Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

At the beginning, Zhuyouxing didn't provide any further hints beyond some basic first-person rules, which caused many problems, both big and small, to arise during the initial development of the game.

For example, how characters behave in a 3D environment, or many other issues.

These are not difficult problems to solve; it's just that they haven't had a flash of inspiration to find the solutions.

Zhu Youxing wanted to see if these people had the ability to solve problems on their own.

Once they had the basic rules, development wasn't particularly difficult. However, there were many bugs in the game, both big and small. For example, objects would fly around when the character moved, or the system would crash when shooting.

However, after three or four months of research and development, they finally created a rough prototype of a shooting game that could run for at least three or four minutes.

Even so, they still felt it was a miracle.

After all, not everyone possesses unparalleled creativity; most people can only push forward along the paths already trodden by their predecessors.

After finally getting a demo without too many bugs sorted out, they sent it somewhat uncertainly to the company headquarters in Japan for Takeyuki to review.

The game itself is computer-generated and can be controlled with a mouse and keyboard, but it doesn't provide specific instructions on how to control it, which makes it seem a bit strange.

The shooting button is located on the keyboard.

The arrow key is located to the left of the numeric keypad on the keyboard.

The mouse can be used to move the view.

However, they can only barely achieve 360-degree horizontal rotation, which means they can only rotate within the X-axis range in a three-dimensional view.

This is quite similar to the original Doom Soldier from the previous life. The original German headquarters could only rotate horizontally. It was only after the development of the second and third generations of Doom Soldier that it was gradually upgraded to rotate along the Y-axis.

However, at the time, it was mostly a compromise on machine performance, and even John Carmack, the legendary figure who popularized shooting games, had no way to overcome it.

However, the hardware technology in this world is now fully capable of supporting more content in first-person shooter games, so there's no need to make them so rudimentary.

But for this group of programmers who were only given a direction and started developing, reaching this level of development is enough to make them lose a lot of hair.

Zhu Youxing was quite accepting of this outcome.

He tried it out briefly on the computer and found the results to be acceptable, so he immediately picked up the phone and contacted the studio manager in the United States.

The studio manager there was a young man named Norman. He became the manager because he had the opportunity to visit Japan and had studied for a period of time in a game development course offered by Yusei Electronic Entertainment.

When he got back, he kept thinking about game development, but at that time he had not yet graduated and was thinking that he should at least finish his studies first.

If he hadn't seen the job postings for GameStar Entertainment in North America, he might have chosen to go solo and make games immediately after graduation.

At first, he was quite flustered leading a team of eighty people, but as someone who came from a top university, he quickly adapted to the role of leader and began to lead everyone in developing the game.

After he led his team to submit the demo of that first-person shooter game, he was so anxious that he couldn't sleep.

Even though it's past 11 p.m., he still can't fall asleep.

Just then, the phone rang.

He practically jumped out of bed and immediately grabbed his phone to check the number.

It's a Japanese number!

His heart clenched.

I am finally coming!

He answered the phone and then cautiously asked, "Hello? This is Norman."

Zhu Youxing's voice came from the other end of the phone: "Sorry, Norman, I'm bothering you at this time."

"No, no, not at all. I haven't been sleeping well lately."

Norman responded somewhat nervously.

Zhu Youxing roughly guessed that the other party was probably having a hard time falling asleep, so he decided to try hitting him.

He still values ​​this game highly and hopes to get in touch with Norman as soon as possible.

Chapter 232 Game Engine

"I've already started playing this game."

"Uh-huh."

"The quality of the game is just average; it didn't quite meet my expectations."

"..."

"I can see your efforts, but you haven't broken free from your established framework in a short time. But that's okay, I'll help you out. Are you at your computer right now?"

Norman quickly said, "Wait a moment! I'll be right at the computer."

Zhu Youxing said, "There's no need to rush. I'm just asking for your email address. I'll send you a download link for an internal network file. The download link also contains an instruction file that tells you how to use it. I think this will be very helpful for your future game development."

Zhu Youxing personally guaranteed that a downloadable software could greatly help game development, which immediately reminded him of current software such as Photoshop and CAD.

His eyes widened slightly, somewhat incredulous.

Are there specialized tools for making games?

But video games are different from software like Photoshop and CAD.

Those software programs have relatively simple functions, and at most they can achieve something in their respective fields.

Video games encompass the overall framework of the game itself, game animation, game music, game CG, and so on.

The game is too complex overall.

To be precise, the digital special effects categories in the film industry are somewhat similar to the tools used in video games, and the two can even be used interchangeably to some extent.

However, digital special effects in the film industry are still in their infancy, and so far no company has been able to help with all aspects of film production using just one software.

However, he still asked with some anticipation, "Um, CEO, I wanted to ask you about the thing you just told me was very helpful. It's not the software that makes game development easier, is it?"

Zhu Youxing did not deny it: "That's right, it's this kind of software. I think this kind of software should play a significant role in your development. In fact, we have been developing this software for a long time, but we have not used it yet. We have been constantly debugging it to ensure that it can be more perfect."

The software that Zhu Youxing is referring to is naturally a game engine.

This element became the core and foundation of the industrialization of video games in later generations.

The role of a game engine is to help developers reduce the frequency of ineffective and repetitive work.

Sometimes, the program content of some games is interchangeable, and programmers have to rewrite the exact same code every time they develop a game. This is a huge waste of energy, and programmers themselves will also doubt themselves during the development process.

Am I a cutting-edge technical white-collar worker, or a robot that can only do repetitive tasks?

In the future, no major game company will be able to develop large-scale games independently without a game engine.

Because the amount of repetitive programming code in large-scale video games back then has increased exponentially compared to today.

Without a game engine, developing a video game similar to Red Dead Redemption would likely require twice as many developers and extend the development time by at least two or three years.

This makes it very difficult to control costs, resulting in significant losses.

Upon receiving Zhu Youxing's affirmative answer, Norman almost immediately ran to his computer, turned it on, and accessed his email.

He had already seen a download link in his email.

The filename on the download link is for a software called Unreal Engine.

engine.

Calling a game development software an engine, which was originally used to power the mechanics of a car, doesn't seem inappropriate at first glance.

A software that powers video games.

He widened his eyes slightly and immediately downloaded the instruction manual, beginning to examine it carefully.

"Norman? Norman, are you still there?"

"Ah!! Sorry, CEO, I was so excited I forgot we were on the phone."

Norman had excitedly run to the computer and completely forgot about making the call, so he quickly apologized.

"It's alright, you can study this slowly. I hope it can be helpful to you. This is also an experimental product. I also hope that in the future this product can help more people and be promoted all over the world."

Norman exclaimed in surprise, "CEO, if this thing can speed up game development, it must be a super artifact. Normally, we should keep this thing tightly under wraps, but it seems you're planning to make it public?"

"Why not?" Zhu Youxing asked in return.

"This……"

The game engine should be considered an advantage of the company, as it can reduce the cost of repeated game development and improve game development efficiency, which is already quite remarkable. Normally, the company would keep it hidden for at least three or four years before revealing it to the public.

But Zhu Youxing never thought that way.

He hopes the game can be developed faster.

Such secrecy is completely detrimental to game development worldwide.

Moreover, he did not say that he would not ask for anything in return for making his decision public.

To this end, he had already formulated a series of rules for using the game engine.

For example, a company can use the console for free, while a company that has exclusive rights to its console needs to pay a certain basic fee, and then the revenue is split based on a percentage of the other party's sales performance.

If you can guarantee them that this product can reduce their development costs by at least 10% or even 20%, they will absolutely not be able to refuse.

Moreover, this is not just a financial gain.

Zhu Youxing also plans to follow the rules of the electronic semiconductor chip industry.

In the field of electronic semiconductor chips, those companies that have a near-monopoly on technology require real-time connections with the companies that buy their products.

Semiconductor chip companies can receive all data from the chip manufacturing companies 24 hours a day.

According to them, this is to help users better utilize their products, and through continuous data optimization, they can create a terrifyingly large-scale suppression from a data perspective.

And any company that wants to enter this industry in the future will be unable to compete with it due to the terrifying amount of data.

Bamboo Star plans to make its use public, even if Su Rui Electronics wants to use it, but they must provide real-time feedback on all usage data so that Bamboo Star can optimize the game engine itself more quickly.

To make this game engine even better and better, and ultimately become the only dominant game engine in the world.

This is much more interesting than making that little bit of money.

Chapter 233 The Bible of Games

In a past life, there was a company that made a fortune simply by relying on a commercial game engine.