Chapter 1: From an Idle Afternoon to a Playable Prototype

The following plots are purely fictitious and any similarity is purely coincidental.

Opening

When L is free, the house is often very quiet.

The sunlight slanted in during the day, and there was an architectural brochure spread out on the table. The coffee went cold halfway through drinking it. Y sat on the other side typing code. The sound of the keyboard was thick and steady, like a standard coder keeping a polite distance from the world. L was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, holding the computer. Originally, he just wanted to chat with Gemini and kill some time.

This Gemini account was originally recharged by Y at the end of last year while taking advantage of the discount. Y’s idea at that time was very simple. Instead of watching AI from afar, it was better to get started and use it for a while. L usually doesn’t reject new tools, but he just doesn’t have the patience to study technical terms. Y simply lowered the threshold to the lowest level and let her use it first, chat first, and try it first. Stop treating AI as a toy exclusively for programmers.

So that afternoon, L really went off topic with Teacher G. First, we talked about any interesting projects we have recently, and then we talked about what subject matter would be more likely to attract people if we were to make something small. As we chatted, we naturally got to the topic of cultivation. L has a very specific obsession with the subject of practicing cultivation. She doesn’t want the colorful big-page games, the buttons all over the screen like an e-commerce backend, and she doesn’t want to pretend to be a sophisticated fairy tale. She wants a black bottom, a little air-conditioning, and the feeling she had when playing "Jin Yong's Legend of Heroes" when she was a child. As soon as she opened it, she knew that Jianghu was already waiting for someone inside.

She told Teacher G that at the beginning, you have to draw talents first, like opening a blind box. After that, attributes should be divided, but it should not be like filling in Excel, making people feel like they are reincarnated. It's best to practice automatically in the middle. Players don't have to click all the time, but they can't help but stare at the scrolling log, like watching a villain with a bad life messing around in the fairy world. The most important thing is the way of death and the title, it cannot be mediocre. After the character dies, the system must be like Tiandao himself, making a harsh and accurate comment without hesitation, making the player so angry that they want to laugh, and after laughing, they want to do it again.

How it started

Teacher G did not argue with her, but first talked with her about the gameplay and temperament. After he almost had the image in his mind, L turned to order Kimi to put the set of things together into an open page. Her understanding of things like code has always been relatively simple, probably equivalent to reading construction drawings. What she cared about was always the results. Whether it can be ordered, whether it goes smoothly, whether it tastes good or not, she knows these at a glance.

As a result, after several rounds of chatting, a webpage prototype that could be opened and played directly came out.

It's not the kind that "maybe workable in theory", but the kind that can actually be opened by double-clicking and played directly. There is a home page, there are buttons, you can click on it to draw talents, and after drawing, you can divide attributes. After entering the game, the log will scroll down one by one, the level will increase, the character will die, and the settlement pop-up window will seriously block people's accounts. Everything is squeezed into the same web page file. Pages, styles, logic, and data are all crowded together. It is not elegant, but it is very vivid.

L played two rounds by himself first, and the more he played, the happier he became. She immediately turned around the computer and waved to Y on the other end: "Come and see this."Y has always known what AI can do. After all, he was the one who recharged this account for L, and he also knew very well that these models were no longer just "chatting tools". It was not unusual for them to write copy, build pages, and build a small thing that could run. Y himself has never written a front-end, and he doesn’t understand anything about CSS, so what he is really curious about is not whether AI can write, but what level L has reached after he first talked about the method with Teacher G and then used Kimi to push it down.

As a result, L opened the page in front of him, clicked "Reincarnation and Cultivation", drew talents, divided attributes, started practicing, the logs started to roll, and finally the character died, and an extremely underrated but very accurate title popped up in the center of the screen. The whole living room was quiet for a few seconds.

Y’s first reaction was not to praise or criticize, but to play it himself.

The writing style of this web page sample is certainly not regular. Everything is tangled together, and if you really need to add more content later, it won’t be easy to maintain. But not only can it run, but it's also heading in the right direction. The interface temperament is established, and the core cycle from the start to the settlement is closed. Even the events and titles with a bit of a smile have brought out the character of the project.

L was getting more and more excited as he talked next to him. She began to think along the lines of this prototype: the title could be more, the log could be more wicked, the talent should be one that you would want to choose as soon as you see the name, and the way of death should be more outrageous.

How did the two people cooperate?

L depends on the feel. She would stare at the "Reincarnation and Cultivate Immortality" button for a long time, feeling that it was not attractive enough; she would read back several logs to judge which sentence was bad enough and which sentence was not enough; she would stop at the checkout page and wonder whether this title made people want to slap the table or start a new game with a smile. She can't write functions, and she doesn't care much about what the words are called, but she can tell at a glance which part "has that flavor" and which part is just a shell that can be lit.

Y is looking at another layer. As he clicked on the page, he had already begun to imagine what would happen next: L would probably add a dozen more titles in two days, change the copy a few more times, and then adjust the values ​​​​a little faster or a little slower. At that point, if everything is still in one file, just finding a place to start will be annoying. Where to change the page, where to put the rules, and which places are best left untouched. These questions have already been lined up in his mind.

Y later did not overthrow it and start over, he just continued to deal with it. The pages should be placed separately, the logic should be placed separately, and those that can be configured should be taken out first. This way, when L gets a whim next time and says, "Here's another particularly damaging way to die," or "The probability of breakthrough here is even more outrageous," there's no need to stare at an entire file for five minutes.

The subsequent division of labor basically grew out of this afternoon. L continued to sit on the sofa and work on the gameplay, temperament, and copywriting with Teacher G. Then he handed over the things he had talked about to Kimi, and stuffed them into the page one after another. Y opened the editor on the other side and started to use Codex. He slowly organized the directories, separated the pages and logic, and left some locations that could be changed repeatedly in the future.

I’ll just remember this this time.

That afternoon, L continued to chat with Teacher G on the sofa, laughing and adding memes to the little website about cultivation. Y dragged the computer back, opened a few windows, and began to figure out how to connect this thing into a serious warehouse.