ca-book Chapter 360 Turing Complete
Chapter 360 Turing Complete
At 2 p.m., the conference room of Tutu Technology was full of people.
Lu Ran stood beside the podium, leaning on his cane, with a huge whiteboard in front of him.
The whiteboard was covered with dense writing, including keywords for the plan, technical architecture diagrams, and development timelines.
He spent an hour writing these things at noon, and his hand was sore from writing.
Originally, a lightbox could have been used instead, but Lu Ran felt that writing on it would have a more textured feel.
Old Wang sat in the first row, with his laptop spread out in front of him and his fingers on the keyboard, ready to take notes at any time.
Zhao Yiming sat next to Lao Wang, holding a pen in his hand, and turned to a new page in his notebook.
Zhang Hao sat next to Zhao Yiming, carrying a new math notebook with the words "My World Algorithm Notes" written on the cover.
Everyone else was there too: the core members of the technology department, several heads of the operations department, the lead artist of the design department, and about twenty people filled the conference room.
Lu Ran glanced at the audience and cleared his throat: "Is everyone here? Then I'll begin."
He didn't use a PowerPoint presentation or a script. He walked directly to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and wrote four large characters on the whiteboard: My World.
"The name of this game is Minecraft. I just came up with the name randomly. You can give me your opinions if you don't like it, but it's unlikely to be changed."
Some people in the audience laughed.
Lu Ran turned around and looked at everyone: "I know what you're thinking. This screen is all blocks, it looks like an antique from the last century. Can players accept that? EA's 'Wildlands' has such great graphics, are we trying to compete with them in the market with a game with this kind of graphics? Are we just asking for trouble?"
He paused, then wrote a word on the whiteboard: freedom.
"My World doesn't compete with EA in terms of graphics. We can't compete in graphics. EA has been making open-world games for over a decade, while we've only just started. Trying to compete on graphics is like throwing an egg against a rock. We don't compete on graphics; we compete on freedom. How much freedom does Wilderness have? You can build houses, but you can only build houses that the system allows. How high the walls are, what angle the roof is at, where the doors and windows are placed—all of these are determined by EA. You can only move around in the circle that EA has drawn for you, and no matter how much you move around, you can't get out of that circle."
He drew a line under "Freedom": "My world is different. In my world, you can build however you want. You can build a matchbox, a palace, or dig a hole and live in it. There are no restrictions, no rules, no system telling you 'this can't be placed here.' You place a block, and it stays there. You dig out a block, and it disappears. It's that simple."
He put down his marker and looked at the audience's reaction.
Old Wang's expression didn't change much, Zhao Yiming was taking notes quickly, and Zhang Hao was staring blankly at the words "degree of freedom" on the whiteboard.
The expressions of the others varied: some were excited, some were puzzled, and some were expressionless.
"President Lu." Someone in the back row raised their hand.
Lu Ran glanced at him and saw that he was a long-time employee in the technical department, surnamed Liu. He had been there for almost a year, was very technically skilled but had a conservative personality.
"Engineer Liu, please speak."
Engineer Liu stood up, his expression somewhat conflicted: "President Lu, I'm not trying to discourage you. I understand the level of freedom you mentioned; it's indeed impressive. But this screen, all blocks, won't players find it uncomfortable? Which game on the market these days isn't meticulously crafted? If you throw a bunch of blocks at players, their first reaction will be, 'What garbage is this?' I'm not saying your proposal is bad, I'm just saying players might not accept it."
Lu Ran looked at him but did not answer immediately.
The meeting room fell silent as everyone waited for Lu Ran's response.
"Mr. Liu, I have a question for you," Lu Ran said. "Do you think the graphics of League of Legends are better, or those of Wilderness Era?"
Engineer Liu paused for a moment: "Of course, Wilderness Era is better."
"Then why don't you play Wilderness Era?"
Engineer Liu opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again.
"I'll speak for you," Lu Ran said. "Because Wilderness Era isn't fun. No matter how good the graphics are, if it's not fun, it's not fun. League of Legends' graphics aren't as good as Wilderness Era's, but you find it fun, and you're willing to spend time on it. The essence of a game isn't graphics, it's fun. Graphics are just the skin; fun is the bone. No matter how beautiful the skin is, if the bone is bad, players will get bored after a couple of days. If the skin is mediocre, but the bone is strong, players can play for years. Minecraft's bone is very strong; it's so strong that players can play for ten years and still not be able to chew it up."
Engineer Liu sat down, but he didn't seem completely convinced.
Lu Ran knew that talking was useless; he had to show something real.
He walked to the podium, picked up his laptop, and connected it to the projector in the conference room.
"I'll show you something."
The computer desktop appeared on the projection screen. Lu Ran opened a folder, found the folder named "Minecraft_Complete", and double-clicked to open it.
The contents of the folder stunned everyone in the conference room.
The game itself, source code, art assets, sound files, operation plan, marketing strategy, user growth model, commercialization design, event planning, community building—everything is there, categorized and neatly arranged.
Old Wang was the first to react, jumping up from his chair: "President Lu, what's this?"
"A complete solution for Minecraft. From source code to art assets to operational strategies, it's all included."
"When did you do this?" Old Wang's voice had changed.
"I started working on it a long time ago. It's been on and off, I'd write a little bit whenever I remembered, and I'd get up and write a few lines of code when I couldn't sleep. Now, it's basically a finished product."
This was the explanation Lu Ran had already prepared.
He can't say, "I downloaded this from the system," he can only say, "I made this bit by bit."
Anyway, nobody in the company knows his background, so whatever he says goes.
Zhao Yiming stood up, walked to the projection screen, stared at the folder list on the screen for several seconds, then turned to look at Lu Ran with an expression as if he were looking at an alien: "Brother Lu, this amount of code would take one person at least a year to write. When did you write it?"
"I didn't write this by myself. Some parts were helped by others, and we signed confidentiality agreements so we can't disclose them. You don't need to know where this code came from; you only need to do one thing—understand this code, and then continue development based on it."
Lu Ran opened the game and double-clicked to run it.
A world made of cubes appeared on the projection screen.
Grass blocks are green, dirt blocks are brown, stone blocks are gray, the sky is blue, clouds are white, everything is a block, square and angular.
The meeting room was so quiet you could hear the air conditioner humming.
Lu Ran controlled his character to walk around in the game, cut down a tree, dug up some stones, made a workbench, and used the workbench to make a wooden pickaxe.
The entire process was smooth and seamless, without any bugs, lag, or crashes.
Old Wang stood in front of the projection screen, staring at the image on the screen, and remained silent for a long time.
Then he said something that surprised everyone: "Mr. Lu, did you travel from another time?"
Lu Ran's heart skipped a beat, but her face remained expressionless: "What did you say?"
"It's nothing," Old Wang waved his hand, his eyes still glued to the screen. "I just think this is too outrageous. You, all by yourself, writing and rewriting, created a complete game. From the underlying code to the upper-level logic, from art assets to sound effects files, everything is included. This has never happened before in the game industry. It's not impossible for one person to make a game, but for one person to make a game of this scale, and so completely, I think it's unrealistic."
"So what do you think reality is? Something I stole? Something I robbed?"
"That's not what I meant," Old Wang said. "I meant you're amazing. So amazing that it feels unreal."
Lu Ran laughed: "Alright, stop flattering me. Can you take a look and see if this code can be used directly? Is there anything that needs to be modified?"
Old Wang sat back in his chair and started flipping through the code folder. He flipped through it for a few minutes, his brow furrowing, then relaxing, then furrowing again. His changing expressions were quite amusing.
Zhao Yiming leaned over to take a look, and after reading a few lines of code, he froze, his mouth agape.
"This architecture..." Zhao Yiming's voice trembled slightly, "This architecture is too clean. Each layer is clearly defined, the interfaces are elegantly designed, and the comments are more detailed than those in textbooks. I have never seen code like this before. This is not something a human would write."
Lu Ran almost couldn't hold back: "What was that written in?"
"I don't know," Zhao Yiming shook his head, "but it doesn't look like something a human would write."
"Stop talking nonsense. Can it be used or not?"
"It works," Zhao Yiming said. "It works perfectly. You don't even need to change anything; you can package and release it directly. But I suggest you read it through from the beginning, thoroughly understand the architecture, and then consider whether to make any changes. Making changes rashly might destroy the original design."
Lu Ran nodded: "Okay, it's settled then. You guys read the code first, and start working on it only after you understand it. No rush, take your time."
Engineer Liu sat in the back row and didn't go forward to look at the code, but his expression changed after seeing Lao Wang and Zhao Yiming's reactions.
The expression on his face changed from that of a skeptic to that of a curious person.
He stood up from his seat, walked to the projection screen, and leaned over to look at a few lines of code.
Then he was stunned.
"The underlying implementation of this redstone system..." Liu's voice was somewhat uncertain, "...uses a finite state automaton? No, it's more complex than a finite state automaton. It's... Turing complete?"
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