—Relaxed? Comfortable? After playing "Mortal Souls" all afternoon?!
The follower asked in astonishment, "Which boss did you defeat?"
It is explicitly stated: "The body of the Outer God Emmanuel."
He was referring to the official name of the final boss, but apparently no player has reached that point yet.
The cultist looked at Mingyan with a bewildered expression and said, "That sounds pretty awesome. What is an Outer God? A hidden boss? Is the body just a corpse left after the sanity points are depleted?"
He smiled but remained silent, offering no spoilers, only saying, "You'll find out as you play the game."
"Wow, that's awesome, bro." The follower was really into it and kept asking Mingyan for more information. "How did you do that? You beat a hidden boss in just one afternoon?"
Mingyan said calmly, "It's very simple. Just remember all his moves, find the corresponding countermeasures, and react in time."
"...Wow, bro, you make it sound so easy, but it's not easy at all! I estimate that the fastest move of the Mortal Soul BOSS probably only has a 0.5-second wind-up. It's not easy to react to it."
The pre-attack animation refers to the action before an attack is launched, such as raising a sword or taking a deep breath, which are all relatively distinct actions.
Correspondingly, there is also "post-attack animation," which is the action after the attack ends, such as sheathing the sword.
The former is an important factor in judging the BOSS's actions and then dodging; while the latter is the golden time for players to attack after dodging.
The lower the margin for error in a boss battle, the shorter its pre-attack and post-attack times are generally, leaving players with less time to react and requiring a higher level of skill from them.
To be fair, Mingyan's reaction time wasn't actually that fast; it was certainly not as fast as those of the expert players.
Unfortunately, he designed all of these bosses!
In other games, with a 0.5-second reaction time, the ronin who claimed to have only 1 point of health would probably be dead by now.
Mingyan knows all the BOSS mechanics in the Soul of Sex by heart. He knows exactly what skill the BOSS is about to release when it raises its hand.
How are bosses in games typically created and configured?
Take the final boss, "The Shell of the Outer God Emmanuel," as an example. It has a move that shoots a row of five blood spikes from its arm for an area attack.
Once the skill design is complete, the corresponding action and special effects requirements will be submitted to the art team responsible for the BOSS.
After the discussion and communication are completed, the art team will create the BOSS's pre-attack animation of raising its arm, the attack animation of shooting out spikes, the post-attack animation of lowering its arm, and the special effects of the blood spikes.
Once these resources are in place, the technical artists begin to combine and configure them into a coherent set of actions.
At this point, the task flow returns to the designer, who then begins to make minor adjustments.
This fine-tuning, however, has a very significant effect.
For example, how long should the pre-rocking motion last?
This determines how much reaction time the player has.
For example, what is the total range of an AOE attack? How long does the attack detection time take?
This determines whether a player's dodge is effective, and what kind of dodge will have what kind of effect.
For example, if the Blood Spike flies towards a designated area over a total of 30 frames, and it lands on the 15th frame, will the player lose health and be stunned on the 15th frame?
Or should we wait until the spikes have already hit the player before creating a blood-red effect on them, and then deduct health from the player at frame 25?
When health is reduced, should the screen shake? Should cracks appear on the floor? Should the sound effects include the spike itself, and also the game character's scream of pain?
There are countless details like these.
But together they determine the so-called "sense of impact".
The sense of impact, this mysterious feeling, is something that most players can't really explain; they generally only know the reason behind it.
But for designers, all of this is meticulously designed and configured; something that might only take a second can take them more than ten hours to complete.
The worst part is that if a test player feels the "impact of the game is not good" after just one second, the game will have to be scrapped and reworked, requiring several more hours of configuration.
Therefore, if a designer like Mingyan is meticulous and has watched a 30-frame animation dozens or hundreds of times, he would definitely be very familiar with every gesture of the BOSS raising his hand.
The BOSS's eyebrows twitched, and he knew in his heart exactly which area would suffer how many points of attack in the next fraction of a second.
Unable to dodge the skill?
It doesn't exist at all.
Chapter 70 goes on sale ahead of schedule
The two-day online test has finally come to a successful conclusion.
Over the past two days, dozens of expert gamers have been exploring and battling in the world of "Mortal Souls," essentially completing the pre-planned testing tasks.
Every evening, staff from Blue Star Studio conduct one-on-one interviews with testers. Through carefully designed questionnaires, they gain a systematic and comprehensive understanding of each player's thoughts.
Two days is a rather short time.
Although each player's initial character already had the necessary foundation to directly challenge the BOSS, only two players actually managed to complete the game successfully in the end.
Moreover, the ending they achieved was the same as Mingyan's: a clean and simple first-playthrough ending, where the protagonist had no idea about the truth of the dark world.
Even so, being able to complete the game is already quite an achievement.
The final boss was inhumanly difficult. Apart from Mingyan, the two people who managed to clear the game did so using rather underhanded methods—one relied on the artifact shield to turtle and counterattack; the other farmed countless ranged items and health potions, and finally relied on luck to whittle down the boss.
So Mingyan expressed his satisfaction: "Not bad, this level of difficulty is just right."