Chapter Text
29th of September, 2018
Ding!
The sound echoes through the whole apartment, which was small anyways, but the only times that Wade's phone actually rings are when his favorite YouTuber, Spiderman, posts a video.
Spiderman is a kid, at least three years younger than Wade, who makes stupid science and informative videos for fun. Anyone who watches even one of his videos can tell he’s smart. He can solve complex equations off the top of his head and uses long words a lot. Wade admires him. He’s everything Wade wanted to be when he was a little kid, but unfortunately, life wasn't so kind to him.
He plugs in his partially working headphones and waits for the video to load.
“Hello, guys!” The boy says, with a huge smile on his face, “It’s me, Spiderman. Have you ever wondered how the fuck video games worked? I have! When I was around eleven-years-old I smashed open my PlayStation One console to see if I could understand the mechanisms. Didn’t work out very well. I had to assemble everything back together and duct-tape it closed until I could get another one on my next birthday.”
He laughs. Wade laughs, too.
“Well, basically video games are images that interact with the player. These images can be moved, or even completely redesigned, sixty times per second. All the player has to do is change the controls!” An image of joysticks appears on the screen. “The controls can make commands, apply the programmed rules, move the game pieces, or alter the state of variables. And everything has to be fast enough for you to play it in real time. It takes an insane amount of calculus to define what every little pixel is going to be doing and have it completely change sixteen milliseconds later. This is known as ‘game loop’.”
Suddenly there is a white board next to him. “To simplify all the coding, since they only have sixteen milliseconds of looping, in games like Pac-Man, every ghost moves exactly the same, but each reacts differently when they have the opportunity to kill Pac-Man. As an example, Red comes as close to where Pac-Man is located as possible, while Pink always try to be in the way of Pac-Man.” He drew ridiculous ghosts on the whiteboard while he talked. “The blue ghost, on the other hand, either chooses a path that would take him as close or as far from Pac-Man as possible, and Orange could go any direction, to chase or keep away from the player.”
“Then there’s hitboxes. You know, those games of fight, like Mortal Kombat...” A preview of said game appears on the screen, but goes away seconds after, “when the punches hit you even when the fighter is far away from you? Well, it consists of imaginary boxes that are over the characters, that determine what part of the body is going to hit you and where it is going to hit you.” Once again he draws along on the whiteboard to make everything less complicated. “This allows them to calculate collisions that are good enough, but sometimes can fail. Everything, from the collisions to the artificial intelligence of the game, has to be easy enough to be executed in the gaming loop. If not, it creates what we call a ‘lag’, when everything seems to be taking a little while to respond to our commands. That’s why developers take so much time trying to make the game as simple as possible while still making it as realistic as they can.”
There is a cut and Peter is in another scene, in front of a blank wall, with different clothes. “Before we can end this video, I want you guys to know that Ned and I are going to be at Geek-Con this year, doing meet-and-greets, so if you wanna meet me, get your tickets using the link in the description. If you don’t live in New York, don’t worry. We’ll be doing a live stream during the whole event.”
It goes back to the other scene with the white board. “That’s it for today, guys! If you enjoyed the video, like and subscribe for more! Spidey out!”
Wade doesn’t wait, immediately going to the description and clicking on the link. It takes him to a page in light blue with bright yellow letters on the top that spell out “Geek-Con: The convention where you can get your geek on!”. Underneath there’s a pretty picture of Spiderman wearing a blue and red sweatshirt that has a spider on the chest. The prices for the meet-and-greet aren’t very high so Wade buys one for the first day. Sighing and resting his phone on the nightstand, Wade lays down to sleep, hopefully without any nightmares.