Chapter 11: Chapter 11

It was April 16th, 2005 a month after we moved from the building I was leasing to our headquarters located in Flint, Michigan. Now that we had more space to move around in and everyone was more comfortable it felt that our work speed seemed to pick up. There were currently forty people I had working on Project K, the MMORPG I was creating. The main story was finished but being looked over to see if any revisions were needed, while Victoria King an Asian writer and developer that worked under Artur was creating the side stories.

The beginning of the story was overhauled along with the way we came up with the character creation. While a player could still design their character, the starting stats were not entirely up to them. It was all based on the background they set for their character. I took this setting from a popular game in my era and chose to put it in my own. This would help players settle into the role-playing aspect of the game.

They had full control over what kind of life their character had before they took over. Each of the ten background questions would affect their character's stats and also recommend to them the faction most suited for that character based on their choices. Joining a faction meant being loyal to them, but a player had the choice to leave that faction to join another. However, they would incur penalties if they did so.

Besides the story aspect of the game and the creation, the company was devoting a lot of time into the classes. There would be a total of six type of classes in the game, but each faction having their own variation of those classes. Meaning at the start of the game there would be a total of twenty classes. Those twenty had to be unique in their own way, but still true to the faction they belonged to.

Such as the Kingdom of Heaven, which was a divine or just faction depending on how you looked at it. They focused on a defensive style of combat but when push came to shove they were capable of holding their own. Always standing up for the weak, never giving in, and fighting for what was right. The six classes in that faction had to have skills that supplemented that kind of playstyle. Which was easy in theory, but once everyone started working together things became a lot harder.

That was why I limited the number of abilities each class could have at one time. Instead of having a super long skill bar with players just taking every skill they could. I informed my team that we should focus on seven skills a player could pick from but have a talent tree that changed the skills. So a skill that was once a lunge could turn into a charge if you took the talent, or even a side step. With every skill having three variations of what they could do, it would change the style of play drastically. Some abilities kept the same type of attack, but the effect changed. Instead of being a high damage ability with no crowd control, it could turn into a low damage ability with some sort of debuff.

My favorite class turned out to be the Shadow Walker, which was an assassin. It was the class of Vivian. She used illusions and phantoms in her style of play. A player could have a maximum of three phantoms at once and trade places with them. Although they could only trade places with the last phantom they summoned, I still thought this skill was cool. It worked more like a charge ability, as they could use it as long as they had a charge available. So if they had three charges, they could summon three phantoms that would appear in the last place they were in. At any point in time they could use a connecting skill that allowed them to return to that phantom.

That class implemented a lot of illusions and phantoms in its kit, making it one of the hardest to come up with. As it was an assassin, it needed to have the damage of one, but it had low defense and counter ability. That or a higher mana cost for its abilities.

I left my office and greeted those that saw me. Many of them were too focused on their own work to pay me any attention, and I was fine with that. They were helping me fulfill my dream, so I was content. The building had two stories and we were on the second one. The first floor was were human resources was located and there were ten people working there. I did not count them into the forty I hired to work on this project since they looked after my employees.

The first room I had to pass through was where everyone got together to talk about the plot of the game, character relationships and such. Sometimes I’d find artists hanging around here to better understand the characters they were in charge of creating. This room also had a large map hanging on the wall of the continent along with the three kingdoms and cities and towns in their domain.

I passed through this room and headed to the next which is where the game development was taking place. From a blank screen to one that had an entire world on it. This is where all the magic happened.

“Hey Eric, where’s Harold?” I asked one of the programmers that just got up from their work station. Eric was around my age but he worked on his own indie game before. It did not sell well but because of his experience and creative mind I ended up hiring him. Just because a person failed to make it big did not mean they were not worth hiring.

“Harold? He should be over there. I think he was looking for you as well.” Eric said as he pointed towards a small group of four men standing up by the water fountain.

I thanked him and walked over to the group. When I got close I found them talking about the graphics of the game and how they needed to tweak this or that. After seeing me they paused in their discussion.

“You can finish.” I told them but they shook their head and said it was alright.

I spotted Harold with a cup of water in his hand. He was a blonde man with short hair and a round face. He was nice enough and diligent in his work. I ended up hiring him after we ran into one another at a convention I attended months prior. He was working at Electronic Arts then as one of their software engineers at the time of our meeting, but found that he was limited in what he could do. We discussed our companies and when I told him I could use someone like him, he hesitated to accept my offer. It took a month of negotiation but he finally agreed to join my company.

“Alex, I was just about to head to your office.” Harold told me as he finished his cup of water and threw it away.

“I saw the email, so what’s the issue?”

“Right, this way.” Harold motioned for me to follow him, which I did.

He lead me down a few work stations before we arrived at the one towards the large glass window overlooking the street below. There was a young man there writing code and when he saw us standing behind him he turned to us.

“Harold! Alex! I wasn’t expecting a visit.”

I knew everyone of my employees and this young man was recommended to me by another employee. He had drive and talent, both of which I liked in a person. His name was Julien Adriano and he applied to work for EA. However, before they could inform him of their decision I ended up scooping him up.

“It’s fine Julien, I told you I wanted to show the boss so here we are. Show him what you showed me.”

Julien nodded his head then changed the screen to another tab. This tab showed the outline of a character model that was empty, it was just a model of what would eventually be the player. In front of the model was a gray box.

“Right, so we couldn’t use the Unity engine because there were some problems with it. Although it’s a bit rough, it’s a solid engine, but it was only useable for Mac OS X and couldn’t be tweaked to be used on an everyday computer. That’s why we switched to the CryEngine, and although this is better it also has a few issues.” Julien started to explain to me.

You are reading story Return to 2004 at novel35.com

“That’s why you hired me, so we could make our own engine. It’s still a work in progress, but after seeing the framework of both engines I believe we’ll have something to work with within the next three years.” Harold added in his two cents.

“But, until then, we are working with CryEngine. I found a problem as I was testing out the movements of the various classes. It’s still a work in progress, but look here.” Julien said as he started to press buttons on the keyboard. I watched as he moved the model here and there with ease.

“See, no problems. But, look at this.” The model jump rolled to the side, but it was very still and unnatural. There even looked to be a bit of lag between the input and the action, this was very concerning.

“I’ve been checking all the classes and there are a lot of problems like this. They are small sure, but it is still a problem. I’ve tried to fix it, and so far no success. We can keep it like this, or…” Julien said leaving the end of his sentence incomplete.

“Why is that block there?” I asked him being the curious person I was.

Julien sighed and so did Harold. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.” Harold said as he motioned for Julien to showcase why that block was there.

“So I showed you the movements without any obstructions, but this is what happens if a player rolls into an object.” Julien kept rolling towards the block and after his third roll, the model got stuck in it. He was unable to roll out of it either or move.

“That’s game-breaking. How do we fix it?” I asked.

“As I said, i’ve tried and had no success. Harold thinks he can create a plug-in that could supplement the motions that are needed.”

“But, the timeframe needed for that would be a few months. This would push back our schedule by a bit.” Harold spoke up.

“That is not a big deal, but are there any other problems with the engine that I should know about?”

“Yes, a couple more but nothing that prevents us from proceeding forward. A lot of what you asked for is pushing the engine to the limits of whats possible. If we truly want to make something great, then it would be better we hold off until we finish our own engine. But, that won’t be for some time.” Harold said.

I rubbed my chin and got to thinking. The CryEngine was good and visually stunning, but the limitations of what was possible with technology in this era was starting to show. Unity in 2025 was ahead of it’s time and Unreal started to lag behind, but the current Unity was lacking in a few ways.

I decided to have Julien show me more problems that we faced, and only after thirty minutes did I stop him.

“If I increase the budget and let you hire more engineers, do you think we could cut down the time needed for our engine?” I looked at Harold and asked.

“It depends honestly. We are building it from scratch but even using the frame that both Unity and the CryEngine have it’ll take us three years. We’d have to hire some specialists to cut the time down even more. Three years is already a good time, and when we do have a stable version the tools we’ll have at our disposal will be more than both engines. Not to mention the graphics. Yes, the game will be pushed back, but in return we’ll have an amazing game. But, to answer your question a higher budget would be nice. I can tell you more people does mean a faster completion time, but then our ideas could collide for what we have envisioned. I’d say two years for the completion time is the minimal timeframe I could give you. Even with an increased budget.” Harold explained to me.

I sighed. I was asking for a lot in 2005 for a video game. The things I wanted could only be achieved once the game industry advanced forward. It seems the release I had in mind for 2008 was drifting further away from me.

“If we still want to develop games we can. There are companies that will outsource work to us, and it’ll give our employees more experience. During this time we can really dive deeper into the world we are creating. We know you were looking forward to a 2008 release, but 2010 or even 2011 is alright as well. Our engine will be way ahead of the others once it's finished, so we have little to worry about then.”

“Yeah, I understand. I’ll look around for work so everyone can work on various projects, while also keeping this one alive. I think during this time I’ll have a chance to look over everyone's work more thoroughly and check the trends. I’ll inform the others of this decision.” I told the two of them.

“Alex, I want to know your opinion on starting a second project. Project K’s base is done, even if we do go back and add in more to it the general story will not change. So, what do you think of starting a second one? We have the manpower to do so.” Harold tossed the idea out.

“I haven’t thought about that. I’ve been so busy with the upcoming movie and this that it never crossed my mind. Personally I don’t think i’d be able to come up with anything new.”

“That is fine, your game will already revolutionize the way gaming is perceived. World of Warcraft is great, but after working on Project K I can see parts where it is bland. You can always invest in someone else’s idea and publish it. As long as it does well, you’d reap the benefits.” Harold told me.

The point he made here was true and honestly, I did not think much about publishing the work of others. I wanted to see my own creation made that I cared little about anyone else. But from a business standpoint, it was not a terrible idea. As long as the person pitching the idea had something interesting to sell me, then I might buy into it. But we were an unknown gaming company, who would want to work with us?

You can find story with these keywords: Return to 2004, Read Return to 2004, Return to 2004 novel, Return to 2004 book, Return to 2004 story, Return to 2004 full, Return to 2004 Latest Chapter