After Lucas finished explaining the game's concept to everyone, the "Monster Hunter: World" project was officially launched, and the team started to work efficiently.
With their previous experience developing "Dark Souls," the team wasn't new to action systems. They began recording the movements of different weapons.
Rachel's team also started to produce concept art and contacted third-party art outsourcing companies to create art assets.
Lucas and Hector continued to test the AI's performance, mainly to plan the difficulty levels of the various BOSSES in "Monster Hunter: World."
Regarding the BOSSES in "Monster Hunter: World," Lucas didn't want their difficulty to only be reflected in high stats that left little room for error.
For example, a normal monster might attack the hunter five times before the hunter is defeated.
But a tempered monster might only need to attack the hunter three times for the same result.
Without better AI technology, the only option was to adjust the numbers.
This could include higher attack power, faster attack frequency, and increased speed.
But with the current AI technology, Lucas wanted the game's difficulty to be reflected not just in the numbers, but more in the game's performance.
For example, by programming the BOSSES with a series of commands like escape, attack, frenzy, and sneak attacks.
The BOSSES in the game would use the environment to their advantage when attacking players.
And their actions would respond to the player's movements.
For example, in normal mode, if the player moves far away to sharpen their weapon or drink a potion.
A BOSS with a higher level of AI would immediately charge at them.
But after adjusting the AI settings to the highest level, Lucas decided to take it easy.
Because at the highest AI level, the BOSS's performance was really outrageous.
If implemented, it would likely lead to situations like this:
A katana user tries a red-blade rising slash, ready to show off a powerful strike.
The BOSS takes a small step to dodge the rising slash, then immediately counters with a charging attack.
A greatsword user mindlessly charges up for a powerful hit, but the BOSS just stands five meters away, watching them like an idiot.
In normal game mode, the monsters' behavior is mostly based on their habits. The more complex combat applications are reserved for when players hunt tempered dragons.
After all, the word "tempered" means having experienced hundreds of battles.
So it's normal for them to have more combat experience and know how to deal with hunters.
Of course, there's still a limit to the difficulty.
Players still need to be able to farm for gems normally, right?
Otherwise, "Monster Hunter: World" would lose a major attraction.
And wouldn't the players protest?
A "Monster Hunter" game that you can't grind isn't really "Monster Hunter!"
.........
During this time, Lucas and his team worked on developing "Monster Hunter: World."
But the game industry wasn't so peaceful.
First of all, "Minecraft" was still incredibly popular.
Players were finding more and more ways to play the game.
And all sorts of MODs were constantly appearing, greatly enhancing "Minecraft's" community content.
As for sales, they had numbed many game designers in the industry.
Besides "Minecraft," there was another piece of news that caught the attention of many designers.
That was, although the major distribution channels had gradually lowered their commission rates, they clearly weren't going to sit still and do nothing.
On May 1st, several major channels announced a strategic partnership, forming a channel alliance to share channel resources.
At the same time, NetDragon and SkyNova also announced several major new games, and stated that their games would also be launched on the channel alliance.
This was unprecedented, because NetDragon and SkyNova had always been among the largest channels in China, and their games were mostly exclusive to their own channels.
But now they were directly launching games on all channels, and the meaning of this was clear.
This left many designers in a dilemma.
The main problem was that after joining the channel alliance, they wouldn't be able to launch their games on platforms outside the official channels.
But at the same time, Nebula Games' platform was developing very well.
Many games had proved that Nebula Games' user base was large enough to support game sales.
Lucas, however, stayed calm about the moves from NetDragon, SkyNova, and the major channels.
Just like those distributors couldn't do much against Nebula Games, Lucas also didn't really have a way to deal with them for now.
The rest was simply a matter of time. As more great games appeared on Nebula's platform and the services improved, the platform would naturally become the biggest channel. Otherwise, it wouldn't.
Right now, Nebula's platform had already entered a stage of steady growth.
Both the player base and the game developers were already stable.
What remained was to keep releasing one great game after another to maintain the platform's competitiveness, and that was the part Lucas feared the least.
But for most regular players, compared to all this platform business—
Most of them still cared more about the games themselves.
Especially Lucas's fans, who were now in an uproar.
The reason was simple: countless players had noticed that this year's Gameplay Expo didn't feature Nebula Games at all.
This left countless players dumbfounded.
After all, in the past two years Nebula Games had always shown up.
At the first expo, they ended the event with two mini-games and a trailer. At the second, they opened with a trailer and a frustrating hammer-swinging mini-game.
But now, at the third expo, Nebula Games was just… gone?
This instantly sparked heated discussions among countless players.
"Wait! Did anyone notice? Nebula Games isn't at this year's Gameplay Expo!?"
"No way, seriously?"
"You're kidding, right? Don't tell me they've stopped making games and switched to being just a platform?"
"Where'd you hear that from?"
"Can't read? Obviously, I'm guessing!"
"Well, you can't say it's impossible. With Minecraft's insane success, Nebula made a fortune. Plus, with their platform now on track—even though their cut is the lowest in the industry and, as Lucas said, the profit is small—it's steady money!"
"No way!?"
The guesses kept getting wilder.
Even Lucas's official Weibo was flooded with mentions.
Inside Nebula, while Lucas was leading his team in the intense development of Monster Hunter: World, his assistant Lin Rou reminded him of the online buzz. Lucas was speechless after seeing it, but still posted an official statement.
"Thank you very much for your concern. Not joining this year's Gameplay Expo was a carefully considered decision, because we're currently focusing on developing a brand-new major project."
"To bring players this new surprise sooner, we decided not to attend this year's Gameplay Expo, so we can put all our energy into making the new game."
"So, please look forward to it."
With Lucas's post, many players got excited.
So that's how it is!
They were making a brand-new game!
But soon, the excitement gave way to a realization.
Aside from knowing Nebula Games was developing something new, they had no clue about anything else—what kind of theme, what genre, what platform, or even how far along it was.
Back when Nebula Games joined Gameplay Expos, they had never really offered playable demos—just trailers to get by.
And this year, they skipped the expo entirely. Forget playable content, not even a trailer showed up!?
(End of this chapter)
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