Rebirth of the Wild Age

Rongcheng.

The Western Software Park has been renamed the Western Science and Technology Park. Although several companies have settled in one after another, it is still "deserted" on the whole.

The electronics factory of Shenzhou Science and Technology is located in the southwest corner, outside the first phase of the park, it is already close to the later Rongcheng High-tech Zone. The software, network, R\u0026D centers and other types of companies are located in the northeast corner of the first phase of the project. There are several miles apart in the middle, and they will not be disturbed by each other.

You won't see these things ten years later in another time and space.

The once famous Western Software Park will be replaced by a residential area, and Top Software will also become Top Real Estate, which will be bought directly for real estate. There is only one Top Information Technology Vocational College with a little bit of technology. You can tell what kind of school it is just by its name.

However, Xikang Institute of Technology, which is not far from the Western Software Park, will grow bigger and bigger, and will be renamed "Xihua University".

Although this place is relatively remote, there are many schools nearby. To the east is the future Xihua University, to the east there are several colleges and technical secondary schools, to the southeast is the University of Electronic Science and Technology, and to the west is Rongcheng Institute of Technology (it is still a junior college at this time). So Song Ruhua, a liar, is still very discerning. He chose the Western Software Park in the middle of a bunch of schools. In a few years, Southwest Jiaotong University will build a branch school nearby.

After all, Hu Geng accepted the "liar"'s invitation, because Song Weiyang contacted his website directly, and contacted him again through the webmaster. After confirming that it was correct, Hu Geng was ecstatic, and went out by plane with his bag in hand.

After landing at Shuangliu Airport, Hu Geng first took a car to Rongcheng, and then took a taxi to Hongguang Town, Pidu.

The town is still relatively dilapidated at this time, and there are basically no modern communities, all of which are all kinds of rustic self-built houses. There are even mixed buildings of stone, bamboo, and clay, typical of Ming and Qing southwest residential styles, which have a history of at least a hundred years.

After getting out of the car, I asked all the way, and finally found "Excalibur Network Technology Company".

There are no high-end office buildings in this dilapidated park, and all kinds of buildings are below six floors, all of which were built by Song Ruhua to deal with officials at all levels. Excalibur Networks directly occupied a building, four of which were vacant and hadn't been renovated yet. The building next door was where the Shenzhou Science and Technology Rongcheng R\u0026D Center was located.

Walking into the building, Hu Geng found that there were a group of college students in the company, queuing up to receive the interview number plate.

"Hello." Hu Geng walked to the front desk.

The girl at the front desk asked: "Hello, are you here to apply for the job? Just go over there and line up."

Hu Geng said: "I was invited by Mr. Song Weiyang, here is an invitation letter."

The girl at the front desk took a worried look, and found out that her job title was "Excalibur Network Zulong Studio Project Chief Planner", she immediately became very enthusiastic, and said with a smile: "Please go to the second floor, there is a sign of 'Zulong Studio' on the door."

Zulong Studio currently has more than 20 members, and half of them stayed in Beijing to continue developing "Freedom and Glory 2" (stand-alone game), and Song Weiyang brought the rest to Rongcheng. The people who came from Xishan Residence are also on the second floor, and another group "Xishan Studio" has not officially started work yet.

Hu Geng received the invitation letter and asked, "Are all those applicants programmers?"

The girl at the front desk replied: "Some are programmers from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and some are students from the Academy of Fine Arts. I heard that the boss directly sent recruitment information to CAFA. However, there are not many students from CAFA, but more than a dozen from Chuanmei. After all, the salary is too high.”

"Is the salary of art very high?" Hu Geng asked.

The girl at the front desk said: "The salary of an intern is 1,500 yuan. After becoming a full-time employee, it starts directly at 2,200 yuan. I heard that there are several levels of salary in the future. The top monthly salary can be tens of thousands of yuan."

This is really helpless, domestic game artists cannot be described as a shortage, but there is no professional game artist at all. 99.99% of college students majoring in art have never even been exposed to professional art software, let alone what cg painting is. These students still need to be trained when they are recruited. They can only be temporarily interns, and they can only become regulars after mastering the initial skills.

The 3D engine of "World of Warcraft" was not considered the most advanced at the time, but Blizzard's art is so powerful that it can use art to make up for the lack of game engine. Also awesome is the Korean NC, who used the Unreal 2 engine, which is not suitable for mmorpg games, to produce the beautifully pictured "Paradise 2".

Hu Geng went upstairs to Zulong's studio to report, but found that no one paid attention to him at all, and everyone was surrounded by a computer inside.

Song Weiyang was standing in front of the computer, looking at the semi-finished product of "Freedom and Glory 2", frowned and said: "You guys are not good at 3D effects, the buildings are all angular blocks, just like building blocks Same."

The designer of Zulong's first and second generation 3D engines is He Di, who has a master's degree from Tsinghua University. He replied: "This is already at the international leading level."

Song Weiyang asked: "Can you make it more realistic?"

He Di said: "In theory, it is possible. At the end of last year, Microsoft launched diretx8.0, which introduced the concept of pixel rendering, and we can use it to develop a new 3D engine. But boss, I must remind you that games made with this technology, At present, 99.99% of the computers in China can’t afford it, and the graphics card will explode directly.”

Song Weiyang smiled and said: "It's okay. The online game you want to develop will not be launched until at least four or five years later, and the computer configuration in China will definitely be sufficient by then."

"Then let's develop a new 3D engine first." He Di said.

In fact, since the project of "World of Warcraft" was established in 1999, the screen until now is almost the same as the game of Zulong Studio, and the stones are square.

The semi-finished product of "World of Warcraft" in 2010 used the engine of "Warcraft 3". Coincidentally, when Microsoft launched dx8.0 in July, with the so-called pixel rendering concept, Blizzard immediately started to develop an engine specifically for "World of Warcraft", scrapping most of the achievements of the previous two years. The dreamy "World of Warcraft".

At this moment, although "World of Warcraft" has been established for more than a year, the development of the new engine has just begun, and Zulong Studio has not been left too far behind.

"Well, excuse me." Hu Geng said weakly.

Everyone looked over, Song Weiyang turned around and asked, "Who are you?"

Hu Geng said: "The wild fox under the tree."

"Oh, you're here," Song Weiyang introduced to everyone, "This is one of the main planners of the game I invited. His screen name is Yehu under the tree. He is in charge of the plot design of the game. Well, most of you are dead enemies. , The wild fox under the tree graduated from Peking University."

Everyone laughed because more than 80% of them belonged to Tsinghua University.

Song Weiyang asked: "Did you bring your game plan?"

"Bring it here," Hu Geng took out a thick stack of manuscripts from his bag, "This is the outline of the game story, and this is the game content design. However, many game content designs should not be used anymore, because my original intention is to Making card games has nothing to do with large-scale graphic online games.”

Song Weiyang had read the novel "Sou Shen Ji" in his previous life. He flipped through the outline of the story, and found that the outline was exactly the same as the plot of the novel, and the novel was written according to the outline.

"This is what I'm going to use. The name of the game is "Shan Hai Jing", and the name of the project is 'Shan Hai Jing Project'," Song Weiyang said. "Li Qing is the chief planner of the game, responsible for the design of the game content, and Hu Geng is the deputy planner of the game, responsible for Game plot design. You must cooperate with each other to achieve the perfect combination of game and plot. He Di is the main program of the game and is responsible for developing a new 3D engine. As for the main beauty..."

Li Qing immediately said: "I met a very awesome person on the Internet. His name is Lu Xiaoyin. He is from the Department of Fine Arts of Zhejiang Normal University. He has just graduated from a bachelor's degree in a few months. I have already sent him an email, and he said I am willing to come and try, and I estimate that I will be able to arrive in Rongcheng in a few days."

Lu Xiaoyin is the future coo of Perfect World. He is in charge of art for "Perfect World", "Zhu Xian", "Wulin Biography", and "Swordsman".

Song Weiyang threw out a few more pages of the manuscript: "Here are some ideas of mine, please study them."

Song Weiyang also played "World of Warcraft" before, but he only played the level 60 version, and he didn't know the content of the game after that. The manuscripts he threw out were nothing more than dungeons, concepts, life occupations, equipment color grading and the like.

Everyone gathered around to take a look, and immediately put away their underestimation, and no longer regarded Song Weiyang as a layman in the game where he spent money to play the game. At least they didn't expect a lot of content and gameplay in it.

For example, in online games in Japan and South Korea, it is popular to take medicine to replenish blood; in games in Europe and the United States, it is popular to eat food to replenish physical strength, and you need to play slowly to regain blood. Song Weiyang pointed out here that the upcoming "Shan Hai Jing" can collect wild food or cut meat from animal carcasses, or even fish in the river by himself. After learning the cooking formula, he can make food by himself. Back to blood. Of course, there are also various pill formulas. After all, it is an ancient mythical game, and you can configure pills by yourself to return blood and mana.

The item level in the game is set by Song Weiyang as "Heaven and Earth Xuanhuang", and these four levels belong to special treasures. There are also green "craftsman" level items, white "fan" level items, and gray broken items.

Song Weiyang said: "What we are making is not a game, but an ancient mythical world in "Shan Hai Jing". We must do all the details well, and we must surprise players in the subtleties anytime, anywhere."

Everyone agreed with a loud bang. In fact, without Song Weiyang's reminder, all game developers in this era think so.

Is World of Warcraft really invincible? Can't even other games survive in its shadow?

Impossible, if the earth leaves, everyone will turn, and the "Tower of Eternity" of another time-space NC almost counterattacked.

How popular was "Aion" at that time?

Shanda originally planned to open 80 sets of servers a month, but due to the influx of players, it was fully opened within a day. The domestic point card agency rights were immediately auctioned for a high price of 200 million yuan, and Shanda's stock price soared by 20%. Don't say it's because "World of Warcraft" was discontinued, that was one month after the public beta of "Aion".

The reason why "Aion" failed was because Chen Tianqiao wanted to transform into financial investment and used this game as a cash machine. Point card charges were operating well, but suddenly two-way charges were introduced, and countless RMB players emerged. They even organized web page lottery activities, using money to exchange attribute equipment and props, forcing players to abandon the pit.

Let's talk about another NC game "Sword Spirit". This time they didn't find the cheating Shanda, but found the reliable Tencent. Tencent is really reliable. The number of simultaneous online users of "Sword and Spirit" soon exceeded 1.5 million, and the highest number of online users of "World of Warcraft" was only 1.3 million.

It's a pity that NC fell into chaos, and the core creators ran away with their sister-in-law. The follow-up main creators got a lot of rubbish, so they could only do wing fashion to make money. Not to mention that the update progress couldn't keep up, and it also made "Sword Spirit" a mess.

Although "World of Warcraft" had already been updated to level 90 when "Blade Spirit" was launched, "Blade Spirit" indeed once dominated the game, and it was defeated only when the development company was in chaos.

The "Shan Hai Jing" invested and developed by Song Weiyang, as long as the game is done well and launched before "World of Warcraft", it may not be able to suppress Blizzard's father all the time, at least it will be evenly divided.