Almighty Video Game Designer

Chapter 230: First Version

Chen Mo planned some huge changes, but it’d probably only be realised in the second or third stages of the release.

A part of it was to implement a more complete tech tree to allow players to place down blocks to build more advanced items such as cars or trains, and potentially recreate modern cities.

Of course many have done this in his previous life, but a lot of it was stationary and non-interactive. Chen Mo wanted to add these technologies as a core part of the game.

However, these were problems to be dealt with in the future.

—

It didn’t take long for Minecraft’s PC Demo to be completed.

However, everyone outside of Chen Mo thought that it was horrible to look at.

Chen Mo didn’t mind as he tried out the demo of Minecraft on his laptop.

Everyone else were nervously watching behind Chen Mo as they feared Chen Mo wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

The starting menu was incredibly simple with only two buttons present, ‘Start game’, and ‘Quit’. Chen Mo hit ‘Start game’, and the world started generating.

Soon, the game started.

The game was in first person with no other UIs such as health, hunger, or inventory. There was a simplistic hand on the right of the screen to represent the player’s hand.

The player could fly freely in the demo. Chen Mo flew around in the world to check out the terrain and other generated resources.

Ocean, mountains, rivers, grasslands, trees, animals…

The land was in order without any major problems. The graphics weren’t great as they were placeholders Zhou Hanyu added in a short amount of time, more or less identical to the quality of graphics in his previous life.

It would look alright on mobile, but it’d be horrible on VR.

Chen Mo flattened the top of a mountain in game and started building using cobblestone.

Soon, a small cobblestone formed on top of the mountain.

Chen Mo ran around the house for a better look before he entered the building, seemingly quite satisfied.

“Yep, that’s great. This feels right, just keep going in this direction. Just focus on hitting the first goal and I’ll prepare the rest,” said Chen Mo.

Everyone got back to their seats and continued working.

Zhou Hanyu said, “Manager, I’d like to discuss some things in terms of the graphics.”

Chen Mo nodded, “Okay, I’ve been wanting to chat with you anyways. Let’s talk in the meeting room.”

The two of them headed to the meeting room. Zhou Hanyu then pulled out a few printed images.

“These are the ideas I have in mind, but I haven’t decided on which one.”

Zhou Hanyu handed CHen Mo different pictures as he explained.

“There aren’t major differences with the art styles, just some differences in the small details. It’s hard to have more detail in pixel graphics anyways.”

Chen Mo looked through the pictures and picked out the one he liked the most, “This one, and I have a few things to remind you.

“First, as special resources such as water and lava or the sky aren’t required to be in blocks, make sure they look as realistic as possible.

“The style for other blocks, in particular the mountains, should be soft. Try softening hard edges and make it look more dynamic and aesthetically pleasing.

“The other was the 3D feel. You could use lighting and shadows to make the blocks feel even more 3D, such as gaps between planks or bricks. This can make it feel more realistic.

“You should also add more details to patterns to make the game feel less grainy.

“You could also pick more contrasting colours for different blocks to help players differentiate between them.

“The game should give off a bright, fairytale-like world.

“You should refer to Leggos when it comes to details such as character models. Special tools such as swords and pickaxes don’t have to be in pixels, it’d be great if you could make it look like a high quality Leggo build.

“The characters should be on the cuter side and make them more detailed. I want to add facial expressions in the future, so the faces of the characters should be clear enough to identify that face and facial expressions.

“Also, I want to add a ‘Chisel mode’ in the future, to allow player to break down 1m*1m*1m blocks into 64 smaller blocks, so take that into consideration too.”

Zhou Hanyu took down notes as Chen Mo explained.

Just as usual, Chen Mo explained everything in detail to avoid miscommunications.

“Alright, I understand,” Zhou Hanyu made notes on everything important.

“You can start preparing the graphical resources, we can add more details after the first version is complete, when we port it to VR. You have plenty of time, so make use of it,” said Chen Mo.

Zhou Hanyu nodded, “Sure.”

—

The development of Minecraft had been going well so far, although it wasn’t particularly hard anyways as the original game in Chen Mo’s previous life was built by a single person.

After having the rules and settings of the world down, Chen Mo took the building of special buildings which would be added during world generation such as villages, mineshafts, and temples into his own hands.

Chen Mo planned to add more hand-made resources into the future to add into terrain generation.

The PC version of Minecraft was on par with the original version before Chinese New Year came.

Everyone was quite happy with the game at this stage, but many still didn’t feel well upon considering the fact that this was the VR game that would go against Thousand Hells.

The high quality graphics of Thousand Hells was miles away from Minecraft after all.

—

Chen Mo declined all activities before Chinese New Year to focus on Minecraft.

Chen Mo only showed up to the Awards Ceremony and didn’t participate too much, and neither Diablo nor Don’t Starve was awarded.

It was within reason as these games didn’t fit the tastes of the judges. Diablo was a western fantasy game with an incredibly dark theme, and its playstyle wasn’t particularly revolutionary either; whereas Don’t Starve wasn’t for an award as it was a smaller game.

Moreover, the judges of this world didn’t have high expectations for sandbox games. In the eyes of many of the judges, Don’t Start was just a niche game that happened to get higher than average sales, and couldn’t make it as one of the greats.