章 8: Chapter 8 Wind Traveler

The game Lincoln had in mind was —— "Traveler of the Wind".

When Lincoln played "Traveler of the Wind" for the first time in his past life, his understanding of games was completely overturned.

The strong yet gentle artistic style, using only a limited number of elements, created astonishing screens and awe-inspiring grand scenes.

There were no weapons and item systems, no leveling up, killing monsters, or making money.

All the actions were moving, jumping, and triggering mechanisms, all you had to do, was to move forward, move toward snow mountain as your final destination, and witness everything in your journey.

Without a line of dialogue, only through the scene changes from the sand sea, underground, high tower to the snow mountain, along with some ruins and remains, a grand and fluctuating storyline was successfully created, bringing intense emotional impacts.

There are innumerable highlights in the game: simple but infinitely fun flapping cloak flight, progressive stages, destined encounters with other players, guidance and rendering of players' emotions, epic background music... and so on.

It had a small size and a short process, but it could let the players completely immerse in the flow it created, experiencing loneliness, zen, meeting, and parting.

Whether they were casual players, hardcore players, or even people playing games for the first time, they could easily enjoy the fun and beauty of the game.

Such a work would allow Lincoln to play to his strengths and avoid weaknesses, avoiding a large amount of cumbersome designs, and magnifying the "scenic experience" and "travel sensation" tenfold or even a hundredfold.

Controlling a little character sliding on the sand within the display with a controller could bring such pure joy, if the players could experience it for themselves, they would be overjoyed!

He even began to look forward to it himself.

However, before he could start working, he had to reply to NetDragon first.

Life Hack: Before slapping someone, try to raise your hand back as much as possible, so you can use your full strength when you slap.

Anyway, it won't take up much time.

"Mavis, help me post on Spiritual Rhinoceros."

"Mavis is here! Ready! What does the master want to post?"

"Even though your words do not match your hearts, and your blessings are insincere, I kindly accepted them. I hope you won't cry too hard a few days from now."

A display and a keyboard appeared in front of Mavis, and she started to type.

In fact, all Mavis had to do was control the mobile phone to enter the content directly, and then post it. There was no need for such a live typing scene.

To some extent, this scene is equivalent to a loading screen, which is completely unnecessary, the kind that purely wastes computing power...

Lincoln sighed helplessly again: "Forget it, as long as you're happy."

"Mavis is done! Does the master want Mavis to read the comments to you?"

"Please don't!" Lincoln can imagine without looking at it what kind of cruel comments there are now, and he doesn't want to upset himself.

He does not intend to look at internet comments before the new device is released.

The reality and his speculation are the same.

This confident response made countless netizens very dissatisfied.

In their feelings, Lincoln, a college student, had some red flags. He provocatively challenged and humiliated netizens, scammed big companies. Now that big companies have responded, the contrast is so huge, the outcome is very clear.

But he just refuses to admit defeat.

And what cyber mobs love the most is to force people to admit their mistakes.

So, as expected, the comment section once again fell into chaos.

"Such a thick face you have, accepting blessings, do you think you're worthy?"

"Hello, my family runs a locksmith shop, do you need keys? How many do you need?"

"This round, this round is what you call 'not knowing the sharpness of an axe till it hits you', not realizing the severity of things until they're at their worst."

"If you ask me, why bother with all this? Just sue them directly for damaging the business reputation, settle it in court."

"The person above is right; I've seen plenty of this kind of attention-seeking, they'll back down the moment they see a court summons."

"@Spiritual Rhinoceros official, why haven't you banned this person yet? Are you waiting till the New Year?"

Of course, Spiritual Rhinoceros won't ban Lincoln. A large corporation could easily see the nature of NetDragon hiring trolls and paying big influencers to lead the narrative; they've always lacked integrity.

Moreover, to a social media platform, right and wrong aren't essential, only the traffic counts.

They watch as the battle between NetDragon and Lincoln becomes fiercer, traffic surging, wishing they could give Lincoln a two-year membership as a token of appreciation.

Ban him? Impossible!

Lincoln didn't bother with all this anymore; he started working on the "Traveler of the Wind" with Mavis.

The first step was quite simple, with Mavis' help, they slightly increased the strength of the neural signals, stimulated specific memory neural areas, copied and stored all memories about "Traveler of the Wind". Mavis then replicated the scenes, setting up the initial framework.

Then, they moderately stretched the spatial range. Judging by the original gameplay of two to three hours, it might seem well-paced when played on a display, but it would feel slightly compact in real life.

After all, if you see the next goal from a high view, arrive in three minutes, and then set the next target five minutes away, and the next one four minutes away...

The game might become a tedious traveling game, continuously advancing towards the next goal, neglecting the distant scenery, losing the artistic conception and fun.

So they had to adjust the distance, fine-tune the distribution of runes and murals, guide the players but not too precisely, allowing the players to tour and explore, immersing them in the world.

After all, "Journey" is the meaning of everything.

After finishing this step, Lincoln needed to adjust the background music according to the changes in the spatial range to fit the spatial changes and set the atmosphere right.

Once the game world was set up, the hard work had just begun.

Because, at this time, the world was still hollow, the sun had no temperature, the sand didn't flow, the wind didn't blow the clothes; it was still a world without a soul.

The next step was the most crucial one: the injection of sensation.

Mavis found the most fitting parts from Lincoln's sensory memories and injected them into the game scenes.

Standing there, Lincoln felt the sun began to heat, the desert became dry, the fine sand began to flow, and the hot wind mixed with coarse sand grit blew through his hair...

"Wait, Mavis, reduce the heat by one third, and the sand blown by the wind to one tenth. Also, make sure the desert is clean, no sand should get into the clothes and shoes, clothes can get dirty, but not sandy. Ensure the players' physical comfort"

After all, they invited players to play the game, to "play," not to practice asceticism; ascetics had been excluded.

"Sure! Mavis is changing it!"

The softness of the sand, the depth of quicksand, the height of jumping and gliding, the change in speed and wind force at different heights, the mode of movement and the intensity of vibration after each mechanism interaction, everything had to be carefully adjusted.

Otherwise, if one detail was ignored, there might be problems.

For example, while Lincoln was testing the long scarf glide, he got his arm and leg entangled in the scarf in mid-air, and he had set the glide mechanism to be activated by flapping his arms.

As a result, he plunged headfirst from a height of more than twenty meters, screaming and flapping his arms in vain, scared half to death.

コメント 3のコメント

投票

ギフトを贈る

章 9: Chapter 9: Completed

While sly Mavis just stood there, covering her mouth as she tried to stifle her laughter, but she couldn't help but burst out in loud laughter. She watched as Lincoln plunged headfirst into the sand, leaving only his legs exposed.

Only then did she run over, grabbing one of his legs and heaving him out like pulling a carrot from the ground.

After the embarrassment, Lincoln realized that the virtual engine needed to be adjusted and couldn't be based on real-world experiences. A balance and compromise must be struck between reality and virtuality.

The ground's gravity in the entire world was changed to only about half of reality, and the gravity in the air would also change according to different heights.

Scarves would never wrap around the body or tangle together.

As long as the player moves, the scarf would flutter gently even without wind, appearing quite elegant.

Even if the scarf inevitably drags on the ground during the later stages of the level, it would always remain spotlessly clean.

For example, unless the player makes an effort or is attacked, they would never be upside down. At most, they could lean forward or backward at a 90-degree angle, so the player wouldn't become a disoriented spinning top while in mid-air.

These details were incredibly tedious but also very important, so he had to experience it, modify it, and test it bit by bit.

After finishing the desert, there were still underground, temple, snow mountain, and the summit of the sacred mountain to work on, and he couldn't afford to be sloppy.

This part of the work took much longer than he expected. He initially thought he could finish in two or three days, but it wasn't until the morning of the fifth day that he finally completed it preliminarily.

Having done all this, he almost fled the virtual world as if escaping from it.

He had been working day and night adjusting this world for the past few days, and now his hair was messy, his stubble had grown, and fatigue was seeping out from his entire body.

He couldn't wait to get out of bed and hastily go to the cramped bathroom while simultaneously shedding his clothes and open the showerhead, trying to wake himself up.

An incident also happened during these days.

One day, he had just adjusted the lighting effects of the quicksand level's horizontal corridor and switched to the underground level.

Just as the mechanical Abyssal Dragon appeared, a sudden loud noise startled him, making him shudder. He thought there was a major problem.

But Mavis reminded him that someone was banging on the door in real life.

Lincoln broke away from the virtual space, approached the peephole, and saw a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boy, repeatedly banging on the door and swearing loudly.

Without a word, Lincoln called the police.

Eventually, after being educated by the police, the boy explained that he was swayed by online public opinion, thought Lenin would affect the launch of NetDragon's new game, and delay him from playing the new game. Impulsively, he did something wrong, apologized, and asked for forgiveness.

Lincoln demanded the boy's name, phone number, and ID card number, otherwise he would not accept the apology.

The young man was cautious and asked what he was planning to do. Lincoln plainly stated that he was developing a new VR device, but in the future, he didn't want to sell it to him.

The young man clearly wanted to mock Lincoln for overestimating himself but held back when he saw the police nearby.

To avoid being held accountable by Lincoln, the young man reluctantly provided his information, although he didn't think he would ever buy Lincoln's product.

Poor kid, he had no idea what he was in for.

In the future, every Full Dive Device sold on the market would refuse his registration.

He would entirely miss the next era of the gaming industry.

"Helping a web-addicted teenager quit gaming can also be considered an act of great merit," thought the shameless Lincoln.

"Ma Lian, I got your name. You can go now."

Although this young person's name was noted down by Lincoln, he knew the blame lay mainly with NetDragon, so he also secretly added a mark against them.

Since then, Princess Camille started to call him every night, softly reassuring him not to be stressed and telling him that his classmates were supporting him.

Of course, he wasn't stressed and didn't need any consolation.

But after a whole day of busyness, having Camille Victoria, the princess-like girl, patiently console and alleviate his fatigue felt quite good, so he did not refuse her.

Now that the game is initially completed, it needed to be tested by players outside the developers to see how it feels.

Naturally, he thought of Camille Victoria first, as she was the only person he was familiar with in this world.

After taking a shower, he wrapped a dry towel around his head, then grabbed his phone and told Camille Victoria that the game was ready.

Princess Camille was very supportive and immediately agreed to come and check it out in the afternoon.

Lincoln tidied up the room and moved the two assembled devices onto the sofa.

Although his rented room was small, it had all the necessary furniture.

He had already organized and tidied up the devices, which now looked quite impressive. Unlike when he first used them, many wires and connectors were exposed, giving it a wasteland punk vibe.

He asked the property management to replenish the food and filled the refrigerator.

– With such an expensive property management fee, he felt no guilt in asking them for favors.

He indulged himself with a lavish meal of four dishes and one soup, filling his stomach contentedly.

Then, he lazily lounged on the sofa watching TV while Mavis excitedly gossiped with Spiritual Rhinoceros.

They leisurely waited for Camille Victoria to arrive.

Lincoln invited the bodyguard inside once again, but was rejected without a word and entered the room alone.

He didn't feel discouraged as it took Liu Bei three visits to get Zhuge Liang; he hadn't even left his door and had only asked twice.

Once he got to know Princess Camille better, he could ask her where a reliable shooting range was. It wasn't impossible for him to even ask her for guidance.

However, he was worried that the cold-faced bodyguard might not be talkative and not good at teaching.

As soon as Princess Camille entered, she saw the two slightly wider white headbands on the sofa and asked with great interest, "Can I take a look?"

"Of course, feel free."

It was expected that Princess Camille had a keen interest in new technology, as she studied art and held a double degree in Lincoln's department.

However, just looking at the headband doesn't reveal much, as the essential technology isn't in the headband itself.

Unable to figure it out, she asked Lincoln, "Can you play without a helmet, just using this small headband? Where's the display? And I don't see an Omnidirectional Treadmill in your room?"

Although she doesn't usually play games, Princess Camille still knew the key components: curved display, controller, and omnidirectional treadmill. Game consoles were generally wirelessly connected or integrated into computers.

As most of the technology was directly obtained from official sources, there were no strict barriers between manufacturers. Thus, there were no strict barriers between gaming consoles and personal computers. Over the years of development, many game manufacturers had merged.

"You don't need those. Just sit down, put on the headband, and lean against the sofa."

Princess Camille obediently sat down and put on the headband.

"Do you have a favorite activation phrase?"

"What?" Princess Camille didn't understand.

"Something like 'Make Daxia Great Again!'"

Princess Camille couldn't help but laugh and slapped him on the arm, "Who would shout such slogans all the time!"

"Alright, I'll activate it manually then." Lincoln shrugged and pressed the start button on Princess Camille's headband while also activating his own.

He didn't expect anyone here to understand his joke.

It was a pity that before he crossed over, the supreme leader was once again on a big winning streak en route to the White House. He felt regretful that he couldn't witness it!

コメント 3のコメント

投票

ギフトを贈る