In the worldview of "Ink and Smoke", the story takes place in ancient China in the ancient years of China, and a vicious beast called Nightmare appeared, feeding on people's negative emotions such as fear, hatred, despair, and resentment, and growing stronger day by day.

The Nightmare Beast is entrenched in Yangmeng City, the center of the world, and everyone in the entire city falls asleep. At the same time, its power has also spread to all corners of the world, and many originally gentle monsters in the whole world have also become ferocious, and the world has become dangerous.

"Ink and Smoke 2" inherits the worldview of the original, but adds many details.

The scholar's mission is still to defeat the Nightmare Beast, but he no longer directly fights the Nightmare Beast, because his strength is insufficient, and he must first gain strength to make himself strong.

He needs to travel all over the world to gain the power of the Four Holy Beasts, and constantly weaken the power of the Nightmare Beasts before he can finally defeat them.

The whole world is roughly composed of five parts, the center is the earth, Yangmeng City and the Nightmare Beast are in the central area, and the four regions of the east, west, south and north respectively have the four holy beasts of Qinglong, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Xuanwu, which are affected by the Nightmare Beast and become restless, and the scholar must obtain the power of the Four Holy Beasts in order to have a decisive battle with the Nightmare Beast.

For example, the green dragon in the east lives in the coastal area, where the four seasons are like spring, there are many thunderstorms, and in addition to the fishermen by the sea, there are also legendary sharks on the sea.

The mermaids are a magical race in Chinese mythology, their appearance is beautiful, in the water they will turn into a fishtail human body, and on land they will become a handsome human form. The mermaid is good at weaving, and can make dragon silk that is not wet in water, and tears become beads, and the ignition point of grease is very low, and a drop can burn for several days without extinguishing.

Because of these characteristics, many humans hunted and killed mermaids, sold them into slavery, whipped them day and night for pearls, and even crushed them to death to extract fat to make everlasting lanterns.

In order for the protagonist to obtain the power of the Green Dragon, he must resolve the hatred between humans and the Sharks, and gain the trust of the entire Shark Clan, in order to successfully pacify the Blue Dragon Sacred Beast.

The white tiger in the west is golden, in the Kunlun Mountains. Here are all in autumn all the year round, the autumn equinox is bleak, the fallen leaves are scattered, there are all kinds of beasts in the mountains, there are wolf demons, fox demons, and the metallurgical skills of the demon clan are the best in the world.

The southern Suzaku belongs to fire, and in the jungle at the foot of the southern volcano lives the Feather Clan, they are proficient in archery skills, and can shoot arrows that burn with flames, with the Vermilion Bird as a totem, and are not afraid of flames, and even a few Feather Clans have the ability to be reborn from the fire.

The Xuanwu in the north belongs to the water, and the snowfields in the extreme north continue to go north to the North Sea, and the Xuanwu lives in the North Sea. This is the territory of the Nuwa people, who are snake-tailed and good at divination.

The main plot of the game is that the protagonist travels all over the world, comes to the territory of the merman, demon clan, feather clan, and Nuwa clan, completes their tasks, gains trust, and helps the four holy beasts get rid of the control of the nightmare beasts, and finally defeats the nightmare beasts with the power of the four holy beasts, and gives the whole world a new life.

In addition, there is a very rich collection of elements in the game.

It is rumored that in ancient times, there were saints of calligraphy and painting in the world. These two people have traveled all over the world, and they have some insights whenever they go to a place, and they will leave their feelings in the local area.

What the painting saint leaves behind is the painting environment, and after feeling the true meaning of the painting, you can enter the painting environment, and after unlocking the painting environment, the scholar can improve his ink power value.

The calligrapher left behind a series of texts, which are scattered in different corners of the world, and there are many of them, and after collecting them, you can increase the capacity of your brushes and scrolls.

There are a total of 81 art scenes and 1,000 words in the game, which is enough for players to find the old world.

In addition to these, the whole world is also scattered with all kinds of magical creatures, such as the strange beast Qiqi, this kind of monster is distributed in remote hills everywhere, strong as a tiger, with wings on its back, and its whole body is covered with spikes, and it likes to eat people.

The beast is like a crane, but it has only one leg, red markings, a cyan body, and a white mouth, and it often causes strange fires wherever it goes.

The strange beast Lushu, shaped like a horse, but with a white head, markings on its body like a tiger, and a red tail, is extremely difficult to encounter, and is said to bring good luck.

All kinds of these strange beasts are distributed all over the world, and if you can kill them, you can not only get a lot of precious materials, but also make medicine or food, and there will be some special bonus effects.

……

After the design concept draft of "Ink and Smoke 2" was shown to everyone, the game immediately entered the preliminary preparation stage of development.

There are two main aspects of preparation: the physics engine and the art settings.

The game will have a lot of freedom in Ink and Smoke 2, and like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game will add a variety of unique systems, such as throwing fruit on the fire to roast it, striking an object at a standstill to release the accumulated power instantly, going out with metal products on a thunderstorm will be struck by lightning, and igniting the grass will generate updrafts......

All of these settings belong to the realm of physics engines, and these complex settings need to be fine-tuned to strike the perfect balance between imagination and realism.

At the same time, because the game has a particularly high degree of freedom, the physics engine has to take into account all aspects of the impact.

For example, a scholar's drawing skills can erase a part of an object in a scene, such as a large rock in the scene, or erase a part of an object, such as cutting off a tree from the bottom.

Then, after using the painting skill, the stagnant time flows again, and the destroyed scene changes according to the rules of physics, such as the truncated tree will fall, or the monster that was originally standing on the stone will fall to the ground due to the disappearance of the stone.

This is a big improvement for playability, but bad news for the program team.

On the other hand, the art team needed to do a lot of art settings for a lot of the content in Ink and Smoke 2.

For example, the four holy beasts, alien beasts, mermaids, feather clans, etc., in the game, these are all original content. Although there are corresponding prototypes of these monsters in myths and legends, these images are too vague to be used directly in the game.

For example, Xuanwu, in mythology, it is a kind of combined image of a turtle and a snake, but what it looks like, including its scales, shell, tail and other details, all need to be carefully conceived and designed by the art team.

This "Ink and Smoke 2" is a very difficult task for the design team, the program team and the art team.

And Zhong Ming himself was discussing the holographic projection display with Lin Xiaoguang.

There are some holographic projection devices on the market, but if you really want to make it a game-specific device, you still have to consider many aspects.