Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 157 The Latency Period

Anyone who has worked in the workplace knows that, in all workplace interactions, it is always more relaxed and pleasant to talk to people who are actually doing the work.

Especially for some technical positions.

You don't need to rack your brains to think about interpersonal relationships.

This is especially true when two techies are chatting. As long as you can make him feel that you are better than him, then basically anything can be discussed. Chu Chen and Shi Jingxiao are feeling this way now.

Moreover, if these kinds of people have doubts, you basically can't continue the conversation unless you clear them up.

So, when Chu Chen saw the other party's surprised expression, he naturally began to explain.

"What you want to recreate is the feeling of a classic JRPG from the Super Famicom era, right?"

"But have you ever considered that the classic JRPGs in your minds are idealized versions of them..."

"2D games of that era, limited by hardware capabilities and resolution, did not strictly adhere to realistic physical proportions."

"Your technology is amazing. Is this developed based on Unity? The lighting and water effects are even better than I expected. But you are too fixated on using 3D logic to build everything, and you have lost the essence of the game."

For someone who hasn't "done" the questions, Chu Chen's words are practically incomprehensible.

But for Ishii Akira, it was truly an eye-opening experience.

"Been taught a lesson……"

Ishii Akira took a deep breath, then bowed solemnly to Chu Chen at a ninety-degree angle.

"Thank you so much for your guidance!!"

Seeing this, his two colleagues behind him quickly stood up and bowed deeply in the same manner. This scene drew curious glances from a few industry professionals passing by.

Chu Chen accepted the greeting without hesitation.

He then waved his hand, gesturing for them to sit down.

"You're welcome. I'm curious, how long has it taken to develop your 'A-HDEngine'? Besides what we can see, does it have any other special features?"

In the ensuing conversation, Chu Chen began to ask about technical details, much like an interviewer.

When he met a knowledgeable "master", Ishii Akira changed from his previous dejection and loneliness to a radiant person. He talked about the various features of the engine without reservation, and even the interesting things and difficulties encountered in the development process.

From the choice of the engine's underlying architecture to the unique "hybrid anti-aliasing" algorithm designed to achieve smooth edges for pixel characters under 3D lighting.

From the implementation of dynamic weather systems to the "out-of-view object hibernation" mechanism designed to save performance...

As Ishii Akira spoke, he became more and more excited, and his two other colleagues chimed in from time to time.

Chu Chen listened quietly, nodding occasionally or asking a question or two.

After some conversation, he discovered that this small team called "Milk Studio" was far more capable than he had imagined.

Furthermore, their technical approach differs from that of Octopath Traveler, because Akira Ishii came from Vanillaware and had also worked on Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

So, while struggling with the proportions issue, he tried changing all the pixel-style art to 2D hand-drawn art, which he was more familiar with and which Vanillaware was more comfortable with. On set, Ishii Akira even demonstrated to Chu Chen that after replacing the art, the overall style looked quite different from *Octopath Traveler*.
It's more like a later version of "King of the Sacred Beasts," except it still has the same old problem: the camera angles are strange.
Because the later version of "King of Sacred Beasts" had a very close-up shot and the characters were very large, while the demo shown by Akira Ishii had a very far shot, but overall...

Akira Ishii's "A-HDEngine" does indeed contain some key details.

And very importantly...
This engine plugin is very suitable for StarCraft games.

Why do you say that?

For Chu Chen, or rather, for Starry Sky Games as a whole, there is a very awkward "transition period."

This refers to the transition from 2D games to large-scale 3D games.
Currently, Starry Sky Games has two 3D game teams: Jiao Xiaofei's A2 and Guan Lei's A3.

Despite the large number of employees, these two studios actually have limited experience in 3D game technology.

Starry Sky Games doesn't have much of an advantage in the 3D game field either, which was very evident when A3 Studios was doing the early project planning for "Infinite Grail".

If we also consider the limitations of players' mobile phone hardware, it will take time to accumulate experience and achieve good results.

It's 16 now. If we assume that a major work featuring high-definition 3D will be released around 19, then there will be a gap of up to 3 years.

If the goal is to develop a "version answer" open-world 3D game, this window of opportunity will have to be pushed back another year.

This is not a problem that Chu Chen, as a time traveler, can solve.

After all, the overall performance of a 2016 phone is twice that of a 2020 phone, and the GPU, or graphics performance, is three times worse. Only time can solve hardware problems.

For other game developers, with titles like *Final Battle* and *Fate/Grand Order*, they can comfortably live off their existing games for four years without developing any new titles, so there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
But for the stars, time is money.

Chu Chen wants to make "Star Tap" the largest gaming platform in China, and in the future, it can compete with Steam.
The only chance of success is to partner with excellent third-party developers like Sony, while also continuously releasing first-party masterpieces like Nintendo.

Therefore, a four-year gap in his career was something Chu Chen absolutely could not accept.

At least two or three more large IPs are needed to fill the gap and boost Startap's global influence.

For example, Chu Chen had been thinking about martial arts anime for a while, as well as Touhou Project and works targeting the Western cultural market.
These games definitely won't work if they continue to use the 2D game framework of "Final Front".

Gamers are the group in the world that needs "novelty" the most.

Players will get tired of using the same framework repeatedly.

As mentioned earlier, Starry Sky's experience in 3D technology is insufficient. If these projects are all converted to 3D production, not only will the development time not be able to meet the window of opportunity, but the final result may not be very good either.

So, the moment I saw 2D-HD technology.

Chu Chen then stopped.

This technology is a great addition for Starry Night Games.

Being based on Unity means that his team can work together almost seamlessly. Referring to his previous work, Octopath Traveler, which officially began production in 16 and was launched in just two years, in 18...
This means that the development difficulty is low.

Most importantly, Octopath Traveler's initial release platform is the Switch, meaning the hardware performance requirements are low, so there's no need to worry about players' phones "exploding."

(End of this chapter)