Friday, December 11th.
"The performance has been quite good," Li Jun said, scrolling through the sales data on his laptop. "Western market sales are still climbing. We hit 30,000 yesterday alone."
Lin Feng nodded.
"Speaking of," he said, "I've been thinking about our dividend structure."
Li Jun looked up.
"What about it?"
"I was thinking of changing it to monthly payouts," Lin Feng said. "To be honest, it would help us avoid all the trouble with translating our income into cash. We'd still maintain the 70/30 split though - 70 percent remaining in the business."
Li Jun considered this for a moment.
"I don't personally have an issue with that," he said. "Monthly works fine for me."
He paused.
"Speaking of money, what are we going to do with the money currently sitting in the company? Should we use it for promotional campaigns? Partnerships, maybe?"
Lin Feng leaned back.
"I've had some thoughts on the matter," he admitted. "But I don't think they'd work for now. So I'm leaving it as is for the moment."
He met Li Jun's eyes.
"But if you have any ideas, don't be afraid to say."
Li Jun shook his head.
"Our growth has been quite steady. I don't think there's much we could do really. At least not without overspending."
He shifted topics.
"What about the game engine? How's the progress on your end?"
He pulled up a folder on his laptop.
"I've pretty much perfected the project structure and build system. Just waiting on the full plan before I move forward."
Lin Feng smiled.
"I was just about to talk about that."
He turned his own laptop toward Li Jun.
"I finished my comprehensive plan for the engine."
A few clicks later, a notification appeared on Li Jun's screen.
He opened the file and began reading.
His eyebrows rose steadily as he scrolled through the document.
"You've put a lot of thought into this," he said.
This is really thorough.
It was detailed in a different way compared to the Fool's Gambit design document, but still remarkably comprehensive. Architecture diagrams, module breakdowns, dependency charts, milestone definitions...
Then he noticed something else.
He scrolled down further.
"Drug Dealer?" he asked, looking up. "There's another plan alongside the engine."
Lin Feng nodded.
"It's another game our studio could work on."
He waved his hand dismissively.
"But don't think of it too much. For now, we'll use it more like a benchmark to test the progress of the engine. Building the game to completion would be quite the milestone for the engine."
It would be a waste to learn the United Sandbox engine just to make Drug Dealer when I'm already developing my own engine.
Better to use what I'm making. I'd naturally be best at it.
Besides, having a game to benchmark against isn't a bad thing. We'd need this anyway - might as well make progress on that end while we're at it.
Li Jun studied the game design document more closely.
It was highly detailed. Just like Fool's Gambit.
In fact, it seemed even more detailed.
It was as though the game already existed somewhere and Lin Feng had simply written it down.
He sighed internally.
The boss really never ceases to amaze me.
Well, having a game to develop alongside the engine would be a good point of testing. He couldn't argue with that logic.
He looked up at Lin Feng.
"How should we split our tasks for the first stage?"
Lin Feng leaned forward.
"For the first stage, there are just four tasks. Each of us could take two."
He pulled up the relevant section of the plan.
"Since you've already finished one - project setup and build system - you can just have one task. That will be setting up a logging system."
He tapped the screen.
"We'll need this the most before we can do anything useful."
Li Jun nodded.
"As for me," Lin Feng continued, "I'll work on a basic rendering pipeline and see if I can get some basic window creation and management going. After that, I'll handle some basic event handling."
He spread his hands.
"And that's basically it for stage one."
Li Jun glanced at the plan again.
"For logging, can I use a library?"
"Yeah, there are multiple good ones. I've highlighted them in the plan." Lin Feng shrugged. "Well, you'll figure it out."
He continued.
"As for rendering, for now, I think just OpenGL is fine. Later, we could set up a proper pipeline with Vulkan as the default and options to switch to Direct3D or OpenGL. But that's still too far ahead."
Li Jun nodded in understanding.
"Got it."
The two of them got to work.
…
They worked from morning until lunchtime.
By then, Li Jun had finished setting up the logging system. After some tests and cleaning, he integrated it into the project structure.
Lin Feng, on the other hand, had managed to get some basic shapes rendering to screen.
After lunch, Li Jun continued working on the application layer - separate from the core part of the engine - while Lin Feng left for something else.
…
Throughout the afternoon, he was back with Mengqi.
The two of them sat in the practice room, surrounded by equipment and scattered notes.
They worked on the song, refining melodies, adjusting arrangements, layering elements.
By the time evening came, Lin Feng felt they were definitely getting closer to what he had in mind.
…
Saturday, December 12th.
This day was a little different.
The CET-4/6 exams were being held.
Lin Feng had his English exam in the morning. The listening section, the reading comprehension, the writing portion - he moved through each part with ease and was done before noon.
After leaving the examination hall, he returned to his dorm and spent some time working on the engine.
They had decided to name it Ultimate Engine.
A bit grandiose, perhaps. But fitting for their ambitions.
After lunch, he visited Su Yue's apartment.
She was in good spirits, and they chatted for a while before he left again - this time with Mengqi to continue working on the music.