Chapter 43 Art resources are brought by strong winds
If I were to say that the "struggler" with the most fighting spirit in the team currently has to be Zhou Yang.
In the gaming industry, different professions have different bargaining methods when changing jobs.
For artists and programmers, they have very clear bargaining standards when changing jobs. For example, artists talk about their works. If they look good, they look good, and if they don’t look good, they don’t look good. Although laymen can’t tell whether the code written by programmers is good or not, but People who understand technology can still tell the difference easily.
Only the planning is different.
There is no specific criterion for judging the ability of planning. What if the game planning proposal is clearly written and logically rigorous? At most, programmers can be more comfortable and ask less questions during development, but no one can say whether these designs will be successful.
Therefore, the most important point in the current industry evaluation of planning capabilities is "successful project experience."
As long as you have worked on a successful project, even a completely incompetent game planner can easily get a high salary when changing jobs.
This is unreasonable, but it is the status quo of the industry.
Therefore, it can be said that Zhou Yang had no hesitation in joining Nitiantian Games, and he was even willing to take a bigger salary cut. Because as long as he develops several successful game projects here, his salary can go up several levels when he changes jobs!
Others are not as active as Zhou Yang, especially these two senior programmers. They will not come here if they have better choices.
As for why these two senior programmers were laid off even though they were very capable?
Of course, this is because the more capable someone is, the easier it is to be laid off...
In Gu Fan's previous life, a top gaming company in the industry laid off 7,000 people in one fell swoop. As a result, the vast majority of those laid off were hard-working programmers, while the bloated administrative and personnel departments remained almost unchanged.
The "cutting costs, reducing costs and increasing smiles" claimed by major manufacturers is indeed not an empty talk.
All in all, Gu Fan is quite satisfied with this team. Although everyone's fighting spirit is not high, Gu Fan doesn't have any requirements for it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not familiar with it. Anyway, we’re all getting used to it while playing the game.
"That's the next game we're going to develop."
Gu Fan said and distributed the design draft of "The Legend of Destiny Wolong" that had been printed in advance to everyone.
Seeing this design draft, everyone had different expressions.
Backstage programmer Zhao Haiquan's expression was the most relaxed, because he read it from beginning to end and didn't find anything to do with his work...
This game is obviously a stand-alone game. Since there is no online play for the time being, I have no related development tasks.
Next, I only need to be responsible for maintaining the limited networking functions in the three games "Hell Tracks", "Sisyphus" and "Heaven Cube". This work intensity can be called a vacation.
Of course, according to the work plan, he is also responsible for training the AI of NPCs in the game so that their behavioral logic and speaking methods are more in line with the content of the Three Kingdoms. During this period, he needs to feed a lot of information and let the AI learn repeatedly.
However, this work is not too heavy for Zhao Haiquan, and he can just run around casually.
Feng Hui, the front-end programmer, didn't have any expression, because "The Legend of Destiny Crouching Dragon" itself is not big, and there are no particularly complicated functions to do. He and Gu Fan developed it together, so the workload is completely acceptable.
The art team leader Guo Hongyu's expression was a little solemn, because this game requires a lot of art resources, especially the original paintings and drawings of the 200 or so generals, which are all his work.
At present, Guo Hongyu doesn't know how to solve these art resources. It stands to reason that the art resources of the three games before Nitiantian are good. There should be a fixed outsourcing company, right? Do you want to contact this company?
I have to ask Mr. Gu privately for a while.
As for executive planner Zhou Yang, he had the most complicated expression.
As the only game planner in the company, he is also the only one who cares about game content and gameplay.
As for this design plan, it can only be described in one sentence.
I couldn’t understand it, but I was shocked!
…
Execution planning is also called "form filling planning". As the name suggests, it is mainly responsible for relatively low-level work such as "filling in forms, using editors, and urging programmers to progress" at the execution level.
Therefore, Zhou Yang is very self-aware of his position in the company Nitiantian Games.
Before coming, Zhou Yang also studied three games currently developed by Nitiantian Games: "Hell Tracks", "Sisyphus" and "Nigeria Block".
His feeling at the time was that almost all of these games took the eccentric approach to the extreme!
But no matter how eccentric he is, he can still roughly figure out the design ideas of these games through post-mortem review.
For example, the main selling point of "Hell Tracks" is to add the unique gameplay of "Bullet Turn" to the regular FPS game. "Sisyphus" uses torturing the anchor to create popularity in the circle and spread virally. "Heaven Cube" By adding a new operation such as "T Spin", this classic old game is given new possibilities.
These practices, in hindsight, are all amazing.
If Zhou Yang was left to think by himself, he would never come up with these ideas.
That's why Zhou Yangcai took a salary cut and came to Nitiantian Games without hesitation, hoping to learn more top ideas of game design here and pave the way for his future career.
But even after studying the previous games and being fully mentally prepared, the game "Destiny Wolong Legend" was completely beyond his cognitive scope, leaving him very confused.
Is this game... really possible?
The previous games at least had some hints of successful games, but this game is completely unrecognizable.
The most important thing is that Zhou Yang has no chance of becoming popular in this game!
Speaking of the previous three games, they all have their own characteristics, such as "Bullet Turn" of "Hell Tracks", "Rolling Stone Acceleration" and "Dragon Wings" of "Sisyphus", and "Heaven Cube" "T Spin".
But what does "The Legend of Destiny Crouching Dragon" have?
"Wolong strategy"?
But this seems to be just a very common gameplay, and it doesn't reach the level of "Bullet Turn" and "Dragon Wings" that completely change the gameplay.
At this time, Zhou Yang felt like there were ten thousand ants crawling on his body. Even a hundred claws scratching his heart couldn't describe this feeling.
I really want to ask!
But Zhou Yang glanced at Gu Fan secretly, and finally decided to shut up. After all, the occasion was special. As a new handyman who had just joined the company, he had better not ask so many questions, which might arouse the resentment of his colleagues.
It would be better to wait until Mr. Gu has time to try and ask again!
…
In this way, the development work of "The Legend of Wolong" was quickly and smoothly distributed, and no one raised any objections.
After all, the design is too clear, the division of labor is too clear, and there is not much to argue about.
The development time for this game was ultimately set at one month.
In fact, in terms of development difficulty, this game is slightly higher than "Sisyphus".
Because most of the functions in "The Legend of Destiny Crouching Dragon" are Lilith's original designs, there are no ready-made templates that can be applied.
Fortunately, the company already has three senior programmers, as well as odd-job planners like Zhou Yang, so the development speed is much faster than before.
Soon, everyone began to get busy.
The office computers are all newly purchased and are all laptops. This is for the convenience of moving in the future.
The configuration cannot be said to be very high, it can only be said to be enough to complete daily work. As for more... then it cannot be too extravagant.
Although the company is small, it has everything it needs. In addition to the backend website required for testing, the company's internal communication tools, SVN (version management tool), etc. were also quickly completed.
Just as Gu Fan was about to start working, art team leader Guo Hongyu came over.
"Mr. Gu, I have a question.
"Our company should have a long-term cooperation with an outsourced art company, right? Then will I be responsible for all the art resources of this game and this company?
"Should I produce the corresponding art resource documents or be produced by the planner?"
Guo Hongyu asked several soul questions in succession based on his own work experience.
As a result, Gu Fan's reply surprised him: "Oh, our company's art resources are all brought by strong winds and grown in the ground, so you don't have to worry about them at all.
“Anyway, before the game is developed, these required art resources will definitely be provided.
“Your main job is to wait until the art resources are in place, adjust the format, and then put them into categories in the editor for easy access.
"If you have nothing to do before this, you can also draw a few original paintings to entertain yourself."