Age of Legends

Chapter 292 By then, the east wind will have already taken hold.

After the New Year, Zhang Chen entered a private room at an internet cafe. Jing Qinming, Xie Yu ("Chai Chai"), and Luo Chengyue greeted him from in front of the computers in the room.

Jing Qinming sat on the machine facing the door, wearing headphones, nodding and waving at him to indicate the empty machine next to him.

Zhang Chen sat down next to him, and Jing Qinming casually took off his headphones and put them on the table. The headphones leaked sound, and the song "My wife, I owe you too much, oh oh~~" came from them.

“It’s Jay Chou…” Zhang Chen smiled. “He has good taste. He’ll be famous sooner or later.”

Jing Qinming gave him a strange look. "It's already very popular, okay? Some people scoff at it, saying it's bad and that it sounds like ghosts singing. But the more I listen, the more engrossed I become, especially when I'm coding, it feels amazing!"

Zhang Chen nodded. This was also the polarized reputation Jay Chou received when he first debuted. His singing was indeed unclear, and many people couldn't stand it; they were his haters. But his talent was undeniable, and some people simply loved it. Both sides could argue fiercely, but that didn't hinder his later historical reputation as the "King of Asian Pop."

Jing Qinming put down the cola he had just taken a sip of and said, "Let me show you the battle report email system!"

Zhang Chen leaned close to his bulky 17-inch computer monitor, which was heavy and enormous. Jing Qinming even held both sides of the monitor and turned it around.

Zhang Chen saw the display above.

[Battle Report Summary: Zhang Fei roared, reducing enemy morale by 10.]

Lu Bu counterattacked, using the "Breaking Formation Halberd Technique" in a one-on-one duel, reducing Zhang Fei's stamina by 20.

Zhang Fei launched a surprise attack, resulting in 140 soldiers being killed by Lü Bu's army.

—The battle is fierce. Click to read the full article.

"The email battle report system is online?" Zhang Chen's eyes lit up.

"Yes, the asynchronous battle system test is complete. The text battle reports and battle formulas are all done. I used data from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to develop an 'attack and defense model.' It doesn't rely on pure randomness; the basic data is weighted by luck, and the battle judgment is similar to Black Isle Studios' D&D system."

The machine opposite received the final battle report, and Chai Chai immediately went berserk, cursing, "My Zhang Fei lost again? How many times? Damn it, Zhang Fei can't even beat Lü Bu? Ze Ze, there must be something wrong with your battle formula!"

Jing Qinming also opened the subsequent battle report in front of Zhang Chen. It showed that [Lu Bu initiated a duel, his halberd pierced Zhang Fei, Zhang Fei's health decreased by 20, Zhang Fei was no match, and the entire army retreated.] Then, without even looking up, seemingly used to Zeze's public challenge, he said, "Don't yell and shout. Lu Bu's combat strength is set to be higher than Zhang Fei's. Lu Bu is 100, Zhang Fei is 97. With Lu Bu carrying the halberd, it's very difficult for Zhang Fei to win."

"That's unreasonable! Zhang Fei is a match for ten thousand men, and he and Lü Bu fought for fifty rounds to a draw! You lost five times in a row. Do you want players to point their fingers at you and curse you out?" Chai Chai said angrily.

Jing Qinming said, "The three heroes fought Lü Bu, and it was only a draw against Lü Bu. They still couldn't defeat him. It's normal that Zhang Fei couldn't beat him!"

Luo Chengyue waved his hand, adopting the demeanor of an old cadre, to express his objection, "Old Jing, I have to say something about you here." He called Jing Qinming "Old Jing" instead of "Zeze" because he hadn't played the game "Lineage" with them before, so naturally he didn't use Jing Qinming's nickname from "Lineage".

"You didn't read the book carefully. Zhang Fei fought Lü Bu for fifty rounds, and I think he was slightly at a disadvantage. After Guan Yu joined in, Lü Bu should have been slightly at a disadvantage, but it was impossible to determine a winner for a while. When Liu Bei, wielding a double-edged sword, joined in, it became a situation where the two of them had to protect Liu Bei, getting in the way and giving Lü Bu an opportunity to escape! So, in my opinion, the battle between the three heroes and Lü Bu should have been a process like this, not simply a three-on-one fight where one lost!"

Zhang Chen nodded. "I agree with Lao Luo." Although Luo Chengyue usually didn't join their arguments, sometimes just watching Zeze and Chai Chai bicker about the game with a smile, he could also sometimes hit the nail on the head at crucial moments, ending their quarrels. They formed a competent team, not usually dominating or stealing the CEO's thunder, but acting as a calming and stabilizing force when things got a bit chaotic. Zhang Chen then added, "But I still tend to support Zeze's design. After all, in this game, Lu Bu is the primary damage dealer, and many players will enjoy challenging him in story missions. Creating an invincible character, representing witty individual destructive power, creates the pressure of a boss. However, I also think that with Zhang Fei's five consecutive losses, Zeze, shouldn't you check your calculation formula?"

Luo Chengyue glanced at Zhang Chen and gave him an approving smile.

Jing Qinming stammered to Xie Yu, "I'll come down and make the changes. Now, let me introduce Chenchen first!"

He then tapped the interface a few times, switching to the map editor interface. A low-resolution but smooth-lined map of the Central Plains appeared on the screen, showing thirteen states with distinct colors for each city, and a red dot flashing above each city.

"Flash 4.0 has solved the dynamic masking, the map can be dragged and zoomed, and even the mouse wheel works—but we still need to patch it on the VB side." Jing Qinming said, as he hovered the mouse over "Hulao Pass", and a gray silhouette appeared.

Zhang Chen stared at the silhouette for a few seconds, then laughed and said, "Guan Yu is red, Zhang Fei is black. Did you take the materials from 'Heroes of the Three Kingdoms 2' and change the colors?"

"You know what, it saves money and effort." Jing Qinming shrugged. "A 256-color indexed image, even the layers are reused, otherwise the memory really wouldn't be able to handle it. I finished making the 16×16 pixel city icons in one night."

Zhang Chen nodded, tapping his fingers on the table as if he were estimating something, and then asked, "How about preloading?"

"The Flash Loader plus the local cache is only a little over 300KB." Jing Qinming smiled with some pride. "I wrote a tool in VB that supports caching commands when the network is disconnected, and automatically sending them as soon as the connection is restored. During testing, a 56K emulator was running on the USTC intranet, and the response time was on average within 8 seconds."

Zhang Chen was pleasantly surprised; it was indeed a clever solution that greatly improved the experience in harsh network environments. However, he still had some concerns: "We must complete a large-scale stress test before the end of the year. Will this pass?"

The private room fell silent for a moment, with only the faint sounds of CS gunfire and the hum of the computer's fan coming from the next room.

Jing Qinming suddenly looked a little dejected: "Yeah, it's mainly because of the modem's pitiful bandwidth..."

The hoarse sound of dialing up to the internet with a 56K telephone is the most authentic background noise of the internet in this era.

Only by doing it themselves did they realize where the difficulties lay. Following Zhang Chen's instructions, Jing Qinming and others did their utmost to control the amount of data in almost every aspect to the extreme. However, they were still worried that they would not pass the large-scale stress test in the future. All the data and structures were being streamlined, and at the same time, they had to ensure the gaming experience through narrow bandwidth channels without a client while maintaining the user experience. This was the final boss, standing in their way.

"It's alright," Zhang Chen said. "Just do your work. Everything is ready. I'll bring the east wind!"

The group looked at him suspiciously, not understanding why Zhang Chen was acting so strangely and pretending to be Zhuge Liang.

But Zhang Chen's cryptic behavior really hit the nail on the head, leaving them half-believing and half-doubting. It seemed that Zhang Chen would always be like the strategist in the novel, throwing out a brilliant plan at the crucial moment.

But Zhang Chen didn't actually have any secret formula. He just had a flash of inspiration and thought that even though 56k dial-up networks were still the norm, at least in Rongcheng, a pioneering city in the internet industry, the telecommunications company was carrying out a major ADSL network upgrade. At the same time, the country was also undergoing a rapid upgrade in internet speed, which was a period of high-speed development for broadband in China.

By the end of the year, it is estimated that a large number of users with internet speeds of 512k will have completed their upgrades. The same will be true in other major internet-developing cities, where a large market of users with internet speeds meeting the standard will take shape.

Moreover, users who prioritize upgrading their broadband are often high-quality target users who need high-speed internet for gaming.

That will be the time for them to conquer and seize territory!
(End of this chapter)