Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 206 Stairs
Chu Chen breathed a sigh of relief after leaving ByteDance.

to him.

As long as he said those words in front of Zhang Ming, he had already succeeded.

This is his biggest "golden touch".

It looks simple, but actually using this "golden finger" is not simple at all. The most difficult part of this matter is not what you said to Zhang Ming.

The key is to get Zhang Ming to listen to him attentively.
Just like how he was able to acquire the copyright for FATE, the most difficult thing was meeting Takashi Takeuchi.

That's how the world is. There's a threshold for every step. If you don't cross that threshold, even if you have the key, you can't open the door.

This is why Chu Chen has been incredibly busy for the past six months.
But now, everything has finally come to an end. He offered a fairly fair price: 30% of TiTok's shares for 10 billion RMB. Zhang Ming was stunned when he heard the offer.

First, they were shocked that Chu Chen truly believed in TiTok and was really willing to give it money!
Secondly, this price was exactly the same as the initial promotional budget he had in mind.

Although this was a coincidence.

However, Zhang Ming gave Chu Chen a strange look in the end and tentatively agreed. Both parties were satisfied with this result, and Zhang Ming confirmed it several times before leaving.

"Mr. Chen, you really didn't discuss this with Bilibili?"

"No, I was just kidding."

With the final agreement reached, both parties felt a great weight lifted off their shoulders. For Chu Chen, 30% of the shares was enough; any more than that, he worried, might in turn influence Zhang Ming's decision-making.

Don't be fooled by his long-winded talk just now; if you asked Chu Chen to create TikTok on his own, he wouldn't be so confident.

At least not as confident as when making games.

What's that saying again? Don't shoot. If you don't shoot, no one will know if your gun is loaded. What if StarCraft creates their own TikTok? If it succeeds, great; if it fails...
Ultimately, his investment in TikTok wasn't for money, but for influence.

Now, we have shares in Bilibili and shares in TikTok.

Chu Chen finally has a foundation for his "empire," but whether it's Bilibili or TiTok, it still needs time to develop.

so now.

What I need to do is to play the "ball" well.

"back office."

Zhang Ming originally intended to treat Chu Chen to dinner, but Chu Chen declined.

Firstly, he noticed that Zhang Ming wasn't focused on eating, and secondly, he himself had other things to do.

As expected, Zhang Ming, who was not paying attention, did not offer any further advice.

Chu Chen was in a hurry to return to the company because there was a "big matter" waiting for him there.

This afternoon is the competition day of the "Starry Sky First Engine Martial Arts Tournament".
You might find the name abstract, that's okay, Chu Chen also finds it abstract, but this competition is absolutely legitimate.
Well, it wasn't really a very serious competition.

To explain the "Starry Sky First Engine Martial Arts Tournament" clearly, we first need to introduce the three engines currently used by Starry Sky Games.

One is a heavily modified version of Unity 5.0 that was purchased outright.

This is the version of Unity released in 2015, and it's also the last version of Unity to support a technology buyout. It's the engine that StarCraft Games is most familiar with. The games *Final Battlefront*, *Final Battlefront: Origins*, and *Fate/Grand Order* all use this engine.

The modified version of Unity 5.0 was initially developed by Chu Chen and a few programmers. Now, the entire Xingchen team has about twenty people dedicated to optimizing the Unity 5.0 engine.

To facilitate management, these twenty people established the Starry Sky Unity Engine Studio.

The main focus is on optimizing the underlying layers of games such as "Final Battlefront," "Origin," and "FGO," and researching how to improve the lighting and graphics of these games on this basis.

In addition to Unity, StarCraft Games also has an engine called Reality.

It can also be called the "realistic" engine.

This game engine was popular in China for a period of time because the other party did not want naming rights and could buy the rights.

In other words, you can buy it, change the name, and then claim "independent research and development" when it comes to marketing and promotion.
Because of its low cost and ease of use, Tencent purchased this engine for many small and medium-sized projects. Based on this, the Blue War team completed the mobile game project adaptation of this engine and some anime rendering.

Currently, both studios that Chu Chen poached from Tencent are using this engine. Moreover, because it's a buy-out engine, both teams have dedicated engine departments that continuously optimize it.

More than thirty people were recruited by Chu Chen.

Among them, more than 20 people from the original Blue War Engine department and more than 10 people from Guan Lei's engine team came together to form the Star Reality Engine Studio.

It should be noted that this is due to the initiation of the project "Fate: Infinite Grail".

With funding secured, Guan Lei and Jiao Xiaofei not only recruited many people with Reality development experience from within China, but also from Reality, the parent company that actually developed the Reality game engine.

They poached some "Americans," including the lead programmer for the Reality engine.
Yes, you heard right. Guan Lei poached the lead programmer of this engine. Although he was able to do so because Reality itself was not doing well, and was squeezed out of its living space by Unreal Engine and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Moreover, his wife is Chinese.

But the fact that he was able to poach the lead programmer from the other company also shows that Guan Lei didn't just sit around at Tencent doing nothing. He spent a lot of time researching and communicating with people from Reality to adapt to the engine.

It is precisely because he communicated with the other party and made the other party feel that he at least understood things that they were willing to switch jobs.

In short, having acquired the other party's main resources, Starry Reality Engine Studio now has approximately 60 people. On one hand, they are further optimizing the Reality Engine's 3D anime rendering, and on the other hand, they are strengthening the motion engine design.

Finally, there's the Ishii Akira team that Chu Chen acquired at CNJOY.

Although they also use Unity, they are using a version based on Unity 4.6, and after a series of modifications, this Unity 4.6 is essentially a new engine.

Remember this "Unity 4.6"

There will be an exam.

The "Starry Sky Game Engine Martial Arts Tournament" was essentially caused by Unity 4.6.
Since the team of about thirty people from Ishii Akira had been merged into Starry Sky Games, they were heavily involved in optimizing the FGO remake.

And after the release of the FGO remake.

Akira Ishii then considered giving his HD-2D engine a comprehensive upgrade.

The reason for this idea is that although Unity 4.6 is a 14 version, only two years have passed, but many things are already a bit outdated.

While it's true that for Japanese game development teams, game engines are often used in a cycle of three generations from the same version, even after the company has gone through several rounds of staff changes, new games still tend to use the same old engine...
This is why the graphics of most Japanese game manufacturers have remained largely unchanged for over a decade.

(End of this chapter)