The Creator of the Second Dimension

"Open world?"

Li Zhen asked back.

Of course he knows about open world games, which are currently the most popular among game development companies.

This type of game usually has an exotic world view. By designing a continent for players to explore, designers use rich details and game interactions to make players feel like they are experiencing a real world.

Of course, this is just a game idea.

In the previous era of SN2 and SN3, due to the limited skills of the mainframe, it was difficult to achieve an open world. The more famous ones, such as Suo Ren Huyu’s own "Warrior Code" series, started to design an open world from the third generation, but only achieved one The city has exhausted all its functions, and a large number of tasks and interactions are actually copy-pasted and completely templated.

For example, the most common task in the game is to tell the player that there are gangsters in a certain place, and the player needs to clear them. When the player arrives, there will be a battle. This thing, in simple terms, plays like a stand-alone MMORPG.

Of course, each game of "Warrior Code" will choose a brand new area, which perfectly replicates the local landscape. The scenery is very good, so it is also called a travel simulator by players.

In addition, the several open world games of Cup Noodle Games also have their own characteristics, but these works are not satisfactory due to the design scale and function, and the open world content is mostly repetitive and monotonous.

Li Zhen is a game developer and, of course, a player. He dreams of an open world game that can truly immerse people in the experience and "live" in it. This is not something that mechanically repetitive open world content can satisfy. of.

Of course, as a developer, Li Zhen also knows how difficult it is to truly open the world.

When making "The Last Survivor", the whole city designed by Xu Rui actually had some open-world elements, which made Li Zhen feel fresh and new. Players can explore freely in a certain degree of area, and some game interactions also made Li Zhen feel very comfortable. novel.

But this game is an online game after all, with limited freedom, and more importantly, performance effects and immersion. Li Zhen knows that this is far from the real open world.

Now, the meaning of Xu Rui's question to Li Zhen is obvious. Of course, he didn't think that Li Zhen didn't understand what an open world game is, but told Li Zhen that Hatsune Games is going to develop an open world game.

"Open world games are not something that can be made casually, it requires a certain amount of accumulation."

Li Zhen said, looking at the computer screen of the staff in front.

"To tell you the truth, the team I lead has also participated in the development of "Warrior Code", but the problems encountered in the actual development process are much bigger than imagined. A standard open world game requires too many resources. , and the final effect is not satisfactory, after all, you never know how players will play the game."

He then gave a simple example of interaction. In the latest work of "Warrior Code", the production team added the option of stealing, so that you can steal things from NPCs. In the past, to complete a task, you usually killed the enemy. Picking up corpses now has an option to steal quest items, and if the theft is successful, you can avoid the fight.

This is a gameplay inherited from the tabletop adventure game. After the game was launched, it was well received. Some people were addicted to stealing and could not extricate themselves. imitate.

But after a while, some people came up with ideas, since it can be stolen, why can't it be robbed, or use language to persuade, or even design an accident to cause the holder's death to get it again, and some people with troubles suggested that if it is the opposite sex, can it be used? Obtained in some indescribable way.

The player's imagination is very good, but this will lead to overly complex games, especially in large-scale open world games, if one NPC designs such a complicated mechanism, then hundreds or thousands of NPCs will lead to an overly large game capacity, and it is easy to There are bugs and the development time is extremely long.

After listening to Li Zhen's words, Xu Rui nodded thoughtfully, and continued.

"In this case, why did we design this NPC?"

"ah?"

Li Zhen was stunned for a moment, not understanding what Xu Rui meant.

"I feel like we're stuck in a mindset that that's why the open world has to be done with human-to-human interaction."

Xu Rui didn't care and continued to explain.

"In the past, most of the open world games were disputes with people and monsters. Players explored the world just to kill monsters better, driven by combat, or just want to advance the plot and understand the ending of the story, which is driven by the plot. , This way of playing has caused our designers to pay too much attention to the existence in the world."

His words made Li Zhen fall into thinking. On the one hand, the current open world games do have such problems; How to do it.

"Mr. Xu, I don't understand what you mean."

Li Zhen thought for a long time, and finally raised the white flag. He really couldn't think of what effective method Xu Rui could use to keep the player's desire to explore the game world after rejecting the battle and plot promotion.

"Curiosity, Lao Li, one of the most primitive human emotions is curiosity. I want to use curiosity to guide players to explore the entire open world."

"curiosity?"

Li Zhen savored the word, years of experience in game development seemed to allow him to grasp a little bit of Xu Rui's thinking, but not so sure.

"For example, um, a strangely shaped stone appeared in front of you, what would you do?"

Xu Rui pointed to the table, which was actually a mobile phone of the staff, but Li Zhen understood what Xu Rui meant.

"Well, I should pick it up and have a look."

he replied.

"At this time, you found that this stone is very light, and it seems to be hollow."

Xu Rui guided again.

"Then I might try tossing it, or dropping it on the ground, to see if it bounces."

"You threw a stone and found that it can be thrown very high. After you throw it on the ground, it will bounce up violently, just like a ping pong ball. At this time, two organs appear in front of you, each controlling two doors. You can only move forward by opening two doors, they are located in different positions, it seems that you can throw stones to trigger them, but one stone obviously cannot trigger two organs at the same time, what will you do?"

"This is of course using the elasticity of the stone just now to trigger the two organs at the same time."

Li Zhen replied, suddenly, he had a feeling.

If it was as Xu Rui said, then he could actually stand in front of one mechanism and use an ordinary stone to trigger another mechanism, but because he picked up a strange stone, he had a different decryption method.

"Of course this is just an immature idea, but in the process just now, you have obviously started to think, and have summed up at least two puzzle-solving methods."

Xu Rui said, looking at the mobile phone in front of him.

"It's all just because of your curiosity, you picked up a stone and discovered its special features."