"Don't say it's impossible."

Qing Zhiyuan hurriedly stopped, "Akaxi-san, you are also the program director, the patriarch of Pokeni, if you retreat from the beginning, other colleagues will not be able to do things in the future." ”

"Okay, good president." Akanishi Ken responded with a bitter face.

"We solve them one by one." Qing Zhiyuan said, "Let's make a big map first." ”

"1000*1000 may indeed be a bit big for the program, and the loading efficiency is understandably slow, but we can do chunk loading first."

"You cut it into 4 pieces first, and if you can't do it, you can cut it into 16 pieces, 25 pieces, it's okay. As long as it can meet the needs of smooth loading. ”

"It's normal to have stutters or something in the middle of the transition."

Qing Zhiyuan said.

"But it looks like it's going to be awkward when the transition happens." "Maybe everything I saw on this small block was clear, but it was only a meter away, and the map block in front of me was not loaded, so it was all empty. ”

"Preload." Qing Zhiyuan stood up as he spoke, and drew a diagram on the whiteboard:

Draw a block first, then draw a block on each of the four sides of the block.

"Look," Qing Zhiyuan said, pointing to the square in the center, "I ran from this area to this east area, at this time, you don't wait for me to get to you and load the right block, but in the process of walking, you should load the right block." ”

"And then, when I get to the rightmost square, isn't the leftmost one out of my field of vision? At this point, you just have to delete it.

This means that we only load 2 or 3 blocks at the same time, and we can get the maximum savings in program overhead. ”

Moreover, in order to meet this point, Qing Zhiyuan decided not to introduce the mount system in the first generation of "Monster Hunter".

There is also a limit to the running speed of players.

"However, even if this is the case, it may still be difficult to count the faces of the monster model." Ken Akanishi continued to look at the document and said, "Herbivorous dragons, a kind of social monster, often appear in groups, about 4 to 6 of them.

We don't have that much support for model faces. ”

"And in a big scene,There's not just one kind of monster that will appear.,There will be a lot of different monsters loaded in at the same time.,That is,It's possible that in the field of vision,There will be more than 10 monsters at the same time.,Once this happens,,It's going to freeze.,And even cause the system to crash.。

emmmm……

Qing Zhiyuan held his chin in thought.

The problem that Akanishi Ken said objectively exists, after all, the current hardware level is placed here, and it has not yet reached the level of casual squandering in the previous life.

In 2023, it is probably only on mobile phones that we need to save resources and memory, and this problem almost does not exist in terminal games.

If you think about it, a game can be a few hundred gigabytes in size, who cares about such a small overhead?

There is no way for the phone to be memory limited.

In other words, the current game has to be formulated in accordance with the development standards of mobile games, and the compression can be compressed as much as possible, and the savings can be saved as much as possible.

Yes~

Qing Zhiyuan couldn't help but sigh, it's still too slow, the times are still too slow, and it would be nice to develop faster.

"It's actually easy to solve." Qing Zhiyuan picked up the marker pen and wrote three big characters on the whiteboard-

“LOD。”

“LOD？”

Ken Akanishi and Koike looked confused.

"Layered display technology." Qing Zhiyuan said it again in human words.

"What do you mean?"

"Look,"

Qing Zhiyuan first drew a particularly realistic horse on the whiteboard, then drew a mosaic horse next to it, and then a particularly abstract horse that I don't know what the hell it was, probably only a few lines.

"We make models with different precisions."

"In the near range, according to the model with the highest priority, load the model with the largest number of actual faces."

"If it's far away and you don't have the need for combat and interaction, but it's in the visible range, you can use the one that is a little rougher and has fewer faces."

"A little farther away, if you can barely see it, you can load only this very rough model, or even not load it, just load the terrain."

"In addition, it is necessary to put a priority label on the terrain, materials, and different object models, so that the program can make judgments."

"For example, the terrain is the most important, so in the pre-loading process, the ground will be loaded first, and then some important elements in the environment, such as big rocks, cliffs, rivers, ......

Just follow this pattern. ”

"Oh, I see, I see." Ken Akanishi and Koike nodded like pounded garlic.

The president is really terrible.

I can think of this way.

According to Chi Xijian's original idea, there must be at least tens of thousands of noodles to load so many things in a scene, how can this program consumption be affordable.

But as soon as Qing Zhiyuan said that it was loaded in layers and preloaded, he suddenly dried up tens of thousands of noodles to only a few hundred, which was terrifying.

This actually has the advantage of simulating the real human eye.

When people see things, they are also within the circle of the near distance, and the closer they are to the focus, the clearer they are, and the farther away they are, the more blurred they are.

After the LOD is made, it is actually the same effect.

The farther away you are, the coarser the loaded model will be, the fewer faces you have, and the more blurry it will be.

Not only will it not cause players to feel uncomfortable because of the reduction in the number of faces.

Instead, it seems more real.

However, as Qing Zhiyuan said, you have to control the player's movement speed within a certain range.

Otherwise, when you move faster than the speed of the preload, it's easy to goof.

For example, if the floor next to it has not yet been loaded, you can drive directly over on your motorcycle, and you may fall under the floor all of a sudden.

This is also a common bug in many games.

But it's actually caused by the preload not matching the problem.

……

"There's one more thing to do on the program's side." Qing Zhiyuan said.

"Huh?" Akanishi looked up in confusion.

"You know about topology, right?"

"Know, know......" Akanishi Ken hesitated a little.

It's not that your program level is not enough, it's mainly that the president's domineering appearance, like a teacher lecturing in class, suddenly asks a student, and you will be a little panicked in your heart all of a sudden.

"That's going to be easy." Qing Zhiyuan said, placing a chalk box on the table, and then took out a piece of chalk and put it behind it, revealing only half of his head.

"In the 3D world, there is actually an occlusion relationship between objects."

"For example, if this piece of chalk is half hidden in the back, then from your point of view, it is actually only half visible."

"In this case, according to the general program logic, whether the second half is visible or not, will it also be loaded?"

"Well," Ken Akanishi nodded, "that's for sure." ”

"But actually, we don't need to load the back part, right, because for the players, the half of the chalk hidden behind the box is an invalid message, so the back part should be cut."

"Also, as far as the chalk box is concerned, there are only three sides that can be seen by the players, and the faces at the back and bottom are also redundant, and if you cut them out, the memory overhead will be released at once."

Nani?!

Ken Akanishi and Koike were both stunned.

In just one teaching, they immediately saw how powerful the president's program skills were.

You don't even know if it's a program or a math thing.

"However, it's a whole, and you can't cut it."

"Isn't this coming, just use the topological algorithm to calculate it, and cut out the invisible part of the back."

"Wouldn't that require a real-time operation? The cost of this operation seems to be not small. ”

Not...... Qing Zhiyuan held his chin, and Akanishi Ken seemed to have a bit of truth in what he said.

I almost forgot the time limits.

The current computing power may really not be enough to support it.

The number of faces is loaded, but the amount of real-time computing brought has increased, and it is really hard to say which one is more cost-effective.

"That's it," Qing Zhiyuan said, "static objects, for example, these things don't move, and the occlusion relationship is fixed, so according to what I said, after the art production is completed, the program will do the first cutting and merging work." ”

"If it's going to change and move, you can find a way to optimize the occlusion relationship, even if it doesn't work now, it will definitely be possible in the future."

Belch......

Ken Akanishi frowned fiercely.

I feel that the workload has increased a lot.

The thing mentioned earlier is to meet the basic needs, and now it becomes the optimized content.

As we all know, program optimization is the hardest and most time-consuming.

……

"It's hard to do with AI, right?" Akanishi said uncomfortably.

He could barely find any questions to make things difficult for the president, so he had to fight to the death with a last-ditch effort.

If that's not enough—

We're about to start working on these terrible problems.

Although it is not difficult to say that Qing Zhiyuan has given a clear plan, it is all a workload.

There is no amount of work to think about, and there is no sense of accomplishment.

Some are just fatigue as a tool.

Now Akanishi Ken regrets a little, he shouldn't have come to the president so early, he should have discussed it with his younger brothers to see if he could find a solution, but he really couldn't go to the president, so that's right.

Once again, Ken Akanishi was stunned by the president's terrible problem-solving skills.

It's still too young, it's still too simple, and it's underestimating the strength of the president.

It's right to think about it.,Since these two games were proposed by the president himself.,He must have a number in his heart.,Knowing that this thing will definitely be realized.,Let the development.。

If you don't think of a plan, you can't realize it, and the youth president probably won't even mention it.

"There are so many monsters, each with their own behavior habits, and when faced with different situations, they have to react differently, which is not easy to solve."

Ken Akanishi played his last hole card.

"You just make the tools for the behavior tree and leave it to the planners to design it themselves." Qing Zhiyuan said, "Whether AI is intelligent or not, you don't care about how far it goes." ”

Fortunately, this thing was left to Kamiya.

If you change it to Hidetaka Miyazaki-

Think about it, how terrible it is for a female fire dragon who can read commands?

Hidetaka Miyazaki has not yet come up with the concept of reading instructions, so everything is still under control.

No matter how difficult The Witcher 2 is, it's numerically difficult, and it's not yet terrifying in terms of mechanics.

It won't be like this in a few years.

……

Damn it!

Akanishi Ken was crushed to the point that he was incomplete, and the president's fluttering words [just do your own thing] were equivalent to blasting out a pair of king bombs, blowing him up to death.

Lost, completely lost......

Ken Akanishi thought to himself, these two games seem to have to be done!

Sure enough, all efforts were in vain?

Is Qing Zhiyuan really invincible?

The president is really bottomless!!

"I have a question."

Art Director Taiji Sakata raised his hand weakly.

"In "Bug Division" and "Monster Hunter", these monsters and characters actually use a lot of action, which is a bit too much work for the artists, and I am afraid that I will not be able to bear it."

Well done, Sakata!

Ken Akanishi gave him an appreciative look.

In this way, these two projects can be dragged into the long-distance run, at least for 3 or 5 years, and if it is evenly spread, the average workload on the program side will naturally be reduced.

And in the future, with the development of hardware, some work will be solved in hardware.

"Oh, yes." Qing Zhiyuan then remembered, and Taiji Sakata asked a very important question.

In the previous 3D games, the actions in it were all drawn and adjusted by art, which was actually a relatively stupid method.

We have entered the 3D era, and it is time to abandon some backward production methods.

"It's time to introduce skeletal animation."

"Skeletal animation?!" Taiji Sakata and Ken Akanishi were both shocked.

"Yes."

Qing Zhiyuan stood up, "You've all played with some festival dolls, right?" ”

"When we swing the doll's hand, the bones inside it will rotate together and then fix the doll's movements."

He made a demonstration himself, "Those who study art know that our human body movement is achieved through muscle relaxation and contraction, such as elbow flexion, which will be used in our biceps.

It is equivalent to our muscles that drive the bones to move.

However, if we do 3D now, we have to do the opposite. ”

"The other way around?"

"Yes, the other way around."

"This time, what we need to do is to let the bones drive the muscles and move the different parts."

Qing Zhiyuan first drew a person, and then drew a skeletal frame inside.

"We can define our own bones for the model, which is equivalent to making many connection points on the model, and these points are connected to form a skeleton framework."

"After that, as long as the bones move, such as bending the elbows, then the skeleton animation will play and the model will be moved.

This is enough to match the movement that the artists want. ”

"The program provides skeletal animation support, and then it's up to the artists to tweak it themselves."

“……”

Ken Akanishi and Taiji Sakata were both stupid.

Especially Ken Akanishi.

Good guys, it's a problem that artists can solve, but how did it turn out to be a program job?

Taiji Sakata is thinking here:

Nani?

The whole process and way of making art has changed.

It sounds so powerful, but he doesn't know how to do it in his heart.

Ken Akanishi covered his face in some pain.

Why the hell am I sitting here?

Qing Zhiyuan said, where is this.

Skeletal animation is the standard in 3D games, which can save a lot of time for artists, you just need to adjust the action, do it according to a certain rule, and then put it in the game and the program will complete the run.

In the future, in order to make the characters in the game have better action effects, you will have to make motion caps.

In the future, after the motion capture technology is available, it will also need to do AI adaptation, AI face swapping, and even AI generation......

At that time, there is no need for people to make adjustments, just input, and then the AI will automatically generate it.

There is still a long way to go, comrades still have to work hard!

……

The programmers and artists discussed their concerns one by one in the conference room.

The newcomer Hideki Kamiya looked stupid.

This scene seems familiar-

It's like watching Zhuge Liang's tongue battle group Confucianism in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

(There is no doubt that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms introduced neon very early on, and it was so popular that many neon people especially liked the Three Kingdoms and even read every detail in it.)

There are a lot of classic stories that can be said to be at your fingertips.

The year before last, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms TV series introduced neon at a price of $15,000 per episode and became a hit TV series. ）

At this moment, Qing Zhiyuan was like the incarnation of Zhuge Liang in the eyes of Hideki Kamiya.

Seeing the shock in Hideki Kamiya's eyes, Shinji Mikami smiled and patted the back of his hand next to him.

"It's all normal, and you'll get used to it later."

"Nani?"

Is this actually a normal operation?

The shock in Hideki Kamiya's heart, the president's knowledge reserve and problem-solving ability are too strong, it can be described as bottomless.

It's horrible.

The president is really terrible.

Every question is answered.

As long as you answer, you will definitely be convinced by the program apes and the artists.

In an instant, I found the direction of production and the solution to the problem.

But......

Ken Akanishi and Taiji Sakata don't need it!

They wish the president couldn't solve it, so that the burden on their bodies would not be so heavy.

The more they discussed, the more panicked they became, how could they talk more and more about their workload?

By the end, there was nothing to ask.

Taiji Sakata sent a look to Ken Akanishi from time to time: You can shut up, you!

……

After 5 hours of discussion, in the end, everyone had nothing to ask, and the plan was also reviewed at the meeting.

Get out of the conference room.

Ken Akanishi felt his brain buzzing.

Damn it!

All the problems were solved by the president again!!

……

……

————————————————————————

There is one more chapter in the evening

(End of chapter)