Chapter 325 Warcraft
With the investment of funds, Bell Communications Research Institute immediately began to develop broadband technology.
Liu Hongmin also began to make arrangements in the hardware sector. He held shares in many hardware companies and all he had to do was continue investing money.
However, in order to accelerate this process, Liu Hongmin needed an opportunity. He had a ready-made opportunity in his hands, which was the World of Warcraft series of novels. By developing it into a computer game, it could encourage players to buy high-configuration computers. Cultivating enough Warcraft players could drive hardware upgrades in the entire market.
Since the appearance of Prince of Persia, the computer game industry has begun to rise, and many good games have appeared in the past two years. However, these games are not cross-era games, and their effect on improving computer hardware is not obvious.
Liu Hongmin hopes to make Warcraft a benchmark for computer games and attract people who don't play computer games to join in. Therefore, Liu Hongmin directly took many settings from Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne and put them directly into Warcraft.
Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne is the culmination of the Warcraft series. Many of its settings are the pinnacle of RTS games. Its good operability has supported international competitions. Whether it is ESWC or WCG, Warcraft is an important project.
The Chenghai 3C map expanded from it has also spawned MOBA-type games such as DOTA and League of Legends.
With the current level of hardware, a map like Chenghai 3C cannot be produced for the time being.
In order to ensure smoothness, the resolution of "Warcraft" is set to automatically adapt to the gameplay. When playing games, the resolution will be lowered to ensure the smoothness of the game. When watching CG, the resolution will be increased to ensure the viewing quality of CG.
CG is a major feature of Warcraft, especially since Warcraft 3, the CG produced is like a movie, and it is still a classic even after 20 years. Unfortunately, the CG production of Warcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 was quite crude.
Liu Hongmin wants to make up for this regret, so he has contacted Pixar Animation Studios and Cameron's Digital Domain to jointly develop CG technology.
The story of "Dark Portal" is ready-made. When making CG, we only need to capture the most exciting parts. Although it will cost a lot of money, it is preparing for CG movies. Once CG technology matures, Liu Hongmin can make the World of Warcraft series into a film and television, which will become another money-making tool for MGM.
Pixar Animation was busy with Toy Story and only sent some people to provide technical guidance. Digital Domain was busy exploring Titanic with Cameron and studying the post-production special effects of Dead Man's Chest, so it was also unable to lead this matter.
So Liu Hongmin let the game company take charge of this matter. However, the game company still needed to produce "Warcraft" and was short of manpower.
Liu Hongmin transferred some people from Mingtian Film Special Effects Company and asked Sun Lu to lead a group of people to the United States to take charge of this matter. The people Sun Lu brought were all carefully selected college students with good cultural level and strong receptive ability. Even if they were exposed to computer technology from scratch, they would learn it quickly.
There are many computer science majors among these college students, and they will secretly analyze the software code. These special effects production software are still in their infancy, and it is not too late to catch up now. As long as you work hard and study hard, you will definitely be able to overtake others.
We are not short of smart people, but we are lagging behind in many areas, so we can only focus on the important areas first. We will not invest a lot of manpower and material resources in unimportant areas such as post-production special effects, so we can only rely on commercial activities or personal will to catch up.
Now Liu Hongmin has gathered a group of smart people to focus on this field, and will soon see results. Sun Lu has been in charge of the project for many years and has developed good management skills. This trip abroad is a test for Sun Lu by Liu Hongmin. If he completes the task, then all animation and special effects matters will be handed over to Sun Lu to manage.
The reason why it was not Mai Zishan was because his talent was more in editing. After the movie special effects company got on track tomorrow, he would only be responsible for management, and all matters related to special effects would be handed over to his apprentices.
He has a low level of education, but he is very talented in editing. There is not much in common between post-production special effects and editing, and as post-production special effects technology has improved, his talent is no longer enough.
Mai Zishan himself also recognized the reality, so he returned to Tomorrow Film Company as an editor. While he was editing, Tomorrow Film Special Effects Company would be handed over to his apprentices to manage.
Liu Hongmin did not take back Mai Zishan's shares. Mai Zishan made an indelible contribution to the Tomorrow Movie Special Effects Company's success. He also brought up many apprentices, who are now the backbone of the Tomorrow Movie Special Effects Company.
After Sun Lu arrived in the United States, he immediately took over the CG technology project team. Some people in the United States looked down on him and the technicians here. It was simply a fantasy for a group of beginners to want to study the most advanced CG technology. Coupled with the problem of skin color, the Americans almost raised their noses to their foreheads.
However, for the sake of high salary, they still fulfilled their responsibility and helped these beginners to learn the software. As a result, they found that these beginners were very hardworking and learned very quickly. In just over a month, they had almost mastered the CG technology software.
After mastering the CG software, Sun Lu asked the project team to start producing CG and conduct training through combat.
The content is the beginning of "Dark Portal Opening", the story of Medivh traveling to Draenor and discovering the orcs. This content does not need to be reflected in the game, so it is most suitable for CG production.
The speed of CG production is very slow, not only because we want to keep improving, but also because the hardware and software are not up to standard.
If the software is not up to standard, the resolution of the CG produced will be insufficient. If the hardware is not up to standard and the computer storage is insufficient, let alone rendering, even the production process must be very careful, and the slightest movement can cause the system to crash.
Therefore, the development of CG technology requires not only technical upgrades, but also software and hardware upgrades. This is not a simple matter, but fortunately the technical context is there, and all Liu Hongmin has to do is invest money and wait for the output.
The game and CG have started production, and the Warcraft project is on track. Although it will take a long time, maybe three to five years to complete, Liu Hongmin doesn't mind waiting.
Upgrading the computer hardware of the entire market and preparing technology for CG movies, one game achieves two goals. Therefore, Liu Hongmin did not plan to make money from "Warcraft 1" and was even prepared to lose money.
(End of this chapter)
