Chapter 330 - 247: Red Alert, Meaning the Devil is Red

Chapter 330: Chapter 247: Red Alert, Meaning the Devil is Red

Because of his deal with Asmodis, Zog decided to base an easter egg on the Lord of Hell.

A special unit—the Dragon Egg!

It costs only one hundred Magic Energy—as cheap as the Inferior Demon, the least expensive unit—and only one can be on the field at a time.

When it hatches, it’s a Juvenile Dragon. It needs to constantly fight and grow, and can eventually develop into the Ancient Dragon, Zog!

Once fully developed, it becomes the strongest single unit in the game. Taking down an entire base with this one Dragon is no problem.

However, it’s a total weakling until it reaches its adult form. Even as an adult, it’s only about as strong as a Deep Prison Demon Refiner. Becoming an Ancient Dragon takes a very, very long time.

Considering the average match length for Red Alert players, it probably has no practical value in a real game.

By the time you finish raising Zog, your base has probably been flattened several times over.

That’s why it’s just an easter egg.

’I’ll have to design another, more useful feature for Asmodis.’

"As for the Human Camp, its units need to be designed to counter those of the Devil Camp. Likewise, within the Alliance Army, the Humans, Dwarves, and Elves must have their own unique units. The aesthetic for the Alliance Army should be as clean and neat as possible, and their fighting style should lean more toward using Magic, unlike the Devils, who rely heavily on melee."

After nearly two hours, Zog finished his general overview of the unit and building designs.

"Alright, are there any questions?"

"I have a question," Uffie said, raising her hand. "If the gameplay is designed this way, players will have to control many units at once. Won’t that be exhausting?"

"Uh, yes. It will be."

Zog couldn’t deny it. RTS games are never relaxing, unless you’re just cheesing newbies.

"But will people really enjoy playing a game that isn’t relaxing?" Uffie asked, confused.

As a loyal follower of Zog’s game development philosophy, this new direction was beyond her comprehension.

In Uffie’s mind—a mindset she had, of course, mostly learned from Zog—games were supposed to bring people joy.

’But controlling so many units at the same time...’

Uffie imagined the scene: units in the sky, on land, and in the sea, all while having to watch out for an opponent secretly attacking from an unguarded direction.

’Heavens, even the exams at Repin Academy weren’t this stressful!’

Despite being a well-known game creator on the Feilin Continent, Uffie was actually a terrible gamer.

Even with the games she helped create, if she hadn’t known the solutions beforehand as one of the designers, she would have struggled to even beat them.

And then there was Toto.

During her streams, Toto could now play two games at once, one with her left hand and one with her right, without missing a beat.

Uffie could already picture the miserable fate that awaited her in a Red Alert match against Toto.

She was actually worrying for nothing. After Red Alert’s release, there would be an official Zog matchmaking platform with a ranking system. In theory, she would never be matched against Toto.

"This brings us to the classification of player types."

Zog cleared his throat twice.

Little Zog’s Red Dragon lecture was now in session.

"All players can be roughly divided into four overlapping types: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers."

This is a game psychology theory proposed by Professor Battier in the 1980s.

Back then, this professor was a professor of game design—a major that was established much earlier than most people think.

"Achievers love to complete tasks and challenges to gain a sense of accomplishment. Explorers are passionate about discovering a game’s story and mechanics, driven by curiosity. Socializers value interaction; for them, who they play with is more important than what they play. As for Killers, they want to defeat other players."

’As for Zog the Dragon himself, he was probably an Explorer. He usually didn’t spend too much time on any single game, wasn’t willing to master its systems, and would move on as soon as he’d seen what it had to offer. A classic case of loving the new and tiring of the old. Which also meant he often felt like he had nothing to play.’

"So, Red Alert is aimed primarily at the Killer-type players?"

"You could say that."

Zog thought for a moment. ’With such a strong competitive focus, even though it’s a PvP game, it probably won’t attract many Socializers.’

"I have another question. With so many units on the field at once, won’t it be easy for players to lose focus and miss important information?"

"Then let them miss it."

There was nothing Zog could do about it.

There’s a saying in the gaming community: StarCraft players don’t need eyesight.

This refers to how often players, including professionals, go "blind" and fail to notice critical information.

The same could be said for any other RTS game.

You can’t see it, you really just can’t.

It can’t be helped; there’s simply too much information to process at once.

Add to that the endless screen-switching.

"Eyesight" is part of the skill.

"Excuse me," another Illusionist, who had been with Zog since the auto-chess days, raised his hand. "What kind of console will we use to play this game? Our current controllers can’t possibly support this type of gameplay."

"Ha, good question!"

’When I first conceived of this, my idea was to use a mouse and keyboard,’ Zog thought. ’Even though we only have typing keyboards and no mice right now, we’d have to make them sooner or later.’ But after discovering the sand tables the Devils used in Hell, Zog had a different idea.

THUD!

Zog pulled his "souvenir" from Hell out of his Treasure Chest Monster and set the sand table down on the long conference room table.

"This is the control platform for Red Alert. I call it... the Super Immersive War Sand Table."

Zog announced with a self-satisfied grin.

The others in the conference room stared back at him, completely silent.

"What’s wrong? Isn’t it a great name?"

The employees made the difficult, soul-crushing decision to give a stiff nod.

"Fine, you don’t like the name."

Zog went straight into introducing the sand table’s functions. After bringing it back from Hell, he had studied it for a long time and even had Bane Furnace take it apart to test if it could be converted into a game console.

The answer was that it didn’t even need to be modified. Once connected to a network, it could function as a game console right out of the box.

The sand table could register controllable characters and maps, and even allowed for custom button layouts and functions.

In other words, besides the official control scheme provided by Zog, players would be free to customize everything.

The registered characters could be configured with a whole range of animations, including death effects like shattering.

Zog activated the sand table to demonstrate for his developers.

"Whoa!"

Everyone couldn’t help but gasp.

The figures on the sand table didn’t seem like mere Illusions; they had a tangible, physical realness to them. Only an extremely high-level Illusion Technique could achieve a similar effect, which was why most current games fell short.

It was as if the exquisite miniatures from a Warhammer tabletop game had suddenly been granted fluid motion.

Furthermore, the sand table even had a built-in fog of war feature, shrouding unexplored areas in a thick, black mist.

This design was a major innovation in the history of strategy games, instantly adding a new layer of strategic complexity and making information gathering a crucial key to victory.

"So, what’s the backstory for Red Alert? Didn’t you say there would also be a story-driven campaign?"

"Simple. The Devils have regrouped to invade the Feilin Continent once more. The Devil campaign shows how the Devils achieve victory, while the Alliance Army campaign shows how the Humans and their allies pull off a desperate comeback. The two sides have different endings."

"Wait," the same Illusionist said, looking puzzled. "Wasn’t our original plan to make people less hostile toward Devils? In this story, the Devils sound a bit..."

"Like the antagonists. I know."

Zog replied.

"However, the situation for Devils is different from that of Tieflings. Tieflings can be portrayed as not inherently evil, just forced into their circumstances. You can’t do that with Devils. So, it’s better to portray them as powerful, principled antagonists to win the audience’s favor."

This was the impression Red Alert had left on many people, after all. The game’s creators had clearly cast the Soviet Army as the villains.

They used radiation, suicide bombers, and terrorists. They modeled Yuri after a great leader, and twisted idealism into Mind Control.

And yet, few players ended up hating the Soviet Army’s portrayal. Perhaps it was because most didn’t pay attention to the story back then.

It even gave rise to the popular saying: "The Soviets are solid and reliable; the Americans are flashy but impractical."

The attempt to villainize them backfired, producing a positive image instead.

In Zog’s opinion, if he just tweaked the story in the cutscenes from the original game and framed the war as a battle for survival driven by resource scarcity—which was, in fact, the truth—it would serve as excellent PR for the "villainous" Devils.

"Anyway, that’s the plan. For a project of this scale, what’s the estimated development time?"

Thanks to the nature of Magic, creating art assets was much easier here than it was for game developers on Earth.

The Zog Group could develop games much faster than the years it often took to produce a AAA title on Earth.

Of course, there were also those mythical 2D games that somehow took years and years to make, despite not needing nearly as many resources, with no release date in sight. Zog could never figure that out.

"About four to five months, if all goes well."

"Excellent. Let’s get to work."