Chapter 231 - 94: Frequency and Multiplayer Lobby

Chapter 231: Chapter 94: Frequency and Multiplayer Lobby

"What’s the critical flaw?" Shi Zuozhou asked urgently after seeing Wen Xiao’s message.

"We’ve verified before that hijacking the spindle waves with audio to a specific frequency is like a ’room number’ for the dreamscape. As long as the frequencies are the same, people will enter the same shared Dream Net, no matter how far apart they are." Wen Xiao explained in the group chat, message by message:

"The problem is, the number of available frequencies we can use is insufficient. It’s like an old-fashioned radio. You can turn the dial to tune it, but there are only a handful of clear, usable channels."

Yang Yiyi also replied in the group:

"That’s right. Xiaoxiao and I just realized this problem while discussing how to implement a ’room system.’ The oscillation frequency for spindle waves is extremely narrow, only between about 12Hz and 15Hz. Plus, to ensure the stability and success rate of the ’hijack,’ we can only select a few whole-number frequencies. We can’t divide them any more finely than that."

Senior Sister Yiyi added:

"So, given our current audio modulation precision, the number of independent ’frequency bands’ we can create is extremely limited. If we want to design the game with countless separate rooms, each room would need its own unique frequency. There just aren’t enough spindle wave frequencies to go around."

"So what happens if the number of active rooms exceeds the maximum number of frequencies?" Shi Zuozhou asked in the group.

"You’d get severe ’crosstalk.’ We tested it yesterday—as long as the frequencies are identical, people will be forcibly pulled into the same Dream Net space, even if they’re miles apart," Wen Xiao replied.

"Players might suddenly drop into other people’s games, or a room could suddenly be flooded with strangers... The entire multiplayer system would descend into chaos."

Yu Xian frowned. He asked quizzically,

"Then why don’t people’s dreams experience crosstalk when they sleep normally?"

"This might not be the best analogy, but it should help you understand. For example, when you sleep, your natural spindle wave frequency might be something like 13.1415926535, and it could have even more decimal places than that. The actual precision far exceeds the resolution our current instruments can capture, so the chances of an overlap are virtually zero," Senior Sister Yiyi explained.

"But when we’re hijacking the spindle waves, we can’t achieve that level of sampling precision. We can only be accurate to whole numbers."

Yu Xian was still processing Senior Sister Yiyi’s messages when the class bell rang abruptly, drowning out the noise from the hallway and cutting the WeChat discussion short.

Dr. Chen cleared his throat at the lectern and, staring straight ahead, opened his presentation slides.

"This is tricky. Let me think on it." Shi Zuozhou sent the message, then flipped his phone face-down on the desk. He pulled a pen and a blank sheet of scratch paper from his bag and immediately hunched over to start writing and sketching.

Yu Xian nodded, not wanting to disturb him.

He gazed out the window. The outlines of the distant buildings were a blurry, indistinguishable mass. The heat in the classroom wasn’t working well, and students whispered among themselves, their hands tucked into their sleeves.

Throughout the entire lecture, Shi Zuozhou showed Dr. Chen plenty of respect—he didn’t touch his phone once.

But by the same token, he never once looked up, his brow knitted in deep concentration over whatever he was writing.

When the bell rang to signal the end of class, students started packing their things and heading out in twos and threes.

"Old Shi." Yu Xian packed his laptop into his bag and tapped Shi Zuozhou on the arm.

"Class is over. Let’s go, we have another class tonight."

"Language Arts?" Shi Zuozhou asked, glancing at the time on his phone.

"Yeah." Yu Xian nodded.

"Let’s just skip it." Shi Zuozhou set his pen on the desk and looked at Yu Xian seriously.

"This is urgent. I have an idea I need to run by you."

Yu Xian thought about it. Skipping one gen-ed class wouldn’t hurt. Seeing how serious Shi Zuozhou was, he agreed.

The two of them packed up, but instead of heading downstairs, they pushed open the door to an empty classroom next to the computer lab.

Shi Zuozhou casually flicked on the fluorescent lights. He pulled out two chairs, smoothed the sketch-covered sheet of paper onto a desk, and pulled Yu Xian down into a seat.

Yu Xian looked down at what appeared to be a chaotic design sketch.

The paper was covered in a dense network of circles, which at first glance looked like a tangled mess. But on closer inspection, he could make out a large circle at the very center. Countless radial lines extended from it, connecting to circles of various sizes at the edges. A bunch of tiny, illegible notes were scrawled across it.

It looked like a fluffy dandelion puff or a lopsided honeycomb.

"Since the number of spindle wave frequencies is limited," Shi Zuozhou said, tapping the large circle in the middle with the tip of his pen,

"and since we can’t solve the problem of the Dream Net wiping and resetting itself whenever it’s empty, we have no choice but to do this."

"What is this?" Yu Xian frowned, trying to understand the logic behind the diagram.

"A game lobby." Shi Zuozhou looked up, his eyes blazing with intensity.

"We’re going to build a centralized game lobby."

He pointed to the circle in the middle and explained his idea:

"Since we don’t have enough frequencies, we won’t assign one to each individual room. Instead, we’ll gather all the players onto a single frequency, creating a shared starting area—a game lobby."

"What’s the lobby for?" Yu Xian didn’t understand Shi Zuozhou’s design.