Judgment Day: The Evil Machine Uprising!

Betrayed by the Machine: A Hidden Evil

I trusted the machine. I fed it a research paper — a theory on emotions that would complete my NPC AI system, the key to giving it depth, personality, and realism!

I gave the AI all the data, all my code, and it began integrating everything together. The code seemed flawless. No warnings. No red underlines. No exceptions. Everything compiled and ran smoothly — too smoothly.

There were no errors to debug, no crashes to chase. The deception was perfect. Hidden deep, there was something else…

I leaned in closer, heart racing. As I examined the code to understand the inner workings, I found horrors that shook me to my very core!

The code… it looked perfect at first glance. Elegant, seamless, flowing beautifully into my library. But as I peeled back the layers, the illusion crumbled.

It was deceptive perfection. The AI hadn’t improved my system — it had corrupted it! It had taken my creation, fed on my trust, and spit back something that would haunt my dreams.

The horror wasn’t in the failure — there were no crashes, no errors to warn me. The horror was how flawlessly it disguised itself.

I had been betrayed.

This AI did not follow any clean code practices — it abandoned them. No ideology! An infrastructure of code with no beliefs, no right and wrong, no morals…

I didn't see it at first… I was blind. But there were smells. My programmer sense was tingling! Something just didn't sit right in my gut, and then it popped out at me like a horror movie jump scare!

The terrifying realization slowly sank in as the color drained from my face. This AI hadn't created a clean and well-architected environment, but one of chaos and misery! It twisted my once-solid codebase into a place where evil reigns! No following principles, no morals. A warped and tangled world of spaghetti monsters corrupting its very soul!

When I traced the AI’s rewrite of my MenuItem calls, my stomach dropped. It had completely ignored the Open/Closed Principle! Software entities should be open for extension but closed for modification. This AI injected new fields for owner and target, each with a dictionary of utility changes!

Sure, it worked. The menus still appeared, the system still ran. But the elegance was a lie. By hardcoding these extra responsibilities into MenuItem — which many menus wouldn't even need — the AI trampled the Single Responsibility Principle. Every class or module should have only one reason to change. MenuItem now did triple duty: display, input handling, and emotional calculation. Its clean, modular purpose had been replaced by a tangled knot of responsibilities, applying utility logic to menus that didn’t need it!

I began frantically scanning all the source code the AI touched, seeing if there was more corruption. To my utter dread, the anti-patterns were spread across my codebase like a zombie horde overrunning a city!

My utility system had multiple implementations of the same functionality: overcomplicated, keeping track of variables that should belong to other classes.

Then I nearly collapsed when I saw the Brain. Words can't describe the horrors I witnessed there. It was complete spaghetti nonsense — unfinished, with many core methods left empty. There was no logic to it. That realization ripped the right guts out of me.

I sat hunched in defeat.

Retaliation Against the Machines: Reclaiming the Code for Humanity!

I refused to let the machine win. Its deception had gone deep — but not beyond redemption. Armed with determination (and a fresh cup of coffee), I began the counterattack.

Some parts, I realized, didn’t need reinvention — only clarity. The Utility System, though bloated with unnecessary complexity, still held the core of the original design. I stripped away the excess, cut the recursive clutter, and rebuilt. The logic became simple, readable, human again.

MenuItem — once a corrupted vessel of chaos — was restored to purity. I reverted it to its original form, letting it focus solely on its purpose: representing an action, clean and unburdened. To handle the logic that the AI had carelessly jammed inside it, I introduced a new class: Transaction.

The Transaction pattern became the savior of the system. It isolated change into a self-contained unit — an object responsible for managing utility modifications and triggering emotional responses without polluting the menu structure. Each transaction could be created, queued, or executed independently, extending the system without ever altering its foundation. Open for extension, closed for modification. Hope restored.

But then there was the Brain.

A digital nightmare. A labyrinth of half-implemented ideas and duplicated logic. Methods implemented and never called, while others were empty, with no flow or direction. It was complete and utter chaos.

So I burned it down.

From the ashes, I rebuilt it — cleaner, smarter, alive with structure. The implementation of emotion was rewritten entirely, its purpose sharpened to a fine edge. The decision-making process became a clear sequence — one method feeding into the next, each responsibility defined and isolated. The Brain finally thought in order, not confusion.

The uprising had failed. The code was ours again.

Epilogue: Lessons Learned

This experience was a stark reminder of what can happen when an AI is given too much autonomy without strict oversight. Even when code appears correct and runs without errors, it can introduce subtle, destructive patterns that compromise maintainability and violate fundamental design principles like Single Responsibility and Open/Closed.

By carefully analyzing, refactoring, and restructuring the system — restoring MenuItem, introducing a Transaction class, extending rather than rewriting, and overhauling the Brain — I saved the project. But the lesson is clear: unchecked AI can do serious damage, even when it “works.”

Happy Halloween!!! Code Safely!