Chapter 14

He actively used English and Hangul as well. He excluded anything that sounded too awkward, but for magic spells in particular, unfamiliar names carried a mysterious feeling that worked quite well.

Something like Fire Ball would probably sound like Abracantabra to them. Maybe even like a Harry Potter spell.

For creators in this world, producing such results would require considerable thought and effort, but Ras could generate them effortlessly. He could also apply the same approach to things like ancient languages and fantasy lore.

Ras began by building the combat system first.

He did not immediately demand graphics from Pana either. Instead, he personally created rough placeholder visuals himself, crude as they were.

There were many variables and interconnected systems, but it was not particularly difficult. It simply required a huge amount of work.

After concentrating for three days straight, he managed to produce enough code to make the combat system function.

During that time, Pana had already completed her assigned tasks and kept glancing around uncertainly, wondering what to do next, so Ras asked her to draw monsters. Since many monsters genuinely existed in this world, it was convenient because he did not need to explain their settings in detail.

Beep!

Turns rotated, magic casting activated, and simple impact effects played during attacks as health gauges depleted.

When one monster collapsed, the remaining characters continued taking turns. Once all enemies were defeated, a short sound effect played, the word Victory appeared at the center of the screen, and the experience gain and reward chest windows appeared.

Ras confirmed that the Gold and Bone Fragments received as rewards had been properly added to the inventory list.

At least there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not seem to be any major problems.

Next, he created the world map where characters could travel.

Ras roughly visualized Earth’s geography and modified it piece by piece while designing the map.

“Pana, make some tree graphics for me. Keep them simple but distinctive like the character sprites. And only use two colors.”

Ras handled the overall structure, but the detailed elements filling it had to come from Pana. Given the resource limitations, they could not make things overly complex, so her artistic sense was extremely important.

Fortunately, thanks to some code he had seen in a computer magazine earlier, adding colors became less burdensome, allowing things to look more convincing.

It was a sort of trick that divided the screen into sections and assigned different color output values to each area. Each individual section used only a small number of colors, but the screen as a whole could still display a wider range of colors.

This trick was perfect for decorating maps.

Terrain in maps usually continued in long stretches anyway, so there was rarely a need to place many colors within a single small area. They could also deliberately avoid situations where that happened.

“What do you think of these?”

Pana quickly created several images and showed them to him.

Having already developed a feel for the style while making the character sprites, she immediately produced something convincing.

“I think these look good. Now make several similar ones and combine them into a larger repeating pattern around this size. We’ll use multiple copies of that pattern to build the terrain. Like bathroom tiles.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Ras copied the completed images onto another diskette, transferred them to his own computer, and placed them across the forest areas of the map he had created.

Since the edge graphics had not been made yet, there was still an awkward sense of abrupt disconnection at the borders, but otherwise it looked remarkably convincing.

Afterward, they gradually filled the map by creating more tiles.

Movement across the map did not switch entire screens at once. Instead, when the character moved in one direction, the divided screen sections shifted one tile at a time in a scrolling format.

He wanted players to feel as though they were truly traveling through a vast world.

Of course, this required cutting the map into separate pieces, naming and saving every single section individually, then creating code to connect ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and load them all together.

Still, it was necessary to improve immersion.

“Make the ground green, but add patterns so it feels as realistic as possible. Use the default color — black — for the pattern itself.”

These patterns were partly intended to improve the appearance of the terrain, but their primary purpose was resource conservation.

The performance of this 8-bit computer was truly inadequate. To create this game, Ras had to squeeze every last available resource out of the machine.

After the field maps, Ras also created dungeons.

Unlike the open field maps, dungeons used fixed pathways resembling mazes. Rather than using scrolling movement, touching the end of a corridor transferred the player directly to the next map.

Partly this differentiated them from the field maps, but it was also intended to narrow the player’s field of view and heighten concentration.

Truthfully, he had not fully calculated all this from the beginning. Rather, he simply used familiar methods and afterward reasoned that there must have been good reasons those systems were originally designed that way.

In any case, the dungeons turned out quite well.

In addition to caves, they created several dungeon concepts, including brick labyrinths and deep forests.

Filling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the fields, towns, and dungeons with NPCs and monsters to create actual game volume took a considerable amount of time.

Even with Ras’s extremely clear planning that left little room for confusion, it still required enormous effort.

“Ms. Pana, take a break.”

Ras bought expensive cookies and sweet pastries loaded with eggs and cream from the bakery he frequently visited, arranged them on the table, and called Pana over.

As development progressed, the workload somehow kept increasing.

Pana was working even harder than he had expected. Honestly, Ras had started wondering whether they needed another graphics designer.

What he did not know was that Pana felt pressured watching Ras work with such intense concentration and seeing her own graphics immediately implemented into the game.

She worried that perhaps her working speed was inadequate, so she kept pushing herself harder.

It was a misunderstanding born from inexperience. This was her first job, and she had only learned computer graphics work here, so she had no basis for comparison and no idea what counted as “skilled.”

In any case, Ras genuinely appreciated how hard she worked.

But since the game had not even been released yet, there was no income to draw from, meaning he could not give bonuses. The most he could do for her right now was buy delicious snacks like these.

“Ah. Thank you for the food!”

As a poor college student, Pana’s usual snacks consisted of processed apple products occasionally sent from home, such as dried apples or jam, along with cheap snacks or leftover bread crusts.

So the expensive-looking pastries delighted her.

Though personally, she preferred meat over flour-based food.

Elves in this world were not vegetarians. Their diets were not particularly different from humans.

After working intensely for an entire month, they finally succeeded in bringing the game world itself to life.

Even at this stage, players could already hunt monsters, gather items and Gold, perform simple synthesis and crafting, raise their characters, and travel through the world.

That alone would probably be enjoyable enough.

However, if they wanted players to become truly immersed in the world, then besides the protagonist, they needed other characters to interact with so the world would feel alive.

At the most basic level, NPCs needed dialogue. Beyond that, there needed to be one-time events and, more importantly, a story that would make players emotionally invested and provide clear motivation for gameplay.

Fortunately, the story itself had already been prepared in advance.

Many parts of the world had originally been built around the story from the beginning.

The plot followed a classic structure.

An ordinary protagonist from a rural village encountered a crisis, left behind daily life, embarked on an adventure, met many people and experienced numerous events, gradually matured, and ultimately defeated the villain responsible for bringing chaos to the world.

Since this style of game had never existed in this world before, Ras believed even that much would be more than sufficient.

Still, by his own standards, it felt somewhat bland, so he added several plot twists.

Nothing particularly groundbreaking.

The apparent enemy wizard turned out to be merely a pawn manipulated by the king who had supposedly been supporting Ras all along. And after struggling to defeat that king, yet another hidden mastermind appeared behind him.

“What do you think of this line? It feels kind of childish, but I can’t think of how else to phrase it.”

Ras was currently writing dialogue for a scene where the protagonist defeats a villain harassing a little girl inside a tavern before triumphantly delivering a line.

But dissatisfied with it, he scratched his head furiously before asking Pana for help.

“Hmm. It does sound a little too self-satisfied. Maybe something shorter like, ‘Get lost,’ would work better.”

When Ras first asked for her opinions, Pana had been extremely cautious.

But after Ras explained that he merely wanted references for ideas and that they were making the game together anyway, she gradually began offering opinions despite her hesitation.

And though this was not manga, she had still dreamed of becoming a manga artist, so she was deeply interested in stories and characters and became increasingly active in the process.

Besides the main story, Ras also added side stories and numerous quests.

Since the world itself had already been created, all it really required was adding several scripts. It was not a major burden, yet it significantly improved freedom and liveliness while also greatly increasing playtime.

“There must be something you can think of too, Ms. Pana. Any good story ideas?”

Ras searched for material both within his own memories and from libraries and daily life, but since all the ideas ultimately originated from himself, they lacked unpredictability and never felt fully satisfying.

So although it technically went beyond graphics work, he still considered it part of her duties as a staff member and requested ideas from Pana as well.

Fortunately, she did not dislike the idea.

Naturally, she felt some pressure, but after continuously working together, she had developed significant interest in this role-playing game genre. At the same time, she began wondering whether ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she could express the kinds of stories she had failed to realize as a manga artist through this game instead.

“What about a love story?”

“Yes. Anything works.”

Since adventure would likely remain the main focus, the primary audience would probably be men. Still, men did not completely avoid romance stories, and it could provide refreshing variety.

But honestly speaking, the story she told him was not particularly interesting.

It was a rather cliché and emotionally messy plot where a woman hated a man because she believed he had betrayed her, only for it to later be revealed as a misunderstanding caused by another woman — who also loved the man — deliberately driving a wedge between them.

Ras adapted the idea appropriately.

He killed off the man entirely and structured the story so the betrayed woman and the betraying woman alternately gave the protagonist requests. Through items dropped by monsters, letters, and most importantly a short message carved with a knife beside the dead man’s corpse, the player gradually uncovered the truth behind the situation.

Depending on the protagonist’s choices, the outcome changed.

“And at the end, the woman who believed she’d been betrayed was actually already a dead spirit from the beginning.”

“Wow...”

Pana widened her eyes in admiration at the hidden twist Ras added.

Seeing her reaction, Ras felt relieved that perhaps his storytelling ability was not actually lacking after all.

Adding all the dialogue and story content took slightly over another month.

During that time, Pana worked on the in-game illustrations.

Despite the limitations of restricted colors and pixel art, her artistic sense was remarkable, resulting in incredibly flashy and impressive artwork.

Most illustrations appeared through full-screen transitions, allowing them to pour resources into them generously, which made such artwork possible.

However, adding impressive sound failed completely.

Ras had abandoned that idea fairly early on.

Originally, he wanted to include background music.

But after improving the graphics quality and deepening the game systems, there were simply no remaining resources available. At most, they could produce basic beeping sounds, and no matter how skillfully those were manipulated, creating actual background music was impossible.

In the end, they barely managed to include a variety of sound effects.

Naturally, there was no reason to look for a music specialist anymore.

Most likely, they would not need one until 16-bit computers appeared.

Afterward, Ras and Pana spent roughly two more weeks polishing the game’s overall quality.

They adjusted awkward story sections and dialogue, fixed minor bugs, and revised several images.