Chapter 69: TLF2 Alpha
Chapter 69: TLF2 Alpha
Malik snatched the magazine and looked through it. There was an article about visiting Parallel Soft and interviewing its representative, and among the text, the word “TLF2” was clearly printed.
“See! I told you it would come out!”
Malik’s face immediately brightened as he shouted.
“Ah!”
At that, Eric recalled what he had said before and gave an awkward look.
Like ordinary boys, the two often argued over pointless things, and one of those arguments had been whether Parallel Soft would release TLF2.
After seeing MFN come out, Eric expected them to continue making games in various genres. But Malik was a hardcore fan of TLF, so he believed a second game would come out. Of course, Malik did have his own logic.
“Exactly! The first game was that successful. There’s no way they’d abandon the series!”
“I guess.”
Eric scratched his head and pouted, but he was happy about the news too. He had also enjoyed TLF quite a lot.
This news spread from LA to various parts of America, and many people cheered just like these two boys. That was how strong TLF’s fandom was.
Moreover, the game had been designed with a high degree of freedom and long-term playability, so even more than two years after release, many players still had not deleted it from their hard drives and continued playing it. Perhaps because of that, the reaction was even more immediate.
The Parallel Soft development office saw the article too.
No one specifically told them about it, but many team members read gaming magazines, and when a magazine mentioned the development team they belonged to and the game they were currently making, they naturally felt happy and itchy to talk about it. So the news spread quickly.
It did not feel bad.
After all, it meant they were receiving that much attention. Of course, being expected to succeed did not guarantee success, but it was also true that it raised the probability.
“Everyone saw that article, right?”
“Yes!”
Even though Insu spoke somewhat vaguely, none of the team members failed to understand what he meant.
“It means that people have that much expectation for us. Not only in articles, but also on PC communication networks, people are loudly talking about the TLF2 we’re making. Now, as long as we make it properly, gamers will buy the package.”
He added a slightly playful tone at the end, and the team members chuckled.
“Then let’s begin developing the alpha version.”
“Yes, sir!”
Insu had already made alpha versions twice. Of course, two times was not an enormous number, but it was true that he had become reasonably accustomed to it.
However, even during MFN, he had felt somewhat awkward when first dividing work with others. This time, there were not just three people like back then, but more than twice that number, seven people, so the work had to be divided into smaller pieces.
Of course, even while developing code, he had already divided work and used other people’s hands. But assembling those pieces into a larger mass and shaping them into something called a game, like an alpha or beta version, felt much more direct.
Watching things get made and assembled with clattering momentum even when he did not personally pay attention to and touch every single part made him feel anxious, amazed, and comfortable all at once.
This really is nice.
He strongly felt that this was why people created development offices and developed games through teams.
Moreover, although he had been anxious because there were many beginners, the Korean developers who had experience developing MFN were mixed in, so things somehow ran well enough without Insu having to run here and there like before.
Of course, he could not completely relax, and he was still afraid of what would happen during debugging later, but he had mostly let go of that since he first gathered developers and made MFN.
When it hits, I’ll solve it then.
In a way, perhaps he had come to trust his own ability. After all, one reason he worried about the future was because he feared he might not be able to handle things when the time came.
In any case, over nearly a month, the resources were assembled and took the form of a game. Thus, the alpha version was created.
For now, the basic loop has no issues.
Successfully building the files was too obvious a requirement. At the very least, they had to enter the game, move the character around, and exit the game before it could be said to be ready for testing.
It felt like a test before the test, but even if an alpha version was assumed to be full of patches, it still had to at least feel wearable before one could put it on and examine it.
“Ah! Crash!”
Insu hesitated for a moment in front of the alpha version completion checkbox, then simply marked it as cleared and immediately recorded the crash in the bug report.
[BUG#1 Intermittent crash when saving, estimated frequency 20–30%, highest priority]
Thus, alpha version testing began.
This definitely feels like a game.
Chris thought that after launching the game and progressing a little. He had played the prototype before, but honestly, that had felt like a temporary set barely tied together and propped up.
This, however, had systems, graphics, and sound all in place, even if bugs exploded whenever the game felt like it and things creaked here and there.
Oh. This is in here.
He entered a tavern to look for companions, then saw objects like tables and lamps inside and smiled with pleasure.
As a graphic designer, he could not help feeling pleased and drawn to the sight of work he had helped create being applied inside the game.
Then his gaze moved to the appearances of the characters on the list of available companions.
Seeing them like this, they really match the atmosphere.
He glanced at Eunha, the graphics lead. He had certainly felt that she was skilled at computer graphics work, but he had not evaluated her drawing ability itself very highly.
However, the feeling her work gave when expressed inside the game was better than he had expected.
Come to think of it, she was good at polished illustrations too.
Thinking about it, perhaps it was not that she lacked skill, but that she made appropriate expressions suited to the environment.
Maybe she just has good sense?
While working together until now, he had learned a lot from her regarding technical aspects and know-how in using tools. However, since he had not come as a student but had been hired as a developer, he had not learned how to draw from her, so there was naturally some gap in that area.
Of course, he had followed Eunha’s overall atmosphere and direction as the lead.
No matter how confident he was, he at least knew that this was a company, and that creating work however he pleased and damaging consistency would be foolish.
There was almost no fundamental graphical difference from the first game.
At this time, a two-year gap was significant, but the first game had been made with very high specifications to begin with. On top of that, 486s were too expensive to spread smoothly, and with the Pentium about to appear, it was an awkward period, so the game ultimately had to be developed for similar specifications.
However, Eunha’s skill as the lead had improved greatly, and the number of people on the graphics team had tripled, so the artwork itself had become much more detailed and rich.
It was similar to how even if the same crayons were used, a painting by an artist and one by an elementary school student would be completely different.
It definitely feels upgraded.
Chris had also played the first game quite a bit. Although the early gameplay barely differed from the first game in terms of systems or structure, perhaps because of these differences in artistic detail, it did not feel boring.
Before long, newly added monsters, magic, skills, and characters appeared, making him feel more and more differentiation.
He continued immersing himself in adventure for quite some time.
Of course, while recording the bugs that kept popping up.
[The local lord highly values you and has offered you the title of [Knight].]
“Oh?”
It seemed he had cleared quite a few quests, and his Honor Points were apparently fairly high. Just as in MFN, where players could take adventurers who entered their territory and completed requests as subordinates, here the player could take the opposite position and become a subordinate of a lord.
Of course, AI could not judge like a person, so they had inserted a simple condition called honor.
Curious about strategy mode, Chris accepted immediately.
[You have become a [Knight].]
Then the locked strategy mode was unlocked. It was not especially grand. A part of the interface that had been grayed out and locked simply changed so that he could click and enter it.
Ah, it’s right around here.
When he entered the mode, the same map he had originally been looking at appeared, and some of its fields were marked in gold. That meant this was his territory.
No separate village or the like was implemented on the field itself. When he entered the mode, the interface showed things like a lord’s manor and training ground, but that was all.
It does seem similar to MFN.
It was much simpler.
There was only a management mode interface, but it still felt like it had all the basic elements of a strategy game, such as adjusting tax rates, gathering troops, and moving them.
But there are no troops I can recruit.
Perhaps because he had only just become the lowest-ranking noble, he was the only knight. There were no cavalry, only single-digit heavy infantry, slightly more pikemen, and the only units he could gather in double digits were conscripts.
Since the territory’s population was less than a hundred to begin with, it could not be helped.
There’s nowhere I can invade either.
The surrounding areas were all lands belonging to the same lord. All he could do was eliminate monsters invading his territory or continue adventuring.
Even though he had become a knight, it did not mean he had to wait on that land all the time.
However, that did not mean there was no penalty. If the lord who appointed him summoned him, he had to gather his troops and go to the lord’s base. If he was too far away from his territory, he could not respond to the summons in time.
Still, this summons had limits set according to feudal historical accuracy, so if he fulfilled all of them, he could freely roam around until the next year.
There was nothing he could do, and the income was rock-bottom, as expected of the lowest-ranking noble. In other words, it felt like being a business owner, but the owner of a countryside convenience store who earned less than a part-time worker. It was better to keep adventuring, so Chris neglected his territory and set out on an adventure again.
Then, after adventuring for quite a while, he reached a point where he was stuck. It was that moment when the dungeon he had to clear, or wanted to clear, was beyond his party’s ability, so he could not win.
This stuck moment happened at different times for each player. Since this was not a game that progressed according to a fixed story in the first place, impatient players got stuck quickly, while relaxed players who did various quests and hunted along the way got stuck later.
In the first game, at times like this, the only method was to retreat, hunt more, raise the characters, gather items, and strengthen one’s fighting power. If even that did not work, one had to move on to the next playthrough.
But in the second game, there was a new system.
Good. Now it’s time to use multiplayer mode.
It was called multiplayer mode, but its function was fairly limited. Since there was a limit to the amount of data that could be exchanged through modems, it could not be helped.
The synchronized information consisted only of the party information of the gamers playing together, enemy information, and rewards. No other in-game information was sent or received.
And until combat began, the guest could not perform any controls and only watched the host’s party move around the field. Of course, chat was possible.
[Du-ru-ru-ru-ru]
When he pressed F10 and selected multiplayer mode from the menu, the game immediately switched to the multiplayer waiting screen.
Then it soon connected to the relay server.
The relay server was extremely simple. Hosts posted recruitment listings, and guests clicked them to connect.