Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 198 Tom and Jerry James Bond

"Dangdangdang~"

"Dangdangdang——"

"Dangdangdangdang~dangdangdangdang~"

When Ethan powered up the Tom and Jerry arcade machine produced by MGM, the theme song of Tom and Jerry, composed by Scott Bradley, came out from the built-in speakers of the arcade machine. The classic music that almost all Americans have heard made Ethan smile helplessly. It was really too extravagant to use such a big move at the beginning.

When he stood up again and looked at the arcade screen, the Tom and Jerry depicted with pixels were not only exactly the same as the images in the animation, but also very lifelike.

Even if there is no game name on the entire screen, and only a PLAY logo, the classic music and well-known patterns alone can show everything.

And this behavior...

"That's really cool confidence!" Ethan complained with envy.

He took out a twenty-five-cent coin from his pocket and threw it in, then pressed the red button on the control panel. There was a 'click' sound, and the background music stopped instantly. Three options popped up on the game homepage. The first was Tom, the second was Jerry, and the third was Tom and Jerry.

Without hesitation, he chose Tom, and then the pattern on the menu interface disappeared like snowflakes falling to the ground, leaving behind a game map that filled the entire screen.

The map is surrounded by white pixels acting as a fence, and the inside of the map is filled with many vertical and horizontal white walls. On the left side of the middle of the map, there is a head shot of Jerry, and on the right side is a head shot of Tom. And right between the two people, there is a vertical white wall. This wall is like a natural moat, separating the two people.

After a countdown of Three, Two, One, the game on the screen seemed to be instantly injected with life. Jerry on the left began to flee frantically, not wanting to fall into the hands of his natural enemy. But when he found that his old friend Tom did not chase him, he stopped in confusion and hid behind a wall, as if wondering why that stupid Tom was slacking off.

While Ethan was shaking the joystick to control Tom to catch up, Jerry started to run away again as if he heard a sound, using the power of geography to try to get rid of Tom's pursuit.

"Oh Sxxt! This game is pretty good!"

After playing a game with great concentration, Ethan said to himself with emotion, "Jerry's code is quite user-friendly. The behavior of stopping and waiting really feels like something out of a cartoon."

Even though Ethan didn't catch Jerry in the first round and didn't experience the thrill of winning, it didn't stop him from thinking that the game "Tom and Jerry" was well made.

Importantly, the gameplay of this game is actually different from that of Snake. Snake is about eating and growing, while Tom and Jerry is about hunting openly.

After real subdivision, it is actually similar to "Speed" in Kingsoft Typing Master made by Lei Jun in later generations. The only difference is that in "Speed", all progress is achieved by players typing out English short sentences in the game, but in "Tom and Jerry", progress is just achieved by flicking the joystick.

This feature of copying but not completely copying made Ethan laugh and shake his head. To be honest, he actually admired the designer of this game. Because according to Roy Disney's description, when he said that the game "Tom and Jerry" was very similar to "Snake", the designer on the stage was somewhat reluctant. From this point alone, it can be seen that MGM wanted its designer to directly copy the success of Ethan Jones, but the designer did have some ideas of his own.

'It seems that conflicts between Party A and Party B exist all over the world~'

Ethan complained in his heart.

Then he continued testing the game.

Since he did not catch Jerry in the first game, he played Tom in the second game. When he re-entered the game, he was surprised to find that the game map had changed.

This situation made him excited. He tested it several times in a row. The game's presentation made him look solemn. This game has more than ten maps. When the AI ​​plays Jerry, the player's success rate of catching it should be 50%, because Jerry's pause seems to be related not only to Tom's capture speed, but also to the designer's design. In this case...

Then you have to look at the code.

Thinking of this, Ethan turned off the machine and went into his sister's office.

When he pushed the door open, he saw a girl in overalls and a ponytail staring intently at the Apple II in front of her. A large green circuit board was scattered on the ground. The CPU and memory that were originally soldered on it had all been cut off, and then soldered to the girl's own board in an unknown way, and then connected to the Apple II, so that she could directly see the programming content in the game.

If MGM saw this, they would definitely curse.

but……

What does this have to do with Ethan?

Roy Disney got all these things for him.

Well, that's right, in order to show sincerity, after MGM's new product launch conference, Roy Disney asked people to buy a few arcade machines, and then sent them to Palo Alto without any concealment.

"Have you finished the test? So quickly?"

The sudden voice prompted the girl to ask directly.

Perhaps because Ethan was the only person who came into her office, she didn't even raise her head.

"I didn't finish the test. I just played a dozen games using Tom's identity."

"Then why are you here?" the girl asked curiously.

Ethan was honest, "MGM did a great job with this game. They made me eager to know how the character of Jerry was designed."

While explaining, he also moved behind the desk and sat on the armrest of the girl's boss chair. When he put his hands on the back of the chair, he saw a bunch of incomprehensible codes on the monitor.

His doubts also caused Evelin to lean back and look up and say, “They did a good job.”

"Compared to you, they are smarter."

"What?" Ethan was surprised. "You said they are smarter than me?"

"This is impossible!"

Ethan would not accept such an evaluation. After all, he did not make any of the Destiny games himself. When he copied the inspiration from a popular game in his previous life, Evelyn said that these natives were better than him?
Ah--

Then why didn't these guys beat Taito, Namco, and Nintendo in his previous life?
"I am telling the truth."

Evelyn saw her brother's dissatisfaction, smiled and stretched out her right hand, pointed at the code on the screen and said, "Their inspiration may not be comparable to yours, but their ideas are very concise. Take this Jerry code as an example. The MGM staff put a lot of thought into writing this aspect."

"Do you think Jerry in the game is as smart as Jerry in the animation?"

"That's because they reverse-wrote our code for Pac-Man."

"There are two ghosts in our Pac-Man. One is bright red and has a bad temper and keeps chasing the player. The other likes to be lazy and will rest there when the player is not detected approaching. Jerry in Tom and Jerry uses a combination of these two codes."

"In MGM's design, Jerry's intermittent stop is the reverse of the lazy ghost in Pac-Man. When no player is detected approaching, it will rest. Once a player is detected, it will locate a farthest coordinate according to the writing idea of ​​the red ghost in Pac-Man and keep running away. In it, it also has a tired setting. When Jerry runs for ten seconds, the tired setting will be triggered, and then their program will select a random number between one and ten, making it the last time for Jerry to escape. For example, if the number drawn by the program is three, then Jerry will stop to rest after three seconds. If it is seven, Jerry will stop after seven seconds."

"This program combination is indeed more complex than the single ghost in the Pac-Man game we made before, but if you add all four ghosts together, the total amount of Jerry's algorithms in this game is much less than that of Pac-Man."

"When they create a character with a repetitive personality using a string of moderately difficult code, this approach is indeed smarter than your segmentation idea... right?"

Although Evelin used a rhetorical question, her tone was full of affirmation.

After listening to his sister's description, Ethan's brows furrowed. "You mean, they copied our code?"

"Uh - I just made a metaphor -" Evelyn shrugged, "The metaphor in the final result is not the same in the actual content."

"Oh, okay." Ethan nodded.

“Why, do you feel a little regretful?” Evelin asked with a smile.

"hold head high."

Ethan showed his inner self without any reservation.

"If we can prove that they plagiarized legally, can't we just strangle them to death?"

Ethan admitted that the game "Tom and Jerry" was well made, but as a competitor, Ethan's job was to beat them directly in a simple and clear way.

Not to mention……

Those bastards at MGM have their own hand in the movie project!
But when Evelyn said these people didn't plagiarize...

Ugh!
That’s such a pity!

Why don't you copy it?
After hearing these words, the girl laughed helplessly.

Instead of continuing the topic, he turned around and continued to introduce the game.

"The code they used when designing Jerry is interesting, and Tom's code is even more interesting because these two guys copied their code..."

If Jerry's code is a combination of the slacking ghost and the hot-tempered ghost, then Tom's code is a combination of the chasing ghost and the slacking ghost. In "Tom and Jerry", when players play as Jerry, the Tom they face is actually a lazy man who feels tired from time to time.

Just like Jerry's code, after chasing for ten seconds, the whole program will select a chasing time for Tom. If it is two, it means that Tom will continue to chase for two seconds before taking a break. If it is five, it means that Tom will continue to chase for another five seconds.

Of course, if it is a simple rest, then when the player plays Jerry, Tom's rest will suddenly reduce the difficulty of the whole game. When the player will keep running and the pursuer will stop to rest, as long as the player has a little brain, he will make a fool of the pursuer.

cough cough...

Although Tom in the cartoon is indeed not very smart.

But you can't do that in the game, right?
In order to give players a sense of urgency, Tom's movement speed will suddenly increase after a rest. This process will last for five seconds. Because he will speed up suddenly, in many cases the player will be caught off guard and be caught.

After reading the codes of the two characters, all the highlights of "Tom and Jerry" became clear at a glance, and their maps, as Ethan guessed, had a total of twenty-five.

It seems a little less, but that’s not the point, right?

The real selling point of this game is still Tom and Jerry. When they have the distinct personalities in the game, the highlight of the promotion is also there.

"What about the other game?"

After listening to his sister's introduction, Ethan asked again: "Which 007?"

When big companies are determined to make a breakthrough, they can't just make one game.

In addition to Tom and Jerry, they also pulled out James Bond.

And this game-

“It’s basically similar to Star Wars.”

Evelyn knew what Ethan wanted to know, so she said, "But the code was not plagiarized."

"James Bond" is a shooting game. Perhaps they thought the design of "Tom and Jerry" was good, so they directly designed the character controlled by the player into a Bond with a big head.

This head is located at the bottom of the game interface. Like in Star Wars, it can move left and right. After pressing the button on the operation panel, it will shoot a bullet with a biu sound.

What he needs to destroy are the enemies coming from above.

The designs of those enemies are actually the same as the alien spaceships in "Star Wars", except that they are all humanoid, uh... well, actually they are still different mosaic heads.

When the player controls James Bond to eliminate an enemy, he will get one point, but if an enemy rushes in front of James Bond, then James Bond will lose a life. After losing three lives in total, the game will be declared over.

To be honest, compared with the sophistication of "Tom and Jerry", the production of this game is indeed a bit rough, but with the name of James Bond... it should be easy to sell.

“Is it stressful?”

Looking at Ethan who was standing in front of the arcade machine in a daze, Evelyn asked with concern.

"what?"

This question brought Ethan back to his senses, and he smiled and shook his head, saying, "No pressure."

As if to make his words more credible, he continued to explain: "If MGM releases the game with us, I will definitely be worried, because the fierce competition will definitely affect sales, but what if we release the game at a certain interval?"

"Then this impact will be minimized as time goes by!"

“All our machines have been sold!”

"Under such circumstances, how could their new game pose a threat to us?"

Such words made Evelin look at Ethan a few more times.

Under the girl's gaze, Ethan also smiled confidently.

But after he left his sister's office, the smile like the rising sun disappeared instantly, replaced by the coldness of winter. Returning to his own office, Ethan immediately called Steve Ballmer and gave him his latest task.

"In the next period of time, you have to keep a close eye on our products."

"If there is an unreasonable drop in sales, just tell me directly."

"Okay?"

He stared at the bald man with sharp eyes.

Ballmer nodded immediately and gestured "Okay, Boss. I'll sleep in the office these days."

(End of this chapter)