Ryan’s point of view shifted into a third person perspective, an androgynous voice welcoming him to the tutorial. He could see himself, head leaned back and staring at the roof of the hide, the graphs, icons and bars that were previously cluttering his vision floating in a curved holographic screen right in front of his face. The voice informed him that the Interface tutorial would now commence.
It explained that the Quantum System Interface showed in the form of a Heads-Up Display. A small icon in the top right corner looking like a pair of wrap-around sunglasses flashed green while the voice informed him that Players could enter the interface management menu by mentally selecting the icon, it also informed him that doing such would render the Player immobile and that any actions performed would only effect the interface.
His avatar started grasping bars and icons and dragging them to different positions on the HUD. Grabbing one with both hands and moving the hands apart enlarged the selected icon. Bringing his hands together entirely minimised it. His avatar then swiped right to left along a pair of bars situated in the top left corner as a result of which they became nearly entirely translucent. Ryan thought that the system seemed to be very intuitive and fairly easy to understand.
Absorbed in the observation of his avatar’s actions he was startled when the voice stated that the Settings menu could be accessed while in interface management, a gear icon situated in the lower portion of his field of vision was highlighted and flashing. It continued to state that Quantum Processor settings were beyond the scope of the interface tutorial and in any event inaccessible to Players below Level 100. His avatar then smacked his crossed arms against his chest, closing the interface management menu and returning Ryan’s viewpoint to the first person perspective.
The voice continued explaining the various items and their functions displayed on his HUD in depth, always highlighting the relevant item. Ryan was slowly getting overwhelmed by the info-dump; Energy Level, Shield Level, Physical Status Dummy, Map Icon, Affinity Wheel, System Log, Combat Log, Chat Log, Messenger Icon, Help Menu, Settings, Character Information Icon, Experience Bar, Buff Tracker, Recipe Book, Skill Book, Blueprint Ledger, Quest Log and Inventory. It seemed that everything about his new existence was tracked, quantified and logged in some way or another by the interface.
What immediately grabbed his attention was the fact that no reference whatsoever was made to either a health bar, stamina bar or a mana bar. The inference he drew was that magic either did not exist or utilised another resource, likely energy. Health damage was probably also calculated organically, a successful headshot killing the target immediately, not dependent on any damage numbers.
Moving on to the various Stats that effected Players the voice summarised Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Intellect, Will, Constitution, Energy, Perception, rattling off the effects of each Stat and that they could be trained. It also skimmed over how they interlinked and mentioned in passing that each was comprised of sub-stats, which it failed to address further.
Ryan thought that whoever had designed the tutorial must have been off his rocker, nobody could possibly be expected to keep up with all the information provided. Ryan considered himself well versed in the various implementations of stat progression systems and even he was only able to retain a fraction of the provided information. Additionally, it seemed to gloss over some very important information.
The voice directly segued in to the affinity system, explaining that Players would be rated on a scale from 0-100 in the following affinities Kinetic (macro), Kinetic (micro), Gravitational, Soul, Space, Time, Matter, Electromagnetic, Biological and Psychic. It further explained that a Player’s affinity would determine the effect of certain Skills and the Player’s ability to learn Skills aligned with certain affinities. Class availability would also be influenced by affinities, it continued.
The implementation sounded neat; manipulation of some fundamental forces, Newtonian motion, life, time, space and Psychic, but Ryan wondered if affinities were predetermined or whether a Player could influence his affinities, a question the tutorial failed to address entirely. He also had no idea what essence could mean. Thinking back, he discovered that, with exception of how to manage the HUD, and the training of Stats*, the tutorial neglected to address a Player’s influence on the various characteristics entirely, only expounding on how they affected the Player. This wasn’t much of a tutorial he decided. Too much information on one hand, too little on the other and of nearly no immediate practical use.
Before he could continue the train of thought the voice continued its explanation, stating that Players could learn any Skill and train them naturally, that their progression was tracked from Novice to Grandmaster. In addition, the System would only provide training assistance for class skills, chosen profession skills and any skills awarded to the player directly.
This too sounded neat, but in retrospect Ryan considered that it was purely logical. The Games System promoted certain aspects of life, but was based entirely in a partially new physical reality. There was no logical reason to artificially restrict Players from developing themselves, time available would be a sufficient restriction in itself. Idly he wondered if he would still age and if so, how, considering he should be able to improve his stats in some way or another beyond what was considered human.
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He then noticed that the voice had stopped talking a while ago. “That was it? That was the tutorial? What the heck? How can that be called a fucking tutorial?” Ryan noticed he was yelling and getting worked up about that nearly useless information dump, quietening down immediately. It was still dark and he didn’t want to attract any unfriendly attention. Actually, on second thought, it seemed to be getting lighter, although his glowing HUD still messed with his ability to see.
“Time to do something about that.” he thought to himself and proceeded into the Interface management menu. Feeling like he was conducting some weird orchestra and simultaneously doing a funky dance he arranged it to his liking, minimal and as non-intrusive as possible. Accidentally double-tapping an icon he discovered a function that the tutorial definitely had not addressed, a tooltip menu.
Double tapping on the Chat Log showed that he could combine all Logs into one by dragging them together, creating a log function with various tabs. The Physical Status Dummy, Affinity Wheel, Skill Menu and Experience Bar could be folded into the Character Information Icon. Likewise, the Recipe Book, Skill Book and Blueprint Ledger could be combined. Discovering that the Messenger Icon could be added to the Log Icon was also great.
He also combined the Energy Bar, Shield Level and Buff Tracker, which resulted in a neat sphere, vertically divided between yellow and blue with two percentages at the bottom. He assumed that any buffs and de-buffs would be arranged around the sphere. The Help Menu, Inventory and Map Icon had no option to combine and no matter what he tried he was unable to change the Map Icon into a floating Mini-Map.
Once again re-arranging his HUD he ended up with the Resource Sphere in the top middle of his field of vision with the remainder minimised as far as possible and squashed into the bottom right. Still feeling like a clown he closed the HUD management menu. Because the HUD was still irritating the shit out of him, he mentally selected the Help Menu by clicking it and immediately focused on ways to improve the HUD. Focusing on clicking HUD in the tabbed menu that appeared before him he started to read.
What he read made him re-asses the stupidity of the tutorial to double face-palm levels of stupid. The Interface was designed as a training aid and the HUD could be considered akin to training wheels. Players should be naturally aware of anything affecting them, their physical and mental status and could enter any menu by concentrating and focusing on the specific function. The Help Menu also addressed removal of icons from the HUD by flicking them away and dimming their glow by rotating them like a dimmer switch, which he promptly did, leaving just the Resource Sphere in the upper left of his field of view.
He could also receive telepathic alerts with respect to anything directly or indirectly affecting him, in essence a telepathic narrator reading his Logs to him. This could also be customised to his liking, choosing what he should be alerted about and what could be safely ignored. Choosing to be alerted only when learning or ranking up a Skill, obtaining an Achievement, levelling up and on imminent Shield failure he closed the Help Menu for now and decided to take a quick peek at his Character Information:
Player23789654
Level 2
Experience
110
Next Level
210
Statistics
Strength
11
Intellect
11
Agility
12
Will
10
Dexterity
10
Energy
8
Constitution
14
Perception
11
Points available
20
Affinities
Kinetic (macro)
22
Kinetic (micro)
21
Gravitational
18
Soul
11
Space
38
Time
26
Matter
12
Electromagnetic
19
Biological
19
Psychic
22
Skills
Class Skills:
None
Profession Skills:
None
General:
11782 listed
(expand)
Achievements
First Kill
bonus not chosen*
Sneaky Bastard
bonus not chosen*
David vs. Goliath
bonus not chosen*
Hat-Trick
bonus not chosen*
The fact that he was Level 2 and the list of Achievements which he would investigate later reminded him that he had killed the leopard. Suddenly glad that his extensive Skill list was minimised Ryan quickly changed his name in the sheet to Ryan Alexander Hunter, his given name. He decided to forego further exploration of his Statistics and HUD and attend on getting a move on as the first blush of dawn was lighting the eastern horizon and he could see fairly well by know. As he closed the Character Information Panel he couldn’t help but notice that he had a whole 20 stat points available for distribution, which seemed excessive for Level 2 given the fact that it appeared that the human average seemed to be around 10 points per stat at Level 0.