Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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At that time, Kuro, which had not yet moved to Shanghai, was not very large.

They have not yet accepted funding from Penguin.

Although game development is still largely a matter of learning by doing, we still have some of our own ideas.

Unlike the Shanghai Mingchao.

In some places, it has reached the point of being a 1:1 replica.

In a game where Paimon is completely unnecessary in the main storyline, they still force a character like Paimon, who has absolutely no presence, into the main story. It just shows that the minds of Mingchao Shanghai Studio have gone mad.

However, Kuro in Guangzhou is currently doing relatively well.

In the art department office, Zhao Yingran, who had only joined the studio less than a month ago, was having a meeting.

This meeting was quite amazing.

The meeting's content was not related to their current priority project, Punishing: Gray Raven.

It was a competition, a competition that didn't even belong to their company.

However, the atmosphere of the meeting was not dampened by this.

On the contrary, it was very enthusiastic.

Just now, Kuro's boss, Liu Sheng, personally came to the conference room and gave a speech.

"We must go all out in this competition!!"

"No matter who the opponent is, the glory of twin tails must be protected by us!"

"We must win the championship!"

"Gentlemen, let us encourage each other!"

This was an extremely juvenile statement, but coming from Liu Sheng, it sounded perfectly natural.

Even Zhao Yingran, a newcomer, after joining the company...

The first interesting thing I learned was the boss's obsession with pigtails.

After the previous project, "Twin Tails," failed, the new project, originally titled "Punishing Project," was abruptly changed to "Twin Tails Punishing" during the project's initiation phase.

Finally, perhaps feeling that the name was somewhat inexplicable, they changed it to "Punishing: Gray Raven," a name that would be even more confusing if one was unfamiliar with Kuro's previous work, "Battlefield Twin Tails."

There is another little episode here.

It is said that the reason why Punishing: Gray Raven was given the prefix "Punishing: Gray Raven" is because miHoYo successfully turned the word "Honkai" into an IP, so Kuro wanted to follow miHoYo's lead and create the IP of "Punishing: Gray Raven," which is also a two-word IP.

However, judging from the reactions of later generations, the "Punishing: Gray Raven" IP still falls far short of "Honkai Impact".

Although the Punishing: Gray Raven IP is still a bit lacking, Kuro has a true love for twin tails.

Even towards the end of the 1.0 version of the Naruto arc, when the world needed to be saved, Kuro still chose white-haired twin tails...

Back to reality, at this point in time.

The entire Kuro development team is still in the startup phase, facing numerous challenges together.

I still have a passion for games.

Since the art theme for the first Spark Game Competition was "white hair and twin tails," it directly hit Clow Reed's strike zone.

From the moment Kuro heard the topic, he had already started rolling up his sleeves and getting ready.

Even so, this competition can only be participated in under an individual name...

"If anyone participates in the competition and wins a prize, I won't take a single penny of the prize money."

"I have only one requirement: your works must use characters from Punishing: Gray Raven as the main design element, and when you give your acceptance speech, you must promote your company's projects."

Liu Sheng genuinely loves twin tails, but his main reason for having his employees participate is to promote Punishing: Gray Raven. Although Kuro has already decided to join the Spark platform, there's never too much publicity.

The art team naturally wouldn't refuse the boss's request.

This is a win-win situation.

So, a group of art students gathered in the office to read the competition rules together.

What is video voting?

As she looked around, Zhao Yingran noticed a problem.

The art group leader nodded.

"This is the key point I wanted to make: for this Spark competition, the expert panel will only conduct the preliminary selection; the final competition will still be presented to the public."

"This presentation is the final round. Viewers watch the video and vote at the same time. If they like it, they click the red heart; if they don't, they skip it."

The player with the most hearts at the end wins.

"Huh? But wouldn't videos at the beginning have an advantage? Also, what about users who only watched half of the video and then left?"

Zhao Yingran's question clearly resonated with many.

"There is actually an answer to this question. In the registration form, there are two main points: one is that the videos are played out of order, meaning that each viewer will see the works in a different order."

"Another measure is to prevent vote manipulation. Only the votes of users who have watched all the videos will be counted. There also seems to be a black box rating that will be included in the total score."

"That's acceptable..."

What exactly is "black box evaluation"?

"I'm not sure about that, but it should be fair. Anyway, let's not talk about that. Let's discuss how we can qualify."

"It's a bit rough, what's there to discuss?"

"Swimsuits, wedding dresses, white stockings... I think any of those will do, right?"

To be honest, the artists in the anime and manga game industry all have some unique skills.

"No, no, no, that's too homogenous. Think about it, under this theme, there will definitely be a lot of pictures like this. If we want to get likes from the audience, we'll have to think of another way."

"Either you work on the setting or you work on the texture."

"for example?"

"For example, oil painting style, sand painting style, or shadow puppetry? When players look around and see that everything is the same, they will definitely like it when they suddenly see a different style."

"Yes, yes, isn't it true that the more likes a video gets, the better?"

"That's true. Another idea is to incorporate elements from familiar characters, such as a JK (high school girl) version of the twin-tailed Little Dragon Girl?"

"Hey, but didn't the boss say we can only draw characters from our project?"

"What's there to be afraid of? If it really works out, we'll just add a new character."

Chapter 456 The Heat Fermented

For art...

Winning a big prize is quite difficult, mainly due to the large number of people working in the industry.

There are so many people working in the arts, and this competition isn't just domestic; it's a global event.

There are quite a few Japanese illustrators, as well as well-known illustrators from South Korea and the United States, who have already announced their participation on Twitter.

For an artist who is not yet famous, this prize money from Xinghuo is a considerable reward.

For established artists, it's a war for fame.

Everyone knew about this, and the more they discussed it, the more excited they became.

In fact, Kuro's art team did discuss many key points, which is the charm of the competition. It's not just about skills, but also about creativity.

There was also intense discussion about the match.

And then there are the programmers in the office next door.

This is a group even larger than the art world.

However, unlike art competitions, there were many competitions for programmers around the world before the Spark Games Competition.

However, all these competitions have one problem.

The problem is that the reach of the promotion is very narrow; often only programmers themselves can understand it, and there's no way to showcase it to others.

This is actually a pain point.

Therefore, this time Spark did not hold any programming competitions to see whose code was more refined or more efficient.

Instead, it sets up a scenario and lets programmers create and implement it.

The prompt is a blank sheet of paper, two black dots, and a stick figure.

The goal is simple.

The requirement is to use the Spark engine to create a demo that allows players to control a character to move from one point to another.

If an ordinary person wanted to come...

It's simply a matter of creating a framework so that the stick figure can move from left to right.

However, it is obviously impossible for this kind of work to win an award.

This competition tests not so much programming skills, but rather the programmers' creativity and the programs that bring their creativity to life.

For example, could we set the distance between two points to be the ocean?

After pressing a certain action, the little character can enter the sea?

For example, could we set it in space, or could we adjust the perspective to a top-down 2.5D view? Or could we implement some features similar to those in FEZ, The World in the Painting, or Monument Valley?

These are all things that participants need to consider.

The final evaluation of this competition is also very interesting. Spark will take the top 100 works, operate them together, and string them together into a game demo. The game is called [Game Name].

[100 sections of road]

Players control a stick figure to continuously travel through the worlds of each creator.

Each time a player travels through a new world, a small red star is placed at the end of that world that requires two jumps to reach, serving as the basis for their popularity score.

"I want to turn the stick figure into an immortal. Players can press left and right, left and right, to ascend to the sky and fly over the cliff to the other side. What do you think?"

"Hey, it's alright, but I feel like this is only at the top 100 level. I'm thinking of putting a rocket next to it, letting the players go in, fly up, circle the moon, and then land. What do you think of this idea?"

"You've gone off-topic, haven't you?"

"No, the requirement is just to get from here to there, right? Mine fits perfectly."

"..."

Discussions like this are happening all over China right now.

Big factories or small factories.

Anyone working in the industry is extremely interested in the competition launched by Spark.

Even though this competition has just opened for registration.

It has already spread throughout the industry.

That was the only thing that made them suspicious.

To participate in this programming competition, you need to use the Spark Engine.

However, money is always the most tempting thing.

Moreover, many people think that if others don't want to use the Starfire Engine but they do, wouldn't they have it all under their control?

As a result, on the Spark platform, the number of downloads of engine development components surged by nearly 10,000 in a short period of time.

Although mastering a new engine takes time,

However, in order to promote the engine, Spark didn't actually need too many complex features for this competition. As long as you have a little understanding of development logic, you can use the engine quickly.

Lin Li was well aware that using the Spark Engine for the competition would result in the loss of some participants, but there are always trade-offs in everything.

Moreover, once the first edition establishes a reputation, there's no need to worry about not participating in subsequent editions.

This is an open and aboveboard strategy.

~~~

The Spark Games Tournament has a relatively long schedule.