Chapter 64: ATI's Request

  Yang Hailong heard Jester say this, and also thought it was a good idea. Jester's grandfather was a patriotic overseas Chinese who had registered in the central government, and Jester himself had received attention from provincial-level leaders. Moreover, he was a young entrepreneur who had already made a name for himself in the United States. Yang Hailong really didn't have any worries about him.

  But he couldn't make decisions on this matter, so he shifted his gaze to Qin Shuyan.

  Qin Shu heard Jester say that, her thin face turned red again, then a hint of hesitation appeared on her face, and she looked up at Jester's face with a faint smile, saying in a low voice: "Then thank you."

  Jie Si drove his powerful Ford F150 pickup truck with Qin Shuyi, first returning to his grandfather's estate to bid farewell to his younger sister and ask if she would be willing to come to his company as the financial controller. After all, always letting a financial company do the accounting work for his own company didn't seem like the style of a company that wanted to become a large enterprise.

  His sister-in-law only said to let her consider it again, the business she is taking over now is very important, and after doing it successfully, it will be very useful for her to enhance her reputation in the industry, Jester can only agree.

  When his little sister found out he was going to send Qin Shuyi back to Los Angeles, and saw the pretty and polite Qin Shuyi, she immediately liked her a lot. When she saw Jester's old-fashioned F150 pickup truck, she immediately forced Jester to drive her own treasured Ferrari 365GT4/BB to take Qin Shuyi home. Originally, Jester was somewhat unwilling, because he had an inexplicable fear of supercars, always thinking that this kind of car was a moving coffin.

  His thick and heavy muscles were more impressive than his big mouth.

  But after seeing this rare silver-white Ferrari classic supercar, he was immediately attracted to its special design beauty of geometric cutting surface, especially when he saw the six thick exhaust pipes arranged in a 3+3 layout at the back of the car, it immediately made Jester's heart hot.

  He likes muscle cars because of their powerful engines and he especially loves the sound of those powerful engines roaring.

  And he just saw these six exhaust pipes, as if he heard the engine roaring, his blood was boiling.

  Ferrari 365GT4/BB is a milestone work in the world's sports car history. When Qin Shuyi, a little girl born and raised in China, saw this sports car with some weird shapes in her eyes, she couldn't help but show a curious expression on her face.

  But she still held back and didn't ask.

  "Get in," Jester said.

  Qin Shu nodded, got on the car, and Jester started the engine. Considering there was a girl in the car, Jester didn't floor it, but the acceleration of this sports car was still terrifying. It went from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under six seconds, which was absolutely top-notch for a civilian sports car in this era.

  Jester is used to driving high-horsepower muscle cars, and now he's driving this lightweight supercar, which isn't difficult to handle. From the outskirts of San Francisco, he got onto the highway that goes straight to Los Angeles, and seeing how empty the road was, he couldn't help but gradually step on the gas pedal.

  But what surprised Jester was that Qin Shuyi, who usually looked gentle and weak, and would blush when stared at for a long time, didn't seem to mind the speeding sports car at all.

  There was even a hint of excitement.

  Of course, Jester saw the scenery on both sides of the road rapidly retreating backwards, and he was rushing forward at a speed as if riding on a flash of lightning, with an expression of enjoyment on his face.

  "No wonder the later generations of car, gun and ball games can be listed as the three major plagues in the game world! Just relying on this kind of implicit and inexplicable venting pleasure is enough." Jest thought to himself while enjoying the thrill of driving this classic Ferrari.

  However, whether it was Jie or Qinxu, both of them were like a dumb melon, for the five or six hours on the road, one concentrated on driving and occasionally stole glances at the girl sitting next to him who made his heart move, while the other only knew how to look out the window at the scenery along the way. The two people only exchanged a few words that were neither here nor there, and they returned to Los Angeles like this.

  USC is now on break, but the dorms are still available for lodging. Jester dropped off Qin Shuyi near USC and stopped the car.

  It was already evening at this time, but it wasn't too late yet, and there were still quite a few pedestrians.

  After saying goodbye to each other, Qin Shuyan also had to prepare to leave.

  Jester wanted to say something, but every time he opened his mouth, he forgot what he was going to say.

  This time, seeing Qin Shuyi's lovely figure pushing the door out of the car and stepping out with a happy pace, Jester finally gathered his courage, also pushed open the car door, got off, and called out to Qin Shuyi who was about to leave.

  Qin Shu Yi turned around with some surprise and looked at Jester, her eyes filled with doubt.

  Jester seemed to lose the courage he had mustered up when he saw Qin Shu's delicate face, and only managed to stammer out a few words with an awkward smile.

  "Can we be... friends?"

  Qin Shu Wei's face turned slightly red after hearing Jester's words, but she recovered in an instant.

  "Are we not friends now?" Qin Shu Yan asked with a smile on her face.

  "Maybe, perhaps, yeah." The smile on Jester's face returned to normal, he thought of saying another friend, but ultimately didn't say it out loud.

  "That's it!" Qin Shuyi heard Jester's answer and laughed happily. She waved her hand, "Then I'll be off."

  "Well then, let's start with friends." Jest thought as he waved his hand.

  It wasn't until Qin Shuyan's figure disappeared into the night-colored USC campus that Jester returned to the car, where he slammed his fist on the steering wheel in frustration, suddenly hating himself for being so incompetent in this aspect.

  This is nothing like myself at all! Where has the demeanor of chatting and laughing with legendary figures like Arakawa Ryo, Li Jianxi, and Nakayama Hayao gone?!

  He scolded himself while sitting quietly in the car for a few minutes before Jester started the engine and sped away.

  Jester always goes to the company first when he returns from a trip, rather than going home directly, because there must be a lot of work accumulated during his absence that needs his attention.

  When Jester arrived at Mars Entertainment, he saw Mark Sennet's room was still lit.

  "It's really desperate." Jester also admired Mark Senni very much. Since his R&D team was established, he had been working overtime almost every day. Fortunately, he was a bachelor like himself, otherwise his girlfriend might have come to make a big scene at the Firestone Entertainment headquarters.

  Jester entered the company and didn't go to his own office, but directly came to Mark Senny's room.

  The first glance after pushing open the door revealed a strange and eerie scene.

  A computer motherboard was disassembled, and the wires were separately connected to a square-shaped object that resembled a VHS tape. Mark Sennett leaned back in his chair, furrowing his brow, his eyes somewhat lifeless as he stared at the flickering fluorescent computer screen.

  "What are you doing?" Jester walked closer with some curiosity and found that this time Mark Senny was not studying his "Avengers", but seemed to be writing a program.

  "Are you back?" Mark Senny also saw Jester come in, he stretched his waist a bit lazily, and a tired expression appeared on his face.

  "What's wrong with you? Why are your eyes so red?" Jester took a glance at Mark Senni and found that his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn't slept for several days and nights. Moreover, on his desk were five or six pizza boxes from the takeout place the company often called, and empty Coke cans filled the trash can on one side of the table.

  "Haven't slept for two days."

  Mark Sweeney yawned and pointed to the thing that Jester had just seen when he came in, which made him feel a bit strange. "You know that company ATI that you have a stake in, they specialize in developing display chips. They sent over some samples of their graphics processing chip for our home console two days ago. Our hardware department tested it and the results were very good. It seems to use some kind of unique architecture. Then their R&D director told me that they've developed a special graphics card for IBM/PC compatible machines, which is exactly what we need for our 8-bit PPU. And guess what? The sample they sent over just happens to be this new architecture."

  As he spoke, Mark Seni pointed to the Jest and said, "This graphics card has excellent image processing capabilities. They want the company to focus on this product, but..."

  Mark Sani said that, Jester suddenly understood, he didn't wait for Mark Sani to finish speaking, and laughed to interrupt him, saying: "However, after they went around to promote it, they found that not many computer companies were interested in their graphics card?"

  "Yes." Mark Senn looked at Jester with some surprise, then a puzzled expression appeared on his face, and he asked, "How did you know? Have they been in touch with you?"

  "Hehe."

  Jester smiled and said straightforwardly, "This is not the case. I just heard you say it, but this thing only needs to be thought about and it will be known. Mark, you need to know that the market only has a market when it needs a product. When the market doesn't need this product, no matter how advanced it is, it won't have a market."

  As he spoke, Jester walked over to the graphics card that ATI had just developed and pointed at it, saying, "Although I don't know how well it performs, I think its image processing capabilities are definitely better than those of other personal computers on the market. But then again, today's personal computers seem to not need a 16-bit graphics card at all, because there aren't any programs that require a 16-bit graphics card to run, right?"

  Mark Sen listened to Jester's words, clapped his hands and said with some admiration: "I didn't expect you to say the same thing as that ATI CEO He. Originally, I thought a product with technical advantages would definitely be favored by the market. Who would have thought it wasn't like that? However, that CEO He also only understood this after failing to sell his products. How did you...”

  "Let's not talk about this for now."

  Jester waved his hand, he understood this naturally because he knew the marketing model of those graphics card merchants in later generations.

  In the future, software vendors and hardware vendors will collude with each other. Hardware vendors will release increasingly powerful hardware, while software vendors will release games that require even more powerful hardware to run. These two industries are in cahoots, which is why the two major graphics card manufacturers can be so valuable. Otherwise, who would need such a powerful graphics card except for those professional graphic designers? Do writers who only use WORD to type need it?

  Not necessarily needed.

  "You'd better answer my first question instead, what is this?" Jester retorted to Mark Senny.

  Juster's words made Mark Senni excited.

  "The CEO of ATI came to us for help, hoping we could create a game that was as influential as our previous ones, but required extremely high graphics processing power to run, so that computer users would be forced to order the 16-bit graphics cards that hardware manufacturers had just developed. Then I thought, why not port the scrolling effect from arcade machines to personal computers? You know, since Eugene Jarvis did it on arcade machines in '81, no one has been able to do it on a PC!"

  As he spoke, Mark Sweeney's initially excited tone gradually became subdued. "But I've tried various methods over the past two days, and the motherboard of an arcade machine is different from that of a computer. Some techniques that work on an arcade machine are difficult to implement on a personal computer, and even if you force it, it will be very unsmooth."

  As he spoke, Mark Sennett beckoned Jester over to his computer screen and ran a program.

  It is a program that simulates the effect of a scroll.

  But Jester couldn't help but feel a sense of disgust at this scroll effect on his personal computer.

  How to put it, this scroll effect is just a little stronger than slides.

  Can you imagine a slide-like scroll effect?

  PS2: If someone wants to play this game, I recommend playing the Wanxiang Senluo version, which adds many MODs and is indeed more playable than the original version.