America: The Godfather of Game Development

Chapter 254 "Zork Placement"

"Taking away the young master?!"

Kanheim felt as if his brain had been suddenly and violently struck by something indescribable.

He was momentarily stunned.

One hundred and eighty-four billion trillion!

If you were to count them one by one, you would never finish counting them in the long run!

"You've invented a 64-bit machine?!"

What's going on?

Did I accidentally fall into a coma for fifty years?

This level of digital capability should only be achievable in the 64-bit era.

But if Kanheim remembers correctly, GAMENOVA only entered the top 16 this year.

As for Sega's Genesis, which has recently started its marketing campaign, it's just a 16-bit machine.

Is this skipping 32 bits and going straight to 64 bits?

Even cheating wouldn't be this outrageous.

"Oh, no, that's not it."

Lin Lixin waved his hand. If he really had that kind of ability, the whole planet would have to take his name.

Although it's impossible to achieve true 64-bit performance like "Mervoy Placement" in terms of hardware from the start.

But he can force this to happen through some clever tricks and ingenuity.

Early video games typically set character stats around 30,000, and at most no more than 60,000.

This is actually directly related to the hardware bit width.

In the world of circuits, to understand a number, you need to use a binary approach.

That is, carrying over one when there is two.

For example, the largest number in the 8-bit era, 255, would be represented as 11111111 in a computer.

These eight bits, which is the true meaning of the legendary "8 bits".

Increasing this width to 16 bits immediately expands the range to 0~65535.

However, generally speaking, the maximum number of numbers that developers can use is only 32767, which is half.

-

This is because there is no device at the computer level that can express symbols.

To make a computer understand what a negative number is, you need to do a little trick with the numbers themselves.

The older generation of engineers, such as von Neumann, used their wisdom to devise a technique called "two's complement".

In this way, although half of the upper limit of numbers is lost, the ability to express negative numbers is gained.

This thing is actually not unfamiliar to players.

The legendary data overflow turned into a negative number, and that's really what it is.

The most classic example should be the negative number level in ultramarathons.

After Sam got his hands on the FC, he even tested it out.

Lin Lixin rubbed his chin.

"Okay, 180 trillion is a bit of an exaggeration, but halving it to 922 trillion is still achievable."

The idle game he's making follows the same path as "Mervo Idle".

It combines full RPG gameplay, allowing players to develop their own character, equip them with gear, teach them skills, and continuously challenge stronger monsters.

Negative numbers will still be needed for now.

MicroNova.

Here, that's what you wanted.

Vivian handed Lin Lixin a pre-packaged black chip. "So you specifically designed and created a chip for calculating large numbers—just to develop a game?"

"Of course, what else would you want?"

"----fine."

Vivian was somewhat speechless. Although she also enjoyed playing games, she couldn't keep up with Lin Lixin's almost fanatical enthusiasm. "But you said your requirement is 64-bit? This chip can't do that right now."

Running 32-bit code on a 16-bit processor is already the best we can do.

If it were any wider, Micron's manufacturing process wouldn't be able to keep up.

"Oh, I can solve this at the software level."

Lin Lixin waved his hand.

In situations like these, the advantage of developers having direct access to the machine's underlying mechanisms becomes apparent.

He doesn't need to be bound by existing variable types like int and long as he would when using modern high-level languages.

Although it can only calculate 32-bit numbers, it only needs to combine two 32-bit registers together.

It simply means that the calculation takes a few more steps; that's what the coprocessor is supposed to do anyway.

How much performance loss can an idle game incur? This little bit of overhead is completely negligible.

Having acquired the big data processor, Lin Lixin didn't hesitate for a moment and immediately brought the already prepared proposal to In.

focom.

—A quilt and toiletries.

"I'll name a number, and it'll be done in a week."

"?"

Kanheim's lips twitched as he looked at Lin Lixin, who was already engrossed in the development.

Why does it feel like the boss is even more ruthless than Bruce in exploiting people?

But why is this feeling—somewhat pleasant?

He glanced at the others; their eyes flickered, and their expressions clearly reflected similar emotions to his.

Damn it, let's do it!

Charge with the leader!

Incremental games are definitely one of the easiest types to develop.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have become ubiquitous on major mobile gaming platforms in later generations.

Many independent game studios earned their first pot of gold through these kinds of works.

But it's not easy to do it well.

Throughout history, there haven't been many truly memorable incremental games.

Besides the all-around champion "Mervo Placement", the most famous one is "Cookie Dots".

Incremental games are the most classic trap for novice developers.

-

The lower limit is extremely low, but the upper limit is equally ridiculously high.

Without a basic understanding of mathematics, it's impossible to design a game that provides a satisfying experience for players.

Even the slightest deviation in the numerical values ​​can cause huge fluctuations in the entire game experience.

And this is something that is not a concern at all in the face of Lin Lixin's superhuman attributes.

From the very beginning, his proposal already included a complete numerical design paradigm.

This turned what should have been the most time-consuming part of the game into the easiest part.

The initial one-week development period turned out to be more than enough.

"Alright, guys, go to sleep. I'm going back to run the tests."

"9

Three days later, Lin Lixin finished packing his things, waved to the group of developers who were about to ascend to godhood, and dashed out the door full of energy.

"Boss—you're a true superman!"

Kanhem watched Lin Lixin walk away, struggled to groan a few times, and then collapsed onto the table with a thud.

I've been working for three days straight, relying entirely on double the espresso to keep going.

I really don't know where Lin Lixin gets so much energy.

He worked almost non-stop for three days straight, and developed most of the core framework of the game.

Others at Infocom claimed to be involved in the development, but they were mostly doing content creation.

This kind of development model—I've never seen anything like it in my life.

It's true that producers should be hands-on, but it's truly rare to see someone like Lin Li-hsin who takes it so thoroughly.

Electronic Games

[GAMENOVA Infocom's new work "Zork Idle"]

[Internal Closed-Door Early Testing]

[Gameplay]: 10/10 (Never had such a wonderful experience!)

[Art]: 8/10 (Simple line drawing with a harmonious style)

>