55 – Expansion and Projects
As the day quickly passed with Batman's Butler leaving the cafe with cases of alcohol and fresh exotic wasteland food, and Logan the same, I said goodbye to all of my customers, including a few new ones, before closing up shop.
With them gone, I briefly glanced at my 'Bank.'
[US Dollars: 19,240]
[Karma: 185, 902]
Turns out, with the sheer amount of Karma some of my customers had, they were quite flamboyant with their spending, such as Kyle using every scrap of his Karma and Credits to purchase ammo, several different weapons, medicine, and a suit of Combat Armor and with me switching the Credit System to a weekly rotation, my various customers have been purchasing whatever they found...appealing.
Another example was that Volkov used all of his Credits to purchase a Power Fist from the world of Fallout, a device that allowed a man to punch through brick and shatter bone. It would certainly make him a menace to any opponent lacking superior biology, powers, or weapons. Which for Gotham or Hell's Kitchen made him one of the 'strongest' outside a very select few individuals.
I wondered how the Cafe would grow and expand in the future and briefly glanced at the shop before sighing.
Opening the system store, I made a few purchases.
The inside of the cafe stretched and shifted, seemingly expanding as if it were a balloon.
Rows upon rows of computers appeared until they numbered 75 in number.
Suddenly a waiting area formed at the center of the cafe in front of the counter, with a coffee table, four chairs, and two couches, all forming a square.
Then, the counter expanded before stopping a good distance from the wall and abruptly swerving to connect to the wall behind the counter
Beside the counter, two doors appeared, both bathrooms.
From there, the display shelves extended, and a fully functional kitchen seemed to form behind the counter and the wall behind my floating form.
The fridge behind the counter disappeared, appearing inside the kitchen along with two more refrigerators.
On the wall behind the counter, many glass display cases appeared, where I could freely show off food, baked goods, and whatever else I desired.
Once I felt satisfied with the expansion, I began resupplying my stock of medicines, food, liquor, and more, which was easy enough as with every sale I made a profit of some kind.
Nodding to myself, I began humming another song in my head as a great many fragments of my mind worked tirelessly on my new set of projects, though one of the fragments was working on something different than the others, a new...App for the Computers.
The Workshop.
Otherwise known as, the platform that would allow the players to mod games in the future, the fragment was having some issues, as it was having to create a lot of tools, programs, and settings that could assist the users test out, customize, and create their monds.
Such as tools that would allow the players to customize the atmospheric pressure of the games, change the composition of the ground or human anatomy, and more.
If anything, I feel that scientists and the more...creative customers I get in the future will be using the Workshop more than anything else just to test theories, experiment, and so much more.
However, I would certainly not make it easy on them as that's not the Workshop's intended purpose.
Sure, I could make it to where they could use the same method I use when creating, but allowing the Customers to freely create whatever they imagine with a single thought would go horribly.
Imagine what would happen if one of the more...crazy individuals in this world were to happen to gain access to that kind of power? I could already see things going wrong.
No, the workshop has to be limited, to at least make it much harder for the Customers to do things in the workshop, hence the implementation of countless tools, programs, and settings to make it hell for someone who wants to calibrate and change everything.
Plus, it would mean that those who want to make 'mods' would have to make some genuine effort if they wanted to get anywhere, and they'd have to learn the entire system of the Workshop.
Moving my focus onto the other projects, I appraised their progress, starting with Minecraft, which would be arguably the easiest one to create as all I would need to do is mostly create a procedural generator that would create unique worlds based on a 'Seed,' much like the Minecraft I was familiar with in my old world.
The only difference was that I wanted to add more items, biomes, mobs, animals, and more, taking much inspiration from the many mods that have cropped up into existence over the years since Minecraft's creation, such as Pam's HarvestCraft, adding plenty of vegetables, fruits, and food items, or Biomes O' Plenty that added a great many new biomes to the Procedural Generator. Other than those changes, I had also planned on improving the villages to account for possible kingdoms to form, and trade routes to be established between villages, and I planned on improving the AI of the Villages and Mobs to make the game more interesting and not so...predictable.
I had more plans, but for now, I was in the initial stages of the game's creation still, working on the world generator and experimenting with it to make sure it works and there are no bugs or loopholes that the Players could exploit, though I feel they'll still find some whether I like it or not.
Two of my fragments were working on Minecraft, while another two were working on the Elder Scrolls series, one was working on Elder Scrolls: Arena, while the second was working on Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.
Both games were from before my time, so I never had the opportunity to play them, but with the System's help, I knew the games inside and out after I purchased the series.
Then I had one fragment working on Resident Evil 0, the one featuring a train. I decided to go in chronological order to provide the Players with a streamlined experience where they could play the games in order without having to worry about being thrown in a game in some other period of time. To explain, the company that created Resident Evil in my old world published Resident Evil 0 as the fifth game in the series, even though it was the first in chronological order, I aimed to fix that.
Speaking of the three games, I had decided what to add to the Credit Store from the games.
For Minecraft, there were a few obvious items. Golden Apples, Potions, Enchantment Gear, Elytras, Raw Ore, and lastly, the Totem of Undying.
For Elder Scrolls, Enchanted Gear, Potions, Alchemical Ingredients, Spell Tomes, Books, and more.
Lastly, there were the Resident Evil games. Most of the items were rather...mundane, but some of them had some potential. Such as the Refined T-Virus Serum, Research Papers, other viruses and pathogens created by the Umbrella Corporation, and even refined Cadou Parasite and Mold samples were available for sale, though I blocked a lot of the more..cataclysmic options from the Credit Store since they'd only cause me problems if someone was stupid enough to start a zombie apocalypse or something similar. Certainly would not be good for business. Though theoretically, someone could research and learn from the research papers and files available in the games. Though they'd lack the unique plants or mold that allowed Umbrella to make their viruses so...unique in the first place.
Even then, there were few people in this world with the knowledge to do such a thing in a short amount of time.
Satisfied with my progress, I reached out to the System Store and made one last purchase.
A new cafe entrance.