CaesarZX： 

对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》美工总监Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。

点击这里进入连载目录 

第五章：首则广告

无声畅游 译

欢迎来到战争的全新境界。

你们中一些老玩家也许会想起《横扫千军》的第一版平媒广告。我认为那个广告为Cavedog赢得了第一流的印象,或者是接近二流……也许是三流。但绝对不会低于第十六流, 我还是比较乐观向上的。

正如你所见，平面游戏广告总是遵循着千篇一律的模式。随便打开一本1997年以前的游戏杂志你都会发现那些广告都惊人得相似。他们差不多都是这样的(如下图)：

这些广告往往都是在游戏的美工部分还相对比较粗糙的时候造就的，所以它们总用一些徒有其表华而不实的艺术图片,或者一张巨大且夸夸其谈的照片来拼命炒作一个游戏。可游戏本身却做不到那些。一个只有12个像素的游戏角色是摆不上台面的。

问题是，游戏广告所展示的画面,总是比游戏实际效果要超前个10年，甚至在游戏实际画面变得是那么回事后也是如此。这在今天已经是屡见不鲜。我并不是责备广告代理机构这么搞。我从不怀疑他们有本事在一个下午就瞎搞出19个这样的东西，而且还有多余的时间吹牛B并玩一盘高尔夫。同样的，这样的搞法对任何平面广告都是适用的。既然那对推销润肤霜和汽车有效……那游戏为什么不呢？

为GT Interactive效劳的广告公司,在1997年初,就是这么干的!我们立刻对此表示反感。我们清楚游戏正式上市前,就只有这么一两幅平面广告,我们当然希望它们能产生最大的影响。Chris和我坚信:我们的游戏靠的是本身的品质。我们坚持要求广告做成一大张横跨两整版的游戏截图。

我们拥有一个巨大的优势。GT几年来一直占据着所有主流PC游戏杂志内封面折页的广告空间。以前,这样的黄金地段总是用来刊登上述那 些标准模式的大幅广告招贴,但我们却用它刊登了一两幅巨型截图展示广告。Chris, Ron和我先写下基本的宣传词,然后再由广告公司的家伙们装饰美化一番。我的工作是对整个广告进行大致的布局,以便能容下那幅巨大的截图。以下便是上面那幅连页广告截图的原料图片。

好吧, 这本来是原始图片,只不过Blogger让它有些失真了!

虽说几个月之后,TA就拥有了一个内建的抓图快键,使我们能毫不费力地抓取游戏快照——可惜当前我们还没有这项功能。我不得不制作一系列较小的截图,然后将它们置于已导入地图编辑器的原始.PCX文件上。我打开网格视图效果制作了第二张截图, 并在Photoshop中用显示蒙版功能将网格与地形的3D效果融合到一起。

这一方式带来了理想的效果。在这幅广告与TA<PC Gamer>上刊登的第一篇前瞻报道期间,我们还去了1997年的E3展,并带去了大量绝佳的宣传料。一些竞争对手的RTS游戏,也在一年内采用了与我们相同的平面广告。不过,就算在巨幅整版截图已普及的今天,你依然能看到大量遵循上述101守则的游戏广告充斥着无数杂志。

Part 5: The First Ad

Some of you old timers might remember the first print advertisement for Total Annihilation. I think that ad scored a  first for Cavedog. Or a close second… maybe third. Definitely no more than sixteenth overall. I’m positive.

Y’see, print ads for games almost always followed a time-honored format. Crack open any game magazine From before 1997  and you will see that the advertisements are remarkably homogeneous. They all looked something like this:

This dates back to the time when game art was relatively crude, so some sort of swanky art or a big juicy photograph  would be used to build an image for a game. The game itself usually couldn’t do that. A character with only twelve  pixels just doesn’t have a lot of presence.

The thing is, game ads still looked like that decades later, even after in-game art started to look reasonably slick.  It’s a common design even today. I don’t blame ad agencies for doing this. I’m sure they can crap out nineteen of  these in a single afternoon and still have time for some blow and a round of golf. And to be fair, it’s a pretty  common approach to any print ad. It works for selling lotion and cars… Why not games?

That is exactly the sort of ad the marketing firm working for GT Interactive showed us when they came by in early  1997. We hated it immediately. We knew the game would have only one or two print ads before it launched and we wanted  them to have maximum impact. Chris and I were adamant that we sell the game with the game. We insisted that the ad  feature a full two-page screenshot.

I don’t recall seeing this before. It’s not like we thought it up. It was just a matter of time before giant  screenshots became commonplace, but Total Annihilation was certainly one of the first games to do it. There was some  resistance From the agency. The concern was that (gasp!) the pixels would be visible since a computer game couldn’t  match the print resolution of a magazine. That sounded fine to us. It would absolutely show gamers what they were  getting.

We did have one advantage. GT Interactive owned the fold-out ad space inside the cover of all the major PC gaming  magazines for a couple years running. This prime real estate was mostly used for big versions of the standard formula  above, but we would get that spot for one or two display ads before the game hit store shelves. Chris, Ron and I wrote  the basic copy which the ad folks polished up a bit. I did a rough layout then went to work creating a big, big  screenshot. Here is the original image:

Okay. This was the original image, but Blogger crunched it down quite a bit.

A few months later, Total Annihilation would later have a built-in  screen shot key command. We could take snapshots  like this with no problem – but we didn’t have that feature at this point. I had to take a series of smaller shots and  drop them onto the original .PCX file we imported into our map editor. I took a second shot with the mesh view enabled  and did a small mask reveal in Photoshop to communicate the 3D-ness of the terrain.

It had the desired result. Between this ad and our first preview coverage in PC Gamer, we went to E3 in 1997 with lots  of good buzz around Total Annihilation. Several competing RTS games had print ads almost identical to this (including  the landscape mesh) within a year. Giant full page screenshots are pretty commonplace now, but you still see plenty of  that Game Ad 101 ethic between the pages of magazines to this day.

CaesarZX：

此文会让我们看到世界上最宏大的即时战略游戏Total Annihilation《横扫千军》的开发公司Cavedog和横扫千军之父Chris Taylor是如何让这个不朽之作诞生在这个世界上的。这篇连载的总序是我自己写的，总序以后的连载内容都翻译自gamespot.com里的这篇专题文章，作者依然是特约作家Geoffrey Keighley。(本篇连载从连载五开始的译文都转载自游戏编年史，由无声畅游朋友原创翻译。每篇连载我都会同时贴出英语原文。点击插图看原图。)

无声畅游 译

（转载已经得到无声畅游朋友的同意和全力自持，欢迎造访他的主页游戏编年史）

Humongous的召唤

于是在1995年末的一个晚上,Tayor与Gilbert在西雅图的一家餐馆坐下来共进晚餐.此时Gilbert已是业界中颇有名望的一位老兵,以前在Lucas Arts时,曾开发过Maniac Mansion(疯狂大厦)与猴岛系列的头两集.他与Shelley Day一起,刚刚创立了Humongous,并被授权开发儿童冒险游戏,其塑造的Fatty Bear(胖胖熊)与Putt-Putt(一辆会说话的紫色轿车)等卡通形象尤具特色。

难道Taylor就要从电脑上的体育游戏转移到周六晨间的卡通片上么?追忆起来,的确有这个可能。“当Chris靠近我时,他说,’Ron,我愿意做任何事情,’”Gilbert回忆到,“我对制作体育游戏厌倦极了,做任何其它事情都行。”

幸运的是,在Gilbert有关Humongous的长期计划中,还包括远比儿童游戏要多的东西.“老实说,制作儿童游戏不过是一种消遣.”Gilbert说到。“当Shelley和我开办Humongous的时候,我们的目标就是开发主流游戏,但是我们之所以制作Putt-Putt是因为它的费用要比一款正规的冒险游戏低得多.当时这么做是合理的,因为我们没有很多资金.不知到幸运还是不幸,就你所看到的而言,我们成功了.”于是制作主流类游戏的想法暂时被搁置了下来。

但这样的想法一直存在着,并且远比Putt-Putt的讨论重要,Gilbert向Taylor征求有关主流游戏设计议题的意见.“我问Chris他对于新游戏有些什么想法,因为我更看重的是他那相对于仅仅为工作而工作的激情。”

Taylor渴望着能够有机会阐明他对于RTS游戏的理念.“他所有关于RTS游戏中3D应用的想法,听上去都与我的下一步计划相一致.”Gilbert说到.“他对于他所说的一切充满了激情,那便是我在一位游戏设计师身上所要寻找的东西.如果他们真的对自己的游戏充满了热情,那么我非常相信他们会取得成功。”

晚餐结束后,Gilbert已确信Taylor便是他要找的人——为Humongous设计第一款主流游戏。他提议Taylor立刻从温哥华搬到西雅图地区来,并开始开发他心目中的RTS游戏.对此Taylor回应到:“那天晚上我决定孤注一掷.”Taylor回忆说.“我卖掉了在加拿大的房子,辞去了我的工作,处理了我的轿车,抛弃了我的妻子,我彻底改头换面了。” 来到西雅图后，Taylor忽然发现自己所处的,是一个新的国家,新的工作,新的轿车,甚至还有许多相亲约会。他正走在实现自己梦想的道路上。

待续

A Humongous Pitch

And so one night in late 1995, Taylor sat down to dinner with Gilbert at a Seattle restaurant. Gilbert was a well-respected industry veteran, formerly of LucasArts, Where he had designed Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. He, along with Day, had recently set up Humongous, whose charter was to produce children’s adventure games featuring original characters such as Fatty Bear and Putt-Putt, a talking purple car.

Was Taylor about to trade sports games for the computer equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons? In retrospect, he would have. “When Chris approached me, he said, ‘Ron, I’m willing to do anything,’” recalls Gilbert. “‘I’m so tired of doing sports games I’ll do just about anything else.’”

Fortunately for Taylor, Gilbert had a long-term plan for Humongous that included more than just kiddy games. “To be honest, the kids’ stuff was almost a distraction,” says Gilbert. “When Shelley and I started Humongous, our goal was to do mainstream games, but we did Putt-Putt because we could do it a lot cheaper than a regular adventure. It made sense then because we didn’t have a lot of money. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we were very successful,” and the idea of making games for adults was pushed to the back burner.

But the idea still burned. And so rather than talk about Putt-Putt, Gilbert solicited Taylor’s opinion on mainstream game design issues. “I asked Chris what his ideas were for new games because I would much rather have him do something that was his passion as opposed to just programming for hire,” says Gilbert. Taylor was eager to talk and proceeded to expound in great detail his ideas about the RTS genre. “All his thoughts on the use of 3D in an RTS game sounded like the next step to me,” says Gilbert. “He had a lot of passion in what he was saying, and that’s what I look for in a game designer. If they are really passionate about their game, then I have a lot of faith they will succeed.”

By the end of dinner, Gilbert was convinced that Taylor was the man he wanted to design Humongous’ first mainstream game. He proposed that Taylor immediately move to the Seattle area From Vancouver and start to build his real-time-strategy game. And Taylor responded. “I decided to dive in headfirst that night,” Taylor recalls. “I sold my house in Canada, I quit my job, I got rid of my car, I left my wife, and basically reinvented myself.” Taylor found himself in a new country, with a new job, a new car, and plenty of blind dates. He was on the road to fulfilling his dream.

CaesarZX：

对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》美工总监Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。

点击这里进入连载目录

第四章：狗狗，牛牛 和 硼硼

CaesarZX 译

到1997年春天，《横扫千军》已经颇具规模而且公众也即将能看到它的首次亮相了。我们第一篇杂志上的预览，印刷广告，以及E3大展都蓄势待发了。我们从开始就知道这游戏绝对不能在Humongous那“完全健康对儿童无害”的商标下发售。对他们的玩家，或者我们希望会玩《横扫》的人来说，这简直荒谬。这并没有阻止我们把Putt Putt画成一个持枪歹徒。我们需要一个全新的名字和一个完全不同的商标图片。

从开始Chris和我就四处征集游戏名字，可什么都没找到。于是我们向全公司征求点子。

我把收集到的建议汇总起来。里面有一些死板的标准开发商式的名字诸如“Mega”和“Soft”。几个程序员干脆动用了元素周期表，提出了“钴”和“硼”这类名字。由于我们曾在靠近西雅图的西北部太平洋沿岸工作，我们听到了许多好听的名字，比如混合雨，雨，山和更多的鱼等等。在Chris和我从中精挑细选后，我们把结论锁定在两个选择里：Cavedog Entertainment和Frozen Yak Entertainment，这两个都是他的主意。

这两个名字我们都喜欢。我在会议期间在笔记本上信手涂鸦了几笔。

我当晚回家后给这些图润色。这是Cavedog的草图之一。

这两张图钉在我和Chris合用的办公室的墙上。我们搞了一次投票，结果Cavedog以微弱优势险胜。这杂种狗已经为走红准备好了。那头看上去可怜巴巴的牦牛并没有完全输。它在一年后被找出来被当作愚人节玩笑放在了Cavedog的网站上。

Cavedog的商标出现在了所有常见的东西上，比如名片，信笺，帽子以及所有T恤衫上。我那几年里做了许多商标，但我始终觉得这个是我比较欣赏的作品。我想唤起新一轮旧石器时代的壁画风潮，保证线条足够简洁以显突出，就算印得很小也一样醒目。

我做到了。2000年的时候我在家休息，看着我最喜欢的电视剧The Sopranos《黑道家族》。当时是第二季的第七集……那集叫“D-Girl”《危险女孩》。在那集接近尾声处，就在“大猫”Sal Bompensiero和AJ在房间里诉说衷肠的时候，背景里的什么东西引起了我的注意。

这可能吗？ 一张《横扫》资料片《Core危机》的海报竟然在AJ的卧室里？

是的没错！你可以勉强看到指挥官就在右边，但Cavedog的标志非常显眼。

是的，你也看到了。我的可爱小配角被载入了电视节目史册。其实Cavedog和那个“大猫”角色同时上荧屏确实相当合适，因为他们俩在一年内都去见上帝了。

待续

Part 4: Dogs, Yaks & Boron

By the Spring of 1997, Total Annihilation was shaping up nicely and the public was about to get its first glimpse of the game. Our first magazine previews, print ads and E3 were just around the corner. We’d known From the start that the game couldn’t be released under the wholesome family-friendly Humongous label. It wouldn’t make sense for their audience, or the one we were hoping to reach with TA. This didn’t stop some of us From drawing pictures of Putt Putt bristling with guns. A new name and a completely different image would be required.

Chris and I tossed around ideas for names From the start, but nothing jumped out at us. We opened it up to ideas From the whole company.

I compiled all the suggestions that rolled in. We heard some standard software developer-ish sounding names with “mega” and “soft” in the name. A couple programmers raided the element chart, submitting ideas like “cobalt” and “boron” Since we worked in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle, we heard plenty of pleasant names incorporating rain, fish, mountains and more fish. After sifting through these, Chris and I narrowed it down to two choices: Cavedog Entertainment and Frozen Yak Entertainment, both of which were his contributions.

We liked both names. I did some crude doodles in my notepad during a meeting.

I fleshed them out a bit more at home that evening. Here is a rough Cavedog.

These two pictures were pinned up on the wall of the office Chris and I shared. It was put to a vote, and Cavedog won by a narrow margin. The pooch was ready for prime time. That sorry looking Frozen Yak wasn’t completely lost. It was unearthed as part of an April Fools joke on the Cavedog website about a year later.

The Cavedog logo ended up on all the usual things like business cards, letterhead, hats and the all-important t-shirts. I’ve done a lot of logos over the years. I still think this is one of my better efforts. I wanted to evoke paleolithic cave paintings, while keeping the lines simple enough to stand out, even when printed very small.

It did. I was relaxing at home in 2000, watching my favorite family entertainment, The Sopranos. It was season two, episode seven… the one called D-Girl. Toward the end of the episode, Sal “Big Pussy” Bompensiero was having a heart-to-heart with AJ in his room when something in the background caught my eye.

Could it be? A TA: Core Contingency poster in AJ’s bedroom?

It is! You can just make out the Commander to the right, but the Cavedog is plain as day.

And there you have it. My small supporting role in television history. It’s fitting that the Cavedog shared some screen time with the Big Pussy character, since both would be bumped off within the year.

CaesarZX： 

对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》美工总监Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。

点击这里进入连载目录 

第三章:“纳米潮”的中期

CaesarZX 译

一个临时的标题背景——1996年秋季

《横扫千军》制作速度很快。简直是飞快。那庞大的源代码和内容只用了不到一年就完成了。我把这归功于两个原因：疯狂的超时工作和良好的前期制作阶段。

即使在今天，前期制作总是一个很容易被游戏发行商和制作者忽略和低估的环节。花点时间去找到合适的工具和技术并花时间观察一下，来让一个游戏听起来很像一回事，可这些偏偏被轻易得忽视掉了。虽然期间你并不会一直有在制作个什么东西的感觉，而且有时候非常难说清你究竟在制作什么（特别是对一个紧张的主管来说。），可是前期制作恰恰是极其有用的。这能让一份充实的制作任务安排布置得恰到好处，还可以让核心队伍更轻松地分享Kool Aid（CaesarZX这里有点不解，Kool Aid是种应料品牌，是否说明核心人员可以在一边歇着而让新手干？）并迅速地训练新加入的组员。我笃信每一周的前期制作都能节省至少三周的正常开发时间。是真的，我都有记录的。

到1996年秋天，我们开始为全面启动制作而加快速度，并急忙招收新人。到那之前发生了很多事：比如我们编造了一个还算合理的故事，我们还有了一些勉强能用的工具，但开始对游戏有了信心。

我们还有了个新的发行商。GT Interactive在1996年7月收购了Humongous Entertainment。这是Chirs和我从没意料到的。要是说我们当时大吃一惊，已经是很委婉的说法了。《横扫千军》当初纯粹是（由妈妈爸爸的赞助的，）自力更生（bootstrap operation直译是“可以自行运作的”），而现在却属于一群在纽约的家伙了。尽管这类事情在商界屡见不鲜，但依然造成了一些紧张甚至是恐慌。

GT（原先是Good Times“好时光”的缩写，……）竟和我们一样吃惊。当收购了Putt Putt，Freddi Fish和Fatty Bear（都是Humongous Entertainment的游戏里的角色，针对儿童玩家。）的制作者后，他们才有那么一丝感觉到有个即时战略游戏正隐藏在这栋楼里的某处。这样看上去很般配。GT由于发行了Doom《毁灭战士》，Quake《雷神之锤》和《毁灭公爵》而攀升到第三大游戏发行商的位子。而《横扫千军》看上去会与他们的地位十分相称。这游戏肯定会得到比在被收购之前好得多的发行待遇。更强的后盾也提供了保证能让《横扫》完成的资金。我们为GT Interactive的头儿们制作了一个快速演示，他们看上去很喜欢。所以，放手全速前进的时刻到了。

这些截图是当一些不同的界面设计被同时考虑的时候虚构的（虽然地图画面和单位是正式的）。这就是为什么图中建造菜单里的建筑物和车辆都混在一起。

这些是1997年1月和2月，或者说是制作大约进行到中期时的截图。一个月之后我们就开始为广告制作正式截图了，实现我们的新闻宣传预览零的突破。

这还是相当粗糙的，但是比起几个月前的已经有所不同了。任何玩过这个游戏的玩家们会感觉许多单位似曾相识，尽管比之前看到的有了很多变化。我们可以来一个“猜猜是什么单位”的竞赛。我们稍稍考虑了一下多人游戏派别的一组标识（包括一些疑似实验试管的），在这里可以看到其中几个。要看到单位上的标识实在很费眼力，所以我们还是用了最基本的Arm/Core徽章。当时的引擎仅仅支持640X480的分辨率，这就是为什么截图里的控制面板看起来巨大无比而那些单位大得简直快爬到你鼻子底下来了。试试在Kbot工厂找到很酷的“阴阳八卦图”吧。

这些建造按钮有很短一段时间用的是蓝图，我当时觉得这个能行。我们有所有单位的3D模型，所以这类简单的线框图看上去是很好的建造开端。

可那却给我们带来了一个问题。有人会对那些细细条条的多边形线框构成单位感到头疼。要区分它们都是个难题，更不用说让它们漂亮了。虽然所有人都能一眼就分辨出坦克和飞机，可却无法区分K-bot工厂和金属储藏罐。而软件渲染师也帮不了什么。材质时常会发生严重的偏移和“飘逸”。早期的引擎总是随着当日的气压（作者的玩笑）使多边形从实体上飘进飘出。我们当时真的担心我们的小机器人和小发明们如何才能齐心协力与其他那么多游戏中精美的预渲染（伪3D）单位抗衡。我们知道一旦有人看到我们的游戏中的单位移动，我们会就有优势。可我们始终不能满意静态截图中单位的样子。

这接近了建造按钮的最终样式。Ron Gilbert建议我们用带有“魅力无穷的3D截图”的小按钮来更具视觉化地表现这些单位。上图是横扫千军建造菜单的早期版本。

不过,上述“单位问题”也促使了我们特有的动画截图的诞生,这也是我们在使用新兴的因特网去吸引和建立玩家群时所采用的众多新奇方式中的第一种。

待续

 Part 3: Mid Nano-Stream

Total Annihilation came together fast. Really fast. The bulk of the game’s code and content was created in less than a year. I credit this to two things: insane work hours and a good preproduction phase.

Preproduction is frequently overlooked and underestimated by publishers and game developers, even today. Taking the time to figure out tools, techniques and a look for a game sounds like good sense, but it is often written off as indulgent fluff. It doesn’t always feel like you’re producing something, and it’s sometimes hard to show that you are (especially to a stressed out executive) but preproduction is incredibly useful. It gets a solid production pipeline in place, and makes it easier for a small core team to share the Kool Aid and quickly indoctrinate new recruits. I firmly believe that every week of preproduction saves at least three weeks of regular development time. It’s true. I have notes.

By the Fall of 1996 we were gearing up for full production and adding staff in a hurry. A lot had happened by then. We had figured out our excuse for a story. We had marginally functional tools. We started getting a good feeling about the game.

We also had a new publisher. GT Interactive bought Humongous Entertainment in July of 1996. Chris and I had no clue that was going to happen. Saying we were surprised is putting it mildly. Total Annihilation was started under the auspices of a mom n’ pop, bootstrap operation and now it belonged to some guys in New York. Stuff like that happens in business, but there were some moments of stress and consternation.

GT (originally initials for “Good Times”) was as surprised as we were. When they bought the makers of Putt Putt, Freddi Fish and Fatty Bear, they were only marginally aware that an RTS game was lurking someWhere in the building. It seemed like a good match. GT had risen to be the third biggest game publisher by distributing Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem. Total Annihilation looked like it might be a good fit for them. The game would certainly get better distribution than it would have before the acquisition. Funding for TA’s completion would also be on more solid ground. We did a quick demo for some GT Interactive execs about a month later and they seemed to like what they saw. So, it was full steam ahead.

These screens are mockups From a time when different interface designs were being considered (though the maps and units are all legit). That’s why there are structures and vehicles all mixed up on the same menu.

These are From January and February of 1997, or roughly the mid-way point of the production phase. This is just a month before we started making screenshots for our first print ad and our nearly nonexistent preview coverage.

It’s still rough, but quite a difference From just a few months earlier. Many units will be familiar to anyone who has played the game, though some saw major changes in the months ahead. Let’s have a fun “guess that unit” contest. We were briefly considering a whole heap of team symbols (including some suspiciously like lab glassware) for multiplayer, several of which can be seen here. Those were too hard to see on most units, so we just went with the basic Arm/Core insignias. The engine only supported 640 x 480 resolution at this point, which is why the UI looks gigantic and the units seem ready to crawl up your nose. Dig the groovy yin-yang on the Core Kbot lab.

The build buttons are From a brief phase Where I thought a blueprint sort of look might work. We had all those 3D models, so a simple shot of the wireframe seemed like a good place to start.

That brings up an issue we had. There were continual headaches with those itty bitty polygonal units. It was always a challenge to make them distinctive and engaging. Everybody knows what an airplane or tank looks like at a glance, but the same wasn’t true for a damn K-bot lab, much less a metal storage facility. The software renderer wasn’t helping much either. Textures tended to shift and “swim” a lot. Early incarnations of the engine often had polygons popping in and out of existence depending on the barometric pressure that day. We were genuinely concerned about how our little robots and gizmos would stack up against the crisp prerendered sprites found in so many other games. We knew our game would have an edge once people saw the units in motion, but we were never happy with how the units looked in static screen shots.

This lead to the final version of the build buttons. Ron Gilbert suggested we go with small “glamor shots” to help sell the units visually. At left is an early version of a build menu for Total Annihilation.

The “unit problem” also lead to the creation of our animated screenshots, the first of several novel ways we used that newfangled Internet thing to find and build an audience for the game.

感谢 思维 的无私帮助，我的这个blog终于捆绑了域名。

现在下面两个域名都属于我了，大家随便输入哪个都可以来到这里：
www.caesarzx.cn 或者 www.andyzheng.cn  这里 Andrew (Andy) Zheng 是我的英文名。

以后大家找我更容易了。

计划在国内域名注册网站再申请两个.com的国际域名（暂时保密，其中一个被注册了，2008-5-10 过期，希望到时记得去抢……），随时都可以申请，但得找个愿意被我欠50块的国内朋友帮忙。

CaesarZX:

随便去一些Space逛的时候看到了此人的此篇文章，阅毕拍桌子高喊：“这他妈太有必要转了！”于是我比大自然还要自然地把它转来了，只在那里留下了请求转载的留言。

以下转自大烟贩子的Space 4月15日文：人类没有毛片，世界将会怎样

去年发生了一件有意思的事情，有一个色情网站的负责人被抓起来了，判了20年，说是他的网站传播色情信息，包括成人小说，色情电影，卖春信息等，通过收取会员费用的方式牟利20万。与此同时，有一个挪用贪污银行资金上千万的哥们被判了个10年。（具体被判了多少年可能不准确，但是前者比后者重那是肯定的）
 
今天又看到一则新闻说十部委要联合打击网络淫秽色情活动。而联手要稳定房价的事情也不过是七个部委联手而已。
 
由上面两件事情我们可以简单得出结论：网络色情其危害性要比贪污上千万更大，要比老百姓买不起房子更影响社会和谐。
 
以前有一个朋友开了一家冷饮店，有一个店员涉嫌强奸被警察带走，围观的人群中有人嘀咕：“这年头怎么还会有人要去强奸哦，到处都是小姐，又不贵…”背后的意思显然就是：如果人们都可以用合理的价格，安全的方式去嫖妓，从而解决长期压抑的欲望的话，那么社会上的强奸现象应该会大幅度减少。
 
现在那么多人成年的没有钱结婚，结婚的都扔下老婆孩子去打工，一个个都欲望压抑。而放眼望去，美女们的衣服又越穿越透，电视上的亲热镜头有越来越多，大小明星们又拼命走光，促使欲望暴涨。如果没有渠道去发泄，那么就只有五种可能：一是自己动手解决问题；二是找个小姐解决；三是出去强奸；四是学习政治理论搞到自己性无能；五是每天晚上挠墙直至变态。
 
强奸要被抓，学习到自己性无能也不是一个好主意，挠墙至变态这事儿也不好玩，找小姐又费钱又容易得病，那么最后留给广大人民群众的出路只有一条：自己动手，丰衣足食！
 
自己动手这活其实也不大好干，需要有些东西来助兴，啥东西？那当然就是毛片啦，成人小说啦。
 
经过以上一系列的推理，我们可以高兴的发现：毛片不能少，网络色情很有必要！否则全民容易变态或者无能或者得病或者变成强奸犯。
 
早就需要一个电影和网站内容的分级制度了，本来嘛，成人内容成人看了，有益无害，日本美国毛片比我们多了去了，那国力还不是强壮得很。现在只是那些管理者没有本事做到只让大人看，不让小孩看，所以就采用一贯的简单方法：打击取缔！靠，管理这活要是真的这么好干，那我们就不用花钱养这么些个部委了，只要一个：打击取缔部。

最后附上某Space上的一小段妙语集锦，挑自己喜欢的当座右铭也不错：

不错  人都是逼出来的
有钱男子汉  没钱汉子难
做爱做的事  交配交的朋友
思想有多远  你就给我滚多远
时间就像乳沟  挤一挤还是有的
我不能给你幸福  但可以给你舒服
喜欢是淡淡的爱  爱是深深的喜欢
男人勇敢去经商  女人勇敢不化妆
我不是随便的人  我随便起来不是人
生活真他妈好玩  因为生活老他妈玩我

CaesarZX： 

对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》制作人员之一Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。

点击这里进入连载目录 

第二章：不是故事的故事

CaesarZX译

这是怎么回事？！？难道毁灭公爵和Vanilla Ice 有个私生子？

《横扫千军》因为它的游戏性和革命性的设计受到了好评，但由于它缺乏诱人而具有深度的剧情，也受到了些批评。RTS游戏中那些大作都拥有精彩的电影，充满了3D动画师和B级演员的能弄出的最优秀片段。

带着要制作出超长的、野心勃勃、能把人下巴都看掉的电影的信念开始了制作。在最初的几个月里，因为一些胡乱编造的愚蠢故事序幕，Chris Taylor和我常常嘲笑我们自己。甚至要是我们最后把串烧鱼贝和减肥可乐从我们鼻子里喷出来，我们都会把这写进故事里。

我们当时倾向于做一个极端暴力的漫画式电影来迎合当今的动画片Venture Brothers《冒险兄弟》粉丝的那种胃口。我们知道我们的核心角色是指挥官。我们只有有限的预算，因此我们想让指挥官作为唯一的真正角色出现在序幕影片里。这个主意是这样的：指挥官都些克隆人，他们以不同形状的实验室玻璃器皿做作双方的标记，而这些器皿正是他们被克隆出来用的培养皿。

是的，我没开玩笑。

其中一个以一个普通试管作为他的徽记的一部分。另一个的徽记上则是Erlenmeyer 瓶（锥形瓶）。一个周末我回家后搞了一个故事板，讲述两艘巨型星际战舰跨星际的漫长战斗，以双方指挥官都坠毁到一个荒凉的外星球结束。在那儿，他们要争个你死我活。够刺激吧……绝对一流的故事。

这是那个长度变态的故事版的一些摘录……

别担心。我们神智还算清醒。我们迅速意识到这样的东西不能出现在游戏里。我们觉得那点子只是平庸的货色，而且可能会让我们的开发经费超过预算。要始终记住的是，《横扫千军》整个制作就靠那区区120万美元，而如今的游戏开发者连花在买Red Vines糖果和洗温泉浴上的钞票都比这多。我们把注意力放回到任务简报，使它有静态图像和一部简单的视频简介，并给每个任务系列的结尾配上短片。

不久之后，我们想出了游戏中阵营双方的名字。Chiris和我为游戏中邪恶一方起名字时有点小犹豫，比如“The Syndicate”还是“The Corporation”。Chris干脆把它简化成了“The Core”（也就是最终的名字）。单位美工Clayton Corbisier则为我们所谓“正义”的一方想出了“Arm”这名字。他只是觉得听上去不错。我们也有同感。Chris随后叫我回家用一个晚上想出一个故事背景。他说：“只不过就是去想一群好人和一群坏人不共戴天的理由。就这么简单。”

我第二天拿着Arm和Core之间那场战争的概述的文件回到办公室，还带来了些游戏的历史和故事的延续。下面是一些摘要：

“曾几何时，银河系一直是和谐统一的——统治者是有精密科学崇拜的Core。所有公民衣食无忧。他们的文明到达了顶峰，终极梦想也得以实现——永生。

“那些有着绝佳天赋的人们被Core的统治层选中。他们的头脑被极其小心得以一种高级数字模拟方式记录下来。他们那弱小而又碍事的人类躯体被抛弃了，取而代之的一个完美的，有着无比强大能力的人工身躯接受着意识的指挥。如此就保证了最优秀和最精英的头脑可以无限期地为社会做贡献。

“这项举措导致了一些派系的不满——银河系里那些有着精英头脑的人们。并不是所有精明的领袖渴望这个“永生”的。逐渐，这个派系联合起来，选择迁移到并居住到Core势力影响触及不到的地域：银河系一个遥远的旋臂里。他们的数量逐渐增长并被简单地称作“Arm”

“这场思想的战争随即演变成了一场真刀真枪的战争。

“起初，Core有这明显的优势。银河系的大多数人口和资源都归他们所有。但是Arm依靠自己的足智多谋多次挫败了Core消灭他们的尝试。Arm在每次战斗后都会学到新东西，最终导致了一场让Core头疼的战争。一切就从一个小遭遇战开始迅速演变为一场持续数千年的大战。”

这个故事背景后来由资深游戏作家Dave Grossman润色简化为我们现在所熟悉的《横扫千军》的序幕部分：

“由于反对把人类意识从血肉之躯中转移到机器中而引发的一次冲突，已经演变为一场屠杀了百万文明的大战。Core和Arm已经几乎耗尽了银河系的所有资源来进行领土之争。如今战争双方已经都开始筋疲力尽，而残余的陆军仍然在一些荒芜的行星上继续厮杀。长达四千年多的全面战争让他们之间的仇恨有增无减。这是一场你死我活的较量。对于任何一方，现在唯一的出路，就是将另一方彻底消灭。”

恩……这下就好多了。上面是我给《横扫千军》做的框架形式的粗略故事版画。适当的单位和多得多的镜头后来被添加进去，但Arm的指挥官没有太大改动。

这是比较基础的，不过我可以例举出一些对我有影响的东西。我读了一些有生动人物形象的书，都是有关当数字化的人类意识成为现实的。第一本是Iain Banks的小说Feersum Endjinn。第二本是Breg Egan写的Permutation City《置换城市》。Bank描述了一个遥远的未来，死去的人继续活在由一台被整合入地壳的超级计算机生成的数字化来世中。Egan则描绘了人脑数字化的早期阶段，而背景比较接近现实。顺便说一句，两本都是好书，并且都影响了我回家后为《横扫》虚构出的那个简陋的序幕。

至于纳米技术的引入纯粹是为了方便。我们试图设计出游戏中建筑物的造型，这是个时间问题。要做出每造一幢建筑物就有一群小家伙用锤子站在脚手架上敲敲打打的效果话，实在太复杂而且太花时间。何况我们时间根本不够。我们需要一种像魔术的东西，但又要有科幻的感觉。于是纳米技术就成了我们的救星！另外两本书影响了我当时的想法——Gred Bear的小说Queen of Angels《天使女皇》以及Neal Stephenson的小说Diamond Age《钻石纪元》。前者有一个非常棒的建造构思，建筑物都由巨大的玻璃凝胶模子建造的。我觉得那样的东西可能非常适合我们酷毙了的未来战争。Diamond Age则是关于纳米技术在建造和战争中的使用。我于是打算用“纳米加工”作为我们的建造技术的基础。我们的一个程序员想出了一个颗粒效果(看上去像在未来太空中尿尿)，然后我们就搞定了。

至此为止，故事还是不丰富。难道我们要用一个故事背景简单到可以浓缩在一小段文字里的游戏来血洗1997年的即时战略市场？我们是不是疯了？！？

是，也不是。

剧情的缺乏可能会让我们失去相当一部分玩家，但是也为各种资料片和扩展包留下了充足的空间。玩家有足够的空间把自己的想象放到故事里去。在我放下那个文件夹后，我再也没有在《横扫》的宇宙中添加一个字。不要紧。其它人会处理的。任务设计者们加入了一大堆主意和各种有趣的花样。同人小说（Fan fiction）则把Arm和Core的传奇带入了一个全新的层次。Core不再是一个简单（CaesarZX翻译问题：二维？）的“坏人”，而Arm也不再只是一群不服气（CaesarZX翻译问题：噘嘴？）的反抗者。一个真实的，充满生机的宇宙融入了《横扫千军》故事背景的骨架。

我要是用了别的办法是做不到这个的，就算用全尽世界所有的试管都做不到。

待续

 Part 2: The Non-Story Story

Total Annihilation was well received for it’s gameplay and design innovations, but there was some criticism for its lack of a deep, engaging story. The heavy hitters in the RTS genre all had swell movies, choc full of the best cut scenes 3D animators and B-list actors could provide.

We started the project firmly convinced we could somehow pull together long, ambitious, jaw-dropping cinematics. During the first couple months, Chris Taylor and I laughed ourselves silly with random ideas for a premise. If we ended up snorting teriyaki and Diet Coke out our noses, we’d put it in the story.

We were leaning toward an extremely, violent, comedic style that would be familiar to fans of the Venture Brothers today. We knew we had a central figure in the Commander. We had a limited budget, so we figured he would be the only real character in the intro movie. The idea was that the Commanders were identical clones who were at war over the shape of the glassware in which they were spawned.

Yes, I’m serious.

One had a regular test tube as part of his insignia. The other had an Erlenmeyer flask. I went home one weekend and whipped up a storyboard for a long, drawn out space battle between two gigantic starships, ending with both Commanders crashing on a desolate alien world. There, they would duke it out to the death. Hot n’ spicy… Total A style.

Here are some excerpts From the insanely long storyboard…

Don’t worry. We came to our senses. It soon dawned on us that we could have no such thing in the game. We thought the ideas were a hoot, but they would have cost more than the game’s whole budget to make. Keep in mind that Total Annihilation was made for a very modest 1.2 million bucks. Game developers spend more than that on Red Vines and spa treatments these days. We scaled back to simple mission briefings with static graphics and settled for a short intro sequence, and a couple of short movies for the end of each mission series.

A while later, we came up with the names of the sides. Chris and I batted names back and forth like “The Syndicate,” and “The Corporation” for our villains. Chris shortened that to simply “the Core.” Unit artist Clayton Corbisier came up with “the Arm” for our so-called good guys. He just liked the sound. We did too. Chris then asked me to go home and come up with a simple backstory one evening. He said, “Just some good guys, some bad guys and some reason they’re fighting. That’s it.”

I came back the next day with a document outlining the war between the Arm and the Core, along with some history and possible story arcs for the game. Here is an excerpt:

“Once, the galaxy was united and whole — ruled with scientific precision by the Core. Their citizens lacked nothing. At the zenith of their civilization, the ultimate dream was realized: immortality.

“Those receiving this awesome gift were selected by Core Central. Their minds were carefully recorded as an advanced digital simulation. Weak and fallible human flesh was cast aside and a perfect, artificial body of dreadful abilities housed the remaining consciousness. This guaranteed that the best and brightest minds could be of use to society indefinitely.

“This practice made certain factions uneasy — most notably the best and brightest minds in the galaxy. Not every promising leader looked forward to this “immortality”. Gradually, this faction united and chose to live Where the influence of the Core was weakest: in a remote spiral arm of the galaxy. As their numbers grew they became known simply as the Arm.

“This war of ideas became a war in fact. Uneasy with an increasingly vocal opposition, the Core decided to squelch this provincial backwater.

“At first, the Core had a clear advantage. Most of the population and resources of the galaxy were still theirs. But the Arm had a certain resourcefulness that stopped the Core’s best attempts to eradicate them. The Arm learned something new with each encounter, eventually building a war complex to rival that of the Core. What started as a minor skirmish soon blossomed into a vast conflict which would last for thousands of years.”

This was later spruced up by veteran game writer, Dave Grossman for the now-familiar (and much catchier) intro sequence to Total Annihilation:

“What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness From flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides, now crippled beyond repair. The remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets; their hatred fueled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other.”

Ah… That’s better. Above is my rough storyboard that served as the framework for the intro cinematic to Total Annihilation. Proper units and many more shots were dropped in later, though the Arm Commander didn’t change that much.

It’s pretty basic stuff, but there are some influences I can cite. I had been reading books with vivid portrayals of what might become of humanity if digitized simluation of human consciousness were a reality. The first was Feersum Endjinn by Iain Banks. The second was Permutation City by Greg Egan. Banks deals with a fantastic distant future Where the dead live on in a digitized afterlife using a vast computer built into the crust of a planet. Egan portrays early attempts at digitizing a human mind using a more contemporary setting. Both are great reads, by the way, and influenced my thinking when I went home to cook up that skinny premise for TA.

The inclusion of nanotech was for pure convenience. This was about the time we were trying to figure out how to portray construction in the game. It would have been too complex and time consuming to have little guys with hammers and scaffolds every time something was built in the game. It also wasn’t futuristic enough. We needed something like magic, but with a thin veneer of science around it. Nanotechnology to the rescue! Two other books influenced my thinking here – Queen of Angels by Greg Bear and Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. The former has a great segment describing the formation of a building inside what amounted to a gigantic glass jello mold. I thought something like that might fit our super cool futuristic war pretty well. Diamond Age vividly portrays nanotech used in both fabrication and warfare. I proposed the “nanolathe” as the basis for our construction technology. One of the programmers came up with a particle effect (sort of like futuristic space pee) and we were set.

For all that, it’s still not much of a story. We were about to enter the Great Real Time Strategy Bloodbath of 1997 and we had a plot you could sum up in one paragraph. Were we crazy?!?

Yes and no.

The lack of story might have turned off a wider audience, but it left plenty of room for all sorts of great expansion and extrapolation. There was room for players to project their own imagination into the story. After I handed off that doc, I didn’t write another word about the TA universe. That was okay. Everybody else ran with it. The mission designers added a ton of ideas and all sorts of interesting plot twists. Fan fiction has taken the saga of the Arm and the Core to a whole new level. The Core is no longer a two dimensional villain, and the Arm isn’t just a bunch of pouting malcontents. A real, vibrant universe now hangs on the bones of Total Annihilation’s spartan backstory.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. Not for all the test tubes in the world.

 CaesarZX： 

对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》制作人员之一Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。

点击这里进入连载目录 

第一章：像素肌肉男

CaesarZX译

 1996年5月,我去Humongous Entertainment工作。我被聘为首席美工, 制作一部被称作“超酷战争游戏”的东西。在接下来的半年里，我与项目的总负责人合用一间狭小而乏味的工作室，他就是项目的头儿和设计师Chris Taylor。这是一段了不起的时光。当我们完成前期制作的时候，我们就已经筹划了Cavedog Entertainment这个品牌从而使我们的游戏脱离Humongous Entertainment这个大家庭。游戏的名字也被最终确定下来，Totol Annihilation《横扫千军》。

《横扫千军》由于它那由多边形组成的建筑物和单位而闻名于世, 但在1996年的夏天，我们做出的游戏里面只有车辆是多边形的。我们本来准备完全用2D技术来设计制造建筑物和人类角色(是的, 人类)。这里是仅存的横扫千军开发初期的游戏截图，时间是1996年6月。

Humongous Entertainment 1996年版权所有

看上去确实相当傻。但请记住，就在一个月之前这游戏还仅仅是个在蓝色背景上带有day-glo牌（荧光笔品牌）的绿色银光网格和一辆有20个无材质多边形的坦克。早期版本的指挥官就是站在图中圆形建筑物下面那个傻头傻脑的肌肉男,恩……确切地说那个建筑物是座飞机工厂。他奇怪的造型在《横扫》的背景故事的早期版本有提到。这点留到以后的帖子里再介绍。

当我们一有机会提升我们的电脑配置，升级到强大的奔腾90处理器和一条暴大的16M内存时, 我们就做了一些测试并决定在游戏中任何移动物体都要用多边形来制作。谢天谢地,象素人被我们驱逐到了游戏制作的废物堆里。剩下的,就是玩家所熟悉的历史了。

我有一大堆关于TA和Cavedog的大事纪和珍贵的原始资料，准备在这个blog里向大家展示其中的一部分。我的展示品包括概念草图、背景故事草图的原稿、故事板画、早期的模型，以及其它一些奇奇怪怪的资料。那么, 锁定本blog，接下去会有比你能发射D-Gun(反物质炮）更前所未见的垃圾内容。

待续

Part 1: Pixel People

I went to work in May of 1996 at Humongous Entertainment. I was hired to be the lead artist on something called Really Cool Wargame. For the first six months I shared a tiny, stuffy room with project lead and creator, Chris Taylor. That was a great time. By the time we finished preproduction we had concocted the Cavedog Entertainment brand to set our dark, explodey game apart From Humongous Entertainment’s delightful family fare. The game was also given its final name, Total Annihilation.

Total Annihilation is pretty well known for its polygonal buildings and units, but in the summer of 1996 we were building a game that only had polygonal vehicles. We fully expected to use 2D sprites for buildings and human characters (yes, humans). Here is the sole surviving composite of Total Annihilation in its infancy, dating From June of 1996.

Copyright 1996 Humongous Entertainment

It’s pretty silly, but keep in mind that one month before this the game consisted of a day-glo green mesh on a blue background and an untextured 20 polygon tank. The Commander is the big silly muscle guy beneath the placeholder, um… I’ll say airplane factory. His strange appearance can be explained by an early version of TA’s backstory, but I’ll save that for a later post.

Once we were allowed to raise our minimum spec to a mighty Pentium 90 and a huge (though still laughable) 16 megs of RAM, we did some tests and decided to go all-polygonal for anything that moved in the game. The Pixel People were thankfully banished to the scrapheap of things that might have been. The rest is gaming history.

I have an immense trove of TA and Cavedog related memorabilia. I plan to display some of it on this blog. My mouldering heap includes concept art, original drafts of a couple different backstories, storyboards, early box mockups and loads of other strange stuff. So, stay tuned for more obscure crap than you can shake a D-Gun at.

一直忍受着MyDonews糟糕的速度和层出不穷的bug，甚至连feed都不能正常显示。前几天看到一个朋友愤然搬家，了解到原来负责MyDonews技术方向的几个高手相继离去，网站基本上成了没人管的烂摊子。

于是我也决定搬了，从这里搬来了。

花了点时间把所有Donews里的文章全部都搬过来。图片已经在flickr备份。 Feed地址已经更换为：http://caesarzx.yo2.cn/feed

再见了MyDonews

说来也惭愧，我小学三年级获得上海市摄影比赛中小学组二等奖，还得了个奖学金（没多少钱）。用我那台海鸥DF300取景和拍摄一直到胶卷的冲洗完毕，全套步骤全部自己干（当然有老师监督啦～）。然而这一切似乎并不能阻止我现在重新变成一个摄影盲。看着厚实的使用手册，感到一股忧伤：不读不行了啊！买来电子产品我一般都不看说明书直接摆弄知道熟透为止，可这次我败给了自己早该熟透的单反。

童年的DF300（google搜来的图）

最近准备重拾童年回忆就下狠心花了700刀买了台Canon  EOS 400D（美国叫做Rebel XTi），低端入门级的数码单反。因为是塑料机身所以没有我满意的那种沉重质感。可我毕竟不是专业的也不是纯粹摄影爱好者。不过我猜可能在几年内会再买一台，到时候非中端以上不买。下面是一些照片：

18-55毫米套头，比入门级还可怜的镜头。

佳能特写

LCD上的透明纸是我自己贴的，PDA专用保护纸。气泡几天就会自动消失。

晚上拍的一张，闪光灯下怎么看都没质感。

右肩。中高端的佳能（比如30D）的这个拨盘是在左肩，而右肩则是一个小LCD。

右边是新买的罗技MX518，替换掉了原来微软无线IE2.0，可还是觉得不够重。

现在，开始入门。