In the early 80s, companies in the global game console industry had a reference mentality for Atari when designing products.

It is roughly equivalent to the mentality of smartphone manufacturers towards Apple in the 2010s.

And even more.

If a kind of black technology and new improvements that increase costs are "useless to Apple", then OV Brothers, Samsung, Huawei, and HTC will feel that there is no need to use it, and feel that it must be "chicken ribs that do not help improve the user experience".

Of course, in the 2010s, there was Xiaomi, a runner who was a thorn in the head, and he liked to flaunt black technology. But that's only because there are already a group of users who have enough understanding of the performance parameters of components in later generations, and the two major functions of running software and sharing circle of friends provide them with soil.

In 1980, players obviously didn't understand what "CPU parameter running scores" were, they only knew the user experience, that is, whether the game console was cool to play, whether the experience was silky and smooth, and whether the effect was exciting.

So what Atari and Gu Biao have never used is like a CN land to be explored, quietly placed there, no matter how late you eat, no matter how elegant you are. (Of course, it can't be delayed until the launch of "The Defender" in '81)

What's more, to say that today's Atari is equivalent to the Apple of 2010, that is to underestimate Atari - the Apple of the 2010s, but there is no "two-thirds of the world", right? and the Atari of the 1980s really accounted for seventy percent of the game console sales of all mankind.

Therefore, you really can't blame the short-sightedness of the planners of Nintendo Konamco Capcom, it is that they are indeed so shocked by the obscenity of the big guys that they lose the ability to think independently.

……

"After finalizing the general direction of side-scrolling customs clearance, we are preparing to work on two games this year. One is based on the Raiden shooter mode, and the other is based on close-quarters action attacks and dodges.

The former can set the monster to be a flying saucer, and the name of the game is "Earth Defender", because the flying saucer is symmetrical, and the display can still be used to easily simulate the dynamics of the 'left and right horizontal jumping' technique used on the Thunder Fighter. It can also increase the sense of substitution for players to defend the earth and reduce the resistance of different consciousness-form markets......"

Gu Biao first said the general design concept, as for the follow-up details and experience design, firstly, he did not understand it very well, and secondly, there was no need to say too much at one time. It is completely possible to first realize the effect of running through the basic functions and refreshing the horizontal scroll, and then instill it step by step.

This also ensures the safety of the idea as much as possible, even if someone comes to spy and poach people, they can't get all the ideas.

And what he said in the end, "Prevent imaginary enemy settings from causing disadvantages to internationalization", is also a point that game manufacturers with great ambitions in the 80s should pay attention to.

For example, the Japanese Konami "Contra", which later used the Rambo images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stallone, is relatively neutral and does not make anyone feel resistant.

At the same time, some manufacturers in the United States exaggerated, and even used the card SITRO and the stealing GE Walla headshot as the protagonist of the two-player gun game, and they could also drive vehicles, and they didn't know how they passed the trial.

Ma Yanglu and the three of them worked hard to write a book, first made a note of Gu Ao's overall thoughts, and then continued to urge the explanation hungrily.

Gu Biao continued to talk about the second idea: "As for the non-shooting type, I continued the consideration of 'attracting female players', and I was going to make it easier, the protagonist drawing should be slightly larger pixels, more beautiful, and the original image of the Japanese Q printmaking style."

I'm going to name it Adventure Island, and the basic elements are to trample on monsters, eat various tropical fruit props and vehicle animals, and then with a vehicle, you can directly kill monsters and enter various invincible or enhanced states. ”

His "Adventure Island" is obviously a great reference to some of the settings of the later popular Super Mario, but it is not completely borrowed.

On the one hand, when Gu Biao watched the archaeology of Director Ao in his previous life, he vaguely heard that the character IP of Uncle Mario had made a cameo appearance in other Nintendo games a long time ago, maybe it was already in the planning of the design, in case of a crash, it would be troublesome.

And the success of Super Mario obviously has nothing to do with the character itself. As long as Gu Biao examines the core reasons for his success, the rest can of course be discarded.

His current emphasis on image design is obviously more "feminine" than Super Mario, and he goes straight to the market segment to cheat women out of money.

However, Super Mario is a game 4 years later after all.

Even if it is a game console running on the 83 version of the MOS-6502 chip platform, according to the "Moore's Law" CPU frequency performance that has increased by 4 times in 3 years, the cheap rotten product in 83 is better than the Motorola cutting-edge in 80.

Therefore, many of the basic design needs mentioned by Gu Biao, Yang Hao and Lu Yunda found that they were a little out of line based on their experience for half a year.

"Things are ugly now, and the only way to get beautiful textures is to go back to 'Plants vs. Zombies' like an 'electric' game. It is impossible to achieve it on video game consoles, the protagonist of 'Pac-Man' can only be a yellowcake with a missing horn, and Bomberman is just a few strips, how can it be possible to play the 'Q version of the painting style'. Once the horizontal axis is scrolled, the amount of graphics to be allocated to the background map refresh is very large. ”

However, even if Gu Biao didn't think about anything else for the time being, he couldn't be more profound about how to save the waste of computing resources on the 'horizontal scroll'.

So he immediately came up with a plan.

"It doesn't matter, we're on the horizontal axis, just refresh the line map that represents the terrain. The rest of the book is pitch black and set against the backdrop of the night – Defender of the Earth could have played skeet under the stars, and MapleStory could have added a crescent moon.

In addition, the starry sky is originally very far away from the characters, so when we move on the ground, we already feel that the starry sky should be stationary. After we make the starry sky and terrain into two layers, only the scanned terrain layer is refreshed when the horizontal axis is scrolled, so that the starry sky layer is fixed, which not only saves most of the computing resources, but also obtains the beautiful effect of depth of field. ”

This is where Gu Biao's version of "Maplestory" is the most resource-saving place than "Super Mario" - everyone has played Super Mario in later generations, and knows that there are clouds in the sky in that game, and the entire background is blue sky, which means that the entire screen must have image output parameters, and it is constantly refreshed, and even Intel's early version 8086 can't bear it.

When Uncle Mario rushes forward, the clouds are stationary relative to the terrain rather than relative to Mario, which is more computationally intensive.

And earlier game consoles,In order to save resources,Let the vast majority of pixels be directly "black screen"—because black screen means that no processing resources need to be allocated,Directly tell the TV that the signal in this place is 0。

Early shooters only had space themes that were easy to fire, which is also the reason, because space is inherently a black hole, and it is easy to draw. If it is an air combat theme in the atmosphere, but there is no blue sky, the player has no sense of substitution.

Gu Biao simply added layers of moonlight and stars, and used a money-saving effect similar to a black screen to create a side-scrolling action game without affecting the aesthetics, and let players naturally substitute for it.

Yang proudly feels that he has GET to the core of the design concept of "using CPU performance on the cutting edge".

These tricks are fantastic!

It is completely conditional to go up, and there are no conditions to create conditions.

When the hardware performance is still relatively critical, it is hard to rely on the ingenious application level design to fully explore the potential of dead parameters.

Although Gu is weaker than Yang Hao in assembly language and instruction set, he is too far ahead of his time in terms of "programming ideas" and design concepts.

Yang Hao had to be convinced.

"Alas, following the boss is not a matter of money, but it is simply a matter of listening to him say a few words that can benefit a lot. Those guys who followed Mr. Yan and went to Hanle Electronics Factory are really a loss. In contrast, making more money in the short term is just a small profit!"

After such a thorough project establishment meeting, the technical level basically unified their thinking.

After Gu Biao tentatively finalized a few points with them, he confirmed that their attitude and energy were fine, and the time could be coordinated.

"Fengzi, then I won't be in Qiantang most of the time this semester, so it's up to you to coordinate the progress of the project, and if you have resource needs, or encounter new difficulties, call me in time. ”

Gu Biao patted Ma Feng on the shoulder, saying that he should take on the responsibility of "project manager", even if he does not know programming, as long as he learns how to evaluate the progress of the project and coordinate the resources of all parties.

This is a valuable life experience and wealth for Ma Feng, and it is also very important to Gu Wei's career.

Ma Feng thought for a while and raised his own difficulties: "Brother Gu, I think that since both projects will use CPUs that we have never tried, why don't we run through one first, and then publicize the other?

Relying on Brother Yang and Brother Lu to find like-minded classmates to join in Zhejiang University, they can't do the core work for the time being. Supposedly, it's best to concentrate resources, otherwise I don't think I can get it out in a semester. ”

Gu Biao selectively accepted: "You can focus on one at the beginning, tackle the 'skeleton' of 'horizontal scrolling', and then allocate energy to the 'flesh and blood' part of the two games."

But in the end, you have to make sure that the two games are about the same time to be released - well, not more than two months, and also allow some time for Mr. Han's electronics factory to concentrate production capacity. It is completely listed together, but it can't be produced there, and the production capacity in the early off-season is wasted.

The reason why I insist on this is because the design idea of 'horizontal scroll' is also an epoch-making innovation, and as long as the first one appears, my peers will definitely imitate it.

With their technical strength, and the fact that they have already accumulated in the field of arcade machines by then, they can develop imitation products in four or five months at most. I only released these two games two months apart, just to occupy the mind of the brand and ensure that the pioneering works of side-scrolling shooting and side-scrolling action are the works of Tiankun Media. ”

"Then we will definitely not be able to ship in time for the summer vacation. Ma Feng spread his hands,

"Their technical strength is already limited, and it is impossible to devote all their energy to this field - it can even be said that if you are in China, you can't find more professional talents who can use it immediately, and university professors can't do it, because in front of the Motorola 68000CPU, everyone is familiar with it equally. ”

Gu Biao comforted Ma Feng: "Then make sure that the first paragraph is listed at eleven times and the second paragraph is listed before December." Let's compete for the Christmas season shipping season in this and the United States, just forget about your summer file. Believe me, foreigners are becoming so timid these days that they could not have imagined it before we shocked them. ”

His task has been set very magnanimously, and the layout of the electronics industry will focus on this one thing this year. Even if the people under him are still nervous about theoretical courses in the past few months, once they are idle during the summer vacation, the senior year of the next semester is still the internship season, and they are just 100% energetic for Gu Biao to take over private work.

——

PS: The above is already 3000 words, and the following is not counting money. Last night, a book friend asked what is the "interlaced scanning" and "progressive scanning" of the TV,Said Baidu couldn't understand it,Explain a little。

As mentioned in the previous chapter, AC was 50 Hz, while early televisions only had 25 frames, so the two current waveforms correspond to one frame.

In this case, progressive scanning is the first 0.02 seconds, the entire screen is refreshed, and the second 0.02 seconds keep the picture unchanged. At 0.06 seconds, frame 2 is refreshed at once. In this way, there are high requirements for the scanning speed of the CRT and the transmission speed of the CPU such as the game console that goes with it.

The first 0.02 seconds refreshes 135 odd rows, the second 0.02 seconds refreshes 246 even rows, and the 0.06 seconds starts to brush 135 odd rows. The equivalent of a frame has been relaxed from 0.02 seconds to 0.04 seconds, and the CRT scanning speed and CPU bus performance can be reduced by half. (As mentioned earlier, the Intel 8088 is an 8-bit bus, but the Motorola 68000 is a 16-bit bus, and the gap is here)

The price of interlacing has low performance requirements for the original, that is, the picture it displays is actually broken, and every frame you see is half of the odd line that is brushed to the next page, and the even line is delayed by 0.02 seconds before it is brushed out. It's just that 0.02 seconds is too short, and I can't recognize it with the naked eye, but I just feel that the picture is flashing and hurts my eyes. In addition, the high frame rate games ported to arcade-specific monitors will work poorly