Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 90 This is AI!

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

Ethan waved his hands, wanting to know more.

"Okay, then I'll talk to you from the most basic level."

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

"Yes." Ethan nodded and said, "The basic way to play the game is to control the protagonist, the elf, in the game and eat all the beans hidden in the maze while avoiding the pursuit of four ghosts. As long as this goal is achieved, it is considered a level pass."

"The advanced gameplay is that small beans will appear in the four corners of the maze. If the protagonist eats them, he will gain the ability to not be afraid of ghosts and be able to devour ghosts. At the same time, the ghosts will also sense it and run away in fear to avoid the protagonist's pursuit. Because of fear, their movements will become very slow."

"A more advanced way of playing is that after the ghost is eaten, it will return to the haunted house in the middle to be reborn."

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

"But this time we are definitely not playing with circuit boards, because we have MOS 6502."

Ethan feels that the biggest problem with the game "Pac-Man" is that it deviates 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 around it, because with the development of the electronic game industry and the increasing complexity of game content, the product of CPU will definitely enter the field of game production. To put it bluntly, the electronic arcade machine is actually a personal computer.

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

When a gaming company has a special hardware supply...

Ethan couldn't think of how he could lose!
I have creativity, I have technology, and I also have hardware...

Isn't this a win over all competitors?

But now, before he could even wield his whip to lash out at his competitors, Evelyn told him that this game had a bug?

How could he accept such a thing?
When he spoke at a Gatling gun-like speed and with a tone of doubt and surprise, Evelyn waved her hands and said helplessly, "Okay - Ethan - I know you are anxious, but don't be anxious -"

"I know this game requires MOS 6502 to produce, and I am ready to accept the challenge, so please recall carefully what I just said to you? I said that your design does not conform to the law of binary."

"And the meaning of this sentence is..."

"Let me explain it to you this way. The rule for binary carry is to add one every two digits."

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

"Max 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, the largest number they can display is 1111, 1111, which is 255 in decimal."

"If you add one more 1, the data will overflow."

"And if one unit represents one level, then this game can only have 1 levels. There is no such thing as infinity as you said."

"So, if you want to make Pac-Man and Snake infinitely playable, that's impossible."

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

"Do you understand what I mean?"

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

When a clear clicking sound was heard, Ethan finally realized that it was not that the game could not be made, but that the infinite loop in the game could not be made!

And for him, this kind of thing...

It’s a small matter!
If you can’t make an infinite loop, then don’t do it!

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

Breath of the Wild was already sticky enough, but after Kingdom of Tears was released, it still withdrew overnight.

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

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

"This matter is not important. Since MOS 6502 has its limits, we will reach the upper limit of this chip."

“We do the best we can and leave the rest to the world.”

There was a hint of levity in Ethan's words. Now that the game can be made, all the problems are not problems.

However, his words made Evelin close her eyes suddenly.

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

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

“It would probably take me a year to design 255 levels by myself.”

"Besides, this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is those four ghosts."

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

"When designing these four ghosts, you think your ideas are great, right? Yes, I admit it. But I want to tell you that this game is not as simple as Snake. If you want to make the route selection of each ghost random, then we have to write the code of the four ghosts separately, let them have different thinking, and then, when the protagonist eats the invincible beans, these four ghosts have to use the same detection code to ensure that they will switch from pursuit mode to avoidance mode..."

"Regarding this..."

"Do you know what technology is involved?"

"To use the most popular term in the scientific community today, this is artificial intelligence."

'What The Fuck!'

Ethan was shocked!

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

"AI?" he asked in disbelief.

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

When the words of confirmation appeared again, Ethan felt a black screen before his eyes.

Because at this moment he was not sure whether this game could be made.

Was Pac-Man designed with AI in mind?

This is a bit outrageous!
You know, when he traveled through time, AI was not an industry that had been thoroughly researched!

ChatGPT4.0, it’s really useful!
Just as he was wondering why this Pac-Man looked even more difficult than Northland Cube, Evelyn raised her draft paper and waved it in front of Ethan. "Hey! Why are you daydreaming?"

Ethan spread his hands and said very simply, "Because I'm thinking about whether there are any other backup plans for our project."

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

Ethan's frustration made Evelin laugh, "You don't believe I can make this game?"

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

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

"Let's give it a try." Evelyn didn't give a positive answer. But the next second, she said, "Just like you said just now, we will do our best in what we can do, and leave the rest to the world."

It seemed as if he didn't want to continue with this boring topic, but it also seemed like he had found a new toy.

After encouraging herself with an affirmative tone, Evelin stood up directly, waving the draft paper, and urged Ethan.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Let's go play games!"

"Ethan, I'm telling you, don't even think about running away during this period! You can't go anywhere until I make the game!"

"It's only been half a year since Snake was made, right? In half a year, you've given me such a big problem?"

"Thank you so much!"

"This time, I will let you know how difficult it is to make games!"

"So that you won't give me more difficult questions next time!"

Note: ① Pac-Man does have an upper limit, and the reason is the CPU upper limit mentioned in the article. Regarding this, on the 255th anniversary of the birth of Pac-Man, Google restored this joke on its official website. At the th level, the game will end, and the old version of the game will crash. ② Pac-Man is the ancestor 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 epoch-making in culture, but also in science and technology. ③ The real-life Pac-Man producer Tetsu Iwatani led a team of nine people and spent months to make Pac-Man, while at that time it normally took no more than four months to make a game. As for why it took so long, Iwaya Tetsu himself said that when they were making the game, they just wanted to make the game fun. If the four ghosts moved in the same way, it would be too easy for the players to pass the level, so they wanted to design separate paths. At that time, few people in the entire team, or in the entire book, knew the concept of AI, because the concept of AI was only popular in the US technology circle at the time. Only schools with research funding such as Carnegie, Stanford, MIT, and Harvard were conducting research on it. Others had no access to it, so they just gritted their teeth and wrote the code. Fortunately, they did it.

PS, there will be more in the evening.

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(End of this chapter)