Sword Art Online II: Gun Gale Online

[Rodin]

Wasn't a lot of the core design from Kayaba Akihiko, also a certified nutjob, with the idea of creating a whole new world or whatever? It wouldn't surprise me if having the core stats be inherently transferable is hard-coded deep into the engine precisely to encourage the massively shared world that he envisioned.

How much of the code for the Seed Engine VRMMO's is black box stuff that died with it's inventor, anyway?

[Dusk Eclipse]

Considering that Akihiko's ghost was able to give the Seed to Kirito in ALO and that pretty much all other VRMMO's are based somewhat on the SAO engine, I'd say.... none of it died with Akihiko.

[Rodin]

Considering that Akihiko's ghost was able to give the Seed to Kirito in ALO and that pretty much all other VRMMO's are based somewhat on the SAO engine, I'd say.... none of it died with Akihiko.

Not my point. The idea I'm trying to express is that Akihiko was a genius and that his code isn't "open source", regardless of the fact that he left the Seed to Kirito. If the Seed is a "magical" black box that cannot itself be replicated by any other game designers, then there can be all sorts of stuff hidden in its code that bypass any real-world programming concerns.

Programmers could design on top of the technology without being able to understand why it works. That's how I interpreted ALO, at least, and something similar is how I've been assuming Death Gun pulls off his remote kills.

[HMS Invincible]

Not my point. The idea I'm trying to express is that Akihiko was a genius and that his code isn't "open source", regardless of the fact that he left the Seed to Kirito. If the Seed is a "magical" black box that cannot itself be replicated by any other game designers, then there can be all sorts of stuff hidden in its code that bypass any real-world programming concerns.

Programmers could design on top of the technology without being able to understand why it works. That's how I interpreted ALO, at least, and something similar is how I've been assuming Death Gun pulls off his remote kills.

Spoiler: deathgun

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Rumor has it that how death gun kills people is super lame and mundane.

[HamHam]

Not my point. The idea I'm trying to express is that Akihiko was a genius and that his code isn't "open source", regardless of the fact that he left the Seed to Kirito. If the Seed is a "magical" black box that cannot itself be replicated by any other game designers, then there can be all sorts of stuff hidden in its code that bypass any real-world programming concerns.

Programmers could design on top of the technology without being able to understand why it works. That's how I interpreted ALO, at least, and something similar is how I've been assuming Death Gun pulls off his remote kills.

That would be hilarious. Everyone keeps using the SEED API not knowing there is an undocumented _killplayer method.

ROFL

But seriously no real business would ever use some engine they had no idea how it worked and for which there was no one to provide user support or any sort of guarantee as to it continuing to work.

Which would imply these all have to be small indie gigs but that's impossible because GGO looks like a AAA game and not Minecraft.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's a huge narrative contrivance.

[Rodin]

That would be hilarious. Everyone keeps using the SEED API not knowing there is an undocumented _killplayer method.

ROFL

But seriously no real business would ever use some engine they had no idea how it worked and for which there was no one to provide user support or any sort of guarantee as to it continuing to work.

Which would imply these all have to be small indie gigs but that's impossible because GGO looks like a AAA game and not Minecraft.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's a huge narrative contrivance.

And yet, it wouldn't be the first. IIRC, it's exactly how .hack worked. And it's happened at least twice in SAO itself - the first time with the original game (which would never have been sold if other people knew it could do that), and with ALO (which itself had two layers of this stuff - the layer that the villain was working on, and then another level that allowed Akihito to hijack it away from him).

How can you have software that's haunted by a person if there aren't elements that nobody understands?

[jseah]

Actually, given that Yui is basically a strong AI, and that she's part of the larger overwatch system that SAO had, it's safe to say that SAO and derivatives have at least a semi-sentient AI.

Designing 100 floors of terrain and art objects and so on by hand is very difficult. What you can do however is to cheat with procedural generation (a deterministic one so everyone sees the same terrain).

Add the semi-sentience AI to the mix, it's not too hard to imagine that each game would be able to parse/translate most or all of the data between other games running on the same engine.

EDIT: also, Kirito has now officially earned the title of Jedi Master... >.>

[Thomas Cardew]

But seriously no real business would ever use some engine they had no idea how it worked and for which there was no one to provide user support or any sort of guarantee as to it continuing to work.

Which would imply these all have to be small indie gigs but that's impossible because GGO looks like a AAA game and not Minecraft.

Basically what I'm saying is that it's a huge narrative contrivance.

Wait... What?

That's exactly what happens in the real world. Legacy code is a very real thing. Developers and CEs leave projects all the time. And no computer engineer in the world has ever uttered the phrase : "My predecessor's code was complete, well written, and excellently commented; I fully understand everything he did and nothing requires immediate and massive improvement or rewrite."

My old university used a research package for radiation that NO ONE there understood. The original professor had retired and was no longer responding to emails. His various grad students had modified the code in the process of their own research before leaving and left an undocumented mess. That we still use to this day. And it will likely never make sense because it is easier and more time/cost effective for each new person to just modify the existing code they only partially understand so that it least nominally works than to rebuild it from the ground up.

In a AAA environment where the next deadline is around the corner and the next round of layoffs is pending, it's not inconceivable that some used bubblegum, shoestring, and old code to meet their deadline. So narrative contrivance? Possibly. But not a huge or inconceivable one.

[Halae]

EDIT: also, Kirito has now officially earned the title of Jedi Master... >.>

I spend a lot of time with actual fencers, so seeing all those flips and stuff makes my eyes twitch.

The deflecting bullets thing? Sure, I can get behind that. He has forewarning where they'll go. Flipping as part of his defense routine? URK.

[HandofShadows]

I spend a lot of time with actual fencers, so seeing all those flips and stuff makes my eyes twitch.

The deflecting bullets thing? Sure, I can get behind that. He has forewarning where they'll go. Flipping as part of his defense routine? URK.

That's what you get with games. Reality need not apply.

[Yuki Akuma]

SAO and derivatives absolutely have AI - it's called Cardinal, and it's in charge of events and quests and the like, as well as 'playing' most NPCs.

Kirito does all those flips because he has a high Acrobatics skill and knows exactly how the physics of the world work, so therefore he knows precisely how to move to avoid the path of bullets. Yeah, Kirito is kinda hax.

Spoiler: deathgun

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Rumor has it that how death gun kills people is super lame and mundane.

Spoiler: How Death Gun Kills People Seriously Don't Open Unless You've Already Read The Novels

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The way Death Gun kills people is actually not that boring, but it is mundane in the 'he doesn't use creepy cyber magic to kill people like this was .hack or something' sense.

Spoiler: I'm Serious Don't Open This If You Don't Want To Be Spoiled

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There are actually three people playing as Death Gun. Two of them are brothers who were part of Laughing Coffin, and whose father is a doctor. They use a drug called Succinycholine, which is injected into players in the real world at the same time they're shot in the virtual world to make it look like the virtual bullet killed them.

They use a needle-less injector to make it non-obvious the player was killed with a drug.

[HamHam]

Wait... What?

That's exactly what happens in the real world. Legacy code is a very real thing. Developers and CEs leave projects all the time. And no computer engineer in the world has ever uttered the phrase : "My predecessor's code was complete, well written, and excellently commented; I fully understand everything he did and nothing requires immediate and massive improvement or rewrite."

My old university used a research package for radiation that NO ONE there understood. The original professor had retired and was no longer responding to emails. His various grad students had modified the code in the process of their own research before leaving and left an undocumented mess. That we still use to this day. And it will likely never make sense because it is easier and more time/cost effective for each new person to just modify the existing code they only partially understand so that it least nominally works than to rebuild it from the ground up.

In a AAA environment where the next deadline is around the corner and the next round of layoffs is pending, it's not inconceivable that some used bubblegum, shoestring, and old code to meet their deadline. So narrative contrivance? Possibly. But not a huge or inconceivable one.

For existing projects, sure. But if you are sitting down to make a new game, that's not a risk you are going to take. Developing your own engine might be expensive, but it's not as expensive as wasting time working with something that might break your whole project and you couldn't fix.

[Yuki Akuma]

For existing projects, sure. But if you are sitting down to make a new game, that's not a risk you are going to take. Developing your own engine might be expensive, but it's not as expensive as wasting time working with something that might break your whole project and you couldn't fix.

At this point it's becoming obvious that you'll keep screaming "narrative convenience" no matter what points are brought up.

This is how VRMMOs work in this setting. You'll just have to deal with it.

[HandofShadows]

For existing projects, sure. But if you are sitting down to make a new game, that's not a risk you are going to take. Developing your own engine might be expensive, but it's not as expensive as wasting time working with something that might break your whole project and you couldn't fix.

Which is why developers all over the world are using the Steam Engine, The Unreal Engine, the Cry Engine, the Unity Engine.... Need I go on? Creating an engine from scratch is a MASSIVE undertaking require a huge amount of funds, time and money. That's why VERY few companies make their own engines today. It's much to expensive and hard to do. And in the future it will only be worse.

[Rodin]

Which is why developers all over the world are using the Steam Engine, The Unreal Engine, the Cry Engine, the Unity Engine.... Need I go on? Creating an engine from scratch is a MASSIVE undertaking require a huge amount of funds, time and money. That's why VERY few companies make their own engines today. It's much to expensive and hard to do. And in the future it will only be worse.

And in a lot of fiction, it isn't that they don't want to build from scratch - they can't. Because the original designer was a genius who is so beyond his contemporaries that it's impossible to reverse-engineer. Just off the top of my head, there's The World from .hack, the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell, Data from Star Trek, the Muses from Girl Genius (who have been around for hundreds of years and still people can't figure out how they work).

[HandofShadows]

Actually the designer of the Tachikomas is still alive (but in jail) and they can replicate the technology. What they have not been able to do is duplicate the conditions that allowed the Tachikomas to grow into being people.

[Rodin]

Actually the designer of the Tachikomas is still alive (but in jail) and they can replicate the technology. What they have not been able to do is duplicate the conditions that allowed the Tachikomas to grow into being people.

I got the impression from the bit at the very end that the new ones weren't even on that scale - very robotic voices compared to even pre-ghost Tachikomas. Remember, the designer destroyed all his blueprints (hence why he's in jail) because he didn't want them to be able to create any more.

[HandofShadows]

I got the impression from the bit at the very end that the new ones weren't even on that scale - very robotic voices compared to even pre-ghost Tachikomas. Remember, the designer destroyed all his blueprints (hence why he's in jail) because he didn't want them to be able to create any more.

No, he damaged the lab to cover his escape. But he still had all his plans and such with him when he was captured. It's just that no one knows why the Tachikoma's "woke up" and they haven't been able to replicate it with the new units.

[JadedDM]

Spoiler: Episode 10

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Kirito and Sinnon exchanged life stories and...that was pretty much it.

I still kind of feel like they are dragging this story arc out.

[Kaez]

I've noticed the dragging too, I wish more interesting things happened in this arc. However, I'm quite content that the arc (I ASSUME) will not end at 14-16 episodes. I'm still bummed about the first half of SAO I being so short, especially since I was getting into the whole Aincrad feels like a neat place to be (minus the you die there, you die in real life thing).

The feel of Alfheim really gave me a curve ball, as I got attached to the characters as they were to have it snatched away and given a whole new set of mechanics and lore. I'm a fan of the Alfheim side of things for literally two fights, the one vs the Salamander general, and the end "fight" vs Oberion.... taking away admin powers is just gross :P.

[Rodin]

The thing that made ALO ring so hollow to me was the lack of consequences for, well, pretty much everything in that arc outside of rescuing Asuna. Kirito spares a guy when he didn't have to, and this...makes the guy back up a bald-faced lie later on. Why, was he that worried about having to do a corpse run and go get that experience again? The alliance between the two races can supposedly be broken up by having the leaders and delgates all be assassinated...because why? They can all message the rest of the people in their faction to explain what happened, and they can find out where the leak is and set up the next delegates meeting in a new secret location next Tuesday. Everybody acts like they're still in SAO.

The only good things to come out of that arc were the aforementioned fights and the romance/not-romance between Kirto and Suguha (slightly squicky, but well-written if you can get past the premise).

Been enjoying GGO though, mainly because of Death Gun. It's the show getting back to what made me like it in the first place - VRMMO with consequences, and neat emotional thought experiments like Sinon disassociating with her real life.

[Yuki Akuma]

Everyone in ALO is just really into roleplaying, I guess.

[Sliver]

I'm confused about the deal with finding out Death Gun's nickname... Aren't their names appearing above their characters, along with their hp bars? Or is there no way to find out a person's nick without him telling you or showing their... What is that? A character sheet? Their contact info?

[Yuki Akuma]

In SAO-derived games, you apparently can't see someone's name unless they introduce themselves. Kayaba wanted it to be like a real world, after all.

I assume keeping track of who has introduced themselves to who is one of the Cardinal system's functions.

[JadedDM]

More talking!

But at least we learned some things,

Spoiler: Episode 11

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namely how Death Gun is operating--he has a partner who kills the player in real life after he shoots them in game.

[JadedDM]

Spoiler: Episode 12

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Evidently, Death Gun/Sterben has possibly more than one ally.

Also, Yui can communicate with people in the real world via phone? And remote hack nearby television monitors?

[HamHam]

Spoiler: Episode 12

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Evidently, Death Gun/Sterben has possibly more than one ally.

Also, Yui can communicate with people in the real world via phone? And remote hack nearby television monitors?

Spoiler

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I think Kirito is just plain wrong about his accomplices theory. I'm till hoping for a Death Note, but it could also be like... nanorobots or something.

[Rodin]

Spoiler

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I think Kirito is just plain wrong about his accomplices theory. I'm till hoping for a Death Note, but it could also be like... nanorobots or something.

Spoiler

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Didn't we actually see the accomplice standing over Sinon? Or was that an imagine spot?

I'm wondering how they're going to get Death Gun's name now. If none of them knew it in the first place and he entered false information when he signed up for GGO....wait, wouldn't they have credit card information on him? I realize that it's a foreign company, but surely "We think this guy is a serial killer" is enough to subpoena that data if the Japanese government stepped in.

[JadedDM]

Hey, stuff is happening again!

Spoiler: Episode 13

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Oh, no! Kirito never learned Death Gun's old name...how can he ever identify him now? Oh, because he suddenly remembers it anyway in mid-battle. Well, that was anti-climatic.

I kind of had an inkling that Shinkawa had some connection to Death Gun, because of the opening credits.

Do the police in Japan have a terrible response time or did Kirito just not get around to calling them?

And finally, I don't understand Shinkawa's motivation at all, at least in regard to Sinon. If he wanted to be with her, why was Death Gun targeting her in the BOB? Or does that get an explanation later on?

[HamHam]

Man SAO, you were so close to not being a terrible sexist mess. And then you screwed it up.