Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 445 - 428 Demo

Chapter 445: Chapter 428 Demo

Time passed quickly, and a month had gone by.

December 24th, Magic Capital, Chuangda Technology.

Wei Chengjie sat at his new workstation, receiving several documents from Capital City.

"Okay, all received!

"I must say, the efficiency is really high."

Wei Chengjie couldn’t help but comment and casually asked, "So, how does it feel to be the new producer?"

Su Tong on the other side replied briefly, "Not very good, I’m going to get busy again."

With that, there was silence from the other side.

Wei Chengjie couldn’t help but chuckle silently, wondering when he had begun to adapt more and more to the somewhat nonsensical work pattern of Nitiandang.

Last month, after finalizing the development plan for "Blood of Lies," Wei Chengjie and Zhou Yang both started their respective tasks.

They traveled separately to Magic Capital and Sheep City to look for competent local outsourcing studios, planning to profoundly revamp these studios and integrate them into the Nitiandang 3.0 model.

Of course, during this process, both of them brought some loyal and trusted members from Nitiandang, mainly developers, along with a small number of designers, artists, and testers, to ensure that the big framework could be built as quickly as possible.

As Wei Chengjie had been an employee of Shengjing Group for some time, and Shengjing Group was based in Magic Capital, he was more familiar with the industry environment there and had certain connections, so he naturally took charge of the work in Magic Capital.

Zhou Yang had a harder task, making his way to Sheep City. Although it was his first visit, he was full of enthusiasm precisely because it was a new challenge for him.

After arriving in Magic Capital, Wei Chengjie quickly surveyed several of the more capable local outsourcing companies.

Of course, his options weren’t plentiful.

Most outsourcing companies in the market were mainly focused on art outsourcing, with not many involved in program outsourcing.

Most companies prefer to keep something like programming firmly in their own hands for peace of mind. Otherwise, there’s the trouble of the other party possibly leaving a pitfall, or refusing to maintain and update after receiving the final payment.

However, this also indicates that the program outsourcing companies that have survived in such an environment do indeed possess some skills.

Chuangda Technology, the company Wei Chengjie ultimately chose, was one such skilled company.

Chuangda Technology was not the strongest, but it was one that could be swayed with money.

Although some companies with stronger technology outright refused Wei Chengjie’s proposals, they were thriving well enough on their own, heavily booked with projects and unwilling to play lapdog to Nitiandang, even for extra money.

As for Chuangda Technology, they were swayed under Wei Chengjie’s financial offensive.

Although they had not agreed outright to sign the agreement and operate in the form of an exclusive outsourcing studio for Nitiandang, Wei Chengjie could see that their attitude was softening and that there was still some room to maneuver.

The outcome of this first collaboration would greatly determine how smooth subsequent cooperation would be.

After all, the days for an outsourcing company weren’t always prosperous, with regular worries about getting from one meal to the next. If a company could secure a stable and profitable partnership, there would be no reason to quarrel with money.

Who wouldn’t want to do outsourcing?

After more than half a month of busy work, Wei Chengjie and the other employees of Nitiandang had mostly finished the transformation of Chuangda Technology, straightening out the entire workflow, and had even started attempting some program development.

Of course, many issues arose in the process.

For example, Nitiandang was currently using the official latest Myriad Editor for development, not the former Illusionary Editor.

After developing a few games, Nitiandang’s programmers had essentially gotten used to it, but Chuangda Technology mainly used the Illusionary Editor.

After all, other game companies that outsource tasks rarely have the audacity of Nitiandang to use a new official editor so early, nor do they possess the capability to handle the myriad bugs. For the sake of prudence, they mainly developed with the Illusionary Editor.

Thus, the developers at Chuangda Technology had to quickly adapt to the Myriad Editor, which also required some time.

However, overall, the progress was within an acceptable range.

Today was a special milestone because Nitiandang had sent over the playable demo of "Blood of Lies," as well as the trailer.

Later in the day, Nitiandang was going to collaborate with the official platform to make the official announcement of the new project "Blood of Lies."

Wei Chengjie first checked the specific content of this demo.

Similar to the previously determined development content, this demo includes two completely different playable characters, a marionette and a human; there are four types of small monsters, two types of elite monsters, and two different bosses, half of which are marionettes and the other half monsters.

There is also one large playable scene and three single-structured background scenes, which are the town, the Puppet Workshop, the cathedral, and the Underground Labyrinth.

The town is a large playable scene, where the entire gameplay process should take about 10 minutes if all monsters can be defeated.

Meanwhile, the Puppet Workshop, cathedral, and Underground Labyrinth are merely simple areas with only a few monsters, mainly used for scene style display and CG production.

"Blood of Lies" is planned to have roughly 10 Chapters; each Chapter contains two to four different miniature maps, several elite monsters, and about two bosses.

The town represents content from roughly the second Chapter of the game, which is the first large-scale miniature map players will face after going through a simple tutorial level.

As for the main monsters in the town, they are naturally all sorts such as marionettes, deranged humans, and mad dogs.

As the name suggests, the Puppet Workshop is the area in the game where marionettes are mass-produced, where there will be a multitude of marionette enemies; in the cathedral, there will be insane clergy and beast-like humans; in the Underground Labyrinth, there will be a large number of terrifying Monsters and indescribable large creatures.

The game’s promotional CGs are basically made with live demonstrations of these materials.

Although the game demo has not been fully optimized at this time, and the actual quality might be somewhat better after optimization, the difference won’t be significant based on previous development experience.

After all, this is an action game, and it is completely unnecessary to spend undue money on making too detailed CGs. With the high-definition quality of the materials from Nitiandang, real-time rendering is totally sufficient.

In this trial play demo, it’s easy to notice that humans and marionettes essentially use twice the amount of materials.

For example, the main character controlled by the player, the attackable small monsters, elite monsters, and bosses generally have both puppet and non-puppet forms.

There is some reuse of materials involved in this.

For instance, the human and marionette controlled by the player look extremely similar in appearance, only differentiating in some details, such as the clearly visible joints of the marionette and the slowly rotating unique clockwork visible on its back.

In addition, some monsters are transformed from marionettes, such as the corrupted zombie marionettes, or those remotely controlled by a profession like the Puppet Master, and the appalling large marionettes resulted from the fusion of indescribable creatures with marionettes, and so forth.

The reason for producing all of these in the demo is mainly to better define standards.

This is both to set the standard for character design and for action standards.

In "Blood of Lies," enemies from the marionette series generally follow a unique set of action standards.

Since marionettes are driven by clockwork, their movements tend to be more rigid. During the winding up process, a marionette’s movements resemble winding up and become slower; however, the instant when the clockwork releases, the previously accumulated power bursts out swiftly.

However, this movement pattern clearly does not conform to real-world logic and differs completely from the movements of usual human enemies or monster enemies.

In gaming terms, this is a situation of extreme "Fast and Slow Blade."

If it’s a non-puppet enemy, then the monster’s movement from raising its arm to attacking will be more common-sense, and players can generally dodge by instinct.

But the action mechanism of a marionette is hard to predict because after it raises its arm to start winding up, the actual attack move is extremely brief, making it difficult for players to judge when to dodge. A slight lapse in attention could result in getting caught by an enemy’s attack during the dodge aftermath, leading to severe consequences.

So, to address this problem, "Blood of Lies" made a series of optimizations for attacks from marionette enemies.

For example, though there won’t be much change in a marionette’s movements while winding up, just raising an arm and slight trembling at the joints, the sound of winding will distinctly vary.

The longer the winding time, the more compact the sound of the winding, much like the feeling of increasingly struggling to wind up a clockwork.

Over time, as long as players hear the changing sounds of the winding, they can roughly judge the timing of the monster’s strike.

Beyond that, there will be clear motion, sound effect, and visual effect cues before the monster strikes, making it easier for players to grasp the timing to dodge or counterattack.

However, even with these preparations, marionette enemies’ movements can still seem a bit odd, as substituting the action logic of other enemies with that of a marionette is not a simple task in itself and will need continuous adjustment moving forward.

Of course, there are many other contents hidden in this demo, such as player-selectable weapons, the Transform Slash and combination system of weapons, player-usable items, and the injury reduction mechanism related to the modification of human and marionette parts, etc.

Although not everything is completed, the basic mechanisms are almost in place.

In other words, this demo can also be seen as a developmental textbook for "Blood of Lies."

The next task for Wei Chengjie is simple, which is to have everyone at Chuangda Technology repeatedly observe and study this demo, quickly understand the game’s design philosophy and details of each system, complete their responsible sections, and ensure that "Blood of Lies" can be finished as scheduled.