After the chat between the two, Mark Seni, who was so sleepy, yawned and went to the lounge to sleep.

Jester sat on the chair that Mark Seney had been sitting before, and looked at the computer and began to ponder.

He can indeed do the reel effect on a personal computer. He had read the Carmack reel algorithm before he was reborn. This was a very clever method. He could complete the reel animation effect like an arcade on a PC that was not suitable for gaming at the time, but...

Jester thought of something, which made him hesitate.

As we all know, PC games were born very early, but PC games were truly accepted. They can compare quality with exquisite home computers or arcade games, but it started after the birth of the Carmack scroll algorithm.

Carmack Reel Algorithm is also one of the two milestones in the history of personal computers. Countless games in later generations, whether they are personal computers, arcades or home computers, have used this reel algorithm countless times.

Moreover, both milestones are related to Carmack, one is his scroll algorithm, and the other is the world's first truly meaningful 3D engine he completed.

His innovation allows gamers and makers to complete their dreams on PC but helpless ideas. The first game on PC that is not inferior to home computers in any aspect was born because of the birth of Carmack Reels. This game is also the ancestor of action adventure games, "Prince of Persia".

When later generations read Carmak's biography, what Jester admired Carmak the most was that he was a real programmer.

The programmers mentioned here are not just coders who can code code, but are programmers who have infinite creativity and imagination, and can complete these into incredible programs, but do not regard these programs as their own prohibitions.

Yes, Carmack is a staunch open source program. Every program he makes is not patented and is open sourced and allowed to use by anyone. The most famous one is the valve's "Half-Life" which uses Carmack's engine for "Thor Hammer", and does not require licensing fees.

This is because after watching the demonstration of "Thor Hammer", G Fat, who was full of confidence, found that they could not make a 3D engine that could achieve this effect no matter what. It just so happened that a friend of G Fat was a little brother to Carmack in ID, so he successfully got Thor's engine from ID.

This is how FPS's most landmark work was released after "Thor's Hammer".

There is even a story about Carmack Reel about his attitude towards open source programs.

At that time, Carmack worked in a game magazine. He completed the scroll effect and, with the help of a colleague of artists, perfectly copied the first level of "Super Mario" to a computer.

Then, his boss saw the game effect demonstrated by Carmack and just said this casually.

"Oh! You should apply for a patent."

Unexpectedly, Carmack immediately stood up from his seat, pointed his finger at his boss's nose, and then shouted unstoppably: "Go to him - what's the patent! If you dare to mention any patent to me again, I'll leave immediately!"

Not long after, Carmack really resigned at the instigation of John Romero.

Therefore, for a genius like Carmack, he wants to use it, but doesn't want to use it. He can indeed accomplish many things that other programmers dare not even think about. The problem is that his special belief in open source programs is something that no boss of a game company can tolerate.

Can you tolerate that the game engine that your company finally developed is open source and is used by everyone for free?

If Jester was a game enthusiast or an independent game producer, he would consider Carmack, who possessed this spirit, a god, but he is not now, even though he was.

Therefore, every time Jester gave Carmak the task he only had some creative and unique games, but did not require any advanced programming skills. He would apply for a patent for every game design plan and retain his correspondence with Carmak in order to prove in the future that the copyright of these games belongs to him, and Carmak was just a coder he hired to help him complete these ideas.

Jester just sat in front of the computer, looking at the flashing fluorescent computer screen. He was worried that if he really made the first scroll game on his PC, what impact would it have on the current game industry.

Under the influence of Atari's impact, the most damaged market was the home game console market, which was basically completely destroyed. The arcade was slightly less affected. Now, with the efforts of Jester, it has begun to gradually recover, but the ones that have suffered the least, or have basically not received any impact. It is the personal computer game industry, unlike Japanese designers, and the countless European and American designers that Jester knew in his mind were honed by making games on personal computers of this era.

If I really launched the scroll game a few years ahead of schedule, will it affect my plan to launch a home machine in the future?

After thinking for a while, a sarcastic smile suddenly appeared on Jester's face, as if he was mocking himself.

"I'm really a little worried." Jester muttered. He was indeed a little worried. In his later generations, when computer games could compare quality with console games, and even the PC functions were even stronger than consoles, it was difficult for the same PC version of the full platform game to be sold to one tenth or even one tenth of the console version, let alone now.

You should know that the future PC market share will be dozens of times that of gaming consoles.

After figuring this out, Jester made his decision. After all, ATI is also his industry. It is only beneficial to him but not harmful to him.

However, Jester is not a programmer with utopian ideas like Carmack. He is the owner of a game company. Naturally, his scroll effect is naturally impossible to be used free of charge after it is open source. It is naturally inevitable to apply for a patent.

After figuring this out, Jester, who had been driving for a whole day, was also a little tired. His own lounge was occupied by Mark Seni, so he had to lie down on the sofa in Mark Seni's office and barely sleep.

the next day.

Jester called out Mark Seney with two programmers in his R&D team who participated in how to complete scrolling effects on a personal computer two days ago.

"How did you accomplish the reel effect?" Before formally explaining the Carmack reel algorithm, Jester asked several people like this.

Mark Seni simply said: "At the beginning, we wanted to copy the methods we already had on the arcade on the personal computer, whether it was to draw images directly on the screen or obtain more memory to improve the performance, but it was not realistic. The reason was that the personal computer was too slow. Although it used a 16-bit CPU, the personal computer was different from the arcade substrate. Its CPU could not be responsible for the calculation of this program. It had to handle a lot of things."

"Later we found that it was impossible to achieve an effect on an arcade on a personal computer, in the current situation, unless we are now using a thirty-two-bit CPU, as well as other memory, video memory, etc., so Larrys and I gave up, except for the director." This time, the programmer named Brian, who spoke with a bearded programmer named Larrys, was the main program in Mark Seney's group. The scroll effect of "Avengers" was overcome.

At this time, Mark Seni spoke and emphasized, he spread his hands, his tone a little depressed: "I have to say that I have not achieved any results in the past two days, so I planned to give up this plan after you came back last night."

"hehe."

Jester chuckled after hearing this.

He prepared the words in his mind, and then said, "Don't rush to give up. Let's talk about how we complete the scroll effect in the arcade. I've seen the engine package you made before, and I've generally understood your ideas. It seems that you did this. When the character controlled by the player moves, if the character moves far enough to exceed the screen, in order to make the background move with the player's movement, you used the most direct way to let the CPU repaint the entire pixels that make up the picture."

Mark Seney and the other two nodded. They did do this in "Avengers".

Seeing that they all nodded in agreement, Jester continued.

"However, because the calculations required in this way are very large, in order to make the characters' actions not appear to be unsmooth in the calculation of constantly repainting pixels, you have also come up with a few very clever algorithms for this, but this is not the focus of our discussion this time. I won't talk about it, just talk about the repainting of the scroll."

As he said, Jester's tone became modest.

"Your programming skills are above me. Logically speaking, I really can't show off my skills in front of you, but I accidentally had some thoughts when I was sitting in front of the computer last night. You can listen first."

Mark Seney and the other two couldn't help laughing when they heard Jester's humble words.

"I was thinking at the time, what are we going to do? - We want the image to move smoothly as the player passes through the game," Jester continued.

Mark Seney and the other two were not impatient because Jester was talking about something bad. They had seen their boss’s fantasy idea when designing games. Sometimes, designing an excellent program may sometimes just lack a fantasy idea.

Jester spoke quickly, but his pronunciation was still clear.

"I remembered a way to deal with an RPG game on my computer. In that game, when the character controlled by the player reaches the edge of the dungeon on the screen, I would make a big adjustment to the background. This kind of pixel-based scrolling is a very common technique. What I want to do now is not pixel-based scrolling, but pixel-based scrolling. Even if the player only moves a little bit, the background needs to be adjusted accordingly. But the problem is, I was the same as you thought at the beginning, but after watching the program of this scroll animation produced by Mark Seney, I found that this path is not feasible."

Then, when Jester saw the three of them becoming more serious, the smile on his face became stronger and stronger, he continued, "So, I changed my mindset - why did I have to let the computer repaint the entire picture? Every time the character controlled by the player moves, although the background is changing, it is not the entire background is changing, but only a few backgrounds are changing."

Speaking of this, the smile on Jester's face disappeared, but became serious, and he was about to talk about the core of the Carmack scroll.

"So what if I didn't repaint the entire screen every time, but just repaint the parts that really changed?"

As soon as Jester finished speaking, Mark Seney and the other two were all lit up. They already knew Jester’s idea, and the three of them were also very talented programmers. They almost got the answer to Jester’s question in an instant.

What will happen?

Of course, there is no doubt that the CPU's calculation volume will be only one-something or even one-tenth of the previous one, and the reel effect will be much faster to execute. To be precise, it is much faster.

Although there is no real verification with the program, the three of them also rely on their sensitivity to code. They know that Jester's method may be able to do it on a personal computer, which can only be achieved on an arcade before.

This is a really great idea.

This is the only thought in Mark Seney and the other two at this time.
Chapter completed!