This is AI!

Chapter 90 This is AI!

"Um... Evelyn, you know I don't understand technology, so could you explain things a little more clearly?"

Ethan waved his hands, wanting to know more.

"Okay, then I'll start from the very basics."

Evelyn shook the draft in her hand, turned to the first page, pointed to the second paragraph, and said, "Ethan, based on your concept, Pac-Man is an unlimited maze chasing game, right?"

"Yes." Ethan nodded and said, "The basic gameplay is to control the main character, a little sprite, and eat all the beans hidden in the maze while dodging the pursuit of four ghosts. Once you achieve this goal, you've cleared the game."

"An advanced gameplay element is that small, constantly flashing beans will appear in the four corners of the maze. If the protagonist eats them, he will gain the ability to be unafraid of ghosts and to devour them. At the same time, the ghosts will sense this and will run away in fear to avoid the protagonist's pursuit. Because of their fear, their movements will become very slow."

"An even more advanced way to play is that after a ghost is eaten, it will return to the haunted house in the middle to respawn."

"These three points are my entire concept. So, is my idea too difficult?"

"But this time we're definitely not playing a circuit board game anymore, because we have the MOS 6502."

Ethan believes that the biggest problem with Pac-Man is that it has lost touch with the most basic physical feedback.

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

However, this is unavoidable, because with the development of the video game industry and the increasing complexity of game content, CPUs will inevitably enter the field of game production. To put it bluntly, an arcade machine is actually a personal computer.

When the overwhelming tide of history becomes irresistible, Ethan will naturally choose to embrace it. Compared with all other game companies on the market, he has a unique advantage: they possess the MOS 6502, which is comparable to the Motorola 6800!

When a game company happens to have hardware available...

Ethan couldn't think of any other way he could lose!

I have creativity, I have technology, and I even have the hardware...

Isn't this a complete blowout to all competitors?

But now, before he's even wielded his little whip to lash out at the competitor, Evelyn is telling him that the game has a bug?

How could he accept something like this?

When he finally spoke his thoughts at a rapid-fire pace, his tone filled with bewildered surprise, Evelyn waved her hand and said helplessly, "Okay—Ethan—I know you're in a hurry, but don't rush—"

"I know this game requires a MOS 6502 for development, and I'm ready to take on the challenge. So, please carefully recall what I just told you, okay? I said that your design doesn't conform to the rules of binary."

"And the meaning of that sentence..."

"Let me explain it to you like this: the carry rule for binary is to carry over when you reach two."

"In binary, 1 is 1, but 2 is not 2, it's 10, and so on, 3 is 11, 4 is 100...^"

"In this case, how many numbers can the MOS 6502 count to?"

"A maximum of 255."

"Because it's an 8-digit number."

"The meaning of 8 bits is very simple. You can imagine there are eight squares in front of you, and each square can only be represented by 0 or 1. In this case, the largest number they can display is 1111, 1111, which is 255 in decimal."

"If we add another 1, the data will overflow."

"If one unit represents one level, then this game can only reach 255 levels; the infinite level you mentioned does not exist."

"Therefore, it's impossible to make Pac-Man play indefinitely like Snake."

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

"Did you understand what I meant?"

Evelyn flicked the paper with her long, slender fingers, revealing the creative ideas Ethan had written on.

When the crisp click sound came, Ethan realized that it wasn't that he couldn't make the game, but that he couldn't make the infinite loop in the game!

And for him, this kind of thing...

It's nothing!

If you can't create an infinite loop, then don't try!

After all, there is no game in this world that can be played indefinitely!

Breath of the Wild was already quite addictive, but it still disappeared overnight after Kingdom Tear was released.

After all, the assembly and building process is quite fun.

Therefore, a game is already a great success if it can keep people entertained for a period of time.

"This is not important. Since the MOS 6502 has its limits, we will push this chip to its limit."

"We will do our best in what we can, and leave the rest to the world."

Ethan’s words carried a hint of lightness.

If the game can be made, then all the problems are no longer problems.

However, his words caused Evelyn to suddenly close her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again a moment later, her face was filled with a bitter smile.

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

"255 levels, it would probably take me a year to design them all by myself."

"Moreover, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is those four ghosts."

"Those four ghosts will chase the player in different styles."

"When you were designing these four ghosts, you thought your ideas were brilliant, right? Yes, I admit it. But I want to tell you that making this game wasn't as simple as making Snake. If we wanted each ghost's route choice to be random, we had to write separate codes for each of the four ghosts, giving them different ways of thinking. Then, when the protagonist eats the invincible bean, these four ghosts had to use the same detection code to ensure they would switch from pursuit mode to evasion mode..."

"Regarding this..."

Do you know what technology this involves?

"In the most popular scientific terms today, this is artificial intelligence."

"What the fuck!"

Ethan was shocked!

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

"AI?" he asked incredulously.

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

When the words of confirmation came again, Ethan felt a sudden darkness engulf him.

Because at that moment, he wasn't sure if the game could even be made.

Does Pac-Man incorporate AI?

This is just ridiculous!

You have to understand, when he traveled through time, AI was an industry that hadn't been fully researched yet!

ChatGPT 4.0 is really useful!

Just as he was pondering why this Pac-Man puzzle seemed even harder than Northern Blocks, Evelyn held up a piece of scrap paper and waved it in front of Ethan. "Hey! What are you daydreaming about?"

Ethan shrugged and said quite nonchalantly, "Because I'm thinking about whether there are any other backup plans for our project."

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

Ethan's frustration made Evelyn laugh. "Don't you believe I can make this game?"

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

You should know that Evelyn was just conveying negative emotions to him!

"You can?" Ethan asked with some doubt.

"Let's give it a try," Evelyn said, without giving a definite answer. But the next second, she added, "Like you just said, let's do our best in what we can, and leave the rest to the world."

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

After encouraging herself with a positive tone, Evelyn stood up, waved her draft paper, and urged Ethan to hurry up.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Let's play games!"

"Ethan, I'm telling you, you're not running away during this time! You're not going anywhere until I finish the game!"

"It's only been six months since 'Snake' was made, right? And you've given me such a huge problem in just six months?"

"Thank you so much!"

"This time, I'm going to show you just how difficult it is to make a game!"

"So you won't give me even harder questions next time!"

Note: ① Pac-Man does indeed have a limit, due to the CPU limitation mentioned in the text. Google even recreated this on its official website for the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, showing that the game ends at level 255, and older versions crash. ② Pac-Man is the progenitor of game AI and remains a standard for testing AI's autonomous learning and programming capabilities. Facebook, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft all use Pac-Man to assess AI performance. This game is not only culturally groundbreaking but also scientifically significant. ③ In reality, Pac-Man's creator, Tetsuya Iwatani, led a nine-person team that spent seventeen months creating Pac-Man, while at that time, a normal game development process took a maximum of four months. As for why it took so long, Iwatani Tetsuya himself said that when they were making the game, they just wanted to make it fun. If the four ghosts moved in the same way, it would be too easy for the player to complete the game. So they wanted to design separate paths. At that time, very few people in the team, or rather the entire team, knew about the concept of AI. Because at that time, the concept of AI was only popular in the US tech circle. Only schools with research funding, such as Carnegie, Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, were researching it. Others had no access to it at all. So they had to bite the bullet and write code. Fortunately, they succeeded.

P.S., there will be more tonight.

(End of this chapter)