"New Fortune Tower."
Cynthia had asked William for a day off, saying she was going shopping with Merry. Naturally, the car was taken, so William took a taxi to work for the first time in a while.
Work hours started at 8:30, but William usually arrived a bit later — partly because he woke up late, and partly because he didn't want to pressure the staff by showing up too early.
The first thing he did when he arrived was check on Angela and Zach's progress. Their computers ran overnight to render animation, so he could see the results right away in the morning.
William's requirements for animation quality weren't high. It didn't need to match the standard of popular animations. As long as it fit the game's art style and let players enjoy the story smoothly, it was fine.
For the two of them, this wasn't hard. After checking yesterday's results, William moved on to Leon's desk.
Leon's second character choice was the famous Three Kingdoms general, Cole Yun. Designing him wasn't too different from Olivia, but because of the historical setting and the need to highlight Cole Yun's "battle prowess," the style would differ greatly.
Among the 20 characters in "Honor of Kings," there were both male and female characters, with quite a few from mythology. Mythological characters took longer to design because of their complexity, while historical figures had plenty of reference material, so myth characters were placed last in the schedule.
Female characters were also planned after the male ones, mainly because there were fewer of them, and Leon's style might not match the desired look. William planned to give those to other concept artists later.
Tina's work followed directly after Leon's, meaning she couldn't move forward unless Leon finished the concept art. For now, she was improving existing virtual characters. But after William's "lesson" last night, her workload wasn't any lighter — she now also had to work with Leon to make adjustments so the characters would look more natural in-game.
William's next stop was Chris, who was testing the basic functions of the custom engine for "The Sims," internally called "simsys." It was based on the source code from the developer's manual, with some features removed due to system limitations. Right now, it was basically a stripped-down first-generation engine.
Chris's job was to first restore all the features of the first-gen engine, then improve the second-gen, and then the third-gen.
The fourth-gen engine's capabilities were actually on par with Unity, just with different focuses. Of course, it was weaker in some areas, but since it was custom-made, it could also do things Unity couldn't.
Chris's goal was to improve the third-gen engine as a way to learn engine development and upgrades. Whether they would use the fourth-gen to back-develop "The Sims" series or stick to the one-engine-per-generation plan was still undecided. William couldn't help much here — all he had was a simple engine user manual for reference.
The manual was auto-generated by "Intro to Game Engine Technology." Even though it was an entry-level guide, it covered everything. Just one read-through could tell you how to use and implement all the engine's features.
That said, everyone's learning ability was different. The manual could list everything, but how much someone could actually understand was another matter.
Claire was the perfect example.
She didn't look well — tired eyes, clearly lacking sleep, maybe not having slept at all.
The reason William left her for last was because he planned to spend the whole day with her. No matter what, they had to release an update today — even just one level — because the players were getting impatient.
Designing levels wasn't hard for William since he had a plan from the start. The real challenge would be hundreds or thousands of levels later, where they'd need to keep things fresh while increasing difficulty. Without careful thought or studying the original version, it would be hard to do well.
For now, that wasn't a concern. When William offered to personally make a level to show her, Claire didn't refuse — she pulled a chair over and sat behind him, watching closely as he finished a new level in under ten minutes.
William turned to her. "Got it?"
Claire thought for a moment, then nodded. "I think so."
"Then you do it." William gave her the seat.
Claire stood, and they switched places. She started making a new level based on William's steps. In fact, she had already finished one level before he came — one she had stayed up late to do — but now she brought it up again to rework it entirely.
Half an hour later, with William giving occasional tips, Claire finished a new level. Most of the work had been adjusting the difficulty, which took a lot of brainpower.
"Good," William encouraged her. "Keep going with this approach. Remember — five levels make a small checkpoint, ten levels make a big one, and every hundred levels, add a new challenge. If you run out of ideas, come ask me."
"Got it."
"Keep it up."
After that, William went over to Marcus. There wasn't much for him to advise — just reminded him, like before, to discuss ideas with Claire. As a skilled gamer, Marcus sometimes had interesting thoughts, and the player's view wasn't the same as the developer's.
Once he finished his producer duties, William returned to his office as a developer.
If nothing unexpected happened, "Craftsman's Wood" would be developed quickly — all the furniture designs already had prototypes, so most of the time would be spent on modeling and rendering, just a night or two of work. With some effort, it could be released this week.
Before the end of the day, Cynthia really did take the whole day off and didn't show up. Judging by her messages, she wouldn't be home for dinner either. Tonight, it would just be William and Aunt Oliver. Since they had eaten so well the night before, Aunt Oliver said tonight would be a simple meal.
Her reasoning was simple — her cooking couldn't compare to last night's chef, and the memory of that taste wouldn't fade in just one day. Since nothing they had tonight could top that dinner, they might as well keep it plain and save the effort.
William had no objections to that.
Seeing Aunt Oliver fitting into the family more and more was a good thing. It wasn't that they lacked care from elders, but this kind of atmosphere made everyone live more comfortably.
Claire reported, "Everything's ready."
"Then let's release it."
William didn't doubt her work. There were five levels in total, and it had taken Claire a whole day to design and adjust them. Now it was finally time for players to try them out.
Of course, the new levels had already been checked by Marcus beforehand. He said they were fine and met the game's usual standard, which was why William felt at ease.
The game was updated.