Chapter 396: Chapter 251: Nine Out of Ten Divinations Are Accurate—No Charge if They’re Not!

The development work for "Mountain Village Memories" primarily focuses on refining the game storyline and level design.

This is also the norm for horror games.

After all, in such games, the sense of immersion and involvement is the most important aspect, to the extent that some gameplay elements can even be sacrificed to enhance immersion.

Of course!

That’s easy to say, but during the actual development, plenty of problems and challenges arise. For instance, the "Divination" system that Chen Ba has been diligently researching since after the Lunar New Year.

This mechanism is actually quite simple.

The player triggers divination, and a screen resembling an Eight Trigrams Compass pops up, followed by an animation of casting Copper Coins, displaying the corresponding trigram for the player.

Speaking of which, creating this interface and system is about as challenging as making a "Hello World"—there’s really no difficulty involved.

The real challenge lies in how to produce an "accurate" trigram. How can this divination system be perfectly integrated with the game content?

That’s quite tricky...

To write a code for random trigrams, Chen Ba could do it with his eyes closed. But the trigrams calculated this way tend to be quite random, lacking a certain degree of reliability and accuracy.

If your fortune-telling isn’t accurate, then what’s the point?

Accuracy is a must.

And on the basis of accuracy, the game’s storyline or content must be pushed to change according to the trigrams, achieving a better effect.

For example, if a player divines and the trigram indicates that this journey will "offend evil" and be highly ominous, then this trigram must not be mere nonsense but should reflect something truly present in the game.

How can this be demonstrated?

The answer is that while the trigram can appear randomly, once it does, the game content must change accordingly to validate the trigram’s accuracy.

Moreover, multiple divinations at the same time must result in the same trigram.

A highly ominous sign one second, and great fortune the next?

What a joke!

Even though we’re dealing with metaphysics, it can’t be that abstract, can it? At least in the short term, the trigram shouldn’t change too drastically; great fortune wouldn’t suddenly become highly ominous.

"Let me think..."

Chen Ba picked up a pen and scribbled on paper, muttering to himself, "The trigrams aren’t entirely random; they’re pseudo-random."

The results of the trigrams will be influenced by the player’s previous actions and the storyline. The storyline change is controllable; the only uncontrolled element is the player’s factor.

This means the divination system needs to be combined with some "known" clues to predict the player’s future. And it’s not about random predictions; there needs to be some basis and accuracy.

For example, if the divination system indicates that it’s not a good day for the player to go out, and the trip will be highly dangerous...

The result is fine, but how was this result derived? Was it all dependent on randomness?

Complete randomness is impossible.

Divination, by its nature, belongs to a type of "fortune-telling." Since it’s fortune-telling, it definitely requires some prior information or knowledge of the diviner’s birth details, etc.

Thus, Chen Ba had an idea.

Utilizing the Iron Fool System’s coding capabilities, first, create a main framework that can operate, then incorporate a bit of "learning" capability into it.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t AI!

Not everything can rely on AI. It’s okay to use AI for drawing and photo editing, but using AI for fortune-telling and divination? Oh come on.

What Chen Ba refers to as learning capability is actually providing this divination system with a "guaranteed fault tolerance rate."

Simply put.

The first divination might not be very accurate, since at that time, the divination system has limited information, so the results it provides are rather ambiguous.

The second and third times...

As it continues to be used, with the system’s continual learning and iteration, the trigrams displayed will only become more precise, significantly enhancing accuracy!

"Isn’t this somewhat like a weather forecast?"

Upon learning from Ba that this divination system is impressive but can’t achieve 100% accuracy, Li Qizhen, the assistant, remarked: "When a weather forecast says it will rain tomorrow, it’s quite likely to rain, but there’s also a small chance nothing will happen."

"That’s right..."

Chen Ba thought about it and realized this analogy was quite vivid and accurate.

The logic of running this divination system is just like the weather forecast model! Because meteorological satellites have observed rain clouds, predicting rain is reasonable.

But this result can’t guarantee 100% accuracy, as the forecast for rain is due to rain clouds lingering over the city.

However, there’s also a possibility that these rain clouds could suddenly drift away to another city, leaving a person who prepared with an umbrella and raincoat waiting in vain for rain all day.

If even the weather forecast is like this, imagine the divination system within "Mountain Village Memories."

Players are dubbed the fourth disaster; their actions are uncontrollable. Even if the divination system is comparable to a weather forecast, it’s impossible for everything to be predicted flawlessly.

"Not only that, regarding the trigrams, I think it should be articulated more conservatively, leaving a little room for interpretation."

Chen Ba explained: "For instance, when there’s an omen of great misfortune, instead of saying outright that it’s hopeless, warn the player of risks; however, it’s not entirely without hope..."

Just like the old fortune-teller!

Those who often get their fortunes told under the bridge know that those swindling fortune-tellers have an extraordinary gift of gab.

"The Art of Speaking"

"Listening to your talk is worth more than listening to another!"

If there were levels in the literature of empty talk, the highest level would certainly belong to bureaucracy, with fortune-tellers coming second.