Project Overworld

- "So, we first need to get all the parts from those conveyor belts..." Keith commented out loud.

Xena and him started working towards one of the largest projects they could think of as of now. Their end goal was to build a completely automatic rocket assembler. This process would be producing every part of the rocket on its own and finally assembling all of them together, only requiring fuel and raw materials as its input.

Most of the individual parts were already being produced by various machines, so they now needed to gather everything at the same place and figure out how they would be filtered before being assembled perfectly to one another.

This has been a real headscratch to Keith for so long, because the parts needed to get to the main assembler in good order so not to overflow the machine in any way. Also, the latest rockets Keith was building measured a good two hundred feet in height, so they needed to build a stable robot which could be assembling from so high up without falling over. The room itself was not that high and Keith needed to open a large portion of the room when working on these rockets.

- "Okay, we're gonna clear that launching pad and extand the engine conveyor belt all the way there." Keith explained to Xena. The spatial room was equipped with two launching pads, one used for test purposes and the other one being actively used to launch modules to the EOSS.

Michael and Tyler were already there, working on the next launcher of the 'Space Station' series.

- "Oh hey!" Michael exclaimed upon seeing the two others.

Keith only greeted them with a nod and started cleaning the launching pad from the test rocket that has been assembled there. Xena realized it would not be efficient having the two of them working on this and instead offered to take care of the conveyor belt which would be routing the rocket engines here.

Obviously, if they both gathered around the launching pad and disassembled the rocket using step ladders, they would eventually be bothering each other. Keith was really pleased with her quick thinking. If she was not able to take optimal decisions like this, he would need to train her some more. Fortunately, even though she was working with her boss right now, she did not seem that stressed up at all.

'I guess everything I've been doing so far is showing results.' Keith meditated as he unscrewed a few panels off the rocket.

Fortunately, disassembling a rocket was a lot faster than building it. By the middle of the week, Keith was done with it and helped Xena with the conveyor belt system. They managed to route the rocket engines being produced by the robot affected to that task all the way to the launching pad as well as a few other parts.

For now, nothing was really being assembled but it would be requiring a few months of work anyways.

Spacol was off to a good start because of their advantageous position and the work Keith has been doing for so long. Their base's coordinates has since been discovered because of the constant launch of rockets they have been doing lately, but the every curious player who dared to approach their base, despite the warning signs posted here and there, were being eliminated by automated turrets anyways.

'I'd prefer to be working directly from space, though.' Keith thought. Even if the he would still be requiring this base in the future to launch materials up there, it would be a lot more easier for them to maneuver around and focus on the future.

They could even be collecting some essential resources directly off of meteorites and eventually turn towards other planets. Those were Keith's plans, at least.

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- "How is the construction going?" Amber asked to the architect. She moved all the way to the place where the municipal team of Yggdrasil wanted to build Asgard, their next city. This project has finally been initiated and she could not wait for it to be completed.

If everything went according to their plans, this city should become one of the most popular this game has ever known, only second to Midgard because it sheltered the world spawn point. Since Project Overworld was a game before anything else, its popularity was currently being limited only because of the choices that have been made by the playerbase up until now.

In fact, after the initial phase showcasing guilds fighting over territory, newer players started gathering together and built the magnificent city called Midgard to counter this never-ending war. However, since then, the whole population of the game has been constrained to follow Midgard's rules and annoying players were gotten rid of by being put in jail for a few days.

To some other communities wanting to develop in the game, this whole period resembled some kind of authoritarian regime. Some people never got to enjoy Project Overworld the way they wanted and that was around that time terrorists started to show up.

In any case, Asgard was supposed to give a sense of relief to players not wanting to take part in technological development of this game. These players ranged from young people not understanding one bit of how to craft anything all the way to older ones trying to have their evening fun by playing some relaxing games.

The fact Project Overworld was a real-world simulation did give it some advantage over other games. Virtually any game could be emulated within this one, and it all depended on the creativity of its playerbase. For now, paintball tournaments have been organized in some open environement near Midgard and various board games have been reproduced by inventive people.

As for video games, they were currently at the prototype phase because computers were not widely distributed yet. However, the fact computers could become a daily-life product within Project Overworld worried its developers more than anything.

Basically, when they first created this simulation, they did not know how popular it would get. That was why the initial number of players was limited to a few thousands. Now that they managed to improve their server's capacity, several millions could be connected to Project Overworld at the same time without too much lag. However, if as much programs were to be emulated at the same time within the game, their servers could reach an overflow of calculations and make everything lag out horribly.

Basically, if the Internet was to be invented in the future within their game, it would be the end of this virtual world. The head of the company 'Advanced Simulations' did not want to resort to constraining players from coding within their game, as it was supposed to be a simulation and any limitation would be unwelcomed by the playerbase.

That was why, the developers have been trying really hard to think of a solution since they spotted some players' base consuming so much of their servers' computational power. It has been six months since this research started, and the only quick fix they could think of was to 'cheat' the system.

Their servers could clearly not emulate the Internet, even as a simplified version. Instead, it was already up and running in real-life so they could give players access to the World Wide Web and not have to worry about hosting those calculations themselves.

Obviously, this was only a short-termed solution because programs not using the Internet could also be developed just like some group of players already did. However, those could be hosted directly by a player's engine because their virtual headset was being connected to their own personal computer.

Basically, as long as they did not try to reproduce one of those complex and modern video games, nobody should be having any lag whatsoever.

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A month after the Spacol company started focusing on the main assembler of their rockets, they managed to have the main engines of their launchers being up and functional on the launching pad reserved for this purpose. For now, Keith decided that they should be building a really strong structure before expanding upon the robot itself.

For that purpose, they melted quite a bit of steel and built some concrete weights to counterbalance the crane that they were about to assemble. For a few weeks after they started this new project, the binomes took turns to expand upon this construction machine. Once it almost reached one hundred feet of altitude, they finally started to build the base of the robot.

A crane was really necessary for this kind of work. At the start of the project, the top of the robot was easy to reach while transporting huge loads with various kinds of vehicles. However, the more a construction advance, the more complex it got to reach its top.

Keith already had a bit of experience in that regard because the large attachment pylons he was building when working on rockets kind of had the same purpose. In any case, this project certainly was one of the more complex he has been working on in a long while.

'Oh yeah...' Keith excitedly thought while looking at the construction site that his base has become. 'It's all coming together!'

He then focused back on his current work, consisting in optimizing one of the machines producing spoilers for their rockets.