Chapter 16 (1/2)

The next afternoon, Ma Yang handed the modified requirement form to Pei Qian.

Looking through it, Pei Qian was fully pleased with what Ma Yang had written.

It was as good as writing nothing at all!

Even though Pei Qian hadn’t worked in the games industry before, the requirement form was a template off the resource website and there were basic instructions written at the top of the form.

Basically, the more detailed, the better.

The designer would propose an image, usually imaginary and vague while the artist would draw the image, usually concrete and detailed.

It was easy for something to go wrong during the process.

For example, the designer might want a ‘Extremely handsome male character’. This was a standard that was vague and hard to measure.

How does one define ‘extremely handsome’?

The artist would then draw a character he takes to be extremely handsome, but would that please the designer? Not necessarily.

After all, beauty was subjective.

Therefore, the designer had to be as detailed as possible while stating their requirements. The best would be if they could describe the sort of clothes, caps, weapons or any defining traits et cetera.

If they had a similar image for reference, that would be even better.

There’s always a joke within the games circle.

Designer tells programmer, “I want a function that can do xxx. The design concept of the function is xxx and it should achieve an effect like xxx!”

Programmer replies irritably, “Just tell me the function of a game you want to copy. Let me have a look at it.”

Designer tells artist, “I want a character that looks like xxx. This character must look like xxx and have xxx personality, giving off an xxx feel!”

Artist replies irritably, “Just tell me a character you want to copy. Show me an image of it.”

It wasn’t because they want to slack off. The main point was that too much information gets lost through texts to images.

Therefore, when making similar requirement forms, it’s naturally better to have the descriptions and reference images as detailed as possible. That way, it would ensure that the work produced by the artist doesn’t differ too far from what the designer imagines it to be.

Now, let’s take a look at Ma Yang’s requirement form.

It’s complete self-entertainment!

Take Guan Yu for example.

“He’s a dragon. Human shaped dragon.”

“As the Martial Saint of the Dragon clan, he’s seen as the pinnacle of fighting strength.”

“He spends his life walking on a blade and his comprehension of battles and killing differs from the layman.”

That’s it.

Now, take Ma Chao for example.

“He’s a half human half horse and that’s why he’s called the Other Race.”

“Ma Chao is different from the other centaurs and he bears clear traits the Dragon clan’s bloodline, such as having dragon horns on his head.”

“It’s also precisely because he has half a bloodline from the Dragon clan that Ma Chao possess an incredible strength similar to those of the Dragon clan.”

Now, Zhuge Liang next.

“When he was young, Zhuge Liang was hailed as the greatest inventor, physicist, mechanical and electrical engineer of the three kingdoms period.”

“His research include man-made lightning, environmental weapons, aviation equipment, automobiles, robots and various other cutting edge fields.”

“At the same time, he was known as a poet, philosopher, music connoisseur and linguist amongst many other titles.”

Zhuge Liang’s description was much longer than the previous two – it was clear that Ma Yang must have been lost in his own enjoyment as he wrote on.

Other than that, there was the Dragon Lady Guard Zhou Cang; Phoenix Orphan Pang Tong; Ice Crystal Maiden Xu Shu; Robot Puppet Huang Yueying; Blood Realm Overlord Guo Jia; Lolita Dragon Hunter Lu Meng; Night Ranger Taishi Ci; Shadow Swordsman Zhou Yu so on and so forth.

Basically, other than their names and some vague characteristics, all of these characters did not resemble those of the three kingdoms anymore!

The content would not serve any purpose for the artist’s creative input as well.

Besides, even though he could have written all of this simply such as just stating that Guan Yu is a human shaped dragon, he had to add in all the gibberish at the back!