Chapter 005: Determined to be a Pirate

  They put down their game controllers and sat down, their expressions serious.

  "Technically, a lot of data structures are used in the stack to simulate the snake's movement route. This game shouldn't be difficult technically," said Alexei.

  Zhao Yongping nodded and looked at Yang Yun: "But the game interface is too simple."

  Yang Yun's chest had a sense of accomplishment: "This is just my first experimental work. If Gluttonous Snake was that simple, how could it...". Suddenly startled, he realized he had almost said too much, nearly uttering the words that were popular all over the world.

  The Snake game was initially mediocre on PC, but it was Nokia phones that made it popular. People all over the world who bought Nokia phones would play it while waiting for a bus, when they couldn't sleep, when they were on the toilet, or when they were bored out of their minds. Later on, 2D and 3D versions, speed versions, maze versions, and puzzle versions emerged, greatly expanding the gameplay, which is why it became a global phenomenon.

  Yang Yun cleared his throat and handed over a stack of paper, each page with simple hand-drawn diagrams.

  There are square cages, four grids divided by two walls, irregular baffles, and accelerated modes. This small stack of paper is just eight pictures, corresponding to the eight game levels of Greedy Snake.

  The two of them exchanged a glance and immediately burst into joy. This way, the playability of the game has been greatly enhanced!

  These days, it's not the technology that's lacking, but the creativity!

  In the first generation of Snake games, they were all black dots, even if the map was complex and the gameplay varied, looking like many different types, but in reality, technically speaking, it's just a change of soup without changing the medicine!

  The stack theory in data structures can handle it perfectly.

  The forward trajectory of the greedy snake is the node coordinates at the top of the stack plus 1, and all node coordinates in the stack are also added by 1. Then re-display all nodes in the stack, which looks like the snake's body moves one step further compared to the previous second.

  Eating points is also the same principle, just increasing the number of stack nodes by one.

  The change in speed is just a change in the time it takes for the stack to reset.

  If it hits a wall or eats its own body, the game ends because there are two nodes in the stack with exactly the same coordinates, and the greedy snake dies. The game restarts.

  This little game, in the 21st century, any university student majoring in computer science who has learned some programming languages can basically program it.

  So, in this day and age, creativity is the most valuable thing!

  Zhao Yongping asked: "Xiao Yang, how long will it take to compile these eight games?"

  Yang Yun looked at Alexei, who immediately indicated no problem and full cooperation. He smiled and replied: "Two days, mainly the method of burning into cassette tapes needs to be debugged."

  These are all low-tech tasks that don't require art, only programming and debugging. About 2,000 lines of code will do, and most of the code for the eight games is shared.

  Zhao Yongping was overjoyed: "That's great! Time is money, efficiency is life! You hurry up and do a good job, then start selling!"

  Time is money, this classic saying was quantified by the general engineer in 1984, so that after the general engineer's southern tour, a wave of economic supremacy swept the country, even Zhao Yongping, a postgraduate student at Renmin University, couldn't escape the trend, and became the director of a small factory on the verge of bankruptcy, thinking about making money day and night, finding a way out, he almost turned white-haired overnight.

  Yang Yunle smiled and said: "Director Zhao, let's think about it carefully and see how we can sell it."

  Yang Yun said this sale is of course selling cassette tapes!

  Zhao Yongping didn't have many good ideas either. Although he still had a bit of an intellectual's pride, the pressure of reality was too great and he finally gave in.

  Huamao Electronics Factory is now in a state of disarray, with only one FC development platform that can only be used for research or secretly producing pirated cartridges, and due to the lack of experience in developing FC consoles and controllers, it's unrealistic for them to produce a complete machine.

  The most crucial thing is that Huamo Electronics Factory's sales channel is almost zero, with only fun games and technology in hand but no way to sell them out, this is a starting-from-scratch situation.

  So after discussion, despite Aleksey's opposition, Zhao Yongping and Yang Yungang started doing pirated copying and OEM work for others!

  First contact the Renshan City Huajiang Electronics Factory that originally sold this platform to them and secretly buy back 1,000 learning card sets.

  The origin of these cards, Huajian Electronics Factory did not explicitly state, the card tore off the trademark information, no trace was left, it should be a thorough black card, and required cash on delivery, no credit, no return, no guarantee.

  These tyrannical terms, Zhao Yongping gritted his teeth and accepted. No choice, Huamao Electronics Factory now only has one game technology that can be taken out, other rigid conditions are subject to others, and they have to swallow their anger.

  These learning cards were brought back, and Alexei and Yang Yun quickly entered a state of work, wanting to crack the motherboard settings barrier, and also implant the Greedy Snake game. The difficulty of reverse assembly was not small, but fortunately there was Alexei, this Soviet expert.

  Under Yang Yun's suggestion, Zhao Yongping was determined to rush the process. To save time, he invited a master from an underground card factory in Shenzhen to guide the decoding and burning work at his own factory. They worked continuously for several days, costing him 3,000 yuan, which made him feel heartbroken!

  But Zhao Yongping's tenacious and decisive character is precisely the important reason why he will be invincible in the business world in the future!

  Three days later, Yang Yun and Alexei took 1000 cards for secondary processing, perfectly embedding the eight 32K mini-games of Greedy Snake into the learning card, and then pasted the hottest Cort learning card logo at that time. It must be a counterfeit product.

  Why use learning cards instead of dedicated game cards?

  This is related to China's national conditions at that time.

  In 1984, in Shanghai, the chief engineer visited the Ten Years of Scientific and Technological Achievements Exhibition at the Shanghai Exhibition Hall. Watching a 13-year-old child demonstrating various programs on a computer, he patted the child's tender shoulder and sighed, saying: "The popularization of computers must start with children."

  Next, almost all home computer manufacturers FC flew the banner of learning machines, successfully attracting countless parents who wanted their children to become dragons, as long as the parents' economic strength could keep up, they rushed to introduce this new type of household appliance into their homes.

  If it were a game console, try to see if it could sell so well?

  Yang Yun's childhood was spent like this, the neighbors bought a learning machine, whether it was a Little Overlord or a Golden Pyramid, anyway, the learning cards that came with it had some Basic programs, Wubi fonts, LOGO language, and looked very high-end, able to help children learn computer knowledge.

  In addition to the rising trend of comparison, and the crying of children, parents are also afraid that their own children will fall behind their peers, so they gritted their teeth and spent a month's salary to buy a set.

  As a result, parents are not always at home. Then Yang Yun and his little friends would swap game cartridges with each other, playing happily until they forgot that their parents were coming home from work, and got beaten up many times.

  "What's so fun about this?"

  They don't understand what kids like. In fact, children are naturally curious, love to explore and play games. Let them learn Basic language, which is far more reluctant than playing games.

  Moreover, the simple greedy snake game is suitable for both old and young, compared to those purely children's games like "Squirrel War", "Adventure Island" and "Digging Ice Blocks", it is more acceptable to parents.

  1,000 boxes of cassette tapes were loaded onto a Jeep by Zhao Yongping, and Yang Yun followed him to get on. Together they headed to Shenzhen, where they would meet up with former sales staff from the Huamao Electronics Factory to sell these highly anticipated tapes.

  Victory or defeat hangs in the balance!