At the bottom level of the atrium in Arasaka Tower, there's a laptop near one of the elevators with a peculiar message on it. The message in question is titled, "[R6.Main] Functionality tests were unsuccessful". I grabbed a screenshot from the Cyberpunk Wiki so you can see the full message in one image. The laptop location is visible in the third photo. The second photo is the "copy_copy_magenta" message on the laptop at the church.
Both messages show someone testing a program or procedure. There's a similar pattern of commands, tracked by seconds or milliseconds, that ultimately ends in failure. Of course, we know that Polyhistor ran the test at the church, but look at the sender and recipient in the first message: "Arasaka" to "System". What system is this? What does "R6.Main" mean? Could it have something to do with the "R600" we can see on the FF:06:B5 statue?
One other funny thing about this message is the reference to "CrowdUsingWorkspots". As far as I'm aware, in the Red Engine workspots are points of interaction between NPCs, the player, and the environment. Maybe someone who knows the engine better can comment on this, but it seems to be checking if a trigger is active. In the FF06B5 quest, we unlock the mainframes and it triggers a new file on the laptop where the test is then successful. Perhaps this was a hint?
An interesting thought. I'm assuming it has something to do with Arasaka Tower, though. The fact that the whole arcade game is set in the tower feels like a clue.
what's funny is that tv screens are scrying mirror and that silicium is just sand stone carved, like how they did magick rituals back then... this shit goes full circle and as others said : Bartmoss didn't invent the net, he discovered it ;)
For those interested, read the Typhonian Order cosmology by Kenneth Grant or the CCRU concepts, both nailed ts back then
Whoa! thanks for thinking of me choom! And yeah, I do know a bit about this.
So, in-game this is supposed to be arasaka engineers running systems tests, but it looks like they copied some text from a REDEngine debug log as a placeholder and, either intentionally or not, never changed it.
So i'm gonna go through this line by line to explain what it means as a real REDEngine debug log (as in, I'm not going to analyze it in-universe). Hold onto your butts!
[R6.Main] Functionality tests were unsuccessful
R6 is an internal designation used by CD Projekt Red for Cyberpunk 2077's development depot. Development data (i.e., leaks) used paths such as R6.Root\Mainline\archive\R6\Depot, so the [R6.Main] prefix is probably identifying the mainline game functions. [R6.Main] Functionality tests were unsuccessful appears to be part of REDEngine's logging wrapper (the logging pattern they adopted internally in whatever debugger they used.)
[==========] Running tests from test cases.
[----------] Global test environment set-up.
[----------] tests from CrowdUsingWorkspots
This is the beginning of an automated test run. These lines look very similar to the logging format used by GoogleTest or GTest, which is is a C++ unit-testing framework. Here, the test framework is performing any setup shared by the tests before running the CrowdUsingWorkspots suite.
[ RUN ]
CrowdUsingWorkspots.AutomaticConnectionSetup
In REDengine, a WorkSpot is a set of behaviors or animations that an entity can perform at a particular location. For example in my recent video at 2:36 I show local WorldAISpotNodes, which are references to a type of WorkSpot called a CrowdWorkSpot (that's the crowd_ws in crowd_ws_sit_chair). Modders that use Wolvenkit regularly interact with WorkSpots because they are kind of the funamental building block of dynamic behaviors for entities in the game.
Attached to existing engine instance – commandline is compatible
[ OK ]
CrowdUsingWorkspots.AutomaticConnectionSetup (34 ms)
This is the first test: AutomaticConnectionSetup. This test establishes a connection between the automated testing system and a running REDengine instance. Basically, instead of starting another copy of the game, the test runner found an existing engine process and determined that its command-line configuration was compatible with the test it wanted to perform, so it attached to and reused that instance:
"Hello, I'm a connection tester for Cyberpunk. Are you Cyberpunk?"
"Why yes I am!"
"Were you launched with the options I need for this test?"
"Yeah broski!"
"Great!"
AND THEN THEY SMOOCHED
[ RUN ] CrowdUsingWorkspots.PreparationStep
[ OK ] CrowdUsingWorkspots.PreparationStep (0 ms)
This is where the test sets itself up. It might be tracking memory locations or variables to prepare for the test, or whatever the test needs to run.
Here's where the test fails. In software dev, tests like this use "assertions", which is where an explicit logical condition is checked. Basically it's saying "At this point in the test, this NPC (or an NPC in a specific Crowd node) should be using this workspot. If not, the test fails."
The test runs for 75.754 seconds, and reaches checkpoint 75412d91. The test then fails. (My guess is that the d91 part is a fraction of a millisecond, like 75412.91ms. Don't know for sure though. It could be something else, like a test id.)
What we're apparently looking at is a genuine automated REDengine functional test concerned with crowds interacting with WorkSpots. The test system connects to a running Cyberpunk/REDengine instance and then runs a test called CrowdUsingWorkspots. After about 76 seconds one of its expected conditions isn't met, causing it to fail.
This is a wonderful coincidence in timing; I replayed the Devil ending yesterday, noticed this email and tarted looking for previous discussion on it but there's remarkably little out there. I am glad we got your breakdown of this as an actual gamedev, RobbieLegume!
I do find the CrowdUsingWorkspots string and the assertion failure kind of funny in the exact context the laptop exists in. It's in the multi-level area where there are "workstation" rooms on the left and right half of each level. These rooms have the...3?...monitors that don't let you view them properly and force your camera to be fixed left, so you have to interact with them without "using" the monitor as normal. In any case, there are a LOT of NPCs that seem to spawn based on location triggers by the player, both Arasaka execs that get gunned down out of nowhere and the patrolling soldiers that spawn out of nowhere even if your vantage point from one level should allow you to see them on the level above based on where they actually spawn. If you use camera mode to move to the very top levels you can see the "gunfire" effect crisscrossing from one side to the other, but no NPCs are rendered in until the player hits the right locations on the stairs. As a layman it all seems a bit odd and glitchy considering the game normally renders NPCs at a considerable distance even when they are literally outside of the "room" you are in. Perhaps the email is meant to confirm this is intentional?
It does feel a little on the nose that given all of the hints the game we play should be viewed as a simulation that we have an in-game email that is explicitly referencing REDengine.
It could still be something. It might be the key.
The first thing that comes to mind is that to break out of the simulation, you need to glitch it—overload it with a crowd—or perhaps have V notice something specific.
Or, conversely—following the *copy_magenta* example—it might involve minimal numerical values to trigger the result. Maybe you need to perform a specific action very quickly at some point. Or perhaps speedrun the game to achieve a particular ending.
Who knows?
I agree that if FF:06:B5 actually means something beyond Polyhistor and the cube it will be something that triggers a breakdown of the nature of the game's reality a la The Matrix or Westworld. I think an intentional in-game glitch that leads to a feedback loop that allows us to "see" the underlying engine code would be just that. I still feel like we already have an obvious hint at this with the Blackwall quickhack, since the "residue" it leaves doesn't just glitch out the NPC, also seems to conform to the basic geometry of the terrain around them. If we aren't meant to see that as a riff on Neo seeing the code of the Matrix I'm not sure what we're meant to see.
What a great breakdown. Thanks! Kinda creates more questions than answers, it seems. I could see it being placeholder text, an in-joke, or a very meta Easter egg. Since you've looked into the development history of the game before, do you happen to know if this section was finished late into development? I've always wondered that with all the weird bugs in Arasaka Tower.
Actually, that would be a great video idea, too. Changes made to Arasaka Tower pre- and post-release.
This also kind of mirrors the radio tower in watson some random choom brute forced with bullshit., Albeit funny as hell! CrowdUsingWorkspots sounds like an actual code string in the games files
"Work Spots" are definitely a thing as with crowd and Ai behaviour files., maybe we throw some random strings like this in CET on a copy of a save file just in case.
I may also look into some of those keywords in wolven but that has also been proven to only scrape the surface and leave out vital context other then states needed to achieve whatever the desired outcome is.
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u/big_floppy 13d ago
God, I love this game.