Xu Meng's invitations to dinner were always just that – simple invitations to dinner.
After eating, he'd send his guest back to their hotel and then go home to sleep himself.
Aside from scrolling through his phone before bed, his routine was incredibly healthy.
Therefore, he woke up early the next day and headed straight to the Jinghu office building after breakfast.
These simulators weren't just delivered for casual gaming; even after acceptance testing, there were still many minor details to handle.
Since he arrived at the company relatively early, he was able to observe the state of many employees arriving for work—
Each and every one of them looked like they'd spent the entire day doing leg workouts at the gym yesterday, their expressions and postures all screaming discomfort.
—After Xu Meng left the company yesterday, they hadn't stopped, but continued playing until late at night.
Xu Meng, lying on his bed at home, even saw someone posting battle reports in the group chat, saying that so-and-so had vomited from exhaustion.
Moreover, the 'War of Kings' demo hadn't been carefully polished or optimized. Even though the motion sickness common in VR games was greatly alleviated by the [War Simulator]'s accompanying algorithms, encountering bugs or other unexpected situations could still lead to dizziness and nausea.
With these two factors combined, everyone would naturally disperse before long.
—That's what he thought.
So, he only remotely instructed them on how to lower the recoil setting for the [Tank Simulator]'s cannon, reduce noise impact, and turn off the external sound effects of simulated firearms, and then didn't bother with it anymore.
Initially, things did indeed go as he expected.
In the two hours after he left, the crowd thinned out considerably.
But the remaining twenty or so people seemed to have taken root there, inexplicably getting hooked, directly dividing into four groups to take turns playing, resting, and then playing again…
They hadn't left even when Xu Meng fell asleep.
Their enthusiasm was so great that Xu Meng couldn't quite understand it.
Even now, these people were walking with slightly weak legs, and their first words upon seeing Xu Meng were still: "Boss, when are we testing the developer version of the Demo?"
Xu Meng wordlessly chased them back to work.
He himself then tried out "Infantry Combat," which he hadn't had time to test yesterday after being defeated by bugs and 3D vertigo.
Afterward, he also tried "Driving a Tank," "Driving an Infantry Fighting Vehicle," and "Operating a Tank Machine Gun."
He even pulled in his little assistant, Chen Mengling, to try out the "Virtual Black Slave" experience—which was the unanimous assessment of the employees who played as the loader yesterday.
Yesterday, Xu Meng still thought it was an exaggeration, but after experiencing it himself, he realized:
It was true.
The commander, gunner, and driver each controlled the machine gun, cannon, and "steering wheel," respectively, providing both gameplay and an external view, making it quite enjoyable to play.
Only the loader, confined to a narrow space where they could barely turn around and move only a step or two, was different.
Not only did they have no external view, but their feet were also constantly jolted up and down, making the working environment far from ideal.
The only advantage was probably that the visual latency issue was completely non-existent, making it the least likely of the four positions to cause motion sickness.
When starting out, the novelty of the tank's interior environment and loading shells could provide some enjoyment, but over time, it would inevitably become monotonous and dull.
But the solution Xu Meng came up with was not to replace the tank with an automatic loader and eliminate the [Loader] position, but rather:
"How to add work content to the loader and enrich the gaming experience?"
Internal maintenance?
Emergency fire extinguishing?
Catching mice?
Tickling teammates?
—Wait a minute!
If everyone wore full-body haptic suits, wouldn't it be easy for physical contact to occur inside the tank?
Especially for the loader, who had relatively free movement.
Turning around could touch the gunner's chest and back, and looking up could lick the commander's butt.
Only the driver, staying in the driver's seat below the cannon barrel, was protected by an iron door, making it impossible for the loader to harass them.
What if there was a female player—assuming that a hardcore game like 'War of Kings' would also have female players, there would probably be a lot of trouble.
If she was shy and got harassed.
Or if she was wild and frantically harassed her teammates…
Both would be troublesome.
There were also femboys, male homosexuals, and many other non-binary genders and gender-fluid individuals.
Of course, it wasn't just the issue of "harassment."
If everyone wore haptic suits, then getting angry during combat and shocking a teammate with electricity…
It would also easily cause conflict.
In traditional games, you could only hunt mothers in the chat channel.
But with haptic suits, players could actually "punch you through the internet!"
The small combat room could even have the effect of a cage fight.
But completely isolating players from each other was absolutely impossible.
Xu Meng couldn't accept that.
He would rather use more complex and troublesome rules to restrain players than completely isolate contact.
Interaction between players had always been something Xu Meng valued very much.
To completely castrate this revolutionary interaction for the sake of convenience would violate his development philosophy.
"So… we still have to develop several modes to simulate the social touch rules in reality."
"Where you can touch, where you can't touch, and even giving introverted players the option to [Reject All Touch], all have to be implemented."
Thinking about these things made Xu Meng's head hurt a little.
For the time being, he was too lazy to continue thinking about the loader's situation and planned to leave it to the planning team to figure out later.
If they really couldn't come up with anything, then let the black slave be the black slave.
Playing games, it's inevitable to be assigned to a position you're not interested in.
After a while, Zu Rongyao led the [Neural Roaming] technology team—currently only 6 people—to connect with Li Gong's technology team to deeply understand the hardware details of these simulators.
After all, they were their own products, so they couldn't ask for outside help if there were problems.
Xu Meng also listened in for a while, mainly focusing on the cost and performance differences between the high-end and basic versions of these simulators, and only left after personally experiencing them.
After going upstairs, he pulled together the leadership team for a meeting.
Before the simulators arrived and the development tools were still being integrated, Xu Meng hadn't been too demanding about everyone's development direction.
But now that the simulators had arrived and the main developers had personally experienced the effects of the simulators.
The latest novel is at six, nine, book, bar, first, release!
At this time, optimizing the Demo could be done with a clear purpose, so it was natural to enter the normal development process.
In addition to the usual optimization of details such as feel, load, and vibration, Xu Meng also clearly put forward two details—
"[Visuals] and [Interaction]."
"These are also the key focus of the next month and a half of work."
"In terms of [Visuals], whether it's the scenes, characters, or props, they must be made more refined."
"Most of the free materials currently used must be updated and upgraded as much as possible."
"Under the VR presentation format, players are closer to the scenes and props, and can see more details than in traditional game modes, which requires higher-quality scenes to ensure immersion."
"The importance of [Interaction] doesn't need to be mentioned much; if you want players to immerse themselves in the virtual world, then interaction must be rich—what I mean is: as rich as possible."
"—And it must be intuitive."
"The existence of the war simulator can provide the most basic strong interactive experience, but more details need to be realized through a large number of ordinary props in the scene."
"For example, dusty glass can be wiped clean by hand."
"The pendant wrapped around the rearview mirror can be taken off by hand."
"Stones on the road can be kicked away."
"Cigarettes can be smoked, wine can be drunk, gasoline can be lit, and so on and so forth."
"But at the same time, we need to make interactive distinctions: light and small things can be picked up with one hand, heavier things require two hands, and even heavier things cannot be lifted."
"These details are all taken for granted in reality; if they can be reproduced in the game, they can effectively enhance the sense of immersion."
"It's just that if you want to realize them in the game, you still have to rely on everyone's efforts."
"There are too few interactive things in the current Demo; from now until the Cologne Game Show, we must enrich the interactive items as much as possible."
"Of course, we can't add them randomly; they must be consistent with the scene and not be abrupt."
…
Xu Meng spoke and gave examples to ensure that his ideas could be accurately conveyed.
Time was limited; in a month, this Demo would be presented at the Cologne Game Show for players around the world to try out, and he had to ensure that not only the simulator would give everyone a surprise, but the game itself would also be bright enough.
—Only showing the hardware advantages can only score 8 points at most.
Only if the game itself is polished well enough can players have the urge to "want to play."
Otherwise, most players will only think: "It's all toys for whales; what does it have to do with me?"
So, we can't let our subordinates be complacent because of the power of the hardware and ignore the gameplay upgrades of the game itself.
—
The meeting convened by Xu Meng was as efficient as ever.
He talked about a lot of things, and others also talked about the optimization ideas they had after trying out the simulator.
But even so, the meeting ended within forty minutes.
Afterward, Xu Meng and Li Xingyun together deeply discussed many technical details related to the game engine, ballistic performance, and physical destruction.
These things were much more troublesome than holding a meeting.
Li Xingyun also lived up to his reputation as a top programming talent, giving Xu Meng many surprises.
—So Xu Meng turned around and handed over more tasks to him.
After talking with Li Xingyun, it was already close to noon. Xu Meng originally planned to call a few people to try running the [Developer Version] Demo on the simulator before the meal.
But Lu Cong, the planner from the 'Frost Snow Project,' suddenly called, saying that they had encountered a problem that needed Xu Meng to make a decision.
Xu Meng had to rush to the old office building without stopping, and also brought 4 VR glasses.
—The 'Frost Snow Project' was still using VR glasses bought on the market to assist in VR scene development.
Just as the little assistant parked the car in the parking lot of the Dream Building Jinghu office building, and Xu Meng hurriedly got out of the car holding the VR glasses, wanting to quickly return to the company, he caught sight of an unexpected person in the corner of his eye—
The parking lot NPC—Zhang Yang, appeared in front of him again without warning.
He was leaning against the car door, seemingly lost in thought.
There were also two large boxes on the roof of the car next to him.
At the same time, the old policeman changed into plain clothes, carrying his old squad leader and a technical officer, and parked the car in the parking lot downstairs of the Dream Building Jinghu office building.
3k, asking for monthly tickets.
