With the Domains' passive effects granted, Jasper and Celeste started to make their way towards the village. As soon as they had a destination in mind and started to make their way towards it, Celeste found herself keenly aware of what direction it was. While she had never been the best at figuring out what direction was where in the real world, in here she knew exactly where to walk, and she seemed to be able to naturally guide them towards a dirt road.
It was fairly easy to talk while walking. Jasper would probably have been out of breath if he tried to talk and hike at the same time, but thanks to his Endurance Domain, he didn't need to breathe anymore, which worried Celeste a little. She loved him, but if he started to ramble, one of the few things that could cut him off would be the lack of air, and if that wasn't something that he had to worry about anymore, she might have to take a more active role in cutting him off. For now, though, she listened to him as he explained the mechanics of the game.
"In brief, this is just a template so far. The AI will try and generate systems as we engage with them, but it isn't something that we should be doing often. This world is still in development, I don't even think they have an official title for this game yet, so we are just fixing bugs in the base world, then letting the AI use the chaos we bring to fix bugs that has been identified." Jasper was barely breathing between each sentence, and it made things hard to understand. Celeste just gave him a look and he instantly seemed to realize what was going on, so he made a conscious decision to take a breathe before continuing.
"We should be in the primordial stage of the world, where humans have just arrived on the continent, and gods haven't really appeared yet, but it does mean that any bugs we don't fix while we are logged in will be iterated upon, and probably expanded into the mythos of the world." Jasper explained.
He was happy to get to show his work while he talked, as it was usually just coding, which he knew was hard for most people to relate to. "Normally we let the AI try and fix its own mistakes... but this should be better. We can take a deep dive on how it fixes stuff later." He explained. It was a topic he was fairly passionate about and he could probably rant about it for ages, but Celeste decided to nudge him in the right direction.
"So these god characters have the potential to change the world. Got it. But what can we do?" She asked, refocusing his attention on the mechanics that he had promised to explain to her.
Jasper nodded as he realized that he had been about to go off track. "Right, so, you have a small stat screen, though you can just ignore your attributes for now, I think we have gone over those once, no need to do it twice. You should see additional stuff underneath." He said, and as he did she found what he was talking about.
Resources Value Rank 1 Health 9 Energy 2 Impact 2 Worship 0 Wealth 0 Available Domain Power Points 6
Some of it made sense to her, but she decided to be patient and let Jasper explain. He was supposed to be the god of knowledge after all. She simply gave him a nod to indicate that she had found it and let him run through it.
"So your Rank is how divine you are. You can consider it your level, but you don't really get experience for fighting and solving quests, so 'level' seemed like a bad word to use. If you wanna increase your rank you need to fix bugs and help create stories and mechanics in the world." Jasper explained, having seemingly put a lot more thought into this than she had assumed.
Celeste couldn't help but wonder how much work her husband had done on this and if it had affected his normal workflow. She concluded that it probably had, though now might not be the time to scold him for it.
"Your health is how much life you have. If you go down to 0 you don't really die, you are just booted from the session, meaning that projects you are working on will progress without your further input." Jasper explained, and the idea of dying and having a half-finished project just lying around made Celeste cringe a little.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
"Next we have Energy. Energy is how often you can use your divine abilities. Each time you use them the AI has to calculate a lot of stuff, meaning that, to begin with, you can't use them a ton, but the more bugs we fix, the less the AI has to handle. In other words the higher rank you are, the more energy you get." Jasper said, which made some sense.
"Energy is used in three ways. It is committed until the next loading screen, this mean that you probably can't use the energy until you have left the conversation, stepped out of the room or do something that forces a game update." He tried to laugh it off, but it was definitely a bit vague, though Celeste would probably get a feel for it.
"Then there is committing it for the day, meaning that you can't use the Energy again until the next dawn. Yes, even if you use it at the break of dawn you will get it refreshed at dawn. I didn't wanna implement another clock which might slow things down, so it is just a global function call that happens when the sun object shifts one of its variables, which so far is just its position in the sky, so if something tries to kill the sun we are in trouble." He said, his laughter now turning nervous and he tried to make it seem like no big deal.
Celeste had to admit that she didn't get much of that last part, she just focused on the first part and knew that she would get Energy back at dawn if she committed them for the day.
"Last but not least, some powers allow you to commit energy for as long as you want. You can pull it back whenever you want, or you can just let it stay there, but there is usually some very specific condition that needs to be fulfilled for you to apply the effect." Jasper rounded out, as he finished up his lecture on energy.
"Impact is how much processing power you have available for your character. You can set up systems where, when you log out, your character will take care of tasks for you. It will go around and fix stuff, though all this requires processing power, and you have only a certain amount allocated. I have tried to quantize it, so each unit represents a single task that your character will perform while the world progresses, but this is an easy way to ensure that you at the very least fix stuff you wanna fix, even if you are knocked out of the game for the session. This also increases with your rank." Jasper summarized though it was clear that he was taking full advantage of the fact that he didn't have to breathe.
"Worship is how many people actively see you as a deity, and no it is not a one to one number. You can spend worship on creating permanent things in the world. Let us take your Tinkering and Time domains. If you wanna construct a clock that tells the wielder when they will die, you will have to commit a certain amount of worship to this. Since the AI is controlling the NPCs, this mostly represents how much goodwill we have with the AI. The bigger the thing you wanna create the more worship it will take. If you select worship you can propose a project you wanna make to the AI, the AI will calculate the worship cost, and then ask you if you wanna spend said cost." Jasper said and Celeste tried to rephrase it so she understood it herself.
"So the AI gives us worship and decides how much the worship should cost? Seems like it will make bugfixing changes cheaper." She said, slowly drawing the conclusion that Jasper had been working towards.
"Yes... This is also how you increase in rank, spend your worship turning bugs into features and creating valuable items or storylines and we get more freedom." He explained.
"Two more left, Wealth is pretty easy, it is how much money you have access to. It goes on a scale from one to ten, one being about a month's wages for a skilled labourer, while ten is the gross domestic product of an empire." He said, and Celeste had to admit that was probably the easiest one so far.
"And lastly, we have Domain Power. You can use this to buy powers within your domain, allowing you further control of each Domain, or you can use them to buy an additional Domain." Jasper finally concluded.
Celeste was a bit stunned. "You mean that we have additional powers inside our Domains?" She asked, having almost paused midstride, though her journeying domain ensured that she kept walking.
Jasper grinned. "Oh yeah, each Domain has lesser powers and greater powers. A lesser power costs one point, while a greater power costs two. A new Domain costs three points, so yes you should be able to buy two new domains if you want." He explained. "It will become much clearer when you pick your powers." He concluded.
"Do you have the same stats as me?" Celeste asked, and Jasper gave a non-committal shrug.
"Almost, I have 10 health, and I am assuming that you are at 8 or 9." Jasper answered.
Celeste nodded along as he talked. "I am at 9." She said. "Should we start picking powers now?" She asked, feeling like she had already committed herself quite a bit to the mechanics of the world.
Jasper shook his head. "Let's get to the village first. From there we can get a feel of the world and decide what to do, then we can pick our powers." He said, smiling softly.
As they walked, the topic shifted from game mechanics to how Celeste's day had been, after all, she had gotten off work and headed over to Jasper's office without going back home. She complained a bit about her students, but as she vented her frustration it seemed more and more irrelevant as she enjoyed the stroll through the forest, the sun gleaming through the newly blooming leaves on the trees, and the birds chirping away. It felt like paradise and it wasn't even real.