Fried Steve

Fried Steve is a hostile entity that periodically assaults the player. Fried Steve's name is never shown in-game, as it will always be displayed as a string of 4 to 10 obfuscated characters.

Fried Steve is fully immune to damage. An attack by him can only be survived if the player uses Metaphysical Pepper Spray.

Spawning

Fried Steve spawns at the end of his dedicated event. He will spawn directly in front of a random player in the game.

Behavior

Fried Steve has multiple AI states. He initially spawns in his darkness state.

Darkness

This state will start with the sound of a light switch being flipped and will make the player's screen turn black. The player will be fully immobilized during this state. After 10 ticks, Fried Steve will start playing an audio buildup, and after being in the darkness state for 50 ticks¹, Fried Steve will automatically switch to the jumpscare state.

Jumpscare

The audio that started in the darkness state will continue and the player will still be unable to move. A red shader and throbbing effect will applied on the screen, and the camera will be locked on Fried Steve. During this state, the following messages will repeatedly be displayed on the player's screen:

• Nowhere to run
• Your time is up
• Found you
• No escape
• This is your end
• Say your prayers
• Don't struggle
• Farewell

Once Fried Steve has been in this state for 50 ticks, the affected player will instantly die. Fried Steve will then despawn after 20 more ticks. However, if the player uses the Metaphysical Pepper Spray at any point during the jumpscare state, the jumpscare state will be interrupted and Fried Steve will switch to his sprayed state, preventing the unavoidable death at the end of the jumpscare.

Sprayed

Fried Steve will raise his arms and begin rubbing his eyes. The following messages will be displayed sequentially on the player's screen:

• AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
• MY EYESSS!!!!!!
• You bastard!
• I'LL KILL YOU!!!

After being in this state for 170 ticks, Fried Steve will switch to his chasing state.

Chasing

Fried Steve will begin running after the player. He is able to run up 1-block tall ledges. If he manages to catch his target, he will switch to the caught state. If he is unable to find a player to chase, he will immediately despawn.

After being in the chasing state for 1400 ticks, Fried Steve will begin to gradually slow down before disappearing into a burst of flame particles 1600 ticks into the chase.

If at any point during the chase Fried Steve finds himself unable to pathfind to his target, he will spawn a pillar of fire particles at their location. He will then teleport to the particles after 20 ticks.

If the player attempts to trap Fried Steve by tricking him into boarding a vehicle (e.g. a boat), he will instead launch the vehicle at the player and send the following message in chat:

• GET THAT GODDAMN {BOAT/CART/other vehicle name} OUT OF THE WAY!"

The flung vehicle will create a massive explosion upon impact, likely killing the player instantly.

During the chase, Fried Steve will send the following sequence of messages via chat:

• Where do you plan on going, {player nickname}²?! (after 410 ticks)
• There's no place on earth where I won't find you! (after 510 ticks)
• No matter what you do, you're dying {today/tonight}³. (after 610 ticks)
• So stop being a coward and GET BACK HERE!!! (after 710 ticks)
• You're just... you're just making things worse for yourself... (after 1200 ticks)
• ...when I get you, I'm gonna... (after 1300 ticks)
• ...i'm gonna... (after 1400 ticks)
• ...i... (after 1500 ticks)
• ...damn it... (when despawning)

For the duration of this AI state, entire world will appear to be lit with an orange hue, a GUI overlay indicating Fried Steve's distance from the player will be displayed at the top of the screen, and Fried Steve's chase theme will play.

Caught

This state is functionally identical to the jumpscare state, except without the noise and throbbing effect. Fried Steve will not be vulnerable to the pepper spray this time, and it will only take him 20 ticks to kill the player.

Notes

1. The 40 ticks between the beginning of the audio and the state change is roughly equal to the duration of the sound effect's buildup.

2. An attempt at using the syntax of the player's username to predict what other people may call them. The exact way the algorithm operates is a follows:

• Split the username into a list of words, which are defined as any sequence of subsequent letters. A capital letter following a lowercase letter denotes a new word (e.g. "xX_A2016ExampleName_Xx" will be separated into "xX", "A", "Example", "Name", and "Xx).
• Filter out words shorter than 4 characters ("xX", "A", and "Xx" will be filtered out).
• If the remaining list of words is not empty, return the first one. Otherwise, continue to the next step.
• Filter out non-alphabetic characters from the beginning and end of the username (e.g. "2016ExampleName_" becomes "ExampleName")
• Return the remaining name if it is longer than 3 characters. Otherwise, simply return the original username.

3. Depends on the in-game time of day.

Trivia

• The track that plays during Fried Steve's chase sequence is Spicy Nacho.

• Fried Steve's chase theme is named after a Doritos flavor.

• Fried Steve was originally going to be part of the initial release of the mod, but was postponed until the 0.1 update.

• The concept for Fried Steve started as a parody of the Error Code -1 jumpscare from no_moon.jar. His jumpscare phase still resembles the Error Code -1 juumpscare.

• The pepper spray mechanic was inspired by the From The Caves mod, where the entity is repelled using the Wooden Cross item.

• The GUI overlay that appears during Fried Steve's chase sequence is inspired by the final boss of the Spider-Man (2000) game.

• Fried Steve changed names several times during the concept phase. Other names included "The Broiled One" and "Deep-fried Steve".

• Despite being a minor character, Fried Steve's face is the mod icon.

• There was originally planned to be a custom death message when the player died to Fried Steve. In the message, the kill method would have been obfuscated similar to Fried Steve's name. This was scrapped because the message's wording could be misinterpreted as something suggestive.

• Fried Steve's dialog was meant to change depending on how many times you have completed the chase sequence, but this feature has been postponed due to the extra intro text needing custom GUI rendering in order to fit on the screen.