Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 590 3D Construction Game
This building is no longer like those in traditional simulation games, which occupy only a flat area, but presents a huge "chimney" shaped structure.

This is the ventilation and lighting system of the hydroponic farm; this vertical structure extends upstairs.

"Holy crap! 3D construction!"

Traditional simulation management games mostly operate on a single two-dimensional surface.

The multi-story building model in "The Wandering Earth" instantly increased the depth and complexity of the game's planning by more than one order of magnitude.

This means that players need to consider not only the 2D layout, but also a comprehensive 3D plan.

A large building can affect the space, energy, and logistics of two or even three floors above and below simultaneously.

On the screen, the player clearly realized that placing it on the bottom floor would waste the space of the two floors above, so they ultimately placed the building on the first floor.

As soon as the building was confirmed to be in place, countless engineering robots swarmed in from all directions, and the building was erected at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Next, the demonstrator began planning the city's transportation.

The underground city has no wide roads, and the concept of private cars is nonexistent.

The city's transportation network consists of various service vehicles, and the demonstrator skillfully connects the tracks from the residential area to the newly built hydroponic farm, and then to the resource warehouse in the industrial area.

Soon, boxy trams began to travel on the tracks, transporting people and supplies.

The camera zooms out slightly, and the scene begins to change. Various buildings rise from the ground, and soon the entire underground city transforms into a huge, intricate anthill, beginning to operate in an orderly manner.

Just as everyone was immersed in this efficient, austere futuristic industrial aesthetic, a red alarm suddenly flashed at an intersection.

Two transport vehicles were locked in a "deep gaze" at a poorly planned intersection, neither able to move.

Immediately afterwards, the vehicles behind them also stopped one after another, forming a long line that completely blocked traffic in half of the residential area.

"puff--"

"Hahahahahaha!"

"Here it comes, here it comes, the traditional skill of simulation management players!"

"Traffic jams are a pain etched into the DNA of every mayor!"

A burst of good-natured laughter erupted in the room.

Traffic jams, traffic jams, traffic collapses—that's the core of simulation management games! Isn't solving the problems you created yourself the greatest source of fun in this type of game?
Here, the demonstrator remained calm and unhurried. He removed the intersection, but instead of changing it into a roundabout or other solution as would be done in a normal simulation game, he simply lowered the route to the next level, occupying part of the space on that level to complete the transformation.

This drew another murmur from the audience.

This kind of cross-layer construction looks really interesting, and there are many possibilities.

After that, the demonstration of the underground city came to an end, and the camera suddenly pulled up from the entrance of the underground city, passing through thick layers of rock and ice, and came to the surface.

Blinding white light and howling blizzards instantly filled the entire screen. Unlike the orderly "civilization" of the dungeon, the surface was a completely different scene—wild, primitive, and full of power.

Amidst the swirling snow, automated drilling platforms roared to life, massive tracked transport vehicles moved across the ground, and various pipelines and conveyor belts created a rather impressive scene.

"This...this is an alien factory?"

By this time, Factorio had been online for more than three years and had a good reputation in the simulation game community, especially in Europe and America, where this gameplay had been adopted by many developers.

Furthermore, because the graphics of Factorio were quite basic, subsequent games, including Satisfactory in 19 and Project Dyson Sphere in 21, enhanced the graphics while maintaining the core gameplay. However, Satisfactory had not yet been released at this time, and Project Dyson Sphere was even further behind, as its producers and team had already been poached to work on The Wandering Earth.

So when game visuals appear, when automation, pipelines, resource management, extreme environments... these elements are combined and presented in 3D.

Many players who love industrial assembly lines and resource planning immediately perked up.

They have begun to imagine how to build their own, super-automated data collection network, spanning the entire continent, on this huge map of the Earth's surface.

However, Starry Night Games' promises go far beyond this.

The camera continued to pan upwards, revealing the entire planetary engine. Then came the second, the third... until the light from tens of thousands of engines illuminated the frozen Earth like stars.

Pale blue dotted lines intertwine among these points of light, outlining a global energy network.

The camera didn't stop; it continued to zoom out into the depths of space.

The Earth shrank rapidly in view; the once blue planet looked lonely and fragile against the dark backdrop of the universe.

However, the next second.

"boom--"

On the other side of the Earth, tens of thousands of planetary engines simultaneously ejected plasma beams, and tens of thousands of blue beams converged to form a huge trail across the sky, dragging behind the Earth.

The reason Liu Cixin wrote this story in the first place was probably because of this dish of vinegar, which is why he made these dumplings.

Now, when this dish of vinegar is concentrated in this scene, it brings a pure scientific romance.

The screen went completely dark, and an astonishing cheer erupted from the crowd.

The Western players in the venue may have no idea what "The Wandering Earth" is, but that doesn't prevent them from understanding everything they just saw.

The warmth of the underground city, the harshness of the surface, the grandeur of the universe.

This pure visual impact, which transcends culture and language, needs no explanation whatsoever.

Games are a universal language!

Meanwhile, in domestic online live streaming rooms, the barrage of comments is no longer a waterfall, but a mudslide.

"Here's the money! Let me play now!!!"

Just as the atmosphere both on-site and online reached its peak, a line of text appeared faintly on the dark screen.

It's not about any fancy special effects; it's just the simplest, most basic white Song typeface displaying the Chinese and English versions of the Wandering Earth logo.
Then, there is an equally enormous [Original work: Liu Cixin]

As the logo appeared, the noisy venue quieted down a little, followed by a resounding "Oh!!" Everyone held their breath, waiting for the most important information.

Then, the second line of text slowly appeared.

[Games & Movies]

Huh? A movie? Everyone was taken aback. What did that mean?
Before they could figure it out, the third line followed.

[Launched simultaneously in 2019]

(End of this chapter)