Siheyuan starts from the stationmaster

Chapter 249 Game Board
Bai Zirui talked endlessly, explaining the game design of "Tank Battle" in great detail and depth.He concluded: "I hope that all colleagues in the R&D department can use this framework as the basis and work together to perfect all the details of the game, so that our company's game will continue to improve!"

Liu Weitao immediately made a strong promise: "Please rest assured, Bai Sheng, we will definitely live up to your expectations."

After Bai Zirui came up with the game plan and basic framework of "Tank War", all the remaining work was handed over to the R&D department in charge of Liu Weitao. The artist had to design the composition of tanks and various terrains first, and then make them into game data, and then Debug various data to improve the balance of the game, and finally perform background dubbing.

Bai Zirui's next job is the top priority. Before Liu Weitao and the others develop all the development work of "Tank War", he will ask the semiconductor company to help design a usable arcade computer board.

The most important task of all is definitely the design work of the new gaming PC board.The motherboard of the game console is the soul of the entire arcade machine, and only a good motherboard can perfectly show the charm of a game.

Now arcades have just begun to become popular around the world, and the development of game motherboards by various game companies is still relatively primitive.The processing cores of early arcade games from four or five years ago weren't even based on a central processing unit (cpu), but were based on transistor logic level technology (ttl).

Simply based on the principle of electronic interference waves, through simulating electronic signals, and displaying simple graphics on the walk-through line of the TV, it cannot be regarded as a real electronic game.It was not until the release of Sega's Snake Wars series of game consoles that electronic game consoles fully entered the era of microprocessor substrates.

Bai Zirui already had a mature plan for the motherboard of the "Tank War" game console.And the solution he planned is not just for the game "Tank War", but a general substrate that all new games of Dingtian Technology Company can run in the next one or two years.

In Bai Zirui's plan, the first general-purpose arcade board he designed will be an [-]-bit computer motherboard, and the main CPU will use an MPU.Its processing power is enough to run "Tank War", "Super Mario" and other simple but classic games.

Of course, if Bai Zirui uses Intel's 8088 chip [-]-bit processor, it will definitely make the game screen produced by the company more delicate and refined.

When the company establishes the hardware department and prepares to develop the second-generation general-purpose board, it will use the classic CPU of the m68000. With its excellent computing power, it can almost drive many classic fighting games.

In addition to the cpu, there are vital sound modules and video modules on the computer motherboard.For the sound module, Bai Zirui is going to install an ay-3-8910 processor made by General Electric Company of the United States as the sound effect chip on the arcade board.

The ay-3-8910 chip has four built-in mono channels, three of which are square wave channels used to play background music, and the remaining one white noise channel is used to express special sound effects such as explosions and guns.

In addition to the sound effect chip, you can also choose to be equipped with a general-purpose sp0256 speech synthesizer. Of course, pure jigsaw puzzle games like the Great Wall of Squares can naturally omit this part to save costs.

As for the video module, Bai Zirui plans to use the tms9918 graphics processor developed by Texas Instruments. This GPU has 16kb of video memory, and can display a maximum of 32 color templates with 64 colors on the same screen, and supports a screen resolution of 256*192.

The screen is a 42” ultra-large liquid crystal display, with clear pictures and huge scene images in front of your eyes. In addition, the scene simulation of the game is highly simulated. After watching for a long time, players feel as if they are in a thrilling war scene and empathize with them.

Bai Zirui's plan for the future development of Dingtian Technology Company, besides game development, he has already planned to enter hardware research and development and manufacturing, but he was limited by his own funds before, so he did not invest in this aspect.

Now Dingtian Technology Co., Ltd. will have a steady stream of income relying on the Great Wall Cube. He decided to start accumulating technology from the most basic PCB manufacturing with bank loans.

PCB (Printed Circuit Board), the Chinese name is printed circuit board, also known as printed circuit board, is an important electronic component, a support for electronic components, and a carrier for electrical interconnection of electronic components.

Because it is made using electronic printing, it is called a "printed" circuit board.Printed board, referred to as printed board, is one of the important components of the electronics industry.Almost every kind of electronic equipment, ranging from electronic watches and calculators to computers, communication electronic equipment, and military weapon systems, as long as there are electronic components such as integrated circuits, in order to make the electrical interconnection between various components, printed circuit boards must be used. plate.

The printed circuit board is composed of an insulating base plate, connecting wires and pads for assembling and welding electronic components, and has the dual functions of a conductive line and an insulating base plate.

The printed circuit board can replace the complex wiring and realize the electrical connection between the components in the circuit, which not only simplifies the assembly and welding of electronic products, reduces the wiring workload in the traditional way, and greatly reduces the labor intensity of workers; The volume of the whole machine is reduced, the product cost is reduced, and the quality and reliability of electronic equipment are improved.

The printed circuit board has good product consistency, and it can adopt a standardized design, which is conducive to the realization of mechanization and automation in the production process.At the same time, the entire printed circuit board that has been assembled and debugged can be used as an independent spare part, which is convenient for the exchange and maintenance of the whole machine.

Regardless of semiconductor chips, PCBs, or even displays, Dingtian Technology currently relies on suppliers from Yang Dezhi's former Yangji Electronics Factory for procurement, which is a hidden danger for Dingtian Technology.

The purchased circuit boards are welded with chips and assembled into arcade boards. This manual workshop-style production method is just a helpless expedient measure. The result is that the performance of the game console motherboard is unstable, and the failure rate is higher than the standard produced by a large factory assembly line. The quality is much higher.

Dingtian Technology's market is mainly in Hong Kong and Kowloon. The company has specially compiled a troubleshooting manual, and has also specially trained a group of arcade game maintenance personnel, so even if the failure rate is a little higher, the game hall owners can accept it.

The goal of Bai Zirui's Dingtian Technology Company is not the small pond of the Xiangjiang market, the United States and Japan are the company's future battlefields.

Now the largest market for arcade machines is North America. The sales of Taito's Space Invader arcade machines in the United States have exceeded 15 units, and the sales in Japan and Europe have exceeded 20 units.This game alone has created more than [-] million U.S. dollars in profits for Taidong.

If you want to compete in mature markets like the United States and Japan, the current arcade machines produced by Dingtian Technology Company will definitely not work.But if he invests in building a large-scale computer motherboard production factory by himself, the funds on hand are only a fraction of the investment.

Li Xuan's original plan was to give up some of the benefits, such as game production authorization, and ask game giants such as Taidong and Sega to produce game console motherboards on their behalf.After all, even a company like Taito had to bow to Sega when promoting the Space Invaders arcade.

(End of this chapter)