Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 395 - 403 Save and Character Profile_2

Chapter 395: Chapter 403 Save and Character Profile_2

"I’m really puzzled. What on earth does this bug mean? How can there be such a bug?"

"From the format, isn’t this a character file?"

The bug was simple and almost always 100% reproducible. It was when players encountered the suspected "female lead’s face-changing" bug for the first few times, and when they tried to load the latest save to enter the game, an error would pop up.

The solution was also simple: just load the previous save.

So, including Instructor Ding, the vast majority of players didn’t think too much about it. After all, games with file corruption leading to broken saves weren’t many, but they still existed. Loading a previous save might waste a bit of time, but it was still acceptable.

However, as a game editor, Zhang Qifeng did have some professional knowledge.

He acutely realized there was something strange about the path.

Generally speaking, game save files are typically stored in folders like "data," whereas "characters" means characters.

From the path indicated by the prompt, what was missing seemed to be character files, not save files.

Moreover, there were no numerical suffixes, like 123, on the path, which was unusual.

Because "Heartbeat Dream" itself had ten default saves: five of which were auto-saves, and five were manual saves.

In other similar romance games, ten save slots might not be enough, as players may need to use the Save-Load trick repeatedly to activate various endings and try different choices.

But for "Heartbeat Dream," this many save slots were completely unnecessary because there weren’t those kinds of mutually exclusive choices in the game. No matter what the players chose, it wouldn’t lead to any fatal consequences, so the Save-Load trick naturally became redundant.

And speaking of which, since the game had ten saves, there should also be ten save files in the game’s root directory, like save0, save1, all the way up to save9.

If a save file was corrupted, it should report "Save 1 corrupted" not that a character was corrupted, right?

"My scalp is so itchy, feels like I’m growing brains."

Zhang Qifeng scratched his head in annoyance, somewhat puzzled by the situation.

Was it intentional by Heavenly Games?

Stop it, that phrase has almost become a meme lately. No matter what abhorrent things come out of Heavenly Games, there will always be Imps commenting, "Maybe it’s intentional by Heavenly Games," so much so that many jesters have started repeating it as well, almost becoming meme-worthy.

The phrase used to be a compliment for the unexpected elements of Heavenly Games, but now it’s used to mock the "filial children" of Heavenly Games.

So many players, even if they had doubts about the game, were drowned out by the criticisms as soon as they raised them.

But Zhang Qifeng still felt something was off because it didn’t quite align with other conventional games.

"Let me take a closer look."

Zhang Qifeng was a man of action and verifying his hunch was simple: just follow the path to the root directory folder.

Check what files were in the folder, where exactly the save files were, and where exactly the character files were. While this might not answer the questions, it would definitely eliminate some of the wrong options.

Thinking this, Zhang Qifeng switched to the desktop, opened the root directory of the game, and searched all the way through.

Soon enough, he really found the "characters" folder.

But the files in this folder weren’t quite what he expected.

Neat rows of English names, including Elios, Yarvette... in short, files for most of the characters in the game were here.

Except for the previously error-reported sakura.

And there wasn’t just one "characters" folder; it had a parent folder, which, from the structure, seemed more like the save files.

"So, this character folder is within the save folder."

"No wonder this file error only affected a single save."

Zhang Qifeng was fairly certain of his guess now.

If the game did indeed corrupt a character file, then the whole game would crash, be unplayable, rather than crash just a single save.

After all, a vast number of places in the game call upon character-related resources, which can influence the whole system just by affecting one part.

Even minor bugs in the game that cause an insignificant underlying file to get damaged could potentially crash the game to the point it can’t be reopened, necessitating a repair of the client—how much more so for something as important as character files?

Therefore, it’s quite likely that this file structure was intentionally designed by the officials.

Save files are at the top level, and character files are below, so if a character file within a save gets corrupted, only that save is affected, not the others.

So the question arises, what’s the point of doing it this way?

Generally, games integrate all sorts of data directly into the save files, not allowing players to access them separately, so there’s no need to create interchangeable folders, let alone extract character data from the save files.

Besides, even if this were done, wouldn’t players just switch back to a previous save and play like normal?

Moreover, it seems there is a certain randomness to save file corruption, similar to the random triggering of horror content.

If you play long enough, it will trigger, but whether it happens after five minutes, ten minutes, or an hour, there’s currently no understood pattern to it.

"Hey? Wait a second.

"This file, it really disappeared.

"What if I copy a file from another save and paste it in here?"

Zhang Qifeng stroked his chin, pondering such a hypothesis.

Logically speaking, there should be no fundamental difference between two sakura.chr files from different folders.

Perhaps the progress in romance is different, or there may be changes in the fake-AI data, but these variations should not cause any particularly severe bugs.

And even if a bug were triggered, it doesn’t matter, because according to the game’s data structure, no matter how much one tampers with it, it would only destroy that one save, leaving the others unaffected.

Without hesitation, Zhang Qifeng copied the sakura.chr file from another folder and pasted it into the latest autosave.

Then he returned to the game and loaded the save.

Just as expected, the game loaded normally!

However, even after loading, nothing particularly noteworthy occurred — the game didn’t crash or report errors, and after playing for some time, the horror storyline could still be triggered, and the game crashing could still lead to file corruption.

The only difference was that the specific timing of the file corruption had become random.

It was as if the system took some time to realize that the file hadn’t been completely deleted and then tried to delete it again.

But as for the gaming experience, there was truly no essential change.

"Hmm... am I overthinking this?"

Zhang Qifeng fell into contemplation once more. Although his operation was successful, it didn’t have that amazing effect that would satisfy him. Obviously, this was not enough for him.

"Eh, wait a second.

"If the character file in this save can be copied and pasted at will, doesn’t that mean the character files in all saves can be manipulated just as easily?

"Could they even be deleted?"

In other games, this would be impossible for a simple reason: save files generally can’t be edited. Even if you could copy them using special tools, adjusting them precisely would be difficult.

But the unique underlying data structure of "Heartbeat Dream" provides players with a possibility for low-cost manipulation.

Without any special tools or specific saves required, just simple deletion or copy-pasting allows transferring a character from one save to another.

From a system design perspective, this seems rather superfluous.

Why on earth would Heavenly Games do this?

Zhang Qifeng had some conjectures, but at the moment they weren’t verifiable.