Chapter 1254: Inspect Ghost General 2’s Design
October 12th, Friday…
Little Sun had sent Eric to the high-speed rail station according to Pei Qian’s arrangements early in the morning.
Pei Qian was not sure if he could really poach Eric over. This matter might be very smooth, but there might be some changes.
The atmosphere when they ate was not bad but Eric might be just being polite.
After all, he had been working in Dayak Corporation for so long. All sorts of relations.h.i.+ps, business acc.u.mulation, and so on were very precious. Joining Tengda meant that the prospects were more unstable. Anyone would be cautious.
However, no matter what, Pei Qian’s att.i.tude had been shown. Whether Eric returned or not would depend on fate.
Pei Qian had long wanted to reorganize GOG’s employees and get rid of Min Jingchao, but there was no need to rush things. It would not be a problem to wait for a month or half.
Thus, he decided to wait patiently.
After breakfast, Pei Qian decided to make a trip to Tengda Games.
He was worried about Yu Fei.
He was worried that he would suddenly come up with some strange ideas and make the game popular. At the same time, he was worried that his progress would be too slow and that the game would not be able to be completed.
Pei Qian could not help much but he could only relax after taking a look.
When he arrived at Tengda Games, he could see everyone’s state from afar.
Min Jingchao was still doing his job as usual.
On the other hand, Bao Xu was playing games happily. Obviously, he remembered Pei Qian’s instructions and did not do everything step by step. Instead, he was only in charge of the checkpoints and left most of the design work to Yu Fei.
Then, he looked at Yu Fei. He was staring at his computer screen with a serious expression. His hands were quickly tapping on the keyboard as he wrote the design concept draft.
Sometimes, he would stop, frown, and think hard for a while. Then, he would delete some content in large paragraphs and write again.
“Eh? It looks good. It’s developing according to the script I expected.”
Pei Qian was quite satisfied.
Bao Xu did not interfere much. Yu Fei was the one who took the initiative to design. What’s more, he seemed to have made some bad designs during the design process which he deleted.
At that moment, some employees saw Pei Qian and quickly greeted him. “Boss Pei!”
Yu Fei, who had been unaware, heard it as well. He turned around and saw Boss Pei. He quickly stood up.
“Sit, continue with your work. I’m just here to take a look at the progress.” Pei Qian smiled and sat down.
Yu Fei felt quite warm.
Obviously, Boss Pei was worried that he would not be able to understand the design intentions well. Thus, he came to see the progress and ensure that this project would be completed flawlessly.
“How’s the concept of the new game? Tell me briefly.” Pei Qian smiled and said.
Yu Fei quickly pulled the design plan’s doc.u.ment to the front and explained, “Brother Bao briefly explained some professional knowledge of combat games to me, making me deeply recognize my previous mistakes.”
“I have to keep the essence of the combat game to meet your needs, Boss Pei. Therefore, we have more or less decided on some red lines that cannot be touched.”
“As for the other parts, I currently have some fragmented and incomplete ideas. At the moment, I’m working hard to string them together.”
“However, the overall progress is still quite optimistic. I think we should be able to come up with a large framework by tomorrow at the latest. Then, we can hand it to other designers to write the design ma.n.u.script for each module under this framework. We can start developing it after another week.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem for the working period.”
Pei Qian nodded, satisfied.
Alright, it was still completely within his expectations!
Pei Qian was most worried about two things. First, Yu Fei was letting himself loose and accidentally caused the game to succeed. Second, the progress was too slow and the game could not be developed. That would affect settlement.
Yu Fei’s progress was still relatively fast. He should not worry about the development cycle.
Yu Fei kept the essence of the combat game strictly and completed more than half of the first requirement.
After that, Yu Fei began to talk about these ‘red lines that cannot be touched’. He mainly kept the basic gameplay of combat games.
To put it bluntly, it was the set of traditional combat games. The upper and lower stages of the attack, defense, killing moves, and so on were basically retained and strived to be original.
Pei Qian nodded his head at the criticisms.
Yes, yes, yes. That’s exactly what I want!
He was still worried if Yu Fei would really make Ghost General 2 into an action game with a third-person perspective. Wouldn’t that make money like Eternal Reincarnation?
Now, it seemed like he had been overthinking. As long as Yu Fei obediently followed the foundation of a combat game and made this game, it would definitely be a niche game. It would not have much sales.
After all, the threshold and fun of fighting games naturally dissuaded many ordinary players.
“Very good, what about the other parts?” Pei Qian felt that there was no problem with the content in this area and could pa.s.s.
Yu Fei’s confidence could not help but increase after hearing Boss Pei’s approval.
Indeed, Brother Bao’s a.n.a.lysis was right!
Since Boss Pei had agreed, it meant that he was on the right path.
Yu Fei continued, “The rest of the content is mainly designed based on Boss Pei’s previous requirements.”
“First of all, the perspective. Boss Pei, you previously said that small soldiers have to come from all directions. Therefore, I took Brother Bao’s suggestion and used some combat games to process it. I changed the direction key on the double-click and the bottom direction key to flash in and out of the screen. That gave players an additional dimension.”
“After adjusting my perspective, I can naturally hit other small soldiers.”
“On top of that, I’m also considering changing all of the character’s attacks to fan-shaped AOE attacks to add attacking range to the skills on the surface.”
“While dodging and sprinting, the hero would move inside and outside the screen. At the same time, he would release fan-shaped attacking skills. That way, he would be able to hit the soldier on the side.”
Yu Fei’s description confused Pei Qian.
He seemed to have heard of such a flash setting in some combat games.
The intention to dodge was actually to move quickly left or right, so that he could avoid the opponent’s attack. At the same time, the connection between the two characters would be angled.
In traditional combat games, the two characters’ lines were cut vertically, and the cut was the scene seen by players in combat games.
On the other hand, the characters on the left moved into the screen, causing the segment to rotate clockwise. Even though players saw that the relative positions of the two characters on the screen did not change, the positions in the scene had changed.
In other words, the characters were actually moving in a fan shape.
That would solve the 3D movement problem and he would be able to fight small soldiers in all directions.
In that case, would such changes be dangerous? Would it lead to profits?
After some thought, Pei Qian decided that there shouldn’t be much harm.
That was because other games had indeed done so. There was a sideways dodge setting, but it had not become the mainstream setting of combat games. That was enough to show that it was not that important.
Yu Fei continued, “Then, there are two ideas that I raised in the meeting previously. One is to increase the PVE gameplay, consider adding a large number of small soldiers in the battle, expand the battle scene, and strengthen the Boss’ attributes. The other is to introduce a simplified operation mechanism.”
“This is actually very easy to understand. It is to arrange a large number of stages for players to control the generals to go through. During the process of clearing the stages, they will encounter enemy generals whose attributes have been enhanced. The difficulty of the stages will continue to increase through adding attributes.”
“It’s similar to the design of ordinary action games.”
Pei Qian nodded. These two were indeed suggested by Yu Fei.
Pei Qian agreed with these two points very much because such a design was incompatible with combat games to begin with.
Many combat games had PVE gameplay but it was often used as a guide for the plot process. It was not much more fun than combat games.
What’s more, the PVE gameplay of these combat games was nothing more than computer AI controlling characters to fight players. There were no small soldiers, the Boss’ stats and body size would not change ordinarily, let alone the settings of the stages.
At the end of the day, it was because gamers of combat games did not care about this.
That was why Pei Qian had requested for Ghost General 2 to have such content. He wanted to spend more effort and money on these unimportant areas so that they would not be perfect.
Pei Qian nodded and gestured for Yu Fei to continue.