Timber Wood Park Square was bustling with activity—children laughing by the fountains, the rhythmic thud of tennis balls in the distance. Jack spotted a pair of girls seated on a stone bench, their lab coats standing out against the vibrant greenery.
The first girl had black hair with red tips, she was wearing her lab coat. Her eyes were a bright crimson making her seem more energetic.
At least as energetic as one could look when the dark bags under her eyes made her seem as if she hadn't slept in days.
She was clearly Sarah. At the same time Jack noticed her, Sarah perked up and waved telling him to come over.
As for the other girl, Jack recognized her to be Sarah's friend Betty who he met over the phone this morning. She was wearing a similar short lab coat as Sarah but looked much more lively. Her long blonde hair literally shimmered faintly.
As Jack got closer, Sarah and Betty's faces frowned.
"What the hell happened to you?" Sarah blurted, eyes wide.
She just saw him two days ago and he was now all wrapped up in medical bandages. His entire arms and chest were covered as well.
She couldn't imagine what could have happened to cause this.
"This? Don't worry about it. I just rescued a baby from a house fire. No big deal." Jack said with a smile.
Sarah blinked as she rolled her eyes. She knew better than anyone that Jack was the last person who would run into an active fire.
"Seriously, what happened?" Betty asked, her interest peaked.
Jack glanced at Betty before deflating like a balloon.
"My window broke and I fell into the glass." Jack said truthfully.
Sarah and Betty's faces twitched.
This was completely different from what they thought happened.
They thought he had gotten into a fight or something. Turns out he fell into glass and ended up injured.
Noticing the smiles on both of their faces as they tried not to laugh, Jack wanted to hide under a rock. It was embarrassing when he told half of the truth.
Muchless if he said that he was getting chased by vengeful ghosts and broke his own windows to escape. He couldn't say that or they will think he is crazy on top of finding it funny.
"Yeah, yeah, get all your laughs out." Jack said before Sarah and Betty burst out laughing.
After a few minutes, they calmed down enough for Jack to ask why they wanted him to meet up with them.
"Hahaha, oh yeah." Sarah said as she wiped her tears off her eyes.
"Betty wanted to invest in you. She wants to put in another three thousand in hopes that you give her the same level of access and privileges as me."
"Are you interested?"
Jack's eyes widened from shock before he grabbed Betty's hands with tear filled eyes.
"I knew the moment I met you, you were kind, generous, and noble. You don't know how much this means to me."
"Only God and the government know how much I need this." Jack said with sincere gratitude.
Betty's face froze as she said, "Uh, your welcome?"
Sarah slapped Jack's hand away and before pulling out her purse.
"Here is my three thousand. Can you make the main character look more like me? And make me a cool girl." Sarah asked as she handed Jack a wad of pure cash.
"Of course, she was already based on you anyways." Jack said as he felt his problems melting away.
Betty took out her purse and handed Jack her bundle of cash.
She felt too embarrassed to ask for anything. She turned to Sarah and gave her a look hinting that she wanted to be added into the game to.
"Hester, can you add in a character based on Betty? If not you can make her a skin for the main character that we can choose from." Sarah said after noticing Betty's intention.
"Not a problem, not a problem at all. I have a character already planned out. " Jack said happily.
"This must be what those tech startup CEOs feel when investors are shoveling money into their companies. Getting so much money up front is addicting." Jack thought to himself and felt his entire day becoming a hundred times better.
Even that vengeful ghost couldn't ruin his day. Plus, he got rid of her already.
"With this much cash, even if I'm forced to move I can do it without a problem." Jack thought to himself.
Seeing Jack become so giddy, Sarah and Betty felt embarrassed. They looked around and noticed that people were looking at them with strange gazes.
"You're causing a scene. It's embarrassing." Sarah said quietly.
Jack snapped back into reality but still had a wide smile on his face.
"Am I?"
"Alright, is this all you wanted to talk to me about or is there something else? I was planning on just working more on the game today so I'm free." Jack asked.
Sarah and Betty looked at each other before pulling out their phones.
"We need help getting to the higher rounds." Betty said with soft sigh as she handed Jack her phone.
She was currently on round five and her base was being raided by the zombies.
"Yeah, show us how you got to round twenty. The most we were able to get to was round ten before dying. Even using our saved up XXX Fertilizer was useless to save the situation." Sarah asked with a serious expression across her face.
"Sure, sure," Jack said happily and looked at their bases before shaking his head.
"Your bases are awful. Once I add in the real market price feature you two probably won't get passed round five."
"Real market price?" Sarah and Betty uttered before becoming pale.
They were already struggling to get anywhere when the prices were fixed. Now he was saying he was going to introduce a situation that basically would make everything ten times harder.
They wanted to strangle him.
"If you add that before we hit round twenty, we're doomed." Sarah said with wide eyes.
"Wait until we catch up. Can you work on the other features in the meantime?" Betty added as she felt a bit embarrassed that she hadn't caught up to Jack yet.
When she was watching Sarah the game felt so easy. It was just like playing a more complex Plants vs Zombies. She easily got the gist with one look but she was stuck at round six.
It was especially embarrassing when she remembered how much she was arguing with Sarah about which plants were better.
"Sure, I was planning on adding a gambling feature to the game first to help you guys out. The real time market price feature will have to come later." Jack said casually.
He was just teasing them. Adding in the real market price feature was definitely going to exaggerate the problem of the game being too hard. He didn't have plans on really creating it.
But now that he thought about it…maybe he could create a hard mode. Then the real market price feature would fit in just nicely.
Sarah and Betty both breathed out a sigh of relief before turning their focus back on getting Jack's advice on how to improve. After an educational hour they had made far more progress.
"So, now that you have a stable cash flow it's time to sell off your Furred Venus Fly Traps and upgrade to the Red Blaze Fly Traps and electric fences around your entire base."
"Isn't that going to use all our money?" Betty asked as she immediately started selling her Furred Venus Fly Traps.
"Yeah, but with it and the cash flow you will be back in shape in no time. And you have enough food, water, and electricity stocked up to last."
"Oh! That makes sense." Betty eyes sparkled as she came to an understanding.
"Wow, these electric fences are so broken. They turned the Slow Walker Zombies into ash." Sarah's eyes sparkled as she watched the zombies that plagued her for so long getting destroyed so easily.
"Yeah, but they are guzzling down electricity so fast. We are going to have to spend more money to increase our battery."
"Betty's right, your next big purchase will be upgrading the base battery. Then it will be time for you to start working on building the research facility." Jack said as he looked at the time.
They had been hanging out for the past hour and it was nearly six o'clock. The sun was starting to set and it was getting colder. Wearing just a tanktop and shorts Jack shivered from the icy breeze.
Jack hesitated for a second before making up his mind to go back home.
He wanted to work on Windor's Siege more. With his military service extension coming to an end soon he couldn't waste too much time.
Every second he didn't spend not working on improving Windor's Siege the long it would take for him to launch it. The sooner he launched Windor's Siege the more money he could get.
Of course, he also didn't want to keep staying outside freezing his ass off.
"I gotta go. I'll see you two later." Jack said abruptly as he stood up.
"Sure, stay safe. Send me a text when you get back home."
"See you later."
Sarah and Betty casually bid Jack farewell before going back to their phones. Their eyes were practically glued to their phones which made Jack want to roll his eyes.
"At least they're enjoying it." Jack sighed and looked at his phone before leaving.
By the time he made it back home, Jack sighed with relief as the warmth of his apartment warmed his cold bones and stiff muscles. After relaxing for a few minutes to regain the nimble movements of his fingers, Jack sat down at his computer.
"Let's start working on updating the game. I have two objectives. First let's work on the gambling feature before working on the main storyline." Jack muttered to himself and cracked his knuckles.
Although he had gone through a lot today, after it all, Jack's mind felt as if it became a whirlpool. Inspiration kept entering his mind as he felt as if he was going through enlightenment.
Unfortunately, with limited time and resources, he couldnt work on everything he wanted. He could only force himself to hold back and focused his inspiration on the gambling feature.
"My initial plan to have the gambling feature be tied to a research facility is great. I can even use it to help provide materials to help the players create their own research facility."
"As for the link between the players and the research facility, it can be the player's older sister. That way I can base the character on Betty. Just a way to repay her for investing." Jack muttered to himself as he didn't stop for a second while coding.
Just then Jack suddenly noticed a small bug that would have affected how the game would run on consoles.
"That's annoying. That portion of code causing the problem is related to the zombie walking speeds. On consoles, the zombies will walk just slightly faster than the other platforms which is going to affect the preparation time the players have every round." Jack analyzed and located the problem.
Although the slight difference wasn't much if he didn't solve it now, the issue might become worse as he kept programming. Not mention solving it after he made a lot of progress would only make finding the solution much harder.
He needed to deal with it now.
Jack save the current development of the program and made sure their were no errors. Before creating a branch of the program to test his solutions.
After figuring it the right solution after half an hour Jack sighed with relief and opened up a virtual machine to test Windor's Siege on various consoles.
Once everything worked as it should and nothing else seemed broken, Jack merged the branch to the main game file before moving on.
"I'm almost done with the protype of the gambling feature. All that's left to do is do some tests and adjust it so that it's balanced."
"I can't wait for the moment where players are at a moment of desperation and decide to risk it to gamble on getting the plant card or material they needed to save the day. That should keep them hooked." Jack muttered with energetic eyes.