Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 370 Engine Breakthrough
After minimizing the Bilibili page, Chu Chen stretched, his joints making a series of crisp sounds.

The sun was shining brightly outside the window, and the office was spacious and quiet on the weekend.

This tranquility allowed him to calm his chaotic thoughts. He took an ice-cold can of cola from the refrigerator, pulled the tab with a "pop," and wisps of cold white air escaped.

He gulped it down, the icy liquid sliding down his throat into his stomach. The stimulating sensation of the carbon dioxide bubbles exploding on his tongue made Chu Chen squint his eyes contentedly.

After relaxing, Chu Chen casually opened his email, intending to deal with the backlog of emails.

At StarCraft, there are actually two communication channels: one is the system of office software and face-to-face reporting commonly used in China, and the other is the email system used by StarCraft's overseas departments.

The reason why overseas departments use email more often is not only due to their work habits, but also because there is a time difference between overseas departments and China.

Furthermore, the frequency of communication between departments is not very high.

Except in exceptionally urgent situations where international teleconferences are used, email is the primary channel for interaction between overseas entities and China most of the time.

Chu Chen was already used to this. It was just like developing a game; there was no single best method. The best method was simply the one that was "suitable."

Opening his email, he found mostly weekly reports from various projects. Under normal circumstances, Chu Chen would quickly glance at them before replying.

It's interesting to say.

This process is somewhat reminiscent of how ancient emperors handled memorials to the emperor.

Among today's many "memorials," an email from the United States stands out with its title.

The sender was Fuller, the person in charge of the StarCraft game engine.

The matter being reported was also very important, so the email was quite long and included several attachments.

The gist is that last week, StarCraft's American engine studio completed the translation of all the art assets for PUBG, as well as the engine adaptation work.

In short, PUBG Mobile is coming!

"finally come!"

Even Chu Chen felt inexplicably excited when he saw this message.

As a major shareholder and publisher of Bluehole, StarCraft had already acquired the development rights for the mobile version of PUBG before the official version was even released.

However, for Xingchen, the mobile game project was not officially launched for a full seven months, from February to September this year.

The biggest reason for this can be summed up in just four words.

Engine compatibility

In its previous life, Photon Studio, backed by the shared Unreal Engine, managed to develop the mobile version of PUBG MOBILE in just four months.

However, for Star Engine, this path of porting is much more difficult, as the underlying logic, rendering pipeline, physics algorithm, and network synchronization mechanism of Star Engine are quite different from those of Unreal Engine.

More importantly.

Before PUBG, the Star Engine only had very basic shooting game functions and did not adequately support large-scale multiplayer online shooting games.

In other words.

Chu Chen wanted to port the game using the Star Engine, which required not only to port the art style but also to add the crucial piece of the puzzle—a "shooting game"—to the engine itself.

From ballistic simulation and recoil algorithm to network latency compensation schemes optimized for mobile devices, each one represents a breakthrough from scratch.

Normally, building such a framework in seven months is no easy task. After all, you also have to consider that Star Engine Studio has a lot of work to do besides the shooting framework.

Fortunately.

Xingchen was lucky in 2017.

For a "new" company making shooting games, there is a once-in-a-decade "opportunity".

That was the mass exodus of the DICE battlefield project team.

This incident is not only famous in later generations, but it is also big news in the industry today. In short, EA became completely arrogant after the success of Battlefield 1.

They began to take control of DICE Studios and began to lead the "integration" work of DICE Studios.

To improve the development efficiency of DICE.

Whether efficiency actually improved is unknown, but after Battlefield V launched, a large number of people with connections but no real ability rushed to take over, hoping to "earn political achievements."

Nepotism, office politics, and the emerging LGBT movement all contributed to a complete mess of project management for Battlefield V.

Moreover, these newly appointed second-generation EA executives, after entering the management team, found the capable veterans at DICE to be a nuisance.

He's always nagging and doesn't understand the meaning of "respect" at all; he doesn't even say "thank you" when we meet.

In such a chaotic situation.

In the previous 17 years, nearly 40 people left DICE at the Swedish headquarters alone, which was almost 10% of the total size of their studio.

As the DICE Los Angeles studio is closer to EA's headquarters, the personnel changes were even more drastic. The large number of new employees brought the entire project to a near standstill in its early stages.

Unfortunately, EA executives initially wanted to make it an "annual release," constantly squeezing out development time.

After the success of Battlefield 1, bonuses were stingy, salaries didn't increase, new recruits weren't effective, those in charge didn't understand the game, and the top bosses kept pushing for progress.

Many experienced veterans simply stopped serving them, taking advantage of the Battlefield 1 hype to go anywhere.

As the old generation passes away, more new people join; the more new people join, the fewer old people there are; and the fewer old people there are, the more new people join.
This ultimately led to the Battlefield 5 disaster.

What's even more absurd is that, since Battlefield 5 wasn't a complete failure, EA didn't take it seriously at all, and the new Battlefield 2042 continued the same mess.

Ultimately, after much tinkering and revisions until the historic explosion of Battlefield 2042, EA's top management suddenly realized that they were truly "killing" the Battlefield IP themselves.

That's when I really started to get scared.
of course
These matters are irrelevant to Chu Chen at present. For Xingchen, the turmoil at DICE only brought one result: Xingchen was able to poach DICE's members very smoothly.
Because of the generous salaries and profit-sharing system, when Xingchen poachs talent, they basically recruit one person and then a whole bunch of others.
It was the addition of these DICE Frostbite engine veterans that enabled Fuller's team to complete this reverse engineering in seven months.

The "bones" and "flesh" of PUBG were completely separated, and then recombined using the "genes" of the Star Engine.

In other words, this email.

This not only means that PUBG Mobile can officially enter the fast lane of content filling and development.

It is more than just a declaration; it is a declaration that the Star Engine has the capability to develop almost all mainstream game genres on the market.

In more "official" terms, this fills a "technological gap" in Starry Sky Games.

This is certainly something to be happy about.

(End of this chapter)