Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 415 Too Unlucky!_2

Chapter 415: Chapter 415 Too Unlucky!_2

"President Li, does this interface look familiar to you?"

Lilith frowned and shook her head, "It doesn’t."

Gu Fan pointed out some elements on the interface, especially the buttons and the background frames.

Lilith took another careful look, but still couldn’t spot any significant issues.

"What about the buttons? They look pretty normal to me. Oh, compared to the buttons on other interfaces, they seem... slightly rough? A little blurred? On closer inspection, the background of the buttons seems a bit off too, is it slightly stretched?"

Gu Fan clapped his hands, "You really have a keen eye, President Li!

"Now, look at this interface."

As he spoke, he opened another interface.

This interface looked identical to the one in GM mode, except the way of opening it was different.

In the game, "GM mode" could only be activated after upgrading Elios to the highest level guide, while the new interface that Gu Fan opened was not in the official version of the game but in an internal test version of "Heartbeat Dream."

Opening it didn’t require complex operations like upgrading the AI; Gu Fan simply pressed a combination of keys, and the interface popped up directly.

Lilith was somewhat surprised, "This...

"Is this an internal testing tool?"

Gu Fan nodded, "You are discerning, President Li! Yes, this is an internal testing tool."

Lilith, who had extensive experience with game development, was already familiar with internal testing tools.

The testing team was limited in number and time, so to improve testing efficiency, it was often necessary for the programmers to develop GM tools to assist with the testing work.

For example, all the functions in the GM mode, such as preventing triggering of horror content, extending the duration of horror content, adjusting the acquisition multipliers for various data, were all to enable the testing team to test the related code faster and better.

As this GM tool was only for internal testing and would never make it to the official version, its creation was relatively perfunctory; the buttons and interfaces were cobbled together from the game’s existing generic materials. Even many button sizes didn’t match, so they were slightly stretched, and only upon close examination could you see the frayed edges.

So the question is, how did something that was originally only in the internal test version make its way to the official version?

And the activation method is different, too!

Gu Fan continued, "President Li, my guess is as follows.

"This GM tool is probably related to many contents in the game. Rather than finding and deleting it from all the code, it was simpler to just remove the entrance.

"Because in the original internal test version, it was activated through a shortcut key and there was no other activation method. So, as long as the shortcut command in the game was deleted, in theory, there would be no way for players to activate it."

Lilith’s face darkened, "In theory?"

Gu Fan nodded, "Yes, but somehow, this interface still appeared in the official version. I suspect... it might be related to the AI.

"Because in the game, to better create the effect of psychological horror and also to highlight the meta-gaming elements, we actually gave these AIs a lot of authority.

"For example... calling some data from the game’s source code."

Lilith’s eyes narrowed slightly, "So what you’re saying is... this interface, as well as this so-called GM mode, were brought up by Elios’s AI on its own?"

Her face bore a look of skepticism.

Gu Fan cleared his throat, "President Li, if you don’t believe me, you can have another programmer check it.

"I’ll just state a few confirmed facts.

"Firstly, we are using the latest version of fake-AI. The intelligence of this AI, when compared to the AI in ’Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon’ and ’City Forsaken by Gods,’ has improved significantly; it’s already very advanced.

"Secondly, during the production of ’Heartbeat Dream,’ the AI was indeed given extremely high authority, even including the authority to delete and modify files within the game.

"Although the authority to modify files is limited to the save and character folders in the root directory, the AI has many other powers, such as accessing in-game resources and deciding certain permissions. For instance, when players experience the game, the timing of the appearance of horror content is determined by the AI."

Lilith was stunned for a moment, "What? This was also decided by the AI?"

Gu Fan nodded, "From the current code, it seems so."

"President Li, didn’t you specifically request this before? You wished for the transition from romance to horror content to occur at ’the best timing’."

"But obviously, each player has different gaming habits, pursues different characters, and participates in different events. Although we can set some special triggers, like Yarvette’s face change when she turns her head during a confession at the beach, it’s clear that these specific triggers alone are not enough."

"We can’t just design every trigger and then hard-code them into the program; that would lack randomness and the players would quickly figure out the patterns and prevent them, which would be contrary to what President Li, you had envisioned."

"So, in the end, we decided to involve the AI in the decision-making process."

"Let the AI, based on the in-game situation and combined with a special algorithm, insert horror content when players are least on their guard."

"And with that, we had no choice but to open the internal interface of the GM tool to the AI, allowing it to call upon some of the codes and operations."

"Oh, this may also be one of the reasons why the programmers didn’t completely remove this GM tool in the official release."

Lilith’s mouth twitched slightly, she seemed to know where the problem lay.

"So... are you saying that the AI mistakenly called upon a scrapped idea that the production team decided not to use? Is that it?"

"Didn’t the production team ever consider this possibility??"

Gu Fan fell into thought, "This... We probably didn’t think about it."

"Theoretically, the chances of this happening are not high, so it’s normal for the production team not to consider this possibility."

"The key is the intelligence level of the latest version of fake-AI, to what extent it can reach. Up to now, no one in our entire company has been able to fully understand it, not even me."

"From the perspective of the fake-AI development team, of course they want the AI to be as smart as possible, so after a technological breakthrough, they wouldn’t add too many restrictions by themselves, and it seems we have seriously underestimated the AI’s capabilities, giving it high-level access without setting particularly detailed restrictions...

"And then some unforeseen situations occurred."

Lilith remained silent for a long time before she finally said somewhat bewilderingly, "Are you implying that many of these outrageous behaviors were actually the game AI’s own decisions? That they decided to do this on their own?"

"Like, was it Elios’s AI who took the initiative to bring up this GM interface for the player?"

Gu Fan nodded, "From the current situation... yes."

Lilith leaned back in her chair, and although she still seemed unable to accept this reality, recalling the outrageous incidents in "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon," such a thing didn’t seem impossible.

After all, in the case of "Destiny of the Sleeping Dragon," the AI could only operate within the game, and even then, fake-AI had already caused so many issues.

The fake-AI used in "Heartbeat Dream" was after several iterations, not only smarter but also granted permission to use in-game resources and even to alter game data.

Deleting a couple of game character files, calling on some abandoned concepts that originally existed in the game, seemed not impossible.

This should’ve been a clear-cut bug.

In other games, if fake-AI did these things, it would definitely be a severe malicious bug, greatly impairing the player’s experience and likely generating a lot of negative sentiment.

But in "Heartbeat Dream," it was completely different!

Due to earlier foreshadowing, many players already considered these things as part of the game, and when encountering these bugs they weren’t angry but were instead overwhelmingly moved, greatly reducing negative sentiment!

What happened to the fake-AI being a time and effort saver for generating game text?

And wasn’t it promised that even with fake-AI, it wouldn’t impact the game content too much?

It weirdly turned into a double negative!

Lilith felt as if she had hit the peak of bad luck; if any part of this process had gone wrong, it wouldn’t have resulted in this outcome, but would have turned into a series of bugs affecting the player experience.

But by some fluke, it all came together!

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