Chapter 66: Carefree Game

  Seeing the change in the expressions of the three people, Jester also knew that they understood what he meant by his previous words.

  However, Jiest still intends to finish explaining the entire Karmarkar algorithm idea.

  He continued speaking without stopping.

  "Suppose there's a blue sky with white clouds as the background on this screen." Jester said, pointing to the personal computer beside him.

  The eyes of the three also followed Jester's finger as it moved over.

  "The character controlled by the player runs towards the right edge of the screen. If it runs far enough, those clouds will be gradually left behind until they disappear from the screen. Although only a white cloud changes, most of the blue area remains unchanged. However, the computer doesn't know these details. It doesn't know that there is actually a faster way to do this. It can only clumsily redraw each pixel that makes up the blue sky, starting from the top left corner of the screen, one pixel at a time, row by row, until the entire screen is completed."

  "Speaking of which, Jester burst out laughing,"To be honest, this method is indeed a bit stupid."

  Mark Sennett and the other two main programmers, especially the other two from The King, were a bit embarrassed by Jester's teasing, as they did exactly that in Avengers, although they handled it a bit more cleverly than Jester said, but essentially the same.

  Jester didn't think much of it, he withdrew his smile and continued to say: "Can we write a piece of code that is used to deceive the computer - let it think that for example the seventh block of graphics on the left is actually the first block on the screen. In this way, we can make the computer start drawing images at the place we specify, and the computer can directly draw white clouds without having to fill in the blue sky pixel by pixel."

  Upon hearing this, Mark and Sen also nodded involuntarily. With their professionalism in programming, they too had heard the feasibility of the method Jest spoke of.

  But Laris seemed to have thought of something, he furrowed his brow, thought seriously about the method Jest said for a while, and then he said uncertainly.

  "Boss, if that's the case, it's also very likely to make players feel not smooth enough when moving." He said with a hint of embarrassment on his face, "Actually, we're currently working on 'Avengers' and have similar difficulties. When the images to be rendered are too complex, there will be a momentary feeling of not-so-smooth lag, although it's very brief, but if you pay close attention, you can still feel it."

  Mark Sennett and Brian also nodded, the situation Larris said was indeed there, and it was what they had just encountered recently, but hadn't thought of a good solution yet.

  "Hehe."

  After listening, Jester still just smiled indifferently. When Carmack was finishing the Carmack scroll, he also encountered this situation, but Carmack solved it in a very clever way, and Jester happened to know this method too.

  So, Jester smiled and simply explained to Mark Sennett and the others: "Actually, it's easy to handle. I thought about this possibility last night too. We can pre-render part of the sky in video memory beforehand, which is actually outside the screen. So when it first enters the screen, it doesn't need to be re-rendered, but rather directly mapped from video memory. This gives the CPU enough time for subsequent rendering, and the sluggish feeling won't exist anymore. The background scrolling animation will also look very smooth."

  "I call it tile autorefresh." Jest looked at the three of them with their mouths agape and added with a smile, which was also what Carmack had named this technique at the time.

  Mark Sennett was immediately plunged into an uncontrollable shock, he had previously thought that Jester had extraordinary talent in game design, always able to come up with some unexpected and highly playable ideas, but what he didn't expect was that Jester also had such a gift for programming.

  The three of them racked their brains but couldn't think of a way to achieve the scroll effect on personal computers, and were about to give up completely when he suddenly came up with it in just half a night?

  This made Mark Seni involuntarily think of the story about Gauss solving the problem that had puzzled mathematicians all over the world for 1,700 years on how to construct a regular heptadecagon with ruler and compass one night. The image of Jest in his eyes seemed to merge into one with the portrait of Gauss he had seen in his textbook.

  I haven't seen him show any talent in programming before.

  This is also what makes Mark Senis puzzled, but he can only comfort himself like this. In this world, there really exists a kind of genius who can easily complete what others say is impossible.

  Jester looked at the three talented programmers with a mixture of admiration and embarrassment in his eyes, as he was simply reciting from memory the process of how Karmark had developed this scroll algorithm, which wasn't even his own creation. There was nothing to be proud of, and Jester didn't want to take all the credit for himself either. So he turned to Mark Senni and the other two and said:

  "You can write a program to simulate whether this algorithm can perfectly scroll the roller, and if so, send a letter back to ATI saying that we will develop a computer game specifically for their 16-bit graphics card."

  After the three of them left, Jester suddenly discovered a place he had been ignoring while thinking about Karmak's data.

  He has yet to establish a dedicated gaming media outlet to date.

  He also thought of Kama K that he suddenly realized when he was in a game magazine, Jest from the future naturally knows how important a specialized gaming media is for a game.

  The most representative one is Japan's magazine called "Famitsu".

  Any game that has been given a high evaluation by Famitsu is rarely not extremely popular, although over time, especially after giving Perfect Score to "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time", the authority of Famitsu has been questioned to some extent. However, players who have already developed the habit still tend to believe in Famitsu's scores.

  "If we really want to create a game magazine company, what should we pay attention to?" Jester rubbed his chin with one hand and furrowed his brow in thought.

  He pulled out a sheet of manuscript paper from a large stack on one side and spread it on the table, then began to write down his own notes.

  First of all, we can't let this magazine company get linked with the game company.

  No gamer would trust a magazine wholly owned by a game company to review various games fairly, as everyone despises the act of being both an athlete and a referee at the same time.

  It's also best not to have any contact with myself, after all, my own reputation is too loud, at least on the surface I can't have any connection with myself, it doesn't matter if people in the gaming industry know about it, what matters is that it can't be known by the vast readers of the future.

  This is also easy to solve, just set up a company and then establish the magazine in the name of this company. As for personnel selection, it's also easy to solve by finding a headhunting company, as long as you have enough money, these are not problems.

  Moreover, although there are many game magazines now, most of them are about computer games and the scale is not large. The sales volume is at most 10,000 copies per issue, which is already very impressive.

  However, Jiest knew that with the resurgence of electronic games in the future, the sales of popular professional game magazines would reach millions of copies, influencing at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of players.

  However, doing a good job on such a game magazine is not easy. The most important thing is that in the initial stage, it must be objective and fair, so that players can believe that your evaluation or review is professional, and cannot have a player who has played a game and feels very ordinary, but the editor of the magazine praises this game in the magazine.

  This will basically make this player think that the level of this game magazine is really poor, and then abandon this magazine.

  Especially when establishing a reputation, after the reputation is established, sales increase, influence expands, and the reader group stabilizes, and many readers are also willing to believe in this magazine, then there will be many places to operate.

  No more than the Spring and Autumn Annals' writing style, with one word of praise or blame.

  In the future, those game media, even the self-proclaimed high-end "Famitsu" can't avoid this trend, let alone IGN which has long been known for speaking with money.

  But this kind of thing can't be done too much, like the behavior of domestic media closing their eyes and scoring is absolutely not allowed. Originally, a game that scored 8 points, if you score 8.5 points, readers won't blame you, and they all think it's acceptable. But if you give 9.5 points, don't blame readers for abandoning you.

  Jest is definitely not going to create a truly objective magazine, the purpose of this magazine he's preparing is to lead public opinion. He deeply knows that in the future, the evaluation of a game will not be decided by which player has the final say, generally speaking, when players are at odds with each other, they will go find some authoritative media ratings.

  Famitsu, GS, or IGN.

  If it's a high score, they will naturally have the idea of buying one to play with, but if it's a low score, many people will also give up on this idea.

  Of course, the most important thing is that your game must be of high quality, otherwise it will be like trying to prop up a weak leader, no matter how hard you try to promote it, it won't have any effect.

  As for the sales channel, Jester is not worried at all. The sales channel left by Clement Paper Card Company can be used completely, and this can also solve a decision that he has been hesitant about.

  What about the Chinese workers in the printing factory under Clement's company?

  For those white and black guys, Jest can do whatever he wants without caring, but for Chinese people, it's not possible. After all, his foundation in the US is these Chinese people, and on a moral level, it's also hard for him to accept treating these Chinese employees with indifference.

  He is not a pure capitalist after all, and he can't be cold-blooded and ruthless.

  They plan to move the card printing business back home, but so many Chinese employees cannot accept the low wages at home. However, this transformation of printing magazines can solve this problem.

  After all, the magazine itself can't be printed on the mainland and then transported to the United States for sale.

  So printing in America was inevitable.

  Next is the last question, how to let players buy such a game magazine that has never been heard of from the beginning?

  Jester furrowed his brow in thought, and after a few minutes, his brow relaxed, revealing a slightly more relaxed expression on his face. He indeed had some ideas about it.

  Then he picked up his pen and wrote down on paper the name of this game magazine he was going to create, a very simple word.

  《game》。