So the two played Street Fighter, Gouketsu no Ichizoku, and so on... It wasn't until they played Samurai Shodown II that Chen Xu finally came back to his senses, because Samurai Shodown II is a fighting game that emphasizes the timing of attacks. This kind of game doesn't rely on flashy special moves, but rather on finding the opponent's weakness and striking them deadly.
So it was during this game that Chen Xu gained a slight advantage.
But when Chen Xu won, Er Ya was unhappy. She kicked her little legs and acted spoiled, saying that Chen Xu had no manners at all and didn't know how to give way to a little girl... This little girl was like a wild donkey when she got going, and you couldn't hold her back! In the end, Chen Xu had no choice but to surrender and promised a lot of benefits before he could appease the little girl.
"Cousin, these arcade games are boring. They're all fun, but the graphics are awful. Hmm, I see a nice game on your computer. Let's play that!"
"On my computer?"
"Yes, yes!" Wang Mingmei smiled like a sly little fox: "It's in that laptop, you know. I secretly flipped through it and saw a really good game description!"
Chen Xu broke out in a cold sweat and tapped her on the head, saying, "Why are you going through my things like that? ... A lot of the files on my computer were copied from Xiao Min's place, and there are some things I haven't figured out yet... Luckily, a lot of the software is quite advanced, and this little girl is only in vocational school, so she definitely won't understand it, otherwise she might have been exposed!"
However, Er Ya's words piqued his curiosity, so he asked, "Which game is it?"
"This is it!" Er Ya clicked around with the mouse and then pulled up a picture. Chen Xu was relieved when he saw the address she found... because the girl had retrieved it from the recently opened documents on the computer, which meant she hadn't actually gone through her own things.
The picture shows a man and a woman striking a pose as if practicing martial arts, with the words "Real combat, the strongest online!" above it.
Chapter 144 The Billion Dollar Game
Chen Xu knew about this game because he had been playing it at the beginning of his winter vacation.
The game is called "Martial Artist," a fighting game released in 2047 for the PC platform, which became a sensation worldwide at the time.
Unlike typical fighting games, "Martial Artist" doesn't have a specific set of characters... Just like well-known fighting games, such as King of Fighters, Street Fighter, or Samurai Shodown, the characters are fixed, and their moves and appearances are all pre-designed.
The character design in Martial Arts is very open, and the characters are completely created by the players themselves... The 3D model is just like the popular online games nowadays, with appearance, body shape, skin color, height, weight, etc., all created by the players.
Moreover, this kind of creation is not just for aesthetic purposes!
You know, in modern 3D games, like World of Warcraft, there are height settings, such as gnomes, dwarves, and tauren... For example, when Yao Ming played WoW, he especially liked to kill players whose names included "Yao Ming," and who were of short races... Not only did he kill them, but he also camped their corpses!
In reality, within the game's mechanics, height and weight have absolutely no impact on character attributes; they are purely for entertainment. However, in the game "Martial Artist," increasing weight is used as a crucial criterion for evaluating a character's attributes.
Taller people are generally less agile than those who are more nimble, but they have long arms and legs, allowing them to hit farther and with greater strength.
In other words, in the game "Martial Arts Master," a character's other attributes are largely determined by their appearance... Imagine trying to make Yao Ming and Zhu Bajie dance ballet. That would be quite difficult.
For fighting games, character height and size are absolutely crucial and cannot be mere decorations. This is the biggest difference between this game and other similar 3D games... its 3D node settings.
Modern 3D games use character models of uniform size. For example, in World of Warcraft, an archer's arrow deals the same damage to a giant and a gnome. However, in reality, a punch to the face and a punch to the buttocks have drastically different effects. In contrast, in modern 3D games, each character is a single model with only one point of impact. Damage calculation for hitting this model is entirely based on skills and equipment, meaning hitting the face and hitting the groin are essentially the same.
However, in martial arts, a single model has been extended to over three hundred points of impact across the entire body! Attacking each point produces a different effect, making the game more realistic.
So, is this game a single-player game or an online game?
Actually, it can't be categorized this way. This game offers online battles, allowing two players to duel in traditional mode, or even engage in large-scale brawls. It can even be set up in a large arena where players can ambush each other like in Counter-Strike… The game is highly interactive and fun. However, it doesn't qualify as a typical online game.
This game can also be played in single-player mode... because many data points can be calculated independently, so it's perfectly acceptable to train alone without an internet connection... In fact, many games nowadays can do this. For example, games like Audition Online and Dance Dance Revolution, playing alone in a private room is essentially the same as playing in single-player mode, right? It's just that game companies haven't developed this single-player feature yet.
Gaining experience still requires an online presence, but rather than calling it an online game, it's more accurate to describe it as a multiplayer online game like Red Alert or StarCraft... because it's easy to imagine that a character model has over 300 action points; if that amount of computation were hosted on a server, how large would the server have to be to handle it?
Therefore, this game's style is closer to esports games like Counter-Strike and Red Alert, and it can't be considered a full-fledged online game. However, in the future world, this game is a very popular esports title, and Martial Artist is a very popular competition item in the WCG (World Cyber Games)... In 2050, the WCG Martial Artist grand prize is a whopping $500,000! It's the game with the highest prize money of all esports titles.
In 2057, exactly ten years after the release of Martial Artist, the game's status not only did not diminish with the passage of time and the emergence of new games, but it grew even stronger, and the prize money for the WCG Grand Prix was increased to one million US dollars!
Why is this the case? The words of that year's WCG champion might explain something: "Ten years have passed, and we've found that our understanding of this game is still very superficial."
The most distinctive feature of the game "Martial Artist" is the ability to create and combine your own moves!
Controlling a martial arts character in a game feels just like commanding a real person. In fact, aside from the basic attack patterns, using all 107 standard keys on the keyboard wouldn't be enough to cover all the attack methods!
Because this character model is not like a regular 3D game, where the model and all the animations are already set up, and you only need a few keys or key combinations to operate it.
In this game, you can choose the character's actions as set by the system, or you can explore them entirely on your own... Even something as simple as having the character flick their hair can be programmed with a command.
Therefore, the game "Martial Arts Master" was studied by a group of enthusiastic gamers who developed all sorts of moves... because the game's slogan was: "It can do any move a human can do!" This was the first game in esports history without any fixed control scheme. Some people even specialized in researching these fighting moves and selling them online for high prices in RMB. Even more skilled individuals incorporated routines from ancient Chinese martial arts—Southern and Northern styles—into the game, thus giving rise to several major schools of thought in the gaming world... But that's a story for another time.
So, how big do you think this game is?
At such high processing efficiency, it must be at least several tens of gigabytes, right? World of Warcraft plus its expansions are already over ten gigabytes.
Dozens of gigabytes? That's ridiculous!
Only six GB! Don't be surprised, that's after including CG. Even on a typical computer in the early 21st century, it should run smoothly, although the graphics card might be a bit weak, resulting in poor visual quality... In 2007, the mainstream configuration was basically a 256MB dedicated graphics card, with 512MB dedicated cards gradually replacing 256MB as the mainstream... And for this game, a 256MB graphics card is definitely enough. Of course, even if you upgrade your video memory to 2GB, the game visuals you see will definitely not be the most impressive.
Chen Xu had played this game on Xiao Min's supercomputer. The graphics were more stunning than any action blockbuster. On his own old laptop, however, it looked much worse, lacking in both color and realism. By today's standards, Xiao Min's graphics card must have at least 50GB of video memory.
Why is such a game so small?
To be honest, if we consider the software integration technology of the early 21st century, this game's size would be so small that even 600GB might not be enough to fit such a massive and incredibly complex game!
Of course, this is only true under current computer conditions.
However, if a double-helix chained code is used... then the entire software can be compressed to a very small size. And the computational efficiency is extremely high!
The double helix chain structure is the most mysterious structure, and also the system structure most capable of extracting the value from software.
To put it simply, even a small segment of the human genome contains information that, when converted to computer units, would amount to gigabytes. Future cell structures like these are merely imitations… yes, imitations, not true simulations.
Even if it's just a copy, the effect is unmatched by current technology. The ultra-high compression method can reduce the size of a software by hundreds or thousands of times while achieving significantly higher efficiency and power… This is different from the compression algorithm provided by X. X's algorithm can only minimize the size of fixed-size 3D models, making it unsuitable for widespread use. But this spiral mode, if used… even World of Warcraft could be played as a regular mini-game.
When Chen Xu heard Er Ya mention this game, his mind started to wander. He was already quite familiar with this game... After all, when others played it, it was like a blind man crossing a river, having to figure it out on their own, while he had Xiao Min's guidance.
Most importantly, regarding the design of character movements, Chen Xu could directly obtain the best movement models that had been technologically tested decades later, without having to try them out bit by bit himself.
Since this game can run on today's PC platform, there's nothing wrong with releasing it, and it might even help me make some extra money.
Besides, sharing is worse than enjoying alone. This game is excellent. It's really no fun playing alone on the computer; sharing it with others can create quite a stir.
However, Chen Xu doesn't want to be famous anymore. This game is clearly a product of its time... or rather, its technology is unimaginable to people today. It wouldn't be good to blame it on SMMH. So what should be done?
Chen Xu had a sudden inspiration and thought of an excellent candidate.
By having X launch this game, we can keep him in the background and also extort money from X. Haha, killing two birds with one stone!
So Chen Xu first coaxed Er Ya, saying that he had only seen the game's trailer online and didn't know if it had been released yet. After Er Ya pouted and went back to her room, Chen Xu immediately closed and locked the door, then switched Xiao Min to computer mode and contacted X.
Chen Xu absolutely dared not use that crappy computer to contact X, otherwise he might be discovered... not just possibly, he would definitely be discovered!
It has been a month since the last time we clashed with X.
Chen Xu had been quite cautious during that month and hadn't noticed anything unusual. However, when facing X, Chen Xu decided to try to trick them.
I just opened the messaging app, and a barrage of messages started flooding in.
"Please log on after seeing this message, otherwise it will seem like you are not being sincere. We have completed the first step of our research. Indeed, many gene chains in the human body are dormant, and we are trying to decipher the codes in the gene chains based on your data."
"Could you please contact us? Could we perhaps draw upon your research findings regarding DNA arrangement?"
Please reply immediately after seeing this message!
"Dear S, please show yourself! In the presence of your organization, we realize how naive we are, like elementary school students!"
Each word he spoke was more respectful than the last. Chen Xu gave a cold laugh and replied, "What was the deal with those unidentified people who appeared around Gao Xiaojie earlier?"
The people at X had probably been waiting for a message on the communicator, and just two seconds later someone replied: "Dear S, you've finally appeared. Please wait three minutes, and our team leader will be here shortly to answer any questions you may have!"
Less than three minutes later, just over two minutes later, a message appeared on the communicator: "Dear S. God bless us that we have finally met you. Was there an unidentified person with the Chinese girl you mentioned? We are sorry that we know nothing about this, because we followed your instructions and did not dare to monitor her in the slightest."
Seeing the other party's respectful tone, Chen Xu reluctantly believed them and replied, "Alright then, perhaps it's another organization. I'll handle this matter. How are your research results coming along?"
"Our organization is deeply grateful for your generosity! We have made some progress in understanding the genetic code and its computer structure, and we find ourselves like elementary school students. Thank you for opening this window for us. We also welcome your guidance on the challenges we have encountered in our research."
Oh my, his tone is so respectful, it's like he's a grandson!
However, Chen Xu didn't see anything wrong with their claim of making some progress... It would be strange if there was no progress at all!
This scam has been dubbed the "greatest lie of the century," and it is not so easy to expose. There will certainly be some progress in the research process, but the probability that such progress can be put into practical use is almost zero.
Looking at the questions sent by the other party, Chen Xu asked Xiao Min a few questions and casually answered two based on the detailed research data on this lie. He didn't answer the remaining questions but instead said, "Your side cannot rely entirely on us. You must understand that for this kind of research, it would be meaningless if we directly presented the data to you. The research on the divine is a long and arduous task, and the inspiration and knowledge gained in the research will be able to develop and expand entirely new technologies."
The other party immediately replied very respectfully, "Yes, yes, thank you for your guidance. We will continue to work hard and strive to catch up with your pace."
Chen Xu chuckled and replied, "That's good. Well, I need your help with something."
"Please tell us, we will do our best to help you with anything we can do!"
Chen Xu chuckled, sent the game's compressed file, and typed on the keyboard: "This was made by a few bored guys over a month. We think it's pretty good and plan to promote it. So we wanted to ask you guys for a favor, since we have a lot of faith in X's capabilities in this area."
Another game?!
The people at X were a bit confused. Were they a game company?!
Transferring a 6GB file would take a long time, but X's communicator is very powerful. Although Chen Xu's network speed isn't great, theirs is very strong, allowing for equal sharing between the two. Even so, it would still take one or two hours to transfer.
So X's representative took this opportunity to ask, "Is your game being released as a game company or something else?"
Chen Xu chuckled and replied, "Our goal is to get more people to play this game and explore its potential. Once it's all over, you'll see how valuable this game is."
Chen Xu's words were quite true, because the potential for exploring combat techniques in this game was simply too great. Before the advent of Virtual Reality, no fighting game dared to claim comparison. His boastful statement wasn't an exaggeration.
What about profitability?
Chen Xu chuckled and said, "We developed this game so that everyone could play it and afford to play it. Originally, we planned to make it completely free. But since it's a lot of hard work, we'll just charge a little price. You should know better than me how to price it."
That's a very ambiguous statement!
The people in Organization X were a bit confused. They couldn't set a price before seeing the game, but after consulting online, a Chinese group leader in Organization X immediately made a decision: "Why even bother setting a price! You foreigners just don't understand the art of language and the way things are done in China! Tell him that we will help him promote and release this game for free, and at the same time, we will put up a billion US dollars as a buyout, directly depositing it into a Swiss bank!"
The foreigners looked at each other, while the Chinese members all showed expressions of understanding... This is the difference between East and West!
These stupid foreigners, do they really think we're here to do business with them? Damn, a billion dollars? That's just a small amount for Organization X! They invest billions in just one research project!
Of course, this is a considerable sum of money, beyond what Team Leader X can allocate; he must request approval from higher-ups. However, they will certainly approve it, because they're not afraid of spending the money; they're afraid of not being able to spend it, or of people not wanting it!
This isn't bribery... Damn, do top organizations like X and S need to bribe?
This isn't a business transaction! It's a favor!
Is it a loss to buy a game for a billion dollars? Probably a loss, but X can afford it!
This only brings the two sides a step closer. A billion dollars is nothing to such a top-tier organization. X is certain that if S's people were willing, they could easily shake something out of the sole of their shoe for more than that price!
So this billion dollars is just a trial balloon, to see if we can get closer to each other... How could you possibly give less money?!
Foreigners don't understand this kind of linguistic art, especially these technicians and scientists. They are all incredibly intelligent but have pitifully low emotional intelligence. It's better to let them study why 1+1 equals two than to make them understand the subtlety of this method!
Upon seeing X's message, Chen Xu's eyes widened instantly!
A billion dollars?!
Just moments ago, he was basking in the glory of earning 200,000 RMB a month, when suddenly a billion-dollar pie fell from the sky! No wonder Chen Xu was stunned!