Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 461: Grow a brain

Time flies, and two days later...

As the recording of the program was completed, Starry Sky Games' official website, YouTube, Bilibili, Titok, TV Tokyo, Niconico, Twitch... almost every video platform that players could think of was simultaneously flooded with a promotional video.

The video's cover features silhouettes of eleven teams emerging from the darkness, with a giant countdown "48:00:00" in the background. At the top, a striking line of text displays the same title in various languages.

"A variety show for gamers! The Starry Sky 48-Hour Global Game Development Competition!!!"

The promotional video is only three minutes long, but it has attracted an astonishing amount of attention.

That's not to say that this short promotional video alone generated great interest among players. In fact, in today's internet age, while the promotional video has some novelty, that's about it.

What truly sparked the players' frenzied discussions was...

Or it's the game itself.

For this program, Starry Night invited a total of 10 teams, with a maximum of 5 people per team, including three student team representatives from the University of Tokyo, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and the University of Southern California.

Apart from that, the other teams are all representatives of legitimate game studios, including those from overseas.

Sony Games team, MT (the development team of Dead Cells), Team Cherry (the development team of Hollow Knight), and Bluehole (the development team of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds).

Domestically, there's the Aurogon development team behind "Gu Jian" and the Phantom Blade Network, the development team behind "ICEY".

Judging from the contestants, it's clear that StarCraft aims to make this development competition an "all-star" event.

The focus of discussion in the player community quickly shifted from the variety show itself to the core of the competition, namely the 11 games that were released simultaneously after the show aired.

~~~
Saturday night at 8 PM, Suzhou University.

In an ordinary male dormitory room, Li Hao connected his laptop to a projector, hung the screen directly behind the door, and casually pulled out a bag of potato chips from the cabinet.

"The Starry Night game variety show has begun!"

To be fair, college students are probably the "most idle" and also the group that reacts fastest to new things in the world.

Almost at the same time that Li Hao finished his work, his three other roommates in the dormitory heard the noise and came over one after another, some moving stools and others sitting on the edge of the bed.

This projector was purchased by four people pooling their money.

The reason we bought this thing is that all four of us really enjoy watching movies, so we occasionally take some time to watch them together.

However, after buying the projector, besides watching movies, they would occasionally do other things, such as playing games or watching variety shows.

"It's started, it's started!"

Li Hao called out, and the last remaining whispers of conversation in the dormitory disappeared.

The white light from the projector shone on the screen behind the door, and a cyberpunk-style opening animation flashed by, the powerful electronic soundtrack instantly grabbing the ears of the four college students.

The huge title, "Starry 48-Hour Global Game Development Competition," accompanied by the ticking countdown, was incredibly imposing.

Next, there was a quick tour of the ten participating teams.

Each team's appearance was accompanied by footage from their signature works, from Kratos's roar as he wields his battle axe in *God of War*, to the silent charge of the little knight in *Hollow Knight*, to the flashing sword light in *Gu Jian Qi Tan*… “Holy crap, this lineup is like gods battling it out,” a roommate couldn't help but exclaim. “Sony's team, with programmers from God of War Studios and the lead artist from Uncharted, how the hell could they lose?”

"Don't underestimate Team Cherry. The two of them made Hollow Knight, which is the true soul of indie games."

This is the core element that attracts the vast majority of viewers to click on this video.

It must be said that as the exciting electronic music started and the cool lighting effects played, the ten participating teams entered the venue one by one, which not only made Li Hao and his team full of anticipation, but also made countless online viewers eagerly await their arrival.

Almost instantly, the barrage of comments on the right side of the screen burst forth like a flood.

And the production team did not disappoint the players' expectations.

Whether it was the Q&A session or the code reverse engineering, the players were left feeling "completely bewildered but impressed." The most interesting part was during the official broadcast of the program.

In addition to a female host who speaks multiple languages, each question is accompanied by illustrations from the performance, which is a very interesting part in trying to show players how these technologies are used in actual gameplay.

For example, right now, the program is in the "reverse code" segment.

On the projection screen, dense lines of code cascaded down like a waterfall. Even a professional programmer would probably feel their scalp tingle, let alone Li Hao and his friends who weren't computer science majors.

"What is this thing? Is it some kind of scribbling?"

Before the group could finish speaking, several teams on site almost simultaneously pressed the answer button, and the Sony team, which had won the right to answer, then answered the question.

"A platform jump controller script that implements 'coyote time'."

As you answer, a sound effect indicating a correct answer appears.

Then, the live chat exploded.
【? ? ? 】

I recognize each word individually, but I really don't understand them when they're put together!

【Coyote Time? What kind of slang is that?】

The other people in the dorm were also completely bewildered. Coyotes? What does this have to do with the game? That's exactly the kind of effect the production team wanted, so the host quickly asked the same question.

"Coyote Time" is a term used in game development, especially in platforming games.

Wile E. Coyote, from the Warner Bros. animated series "Road Runner," is a coyote who always manages to run for a while in mid-air after plunging off cliffs.

Game designers used this metaphor to describe the mechanism of "seemingly falling into the air but still being able to jump".

In practical application, this refers to a brief grace period during which the player character has actually left the edge of the platform, but the system still allows the player to perform a jump.

While Sony's programmers were answering the question, the show also provided a simple illustration from Hollow Knight. In this image, the character has already left the platform and should fall according to the rules, but if the player presses jump at this moment, the action can still be performed.

The core of this system is to avoid the common problem in side-scrolling games where players press the button but the game doesn't jump.

Small details like these.

Although it doesn't appear in every question on the show—after all, variety shows also need to consider pacing—every time it does appear, it not only "promotes the game" with illustrations but also gives people a feeling of "ah, I've learned something new today."

(End of this chapter)