Chapter 258: Minecraft Pocket Edition
Zou Zhuo was done after the first match.
“Hold on a second manager. I just realised that I wanted to look at the holographic projections. I never got the chance to look at it since I was so occupied with the game!”
Chen Mo laughed, “That’s true, anybody else wants to play Warcraft? Just head into the other room and give Zou Zhuo a chance to look at the projections.”
Two excited volunteers offered themselves and entered the soundproof rooms.
Another game started and Zou Zhuo was utterly shocked upon seeing the holographic projection.
“This is amazing!
“I can see each and every detail of the entire map! All the micromanagements can be seen so easily.
“And all the characters and terrain are 3D, so it looks much better than on PC.
“Wouldn’t this look amazing if it was 2v2?
“But there’s a problem, if it was an eight person map, it would look too good right? Heroes might do alright, but the minions would look tiny.”
Chen Mo nodded, “Yeah, this projector setup works best for smaller 1v1 maps. Moreover, this isn’t just for Warcraft, it has other uses as well.”
Zou Zhuo was shocked, “Huh? What else?”
Chen Mo had a mysterious smile on his face, “For the new game of course.”
—
The theory behind holographic projects were quite simple. In this world, although holographic projections were expensive, they did a really good job.
Holographic projections work well with many different types of games as long as the game was fully 3D (3D models and scenes), then the holographic projector will do a good job of showing the bird’s eye view of the game.
There were two different ways of displaying the game. First was a tracking mode, meaning tracking a player’s perspective or certain units. Games such as Diablo would be more suited to a tracking mode.
But a game like Warcraft didn’t suit tracking mode because of how much micromanagement there was. A lot of aspects of micromanagement would be missed if they chose to follow a hero, and if they followed the player’s perspective, it would result in a terrible viewing experience because of how quickly the player’s screen would change.
The other was a fixed mode, meaning fixed on a certain area or perspective. Warcraft would be better suited for fixed mode.
Of course, a problem arises if the map was too big, such as Warcraft’s eight people maps. With a fixed perspective, smaller units such as Peasants will be too small to view comfortably.
But a lot of Warcraft was about 1v1 on smaller maps, so this wasn’t a big problem. Moreover, Chen Mo didn’t buy this holographic projection setup just for Warcraft, he also considered a use case for the new game.
Moreover, there was a huge LED screen in the holographic projection area, similar to ones used in concerts. The viewing experience of a huge LED screen combined with the holographic projectors would most certainly be great.
—
The experience with the holographic projector was overwhelmingly positive. Chen Mo also hinted at a new game, but no matter how much Zou Zhuo pushed for an answer, Chen Mo kept his mouth sealed.
Back at the fourth floor, Chen Mo got the other main creative staff and finalised their development plans.
There were many things that had to be returned to order after the move to a new experience store, and many hadn’t yet stabilized from the move, so Chen Mo didn’t plan to start on another large work immediately.
Because of the one-two punch of Diablo and Minecraft, everyone was quite tired because of how close together the timing was and needed some rest. This was why Chen Mo wanted to work on a few smaller games to pick at their brains.
The final design plan is as follows.
Finish up the move to the new experience store before the end of September and release PC, mobile and international version of Minecraft. These were relatively easy jobs just to keep the staff stimulated.
They will release one smaller, high quality game at the end of October and November. It served as warmup and to fill up some s.p.a.ce on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.
They will start working on the next big game from December onwards.
-In the office.-
Qian Kun handed a tablet to Chen Mo.
“Manager, the mobile version of Minecraft is more or less done, please take a look. The controls are still kind of weird.”
Chen Mo grabbed the tablet and played for a few minutes.
“Yeah, that’s about right, we can consider releasing it now,” said Chen Mo, “The controls are more or less done at this stage. Because of the platform itself, it will never be the same as PC or VR versions.
Qian Kun nodded, “Alright, I’ll arrange that.”
After a month or so of development, the mobile version of Minecraft was finally released.
This timeframe was just as Chen Mo expected.
In fact, the development of Minecraft’s PC and mobile versions were quite painless as the PC version was developed before the VR version, so compared to the PC version, the mobile version was relatively easy.
The reason it took so long was due to some minute details in the gameplay.
Chen Mo had made huge changes to the VR version and had much more content than the original Minecraft. Online mode, ‘Chen Mo’s World’, skill trees… supported Minecraft’s explosive growth.
And selling buildings became an important source of income from the game too.
Many players were giving it their all to figure out building techniques, creating various buildings or moving mechanisms just to earn some cash in game.
PC was alright compared to mobile. Because of various restrictions of mobile, it couldn’t communicate seamlessly with the VR version.
In multiplayer mode, there often would be many people connected to the same server. Setting aside the huge resource requirement as well as a good internet connection, graphics itself was a huge problem. With twenty to thirty people in a small area, the mobile version had no chance because of how small the screen of a phone is.
The buildings Chen Mo built also had extraordinarily high resource requirements, so it’s unlikely that mobile phones could support them.
There was also a problem of the controls. The controls of Minecraft on the mobile version were quite terrible, creating an awful fighting experience. However, despite this problem also affecting the original version, it didn’t affect its explosive popularity.
Therefore Chen Mo decided to have identical versions for PC and VR while excluding a portion of the functions on mobile, serving as Minecraft: Pocket Edition.