Chapter 214 The AI Solution

September 6th, Thursday.

In the Zhixing Studio, employees were busy developing the new VR game "Real Estate Agent Simulator."

After the tempering and collaboration of "Animal Island," the entire development team had made significant progress, with better cooperation and smoother development processes.

Even Cai Jiadong, the lead designer, was more comfortable in his role.

He seemed to be gradually grasping Tenda's design ideas and methods, becoming more aligned with Lin Wan's thinking, and steadily evolving into a qualified lead designer.

After working on the computer for a while, he took the printed documents to report to Lin Wan.

At this time, Lin Wan was intently staring at the computer screen, her brow slightly furrowed, as if pondering something very important.

Seeing Cai Jiadong arrive, Lin Wan temporarily shifted her gaze from the computer screen.

"Lin-zong, have you seen that experimental mini-program sent by the Nu Ma Artificial Intelligence Laboratory? What do you think?"

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

Lin Wan was taken aback. "Oh, I've been thinking about other things lately and 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 surprisingly good."

Lin Wan didn't expect Cai Jiadong to give such a high evaluation.

This mini-program was sent by Nu Ma Laboratory to Tenda Games and Shang Yang Games two days ago, saying it was an artificial intelligence program still in the experimental stage, asking them to try it out and give some feedback.

Since Lin Wan had close ties with Shang Yang Games, the program naturally also reached Zhixing Studio.

Anyway, they were all Tenda's internal operations; they were all in the same family.

Lin Wan had been a little busy these past two days, so she hadn't had time to look at it.

The main reason she didn't pay much attention to it was that she felt it probably wouldn't be very reliable.

Currently, interactive movie games, or some RPG games with a lot of dialogue that require close-up expressions of characters, all use motion capture technology, with actors performing the roles.

Motion capture technology can capture not only body movements but also subtle facial expressions. During the process of actors speaking lines, they record audio and capture facial movements, then apply this data to models created based on the actors, which allows the game to show very realistic effects.

Of course, if they are not satisfied with the actor's line delivery, they can find someone else to dub the lines, achieving a better effect.

But this approach also has a problem: the workload is too large and not very flexible.

Once the plot dialogue is set, it cannot be changed randomly. Otherwise, even if you just add a sentence, you have to bring the motion capture actor back to re-record.

The program from Nu Ma Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is said to be an alternative to facial motion capture technology. The specific principle is to intelligently analyze the content of the speech, combine it with past motion capture data in the editor, and automatically generate the character's facial movements. In other words, it can also be regarded as automatic lip-syncing.

It's roughly similar to some software that makes photos sing, but supposedly the effect is better.

Lin Wan was a little skeptical about this.

Can a program-generated performance really compare to an actor's performance using motion capture?

President Pei's requirements for the "Real Estate Agent Simulator" game were very high. It had to have high-precision modeling like "Struggle," and all actions had to use real-person motion capture, to give players a truly immersive experience as much as possible.

If the NPCs' movements were stiff and their expressions were distorted, it would be too jarring, and the entire game would be flawed.

It might even trigger the uncanny valley effect, scaring the players.

After all, the immersion of VR games is far superior to that of conventional games, and a tiny error can lead to a huge mistake.

But now, hearing Cai Jiadong say that the effect was surprisingly good?

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

The "Real Estate Agent Simulator" game had been in development for a month, and many character models had been made so far.

Due to the existence of the official platform simulator, creating character models is actually a process of character customization, so there is no need to start entirely from scratch. Moreover, the game "Struggle," which President Pei had previously made, mostly featured Westerners, but after making slight modifications, many characters could still be used directly.

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

Lin Wan quickly finished watching the cutscenes and asked after a moment of silence, "This was automatically generated using the new program? Not motion capture?"

Cai Jiadong nodded. "Completely automatically generated. However, its support for foreign languages isn't particularly good yet."

Lin Wan was silent.

It didn't matter whether or not the support for foreign languages was good, because the "Real Estate Agent Simulator" game was originally intended for domestic players. Even if the game was well-received and they planned to release a multi-language version, that would have to wait until months after its release.

The effect was truly a bit amazing!

The characters' expressions in the game were very natural, without any stiff movements or distorted expressions.

Of course, it's impossible for it to be as seamless as real-person motion capture, where the voice and facial movements are perfectly coordinated.

But as long as you're not staring intently at the character's lips, you basically can't detect any abnormality.

Actually, achieving this level is already enough, after all, in many foreign movies and TV shows, the lip movements don't match the dubbing at all after re-dubbing, and the audience is used to it and doesn't find it strange. And the facial expressions automatically generated by this program are much more natural than those in these re-dubbed movies and TV shows.

"Given the current situation, this technology can be directly applied to 'Real Estate Agent Simulator'."

"Moreover..."

Lin Wan's eyes suddenly lit up. "Isn't this exactly what we need to solve that problem that has been bothering us?"

"No wonder, we always felt uneasy because this problem couldn't be solved well. Now it seems that President Pei must have been prepared for this and knew that this new achievement of Nu Ma Laboratory could solve this problem?"

The emergence of a new technology often influences the design ideas of a game.

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

According to the initial setting, one of the core gameplay elements of this game was selling houses.

The basic process of this gameplay is that the player gets a new apartment layout, modifies and rearranges the house, uses the funds at hand to repair it, replace furniture, and then receives guests. During the introduction, the player answers different questions and ultimately adjusts the price to facilitate the transaction.

This gameplay runs through the entire game, but in the beginning, the player may not have funds and cannot make changes to the room, and can only lower the rent after the customer points out the problems. Later, the player can discover the problems of the house in advance and solve 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 small problem.

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

If the customers who come each time look almost the same, ask almost the same questions, and have very similar dialogues, actions, and behaviors, then players will probably quickly get bored, and this core gameplay simply can't support the game experience.

Therefore, how to make this game like a MOBA game, so that it still feels fresh no matter how many times it is repeated, and at least make players feel that each customer they encounter is brand new, and be full of expectations for receiving the next customer, is the most important thing in determining the game experience.

This problem is multifaceted.

To solve the problem of appearance, the customer's appearance can be automatically generated by the program.

Many games have similar functions in their character creation systems, which are not difficult to do.

Of course, the faces automatically generated by the character creation system may be more uncoordinated, for example, if it is obviously a woman wearing professional attire, but she has a Mohawk hairstyle, wears earrings, and has an exaggerated tattoo on her forehead, it will definitely look strange no matter how you look at it.

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

With the appearance problem solved, the next thing is action.

This is also relatively easy to solve, after all, inside a room, there are only a few things an NPC can do: sit on the sofa, drink tea, look out the window, bend over to observe the corner, and so on.

These actions can be arranged in advance, and several sets of actions can be made according to the character's gender, body type, and age, and 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 by increasing the amount of content.

As long as the amount of action is increased, and it is automatically extracted through random algorithms, combined with different appearances, body types, and other factors, it can be done roughly correctly.

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 poor ventilation, small bedrooms, dirty bathrooms, poor sound insulation in the windows, etc.

Of course, there are also corresponding advantages.

Before the customer comes, the player can first look at the house himself. After reading it, the system will give several options for the player to choose from, such as whether the house layout is square, whether it is well-ventilated, how the lighting is, etc.

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

When taking the NPC to see the house, the NPC will ask questions about the house, and the player needs to select the corresponding options to respond. If the selection is correct, there is no problem. If the selection is wrong, it will reduce the customer's evaluation of the house, and then either the price will be reduced, or the transaction will fail.

These questions are of course all set, using a lot of professional knowledge.

This content is also not difficult to make. Just communicate with the Sloth Apartment more, and you can set the standard answer for each house type.

But the biggest problem is... how to deal with the specific wording used by the NPCs to express these questions?

The same question will certainly be asked differently by different people.

For example, some people may say "the house has poor lighting," some people may say "it's too dark here," and some people may say "the building opposite is blocking the light," and so on.

If all the NPCs say "the house has poor lighting," it will seem very stiff.

But this problem cannot be solved by increasing the amount of content.

If the old method of motion capture is still used, then every time the wording is changed, motion capture needs to be done again. People of different body types have different facial expressions when speaking, and motion capture cannot be mixed. Therefore, multiple expressions under the same meaning may need to be recorded several times.

If it is other interactive games driven by plot, this is not a big problem, it is just more workload and more recordings.

However, "Real Estate Agent Simulator" is different. There are too many questions, the amount is too large, but it does not improve the game experience in any key way.

If you don't do it, it's not perfect, not extreme enough, and it's easy for players to lose immersion;

If you do it, the resources invested are too much, so much that you can't afford it, and the cost performance is extremely low.

So it got stuck, it's not appropriate to do it, and it's not appropriate not to do it.

But now with the artificial intelligence program from Nu Ma Laboratory, this problem has been solved at once!

In this way, there is no need to do motion capture for every sentence, and only dubbing is enough.

The workload of pure dubbing is much smaller, and it can even be collected online, and many enthusiastic players can help with the dubbing. After importing these dubbings, the program will automatically generate the character's facial movements based on the audio, and then combine it with certain body language and actions, which can create a feeling of a thousand people having a thousand faces.

Cai Jiadong exclaimed, "I knew it! When I was designing the details of this part, I was wondering, this problem simply cannot be solved under the existing conditions! Didn't President Pei think of this when designing this game?"

"Now it seems that President Pei had obviously thought of it a long time ago and must have known about Nu Ma Laboratory's recent research results, so he asked us to make such a game!"

Lin Wan nodded. "That's for sure."

"Then there's no need to hesitate, let's do it this way!"

"By the way, Sloth Apartment has already sent the information for the new batch of houses. Check it out and give it to the designers."

Cai Jiadong nodded and said, "Okay."

After starting the development of this game, Lin Wan directly contacted Liang Qingfan and asked him to cooperate in the development.

When it comes to this knowledge, who can be more professional than Liang Qingfan?

Sloth Apartment has many architects and designers who specialize in studying how to renovate houses. Just send someone to collect information on various house types online, and then sort out the advantages and disadvantages of these house types, and they can be sent to Zhixing Studio for direct use in the game.

These things, of course, do not need Lin Wan to worry about, but are the job of Cai Jiadong, the lead designer.

Watching Cai Jiadong leave, Lin Wan leaned back in her chair and breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Hoo... Fortunately, Liang Qingfan wasn't taken away."

"If he was taken away, although I could go to Sloth Apartment to find another architect, he definitely wouldn't be as reliable as him."

"Speaking of which... What's going on with President Pei suddenly grabbing all the executives for special training..."

Yesterday, Lin Wan felt something was wrong.

Although she had come to Zhixing Studio, she was still in the Tenda executives' chat group.

Usually, everyone often chats about the current situation of various departments, and the group is quite lively.

As a result, yesterday, the entire group suddenly became deserted, and several people who usually posted a lot of messages didn't say a word.

Lin Wan felt something was wrong. Today, she inquired with Wang Xiaobin and found out that ten executives from the core departments, including Ye Zhizhou, had been taken away...

Lin Wan was shocked. She thought these people had done something bad behind the scenes and were caught by President Pei, but after asking carefully, she found out that they had been taken to the training base...

Including the Nu Ma Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which had helped a lot not long ago, the head of the laboratory, Shen Renjie, was also taken away along with the other executives.

Fortunately, Liang Qingfan of Sloth Apartment survived, otherwise the development of the game at Zhixing Studio might have been affected.

Lin Wan's intuition was very sharp, and she immediately felt that this matter was extraordinary.

After asking around in the group, she successfully obtained the first list of the training base, which included ten people: Huang Sibao, Hu Xianbin, Xiao Peng, Rui Yuchen, Ye Zhizhou, Shen Renjie, Guo Licheng, He Desheng, Chen Yufeng, and Ma Yiqun.

"The training base has just opened, so it needs to be done gradually, and too many people cannot be trained at once, so it is also reasonable that the first list only has ten people."

"But... why these ten people, not others?"

"There are so many executives in Tenda's various departments, there must be a corresponding evaluation standard, right?"

"President Pei attaches great importance to this matter, and even at the expense of temporarily affecting work, he must arrange all the executives of the core departments to go in, which is obviously for some special purpose. And this purpose is even more important than short-term work or even profit."

"Is it simply to support Bao Xu's work? That's definitely impossible. President Pei is a fair person, and what he does is ultimately beneficial to Tenda."

"It seems to have disadvantages in the short term, which means it must be beneficial in the long term."

"What is President Pei's real intention..."

"Hmm, maybe I should start with this list. As long as I figure out the standard by which President Pei selected this list, I should be able to roughly infer President Pei's true intention..."

Lin Wan looked at the computer screen again and fell into deep thought.

Although she was no longer an executive at Tenda, she was still paying attention to the internal movements of Tenda. After all, any disturbance within Tenda represents President Pei's will, and President Pei's behavior often implies profound meaning, so learning more will definitely be beneficial.