This is not a BUG, this is a game feature

The development work of "Mountain Village Past" mainly focuses on polishing the game plot and level design.

This is also the norm in horror games.

After all, in this kind of game, the sense of substitution and immersion are the most important things, and the gameplay can even be sacrificed to improve the sense of substitution.

certainly!

That being said, when it comes to actual development, we encounter a lot of problems and difficulties. For example, after the Spring Festival, Chen Ba devoted himself to studying the "divination" system.

This mechanism is actually very simple.

When the player starts the divination, an interface similar to the Bagua compass pops up, and then an animation of throwing copper coins appears, giving the player the corresponding hexagram display.

Speaking of which, the difficulty of making this interface and system is almost the same as making a "Hello World". It is not difficult at all.

The real difficulty lies in how to derive “accurate” hexagrams? How to make this divination system perfectly integrate with the game content?

This is not easy to deal with...

For Chen Ba, writing a random hexagram code can be done with his eyes closed. However, the hexagrams calculated in this way are relatively random and lack a certain degree of reliability and accuracy.

If your fortune-telling is inaccurate, then what use is it to you?

Accurate calculation is a must.

Then, on the premise that the calculation is accurate, the game plot or content can be changed according to the hexagrams, so as to achieve better results.

For example, if the player calculates a hexagram, and the hexagram shows that there will be great misfortune in this trip, then the hexagram cannot be just nonsense, but the game does have such a thing.

How to manifest it?

The answer is that the hexagrams can appear randomly, but once the hexagrams appear, the game content must be changed accordingly to confirm the accuracy of the hexagrams.

Moreover, if you tell fortunes multiple times at the same time, the hexagrams must have the same result.

One second it was a bad omen, the next second it was a good omen?

What a joke!

Even though it’s about metaphysics, it can’t be so abstract, right? At least in a short period of time, the hexagrams will not change much, and good fortune will not suddenly turn into great misfortune.

"Let me think about it..."

Chen Ba picked up a pen and wrote on the paper, and at the end he murmured to himself: "The hexagrams are not completely random, in fact they are pseudo-random."

The result of the hexagram will be affected by the player's early operations and the plot. Plot changes are controllable, the only thing that is uncontrollable is the player factor.

In other words, this divination system needs to combine some "already mastered" clues to predict the player's future. And you cannot make random predictions, you need to have a certain basis and accuracy.

For example, the divination system shows that the player should not go out today, that the trip will be very dangerous, etc...

There is no problem with the result. The question is how is this result derived? Is it all random?

Complete randomness is impossible.

Fortune-telling is inherently a type of "divination". Since it is divination, it definitely requires some preliminary information, or understanding the fortune teller's birth date, etc.

Then, Chen Ba had an idea.

Utilize the coding capabilities of the Tiehanhan system to first create a main framework that can be run, and then add some "learning" capabilities to this framework.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not AI!

Why bother with AI for everything? Just use AI to draw and edit pictures. Why do you also need to use AI for metaphysical matters such as fortune telling and divination?

Chen Ba's so-called learning ability actually provides a "minimum error tolerance" for this divination system.

simply put.

The first time you do divination, the results may not be accurate. After all, at this time, the divination system has limited information, so the results it gives are also very ambiguous.

The second time, the third time...

Keep using it, and with the continuous learning and iteration of this system, the hexagram display will only become more and more accurate, and the accuracy will be greatly improved!

"Is this similar to a weather forecast?"

After learning from Brother Ba that although this divination system is powerful, it cannot be 100% accurate, Li Qizhen, who started it, sighed: "The weather forecast says it will rain tomorrow, so there is a high probability that it will rain, but there are also small chances. What’s the probability that nothing will happen?”

"Is such that……"

Chen Ba thought about it and found that this metaphor was quite accurate.

The operating logic of this divination system is just like the weather forecast model! Because cumulonimbus clouds were observed by meteorological satellites, there is no problem in predicting rain.

But this result cannot be guaranteed to be 100% accurate. The weather forecast says it will rain tomorrow because cumulonimbus clouds stay over the city.

But there is also a possibility that this cumulonimbus cloud suddenly drifted away and flew to another city. After waiting for a long time, it did not rain, and the umbrella and raincoat specially prepared in the morning were wasted.

The weather forecast is like this, let alone the divination system in "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village".

Players are known as the fourth natural disaster, and all actions are uncontrollable. Even if the divination system is comparable to weather forecasts, it is impossible to explain everything clearly and without errors.

"Not only that, regarding the hexagrams, I think we should be more conservative, that is, don't talk too much and leave some room for interpretation."

Chen Ba explained: "For example, if there is a sign of great danger, you cannot directly say no, but warn the players that there are risks, but it is not without hope..."

The old fortune teller!

People who often go to fortune-telling under overpasses know that those fortune-tellers who pretend to be magic are not generally good at eloquence, and all their abilities lie in their mouths.

"The Art of Speaking"

Listening to your words is better than listening to them!

If there are grades in nonsense literature, then the highest grade would definitely be within the system, and the next highest grade would be the fortune teller.

One plus one equals two. You must not say it directly. You must tell him in a roundabout way that according to your birth date and horoscope, one plus one probably, maybe, probably equals two!

Same thing.

The divination system used in "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village" cannot determine the outcome too firmly, leaving no room for maneuver in the game.

These are just omens of great misfortune and good fortune. Under this omen, there is also a long list of descriptions about this hexagram.

Is this trip a big deal?

If you meet a noble person for help, there may be an opportunity for a dead tree to bloom, and if you act properly, you will be safe and sound...

Look, this is called professional!

Anyway, the hexagrams are highly likely to be accurate. After all, fortune telling is roughly equivalent to "predicting the future." The future in reality is unknown, but the future in the game can still be slightly glimpsed.

"Is it so magical?"

Li Qizhen was very curious, could this divination system really "calculate" all the big and small things that happened in the game?

"Can!"

After all, the core code came from Tiehanhan System, and Chen Ba had tried it himself, so he was full of confidence in it.

This divination system, placed in the game "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village", is equivalent to the "Golden Finger" plug-in for the protagonist Hu Xi.

No matter how big or small, everything that happens in the game can be calculated accurately!

Li Qizhen also gave it a try.

Because "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village" is not ready yet, he can only use a simple game demo for testing.

This demo is very simple. There is only one room for interaction, and there is a locked box inside. Players need to find the key in the room to open the box.

During this process, there will be monsters with mosaics all over their bodies (the modeling is not done well) to sneak attack the player, but the timing is uncertain.

The player may not encounter monsters during the exploration process, or he may encounter them as soon as he enters the room...

Based on this premise, Li Qizhen used the divination system to make a fortune for himself.

"Xiao Ji, good things come in hard times!"

As Brother Ba said, the display and interpretation of the hexagrams are very vague, and the true meaning of the hexagrams can only be guessed based on these key hints.

Li Qizhen thought about it for a while and roughly guessed the meaning of this hexagram.

"It means that if I enter the room later, I will encounter monsters in the middle, and the process of finding the key will not be smooth, but I will still be able to find and open the box in the end?"

"It's almost the same, but the interpretation of "good things take their time" is not accurate enough. The meaning of this sentence should be that you won't succeed once, you need to try a few more times..."

After Chen Ba finished speaking, he saw Li Qizhen controlling the character to open the room, stepping into it and looking for the so-called key.

Keys will randomly appear in every corner of the room. In addition, the lights in the room are very dark, and the protagonist Hu Xi only has a flashlight, so it is very troublesome to find them.

The monster is coming!

In order to avoid the monster, Li Qizhen temporarily hid behind a shelf.

Keep looking, the monster is coming again!

This time it was even more dangerous. Li Qizhen was almost discovered, and finally escaped by lying under the bed.

Keep looking for the key...

This time it didn't go so smoothly. Li was actually chased by the monster and escaped only by pushing the door and leaving the room.

After struggling for about fifteen minutes, Li Qizhen entered the room again and finally saw the rusty key in the corner where the debris was piled.

"All good things come to an end?"

After this experiment, Li Qizhen had a rough understanding of the accuracy of this divination system.

But he wanted to try a few more times.

So he reset the game progress and information. After the reset, he got a good luck divination. He didn't encounter monsters this time, and when searching the room, he found the key at once.

"Very strong!"

Li Qizhen praised: "This divination system, to a certain extent, is really a cheat in the novel. It is simply too powerful."

Isn’t it great to be able to predict the future?

Anyone who can do this in reality can probably be called a "living god"! Predicting what will happen in the future, and predicting it so accurately, is a bit unexpected.

But Li Qizhen then thought about it. The so-called "predicting the future" was just predicting the future in the game.

It's just a game!

Since it is a game, everything in this world has been arranged by others, and the game designer is equivalent to the "Heaven" or the Creator who controls everything in the game.

With the help of the Creator, it is not surprising that this divination system can do this and successfully glimpse a corner of the future.

"Amazing, right?"

Chen Ba said with a smile: "But the logic of this thing is not to predict the future, but to rewrite the future."

Don’t get the order wrong!

To truly foresee the future is to see what will happen in the future, and this future is usually immutable and unique.

But the future in "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village" will actually change at any time.

If the player divines a bad hexagram, then the rest of the game will revolve around this hexagram. If a good hexagram is divined, then the game will revolve around the good fortune.

There are hexagrams first, and then what happens next! Instead of arranging the plot first and then showing the corresponding hexagrams to the players, there is an essential difference between the two!

"The most obvious difference is that the first time you divination, the result is small auspiciousness, and the second divination after resetting, the result is great auspiciousness..."

Chen Ba explained: "The reason why two completely different hexagrams will appear after you reset the game progress is because the hexagrams are randomly generated and not fixed."

"And your experience of solving puzzles and finding keys in the two hexagrams is also different. This is all a chain reaction caused by changes in the hexagrams..."

This has a premise, reset the game!

Because Li Qizhen reset the game progress, two different hexagrams, "Daji" and "Xiaoji", can appear in the same test environment.

If a normal player initiates a divination in the same place and at the same time, the result of the divination will not change, and it will be whatever it is supposed to be.

“What about different players?”

Li Qizhen asked curiously: "Brother Ba, according to what you said, if player A and player B play this level at the same time and initiate divination at the same time, the results may be different?"

"Please remove the word maybe!"

"It's not possible, but it must be different!" Chen Ba picked up the thermos cup and said, "Different players, even under the same conditions and testing environment, will come up with different hexagrams."

How could it be the same?

If everyone's divination result is the same, then why bother asking the Tiehanhan system to take action? Chen Ba can do this by himself!

It is definitely different, and the hexagram can change each player's future and game content based on the player's actual operation and play situation, so the system needs to provide core code.

This thing is black technology!

The biggest use of this divination system is actually to solve the "spoiler" crisis and make horror games less embarrassing.

For horror games in the past, it was more interesting to watch other people play them than to watch them live, and after watching them once, you would basically lose interest in playing them.

This is also the reason why most horror games have a sales limit. They are so popular that it seems that the whole Internet is playing this game, but the sales volume is only a few hundred thousand copies.

"Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village" is different.

Thanks to this unique divination system, everyone's destiny is different.

Different paths lead to the same destination!

These four words are extremely appropriate to describe "Once Upon a Time in a Mountain Village", which means that although the endings are the same, the playing process and experience will lead to certain deviations due to different hexagrams.

With this thing, who needs to be afraid of spoilers?

You can only spoil yourself, but you can't spoil other players! Because once the hexagram changes, the game experience and process will also change. The so-called spoilers are purely funny.

Strategy posts and teaching posts can be done, but they won't be of much use because different hexagrams lead to completely different situations.

When looking at guides, you can only learn from other people’s experience in solving levels and solve puzzles, but you cannot copy them exactly. Otherwise, someone is a lucky person who has survived this test. You are a lucky person, and you have also survived this test?

I'm afraid I don't know how I died...