Chapter 70: Half a Step
Chapter 70: Half a Step
[Level 30 or above, looking for field hunting party.]
[From level 20, let’s just hang out together.]
[No one under level 35.]
They had also made it possible to enter passwords so that people who had made prior arrangements could play together. Everyone was from the development office, but perhaps they were testing that function, because some rooms were locked.
Originally, Chris had planned to invite guests and break through the point where he was stuck, but once he entered multiplayer mode, curiosity rose and changed his mind.
This one seems like Yoonsu, but who’s this?
The character limit was extremely strict, but since there were not many people in the development office, he could still identify some of them to a degree. After some thought, he entered a room close to his own level, twenty-five.
[Synchronizing…]
It did not take long to connect, but that was because they were in the same development office and the connection environment in the region was relatively good. Once the official service began, it would probably be different.
Of course, even though it did not take long, it still took almost a minute. The limitations of the era could not be helped.
Once connected, the screen immediately switched to the game screen, but it was an unfamiliar field, not the place where Chris had been playing. Something kept clattering as though it was still loading, and while he was paying attention to that, he saw text appear at the bottom of the screen.
[Hi~ Who is this?]
Feeling amazed and pleased, Chris immediately typed a reply.
[It’s Chris. You?]
[Ah! It’s Suhyeon!]
Chris immediately pictured her face, looked around, and apparently the other side did the same, because their eyes soon met. The two grinned, then turned back to their computer screens.
[This is fun.]
[Right?]
They had not done anything yet and had only chatted a few times, but it was already fun. At the time, even PC communication was fascinating, so simply entering the same game, forming a party, and talking was enough to make dopamine surge.
[Then I’ll head out.]
[Yeah. Go, go!]
Since it was still the alpha version, there were many unstable parts, and it felt slightly choppy, but that did not greatly reduce the enjoyment. Of course, neither of them forgot to record it in their reports.
They had not moved far before combat began.
[Loading]
In single play, loading was not this long, but since packets had to be exchanged through modems, it was inevitable that it would take a little more time. Of course, part of it was also because the system was still full of bugs and creaking everywhere.
“Oh!”
The enemies were just ordinary orc bandits. What impressed Chris was that, in the allied field, there were allied characters marked in yellow in addition to his own character.
It strongly gave the feeling that they had formed a party together.
In truth, however, this formation had been manually arranged by Suhyeon, the host, who placed Chris’s newly joined characters in those positions. During planning, they considered making this automatic, but since placement had such a large influence on strategy, they ultimately chose manual placement even if users might find it a little troublesome.
That authority was given to the host. Even in terms of the setting, party member placement was something the party leader handled, and since chat was available, it was not as though the guest’s opinion could not get through at all. So instead of making the exchange of authority complicated, they kept it simple.
Combat kept the same system where turn order was determined by character stats. When it became a player’s character’s turn, that player controlled them.
[Let’s kill the one in front first!]
[Okay!]
The enemy was not very difficult, so they fought with the simple tactic of focusing down one enemy at a time. But fighting while exchanging chat like this made it far more interesting. Since there was nothing to do when it was not one’s own turn, their hands naturally went to the chat.
[Got it!!]
[Yes!!]
Item distribution was simply judged on each person’s computer. In other words, it was treated as though each person had defeated the enemy alone. Since it was ultimately a single-player game and there was no separate server storing game data, this could not be helped.
[Ah. This is fun.]
[Right? It doesn’t even feel like we did anything amazing.]
The effect of cooperation was definitely there. Since this game had many random elements in forming party members, there was a large gap in the abilities of each party’s members. But if two teams were combined, only the relatively elite members from each team could form one party, allowing for a far stronger team.
Moreover, the composition could also be matched more ideally, making them even stronger.
In this way, the development team members demonstrated multiplayer, and most recorded positive evaluations.
Alpha testing continued for a month. Of course, while testing progressed, the critical issues that affected the test itself were debugged at the same time, so they could not focus only on playing the game and had to suffer through it.
After alpha testing ended, Daniel connected to PC communication and shared his experience.
[Our team leader really seems like a genius. Honestly, at first I worried there were too many unfamiliar elements and that it might feel strange, but it didn’t at all.]
This was not simply him getting lost in his feelings and venting emotional nonsense to an unspecified crowd, regardless of what happened to the company.
Of course, if asked whether this was not fun at all, the answer could be seen from Daniel’s sparkling eyes and raised lips, but in any case, this was strictly an extension of work.
That was because he was the QA manager.
[Multiplayer mode is especially amazing.]
Not long after he posted, replies began appearing.
[Is this real?]
[Ah. This is about TLF2, right? I’m really curious.]
[Multi? Is it a MUD?]
[I want to try it too!!!]
Daniel grinned when he saw the last comment.
Until now, Parallel Soft had conducted all tests internally, but now that the company had reached a certain scale, and although it was not quite the internet era, they judged that in America, they could gather enough testers through PC communication. Therefore, they planned to conduct this beta test externally.
That was why they were doing work like this in advance, releasing information and selecting decent testers.
America had especially many TLF-related communities, so the reaction was lively.
“Good. This much bait should be enough for today.”
His plan was to hide sensitive information while throwing out only enough to attract interest, gradually letting people know that the beta test was approaching.
To be precise, Insu had roughly taught him the method, and Daniel was fumbling along, learning through actual practice.
Daniel truly found Insu’s abilities astonishing.
He did not simply have development ability. He was meticulous in every respect. Even seeing him devise a way to use PC communication like this for beta testing and actually watching the plan take shape made Daniel feel chills.
Of course, this was not Insu’s original idea. It was a method that would become extremely common later, merely adjusted slightly for this era.
In any case, an article about Parallel Soft’s new title had gone out through magazines, and after that, the development progress became known through PC communication, so expectations for the new game gradually grew.
“Amazing! As expected, Parallel Soft isn’t ordinary.”
A handsome white man in his early twenties, with long hair and a leather jacket, exclaimed as he looked at the atmosphere on the PC communication board, where everyone seemed to be talking about TLF2.
This man was Jayden Bell, one of the developers at Sandfire Studios, the studio that made the recently popular first-person shooter, Hollow Warfare.
Although he was called a developer, he mainly handled sales and promotion, so he spent more time outside than in the development office.
“They’re not just good at making games. They seem to know marketing too.”
The man who had been typing on the keyboard without taking his eyes off the monitor slowly turned his head and responded to Jayden’s words.
He was a white man with sharp, monolid eyes and a cold impression that seemed intelligent but lacked human warmth. This man was Raiden Cole, Sandfire’s main developer.
Before meeting Jayden, Raiden had been a single-minded person who thought that if something was simply well made, it would naturally sell. But now he understood that the methods of announcing and selling a good game were just as important as the game itself.
“By the way, their confidence seems incredible. If they inflate expectations like this, it’ll be hard to satisfy them unless the game is really something.”
“This is Parallel Soft, the company that made TLF and MFN, right? For developers at that level, it’s only natural.”
Raiden was an extraordinary developer, but his empathy was somewhat lacking, so rather than feeling burdened, he was the type to focus on making the perfect game.
Jayden knew Raiden’s personality, so instead of agreeing with him out loud, he only smiled bitterly.
“I think they’re not just promoting it. They’re probably trying to gather testers with that too.”
“Maybe.”
Raiden turned back toward the monitor, paused briefly, and answered. It was not that these two had extraordinary insight. It was simply that recruiting testers through PC communication was not especially rare.
“How about we promote ours this way too?”
“…That doesn’t sound bad.”
The two were preparing a new method of testing and selling that had not existed before. They needed promotion for that, and since they planned to contact all kinds of magazines and game-related communities, there was no reason not to use a promotional method that looked promising.
Of course, they had already been thinking of promoting through PC communication.
However, they had only thought of simply posting messages. They had not thought of a systematic and delicate method like Parallel Soft’s, where continuous communication and steady information sharing maintained interest and gradually raised expectations.
In this way, Parallel Soft’s actions also influenced other developers. What changes that would bring was still unknown.
Even while Insu worked hard on developing TLF2, many games were released into the world, and among them were many RPGs.
A game developer could not focus only on development, or they would fall behind trends. Also, releasing a game required proper timing and strategy.
So Insu examined gaming magazines quite diligently. Of course, part of it was because he found it fun, but without that need, he would not have read them this faithfully.
This one is pretty unusual.
Then one RPG released for NeoCom 2 caught Insu’s attention.
[ECHOS: Resonance of Memory]
It was a Japanese RPG, and the in-game graphics were JRPG-style, so at first he thought it was simply a well-made JRPG. But as he read more of the article, it felt strange.
[A free scenario system where players do not simply play in a fixed order, but freely create the story, leading to different results!]
At first, he wondered if they had simply raised the degree of freedom like a CRPG, but it was far from that. There was a fixed setting and story, but the scenario was not linear. Instead, it branched into multiple paths depending on choices, leading to various results.
In other words, it pursued a degree of freedom within the realm of JRPGs.
In a way, it seemed like it could give a feeling similar to TLF. Of course, its essence was completely different, but in that it had a Japanese exterior while pursuing freedom to differentiate itself, it was similar.
And aside from the story side, its growth system was also somewhat unusual.
There were no levels. Instead, stats randomly increased or skills were obtained during combat. So although it possessed strong characterization like a Japanese RPG, as the game progressed, characters grew into wildly different forms with completely different abilities.
There was an MMORPG where stats rose like this before, wasn’t there? Was it The Legend of Three Kingdoms?