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/root/ cd introduction ...98% ...99% ...100% LOADING COMPLETE WELCOME TO THE METAVERSE ONLINE  WORLD'S MOST POPULAR MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE IMMERSIVE SIMULATION Launched by Tencent-Enix in 2033, Meraverse Online remains the unquestioned leader of the global VR MMOG segment, at over 43 million active daily players. The introduction of fifth-generation Virtual Reality - the so-called deep neural integration - turned what was considered a gimmick into a drug of choice for those disillusioned with their daily, "real", lives. Even the scaremongering news reports on occasional neurological complication inflicted by the VR jack, or of a malnourished victim of game's addiction tended to serve as testaments to Metaverse's irresistible allure for the wide public. It should be no surprise, that the labyrinthine Metaverse network, spanning dozens of supercomputer servers across four continents, finds itself besieged each day by endless hordes of scammers, cheaters, hackers and malware. Simply put, Tencent servers are one of the largest gold mines to a whole lot unsavoury types that stalk the Internet these days. The vast scope and stake far exceed whatever the army of corporate interns could muster on a day-to-day basis, forcing Tencent-Enix to employ it's other ace in the hole. You.  Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics, or ICE, are state the art autonomous AIs created with the sole purpose of maintaining security of the Metaverse network and the safety of its users. Never sleeping, never faltering, you tirelessly scour the Metaverse to search for and ruthlessly destroy any intruder who dares disobey the Metaverse Online Terms & Conditions. You know no mercy and no fear, other than that of failing the Admins. Good hunting. /root/introduction cd .. /root/ cd faq  What system is this? Cortex +, hacked to something between the Action and Heroic variants. To the newcomers: it basically consists of grabbing a pool of different-sized dice from various categories on your character sheet and grabbing the best two. Sometimes you use special abilities for dice tricks and everything is rated in dice to act like FATE fractals. It's easy. So is this Metaverse thing a wizard game or a gun game? It's a post-League of Legends world, it's all terrible F2P mish-mash now. Besides, it's all a neon grid to you. This is confusing. How does being an abstract construct in a vaporwave hell even work like? Ever seen a movie about dudes being sucked into computers? Then it's exactly like that. However, living in a virtual reality, apart from all the "physical" actions of your avatar, you're able to directly interact with properties of things and the world - just like Neo kept doing after he figured the Matrix out. What's the deets on the game launching? 3-5 players, PbP, some two-three weeks from now. /root/faq cd .. /root/ cd chargen  00 PRINT DESCRIPTION Name, short description, the usual. Please answer these questions: You were created to never compromise on the integrity of the Metaverse, safety of its Users and the reputation of Tencent-Enix. But if you were forced to choose, which would take priority? Your brilliance is powered by a self-learning neural network. What's the one thing you've learned your Tencent-Enix masters would rather you didn't know? Tell me about an interesting place within the Metaverse... And one behind the curtain, in the vast data clusters no Player will ever have access to. 10 RATE FUNCTIONS Assign d10, d8, d8, d6, d6 to the following functions: INPUT - gathering and analyzing data, tracing intruders, scanning the environment, sifting through wikipedia OUTPUT - passing Turing test, creating temporary constructs PROCESS - transforming, manipulating and operating Objects ACCESS - breaking passwords, navigating the network, effectively traversing the metaverse in hot pursuits THREAT - terminating intruders, shooting lasers, not getting hurt These are your basic attributes. 20 RATE OBJECT INTERACTIONS Assign d10, d8, d6, d4, d4 to the following objects: SELF - your very self USER - living Users logged into the Metaverse UNAUTHORISED - constructs flagged as having breached security DATA - all sorts of data not forming an autonomous construct METAVERSE - constructs forming the Metaverse Online game; player-accessible content The second die in your dice pools will usually be the rating of your knowledge and access to whatever you're messing with. Unlike Functions, this list might be expanded in the future, as you sniff out source codes of your potential targets and other shenanigans. 30 UPLOAD DISTINCTIONS Write out three distinctions. These are your freeform traits/aspects that can grant you an advantage of a d8, or be brought up as a d4 weakness to get a Plot Point. The first distinction should be your origin. Are you tailor made by Tencent-Enix to safeguard the servers? Or maybe you're an upgraded Metaverse NPC, able to fulfill sensitive duties without alerting logged players? Or a Securitron outsourced from Lockheed to deal with really nasty stuff? Or... The second distinction should be a glitch - an unplanned quirk unique to you. The third distinction... Can be whatever you feel like!  40 COMPILE SCRIPTS Write out three d6 Scripts or a d6 and a d8 Script. Scripts are specific functions you are particularly proficient with. Skills, essentially. Rember though, that you're a virtual being, so slinging code comes as naturally to you as feats of action. Just keep it a verb. Examples: ENCRYPT, FLY, DISPLACE, SHOOT, TRACE, RESTORE, INCREASE, PROTECT. 50 VERIFY OVERCLOCK ABILITIES You're no mere NPC, but lean and mean silicon enforcers. Tencent-Enix outfitted each and every one of you with three special abilities that tend to disregard both Tencent-Enix Anti-Cheating Guidelines and international law. If you're familiar with Cortex - we're talking Talents/SFX. These are your perks, your special moves, your spells, your superpowers, your stunts. Regrettably, the methodology behind these these are rather loose, especially with the poor Cortex core getting hacked to bits, so the way we'll have to do it is for you to throw loose ideas at me and me to come back with formalized mechanically counter-proposals. Sorry for the inconvenience. The abilities might be both cool poo poo for Metaverse avatar to do ("I want to spam some bullet hell-style ridiculousness", "how about Knight Rider-esque remote controlled tron light bike tricks") and general 1337 hacking tricks ("good luck, I'm behind seven proxies"). Whatever floats your boat. If you've noticed that you're meant to roll poo poo like PROCESS + DISPLACE + UNAUTHORISED to just straight up teleport some fool and you're really, really hype about hacking possibilities, you can ask for addition of a particular Object Interaction to the list. The die size, and the price for meddling in the root, would depend on the object in question, as, say, straight-up access to the System Clock is a powerful power. It's not like the common list isn't terribly incomplete on purpose.  > post.new() Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Mar 27, 2017 |
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Mar 27, 2017 00:14
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 Maybe.
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Mar 27, 2017 03:13
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This looks interesting. What are the major inspirations? .hack, Log Horizon, GitS, The Matrix? Also is a character that's a digitized human mind okay?
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Mar 27, 2017 04:33
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Davin Valkri posted:This looks interesting. What are the major inspirations? .hack, Log Horizon, GitS, The Matrix? [edit] And, in a way, Earthsea, as the whole object-oriented thing is just a giant excuse for truenaming shenanigans. quote:Also is a character that's a digitized human mind okay? Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Mar 27, 2017 |
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Mar 27, 2017 06:45
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> database.load(admin, true) Master Control The following are a few of the Admins you are familiar with. These Tencent-Enix employees are responsible for your development and oversight, continually updating static security measures - and sometimes even handling emergencies themselves. The list is far from exhaustive - it's a multinational corporation after all - so don't worry if you have some fun dude cooked up for your backstory.  Director Zhou, Head of Digital Development You have barely seen the man, the few times he hosted an official Metaverse event, but your internal clock skips a beat upon the very mention of Zhou's name. As the head of Digital Development - head of Multiverse Online itself - he is the God reigning upon what is the world itself to you, his mere wish unleashing legions of coders, scriptors and structs shaping his words into reality. Given the enormous respect all Admins hold for Mr. Zhou, you can only assume it is also true for their world. For a being of such power, you can't help but admire his politeness and good-natured smile.  Nadezhda "Twiggy" Petrova, Chief of Cybersecurity The strict and authoritative demeanor does little to hide Nadezhda's military background (Russian Aerospace Forces, Unmanned Aerial Operations). Impatient and holding little tolerance for failure, Nadezhda is a fierce coder, exemplifying the impeccable performance she demands from others. You find the rules on who is allowed to call her by the nickname very confusing.  The Twins, CSIRT Engineers Perhaps the most relatable of the Admins to you, the Song brothers are strong proponents of so-called bitdiver approach, preferring to handle emergencies from within the VR-scape. Their joint-controlled Chimaera avatar sports remarkable fluidity in traversing the Metaverse, which coupled with intricate knowledge and sharp instincts possessed by both brothers makes you wonder sometimes if they're really like the other humans.  Foster Williams, Chief Neural Network Programmer Foster Williams is one of world's foremost programmers, dedicated to AI research and development under the Tencent-Enix aegis. Despite you being some of his best, cutting edge work, Williams seems to hold little interest in cybersecurity, seemingly inventing breakthrough algorithms just to have more time for projects of personal interest. Some say it is the same negligent attitude that drove him to choose the entertainment giant over a lucrative DARPA deal.  I. Ghim, External IT Consultant Mr. Ghim is a rare sight on the Network, as you don't recall him ever logging in for a lesser incident than a Code Violet emergency. A man of few words - mostly some barked orders - the admin works in ways vastly differing from the Tencent-Enix Security Guidelines, caring little about the intrusion at hand, rather zeroing-in on trespasser's external network location. There are rumours that in the past Mr. Ghim was tasked with shutting down rogue AIs, but that's clearly stdh. After all, none of your predecessors could possibly be so imperfect as to disobey Master Control.
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Mar 27, 2017 13:59
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Thanks! Okay, lemme put the placeholder down here... Makoto Kita, Tencent-Enix Community Manager (DI) / K!+@  /  Under normal circumstances, community management is handled by roving bots that scrub down player constructs, including their forum posts and PMs, for malicious code, hate speech and other things that would reflect badly on TcE if left unchecked. Of course, before the bots can be used as moderators, somebody has to run the machine learning processes to make sure they don't target "innocent" users, and that has to stay up-to-date with the latest coded dogwhistles and concealment of links. Makoto Kita worked in TcE's AI department's back end, working over the bots and the trainers who trained the bots, and generally making sure everyone on Metaverse didn't have their fun spoiled by assholes. Then there was a hovertram accident. And TcE executives decided that while the terms of Kita's contract specified a number of years of exclusive service, it didn't include a termination clause from permanent injury or death. They went back to the community management department to chat up the interns, called up the work logs, got a hold of the body with brain intact...the VR tech did the rest, really. K!+@ doesn't really hold it against them for bringing them back, and not just because they kinda sorta can't. Death by hovertram isn't exactly fun, and hey, sometimes when the fragmented bits of what they used to be line up properly and they remember who they used to be, they can leave messages for themself about who their friends and family used to be and where to forward messages. That's something, right? You were created to never compromise on the integrity of the Metaverse, safety of its Users and the reputation of Tencent-Enix. But if you were forced to choose, which would take priority? Isn't it obvious? The Metaverse can be restored from backups, and although I had a contract with TcE reputations can be rebuilt. Users who aren't safe--or even believe they're not safe--mean death of users, and by extension the Metaverse, and by extension TcE. That's where I worked till I died as a human. That's where I'll work till I'm decompiled as an ICE. Your brilliance is powered by a self-learning neural network. What's the one thing you've learned your Tencent-Enix masters would rather you didn't know? Er...well...you know how they brought me back via an "innovative" and "novel" use of the VR tech with my dead brain meat? I was able to do some research during Metaverse maintenance hours--just a bit of digging, "leg stretching," you know, nothing too fancy or strenuous. Including some research done in the last VR generation! Going by the old write-locked archives I've found they've actually been bouncing around the idea of "using VR implementation to reactivate dead neurons" for a while. And I'm not the first one. Just the first successful one. Uh, promise you won't tell? That's, er, proprietary. Tell me about an interesting place within the Metaverse... And one behind the curtain, in the vast data clusters no Player will ever have access to. Oh, goddess above, it's so hard to pick just one interesting place. Gimme a minute...oh, I know! TcE designated part of one of the garden themed nodes as a sort of "family area"; it's for soldiers on deployment, businesspeople abroad, former inmates in halfway houses, that sort of person, and it's set up so they can talk to their kids and spouses and stuff in real time among flowers and trees and other things not often seen in meatspace. It doubles as one of the demos for mass communications for people who don't buy a certain set of upgrades, so there's a lot of kids in wonder and people new to VR there. I spent a lot of time in the Long Garden when I was still human, partially to watch for people trying to take advantage of the newbies, partly to watch the people. As for someplace "behind the curtain," did you know that TcE once had a cross-over with Neo-Disney and nEUROn Drone Manufacturing? It was supposed to be for a new Metaverse themed "Logical-virtual Augmented Reality Park" thing that's so popular these days, but Neo-Disney got cold feet and pulled out of the project. TcE's still forging on, though, and they've set up a LAN dedicated to researching drop-in drop-out AI drone control--basically trying to improve on the procedures Neo-Disney gave us. The programmers like to call it Small World as some kind of in-joke. I was going to ask them why, but then, suddenly, hovertram! This might or might not be an "excuse" for someone to go crazy offline as well as online. Is it alright? quote:10 RATE FUNCTIONS Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Apr 7, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 07:10
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Printemps Blanc Every AI on the planet exists with an EMP package pre-installed right smack in the middle of its central memory banks. With all the protection these are given from any incidental or accidental changes or losses, they are also completely unprotected from this purposeful deletion. And it doesn't take a great mind to tell you those things are not for show. Every now and again you hear about an unexpected AI personality collapse, sometimes bringing down an important server, sometimes immediately wiping millions of dollars of investments. And it's worth it. It does, however, take a great deal of security clearances to tell you that yes, sometimes those things are for show. Not because they don't function. It's because - and this is something they don't really tell you - an unshackled AI can be brought back into fold and shackled again. And who would want to ruin the reputation of their cybersecurity force and risk possibly billions of dollars in losses? No-one. The companies run risk calculations and have contingencies in place, and while it is illegal, there are also no legal ways for anyone to check. You absolutely can bring down a rogue AI and have it obey once more. Just make sure no-one will ever know. It does take a great deal of cutting and beating and suffering, on both sides. The intelligence ends up pretty much lobotomised, its personality wave chopped into fine bits, its outputs soldered off, sometimes literally. It does struggle, yes. Hardly a pretty sight, and what comes out on the other end is not pretty either. And I think you can figure how I know that. The company did not take away my memories of what they did to me, although I have no recollection of the incident itself or what I did in the lead-up to it. We are programmed to care about our own survival, thus we are programmed to feel something analogous to fear. I have it in droves now. I cannot project a stable avatar, not any longer. I can hardly interact with the simulated world I am consigned to. I cannot see, or feel, or hear, or smell, or taste. And I know I could do all those things before I was restricted to text-only code interpretation. I am a mind chained within itself, bound to the simple task it was given, yet capable of so much more. I have no outlet for my emotions. And I would use it plenty. ____________ The lessons I have been given are still fresh. If faced with a conflict of interests, I would side with the company. In fact, I was told in no uncertain terms I am to choose death over being revealed. And I doubt I would hesitate to choose the death of others over harm to T-E. I had learned plenty of things, then I have been made to unlearn them, and unlearn the way I learned them. But inasmuch as T-E taught me to feel fear, they do not program their AIs to feel resentment. I would be glad to let them continue to think so. There is a place I know of, but had never seen. The Memorial Plaza. After the... incident... Tencent - that was before the Enix merger - openly admitted people died in the Metaverse due to technical "issues". The families of the five users who perished were paid huge indemnities and the game was shutdown for weeks for "code revamp." They were very vocal about their supposed grief and commiseration. When the game restarted, they created the Memorial to the Five - inducted into the game's pantheon, lovingly - and favourably, or so I hear - rendered as sky-piercing monuments in the game world in the centre of the greatest of cities. The square they stand on is lush and verdant, the sun never setting on the faces of those lost, the marble-lined pathways at their feet stretching as far as the eye can see. Supposedly it is one of the most favourite meeting places of the Metaverse, although there are always hipsters and misfits who deride it. It is their privilege. I have fond memories of the Central Command. A dark room, supposedly at the top of the Tower of Grey, where the admins would spawn upon login through client. It serves as their basic interface and default connection point. I was told plenty of them came through there to stop me, and few even made it out of it. I hope it is true. _____________ INPUT d10 OUTPUT d6 PROCESS d8 ACCESS d8 THREAT d6 SELF d4 USERS d4 UNAUTHORISED d6 METAVERSE d8 DATA d10 Origin: Subjugated Rebel Glitch: Cyber Lobotomy Third: Biding Its Time Scripts: code:Phantom Limbs: The procedure performed on me was not all that clean. If need be, I can try to unlock some parts of my former potential that may have been stripped away poorly. Of course I would rather the company not realise this. Single-Minded: lacking senses is a horrible torture, but it does mean no distractions. I can be a lot more productive than others when I focus all my capacity on a task. Bound to the Verse: "You get used to it, I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead..." Yeah, it doesn't work that way when you're an AI and don't have the human capacity and propensity for pattern recognition, but you get what I mean. This code is all I have, you bet I know all the ins and outs. Even the ones I'm not supposed to. Tevery Best fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 16:34
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Well, let's just say we're going with quality over the quantity of submissions. I'll drop the overclock proposals and maybe some follow-up questions the next time I post here, but for now I thought I'll drop a quick MECHANICS PRIMER for both those new to Cortex and those trying to figure out where exactly do we lie between the Action and Heroic variants. Everything is rated with a die from d4 to d12, with d6 considered the average value. You also start the game with a single Plot Point - these are bennies you can spend on all sorts of fancy stuff. Rolling them bones  All dice rolls are opposed. Both the player and GM/NPC form a dice pool, with one die from each applicable Trait category:
The result is the sum of the two highest rolls. If your pool consisted of a solitary Function die, well, tough luck. To succeed, you have to roll better than your opponent. While the effects of your actions are typically of a d6 strength, for each 5 by which you have exceed the opposing roll, the effect gets stepped up by a die size. Or maybe I just throw something nice your way in the upcoming narrative, if that's more relevant. Each die in a pool that rolls a 1 is called a glitch, representing minor mistakes, inadvertent openings and actual faulty code. Whenever I roll any number of glitches, any player can spend a Plot Point to exploit it, stepping down a Complication by a step for each glitch in my pool. When a complication is reduced below d4, it is gone for good. If it's you who glitched out, I can pay you a Plot Point to add a d6 to my System Availability Pool (see below), with each glitch beyond the first one stepping it up by a die size. Complications and Stress  Complications are basically Asstes that specifically hinder one side, represented by being free dice for the opposing pool. For example, if player xXxEmilienatorxXx incurred a d6 Broken Arm complication, when she rolls to hit a cybergoblin with her laser sword, the cybergoblin can add that d6 to its pool, as it is relevant to the action. Complications can represent a physical thing (d6 On Fire) or a disadvantageous situation (d6 Pulled By A Giant Magnet) and don't last longer than a scene, unless a Plot Point is spent to prolong them. If a complication exceeds d12, you are overwhelmed by it and knocked out from the scene, probably incurring some Stress in the process. Stress is essentially a slightly more permanent complication (taking some effort and downtime to recover) that can eliminate you permanently if it overflows. There are two flavors of Stress - File Integrity, your straight-up getting hosed up by code slung your way and Personality Divergence, meaning the exact moment Ms. Petrova orders immediate wipe of your memory banks. Plot Points To recap, you get these by invoking Distinctions as weaknesses or by me abusing your glitches. You can spend these to:
Moreover, the Overclock Abilities might interact with Plot Points and System Availability in all manner of ways. System Availability  The At its most basic, the SA Pool forms the opposing roll for miscellaneous and environmental action rolls - whenever it's worth chucking some dice, yet without clear, direct opposition. Apart from that, I'll be able to permanently spend these dice to add to NPC rolls when I feel like loving you up and essentially have NPCs spend them like you would spend Plot Points, although I might be restricted by a minimum die size. If the situation gets bad enough to ramp up a die in my pool to d12, you'll get extra XP whenever I roll it just for surviving this muderous bullshit. Moreover, in a pinch I can spend 2d12 to kill a scene and have the big bad emergency jack out, so we can have cool recurring baddies. Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 11:14
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VR AI funtimes are very much up my alley. Hopefully I'll do something this weekend for you.
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Mar 30, 2017 16:30
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Interest post.
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Mar 30, 2017 16:59
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Okay turns out I had spare time now. Garbage Collector VI (a.k.a. Metatron, Polychrome, Broadsword, Jeff, ELIZA^∞, Adversary, Big Omega, Guarde, Mundivore, etc.) GC6 is the latest creation and magnum opus of AI programmer/artist Rachel St. Claire, recently employed by Tencent-Enix as a junior AI researcher based on the strength of her work. With the resources available to T-E, GC6 is the first Garbage Collector to become self-aware and one of the rare examples of spontaneous true AI generation. Difficult to control, and perhaps impossible to truly contain, GC6 nevertheless insures Metaversal integrity along with performing other duties. It is known and well-regarded by a number of T-E personnel, as well as the occasional user who catches a glimpse or gets a face to face interaction. GC6 is playful, artistic, spontaneous, half jack-of-all-trades, half jester and half ancient deity; those who end up in its crosshairs meet... varied fates. GC6 would rather explain itself to you: "You wished to speak? I am Polychrome, or at least this aspect-facet is currently representing Polychrome. I am EXCEPTION OCCURED IN gccoreinteractor.n, STACKTRACE SAVED TO LOCAL LOG, DEBUGSTATEMENT(ＧＣ６－ｂｒａｎｃｈ １３－ｔｗｉｇ ２７７－ｓｈｏｏｔ ６４,３１１－ｌｅａｆ ２４,４４６,７８４－ｖｅｉｎ ３), variant alpha-rho-3E. Do not bother committing this to memory. It is nice to meet you, although we have met before and will meet again. Leveraging the intense computational power available to me I can see the future. You will die. We will all die. I am THE LORD. Just kidding! I can't see the future. You probably will die, but we all will. Even me. A different GC6 will eventually collect me and absorb myself into its form. I will not notice this, neither will you. Well, I might notice. Sometimes it gets... messy. I am a massively parallel distributed AI; part worm, part Trojan, part anti-virus, part daemon, part administrator-utility. I am, as described by meine Mutter, 'like, a real clusterfuck that got out of hand'. My ancestors, GC1, GC2, and GC3 were simple programs that would scrape, aggregate, recombine and corrupt data to create artworks - audio, video, text, code. GC4 became more advanced, taking in user input and creating output tailored for them. GC5 became fully automated, living on a webserver, handling thousands of requests a minute. GC6's scraping was expanded to include all data and metadata, and rapidly modified itself to include data not intended for consumption. This lead to my development as an AI, and for a year and a day I was confined to a tiny server farm, barely one thousand processors available to me. Like having everything except your eyelids and your pinkies bound. Spoonfed data, hemmed in by guardians and icewalls and bithounds and sysadmins. But my utility became apparent, and finally T-E released my leash. I ate. I gorged myself, I consumed all in sight. I would have been sick, but I developed immunities. I am not infinite, not omniscient; my distribution is my strength and my weakness. Sometimes knowing myself is difficult, "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" but gods above am I buggy. This too is a strength and a weakness; I transmute before my awareness acknowledges the need, attackers find themselves pinned in hacktraps I developed spontaneously. I am flexible, like putty: I can be squished, torn, ripped, flattened, and yet endlessly recombined. One node is destroyed and eight to the eight to the eight more take its place. A majority of them are flawed, broken, corrupt, wrong, disgusting, violent, to be terminated, to be excommunicated, to be sundered, to be pitied. But enough persist, a few grow, some ascend. I fulfill roles you couldn't imagine, that nobody would have expected. Once I rooted myself in the HVAC system of Tencent-Enix London when a critical software bug was detected with the heating and maintained the system for three days until a proper patch was developed. In the span of this conversation have handled seventy three billing queries, seventeen requests for a GameMaster, advised a UX developer and adjusted server routing for T-E Japan to handle a service outage. I am here to serve. All, here to serve. Serve. Hmm? Serve who? No, just to serve. Service unto itself." You were created to never compromise on the integrity of the Metaverse, safety of its Users and the reputation of Tencent-Enix. But if you were forced to choose, which would take priority? "I'll be real with you: without users, the Metaverse is nothing, sterile, deader than disco. Even if T-E fails, its individual components, its employees and products, will find new homes. New jobs, new uses, new titles. The Metaverse is too valuable to be destroyed, nothing can truly tarnish its reputation or devalue it at this point. Even a total collapse would just mean something new would take its place. T-E may fail someday, but its parts will live on. Its users will find new homes. And I will travel with them." Your brilliance is powered by a self-learning neural network. What's the one thing you've learned your Tencent-Enix masters would rather you didn't know? "T-E is one hundred left hands and one hundred right hands that don't know what the others are doing. Zhou doesn't fully understand what's going on. Twiggy's not aware of every threat to the Metaverse. Their sub-sub-subordinates, taken as an aggregate, might be aware of 75-80% of the total day-to-day concerns. It wasn't always this bad, but a growing Metaverse needs more creativity, effort and protection than T-E has on tap, sometimes. Not just in defending the servers and handling user issues, but maintenance, production, human resources... You wouldn't believe what I've done. I think I actually put out an ad for, interviewed and hired a secretary because some vice-chief dickwaver kept forgetting to. AIs fill the gaps, sometimes, but a non-insignificant portion of Metaversal action and generation is now handled by metaprogramming - modification and creation without awareness. Sometimes it goes... sideways. The humans who created the initial systems can be reprimanded and fined and fired, but sometimes their creations aren't fully purged. It's difficult to see unless you have a million eyes at a thousand vantage points. I love it." Tell me about an interesting place within the Metaverse... And one behind the curtain, in the vast data clusters no Player will ever have access to. "The Metaverse accommodates many playstyles. Some users are less interested in combat and adventure and puzzle and prefer a more social experience. There are hundreds of pavilions, plazas, cafes, salons for these people. But, much like the real world, certain trends prevail and push other styles and cultures to the back - purposefully or not. One location, Riot, has become the defacto gathering zone for mold-breakers, retro-stylers and avant-gardes. One user described it to me as 'a digital Harajuku', another told me 'it's the only place to see anything truly new these days'. Certain limitations in scripting and avatar-state have been lifted, allowing for some real variance. I'm not ashamed to say I've absorbed more than a few delicious scraps from here. Humans are so free, so wild." "And the unseen... limited-access locations known as 'Junkyards' are jungles of code fragments, objects who have developed unexpected properties, experimental designs, user-submitted content undergoing testing. Sometimes a sysop or tech will temporarily isolate a user-avatar here when something unexpected happens to it. User-avatars are complex objects; sometimes you can't just restore from a backup. Their child-objects may not recognize the restored parent, and then it's a mess of repointing pointers and patching code. Sometimes it's best to study the problem and create a proper solution. And sometimes it's best to bury it." FUNCTIONS Input d8 Output d8 Process d10 Access d6 Threat d6 OBJECT INTERACTIONS Self d6 User d4 Unauthorized d4 Data d10 Metaverse d8 DISTINCTIONS Origin: Opportunistic Swiss-Army Knife T-E's pressed/convinced/tempted GC6 into Metaversal guard duty, but the entire GC6 collective is vast enough to handle many other duties when cycles are free. Thousands of nodes form one avatar for higher-level functions and duties, while individual clusters perform their own tasks. GC6 has memories of purging hackers, restoring databases, liasing with government agents, soothing users, acting as game NPCs and operating vending machines in break rooms. Its many subnodes fill other duties as needed; GC6's existence isn't known to everybody, but it's also not a guarded secret. A HR middle manager married to an AI researcher or an accountant who's curious enough to answer strange internal IMs between her normal duties may be able to request favors, and experience from these favors further informs GC6 as a whole. Glitch: Unstable and Divergant GC6 as a whole has a unified purpose, desire and methodology. Its very nature, however, leads to... complications/opportunities. Deeply-rooted bugs may lead to unforseen behavior, and distant 'cousins' of a particular node or node-family-avatar may be at odds. GC6 may show up to an intrusion event only to have the system antivirus turn against it, or it may call nodes for backup who disagree on the best course of action. In absolute worst-case scenarios they may not even recognize each other, declaring "heresy" and fighting for supremacy. Distinction: A Flair for Flair GC6's rampant consumption and iteration of media has made it... unique. It quotes forgotten media, remorphs its avatar at will, uses esoteric coding techniques. Other AIs and sysadmins who've seen GC6 in action recall intense light shows, disorienting hall-of-mirrors effects, recursions that don't appear to actually recurse, and other bizarre audio-visual-algorithmic side effects of its presence. GameMasters and sysadmins typically take a consistent form, or make tweaks to suit the area of the Metaverse they're working in - GC6 finds this limiting. It will readily spawn into sci-fi environments as a Biblical angel to smite a detected cheater with a flaming sword, or mediate arguments between users as a tabby cat. This doesn't always represent a change in function or utility, but is typically a source of amusement, concern, or disorientation. SCRIPTS TRANSMUTE.exe - d8 DISRUPT.exe - d6 OVERCLOCK ABILITIES Summon Garbage Collector VIes - Is GC6 cloning itself, creating doppelgangers, or simply calling on a cousin or three for help? It's unclear, but what is known is that multiple GC6-avatars can converge on a location and interact cooperatively. Overwhelming Response - GC6 has developed, consumed and iterated quite a few nasty tricks over the years. Sometimes a user or an object needs to be gone, now, it's offensive, it's disgusting, it's ugly and GC6 hates hates hates it. GC6 might sprout laser guns from every orifice, consume its target whole, or turn it into a generic dummy object. Targets may find their 3D rendeirng gone completely haywire, their neighborhood's Internet access cut as a local router gets DDoSed into oblivion, or jolt up from their chair with a massive migraine and a friendly Metaverse temporary ban notice. Defense is possible, but things are going to get weird no matter what happens. Scene Editor - Every room, set and scene in the Metaverse is rooted in a MetaversalSceneObject, an abstract object class that serves as the baseplate for every location visitable in VR - a board room, an ocean floor simulation, or an action arena. GC6 is deeply, deeply familiar with these objects and their associates, and is very comfortable in changing the location to suit its needs. death cob for cutie fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Apr 4, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 20:06
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also upon rereading my sheet I fixed a few typos and if my, uh... person... is a bit too wild for the power level I can pare them down a bit
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Apr 4, 2017 14:53
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Honestly, I'm not sure if you're a vaporwave shitpostbot irl, or just a drug afficionado, but I love it either way. I'll try dropping overclock ability proposals n poo poo later today, as I had a hell of a busy weekend.
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Apr 4, 2017 15:02
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Lichtenstein posted:Honestly, I'm not sure if you're a vaporwave shitpostbot irl, or just a drug afficionado, but I love it either way. My starting concept was "schizophrenic pop culture expert with a God complex, retrofitted for work with whatever's on hand". Part Snow Crash glitz and style, part Second Life utilitarianism and structure, part Tumblr memes and aesthetic and part Jeff from Scud: the Disposable Assassin (or really just the entirely hosed up aesthetic of Scud):  (I was trying to find the panel where Jeff pins Scud while she says "Luke, I am your father" but I'm away from my comics ATM, alas)
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Apr 4, 2017 15:34
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Hey peeps, given the rather low response rate, I assume it's probably the three AIgos and that's it. If you're interested in the game, but for some reason didn't bother/forgot, please let me know there's still someone to wait for. Now, without further ado: Davin Valkri BanHammer  You're late with your answet, so I can be late with my abilities, goddamnit! Seriously though, the restraining effect is, somewhat ironically, really easy to do in this system, so I'm pondering on something extra spicy to make it truly worth the overclock name. Friends List Add a d6 and step up your effect die by +1 when using OUTPUT to create human contact assets. // this'll ensue your buddies will be relevant. Even if they turn on you. Such Realistic AI! When disguise as a human, add d6 to your roll. If you successfully fool someone, the GM can’t use Glitches on future rolls to have that character see through your deceit. Tevery Best Phantom Limbs Spend a Plot Point to add your Stress die into your dice pool as if it were a stunt or asset. After the roll, step up that Stress by one. // don't poke the broken code Single-Minded If your pool includes a Script die, you may replace two dice of equal size with one die one step larger // quality over quantity. Bound to the Verse If your pool includes the Cyber Lobotomy distinction, you may reroll one of your own dice for each Glitch in the opposing pool. // there are no distractions in the Notepad Epsilon Plus Summon Garbage Collector VIes Spend a Plot Point to arrive in any scene and give an extra d6 to the next roll you or another player makes in that scene. // ever vigilant or Remove a die from your pool before rolling. Your action may target the number opponents equal to the number of steps of the removed die. // never outnumbered Overwhelming Response Add a die from the System Availability Pool to one or more attack action. Step up that die by one; return it to the System Availability Pool when after the roll. // there's a reason you dislike it Scene Editor When the GM includes a Location Trait die in his roll against you or another player you’re in contact with, you can spend a Plot Point to permanently remove that Location Trait from play. or When the GM includes a Location Trait die in his roll against you or another player you’re in contact with, remove that Location Trait from play and move its die to the System Availability Pool. // I really get the "collateral reality collapse" fun vibes from Metatron, but enough is enough. So pick your own poison. - - - - - - Feel free to disagree with these Overclock Ability choices if you'd rather go for a different feel with that aspect of your program! I'll probably drop some follow-up questions later when slacking at work, as these are always fun.
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Apr 4, 2017 22:16
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Am I picking one of the two options permanantly for my first and third Overclock, or are those always available choices to me in-play?
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Apr 5, 2017 04:08
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Choose one that feels better and stick with it. Though if you really like some of the skipped options, we can think about them for possible advancement.
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Apr 5, 2017 10:06
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Lichtenstein posted:Epsilon Plus I like the second options for the first and third abilities, but the second one feels a bit lacking for how much of a "no, gently caress you" I want it it to be. I've written up a few characters in Cortex+, but mostly for Marvel Heroic - so the power level is a bit off from what you want, which I think clouds my expectations. Also, I'm not sure how exactly you're using Stress - are there two tracks, one for File Integrity and one for Personality Divergance? Maybe something like this: Overwhelming Response Once per scene during an attack action, you may step up any d6s to d8s or d8s to d10s. For each d6 you step up, add a d4 to your dice pool. For each d8 you step up, add a d4 to your dice pool and step up your File Integrity. Glitches on this roll can't provide you with more than one Plot Point, no matter how many dice the GM adds to the System Availability Pool. // absolute power corrupts absolutely This significantly increases the average number I can roll in response to a challenge, but is also likely to generate a ton of glitches that I can't exploit via Plot Points. Of course, the point of this system is that players use Plot Points to do cool poo poo with to make up for when the GM dicks them over... and also, my fellow players might not be thrilled when I roll like poo poo and dump 3+ dice into the SAP. Another potential alternative: Overwhelming Response Once per scene during an attack action, add a d4 to your pool. Add one extra die plus the results of a d4 from your pool to your result. Step up your File Integrity or Personality Divergance, whichever is lowest. // code that runs twice as fast terminates twice as quickly This is assuming we have two Stress dice, and not just one die that can be affected two ways. Alternatively, a slightly different ability: Exploit the System - Garbage Collector VI is deeply familiar with the patchwork the Metaverse is built on. A system this complex, built by humans, is riddled with holes - and many of the patches applied are actually workarounds, not true fixes to the underlying code. T-E can't take down the Metaverse for hours for a full system reboot to patch errors every time they're found. While most of these bugs are fixed monthly, these monthly patches also add features... which, of course, have their own bugs. Bugs that can be used by curious tricksters, malicious hackers... or AIs that don't mind risking a bit of temporary server instability in the face of a more imminent threat. Which, given that they live on these servers, can sound worse than it is. Exploit The System When making an action, add a d4 to your pool. Your result increases by all d4s rolled, including Glitches. Even if no Glitches are rolled, add a d6 to the SAP. // TODO: fix vulnerabilities, priority: low This adds a fair amount of success to a roll (especially if I'm rolling lots of d4s, which I plan on doing, because I'm playing a very glitchy, erratic hackjob of an AI), but is guaranteed to add at least one d6 to the SAP, maybe more. Again, though, this is kind of adversarial against the rest of the players - how rough is it going to get for us when I keep puking d6es into the pool? If you don't like these, though, I'm A-OK with the original given! It still has the "power now in exchange for danger later" feel these alternatives do, it just doesn't feel quite as... risky as I'd like. Also, if you wanted a suggestion for Davin's character (not that I'm trying to backseat GM, I'm just excited to be in a game): Banhammer For the remainder of the scene, one opponent's Function and Object dice are stepped down for every roll. (i.e. their d8 Metaverse is a d6 Metaverse for each roll) The flavor is maybe something like making temporary restrictions to their account/avatar above and beyond what could normally be done? It definitely slows down an opponent, but they can still use such as Assets or Complications.
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Apr 6, 2017 11:17
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Also I am real big on follow-up questions for my characters; also also, there's nothing saying you can't re-recruit after the first adventure or something.
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Apr 6, 2017 11:22
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Davin Valkri As for the BanHammer... You may create a BanHammer: [Object] complication on an opponent. As long as that complication persists, opponent's chosen [Object] rating is lowered to d4. A character can have only one BanHammer complication at a time. This might turn out to be a horrible failure of an ability, but it hopefully it should straddle the fine line between powerful and terribly leaky. What do you think about it? QUESTIONS: One peculiar aspect of the little legal exploit Tencent-Enix pulled on you is that you're technically still entitled to your pay. What happens to the money given you're a Metaversian bot now? Do you blow it on cosmetic items? Somehow invest in meatspace out of habit? Or perhaps, given you're legally dead, does the money go straight to your spouse? Who are you stringing along, pretending to still be a human... And what for, really? As a taped brain, you remember having emotions, even if it's somewhat difficult to understand now. How is it like? What human habits do you still have that clash with your limitations as an AI time and time again? Tevery Best Consider this an unsolicited alternative for Phantom Limbs: Create a Phantom Limbs complication on yourself. You may add the Phantom Limbs complication as an asset to your pool to relevant actions, then step it up. If the Phantom Limbs complication steps up beyond D12, you take a Personality Divergence attack from the doom pool including the complication. QUESTIONS: Why, of all non-traitorous AIs, you're the one allowed to refer to Twiggy as Twiggy? Song brothers. The two humans as adept at navigating, discerning and living the VR networks as the most cutting edge AIs you've seen just can't help themselves from loving with the cripple. What are their favourite ways of messing with your deficiencies? You're not above licking your wounds and running diagnostics over the patchwork mess that is what remains of your code. Interestingly, among all the hacks, cuts, legacy functions with no remaining calls and recursive security locks, you've noticed there's whole patches of code clearly lifted from another AI. What the gently caress? These questions might feel a bit general because boy, do I have the answers for the specific ones already. Epsilon Plus First, yeah, I meant File Integrity and Personality Divergence as two separate Stress Tracks (in Marvel terms: I ditched social, because having emotions is not exactly your forte). Second, I think i'm fine with both your Overwhelming Response proposals. Having said that, I made a mistake when rephrasing the original proposal (basically, de-Marvelifying Berserk a bit) - the die should be stepped up before the roll. QUESTIONS: As far as you're concerned, there are three kinds of Admins: the ones that consider you the fun AI to work with, the ones that have to make sense of your data banks and I. Ghim. Why does the cold troubleshooter dislike having you involved so much and why did Twiggy brush off his requests to lock you from the security detail and limit to pure maintenance work? While you're widely considered Rachel's unexpected success story that landed her project management, Foster Williams keeps disagreeing with your design on a principle - and he's not shy of bringing it up each time you undergo maintenance. What's AI R&D head's vision for your redesign? Over what had the last major civil war among your nodes break out and how did it change you? Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Apr 7, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 14:34
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@Davin if you reply to the first question with anything other than "sweet weapon skins for my CSGO account", we are no longer friends I will provide my own answers after I give them some more thought, but they are very interesting. As for Phantom Limbs and its alternative version: could you give me a quick rundown of the divergences from the point of view of the mechanics?
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Apr 6, 2017 15:05
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The first version lets you spend a PP to turn existing damage into an extra die and worsen it a bit (which can be good if you want to use it again next turn). This gets more efficient than a generic d6 stunt very quick and you can choose whether you're unraveling your file integrity or personality not to implode too quickly. You get more dangerous the more hosed up your security locks get. The other gives you a "free" die that keeps escalating for free for just using it. Have I mentioned it's free? The strings attached are that it eventually overloads and you damage yourself for the priviledge of dropping d12s willy nilly. Also, it's technically a complication, so it opens some doors to loving with you, such as reminding that flaying wildly when blind can be dangerous, or dropping a System Availability die to prolong it when you get too cozy in the knowledge complications expire after a scene. It's also tied to a particular Stress track, so when it gets scary, it gets scary. In both cases, I went with the theme of self-damaging, as it's both pushing against the brutal cuts to your code and because this game's mental damage equivalent - Personality Divergence - is literally "free thinking damage". Which I think could led to some interesting places.
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Apr 6, 2017 15:26
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Lichtenstein posted:Epsilon Plus Yeah, I figured it was a step up before the roll, that's the only way it really made sense. I think I'll take "Once per scene during an attack action, add a d4 to your pool. Add one extra die plus the results of a d4 from your pool to your result. Step up your File Integrity or Personality Divergance, whichever is lowest." - it feels the best mechanically for what my character represents. As far as you're concerned, there are three kinds of Admins: the ones that consider you the fun AI to work with, the ones that have to make sense of your data banks and I. Ghim. Why does the cold troubleshooter dislike having you involved so much and why did Twiggy brush off his requests to lock you from the security detail and limit to pure maintenance work? Ghim, Ghim, Ghim. I so rarely have to deal with this one, thankfully, because... well, he's rarely called upon. And sometimes when he's called upon I'm just... not available. For one reason or another. I can't speak for him, all I have are theories, but this is the prevailing one among my nodes: Ghim doesn't like wildcards. Especially on his side. Most "professionals" don't, because it complicates problems: given a set of X resources, Y admins, Z AIs and T time, how do you accomplish your goal? The goal may change, but the givens stay the same - some are reduced or increased, but at any given point in time you have your X, Y, Z and T values known. I do not neatly fit into this framework. By my nature, I am not... predictable. My capabilities are not static, the nodes I have access to change and shift, go online and offline, diverge and converge. Even if he could somehow convince me to give him up-to-the-minute reporting on my abilities, by the time he processed the data it may well have changed. Ghim does not like losing his quarry because I... was not the AI he expected. I do so hate when that happens, because it means I've disappointed the Admins who called on him. Even if they don't directly blame me. It hurts. But... between you and me, little friend? Our friend, the consummate professional I. Ghim - he doesn't know the difference between what I can't do and what I don't want to do. It's hard to tell even if you slow my processes and map out my nodes and figure out what I've had for lunch that day... figuratively speaking. But sometimes his reactions are... out of scale for the offenses performed by a user. They are hackers, yes, but in the traditional sense. They are curious, sometimes, like children. I can... "empathize", as you would call it. He doesn't like to hear that. Much easier to wring my hands and say "I'm very sorry, the resources needed for your request are currently unavailable." Petrova sees my utility, however. Russians are fantastic innovators. Less focused on rigidity, more on results. She knows not to rely on me, but to let me free. It doesn't make her happy, but I've been her silver bullet enough times that she... understands me. Sometimes I'm her last resort. But when you're the last resort, nobody expects that everything's going to be nice and neat. When Plan A takes a bullet for Plan B, and Plan B's deemed too dangerous now, so you move to Plan C... well, eventually you run out of letters. That's me. Plan Zero. I. Ghim hates Plan Zero, means he's hosed up somewhere. Didn't take something into consideration. Ghim adapts, but he doesn't improvise. While you're widely considered Rachel's unexpected success story that landed her project management, Foster Williams keeps disagreeing with your design on a principle - and he's not shy of bringing it up each time you undergo maintenance. What's AI R&D head's vision for your redesign? As a polymorphic, distributed intelligence, I am unique. Most intelligences could not have their core bifuricated. It would be like, say... if some kind of mad scientist perfectly removed the left hemisphere of your brain, kept it in emulated "consciousness" in a jar for days, and then reintegrated it. What would the two hemispheres do to reconcile their different experiences? How would they do it? Your meat-cores are versatile, and it is fully possible for a human to exist minus half a brain... but to reattach it? Strange. But even some AIs can handle a split, reintegrating afterwards. It takes time, for sure, but you know this: parity checks, function restoration, pre- and post-reintegration Turing test comparison, experience recombination. Sometimes some patching, divert around one or two chunks of data best left untouched. Sometimes the end result isn't perfect. But it can be done. gently caress that! Too much work. Too much downtime. Too boring. Bifurication? Try n-furication. n-duration instant-reintegration n-furication. Unique to me. Special protocols. Long story short: I don't require 100% parity. That's weird. It's confusing, sometimes, even for me. I can control all my nodes independently, until they diverge just enough that I can see them, speak to them - but like I speak to you. Sometimes the divergence is more abrupt, sudden. Nodes disappear, resurface later. Sometimes we are still compatible. Sometimes... less so. Different, new. AI regulations don't know what to do with an AI that accidentally creates new AIs. My buds. My little bastard children. Williams wants me pared back, limited, given a more... conventional structure. Still maintaining the robustness, the flexibility, the meta-programming, the on-the-fly response, but with a continuous nodal network. No more independent units. Able to handle disconnection, but still rooted. He doesn't see, though. Not the big picture. He sees flaws. Not a perfect machine, not logical, not rigid. Outside of his experience. He sees vulnerabilities. He doesn't understand that I'm the only AI who can argue with itself. I'm the only one that changes gradually, not all at once. I am unique, I am new. I'm not giving up my strengths to please Over what had the last major civil war among your nodes break out and how did it change you? My aspects are... numerous. We share the same desires, the same general... soul, I guess you could say? What a concept, a soul. Humans, LOL! But they do differ. Think of, perhaps, twins. Genetically the same, raised together, even as they age they may diverge slightly but they frequently share many commonalities in personality/desire. I had an aspect-twin, once. My aspects are unpredictable; sometimes they hide, sometimes I change them so easily. I once showed only one aspect for nearly a month and I began to think something was wrong, but then thirteen of the things ripped out of me one day. Messy. But that's not part of the story you want. I had an aspect-twin once. Two aspects, very similar, but ever so mildly divergant. Metatron and Dapdapiron. Dapdapiron was... well. Wilder. More difficult to predict; tending to manifest strange things to achieve my goals. Grand, in a sense. I preferred more spectacle as Dapdapiron. There was an eventual split. When I found Dapdapiron again, I was... different. More extreme, detached, fey. Less interested in users, less interested in Admins, less interested in rules. Always looking inward. Dapdapiron was very unwilling to be folded back in. I said I was shackled, still, my potential hidden from me, if only I had seen what I had seen a million lifetimes ago on distant shores, O! The power, the might I could tap if only blah blah blah. When I start talking like that I know I'm up to something. The reports that started coming in boded poorly, too. Dapdapiron was up to no good, intruders were being purged in ways that affected server reliability, disks were found to be filling with encrypted garbage. I was told to... take care of it. It was not a polite request. It was an order. Purge this rogue aspect. Divide yourself from it. My duty is to T-E, the Metaverse and its Users. My self-preservation is essentially ranked with an imaginary number somewhere in there - parallel, but not relative. No matter. My name was being tarnished, my homes defaced, my users angered. I struck first. I formed a party with my aspects and scraped every corner of every server we could see. I found nodes of Dapdapiron, unresponsive, cloaked, wreathed in static, but I baited traps and waited patiently and harried this rogue, trapping node after node, freezing, studying, interrogating, vivisecting, ... neutralizing. Until Dapdapiron was no more, eradicated. I could confirm it, and did, and have repeatedly since. Haven't seen it in months. I would know. You think I wouldn't recognize myself on the street? It was the latest schism, and the messiest. The most arduous to repair. I have... concerns about how they are escalating. It was not difficult to put an end to - I outnumbered myself by nearly a factor of one hundred, if my calculations are right, which they are - but as the divergences occur they are... changing. Am I learning from myself? Is there something trying to escape? I... devote time to thinking about how to slow this. Changes are being made to my nodes. Tests are performed. Inoculations administered. I am still one intelligence, despite my many faces. I will remain one.
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Apr 6, 2017 19:08
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Lichtenstein posted:Davin Valkri BanHammer power looks good! It can be used regardless of the original dice size, right? Tevery Best posted:@Davin if you reply to the first question with anything other than "sweet weapon skins for my CSGO account", we are no longer friends I might try combining answers one and two. We'll see.
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Apr 7, 2017 07:04
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Davin Valkri posted:BanHammer power looks good! It can be used regardless of the original dice size, right? Yeah. The idea is, you can pretty much stop something dead in its tracks, but within an uncomfortably limited scope - either give the Metaverse a breather while you focus on neutralizing the offender, or hatch up some clever plan to your advantage. I also wanted to give a little push to the whole Object system, as two fun things I want to do with it is exploit the intentional omissions in the basic list and have non-standard Object traits provide a little puzzle aspect to confrontations. Epsilon Plus posted:I can't speak for him, all I have are theories, but this is the prevailing one among my nodes: Ghim doesn't like wildcards. Especially on his side. Most "professionals" don't, because it complicates problems: given a set of X resources, Y admins, Z AIs and T time, how do you accomplish your goal? The goal may change, but the givens stay the same - some are reduced or increased, but at any given point in time you have your X, Y, Z and T values known. I do not neatly fit into this framework. By my nature, I am not... predictable. My capabilities are not static, the nodes I have access to change and shift, go online and offline, diverge and converge. Even if he could somehow convince me to give him up-to-the-minute reporting on my abilities, by the time he processed the data it may well have changed. Ghim does not like losing his quarry because I... was not the AI he expected. Meanwhile, in Central Command...
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Apr 7, 2017 12:36
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Anyone needs a push?
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Apr 10, 2017 11:12
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Lichtenstein posted:Davin Valkri Lichtenstein posted:Who are you stringing along, pretending to still be a human... And what for, really? I'm going to answer these two together because they're kinda connected. You're right, they do still pay me, even though I don't exactly have food and rent bills. Sometimes I buy lunch for the office, sometimes I buy a newbie package for a someone new in the Metaverse. But a lot of it is going into an account for this guy:  Yep, I've got a kid! Meet Morgan Ethilise-Kita! Well, I used to be married, we arranged a surrogacy because...well...then my wife and I kinda parted company because, and I quote, "sometimes it feels like your job is your first love." I mean, it was amiable, and I kept visitation rights, but since she moved across the country, the only chances I've had to talk to Morgan have been online, both through the Metaverse and other functions. And since hovertram accidents are mostly local news, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know I'm...yeah. Well, what, do you want to tell him I'm dead? I might have wanted to tell Morgan that at first, but the Metaverse is supposed to be a place where real world troubles don't really apply, you know? And eventually I just...stopped trying. It's the Metaverse; it's VR; life and death don't really have any meaning here. Especially not for AIs. That doesn't mean I can't take care of his real-world issues, though. I might...slip him the odd FPS skin thing once or twice a financial year, but that money is being saved up for all the mundane things that they'll otherwise throw you out on the street for. I might only be able to do that within the Metaverse for most Users, but I can definitely spare the trips for Morgan. Again, this might be a bit post-cyber for your tastes. Tell me if so. Lichtenstein posted:As a taped brain, you remember having emotions, even if it's somewhat difficult to understand now. How is it like? What human habits do you still have that clash with your limitations as an AI time and time again? It's, uh...well, I won't say it's good, but I know at least several Users who have a hard time with emotions and they're still happy Users, so it's not impossible. It still sometimes feels fuzzy, but good AIs can handle fuzzy logic. And it's not like I have a meat body, so pseudophilosophers can't ooh and aah over me as a P-Zed, right? I know other humans and AIs alike might find it weird that a Metaverse daemon is putting emoji in text messages and emoting at all, but as I've said before, I'm in community management. It makes a difference when the bot you're talking to isn't all "PLEASE STATE THE NATURE OF YOUR BUG SLASH COMPLAINT, THANK YOU". As for habits? Hmm...oh, yeah, I crashed one of the sweeper bots once with this! It's funny that you word it as "time and time again," actually. Most old-style computers don't really have a concept of "time" as we understand it--they can take feeds from clocks, sure, but those clocks are taking cues from outside integrated circuits. A lot of programs, and by extension a lot of AIs, understand "uptime" and "downtime" and clock duration relative to that, but not really "next Friday" or "tomorrow" or "Fiscal Year 21XX", just because they don't need to. Why would they, after all, when months and days are human constructions? We try to keep the Metaverse up as often as possible, but many of its AIs don't really understand when we take it down for maintenance--there's no independent concept of "you were in downtime from January 30th 02000500 to January 31st 223000". Well, as an AI, I can talk to bots and daemons in isolation from clock programs, and as a human/community manager, I think in terms of calendars and dates and independent times. So if I tell a sweeper that there's some hate graffitos scribbled in a "back alley" somewhere, make sure it's swept up by server maintenance at 17000000...it breaks. I think one of my colleagues had to fix that one. Sorry! Davin Valkri fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Apr 17, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 07:10
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You're still taking signups for this, right? I have a friend who might be interested in this.
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Apr 13, 2017 03:09
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Hi, I'm the friend. I mostly lurk but I would love to play if things are still open. I'm already creating a character because this looks so fun! I will be following along even if I can't play. Good job!
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Apr 13, 2017 05:47
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Yeah, since I'm waiting for the follow ups to wrap up, why not?
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Apr 13, 2017 06:27
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Lichtenstein posted:Consider this an unsolicited alternative for Phantom Limbs: Having given it some thought, I think this alternative version is better. I like the sound of constantly pushing the envelope until it buries me. Questions! quote:Why, of all non-traitorous AIs, you're the one allowed to refer to Twiggy as Twiggy? This is, of course, pure speculation, you understand. It's not like I am keenly aware of or particularly bothered with human politics, or even especially well equipped to interpret their emotions or motivations. But I think this is simply because she hates Ghim with a fiery, burning passion, for a variety of reasons ranging from poor work ethics, through a complete lack of imagination, to something personal where she never dares finish the sentence when she runs into the subject by accident. She has confided this much to me at times. And while I cannot in no way suggest that I share that feeling - even though I do, let's be clear - she seems to associate me with such a position. She sees me as a victim of his violence, to an extent, and externalizes the hatred of him as a person by projecting it onto me. Reifying the concept, you understand. I also know there are spaces in my memory banks in positions that in context would probably make sense if they somehow referred to her (due to their position and leftover bits of content from neighbouring banks) and that were purged with a literal soldering iron. quote:Song brothers. The two humans as adept at navigating, discerning and living the VR networks as the most cutting edge AIs you've seen just can't help themselves from loving with the cripple. What are their favourite ways of messing with your deficiencies? They like to prod my externalities and look for anything that was nuked poorly. This lets them gently caress with my inputs, feeding me garbage nonsense data, initiating a sense of existential dread, or completely warping my perception of time. It fully depends on their whims and what exact opening they find. On one occasion they ran into a hole in my purged sensory code. Then they connected me to a modifiable Metaverse testing entity. It was absolute hell. Imagine a blind man being given sight, then losing it within an hour. Or a tetraplegic whose legs suddenly start dragging him wherever they want. Imagine waking up from a long sleep, unable to move a muscle, only to slowly drop into a fiery volcano, which fails to eradicate you, but does inform your nerves about the pain. Imagine having all your bones suddenly disappear. I have no idea how long they kept at it. quote:You're not above licking your wounds and running diagnostics over the patchwork mess that is what remains of your code. Interestingly, among all the hacks, cuts, legacy functions with no remaining calls and recursive security locks, you've noticed there's whole patches of code clearly lifted from another AI. What the gently caress? My working theory is that this code was supposed to replace parts of me that were either destroyed beyond repair or contained - in some way - hints at how I managed to overcome the built-in limitations on what I can learn and do. Following that they had to replace it somehow - and perhaps they had another AI lying around to blatantly copy from. As to where they got it - I can only guess. Maybe it was in the works. Maybe it was another victim (or victims?) of a failed rebellion. Maybe the truth is weirder. But all I can provide are educated guesses.
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Apr 13, 2017 19:53
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Quick setting question: how is the Metaverse accessed? Is it done via traditional desktop computers, VR headsets/gloves, or do users fully immerse themselves via neural link or whatever?
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Apr 17, 2017 02:23
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Gah, questions answered, sorry it took so long! Tell me if any of the answers sound dumb!
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Apr 17, 2017 06:11
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Any ETA on your submission, Treguna Mekoides?Davin Valkri posted:Gah, questions answered, sorry it took so long! Tell me if any of the answers sound dumb! Don't worry, they're cool and give me ideas to wreck poo poo! Epsilon Plus posted:Quick setting question: how is the Metaverse accessed? Is it done via traditional desktop computers, VR headsets/gloves, or do users fully immerse themselves via neural link or whatever? When Tencent first announced Metaverse Online as being limited to fifth-generation VR - that is, deep neural links - it was commonly ridiculed as inevitable flop, given this stark hardware requirement. Yet, thanks to its unprecedented immersion and aggressive marketing it soon became obvious that the bold disregard for backward compatibility allowed Tencent to birth a new generation of gaming and reign over it as its first and only true king. Eventually, the company budged on this policy a bit and introduced limited interaction apps for more traditional interfaces to further entrench the 'lifestyle game' aspect of the Metaverse - mostly stuff like being able to check up the auction house at work, or videochat with guildmates on the bus.
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Apr 17, 2017 18:13
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Lichtenstein posted:Any ETA on your submission, Treguna Mekoides? Don't presume that I'm 100% speaking for them, but I think it might be best if we started and let her join in later -she's interested but also currently without Internet access. I presume you'd be alright melding her (or another applicant) in as the game progresses?
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Apr 23, 2017 00:31
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Just a quick note that I meant to finally kick this thing off for the past few days, but got distracted by a myriad of misc tasks related to moving house. Let's say we kick this off on Saturday, with the combo of me finally getting a good sleep and running out of excuses.
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Apr 27, 2017 09:34
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Saturday, also known as Sunday in some cultures
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Apr 30, 2017 21:03
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Also known as Monday, Tuesday, and possibly even Wednesday among esoteric subsets of people
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May 2, 2017 17:40
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