Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 528 - 511 Abruptly Ended

Chapter 528: Chapter 511 Abruptly Ended

Evening.

Lilith arrived at Gu Fan’s living room like a giant dragon inspecting its territory and began to earnestly survey the online feedback for "Star Plan."

"Phew, that was a close one, but no real danger, huh!"

It was evident from Lilith’s perspective that the negative emotions elicited by "Star Plan" showed signs of intense fluctuation from the outset.

This was determined by the game’s inherent traits.

It was essentially a production line-based construction simulation game; from this angle, for players who favored this mode, positive emotions were bound to outweigh the negative ones.

And there were primarily two sources of negative emotions in the early stages of the game:

One was players who were not very familiar with this type of game.

These players, having rarely played such games before, couldn’t derive much joy from organizing production lines or placing buildings; instead, they tended to get frustrated.

The reason they even entered the game was simply the reputation of Nitiandang, and initially, they should have been quick to leave.

But since it was a two-person game, dropping out hastily was not particularly friendly towards the other player, so these people had to hold their noses and keep playing.

Considering the cross-demographic reach of Nitiandang games, they indeed attracted a considerable number of casual players, thus contributing to a substantial amount of negative emotions.

The other source of negative emotions was due to coordination mishaps between players.

In the early stages when everyone was still getting the hang of the game, two players would easily find fault with each other, and naturally, negative emotions followed suit.

However, after a few hours, there was a sharp decline in negative emotions.

This slightly panicked Lilith.

The reason, of course, was that after the initial teething problems, many players started to coordinate more intuitively.

Players like Zhuge Jun and Hou Ji could collaborate effectively. When overcoming disasters and flying out of Comet, they were naturally able to gain a considerable amount of positive emotions.

However, Lilith’s panic did not last long because soon enough, there was a minor spike in negative emotions.

The signature event during this period was Instructor Ding’s "Comet Oath" incident.

After the first two phases of exploration, some top-tier players had already roughly figured out the gameplay.

Whereas previously, two people collaborated closely to pass levels more effectively, now the elite players were entertaining some cheeky ideas, given they could easily carry a less adept player through the game.

For example, could they successfully engineer a coup d’état as a governor?

The answer was yes!

Consequently, the little ships of friendship that were built through shared hardship capsized overnight.

Negative emotions surged anew.

In response, although Lilith was in a bit of a flap, she still proudly declared, "Everything is within my calculations!"

Gu Fan sat beside her, munching on fries and inquired, "President Li, Instructor Ding really did a great service this time, right?

"Can’t reward him officially, but how about something on the down-low?"

Lilith glared at him: "Reward? Reward my ass!

"He’s already caused me a lot of negative emotion before that I haven’t settled with him!

"This time he just bumbled his way into creating the ’Comet Oath’ show effect."

"Even without him, under the brilliant and mighty design of yours truly, Lilith, other players would inevitably fall into this trap.

"In any case, from this small indicator, we can nearly see the trend of negative emotion collection in ’Star Plan.’

"This time the situation is very promising!

"Unless... cough, cough, never mind, there is no unless!"

Although the game had only been online for a day, just as the game’s revenue on the first day could generally predict the trend for the following days, Lilith had also learned to analyze the subsequent negative emotion collection using the changes in negative emotions on the first day.

It could be assumed that the subsequent shifts in negative emotions for "Star Plan" would roughly follow a "high, low, high" pattern.

And as a large number of players fully grasped the gameplay, most of them capable of succeeding even while dragging along a lesser player, the real "Dark Forest" among players would arrive.

By that time, countless governors and heads of state would be scheming desperately against each other – the thought alone was thrilling.

Of course, this perfect plan hinged on one condition: the game itself mustn’t develop any more bizarre bugs.

...

"Hey, before we know it, it’s gotten late. Shouldn’t we head back to the dormitory?

"We can’t be pulling an all-nighter on the game, right? Although it really is quite fun, it would be a bit embarrassing to admit it."

In the internet cafe, Hou Ji checked the time; it was already 10:30 at night.

From the moment "Star Plan" officially lifted its embargo, they had been struggling here the entire time; they had failed twice but fortunately, after summarizing their experience and learning from their lessons, they finally saw the dawn of victory.

They hadn’t encountered an event like Instructor Ding’s "Luoshui Oath"; after all, the two were friends in reality, and their trust in each other was quite solid.

This also meant they had hopes of becoming among the few players to clear the game on the first day.

Zhuge Jun was still focused on his operation, "Don’t rush, we’ll reach the next planet right after flying out of the comet’s trail, and that’s when we’ll really show our stuff!"

On the spherical screen, the comet they had seen before was gone, replaced by a deep black void, like a black hole.

In reality, this wasn’t a black hole but represented outer space.

In "Star Plan," the subsequent content available to players varied depending on the ending.

For a "ruler usurpation" ending like Instructor Ding’s, the player playing the sovereign would be forced to stay on the original comet, and that’s where the game would end.

However, if the pair didn’t end up with the "ruler usurpation" ending, but instead, a normal ending where the sovereign and the ruling officers coexist, the ending scene would appear later.

Just as it was at this moment.

After successfully establishing an interstellar fleet, Zhuge Jun and Hou Ji left the comet, venturing into the vast cosmos in search of a new home.

Soon, after about two or three minutes of flight, they finally arrived at the dreamy habitable planet they’d been searching for.

From a distance, it was a fiery red planet.

Although it wasn’t the familiar blue, considering the game characters were silicon-based little people, this planet quite obviously met their survival needs more.

As the fleet landed on the planet’s surface, the spherical display naturally transformed to display the surface of this new planet.

"Don’t rush, give me ten more minutes to set up the first industrial zone, and then we can go," said Zhuge Jun, as he sped up his manipulations.

"Star Plan" was set to save automatically; if both players exited the game, the current session state would automatically be preserved and uploaded to the players’ cloud save.

They could pick up where they left off next time.

Hou Ji originally wanted to save and leave at this point but Zhuge Jun clearly didn’t want to; finally arriving at a new planet rich in resources was almost like having an unlimited resource cheat, and wouldn’t they enjoy that?

After playing the game for so long, they hadn’t really had much fun yet!

Even though Zhuge Jun and Hou Ji were well-acquainted and worked closely together, the resources on the comet were finite, and often, for just a small amount of material, they had to haul a long production line.

They couldn’t skip it, because lacking that bit of resource could mean not being able to fly away.

Now was different, the resources on this planet were far richer than on the comet; it was simply more joyous than mining.

Aren’t they about to conquer the universe?

With such a mood, Zhuge Jun began a grand construction plan; he had already laid out the framework for the first industrial zone and was starting to construct it.

If he hurried back to the dorm, fifteen minutes should be quick enough, so Zhuge Jun thought he still had time.

The rest could be saved and played slowly later on.

However, just as he was about to lay down a new production line, something unexpected happened.

He suddenly discovered he couldn’t control the screen!

Neither the mouse nor the touchscreen were of any use, and the spherical display gradually went dark with lines of text appearing.

And when the screen lit up again, it had reverted to replaying the construction on the comet.

"Hey! What’s going on here!" exclaimed Zhuge Jun, confused. How had they suddenly entered the ending animation?

Man, he had barely escaped the comet and hadn’t even started to have fun yet!

Was it already ending?

"Heavenly Games wouldn’t be this stupid, right? Not even letting players enjoy it a bit at the end?

"Wait, maybe the game could continue after playing this ending animation, right?"

With this last glimmer of hope, Zhuge Jun silently watched the entire ending animation.

Then, the game exited back to the lobby.

No save, no continuation!

Yes, the game session that Zhuge Jun and Hou Ji had worked so hard to clear was over just like that.

Although they could view the entire process, no further actions could be taken; it was as if it had become a specimen, mounted for display, untouchable.

Especially irksome was that watching the recording to the end would reveal the last building Zhuge Jun had placed.

It was all so well planned, but it stopped abruptly, without any warning.

"This is crazy!

"After getting this far, would it kill them to leave a permanent save to let players enjoy a bit!"

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.