1988 Retro Game Tycoon - Chapter 82



Only Noblemtl

Episode 82 – Character Sheet

I checked the problem and continued the action test by summoning other enemies.

The main character, Kim Do-kwon, is a very powerful character with just one-two punch combination, as the title suggests.

But, it was too strong.

“Isn’t the basic punch too strong? If it’s like this, I don’t think there’s any need to use other techniques.”

Even though he’s a mob like a thug, he’s still very powerful against mid-level executives and stage bosses. His punches aren’t like Mike Tyson’s nuclear fists.

“And the punching power is the punching power, but the bigger problem is that if you punch repeatedly, the one-two combination won’t stop. So wouldn’t it be enough to just stand still and keep hitting the enemies that are rushing at you? The action isn’t just about hitting, it’s about hitting and receiving, and I don’t think that would be very fun.”

“This is an action game, and since the character Kim Do-kwon is the center, I thought it was most important to make him strong.”

“It’s good for the main character to be strong, but he shouldn’t be invincible. You shouldn’t put in a technique that would make him invincible either. Then it’s obvious that people will only use that.”

“But if you look at airplane shooting games, you can shoot missiles infinitely, right? Bombs are limited, though. Can’t you think of the main character’s punch in that way?”

“That’s a little different. In those shooting games, bullets pour in from all directions. I can’t win by just standing there and shooting. I have to move around without resting while avoiding enemy attacks. In the meantime, I have to attack enemies and reduce their numbers, so infinite attacks make sense.”

“iced coffee···!”

“And shooting games and action games are different. In most shooting games, you die with just one bullet. There is no concept of stamina. However, in action games, you don’t die with one hit. You have to run out of stamina to die, but if the main character can attack infinitely, it becomes too easy, so there is a problem.”

Shooting games have been around since the very early days of video games. Taito’s Space Invaders, one of the first games to industrialize gaming, laid the foundation for shooting games.

Since infinite attacks are such a familiar concept, it seems like the development team overlooked the need to properly interrupt the player’s attacks in belt scrolling action.

“I think we’ll have to put a lot more effort into action and balance control. We’ll have to assign at least two people to work on this until the game’s release.”

“All right.”

“And you must not forget that is an arcade game. It is different from console games where you can play endlessly just by buying a pack. It has to be a game that you want to play at the arcade, but at the same time, it cannot be so easy that you can get to the end with just one coin.”

“Why is that so?”

“Then the arcade owners won’t let them have the games because they don’t like them. No matter how much fun the kids have playing the games, if they don’t make much money, the arcade owners can’t help but hate them.”

“When I was in school, there were a few times when the owner of the arcade gave me 100 won and told me to leave because I kept playing without dying. I just left that time. I guess it was all about money.”

“Arcade games are harder to make than console games because there are two customers. On the surface, the people who put coins in the arcade and play the game seem like customers, but in reality, the people who actually buy are the arcade owners. We have to satisfy both sides. So making them is twice as difficult.”

Arcade systems are much more expensive than home game consoles.

Home consoles have relatively low specifications and are produced in quantities of hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions, so production costs can be significantly reduced through economies of scale.

On the other hand, arcade system boards have much higher specs, larger RAM and ROM capacities, and use many more chips. Durability is also important because they are kept on even when the game is not being played.

Arcade systems are produced in much smaller quantities than home consoles, so the price of a single board can run into the millions of dollars at minimum.

For an arcade owner, buying a game board is a big investment. We sell games, but for an arcade owner, it’s like buying an investment product.

If a game you introduce with great determination is not popular with people, or if it is popular but is too easy and people only spend a coin and leave, then the business will not be successful.

Then, the circuit board that you bought with a lot of money will become a useless possession, and it will grow old alone in a corner of the arcade where no one can see it, just consuming electricity.

“If things continue like this, will also meet the same fate. Imagine. in a dark corner of an arcade with no one looking for it, just playing on the demo screen endlessly…”

“Ahhhhhhh···.”

“It’s so sad to even imagine it···?”

“Absolutely not. It’s like a game to me.”

There are many legendary masterpieces that I remember, but when looking at games as a whole, there are only a few masterpieces that are loved.

The popular seats in the arcade, the seats that are always crowded, are monopolized by a few games. And the majority of games disappear into time as mediocre games without even receiving much attention.

A mediocre game can be a special memory for someone. However, from the company’s perspective, it is classified as a failure and casts a dark shadow over the company’s management and future.

We have no intention of creating an ill-fated masterpiece that is highly regarded by die-hard fans but is ignored by the public. That was the sentiment shared by everyone in our company.

“Then, shall we give it our all to make a success?”

I didn’t expect the results to be good from the first test, but it seemed like there were more areas that needed attention than I thought.

This is partly my responsibility.

was a game planned before , but its development was pushed back due to hardware issues. In addition, a considerable amount of time passed due to the development and marketing of the game Pocket, which was not in the plan.

I thought the project would be moving along at a leisurely pace until the A1 board was finished, but I ended up leaving the work to people who had no experience with belt-scrolling action games, and I kept getting busy with other things and couldn’t properly take care of it.

But it’s not that big of a deal since it’s something that can be easily fixed. It was just a time when we needed to tighten the reins that had been loose for a while.

“Let’s reorganize everything from the character sheet. As a developer, any developer should be able to know not only the characteristics of the character but also everything that will be implemented in the game just by looking at the character sheet. We will quantify everything about the character into numbers.”

The language used by humans is made up of a variety of characters, numerous words, and complex grammar.

But computers only understand 0 and 1. We have to create living, breathing games that interact with gamers through infinite combinations of 0 and 1.

I started by re-creating a character sheet template from scratch using a spreadsheet program to contain everything about the character.

“In here, write down everything about the character’s movement and actions, in detail. It’s helpful to think of the character as a differentiator. Let’s say he punches an enemy. How fast does he extend his fist? How far does he punch? How strong is he? How much damage does he do to the enemy? Does he follow up with the punch? Does it change based on character level? Is it a jab? A straight? Or some other signature punch? You should specify all the variables that can come out of a single movement, and assign a number to that value.”

Computers don’t understand the terms hard punch and weak punch.

After specifying the punch strength from 1 to 10, you need to determine which number it falls into and tell the enemy how much damage it inflicts on them.

Computers are amazingly fast and accurate, but they are also ridiculously clumsy and stupid. They can’t handle anything as flexibly as humans.

Since belt scroll action games feature a variety of characters, you need to specify various abilities for each action.

It was usually not difficult to give each character abilities that fit their personality, as they had to fight and interact with each other in one game.

That’s why game companies usually have a planning position dedicated to this balancing work. Arcade games and console games are released once and then finished, but Internet games are endless until the server is shut down, so character power rebalancing can also be seen as continuing forever.

But at Starbeat, there was still no one who could be called a planner other than me. So a programmer took on the role of planner.

In Team A, Yong-ju Lee, who has the most experience after Go Dae-ryong, and Ho-young Jin, who joined as an intern among the members of Tobagi, were assigned to work on the character sheets.

Lee Yong-ju is the main character, and Jin Ho-young is the supporting character, adjusting the power balance between all the characters appearing in .

“But, what if I keep editing the character sheet and the character’s appearance and abilities don’t match?”

“What if the character deviates completely from the concept? That should be avoided as much as possible, but if it is determined that a change would be better for the game, then the image should be changed.”

“Then I guess I have no choice but to throw away what I worked on before.”

“Yes, that’s why it’s dangerous to work on characters without a clear concept. You run the risk of having to redo the work over and over again. If you don’t have a clear concept in the first place, it won’t be easy to draw characters either.”

When developing a game, it is common to change the direction from the original plan. However, it is also difficult to work on it as if the change is natural.

It’s like taking working overtime as a daily routine. If you work overtime every day, you’ll end up procrastinating on tasks that could be completed quickly because you know you’ll be working overtime again.

Habits are scary, and when modifications become routine, you can fix them later, so you just do them without much thought. Then, more modifications come up, you waste energy on unnecessary things, and even passionate people get tired of their work, which leads to a vicious cycle.

If they are correcting something because they made a mistake, that may be fine, but if the planning direction keeps changing and corrections are made repeatedly, programmers and art gradually start to think that they are cleaning up the mess made by the planner.

The good thing about programmers taking on the role of planners is that planners don’t have to ask developers every time they want to adjust numbers.

If you want to adjust your jumping power, you can adjust the values ​​directly in the database and check the results with your own eyes. That way, one step is reduced, and the work is faster.

However, as games develop and development organizations grow, it is inevitable that the roles of planners and developers will become more differentiated.

Ultimately, the key is for directors and middle managers to coordinate work so that things run smoothly and prevent unnecessary work and misunderstandings from arising between organizations.

Our company has less than twenty employees so far, so there aren’t any major issues, but there will come a day when we will need to develop and manage a separate planner position.

Until then, I plan to direct and delegate planning tasks to various people.

Shigeru Miyamoto, famous as the father of Super Mario, did not start out as a game developer, and Bill Roper, famous for developing Diablo and Starcraft, also originally joined Blizzard as a music producer.

As game development continues to become more specialized and fragmented, it becomes increasingly difficult to move between jobs in any field.

I plan to arrange for my company’s employees to experience as many different types of work as possible.

Because you never know who has what hidden talent. For example, I had no idea that Kim Han-sol from the art team had such a talent for dotting.

returned all characters’ abilities to their original state.

“Right now, it would be a good idea to decide on the concept of additional player characters other than Kim Do-kwon.”

The characters that gamers can choose from are set at three, including Kim Do-kwon. We needed a character that would show a different style from Kim Do-kwon, a swordsman who wears a cool suit and uses his fists for friendship.

I gathered all the programmers and art team together and held a character meeting.

AD Choi Han-il came up with the idea first.

“I don’t know if it’s because I draw, but I think it would be nice to have a character who is a bit lighter but also knows how to be stylish, different from Kim Do-kwon’s suit style. Even the way he dresses is different.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“For example, what if you came out wearing a leather jacket? It was a fashion that would have been difficult to come out of Gyeongseong in the 1930s, but leather clothes existed back then. Like flight jackets or motorcycle jackets.”

“Motorcycles. That’s okay too. I don’t think ordinary people in Gyeongseong rode motorcycles back then, but we’re making games, not documentaries. The Japanese military must have ridden them too.”

The character’s leather jacket style, which is clearly different from Kim Do-kwon’s suit style, was given more power, and the setting that he rides a motorcycle stolen from the Japanese military was added.

“If Kim Do-kwon is a swordsman who values ​​justice, I think it would be better to make this character much more free-spirited. The style should be focused on speed rather than strength.”

“Then the other one should naturally go to the power type. A balanced Kim Do-kwon, a romantic speed type, and an honest power type. Would that be okay?”

It was the most classic character distribution.

The speed type wearing a leather jacket was named ‘New York’ after adding the setting that he had been to the United States.

The last, honest power type was designed with a muscular body that looked like it would burst, wearing a white China collar shirt, and rolling up the sleeves to reveal his powerful arms.

The character’s name was decided as ‘Hong Kong Wu’, which was inspired by the China collar shirt and taken from Hong Kong.

“It seems like the trio of characters have taken shape?”

1. Kim Do-kwon, a swordsman who is good at using his fists and has a good balance between speed and power.

– Signature Action: Body Blow Punch

2. Romantic Fist Fighter Riding a Motorcycle Stolen from the Japanese Army, New York

– Signature Action: Spinning Kick

3. Hong Gong-woo, a former wrestler with a huge build and a penchant for alcohol.

– Signature Action: Wrestling technique up throw

After finalizing the main character concept, we focused on Kim Do-kwon and created a character sheet while modifying various abilities.

Every day, on Stage Zero, characters whose visuals weren’t even complete yet would come up on stage and fight, hitting, and repeatedly.

When I first planned , I was at a loss as to how I could make it into a Gemix game. Now, I have the A1 system board, and I have many talented people working alongside me to make games.

With these guys, it seemed like we could create any number of belt-scrolling action games that would surprise not only Korea but also the US and Japan, the home of gaming.