Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Page 802

"What if someone from Sony is coming to visit after National Day? What should we do?"

"Someone from Sony is coming to visit after the National Day holiday? Who is it?"

Lin Li wasn't pretending to be stupid; he genuinely had no recollection of it.

"Kazuo Hirai...you forgot? When they come, they'll definitely talk about this..."

"Oh, yes..."

When Su Shanshan mentioned the name Kazuo Hirai, Lin Li immediately remembered that Sony Games was going to hold its annual Sony Star launch event after the National Day holiday.

Logically speaking, although Sony holds the Sony Star event every year.

You could say Sony values ​​it, and yes, Sony does value it quite a bit. But if you say they don't, at the group level, Sony China Star isn't exactly a very influential project.

However, with the strong rise of Xinghuo in recent years.

As a result, many overseas companies have become more interested in investing in China's gaming industry. As a non-listed company, Xinghuo is unable to invest in it.

But there are still many Chinese game companies that are worth investing in.

Therefore, in the past two years, especially since 19, not only domestic capital has been looking towards the gaming industry, but overseas capital has also been looking towards China.

Sony, for example, has been working on the Sony China Star project in China for some time, and in the past year or two, it has clearly received more resources from the Sony Group.

This time, they even brought back Kazuo Hirai, who had already retired.

They want to expand their influence.

To attract more game companies to participate in Sony Star's plans.

Since it's Kazuo Hirai coming, he should definitely pay a visit to Xinghuo as well, since Xinghuo and Sony started their collaboration under Kazuo Hirai's mediation.

Lin Li was aware of this matter, but he didn't think about it any deeper.

Unlike many production teams and producers who become arrogant after gaining fame,

Although Xinghuo had already gained the right to be a wanderer, Lin Li was still a very down-to-earth person.

So far, Sony has been a greater help to Spark, and this help comes from two aspects: the IP owned by Sony and Sony's influence in Japan.

While both are gaming giants, Sony operates in Japan, and Microsoft in the United States, but they are completely different concepts.

After much deliberation...

Lin Li nodded as well.

"Yes, now that you mention it, we really should create a new folder..."

~~~

Holidays are always wonderful, as long as you don't think about work.

Life is beautiful as long as you don't think about work.

Su Shanshan's body is also... cough cough, I can't think about this too much, thinking about it too much will hurt my kidneys.

For the next two or three days, although it was still a holiday, Lin Li began to think about the project constantly after having a goal that urgently needed to be established.

Don't be fooled by his casual talk about creating a new folder; he actually does it.

But for a game...

The most difficult part is actually the stage of creating a new folder. You need to confirm the core of the game, roughly plan the gameplay, and the game title.

These are not decisions that can be made on a whim.

In particular, this game can be considered a semi-assigned task, a short film, but it needs to be impressive enough to demonstrate the new technology of the Starfire engine and the new capabilities of Sony's new machines.

Of course, the latter can be left to Sony's optimization team.

However, the former requires Lin Li to plan carefully. Before that, he actually had some ideas, so he logged into the art library of the Spark Engine.

This art library is an asset bundled with the Starfire engine. Like model assets, the resources in this art library can also be purchased.

Paying the author a certain copyright fee allows the game to be used commercially.

For some small and medium-sized production teams, the prices here are relatively low. Although some authors resell their work, the advantage is that the prices are cheap.

Among these, anime character illustrations are considered one of the best-selling "products".

Conversely, this has also led to many small works on Orange Light and some small workshops on the Spark platform frequently featuring characters with the same set of character illustrations.

Chapter 428 New Game

Lin Li logged into this platform not to buy works, but to find some inspiration for himself, as more and more people use the Spark Engine.

There are also many skilled artists showing off their techniques online, and their works are often priced at 9999999.

This also led to the addition of a so-called "9 certification" on the Spark Engine, meaning that art resources that dare to be labeled with 7 nines are usually of relatively high quality.

Therefore, when searching for resources on Spark Engine, many people will max out the price options to see the works of these "masters".

Lin Li randomly searched for a post-apocalyptic, dilapidated topic and set the price to the maximum. Soon, a large number of related materials and images appeared in front of Lin Li.

Lin Li casually glanced at the works.

There are all kinds of styles, from traditional zombie sieges to dilapidated magic academies, medieval ruins after war, and statues destroyed during the Renaissance.

These works are actually quite good; in fact, they could be described as having a very apocalyptic feel.

The problem is that none of these works gave Lin Li a "wow" feeling.

The phrase "a sudden flash of inspiration" is rather precarious. Even if Lin Li dared to use this phrase in front of his own art department, he would probably get a disapproving look after saying it.

So Lin Li scrolled down the price option again and selected "normal".

Upon further searching, even more resources came into view. Among the four job categories in the R&D department—planning, programming, art, and testing—artists are the most likely to take on freelance work. Generally, more senior and well-known artists usually have freelance work done.

While most companies dislike employees holding part-time jobs, they usually don't explicitly prohibit it, mainly because they can't.

This is why, as the Spark Engine has been promoted in China, its resource library has become richer, and many people have become accustomed to using the Spark Engine at work.

It's common for people to simply take orders on the Spark Engine platform after get off work.

Now, when Lin Li sees these paintings, he might recognize works uploaded by employees of NetEase, Kuro, miHoYo, or even Spark's own company.

As Lin Li scrolled down page by page, his patience was wearing thin when a piece titled "Lost Ship" suddenly caught his eye.

Strictly speaking.

The painting wasn't very good. Even though Lin Li wasn't a professional painter, he had seen a lot of painters.

Therefore, Lin Li could tell at a glance that the artist lacked attention to detail in many aspects of the painting, but the underlying framework and artistic conception of the painting impressed him.

This wasn't the apocalypse Lin Li had envisioned, but the feeling this work evoked was right. The scene depicted a luxury cruise ship with its back to the camera, and in front of the ship was a massive iceberg.

Looking at these two pieces of information alone, it somewhat evokes the Titanic, but the information posted on this ship is quite different. There's no one on board, and not only is there no one, it also appears quite "deserted."

In the center of the cruise ship stands a withered giant tree, and the word "Noah" is written on the ship's hull.

Lin Li could hardly say that he fully understood the creative concept behind the painting, but the feeling did come to him immediately.

It feels like something very mystical, but it's also something that's really useful.

The initial framework of many games may simply be a flash of inspiration from the creator.

~~~

Lin Li first sent a message to the author.

"Hello, I am Lin Li. I really like your work and would like to chat with you."

After a while, the other party was probably not online and did not reply to him.

So Lin Li commented on the painting again. After that, Lin Li did not wait any longer, but took out his notebook and began to build the framework. For him, it was always good to write more while the inspiration was still there.

First, Lin Li quickly confirmed the tone of the game.

The final battle is paired with another gameplay mode: survival.

The end is the game's central theme.

The so-called end times and the end of days are not quite the same.

Just like the world view of the anime "Endless Girls", the end is a state, referring to an individual or civilization entering its final countdown.

It is almost irreversible.

Even in the apocalypse, there are still some things that can be reversed, and some things that still possess vitality.

The game's background doesn't need to be designed in too much detail.

To put it simply, a huge disaster occurred, and then Noah's Ark set sail. This simple sentence can start the story; as for filling in more details, that's a matter for later.

The gameplay scene is a huge cruise ship, but not the kind shown in the picture; it's a larger ship.

In terms of design, we can refer to the "ecosystem" experiment that was very popular for a time, and build an ecological ship. The ship could be named something like Noah's Ark or the Ship of Life.

From an art perspective, since the entire game takes place on a cruise ship from beginning to end, all art resources can be devoted to it.

It should incorporate some science fiction elements, but not to the point of being detached from reality.

The goal was to create a realistic ship, with a touch of laboratory style, but one that was abandoned. It was a ship that carried the hopes of civilization, but that statement is preceded by the word "once."

This was once a ship carrying the hopes of civilization.

This setting can be used to introduce the main storyline and give players a clear goal. However, how to establish the specific art style of the ship and express this worldview through art is a major problem that will be faced during development.

For some games, the framework is already set up and the art doesn't matter, but for others, the art is more important than the framework.

For example, the previous game, Atomic Heart, is a classic case of how art style drives the entire game's success. If you disregard the art style, Atomic Heart is just a barely passable game.

But with the added art, the game's feel is immediately elevated.

Imagine if the game "Atomic Heart" hadn't captured that Soviet feel; the final result would definitely have been that of Bao Si (a character from a Chinese folktale known for her scheming and ruthless behavior).

Essentially, the same principle applies to Lin Li's game.

If you put a regular cruise ship in the game, players will be immediately thrown out of the game the moment they enter.

Therefore, regardless of the overall design of the ship, the design of the various laboratories and cabins on board, the sea surface, the dim sky, and the mutated creatures and remaining mechanical guards that may or should exist, all these factors are considered.

All of these require the art director to have a very high level of artistry in order to fully bring out the visual tension that Lin Li wanted.

The goal is to make players, upon seeing the trailer, immediately think, "Holy crap, what is that?! Holy crap, what is that?!"

Holy crap, what happened to this ship?!

If this cannot be achieved, it will be difficult for this game to succeed.

Chapter 429 Setting the Hook

What does it mean to build anticipation?

Essentially, it's about setting a trap for players. Some games use fair-skinned, beautiful, long-legged female characters as bait, some use interesting settings, some use gameplay, and some use graphics.

For a game, it doesn't need to do everything; doing just one thing can attract attention in the early stages of the game.

This time, Lin Li wanted to focus on art style.

It needs to have the visual tension of an end-of-the-world wasteland, allowing players to directly feel the pressure of survival, and also making them feel that they are on a giant cruise ship.

Three years ago, it would have been really hard to find someone like that.

At that time, the mainstream art in China was either anime-style, or mainly based on martial arts, fantasy, or chibi cartoon styles.

However, thanks to Xinghuo's efforts over the past few years, the number of talented people in the market has gradually increased.

In terms of specific gameplay design, Lin Li has generally planned two storylines: one is survival, and the other is puzzle-solving.

The survival path is actually quite simple.

At this point in time, there are simply too many survival games, and this type of gameplay has been explored to the point that Lin Li can directly copy.

Gather food, build blueprints, collect materials, and construct items.

Each point has something to elaborate on, but Lin Li no longer needs to think about these things himself; he only needs to tell the development team that he needs these systems.

On the contrary, the other line of deciphering requires Lin Li to think deeply and refine it carefully.

Lin Li looked at the painting on the computer and, following his train of thought, began to extend the idea further.

In the game, after the player regains consciousness.