Game Development Giant

There is nothing good to say about the game "Halo". Later generations of FPS fans say it is a masterpiece of old-school FPS.

It can be said that if "Quake" ushered in the FPS era, then "Halo" ushered in the era of console FPS. Its creative auxiliary aiming design allows players to experience the FPS on a home game console for the first time. Here comes the fun of fps games.

Moreover, the structure and setting of the entire story are also magnificent.

Later, it became Microsoft's most powerful weapon against PS, so much so that many players put such an evaluation on Xbox - Xbox only needs to play the "Halo" set of games. .

But despite this, Carmack still lacked interest in the game.

He is only interested in technical things. In his opinion, this game called "Halo" is just using the engine of "Quake" to make a game similar to "Quake 4". , it really lacks challenge and temptation for him, so he might as well put this time into the development of new engines.

As time goes by, and "Quake" has been developed to its fourth installment, Carmack increasingly feels that engine development is complex and difficult.

In the first and second games of "Quake", he could complete the engine development of the entire game by himself, but by the time of the third game, he discovered that if he developed the game alone, If the engine is used, then he will have to postpone the official development of the game for five years, which is unacceptable to the entire company.

As a last resort, Carmack formed an engine development team of ten people.

When it came to the engine development of "Quake 4", even though Carmack established an engine development team of more than 20 people at the beginning of the project, the development of the entire engine still took more than half a year. This was basically what he was doing. It has taken the longest period of time since the development of the 3D engine. Now, Carmack is also developing a new engine.

Only developments in engine development seemed to capture his attention.

However, the development team of "Quake 4" has nothing to do. They usually go to other development teams to help. After all, according to Carmack's development habits, after the successful development of this new engine, he is not likely to It is possible to develop new games. For Carmack, it is enough to develop one game with one engine.

So, generally Carmack developed the engine. In addition to his own "Quake", there are also many development teams in the company who like to use it. Although Carmack's engine is more difficult to use, its performance is really outstanding, not at all What they can develop by themselves is not of the same level at all.

So Carmack had no problem with Jester's request to let the Quake development team, who currently had little to do, work on Halo.

Jester himself doesn’t have much time. After all, the ‘Times’ project has ushered in its most important year. There is no room for error, but fortunately, he has completed the planning of some classic games before, and "Halo" happens to be among them. The entire plot structure from the first game of "Halo" to the fourth game of "Halo" has been written down.

He asked people from the "Quake" development team to come to his office to pick up this copy of the "Halo" design plan.

There is quite a lot of planned content, dozens of pages in total. After all, it was a full four-part storyline series, when the people from "Quake" came to Jester to take away the plan. His eyes were also extremely shocked.

Judging from the notes on this project, it is obvious that it was not just completed.

In other words, Jester had already completed the game design plan a few years ago, from the plot to the system and many other things.

This kind of sci-fi FPS game is indeed in line with the taste of the "Quake" development team. After all, the games they developed before were similar to this style, but they used sci-fi weapons to fight various monsters. .

Jester thought about it again, but still felt it was not enough.

There are still too few heavyweight games.

He remembered that Rob Pardo had nothing to do after developing "Invincible Heroes" and had been thinking about his next game. However, Jester asked him a few days ago and he didn't have any good ideas. , but he did ask Jester if the "StarCraft" that Jester had promised before could be developed.

At that time, Jester thought about it seriously, then shook his head and rejected it.

Although "StarCraft" is an RTS game, it is also a game that has very high requirements for the engine. Since the requirements for the engine are high, then naturally, the requirements for the hardware will be very high.

Although Rob Pardo is very good at designing strategic games, his programming level is not that high, and there is no Carmack in his team, or someone like Carmack who can become a The core characters of the engine, besides, there are always flaws in the current hardware, especially the CPU, which may not be able to handle "StarCraft" level calculations and simulations.

At that time, Jester didn't have any good ideas to share with Rob Pardo, but now he has thought of a game that can be made on Dreambox3.

Calculating the time, there is still almost a year and a half before the release of Dreambox 3, and this game is almost a year and a half away. The only question is whether Rob Pardo can control a game. 3d game development.

But when Jester thought about it again, he felt that he was thinking too much.

Nowadays, developing 3D games on consoles can be said to be starting from scratch for 99% of designers. No one knows how to develop 3D games on consoles, and after all, Rob Pardo In the world in Jester's memory, he was one of the most outstanding and top designers in the world. Therefore, in terms of receptive ability and talent, it is definitely not possible.

There is no need to worry yourself.

If even Rob Pardo can't control this type of game, then I'm afraid the vast majority of game developers in the world can't control 3D games.

Thinking of this, Jester called Rob Pardo and asked him to come to his office. (To be continued...)