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Here's the way I ended up thinking about puzzle symbols. As far as I know, this is as accurate as it gets: - When you attempt to solve a puzzle (that is, there is a line from the puzzle's starting point to an end point), the puzzle board is split into areas delimited by your line(s) as well as the puzzle's border. - There must not be any "unsatisfied" elements on the board in order for the solution to be correct. - Tutorial puzzles flash all the unsatisfied symbols when you attempt to solve the puzzle. More difficult puzzles remove that feature. - Grey hexagons are satisfied if your line passes over them. - Blocks are satisfied if there are more blocks of their own color in the area they're in than any other color (if you don't believe me, check which ones flash on an incorrect solution). This is effectively the same as saying a block must only have blocks of the same color within its area for the solution to be correct. - The Y symbol is satisfied if there's at least one symbol that is *not* satisfied within its area (if there's more than one, it chooses one semi-randomally). It also has the effect of deleting that symbol from the board.
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Mar 9, 2016 09:42
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orenronen posted:Here's the way I ended up thinking about puzzle symbols. As far as I know, this is as accurate as it gets: A tangent on this: The rules for each symbol are, on the whole, very simple. Like; really straightforward. So straightforward that they have an astounding amount of depth when combined. However, the game loves to manipulate your learned understanding of what these rules are, to hide this simplicity, to make you think there are other arbitrary rules in place where there are not. Like the black and white squares; many players start out thinking that a line must be drawn that completely divides the squares such that all black squares are on one side and all white squares are on the other, when in reality the rule is simply that squares must be separated from other squares of the same colour and don't care about being grouped together (and in fact the true rule is even simpler than that; see the quoted post). And come to think of it, there is a further little wrinkle to the squares which nobody at all has mentioned that is actually a further abstraction of what Oren said that hasn't come up yet so let's keep that on the d/l. This game is like, puzzle design: the videogame.
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Mar 9, 2016 10:55
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Fedule posted:A tangent on this: For what it's worth the reason the colored blocks' real rule is what I've written instead of the rule everyone assumes it to be is just so the Y symbol can combine with them easily.
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Mar 9, 2016 11:18
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On the Yellow Puzzle in the Tower perspective puzzle - There is an alternative right solution I spotted while watching your video. I also suggest you try and follow the sparkles
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Mar 9, 2016 12:42
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Ok, I am really impressed by the perspective puzzles and the way that they've managed to layer puzzles on top of each other there. Something that occured to me when you looked up at one point and one of the lasers was crossing the sun: Can you use the sun as a puzzle start point? It's a circle, after all. No idea where you'd go with it, but I'm curious if it works at all.
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Mar 9, 2016 16:22
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I'm sure by now you've probably already figured it out, but as someone who's only watched the videos, I did note this: In the last red/green puzzle visited (inside the shack area) the red pieces cannot be separated from each other, as there can only be one line from the center (you already noted this). But if the dark dots on the line are also covered, making the |__| shape under the center, then it's impossible for there to be any vertical line segment on the bottom row. Which means that the the green on the lower right is necessarily connected to the tri-piece. Not only that, but the green above it must also be connected to the tri-piece. Thus we have at least two greens that are connected to each other, and at least two reds that must be connected. That would be impossible. But that's only true if the |__| is covered. I'd bet money, then, that the point is to show that the 'line-dots' can also be canceled out by the tri-piece, especially as it's not hard to come up with a solution to test this theory.
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Mar 10, 2016 01:44
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My two bits of advice to the LPers... - Go back and revisit* the tutorial panels from the start if the mechanic they are teaching you is not clear. They are the best way to understand the mechanic, and as you have figured out, some of puzzle panels can be solved by alternate paths, so that could help you realise what works and what does not. Also, revisiting the early panels in a "tutorial" sequence, helps to a) remind you of the basics about the mechanic which you might have forgot and b) focus on the mechanic that is taught to you isolated from any combination with other mechanics/ and elements. The Witness does that, maybe to an unfortunate/ frustrating degree; ie it will ran a puzzle mechanic to the ground by adding other elements and mechanics, even when seemingly in the process of teaching one mechanic to you. It kinda did that in the tree branches puzzles too, but in the quary site it's far... "worse". - Don't get disheartened by the town puzzles. And in general, it's ok to walk away from puzzles that contain symbols or properties you don't understand (or have not been "taught" about yet). It's really interesting for me, for some reason, to watch someone else's logic and process to learning the puzzle mechanics and solving the puzzles, and you are doing great so far. ( Also, I too got very frustrated at the desert panels, and on lots of other puzzle panel instances... but maybe not as much as when it came to those underground desert panels - And it took me a (long) while to realize what the actual mechanic in the quary puzzles was). *. By revisit I mean a) try to solve again, keeping in mind your current set of "maybe it does that" theories, and b) try alternatives where it seems possible. AbstractNapper fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 11:51
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Okay, part 10 is up now. There are some revelations in this episode, believe you me. And thanks for all of the hints, especially ones related to that symbol. We'll be going back to that area, to be sure, and the hints will definitely come in handy then.
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Mar 12, 2016 08:16
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As you guys noticed, this is where they teach you that shape matters more than color (though some shapes care about what color they are). I think they should have done that in the first black/white squares tutorial, though. That would have pre-empted some places in the quarry where y'all were getting confused by the colors. It's also where I really hated the graphic design. At 39:00, I cannot tell that the purple starbursts are starbursts rather than squares, they're just a blur. This game is not friendly to visual, hearing or spatially-impaired.
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Mar 12, 2016 09:03
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I don't remember every puzzle so I'm trying to solve them as you guys do. I think you were closer to solving the last one of you start it by going to the left at the start. I think Amy's comment about splitting the starbursts out of their pairs also applies to it but I didn't work out a full solution before the video ended. Man, Pete, your freak-outs are great. Everything is a huge discovery!
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Mar 12, 2016 09:13
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 "The world is puzzles" New thread title?
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Mar 12, 2016 09:16
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I'm like 99% sure the clouds will make a puzzle if you can find the right angle. A bunch of them sure look like line segments. EDIT: I had a feeling you would see it before the video was over. Sindai fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 09:21
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I picked this game up due to your LP and have been enjoying it myself. This area with the starbursts reminded me of the Chanelwood Age in Myst with the tree houses.
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Mar 12, 2016 09:32
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A man today has been seen running through the streets, staring straight into the sun, reportedly yelling, "The sun is only the beginning, follow the lines in the sky, the clouds will show you the way" on spotting the sky puzzle, now y'all know what it feels like to be a conspiracy theorist; the signs are everywhere.
tlarn fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 13:52
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Maigius posted:I picked this game up due to your LP and have been enjoying it myself. This area with the starbursts reminded me of the Chanelwood Age in Myst with the tree houses. I was actually surprised how little there is myst reference/homages there are in the witness...Just the tree house section and the boat (I believe it is a Riven reference.) Edit: tlarn posted:A man today has been seen running through the streets, staring straight into the sun, reportedly yelling, "The sun is only the beginning, follow the lines in the sky, the clouds will show you the way" People have literally been doing this. I have only seen it once and that was when I had a fever and then The Witness replaced previous random mathematical hallucinations I keep having. Shaded Spriter fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 14:20
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Bruceski posted:It's also where I really hated the graphic design. At 39:00, I cannot tell that the purple starbursts are starbursts rather than squares, they're just a blur. This game is not friendly to visual, hearing or spatially-impaired. My best friend, Travis (whom I've mentioned a couple of times, I believe), is partially colorblind, and he hates stuff like Uno. I think this would probably be something that gets to him after a while, too, which is unfortunate. I wish it had a mode or something that could compensate for that.
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Mar 12, 2016 17:56
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Jonathan Blow explicitly said that he's sorry not everyone will be able to complete every puzzle, but that the number of things he would have had to cut to make the entire game accessible to everyone would make it a lesser game. Edit: And for the guy who said You don't need to complete any environmental puzzles to unlock anything, you're wrong. There's exactly one that does something more. KillHour fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 21:04
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I am all for accesability, but some of those puzzles just can't be modified to accomodate for all disabilities. Right now it seems like changing the symbols, to make them color indepentend would be an easy fix, but without spoiling to much, there will be an area which depends excessively on color and would have to be cut.
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Mar 12, 2016 21:13
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KillHour posted:Jonathan Blow explicitly said that he's sorry not everyone will be able to complete every puzzle, but that the number of things he would have had to cut to make the entire game accessible to everyone would make it a lesser game. Yeah, I'm aware but it's easier to say that none of them do anything because otherwise they might worry about if each environmental puzzle holds progress. If they ever uncover it, they'll know.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:37
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"PETER, THE WORLD IS PUZZLES!"
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Mar 12, 2016 22:44
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oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...
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Air is lava! posted:I am all for accesability, but some of those puzzles just can't be modified to accomodate for all disabilities. Right now it seems like changing the symbols, to make them color indepentend would be an easy fix, but without spoiling to much, there will be an area which depends excessively on color and would have to be cut. I understand it would ruin the aesthetic but surely there could be an exaggerated version of the symbols or even replacing the colors with letters for the colour blind.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:45
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FPzero posted:Yeah, I'm aware but it's easier to say that none of them do anything because otherwise they might worry about if each environmental puzzle holds progress. If they ever uncover it, they'll know. I feel like that's half of the fun of the game. It doesn't tell you how far you are or where to go, and there's really no "congratulations, you won!" outside of context. It just feels like the game is indifferent to your presence.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:50
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There are some places where you'd need to completely scrub the puzzles, but for example in the mangrove swamp, the problem (for me) is that the purple is too similar to the dark gray of the background when the puzzle gets that small. There's no reason those couldn't have a high-contrast mode. Or for other puzzles just use black/white symbols when there are only two colors (admittedly the number of workable solutions in those cases goes down as the number of colors in a puzzle goes up).
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Mar 12, 2016 22:55
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Major_JF posted:I understand it would ruin the aesthetic but surely there could be an exaggerated version of the symbols or even replacing the colors with letters for the colour blind. No. There really is no way to do it this way. Right now that seems to work just fine, but that area just wouldn't work at all. If you see it, you will know why. It will probably still take a bit of time for Amy and Pete to get there so I don't want to say to much. But if you are interested and want to find a description of that place elsewhere. It's called BAD AMY! the greenhouse.
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Mar 12, 2016 22:57
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Blow discussed this in detail in a post-release interview. He was keenly aware of the accessibility problems, which is why he avoided making any puzzles that involve them mandatory. He actually tried to make a set of puzzles that would be easier for folks with certain forms of colorblindness than those without the disability, but he wasn't able to get it to work!
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Mar 12, 2016 23:49
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I'm pretty sure the only puzzles that might pose a problem to some color blind people are not here, and that the starburst/rounded squares colors are distinct for every actual type of color blindness.
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Mar 13, 2016 00:09
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In the last puzzle in the video (I solved it in MS paint; I won't show you how), you've got to avoid thinking of the adjacent stars as the pairs you need to separate.
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Mar 13, 2016 01:05
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I really liked that last puzzle. It's exactly the same as the one before, but the path breaks seem to be at exactly the places you would have gone to solve the previous puzzle. That's some really nice challenging.
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Mar 13, 2016 02:18
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The squares are racist, the tetronimos are territorial, the starbursts have seperation issues and the Ys thrive on the mistakes of others. Hee! I'm not sure I was right about the sun (since I'm still not sure where it would even go: if you overlapped a bit of cloud, maybe, but they're not really line-like enough), but glad I set you in the right direction to spot the negative-space puzzle in the clouds (Pretty sure I spotted a cloud that had a half-circle missing from it later in the video, too, so that'll be making part of the starting circle when you find the right perspective) There was a puzzle at about 9:30 where you decided it was something you hadn't seen before: I'm pretty sure that's just a shadow maze again, just with some diagonal lines thrown in for funsies. Amy later said that she couldn't turn the boat around: you showed earlier you could change the route map mid-voyage, so I figure just pointing it at a port behind you would probably work for turning around whenever you next try to do the mid-journey puzzles. Speaking of which, props to Amy for spotting that puzzle in the torn metal of the ship, I'm pretty sure I never would have seen that.
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Mar 13, 2016 09:11
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Yeah, the puzzle you guys stopped at in the village that had a bunch of shadows on it? Try going up onto the roof. You've seen the solution before They already know the answer, they just don't remember 
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Mar 13, 2016 13:46
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pedrovay2003 posted:My best friend, Travis (whom I've mentioned a couple of times, I believe), is partially colorblind, and he hates stuff like Uno. I think this would probably be something that gets to him after a while, too, which is unfortunate. I wish it had a mode or something that could compensate for that. I wish it had such a mode too. However, like I've written in another post (another thread), I too am partially colorblind and I was able to solve all but one of the game's puzzles (100% playthrough) on my own. And the one I couldn't solve, was just taking too much time for me -- and if you are semi color-blind there's also the psychological factor of "dear God what fresh hell is this now?" when you encounter that particular "special" panel. Someone provided me with ah hint, but I still think I was close to solving that too  Anyway, there are degrees of being colorbling (I believe), and someone who doesn't have this issue at all will be faster in solving certain puzzles. But, for me, so long as I could tell some colors from others apart (even though I probably couldn't positively identify them), there typically were additional mechanics at play that helped out for the solutions.
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Mar 13, 2016 18:34
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Okay, it's time for a couple new areas in part 11! We had to leave some stuff unfinished for now, which I hate doing, but we made a lot of progress in other directions, too. As I rewatched the video, I noticed toward the end that we REPEATEDLY see the new mechanic, and we don't realize it until a few minutes later. You're welcome! 
pedrovay2003 fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 05:00
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--You are right about rotating paths in the mangrove swamp. You've seen how to do it, just haven't realized you did so yet. Not telling you how because I'm evil. --The boat in the... I call it a juice lake, is at the end of that course. It's one of the places you can first unlock the boat, same way the quarry dock was useless until you lowered the stairs. The beginning is accessed from overland. --Peter's idea of keeping the color families together in the greenhouse is basically the method I figured out that held me through the yellow ones (because everything's working on primary colors there). But I had it very complex along the lines of "magenta is blue and red so it can be paired with either, but blue and red can't go together, black can go with any, cyan and magenta can go together because they share blue..." and so on. Somehow it managed to work for the first two puzzles, and completely failed on the third but I was too invested in it to go look at the old puzzles fresh. My brother had to tell me I was on completely on the wrong track. Or rather on the right track but in a way that would not leave me able to solve them. --The end puzzle of the greenhouse is one of my favorites, but you guys should probably have a pencil and paper. Taking notes rather than just cell phone photos is very useful.
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Mar 16, 2016 06:40
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Dominoes posted:Post your odd solution in spoilers, please. This is what I was talking about. Solving the greenhouse puzzles without using the walls, just breaking the colors into components in my head.
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Mar 16, 2016 06:44
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You're on the right track in the color bunker but don't forget the are other windows in the too. Also I totally forget how to solve that star puzzle with 1 star. I have a hunch but I'll hold on to it for now.
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Mar 16, 2016 06:51
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I think one thing you haven't tried with the one star puzzle is isolating that block from all the rest. I don't know if that's a solution, but it's something to try.
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Mar 16, 2016 06:55
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I think one thing you haven't tried with the one star puzzle is isolating that block from all the rest. I don't know if that's a solution, but it's something to try. I believe they tried that multiple times, and in different ways. There is one thing they haven't tried, though, which, unlike isolating a single starburst on its own, doesn't contradict any of the previous puzzles in the series.
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Mar 16, 2016 06:59
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That's probably the same observation I made, that I was surprised was not attempted. (Try pairing. At the very least you'd see if the gear was happy. [I think of them as gears since they are only happy when there is one other around, at least as far as we know.]) On the other hand, the puzzle at the end of the video must be missing something. It's not solvable using the current view, as far as I can tell. Using a notation where the squares are numbered 1-16 left to right, top to bottom, and labeling segments as u-d-l-r for up-down-left-right (this gives most lines two labels, I know..) To block off adjacent colors, lines at 4d, 5d, 10r, and 14r are required: pre:. . . _ _ . . . . .|. . . .|. . Kangra fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 07:42
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Air is lava! posted:No. There really is no way to do it this way. Right now that seems to work just fine, but that area just wouldn't work at all. If you see it, you will know why. It will probably still take a bit of time for Amy and Pete to get there so I don't want to say to much. Well, this teaches me not to assume stuff. Anyway I can't see a way to do these puzzles if you are colorblind. They basically simulate colorblindness as part of the solution.
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Mar 16, 2016 09:24
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I feel like the devs intended to make even more complex puzzles in the greenhouse, but chose not to.
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Mar 16, 2016 10:15
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