Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In the summer of 2004, at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, the world's highest fighting game, EVO, a "Street Fighter 3" game was under way.

The bloody Ken blocked 15 attacks of the Phoenix wing fan with his elbows and knees amid a flood of cheers, and completed the ultimate counter-kill, and the boiling crowd and commentator's "Unbelievable" was recorded by the camera forever, a moment known as Evo moment # 37.

But as a matter of fact, EVO Moments did not achieve this magic skill by 11036. Dago Miyahara has become an immortal legend talked about by countless fighting players. EVO, which sets up the stage and gives it legendary value, also celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.

This multi-event IP, whose full name is the Evolutionary Championship series, not only inherits the warm-blooded competitive culture of arcade fighting through years of solid operation, but also provides a stage for electronic weapons aficionados all over the world to realize their dreams.

Behind the legendary events and contestants is a passionate story of love and dedication. The protagonist of the story takes interest as the cornerstone and enthusiasm as fuel, quietly changing the whole fighting game industry for the benefit of fighting players all over the world.

With the end of this year's EVO, let's talk about the legends of the founders of EVO, the brothers Tom Cannon and Tony Cannon, and see how they changed the fighting game industry on their own.

In the 1970s, Tom Cannon and Tony Cannon were born together in California, USA.

Because of the good family conditions, the two brothers received an Atari 2600 from their parents when they were only five years old. For young children, this rare electronic object brings them a novel experience far beyond ordinary toys.

Whether it was a combat mission (COMBAT) that pierced enemy tanks with pixels, or an explosive comet (asteroids) that prevented meteorites from falling to earth, the two brothers became addicted to it and became increasingly interested in this magical thing called a video game. As they get older, the two brothers begin to delve into the logic behind the game outside of playing the game. rather than simply playing according to the rules of the game, they want to understand how the functions of the game are realized.

So, in order to get a mainframe with programming ability, they begged their parents for months and finally got an Atari 800XL and a BASIC programming cassette on Christmas Day 1983. At that time, they compared the basic code in computer magazines, typed it into the host computer bit by bit, and then did some simple debugging according to their own ideas, and made a lot of simple Mini Game.

Because of their talent and love of research, the Cannon brothers were successfully admitted to Stanford University as a computer science major in the early 1990s. While in college, the category of fighting games is becoming popular with the Dongfeng of Street Fighter 2.

Although it is only a sequel, Street Fighter 2 sold nearly 50, 000 units at the beginning of its release in 1991 and exported to the world within two years, generating revenue of $1.5 billion for Capcom and accounting for nearly 60% of the global arcade market. Under such hot sales data, Cannon brothers, who love games, are naturally deeply attracted by this "national game" and become restless "fighting teenagers" who fight until dawn in the arcade hall.

As the street bully skills of the two brothers became more and more skillful, they also began to come into contact with some local experts. At that time, arcades, bowling alleys and other small shops with fighting machines in the United States held some small events on a regular basis.

On the one hand, you can use the name of "who is the strongest player" to harvest a wave of "bad guys" and invest a lot of money? on the other hand, you can also do publicity for the store to attract more newcomers to play. In such a competition atmosphere, different regions, different urban areas, and even different streets have given birth to their own "ace players".

Folk experts such as the King of California, the ghosts of New York, Detroit, and Lao Wang next door not only dislike each other, but also often leave their own challenge posts on the underdeveloped Internet message board. Then, while disclosing his practice experience, he argued with the "challenger" who came to discuss it and had a wild war of words.

And the Cannon brothers, as enthusiastic fans of the game, have also become one of these posters. In order to solve the urgent problem of "who is the best player in North America", they decided to make a big news simply-didn't you all say you were the best? Then I will hold a "national master contest", in which mules are pulled out before horses to walk.

So, to host the Huashan Sword, the Cannon brothers brought in two other friends, Joey Cuellar (Joey Cuellar) and Seth Killian (Seth Killian), and the four worked with the local arcade hall. And through online posts, flyers and phone invitations, they held a fighting game contest-which they named Battle By the Bay, which means Battle of the Gulf, or B3 for short. They are very satisfied with the name, because it sounds like E3, revealing a foreign flavor.

In 1996, the Battle of the Gulf officially began, with the events of "Street Fighter 2" and "Junior Street Fighter 2". The number of participants was as high as 64, including Alex Valle, who was later famous in the fighting game circle, and James Chen, the famous commentator. Gongs, drums and firecrackers blared in the sky on the day of the competition, and spectators gathered around the arcade hall. The super popularity and lively atmosphere made the Gulf War the first major fighting game in the United States in a practical sense.

There were even contestants from Canada and Kuwait who heard the news and incorporated "cross-border" blood into the competition.

With the success of the Gulf War, the Cannon brothers realized that they might be able to do more than the National Games, so they held larger B4 and B5 events in 2000 and 2001, respectively.

In the B4 competition, the top five contestants of the "Young Street bully 3" project also flew to Japan for an exhibition match of the 5v5 of the United States and Japan. When it came to the B5 competition, many Japanese contestants specially flew to the United States to participate in the competition. It can be seen that after several years of development, the Gulf War has an embryonic form of international competition.

Back to the Cannon brothers, the two brothers did not neglect their studies during the competition. After graduating from Stanford, Tony joined Microsoft in 1997 and Tom joined VMware in 2000, both of whom have bright futures. During their work, with their own expertise, they created a fighting game forum Shoryuken.com with much richer features than the message board. Players can share information, discuss technology, or simply gossip about players in the forum. There are also old birds who spontaneously produce teaching videos and continuous demonstrations, which provide a lot of help for novice players.

The competition went smoothly, and the atmosphere of the forum was very hot. At a time when the Cannon brothers were interested in a bumper harvest in their careers, they had their first major setback-the arcade halls in the United States were rapidly disappearing.

In fact, as early as the late 1980s, the American arcade industry was already in crisis. Both the aftermath of the Atari crash and the financial crises such as Black Monday and the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s have dealt a heavy blow to the arcade industry, which requires large amounts of liquid assets and is heavily dependent on sustained consumption.

Although popular fighting games such as Street Fighter 2 and VR Warrior have enjoyed a brief revival, the strength of the blue pill will not last long, and even in the hottest days of Street Fighter 2, the US arcade market is billions less than it was at its peak in the 1980s. All game manufacturers know that the era of arcade is coming to an end.

For the founders of the Gulf Wars, the demise of the arcade industry meant that all their previous cooperation with the arcade hall had come to naught. More importantly, the community of fighting players and the arcade culture they love will disappear. In order to inherit the fire of the arcade culture, they decided to continue the competition. As the arcade hall no longer exists, they need new venues, new forms of games, new types of games and players, and everything has to start from scratch.

In 2002, the Cannon brothers and others took great pains to rent a ballroom at the University of California, Los Angeles, and rented an arcade at a high price, where they planned to hold a new competition. This competition, as usual, is still open to all players. But the competition system is different from the previous games, the process of this game is to audition for each event to determine the top eight.

Starting from the quarterfinals, the contestants of each match will step onto the main stage and present a brilliant showdown for the audience through the broadcast on the big screen. In the past, people in the arcade hall watched the game around the machine, but this time the organizers turned the game into a boxing match, a novel and exciting experience that was well received by both the contestants and the audience.

As you may have guessed, this game is Evolution, or EVO for short.

The persistence of EVO's iconic LOGO organizers has indeed been rewarded. As a competition with no investors, no public relations and no interest, EVO not only did not die out with the arcade a few years later, but also showed more and more vitality.

Under the thin prize pool, which basically comes from contestants' registration fees and audience tickets, no contestants receive preferential treatment in other aspects such as "invitations". They must tighten their nerves at "audition time" and defeat every opponent who comes to challenge. While the organizers participated in the project setup and management completely as a part-time job, the Cannon brothers naturally mingled with the spectators who came to watch the game, cheering for the genius who won the championship for the first time in the auditorium, and marveling at the master's every move for the temptation of standing back, for the Jedi counterattack and the completion of the impossible feat of "Legend Mei Yuan."

As a result, the influence of EVO has increased several times in a few years. With the increase in the number of contestants, the venue has been changed to the sleepless city of Las Vegas since 2005, which continues to this day.

Today's EVO is probably the most competitive e-sports competition in the world. Its prize pool and attention may not be as good as those professional e-sports leagues, but to be able to continue the arcade culture, so that players and players can feel passion, may have been the original vision of the Cannon brothers.

However, heroes who are interested will not stand still because their dreams come true. Compared with the later careers of the Cannon brothers, the establishment and development of EVO is less important.

32006 is the sixth year that Tony left Microsoft to join Weirui with Tom. It coincided with the arrival of "Street 2" on Microsoft's new mainframe XBOX360. In order to recall their youth, the two decisively supported one.

However, they soon found that the networking latency of the game was so high that it usually took a second for the operation to respond. For fighting games with frame-accurate operations, such online battles are virtually non-existent.

Due to the way the fighting game 1V1 is played, manufacturers can only set the networking mode of the game to P2P. In this way, the game online warfare will be affected by various factors, ranging from the mountain to the next piece, as long as a little disturbance, the smooth Shenglong fist will become Catton's white fist.

If you live in California and drive less than a few dozen miles from Microsoft, you will be worried about delayed stutter, then the network resources will be even worse, and players in more remote areas will not be able to play at all. With this in mind, the Cannon brothers decided to once again embark on a journey to save fighting players.

Borrowing knowledge from their work, the two brothers began to carefully study the technical solutions to network delays. They found that although the logic of the existing online code is simple and clear, it is almost impossible to achieve a smooth combat experience in a non-LAN environment.

The combat game runs at 60 frames per second, which means receiving 60 instructions from the other side every second. And once the packet is lost, the game will get stuck when you can't accept the instructions of the other party.

It will not run until the instruction is received again, depending on the speed of network recovery. The ever-changing ping will also change the delay in game input, making it impossible for players to grasp or even miss the opportunity to enter commands.

The brothers concluded that if you want to make the networking experience like a stand-alone, you need to solve two problems: one is to keep local input unaffected by delays, and the other is how to receive instructions from each other more efficiently.

Compared with the first, the second is an almost unsolvable problem. But they still came up with an alternative-to predict what they would do if they could not receive instructions from their opponent in time because of network problems. Specifically: let the game repeat the last instructions made by the player.

Based on their knowledge of the fighting game, the Cannon brothers know that all the tricks played by the character are essentially a continuous animation. Assuming that a complete animation of Sheng Longquan is 60 frames, then it means that from the moment Shenglong Quan is issued, within the next second, this will be an unchangeable fact. If you understand the mechanism of the game, you should know that during the duration of the opponent's Sheng long fist, whether you receive his instructions or not, it will not affect the progress of the game.

It is this certainty that strives for space for network signals. When the network fluctuation occurs, the code will first give an opponent the previous instruction to let the game run first. So in the player's cognition, the game is still running smoothly.

In the face of a more complex situation, the Cannon brothers also made perfect considerations. Under their optimization, a complex period of network fluctuations will also become quite smooth. Here is a visual example, if in the game, your opponent is moving forward, and the network fluctuates, if this is frame 300, the game will continue to execute his instructions at frame 299, that is, still moving forward.

But perhaps, your opponent does not enter the front but the jump at this moment, assuming that at frame 303, the network returns to normal, and the code will go back to frame 300 for input detection, and after getting the correct instructions, the game will immediately start rendering the take-off frame 3 animation, cutting off the first two frames directly to make sure the game is on the correct timeline.

Although switching directly from a forward animation to a jump animation is somewhat fragmented, it is obviously smoother and more comfortable than the input delay and sudden pause visible to the naked eye.

This improved set of web code will constantly correct the game screen according to the process of prediction-test-re-rendering. This working mechanism, which is like rewinding repeatedly, is what we now call "rollback code".

I believe that friends who pay attention to fighting games will often hear this name in recent years. But strictly speaking, the use of rollback code does not start with fighting games. It was used in FPS games as early as the 1990s. It was the Cannon brothers who transformed it and introduced it into the fighting game.

Knowing that their "invention" could change the future of fighting games, the Cannon brothers contacted a good friend, Seth Killian, who was also one of the founders of EVO, and asked him if he wanted to see a "great invention." Seth was working as a community manager in Capcom, North America, and as an industry person, he naturally realized the importance of rolling back code.

'if you want to sell it to Capcom, I can help with the referrals,'he said to the Cannon brothers. The Cannon brothers are so excited that, as fans for many years, they wish they could contribute to Capcom's fighting game. But they believe that the current results alone are not convincing enough. They need to be better prepared.

To verify the effectiveness of the rollback code, the Cannon brothers spent nearly a year building a war platform, GGPO, which added the rollback code and downloaded it free of charge on the forum. Soon, the players who have used it will be completely shocked by the magical ability of GGPO to "predict the future" and give a lot of praise. According to statistics, even the initial version of the rollback code has a "prediction" success rate of nearly 80%. A large number of players who suffer from online instability are finally able to play online games as smoothly as offline games.

Finally, the Cannon brothers took GGPO to meet with Capcom's executives. After listening to Tony's explanation, Capcom gladly bought the commercial rights of GGPO.

Everything seems to be going well, and in the Cannon brothers' idea, with the promotion of the leading brother, the rollback code will soon benefit fighting players around the world. In 2009, the mainframe version of Street Fighter 4 went on sale. When the Cannon brothers opened this long-awaited masterpiece to see how the results of their meticulous research benefited a large number of players, they suddenly found that this "blockbuster" that could end the dark age of fighting games, online warfare was as stuck as Street Fighter 2 on XBOX.

Perhaps because of the face of the Action Master, or considering the release cycle, Capcom did not use this new technology in the main fighting new work, which once disappointed the Cannon brothers.

As a result, the Cannon brothers, who repeatedly insisted on asking for others rather than asking for themselves, finally decided not to face their love with a sideline and part-time mentality, but to devote themselves to the cause of fighting games. They set up a game company and developed their own fighting games. Use your savings to set up an independent scholarship mechanism for NYU Game Development Center to reward students who have made unique contributions in the field of game development. At the same time, it provides special help and publicity channels for independent game developers on EVO. And themselves, they also visit everywhere to promote the excellence of the rollback code.

Compared with Japanese game makers, developers in Europe and the United States prefer rollback code. Both independent games and 3A masterpieces regard the online experience as the top priority of the game.

The developers of Killer Instinct have revamped the game engine in pursuit of a perfect online experience. The developers of unrighteous Alliance 2 made the rollback code one of the most important things in the game, and it took nearly ten engineers a year to optimize it.

Interestingly, although Capcom, the first to have a rollback code, used this technology in the 2016 release of Street Fighter 5, it was widely criticized by players for its inadequate optimization. Just last year, at Capcom's CPT competition, well-known player PUNK also made a public complaint to Capcom.

Now, with the epidemic ravaging the world and players' increasing demand for the quality of online games, the importance of rollback code has finally been valued by developers around the world, and even Japanese manufacturers have finally recalled it. New fighting works such as "evil equipment: struggle", "Boxing King 15" and "DNF duel" have also adapted to the times and added this function. At the just-concluded EVO 2022, Soul Dawn and Dragonball Warrior Z also promised to update their support for rollback in the future.

After 15 years since its birth, the day has finally come when rollback code has become standard in combat games.

In fact, for the Cannon brothers, whether it is to start EVO as an ordinary player or become a professional developer to make games. They are just an externalization of their pursuit of things they love. They themselves do not expect to gain fame and money through some kind of "merit", but accomplish these "feats" that seem to change the industry on the way to pursuing hobbies.

Tom once said: "I have always been a player. Through fighting games, I met a lot of special people, made lifelong friends, and learned to face adversity and break through myself." but the art I make doesn't need anyone's support, and if I need a tool, I'll create it myself. "

And I think, perhaps it is precisely in this way to drive themselves with love and motivate themselves with actions, so that the Cannon brothers can strengthen their expectations and hopes in the face of countless setbacks and difficulties, so as to change the world for the benefit of the world.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: travel Research Agency

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