The Game Can't Find Us?

Ginger’s pirates were nice enough to give us a ride as close as they could to Mothbordia. The river we were on traveled all across the map and touched within a few miles of just about every major location, and that included our destination. The issue was that she claimed that we’d have to cross through some corrupted location known as “The Bad Lands.”

“Jus’ so yee’ know…” Ginger Snap spoke up. “Thee Bad Lands ain’t no place fer’ the weak. Lots O’ monsters and lost souls lookin’ for brains to munch on.”

-Brains? ( ಠ - ಠ ) What are they, zombies? Why would you guys want to put those in a fantasy game?-

To answer her question, it wasn’t unheard of to have zombies in a fantasy setting, but that wasn’t the case for this game. These so-called “Bad Lands” were not designed by us, so I had no idea what type of creatures were in there. And I hadn’t worked on zombie mechanics since our game, Right 2 Life, so there definitely shouldn’t have been zombies even in the code.

“Ten, got anything to share with us?” I asked.

“Well, last time I flew through here a few weeks ago, everyone was calling me “food rations” and were trying to catch me in big nets.” She scrunched up all shyly and hid behind my back. "D-do we really have to go that way?"

-If ANYONE eats any of you, I’m dropping a nuke on them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.-

“Hon, we don’t have a nuke in this game.”

-Well you better get coding one, darling (｀∀´)-

Maybe I could port in a nuke from somewhere else, but did I really want to potentially give The Virus nuclear power?

“Anyways, yer’ gon’ needst to cross that place to reach Mothborida.” She held a thumb to her chest. “Might want a lil’ help, eh? Davy! Get yer’self some moxey and follow me!”

She picked up rope with a full size anchor attached to the end and threw it to shore all on her own, then slid down on her fake hook hand. Just before her feet touched the sand she rolled and turned back with a hearty grin.

“Right behind yee’, cap’n!” he had a curved sword that he hooked onto the rope and slid down with it.

They’d given me some hooks of my own, so Rose was all too eager to have me perform the same sliding maneuver as them.

“Wooah!” I uttered as I quickly went down the rope.

As I slid down, Tensei flew in circles around me while laughing with excitement.

Unlike Ginger, I somehow slipped and fell face first into the sand.

*PLOOSH!*

-You good, Ray? You just ate sand.-

“Blegh…” I spit out a crab, who skittered away into the water. “Actually, I prefer to eat boiled crab, but I’m good.”

“Tha’s da’ spirit!” Davy smacked me in the back, which made me cough up more sand. “Cap’n, we keepin’ the girls docked her’ fer’ now?”

“Aye,” Ginger replied. “No water ways through Mothborida. Gon’ need a carriage to get ‘cross.

-Are you sure you guys want to join us, Ginger? You’ve already helped us enough by taking us this far.-

“‘Course I’m sure!” she grinned proudly and gave a thumbs up. “Yee’ scratched me back, dist’cha? Now it's my turn.”

The funny thing was that I think she was actually supposed to become a party member at the end of her quest line. A darn good frontliner, actually. But it was hard to say if that was coded in yet, or if she was doing this all of her own appreciation for us. With these advanced AI, I couldn’t tell what made them tick.

The beach we were on had a sprawling line of various trees at the end of its dunes. That line wasn’t very thick, because on the other side of it was a small farm settlement in a flowering savana. Everything smelled nice and the villagers were hard at work expanding their territory.

A cute little fence went around the perimeter, but didn’t do much more than keep farm animals and horses within the city limits. Otherwise a few stray monsters easily taken out by hardy farm boys, it was peaceful and inviting.

Down at the horse stable were a few carriages for sale. Ginger said it would be easy to go and buy one, since she’d come through here a few times before while traveling. I took her word and marched in with a reasonable sum of coin in hand, a few silver pieces with a gold coin in reserve, but…

“I’d be happy to sell you a carriage for a fair price of -20- diamond pieces!” Said a mustached man with a big top hat.

“What?!” Tensei flew up in his face and startled him. His hands curled up like a squirrel and he took a step back. “That’s highway robbery!”

-And here I forgot my iron pickaxe on the other server.-

-Ray, why’s he asking for so much? Is this a glitch?-

Out of everything we’d encountered up to this point, she was surprised to learn this wasn’t actually a glitch. It was a feature that definitely needed some tweaking.

The economy of this game was dependent on the players and how much money they gave to shops. So let’s say a -XxxShadow_LordxxX- needed a potion. He would go to a shop and buy something, and the shop owner would then go and invest that money to order more items, which would grow his stock and lower the price of everything he had.

I had to assume zero players had come through here up to now, so his ridiculous asking price of 20 diamond pieces was to try and fill his bank account. Even so, that was a lot for any first time player.

“I have an idea!” Tensei said as she floated down into my arms and went limp. I held her tightly so she wouldn’t fall to the ground.

The man's eyes lit up green and he handed over the premium contract for the best horse and carriage in his stock, plus all the gear and reins for hooking up the horse to it.

-Did she just possess him?-

“I sure did!” Tensei said as her normal body came back to life. “Just so I don’t feel like we’re stealing, can you leave him some coins?”

Whatever was in my hand was now on his counter. He seemed very confused, but let us walk out of there without any trouble.

“Dids’t it all go well?” Ginger asked.

“I guess? We got the carriage,” I said.

Out back behind the shop was a row of stables with dozens of horses in their prime, ready to travel through the harshest of climates. The one we’d been given access to was all the way in the back.

She was a seriously beefed up girl who looked like she’d been hitting the horse gym. According to her stats, she lacked in speed, but more than made up for it in endurance and durability.

She immediately made nice with Tensei, who kept brushing her main happily. But whenever I tried to do it, she’d snort in my face and trot away from me.

“What did I do?” I asked.

-Maybe she knows what we did to the wooden horse back in Seigfell ( 0 _ 0)-

It couldn’t have been that. Unless…

“Rose, can you open up the pause menu and click on a tab called ‘Banners?’

-Gotcha! What are these?-

Banners are things that players earn while doing things out in the world. They were awarded for things like killing a particular amount of goblins, completing quests and other tasks. They could be displayed on a player ID card to show off.

One of the cards I received was Horse Slayer. The game must have given me that when we beat the wooden one Lord Troja made.

-Does that make any difference here?-

“Some of these cards actually cause creatures to react to you differently when you have them displayed. For instance, if I have the goblin slayer banner, then they’ll be more likely to fear me in a fight.”

The rest was pretty easy to figure out from there. This horse didn’t like me very much because I had the banner I did, and unfortunately it was the last one I’d received, so it was equipped by default. Even after we switched it to something more practical, the horse didn’t really like me much.

Davy, Ginger’s first mate, was all sorts of friendly with the horse though after he offered her an apple.

“Yee’ just needst’ to treat the ole’ gal like a companion,” he said. “They’s very personal creatures. She'st gets over it soon 'nuff.”

“Personal, huh?”

There was another apple on the ground. Rose made me pick it up and offer it as tribute to the beast of burden.

*Neeeeigh!* announced the horse as she rejected my friendship with a turn of her head. Her main flipped like she was some rebellious diva.

“Hah!” Ginger laughed. “Yee’s fer-real can’t make nice wit’ dis’ beast?” she said while petting it on the head, getting a much more tame reaction. “Ain’t that jus’ sad? Yee’ll get her care soon though if yee’ makes nice.”

-He’s never been good with animals. They've never liked him for some reason. He’s like that old joke where chihuahuas chase after mailmen.-

It’s the strangest thing. I get attacked by random birds on walks, dogs always bark and nibble on my ankles, and cats avoid me like I’m cursed. I didn’t know how I upset nature so bad, but one of the perks of an office job was staying indoors away from it.

At least the horse was willing to cooperate with us on our travels. She was a spunky one, so I had a good feeling the creatures of the Bad Lands wouldn't phase her too much.

“So, is there anyway to make nice with the horse?” I asked.

“Well, yee’s could start treat'n her right by learnin’ her name,” Davy said as he mounted onto the carriage. “It’s Ruth!”

-Welcome to the team, Ruth! Ready to save the game?-

*Neeeeigh!*

She seemed ready. So with that, we hooked her up to the carriage and started the trip.

💻⚔️💻

Ruth the horse was happy to let Davy hook her up to the big wooden box with wheels and trudge us along on the path to Mothbordia. It was still early morning in the game, so most of the nighttime monsters were either starting to turn to ash in the sunlight or were finding dark places to hide.

The morning dew was a nice greeting as I looked over Davy’s shoulders. I couldn’t help but notice that the path ahead was jittering very badly, and the carriage was zig zagging a lot and looked like it’s various components were wiggling apart.

-Ray, everything looks so jittery here. It’s making me sick (￣x￣;) What is this glitch? Or, did we buy a bad carriage?-

What she was seeing wasn't so much a glitch as it was a limitation of the games engine. “That jittering your seeing is called a floating-point precision error. The further we are from point zero zero, or the origin of the world, the more the game struggles to tell where we are and place us there.”

Every game struggled with this to some degree, especially procedurally generated games. I didn't think it would be this bad here, but it needed to be fixed if it was happening this terribly.

-I don't really understand any of that, but can we do something about it? Like, ASAP? It's making me SUPER motion sick.-

She wasn't the only one. At least she had the luxury of looking away. I was full on submerged in this jittery mess. Even some of my own vertices were getting messed up. Tensei seemed fine, at least.

“Even on da’ seas, dis is somtin’ we deal wit’,” Davy said. “Can’t get too far’way from shore, or dis’ gets worse.”

“The Bad Lands are really bad too,” Tensei added. “It made it really hard for people to catch me.“

I had a hunch that whoever designed this system didn't really understand how an open world was supposed to be rendered. This was a big game, the biggest we’d ever made, and the origin of it was made somewhere near Spawn Town, which was at the very center of the map.

What we should have done was either do loading zones, which would constantly change the location of the origin to be in different spots depending on the region, or just have the origin constantly follow the player around. I think I was going to try for the former option, since it seemed a little easier on me and less taxing on the game for thousands of players to be their own origin point. But first, we needed to find an access point for me to do that, and Lord only knows what monster is going to get in our way before that.