MPC 57X(40): Bring Your Cheeto to Work Day
Dec 19, 2018 22:33:32 GMT
Post by Jen & Cheeto on Dec 19, 2018 22:33:32 GMT
MPC Name: Wild Card (Videogame Nightmare)
MPC Number: 57X (40)
Reward Requested: Bits
Jen stared into her work computer screen, brain throbbing from how much she was racking it. What she was supposed to be doing today was implementing this boss monster’s special attack. What she was actually doing was playing the same fight over and over, scrutinizing the same lines of code, and not figuring out why the heck it crashed every time she tried to match red blocks. She’d been sitting there for an hour, and the only new feature she’d added to that game was a bunch of commented out print statements!
Making video games was fun.
Jen threw herself back in her swivel chair, sending herself gliding toward the wall. To be fair, it wasn’t as if she had nothing to go on. When she commented out that line that kept track of how many red block combos you’d matched, the game worked fine. But that line was there for a reason, and she couldn’t stand not knowing why it was such a problem.
As she sat there, contemplating whether she should admit defeat, she realized something. She hadn’t heard from Cheeto in a while.
“Cheeto?” Her eyes snapped open, and she hopped off the chair. “Cheeto? Are you okay?”
She scanned the room for any signs of yellowish orange. Normally, she shared this office with a couple other programmers, but neither of them were in today. So she’d let Cheeto walk around, with the promise that he wouldn’t leave the room. But he was a curious little Patamon...maybe he’d left anyway?
Growing worried, Jen stuck her head into every corner of that room, ducked under every desk, even picked up every trash can. Nothing had happened to him, had it? He hadn’t gotten lost again? And if he had...well, he couldn’t have, right?
As Jen made her way toward the door to look outside the office, she got a glance at her computer screen. And it was probably just her, but it seemed...off, somehow. Different from usual.
It probably wasn’t the time for this, but she couldn’t resist taking a closer look. And just as she thought, it was the same as usual. Debugger on the left, game window on the right. Same ominous desert cave, same rock monster, same weird sand bats, same Patamon…
...wait, what?!
------
Cheeto hadn’t known there were three worlds for him to play in!
He’d only known two: the one he was born in, and the one with Jen and the other hu-mon. But then Jen pressed a button on her Digivice, and next thing he knew, he was flying right into a whole new place!
He wished Jen could be there to see it, too, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. All he could see as he walked along the dark, dusty tunnel were lots of little flying Digimon, and big rock walls, and a few balls of grass. And sand. Sand was falling everywhere. A little bit of it even fell on his nose.
It tickled. “A-choo!”
“WHO GOES THERE?!”
Cheeto turned around to see where the voice was coming from. It was a rock Digimon, kind of like a Gotsumon, only bigger and redder and with no ears on their head. Maybe they could help!
“Me!” Cheeto said. “Hi! I’m Chee--”
“I know who you are,” the not-Gotsumon said. “Only the Hero of Legend could ever make it this far into my impenetrable fortress.” They scratched their chin. “Though you are a lot smaller than I thought you’d be.”
“I can get bigger if you want!” Cheeto puffed himself up, like he was about to launch a Boom Bubble.
“Your size doesn’t matter.” Not-Gostumon puffed themself up, too, sticking their chest out. “Prepare to battle!”
All of a sudden, everything got even darker, except for the tiny circle Cheeto and Not-Gotsumon were standing on. That got even brighter, like an Agumon was launching a flame attack right over their heads. In front of Cheeto was a huge see-through box, big enough for a lot of Cheetos to fit inside. And it looked like Not-Gotsumon had one, too.
“Are you ready?” they asked.
Sure, Cheeto was ready! He didn’t know what he was ready for, but--
“Cheeto! Can you hear me?”
Jen! She was here! “Hi, Jen!” He looked around. “Where are you?”
“Outside. Back in the real world. I mean, the human world. Um...not in the video game.”
“Video game?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how it happened, but...okay, you know that game I was making? That thing I was doing on the computer?”
Cheeto thought for a few moments. “With all the colors?”
“That’s it. I...think. Anyway, you somehow got sucked into that game. And the only way out is...well, it’s hard to explain, but basically, you have to fight this guy.”
“Okay!” He took in a biiiiig gulp of air. “Boom bubble!”
“Not like that!”
He swallowed the air.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. The thing is, this game has rules. You can't just attack them straight out. You have to use the blocks.”
“The blocks?”
“The things with all the colors.”
“Ohhh!” He smiled. “I like those!”
“Me, too! I mean...anyway. What you have to do is stack those blocks. They’re going to fall down from the sky, and you’re going to have to grab them and drop them on the ground so that blocks that are the same color are together. Do you understand?”
“Yep!” he said. “Same color goes together!”
“Exactly. Blue with blue, green with green, yellow with yellow, and purple with purple.”
“And red with red, right?”
“Actually, no. Don’t match the red ones. That’ll crash the game.”
Crash? “What does that mean?”
“It means...things will be bad. So don’t match the red ones, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Great. Now, are you ready to get started!”
“I’m ready!”
------
What followed were the most stressful five minutes of Jen's life.
Yes, Cheeto understood the basics of the game, but there was a lot of detail that she’d completely forgotten to tell him. Like how you needed to stack the blocks as fast as possible, or else the King of Rocks over here would drain your HP. Which wouldn’t even be much of a problem, if it weren‘t for the fact that you couldn’t stack red blocks or else the game would crash.
Cheeto’s sprite zipped up and down as he grabbed the blocks from above and dropped them on the bottom of the screen. Which made things even harder, since he was blocking part of the screen. But she couldn’t blame him; it wasn't like she could explain how to do it with his mind. In fact, she couldn't really explain anything. Every attempt at a sentence came out half-baked.
“No! Not there!”
“There! Combo! Left--never mind.”
“HP! It’s...where’s...clear block?”
“NO NOT THE RED ONE!”
It wasn’t long before things looked dire. Cheeto had only a sliver of HP left, while the boss’s was still half full. Cheeto’s half of the screen was packed with rows upon rows of unmatched red blocks, leaving him little room to stack more. In the middle of the screen, that rock monster was cackling; it was his “I’ve got you now!” expression. And he was bringing a pair of green blocks lower and lower, to create a combo that Cheeto certainly wouldn’t survive.
What was Jen doing? She had to pause the game!
But when she reached for the space bar...it was already too late.
“BATTLE OVER!”
It was over. Cheeto had lost. And if all his HP had drained...then that could very well mean…
“YOU WIN!”
Wait. What?
Jen tilted her head back up to look at the screen, and sure enough, Cheeto had won. And, thanks to a graphical glitch, she could see just how he did it: a massive pile of yellow blocks, matched all at once.
A familiar “ding!” sounded from the game window. The “ding!” that means...you got an achievement.
Wait a second.
Jen clicked on the window behind the game to bring up the code editor, where all the game’s code files sat. She opened the background processes folder, skimmed its contents, and clicked on the one she was looking for: the achievement listener.
There were plenty of different achievements you could earn throughout the game. Some were just story checkpoints, like beating a certain boss, but others held their own little goals you could work towards. For example, there were a few achievements for stacking a certain number of the same color of block. Like, say, the red blocks. Every time you matched red blocks, a counter would go up. And every time that counter went up, it would call a function inside this very achievement listener. That function would update your progress toward the corresponding achievement, so once it reached a certain number, you’d get it. But that wasn’t all; if there happened to be any other code inside that function when it was called…
...like, say, that infinite loop someone put in there…
Yes, that was it! Whoever handled this code last had been trying to implement something related to the red blocks. Jen wasn’t sure what that was, but they'd put the code for it in the achievement listener, which is called every time you match red blocks. And that code was so messily done that it made the game crash!
With a sigh of relief, Jen commented that code out. Finally. She was out of this mess.
But Cheeto was still in his! Quickly, she brought up the game window, hit enter to exit the battle, and guided Cheeto to a save point. Which, according to the message on the Digivice, was the only way to ensure he got out of the game safely.
A beam of bright yellow light shot out of the computer and right onto Jen's desk. And seconds later, her little Patamon was sitting in its place. “You did it, Cheeto!”
“I did it!” His wings flapped up and down, like how a dog's tail wagging.
And Jen couldn’t help but laugh. “I have to say, thanks for getting stuck in there. I don’t think I ever would have figured that out without your help.”
“You’re welcome!” he said, big smile on his face. “That was fun. Can I go in there again?”
Jen froze. “Um...maybe later.”
Words: 1777
MPC Number: 57X (40)
Reward Requested: Bits
Jen stared into her work computer screen, brain throbbing from how much she was racking it. What she was supposed to be doing today was implementing this boss monster’s special attack. What she was actually doing was playing the same fight over and over, scrutinizing the same lines of code, and not figuring out why the heck it crashed every time she tried to match red blocks. She’d been sitting there for an hour, and the only new feature she’d added to that game was a bunch of commented out print statements!
Making video games was fun.
Jen threw herself back in her swivel chair, sending herself gliding toward the wall. To be fair, it wasn’t as if she had nothing to go on. When she commented out that line that kept track of how many red block combos you’d matched, the game worked fine. But that line was there for a reason, and she couldn’t stand not knowing why it was such a problem.
As she sat there, contemplating whether she should admit defeat, she realized something. She hadn’t heard from Cheeto in a while.
“Cheeto?” Her eyes snapped open, and she hopped off the chair. “Cheeto? Are you okay?”
She scanned the room for any signs of yellowish orange. Normally, she shared this office with a couple other programmers, but neither of them were in today. So she’d let Cheeto walk around, with the promise that he wouldn’t leave the room. But he was a curious little Patamon...maybe he’d left anyway?
Growing worried, Jen stuck her head into every corner of that room, ducked under every desk, even picked up every trash can. Nothing had happened to him, had it? He hadn’t gotten lost again? And if he had...well, he couldn’t have, right?
As Jen made her way toward the door to look outside the office, she got a glance at her computer screen. And it was probably just her, but it seemed...off, somehow. Different from usual.
It probably wasn’t the time for this, but she couldn’t resist taking a closer look. And just as she thought, it was the same as usual. Debugger on the left, game window on the right. Same ominous desert cave, same rock monster, same weird sand bats, same Patamon…
...wait, what?!
------
Cheeto hadn’t known there were three worlds for him to play in!
He’d only known two: the one he was born in, and the one with Jen and the other hu-mon. But then Jen pressed a button on her Digivice, and next thing he knew, he was flying right into a whole new place!
He wished Jen could be there to see it, too, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. All he could see as he walked along the dark, dusty tunnel were lots of little flying Digimon, and big rock walls, and a few balls of grass. And sand. Sand was falling everywhere. A little bit of it even fell on his nose.
It tickled. “A-choo!”
“WHO GOES THERE?!”
Cheeto turned around to see where the voice was coming from. It was a rock Digimon, kind of like a Gotsumon, only bigger and redder and with no ears on their head. Maybe they could help!
“Me!” Cheeto said. “Hi! I’m Chee--”
“I know who you are,” the not-Gotsumon said. “Only the Hero of Legend could ever make it this far into my impenetrable fortress.” They scratched their chin. “Though you are a lot smaller than I thought you’d be.”
“I can get bigger if you want!” Cheeto puffed himself up, like he was about to launch a Boom Bubble.
“Your size doesn’t matter.” Not-Gostumon puffed themself up, too, sticking their chest out. “Prepare to battle!”
All of a sudden, everything got even darker, except for the tiny circle Cheeto and Not-Gotsumon were standing on. That got even brighter, like an Agumon was launching a flame attack right over their heads. In front of Cheeto was a huge see-through box, big enough for a lot of Cheetos to fit inside. And it looked like Not-Gotsumon had one, too.
“Are you ready?” they asked.
Sure, Cheeto was ready! He didn’t know what he was ready for, but--
“Cheeto! Can you hear me?”
Jen! She was here! “Hi, Jen!” He looked around. “Where are you?”
“Outside. Back in the real world. I mean, the human world. Um...not in the video game.”
“Video game?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how it happened, but...okay, you know that game I was making? That thing I was doing on the computer?”
Cheeto thought for a few moments. “With all the colors?”
“That’s it. I...think. Anyway, you somehow got sucked into that game. And the only way out is...well, it’s hard to explain, but basically, you have to fight this guy.”
“Okay!” He took in a biiiiig gulp of air. “Boom bubble!”
“Not like that!”
He swallowed the air.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. The thing is, this game has rules. You can't just attack them straight out. You have to use the blocks.”
“The blocks?”
“The things with all the colors.”
“Ohhh!” He smiled. “I like those!”
“Me, too! I mean...anyway. What you have to do is stack those blocks. They’re going to fall down from the sky, and you’re going to have to grab them and drop them on the ground so that blocks that are the same color are together. Do you understand?”
“Yep!” he said. “Same color goes together!”
“Exactly. Blue with blue, green with green, yellow with yellow, and purple with purple.”
“And red with red, right?”
“Actually, no. Don’t match the red ones. That’ll crash the game.”
Crash? “What does that mean?”
“It means...things will be bad. So don’t match the red ones, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Great. Now, are you ready to get started!”
“I’m ready!”
------
What followed were the most stressful five minutes of Jen's life.
Yes, Cheeto understood the basics of the game, but there was a lot of detail that she’d completely forgotten to tell him. Like how you needed to stack the blocks as fast as possible, or else the King of Rocks over here would drain your HP. Which wouldn’t even be much of a problem, if it weren‘t for the fact that you couldn’t stack red blocks or else the game would crash.
Cheeto’s sprite zipped up and down as he grabbed the blocks from above and dropped them on the bottom of the screen. Which made things even harder, since he was blocking part of the screen. But she couldn’t blame him; it wasn't like she could explain how to do it with his mind. In fact, she couldn't really explain anything. Every attempt at a sentence came out half-baked.
“No! Not there!”
“There! Combo! Left--never mind.”
“HP! It’s...where’s...clear block?”
“NO NOT THE RED ONE!”
It wasn’t long before things looked dire. Cheeto had only a sliver of HP left, while the boss’s was still half full. Cheeto’s half of the screen was packed with rows upon rows of unmatched red blocks, leaving him little room to stack more. In the middle of the screen, that rock monster was cackling; it was his “I’ve got you now!” expression. And he was bringing a pair of green blocks lower and lower, to create a combo that Cheeto certainly wouldn’t survive.
What was Jen doing? She had to pause the game!
But when she reached for the space bar...it was already too late.
“BATTLE OVER!”
It was over. Cheeto had lost. And if all his HP had drained...then that could very well mean…
“YOU WIN!”
Wait. What?
Jen tilted her head back up to look at the screen, and sure enough, Cheeto had won. And, thanks to a graphical glitch, she could see just how he did it: a massive pile of yellow blocks, matched all at once.
A familiar “ding!” sounded from the game window. The “ding!” that means...you got an achievement.
Wait a second.
Jen clicked on the window behind the game to bring up the code editor, where all the game’s code files sat. She opened the background processes folder, skimmed its contents, and clicked on the one she was looking for: the achievement listener.
There were plenty of different achievements you could earn throughout the game. Some were just story checkpoints, like beating a certain boss, but others held their own little goals you could work towards. For example, there were a few achievements for stacking a certain number of the same color of block. Like, say, the red blocks. Every time you matched red blocks, a counter would go up. And every time that counter went up, it would call a function inside this very achievement listener. That function would update your progress toward the corresponding achievement, so once it reached a certain number, you’d get it. But that wasn’t all; if there happened to be any other code inside that function when it was called…
...like, say, that infinite loop someone put in there…
Yes, that was it! Whoever handled this code last had been trying to implement something related to the red blocks. Jen wasn’t sure what that was, but they'd put the code for it in the achievement listener, which is called every time you match red blocks. And that code was so messily done that it made the game crash!
With a sigh of relief, Jen commented that code out. Finally. She was out of this mess.
But Cheeto was still in his! Quickly, she brought up the game window, hit enter to exit the battle, and guided Cheeto to a save point. Which, according to the message on the Digivice, was the only way to ensure he got out of the game safely.
A beam of bright yellow light shot out of the computer and right onto Jen's desk. And seconds later, her little Patamon was sitting in its place. “You did it, Cheeto!”
“I did it!” His wings flapped up and down, like how a dog's tail wagging.
And Jen couldn’t help but laugh. “I have to say, thanks for getting stuck in there. I don’t think I ever would have figured that out without your help.”
“You’re welcome!” he said, big smile on his face. “That was fun. Can I go in there again?”
Jen froze. “Um...maybe later.”
Words: 1777
