From Idler to Tech Tycoon: Earth

Chapter 21: Finishing Touches
Chapter 21 - 21: Finishing TouchesWith the last screw tightened and the final cable connected, their two high-end gaming rigs stood proudly on the desks, humming softly as the RGB lights pulsed in a hypnotic rhythm. The glow of blue and red LEDs reflected off the glass walls of their office, giving the space a futuristic, almost cyberpunk aesthetic.

Richard wiped his hands on his jeans and stepped back, admiring their work. ”Alright, now for the final touch.”

He left the office and returned moments later, dragging a spare wooden table from one of the guest rooms in the basement. With a grunt, he positioned it opposite Jack’s desk, completing their two-man workspace.

Meanwhile, Jack finished setting up the dual monitors on both desks, connecting each PC to its peripherals—mechanical keyboards, high-DPI Logitech mice, and a pair of studio-grade headphones.

Jack grabbed a bootable USB loaded with Windows 7 Professional and inserted it into both PCs. The monitors flickered to life, and after a few moments, the familiar installation screen appeared.

As the setup process began, Richard disappeared upstairs to grab his laptop from their bedroom on the third floor. When he returned, the operating systems had finished installing, and both machines booted up for the first time.

The screens came to life, illuminating the room in a soft glow of RGB reflections. Jack and Richard exchanged grins, satisfied with their work.

Jack leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms. ”We’re all set... except for making this place actually look like a studio.”

Richard nodded, looking around. ”Yeah, it still feels too... corporate. We need to make it more like a real game dev space.”

Jack rubbed his chin in thought. ”We could move the fridge from the second-floor lounge down here. That way, we can stock up on snacks, sodas, and instant noodles.”

Richard smirked. ”Gotta have the essentials.”

Jack snapped his fingers. ”Oh, and tomorrow, we’ll head to the city to buy some paint. This place needs color. I was thinking light green to give it a fresh, creative vibe. But more importantly, we need a badass 3D LED logo for our wall. We should find a logo builder who can print it in high quality.”

Richard raised an eyebrow. ”Do you have a design in mind?”

Jack grinned. ”Yeah. A bull inside a shield shape. Something that screams strength and resilience.”

Richard chuckled, shaking his head. ”Are you trying to get sued by Lamborghini?”

Jack laughed. ”Hey, I said a bull, not their bull. Ours is different—it represents power and determination, like we’re charging forward into the industry.”

Richard rolled his eyes playfully. ”Sure, let’s just hope their lawyers don’t think the same thing.”

The soft hum of the PCs filled the room, accompanied by the sharp, rhythmic clacking of Richard’s mechanical keyboard. His fingers flew across the keys at an almost unnatural speed, the sound reminiscent of an A-10 Warthog unleashing its legendary BRRRT.

Jack, meanwhile, had his arms full of snacks, hugging a variety of chips, candy bars, and a couple of canned sodas as he balanced his external hard drive in one hand. He took one look at Richard, who was already deep into his coding, and sighed.

”Bro,” Jack said, plopping into his chair, ”how eager are you to finish that? Your typing sounds like you’re single-handedly waging war on your keyboard.”

Richard didn’t even pause. ”As soon as possible, bro.” His voice was flat, his eyes locked onto the screen as lines of code scrolled by at a blinding pace.

Jack squinted. ”Wait... don’t tell me that speed is from the Keeper too.”

Richard’s fingers didn’t slow. ”Yep. This too.”

Jack shook his head in disbelief as he plugged his external hard drive into his PC. ”Alright, you code away, oh mighty cyber-god. I’ll work on the models and start building some basic game mechanics. If your engine works, great. If not, at least we’ll have made some progress.”

He opened his 3D modeling software and stared at the blank workspace for a moment, considering their next move. ”By the way, textures—what style are we aiming for?”

Richard glanced at him briefly before refocusing on his screen. ”How about stylized textures? Cute, fun, vibrant. Since we’re going low-poly, we should lean into that aesthetic.”

Jack nodded. ”Makes sense. High realism would be a pain to optimize, and a stylized look will make the game more visually unique.” He cracked open a soda and took a sip, eyes narrowing at his screen. ”Alright, let’s get to work.”

The room was silent except for the soft hum of the PCs and the rapid-fire clatter of Richard’s mechanical keyboard. His eyes flicked between the monitors and the whiteboard filled with hastily drawn vector diagrams, his mind fully immersed in the mathematical foundation of 3D space.

He typed:

// Data Structures - The Foundation of Everything 3D

His fingers traced the marker over the whiteboard as he muttered to himself. ”If these aren’t solid, efficient, and precise, the entire engine will suffer.”

A new file blinked open in his IDE—a blank canvas awaiting the birth of one of the most fundamental components of the Vector Core engine.

class Vector3

”Three components: x, y, z. Simple, right?” Richard smirked, shaking his head. ”Wrong. It’s not just about storing numbers—it’s about how they’re stored, accessed, and manipulated. Every nanosecond matters when it comes to real-time rendering.”

He meticulously crafted the class definition, agonizing over data alignment and memory layout. Floating-point precision, SIMD optimizations, cache locality—it all had to be perfect.

// Vector operationsVector3 operator+(const Vector3& other);Vector3 operator-(const Vector3& other);Vector3 operator(float scalar);*

Simple, straightforward math—but efficiency was key. Every unnecessary calculation, every redundant memory access, had to be eliminated.

Then came the heavy hitters:

float Dot(const Vector3& other);Vector3 Cross(const Vector3& other);Vector3 Normalize();

”These are the workhorses of 3D graphics. They power everything from physics to lighting to animation. If they aren’t lightning-fast, the entire engine slows down.”

He benchmarked different implementations, profiling performance, swapping out different algorithms, and pushing the hardware to its limits.

Matrices – The Great Manipulators

With Vector3 set up, Richard cracked his knuckles and opened another file.

// Matrix4 - The Transformer

”Matrices...” he muttered, rubbing his temple. ”The foundation of transformations, the core of all 3D movement. Scaling, rotation, translation—everything depends on them.”

float m[4][4];

A deceptively simple 4x4 grid, yet it held the key to some of the most complex calculations in 3D space.

”Row-major or column-major?” Richard frowned. ”One is more intuitive, but the other is more cache-efficient.” It was a never-ending trade-off.

He optimized matrix multiplication, knowing full well how much of a performance bottleneck it could be.

Matrix4 Multiply(const Matrix4& other);

”Nested loops... a nightmare.” He tapped the desk, thinking. ”But if I unroll the loops and use SIMD instructions... I can make it blazing fast.”

And then came matrix inversion—a notoriously expensive operation.

”Gaussian elimination? LU decomposition? Which algorithm is the most stable, the most efficient?”

He tested different methods, running benchmarks, ensuring maximum precision with minimal computation. Every microsecond shaved off meant better performance.

Quaternions – The Elegant Rotators

Just as Richard was about to call it a night, he hesitated.

”Quaternions.”

His fingers hovered over the keyboard.

”I might as well get started on those too.”

A new file opened.

// Quaternion - The Rotation King

”A strange beast.” Richard chuckled. ”A complex number with four components that somehow makes 3D rotations smooth and intuitive.”

He defined the class, implementing multiplication, normalization, and conversions.

Quaternion operator(const Quaternion& other);*Matrix4 ToMatrix();

”Quaternion multiplication is bizarre, but crucial.” It allowed for seamless, gimbal-lock-free rotations.

Then, he experimented with interpolation techniques.

”Slerp? Squad? Which is better?”

He ran multiple simulations, tweaking parameters, making sure rotations felt natural and fluid.

A Step Closer

Richard finally leaned back in his chair, stretching his aching muscles.

He exhaled slowly, eyes scanning the lines of code filling his monitors.

”These data structures... they’re not just numbers and operations. They’re the language of 3D, the foundation upon which everything else is built.”

His hand hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then he saved his progress.

”It’s a long journey,” he thought. ”But every line of code, every optimization—it’s a step closer to realizing Vector Core.”

Tomorrow, the grind would continue.

Richard glanced at his phone—1:00 AM. The glow from the screen reflected off his tired eyes, and he exhaled as he stretched his stiff shoulders. His gaze shifted to Jack, who was still glued to his monitor, his other hand casually tossing a potato chip into his mouth. The crunching was rhythmic, almost in sync with the ticking of the clock.

Richard stood up, rolling his neck to ease the tension. Jack noticed.

”Finished, bro?” Jack asked, still focused on his screen, licking the salt off his fingers.

Richard shook his head. ”Nah, bro. I’ll finish it tomorrow. But aren’t you gonna sleep? It’s already 1 AM.”

Jack sighed, then stretched, his joints popping from hours of sitting. ”Yeah, yeah... we still have painting to do tomorrow.” He yawned, saving his progress before shutting down his PC.

Both of them headed upstairs, their footsteps light on the wooden floorboards as they made their way to their room. The house was silent, aside from the distant hum of the night air.

Jack rubbed his eyes. ”We also need to commission some laminated gaming posters and gaming tarpaulins.”

Richard raised a brow. ”We don’t need to go all the way to Cagayan for that, right?”

Jack shook his head. ”Nah, we can get it done in our city. We should also commission an LED-lit sign for our studio name. A glowing sign on the wall would look sick.”

Richard smirked. ”As long as we don’t turn it into some over-the-top neon disaster.”

Jack chuckled. ”Right, right. We’ll keep it classy. Oh, and we need speakers too. Not just for gaming but for some proper sound in here. The room’s too quiet.”

Richard nodded. ”Yeah, good point. But we can order those online. No need to waste a trip for that.”

Jack suddenly paused, smacking his forehead. ”Damn, I forgot about the gaming chairs!”

Richard snorted. ”Dude, how do you forget something we’ll be sitting on for hours?”

Jack groaned. ”Man, we’ve been so caught up in the tech, I completely overlooked comfort. Alright, I’ll place an order tomorrow—ergonomic, full recline, lumbar support, the whole shebang.”

Richard chuckled as they finally reached their room. He plopped onto his bed, sinking into the soft mattress. ”Good call. No way I’m coding on a stiff wooden chair for the next few months.”

Jack fell onto his own bed, his voice muffled against the pillow. ”We’ll get everything set up. One step at a time.”

Richard stared at the ceiling, his mind still buzzing with code, vectors, and matrices. But for now, he let the exhaustion take over.

Tomorrow, their studio would start taking shape.