One Sword to Heaven

Chapter 94 Interview with Professor Wedge Chen
In order not to spoil the taste of martial arts, the reality part and some important settings will be written at the beginning of each volume as a wedge. After all, this cannot be circumvented. A story with a beginning and an end needs to be able to pass from a logical level. For the ending, take the wedges of each volume as a little foreshadowing for the future ending.

“With the development of technology, more and more virtual game worlds are appearing in our lives, from the original Azeroth remake to the sandbox intelligent virtual world opened by The Elder Scrolls, and now more and more virtual game worlds are appearing in our lives. With various game worlds becoming more and more intelligent, many people have regarded virtual game worlds that can fully immerse their senses as part of their lives. Some people even think that those worlds really exist, and they have invested a lot of time and energy in this regard.

So, what is the charm of the virtual game world, and why do people become so crazy?In this issue, Lu Yu has invited the chief designer of this year's most popular online game "Xianwu Era", Professor Chen Mingchen, and his team members. "

The screens of classic games are played on the huge light curtain. After the narration is finished and countless bright lights are turned on, a place similar to a living room appears in front of you. There are several long sofas in the hall. A slender woman with bob hair was sitting on the sofa on the right. She turned her head to look at the light curtain behind, and said in a calm manner: "Looking at these game screens, if you are a little older, you will have some experience with online games." Those who must understand will definitely understand some of the questions in the narration just now.

In traditional online games more than ten years ago, people still sat in front of the computer, and the game screen pursued exquisiteness and beauty. Although this is good, it cannot be immersive after all.

Today, with the epoch-making progress of AR technology, people can not only bring a full range of senses into the game world, but more importantly, the development trend of online games today is to make the game world itself more real, just like those on the screen. The pictures are all full of real texture.

But just the advancement of technology and a more realistic experience can make thousands of people crazy, or even addicted? "

This bob-haired, articulate woman is Lu Yu, the host of this talk show. When she said this, she paused, then stood up and applauded: "Let me welcome Professor Chen and his assistants, I hope they Today will bring some answers."

With the sound of applause, I saw a gray-haired old man with a hunchback leading several young men and women into the living room. After a few people went to the sofa on the left to greet the audience present, Lu Yu stretched out his hand Said: "Professor Chen, please sit down."

The old man took the lead and sat on one sofa alone, while several other young men and women squeezed together on another sofa. After the host and guests were all seated, Lu Yu, the host, immediately went straight to the point, saying: " Xianwu Era is the most popular game this year, bar none. According to the latest data released by the authoritative website ARI, Xianwu Era has had a maximum number of online users of 700 million since its official operation two months ago, and the average number of online users in 24 hours has also reached 300 million. Breaking through [-] million, ranking first in the world, and becoming the first phenomenon-level domestic independent game in the past five years, then I would like to ask Professor Chen why Xianwu Jiyuan achieved such a great success?"

Facing Lu Yu's question, the old man looked calm and calm, and said slowly: "The secret of success is only two words, hard work."

"After nearly 20 years of development of online games, from the very beginning Legendary, Millennium, World of Warcraft games, to a series of games after entering the virtual game world, the forms of online games are constantly changing, but they can never escape from the barriers. People always pursue With fresh content, most people will choose to leave once they cannot go further in the game and get more experience. After all, there are only a few people who place their feelings on it, and this point cannot be changed even in the current virtual age.

The Xianwu Era completely breaks the tradition, giving players the strongest experience signal from the very beginning, that is, a complete time travel! "

Hearing these words, Lu Yu took up the conversation very well, and said: "I believe everyone is familiar with time travel. It was born in Internet literature more than ten years ago, and later it is often seen in film and television works. Even if it is embedded in the concept of online games It is not uncommon, so what is unique about the Xianwu Era?"

"Restore the most authentic feelings!"

The old man answered confidently, and then said: "We have borrowed a lot of online literature, and finally determined that there are only two functions for players in the game world, self-information status templates and experience point acquisition and distribution."

Lu Yu grasped the key point in an instant, and said, "Is there no friend system, mailbox, chat channel, etc.? Wouldn't it be very inconvenient for players to communicate with each other?"

The old man waved his hand and said: "Not at all. After entering the game world, the player is like a traveler. The acquisition of self-information status templates and experience is like a golden finger for them. Except for these, there is no doubt that there will be no difference with the real world. In traditional online games, there is a name on the head, there is no friend system, and there are no regional chat channels for everyone to communicate with each other, and everything that hinders real feelings does not exist!"

Speaking of this, a young man with glasses next to the old man took the conversation and said: "Actually, I don't think this will cause communication barriers. After all, today is a diverse society. In addition to online activities, players also have offline time. , if they really like Xianwu Era, they can communicate through the forum, and even our company has launched a social software "Xiayou" specially for players to communicate. At present, the registered users of this social software have exceeded 100 million, and it is completely in accordance with reality. It is very convenient to communicate with the dual identity determination system in the game."

The young man showed off a wave of company product advertisements, Lu Yu nodded with a smile, and said, "Indeed, if you really like something and are willing to spend your heart and energy on it, there is nothing wrong with adding a social software on your phone.

Let's get back to the topic. As Professor Chen said, Xianwu Era is based on the most authentic feelings and strives to create a real time-travel experience. But will this increase the difficulty of the game and lose some players? "

"It is impossible for a game to be comprehensive. Just like today's highly developed technology, poorly made web games and mobile games still exist, and there are still consumer groups. Why? Because they are for fast consumption, giving players pleasure quickly, and then killing time. After all, no matter how good the virtual game world is, you will definitely not be able to connect to the game world during working hours."

During the old man's words, he was extremely disdainful of the web games and mobile games that have been inherited from more than ten years ago. Seeing this, Lu Yu quickly changed the subject and said: "Then the Xianwu Era has other unique features besides the completely simulated time travel setting." ?"

The old man glanced at the young people beside him, and immediately a young woman said: "We have completely canceled the task setting, or we have changed the trigger and completion mode of the task.

In traditional online games, the generation of tasks is repetitive and traceable. Once generated, corresponding rewards will be given according to the completion progress. However, in Xianwu Era, there are no fixed and repeatable tasks. They can only be generated when special events occur, such as If the sect is attacked, or if you interact emotionally with the NPC to a certain extent, the other party will give you some tasks.

It can be said that there is no concept of missions in Xianwu Era, but in fact, every NPC may trigger missions. There are various ways to trigger missions, and there are also great fluctuations in the acquisition of rewards. Players can fight for themselves, Such as bargaining, increasing payment, etc. in order to obtain greater returns, this method naturally improves the real experience, and also satisfies the psychological needs of players for adventures.

However, the greater the reward, the higher the difficulty of the task, so here we still ask players to do what they can, not to be dazzled by the expected rich rewards, but also to increase the degree of recognition, after all, in our game world There are some highly intelligent NPCs with very high intelligence, even possessing subjective initiative, and will imitate players, but they can deceive people. "

"Wow."

Lu Yu exclaimed, and said with disbelief on his face: "It's the first time I've heard that the NPC in the game will have such high intelligence and will cheat. Is this a program setting, or is it an NPC?" self-awareness?"

There was doubt in Lu Yu's words. The old man smiled lightly and said: "I am engaged in the research and development of digital intelligent life. I met Mr. Wen Shiming, the president of Yunwang Technology, by a coincidence a few years ago. Some common views on intelligent life, I will later become the chief designer of Xianwu Era.

Let's put it this way, whether it is in the intelligence performance of high-end NPCs or the average intelligence performance of NPCs, Xianwu Era is much higher than any game today. As the main body of the game world, that is, the main brain, you can visit it in the future. Now, its volume is as high as a three-story building, and in order to carry huge data, we have nearly [-] large-scale machine rooms across the country, and even in order to load the data of some high-end intelligent NPCs, we also have more than a dozen dedicated unit room and research room.

Ms. Lu may not have a deep understanding of digital intelligent life. In today's technological environment, as long as there are enough devices to support it, it is not difficult for large-scale composite applications to produce behaviors similar to autonomous consciousness under their own rules and logic. . "

"I really don't know much about this aspect, so from my perspective as an ordinary player, if I am deceived by an NPC in the game and then killed, will I feel angry and feel that I have been fooled?"

Lu Yu launched a counterattack from another aspect, but the old man smiled slightly and said, "If you really think that you have traveled through time, then of course you won't."

But after all, it's not a real time travel, it's just a game world!
Lu Yu really wanted to mess around like this, but felt that it was meaningless, so he immediately changed the subject: "Can Professor Chen popularize the division of NPCs in the Xianwu Era?"

"Generally speaking, the stronger the NPC in Xianwu Era, the more intelligent it is, especially the NPCs that exist like bosses in traditional online games have even higher intelligence than ordinary people.

But in order to make it easier for everyone to get started with the game, we have set up some low-level simple and intelligent NPCs in the early stage. In game terms, they are low-level experience cannon fodder monsters, and the main world program of the game will periodically Repair these low-level experience cannon fodder monsters, commonly known as refresh, but this frequency is very low, just to satisfy newcomers who are new to the game. Improve your own game character.

If it is divided according to the level of strength, we have added templates to NPCs of different grades, such as cannon fodder templates for low-level experience monsters, ordinary templates for ordinary people in the world and ordinary disciples of various sects, elite templates for some masters, and even famous NPC templates. The hero's knight template and so on.

These templates correspond to other games and can be regarded as common monsters, silver hero monsters, sub-elite monsters, elite monsters, and even world boss levels.But the difference is that different templates reflect not only combat performance and intelligence, but more importantly, NPCs can use this template to improve themselves. The more advanced the template, the more clearly NPC can use it to see its own training status, etc.

Although the player cannot see the template of the NPC, after understanding it, combined with the experience in the game and getting along with the NPC, he can slowly summarize the rules, which is more helpful to understand the game world, so as to know how to deal with different NPCs.

But this is not absolute. "

Lu Yu was a little confused, so he couldn't help but said, "I don't know what Professor Chen means by not being absolute?"

"Because I have implanted the X program I developed in a considerable number of low- and middle-level NPCs, which I call life activation. This is a variable program with great autonomy, and it is released for the possible harvest of intelligent life.

Just like fertilization, men emit hundreds of millions of sperm at that moment. As long as one implants in the bed, a life can be obtained. The X program can be regarded as sperm, and the game world of Xianwu Era can be regarded as a child. Palace, once there is an X program to make a qualitative change in the NPC, it may slowly breed a real and complete digital intelligent life in this world.

From the current point of view, the performance of the X program far exceeds that of human sperm. We have discovered thousands of autonomous variants. These variants will show intelligence and combat performance that surpass their own intelligent settings and attached templates. For this reason, We will make some corrections. Even if their strength is still low, we will add more advanced templates for them. We call this super body. For players, they may have a powerful combat power beyond the realm itself. "

Lu Yu listened very carefully, and did not feel shy at all because of Professor Chen's straightforwardness. Instead, he grasped a key point and said: "Professor Chen obviously attaches great importance to the development of intelligent life, but the player is in this world. Aren't these super bodies dangerous? Because you mentioned the existence of experience points before, then these super bodies that may grow into intelligent life forms are naturally the hunting targets of players, or can these super bodies also be resurrected?"

"I have always believed that emotional interaction with real life, cognitive discrimination and other behaviors are more conducive to the breeding and growth of intelligent life, and can make intelligent life more complete. At the beginning, Mr. Wen and I had such a consensus , I will agree to be the chief designer of Xianwu Era.

As for the impossibility of resurrection, the gestation process of life is irreversible. This is a natural rule, and digital intelligent life also needs to obey. Once their consciousness dies, even if we refresh their main program, what will be resurrected is just a bunch of digital programs That's it, not a life in conception anymore.

But you have heard before that these highly intelligent NPCs have deception or disguise behavior, that is to say, these super bodies have a strong sense of survival crisis, and they will try their best to survive, and disguise is just one of their means. one.

Of course, without violating the objective rules of the game world, we will also provide certain guarantees for them. One aspect is to correct the templates that are added. In addition, we will implant Y at the right time for the super-body that has truly awakened self-awareness. program. "

Lu Yu was completely attracted by the concept of intelligent life described by Professor Chen, and quickly asked, "What is Program Y?"

"The creativity and main rules of the world of Xianwu Era are set by our team, but more rules, such as the creation of martial arts, the conscious behavior of most NPCs, etc. The self-rule logic of the program is calculated little by little.

Let's put it this way, from the player's point of view, martial arts may be a skill that is attached to oneself, but for the NPCs in the game world, they determine the rules through specific digital program communication, that is to say, they practice martial arts They are really practicing bit by bit, because that is their rule.

It's a pity about this point, after all, today's technology is still unable to allow players to truly practice in the game world. After all, the rules of the game world are completely different, even though it looks similar to the real world in many ways, but That's just the performance of number crunching.

In fact, it is difficult for players to understand the rules of the game world itself, even if they understand it, they cannot use it, because it requires a huge amount of calculation, so this is also a bottleneck and limitation that online games are facing today.

Speaking of program Y, program Y is actually the deduction and computing power used by the mastermind in the calculation of the rule of creating martial arts. The computing power of the mastermind.

As for the NPCs implanted with the X program, once they have self-awareness and enter the super-body stage, we will give them an independent unit as a data carrier, and the X program itself is a variable program, and the behavior that NPCs can do is unpredictable. After realizing it, the functions displayed in the game may have self-created martial arts, or the use of rules, and the Y program is actually an amplifier of this aspect, making them more capable of self-created martial arts, and can have a deeper understanding and understanding. Apply the rules, that's the best protection we can give them. "

Lu Yu couldn't help laughing when he heard this, and said, "Can I understand that this is cheating for Super Body? This is the first time I've heard of cheating for NPCs."

"No. This is just to give Super Physical Energy a chance to complete a complete transformation and become a real digital intelligent life, a real life form!"

Professor Chen answered seriously, and Lu Yu couldn't help being awed when he saw it, and asked softly: "Then what does Professor Chen think is a real living body?"

Professor Chen's eyes sparkled, and he said decisively: "Have a soul!"

(End of this chapter)