Chapter 235: President Pei's Performance Time?
August 18th, Wednesday.
The demo for "Turn Back Before It's Too Late" was finally ready.
The so-called "demo" is essentially a demonstration, a showcase, or a sample version. For a game, it means the initial playable build.
For a game like "Turn Back Before It's Too Late," as long as the character models, animations, and combat system are mostly complete, you can combine them with a few scenes to create an early version.
Usually, tuning that demo build and developing later scene assets happen in parallel—while the art team is drawing new environments and monsters, the programmers fine-tune the animations and combat details.
This way, development efficiency increases.
. . .
Inside President Pei's office.
Li Yada was adjusting settings on Pei Qian's computer, double-checking whether the values were correct. Once she finished debugging, it would be time for President Pei to test it himself.
Pei Qian stood beside her, watching her tweak the game's internal parameters.
Developing an action game has an extremely high skill threshold.
Why do some domestic action games feel so clunky and uncomfortable to play, while foreign AAA titles make combat feel smooth and exhilarating?
It all boils down to two words: the details.
For instance, when a character uses a dagger, a sword, or a war hammer, the animations for each weapon should feel distinct—and every frame of every movement must be carefully adjusted.
Of course, using motion capture helps, but even then, everything still needs to be fine-tuned afterward.
If any single frame is slightly off—too fast, too slow, tilted, or misaligned—the player will feel that the motion isn't fluid.
Furthermore, when hitting an enemy with different weapons, the enemy's reaction should also differ, and the surrounding environment should respond appropriately—debris flying, ground cracks, impact sounds, and so on.
For example, stabbing an enemy with a dagger and smashing one with a war hammer should feel completely different.
If you slam a huge hammer into a monster and it barely reacts, players will immediately think: "This feels bad" or "That's unrealistic."
So fine-tuning hit feedback is both a technical and physical grind.
But then again—all of that can be solved with money.
"Turn Back Before It's Too Late" used top-tier motion templates and hired the best freelance 3D artists to refine the animations. As a result, the movements felt fluid and far superior to typical domestic games.
Simply put—it's all about money.
Of course, animation tweaking is the art team's job. Li Yada couldn't help much there, but numerical balancing—that was her responsibility.
For example, when the player hits a monster with different weapons, exactly how much HP should that monster lose? How many hits until it dies? Which attack animations deal more or less damage, and by how much?
All of these are numerical balance questions.
Although most immersive AAA titles tend to represent HP with visual UI elements like health bars, they still rely on precise internal numbers—they just hide them from the player.
After double-checking all the data she entered, Li Yada was about to stand up and hand the computer over to Pei Qian for testing.
But Pei Qian stopped her.
"Wait. Adjust the data again—make the monsters stronger."
Li Yada froze.
"Again? They're already pretty strong."
Pei Qian nodded.
"Stronger. Double their attack power. No—triple it."
Li Yada: "?"
Previously, President Pei had made it very clear: "Turn Back Before It's Too Late" must be an extremely difficult game. Everyone on the development team must rack their brains to make players fail as often as possible.
Their top priority was to drive away as many players as they could.
And to be fair, Lu Mingliang had followed President Pei's orders to the letter.
Bao Xu, too, had been providing many… "constructive" suggestions throughout the process.
So, even that wasn't enough for President Pei?
Pei Qian didn't bother explaining. He knew very well that even though Lu Mingliang had followed his instructions to the letter, their imagination still wasn't… cruel enough.
Li Yada adjusted her glasses and did as he asked, increasing the monsters' attack damage to triple the original value.
As a result, the game's already low margin for error instantly dropped even further.
Once the changes were done, Li Yada stood up, handed the controller to Pei Qian, and stepped aside.
She wanted to see how President Pei played the game!
He'd been so confident when telling her to triple the monsters' damage—was it because he thought the game's difficulty didn't pose any challenge to him?
Or maybe… President Pei was like Bao Xu, a hardcore gaming master who could only find joy in punishing difficulty?
Li Yada pushed up her glasses again, her eyes focused, completely absorbed in watching him.
Pei Qian took the controller, sat back in his executive chair, and began the game.
The opening scene was set in a small rural village.
Once a peaceful, tranquil place, it had now fallen into chaos—more and more villagers had lost their souls, becoming wandering ghosts.
They wore tattered clothes and looked deathly thin, wielding strange, makeshift weapons: cleavers, hoes, sickles, pitchforks—even bare fists clutching rocks.
The monsters roamed throughout the village, engaged in eerie, meaningless actions.
Some hacked endlessly at wooden stakes with axes, though no wood ever fell—they just kept raising and swinging the axe over and over, in vain.
Some crouched in corners, facing the wall, muttering incomprehensible phrases to themselves.
Some walked repeatedly into walls, mindlessly pressing forward as if trying to follow the road to the underworld—completely unaware that a solid barrier blocked their way.
Some wandered aimlessly through the streets, and upon seeing a conscious, living person, they would shriek and charge madly toward them.
The protagonist looked much the same—dressed in ragged clothing, holding a crude, battered weapon.
In the starting courtyard, a few basic weapons were available: a cleaver, an axe, a club, a pitchfork, and so on.
As players progressed, they could acquire and freely switch between new weapons—assuming their stats were high enough to use them.
Pei Qian chose the cleaver—an easier option for beginners—and rushed at the first nearby enemy.
That monster was holding a pitchfork. It immediately noticed Pei Qian's approach.
Before his cleaver could even connect, the pitchfork lunged forward with a sharp thrust!
Tsshh!
Pei Qian watched as more than half of his health bar vanished from the top-left corner of the screen.
Panicking, he mashed the dodge button.
But just as he rolled away, the pitchfork-wielding monster struck again—another thrust, this one finishing off the last sliver of his HP.
"Hehehehehe…"
The monster let out a strange, eerie laugh before turning and walking away.
All that remained on the screen was darkness.
Pei Qian: "…"
Li Yada: "…"
For a long, awkward moment—no one spoke.
<+>
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