Translated by Coldtaco
Edited by Aelryinth
Chen Mo was quite satisfied. He was worried about the audio side of things of the game, so the skill book was a godsend.
Chen Mo always hired people to do BGM and sound effects for his game, as he did not have any musical bones in him.
For some of the classic games, it will be impossible to recreate them perfectly just from dictation. Therefore it would be better if he took matters into his own hands.
Chen Mo tapped and activated it immediately. The blue skill book turned into rays of light and entered his fingertips.
Chen Mo took out the keyboard from his office that had been provided by the competition officials. Thinking he wouldn't be able to use it, he had put it away, as it was just gathering dust.
After trying out a couple scales, he connected it to the computer and produced a simple ten second long BGM. Chen Mo felt that it sounded alright, and he was able to handle the audio part himself for simpler games.
"Not bad, off to a good start. Now all that's left is to see the results for the two ten spins."
Chen Mo took a deep breath and tapped the ten spins button.
Clack, clack, clack...
The wheel spun up and slowed down constantly, finishing ten spins within thirty seconds. The ten draws showed on the screen in the order they were drawn.
Designer Skill Books: three Coding books, four Level Design books.
Special Skill Books: one +10 Original Art
Special Effects Book: one +10 Animation Skills
Special Equipment: Memory Playback Potion
This caught Chen Mo's attention. Pretty good, ten draws did make a difference! It felt like the chances of drawing blue and purple rares were much higher than single draws!
Chen Mo hurriedly checked out the effects of the special equipment.
Memory Playback Potion: After consuming, freely remember any forgotten or murky memories, lasts for four hours.
That was pretty good! Chen Mo badly needed that item.
There were many games that Chen Mo had played before that he could barely remember now. Although there was a faint impression, it wasn't enough to reproduce all the details.
With the Memory Playback Potion, Chen Mo would be able to dive into his past memories. As long as he has played it or done a deep dive into it, he'd be able to recall the experience.
Chen Mo consumed the skill books without giving them much thought.
Coding skills +3, Level Design +4. Chen Mo estimated that his true coding ability was about 27, and his true Level Design ability was about 35. Combined with the Memory Playback Potion, recreating some more complicated minigames wasn't a problem.
There were two other Special Skill Books: one for Original Art, another for Animation.
It was obvious that the drawing mechanism was programmed to separate skills, such as art and music, that weren't related to video game engineering, to be part of the Special Skill Books.
Original Art +10, Chen Mo's Original Art skills had been raised to 19, and were now able to deal with games with simpler art styles.
From barely anything to now something, Animation skills were now decent with the +10 skill book. Chen Mo could now do some simple 2D animations, which was key.
-Draw again!-
With another ten draws in him, Chen Mo tapped on the screen once again.
Clack, clack, clack...
The wheel started spinning once again, and another ten items followed it.
Designer Skill Books: seven Storyboarding skill books, two Coding skill books.
Special Equipment: Lucky Capsule.
Chen Mo almost fainted; the difference was way too big!
-You have to be kidding!-
Not only wasn't there a single blue skill book, the green skill books that were drawn were in the most unnecessary aspects, coding and storyboarding!
Chen Mo was hurting after that. Every ten draws cost a hundred thousand RMB!
However, Chen Mo felt better when he saw the special equipment.
Lucky Capsule: After consumption substantially increases luck, lasts for ten minutes.
-What does this do? Am I gonna pick up five million bucks when I go outside?-
-Effect lasts for ten minutes... obviously it was meant to be used alongside drawing ten! Next time I'll find ten million credits and spin for ten ten times!-
"Whatever, I'll save it for next time…"
Chen Mo was now in a sticky situation. With his credits depleted and a hundred thousand RMB in the bank, it would be too risky to dump the rest of it into credits. The safer bet would be to come back after earning some money by producing his first game.
Chen Mo consumed the Storyboarding and Coding books. Although these were Chen Mo's strengths, they were still far from perfect, and in the end they were still useful.
------
Cehn Mo turned off the virtual display in an attempt to calm down.
Two hundred thousand RMB spent on top-ups, skill books were drawn, special equipment was drawn, all that's left was for Chen Mo to make his first real game.
Chen Mo was still hesitant on which game to make.
From a pure money-making perspective, a Chinese pay-to-win mobile game from his previous life would be the best choice.
These games weren't super high quality, purely attracting players using the coding side of things. You shouldn't make such a game too much about monetization.
However, Chen Mo was worried about two things.
First was his coding abilities.
The reason Chinese pay-to-win games are able to keep their players paying was by stimulating them using well made code. Just because you improve your strength in game using money doesn't mean the game would be profitable.
Therefore software engineers within the Chinese video game industry had very high statuses, only second to the producer as software engineers control the tempo of the game.
Making the code well would mean giving the game a proper foundation. The game can be saved even if the graphics looked bad or if the playstyle was repetitive. But if the coding weren't done well, the game would be dead on arrival with no breathing room.
As Chen Mo didn't even have thirty points in his coding abilities there were some risks to making a game like this, even with the help of the Memory Playback Potion.
The code for these games were always semi-hidden including combat calculations, attribute growth, effectiveness relationship, economy algorithms etc. Every one of these have their own proprietary configurations, and maintained by professionals, essentially a trade secret where the average joe has no access to it.
Because the code is such a big part of these games, as soon as the code is leaked, other companies will be able to use that as a framework and produce a knockoff.
Chen Mo would have to write all the code by hand if he made a game like this. However, he didn't have confidence manipulating the code based on his current abilities.
There was another problem: player acceptance!
The main method of profit in this world still depended on sales per game.
Top-up services, especially pay-to-win, were not mainstream. Furthermore, there hadn't been anyone fully committed to pay-to-win.
If he produced an average pay-to-win game and the gamers discovered it was pay-to-win, would they accept it?
Would they be strongly against it, negatively affecting him and the company's image? Maybe there would be some players who would just boycott his next games?
It was hard to say. Just because there was a low chance of it happening didn't mean it wouldn't happen. As this was Chen Mo's first game, he didn't want to take the risk.
The tastes of gamers and the place for pay-to-win games in this world were unknown, and the grounds needed to be tested, step by step. One misstep might be devastating.
Therefore, Chen Mo chose to make a safer choice, and make a stand-alone game and an honest living out of it.
Stabilizing himself using this game, at least putting the name of Thunderbolt Gaming out there, and then slowly testing the limits of the players was what Chen Mo had in mind!