Thinking of that, Xie Mingzhe immediately took senior brother Qi and consulted him modestly, “You have referred “original card” many times just now. If players want an original card, are there any special requirements?”
The old player, senior brother Qi explained patiently, like a commentator, “To create an original card in the game depends on the Inner Spirit and genius of players.”
Xie Mingzhe nodded, “Oh, could you explain it in detail?”
Senior brother Qi simply found a quiet pavilion nearby and sat down, along with Xie Mingzhe. Sisi followed us and listened to the “old players lecture” curiously.
“Inner Spirit, in the more popular words, is the ability of your brain to withstand external stimuli, which can be measured in hospitals. The Inner Spirit of ordinary people is around 200. If the number is higher than 260, the man is competent to all difficult tasks of various fields, or to partic.i.p.ate in the professional league of holographic games.”
“…” Xie Mingzhe stunned. How many were his spirit points? When he woke up in the hospital, Doctor Qin had measured his Inner Spirit, using robots. His Inner Spirit points seemed to be 300 – yes, when the robot pressed the electrode on his temple, the number displayed on the screen was 300!
So his Inner Spirit was relatively high, at least higher than the average Inner Spirit point, 200. Xie Mingzhe was happy and continued, “Is it necessary to use the Inner Spirit for creating original cards in the game?”
“Yes.” Senior brother Qi brother replied in detail, “Both the content and skills of the card you want to create depend on your Inner Spirit. For example, if you want to make a plant card, the cards you create must be refined, specific to what the flowers look like, how its root grows, what the shape of its leaf is, how to describe its skills and how to distribute its data – the more specifically and precisely you create the card, the better the quality of the cards will be.”
Xie Mingzhe was stunned - wasn't this similar to drawing?
There were two ways to draw a picture: one was to draw the real scene on the paper; the other one was to imagine.
For example, if you wanted to draw a kind of plants, first you need to outline the appearance of the plant in your mind. Once the imaginative appearance shaped, picture it on the paper. The works of a good artist were realistic enough to be taken as real objects.
It was easy for Xie Mingzhe to create a card in this way. He was a science student in his previous life on earth, but he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital University in this world.
He could draw and imagine and his Inner Spirit was 300, all of his abilities had reached the standard of being a card creator, now he just needed a permission for his creation. Please support original translation in w.a.n.gmamaread.
Xie Mingzhe rubbed his hands in excitement and continued, "In other words, after imagining the detailed contents of the card, I will use the Inner Spirit to draw them on a special cardboard to make a card. Is that the whole process?"
Senior brother Qi shook his head, saying, "This is just the beginning. A more vital part of creating a card is the examination and approval of the new card. There is a very strict copyright protection system in the game. Your card has to be examined and approved by the official card database system before it is operational in the game."
"Protect copyright? What does it mean?" Xie Mingzhe scratched his head confusedly.
"For example, the [Nine-tailed Fox] card sold at today's auction has been reviewed by the official card database system, so its creator owns its copyright and others are not allowed to plagiarize his idea. That is to say, other players are prohibited from plagiarizing his idea to make similar cards, such as an [Eight-tailed Fox] crad, a [Seven-tailed Fox] card or a [Nine-tailed Cat] card."
Sisi nodded her head as if she understood something, saying, "In other words, players are not allowed to remould the ready-made cards in the card database, instead, they can create new cards that haven't appeared in the card database before, right?"
Senior brother Qi nodded, saying, "Yes. Cards in the database won't be turned into an original card by modification and the skills of the ready-made cards can't be copied directly either. Players have to create new cards and design new skills before their cards are approved by the system. As for the Character Cards, the official has a special requirement. Importing the features of a man in the real world is prohibited, players need to create their original character."
Xie Mingzhe suddenly understood it.
The official stipulation was indeed powerful and effective, which put an end to plagiarism. In this way, the official could protect the players' creative ideas, so creators didn't have to worry about their ideas would be stolen. A man's features in the real world couldn't be imported into the game, which also avoided players maliciously smearing the image of people in the real world and giving them some odd skills. For instance, one would import his cla.s.smate's feature data into the card and give it a "Fart" skill, which sounded terrible.
Senior brother Qi added, “More critically, your card's skills need to match its image. For example, [Tuberose]'s skills, Alluring Scent and Night Falls, are both related to the card's name¹. Tang Muzhou's strongest AOE card [Thousand-year-old G.o.d Tree] has a skill called [Fatal Strangling], which can strangle star card holograms with its Wood vines over a wide range of areas. The reason why his card is so strong is that the card, data and skills are perfectly compatible.”
Xie Mingzhe nodded in admiration. It seemed that Tang Muzhou had a very vivid imagination! All kinds of plants had been given great skills.
The official rules for creating original cards were really strict. Players couldn't just create cards at will. In order to make the game as fair as possible, the official must have a large professional database and calculation formula to control card data. For example, skills stepping out of lines such as killing all targets within 100 meters would not be approved.
The earlier you played this game, the easier it was to create original cards, because there was a lower possibility to create same skills with other players. But Star Card Storm had been in operation for a decade, having countless players. Those having played this game for longer years must have created all kinds of cards, Xie Mingzhe guessed. Did the official database collect all plants, animals, and characters cards? To be creative would be a big problem for many players who wanted to create original cards.
Must he create a card that was not included in the database? What should he do? Xie Mingzhe rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
Senior brother Qi said, “If you are really interested in original cards creation, you can go to the black market to buy some Nebula papers and give a try.”
Sisi advised, “Uncle Chubby, creating original cards is especially expensive. One of my besties wanted to create a pet card last month, and she spent several thousand coins on buying materials. But she failed at last. Don't get yourself into a fix!”
Xie Mingzhe nodded, “OK. I'm just interested in it and want to give a try. If I fail, I will forget it. I won't spend too much on it.” He didn't have much money to waste, but he couldn't reconcile himself if he didn't try it.
At least he had a high Inner Spirit and was good at painting, which meant he was totally qualified to create original cards. Maybe he could succeed and make money by selling his cards.
Making up his mind, Xie Mingzhe followed senior brother Qi to the black market, the largest underground trading market in the commercial star.
Translator's Notes:
1. Tuberose in Chinese is 夜来香. "夜" means "night", while "香" means "scent".