Chess Mage of Faerûn

Chapter 102 New Things

Tyrandeur neither agreed nor disagreed with these words. After thinking for a while, he asked in return:
"An interesting idea, but have you thought about this problem? You can't encompass all situations and possibilities with pre-set conditions; that's unrealistic."

Tyrantir's words hit the nail on the head: "Besides, reality is not a laboratory where all conditions can be set in advance. In a constantly changing and complex environment, how do you expect the golem to act based on your pre-set logic circuits? Even if it works, how huge would that logic circuit have to be? How much effort and cost would it take to inscribe it into the core of its mind?"

Zhang Yuan, who had only expressed his feelings on a whim, was speechless and stammered for a long time without being able to utter a single word.

The archmage, who hadn't expected the other party to answer the question, instead fell into deep thought himself, and after a long while:

“I discovered something quite interesting in the core of your stone golem. That green crystal core, which is called some kind of Radiant Crystal, has good compatibility with souls and thoughts, but its capacity is very limited. It can only accommodate a small fragment of a soul or the weak souls of ordinary animals.”

Tyrantir seemed to have discovered something crucial, and his eyes grew brighter as he spoke: "Logically speaking, such a faint fragment of a soul, or even just a projection of thought, could not possibly control a puppet or a golem. This is what I've always been wondering about, but if we follow your logic, perhaps it's not so absolute."

After finishing his self-talk, the archmage turned and left. He couldn't wait to try out his new ideas. Of course, the person who was the source of his inspiration also took on the role of an assistant. Although there were no direct benefits, having more opportunities to meet Tyrande was already the biggest gain.

The days that followed seemed to return to normal, and the great master, busy with new research topics, seemed to have forgotten that he had an "assistant," focusing only on his research.

Even Zhang Yuan himself didn't think that Tyrantir would really ask him to go and help. He just took a chance and occasionally indulged in some daydreams while browsing through books.

However, changes always come so suddenly. Just three days later, Tyrandeur remembered his honorary assistant and sent a text message to bring Zhang Yuan to the construct research lab.

Upon seeing Tyrandeur, Zhang Yuan was immediately drawn to a golem beside the archmage. The golem wasn't particularly tall, but its material was somewhat unexpected—it was a wooden golem.

"This is an ironwood puppet. My idea is to use fragments of souls or the souls of ordinary animals as the core, and then place them into a spell circuit with various instructions and logic already set up to form a complete magic circle, or rather, a thought core."

Before Zhang Yuan could even speak, Tyrantir began to explain: "As for the golems, I specifically chose ironwood golems. These constructs are low-cost, easy to repair, and require relatively little soul energy to operate, making them perfect for experimentation."

"What problem did you encounter?" Knowing without asking that the other party's research had run into trouble, Zhang Yuan, who already understood Tyrantir's temperament, asked directly.

“Your idea should be feasible. With the guidance and correction of the logic circuit, even if the soul of an ordinary rabbit is used as the core, the ironwood puppet can understand simple commands to move forward and backward.”

"However, this method still has too many limitations. Each instruction requires a separate circuit, and even the simplest command contains multiple instructions. For example, to make the puppet take a step forward, it is divided into a series of instructions such as identifying the direction, lifting the leg, bending the knee, stepping forward, and landing."

Even the archmage was starting to get a headache thinking about all this complicated stuff: "By Azus, even something as simple as walking requires a whole bunch of commands, and the spell circuits needed to execute those commands are more complicated than the tunnels in that damned Underdark."

"Since this was your idea, do you have any way to simplify these instructions and logic circuits?" Tyrantir looked at Zhang Yuan: "Otherwise, the spell circuits needed for even the simplest movement would be enough to fill the entire puppet's body, so don't expect anything else."

After listening to Tyrantir's explanation, Zhang Yuan roughly understood the problem and began to think about solutions.

Let's first clarify the troubles the archmage encountered. It's nothing more than too many logical judgments and too many commands. In order to implement these judgments and commands, it is necessary to inscribe extremely large and complicated spell circuits. Needless to say, this method is inefficient. Even if you bite the bullet and do it, there is no place for an ironwood golem that is less than two meters tall to inscribe so many spell circuits.

So where did the problem lie? In the previous life, although strong artificial intelligence was still in the so-called twenty-year stage, many robots already had the ability to make basic logical judgments and obey commands.

The key elements are undoubtedly the hardware and software aspects: chips and AI programming code. As for chips, forget about it; it's definitely out of the question. However, while Faerun may lack high-tech and precision manufacturing industries, it has magic and a soul. What could be more suitable as a carrier of artificial intelligence than the soul itself?
The creation of golems uses the soul bound and controlled by magic as the core of thought. What I need to do is to simplify this process and lower the barrier to entry.

In other words, it means reducing hardware configuration requirements through software programming optimization.

BINGO! Now all the thoughts are clear.

What Tyranitar needs now is a reasonable and complete programming language and manipulation code to significantly reduce the huge redundancy in the previous instructions and loops.

It's like how the archmage designed a specific circuit for every movement of the puppet. In the context of my previous life, this would be like etching a separate circuit board for a single logical decision or instruction.

Who the hell can afford to wait this long? If you don't go bankrupt, who will?

Now that he felt more confident, Zhang Yuan spoke in a much higher tone:
"Lord Tyrantir, I have a suggestion. It would be too extravagant for us to create a separate spell circuit for each command."

Zhang Yuan began to try to popularize machine language and underlying logic code: "We might as well simplify all questions into yes or no, and convert our language into a series of yes and no judgments."

As Zhang Yuan got more and more excited, he talked about electronic circuits, and then about NAND gates and assembly language.

Upon hearing such a novel thing for the first time, Tyrandeur showed none of his previous anxiety and eccentricity. He simply listened quietly, occasionally interjecting with a few questions. At this moment, the archmage seemed no different from those humble and eager-to-learn apprentices.

Zhang Yuan, who witnessed this scene, couldn't help but admire him in his heart as he spoke eloquently. It was truly rare for someone to reach such a position and possess such power to remain humble and self-disciplined.

After explaining the underlying logic circuit control and basic assembly language to the Grand Master, Zhang Yuan decided to use Python as a reference tool to try writing the core of his thinking.

Firstly, Python is a language with advantages in readability and accuracy, and it is easy to understand when translated into Formon. Moreover, since the soul itself has a certain ability for fuzzy computation, there are not many obstacles to using and understanding object-oriented languages.

Of course, these are all computer languages, and they cannot be applied to the core of thought that relies on the soul.

However, Zhang Yuan's goal was not to expect to be able to run the golem using a programming language. The magic network is not the Internet, and the core of thought is not a computer. If programmers had this ability, they would have switched to becoming arcane sorcerers long ago. Why bother staying up all night and losing hair every day?

He said all this simply to inspire Tyrandeer to apply the logic of these programming languages ​​to improve his core thinking.

Just as Zhang Yuan had finally finished explaining this long list of new concepts and was catching his breath, Tyrantir's words almost made him faint.

"Chanem, you're not from this world, are you?!"

Hmm... Hmm, cough! This chapter is a bit of a fabrication because I'm not a professional in this field. If any of you build a golem and find that you can't start it with Python, don't come looking for me, just contact my friend Zhang Yuan himself.

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(End of this chapter)