Chapter 12 Friday, October 12th

Early this morning, Xiao Sun had already taken Eric to the high-speed train station as arranged by Pei Qian.

Pei Qian wasn't sure if he could really poach Eric over. This matter could go smoothly, but there might also be some variables.

Although the atmosphere was good when they had dinner, Eric might just have been being polite.

After all, he had been working at DYA Games for so long, and all kinds of interpersonal relationships and business accumulation were very valuable. Switching to Tengda meant a more unstable future, and anyone would be cautious.

But no matter what, Pei Qian's attitude had been conveyed. As for whether Eric would actually come back, that was up to fate.

Although Pei Qian had long wanted to reorganize the people on the GOG side and get rid of Min Jingchao, there was no need to rush this matter. Waiting a month or half a year would be perfectly fine.

So, wait patiently.

After breakfast, Pei Qian decided to go to the Tengda Games department.

He was a little worried about the situation with Yu Fei.

He was worried both that he would suddenly come up with some whimsical ideas that would make the game a big hit, and that his progress would be too slow, leading to the game being unfinishable.

Although Pei Qian couldn't help much, he still felt more at ease seeing it for himself.

Arriving at the Tengda Games department, he could see the state of everyone from a distance.

Min Jingchao was still doing his job as usual, step by step.

Bao Xu was happily playing games, obviously remembering Pei Qian's instructions. He didn't do everything himself, but only supervised the key aspects, leaving most of the design work to Yu Fei.

Looking at Yu Fei, he was staring intently at the computer screen, his hands rapidly typing on the keyboard, writing a design concept draft.

Sometimes he would stop, frowning and pondering for a while, then delete large sections of content and rewrite them.

"Hmm? Looks good, it's developing according to the script I expected."

Pei Qian was quite satisfied.

Bao Xu really hadn't interfered too much. Yu Fei was actively doing the design, and it seemed that he had made some bad designs in the process, which he had deleted himself.

At this time, an employee had already seen Pei Qian and hurriedly greeted him, "President Pei!"

Yu Fei, who had been completely unaware, also heard the greeting and turned to see President Pei coming. He quickly stood up.

"Sit down, continue with what you're doing. I'm just here to check on the progress a bit." Pei Qian smiled and sat down next to him.

Yu Fei felt quite warm.

Obviously, President Pei was worried that he wouldn't be able to understand the design intent well, so he came to check on the progress to ensure that this project could be completed without any mistakes.

"How's the new game coming along? Tell me about it briefly." Pei Qian said with a smile.

Yu Fei hurriedly pulled the design proposal document to the front and explained, "Brother Bao briefly explained some professional knowledge of fighting games to me, which made me deeply realize my previous mistakes."

"Fighting games must retain the essence of the content in order to meet your needs, President Pei. Therefore, the red lines that cannot be touched have been roughly determined."

"As for the other parts, I currently have some fragmented and incomplete ideas, and I am currently working hard to string them together."

"However, the overall progress is still relatively optimistic. I think I should be able to come up with a large framework by tomorrow at the latest, and then I can hand it over to the other designers to write the specific design drafts for each module under this large framework. After another week of perfecting the design plan, we can start working on development."

"In terms of construction period, there should be no major problems."

Pei Qian nodded again in satisfaction.

Good, still completely in line with expectations!

Pei Qian's biggest worries were two things: one, Yu Fei letting himself go and accidentally making the game a success; and two, the progress being too slow, the game development being unfinished, affecting the settlement.

Now Yu Fei's progress is still relatively fast, so the development cycle shouldn't be a concern.

And Yu Fei strictly retaining the essence of fighting games also makes the first requirement mostly completed.

After that, Yu Fei began to talk about these "red line contents that cannot be touched," which mainly retained the basic gameplay of fighting games.

In other words, the traditional fighting game combo system, upper and lower attacks, defense, special moves, and other settings were basically retained, and he strived to make them as authentic as possible.

Pei Qian listened and nodded frequently.

Yes, yes, yes, that's what I want!

He was still worried that Yu Fei would really turn *Ghost General 2* into a third-person perspective action game. Wouldn't that be like *Rebirth Cycle* and make money again?

Now it seems that he was overthinking it. As long as Yu Fei honestly made this game based on the foundation of fighting games, it would definitely only be a niche game with few sales.

After all, the threshold and fun of fighting games naturally dissuade many ordinary players.

"Very good, then what about the other parts?" Pei Qian felt that there was nothing wrong with this part and it could be passed.

Hearing President Pei's approval, Yu Fei couldn't help but feel more confident.

Sure enough, Brother Bao's analysis was very accurate!

Since President Pei nodded, it means I'm on the right path.

Yu Fei continued, "The remaining content is mainly designed according to your previous requirements, President Pei."

"First of all, in terms of perspective, you said before that the small soldiers must come from all directions, so I adopted Brother Bao's suggestion and used some fighting game processing methods. Double-tapping the up and down arrow keys has respectively become sidestepping towards the inside and outside of the screen, thus giving players an extra dimension."

"After adjusting the perspective, you can naturally hit the other small soldiers."

"In addition, I also considered changing all of the character's attacks to fan-shaped AoE attacks, adding an attack range to the skills that were originally on a plane."

"At the moment of the sidestep dash, while the hero is moving towards the inside and outside of the screen, he will simultaneously release fan-shaped attack skills, so that he can hit the small soldiers on the side."

Yu Fei's description made Pei Qian feel a little confused.

He seemed to have heard of this sidestep setting in some fighting games.

Sidestepping actually means moving quickly to the left or right, which can dodge the opponent's attacks and also change the angle of the line between the two characters.

In traditional fighting games, the line between the two characters is cut vertically, and the cross-section that is cut out is the screen that the players see in fighting games.

When the character on the left moves towards the inside of the screen, it causes this cross-section to rotate clockwise. Although the player sees that the relative position of the two characters on the screen has not changed, their position in the scene has changed.

In other words, the character is actually moving along a fan-shaped trajectory.

In this way, the problem of 3D movement is also solved, and all the small soldiers in all directions can be hit.

So, is this change harmful? Will it lead to making money?

Pei Qian thought for a while, it shouldn't be very harmful.

Because there are indeed other games that have done this, with a sidestep setting, but it has not become the mainstream setting of fighting games, which is enough to show that it is not that important.

Yu Fei continued, "Then there are the two ideas I proposed at the meeting before. One is to increase the PvE gameplay, considering adding a large number of small soldiers to the battle, expanding the battle scene, and strengthening the attributes of the Boss; the other is to launch a simplified operation mechanism."

"This is actually very easy to understand, it is to arrange a large number of levels, let the players control the martial generals to go through the levels, and during the process of passing the levels, they will encounter various enemy martial generals with enhanced attributes, and constantly increase the difficulty of the level by adding attributes."

"It's a bit similar to the level design of general action games."

Pei Qian nodded, these two points were indeed proposed by Yu Fei.

Pei Qian strongly approved of these two points, because this kind of design is inherently incompatible with fighting games.

Although many fighting games have PvE gameplay, it is often used as a guide to the plot process and does not account for a large proportion of the fun of fighting games.

What's more, the PvE gameplay of these fighting games is nothing more than computer AI controlling characters to fight against players. There are no small soldiers, and the attributes and body size of the Boss generally do not change, let alone the setting of levels.

In the final analysis, isn't it because the players of fighting games don't care about this?

That's why Pei Qian required *Ghost General 2* to do these things, in order to put more effort and spend more funds in these unimportant places, so that the truly important places would not be so perfect.

Pei Qian nodded, signaling Yu Fei to continue.