Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 598: Chapter 566: How Can a Competition with a Bug be Interesting?

Watching Little Chun and Randall embrace each other, one constantly crying, the other not knowing what to do.

Lincoln, Camille Victoria, and Mavis, sitting across from them, were also somewhat confused.

After a while, feeling that Little Chun’s emotions should have been vented out, Lincoln suddenly suggested: “Why don’t… we also hug each other?”

“Huh?” Princess Camille Victoria was taken aback.

But before she could react, Mavis had already jumped up and shouted “Great idea!”, hanging on Lincoln’s neck.

“Haha, I was just kidding.” Lincoln took Mavis off, patted her on the head, and asked her to sit down properly.

After this distraction, the awkward atmosphere eased a bit.

Little Chun wiped her tears and whispered in Randall’s ear: “We’ll talk more later.”

Then she sat up straight and apologized: “Sorry, I was just reminded of some things from the past.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Lincoln quickly waved his hands, “I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys.”

As he spoke, he extended his index finger, and a stream of data quickly converged at his fingertip, turning into a little fire dragon shape, slowly flapping its wings, and flying towards Little Chun.

“These are the sensory data that appeared in your memory. Mavis has done an initial classification based on the code characteristics, but we still need your help to label which pieces of data represent which senses.”

Little Chun reached out to catch the little fire dragon and nodded: “No problem, leave it to me.”

The little fire dragon disappeared slowly in Little Chun’s hand – this was just a form of authorization, and the actual data content had already been transferred to Little Chun’s workspace.

“There’s no need to rush, many things are not yet ready, and the Civil Affairs Bureau is still coordinating. We have plenty of time. You can do this when you have some free time at work.”

After explaining his intentions, Lincoln pulled Mavis and Camille Victoria away, leaving them some private space.

However, after they left, Little Chun didn’t spend much time cuddling with Randall, they only talked softly for a while about the trip they’d had before and decided to go see it again this weekend.

Slowing down the worsening of the disease is important, but you can’t sacrifice your current life for delaying the bad days to come.

After all, living in the present is what people must do.

After opening their hearts to each other once again, they returned to their respective teams and continued their leading work.

The difference was that their steps were lighter, and the tangled emotions in their hearts had been greatly relieved.

Little Chun returned to her team with a smile and asked: “How are the players reacting to the competition?”

Clark quickly put away his copy of The Development of Tang Dynasty Clothing and the Changes in Clothing of All Classes, then enlarged the work window in front of him with a serious expression before answering Little Chun: “It’s great, the boss’s suggestion is really impressive. If it weren’t for the National Construction Competition, the Redstone Challenge alone wouldn’t have caused such a sensation.”

Seeing that Clark was not being completely idle, Little Chun didn’t mind. She was used to it – after all, he was eager to join the Virtual Chang’an project.

Returning to her own sofa and sitting down, she began to pay attention to the players’ feedback.

She soon discovered that Clark’s summary of the players’ situation was quite accurate.

Just looking at the player’s feedback below the announcement, although the Redstone Challenge had a higher prize than the National Construction Competition – the champion prize of the Redstone Challenge was 3 million, while the National Construction Competition was 2.8 million – but what the players were most enthusiastic and eager to talk about was the National Construction Competition.

Lincoln wouldn’t mind giving more prize money, but Little Chun’s team philosophy doesn’t want the words “game” and “get-rich-quick” closely linked – that would mislead many immature players.

So, in their event plans, the prize money wouldn’t concentrate on one person or, let’s say, “very likely” wouldn’t concentrate on one person.

Because the entire competition process was designed very compactly: the whole process only lasted 15 days.

Twelve days were allocated for building and submitting results, and the remaining three days were for presenting to all the players for voting, and the results were determined based on the voting results.

The National Construction Competition had no barriers to entry, and standings were determined solely by voting results. Even if the players went crazy and voted for a piece of dirt as the winner, Lincoln would still pay out the prize money.

However, considering that this was a global competition and all players worldwide who had purchased the game could participate and vote, this likelihood was pretty low.

The Redstone Challenge had set a requirement: a large number of Redstone structures must appear in the entries.

It seemed that this competition could be entered individually.

But in reality, a work that could win the world’s attention could hardly be small-scale.

Large-scale works were, of course, the result of many people working together. Super Tomato’s Forbidden City and Camille Victoria’s Floating Island were both like this.

If you haven’t done these things before and want to sprint in the last 12 days, it’s even more impossible to rely on one person to make it.

So, the likely outcome was that the entire team of players would share the huge prize money.

This was the scene that Little Chun’s team wanted to see the most: players working together, united in cooperation, striving for victory in the competition.

Now, the online discussions were in line with their expectations: players were forming groups, expressing ideas, and recruiting teammates.

However, some of the discussions were strange:

“@Super Tomato, is there a spot for me in your Forbidden City project? Can I join? I can pay to work!”

“@Camille Victoria, big sister, please take me in! Your floating island needs a hardworking sheep like me!”

“@Super Roller Coaster Project Team, add me! I can mine for eight hours a day without pay!”

…

Yes, compared to starting from scratch now, many players hope to join an ongoing project that has been under construction since the game was launched and has already taken shape.

This can save a lot of preliminary work.

And there are not a few such projects; many great anchors have organized such projects.

Even in the past few days, when many anchors have become “Battlefield” people, they still take some time every day to return to build houses as a way to relax.

Besides the anchors, many small teams formed by colleagues, classmates, and friends also post videos to showcase their construction achievements.

These teams with a first-mover advantage naturally received enthusiastic attention from netizens.

However, these teams did not immediately recruit new members, apparently fearing that they would recruit those who want to gain something for nothing.

Under the strong calls of the players, Camille Victoria finally showed up and posted an update.

But this update wasn’t about whether or not they were recruiting. Instead, it was a [Declaration of Withdrawing from the Competition]—

[The Floating Island is not my accomplishment, and I have contributed very little to it. To “Defend the Farm,” we pulled in a lot of players at once, adding players who came for the fame later. These players have contributed more or less, and their total number probably exceeds 2,000.

So, strictly speaking, the Floating Island is a public venue, not a construction entry, and is not suitable for the competition.

We have communicated with the fans who participated the earliest and contributed the most.

[The Floating Island will not participate in the competition]—that is our final decision.]

This post naturally caused quite a stir, and netizens discussed it.

But Camille Victoria didn’t even look at the netizens’ reactions, turning her head straight back to her hardcore fan group and saying to them, “Let’s make something new for the competition? How about a giant flying whale?”

Fans in the group immediately got excited: “Great idea! Totally possible!”

“Sounds fantastic! I’m in!”

“One? Are you looking down on me?! A group of whales! Let’s make twenty!”

“What a joke! There are only 12 days left, and there are more than 400 of us, most of whom still have to work during the day. Think about the workload!”

“Let’s start with a big one and see how time goes! If there’s enough time, we’ll make more; if not, we’ll make a few small ones as whale children. It makes perfect sense!”

“What do you guys think about adding an old fisherman and creating a whale-hunting effect?”

…

Super Tomato’s situation was a bit unique: the number of participants in his Forbidden City project was limited and easily identified.

As he was the actual project leader and had put a lot of effort into it, he could confidently submit it for the competition.

He did intend to participate.

However, his competition goal was not quite what netizens had in mind—

Super Tomato didn’t plan to compete for the top prize of the National Construction Competition; he wanted to try… exploiting a BUG.

He planned to use the unfinished Forbidden City building group to participate in the Redstone Challenge.

Yes, he planned to participate in the “Redstone” challenge with this building group, which has not a single redstone structure so far.

—Super Tomato had carefully studied the rules of the competition and discovered that none of them explicitly stated that the “Redstone structure” had to be closely integrated with the “main building.”

The rules only required the “quantity” of the redstone structure, not the “complexity.”

Then, what if they placed a redstone torch at the entrance of the Forbidden City building group, and then connected it to thousands of levers using redstone powder so that any lever could ignite the torch?

Would that meet the standard for a “large number of redstone structures”?

Super Tomato wanted to give it a try.

The group friends who loved to make trouble all strongly supported the idea, even suggesting that when laying out the redstone powder circuit, there was no need to use strictly straight lines—

“We could use the line to paint a pile of poop!”

“Gross! How about a tomato instead?”

“Boring! I say draw Mavis! All her fans will vote for us then!”

“Might as well draw Alex.”

“Draw a princess!”

“Draw Lincoln! Who would dare not give us the championship? Even those rigging the results would have to give us the championship!”

“???”

“???”

…

Super Tomato found the suggestions of his group friends very amusing, so he chimed in: “Only children make choices, adults want them all!”

“Let’s leave some space for everyone to draw whatever they want!”