America: The Godfather of Game Development

Chapter 54 The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Fantasy

Sam was a little dizzy from being bombarded with this bunch of terms.

"In short... you're going to do an action role-playing game, right?"

"Well, that's pretty much the idea."

Lin Lixin nodded and casually flipped through the draft.

Many people's understanding of Zelda, an IP that can be called an immortal monument in gaming history, began with "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," a masterpiece that outshone all other works of its time.

However, in a sense, this work is actually a return to the basics of the Zelda series.

It has returned to its original form.

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Fantasy

The world's first truly open-world game.

The Zelda series has been a legend since its inception.

Its birth heralded the beginning of video games' attempts at non-linear free exploration and shook the dominance of linear level-based gameplay.

However, Lin Lixin encountered far greater difficulties in bringing this work to fruition than he had imagined.

One of the biggest challenges is the map in front of us.

It's too big.

To put it bluntly, the original Zelda was actually an extreme example of piling on features.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have become a work that needed to be mounted on a floppy disk.

There are a total of 128 scenes in the surface world alone.

Sam clearly noticed the problem too, scratching his head and saying:

"It seems like a lot, but when you think about it, it's not that bad. Our Metal Gear series has 200 levels...."

Before Sam could finish speaking, Lin Lixin suddenly flipped over the top map, revealing the contents of the next map.

He had assumed that the following content would be character or monster design drafts.

But what was presented to Sam was even more maps.

Unlike the previous one, this map is clearly set in some kind of dungeon.

The label in the upper right corner has also changed to "[Maze Map 1 (Table)]".

"Wait..."

Sam swallowed hard and gently lifted a corner of the map.

【Maze Map 2 (Table)】

"..."

Each map is 128 scenes in total, with a total of 9 mazes. Adding the world map, it's already 10x128!

But Sam discovered that he had only flipped through less than half of the stack of documents.

When he turned to the next page, he saw a map with a style very similar to the first maze.

However, its layout is quite different from that of Maze No. 1.

【Maze Map 1 (Inside)】

"Huh?"

After he had looked through the maps of the nine major mazes, as well as the world map and the hidden rooms, he was at a loss for words.

He had seen Lin Lixin hunched over his desk all day drawing things.

But he never expected it to be such a vast world.

This has exceeded the limits that video games could achieve in the past.

"Dude, this thing..." Sam struggled to find the right words, "Drawing it and actually making it are two different things. NovaBox's memory can't hold a map this big, can it?"

Sam was involved in the design of NovaBox, so he naturally knows its hardware specifications.

With its meager 64KB of memory, after deducting the memory usage of game system mechanics, attribute data, and other content, the remaining memory simply cannot allow such a large map to be loaded in real time.

Even using the tile mapping system they used in Metal Gear Solid wouldn't be practical.

Video memory and system memory are limited.

If an arcade machine were to be used, employing a more advanced 16-bit processor, this could be achieved with the support of larger memory.

However, GAMENOVA's current strategic direction is clearly to shift from the arcade market to the home console market.

"I already have a solution for this."

He turned on his newly acquired IBM 5170 and launched a test program.

"This is a technique I designed with Carmack called 'pseudo-seamless map'."

As Lin Lixin guided the player to the edge of the map, the entire screen immediately began a smooth scrolling effect, seamlessly transitioning to a new scene.

There was no black screen or loading lag.

This is top-tier technology that even Starry Night couldn't achieve! (Just kidding)

Well, of course, this is also because Zelda's map is made entirely of tiles, so the loading pressure is not high.

Sam glanced in surprise at Carmack, who was sitting not far away, typing away at his program, and suddenly felt a headache coming on.

Are kids these days really this outrageous?

Carmack noticed his gaze, turned to look at the two of them, and rolled his eyes at Sam.

"You don't understand Lin's greatness at all. For this game, the technical implementation is just a trivial part."

His gaze fell upon the stack of maps on the table, his eyes gleaming.

"This is a game that subverts the concept of RPG; it's pure design art!"

Carmack already knew what Lin Lixin wanted to do when he was working with Lin Lixin to design the system.

That was not the 'adventure game' he knew at all.

It is a work of art.

……

Zilog headquarters, Santa Clara, California.

The custom-designed Z80S chip, developed in collaboration between Zilog and Gamenova, has already proven its value on the NovaBox.

Higher frequencies and the SoC design philosophy have brought this somewhat outdated chip back onto the world stage.

"Mr. Lin, this is simply magic. The instruction set has been greatly simplified, yet the performance is much better. It's unbelievable."

Richard spared no praise, extolling Lin Lixin to the skies.

But his words were not empty words. Even the Zilog engineering team was amazed by the unique performance of the Z80S.

When Lin Lixin handed them his outlandish architecture diagram, Richard even doubted that the guy knew nothing about chip design.

Zilog's flagship product, the Z80, is most proud of its Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) architecture.

Compared to its competitor Intel 8080's paltry 72 instructions, their Z80 instruction set boasts a whopping 158 instructions!

This design makes their chips far less difficult to program than other products.

With just a few lines of code, you can achieve the same effect that would require dozens or even hundreds of lines of code on an Intel 8080.

and then?

Lin Lixin pushed open the door to the conference room and slammed a design sheet on their table, cutting out most of the instructions.

Those things they were so proud of, those key advantages that defeated Intel, were simply discarded by Lin Lixin.

Lin Lixin laughed and said that Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) only became mainstream after the PC standard had been widely adopted.

In this day and age, adopting RISC is simply making things harder for programmers.

This shifted all the complexity from the computer itself to the programmers.

But once the programming difficulty is overcome, RISC will be the key to their leapfrog development.

Lin Lixin happens to have just such a product.

N language.