Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 4 Entering the game
Ye Feiyang originally planned to just quit the game, but as a game addict, he would play any game for a while before criticizing it, even if everyone said it was trash.

Now that we've reached this screen, we should naturally take a look.

The game's main interface is a sci-fi-themed command center with a holographic map in the center. Normally, the details of a holographic map or command center would serve as part of the atmosphere or background.

Ordinary players rarely pay attention to this.

However, this time, Ye Feiyang was drawn to the background.

This is a dynamic background.

The main structure is a towering, technologically advanced space elevator. Countless blue lights twinkle on the elevator's tracks, outlining a celestial path paved with stars.

On these tracks, several gleaming metallic shuttles were rapidly ascending along the space elevator tracks, their bases constantly spewing flames.

Although it wasn't very clear because it was a virtual projection in the command center, the background was still very dynamic, giving people a very unique sense of technological awe.

In addition to the main space elevator, there is a huge circular city wall below the space elevator. Various city defense weapons are displayed on the city wall, while enemies marked with red dots outside the city are constantly attacking the city wall, only to be eliminated one by one by the weapons on the city wall.

"What's that thing? We're supposed to guard this space elevator? It looks pretty cool."

People are sometimes like that. Even though the background of this game's main interface has absolutely no impact on the gameplay, the virtual battlefield projection is clearly made with great care.

The fact that such attention to detail is so good makes it instantly interesting.

It did indeed make Ye Feiyang a little more energetic.

At least, by this point, he was genuinely starting to want to play the game.

Besides the background, the main interface also features several sci-fi themed options on the left: [Story Mode], [Simulation Front], [Final Front], [Humanoid Weapons], and [Warehouse Preparation].

Although many options were given, only one was actually lit up at this moment: [Simulated Battlefront].

Since there was no other choice, there was nothing more to say. Ye Feiyang quickly clicked on [Simulated Battlefront].

After clicking.

The game pops up a prompt asking if you want to enter the tutorial.

Ye Feiyang didn't even look at it and directly clicked "No".

"Teaching? Who watches that stuff..."

Although Ye Feiyang didn't even know the name of the game, that didn't stop him from skipping the tutorial.

After skipping the tutorial, the game went directly to the matchmaking screen. After waiting for about ten seconds, the system displayed that the match was successful, and the game switched to the game screen.

The game's interface is a classic chessboard viewed at a 45-degree angle. The bottom three-quarters of the screen is the controllable area, and the chessboard is six squares wide and twelve squares long.

The bottom square of the chessboard is slightly higher and has some parking lot-like squares drawn on it, with words like "Preparation" and "Standby" written in a special font. This is the "formation area" for players to adjust their pieces.

It can also be understood as the tile arrangement area in mahjong.

The center of the screen is a grid, while a quarter of the screen is the background.

The background now is the same as the homepage background, a giant space elevator, but as a battlefield background, its size is more blurred.

As the game officially began, three humanoid figures appeared in the formation area, along with their voices.

"Type 95 reporting for duty, Commander!"

The first one to appear was a black-haired girl.

A white dress, a dashing figure, long legs encased in black stockings, and a rifle in her hand—she was someone you'd want to look at again after just one glance. Next up was the second one.

"Mosin-Nagant reporting for duty, Comrade Commander! Workers of the world, unite!"

The second one is a silver-haired girl with red eyes, wearing a modified Soviet winter cloak, and her uniform is decorated with many small Soviet-style decorations, such as red badges.

What? You're asking what improvement means?
The answer is simple: no matter how stylish the character's upper body is dressed, the black boots, snow-white thighs, and the curves of her chest will never be hidden.

"Colette's here~~"

The last one is a lively blonde girl with blue eyes, whose uniform design clearly has a Western style.

Compared to the previous two, this one is clearly going for the cute route.

"Holy crap, this game has voice acting?"

Ye Feiyang was somewhat surprised.

"The character art is pretty amazing too."

Besides praising the good voice acting of the three characters, he was even more surprised by the quality of their character illustrations.

The delicate brushstrokes, the vivid expressions, and the unforgettable black stockings—no, I mean the clothing.

Strictly speaking, Ye Feiyang is not a veteran anime/manga fan.

However, he watched Sailor Moon and Doraemon when he was a child, so he is very accepting of this art style.

This is actually why the domestic game industry later experienced a craze for anime and manga, and why miHoYo was once able to compete with Tencent and NetEase on equal terms.

Ultimately, the style of anime and manga is just a style of art, just like the style of American comics.

It's an art style that even an average player can accept, or even find quite beautiful and pleasing to the eye.

Of course, Ye Feiyang wasn't thinking that far ahead at the moment. He simply thought the chess pieces were beautiful, with an indescribable, slightly edgy yet cool feel to them.

The in-game perspective of "Final Frontline" is at a 45° angle, somewhat like the scene in "DNF". The way the humanoid figures of the chess pieces are presented does not adopt the Q version image commonly used in current anime games.

Instead, it is scaled proportionally to the normal ratio.

This results in the overall battlefield presentation being closer to the character display in a side-scrolling beat 'em up game.

However, the characters here cannot be directly controlled.

The pace of the game "Final Front" was faster than Ye Feiyang had imagined, and it was also very engaging to play.

First, the weapons in the game are clearly distinguished by their categories.

Rifles are high-damage and tanky, shotguns are close-range and tanky, sniper rifles have low rate of fire but high single-target damage, pistols can heal and also provide various buffs, and submachine guns are for squishy targets with fast damage output.

For a seasoned gamer

Even without the tutorial, Ye Feiyang understood it instantly.

Soon, the first wave of monsters was easily dealt with by the three girls on the field. They watched as the monsters kept pouring in and being knocked down by the humanoid gunfire.

Then new enemies flood in, and the overall battle is actually quite interesting.

This is interesting because of two things.

(End of this chapter)