. So the capacity is definitely not a problem.

Catherine knows the limits of today's computers, so her opinions are very targeted and she doesn't write anything whimsical.

Sometimes whimsical proposals can be eye-catching and successful, but sometimes they can lead to serious failure.

"That's it for now..."

Catherine looked at her plan and asked the game production team to reset the data of each force to completely distinguish the three forces.

Each force has its own advantages and disadvantages. Although it is very important to balance the game, the playability of the game has suddenly been upgraded to a higher level...

…

The third update is completed~

This week's essence has been used up again, more essence will be added next week...