All dark magicians knew that forbidden magic of the "Dark Magic: Army of the Undead" type was only awesome-looking but actually pretty useless.
The reason was very simple. Whether it was the "Resurrection of the Dead" that used corpses as materials to revive, or the "Summoning the Undead" that directly summoned from the demon world, the ones summoned here were toys with almost no IQ, dull and stiff. Even a child could outrun them. They had no fighting power.
They weren't even cute.
The thousands of corpses that Yang Qiu summoned from the swamp didn't even have a spiritual fire in their eye sockets. They relied entirely on the magic power provided by Yang Qiu to move as slowly as an army of geriatrics. As soon as Yang Qiu took away his magic power, the corpses fell to the ground in a crash.
Of course, Yang Qiu didn't expect this cute skill to be of any use...all he wanted was the corpses.
Next, Yang Qiu rolled up his sleeves, squatted in the middle of the pile of corpses, and picked out the intact bones one by one. After working hard for several hours, he was able to pick out more than 300 relatively intact bodies.
Then, he injected magical power into these more than 300 corpses, so that these corpses of different shapes lined up in rows and followed the undead horse back to the birth point.
Next, there was another big challenge - to process the simplified spiritual imprint and the simple teleportation array that could only be used to teleport non-living people into these corpses.
It was impossible to require players to play the game without wasting time and not die even once. Could you be called a player if you didn't waste time? Could a game that didn't allow you to waste time be called a game?
But even if Yang Qiu found this Tarantan wasteland, which was once an ancient battlefield, as a playground, there would not be so many complete corpses to use, so he had to consider what to do after the players died.
Forget about the magic circle that could teleport living people. He didn't have the money for dimensional magic! He didn't have the materials! He couldn't afford it! Empty wallet!
The magic circle for teleporting non-living people however was simple...just modify the summoning spell used by the caster to summon the demonic servants. Well, this teleportation array modified from summoning could not work on dead things, because dead things could not respond to summons.
In short, after the player died, the modified Spirit Brand Core, which served as the "resurrection point," would send out a resurrection (teleportation) call, and the player would naturally be able to respond, which solved the resurrection problem.
"It's a good idea... but with two formations added together, the mental energy consumed will double!"
Halfway through, Yang Qiu discovered another big problem. The education level of the people on Earth, or in other words, the young people in China, was relatively good, at least better than the natives of the magic plane.
According to the evaluation standard that Yang Qiu figured out himself, if a magic apprentice's mental power was at least eighty points, then the average mental power of Chinese young people was about forty points, which was 30% higher than the natives of the magic plane.
As for the reason, Yang Qiu thought it was because the spiritual world of Chinese youth was relatively complete, and they had established a worldview of "believing in human beings more than gods" since they were very young.
This was not just random speculation, Yang Qiu had solid evidence - you had to know that to become a magician in this plane, the first hurdle to entry was "the caster must never pray to God."
Young people from Earth who did not believe in gods and believed that man could conquer nature had been consolidating their spiritual foundation from an early age. Although there were no magical rules on Earth, no matter how strong the spiritual power was, one could not become extraordinary.
In short, the relatively high average mental power of the youth group gave Yang Qiu the confidence to develop the earthlings into "different world game players," but if the double-layer magic array engraved on the "game character" consumed more mental power than the Chinese youth could bear, then he could not continue playing.
If players felt exhausted and exhausted after playing the game for a few hours, would they suspect that there was something wrong with the game? Would they refuse to log in? What's the point of talking about sustainable development?
Yang Qiu held his head in his hands, thinking hard.
"Wait!"
"Players only need to return to their resurrection point when they die. There is no need to keep using summoning magic... er, resurrection teleportation!"
"The resurrection transmission is only activated when you die, and a death penalty is added... Yes, a death penalty! If you die, you will be forced to disconnect and cannot go online for half an hour Earth time. If you rest for half an hour, you can definitely make up for the energy consumed by the resurrection transmission!"
After coming up with a solution, Yang Qiu happily continued working.
Finally solved the problem of death and resurrection...more problems were exposed.
"Forcing players to play... uh, forcing players to stay online for a long time requires a numerical reward mechanism with timely feedback. Otherwise, players will have no sense of accomplishment and will quit the game. In other words, we need a level mechanism!"
"There's also the class system... Without a rich class system, the game will be the same no matter how you play it. Once the novelty wears off, players will get bored and abandon the game!"
Realizing that if these problems were not solved, the game would not retain people even if it was launched, Yang Qiu had to stop working, return to Earth, and go to internet cafes to study a large number of game commentary (complaint) videos.
After going back and forth like this, it was more than twenty days later, Earth time, before the exhausted Yang Qiu finally worked out a "game mechanism" that would barely work and turned more than 300 skeletons into suitable "game characters" for use.
Next, Yang Qiu was faced with the super difficult problem of how to turn the motorcycle helmets ordered online into a "magic VR helmet."
It was not difficult to engrave the spiritual imprint, but the trouble lay mainly in the USB system that could be connected to the computer host. The USB flash drive system installed in the helmet was not a high-end device. It was just a simple audio and video transcoding system and an operating interface so simple that even an elementary school student could make it by following the tutorial.
When players played games, they would definitely want to take screenshots, record videos, or even live broadcast. How to transmit the video and audio to the earth through the consciousness channel and decode and compress it into video and audio that could be played by the computer really made Yang Qiu's intestines twist and turn.
Magic could not solve this technical problem.
After much thought, Yang Qiu decided to resort to cheating: buy a server and use the space-time rift to achieve a physical connection; the screenshots and recorded images taken by players would be uploaded to this server at the designated location of the birth point. After exiting the game, log in to the official website of the game through the VR helmet to download it.
In order to avoid increasing workload and raising costs, Yang Qiu decided that not all players would be able to take screenshots and shoot videos freely in the future. They had to make certain contributions before they could do it, and then he would install a shooting device on the applicant's "game character."
Uh...actually it's a camera bought online, the kind that can only store data without connecting to the internet.
Forget about live streaming, the time flow rates in both worlds were different and could not be synchronized!
During this period, due to insufficient funds, Yang Qiu had no choice but to buy a set of bone china handicrafts from a supermarket on Earth, and then ride out of the Tarantan Desert on horseback to sell them to a country noble.
It was October of 2019 Earth time. Yang Qiu, who had worked hard on both sides and finally completed the "opening" work, scheduled the game's opening day during the National Day holiday.
Early morning of October 1st. Yang Qiu purchased a computer through an account opened with an identity purchased online, and rented a house in the suburbs to house the server. The first thing he did after logging in was message his sister through a social media account that he'd used back on earth as a teenager.
He had worked very hard to remember the password of this social account for half a month. He had no choice but hurry with the contact, as his missing person notice had been posted on the streets.
In the chat, after being assured that he was alive, he was fucked to death verbally by his sister and beaten to a pulp by his mother.
After racking his brains to calm his family, Yang Qiu also sent a magic VR helmet to them. His sister didn't like playing games, not even mobile games, but he still wanted her to see the results of his work after "running away from home" for a month.
After leaving a message for his sister, Yang Qiu opened the official website and checked the message board.
Because he didn't have the magical system assistance, it was impossible for him to apply for a game approval number, he couldn't do any public promotion, and he couldn't openly put up a link to sell helmets, he'd get arrested as an illegal distributor in a day.
So, Yang Qiu just kept to himself and didn't do anything unnecessary. He bought a domain name and created an official website. The homepage contained a row of extremely concise and clear large characters: "Alien World" - the beta version of the first non-profit independent VR game developed by an individual in China.
Yang Qiu had no idea whether putting up an independent game sign could bypass the firewall monster, but as long as he could trick players into logging in as quickly as possible, it didn't matter.
On this extremely simple official website, Yang Qiu posted a few fabricated introductions to the game background, a few real-life footage of the Tarantan Wasteland and the "Undead Birth Point," and his carefully produced "Undead NPC" battle video. Ten days ago, he had secretly created a small account and participated in forums, discussion areas, and Tieba activities where all types of hardcore players gathered, and secretly promoted the game.
The result was obvious. Hardcore players were very pessimistic about "independent VR games." No matter which discussion forum Yang Qiu's small account posted in, it had never been welcomed. Either he was ridiculed or simply ignored.
But we have to say that there are still a lot of bored people in the world. Although Yang Qiu's posting account was ridiculed very badly, there were still many players who "had nothing to do anyway" who followed the post to find the official website.
Then, the official website, which was not even as sophisticated as the Penguin Space for middle school students, discouraged a large number of these bored and annoying people.
In the end, there were only nine people who had the patience to endure the extremely embarrassing homepage, were attracted by the extremely realistic promotional video that seemed like a blockbuster movie, and filled in the closed beta application information in the application column at the bottom of the official website with a half-believing and half-doubting mentality, and paid 188 yuan for the helmet materials and postage.
In other words, including the helmet mailed to his sister, Yang Qiu had only ten players.
On the official website, there were only nine applicants on the closed beta list. These players who paid for the helmets themselves all sympathized with the developers. In the past few days, these nine people would log in to the official website from time to time and post one or two awkward but humane consolation messages on the message board, such as:
"I'm so hungry. I should have known this would take time."
"Did the producer use all the money he swindled to shoot promotional videos? There's no need to do that. It's better to save some money for instant noodles."
"I'm too embarrassed to ask for a refund. Forget it, I'll just use this helmet as a safety helmet."
"Is the producer still here? Did the investor beat you to death?"
"Making independent games is a dead end, why not join me in a livestream in women's clothing?"
...etc.
Yang Qiu remained calm about these reactions.
It was indeed annoying that only nine players were willing to buy it, but if you changed your perspective and interpreted it as nine people on Earth willing to take the initiative to become his anchor points - the feeling would immediately be very different.
After appreciating the few new sexy words added to the message board today, Yang Qiu calmly posted the server launch announcement on the official website and sent launch reminders to the email addresses left by nine paying players. Then he sat down quietly and waited for the time to arrive.
The server launch announcement was posted at exactly nine o'clock in the morning.
At 9:20, Yang Qiu, who was cosplaying as a game developer in a computer room with only one server, suddenly opened his eyes. In the spiritual imprint matrix composed of 300 mass-produced inscriptions that he created, one inscription was lit up.
Then, the second, the third...