After finishing up the details with Su Yue and Mengqi, Lin Feng returned to campus.
They had their daily coding lesson and once it was over, Li Jun and Lin Feng sat together.
"So," Lin Feng began, "what did you think about the plan I sent for the game?"
Li Jun fell silent for a moment.
What did he think?
He had never seen anything like it.
The level of detail was extraordinary. It was difficult to believe that document was an actual plan. It seemed more like a description of a game that already existed.
If it weren't for the fact that he had searched extensively and couldn't find anything resembling it, he wouldn't have believed the game didn't already exist somewhere.
The plan was meticulous. Every decision was made. Every pitfall to avoid was clearly outlined. Everything was completely laid out.
There was nothing for him to do except implement it into code.
But then again - was this really surprising for Lin Feng?
He always seemed to have everything planned out. All his plans were like this. Li Jun supposed this was just the kind of person he was.
He sighed.
"As expected of you," he said. "I have no words. It's perfect."
He leaned back.
"I looked up this Laura 2D too. It uses Lua, which doesn't seem all that different from Python. Should be fairly easy for us to pick up."
Lin Feng nodded.
"It could even prove useful later," he said. "If we decide to use Lua as a scripting language for our engine."
Li Jun nodded in agreement.
"Then when do we start?" he asked.
"Right now," Lin Feng said. "We already have the plan."
"I guess that's true."
Li Jun thought for a moment.
"What do you need me to do then?"
"Since I've already set up the project and the Laura 2D environment, we can get started on the core features," Lin Feng explained. "We'll work on non-conflicting features on separate branches, then bridge them together once they're completed."
He paused.
"You work on the poker hand detection logic and a simple scoring system. For now, just think of chips - don't worry about mult."
Li Jun nodded.
"As for me," Lin Feng continued, "I'll work on our rendering pipeline."
"Got it."
Lin Feng leaned back.
"By the way, we need to brainstorm ideas for our studio name. Tomorrow, you can go and start the registration process."
He sighed.
I frequent that place too much. Maybe I need to tone it down a bit.
The two got to work.
...
They continued working until around 5pm, when it was time for Lin Feng to leave for his job.
By then, he had a basic rendering pipeline in place.
It was much easier to set up for a language like Lua compared to C++, especially since he was using a specialized framework on top of that.
Actually, it wasn't even a genuine rendering pipeline. It was more like abstracting certain functions to make their work easier when drawing to the screen. But it would serve its purpose.
He checked on Li Jun's progress.
Li Jun was also nearly done with his task. The poker hand detection logic was complete, and he was now working on scoring.
It wasn't anything complicated - just populating some hardcoded values.
Though the values weren't completely immutable. They could be modified through special jokers, editions, and other modifiers. So Li Jun had to be careful to leave some wiggle room in the code architecture.
Lin Feng pushed his changes to the repository.
Then he excused himself and left for his job.
…
The next day wasn't much different from the last.
Apart from having an exam that morning - which Lin Feng handled without much difficulty - the rest of the day proceeded as usual.
They had their daily meeting with the group. Business operations were stable. Orders were steady. No major issues to report.
Afterward, Lin Feng met up with Mengqi and Su Yue to chat and hear about their progress. Su Yue's training was going well. Her vocals were improving, and her stage presence was becoming more polished. Mengqi reported that everything was on track for her return to streaming.
Later, he had his usual report with Yu Shen. They discussed some strategies for the coming weeks - ways to optimize returns and handle the increasing AUM. As Yu Shen had predicted, they were rapidly approaching the one million mark and would probably hit it before the end of the day.
Later, he had his coding lesson with Zhang Wei and Li Jun.
As for Fool's Gambit, they merged their changes from the day before and made a few adjustments to ensure everything was working properly. The poker hand detection integrated smoothly with the basic rendering pipeline.
After that, they picked another set of tasks to work on.
Li Jun was to continue with the scoring system - making optimizations and improvements. Specifically, he needed to implement the dynamic chip × mult calculations that would form the backbone of the game's strategic depth.
As for Lin Feng, he would work on card selection and discard logic, as well as building the basic UI that would allow players to interact with their hands.
This was much more complicated.
By the time it was time for him to leave for teaching, they weren't done yet.
But there was no hurry. They could always continue the next day.
The good news was that Li Jun had come up with a name for their studio - Starfall Interactive.
Lin Feng liked it. It was memorable without being pretentious. Well, too pretentious.
…
Thursday
Thursday was mostly the same as well.
Classes. Meetings. Reports. Lessons.
The only new development was that the leaked song was finally going viral - exactly as intended.
It had now been reposted thousands of times across various platforms. The cumulative views had surpassed one million. It even hit #40 on Weibo's hot search for a few hours before being pushed down by other trending topics.
Discussions were getting heated.
All sorts of fandoms were joining in, each convinced the mysterious snippet belonged to their favorite artist. Theories flew in every direction. Some claimed it was a hidden track from an upcoming album. Others insisted it was a scrapped demo that had been leaked by an insider.
No one could agree on anything - which only fueled the fire further.
On the game development side, Lin Feng and Li Jun worked on finishing up their tasks from the day before.
This time, they were able to complete them.
They merged the changes and adjusted the code to work together seamlessly. The card selection UI now interfaced properly with the scoring system. Players could select cards, discard them, and see their chip values update in real time.
The game was coming together quite well.