Dragon, choose cultural victory to make money

Chapter 248 Red Alert, meaning the devil is red
Red alert.

A more accurate name should be Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

It is a branch of the entire Command and Conquer series.

There are several other product lines in this large series.

But for Drogo, the most familiar one must be Red Alert.

As a child, he had never heard of Command & Conquer.

I've only played Red Alert.

To be precise, it is the version of Red Alert 2: Glory of the Republic.

For a long time, he thought this version was the most official one.

I believe that there are many people who, like him, once thought so.

In this version, the mysterious Eastern power is incredibly powerful, with amphibious mining carts running all over the ground, tanks that are several times more expensive but several times stronger, and even more powerful aircraft carrier fighters...

There is no balance, just excitement.

Later I found out that it was just a MOD made by players, not an officially released version.

Drogo does not intend to choose this self-made MOD. Although it is fun, it is indeed not a qualified game.

As for why he chose Red Alert, a game set in modern warfare, instead of Warcraft or Age of Empires, which have a background style closer to that of Fallin's works.

There's nothing special about it, it's simply because Drogo is familiar with this game, but he hasn't played the others much.

Before I learned how to download games, the only games available on my home computer when I was a kid were web games, Windows built-in games, and Red Alert, which came from nowhere.

Of these options, Red Alert is clearly the more interesting one.

I played through the campaigns of both factions several times, then fought against AI on various maps, from easy to brutal, from one-on-one to one-on-seven.

The game should be at least several hundred hours long, so you have a relatively good understanding of the various details and can replicate them more easily.

As for how the buildings and units should fit the Felin background, just reskin them accordingly.

After introducing the basic gameplay mode, Drogo began to give examples of the combat units and architectural designs of the Devil Camp to everyone in the conference room.

These are all the results of searching for information these days.

"The first and most important thing is the construction base for all other buildings, the construction plant. The construction plant has two states: expanded and unexpanded. When expanded, you can build things, and when not expanded, you can move things around."

The look that Drogo chose for the Devil's Construction Factory was a simplification of Asmodeus' lair, the Hell Fortress.

In addition to Drogo's draft, the slides also include real-life pictures of the Hell Fortress. Because Drogo did not bring a camera when he went to Hell, these valuable picture references were directly captured from his memory through the elves' magic.

The concept of the base vehicle was not easy for the people here to understand, so Drogo made some minor adaptations.

The construction plant is summoned by a special unit, the Devil's Archduke, using a secret spell that requires continuous casting, so the Devil's Archduke cannot move when the construction plant is deployed.

“The game revolves around two resources: mana and magic power. Mana is used to build all units, and magic power is used to keep buildings running.”

That corresponds to the money and electricity in the original work.

To be honest, Drogo always felt that it was a bit weird that everything that needed to be produced in the original work had to be bought directly with money.

"The source of mana is the mana stone mine or mana well on the map, and mana needs to be generated by building a magic tower."

Then, Drogo demonstrated the functions of different demons.

The lowest level of inferior demons act in teams and can only do basic physical work, such as mining, which is called "mining carts".

Hedgehog, a low-level devil with thorns on its body, is the cheapest type of soldier. It can fight in close combat or throw fireballs. It is a "mobilized soldier."

Cerberus, as the name suggests, is a dog that can bite infantry units to death.

The thorn demon has thorns on its tail, and can swing the thorns to attack from a distance. It will explode when it pierces the enemy. It is an anti-aircraft unit.

The little devil has no combat ability, but is one of the smarter low-level devils. It can repair some facilities or occupy magic wells. It is the "engineer" among the devils.

Ice Demon, a high-level soldier, has powerful ice magic that can cause high damage to various units, but when deployed it will bring about an ultra-low temperature area, which will also cause damage to friendly units. It is a magic version of "Radiation Engineer".

And so on.

As for the higher-level devils in hell, they no longer correspond to infantry units.

For example, the horned demon that can fly in the sky and cast Pyroblast is actually a Kirov airship.

The only flying thing in the devil's camp.

The strongest ground unit, the Apocalypse Tank, was directly transformed into a Hellfire.

As for the units in the sea, the ships are definitely gone.

However, there are quite a few aquatic monsters like giant squids.

In terms of architecture, Drogo did not design the entire exterior, but only determined what functions the building would need.

What it will look like specifically is left to the designers to design.

Anyway, Drogo provided a lot of reference pictures of Hell buildings, with only one requirement: they should look rough at first glance, but be sturdy and durable, with a tough style.

"These are just preliminary ideas. The specific implementation will have to wait for testing before adjustment. There is more than one Grand Duke in Hell, and the armies of different Grand Dukes need to have some differences in effects. The basic buildings and arms do not need to be changed. One or two special features will be enough. I will leave this part to you to design."

Drogo offers only an idea of ​​the differences between the various archdukes.

His own Easter egg.

Because of the deal with Asmodeus, Drogo decided to place the Easter egg on the Lord of Hell.

Special troops——Dragon Egg!
It only requires 100 mana, which is as cheap as the cheapest unit, the Lesser Demon. Only one can exist on the same field.

After hatching, it is a baby dragon. It needs to keep fighting and growing, and eventually it can develop into the ancient dragon Drogo!
After full development, it will become the strongest single unit in the entire game, and it will not be a problem to defeat the enemy alone.

However, it is a weakling until it reaches adulthood. When it reaches adulthood, its strength is about that of a hellish fiend. It will take a long time for it to become an ancient dragon.

Judging from the length of time Red Alert players play a single game, it should have little practical value.

By the time Drogo is raised, the house would have been destroyed several times.

So it's an easter egg.

Asmodeus's characteristics still need to be designed to be useful.

"As for the human camp, we need to design the troops corresponding to the devil camp. Similarly, the humans, dwarves, and elves in the human coalition must also have their own special units. The style of the coalition should be as clean and tidy as possible, and the fighting method should be more inclined to use magic, unlike the devil's many melees."

It took Drogo nearly two hours to give a general introduction to the unit and building design.

"Okay, now what's the problem?"

"I have a question," Yuffie raised her hand, "If we design this kind of gameplay, where we have to control many units at the same time, wouldn't the game process be very tiring?"

"Well, it will be very tiring."

There is no way to deny this aspect of Drogo. As long as it is an RTS type, it has nothing to do with ease.

Except for the dirty routine of abusing vegetables.

"But would anyone really like to play a game that doesn't make the experience relaxing?" Youfei asked puzzled.

As a loyal follower of Drogo's game production philosophy, this attempt was beyond her understanding.

In Yuffie's opinion, of course, she learned this mainly from Drogo, games should bring happiness to people.

But you can operate many units at the same time.

Yufei thought about the scene, which involved the sky, the land, and the sea, and she also had to be careful that the opponent wouldn't sneak up on her from a direction she couldn't see.

God, even the exams at the Repin Institute didn't give her this much pressure.

As a well-known game creator in Feilin, Youfei's gaming skills are actually quite poor. Even for the games she participated in making, if she, as a designer, didn't know the strategy in advance, it would be difficult to pass the game.

Look at Toto again.

She now plays two games at the same time when she is live streaming, one in her left hand and one in her right hand, without any interruption to either.

Yuffie could already foresee the miserable scene of herself playing against Toto in Red Alert.

She was actually overthinking this. After the launch of Red Alert, there will be an official Drogo battle platform with ranking points, so theoretically she won't be able to meet Toto.

“That brings us to the classification of gamer types.”

Drogo coughed twice.

Little Drogo Red Dragon Class has started.

"All players can be roughly divided into four categories, which can overlap with each other: achievers, explorers, social players, and killer players."

This is the game psychology theory proposed by Professor Battier in the 20s.

At that time, this professor was a professor of game design, and the birth of this major was much earlier than many people imagined.

"Achievers like to complete tasks and challenges to gain a sense of accomplishment; explorers are keen to explore the game plot and mechanism, and their driving force is curiosity; socializers value interaction, and who they play with is more important than what they play; and killers want to defeat their opponents in the game."

As for Drogo Benlong, he should be an exploration player. He usually doesn't spend too much time on a game, nor is he willing to delve into the gameplay. He just runs away after experiencing it.

Like the new and hate the old.

It is also easy to run out of games.

"So Red Alert is mainly aimed at killer-type players?"

"That's understandable."

Drogo thought about it and realized that with such a strong competitive nature, even though it was a player-versus-player game, it probably wouldn't attract many social players.

"There is another problem. If there are so many units on the same field, will it be easy for players to lose focus and ignore a lot of information?"

"Then let them ignore it."

There's nothing Drogo can do about this.

There is a saying in the world that StarCraft players do not need eyesight.

Refers to the frequent situations where professional players, among others, fail to notice key information.

The same applies to other RTS games.

I can’t see it. I really can’t see it.

There is no way, there is too much information at the same time.

Plus the endless screen switching.

"Having vision" is also part of strength.

"Excuse me," another illusionist who had been with Drogo since the Auto Chess days raised his hand, "What kind of game console should be used to play this game? Our current game controllers probably can't support this kind of gameplay."

“Ha, good question!”

When it was first conceived, Drogo's idea was to operate it with a mouse and keyboard. Although there is only a keyboard for typing and no mouse now, it should be done sooner or later.

But after discovering the sandbox used by the devils in Hell, Drogo changed his mind.

"boom!"

Drogo took out the "local specialty" he brought back from hell, a sand table, from the treasure chest monster and placed it on the long table in the conference room.

"This is the operating platform of Red Alert. I call it a super immersive war sandbox."

Drogo said smugly.

There was no reaction from the audience in the conference room.

"Why, isn't that a good name?"

The employees made a difficult and unwilling decision and nodded stiffly.

"Well, you don't like the name."

Drogo directly began to introduce the functions of this sandbox. After bringing it back from Hell, he studied it for a long time by himself, and had it disassembled by Barn Forge to test whether it could be converted into a game console.

The answer is that you don’t even need to modify it, you can just connect to the Internet and play it as a game console.

This sandbox allows you to input and control characters, maps, and design button positions and functions by yourself.

That is to say, in addition to the official operation keys provided by Drogo, players can customize them at will.

The imported characters can be configured with a range of actions, including shattering effects.

Drogo activated the sandbox and showed it to the developers.

"Wow!"

Everyone couldn't help but sigh.

The characters in the sandbox do not seem like pure illusions, but have a sense of reality with entity. Only extremely high-level illusion can achieve a similar effect, so many games currently cannot achieve it.

It looks like the exquisite chess pieces in the Warhammer board game, with smooth movements.

Moreover, the sandbox also has a built-in war fog function, and the unexplored areas are shrouded in thick black fog.

This design is definitely an important innovation in the history of strategy games. It directly raises the complexity of the strategy to a higher level, and obtaining information has become the top priority for victory.

"So, what's the background story of Red Alert like? Isn't there a campaign with a plot?"

"It's very simple. The devils have regrouped and invaded the Felin Continent. The devil plot is about how the devils win, and the coalition plot is about how the human coalition makes a comeback. The two sides have different endings."

"Wait," the illusionist was a little confused, "wasn't our original plan to make everyone less hostile to the devil? Now in this story, the devil sounds a bit..."

"Like the opposite side, I know."

Drogo answered.

"However, the situation with devils and tieflings is different. Tieflings can be portrayed as people who are not bad by nature due to circumstances, but devils cannot. So it is better to treat them as powerful but principled villains to gain their favor."

This is also the impression that Red Alert left on many people. The game makers obviously portrayed the Soviet army as villains.

Using radiation, self-destruction, and terrorists, Yuri was designed in the image of a great man, and idealism was misinterpreted as mind control.

But in the end, not many players disliked the image of the Soviet army here, probably because they hadn't paid much attention to the plot before.

The sayings of "solid and reliable Soviet Union and flashy and impractical America" ​​were also born.

As the darkness deepens, it eventually produces positive effects.

In Drogo's opinion, as long as the content of the short story in the original work is changed and the war is described as a battle for survival caused by resource shortages, which is actually the case, it will be a good propaganda for the "big villain" devil.

"In short, that's it. With this scale, how long is the estimated development cycle?"

Because of the characteristics of spells, producing art resources is much easier than developing games on Earth.

Drogo Corporation can also develop games much faster than 3A companies on Earth, which often take several years.

Of course, some magical 2D games, which obviously do not require so many resources, still take many years to develop, and there is still no hope. Drogo can't understand why.

"About four to five months, if everything goes well."

"Very good, let's get to work."

(End of this chapter)