Rongcheng.

The Western Software Park has been renamed the Western Science and Technology Park, and although several companies have settled in one after another, it is still a sign of "barrenness" on the whole.

Shenzhou Technology's electronics factory is located in the southwest corner, outside the first phase of the park, and is close to the future Rongcheng High-tech Zone. The software, network, R&D center and other types of companies and institutions are located in the northeast corner of the first phase of the project. They are separated by miles, and they are not disturbed by each other.

Ten years from now, you won't be able to see these things.

The once famous Western Software Park will be replaced by a residential community, and Top Software will also become Top Real Estate, which will be directly bought as real estate. Slightly related to science and technology, there is also a Top Information Technology Vocational College, and you will know what kind of school it is by listening to the name.

However, Xikang Institute of Technology, not far from the Western Software Park, will become bigger and bigger, and will be renamed "Xihua University".

Although this place is relatively remote, there are many schools nearby. To the east is the future Xihua University, and then to the east there are several junior colleges, technical secondary schools, to the southeast is the University of Electronic Science and Technology, and to the west there is a Rongcheng Institute of Technology (at this time it was still a junior college). Therefore, Song Ruhua, a liar, is still very discerning, he chose the Western Software Park in the middle of a bunch of schools, and in a few years, Southwest Jiaotong University will build a branch campus nearby.

Hu Geng finally accepted the invitation of the "liar", because Song Weiyang directly contacted the website where he was located, and contacted him again through the webmaster. After confirming that it was correct, Hu Geng was ecstatic, and took the plane out with his bag.

Landing at Shuangliu Airport, Hu Geng first took a car to Rongcheng, and then took a taxi and went straight to Pidu Hongguang Town.

The town was still relatively dilapidated at this time, and there were basically no modern communities, all of which were all kinds of rustic self-built houses. There is even a mixture of stone, bamboo, and mud buildings, typical of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the southwestern residential style has a history of at least hundreds of years.

After getting out of the car, I asked all the way and finally found "Excalibur Network Technology Company".

There are no high-end office buildings in this dilapidated park, and all kinds of buildings are below six floors, all of which were built by Song Ruhua to deal with officials at all levels. Shenjian Network Company directly occupies a building, four of which are empty and have not been renovated, and the next building is where the Rongcheng R&D Center of Shenzhou Science and Technology is located.

Walking into the building, Hu Geng found that there was a group of college students in the company, who were queuing up to receive the interview number plate.

"Hello. Hu Geng walked to the front desk.

The girl at the front desk asked, "Hello, are you here to apply?" ”

Hu Geng said: "I was invited by Mr. Song Weiyang, and here is a letter of invitation. ”

The girl at the front desk glanced worriedly, and found that her position was "the chief planner of the Zulong Studio Project of the Excalibur Network", and she suddenly became extremely enthusiastic, and said with a smile: "Please go up to the second floor, there is a 'Zulong Studio' sign on the door number." ”

Zulong Studio currently has more than 20 members, half of which are left in the capital to continue to develop "Freedom and Glory 2" (stand-alone game), and the rest are all pulled by Song Weiyang to Rongcheng. The people who came from Xishan Ju are also on the second floor, and another "Xishan Studio" has not yet officially started.

Hu Geng put away the invitation letter and asked, "Those who came to apply are programmers?"

The girl at the front desk replied: "Some of them are programmers from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, and some of them are students from the Academy of Fine Arts. However, there are not many students from CAFA, but more than a dozen from Chuanmei came, after all, the salary given is too high. ”

"Is the salary of art very high?" Hu Geng asked.

The girl at the front desk said: "The intern's salary is 1,500 yuan, and it starts at 2,200 directly after becoming a regular, and I heard that there are several levels of salary behind, and the top monthly salary can be tens of thousands of yuan." ”

There's really no way around this.,Domestic game artists can't be described as a strange shortage.,It's that there are no professional game artists at all.。 99.99% of art college students have never even been exposed to professional art software, let alone know what CG painting is. These students still need to be trained, and they can only be temporary interns and become regular only after mastering the initial skills.

The 3D engine of World of Warcraft was not the most advanced at the time, but Blizzard's art work was so powerful that it could be used to make up for the lack of the game engine. Also awesome is South Korean NC, which uses the Unreal Engine 2, which is not suitable for MMORPG games, to produce a beautiful picture of "Lineage 2".

Hu Geng went upstairs to Zulong's studio to report, but found that no one paid attention to him at all, and everyone was surrounded by a computer inside.

Song Weiyang was standing in front of the computer, looking at the half-finished product of "Freedom and Glory 2", frowning and saying: "You can't do this 3D effect, the buildings are all angular squares, just like building blocks." ”

Zulong's designer of the first and second generation of 3D engines, named He Di, with a master's degree from Tsinghua University, replied: "This is already an international leading level. ”

Song Weiyang asked, "Can you make it more realistic?"

"Theoretically," said Hody. At the end of last year, Microsoft introduced DirectX 8.0, which introduced the concept of pixel rendering, which we can use to develop a new 3D engine. But boss, I must remind you that 99.99% of the computers in China can't afford to drag the game made by this technology, and the graphics card will blow up directly. ”

Song Weiyang smiled: "It's okay. The online game you want to develop will not be launched until at least four or five years later, and the domestic computer configuration will definitely be enough by then. ”

"Then let's start with a new 3D engine. Hody said.

In fact, since World of Warcraft was conceived in 1999, the graphics are similar to those of Zulong Studios - the stones are square.

The semi-finished "World of Warcraft" from 1999 to 2001 uses the engine of "Warcraft 3", and the picture effects are all kinds of spicy eyes, and the characters of various races also make people want to vomit. Coincidentally, Microsoft launched DX8.0 in November 2000, and with the so-called pixel rendering concept, Blizzard immediately began to develop an engine specifically for "World of Warcraft", and most of the results of the first two years were nullified, which led to the "World of Warcraft" that countless players dreamed of.

At this moment, although the project of "World of Warcraft" has been established for more than a year, the new engine has just begun to be developed, and Zulong Studio has not been left too far behind.

"Well, excuse me. Hu Geng said weakly.

Everyone looked at it together, and Song Weiyang turned around and asked, "Are you?"

Hu Geng said: "Wild fox under the tree. ”

"Oh, you're here," Song Weiyang introduced to everyone, "This is one of the main planners of the game I invited, the screen name Shuxia Wild Fox, who is responsible for the game plot design." Well, most of you are mortal enemies, and the wild fox under the tree graduated from Peking University. ”

Everyone laughed because more than 80% of them graduated from Tsinghua University.

Song Weiyang asked, "Did you bring your game plan?"

"Brought," Hu Geng took out a thick stack of manuscripts from his bag, "This is the outline of the game's story, and this is the design of the game's content." However, there should be a lot of game content design that I don't need anymore, because my original intention was to make card games, and it has nothing to do with large-scale graphic online games. ”

Song Weiyang had watched "Sou Shen Ji" in his previous life, and he casually flipped through the outline of the story and found that this outline was exactly the same as the plot - it was written according to the outline.

"That's it, the name of the game is 'The Classic of Mountains and Seas', and the name of the project is 'The Classic of Mountains and Seas Project'," Song Weiyang said, "Li Qing is the chief planner of the game and is responsible for the game content design, and Hu Geng is the deputy planner of the game and is responsible for the game plot design." You have to cooperate with each other and strive to achieve the perfect combination of game and story. He Di served as the master engineer of the game and was responsible for the development of the new 3D engine. As for the Lord's beauty......"

Li Qing immediately said: "I know a person on the Internet who is very good, his name is Lu Xiaoyin, he is from the Fine Arts Department of Zhejiang Normal University, and he will only graduate from his bachelor's degree in a few months. I have already emailed him, and he said that he is willing to come and try it, and it is estimated that he will be able to get to Rongcheng in a few days. ”

Lu Xiaoyin is the future COO of Perfect Time and Space, and he is in charge of the art of "Perfect World", "Zhu Xian", "Wulin Gaiden", and "Smiling Proud Jianghu".

Song Weiyang threw out a few more pages of the manuscript: "Here are some of my ideas, you can study them." ”

Song Weiyang had also played World of Warcraft before, but he had only played the level 60 version, and he didn't know what the game would be after that. The content of these manuscripts he threw out was nothing more than copies, PVP and PVE concepts, life occupations, equipment color grading, and so on.

Everyone gathered around to take a look, and immediately put away their contempt, and no longer regarded Song Weiyang as a layman in the game where he spent money to play tickets, at least they didn't expect a lot of content and gameplay in it.

For example, online games in Japan and South Korea are popular to take medicine to replenish blood, while games in Europe and the United States are popular to eat food to replenish physical strength, and it is necessary to play slowly to recover blood. Song Weiyang pointed out here that the soon-to-be-developed "Classic of Mountains and Seas" can collect wild food or cut meat on animal carcasses, or even fish in the river by yourself, and you can make your own food after learning cooking recipes, and these foods can also slowly return to blood. Of course, there are also various elixir recipes, after all, it is an ancient mythological game, and you can configure the elixir by yourself to return blood to blue.

The level of items in the game was set by Song Weiyang as "Heaven and Earth Xuanhuang", and these four levels are special treasures. There are also green "craftsman" level items, white "van" class items, and gray broken items.

Song Weiyang said: "What we are doing is not a game, it is an ancient mythological world in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", we must do all kinds of details well, and we must surprise players in the subtleties anytime and anywhere." ”

Everyone agreed, in fact, there is no need for Song Weiyang to remind that game developers in this era think so.

Is World of Warcraft really invincible? and can't even other games survive in its shadow?

It's impossible, anyone will turn when the earth leaves, and the "Aion" of NC in another time and space almost counterattacked.

How popular was "Aion" at that time?

Shanda was originally going to open 80 sets of servers a month, but due to the influx of players, it was full in one day, and the domestic point card agency was immediately auctioned at a high price of 200 million yuan, and Shanda's stock price soared by 20%. Don't say it's because World of Warcraft was suspended, it was a month after the open beta of Aion - after Warcraft was suspended due to agency, the number of people online in Aion really skyrocketed.

The reason why "Aion" failed was because Chen Tianqiao wanted to transform into financial investment and used the game as an ATM. The point card charge is operated well, and suddenly there is a two-way charge, countless RMB players have emerged, and even a web lottery has been carried out, using money to exchange attribute equipment and props, forcing players to abandon the pit.

Let's talk about NC's other game "Sword and Soul", this time they didn't look for the grand of the pit father, but found the reliable Tencent. Tencent is really reliable, and the number of simultaneous online users of "Sword and Soul" quickly exceeded 1.5 million - the highest number of online users of "World of Warcraft" was only 1.3 million.

It's a pity that NC is in chaos, and the core creators have run away with their sisters-in-law. The follow-up main creator got a batch of garbage, and he could only make wings and fashion to make money, not to mention that the update progress couldn't catch up, and it also made "Sword Spirit" a miasma.

Although World of Warcraft had been updated to the level 90 version when "Sword & Soul" was launched, "Sword & Soul" really once dominated, and it was defeated when it encountered chaos within the development company.

Song Weiyang's investment and development of this "Classic of Mountains and Seas", as long as the game is done well in a down-to-earth manner and launched before "World of Warcraft", it may not be able to keep Blizzard's father pressed, at least it can be equal.