Chapter 158: Civilization Trailer

"Incremental synchronization?"

"That's right. The telephone line only needs to transmit the commands."

Ethan nodded. This was the most fundamental, and most important, optimization: online games didn't actually need to transmit much data at all. In most cases, all the other side needed to know was what you had just done.

"Only transmit the commands? But..."

Gerald was about to argue that leaving out information would inevitably lead to inconsistencies, but after thinking it through, everything suddenly clicked.

Player A moves a unit to point X. Player B attacks the unit at point X. As data, both actions could be represented by an extremely compact command. The console itself could handle everything else, including how those actions were displayed on screen.

"Right. That way, even the limited bandwidth of a telephone line is enough to transmit everything the game actually needs."

The two players only needed to synchronize the complete game state once at the beginning of a match. After that, there was no reason to keep sending large amounts of data back and forth.

Ethan paused, giving Gerald a moment to process everything before continuing.

"As for latency... Carmack, how's that other thing coming along?"

"It's finished."

Carmack wore a confident smile.

"What thing?"

Gerald looked between the two of them, completely lost by their cryptic exchange.

"Prediction. We let the game predict what the player is going to do before the data even arrives."

A smile spread across Ethan's face.

A delay of just a few hundred milliseconds might not sound like much, but it could have an enormous impact on how responsive a game felt. If the game didn't react immediately to a player's input, then their sense of control could disappear almost instantly.

According to The Psychology of Games, "control" was one of the fundamental psychological needs of a player.

Sluggish controls were simply unbearable.

Even in a turn-based strategy game.

Client-side prediction was nothing short of a genius invention. Instead of trying to overcome the hardware limitations directly, it worked around them by making the player's machine act before the server's response arrived.

When a player pressed the movement key, the client didn't wait for the server to confirm the action. It immediately moved the character. Then, once the server's authoritative result arrived, the client simply corrected the movement if necessary.

In the original timeline, the person who would go on to invent this technology was none other than John Carmack.

It was first used in DOOM and could rightly be called one of the foundational technologies behind virtually every online game that followed.

"Right now, Ethan and I are working on reconnect-after-disconnect functionality, hot loading, and switching over to the lower-latency UDP protocol..."

....

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August.

Nintendo officially released Metroid.

Riding the wave of excitement generated by GAMENOVA's earlier hit Castlevania, the game had already sold more than 30,000 copies worldwide through pre-orders alone. Yet almost at the same time, GAMENOVA made a move that caught everyone completely off guard.

Partnering with MCA Records, GAMENOVA released a vinyl record titled Dream of Flight.

A video game company releasing music? That was unheard of. Then again coming from GAMENOVA, a company that never played by the rules, it somehow felt perfectly in character.

After all, this wasn't even their first record. The Castlevania soundtrack album had been selling like crazy and had already established itself, beyond any doubt, as both the world's first and best-selling video game soundtrack album.

Releasing another piece of music during the strategically important month of August made their intentions obvious. They were aiming straight for next year's Grammy Awards.

Once that theory began spreading, discussions about GAMENOVA intensified across the industry and among players.

"Serious question: Is GAMENOVA planning to become a music company?"

"They haven't released a new game in six months. There's barely any promotional material either. Are they still working on a completely new project?"

Meanwhile, some fans remained surprisingly confident in GAMENOVA and Ethan, just repeating the same motto.

"Trust Ethan. Believe in Ethan. Wait for Ethan."

The answer came only a week later, or more accurately, it appeared on television.

During prime time on the weekend, a three-minute promotional film aired in one of the most expensive advertising slots across cable television stations throughout much of the United States.

A brilliant full moon hung above a dark sea, its surface churning beneath powerful waves. As the camera slowly moved across the scene, it settled on a man using an ink brush to draw a new route across a map.

At that moment, the background music began to play: "Dream of Flight," a song that had already sold more than 100,000 copies in just one week.

"Drawing another new route?"

"The tides of history are constantly changing. If we want to reach the end of our journey, we must keep adapting... and keep moving forward."

"Then how do we know when we've finally arrived?"

The man smiled faintly.

The camera moved in, centering on his face. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was standing atop the outstretched arm of a colossal statue.

The Colossus of Rhodes.

The scene shifted again. The Great Wall stretched endlessly across towering mountains. Following the man's gaze, fireworks erupted across the sky in a deafening barrage of light and sound, their smoke seamlessly transforming into the blazing muzzle flashes of muskets.

Winged Hussars charged fearlessly through a storm of gunfire. Then came the Wright brothers, ushering in the age of powered flight with their historic airplane. Not long after, fighter aircrafts such as the British Spitfire fighter and American P-51 Mustang took to the skies, transforming the battlefield once again.

.....

Finally, the rocket's engines erupted into flames as it thundered into the sky, leaving the planet behind, its surface glowing beneath the darkness with countless lights from human civilization.

The camera continued pulling back, farther... farther still, until the vast world came into view, seemingly resting on the shoulders of Atlas, the mighty Titan, just as he was depicted in the ancient image of the celestial globe.

CIVILIZATION

The game's title appeared on the left, silhouetted against the rising sun on the horizon, a new dawn that even Atlas himself could not block.

1986.12.25

PRE-ORDER NOW

GAMENOVA

It was only three minutes long, yet it left many viewers with a strange sense of emotion they couldn't quite explain.

Only after the commercial ended and the television program resumed did the stunned audience finally snap back to reality.

That... was a game trailer? How could that possibly be a video game trailer?!

It was no exaggeration to say that this three-minute short film could have entered a film competition and easily walked away with first place.

The perfect fusion of Dream of Flight and breathtaking visuals told a story of humanity endlessly pushing forward towards a future that always seemed just beyond the horizon.

This was the first time GAMENOVA had released a trailer in this style.

There was no gameplay footage, no live-action performances, no elaborate dialogue, only the purest celebration of humanity and civilization.

Release date — Christmas Day

The wait of nearly half a year had never felt so agonizingly long. There were only a few months left now, just a few more months.

Why were there still so many months left?!

"I WANT TO PLAY IT RIGHT NOW! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY!!!"

Who the hell cared about the TV show anymore? It was time to pre-order.

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