Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 218 You can’t even keep up with the version!
Since Ethan won the "Alien" project last year, the production related to "Contra" has been officially put on the agenda. If it weren't for the fact that he had too many enemies, if it weren't for the fear that the enemies would wield hoes and frantically poach talents, Ethan would have spread out these tasks and distributed them.

Although keeping things secret is safe, it will also slow down the progress of project development.

However, these are no longer important.

Since Evelin could take the initiative to invite him, the game was probably done.

And so it is.

When Ethan followed his sister to the study, the first thing he saw was the electronic devices scattered all over the floor. He couldn't name many of the things inside, but with just a quick glance, he caught sight of the wooden box on the coffee table, which was about three-quarters the size of an A4 paper bag.

Perhaps because it had no shape, the box Ethan saw was very flat and angular. If one had to describe it, it was not much different from a brick.

On the front of the box, there are two pushable metal buttons, an embedded external socket, and two black wires extending out, with the other ends connected to palm-sized handles.

This handle is also made of a wooden box. It has a cross key for up, down, left and right on the left, and two round buttons on the right. Even though there are no markings on them, Ethan knows that the left one is B and the right one is A.

As for the reason...

That’s because the FC controller he drew for Evelyn was designed like this!

"Wow - is it that highly accomplished?"

Ethan was a little surprised.

"When was it finished? Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

“Machine packaging is a matter for the beginning of the month.” The slightly complaining tone made Evelin smile and shake her head.

The girl came to the machine, took out the lotus head from the back and plugged it into the TV.

While turning on the power, he said, "I didn't tell you because this is just a test version."

“Though from the outside, it looks like it’s ready to sell.”

Ethan was very confused by his sister's words, but he soon understood why Evelyn said that, because when the girl pressed the power button on the machine, the TV screen covered with snow flickered for a moment, and then the logo of the Destiny Game appeared. When it receded like a wave, there was only a menu with the word Game on it on the black screen, and inside... there was nothing.

"What?"

"What about the game?"

Ethan was puzzled.

If he remembered correctly, when Evelyn showed him the first version of the machine, there were two games in it. Even if those two games were just a simple connection made by Evelyn and not actually integrated into the machine, being playable and not being playable are two different concepts.

Facing Ethan's question, the girl did not answer, but pointed behind Ethan. As he turned around, the Disk II invented by Steve Wozniak came into his sight.

"???"

This thing made Ethan raise his eyebrows.

Continuing to turn his head, he found Evelin reaching out for it.

This situation made Ethan pick up the Disk II. When he handed this Apple external floppy drive to Evelyn, the girl immediately connected it to the embedded external socket that he saw first.

She pressed an unknown button next to the power button, and the TV screen suddenly went black. About five seconds later, the game menu was reloaded, and only then did small dots with numbers one, two, and three appear.

Ranked first is "Snake".

In second place is Pac-Man.

Ranked third is "XXX".

Although the name of the third game was unknown, Ethan knew that it must contain the "Contra" he wanted, and when it appeared...

Even though Ethan had a thousand questions in his mind, he decided to have some fun first.

"handle."

He held out his hand to Evelyn.

"uh-huh."

Evelyn handed him the wooden handle.

Without waiting for his sister to introduce him, Ethan pressed A to enter the game. As he did so, the TV screen suddenly went black and the game menu disappeared. After about three to five seconds, the sound of keyboard tapping came from the TV's sound channel, and green words appeared on the screen.

"In the year 2633, humans have completely mastered the technology of interstellar travel and found a new home in the universe. However, just as humans were preparing to migrate to the stars and sending a vanguard team to the new Earth to establish a base, countless alien species suddenly appeared, raided and occupied the human base."

"This news allowed the Earth's highest commander in charge of immigration to contact the most powerful human warrior organization in America, 'Stars', hoping that they could send out the elite of God to rescue."

"You, the leader of the Stars organization, Bill Lance, who received the news, embarked on a journey without hesitation to save the future of all mankind..."

To be honest! When this text appeared in front of Ethan with the effect of typing, the oncoming middle school spirit made his scalp numb! An inexplicable sense of shame arose spontaneously!

If they were normal adult men, they might shout, what the hell, what a stupid plot!
What the hell! What a stupid transmission method!
But Ethan...

He just wanted to give this line a thumbs up!
Although the taste is strong!

But it tastes great!

No matter which country they are from, adolescent children will like this kind of thing!
For America, which advocates personal heroism, the story of the most powerful human warrior embarking on a journey to save the future of all mankind is a story that everyone likes!
With these things, you already have the three golden chapters!

If we must make an analogy, it is equivalent to——

Fighting power, three stages!

"Ok, Ok……"

Ethan muttered to himself, his eyes shining, "This plot is well presented."

“People will love it!”

After the plot, the sound of propellers was heard, and then the TV screen lit up, and a shirtless figure wearing blue pants appeared on the left side of the screen.

He stood on the green earth and there was an endless starry sky above his head.

There was a dense jungle in front of him, and a dark abyss from which he could not retreat.

Ethan tapped the right directional pad, and Bill Lance, gun in hand, immediately stepped forward;

Ethan tapped the direction key, and Bill Lance, the strongest warrior of mankind, pointed his gun downwards;

Ethan tapped the direction key, and the muzzle of the gun pointed at a forty-five-degree angle;
Ethan tapped the left direction key, and the direct retreat without turning around was perfectly executed;

Keep pressing A, and you will hear a "biu~" sound, and a red round bullet will shoot out from the muzzle;

Then press B, and Bill Lanston, the strongest warrior of mankind on the TV screen, instantly transformed into the Monkey King Sun Wukong of the Water Curtain Cave in the Flower-Fruit Mountain, and somersaulted on the spot.

When all the action elements were presented one by one, the smile on Ethan's face became even wider. When he controlled Bill Lance forward, the minion in uniform asked him to press A continuously. With the sound of biubiubiu, the minion's body exploded into balls of green blood mist.

Keep moving forward, the cubes embedded on the map are the fortresses of the future. It's a pity that no matter how strong they are, they can't stop a bullet from Bill Lance.

"Oh Evelyn - you're doing such a great job!"

“You made everything I wanted!”

"This is just--this is just--this is just perfect!"

Ethan finally couldn't help himself and spoke during the game.

Although the game in front of him was somewhat different from the Contra in Ethan's previous life, for example, the game was made very crudely, and all the ground was made of uniform blocks, exactly the same as the ground in the first generation of Mario that Ethan played in his previous life. At first glance, you could tell that it was made of the same pixel blocks. The various planets floating in the night sky were just the reuse of the same material, but with different colors. Even the misalignment of the stars was just the repeated stacking of materials to create different sizes and shapes. But these...

None of it matters, right!

As long as this game can reflect the gameplay that Ethan wants, that's enough!
Moreover, using duplicate material packages to create different map presentations is a reflection of engineers’ abilities. This extreme optimization represents excellent engineering thinking!

"Oh - thank you -" Ethan's words made the girl smile.

But at the same time, she added, "Just play first, and we'll talk about other things after you finish this game."

Although Ethan didn't understand why his sister said that, completing the entire game was what he had to do. As the boss of a game company, he certainly could not understand games, but if he wanted to operate his company's products well, then the operator had to play the game.

As for not playing games but just wanting to manage operations, is that okay?
This is actually also possible.

After all, Bobby Caudricourt hadn't ascended to heaven before Ethan traveled through time.

Under Ethan's operation, the picture on the TV was constantly changing. Since Ethan could no longer recall what all the levels of the game "Contra" looked like, the game content he played at this moment was very different from the games of Konami in his previous life.

The first level left the deepest impression on me, so the imitation was the most powerful. After landing on the alien planet, the protagonist Bill Lance fought his way to the entrance of the alien base alone. The final boss was the gate at the entrance of the base.
I also remember the second level, which was about breaking into the base by moving left and right. Although Ethan showed the vertical shooting in "Contra", Evelyn did not do it completely, because she felt that the behavior of the monsters designed by Ethan jumping out from behind the door to attack people was very stupid, so she slightly modified this level and used the production method of "Star Wars" to make the closed door in the picture open with a black hole, and the enemy would shoot bullets from it to attack the protagonist;
The first door has one opening on each side, the second door has three openings in the shape of a Chinese character "品", the third door has two openings on each side, forming two Chinese characters "吕", the fourth door has countless soldiers rushing out from top to bottom to attack the protagonist, the fifth door is the BOSS, it still has four openings, but what it shoots out is lasers, and soldiers will also emerge from the left and right corners of the top of the screen to launch sneak attacks;
The health of each door is also different, starting at ten and increasing by five. The first door will explode after being hit ten times, while the fifth door can withstand twenty-nine attacks from the protagonist.

By the third level, Ethan couldn't really remember what Konami had done, so he started to play around. He thought that bases were usually hidden underground, so he designed a route to explore downwards. It was still a horizontal board from left to right, but after a road was opened, he could take the elevator to continue going down. The cutscenes were presented in the form of text with sound effects. The clanging sound represented that the elevator seemed to be in disrepair, but it also contained the meaning of exploring downwards.

The boss of this level is an alien creature that parasitizes humans. Its long banana head perfectly reflects the name of Alien.
Since it is difficult and time-consuming to make a mobile BOSS, Evelyn directly set it as a sculpture-like gate god. The attack method is also very simple. One is to open his eyes wide and shoot a death ray at the protagonist, just like the previous laser;
Although this ray is very fast, it has a pre-casting motion. Before it is officially launched, its attack trajectory will appear on the TV screen.
The other one opens its bloody mouth and shoots green saliva bullets at the protagonist. The attacks connected in a line are easy to dodge;
The fourth level that appears after completing the third level is a repetition of the second level.
The protagonist has to continue to pass the level. All the materials are completely reused, but the pixel splicing method, color calling method, and the defense formation of the soldiers are slightly different from the second level.

Until the fifth level...

The fifth level is a cave, and stalactite-like decorations appear on the top and bottom of the map. They look different, but they are actually made of the same brown cave material, just flipped.

On the road, there will be red alien eggs one after another. If the player shoots them, they will explode into pieces. But if the player does not shoot them and chooses to jump over them, then after walking a certain distance, a bunch of facehuggers will emerge from behind the protagonist's buttocks.

It was a brown spherical creature, with its main body made of planetary materials. Its tail and feet were connected with the stars from the first level. With a simple combination of pieces, the whole creature was completed. Although it looked a little strange, how could something that wasn't strange be called an alien?

This guy's attack is also very simple. Its movement speed is a little faster than the player, so when it hits the player and the player fails to kill it, the player will die.

As for how the protagonist who cannot turn around can kill the facehugger that is chasing him?

This is even simpler...

Because the facehuggers coming from behind will always run in front of the protagonist first, allowing the protagonist to gain attacking distance, and then they will turn around and attack the protagonist.

The algorithm for this judgment...

"This algorithm is actually very simple." When Evelyn heard Ethan's curious question, the girl immediately stood up and gestured on the TV, "Because when I made this game, I used the Descartes principle, which is the coordinate system he invented..."

Evelyn drew a cross in the center of the screen. "We divide the entire screen into four parts, so that the left and right areas can be accurately distinguished. Then, we set the left side of the entire screen as a static area. When the character moves in it, the picture will not move forward. Only when the character moves to the center line, that is, coincides with the Y axis, will the entire game picture extend forward..."

"So, when you play the game, you'll find that the character can't go to the right side of the game at all. He can only move on the left side, because once he touches the Y axis, the map will extend."

"In this case, I just need to set the movement coordinates of the face hugger within the dynamic area, that is, within the increasing area of ​​the X axis. Then no matter how many times the face hugger chases, it will definitely appear in front of the player."

"This period of time is the specific attack time I give to players. If players can't even seize this period of time, they will be bitten to death by the facehugger."

Ethan understood.

Then he was shocked.

"Is this judgment difficult to write?" he asked with concern.

"It's okay." The girl stepped aside and shrugged. "Making games is not as difficult as making hardware. As long as we know what the final effect should be, it's only a matter of time to restore it."

Although the girl said it easily, Ethan didn't believe it. "How long have you been doing it?" he asked.

"This?" Evelyn pointed at the facehugger.

"No, the whole thing." Ethan was talking about the game.

"Uh...it took me more than two months to finalize the idea. The rest is just finding materials and putting the game together."

Evelyn thought for a moment and said, "I don't think this game is difficult to make, because the movement algorithms of facehuggers and soldiers are much simpler than the ghosts in Pac-Man. We have done things like bullet trajectory before. When we made shooting games like Star Wars, the bullet algorithm in this game was very simple. The only difficult thing is the action. If you didn't insist on asking me to do a somersault, but a straight up and down jump, then this game would have been finished long ago."

Such words made Ethan purse his lips.

He stared at the girl for a while, then smiled and continued playing the game.

After creatures like the facehugger have appeared, the following levels are all related to aliens.

If the boss of the third level is just a human inhabited by an alien, then the boss of the fifth level is a pure alien, a dog-shaped alien that walks on all fours;

There are three ways to attack: one is to open your mouth and spit, one is to have an instant impact with a pre-swing, and one is to raise your voice to the sky and summon a facehugger to attack;
Although these seem troublesome, they are actually very simple to do. Spitting uses a ballistic algorithm, copying itself; the instant impact with a pre-swing is similar to the laser in the second level, and using this method instead of moving can also reduce a lot of programming workload, and give the aliens fewer actions; summoning a facehugger is nothing more than re-calling the previous facehugger code, which is the highest level of reuse and makes the best use of everything;
When all these things appear, a wealth of attack methods are presented with the simplest code.

After clearing the fifth level, the sixth level is a reappearance of the first level, except that all the mobs have been replaced by a combination of humans and aliens, and the map has also changed color.

The seventh level is the final battle against the aliens.

Alien eggs, facehuggers, human-shaped aliens, and dog-shaped aliens all appeared in a swarm.

After defeating them, the final BOSS appeared in front of Ethan. It was an evil heart, just like Antun's heart, hanging high above the map.

After reaching this point, players only need to press the A key frantically to achieve victory.

Ethan entered the house with his sister at ten o'clock in the evening, but he didn't have time to look up at the moon until four in the morning. In six hours, he played the game more than a dozen times. The reasons for doing so were very simple. First, he wanted to see if there were any obvious bugs in the game, and second, he wanted to experience more different ways of playing.

Because when designing this game, Ethan prepared several kinds of ammunition for the players. As long as you kill monsters, you have a chance to obtain them. Among them are triple bullets. With one shot, three bullets are fired continuously. There are also explosive bombs. With one shot, all monsters can be killed instantly. Even when fighting a BOSS, one shot is better than two shots. There are also diffusion bombs, with three bullets on the top, middle and bottom, which can clear the screen directly.

In addition, after obtaining the special bullet, the protagonist's pants will change from blue to red.

Being killed in this state will only cause you to lose your special bullets, but you will not die.

This is equivalent to giving the player an extra life in disguise, and doing so...

That's also because console games need to take care of the players' gaming experience.

To be honest, Ethan was already very happy that Evelyn was able to restore Contra to its current state without ever having played the game.

Because in the era when video games were still in the early stages of development, gameplay was the real selling point! This was the thing that made the genre famous! As for the graphics?
It doesn't matter if it's a little crude.

Players don't care about this at all.

And when the excellent gameplay has been demonstrated...

"Ha ha ha ha--"

When Ethan put down the handle, there was only a smile on his face!
He opened his arms and hugged Evelin tightly, tears of joy already welling up in his eyes!

"Evelyn! Thank you!"

"This kind of game display can crush all the game companies on the market!"

"I swear!"

"Do not--"

“The whole world will tremble because of this game!”

"Because they will find that even if they copy our best-selling products, we can still come up with something even better!"

Ethan is really excited now!

With a game of this quality, who the hell can beat him?
Superman?

Superman?

What the hell!

You can't even keep up with the versions!
You still want to fight me?
Ethan's excitement brought satisfaction to Evelyn's tired face.

Although she was very tired at the moment, having witnessed Ethan playing games for six hours straight, she could no longer resist the sleepiness. However, when she saw Ethan waving his fists excitedly, wanting to beat all the enemies to death, she still smiled like an aunt.

"I believe it." The girl said softly.

"Okay, let's stop here for today." Ethan took a deep breath and said, "It's getting late. It's time to rest."

However, just as Ethan let go of his arm and prepared to get up to wash, Evelyn grabbed his hand and said, “Wait a minute.”

"What's wrong?" Ethan was a little surprised.

"I haven't finished my story yet," Evelyn said.

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Maybe it was because it was really too late, or maybe it was because Ethan was too happy, so Evelyn didn't keep him in suspense, but pointed to the home console under the TV and said, "The game is fun, right? But have you ever thought about why I added an Apple floppy drive interface to the machine?"

"..." These words made Ethan turn his head instantly.

He suddenly remembered that he had felt something was wrong here before.

And his behavior also made Evelin take the initiative to explain, "Because——"

“This game is 128KB in size.”

"How much?" Ethan was stunned, then screamed. He suspected that he had heard it wrongly.

"128KB."

Evelin repeated it with a smile, her face showing helplessness.

“WTF???”

This number made Ethan stand up instantly.

"128KB?"

"Oh! Sxxt!"

“How do you sell a game this big?”

He was stunned.

Note: ① Many companies have considered adding floppy disk drives to home game consoles. For example, when Atari ported Pac-Man and Space Invaders in the 40s and early 6502s, it wanted to add an external disk to the machine, but disks were too expensive. Nintendo also tried it in the mid-s, but an external port was as expensive as the game console, which was a huge failure. ② The splicing of materials described in the article was a popular method of that era. In that era, people were very particular about it. Super Mario was used to the extreme, with a total of KB. For example, the sound effect of eating mushrooms to make it bigger was just a fast-forward of the sound effect of passing the level. The clouds were just spliced ​​together, and the Mario brothers were just changed in color. However, this method was not originally created by Shigeru Miyamoto. It is hard to find the source of who made this thing. The earliest one that has been verified so far was made by the group of people from Activision who worked at Atari. ③ It is also a common practice in the industry for horizontal scrolling games to use the coordinate system to confirm forward movement. It is unknown who invented this, and the earliest application should be the game made by Namco in the early s. This design is also related to CPU performance. The is indeed cheap but the performance is indeed not good. This CPU can make many games, but its processing speed cannot even keep up with the extreme speed of human hands. The final level of the "Pac-Man" written before was created by an American guy with his hand speed. When the instructions he rubbed out were faster than the CPU judgment, Pac-Man became invincible. Therefore, scrolling games can only minimize screen scrolling to save resources, and there is no retreat.

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(End of this chapter)