Rebirth of America, this is my time

Since Ethan won the Alien project last year, production related to Contra has been officially put on the agenda. If it wasn't because he had made too many enemies, if he wasn't worried that his enemies would wield their hoes to poach people like crazy, then Ethan would have spread out the work, crushed it up and distributed it.

The behavior of hiding is safe, but it will also lead to slow progress in project development.

However, these are no longer important.

Now that Evelin can take the initiative to invite him, the game is probably over.

And so it is.

When Ethan followed his sister to the study, the first thing he saw was the electronic equipment scattered on the floor. There were many things inside that he couldn't name, but with just a quick glance, he caught the wooden box that was placed on the coffee table and was about three-quarters of the size of an A4 paper bag.

Perhaps because it was not shaped, the box Ethan saw was very flat and angular. If I had to describe it, it was not much different from a brick.

On the front of the box, there are two pushable metal buttons, an embedded external socket, and two black wires dragged out. The other ends of them are connected to a palm-sized handle.

This handle is also made of a wooden box. It has up, down, left, and right cross keys on the left side, and two round buttons on the right side. Even if there is no mark on it, Ethan knows that B is on the left and A is on the right.

As for the reason...

That’s because the FC controller he drew for Evelin was designed like this!

Wow - is the degree of completion so high?

Ethan was a little surprised.

When was it done? Why didn't you tell me earlier!

Machine packaging happened at the beginning of the month. The slightly complaining tone made Evelin smile and shake her head.

The girl came to the machine, took out the lotus head from behind, and plugged it into the TV.

While powering on, he said: I didn't tell you because this is just a test version.

Although from the outside it looks like it's ready for sale.

Ethan was confused by his sister's words, but soon he understood why Evelin said that, because when the girl pressed the power button on the machine, the TV screen full of snowflakes just flickered for a while, Then the logo of Destiny Game appeared. When it receded and dissipated like a wave, there was only a menu with the word Game on the dark screen, and there was nothing in it.

What?

Where's the game?

Ethan was puzzled.

If he remembered correctly, when Evelin showed him the first version of the machine, there were two games in it. Even if those two games were just a simple series connection of Evelin and did not really get involved in them, they could play and No, those are two concepts.

Faced with Ethan's question, the girl did not answer, but pointed behind Ethan. As he turned around, the Disk II invented by Steve Wozniak came into his sight.

???

This thing made Ethan raise his eyebrows.

Continuing to turn his head, he found Evelin reaching out to ask for it.

This situation made Ethan pick up the Disk II. When he handed the Apple external floppy drive to Evelin, the girl immediately connected it to the embedded external socket he saw first.

She pressed an unknown button next to the power button, and the TV screen suddenly went black. After about five seconds, the game menu was reloaded, and only then did the small number dots marked one, two, and three appear.

Ranked first is Snake.

In second place is Pac-Man.

Ranked third is XXX.

Although the name of the third game is unknown, Ethan knows that it must contain the Contra he wants, and when it appears...

Even though Ethan had all kinds of doubts in his mind, he decided to have a play first.

handle.

He held out his hand to Evelyn.

uh-huh.

Evelin handed him the wooden handle.

Without waiting for his sister's introduction, Ethan pressed A familiarly to enter. Following his actions, the TV screen suddenly went black and the game menu disappeared. After about three to five seconds, the clicking sound of the keyboard stopped. came out from the TV's audio channel, and green words appeared on the screen——

In the year 2633 AD, mankind has completely mastered the technology of interstellar travel and found a new home in the universe. However, just as mankind was preparing for interstellar immigration and sending an advance team to establish a base on the new earth, countless aliens Species suddenly appeared, raided and occupied human bases.”

This news caused the Earth's supreme commander in charge of immigration to contact the most powerful human warrior organization Stars in America, hoping that they could send trance elites to rescue.

After receiving the news, you, the leader of the 'Stars' organization, Bill Lance, embarked on a journey without hesitation in order to save the future of all mankind...

Tell the truth! When this text appeared in front of Ethan with the effect of tapping, the chuuni energy that rushed towards him made his scalp numb! An inexplicable feeling of shame arises spontaneously!

If they were normal adult men, they would probably shout, Damn it, what kind of silly plot is this!

Damn it! What kind of stupid transmission method is this!

But Ethan...

He just wanted to give this line a thumbs up!

Although the flavor is strong!

But the taste is right!

No matter which country they are from, as long as they are adolescent children, they will like this kind of thing!

And for America, who promotes personal heroism, who is the most powerful human warrior and who embarks on a journey to save the future of all mankind, that is a story that everyone likes!

As long as these things are there, the three golden chapters are already there!

If we have to make an analogy, it would be equivalent to——

The power of fighting, three stages!

Ok, Ok……

Ethan murmured to himself, his eyes shining, This plot is presented well.

“People are going to love it!”

After the plot, there was a loud sound of propellers, and then the TV screen lit up, and a shirtless figure wearing blue pants appeared on the left side of the screen.

He stepped on the green earth and the endless starry sky above his head.

In front of you is a dense jungle, and behind you is a dark abyss from which you can't retreat.

Ethan pressed the right direction key, and Bill Lance, holding a gun, immediately stepped forward;

Ethan pressed the direction keys lightly, and Bill Lance, the strongest warrior in mankind, pointed his gun downward;

Ethan lightly pressed the direction key, and the muzzle of the gun pointed at a forty-five-degree angle;

Ethan lightly pressed the left direction key and retreated directly without turning around, perfectly presented;

Continue to press A, just listen to the biu~ sound, and the red round bullet is shot from the muzzle;

Then press B, and Bill Lang, the strongest human warrior on the TV screen, instantly transformed into Monkey King Monkey King Monkey King Monkey King Monkey King of Water Curtain Cave in Huaguo Mountain, and he did somersaults on the spot.

When all the action elements were presented one by one, the smile on Ethan's face became even brighter. When he controlled Bill Lance forward, the little guy in uniform asked him to press A repeatedly. In the sound, the body of the minion exploded into balls of green blood mist.

Moving on, the cubes embedded on the map are the fortresses of the future. Unfortunately, no matter how strong they are, they can't stop a bullet from Bill Lance.

Oh Evelyn - you're doing such a great job!

You made everything I asked for!

This is just - this is just - this is so perfect!

Ethan finally couldn't hold it back and spoke while playing.

Although there are some differences between the game in front of me and Contra in Ethan's previous life. For example, the game is very rough in production. All the floors are uniformly shaped blocks, which is different from Ethan's previous life. The ground used in the first generation of Mario is exactly the same. At a glance, you can tell that it is spliced ​​with the same pixel blocks. The various colored planets floating in the night sky are just the reuse of the same material, but the colors used are different. , even the misalignment of the stars is just the repeated stacking of materials to create different sizes and shapes, but these...

It's not important, right?

As long as this game can embody the gameplay that Ethan wants, that's enough!

Moreover, using repeated material packages to create different map performances is a reflection of the engineer's ability. This kind of extreme optimization represents excellent engineering thinking!

Oh - thank you - Ethan's words made the girl smile.

But at the same time, she said: You should play first, and we will talk about other things after you finish this game.

Although Ethan didn't understand why his sister said that, getting through the entire game was what he wanted to do. As the boss of a game company, of course he didn't have to understand games, but if he wanted to operate his company's products well, then operating People have to play games.

As for saying you don’t play games but just want to manage operations, is that okay?

This is actually possible.

After all, before Ethan traveled through time, Bobby Caldick had not yet ascended to heaven.

Under Ethan's control, the picture on the TV is also constantly changing. Since Ethan can no longer recall what all the levels of the game Contra look like, at this moment, the game he is playing The content is very different from previous Konami games.

The first level has the deepest impression, so the imitation is also the most powerful. After the protagonist Bill Lance lands on the alien planet, he fights to the entrance of the alien base alone. The last BOSS is the gate of the base entrance;

I also have an impression of the second level, which is to break into the base by moving left and right. Although Ethan showed the vertical shooting in Contra, Evelin did not completely follow it because she felt that Ethan designed The behavior of the monster jumping out from behind the door and hitting people was very silly, so she slightly modified the level and used the production method of Star Wars to make a dark hole appear in the closed door in the picture. The enemy will shoot bullets from there to attack the protagonist;

The first door has one opening on the left and right, the second door has three openings in the shape of a pin, the third door has two openings on the left and right in the shape of two LV shapes, and the fourth door is from top to bottom. Countless soldiers rush out to attack the protagonist. The fifth door is the BOSS. It still has four openings, but it shoots lasers. Soldiers will appear in the left and right corners at the top of the screen for sneak attacks;

The HP of each door is also different. The base is ten and increases by five. The first door will explode after being hit ten times, while the fifth door can withstand twenty-nine attacks from the protagonist;

By the third level, Ethan really couldn't remember what Konami had done, so he started to play freely. He thought that bases were usually hidden underground, so he designed a downward The route of exploration is still along the horizontal board from left to right, but after a road is opened, you can take the elevator and continue downward. The cutscene is shown in the form of text and sound effects. The clanking sound means that the elevator seems to be in disrepair, but It also contains the meaning of exploring;

The BOSS of this level is an alien creature that is parasitic on humans. The long banana head vividly demonstrates the name Alien;

Since moving the BOSS is difficult and time-consuming, Evelin directly set it up as a sculpture-like door god. The attack method is also very simple. One is to open its eyes wide and shoot a death ray towards the protagonist, and Same as the previous laser;

Although this ray is very fast, it has a casting forward motion, and its attack trajectory will appear on the TV screen before it is officially launched;

The other one opens its bloody mouth and fires green saliva bullets at the protagonist. The connected attacks are easy to dodge;

The fourth level that appears after completing the third level is a repetition of the second level;

The protagonist wants to continue to pass through the card, and all the materials are completely reused. Only the way of pixel splicing, color calling, and the defense formation of the soldiers are slightly different from the second level;

Until the fifth level...

The alien creatures reveal their true identity.

The fifth level is a cave. There are stalactite-like decorations on the top and bottom of the map. They look different, but in fact they use the same brown cave material, but they are presented in a flipped way. That’s all;

On the road, there will be red alien eggs one after another. If the player shoots them, they will explode into pieces. However, if the player does not blow them up, but chooses to jump over, then after walking a certain route Afterwards, a bunch of facehuggers will appear behind the protagonist’s butt;

It was a brown spherical creature. The main body was made of planet materials. The tail and legs were connected with the stars in the first level. With a simple put together, the whole creature was ready, although it looked a little awkward. Can something strange, but not strange, be called an alien?

And this guy's attack is also very simple. It moves a little faster than the player, so when it touches the player and the player fails to kill it, the player will die.

As for how the protagonist who can't turn around kills the facehugger chasing after him?

This is even simpler...

Because the facehuggers coming from behind will always run in front of the protagonist first, allowing the protagonist to gain attack distance before they turn around and attack the protagonist.

And the algorithm for this determination...

This algorithm is actually very simple. When Evelin heard Ethan's curious inquiry, the girl immediately stood up and made gestures on the TV, Because when making this game, I used Descartes Criterion, that is, the coordinate system he invented...

Evelin drew a cross in the center of the screen with her hand, We divided the entire screen into four so that the left and right areas can be accurately distinguished. Then, we set the left side of the entire screen as a static area. When the character moves here, the screen will not advance. Only when the character moves to the center line, that is, coincides with the Y-axis, will the entire game screen extend forward...

So, when you play the game, you will find that the character cannot move to the right side of the game at all. He can only move on the left side, because once he touches the Y-axis, the map will extend.

In this case, I only need to set the moving coordinates of the facehuggers within the dynamic area, that is, within the increasing area of ​​the X-axis. Then no matter how many times the facehuggers chase, they will definitely appear in front of the player. .”

This period of time is the specific attack time I leave for the players. If the players cannot seize even this time, then they will have no choice but to be bitten to death by the facehuggers.

Ethan understood.

Then he was shocked.

Is it difficult to write this judgment? he asked with concern.

It's okay. The girl stepped aside and shrugged: Making games is not as difficult as making hardware. As long as you know what the final effect should be, it's only a matter of time before you restore it.

Although the girl said it easily, Ethan didn't believe it. How long have you been doing this? he asked.

This? Evelin pointed at the facehugger.

No, the whole thing. Ethan was talking about the game.

Well... it probably took more than two months to finalize the idea. The rest is to find materials and put together the game.

Evelin thought for a while and said: I don't think this game has any difficulties in production, because the movement algorithms of facehuggers and soldiers are much simpler than the ghosts in Pac-Man. We have done things like bullet trajectories before. When we made shooting games like Star Wars, the bullet algorithm in this game is very simple. The only difficulty is the action. If you don't have to If I had been asked to do a somersault instead of jumping straight up and down, the game would have been finished a long time ago.

Such words made Ethan purse his lips.

He stared at the girl for a moment, then smiled and continued the game.

When creatures like facehuggers have appeared, the next levels are all related to aliens.

If the BOSS in the third level is just a human being inhabited by an alien, then the BOSS in the fifth level is a pure alien, a dog-shaped alien on all fours;

There are three ways to attack, one is to open your mouth and spit, one is to have an instant impact with a forward swing, and the other is to scream in the sky to summon a facehugger to attack;

Although these seem troublesome, they are very simple to do. Spitting uses a ballistic algorithm to copy yourself; the instant impact with forward shaking is similar to the laser in the second level, and using this method instead of moving is also It can reduce a lot of programming workload and reduce the number of actions for the alien; summoning the facehugger is nothing more than re-calling the previous facehugger code, which is the highest level of reuse and making the best use of things;

When all these things appear, rich attack methods are presented with the simplest code.

After clearing the fifth level, the sixth level is a reappearance of the first level, except that all the miscellaneous soldiers are replaced by a combination of humans and aliens, and the map also changes color.

The seventh level is the final battle against the aliens.

Alien eggs, facehuggers, humanoid aliens, and dog-shaped aliens all appeared in a swarm.

After defeating them, the final BOSS appeared in front of Ethan. It was an evil heart, hanging high above the map like Antoun's heart.

After reaching this point, players only need to press the A button wildly to gain victory.

Ethan entered the house with his sister at ten o'clock in the evening, but it was not until four o'clock in the morning that he had time to look up at the moon. In six hours, he played the game more than a dozen times, and the reason for doing so was very simple. Check to see if there are any obvious bugs in the game. Secondly, you want to experience more ways to play.

Because when designing this game, Ethan prepared several types of ammunition for players. As long as they kill monsters, they have a chance to get them. Among them are three consecutive bullets, which are shot out with one shot, three bullets shot out continuously, and explosive bombs. , with one shot, all the mobs can be killed instantly. Even when fighting BOSS, one shot is better than two shots. There are also diffusion bombs, three at the top, middle and bottom, which can directly clear the screen.

In addition, after obtaining the special bullet, the protagonist's pants will also change from blue to red.

If you are killed in this state, you will only lose the special bullets and will not die.

This is equivalent to adding a life to the player in disguise, and doing this...

That's also because console games need to take care of the player's gaming experience.

To be honest, Ethan was very happy that Evelin could restore Contra to this appearance without having played Contra before.

Because in the era when video games were still in the pioneering stage, gameplay was the real selling point! This is what establishes a sect! As for the graphics?

It doesn't matter if it's a little crude.

Players don't care about this at all.

And when the excellent gameplay has been demonstrated...

Ha ha ha ha--

Ethan put down the controller with only a smile on his face!

He opened his arms and hugged Evelin hard, tears of joy already bursting from his eyes!

Evelyn! Thank you!

This kind of game display can kill all game companies on the market!

I swear!

No--

The whole world will tremble because of this game!

Because they will find that even if they copy our popular products, we can still come up with something even better!

Ethan is really excited now!

With a game like this, who can beat him with special numbers?

Superman?

Superman?

What the hell!

You can’t even keep up with the version of your special code!

Do you still want to fight me?

Ethan's excitement made satisfaction appear on Evelin's tired face.

Although she was very tired at the moment and had witnessed Ethan playing games for six hours in a row, she could no longer hold back her sleepiness. But when she saw Ethan excitedly waving his fists, trying to beat all the enemies to death, She still smiled like an aunt.

I believe it. The girl said softly.

Okay, that's it for today. Ethan took a deep breath and said, It's getting late, it's time to rest.

However, just when Ethan let go of his arm and was about to get up to wash up, Evelin took his hand and said, Wait a minute.

What's wrong? Ethan was a little surprised.

I haven't finished talking yet, Evelyn said.

? Ethan didn't understand.

Maybe it was because it was really too late, but it was also possible that Ethan was too happy, so Evelin didn’t show off, but pointed to the home console under the TV and said, “The game is fun, right? But you Have you ever thought about why I need to add an Apple floppy drive interface to the machine?

... These words made Ethan turn his head instantly.

He suddenly remembered that he had felt something was wrong here before.

And his behavior also made Evelin take the initiative to answer her questions, Because——

This game is 128KB in size.

How much? Ethan was stunned for a moment, and then screamed. He suspected that his ears heard it wrong.

128KB.

Evelin repeated it with a smile, her face showing helplessness.

“WTF???”

This number made Ethan stand up instantly.

128KB?

Oh! Sxxt!

How do you sell such a big game?

He was confused.

Note: ① In reality, many companies have considered adding floppy disk drivers to home game consoles. For example, when Atari ported Pac-Man and Space Invaders in the 1970s and early 1980s, they thought about getting an external disk for the machine, but the disk was really too expensive. Nintendo also did it in the mid-1980s, but an external port was as expensive as a game console, and it died suddenly. ②The splicing of materials written in the article was a popular method of that era. In that era, it was dug into the bones. Super Mario took it to the extreme, with a total of 40KB. The sound effect like eating mushrooms that gets louder is just a fast playback of the sound effect for passing the level. The clouds are just splicing, and the Mario Brothers are just changing colors, but this method is not original to Shigeru Miyamoto. The exact origin of who created this thing has been lost. The earliest ones found so far are all in Atari. The people at Activision at work did it. ③ It is also an industry habit for side-scrolling games to use coordinate systems to confirm progress. I can’t find out who invented this. The earliest application should be a game made by Namco in the early 1980s. This design is also related to the CPU performance. The 6502 is indeed cheap but the performance is indeed not good. This CPU can do many games, but its processing speed cannot even keep up with the ultimate human hand speed. The final level of Pac-Man written before is An American guy pressed it with his hands at a crazy speed. When the instructions he pressed out with his hands were faster than the CPU's judgment, Pac-Man was invincible. Therefore, scroll games can only minimize screen scrolling and save resources, so there is no retreat.