Chapter 156: A New Development Team and Unexpected News
Chapter 156: A New Development Team and Unexpected News
He felt as though he now understood why the person who recommended it had said it was hard to explain, but it was truly good.
Unfortunately, he could not enjoy it to the end.
“Oppa! Dinner’s ready!”
Because Ella’s voice rang out. Ras flinched and reflexively closed the game.
“Uh... yeah. Just a second.”
Then Ras found himself ridiculous and laughed softly. Well, perhaps he should have expected a game like this to appear. Sex was originally an element that was hard to separate from games, and even on Spirit Space, so-called erotic stories were being uploaded, putting the administrators in a difficult situation.
That did not mean erotic stories had to be banned. Adults had the right to freely enjoy such content. The problem was the children exposed to it.
Since this kind of content was related to sexual desire, it was stimulating and distorted, so it could shake the values of children who did not yet have proper information or standards.
Well, honestly, the problem is social perception more than the children themselves.
He had said something a little like a moral textbook above, but this was his true feeling. Ras had also seen adult content that flowed out without regulation during the early days of the internet when he was young, but it had not exactly ruined his character. There were probably quite a few people who shared that experience too.
So he did not think it was a huge disaster just because children saw some of that, but there would certainly be people who reacted sensitively to it.
Ras decided he first needed to establish a restricted 19+ area. That would not completely isolate adult content, but he needed to do something so he at least had an excuse.
After that, Ras got up from the computer while thinking this.
Very reluctantly.
“Oppa, what are you doing?”
“I know. I’ll be right there.”
The next day, after Ras went to work and roughly finished what he needed to do, the game he had left unfinished yesterday came to mind. No, it was not exactly conscious. Perhaps because he regretted stopping midway, it happened naturally.
On Earth, he had already graduated from this kind of game long ago, but maybe because he was still young now, or maybe because it had been a long time since he last encountered one, it felt incredibly interesting and fun. It was definitely not that he had any dissatisfaction with Ella. In other words, it was a kind of fantasy.
A deep, dark fantasy, like something a famous porn star had once said. Of course, that did not mean the game’s atmosphere was dark.
I’ll have to say I’m studying in the study sometime and play it secretly.
But after encountering a dating simulation, or to be blunt, an erotic game, something about his previous thoughts seemed to change a little.
Before, he had said he would not bother making one, but now he wanted to make one.
Of course, he was somewhat concerned about how others would see it and felt embarrassed, but more than that, he wanted to make a proper dating sim with beautiful girls.
The game he played yesterday was excellent in its own way, but when it came to dating sims with beautiful girls, they needed beautiful illustrations.
And there would also be sound and voice.
Come to think of it, Meta Hardware had brought over a prototype of a decent sound card not long ago. It could not be used on current computers, but once the new computer currently under development came out, he thought they would need to hire a large number of voice actors too.
After thinking about it for quite a while, Ras eventually spoke to Ella and had her post a recruitment notice for a new development team.
For the first dating sim with beautiful girls he made, he planned to express the erotic parts as plainly as possible or reduce them. Social perception was frightening, and his purpose was not to look at erotic pictures. He wanted players to enjoy the dating simulation game itself.
“Please organize the development personnel with as many different races as possible. Especially for scenario, character, and graphics, make sure there is at least one Orc, one Gnome, and one Dwarf.”
“Okay. Got it.”
He considered hiring a Lizardman too, but there were far too few Lizardmen living in the Republic of Smite. And honestly, he did not particularly want to make beautiful-girl characters for Orcs, Gnomes, and Dwarves, whose aesthetic standards differed from his own, but he had no choice. More than anything, he simply did not have the motivation to go as far as accommodating Lizardmen.
In any case, Ras made up his mind to create the first beautiful-girl game, no, the first graphical beautiful-girl game.
Ras was reading a newspaper in the chairman’s office. It was a medium he barely looked at on Earth, but in this world, it was one of the most powerful forms of media, so at some point, reading it to obtain information became natural.
Moreover, since he ran a business and had once fought with a communications company, he had realized the importance of information. Because of that, Ella had several kinds of newspapers placed in the chairman’s office every day.
“Huh?”
Ras was reading the newspaper for a while when his expression stiffened at one article.
<An engineer named Jajadukara from the Republic of Tonidu has succeeded in developing a new CPU. It boasts performance incomparable to existing CPUs.>
As he quietly read the following content, it was clearly talking about a 16-bit CPU. A 16-bit CPU had finally appeared in this world.
<Development has been completely finished, and it is said that it will be commercialized and released to the market starting two months from now.>
Ras bit his lower lip. Of course, he was happy about the development of computers. But the timing was truly inconvenient. It had only been a short while ago that he received a report saying the design of the new computer was almost complete.
Naturally, since they did not have CPU development capability, the CPU of the new computer was 8-bit.
Damn it... Is it at least fortunate that we haven’t contracted with a CPU maker yet?
Of course, if someone was developing a product like this, they would have no choice but to maintain strict security, but keeping all information hidden until two months before commercialization was truly impressive. Thanks to that, Ras was now about to throw away a design that was almost complete.
No, could we just change the CPU part of the design?
Still, it was extremely fortunate they had not entered manufacturing yet. If an article like this had come out while they already had about 200,000 units in inventory, even Ras would have taken a serious blow.
It seemed he needed to invest more in information gathering.
But the Republic of Tonidu? That’s unexpected. Wasn’t the Kanish Kingdom usually strong in computers?
Now that he thought about it, even if he had strengthened his intelligence network in advance, he probably would have been watching the Kanish Kingdom, so he likely would have been caught the same way.
In any case, since a 16-bit CPU had appeared, he needed to properly investigate what kind of product it was and adopt it if suitable. While he was asking Ella to gather information, someone knocked on the chairman’s office door.
“Who is it?”
Usually, visitors announced themselves through the intercom before coming, so Ras was slightly surprised, and Ella hurriedly opened the door to check who it was.
“Chairman! It’s Karkov.”
Before Ella could confirm and relay it to Ras, the familiar, rough voice of a Dwarf came from beyond the door. Only then did Ras understand this sudden visit and smile bitterly.
“Yes. Come in.”
“Yes. Excuse me. Have you perhaps seen this?”
As soon as Karkov entered, he excitedly held out a newspaper. As expected, he had also seen the article about the 16-bit CPU.
Well, since he had been personally designing the new computer, he must have felt even more empty and stunned than Ras.
“Yes. I saw it.”
“Ah. You saw it. Those Gnome bastards really did something big this time.”
However, Karkov’s reaction was slightly different from what Ras expected. He seemed excited that a new CPU had appeared and a little resentful that it was developed not by a nation of Dwarves like himself, but by the Republic of Tonidu. However, he did not seem particularly angry that his own design had become useless. Ras probed him carefully.
“Yes. Then what happens to the design now? Do we need to start over from the beginning?”
“Ah. The design. Well, not all of it, but we do need to redo quite a lot.”
His reaction was much calmer than expected. Ras found it strange, but he was also disappointed that they had to spend a great deal of time again on a design that was almost complete. Then Karkov said something unexpected.
“Maybe this is a fortunate thing.”
“Yes?”
“To be honest, the computer we designed this time had very clear limits.”
The new computer Meta Hardware had been preparing, tentatively called the Meta Computer, was planned to have graphical performance comparable to the Hammer Computer, powerful network functions, and excellent sound.
However, it had a problem in exchange for being so versatile. It used too many of the CPU’s available resources.
Of course, graphics cards and sound cards reduced the CPU’s burden and had their own processing ability. But that did not mean they used no resources at all. Since devices that had not existed before were being attached and had to be managed, it was only natural that they imposed a burden.
And the 8-bit CPU was weaker than expected, so simply managing those things consumed a significant portion of its capabilities. Because of that, the Meta Computer could not help but have lower basic processing ability.
Of course, they had used various methods to compensate for it, but in Karkov’s eyes, it looked like a product that was far too lacking.
Ras nodded without saying much. Honestly, by Ras’s standards, he thought it was a good enough product, so he had approved it. But if the developer himself felt this way, there was nothing to say. He could only hope that Karkov would carry that motivation forward and make the 16-bit computer he would redesign into a more complete product.
In any case, after sending Karkov back, Ras instructed Meta Hardware to contact the Republic of Tonidu.
Naturally, the other side welcomed the contact.
More precisely, it was a company called Zerman. They had only just finished development and begun sales activities, so a computer manufacturer from an economic great power like the Republic of Smite making an inquiry could only be welcome.
After all, no matter how good a product one made, profit only came from selling it.
“Understood. We will discuss it internally and contact you again.”
When Meta Hardware requested samples, papers, and blueprints, Zerman asked for some time. A few days later, they replied that they would send them. They probably investigated what kind of company Meta Hardware was during that time.
It seemed to take roughly two weeks. Zerman even sent an engineer along with them. They probably calculated that this would minimize technology leakage while also helping with the computer design.
“I look forward to working with you.”
Unusually, the engineer was a woman. Since she came from a Gnome nation, she was a Gnome, but even in this world, women made up a low percentage in science and engineering, and the computer field showed that tendency even more strongly. Because of that, the engineer named Rundna, neatly dressed in a suit, drew the attention of Meta Hardware’s people.
However, aside from being a woman, she was simply an ordinary, competent engineer. There was nothing particularly eccentric about her personality either.
After that, she endlessly discussed matters with Meta Hardware’s engineers.
A short while later, Karkov, who had grasped this CPU to some extent, gave a report about it.
“Its performance is certain.”
He confirmed the part Ras had been most worried about first. In advanced technology fields like this, products that were theoretically more advanced sometimes failed to fully resolve various restrictions and problems, so the actual product occasionally performed worse than the previous one.
However, perhaps because Zerman truly had technical ability, they had overcome most of those issues, and even though this was their first product, it showed definite performance.
“I wondered how they made something even Kanish had not managed to commercialize yet. It turns out they applied magical technology in combination.”
Karkov looked impressed. He was not a mage, but as an engineer, he had a cultured person’s level of magical knowledge. Nor did he reject magic in particular. Since cutting-edge technology in this world fundamentally received a lot of help from magic, there were few pure scientific purists.
“But there was one problem.”
Footnotes:
Translator’s Notes:
19+ (19금) — Korean age-rating term meaning restricted to adults aged nineteen or older. It is commonly used for sexual, violent, or otherwise adult-oriented media.
Dating sim / Beautiful-girl game (미연시 / 미소녀게임) — 미연시 is a Korean abbreviation for “dating simulation,” while 미소녀게임 refers to games centered on attractive female characters, often romance-focused and sometimes adult-oriented.
Voice actor (성우) — Performer who provides character voices for animation, games, radio dramas, dubbing, and related media.
CPU — Central Processing Unit, the core processing component of a computer.