This Is Not a Bug but a Game Feature-Chapter 234 - 163: Playable with 8GB, Enjoyable with 16GB!
The gaming industry has always had a strange phenomenon: official versions can’t beat pirated ones!
When a groundbreaking game hits the market, if its gameplay is novel and easy to mimic, it often enjoys early success but then gets crushed by knockoff games from competitors later.
There are plenty of examples like this.
There was even a news story a few years ago about Tencent suing a small company with low recognition, one that many domestic players hadn’t even heard of.
What did the company do?
The answer is, they created a knockoff of "King of Glory," a MOBA mobile game popular across the country, and used this knockoff to break into parts of the Southeast Asian market, outperforming the official overseas version.
This story is somewhat amusing but is indeed a norm in the gaming industry, especially in the domestic gaming scene.
Being the pioneer doesn’t always mean securing market share; sometimes, it’s the latecomers that become the ultimate winners!
Chen Ba doesn’t want to claim that domestic games are plagued by plagiarism because the legal definition of "plagiarism" is quite strict. Many games may seem plagiarized to players, but it’s difficult to provide evidence or determine if intellectual property rights have been infringed.
Therefore, using terms like "patchwork" or "knockoff" to describe them is more accurate and reasonable than "plagiarism."
Is someone knocking off Tianba Studio’s games?
Chen Ba had anticipated this long ago and was mentally prepared. After all, he saw a game mimicking "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" on the Steam Platform a year ago.
This time he was surprised because the mimicker wasn’t a small workshop or team but actually a major domestic game company.
Moreover, he never expected that the major company targeted Tianba Game’s "Divine Grace Continent"!
Ah, this...
"Divine Grace Continent" is formidable, but to mimic its essence and create a workable version would require a certain level of AI training, wouldn’t it?
"Magic Animation?"
As soon as Zhong Shengwei heard the name, chewing gum, he remarked, "Quite ambitious, aiming directly at the professional version of ’Divine Grace Continent’." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
Jumping straight to the highest difficulty without considering how challenging it is to mimic.
Even mimicking "Cold Window Study Simulator" and "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" would be better! The development difficulty of these games is simpler than that of "Divine Grace Continent," right?
"Perhaps it’s dismissive!"
"A big company has its pride; they likely look down on our low-cost mini-games..."
At this point, Chen Ba waved his hand and said, "Whatever, let them mimic if they want. If it becomes a joke, it’s not our problem."
He has no time to concern himself with competitors.
"Don’t Leave After School: Marbles Storm," as a medium-sized game, has matured in development.
According to the studio’s usual practice, before a new game is publicly released, multiple rounds of "bar fried rice" testing are necessary.
This testing is partly for the game’s stability and reliability.
On the other hand, the testing phase is also crucial for Chen Ba to identify and remedy flaws in the new game.
"Don’t Leave After School" is medium-sized and was not originally intended to be a big game. The expected retail price for the full version is only 68 yuan.
This is different from "Speeding Frenzy."
As a game expected to sell for only 68 yuan, the development work for "Don’t Leave After School" is naturally more relaxing than for "Speeding Frenzy."
Certainly!
The main contributor to the short development cycle is the Iron Fool System, without which the game’s "marble" portion would have taken at least 12-18 months to complete.
Chen Ba opened the details page.
[Game Name: Don’t Leave After School—Marbles Storm]
[Planning: 85 (can be improved)]
[Programming: 90 (can be improved)]
[Art: 87 (can be improved)]
[...Overall Score: 96]
Staring at the system page in his mind for a moment, Chen Ba suddenly asked Lu, "Are you sure there are no major bugs detected?"
"Nope!"
Lu asserted, "The game’s stability is very strong, and aside from relatively high memory usage, no other issues have been found during operation."
"Relatively high memory usage?"
Hearing this, Chen Ba frowned and pressed for the specific reason for the high memory usage.
It turned out to be a false alarm.
With Lu’s repeated debugging, the memory usage issue of "Don’t Leave After School" has been optimized and resolved, and now, it can be happily played with 8GB of memory.
However, that said...
Due to limitations in the game’s map and scene modeling, the recommended configuration for "Don’t Leave After School" is actually 16GB of memory, where 8GB can play, but with some settings lowered, reducing the number of characters displayed on screen.
"Optimize it further!"
Chen Ba knows very well, although everyone jokes online about 16GB of memory being insufficient with various claims of 32GB, 64GB to enjoy AAA titles.
But jokes are jokes; in reality, most people’s computer configurations commonly have 8*2 combos, which means 16GB predominates.
Moreover, many people actually don’t set up dual channels; their motherboard only has a single 8GB memory stick.
So 8GB is the baseline.
On this basis, we must ensure the experience for players with 8GB of memory, avoiding scenarios where 8GB can’t be played, and the 16GB experience is mediocre.
"Lower the configuration threshold a bit more; this isn’t like ’Speeding Frenzy’ or ’Star Emperor,’ we don’t need such high configuration thresholds."
Chen Ba explained, "Ideally, 8GB should be playable, 16GB enjoyable! As for the graphics card, whether or not there’s a dedicated one doesn’t matter; integrated graphics can handle it..."
