Chapter 87: The Prototype of the Prototype
Chapter 87: The Prototype of the Prototype
“Understood. Then we’ll try building the site as it is for now.”
“Yes. And the search engine can be attached later, but before that, please hire management staff in advance and start collecting sites.”
“We should.”
It was a little disappointing that there was almost no content, but for now, they would have to think about it while posting at least Parallel Soft-related news.
The first thing that came to mind was a bulletin board.
One might wonder why anyone would come to the mostly empty internet when PC communications already existed, but the internet had one powerful advantage PC communications did not.
Images.
Text and images differed enormously in terms of delivering information. Text fundamentally required reading comprehension, and readers then had to reconstruct the picture in their heads, making errors in information delivery more likely and also taking longer.
But pictures conveyed information the moment one saw them. It was similar to how TV was easier than radio, and comic books were easier than novels.
This was a tremendous advantage not only for information consumers but also for information producers. Converting information into text was never easy. This did not only apply to complex documents or novels.
Even when conveying a simple joke or an experience one had, writing it out had enough difficulty that people often hesitated.
But pictures were easy. Of course, drawing also required skill, but anyone could easily draw something like a doodle, and that doodle was usually easier to understand than text.
Anyone who had looked up game guides would understand. An explanation written only in text was hard to understand, but if someone roughly drew lines in Paint and circled things, the guide became much easier to grasp.
So even if this bulletin board seemed like nothing, it might become a trigger that exploded user-generated content.
Moreover, Insu had used many future community boards like Ruliweb and DC Inside, so he could design a more advanced structure without much difficulty.
A chat room would be good too.
Of course, PC communications also had real-time chat. But because of network structure and technical limitations, most of it was one-on-one chat.
The internet, however, even with the same modem, had the advantage of being an open network, and with lightweight protocols like IRC, it was possible to chat with a larger number of people.
And although it was not supported yet, if Insu remembered correctly, a new HTML version would come out within a few years, and it would support the tag.
Using that, users could change text size and font or add colors, allowing a more dynamic experience.
At that time, PC communications only had dull, unchanging text, so there were almost no ways for users to show individuality. Simply enlarging letters and adding color felt as thrilling as attaching all kinds of emoticons, perfectly timed reaction images, and videos in 2025.
In any case, once they built the site and brought it in, they could test it and then make a firm decision.
Insu’s team only managed to create the prototype of the single-player prototype in February 1994.
Creating a prototype of a prototype might sound strange, but MMORPGs were still games. They needed to check in advance whether the concept was actually fun when realized, and whether the systems worked properly.
For this version, even systems they planned to move to external machines, like the corruption system, were simply included inside. Developing and attaching an external processing system for the prototype would be meaningless and would only take extra time.
The single-player prototype itself was meant for local testing in the first place, so putting an external processing system into it made no sense.
And since the single-player prototype did not have multiple users like a real online game anyway, there were not many targets to process, so it was fine.
“Everyone needs to examine this properly and evaluate it clearly.”
Insu first checked whether testing was possible with this prototype, then marked it cleared. After placing it in the shared folder, he informed the team members that testing would begin.
The team members began downloading it with both tension and excitement.
Even at this time, LAN speeds reached around 10 Mbps, so data could be exchanged relatively easily on an internal network like this.
(Translator’s Notes: LAN — Local Area Network. A localized computer network connecting systems within a limited physical area, such as an office or building.)
As soon as the download finished, Yunsu launched it.
He found this project extremely exciting. He had originally been very interested in networking, to the point that he had once created a MUD by himself, and this time, they were making the world’s first graphical online RPG.
And it’s based on that TLF, with all kinds of innovative systems packed into it.
When he watched Insu conceive and design systems that simulated reality and allowed multiple users online to become intertwined, such as the corruption system, economic system, trade, and Strategy Mode, chills had genuinely run down his spine.
He himself had imagined what it would be like to turn an RPG into an online game. But at most, his ideas ended with players forming parties, hunting, and leveling up.
Of course, he had thought of players trading items with each other, but he had not gone so far as to connect that to an economic system.
The team leader must be making an MMORPG for the first time too.
Considering Insu’s age, there was no possibility that he had any other career experience in the first place. The way he found answers others could not imagine in an untouched field and moved forward without hesitation could only be described with the word “genius.”
[The Land Of Fantasy Online]
After some loading, the title screen appeared.
Unlike the previous games, the image filled the entire screen.
A field drawn like a medieval map on old parchment was depicted in bright colors like an in-game field, and the various terrains, castles, villages, and several monsters and races were shown freely moving across the field in different directions through high-quality pixel illustrations.
Above it, the title stretched across slightly above the center of the screen in large medieval-style cursive letters with a thick black outline.
Computer performance had now improved considerably, and more than anything, they had become much freer from capacity limitations, so they were investing quite a bit even in the title screen.
Until now, they had kept things simple because they had no choice, but a title screen was no different from a game’s first impression, so it was worth investing in if possible.
And for online games, it was even more important because players often waited on the title screen for a long time while logging in, connecting, and choosing servers.
By the time this game released, package games would probably start using video intros instead of simple illustrations.
However, TLF Online was an online game, so players would have to connect repeatedly. A video could actually become tedious and inconvenient, and it could also become burdensome during version updates, so they did not adopt it because it did not suit the genre.
If Insu had developed another package game this time, he would have created a video production team. Since he had memories of the future, he at least knew that much about the coming trend.
The start is the same.
The screen composition and art style had changed, but it was the same in that players simply chose a name and began without customization.
The TLF series was characterized by building one’s character through choices that naturally emerged across multiple playthroughs, and this was reflected in the online version as well.
During the planning stage, there had been opinions about adding at least simple customization, or at minimum allowing players to choose gender, but more people argued that doing so would harm the game’s identity.
At the time, the team leader had stayed silent without giving his opinion, so Yunsu wondered what he had been thinking.
Anyway, it feels much simpler.
Compared to the previous titles, the information window had become smaller, and the characters were smaller too. The interface had also shifted to a mouse-centered design. The biggest noticeable change was that movement now used clicks instead of the keyboard.
This was the result of optimizing the UI to suit an online game where multiple users played together.
It might feel a little unfamiliar at first and reduce immersion, but the online environment itself would provide its own immersion, so the overall sense of immersion probably would not drop much.
And although the current Yunsu did not know it, considering that most games would eventually shift toward mouse-centered controls while the keyboard became a supplementary tool, the intuitive mouse interface might actually increase immersion.
It feels a little strange that there’s no story.
A package game needed to present direction, and since there was only one player, the world could progress around that player. But an MMORPG could not tailor the entire world to one person, and since the world was completed and moved through interactions between players, the element of a story did not really suit it.
Of course, later on, many MMORPGs would include stories, but Insu designed the game according to the characteristics of early MMORPGs.
And even aside from the flow of the times, Insu personally did not particularly like stories being placed into MMORPGs.
It might be a somewhat narrow-minded view, but he believed this was because MMORPGs had lost their identity in order to survive in the game market and differentiate themselves.
Still, TLF Online did have a small initial event that served as a tutorial to teach the minimum method of play.
To Yunsu, it felt like an unnecessary appendage, but games always had to consider new users. Moreover, the TLF series had drawn in more and more users over time, so there was a high possibility many people would encounter the series for the first time through TLF Online.
It’ll be necessary to make those gamers settle in.
Afterward, he followed the tutorial and began raising his character. Because there was no story, it felt a bit bland, but it was still more playable than expected.
It did not feel hugely different from the previous series, but the TLF series had originally been a system-centered game rather than a story- or character-centered one. Even after removing the story, the remaining pillars were strong enough that the gameplay did not collapse.
It feels like I’m playing TLF3.
It was similar, but the design and sound definitely felt different from before.
Ah. This is the corruption system.
After finishing his first hunt and obtaining the byproducts, Yunsu noticed a thin white line around the item image. Looking closely, the line was divided into six sections like the hours on a clock.
He had already seen it in the code, but this was his first time seeing how it was expressed once graphics were added.
Come to think of it, perhaps because this prototype had taken quite a long time from the planning stage onward, unlike previous games, there were fewer rough placeholders or reused old resources.
Of course, there was no guarantee that the currently implemented images would all be used as-is in the official release, but it still felt closer to a release version.
Another difference from TLF2 was that the game’s time never stopped and everything flowed in real time.
It’s a little inconvenient, but the realism makes it not bad.
When learning things like magic, it was convenient to press learn, go do something else, and come back to find it acquired.
However, the corruption system worked against the player. Even while disconnected, the ticks continued decreasing.
In particular, items with short ticks, like food, could become trash if bought and then left alone while the player stepped away for lunch.
But as expected, playing an online game in single-player mode makes it hard to get a feel for it.
He was trying to simulate in his head how things would feel after the official release, but the systems designed for online play felt as though they were spinning uselessly. It was like forcing a waterwheel to turn in a place without water.
Yunsu diligently wrote that impression into his report as well.