4 04 - First game
"So you mean you just saw my Magic Card and learned the spell instantly?" the girl asked Neo with a dubious expression.
"Yes, I really just stayed in the library studying history and geography books. Before entering magic school I hadn't really devoted myself to those subjects," Neo responded, feigning a little embarrassment.
"This… I have to make sure of this then!" The girl said as she took a Magic Card from her backpack. "Let me see. So, if you're telling the truth, in this letter is a spell my dad had bought for me to study for the year. I'll only let you read it once; I won't let you see it anymore since my dad bought this for just me. If you can't mimic this spell, I'll know you're lying."
Neo looked at the letter in the girl's hand curiously. Just seeing the plethora of lines of code, Neo knew it would have two options: either it was a novice waste or a really complex spell. As the girl's father had bought this Card for her to study, it was quite possibly the second option.
Reading the Card, Neo began to understand the purpose of this spell. What surprised him the most was the complexity of it. Comparing this Card to the lines of spell code he had read earlier, Neo knew it was a much higher grade algorithm. Based on the numerous blocks of code he had seen in his previous world, he knew that this Card was not far behind and could easily have been written by a software development professional.
"There, time is up." The girl saw the expressions of surprise Neo was making and knew she was right; he would hardly be able to replicate this magic. After all, not even she could understand the reason for several of these lines of code. This was the reason why her father also sent some notes that explained each process so that she could understand the reason for everything.
That was the big reason she was already able to simplify some lines of Liquify Magic. After all, she was learning so many more useful ways to write magic using this Card, and then applying them to more basic spells was much simpler.
"You can't, can you? I knew it! After all, this is a magic that does-" But before the girl finished what she was saying, she was surprised once again to see what Neo was doing. In front of Neo, a transparent screen appeared; on that screen some words were being written like in a notebook.
"You!! Did you really learn Notebook magic?" The girl screamed even louder.
"Is that the name of the spell? Interesting, I didn't know it was possible to use magic this way. Unfortunately it's useless without a Card" Neo said, a little disappointed.
He had really learned the entire magic. The magic basically created a notepad that a person could write whatever they wanted by the way the person injected mana into it and even had a function to save the file. This was extremely practical. Neo didn't even know that mana could be used that way when developing a software spell.
The program had over 300 lines of code. If it were a common Notepad in Neo's previous world, he could do this with several times fewer lines, but this magic not only didn't need a keyboard, it also managed to produce a blue screen floating in front of the user at the cost of mana. The downside of this was that even keeping the screen activated used a constant flow of mana, but the upside was that it could contain a lot more words than a real notebook, as well as being much more practical than carrying a large notebook and writing materials.
This was not to mention that this opened up a big possibility for Neo. For him, who wanted to make games, he could easily create a monitor in front of him where the game would be broadcast just using the lines of code he learned from this magic.
'I thought I understood a lot about this world's software development when I arrived, but there really is a lot more I still have to learn,' Neo thought, remembering how surprised he was to discover lines of code he had never seen before on this Card, especially the ones responsible for converting mana into a screen of light that represented what the person had written.
"You really are a genius," the girl said in a defeated tone.
She had been studying this Card for over three months and had barely understood these lines of code. Maybe nowadays, with how much she had already studied it, she could even make a floating screen too, but she hadn't been able to make a functional floating screen just using mental magic.
If she used the Card to write things down, she could easily use it. After all, she just needed to inject mana the way it indicated, but doing it mentally was impossible for her these days.
"I've been called a genius before, but even geniuses have their shortcomings," Neo said a little wistfully as he remembered the problem he had with his hands from typing so much on the computer in his past life.
The girl didn't know if Neo was saying this to himself or if he was saying it to comfort her, but it still worked, which she thanked him for in her heart.
"Jenny, I'm going back to our room, I need to study more." she said to her companion as she stood up, remembering what Neo had just said about the deficiencies. Her weakness was that she often got tired of studying the same thing and almost always abandoned it, but hearing what Neo said, she felt like going back again and focusing completely on this card in her hand.
"But we haven't even eaten yet, Kayle," the girl Jenny said as she pouted and looked at the two food trays in front of them.
"Let's take this to the dorm." Kayle still wanted to study, but was also very hungry, so she decided to take it to her room to eat.
"Damn, that's an advantage we don't have..." Fatty said with envy.
"What advantage?" Neo asked curiously as he went back to eating his lunch.
"Taking food to the bedrooms. Only girls can bring food to the bedrooms; boys can only eat in the cafeteria… I would be so happy to be able to eat in the bedrooms," Fatty replied a little wistfully.
Neo had to control himself not to laugh. This school was practically a software development school, and he knew very well what his previous world's software developers' quarters were like: cups of instant noodles everywhere, snack bags, soda cans, all kinds of dirt were all over the place. This probably had also happened at this school before there was a rule forbidding boys to eat in their room.
"Haha." Neo chuckled at the memory of that.
After eating, Neo and Fatty returned to their room. There was nothing to do there, so Neo decided to test something he had thought of after today's inspirations.
"Fatty, want to play a game?" Neo asked.
"What game? We don't even have space here in the room, not to mention that I didn't bring my deck. My father said that if I did, I wouldn't focus on my studies," Fatty complained quietly.
"Just give me a minute."
Neo already had in mind that he didn't want to start with a very big and complex game. As this world had not yet had access to digital games, it would be better to start with something basic and then progress to more developed games when people became more used to it.
So Neo thought of one of his old world's first multiplayer games, Tennis for Two! This game was very simple. It only had 105 lines of code in total, so with a magic card in hand, Neo started writing the codes.
[void draw(){
background(0);
myEngine.display();
myEngine.update(mana);
...]
Since there were no joysticks, Neo had to adapt the code base to use a mana input. Not knowing much about the workings of the Card that Kayle showed him, Neo would have a lot more work to do to make the spell execute, but after seeing how that Card read mana, Neo had already figured out the answer he needed.
In less than a minute the Card for the first video game in the world was ready. On the back were all the lines of code, while on the front Neo used his knowledge of graphic design to make a simple Pong design. Yes, he preferred to use the Atari Pong version instead of the experimental version made by the original creator, since a game like this would be easier for the lay public to understand and play.
Fatty saw the big Pong logo in front of the Card and a small white ball being bounced between two white bars and was confused.
"Pong... What is this? How is this a game?" Fatty asked, confused.
"Hehe, inject some mana while holding the card to one side," Neo instructed.
When Fatty did this, a 10-inch floating screen appeared in front of him with a Start button floating in front of it.
"Woah! Did you really learn what was written on that card, Neo? And you even wrote your own spell! That's amazing!" Fatty said in awe as he stared at the small screen floating in front of him. He still had a hard time learning the basics of Sorcery, but his roommate was already doing spells with advanced concepts, which was amazing for him.
"Hehe, that's natural for me. Now inject mana at frequency -1 and frequency -2 to start, then you can inject mana at frequency 1 and frequency 2 to control your meter." Neo explained patiently as he held the Card on the other end, making a small floating screen between the two of them. As the screen was transparent, the two could see without any problem.
Neo had also learned this on Kayle's card: a mana rate control to replace the keyboard. On that card, it took 104 different frequencies to be able to use each letter and the keys for the letters. Fortunately, controlling the frequency of mana was a very natural thing for more advanced mages, to the point that some could even control thousands of different frequencies of mana itself. Of course, first year students like Fatty still had a hard time controlling more than 30 mana frequencies, but controlling just 4 was extremely simple.
When Fatty did what Neo told him to do, the screen immediately switched to the game screen and the dot in the center of the screen began to move slowly. On Fatty's command, the bar moved downward because of the frequency of mana he injected, causing the bar to block the ball, bouncing it across the small map.
Neo also controlled his bar to block the ball and sent it back to Fatty, making the ball go a little faster.
"Damn, this really is a game! You made a game with magic; this is amazing Neo! I won't lose to you, hehe," Fatty chuckled gleefully as he controlled his bar to block the ball Neo sent.
And while Fatty concentrated on the game, Neo watched his expression of joy as someone played an electronic game he made for the first time since coming here and was satisfied. It had been a long time since he felt this because of the problems he had at hand in the world before.BThis made Neo feel even more motivated to learn more about magic and make more games.
Unbeknownst to him, this goal was the main factor for the greatest wizard in history to emerge - a wizard whom enemies would fear and allies would be relieved to have on their side, the wizard who would one day be compared to Merlin, the Legendary Technomancer.
-----
Read the author notes down here he he ↓ ↓ ↓
Heey guys, this story already have a lot of chapters written, and I'll release it daily.
Add it to your library to keep reading it!
