AI is horrificly designed

[Kii]

This is the only minigame that took me literally hours to do what I wanted it to, and I still didn't intentionally get the desired result, it just happened. The power shutting off for "Misuse of other AI components" is complete vague nonsense. There was and still is, no way for me to understand what is going wrong. There are still unused slots before emotional shutdown but inputting literally anything at any power level shuts off the power.

The emotional shutdown counter also doesn't seem consistent at all. I thought you got 4 total button attempts to reach the target emotion, but sometimes it jumps from 1 shutdown attempts to 3, and shuts down despite still having empty attempts. The book of course gives absolutely no explanation as to what the attempt dots mean or even if they work the way I assume because the page you go to for more information on the emotional shut down is nothing but "Haha, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Reset." Absolutely no information on the parameters of how it works at all.

Even if everything worked the way I expected it to, its also the only minigame that's anywhere near this level of obtuse. I haven't needed to open the book for any other fix after the first encounter. This is the only one that feels like you simply can't do without looking at the solutions in the book.

[SirusTheMadDJ]

I love it when "horrifically designed" is used in an argument that has multiple hints you're not understanding what's going on.

Read the passage again. Because it does.

But, rather than just doing the usual troll card and reminding you that the game really would love it if you RTFM, let's read it together! I'm stuck downloading the Wilds beta right now, so believe me, I've time to kill. And given how this is probably easier to play through while you have the module in front of you, it's going to look a whole lot more complicated than it actually is.

So, with warning in place, here's what's getting a lot of people, myself included before doing this, stuck. First, let's get the easy bits out the way.

If it's shutting down and you have to reset the power, it's because you didn't set the power to the right level. If you are inputting one button, set it to one step of power. If you're pressing two in the same action, then use four. And remember to lob it back to Five when you're done screwing it all back up after.

That's the only bit I don't think is covered in the manual, but it's quick enough to reset and find it out anyway. Unless I'm missing something, of course.

The sticking point, however, is the flowchart.

That's because it's a logic puzzle.

Think of it like a computer pro-...I mean, it is a computer program, bu-....Shut up, Sirus.

As Clifford goes through each step, it's triggering a logic gate. In this instance, it's IF. When the statement is processed, it's asking IF a one value or a total of values is equal to, or greater or less than, a given value. The arrows state what to do IF the value meets the statement. Solid line for true, hollow line for false.

Nothing fancy there. Oh, the Emotional shut down is triggering because a value has gone over a cap, or (as you said), ran out of turns.

The intentionally blank page is probably some way of leaving us in the dark. Why there's deliberately blank pages has my head spinning...

A-anyway, back to the matter at hand.

The kicker is each mood is affected by the others, as shown. Joy and Misery cancel out, as does Passion and Doubt, with the "net", or final total, detailing what is the outcome.

In effect, these four are actually two values, with the meaning flipping once we pass zero in a direction. Then, it's a case of making each of the two numbers to fit the location in the chart.

Simple right? Not when it's presented like it is. Let's go get the page which we're all here for.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3422380160

Look, if the guy minded me tearing it out, he can come and get me. He's dead, so I think I stand a chance..

Anyway, let's go through this, using what the book is showing us for the mood values.

So, we've six dots. Going from the reference, we have 1 joy, 3 misery, 2 passion and 1 Doubt.

To make it a touch easier to understand, and to reinforce it's only two values, we can make this simpler by abusing brackets. Or, (Joy-Misery) being the one value, and (Passion-Doubt) being the other. If I were evil, I'd assign them X and Y, but I spent the points on the opening dig, so let's just leave it at that.

So, what we actually have is (1-3) and (2-1), or -2 and 1. Which is understood by the program as 2 Misery, and 1 Passion, as all it's doing is translating the minus values into negative moods.

The trick to the puzzle, if we need to change it, is to understand what's happening first, and then reversing that to alter the path to get the mood we want, rather than the mood we have at the moment. Hence "find the mood and work backwards".

To try and get this a tad clearer, let's type out what it's actually doing from the Start, using the values we got. Once this is clear, working back through it will be a LOT easier.

So. Let's make coders cry together. I'm using caps here instead of the symbols, and treating the mood result as the output of the gate. Again. Solid lines are True, Hollow Lines are false. And I will be repeating this again, as the chart is deliberately designed to trip you up. Much like a certain test...

1 IF (Joy + Misery + Passion + Doubt) IS 0, Mood is Bored. [FALSE]

Easy enough.

2 IF (Joy-Misery)+(Passion-Doubt) IS LESS THAN 2, Mood is Neutral. [FALSE. -3+2, so it's -1]

Here's trick number one. Listing all four like this is to catch one particular path. There's only one combination to actually trigger this, but we'll play with that later. We go on.

3 IF (Joy-Misery) IS GREATER THAN 1 GO Right, ELSE GO Left

This is the spilt, and the first part to save time. If Clifford is not bored or in neutral, then the first question is if it's a positive mood or a negative one.

If it's Joy, or anything above 1, we go down the right branch. We have 2 Misery, or -2, so we're going left.

The bottom is tracking Passion and Doubt, but we just hit a little snag we just hit going left.

4 IF (Misery) IS LESS THAN 1, Mood Is Anxious. [FALSE]

Another trap. Again, remember the arrows. Hollow means false, so if this was a program, that would be the "correct" syntax to trigger the gate. Since Misery is greater than one, being 2, we move down. This, given the fact it leads to a mood that's listed three more times, is a hint that it's catching a particular set of combinations. Which, again, we'll touch on later.

5 IF (Passion+Doubt) IS LESS THAN 2, Mood is Sad. [TRUE, as it's one.]

So, it ends there, and the mood is Sad. We now have the start point to then work back through the chart, and thus suggestions on what experiences we need to change.

Note the comma. If the total is +1 OR -1 for (Passion-Doubt), it gets caught here.
As we're at +1, if we needed Clifford to be Angry, we add more Passion and make sure Misery stays at two or more. For Scared, we add Doubt, or take Passion away while maintaining where Joy/Misery is at as best we can.

If we don't need Anxious, Sad, Angry or Scared, we need add Joy alongside any changes for Passion and Doubt.

So, if we need to flip it from Sad to Happy, we're aiming at making (Joy-Passion) greater than 1, and (Passion-Doubt) to be EXACTLY Zero. If it's above zero, it's Love, and if it's below zero, it's Shy.

And, just a final headache, 1 Joy or Misery, and 1 Passion or Doubt, is Anxious. Which is why it's listed three times, and why Happy has EQUAL to 0 Passion-Doubt, and not less than one. It also could explain why there's a square at the end of that line in the spilt, and not the forth listing of it, but using == is another trap.

And, this also leads to an easy way to get Neutral. Because of how the split works, the ONLY way we get Neutral is at Zero Joy, One Passion/Doubt. Or, 0 (+1/-1).

The only way to get Bored? Intentional Emotional Shutdown.

And, with that, you can go through the list to find out what operations you need to input in order to hit the right gate. Hopefully. I tried, as you can see.

If this still isn't clicking, the logic behind the guides telling people to cause the shutdown intentionally is to just start from the top and work down, as I just detailed.

This is to set a constant start point to then just performing one or two operations without trying to work it out, and infinitely simpler than working backwards when you're limited to not seeing what's on the screen. As to which guide to use?

You can scroll up to click that button yourself. After all, you did use the "bad design" card as a stand in for a personal matter over the game.

It's not bad design if the player doesn't understand the puzzle. Unfortunately, that problem exists between the input and output devices of the client's machine. All I can say is that I hope this troubleshoots this particular ID10T error.

It certainly helped me typing it out, actually....

Anyway, fingers crossed this is helpful to someone. After a lie down, I'm off to go murder wildlife with a slab of metal bigger than I am.

Good luck.

[{SLURP}Legion]

The emotional shutdown happens because depending on how many memories you give it at once you have to give it different power settings or it powers off.(took me several AIs to notice this part in the book)

[Spawnling]

If you don't udnerstand the AI, look up an AI table in the guide section.
Shutdown, Reboot, click 2 buttons, job done for any mood.