Thursday, September 6th.

In Chi Xing Studio, employees are busy developing the new VR game "Real Estate Agent Simulator".

After the tempering and running-in of "Animal Island", the entire development team has made significant progress, the cooperation is more tacit, and the development process is smoother.

Even Cai Jiadong, the chief designer, has become more proficient.

He seemed to have gradually acquired Tengda's design ideas and methods, which matched Lin Wan's ideas more and more, and gradually became a qualified chief designer.

After working on the computer for a while, he took the printed document and went to Lin Wan to report his work.

At this time, Lin Wan was looking at the computer screen attentively, her brows slightly furrowed, as if she was thinking about something very important.

Seeing Cai Jiadong coming, Lin Wan temporarily looked away from the computer screen.

"Mr. Lin, have you read the small program that was sent by the Roma Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is still in the experimental stage? How do you feel about it?"

"If it can be used, it will not only greatly shorten the development time of our entire project, but it may also have a certain impact on the specific design plan of the game."

Lin Wan was stunned for a moment: "Oh, I have been thinking about other things recently, and I haven't had time to look at it yet. What do you think of the effect?"

Cai Jiadong answered truthfully: "I think... the effect is unexpectedly good."

Lin Wan did not expect Cai Jiadong to give such a high evaluation.

This small program was just sent by Roma Lab to the two departments of Tenda Games and Shanyang Games two days ago. It is said to be an artificial intelligence program that is still in the experimental stage, and they are asked to try it out first and provide comments.

Because Lin Wan has a close relationship with Yang Yang Games, this program was naturally sent to Chi Xing Studio.

Anyway, they are all Tengda's internal industries, and one family does not speak the same language.

Lin Wan has been a little busy these two days, so I haven't had time to watch it yet.

The reason why she didn't pay much attention was mainly because she felt that this thing would definitely not be very reliable.

Current interactive movie games, or some RPG games that have a lot of dialogue and need to show character expressions and speech at close range, all use motion capture technology and actors to play the roles.

Motion capture technology can not only capture body movements, but also capture subtle facial expressions. During the process of the actor speaking his lines, facial capture is performed while recording, and then the data is applied to a model created based on the actor.

It shows a very realistic effect in the game.

Of course, if you are not satisfied with the actor's line skills, you can also find someone else to dub the voice to achieve better results.

But there is also a problem with this approach, that is, the workload is too much and it is not very free.

Once the plot dialogue is finalized, it cannot be changed randomly, otherwise even if you just add a sentence, you will have to invite motion capture actors to re-record it.

This program from the Roma Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is said to be an alternative to facial motion capture technology. The specific principle is to automatically generate the character's facial movements through intelligent analysis of voice content and comprehensive past motion capture data in the editor. In other words,

It can also be thought of as automatic lip-syncing.

It's roughly the same as some software that makes photos sing, but it is said to have better effects.

Lin Wan was a little skeptical about this.

Can something automatically generated by a program and something performed by a motion capture actor be the same concept?

Mr. Pei has very high requirements for the game "Real Estate Agent Simulator". It must be modeled with the same high precision as "Struggle". At the same time, all actions must be captured using real-person motion, so as to give players a sense of reality as much as possible.

The real feeling of being there.

If the NPC's movements are stiff and their expressions are distorted, there will be more drama and the entire game will be flawed.

Maybe it will trigger the uncanny valley effect and scare the players.

After all, the sense of immersion in VR games is far beyond that of conventional games, and anything you miss can make a huge difference.

But now I heard from Cai Jiadong that the effect is unexpectedly good?

Lin Wan couldn't help but become interested and checked it on her computer.

The game "Real Estate Agent Simulator" has been developed for a month, and many character models have been made so far.

Due to the existence of official platform simulators, making this kind of character model is actually a process of making people, and there is no need to start from scratch. Moreover, although most of the games "Struggle" that Mr. Pei once made,

It's a Western, but after slight modifications, many characters can still be used directly.

As soon as he got the program, Cai Jiadong arranged for the designer to make a few cutscenes using existing models and record them.

Lin Wan quickly finished watching the cutscene and asked after a moment of silence: "Is this automatically generated using a new program? Isn't it motion capture?"

Cai Jiadong nodded: "Completely automatically generated. However, the current support for foreign languages ​​is not particularly good."

Lin Wan fell silent.

It doesn't matter if the foreign language support is good or not. Anyway, the game "Real Estate Agent Simulator" is originally only for domestic players. Even if the response of the game is very good and a multi-language version is planned, it will still have to be released for several months.

That's a matter for the future.

This effect is really amazing!

The expressions of the characters in the game are very natural, and there is no feeling of stiff movements or distorted expressions.

Of course, it's impossible to be as precise as real-person motion capture, with perfect coordination between voice and facial movements.

But as long as you are not concentrating on the character's lips, you will basically not notice anything strange.

In fact, it is enough to achieve this level. After all, many foreign film and television dramas have completely mismatched their mouth shapes after being re-dubbed, and the audience will not find it strange if they are used to it. And the facial expressions automatically generated by this program are better than this kind of re-dubbing.

There are naturally more movies and TV series.

"Judging from the current situation, this technology can be directly used in "Real Estate Agent Simulator"."

"and……"

Lin Wan's eyes suddenly lit up: "Wouldn't this just solve the problem that has been troubling us before?"

"No wonder, we always felt that this problem could not be solved well before, and we felt uneasy. Now it seems that Pei always was prepared and knew that this new result of the Roma Laboratory can solve this problem?"

The emergence of a new technology often affects game design ideas.

Previously, Lin Wan and Cai Jiadong were very worried about the design details of the core gameplay of "Real Estate Agent Simulator".

According to the original setting, one of the core gameplays of this game is selling houses.

The basic process of this gameplay is that the player gets a new house type, remodels and rearranges the house, uses the funds in hand to repair it, replaces the furniture, and then receives the guests, answering different questions during the introduction.

In the end, the price was adjusted to a certain extent to facilitate the transaction.

This gameplay is used throughout the game. However, at the beginning, you may not have the funds on hand to make changes to the room. After the customer finds fault, you can only lower the rent to facilitate the transaction. In the later stage, you can discover the house in advance.

problems and resolve them before the customer comes to see the house.

But in the process of designing this core gameplay, Lin Wan and Cai Jiadong encountered a little problem.

Obviously, this is a repetitive gameplay, and if it's not done well, players will quickly get bored.

Assuming that the customers who come every time look similar, ask similar questions, and have similar conversations, actions, and behaviors, then players will probably get bored very quickly, and this core gameplay will not be able to support the game experience at all.

Therefore, how to make this game, like a MOBA game, still fresh no matter how many times it is repeated, at least make players feel that every customer they encounter will be brand new, and they are full of expectations for receiving the next customer, this is the decision

The top priority of the gaming experience.

This problem is multifaceted.

To solve the appearance problem, the customer's appearance can be automatically generated through a program.

Many games have similar functions in the face pinching system, and it is not difficult to do.

Of course, the face automatically generated based on the face pinching system may be a bit inconsistent. For example, she is a woman wearing business attire, but she has a mohawk hairstyle, earrings, and an exaggerated tattoo on her forehead. What must be happening?

How strange it looks.

Therefore, some more patches need to be added to this system to limit the identity of the person through algorithms, and accordingly lock in some specific elements in the facial expression, so that the character's appearance does not deviate too far from the original design.

With the appearance issue solved, the next step is action.

This is relatively easy to solve. After all, there are only a few actions that the NPC can do in the room: sitting on the sofa, drinking tea, looking out the window, leaning over to observe corners, etc.

These actions can be arranged in advance, and several matching actions can be performed according to the gender, body shape, and age of the character, and they can be automatically triggered in the room according to the algorithm.

In addition, the NPC will also have corresponding body movements when speaking, which is also easy to handle.

In short, these are all problems that can be solved using heaps.

As long as you pile up the amount of movements, automatically extract them through random algorithms, and combine different appearance, body shape and other factors, you can make a difference.

The most critical issue is the content of what is said.

In the core gameplay of the game, each house has corresponding problems, such as the north and south are not transparent, the bedroom is too small, the bathroom is not clean, the windows are not well insulated, etc.

Of course, they all have corresponding advantages.

Players can view the room by themselves before customers come. After viewing, the system will give several options for the player to choose from, such as whether the room is square, whether it is transparent from north to south, how the lighting is, etc.

The player's choice at this time represents the correctness of the player's understanding of this house, and will also affect the options when answering NPC questions.

When taking an NPC to see a house, the NPC will ask questions about the house, and the player needs to choose the corresponding option to respond. If you choose the right option, there will be no problem. If you choose the wrong one, it will lower the customer's evaluation of the house.

At that time, either the price will be reduced or the deal will fall through.

Of course, these questions are all set and a lot of professional knowledge is used.

These contents are not difficult to make. If you communicate with Sloth Apartment more, you can set a standard answer for each apartment type.
To be continued...