Chapter 48: Why Are They Cursing?
Rage Disruptor: Use on anyone other than yourself. After use, the target enters a rage state and has a high chance of making irrational actions, lasting 15 minutes.
Super Accelerator: Use on yourself to triple your work efficiency for 8 hours. After use, you must sleep for at least 10 hours to alleviate fatigue symptoms. Can be used at most once every 3 days, or else bear the consequences yourself.
"Super Accelerator? Not bad, I could use it when I'm catching up on progress. As for this Rage Disruptor... what's the point? Make someone really angry so they come beat me up, then I can extort money from them or something..."
"Forget it, I'll just keep it for now."
Chen Mo couldn't use these special items yet, but the huge pile of Memory Replay Potions he'd drawn was too crucial. He wouldn't have to recall things as tightly as last time.
He ignored the designer skill books and just ate them one by one.
After finishing them all, Chen Mo estimated that his previously weaker abilities in stats and levels were now around 70 points each, while his system ability was probably around 90 points.
His story ability should be even higher, nearly maxed out.
Of course, this rating was just Chen Mo's rough self-assessment of his own abilities, with no specific numbers.
After eating the last story skill book, a dialog box popped up on the virtual screen: "Detected that your actual story ability has reached maximum value. Do you want to activate the second stage?"
Chen Mo was stunned. What the hell was this?
He clicked confirm.
The screen displayed: "Story ability second stage reached, pending activation."
Below was a small line of annotation: "Reaching the first stage of story ability only means your skills meet the needs of story design in games. Keep working hard!"
Chen Mo read this sentence three times before barely understanding its meaning.
"I feel like the system's Chinese teacher must have passed away unpeacefully..."
Chen Mo silently complained.
In fact, this sentence meant that Chen Mo had only reached the first stage of story ability, ensuring he could handle story design needs in ordinary games.
For example, if Chen Mo wanted to develop a text adventure game now, with an outline and script already in place, he could competently fill in the in-game dialogue and story descriptions.
But if Chen Mo had to write a classic game script from scratch, that was impossible.
The second stage of story ability was meant to enhance Chen Mo's skills in this area.
Chen Mo rubbed his forehead: "The road ahead is long and winding. I thought I could max out all abilities with ten million, but it seems I was too naive..."
After pulling himself together, Chen Mo ate all the special skill books too.
Now Chen Mo's skills in concept art, 3D art, and music and sound effects had also improved somewhat.
Immediately after, another dialog box popped up on the virtual screen.
"Detected that you have one ability reaching the second stage. You can now preview your true abilities in each area."
Chen Mo was taken aback: "Huh? Is this unlocking a new feature?"
On the virtual screen, Chen Mo's precise scores for each ability appeared. Previously, these scores weren't displayed, and Chen Mo had to infer them himself. Now they were finally exact numbers.
[System: 93]
[Stats: 72]
[Levels: 71]
[Story: 100] (Second stage activated)
[Concept Art: 53]
[3D Art: 35]
[Art Animation: 10]
[Music and Sound Effects: 20]
[Storyboarding: 13]
These numbers represented Chen Mo's true level, including abilities accumulated from his past life and those gained from spending money in this parallel world.
In the Illusion World Editor, Chen Mo's evaluation was as follows.
[Chen Mo: Game Designer (C-Class)]
[Creativity: 49]
[System: 30]
[Stats: 48]
[Levels: 53]
[Story: 15]
[Concept Art: 36]
[3D Art: 1]
[Monthly Resource Quota Used: 0GB/1.6GB]
This was the editor system rating, representing the abilities Chen Mo had already demonstrated.
After developing "Plants vs. Zombies," Chen Mo's rating had further improved. Creativity, stats, and level abilities had seen significant increases.
Moreover, with the explosive popularity of "Plants vs. Zombies," Chen Mo had upgraded from a D-Class designer to a C-Class designer.
As for the monthly resource quota, it was no longer important to Chen Mo. He didn't really care about the editor's free resources anymore, though he could still use them as substitutes.
After finishing his spending spree, Chen Mo felt refreshed.
Now Chen Mo had too many games to choose from. Some domestic cash-grab games had finally become available options.
But having too many options was also a kind of trouble. Chen Mo thought about it until nightfall without deciding which game to make, so he just went to sleep.
...
The next morning at 8:30, Chen Mo was woken up by his phone ringing.
Rubbing his sleepy eyes, Chen Mo saw the call was from Su Jinyu.
"Hello? What's up, do you need to take time off?" Chen Mo asked.
Su Jinyu's anxious voice came through the phone: "Not time off, boss. Hurry and check online. Imperial Dynasty Interactive Entertainment is developing a game called 'Holy Spring Guardian,' and it looks like it's plagiarizing 'Plants vs. Zombies'!"
Chen Mo rolled over in bed, finding a more comfortable position: "Yeah, I know. Didn't a trial play video come out a couple of days ago? I just watched it last night."
Su Jinyu said, "It's not just that. The designer of 'Holy Spring Guardian,' his Weibo got trashed by our players, and then a bunch of Imperial Dynasty players fought back and trashed you too! Go check your Weibo quickly."
"Huh?" Chen Mo sat up with a start.
Wasn't he just sleeping? How did all this happen?
Chen Mo got up, washed up, and turned on his computer.
Sure enough, his Weibo had been flooded by Imperial Dynasty players. The latest post already had thousands of comments, with two factions battling it out endlessly.
Chen Mo spent twenty minutes roughly piecing together the whole story.
The cause was still the video Chen Mo had seen last night.
A player had secretly recorded a screen capture on their phone while playing "Holy Spring Guardian" at an Imperial Dynasty experience store and then posted it online.
The video had been up for two or three days, but last night, a few loyal "Plants vs. Zombies" players discovered it. These people, feeling a sense of justice, directly found the Weibo of "Holy Spring Guardian" designer Qiu Bin and trashed him with harsh words.
"Heh, as if Imperial Dynasty could ever miss out on jumping on the plagiarism bandwagon. A dog can't change its habit of eating shit."
"Sure enough, a knockoff of 'Plants vs. Zombies' came out this fast. I have to hand it to you, your work efficiency is really something."
"Plagiarizing dog, and you're a B-Class designer? Shameless for money, huh!"
These comments got upvoted and quickly caught people's attention.
Qiu Bin himself said nothing, but as a B-Class designer and one of Imperial Dynasty's main designers, he definitely had a large group of supporters, including many blind fanboys.
When these people saw Qiu Bin being insulted, they couldn't let that slide and immediately fought back.