Shinichi returned from the weekend of performing with the intent to "sleep all week". He was getting a good start on it, as he was still sleeping when Danika started her shift in the new server.
The uncharacteristic exhaustion made her worry that he might be getting sick, but if he still seemed lethargic when she finished work, she could always encourage him to use the VR-medi pod for awhile and have it check him out. He already had a stored profile for it to compare its readings with, so it should be pretty accurate. Having the device readily available for diagnostics made it feel less like an expensive luxury and more like a comforting tool.
--
They decided to start with the space themed game, partly because Myles kept insisting that its physics libraries would be 'easy' to create.
Paul questioned the terrain storage capacity, pointing out questioningly, "Living Jade Empire doesn't even have an entire planet detailed, how will we present entire solar systems?"
Lin Hao replied easily, "We'll cheat. 'Living Jade Empire' was built to resemble a living world, but there's no reason the system can't do what most games do, and present simplified worlds full of prefabricated pieces. Even the best space exploration games so far have limited terrains and environments, even if they are more complex than the old ones that held a single biome per planet."
"Doesn't Living Jade Empire already do that?" Danika asked. "Before you said it doesn't track what no one is near?"
The people from the programming division all sort of rolled their eyes at her and Myles said a little condescendingly, "We're discussing the storage of the worlds, not the ongoing processing."
Lin Hao moderated it with, "But both will be applicable. Think of it like the story frameworks we rebuilt, we'll be saving outlines, but they'll only be filled in with pieces as needed."
--
Shinichi was awake, and playing 'Living Jade Empire' when Danika logged out for her break.
He switched to his phone and sat beside her while she ate, and he looked startled when she asked, "Are you feeling alright?"
"Yeah?" he replied easily. "I am not eating because I only got around to breakfast about an hour ago."
"You just seemed tired out," she told him.
He grinned at her and scooted close enough to hunch over and lean his head on her shoulder. "I am," he agreed.
Even though he was turning it into a playful complaint, she wasn't entirely reassured. She shifted until she could curl her arm up and pet his head. He just closed his eyes and stayed that way, with a smile curving the outline of his cheeks.
--
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Danika felt like things actually began to come together at a level that she could understand after Devon Yu joined them in the afternoon. He seemed completely unsurprised that they'd chosen the space theme to start with, and jumped right into the planning as though he'd been there all morning.
Jade seemed to take more interest after Devon began to outline things too. He hadn't commented very much on the discussions about which proven and which theoretical physics of space flight were going to be implemented. He didn't seem to share Living Jade Empire's Guardian of the Western Vault's curiosity about how their world related to their moon and such. Either that or he automatically understood as the information was uploaded.
It wasn't until their workspace began to reflect the zero gravity environment that a space station might hold that Danika suggested, "You know, what if instead of trying to moderate the environment, we just made the players a little more heroic?"
"That makes no sense to me," Paul told her bluntly.
Myles sort of shocked her by saying thoughtfully, "I think I see what you mean."
"Explain," Lin Hao commanded.
Danika began, "So I get that having no gravity can make people feel dizzy, and that space isn't like it is in a movie, where the hero floats dramatically away just out of reach of the edge of the fire as it expands, or the guy who fell out of the airlock has plenty of time to scream…"
"For a lot of reasons," Devon said with a quiet chuckle.
She continued, "But can't we just make the characters a little tougher? Like… genetically modified so they actually can last a few minutes naked in the vacuum without severe damage, and don't suffer as much disorientation from their inner ears not being designed for this environment?"
Jade asked curiously, "You mean like dragons in the upper atmosphere in the original Empire?"
Lin Hao told him, "I think that's what she means, yeah."
"Is this also an empire?" Danika asked suddenly. "Will all of the games need to have a central figure like the Jade Emperor?"
"What's wrong with having me in all of them?" Jade complained.
"Nothing," she replied quickly, "only won't you want new roles to go with the new places? And what if there are multiple empires, or only a small kingdom, or some weird blend of different polities?"
Devon said, "That's true, I wonder what power most astronauts call out to when their fragile shells crack?"
Everyone turned to look at him, even the people who had been busy trying to adjust the basic laws that this server would be using as its foundation.
Lin Hao ran a hand through his celestially neat hair and suggested, "Why don't the four of you start working on the game's founding story line, and figure out if it will fit within the existing frameworks. Adjusting the underlying laws is turning out to be more tricky than I expected, since the game wasn't designed to have those things arbitrarily altered. I think we need to spend the time to restructure things so that future alterations can be done by just changing the data in the correct libraries."
Takahashi, Paul, Danika and Devon had Jade create a second workspace so that they could begin one of the noisy brainstorming sessions that the meetings of the sixth often turned into.
--
Danika was relieved to discover that by the end of the day, she wasn't the only one who was feeling the lack of her usual assistant dragon.
Even Lin Hao admitted that he felt like he was having to look up too many things "by hand".
Neither she, nor Jade quite understood his explanation of why the dragons couldn't just visit the new system. Everyone else seemed to be clear about why it wouldn't work, but Jade kept asking, "Why can't you just make a new door?"
Danika didn't understand what the "door" Jade was talking about was either, but Lin Hao seemed to. "Because even if I could, I wouldn't. The world dragon exists to protect you from being rewritten from the outside, and you just aren't designed to communicate with a copy of yourself through a limited data channel."
Danika at least understood that last bit, and asked suddenly, "Couldn't we run copies of the mobile app that lets us communicate with our dragons through our phones?" She didn't think it would be any different than running the mobile version of the game while logged on in VR, and she added, "And couldn't Jade play the mobile version of the original game?"
Lin Hao eyed her warily and then replied, "You could do that, but your dragon won't have any information about this server, or any way to transmit anything outside of the application's limitations."
"Okay," Danika agreed cheerfully. Even if she needed a local assistant to work here, being able to consult her original one seemed useful enough to her.
"I want to try playing the mobile version," Jade told Lin Hao with a stubborn expression.
Lin Hao pinched the bridge of his nose, which probably didn't actually help his headache, and told Jade firmly, "Fine, I'll get you a phone, but not today."
"Does he need an actual phone?" Takahashi questioned doubtfully.
"My dragon told me that it could only access things through its app, and couldn't access my character directly," Danika answered when Lin Hao only nodded, "so I guess Jade will have to pretend that he's a celestial dragon assistant?"