TEST DIVE #2

[subnauticmods]

≡U.R.S.U.L.A. NAVIGATION

_ PREMISE & NAVIGATION ✦ RULES ✦ MOD CONTACT TAKEN ✦ RESERVES ✦ APPLICATIONS ✦ HIATUS & DROPS FAQ ✦ BASE ✦ BIOMES ✦ URSULA ✦ URSULA CONTACT

TEST DIVE MEME


For information about the animals and locations, be sure to check out the BIOME and BASE pages!

A: There’s a Storm on the Horizon
A brainstorm. On advice about the ingenuity of multi person parties, and from admitted lack of understanding of many needs of organics, URSULA has selected you and a partner (or partners) to go to one of the observatories with food, beds, and recording devices to have a jam session for ideas about missions.

You are not to leave the room until you have some good ones. So get cracking! Start suggesting to one another what the base needs to do.

Or get horribly, horribly sidetracked and possibly a little crazy at being locked up together with the ocean staring at you. Judging.

B: The Abysmal Sea
You’re stranded.

One of the planet’s troublesome signal-interfering pulses has just made your communication devices 100% nonfunctional. No matter how you try to call URSULA for help, she isn’t able to respond. The database strapped to your wrist is just a useless chunk of metal now, leaving you without a useful library of knowledge to survive off. If you were driving any underwater vehicle prior to this point, it’s broken down. And unless you’re a mechanic, it’ll be pretty hard to get it jumpstarted again.

Don’t fret! The communication systems always come online eventually, so if you stay put, it’ll boot back up and give you directions straight back to base so you can finally get home. But can you really afford to stay put? The sunlight’s slowly streaming out of the sky, leaving the waters darker and darker with each passing second. Soon, you won’t be able to see five feet in front of you, and the only warning you’ll get of any approaching threat is through sound, if they even make any.

You have a few choices: take a daring risk and try swimming back to base, but on the off-chance you don’t remember the directions correctly from before you were cut off, you’re going to get even more lost, in the darkness of the night no less. Or, you could huddle in, with any friends if they were unfortunate enough to be with you, and start focusing on getting warm. Because spending the night out here in the vast oceans with the entire world against you is becoming a very, very real possibility.

C: It’s dangerous to go alone. Take them!
URSULA’s technology is breathtaking. With enough materials, she could make practically anything: weapons, vehicles, all those human comforts and entertainments she forgot to build... or perhaps she could expand the base to give everyone even more leg room. But there’s a catch: you need to get those materials to her in the first place, and scavenging can be a monumental task.

The planet Iniidae has a plethora of materials to provide, but you’ve got to go find them first. Some are easy enough to get, by plucking off the ground or breaking a rock. But some are a bit more challenging, such as Crash Powder, seeing that the Crash defending it will literally explode in your face if you get too close. And then there’s materials such as Blood Oil, only harvestable within the Blood Kelp Caves several hundred meters underwater in the pitch-black darkness… remember, you have to gather resources with your two bare hands. No such thing as driving around and conveniently collecting them within the somewhat-relative safety of an armored vehicle.

Since it’s so dangerous to go alone, URSULA will encourage you all to leave the base in pairs or groups if you’re going to try collecting some of the more precarious materials to harvest. She has heard that most lifeforms find being reconstituted from nanites traumatic, so try not to die in front of each other!

D: Almost, but not quite, Entirely Unlike Tea
The droids, URSULA promises, will do their best to make anything you want. Go on! Ask them anything! She’s excited. This seems like a great way to test out their capacities.

Of course, you need to be very careful what you wish for. Maybe you ask for Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and they do their best but only know so much, giving you a book with some… creative changes. Maybe you ask for a puzzle box, but you weren’t specific enough and things went awry.

Maybe you made the mistake of asking for tea..

No matter what, you were given something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what you asked for. Now what do you do with it?

E: CREATURE FEATURES (possible body horror)
As more data is collected on the creatures of the deep, DNA can also be gathered to allow URSULA to research how to integrate it into her crew members in useful and hopefully unintrusive ways, unless of course permission is given first for more obvious or exhausting additions.

Well, that's the idea, anyway.

Unfortunately, something malfunctioned while URSULA was researching. Her incomplete serum was injected into you through your devices while you slept (or maybe you were knocked unconscious by the sudden change to your body). Now maybe you have the temperament of a Stalker or the thirst of a Bleeder or Gasopod pods on your back that trigger when you're startled. How this genetic malfunction works and what it is can be up to you but while URSULA assures you it's only temporary, you're stuck like this for now.

Have fun?

F: The Caverns of Dream
The ocean calls you. Of course, it's much easier to dismiss it as nightmares. You'll probably think that's all it is after you have them. Flashes of screaming sea creatures writhing in agony, pleading for help, but these creatures can't ask for help, can they? Something huge, beyond the scope of imagination, moves in the ocean of your dreams and calls out to you to go deeper into the darkness. It pleads and begs but not with a voice you can hear or words you can understand.

You wake up in a sweat with the unrelenting desire to take a swim, even though it's late and everyone is asleep. Or maybe someone else just had the same nightmare as you? Are you willing to take a swim and try to understand the dream?

BASED ON CODE BY TESSISAMESS AND SUPERSUITS

Comments

Dirk Strider | Homestuck

[splinten]

[Wow. It's an endless ocean full of alien life. What a change.]

D, ish

[Knowing how AIs can get, Dirk remembered to ask URSULA before he started tinkering with the droids. But with her permission, he is now camped out in the lab, assorted mechanics tools around him, with a droid opened up and subject to all of his tinkering.

A bottle of something that looks orange and fizzy, and yet probably isn't entirely unlike orange soda, sits beside him. Guess what brought on the tinkering?]

Don't worry, little dude. With a little time, you will have more skills in your processors than you'll know what to do with.

F

[Did you have that dream too? Did you head outside into the ocean depths with it, wondering how to deal with it?

The faint light of the Gasopod will reveal Dirk, in swimming trunks and a breathing mask... just kinda chilling on top of the Gasopod. Patting it gently. The orb of its tail sways behind them as the ocean currents glide through.

He raises a hand to give a wave at you. Then he points at the Gasopod's mate.

Wanna join this chillest of chill underwater dives?]

D

[maserannas]

Dare I ask what you're doing with the metal golem?

[ Dave, sometimes there are elves who show up to bring in plant samples to the lab, and they just don't understand what it is you're doing with the droid you have open over there. Though Ellana is interested, she's not one much for these kinds of intricate feats of engineering: that's why she's bringing back loot and not attempting to improve anything mechanical by horrifically breaking it.

Since she's fairly sure that's what would happen were she to try. ]

[splinten]

['Metal golem'?

Actually, yeah. That's a really good way to think about them. He can't argue with it.]

Right now, I'm adding more processors so he's capable of more tasks.

[maserannas]

[ Processors doesn't make sense in that context to her, but she makes herself consider the overall statement. One processes things to understand them. This young man is saying he's altering how the metal golem processes so that it can handle more tasks than it already does.

... He's teaching it, or improving it's capacity to learn? ]

Will that leave 'him' capable of performing those tasks well, or simply performing them? [ She's not being entirely serious, though she's serious enough that the upward lilt of the question doesn't erase the fact it's still a genuine question. ] I'm not familiar with the way you're speaking, but it seems like increasing the capacity of the metal golems here would be a service to the group as a whole.

[splinten]

[To her joke, that isn't quite a joke, these impassive sunglasses show no visible sign of mirth. But there might be some. It's a Mystery.]

You can't be too hard on a child if it needs time to learn how to walk well. You have to give a toddler props for crawling first.

[And he mimes the little droid....Toddling along.

It's a baby bot, Ellana.]

[maserannas]

[ She does find the miming of motion somewhat amusing. The point isn't lost on her, but... one doesn't need to be an infant in reality to have a steep learning curve. ]

True enough. We all start somewhere. [ Followed by a brief pause before: ] One relies on the teachings of those around them for more than how to take those first few steps. Is what you're doing assisting with that as well, or is it more increasing the capacity for him to learn and adapt on his own, based on feedback from those around him?

[ Is this metal golem going to get more complex in its interactions, or simply able to do more while remaining a simple creature itself? ]

d-ish

[parodeity]

Will those skills involve getting fresh AJ? Because if so, I am all kinds of about handing you stuff.

[ He'd offer to actually help with the tinkering, but Dave knows exactly where his skills are at, and in this scenario? His skills are at handing Dirk whatever the hell he asks for. Regardless of what answer he gets, Dave will generally make a nuisance of himself by clearing enough space on the desk to sit on it, legs dangling, as he sets down a bottle of something near to but not exactly apple juice beside the not-quite orange soda.

SOMEDAY, HE WILL TASTE APPLE JUICE AGAIN.

Today isn't that day. Dave, you're in the way, how is sitting there kicking your heels being remotely helpful? ]

That your vice? Orange soda isn't so bad even though I don't really like it, though the only pop we've had for ages is that shitty troll stuff you couldn't pay me to touch. Well, maybe you could pay me to touch it if money had any meaning whatsoever, but considering I had the crocodile stock market on lockdown and there's no actual economy any more beyond "yo Rose I'll trade you a shitty comic for a hand-knit sweater"..

[ Words. There are so many words happening. Words without a point, not that this is a rare thing for a bored Dave. ]

D WHERE THE D-STRIDES BELONG

[splinten]

[Adding to the list of things that Dirk didn't manage to imagine about Dave: that loquaciousness.]

The other version of you left me a lifetime supply of orange juice in the high rise I ended up living in. I thought, I'm in the middle of an ocean full of alien fish, so I might as well complete the experience. Could you pass the tiny wrench on the right?

[Dirk could stretch for it himself... But he's sort of indulging in the novelty of having a brother around to call on for this. Way better than building bots on his own.]

In this case, I'll be installing more processors and a voice box. The droids should be able to ask for clarification, learn from correction, and rap.

BASICALLY

[parodeity]

Wait, what? Why didn't I leave you a lifetime supply of apple juice instead? What kind of bro leaves a dude with orange soda for life when there are so many other options. Especially apple juice related options? I should have drunk that shit in my closet, I swear to god John has never trolled anyone as hard as he did his thirteenth birthday.

[ But really, what kind of terrible parent was he? Dave honestly looks entirely too offended about this revelation for what it deserves, but he immediately picks up and passes the tiny wrench. While continuing to talk, because that is apparently a thing that isn't going to be stopping anytime soon.

He brightens when Dirk clarifies what he's up to, though. ]

Rap? Oh my god a robo rap battle, sign me up for beta testing, holy shit. [ This sounds like something Rose might be into, sans the rap, he realizes. Well, maybe plus it? It isn't like she hasn't spouted poetry at him before. But AI stuff learning sounds like something she'd like.

It's weird to be able to look at something like that and go maybe that's where she got it, so Dave only spends half a second thinking about it before deeming it entirely too weird to contemplate further. ]

Please tell me there were rapping robots in our horrendous post-scratch watery future. There has to be at least one bright shining star on the horizon beyond awesome movies that were tragically defaced. I mean, shit, something had to offset Ben Stiller's untimely demise.

[splinten]

[Is Dave.... seriously bothered by that? Sure, Dirk might've appreciated a bit of variety over the course of sixteen years, but at least it wasn't a lifetime supply of alcohol. He's still not entirely certain why Roxy's mom did that, and even less so now that he's met Rose.

Doesn't feel like a thing to ask Dave.]

Did John... sendificate apple juice to your closet? [Dave.... what happens in your life...

He can, at least, talk about robots. He gives a little shrug of his shoulders. As he's said to Jake, he isn't exactly proud of his work in robotics, relative to what was contemporary robotechnology for his era, but with Dave it's a little different.

Also, one can't be too happy after one is reminded of Stiller's tragic, heroic death.] I built a couple. Sawtooth's skills were so without peer that I never once defeated him in rap battle. He travelled the world, schooling all who crossed words with him. [A pause] Squarewave was easy to defeat, but he was a really sweet bot.

[parodeity]

[ Dave's life makes little sense on a day to day basis (case in point: this entire situation) and his semi-dramatic ramblings don't really help to put things in perspective usually. He's probably the only person who would find the idea of not giving someone a lifetime supply of apple juice, given the chance, to be cruel and unusual. ]

Nah. I found some - last time I saw any, since this was the day the world ended, you know? - in my closet, which was pretty normal since that's where I kept anything I wanted to eat or drink, but John. [ Let's just ignore how that's a weird place to keep food and concentrate on the main issue here: ] John. I told him about it before I went to drink it, and he had to bring up Howie Mandel and Little Monsters? And I was going to ignore it but then I just kept thinking about it. Though obviously you should never tell him this because I'm pretty sure he doesn't know he won that one, come to think of it. His prankster's gambit needs no help.

[ Literally nothing cool happens in his life, ever. This is the tip of a very large ice berg. More importantly: Dirk apparently had actually cool things happening to him. He built rap robots? One of whom was basically a travelling rap ninja.

How is this even real life. ]

You built a world-travelling rap robot. [ He just. Has to peer over the top of his shades at Dirk, because holy shit. ] Oh my god, you're an anime character. The truth of my lineage has been unearthed. I better start running around with toast in my mouth and checking things off the animu bucket list. Do you think I get a freebie on my eyes? But seriously, world-travelling rap robot. Unironically radical.

c-c-combo breaker! f;

[chataclysmic]

[Adrien is a lot less comfortable around sea creatures than Dirk, an obvious fact from the way he shies away from the Gasopods uncertainly. Yet here he still is, clad similarly and trying to sort out why exactly he was drawn to the ocean and aforementioned creatures after waking up in a start.]

[Dirk, at least, seems welcoming enough, and after a bit more uncertainty he makes his way to the adjacent Gasopod and follows the Strider's example, patting it as he finds his way onto it.]

[He raises a hand in silent greeting once there, continuing to pat the creature with his other hand.]

[splinten]

[There we go. Nothing to be afraid of, little blond fashion prince. Dirk gives a reassuring thumbs up.

He knows some people can be iffy about telepathy, so he reaches out gently over it. He is trying not to be an overbearing jackass as he goes through life. It's a hard skill to learn, but he's working on it.]

You don't have to worry about them. These guys are just a pair of peaceful sea cows.

[As long as Adrien doesn't agitate him but—well. Don't startle Adrien any more than he has to. That's the point.]

[chataclysmic]

[Little blonde fashion Disney Princess, more like. He returns the gesture, moving carefully like he's afraid to jostle the creature he's sitting on.]

[Thankfully, he's not especially iffy about the telepathy. It's odd, that's for sure, but after a moment's start when he realizes this guy's voice was in his head (of course it was, they were both wearing masks so they could breathe, those certainly didn't allow for verbal communication!), he scrunches his nose like he's concentrating to respond.]

Peaceful sea cows.

[Another gentle pat to the Gasopod.]

Man, even manatees can be scary, though.

[splinten]

[It takes him a moment. Manatees? They're definitely extinct, and come up less frequently than cows in Dirk's ancient histories research. But he does remember this one film. He thinks he's got it. Enough to realize that he didn't actually need to work out what they are, but Dirk sure does love to overthink things.

That said:] Gasopods can be fairly dangerous themselves when they're threatened. I'm going to assume that you're not planning on giving the mysterious alien mammals a big scare.

[chataclysmic]

[Oh the Huge Manatee.]

[The comment makes him go still, and he looks down at the Gasopod he's seated on with as little movement of his head as he can manage, then turning a startled look to Dirk.]

Definitely not planning, no, but is there anything in particular I should avoid?

f!

[venerations]

[ here's the thing: mozu doesn't know how to swim. having grown up in a farming village all her life, learning how to swim wasn't exactly at the top of her list of her priorities and, you know, that was fine. until she gets dropped in some underwater base thing and expected to stay there for some indeterminate amount of time.

and so that's how she finds herself late at night, in a swimsuit and staring out at the water dubiously. the gasopod however is a welcome sight, and even though it's nothing she's ever seen before, mozu at least knows her way around animals.

she lifts her hand in a small wave to dirk before lowering herself to a crouch next to the gasopod, laying her free hand on its head. ]

Hi, there, [ she tries a smile, even if it's hidden behind the mask. ] Aren't you pretty? I love your tail.

[ sorry, she's just going to have a mental conversation with this sea cow first, okay. ]

reading information is for the weak

[splinten]

[Dirk blinks. Yeah, that was not addressed at him.

He peers over the edge of the gasopod to look at her. At least all is going gentle and calm for now.

...He would not have picked 'pretty' as his adjective, but sure, this young lady can have her own weird definition. Especially if it makes the seacow happy.]

truer words have never been said

[venerations]

[ dirk is plenty pretty himself too, don't worry. and look, it's polite to say hi to a cow before simply jumping on its back, regardless if it's at sea or not.

in any case, the gasopod hardly reacts to the petting, so she eventually makes her way onto it without much preamble. she does also, lean a little towards dirk, as if she doesn't want the gasopod to hear what she's thinking at him. ]

Hey... did you have that dream too earlier? Pretty strange, wasn't it?

[splinten]

[Clearly, this young lady has great manners.

Did she lean towards him like she was...whispering her thoughts? This girl.

However, he gives her a nod to affirm.] I have my suspicions about that dream, but there isn't enough to say right now. Did it make you want to come out here, too?

[venerations]

[ she's a small town girl, okay. she tries.

she relaxes a little when dirk nods, relieved that she wasn't the only one who had the same sort of dream. not that this makes things any better, but at least she knows that she hasn't gone completely off her rocker. ]

Mm, it did. I don't really know what to make of it, though. I mean, these guys here seem alright for the most part.

[ she means the gasopods they're sitting on, giving hers a pat as if to make sure she hasn't forgotten about it. she's still whisper-thinking. ]

d

[grimdeity]

[ A lab full of mechanical bits and bots is not Rose's cup of tea, personally, but nevertheless Dirk's other blonde biological child manages to wander in. She eyes the "orange soda" for a moment. ]

... If that is it's attempt at apple juice, remind me not to order any drinks from it.

[ Just automatically assumes that any Strider, Dave or otherwise, would subsist on apple juice if possible. She will be truly shocked to learn otherwise. Never mind that Dave hasn't even had apple juice since The Incident, anyway. ]

[splinten]

[Ah yes. His daughter. Inheritor of his pathological need to deliver long intellectual commentaries. Hero who got one of the nicest outfits in this whole game. (Prince class, why.)

Now that he knows a little more about Dave, that comment isn't completely surprising. But he must correct it.]

Orange soda. Still not the most accurate representation of the drink, but much more passable than if it were an approximation of apple juice.

I'm working on teaching him to learn from his mistakes.

[grimdeity]

[ It's true, the Seer outfit far surpasses the Princely pantaloons. Unless you are into puffy pantaloons. They both surpass the Page hotpants, though, so high-five. ]

Orange soda? Ah, then yes, that does appear to be closer to it's actuality. [ Is it like gross troll faygo, though, important question. ]

Mhm, quite the quest you've taken on, then. Can a robot ever truly learn from it's mistakes? Or are the mistakes simply programmed away, leaving the bot bereft of a genuine learning experience? Though, I suppose it would not be aware of missing out on such. Which is the true tradgedy of it's nature, is it not?

[ Yep, robot philosophy. This is what your genes created, Dirk. ]

[splinten]

[It is very like gross troll faygo. Sorry. There is a reason Dirk had to take on this serious undertaking.

But look at that philosophizing. His daughter is amazing. Their time has come.]

Before we get into the technical aspects of what I'm doing here with the programming, I need to know what definition of the word 'learning' you've settled on. In the sense that Wiz will be using experiential data to modify his actions, then I'd say that he will not just learn, but be a model learner, both actively and passively developing based on what happens around him. If you take the perspective that true consciousness is required for it to be considered truly learning, then no, Wiz isn't going to be that advanced. I'm not interested in developing a truly sentient AI here. But to preclude all robotic forms from it on principle seems to me to deny an obvious counter-example whom you have in some sense already met, the Auto-Responder.