Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 540 - 523: Was It All Just to Annoy the Players?

Chapter 540: Chapter 523: Was It All Just to Annoy the Players?

At first, Gan Di thought it was some special circumstance, or perhaps he triggered a hidden mechanism that caused the game time on the new planet to extend?

But he patiently waited; ten minutes passed, then half an hour.

There was still no sign of the game suddenly ending!

Logically, this was already unreasonable because players had tried before, no matter how hard they worked to compress the game time on Comet, the game on the new planet would inevitably end in about 10 to 20 minutes.

But now, it had naturally exceeded half an hour.

The Governor players who were watching were also baffled.

"Bro, you must have cheated!"

Clearly, the continuous absurd events led him to make a flawed judgment about this game. Without knowing the cause and effect, seeing such an absurd situation, he could only explain it as "cheating."

Gan Di quickly said, "No, really, I haven’t, it’s just that I might have triggered some special mechanism before..."

However, before Gan Di could explain in detail, the other player had already skedaddled.

"Bro, I’m bailing first! If you get banned for cheating, don’t drag me into it!"

Gan Di was speechless; when had Nitiandang ever banned anyone in a single-player game?

But on second thought, the other player’s concerns were not unreasonable, after all, "Star Plan" was not a purely single-player game; it was for two players networking.

Worrying about a ban was also reasonable.

However, Gan Di was very clear that he hadn’t cheated, and it wasn’t even clear whether this could be considered exploiting a bug.

It looked more like a mechanism inherent in the game itself.

The live chat became more lively because creating an unlimited save was a first.

Gan Di quickly did a few things.

Firstly, he found a few stream buddies, matched into the game, then left the game, making sure to back up this save.

As long as you enter a game once, that save is stored, and you can use it later to match games or invite other players, effectively achieving the purpose of spreading the save.

Of course, Gan Di also found the corresponding save file in the game’s root directory and saved it.

After that, he simultaneously hung up with stream buddies to see how long this save could last and reviewed his own operations.

He wanted to confirm which part caused the issue, and why the game still hadn’t settled.

"The root cause should be the Governor’s idle state, while I kept clicking on the two lines of Public Opinion Technology Points.

"After searching online cases, it seems others have clicked on Public Opinion Technology Points too, but not comprehensively, and often only one line, so the troublemakers just caused trouble without showing clear constructiveness.

"At the moment, it’s uncertain whether it’s due to the number of points clicked, or because the Governor remained idle that a certain bug—no, a special mechanism was triggered.

"This point still requires comparative experiments and continuous verification.

"However, it’s clear that not having a game settlement seems to be somewhat related to the erratic intelligence of the Silicon-based dwarves.

"Because I clearly remember, when leaving Comet, those dwarves seemed to still be finding their own work.

"I can’t confirm now, but if I use special technical means to look..."

Gan Di prepared to verify his speculations one by one.

The first thing to verify was why the game had not ended.

Since you can’t go back to Comet after flying to a new planet due to the game mechanics, achieving this required some technical means.

Fortunately, Gan Di’s own technical skills were solid, and he was a mod creator, so it didn’t take much effort.

He quickly cracked the game’s restrictions and moved the camera back to Comet.

Interestingly, the new planet and Comet, within the game engine, were actually very close; it was just that during the fleet migration, the game made a special shuttle animation and a long period of time, creating the illusion that "the two planets are far apart."

After seeing the situation on Comet, Gan Di’s speculation was confirmed.

Indeed, the Silicon-based dwarves on Comet were still active.

Although the resources on Comet had been completely depleted, the problem was that there were ships that regularly went to nearby planets to collect minerals, and these ships would periodically bring back a batch of new minerals.

The quantity was not much, but it was enough to maintain some production lines for a while.

"So that’s it. Perhaps this is where the problem lies?"

Gan Di suddenly realized.

Comparing two different scenarios:

Previously, when players flew to a new planet, Comet actually became unmanned. As a result, these spaceships were either taken away or no longer took off.

The biggest difference now was that, since these Silicon-based dwarves had a certain degree of autonomy, they would spontaneously maintain the neglected production lines.

Because there were fewer people, the necessary supplies for survival were also less.

Basic supplies could be brought in from other planets with a small number of spaceships; and during extreme cold or heat, the protective facilities left over from before were sufficient to keep this small group of people alive.

With this in mind, Gan Di made a clear inference.

"I get it!

"So the game’s forced ending mechanism is, no more production activity on Comet?"

"But why set up a mechanism like this? It’s so strange!"

Gan Di was somewhat puzzled. From the current situation, it did indeed seem likely by this design, but from a design philosophy perspective, it didn’t make much sense.

If the officials just wanted to enforce the end of the game, why not settle the scores at the moment of entering the new planet?

Why go the extra mile and use the production stop on Comet as a prerequisite condition for the game’s settlement?

Thinking it over, there was only one advantage to this:

The timing of the game’s settlement would be quite random, unpredictable, and also difficult to ascertain the real reason for the settlement.

Although unpacking would solve all problems, such a mechanism could be buried very deep, creating major challenges for the big shots capable of unpacking to dig out, and they might not be willing to bother.

Or say, even if it would inevitably be unpacked, doing so could greatly prolong the time it takes for players to discover the truth.

Besides, this approach could show a strong sense of randomness.

Players would find that sometimes more resources left on Comet meant a later settlement, sometimes fewer resources also meant a later settlement; it seems related, but often there would be completely different anomalies.

This would greatly prolong the time they took to find the issue, and during this process, the frequency of being caught off guard by the ending would increase significantly.

But then...

What’s the point of this?

Isn’t it just to make the players break down a few more times?

Gan Di scratched his head, feeling a bit stuck at this point in his reasoning.

However, he didn’t care too much. In the gaming industry, there are many designs that seem pointless on the surface; some might indeed be meaningless or perhaps just intended to bury an Easter egg.

Like with Star Plan, using Comet’s standstill as the point of settlement might simply be due to some symbolic significance, right?

For example, "The standstill of the home planet symbolizes the Silicon-based dwarves’ civilization formally transitioning from a Comet civilization to a space civilization"?

This reason looked quite plausible!

So Gan Di decided not to dwell on this issue and instead pondered another: If the non-settlement mechanism was triggered by the autonomous actions of the Silicon-based dwarves, then why would the Silicon-based dwarves act on their own?

Analyzing the current situation, even if you don’t follow Gan Di’s way of allocating points, if you simultaneously select Public Opinion Technology Points from both technology trees or just from one, the Silicon-based dwarves would still exhibit a certain degree of initiative.

But this initiative depended on the situation.

If the Governor player took the game seriously and built earnestly, then this initiative often manifested as a destructive force.

This was easy to understand.

The Governor had built well, and suddenly the Silicon-based dwarves had their own ideas, altering the production line or constructing a new building. Even if these actions were well-intentioned, they would only cause chaos.

But what if the Governor stopped functioning?

What if the Silicon-based dwarves wanted to insert an unnecessary part into the production line, but there were no production lines on the map at all?

Wouldn’t they have to build a production line first?

This meant that to achieve the effect of "inserting parts into the production line" or "building structures outside of the player’s planning," the intelligence of the Silicon-based dwarves first had to reach a certain level.

Without enough smarts, they couldn’t even cause trouble.

But if they were too smart, they would end up like now. The Silicon-based dwarves had the capacity to build, and when the Governor slacked off, their "troublemaking ability" would collapse into "constructive ability."

After a round of analysis, Gan Di came to a somewhat surprising conclusion.

"The subjective initiative of the Silicon-based dwarves, it couldn’t also be just to annoy the players, could it?"