Chapter 187: Better System

Sometimes, Will was amazed by just how many connections Ethan seemed to have, it was almost unbelievable. 

Without Will even realizing it, Ethan had somehow managed to bring in people from all over the old Atari organization. There were so many of them that it felt like half of Atari's former staff now worked for him. 

"Will, are you also planning to develop a life simulation game?" 

David looked him over with great interest, but what stood out even more was the amazement in his eyes. 

Just as Will knew David well, David had heard plenty about Will too. 

He was the designer of SimCity. 

The first time David played the game, he was genuinely amazed. He'd seen plenty of incredible things in his life, but even he couldn't help being impressed by what Will had created. 

"Yes! It's called The Sims, but we haven't even officially started yet." 5

Will became completely excited. LCP was precisely the game that had inspired him to have the idea of developing The Sims. 

"David, the little computer person in LCP is always the same male character, but I heard that when you designed the game, you made each player's character behave differently and have a personality of their own. Is that true?" 

"You even know about that?" 

David was slightly surprised. That was a unique piece of design he had left in the game. However, due to hardware limitations, it could not run as completely as he had originally intended. 

In the end, the system was designed to stay almost completely in the background. It was so subtle that most players probably wouldn't even notice it was there. 

The fact that Will knew about something that subtle proved he wasn't just trying to flatter David. He was a genuine hardcore fan of LCP. 

"Yes, that's exactly right. I designed a random parameter combination system and paired it with a simple state machine, so that every player's little computer person would have subtle differences in their behavior." 

"Some little people prefer playing the piano, while others prefer watching TV. Their preferences for gifts also differ to a certain degree." 

"Depending on how much food and water they need, as well as their current mood, each little computer person will do different things." 

David himself was quite fond of this work. Seeing how seriously Will took it, he began explaining all the ingenious design ideas he had left in the game in detail. Even though two years had already passed, he still remembered those details clearly. 

"That's amazing?" 

Even Ethan was somewhat surprised after hearing David's explanation. After all, this was a game running on a low-end consumer PC like the Commodore 64, rather than an arcade machine or an 8-bit performance monster like an NovaBox. 3

Building a life simulation this complex with such limited data and hardware was an incredible achievement. David clearly had an exceptional talent for game design. 

"It's nothing all that complicated. Most of it goes back to the old 8-bit days." David waved it off. 

So, what if he had polished the details a little more? If Ethan hadn't shown up when he did, David probably would've been out of Activision by now, wondering how he was going to make ends meet. 

Bruce simply didn't agree with the way David approached game design, especially when it came to fine-tuning his work. 

"David, although our The Sims hasn't been officially approved yet, I want to show you the new character artificial intelligence that Ethan and I designed." 

Will paused for a moment before continuing. 

"The idea for this system came from the random number generator we used while developing Momotaro Dentetsu. The American version is called Sovereign." 

"We have named it the Jazz system." 2

What had started as a simple concept had now grown into one of the most important systems in the game. It had also become a major character intelligence module that Ethan and Will had spent a great deal of time developing and improving. 

The name had come from Will himself. He explained that the system's ability to improvise and work together reminded him of a jazz band. 

The musicians didn't follow a fixed score from beginning to end. Instead, they worked within a basic framework while listening to one another and improvising as they played. 

In Will's view, that kind of freedom was essential for a life simulation game. If they wanted their characters to feel alive, they couldn't simply have them follow a rigid set of predetermined behaviors. 

"The core of the Jazz system is a decision tree. I based it on the finite-state machine used in LCP." 

The development of Jazz was also closely connected to Civilization. Will had been particularly inspired by the game's technology tree and civics tree, and those ideas had played an important role in shaping the system. 

"The entire intelligence logic is organized into a tree structure that branches out from the root node. 

Each branch node judges based on the current state, searches for the next child node that meets the conditions and continues the process until it reaches the bottom of the tree." 

Will continued explaining the core design philosophy behind the Jazz system in detail. 

The more David listened, the brighter his eyes became, this was simply ingenious. The systems readability and maintainability were frighteningly high. 

With a dedicated tool built around this structure, even someone who knew absolutely nothing about programming could potentially handle an artificial intelligence's behavior logic. 

All they would have to do was drag and drop nodes and adjust their contents. From there, they could easily build all kinds of behaviors for an AI system. 

Especially in the modern era, when AI systems had to handle more and more situations, the tree-based design could still keep everything clear. 5

If they continued using David's FSM finite state machine design, the entire artificial intelligence source code would eventually become one enormous mess that would be nearly impossible to maintain. 

Ethan had always been looking for an even more advanced solution called HTN, or Hierarchical Task Network. But with the hardware available at the moment, Jazz was already the best overall solution. 

"This system it isn't only usable in The Sims, right?" 

As David dug deeper into the system and peeled back its layers, he discovered something even more surprising. Every new innovation from GAMENOVA seemed to exist independently at first. 

Will appeared to be developing something completely unrelated to Quake. But the more David examined the Jazz system, the more he began to sense that there was something connecting it to the bigger picture. He just couldn't quite put his finger on it yet. 

"That's right. This is also a key module that will be integrated into the 3D engine Carmack is currently developing." 

Ethan laughed. A game engine was, after all, created to make game development easier. So naturally, such an essential component would be built directly into it. 

Whether it was NPCs or enemy units, developers could rely on this system to design and implement their character logic with ease. 

David drew in a sharp breath. The way he looked at Ethan and Will had changed. 

They were always thinking several steps ahead. No wonder GAMENOVA had grown into the massive company it was today, with everything fitting together so seamlessly. 

Every game the company released wasn't just a groundbreaking hit. Each one also served as a massive experiment, pushing GAMENOVA's technology forward. 

David's eyes flickered as he thought back to all the games GAMENOVA had released over the years. When connected together in their entirety, they seemed to form a complete and magnificent history of the advancement of electronic game technology. 

He looked toward Carmack on the other side, who was still leading everyone in building the basic architecture. GAMENOVA was now on the verge of entering a new chapter in its history.