In the winter of 2006, the sunlight shone upon the building of Gamestar Electronics' U.S. branch, reflecting a brilliant glow, making the building appear far more beautiful than the other buildings around it.
"Good morning, Mike."
"Good morning, Carl."
At nine o'clock, employees began arriving at the company, one after another, and sat down at their respective workstations.
Once seated, their first thought was to boot up their computers and immediately get into the game development mode.
Since there was a limit to the regular working hours and overtime was not encouraged, the only thing they could do was maximize their work efficiency during office hours.
Thankfully, despite the tight work schedule, they could still handle everything within working hours, unless someone slackened off, in which case they would only have themselves to blame.
...
...
Recently, the development of Titanfall had entered about 90% completion.
With Christmas approaching and a longer holiday ahead, if they didn't finish their work before the break, they wouldn't be able to enjoy their holiday, constantly worrying about the unfinished tasks.
At the moment, the pace seemed just right, with no major issues arising.
Before Christmas, the demo of Titanfall was scheduled for release, and everyone was working hard to perfect this demo, hoping to make it as flawless as possible.
In fact, nearly all the levels of Titanfall had been completed, with only some finer details left, which, although important, mainly involved bug fixes and enhancing the visuals to push the game's performance to its limits.
Takayuki had also arrived early today, preparing to have a meeting with key personnel to discuss some additional details of the game and confirm the overall status.
In the meeting room, the sound of battle from Titanfall was already playing.
The story had entered a crucial phase, where players could control Titans and engage in actual combat on the battlefield.
Arno was now personally demonstrating the full gameplay of Titanfall to Takayuki.
Every time Arno looked at the nearly finished game, he couldn't help but feel proud.
This was the largest game development project he had ever participated in.
Moreover, it might very well be a benchmark first-person shooter in the industry. If it was successfully released, he would undoubtedly leave his name in the history of game development.
He was excited, and as he demonstrated the game to Takayuki, he couldn't suppress a smile.
Finally, he completed a full Titan combat level and looked back at Takayuki, as if waiting for praise.
"Boss, what do you think? Is it ready for market release?"
Takayuki didn't respond immediately but continued to watch the screen.
Seeing Takayuki's reaction, Arno didn't dare to say more and waited for his response.
"This game's frame rate doesn't seem very stable," Takayuki spoke after a few minutes.
"Oh, you're talking about the frame rate. Well, some optimization work hasn't been completed yet, but we'll focus on that in the final phase to stabilize it," Arno explained.
"How stable will it be?" Takayuki asked.
"About... thirty frames per second," Arno said, though now he wasn't too sure.
The exact optimization effect depended on the tech team; Arno hadn't paid much attention to that recently since the game was almost done. Most of the remaining work wasn't technical anymore.
Only thirty frames?
Takayuki wasn't entirely satisfied with this frame rate.
However, considering the current GSX console's performance, achieving this was already a challenge.
Takayuki hadn't played Titanfall on a console in his past life, so he wasn't sure how the frame rate on the console version performed back then.
But he clearly remembered the frame rate on the PC platform.
With powerful graphics cards, Takayuki could easily achieve over 60 frames per second on the PC.
The experience gap between 60 frames and 30 frames was still quite significant.
But today's players weren't as demanding about frame rates.
Thirty frames on a console wouldn't be a major problem, and players would accept it.
However, Takayuki found it hard to accept.
In the time before his transition, processor performance had skyrocketed to much higher levels—at least two or three times higher than the current world's technology.
Back then, Titanfall's visuals were never an issue.
Moreover, the focus had gradually shifted from seeking the highest visual fidelity to prioritizing higher frame rates.
Takayuki wasn't ready to accept a 30-frame limit just like that.
"Boss, don't you think this frame rate isn't very high? Our top console games used to have frame rates like this," Arno cautiously asked.
Takayuki looked at Arno and replied, "I know, but I think maybe we can make some progress in this area."
"Well, boss, if we compromise on the frame rate, the visual performance will be downgraded," Arno explained.
Takayuki thought for a moment and said, "Do you have a downgraded visual option? Show me how it looks on the console; I want to see the actual effect."
"We didn't prepare it beforehand, but it's not a big deal to adjust it. I'll have someone work on it right now."
Takayuki nodded, "Alright, get it ready. This isn't urgent."
The meeting was temporarily paused, and Takayuki was still hoping to see a better frame rate performance.
However, if improving the frame rate meant sacrificing too much visual quality, he would definitely not agree to it.
Everything had to be evaluated in practice.
The employees spent most of the morning adjusting the visuals.
There wasn't a function for visual adjustment on the home console previously, so adding it now would take a little time.
But the PC version had already done a solid job of visual adjustments, so it wasn't too difficult.
In the afternoon, the meeting resumed, and Takayuki reconvened with Arno and some core team members.
This time, Arno showed the downgraded visual performance.
Meanwhile, the frame rate had been boosted to 60 frames per second.
The original 30-frame performance of Titanfall had been strong, but once the game hit 60 frames, everything felt completely different.
After Arno's adjustments, the 60-frame Titanfall was surprising.
This... it felt even more exhilarating?
But it shouldn't have, since the visual quality was supposed to be reduced. Logically, the visual experience should have suffered. However, the boost in frame rate more than made up for the slight sacrifice in visuals.
Takayuki nodded slightly, "Looks good. What do you guys think?"
Arno answered honestly, "It really does look great. It's strange, though. I thought sacrificing visuals would significantly reduce the experience."