game trailblazer

Chapter 142 Zhang Lexing's Resentment
When Zhang Lexing woke up from her sleep, she found a tall stewardess standing beside her. Seeing Zhang Lexing wake up, she bowed slightly and said in a sweet voice: "Sir, our flight is about to land at BJ Capital Airport, for your safety, you need to return your seat to its original position, do you need me to serve you?"

Zhang Lexing sat up and shook his head: "No need, I will do it myself."

"For your safety, please return the seat to its original position as soon as possible, and fasten the seat belt." The stewardess took a step back, bowed slightly, pointed at the beeper, and said respectfully: "If you have If you need anything, please call me anytime."

After speaking, the stewardess turned and walked away.Zhang Lexing patted his face lightly to wake himself up, then lifted the blanket covering his body and stood up, the plane was still flying smoothly at this time, Zhang Lexing went to the bathroom to wash his face, so that he was completely awake come over.After returning to the seat, Zhang Lexing pressed the beeper, and the stewardess appeared and took away the blanket. Then Zhang Lexing returned the seat to its original position and sat on it. Then he fastened his seat belt and waited for the plane to land.

……

When Zhang Lexing and the accompanying bodyguards came out of the terminal, they saw Wang Mengyao waving and the black Mercedes Benz 400E not far away from her.As they got closer, Wang Mengyao's voice came over: "Boss, here, here."

Zhang Lexing smiled and waved to Wang Mengyao, then dragged his luggage and walked towards her.A group of people got into the car, and the car quickly started and drove away from the airport.

In the car, Wang Mengyao asked as usual: "Boss, do you want to go back and have a rest first?"

"No need, I rested on the plane." Zhang Lexing waved his hand and said, "I'd better go to the company first, I want to see the situation."

"Good boss." Wang Mengyao leaned forward and patted the driver's seat: "Brother Chen, go to the company."

"Has anything happened in the industry and in the company during this time?"

"Well, boss, during this period of time, many companies have submitted applications to the Dream Fund, and four companies have been approved, namely Leading Software, Huiying Electronics, Hongda Software, and Xionglong Company. Zhou was officially established, and its office is located in the Baishiqiao area.

Kingsoft General Motors posted a recruitment notice for game developers on some computer industry media, intending to set up a game development studio.

Following the Guangzhou branch, Zhiguan established the BJ branch on May 5, and formed a game development studio called Red Ant.

It is rumored that Jinpan Electronics will launch their first game within three months. The game is called "Condor Commando", and the game type is unknown.

Another professional game magazine was published. In June, the first issue of "Home Computer and Game Console" was launched. "Mysterious Manor" (the game used as a distribution experiment) was published on both "Home Computer and Game Console" and "Video Game Software" Advertisements were placed, and a total of 6 sets have been sold so far.

The "Legend of Sword and Fairy" and "Obsidian" project teams have gone to Shenzhen at the end of June because they need technical support from Hong Kong. They are currently staying at Kingsoft GM. The development equipment is supported by Hong Kong. The current development progress It went well. Among them, the "Legend of Sword and Fairy" project team expects to release an official trial version in early November, and complete all work in mid-January next year.

After the first phase of training at Fengyun Game Academy, a total of 86 people reached the company’s contracting standards, 82 of whom entered the company (ten of them were recommended to study abroad), and six of the remaining eight were signed by Kingsoft, and The whereabouts of the two who failed to meet the standard are unknown.

......"

Zhang Lexing leaned on the car seat and closed his eyes slightly. While listening to Wang Mengyao's report, he thought to himself: "Originally, there should only be Jinpan Electronics, Qiandao, and Jinshan. I didn't expect there to be more companies with Dream Fund." Three companies, it seems that the game development capabilities in the future should be much stronger...I didn't expect the sales of the game to be so bad now, it seems that this low-cost game might lose money...Equipment problems are still very troublesome, otherwise There is no need for the project team to travel as far as Shenzhen. I hope that the negotiation with Sister Xin will go smoothly... With the departure of the two project teams, the company's development force may have to lose more than half. Fortunately, the Game Academy has added If some newcomers come in, maybe it won’t be a problem to hold on to talent for a few more years.”

……

The car was parked downstairs in Beihang Building. Zhang Lexing and Wang Mengyao got off the car and walked to the elevator in the lobby.Before coming to the elevator, Wang Mengyao pressed the up button and waited for about a minute and a half before the elevator door opened.Walk into the elevator together, press the floor button on the eighth floor, the elevator door slowly closes, and starts to rise upwards.Not long after, with a ding, the elevator stopped on the 8th floor, and the elevator door opened again.

When he came to the company, Zhang Lexing went to the administration department first, intending to find out if there was any change in Chu Jing's company personnel, and to check the information of these new people who joined the company.

In the administration department, only Chu Jing was alone, and she was writing something at her desk.Zhang Le walked in and came to Chu Jing's desk. Just as she was about to do something, she raised her head.

"Le Xing, you're back." Chu Jing showed a surprised expression: "Well, your flight is at this time, including the time on the way, it seems that this time the flight is on time."

"Yeah, this voyage is just like a textbook, almost every second is accurate. By the way, the company should have recruited a lot of people during this period, what is the current situation of the company's human resources? Just talk about the development side. "

Chu Jing nodded, thought for a while and said: "Well, the total number of developers in the company has reached 210, including 42 planners, 98 programmers, 36 artists, 24 QA, 10 music, and there are alternates. There are 50 game testers. In terms of number, there has been a great development, but there are too many newcomers, and the overall strength needs to be improved..."

The problem of personnel training cannot be solved overnight. Except for a very small number of geniuses, it needs good training and sufficient experience accumulation.In fact, the creative workshop already has corresponding arrangements. For example, for the first project of newcomers, they usually arrange some small projects with less difficulty. It all takes time, and no matter how urgent you are, you can't just pull the seedlings and encourage them to grow.In fact, Zhang Lexing also thought about whether there is a shortcut. In fact, if this problem is changed to a place with a large number of developers, such as the United States or RB, it will be easy to solve. If there is no time to cultivate, he can directly recruit people, but the shallow game foundation in mainland China is simply not enough. How many qualified game developers, even in a few years or more than ten years, Zhang Lexing will not have many to dig, and Zhang Lexing is not willing to do this kind of thing, if he does not cultivate the mainland game industry Who will support it in the future?

Chu Jing's voice came again: "...the company's biggest problem at present is its income. In the past two years, it can be said that there has been only investment but no output. So far, the gross income from game sales is only 22000 yuan. Excluding the corresponding costs, game sales are still at a loss. The most important problem to be solved at present is the source of income. If this problem is not resolved, the loss will only increase. Based on the current salary base, the annual salary and year-end bonus will cost more than 700 million , if other costs are added, it will definitely exceed 800 million. If we continue to recruit people in the future, the cost will only increase. Le Xing, I am afraid that we have to find a way, although the company still has sufficient funds , but long-term losses are not a good sign.”

"It doesn't matter. It's still the accumulation period. It's normal to lose money. When the developers grow up and more projects are opened, they will slowly turn losses into profits. Don't worry about the money issue. There are still a lot of reserve funds. "

"Le Xing, since that's the case, then I won't say much, you have to take care of it yourself, after all, this loss is all your money."

"It's okay, I can still stand it. By the way, you can show me the information of the new personnel who joined the company."

"Okay." Chu Jing got up and went to the filing cabinet next to her, took out three folders, and handed them to Zhang Lexing: "All the new employees are here, take a look."

Zhang Lexing took the folder, found an empty desk and sat down, then spread out the folder and slowly read it.There were a lot of people, and Zhang Lexing didn't have the energy to look carefully at each one of them. He searched a little bit, but didn't find one that stood out, so he gave up.After closing the folder and returning it to Chu Jing, Zhang Lexing left the administration department and was going to see what the 3D engine made by Ken Silverman and others looked like.

Ken Silverman and his group are no longer the first three guns, and many people have been added one after another. Now it is a team of 22 people. Except for five artists, the rest They are all programmers.When Zhang Lexing came to the independent office of Ken Silverman and others, most of these people were working hard to write codes, and a few of them could see from their computer screens that they seemed to be testing something, echoing in the office There are keyboard clicks and mouse clicks.

Ken Silverman sat in front of his computer, stared at the screen for a while, opened his mouth and yawned, shook the cup next to the monitor with his right hand, and looked at it again. "Empty again," he muttered, and was about to get up when a hand reached out from the side and took hold of his glass.

After letting go of his hand, Ken Silverman explained again: "Make me a cup of coffee, remember not to add sugar."

Five minutes later, a cup of coffee was delivered to Ken Silverman's table. He took a sip of the coffee, nodded and said, "Well, it tastes like this." Then he remembered that he should thank him, so he stood up He turned around to see who the colleague who was making the coffee for him was, but he couldn't help but be surprised by the one in front of him.

"Boss, you..." Ken Silverman said a little bit tongue-tied, "Could it be..."

"It's okay, just a cup of coffee." Zhang Lexing spread his hands, and then came to Ken Silverman's desk and asked, "By the way, how is the 3D engine you researched?"

An excited look flashed across Ken Silverman's face, and after hearing Zhang Lexing's question, he immediately replied: "Well, the 3D engine has already had a preliminary result, which is what we call Strictly speaking, the engine for Build is not a real 3D engine. In fact, it uses texture technology similar to "DOOM" to simulate 3D effects, but it is still a big improvement compared with "DOOM". For actions such as squatting, finer textures achieve a 360-degree look around effect, and the character is no longer restricted to the ground through the design of the flying props. When entering the water, the character can also swim..."

"Boss, look, what is running on that computer is the verification attack made using this engine." Ken Silverman pointed to the screen of another computer and said.

Zhang Lexing went over to look at it for a while, and felt very familiar. Of course, it did not mean that the game screen was familiar, but that the style of the game seemed to be very similar to a certain game he had played.In fact, the design of this verification game is very simple. To come and go is to wander around in a city. What you do is a bit similar to "Wolf3D", except that the enemy characters are replaced by wearing yellow clothes and with Rendanhu on their noses. A small man dragging a long rifle haunts every corner of the city. Enemies riding horses will appear in some open areas. There are many enemies, and the protagonist's equipment is also unambiguous. There are pistols from the same period, Rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns are available, as well as ghost-headed swords. In addition, there are slightly sci-fi individual bazookas, which are enough to blast the enemy into slag.Due to historical reasons, flying props did not appear in this verification hack, but if a password is entered, a jetpack will still appear on the protagonist.It was this jetpack that made Zhang Lexing feel very familiar, and he missed the days when he flew into the sky and chased down little alien monsters.

After watching the verification certificate for a while, Zhang Lexing felt that something was wrong: "I remember that when you applied for it, you planned to build a real 3D engine. I also gave you a lot of suggestions, why is it shrinking so much now?"

Sighing, Ken Silverman said with a sad face: "Boss, in fact, we are also working on a real 3D engine, but the progress is relatively slow. We originally planned to add polygonal models, animations and particle effects. Boss, your suggestion, we have included real-time light and shadow, skeletal animation system, model animation system, physical effects, collision detection, rendering engine, etc. into the scope of the design, but in this way, the requirements for computer configuration will rise sharply, especially Real-time light and shadow, physical effects, and rendering engine are the three most resource-consuming. As long as any one is added, the engine's operating efficiency will be greatly reduced, and the speed of one frame per second will not even be reached. In view of this, we have to make a pseudo The 3D engine comes out, so we can use it to make some games first, and the real 3D engine can also have more time to improve, but it is a pity that there is a very big gap between the best PCs now, I hope that after a while There will be faster and better PCs in time."

Zhang Lexing can understand what Ken Silverman said, let alone the current Pentium 75, even the Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 in a few years may not be able to meet the increasingly complex needs of the 3D engine. If it is not for 3D With the emergence of accelerator cards, I am afraid that the dream of PC games will stay in 2D or simple 3D without complex lighting and shadows and fine rendering for a long time. It seems that I am a bit radical in my requirements for Ken Silverman. The problems he can solve now must rely on the continuous development of computer technology.

Looking at the crude 2.5D picture on the computer screen and the 3D picture on another computer that can't even be called a "moving" cartoon, Zhang Lexing couldn't help but miss the combination of dual-core meat + GeForce8800GTX, and he was full of incomparable love for the current computer. Resentment.

(End of this chapter)