I will make this game even more like our world

Andrew and I took up a large-scale project. We paid a lot, but the task was not easy - the customer wanted us to do something like the Sims real life simulator, but much cooler. Imagine the good old Sims, only with artificial intelligence, self-study and gameplay so close to reality that if we did not have the opportunity to attract third-party developers with our ready-made ideas, this project would take us forever to implement. But the rich sponsor (we even joked that it was probably the government of one large and densely populated country decided to please its citizens with a new MMORPG) did not spare money - we had everything: a farm of supercomputers, access to any artificial intelligence algorithms developed by scientists from around the world, a team of developers, project managers, errand boys and even your own clown (Andrew insisted that there be a clown in the rest room) and if something happens, we could easily buy a couple of other three companies developing boiling the game with a staff of one thousand people in each staff. We had it all! Everything except time.



We were tasked to release the game in production a maximum of two weeks. As the customer explained to us, the previous contractor took up the development a year ago, but did not cope with the task in due time. The project was in such a state that it was extremely difficult to sort it out and not go crazy. And the project was entrusted to us.



Yes, I do not argue that we are the real gurus in game devs, that no one but us and all that. And we were paid a lot of money. I have not seen so much money in my life, even in a dream. In general, we simply could not refuse this project. For cultural and ethical reasons. If everything worked out, we would become known around the world as the most creative developers of computer games, besides working only for amounts with a large number of zeros at the end. But, unfortunately, everything turned out quite differently, now I am sitting in a room with soft white walls, completely without windows, and I thank the orderly for allowing me to draw a little with marker pens. Draw with damn markers!

')

Of course, I'm not going to draw anything, but my only chance to get out of the mental hospital is to tell everything as it really was. I have a couple of sheets of paper, orange and blue felt-tip pen and a lot of free time, so, perhaps, I'll start my story.



The first day.



Dealing with the project was fun! The previous developer screwed the game from the space simulator to the game, so everything was fine with the Universe. Only for beauty, a couple of changes were made - we pushed the planets, where we needed it and where it was not necessary to put satellites and moons, for greater beauty we created giant asteroids periodically flying into the inhabited part of space. Andrew wanted to program the atmosphere and geophysical data on all the planets of the solar system as habitable virtual characters of our game, but I said that he should not waste time on this. They entrusted the generation of characteristics to a random number generator. The result was a full seam - where the nitrate rains, where the air consists of sulfur oxide, but, in general, it suited us.



Finally, we focused on the main gaming planet-location, on which life will exist. The physics and chemistry of processes was transferred from real life, but with reservations. Algorithms are too complex, we had to simplify, because even our mainframes do not have such processing power of game processes. It's good that the game turned out to be four-dimensional, it greatly simplified our lives and calculations. So far we have worked well.



Second day.



Andrew designed the characters. The characters were created in our image and likeness, but it seemed to me not interesting. The second part of the work, namely, the colonization of the planet by animals, was performed by me, and here I came off to the fullest. Have you ever seen giant reptiles, people covered from head to foot with white hair, or lions with a human head? Or girls whose bottom ends with a fish tail? Well, in general, I fantasized to fame. And that was my little secret. Andrew thought that there was nothing in the game except for project animals, so I knew for sure that he would not appreciate my joke. And I changed the color of the skin of some characters to yellow and even black. Shit it turned out! In the end, my chimeras can be removed in the release, or with the subsequent update.



Third day.



It is time to realize the possibilities of artificial intelligence and self-study. Since the game included a division of characters according to gender, Andrew took up designing intelligence and reflexive psychological functions of a male character, which I named Adam, in honor of the monkey from my favorite cartoon. I designed the female character based on the work of Andrew. Slightly changed the algorithms of the artificial mind of the male character, increased the intuition, reduced the logic, in general, changed the variables and watched what happened. At first, something came out between the intelligence of an ordinary person and the mind of my guinea pig Eve. After some time, the result completely suited me, and we switched to programming social connections and the interaction between characters and animals.



Day four.



Launched the game world. Began to test the interaction of artificial intelligence among themselves, without attracting players. The map was randomly populated by characters of both sexes, and, depending on the natural conditions and the amount of material resources, the population of characters in certain locations of the planet either disappeared completely or multiplied very quickly. And since many of the skills for such a short period of time in this population simply did not form, the population also quickly died, or from hunger, when all the berries are eaten, and what to do with coconuts is still not clear, or from a lack of intelligence in principle. For example, some characters could hunt an elephant, having only fists from a weapon, or freeze from the cold, then when a tree was set on fire next to it.



Fifth day.



Having fixed the flaws in artificial intelligence, Andrew and I finally decided to wear a virtual reality costume and become the first gamers who could plunge into the game with their heads. Andrew decided to approach the creation of his character very carefully - by scanning himself with a 3D scanner, he translated the textures into the game, thereby obtaining his full copy. A bearded uncle with long hair in a white T-shirt and light gray trousers girdled with a thin leather belt looked good against the background of the already started to develop characters with artificial intelligence, who walked in tatters of approximately the same style as Andrew. I also scanned myself with a 3D scanner, but I decided that this was not enough, so instead of my textures, I pulled a goat texture onto my character’s head. It turned out really funny - heavy shoes, black jeans, a spiked belt, a black T-shirt with the logo of my favorite rock band, in which two letters R and T are intertwined ... and shiny eyes on a goat's face. Beauty!



Running among the characters with artificial intelligence, I suddenly realized that they were absolutely sad. Despite the fact that the server has already been launched for the second day, which in the game world is equal to a couple of hundreds of years, and the self-study of artificial intelligence is in full swing, the game characters have not learned even half of what a three-year-old child can do. But a three-year-old child himself can close advertising on a tablet. He showed them how to make fire, and most importantly, what to do with it later. It has become much more interesting.



Andrew noticed that characters with artificial intelligence are dying mainly because of non-observance of elementary rules. They eat carrion, live in unsanitary conditions, copulate indiscriminately, causing a terrible overcrowding, and subsequently hunger. Without putting these rules hard in the artificial intelligence at the development stage, Andrew decided to train the characters by directly interacting with them. For a good conversation, the characters sort of learned about a dozen elementary rules. And they even wrote them down on some kind of stone.



Spoken language, by the way, although it was registered in the algorithm of the game, but the characters can master it only at a certain stage of development. The fact that they did it, says a good progress.



But suddenly, corrections from the customer came in the technical specifications for the game. The view of the planet should be redone, making it not so much like a geographical globe. It is also necessary to make changes in the spoken language - the language of each population should differ. A brilliant idea - in order for live players to interact with characters, it will be necessary to “learn” the language of each population. Naturally for game currency. Not bad. Of course, we took into account all the wishes of the customer, especially the changes in the appearance of the game planet. For this, we had to arrange a small flood on the planet, thereby outwardly greatly changing the outlines of the continents. But they were busy with the spoken language for a long time - after the populations of characters located in neighboring locations stopped understanding each other, there was a wild confusion in social interaction, and the development of populations in general was going much slower now.



We decided that we need to increase server rates, and for each real-time day, more than half of the millennium will pass in the game world. Then fix it. In the meantime, come down and so.



The sixth day.



During the time that Andrew and I slept and had dreams, the game world evolved quite well. True, the shoals were also discovered - suddenly we were caught by characters with artificial intelligence, which I changed the skin color for fun. There were so many of them that it was no longer possible to just exclude them from the game. It was also impossible to repaint them back: the characters in their social relations were now guided not only by gender differences, but also by the pigmentation of the skin of representatives of another population. By removing pigmentation, we would break down the causal logical chains that have already been developed in almost all representatives of characters with artificial intelligence. Now you have to get out in front of the customer, but I think that everything will cost. In the end, everything can always be attributed to the evolution and influence of climatic conditions on character development in the game world. It would not be bad, by the way, to prove it with something else, but theoretically it wouldn’t be good for me.



After a couple of hours of playing on our faces under the virtual reality suit, it was possible to discern the smiles of idiots who finally made the house of cubes themselves. The game really worked, artificial intelligence met all our expectations!



Andrew teleported between locations, and how he could participate in the gameplay. With the admin console in general, it is much more interesting to play than without it - Andrew easily and naturally increased the yield of the fields and gardens of the characters he liked. And for those who really complained about life, Andrew gave all the awesome stuff - a self-tidied tablecloth, boots, walkers, endowed the fish with speech and the ability to fulfill desires, and, suddenly, made rain of semolina! The game world before launching into production will still be wipe. You can have fun as you like.



I also did not miss my opportunity to mock artificial intelligence: my character with a goat's head now and then interfered with the boring and monotonous computer simulation of the real-unreal world. For example, I endowed some characters with the ability to fly on household items - brooms and carpets. And even taught to brew beer.



So that the rest of the characters do not have a heightened interest in my person, I must take the word “non-disclosure” from everyone who received a bun from me, intimidating poor artificial intelligence by taking his soul. But Andrew was not lucky - the fame of his deeds spread to all the continents, and many of the characters just saw him, immediately asked to reveal a miracle, make them rich, great warriors and even give birth to a child from him. And those who have never seen Andrew, still asked him for the benefits of real-virtual, rolling his eyes to the sky and quietly whispering their wishes, hoping that he would hear.



We are very quickly tired of doing something for others, so we changed the appearance of our characters. This time, Andrew created the image of a humanoid elephant with four arms, and I decided to stay a bit in my human form.



Lowering the server's rates to normal, we again plunged into the virtual world we created, and were amazed at how much it resembled our own. Even the cultural values ​​in the game world were so similar to the values ​​of the real world, instead of pride for our common creation, I was suddenly seized by incomprehensible fear ... Andrew decided that everything was going as planned, and offered to go home, take a good sleep and with new forces take up Finishing the project, but tomorrow.



I told Andrew that I would not go home, but I would spend the night in the rest room, on the second floor. Waving a hand at me, Andrew left me in splendid isolation. The rest of the staff had long since gone home, for the time was already past midnight. Reaching the rest room, I fell flat on the bed and instantly passed out.



Seventh day.



I woke up from a nightmare. I saw myself standing in a puff of smoke, and at my feet lay a woman in a black dress, and loudly calling me by name. Her voice could be clearly heard in my head, which ordered me to appear. Even when I woke up, I could not get rid of this voice, he did not give me rest. My head started to hurt, circles swam before my eyes, and, not understanding why, I got up and walked towards the virtual reality hall. And then I lost consciousness.



I woke up from the smell of acrid smoke. Opening my eyes, I saw the very woman who called me in a dream. We were in a room with soot-black walls, on which the letters R and T intertwined with each other were painted with red and long burning candles around me. A woman came up to me, and calling me by name again, looking into my eyes, whispered: “Why did you create this world? Why do we suffer from wars and famines? Why does most of the world die in poverty, and rich villains live happily ever after? ”



Before my eyes opened the navigation map of the game world, where red dots all over the planet began to flash by themselves. Choosing one of them, I saw the terrible consequences of a forest fire. At another point on the game map the plague was atrocious, at the third point from the city there was nothing left but melted walls ...



And then I lost consciousness again.



Epilogue.



I woke up in the ward with white soft walls, with my hands tied behind my back. When the nurse noticed that I opened my eyes, she immediately left the room without saying a word. Then came Andrew.



“What found you, friend?” Yesterday you destroyed all the results of our collaboration. You destroyed the mainframe with a fire extinguisher, you set fire to the storage system using paper documents relating to our project as brushwood. You could even remove most of the information, as well as algorithms of artificial intelligence.



I tried to answer him, but I could not open my mouth.



- Don't even try to say anything now. Anyway, you can't. The guards could not stop you, so they injected you with several syringes with relaxants. Yes Yes. Some. More precisely six. You even after three injections showed wild stubbornness.



“I don’t know what found you all the same, but I think it will be good for you to spend a couple of months under the supervision of doctors,” Andrew continued, “And I have to upset you.” With you broke the contract. But I was again offered to take on this project, so wish me luck. I will make this game even more like our world.



“Sorry, Falandh, I must go.” Get well soon.