In the current environment, many game companies simply come up with a random idea, develop a small online game, and then promote it directly. On one hand, they claim it's permanently free-to-play, while on the other hand, they frantically distribute paid items, essentially just trying to make a quick buck and leave.
Most of these games are garbage, riddled with bugs, vague details, and inconsistencies. Compared to Chen Xu's student team, who meticulously analyzed the price of every item, their attitude alone is far inferior!
As the start of the school year drew closer, most of the computer interest group members returned to school early to work together on the game.
However, a few people were still missing from this group when school officially started on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month.
Several senior students had already gone to their internships by this time. When they returned, which would be in June, they would have submitted their theses, completed their defenses, and their four years of university life would be over.
However, Chen Xu and his team weren't in the mood for sentimental reflections about missing someone while planting dogwood. The game had already entered its final closed beta phase.
Actually, back in early 2007, web application plugins like the now-popular "Parking Wars" and "Happy Farm" hadn't even appeared in China yet. Even at that time, web-based games in China were just beginning.
Chen Xu and others' original idea was to create a web-based game called "My Home, My House" and link it to the community website, sharing user data with the community website... meaning there would be no need to register user data separately, and new accounts for this game would have to be registered through the community website. In fact, the original idea was based on a relatively independent web game.
But after finishing the game, Gao Xiaojie contacted X, the mysterious person who had appeared to help, and asked them to take a look... This naturally frustrated X's people immensely, because how could they possibly have the time to help a group of students make a game?
Despite his frustration, X still had to flatter her. Since S was completely unyielding, the only way to curry favor was through Gao Xiaojie. Therefore, X dared not have any romantic feelings for this girl; on the contrary, he had to do everything in his power to win her favor. Although this was extremely damaging to X's pride, they couldn't afford to be dismissive when Gao Xiaojie came knocking.
So X's team modified the client, changing it from the original web format to a Flash-based embedded plugin format. The biggest advantage of this format is that the game is completely embedded within the community network as a plugin. Users can directly click on the plugin to play the game while interacting with friends on the community network, greatly increasing the game's interactivity.
After two weeks of intense closed beta testing, several bugs discovered during the testing phase were fixed. Finally, on March 20th, the day of the Dragon Head Raising Festival (the second day of the second lunar month), "My Home, My House" officially launched on the community network, becoming the first official social game in the domestic SNS community!
The development path of SNS communities is inherently a process known as "viral spread."
Early SNS communities in China mostly spread their culture through friend invitations, which is an important manifestation of a people-oriented approach.
Early SNS communities were essentially the same as other interactive websites, using very ordinary methods for interaction such as writing logs and uploading photos. This mode of interaction was simple and mundane, lacking any particularly novel ideas to bring friends together.
However, once the game "My Home, My House" was released, it quickly spread among users of the community network.
You can own your own house and garden, and the graphics are exquisitely beautiful. Despite the 3D models, it runs smoothly without any lag. The novel gameplay only requires logging in once a day to do some tasks like watering the plants. This quickly attracted a large user base!
Don't underestimate this seemingly simple game. Although you only need to log in once a day to water your flowers and clean your room to increase your experience, the game developer, Chen Xu, is someone who almost always uses a cheat code when playing single-player games and whose first thought when playing online games is to find cheats. He naturally understands that there must be a large number of players like himself who enjoy the process of leveling up quickly.
Therefore, during the development of this game, in order to enhance the game's interactivity, Chen Xu deliberately left a "bug" in the game that allowed players to farm money and experience.
This isn't really a bug; it's just taking advantage of an interactive feature in the game. You can help your friends clean their houses, water their flowers, and so on, earning up to a daily limit of fifty experience points.
Don't underestimate the experience points; people still try to farm them, either by creating multiple accounts or forming groups with friends. Fifty points a day adds up to five hundred points in ten days, which is much better than slowly gaining experience. Plus, you can farm money while farming experience, with no daily limit… However, Chen Xu and his friends tested it and found that the maximum they could farm per day using this method was only a little over ten thousand yuan… While that's a huge sum in real life, it's negligible in the game, and without sufficient experience, few people have the patience to farm money like crazy.
As expected. Just one week after the game's release, thanks to the overwhelming advertising on the community network, the number of users skyrocketed to 50,000. This community network was already one of the earliest and largest SNS communities in China, boasting a user base of around 100,000. This meant half of them had joined the game… Of course, that's not the whole story; 8,000 of these 50,000 were newly registered users—in other words, fresh blood being injected into the community network.
Of these 8,000 people, about one-third are fake accounts registered by themselves, but excluding fake accounts, an increase of 5,000 users in a week is still a remarkable number. And this number continues to grow.
A sudden increase in the number of users will inevitably lead to increased server pressure, and this number is not just from people opening web pages... The computation of games will definitely consume more server resources than ordinary web browsing.
However, Zhong Ziyu quickly announced that the community network had received a 5 million RMB investment from Huaqiang Group, eliminating any server pressure issues. Huaqiang Group is the same group owned by Guan Yi's father. The last time they went to the five-star hotel, Zhong Ziyu was discussing financial sponsorship with Guan Yi's father.
While five million may seem like a small amount for a large website, it's a crucial initial investment for a newly established online community.
At this point, one can't help but marvel at the randomness of history.
In its original history, the community website had only existed for a short time before disappearing without a trace. The reason was simple: the founder of the community website, Zhong Ziyu, was accidentally infected with the rabies virus. At that time, how could he concentrate on his work? So the community website fell into decline.
Unbeknownst to him, Chen Xu has been gradually changing history, but will this change in history affect the supercomputer in his hands?
Chen Xu had thought about this problem, but couldn't figure it out, so he simply stopped thinking about it.
Since we're here, let's make the best of it. There's no point in thinking about all that nonsense.
This game has once again made Gao Xiaojie, Chen Xu, and their development team incredibly popular... after all, games need hype. And the production team of "Jin Yong's Heroes: Reunion" is itself an excellent hype gimmick.
And this game is indeed very fun... Take the farm game, for example. While the game basically only requires opening a webpage and clicking once a day, taking up very little time, the added stealing feature is both very welcome and frustrating for players. Welcome, of course, for stealing other people's things. Frustrating, because it's about being stolen from.
Many players are constantly watching their own farms while also keeping an eye on their friends' farms, even staying up all night with timers running to steal from others... because making money almost entirely comes from farming, and stealing a dozen or so fruits at once can earn you thousands of dollars, enough to buy a square meter of housing!
The game's immense popularity naturally attracted the attention of other social networking sites, and even Tencent.
Tencent, being a company that highly values this kind of people-centric interactive gaming, keenly recognized the immense value this game could bring. Besides Tencent, other social networking sites were also eyeing the game closely… After all, for attracting users, Tencent only needed QQ. These smaller, newly established websites, however, desperately needed a game like this to stimulate user engagement.
However, Zhong Ziyu was naturally not going to hand over such a valuable asset. These people approached Gao Xiaojie, but Gao Xiaojie said they had already signed a contract with the community website, and the game couldn't be transferred to other websites for operation. Furthermore, they didn't have any new ideas for the time being; they simply didn't plan to make a second similar community game.
Therefore, these SNS communities could only curse inwardly in frustration before starting to copy.
In fact, the most outstanding feature of this kind of social game is its novelty.
In early 2007, when social networking communities in China had not yet reached a significant scale, social games were simply waiting for their opportunity to emerge. The idea was actually quite easy to come up with, so similar social games quickly appeared on domestic and university-based social networking communities. Examples included farm games, house-buying games, and parking space games.
While these community games certainly helped boost the popularity of these SNS communities, they were far less outstanding and impactful than "My Home, My House".
One thing that must be acknowledged is that the technological gap between the two sides is simply too large!
Such a 3D model game would be embedded in a webpage using Flash, with all computations handled independently on a server. An estimate suggests this game would require at least 100MB… How could such a “large” game possibly exist?!
Could it be that Gao Xiaojie and her team have hired SMMH as an outside helper again?!
When interviewed by the media, Gao Xiaojie simply smiled and said that a master had helped him with the technology. As for who it was, and whether it was SMMH, Gao Xiaojie avoided mentioning it.
In that case, those websites that want to find ways to get their hands on this technology can only sigh in vain, because there's a god standing behind them!
However, some people are indeed dissatisfied with SMMH's perceived favoritism. An administrator of a small website wrote a ghostwritten article titled "Is Gao Xiaojie SMMH's Illegitimate Daughter?", which was almost entirely sarcastic and ironic. However, just two hours later, the website was attacked by hackers and shut down.
The administrator of that small website got cocky and set up a server in North America to launch the website. Then, the entire site was filled with criticisms of SMMH, and it also included many untold stories about SMMH and Gao Xiaojie...
Then the administrator was invited to the police station for questioning by the authorities in mainland China, and his website was immediately shut down even in North America.
Because of something X said.
This administrator should be thankful he was born in China. If he were abroad, under the direct influence of certain powerful figures, it wouldn't be a simple matter that could be resolved with a cup of tea.
The scope of this matter was not wide. Internationally, there are gag orders, and domestically, with such strict media control in mainland China, even less likely would the news leak out. Only a few high-ranking media figures got wind of it and understood that SMMH is extremely important to the country. To avoid getting burned, those who want to attract attention with paparazzi, gossip, and scandals are better off not using these things for publicity.
So Gao Xiaojie had no idea about this matter. She was almost done with the game-related work and didn't need to worry about it anymore. So now, her focus was on the cake shop.
Renting a shop, buying equipment, applying for various certificates, and learning how to make cakes—Gao Xiaojie is currently so busy and exhausted that she's practically sticking out her tongue.
What really annoyed Gao Xiaojie was that while she was working herself to the bone, Chen Xu and Guan Yi had somehow disappeared to play somewhere. As for things like cleaning the storefront, she couldn't find them at all.
Fortunately, with Wu Yuan there to do the hard work, Gao Xiaojie smiled smugly. As long as Tang Bixuan was there, she wasn't worried about Wu Yuan not taking the bait. Sure enough, whenever Gao Xiaojie "ordered" Tang Bixuan to do something, Wu Yuan would immediately snatch it and do it himself. In the end, Tang Bixuan felt a little sorry for him, while Gao Xiaojie and Zhan Jing secretly laughed to themselves.
So what are Chen Xu and Guan Yi doing now?
Actually, it's not like Gao Xiaojie thought. Chen Xu and Guan Yi are together now. Chen Xu doesn't know where that vixen Guan Yi has run off to. However, Chen Xu is currently staying at home with Zhong Ziyu, playing battlegrounds together.
Of course, this "battleground grinding" wasn't about playing World of Warcraft; it was the two of them grinding for points in the Red Hacker Battleground together. Meanwhile, Chen Xu was following Zhong Ziyu, learning hacking techniques.
Although Gao Xiaojie's offensive tactics were varied and flexible, her basic knowledge was too poor, at best only at the beginner level, so she wasn't qualified to guide Chen Xu. But Zhong Ziyu was different.
As a relatively experienced hacker, Zhong Ziyu assessed his own abilities and placed himself in the upper-middle tier of the Red Hacker Alliance—not exceptionally high, but not low either. As for Chen Xu, he could now learn many useful things from Zhong Ziyu.
It seems Chen Xu relied heavily on software when he used to hack... That's right, many of the software programs were written by Chen Xu himself, but software responses are always a step slower than human responses. True masters generally use commands.
For example, the `ip` command displays information such as the configuration of the internal IP protocol of the host where the user is located. In the Windows NT platform, the most commonly used and most powerful `NET` command is used to perform network work. This command can establish IPC connections, map disks, open system services, and even create user accounts.
Then there are AT commands, TELNET commands, FTP commands, and so on. These commands play a particularly important role in attack and defense. Knowing when to use which command and what operation to perform is a reflection of a hacker's advanced skills.
Chen Xu is much less capable in this area, and most importantly... his hand speed is not fast enough.
Chen Xu's basic computer knowledge has become increasingly solid and refined after studying the Chinese language. Although it was only a short six months of study... but would the result of a Chinese person studying Chinese for six months be the same as studying English for six months?
Obviously impossible!
A primary school student can write a vivid and expressive article after studying Chinese for half a year. Try letting him study English for half a year? He probably won't even remember a few words!
The fact that Chen Xu can now independently create such a simple 3D model game shows that his skills are quite good, at least among students. However, many commands in network attack and defense are in English, which makes it a bit complicated for Chen Xu to remember, thus reducing his efficiency. Since the output of Chinese language needs to go through the Chinese language assembler in Chen Xu's hands, which cannot be used on other servers, Chen Xu still needs to strengthen his learning in this area. This is the main reason why Zhong Ziyu commented that Chen Xu's basic knowledge does not match his demonstrated attack and defense capabilities.
Another point is that Chen Xu's typing speed is not fast enough.
Especially when inputting commands requires special characters, many hackers are more familiar with the keyboard positions of these special characters than with the ABCD keys. Chen Xu was fairly familiar with the positions of ABC on the keyboard, but he basically had to look at the special characters by eye.
What do hackers of the same skill level compete on?
On-the-spot reaction speed and the speed of inputting commands!
If you enter your PIN command one second earlier than someone else, you might be able to find their IP address. But if you're one second later, they might disconnect and escape.
Xiaomin has never talked about or mentioned this part of the story.
Now Chen Xu finally understood why Xiao Min refused to teach him hacking techniques: a computer is a computer, and it always needs to run according to a program, while the profession of hacking is far more complex than simply using programs...
Chapter 139 Little Cousin
Chen Xu was now holding a typing software that Zhong Ziyu had given him, practicing his typing speed and command input with a sense of frustration. He thought to himself, "All my hard work over the past ten years has come to nothing..." This kind of typing software was something he used to play when he was playing on his old Little Tyrant game console. He never expected that he would encounter it again more than ten years later.
This typing software is commonly used by hackers, and the training isn't for ordinary typing; it mainly focuses on common commands.
For example: `C:>ip`, using the `IPCONFIG` command to view detailed information, including the hostname, IP address, subnet mask, etc. `map drive` maps the other party's C drive to your own drive...
In short, this is a tool for training hackers' typing speed, containing commonly used commands. Zhong Ziyu added, "A hacker's command input is different from that of a regular computer. It's like when we use various input methods, such as Sogou, Google, or Ziguang Pinyin, there's a fuzzy correction setting if you mistype a Chinese character. But when inputting English, you can easily make a mistake without any feedback. However, in a hacker's battle, if you're not familiar with English commands, even a single mistyped letter will render the command invalid. Therefore, you must be familiar with these commands to the point where you can type them out effortlessly."
Sigh, that's why you need to practice!
Chen Xu suddenly thought, "Why not make an English input method? There should be such English input methods abroad. Not the default English kind, but something like how we input pinyin, where you input letters and the corresponding phrases automatically appear. If we add a few command dictionaries to that kind of input method, wouldn't it be very simple to use later?"
Zhong Ziyu smiled and said that this method wasn't impossible, but it was like a chicken rib—useless. After all, there are only so many commonly used commands, and you'll get used to them as you type them out. It's much faster and more convenient than searching for them one by one in the input method. So it's just a few commands, you'll get used to them, there's no need to think about anything else.
Chen Xu said "oh" and continued typing away.
Sigh, the life of a hacker is indeed tedious and boring. Just thinking about how the great SMMH master is now holed up at home practicing typing makes Chen Xu feel a deep sadness. If this news gets out, I wonder how many people will be so depressed that they'll want to bang their heads against a wall.
This typing software is cleverly designed. It's similar to the Raiden games Chen Xu used to play, but the commonly used character is "shoot," and you have to input various commands in real time. At first, you can just type the commands, but later, in advanced levels, it prompts you to perform certain actions and then lets you input the corresponding commands yourself.
Although the graphics were a bit lacking... well, the kind of crappy graphics you get with 8-bit NES games, the gameplay was still pretty good. Chen Xu was having a blast when his phone suddenly rang. As soon as he answered, Gao Xiaojie's booming voice came through the phone: "Chen Xu, you big idiot, where have you been?! Don't you know we're opening for business today?!"
Chen Xu slapped his forehead, saying he had forgotten about it, then turned to Zhong Ziyu and said, "Come on, let's take Pipi and go have some cake."
Pipi was that enormous white Samoyed. This lecherous dog—Chen Xu finally understood what a lecherous dog really meant. This guy was incredibly affectionate with Guan Yizhan, Jing Gao, Xiaojie, and Tang Bixuan, wagging his tail and all that. But when he saw Chen Xu, he didn't even glance at him, acting all high and mighty like a spoiled brat. It made Chen Xu constantly wonder if this dog was some kind of mishap—a reincarnation of Ximen Qing from another era. So he repeatedly told Zhong Ziyu, "For the sake of family planning, let's neuter this wretched dog..."
No sooner had Chen Xu finished speaking than this wretched dog grabbed his trouser leg and dragged him out the door... Damn, it's practically a spirit?!
The cake shop's storefront was right at the west gate of the school. It used to be run by a spicy hot pot restaurant, and business was pretty good, but apparently something happened to their family, so they closed down and moved out. Then Gao Xiaojie and Guan Yi took the opportunity to buy the storefront. They signed a three-year contract right away.
This shop isn't small, a large room of about 70 square meters. After setting up the oven and partitions, there's not much space left. There are quite a few storefronts like this, but this one has the best location... because it's right by the roadside, visible as soon as you exit the west gate of the school. So, acquiring such a shop has made many surrounding vendors green with envy.
When Chen Xu, leading Pipi—or rather, being led by Pipi—arrived in front of the cake shop, he was startled…tsk, so many people?
The entrance to the cake shop was packed with people, and most of them looked familiar. Luckily, it was the start of the school year and only in the afternoon, so there weren't many people on the street, otherwise it would have been completely crowded.
Most of the shops in Ximen are small restaurants, and people set up food stalls in the evening. So, as for cake shops, apart from Hua Die Xuan, which is only a hundred meters away, they are basically not competitive. Guan Yi did the research, and then this woman decided that Hua Die Xuan's prices were too high and not worth it. As far as students are concerned, they certainly don't have that much spare money. So, apart from some middle-class people who go to Hua Die Xuan, the foot traffic here is generally very high.
Moreover, the cakes made by pastry chef Zhan Jing taste even better than those from Hua Die Xuan!
Of course, Zhan Jing couldn't stay here making cakes forever. She had been teaching Tang Bixuan and Gao Xiaojie these past few days, mainly focusing on Tang Bixuan. This little girl had been in the cake shop for quite some time and knew a bit about it herself. Plus, she was quite clever and quick-witted, so she learned very fast.