Chapter 53: The Graphics Revolution
Chapter 53: The Graphics Revolution
Contrary to what they had imagined, the endless physical labor left both of them drenched in sweat. Still, this was not entirely a bad thing. If business was this good, there was little chance the store would go under and throw them out without paying their wages.
This world was still not one where workers were properly protected. That made this a very important issue.
No matter how hard things were, time still passed. After working in a frenzy, they realized it was already nine in the evening.
The original business hours were from ten in the morning until now. But Kabl and Andaril still could not bring themselves to close the store because it remained packed with customers.
“What do we do?”
“I’ll call the boss first.”
Kabl offered an opinion after seeing Andaril scratch his head with a troubled expression.
Andaril nodded as if telling him to hurry and try. Kabl picked up the phone on one side of the coin exchange counter and dialed the contact number they had received.
“He’s not answering.”
But Ras was in the middle of studying at Bert’s house, so there was no one home to answer the house phone. Kabl only learned this much later, after calling Ella, whom he knew was Ras’s secretary.
“Ras, no, the boss went to study magic.”
“Do you know around when he’ll be done?”
“I think he said nine. He’s probably done by now.”
“Yes. I understand. Thank you.”
Since he had seen Ella a few times before and knew she was an incredible beauty, Kabl was extremely nervous while talking to her. In any case, once they judged that Ras would probably arrive soon, the two decided to simply wait a little longer.
Of course, just because class ended now did not mean Ras would immediately come here. Fortunately, Ras himself was curious about the sales on the first day of business, so he returned to the store by taxi before too long.
“Huh? You still haven’t closed?”
Ras was surprised when he saw that the inside of the store was still crowded with customers, even though business hours had ended thirty minutes ago. Since the two had failed to follow the boss’s instructions from their very first day, they both looked extremely troubled.
“Well, there are still too many customers, so we were planning to ask you before deciding.”
This time as well, Kabl stepped forward. Ras glanced over the customers filling the arcade and nodded. It certainly was burdensome to drive out customers who had already come in, especially since today was the first day of business.
“That’s true. Let’s wait a little for now.”
Fortunately, as it approached ten, people began leaving one by one. And once it passed ten, most of the crowd emptied out as if all the earlier congestion had been a lie, revealing the floor of the store that had been packed like a bean-sprout steamer.
However, there were still some people left as if they intended to stay all night, which made things a little awkward.
But they could not operate twenty-four hours just because of those people. Even now, Ras felt uncomfortable because the two employees were working overtime. On top of that, when he occasionally came by during the day to check the situation, he saw that the intensity of their work was quite high.
After thinking for a moment, Ras soon made a decision.
“Let’s ask for their understanding and have them leave now.”
“Yes.”
Kabl and Andaril still seemed reluctant, but when Ras, their boss and the person in charge, gave the order, they nodded.
“Customers, we apologize. Business hours are over. Please visit us again tomorrow.”
“Ah... really?”
“Let me just finish this round!”
Kabl looked troubled by the objection from a Gnome customer whose eyes were bloodshot and turned to Ras as if asking what to do.
“Yes. Once you finish the round you’re playing, you need to leave.”
They could refund the coins already inserted, but Ras knew from a gamer’s perspective that this was not all there was to it. They could not forcibly cut off a game that was already well underway. So Ras made that ruling.
However, to create the atmosphere that business had ended, he turned off most of the lights near the store entrance.
Then he entered the exchange room and began calculating the day’s sales.
Of course, Ras did not do it alone. Kabl helped him. Andaril was assigned to clean outside and see off customers once they finished.
The calculation was not easy. Most of the money consisted of 1-del bills or 10-piece coins. At least the bills could be counted quickly, but there were so many coins that even using the coin trays was difficult.
I should keep a scale here too. No, is there no coin-counting machine?
Fortunately, it did not take as long as he expected. It seemed like they struggled for roughly forty minutes.
5,273 del and 40 pieces.
It was a huge amount. Even if he picked one of the expensive machines among those in the store, they had almost earned the price of one machine in a single day. Since there were currently forty machines installed, that meant they could cover the cost of the machines after about forty days of business.
If he rounded it down to 5,000 del, that was 150,000 del in a month and 1.8 million del in a year. In Korean money, that was roughly 1.8 billion won. Even after subtracting labor costs, electricity, rent, taxes, and so on, it would still be around 1.4 billion won. And this was only the earnings of one location.
Ras planned to build up know-how here and create a kind of franchise. When he imagined businesses like this increasing like Starbucks, he felt dizzy.
In any case, while celebrating a good start, Ras first decided to add more employees. More people had gathered than he expected. And after seeing today’s situation, it seemed the business hours would need to run until at least ten-thirty.
He judged that two employees were not enough.
While he was creating the arcade like this, the new computer he had ordered also arrived at the Meta Soft office. It had been over twenty days since he placed the order. Even that was a lucky case. From what he saw in the magazine, there were plenty of people who said they would have to wait more than another month.
“This really does have incredibly powerful graphics performance.”
Garazt ran several sample illustrations and programs that came with it and expressed his admiration. Ras already knew its general performance from the article, but the output speed he had worried about was also fast enough. It seemed they could make the game the way he had imagined.
The two young women on the graphics team were also astonished. Honestly, until now, their work had been less about creating images and more about somehow reproducing something recognizable on the computer. But this could definitely produce something that looked like an actual picture.
It even supported a full sixteen colors. On top of that, it was not so stingy that they had to use only two colors per area just to save resources.
There were probably still limits, but even when Pana expressed things so colorfully that Ras wondered if it would be okay, the images displayed on the screen without issue.
Thanks to that, the characters in Project “Boxing” were made with a fairly high level of quality. When Ras first came up with the concept, he had imagined lumps of pixels that could barely distinguish the characters, but now it seemed to be around the level of Street Fighter.
Since cartoonish expression was not popular in this world, it felt a little more realistic than that, but if anything, this side seemed better.
However, even though they were making the game for the new computer’s specifications, they still planned to include a graphics downgrade option so it could at least run on older systems.
In truth, considering the number of computers currently in circulation, it would be more efficient to simply make it with old-system graphics from the start. Of course, they would not be redrawing every image separately, but rather adjusting things by changing pixel colors and correcting awkward parts during play, so the workload would not be enormous. Still, it would be quite bothersome.
But just as it had been on Earth, once consumers saw revolutionary graphics, they would eventually switch to the new computers. Thinking of it as taking the lead in a new market, it was not a bad move.
And to be honest, now that he could use graphics like this, the thought of continuing to use the cramped old graphics was too terrible.
He had adapted somehow until now while making games, but Ras had never even experienced the 8-bit computer era on Earth. By his standards, graphics had to at least reach this level to feel like a game.
However, once computer graphics improved, a new problem arose.
They could now draw gorgeous images, but the amount of labor required increased even more.
“Um, Boss.”
“Yes?”
It was Pana. Beyond her thick glasses, she looked at him with a determined expression. Ras grew slightly tense, wondering what this was about, and waited for her to speak.
“Could you hire a few more people? Now that I’ve tried it, this takes way too long.”
At first, they were excited by the improved graphics performance and overflowing with motivation, so they somehow managed to push through the workload a few times, but it gradually became too much.
Better graphics were nice, but the problem was that it was still a pixel-based method. They had to place every fine expression and color one by one, so the workload had become several times higher than before.
“That makes sense.”
Carelessly increasing personnel was originally a shortcut to ruining a company, but after hearing her explanation and checking the work process, it was clear the current staff could not handle it.
“I’ll reduce the workload for now, so please wait a little.”
“Yes.”
“Ah, and do you have anyone you can recommend this time too?”
Pana seemed to think for a moment before nodding. In truth, the art departments in this world did not have particularly good employment prospects, so there were many people with nothing to do. The issue was whether any of them were useful. Pana planned to contact those she considered decent.
Naturally, she had no intention of calling in just anyone. Nor did she intend to call someone simply because they were close. If it were an entirely different department, maybe, but since she, as the graphics team leader, would be responsible for handling the workload, that was different.
“One person won’t be enough, right?”
“Huh? Yes! We need at least two more people.”
In truth, she had intended to somehow manage if he hired just one more person, but it was obvious that would still be difficult. Since the boss had opened the door himself, she pushed a little further. No, even this felt insufficient. It would probably be better to have around three more people.
“I think it would be good if we had around three more...”
But after saying it, she wondered if increasing the team by more than double might be too much, so she began watching his reaction. Ras inwardly laughed at the sight of this small older girl, whose intentions were so easy to see, and nodded.
“Yes. I understand. First, please check whether you can find three people. Tell me if it’s difficult. I’ll have to look separately.”
“Yes!”
However, the additional hiring was limited to the graphics side, and the other departments stayed the same.
Garazt and Kelliper were in the middle of struggling with the command input system. At first, the two had seen the various skills and agonized over how to activate them.
“Don’t we not need to think too complicatedly?”
Garazt suggested assigning them one by one to keyboard buttons like in Earth’s MMORPGs, where pressing Q would unleash a one-two combination, and pressing the key beside it would throw an uppercut.
“But the boss said this game is planned to be ported to arcade later. Having too many keys would be a problem.”
At least Kelliper thought a little further and came up with another method. It was simultaneous key input. But a method where the direction key and attack button were pressed together had few possible combinations and frequent input errors.
For a simple example, if the player wanted to punch while crouching, but down plus punch was set as an uppercut, then the character could end up punching the air instead.
In the end, Ras taught them the command input method, and unintentionally received looks full of respect again.
As expected of a genius!
Ras felt somewhat complicated. It was a mix of amusement and embarrassment. Of course, he did not get drunk on that respect. He knew that ideas like this were ultimately things he borrowed from Earth, not his own ability.
The game itself did not take very long to program at a basic level.
However, because two characters had to interact in real time, there were many things to consider. They needed to fine-tune the delay of each technique, the size of the hitboxes, and so on.
If they did it carelessly, the gameplay could turn into both sides constantly landing simultaneous hits. Naturally, if the active hit duration was too long and the delay was too short, that would happen.
But if the delay was too long, the game would lose its sense of speed and become boring, and if the active hit duration was too short, hitting the enemy would become too difficult. They needed to find the exact right balance, but since Meta Soft had no real know-how, they had no choice but to adjust it roughly, run the game, and keep correcting it.