The next morning, Lin Yun headed to the company to supervise the programmers as they integrated the Booble search engine into the Cloud Browser.
"Done," Lin Yun announced after checking for all possible bugs.
He turned to his development team and said, "Thank you, everyone. You did a good job."
Everyone smiled happily.
"Honestly, Chairman, we didn't do much," the team leader, Gong Xiao, spoke up. "The browser you've designed is beyond perfect. I believe that even a high school student could do it."
Lin Yun smiled and said, "Are you saying that there's no challenge here?"
Gong Xiao exchanged glances with the others and said, "Yes, Chairman. Most of us came here because of your innovative ideas, but we've found that we can't do much here. All the projects in our company don't require us to develop anything from scratch."
Lin Yun nodded slowly. "I understand what you mean. To tell you the truth, there are plenty of projects in my mind, but I just wanted all of you to familiarize yourselves with the environment and programming languages here first."
He paused for a moment and continued, "Since all of you are eager to try something new, I will give you a new project. We're going to create a search engine that surpasses Booble."
Everyone's eyes lit up when they heard this.
Lin Yun took out a CD and handed it to Gong Xiao. "Here. This is the blueprint for our search engine, Heaven."
"Heaven?" Gong Xiao was slightly surprised as he took the CD.
Lin Yun chuckled. "It's just an idea I had. I named our search engine Heaven because I think it's funny when people say that they are going to 'ask Heaven' when they want to know something."
Gong Xiao and the others were stunned for a moment and then laughed.
"It's a good idea, actually, Chairman," Gong Xiao said with a smile.
Lin Yun smiled and said, "You can list the hardware we need and send it to President Lin."
"Understood," Gong Xiao nodded seriously.
"By the way, you can recruit more people. I'm going to establish a game studio soon. It would be better to hire some artists," Lin Yun added.
Gong Xiao and the others were surprised.
"Chairman, can you tell us more about it?" A young man with glasses raised his hand. His name was Jin Yang.
"You are Jin Yang, right? I remember that your thesis project is related to games," Lin Yun looked at him with a smile.
"Yes, Chairman. Honestly, I plan to open a game studio in the near future. I was attracted by your Plant vs. Zombie game," Jin Yang said truthfully.
"Good. I will appoint you as a team leader," Lin Yun nodded approvingly. "The game studio I am going to establish isn't just for game development; we are going to create a game empire. The first thing we are going to do is create a game engine."
"A game engine?" Jin Yang adjusted his glasses slightly. "As far as I know, there aren't many game engines in the world right now. All of them are used exclusively internally."
"You are right. Aside from Kidtendo (Nintendo) and Somy (Sony), the rest are currently struggling with their game engines. Most of them consist of independent scripts joined together," Lin Yun explained. "However, what we are going to create is a complete game engine."
"Now, some of you might be wondering, what exactly is a game engine?" Lin Yun began, pacing slowly in front of the assembled team.
His eyes scanned their faces, gauging their understanding. He knew that while many were talented programmers, the concept of a dedicated game engine might still be foreign to them, especially in this world's relatively nascent gaming industry.
"Think of a game engine as the foundation, the framework upon which a game is built," he continued, using an analogy he hoped they could easily grasp. "It's like the chassis, engine, and transmission of a car. You can build different car models on the same chassis, right? Similarly, a game engine provides the core functionalities that most games need, so developers don't have to build everything from scratch every time."
He paused, letting the analogy sink in. "A game engine typically handles things like rendering graphics, managing physics, processing audio, handling user input, and even providing tools for artificial intelligence. Without an engine, developers would have to write all of this code themselves, for every single game. It would be incredibly time-consuming and inefficient."
Lin Yun could see nods of understanding around the room. He decided to delve a bit deeper, explaining the specific components of a typical game engine.
"Let's break it down further," he said. "One of the most important parts of an engine is the rendering engine. This is what draws the game world onto your screen. It takes the 3D models, the textures, the lighting information, and it calculates how everything should look, pixel by pixel."
He moved on to the next key component. "Then there's the physics engine. This is what makes objects in the game behave realistically. It handles things like gravity, collisions, and momentum. So, when you throw a ball in a game, the physics engine determines how it will arc through the air and bounce off the ground."
"And of course," he continued, "there's the audio engine, which manages all the sounds in the game, from the background music to the sound effects. It handles things like sound positioning, so you can tell where a sound is coming from in the game world."
Lin Yun could see that his team was following along, their initial curiosity turning into genuine interest. He decided to touch upon one more crucial aspect.
"Another important part is the scripting system," he explained. "This allows developers to add custom logic and behaviors to their games. It's like the programming language of the game engine, allowing developers to define how objects interact, how characters behave, and how the game progresses."
He emphasized, "All these different parts work together seamlessly within the game engine, providing a cohesive and efficient environment for game development."
Jin Yang's eyes lit up when he heard this. He finally understood Lin Yun's idea. It could be said that this was a revolutionary idea. He could already foresee that this game engine would become mainstream in the near future…