Some players thought it was interesting, and the block-building gameplay felt fresh.
Others didn't really get what Minecraft was about.
Because the game seemed to have no clear goal.
In Don't Starve, players had to steadily develop in order to survive.
For example, if you didn't gather resources quickly, the first hound attack would almost certainly kill you.
And as seasons changed, not only hounds but also bosses would show up.
Survival in Don't Starve was never easy, even on the simpler modes.
But in Minecraft, a lot of players felt survival was far too easy.
The only real danger was at night.
But unlike Don't Starve, you didn't have to stay glued to a campfire.
In Minecraft, nights were spooky too, but much easier to get through.
Dig a hole, cover it with dirt, count to five, and after about seven minutes it would be morning again, danger gone.
As for hunger, there were cows, sheep, chickens everywhere.
In Don't Starve, staying alive felt like a luxury.
In Minecraft, it felt almost effortless.
Of course, higher difficulty was another story.
But as long as you didn't deliberately seek trouble, your life was pretty safe.
In this situation, many players couldn't figure out what Minecraft's real focus was supposed to be.
That was why Lucas added tutorials.
Because in this parallel world, players had no concept of sandbox games, let alone open world.
Lucas needed to guide them, to show where the true fun and uniqueness of the game lay.
Once they understood, that's when players would really unleash their creativity.
While the industry was saying Minecraft wasn't catching fire,
Lucas and Nebula Games finally made their move.
Major gaming sites across the country all posted headlines and news articles:
"Someone rebuilt the entire city of ancient Rome inside Minecraft, down to the Colloseum and the Forum!"
"Check out this time-lapse of them building the Ancient Rome. The scale is unbelievable!"
"Is this really just a pixel game?"
When it came to promotion, there was no way Lucas would just sit still—everything had already been planned.
The topic of Minecraft exploded instantly.
In no time, many designers in the industry and countless players had their eyes on it.
But what followed was total confusion.
The Ancient Rome?
What does the Riverside have to do with Minecraft?
Could it be that Nebula Games actually built the Ancient Rome inside Minecraft with blocks?
A lot of players were baffled, having no idea what it meant.
Players, whether they had played Minecraft or not, clicked the news articles out of curiosity and opened the video links inside.
At the start was a line of text: "This video is from in-game footage. All buildings can be recreated inside the game…"
When players first read it, they didn't react much.
But the moment the video started, everyone was shocked.
"Holy crap! My roommate just asked why I'm kneeling in front of my computer!"
"This is a pixel game? This is a pixel game? Is this really the same game I was just playing a few days ago?"
"Lucas, don't fool me, this has to be CGI, right?!"
"Holy crap, it really is the Ancient Rome! I thought you meant the animation itself, but you actually built the whole city?!"
The players who clicked the video were instantly floored by what they saw.
They couldn't believe their eyes.
For those who hadn't played Minecraft, it was shocking enough.
But for players who had, they were both thrilled and confused.
Because what they saw in the video looked completely different from the game they knew.
The video opened with a misty rainfall.
Raindrops fell to the ground, as if time had jumped back a thousand years, to the banks of the Colloseum.
The drizzle fell on the empty streets of Ancient Rome.
It felt like a hint at the hidden dangers behind the city's prosperity.
Gentle background music began to play, and the camera slowly rose into the air, showing all of Bianjing and the Bian River.
The view zoomed closer to the streets, letting people clearly see the houses in the alleys and the temple pavilions.
It passed over streets, canals, lofted bridges, and farmlands. The rain stopped.
The sun rose, and its light shone down onto the streets of Bianjing.
Crowds of people appeared, laughing and chatting, filling the streets with life.
Then the video shifted with the changing camera.
Vendors and travelers filled the streets and alleys.
Boats moved along the canals, carrying poets, merchants, and nobles.
Outside the city, traders led cattle and horses down the roads.
In the fields, farmers worked and children played.
As time passed, Ancient Rome moved into night.
Painted boats floated in the middle of the River, while countless lanterns drifted into the sky.
The video slowly faded into darkness, and the music faded away with it.
Then came a short behind-the-scenes sequence.
Through a montage of fast-forwarded clips, it showed how the Ancient Rome was built piece by piece in-game.
From nothing to something, it showed that players too could recreate all of it if they wanted.
And the lighting in the video wasn't done with outside rendering. Lucas had relied only on the game's own built-in lighting effects.
Sure, post-rendering would have looked even better, but to normal players it would have felt fake.
Like posting a selfie—you promised a bare-face photo, but instead you upload a heavily filtered makeup shot. That's just cheating.
But even so, just the in-game version of the Ancient Rome in Minecraft was already enough to stun players.
And in this showcase, Lucas had also used a brand-new technology.
It was the AI performance tech that Galaxy Intelligent Technology had been developing.
The tools they worked on last year were finally ready to use.
Matthew had even applied for patents related to the latest breakthroughs.
For Minecraft—and specifically this Ancient Rome demo—Lucas was using it for the very first time.
The results, it could be said, matched his expectations perfectly.
But for now, the latest AI tech still takes up a lot of resources.
It also demands higher specs from players' computers, so Lucas had Hector and the team keep working on more optimizations.
Of course, from the players' side, just watching the videos, they couldn't notice any of this yet.
(End of The Chapter)
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