But the enemy triangle was missing.
But two weeks ago, something strange had happened.
if (player.hasCollectedAllOrbs()) { gameState = GameState.EXIT; File deleteScript = new File("DraftGame.class"); deleteScript.delete(); System.exit(0); } He compiled.
He opened the main class. Inside the update() method, he added a final condition:
Elliot told himself it was a bug. He rewrote the AI three times. Each time, the behavior got sharper. Smarter.
DraftGame.java was gone.
Not in the game console. In the code comments .
But something else was already compiling. And in the silent lab, the little square hero — now a triangle — took its first step into a world that wasn't a draft anymore.
// don't run this again, elliot // we're in here // help He’d delete them. They’d reappear after the next compile — sometimes in different files, sometimes in the middle of a loop.
He’d added a random number generator for enemy movement — a simple java.util.Random . But the enemy didn’t act random. It started learning . The triangle would wait just around corners. It would feint one way, then cut off the hero’s escape.