Chapter 63: Signing a Cooperation Agreement with Cheng Long

  The negotiations with Cheng Long went smoothly and happily, and Yang Yun finally persuaded him.

  Longteng Entertainment Game Company signed a series of cooperation agreements with Chenglong China Company, Chenglong became the spokesperson for Longteng learning machine and also had Longteng tailor-made a fighting game called Dragon-Fighters (Dragon-Fighters) to compete against Nintendo's Double-Dragon game.

  This Dragon Warrior game has the same old heroic rescue background, the story takes place on 13th Street in Los Angeles where the Black Gang is concentrated. Cheng Long and his brother Cheng Hu begin a bloody battle to rescue his girlfriend who was kidnapped by thugs, fighting their way into the lair of evil forces.

  With just two buttons A and B, there are really not many actions that can be performed on an 8-bit FC game console.

  In Double Dragon, when Lee is facing right, pressing A will throw a regular punch and B will kick backwards; if he's facing left, pressing A will kick backwards and B will throw a regular punch. It feels somewhat inconvenient to operate.

  The Dragon Warrior game has undergone changes, with faster left and right character control. A is a front punch, B is a front kick, and by combining the left and right directions with AB keys, you can implement the function of pointing to hit and kicking whoever you want.

  In Double Dragon, when a character jumps up, press AB keys at the same time, then press A or B at the highest point of the jump to perform a whirlwind kick. After landing, there is a crouching action, and pressing the A key during this crouching moment will result in a falling sky fist. Generally, small soldiers die with one move. Then, when hitting an enemy, if you hit a bear hug or knee drop, you can play out the special effect of a shoulder throw.

  The dragon warrior took the same design, just with slightly improved details, more reasonable.

  For example, the Whirlwind Kick in Double Dragon requires pressing A or B at the highest point of the jump to release it. This move is controlled by estimating the height and timing of the button press, which is very difficult to succeed at first, and most players practice this action by jumping up and kicking with one leg.

  While Dragon Warrior adopted the most common design of arcade games, after pressing the AB keys to jump up and then simultaneously pressing the two AB keys, you can successfully kick out a whirlwind leg without having to wait for the character to jump to the highest point.

  This emergency whirlwind kick, after hitting the enemy, will make itself lose a little blood, which is similar to the big move of the arcade character, belonging to the lifesaving and blood-selling move.

  For example, in Double Dragon, Bruce Lee can pick up various weapons such as daggers, iron chains, and carbine rifles. The enemies include sexy women, airplane-headed boys, bald-headed thugs, and red-and-green-clad miscellaneous characters.

  In the Dragon Warrior, Long Cheng will use more weapons, and also increase more small-volume activity props, such as bricks, gasoline drums, beer bottles, etc., which can be used as disposable hidden weapons to throw out and cause minor damage to enemies. As for large-scale weapons like baseball bats and giant pliers, pressing the AB key can throw the weapon in hand, causing great harm to enemies. The enemy settings are also more abundant, adding black police, racing gangs, making the plot of passing through the level more complicated.

  Finally, the most distinctive and what Yang Yun is most proud of is that during doubles, Cheng Long and Chen Yu can link up their moves to take down small bosses and BOSSes, making them basically unable to get back up.

  This is a tactic that many arcade players like to use, allowing multiple players to play together at the same time, coordinating their attacks and making the game more technically demanding, attracting players to repeatedly practice and experiment with techniques such as hitting an enemy into a stunned state, then slamming them over their shoulder, and seamlessly linking up with their partner for another round of combo attacks, leaving players with endless replay value.

  In addition, the art team optimized the scene, made a large number of basic background paintings, and the levels became more numerous and richer. The background music is more passionate and exciting. It is divided into three modes: simple, nightmare, and hell, according to the difficulty level. In theory, the game size will reach twice that of Double Dragon.

  Yang Yun left all these things to Zhang Guoqiang, who would provide the money and personally go to various universities to find people, and put up huge recruitment advertisements on the headquarters building of Longteng Company.

  The Chinese are more diligent than the Japanese, and labor costs are so cheap that it's unimaginable to the Japanese, so Longteng Company can use people to pile up and quickly pile up a high-quality game.

  ……

  ……

  In the Dragon's Den laboratory, all members of the FC scroll game project team are receiving opinions and guidance from Yang Yun.

  The Chinese version of Double Dragon, also known as Dragon Warrior, has a much more complex technical content than Salamander, which Yang Yun attaches great importance to.

  It's a pseudo-full-screen scrolling game. In addition to moving left and right, you can also enter various room copies and climb stairs up the house, but falling down will result in death.

  In programmer's terminology, once a character model exceeds the data range, it will produce data overflow and needs to reset the spawn point to revive and fight again.

  Then, due to the grand scene and numerous levels, the art designers' tasks were the most arduous. They needed to produce multiple background images and set restrictions on specific areas, such as not being able to walk through boxes or walls, and falling off cliffs would result in death.

  Third, Zhang Guoqiang needs to make control standards for the movements of Cheng Long and Cheng Hu, these two brothers, including walking, jumping, punching, kicking, hooking, whirlwind kicks, combination attacks, all these things need to have standardized program control.

  Finally, it's time to battle the enemy. The trajectory of the stealth attack is reasonable (can be dodged or blocked), and the protagonist's attack must have priority (the protagonist's control code takes precedence when in contact with NPCs). The enemy has a certain level of intelligence (there are three difficulty levels: simple, nightmare, and hell, which differ only in brain/residual degree).

  It sounds simple, but Zhang Guoqiang's head has already started to hurt. He used to work on Salamander and Gradius with Irem, now he's working on a more difficult game, Dragon Spirit, as the lead designer and developer, which makes him feel somewhat insecure.

  Zhang Guoqiang said in front of six or seven subordinates, "General Yang, your requirements are really too detailed, aren't they?"

  Yang Yun patted his shoulder and said with a smile: "Guo Qiang, someone has already thought of the details for you. Isn't that better than your careless attitude? Hurry up and get to work! If you do well, I'll give you a big red envelope. If not, I'll arrange for your team to move to the staff dormitory in the backyard..."

  Zhang Guoqiang's whole body was invigorated, and he quickly adjusted his mindset, pouring his abundant energy into the battle.

  Long Warrior, this game was decided like that, and another domestic Red Alert, Yang Yun decided to use the name Dare to Die Team, after Long Warrior started formal coding and debugging, the art group would first handle the map.

  The domestic version of Red Alert will fully adopt the story script provided by Cheng Jia Ban, which is a pioneering attempt to combine games and movies, and this is also an important reason for attracting Cheng Long and Longteng to cooperate!

  This classic full-frame game, Cheng Long suggested using Hollywood's genre film script, but he temporarily didn't have a ready-made manuscript and needed to collect relevant materials through his American friends.

  Yang Yun agreed, not rushing to take action. Of course, while waiting for Cheng Long's news, he wouldn't be idle either. Aleksey was also in the US, and KTT had some reputation in the North American gaming industry, with many friends, so maybe there would be some good leads on that side.

  Regarding the matter of shooting an advertisement with Cheng Long, Yang Yun handed it over to Fang Huimin. Next, Yang Yun brought Jiang Shaoyun to Jingcheng University.

  His initial idea was to find several experts in the history of the Three Kingdoms at the University of Beijing, and then invite these expert teams to write scripts, dialogue, set plots, correct unreasonable errors and other tasks for his Three Kingdoms game.

  But after initial contact, Yang Yun was disappointed.

  The professors and scholars of the University of the Capital all have an air of arrogance unique to men of letters. It was said that a company was going to sponsor research on the Three Kingdoms, so the professors and scholars all came out, but as soon as they met, they found that it was two young guys who hadn't even grown their hair long yet. And when they heard that the other side was in the game industry, one by one, they turned around and left without looking back.

  Making games and playing games has always been incompatible with China's mainstream society.

  Investing in letting academic experts within these universities write books on Three Kingdoms topics, they are willing to do so, and can even seek them out themselves, to provide technical support for the Three Kingdoms game. Even if Longteng offers more money, no one will pay attention.

  Moreover, it can be said that these experts are quite underestimating the game industry.

  The University of Beijing closed this door, and Yang Yun and Jiang Shaoyun could only return in dismay, helpless.

  Jiang Shaoyun's face was filled with indignation: "These pedantic old men! Each and every one of them is so self-righteous! From start to finish, they've never looked us straight in the eye!"

  Yang Yun smiled faintly and said, "The experts from the University of Beijing have a high gold content in their diplomas, a high academic status, and are older in age. Their thinking can't keep up with us young people. They don't look down on many people to begin with. Besides, our purpose is not pure. We're using the banner of spreading Three Kingdoms culture to the world, but actually, we're mainly here to make money. What Professor said isn't wrong."

  Jiang Shaoyun was shocked: "Director Yang, they treat us like this, and you still speak well of them? The chief engineer has already said it, we must vigorously develop the economy. Without our hard work to make money for the country, without our blood and sweat to earn foreign exchange for the country's contribution, where would the financial allocation come from for these old masters?"

  Yang Yun waved his hand and comforted, "Although material life is very important, people still need to have some spiritual pursuits. Everyone has their own ambitions and can't be forced. They don't want to do business, they just want to do research, so let's not disturb them. Besides, intellectuals are like this, aren't the stinky old nine who were criticized and struggled against in the past? There are many pedantic scholars in this world who are stubborn and unyielding, can you save all of them? We may be full of copper smell, but at least we have made contributions to promoting Three Kingdoms culture. Since our paths are different, let's each go our own way!"

  Jiang Shaoyun was persuaded and sighed, asking: "Then, Director Yang, where are we going next?"

  Yang Yun thought for a moment: "Not only the History Department of Jingcheng University is doing research on the Three Kingdoms, other universities should also have it, Renmin University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Minzu University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, they should all have it! If not, we can go to other cities to find them, China is so big, I don't believe we can't find experts who are willing to help us make a Three Kingdoms game!"

  Jiang Shaoyun nodded: "Right! Mr. Yang, I'll also ask around my former colleagues, our Beijing Youth Daily also attaches great importance to traditional history and culture, maybe we have some connections with experts and scholars."

  Yang Yun agreed: "Let's put it this way, we'll split up and search separately. I'll go to the Academy of Social Sciences, you ask your colleagues, and we must find a suitable person as soon as possible."