Project Overworld

Fiddling with the main computer of his base, Keith did not see time passing by. He was really focused on finalizing a modeling program which would allow him to make more precise and concrete plans, especially for his rockets.

He had indeed finished testing his prototype of a liquid propellant engine and was now doing lots of calculations regarding the total weight of the rocket he would be making. There was the engine itself to take into account, but also the propellant, the fuel cargo, the c.o.c.kpit as well as all the components needed for the rocket to function properly. Not to mention Keith's weight too.

Up until now, he had not made any precise measures concerning the load of his machines, and he had no idea on what his character would actually be weighing around. Hell, he did not even know how a weighing scale would work, although he did have some theories about it.

That was how Keith's ideas came to life one after the other. If he needed to weight something, then he would build a weighing scale. Looking up on the Internet or putting his own knowledge to use, he would eventually progress further and continue working on his main projects.

Although, this time around, Keith had to put an hold on his work and start preparing for another journey. In a month from now would be taking place the second official tournament of Inventopia. Last time this event was organized, Keith really got disappointed by other players' creativity.

Thus, he had decided that he would be participating in order to help the city with its development. Although this would take time off his schedule and allow the city to catch up to him, he was inherently pitying them.

When Keith has been visiting Midgard in the past, he has been really impressed by their constructions and the way the whole city was arranged. He wanted the city to expand so that he could observe interesting changes and cool ideas emerge from people's mind.

This was a pretty selfish way of thinking, in the end.

Keith did deliberate for a while regarding his participation in Inventopia. Initially, he had no idea about what he would be introducting during the competition. He has had several ideas, but whether they were too developped for the city, putting him at risk of being targeted, or too silly to be interesting.

One thing he noticed, however, was that people did not really know how to have fun in this game. Most of the players were not really engineering themselves and were only collecting some resources for the others before disconnecting until we needed them again. The city did not have enough distractions for the vast majority of the players to be enjoying themselves.

A lot of players stopped playing Project Overworld after a while because they did not enjoy the core mechanics of the game. Those players certainly got attracted by its popularity and left once they discovered what it was actually all about.

'This is a rather peculiar game. If you don't like collecting resources and crafting, there isn't much more to in here.' Keith though.

To combat this, Midgard's municipal team has been working with various engineers to offer games like chess or checkers to their citizen. Some skate parks were even made for people to show off their skills with bikes. The whole entertainment idea was really working and some people only connected to the game to chat with other players and have some fun together.

This all seemed pretty ironic coming into a game to do the exact same things as in real life, but people found it actually quite convenient. They did not have to leave their house to meet with others, or having to deal with an overpopulated and polluted city such as New York. The scenery Midgard offered what rather pleasing to say the least.

But the most important reason why people enjoyed Project Overworld more than real life was the security and comfort it provided. Introverts could finally express themselves without being afraid of their appearance, because they could choose how their avatar looked like. The paranoid people could simply disconnect if they though someone was trailing them. Nothing could really happen to one's body within the city except from being killed off by another player, and in that case the only downside was needing to respawn at their bed or the now well-arranged world spawnpoint. Midgard's crime-fighting police would then take care of the annoying criminal by putting him into jail.

Although, the food system of the game did not really allow for players to be kept into jail.

At the beginning, Midgard's police had to remember the criminal's name on some doc.u.ments and mass report him to an admin if he did not comply to eating something during his sentence. This led to some bans over a simple stolen fruit and a few abuses

After a small patch, however, Advanced Simulations added to their game a way to formalize jails which would prevent players from dying for a whole real-life week-time at most. This was sufficient for crimials to stop doing their malicious deeds within the city and limited the number of players being kicked or banned out of the game.

Regardless, when thinking about the entertainment options that could be added to Midgard city, Keith was suddenly struck with an idea worth investigating.

He looked for the resources he needed in his stocking area and spent the next few hours fidgetting around with a strange design of an object. Once he was done, he tested it on some targets outside of his base and thought of a few adjustements. Once satisfied by the result, he made several more of them and put them into his inventory.

After he was done, Keith disconnected from the game and browsed through his phone to find the official post made by the municipal team of Midgard on the Project Overworld forums. To avoid any problem during the competition, they recently decided to go through some online applications so that they could monitor the number of participants and what they would be showing off. This was mainly a decision done by Amber who found the last Inventopia rather boring, excepting for a few inventions which caught her attention.

Keith sighed out of satisfaction and went to sleep. Now that he had prepared for the event, he could resume working on his main projects. In fact, he would only start traveling towards the spawn in two weeks from now, since he needed a week and a half to navigate all the way to Midgard.