Reborn America, this is my time

Chapter 90 This is AI!

"Uh...Evelyn, you know, I'm not tech-savvy, so can you make things a little more clear?"

Ethan waved his hands, wanting to know more.

"Okay, then I'll tell you at the most basic level."

Evelyn shook the creative draft in her hand, turned it to the first page, pointed to the second paragraph above and said, "Ethan, according to your idea, "Pac-Man" is an unlimited game. A maze chase kind of game, right?"

"Yes." Ethan nodded and said, "The basic gameplay of the game is to control the protagonist elf in the game and eat all the beans hidden in the maze while avoiding the pursuit of the four ghosts. This goal is considered a pass.”

"The advanced gameplay is that there will be flashing little beans in the four corners of the maze. If the protagonist eats them, he will be able to gain the ability not to be afraid of ghosts, and at the same time, the ghosts will also eat ghosts." If they feel something, they will run away in fear to avoid the protagonist's pursuit, and because of fear, their actions will become very slow."

"The more advanced gameplay is that after the ghost is eaten, it will return to the haunted house in the middle for rebirth."

"These three points are all my ideas, so, is my idea too difficult?"

"But what we are doing this time is definitely no longer a board game, because we have MOS 6502."

Ethan feels that the biggest problem with the game "Pac-Man" is that it is separated from the most basic physical feedback.

It cannot use the most basic photoelectric feedback to present game effects like "Snake".

However, there is no way to do this, because with the development of the video game industry, the content of the game is becoming more and more complex, and the product of the CPU will definitely enter the field of game production. To put it inappropriately, the electronic arcade machine is actually a personal computer.

When the rolling historical trend is irresistible, Ethan will naturally choose to embrace it actively. Compared with all game companies on the market, he has a unique advantage, that is, they have a MOS 6800 that can rival Motorola 6502 !

When a game company has special hardware supply...

Ethan couldn't think of how else he could lose!
I have ideas, I have technology, I have special codes and hardware...

Isn't this slapping all colleagues?

But now, before he even brandished his little leather whip to whip his friends, Evelyn told him that this game had a bug?

How could he accept such a thing?
And when he said what was on his mind with a Gatling-like speed of speech and a tone full of doubts and surprises, Evelyn also waved her hands and said helplessly: "Okay—Ethan—I know you are in a hurry. , but don't rush—"

"I know that this game needs MOS 6502 to make, and I am ready to accept the challenge, so please recall carefully what I just told you? What I said is that your design does not meet The laws of binary."

"And the meaning of this sentence..."

"Let me explain to you this way, the binary carry rule is every two carries one."

"1 is 1 in binary, but 2 is not 2, but 10, and so on, 3 is 11, 4 is 100... ^
"In this case, how many can MOS 6502 count?"

"Up to 255."

"Because he's 8-bit."

"The meaning of 8 bits is very simple. You can imagine that there are eight grids in front of you. Each grid can only be represented by 0 or 1. In this case, their largest display number is 1111, 1111, which is decimal. 255."

"If one more 1 is added, the data will overflow."

"And if one unit is used to represent 1 level, then this game can only achieve 255 levels, and there is no infinity as you said."

"So, it is impossible to make "Pac-Man" and "Snake" infinitely playable."

"Because the MOS 6502 CPU has an upper limit."

"Do you understand what I mean?"

Evelyn flicked the creative paper written by Ethan with her slender fingers.

When the crisp clicking sound appeared, Ethan realized that it wasn't that the game couldn't be done, but that the infinite loop in the game couldn't be done!

And this kind of thing for him...

Trifles!
If you can't do an infinite loop, then don't do it!

After all, in this world, there is no game that can make people go on infinitely!

Breath of the Wild was sticky enough, but it still died overnight after Tears of the Kingdom came out.

After all, that kind of assembling and building is quite fun.

Therefore, as long as a game can make people feel interesting for a period of time, it is already the greatest success.

"This matter is not important. Since MOS 6502 has a limit, then we will achieve the upper limit of this chip."

"We do our best where we can, and leave the rest to the world."

There was a hint of lightness in Ethan's words.

Now that the game is made, all problems are not a problem.

However, his words made Evelyn close her eyes suddenly.

After opening it again for a while, her face was covered with a wry smile.

"Oh Ethan, do you know how much work your decision means?"

"255 levels, if I design it by myself, it may take a year."

"Also, this is not the most important thing, the most important thing is the four ghosts."

"Those four will chase the player's ghost in different styles."

"When designing these four ghosts, you think your ideas are very powerful, right? Yes, I admit it. But I want to tell you that this game is not as simple as "Snake". To make the route selection of each ghost random, we have to write the codes of the four ghosts separately, so that they have different thinking, and then, when the protagonist eats the invincible bean, the four ghosts have to use the same detection code to make sure they're going from pursuit mode to avoidance mode..."

"For this..."

"Do you know what technology is involved in this?"

"To use the most popular discourse in the scientific community at the moment, this is artificial intelligence."

'What The Fuck! '

Ethan was shocked!

Because he never expected that the development of the game "Pac-Man" would be so difficult?

"AI?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yeah~AI~" Evelyn nodded with a smile.

When the words of reconfirmation appeared, Ethan only felt his eyes go dark.

Because at this moment, he is not sure whether this game can be made.

"Pac-Man" designed to AI?

This special code is a bit outrageous!
You know, when he traveled, AI was an industry that hadn't been thoroughly researched!

ChatGPT4.0, that is really easy to use!
And when he was thinking about why this "Pac-Man" seemed to be more difficult than "Northern Tetris", Evelyn raised the draft paper and waved it twice in front of Ethan, "Hey! Why are you in a daze?" gone?"

Ethan spread his hands and said in a very bachelor way: "Because I'm thinking about whether there are other backup plans for our project."

"Oh Ethan~ you don't believe me?"

Ethan's frustration made Evelyn laugh, "Do you not believe that I can make this game?"

"Aha?" Ethan didn't understand what his sister meant.

You know, it was Evelyn who was conveying negative emotions to him just now!
"You can?" Ethan asked suspiciously.

"Give it a try." Evelyn didn't give an affirmative answer.But in the next second, she said again: "Just like what you said just now, we do the best we can, and leave the rest to the world."

It seems that he doesn't want to continue on this boring topic, but it's more like he found a new toy.

After encouraging herself with affirmative tone, Evelyn got up directly, waved the draft paper, and urged Ethan.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Let's play a game!"

"Ethan, let me tell you, you don't want to run away during this time! You can't go anywhere until I make the game!"

"It's only been half a year since the production of "Snake"? You have given me such a big problem in half a year?"

"I really appreciate you!"

"This time, I must let you know how difficult the game is!"

"In case you give me a more difficult question next time!"

　Note: ① "Pac-Man" does have an upper limit, the reason is the upper limit of the CPU written in the article, for this, on the 255th anniversary of the birth of "Pac-Man", Google also restored this stalk on the official website, to the [-]th When it is turned off, the game will end, and the old version will crash. ② "Pac-Man" is the originator of game AI, and it is still the testing standard for AI self-learning programming. Facebook, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft all use "Pac-Man" to test AI capabilities. This game is not only in It has epoch-making significance in culture, and it is the same in science and technology. ③In reality, the producer of "Pac-Man" Iwatani led a nine-person team and it took [-] months to make "Pac-Man". At that time, it took up to four months to make a normal game.As for why it took so long, Iwatani said that when they were making this game, they just wanted to make the game fun. If the four ghosts moved in the same way, it would be too easy for players to pass the level, so they I wanted to design the path alone, but at that time, few people in the entire team, or in the entire book, knew the concept of AI, because at that time the concept of AI was only popular in the US technology circle, only Carnegie, Stanford, MIT , Schools like Harvard with research funding are doing research, and others have no access to it, so they bite the bullet and write code. Fortunately, they made it.

　　PS, there are more at night.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)