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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

Combine 2D pixels with 3D effects organically to create a pixel game that switches day and night light and shadow effects in real time.

RPG "Sea of Stars" by Canadian studio Sabotage was released on August 30 this year. The game achieves an organic fusion of retro 2D pixels and modern 3D effects: switching day and night light and shadow effects in real time, the shadow of 2D objects will change with time and orientation, and the surfaces of objects show different light textures according to normal mapping and subsurface scattering. Sabotage Studios thought it was an impossible task, but they finally achieved their goal.

The picture of "Sea of Stars" is very beautiful, by contrast, the growth system is very thin, which has aroused controversy among players. Why the game director chose such a design is another topic worth discussing.

Despite the different types of games, Sea of Stars adopts the same worldview as the action game Messenger, which was released by Sabotage five years ago. Director Thierry Bronge (Thierry Boulanger) conceived this fantasy world from the age of 8, providing the basis for all Sabotage's works. In the future, Sabotage will also develop other types of pixel games, for directors and studios, this retro road has only just begun.

After the release of Pixel and Shadow Messenger, most players thought that Sabotage would continue to develop Messenger 2, a continuation of the action game type, but the new film Sea of Stars turned into RPG. This is not on a whim. Within Sabotage, Sea of Stars is no secret. Director Thierry Bronge said before the company was founded that he had conceived five games, including Messenger and Sea of Stars. In October 2018, the development of "Sea of Stars" was officially launched, with only a small team doing experimental work at first, and the team expanded to 15 people a year later.

Thierry predicts that if "Sea of Stars" uses a 15-member team and goes on sale in March 2022, the development cost will be about 2 million Canadian dollars (10.59 million yuan). Although they spend all of Messenger's revenue on the Sea of Stars, there is still a big gap in development costs. Thierry chose crowdfunding, but still can't rest assured-the artist Michael's "Sarcia" raised only $1500 before, which left him with a lingering fear.

Sabotage is not a well-known company, and there is no big shot in the team, so Thierry lowered his expectations. When Star Sea launched crowdfunding on March 19, 2020, the minimum target was only C $130,000, but it took only six hours to achieve it. By the end of the crowdfunding 30 days later, Sea of Stars had earned 1.62 million Canadian dollars (8.58 million yuan) on the crowdfunding platform, exceeding Thierry's expectations.

"Sea of Stars" has many eggs associated with "Messenger" Thierry admits that "Sea of Stars" is not suitable for all players, and different people have different tastes. If you compare "Sea of Stars" to apples, then there must be people who hate apples and like oranges, which is normal. The key is to be honest and let players know that they are apples and don't mistake them for oranges.

From the launch of crowdfunding to its final release, the system of "Sea of Stars" has barely changed. Apart from the full plot, the key points of the game were made public three years ago, and crowdfunding is more like a kind of market research for the development team to see how many players support such RPG. After the crowdfunding figure exceeded expectations, Thierry chose to increase the development scale, increasing the number of Sabotage staff to 26, which is also the ideal number in his mind.

The atmosphere of the small-scale team is more harmonious, and the planner will leave room for the picture effect needed by the art when designing the map, and the art will also consider the scene guidance for the planner when polishing the picture. In the team of 26 people, we are all acquaintances. These details can be understood without special communication. In addition, Thierry is a relaxed director who is good at communicating with his employees in a way that encourages rather than commands, and if the team expands to 40 people, he may not be able to maintain this harmonious and relaxed management style.

When the development of "Sea of Stars" was launched, shortly after the launch of "Traveler in all directions", Thierry did not like the so-called "high-definition 2D engine." he thought the picture of "Traveler in all directions" felt strange, and the pixel image was like a piece of paper in the 3D world. lack of volume. Therefore, in the early days of development, he set technical goals for "Sea of Stars": to achieve dynamic shadows and instant switching between day and night; the shadow of 2D objects will change with time and orientation; modern 3D technologies such as normal mapping, volume light, water subsurface scattering, ambient light masking and other modern 3D technologies are integrated into seamless 2D pixel images. When Thierry first listed these goals, only he believed in the vision, and others thought it was "impossible to achieve". But after many experiments, the team did it all.

A large number of 3D lighting effects are integrated into 2D pixels, which not only improves the picture quality, but also improves the scene guidance. By lighting a door with a light source in a complex maze, players will know where to go in the right direction. In addition, the "Sea of Stars" lens is not an accurate 45-degree isometric perspective, and players are likely to get the illusion that a higher platform is lower, which also requires light to guide.

3D light and shadow gives 2D pixels a sense of "plagiarism" and salute looking back on his childhood. The first RPG Thierry played was "the Warrior against the Dragon" on NES. He lost interest immediately because he couldn't see the battle picture of the protagonist. It wasn't until the SNES period that he really became a RPG player.

Thierry believes that there are three classic games that have the greatest impact on "Sea of Stars": "Super Mario RPG", "Gaia Fantasy" and "the key to Space and time". The common feature of these three games lies in the fast pace of the process, and there is no Boss that deliberately requires players to practice in the process of customs clearance. Specifically, Super Malio RPG integrates action elements into traditional turn-based combat, and pressing keys at critical moments of attack and defense can improve the effect, as referenced by Star Sea.

"Super Malio RPG" buttons can enhance the attack power at critical moments. "Gaia Fantasy" is an ARPG with a large drop in scene, and Thierry believes that the feel of this unpopular work is comparable to that of platform action games. The scene of "Sea of Stars" also retains the feel of this platform action game, and even adds the hooks and claws of "Messenger" to further improve mobility. Were it not for the need to retain multiple combat characters in the team, Sea of Stars would probably become an ARPG.

The scene of "Gaia Fantasy" with a high and low gap "the key to space-time" left the deepest impression on Thierry. When he was 10 years old, he and a classmate went to a small shop that rented cassettes, looking for a cassette that could play doubles. The shopkeeper said casually that the "key to time and space" could play doubles. Under a load of nonsense, Thierry rented the cassette home and found that it was a RPG that could not play doubles. At that time, Thierry and his classmates did not know English. Faced with a lot of English at the beginning, the students felt bored and left, while Thierry imagined the content in English and continued to play.

The design of "key beyond time and Space" that cuts directly into battle in the maze is hailed by Thierry as a masterstroke, and this design is also used in "Sea of Stars". A lot of RPG will cut out the maze screen during the battle, and players may forget the structure of the maze after the battle. "key beyond time and Space" does not have this problem.

Thierry believes that the key to space-time is a near-perfect game. Square took everything to the extreme that year, and no one in the world can develop a stronger new game. In fact, Thierry can't make the Sea of Stars reach the level of "the key to space-time", and there is not much innovation in the game. He just sews his favorite elements into a work out of personal taste.

When "key beyond time and Space" went directly into the maze to fight and communicate with other independent game teams, Thierry also said that do not make a similar statement in the trailer, "the Legend of Zelda" and "Pokemon". Because the independent development team is not the original author, it is impossible to make a more authentic flavor than the original author. Instead of claiming to be the successor of so-and-so in the trailer, let players dig out the similarities in the two games, which is the style of independent games.

Thierry believes that if an RPG uses a traversing plot and eight chapters, plus a robot companion, such "plagiarism" will soon be forgotten by players, and everyone will only remember a "key to space-time". Compared with this superficial plagiarism, independent games should analyze the core of classics in order to break away from plagiarism and reach the level of respect.

One of the advantages of "key beyond time and Space" is the rich theme of the scene, and players always maintain a sense of freshness as they advance the process. "Sea of Stars" also emphasizes the diversity of scenes-a RPG does not need 5 forest mazes and 3 snow mountain mazes, and players want to see scenes with richer themes. Different labyrinths in "Sea of Stars" have different environments and enemies, and the frequency of common enemies in changing colors is lower.

"Sea of Stars" also refers to other 1990s classic RPG, such as character and plot imitate "Fantasy Water margin", fishing Mini Game imitates "Dragon Warrior 3". Other designs come from modern HD games, and navigation systems refer to the "quality effect", where players can talk to NPC on board and get information about future plans.

You can talk to NPC on board because the content of RPG is much larger than that of action games, and Sea of Stars doesn't produce 8-bit and 16-bit footage like Messenger, but the game's scene soundtrack is still available day and night, with a total of 206soundtrack. Most of the soundtrack is done by Eric Brown, who worked on Messenger as an outsourced songwriter and became a regular employee of Sabotage during the Star Sea period. Kangda, the composer of key beyond time and Space, also participated in the Sea of Stars. Sabotage only sent a few screenshots and game introductions to Guangda's email address, and Guangtian agreed to compose music for the book. However, due to the limited time, he only provided 12 pieces of music for this work.

The biggest controversy of "Sea of Stars" is the thin growth system. Thierry didn't like the data and training elements in RPG. He wanted to subtract RPG, but he overcorrected it. The protagonist gains very little experience when defeating an enemy whose level is lower than his own. To the limit, if the player chooses to stay in the initial maze, it takes 30,000 soldiers to complete the level, which is a goal that is too boring to be achieved.

As long as players keep pushing the maze, even if they miss important weapons and equipment, they can successfully defeat Boss, which is designed to satisfy players who want to quickly experience the plot and avoid fighting and exploration. However, there are still many unavoidable battles in the game. Although the miscellaneous soldiers use the clear mine mechanism in the maze, in theory, players can avoid the battle in advance, but some of the miscellaneous soldiers will actively chase the player, and some of the battles will be forced by the plot to avoid.

At the same time, Thierry believes that many RPG have an unreasonable design: the mana consumption is so high that players rarely use magic in order to save MP during the maze exploration, and use all the saved MP on Boss. He has a point, but the solution given by "Sea of Stars" is not perfect, there are few MP responses to ordinary attacks, the upper limit of the character's MP is very low, and the frequency of magic is still not high.

The thin growth system affects the combat experience that "Sea of Stars" does not have a career system similar to "final Fantasy". Thierry does not want to divide the characters into output, defense, recovery and other functions according to their class. The six characters in the team are mainly distinguished by attack attributes. However, the absence of the professional system makes the characters lack a complex training system, which weakens the depth of the battle. For players who do not like to fight, "Sea of Stars" can modify the battle rules through the artifact system, which is more difficult than simple selection, but the artifact needs to be collected one by one in the process. Not all of them were provided to players at the beginning.

As a turn-based RPG, the best thing about "Sea of Stars" is the action elements of the maze, rather than the combat or growth system. If Thierry hadn't clung to a team of six characters and completely turned "Sea of Stars" into a single protagonist ARPG similar to "Gaia Fantasy," the game might have been much smaller.

On the other hand, because Thierry's mother tongue is French, the English text of "Sea of Stars" is not high, while most other languages are based on the English version, and the localization of "Sea of Stars" is not as good as "Messenger". This leads to the strange appearance of the text except French, which affects the plot experience.

The design of the labyrinth is comparable to the long development of platform action games. "Sea of Stars" turned to telecommuting development in 2020 and 2021, affecting efficiency. When the team returned to the office in 2022, the development was already behind schedule, but Thierry was unwilling to work overtime at the expense of the team's health, so he postponed the release of the game to August 30, 2023.

As a result, the timing of Sabotage's launch of the two games hit a masterpiece. The release date of the 2018 Messenger is only a week away from that of Marvel Spider-Man. 2023 will be a more crowded game year than 2018, and the release date of "Sea of Stars" will be preceded by "Baird Gate 3" and followed by "Starry Sky", which are also closely watched by Thierry himself. Because Messenger's first-week sales fell short of expectations, and Thierry's sales forecast for "Sea of Stars" was not optimistic, he made his debut into the XGP and PS Plus second-tier (Extra) subscription library.

But sales of "Star Sea" far exceeded expectations, affecting sales to some extent by subscription services, and physical versions have not yet started selling (they went on sale in Japan on December 7 this year and in Europe and the United States early next year). Star Sea sold 250,000 copies in a week, a figure Thierry imagined would take a year to reach. The good sales have boosted the team's confidence that they will continue to update the game in the future, including the rough doubles partnership model and the first plot DLC, and then consider whether to produce a second plot DLC based on the player's reaction.

The Japanese physical version of the "Sea of Stars" cover now, Sabotage has once again formed a small team to work on the framework of the next new work. Thierry admires the Oddworld studio that developed the "Strange World" series, and he hopes Sabotage will follow the same direction. In the Strange World series, Abby is a horizontal action game played in 2D, Monk is a 3D action game, and Wrath of Stranger is a 3D shooting game, which are played differently but all share the same worldview, which is the future goal of Sabotage.

The timeline of "Sea of Stars" was set thousands of years before "Messenger", and the relationship between the two is relatively loose. Players do not need to play "Messenger" to understand the plot of "Sea of Stars". However, players who have passed through "Messenger" can find a lot of colored eggs in "Sea of Stars". Sabotage's future new films will follow a similar line of plot, but the type has not been disclosed, and Thierry believes that Sabotage can even develop FPS, racing or fighting games, as long as they use the same worldview and pixel screen.

In Thierry's view, the fantasy world he conceived at the age of 8 is not infinite, but it is enough to consume the rest of his life. It took three years to develop Messenger and five years for Sea of Stars. Only two of the five games originally planned have been completed. He doesn't know how long it will take for the remaining three, but he is willing to give the rest of his life to this fantasy world of his boyhood. After all, it was his childhood dream.

The game is developed to realize my childhood dream.

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