Chapter 34 [Medieval Fantasy Nobles]
Chapter 34 [Medieval Fantasy Nobles]
Compared to a completed game, it would naturally be lacking in many ways. But prototypes were originally meant to let developers run the game first and check how it felt. It didn’t need to be perfect.
Damn, this is annoying.
After organizing the work needed for the prototype, Insu began redistributing the tasks. The annoying part was the distribution work itself. It hadn’t been necessary when he worked alone, but now it consumed a considerable amount of time and attention without directly producing anything, so it felt wasteful.
But right now, the team consisted mostly of rookie developers, so aside from Insu, who at least had development experience, there was no one else who could handle it. Insu glanced sideways at Park Yoonsu.
That ajusshi could probably do it too if he tried.
But Yoonsu’s development experience was still only around the amateur level, making things somewhat ambiguous. Maybe after this project ended and they started the next one, he could try entrusting some of it to him.
“Noona. Please finish the drawings that go in here first.”
“Okay. Like before, for the unfinished parts, I’ll just draw simple placeholders so we can at least tell them apart?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Insu smiled brightly and nodded when she said it first.
Back then, there had only been one person to cooperate with, and since that person was also completely new to development, explaining things hadn’t really felt difficult.
But now that he was running even a small team, simply giving instructions drained his energy. Still, seeing Noona Eunha naturally step forward because of the experience they built together made him genuinely happy.
Drrrrrk! Screeeech!
The distributed tasks printed out through the dot printer. It didn’t feel too bad seeing the expensive printer finally doing its job, but waiting around for it was frustrating.
Even this was considered an extremely advanced workflow by the standards of this era. But Insu was someone who had seen the year 2025.
If only we had KakaoTalk... no, even just a messenger would be insanely convenient.
It was merely a passing thought brought on by memories of the convenient future.
Huh? But couldn’t we still use an in-company messenger even now?
But no such program existed yet. As far as Insu knew, the first instant messenger was ICQ, which would probably appear in 1996. Still, local area networks, or LANs, had already been developed back in the 1970s, and although they weren’t messengers, there were programs that could be used in similar ways.
(Translator’s Note: ICQ — Real-world instant messenger software released in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis. It is considered one of the earliest widely successful commercial instant messaging programs for PCs.)
Should I make a simple one?
Making something with only basic text and file transfer functions wouldn’t even take a few weeks. Summer vacation had started too, so he had some free time now. Working on it little by little didn’t seem impossible.
No. No way.
But Insu soon shook his head. There was already an ongoing project, and he himself was leading the development team.
I need to focus.
Game development was no joke. Especially now, when they were only just starting the prototype phase. If he got distracted by something else, there was a real chance neither project would turn out properly.
For now, Insu decided to simply record the idea separately in his notebook.
I’ll think about it after we finish and release this game.
All sorts of thoughts kept bubbling up, but he suppressed them and focused on prototype development.
He had done this before, but creating a prototype was never easy. It sounded like you only needed to make something that roughly functioned, but “making it function” was a much higher hurdle than people expected.
Simply put, it was similar to assembling LEGO blocks. Code and systems were like individual blocks or chunks made from several blocks, and all of them had to be combined into a structure. But first, they had to fit together, and after assembling them, the structure had to maintain its form without collapsing when you let go.
At least LEGO could be handled intuitively, but programming always required a minimum amount of calculation no matter what.
Maybe somewhere out there exists a genius who can just calculate everything instantly in their head and shove things together as they go.
The important thing was that neither Insu nor his team were those kinds of geniuses.
Afterward, the team spent ten days stumbling through trial and error before finally producing the prototype.
Of course, The Land Of Fantasy was already much further along in development when its prototype was made, so it wasn’t exactly fair to compare them directly. Still, even taking that into account, the process felt much slower than when Insu worked alone.
Insu believed he distributed the work fairly well, but dividing up simple coding implementation was different from dividing larger systems, so even he went through plenty of trial and error.
The process of having each member build modules in code and then reassembling them later caused many compatibility headaches, which probably consumed the most time.
The interface connections and coding itself were fine, but there were slight discrepancies in dependency issues between modules.
Anyway, now that it was finished, it was time to test it.
“Alright. Stop coding for now and focus on testing. Testing is also an extremely important part of development, so concentrate on finding bugs and issues, record them when you do, and if you think there are problems or shortcomings in the game itself, tell me as well.”
“Yes!”
Looking around at the team members made him feel reassured. Back during The Land Of Fantasy, there were so few people available for QA that he wasn’t even sure whether testing was done properly.
Though he still vividly remembered frantically debugging the countless bugs they somehow managed to find anyway, the anxiety from back then remained crystal clear in his memory. But now, instead of relying on his parents, he had five people, including himself, who could be pushed hard into QA work.
I guess Noona Eunha can be considered a gamer now too, right?
Even before, having a beginner and light user’s perspective was still meaningful, but to properly examine deeper systems, it definitely helped to understand games to a certain degree.
Lee Suhyeon from the graphics team had broad experience in various things, but this was his first time working on PC game development, and he wasn’t especially familiar with PC games themselves either.
As for how he ended up applying to a game development team in the first place, it stemmed from something he once heard while working at an electronics market.
“In the future, everyone’s going to use computers, and industries won’t be able to function without them.”
“To that extent?”
“I’m serious!”
Lee Suhyeon didn’t know much about computers. But based on the bits and pieces he heard and his own instincts, he thought that even if they didn’t completely dominate the future, computers would definitely become a huge industry.
So at the time, he wondered whether there was some way to apply his specialties in comics and drawing to this emerging computer field. Back then, he never reached a concrete conclusion and instead moved on to other jobs.
Still, perhaps because of those earlier conversations, he gradually became interested in computers themselves. Even with barely any money, he somehow managed to buy a used computer and started using PC communication services. Then, by chance, he saw the recruitment notice, applied, and somehow got hired immediately.
After joining the development team, he was too busy learning the work and adapting to his environment to think straight. Thankfully, the girl leading the graphics department was kind and considerate, so he somehow managed to learn and blend into the team.
Honestly, Lee Suhyeon was lucky.
Eunha wasn’t a bad person, but she also wasn’t especially gentle or kind by nature. However, since she herself had suddenly entered development work and struggled painfully to adapt and learn, she couldn’t bring herself to act harshly toward someone who looked similar to her old self.
Moreover, she understood that Lee Suhyeon was the only teammate who could share her workload, so she had no choice but to teach him earnestly.
Before he knew it, the prototype production phase had arrived amid the chaos, and he ended up participating as a tester as well.
The logo appearing at the start of the game was already familiar to him, so he quickly skipped past it. Then the title screen appeared.
Oh... so this is the kind of feeling it has?
Computer performance still hadn’t advanced enough yet, so conserving resources was necessary. But even within those limitations, pursuing detail and quality was what professionalism meant.
Eunha especially liked the noble concept this time, so she designed the screen with a brick wall resembling part of an old castle wall, partially draped noble-looking cloth over it, and arranged flowers, crosses, swords, parchment, and other medieval-themed objects around it.
By using heavy shading, she preserved the dark and majestic atmosphere unique to the medieval era while also using fewer and more selective colors, which further saved resources.
And in the center, the title [Medieval Fantasy Nobility] was prominently displayed.
Honestly, by Lee Suhyeon’s standards, Eunha’s drawing skill wasn’t exceptionally extraordinary. Of course, it was impressive for her age, but from the perspective of someone who worked with multiple professional manga artists, she barely reached average.
But it feels completely different when used as game graphics.
He learned a lot about computer graphics work during this time, but seeing the finished result made him truly understand why she was called the lead.
Her sense is incredible.
Without realizing it, Lee Suhyeon glanced sideways at Eunha before focusing back on the game.
[Which race would you like to start with?]
At first glance, it looked like simple character creation, but in reality, it was practically difficulty selection.
Like Civilization, this game generated maps through a tile-based random generation system.
However, it wasn’t as diverse or complex as Civilization. Forest, grassland, wasteland, mountain, and water tiles were generated into believable forms using random number generation techniques and procedural generation algorithms.
If the system simply generated things randomly without restraint, the terrain would become absurd and nonsensical, so Insu put significant effort into designing these procedural generation algorithms.
Yoonsu’s programming talent greatly helped with this.
Unlike most other values, which were random within fixed limits, one particular tile value, racial population, followed predetermined ratios across the entire world.
Each race had its own strengths and weaknesses, so no race was overwhelmingly advantageous or disadvantageous on its own. But what mattered was that the racial preference compatibility system from The Land Of Fantasy was also applied here.
Humans generally maintained relatively stable relations with other races, and since their population was high, they faced little difficulty expanding their influence. Orcs, on the other hand, were hated by many races, so even after winning wars, they often ended up merely occupying land without being able to absorb the races living there.
Furthermore, the surrounding factions’ favorability was also heavily influenced by race, so if someone chose an outcast race, they would eventually discover themselves isolated even without doing anything particularly evil.
Since the programmer team roughly understood these systems, they chose relatively popular races like humans, elves, and dwarves.
But Lee Suhyeon had focused only on drawing and barely understood the systems.
Demons? They sound strong. And “demon nobles” sounds cool too.
Thanks to the lingering traces of his chuunibyou phase, he ended up fighting surrounding factions constantly from the very beginning.
(Translator’s Notes: Chuunibyou — Japanese slang literally meaning “second-year middle school syndrome.” Refers to adolescents who act dramatically or fantasize about possessing secret powers, often associated with edgy behavior and exaggerated self-importance. Used humorously here as the player character’s name.)
Compared to Civilization, this game didn’t have that many tiles. However, each tile contained much more information.
That information included resources, population ratios, technological level, and more, but the most distinctive feature of the game was undoubtedly its relationship system.
These relationships didn’t merely indicate hostility or alliances. They also displayed feudal contract relationships. Every territory had nobles governing it, and the system tracked what kind of relationships those nobles maintained with other nobles.
Direct vassals, the vassals of vassals, and even the vassals beneath those vassals were all connected in chains.
And these vassal relationships weren’t maintained forever either. Loyalty gradually decreased as turns passed, dropped whenever troops or resources were demanded, and declined further as the vassal’s own power increased. The feudal system itself had been implemented directly into the gameplay systems.
This kind of feels like organized crime.
While deeply immersed in the game, Lee Suhyeon suddenly had that thought.