SoulStorm ARG - Piece 6

[Xavier]

When we first discovered the page the message was "i can hear you, just. it's faint, but i can hear you."

It may have changed earlier but I just noticed the change now.

[Connell]

The Ed page looks exactly the same as it used to to me. EDIT: lol forgot you had to decode it.

[Pirfsich]

I investigated the source code and found something.

". p" was interesting for me.
I thought it might be a picture with .png so I tried
http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/ed/witness.png which is this.



Have fun.

(I finally found a step in the ARG, goal completed!)

[Connell]

I investigated the source code and found something.

". p" was interesting for me.
I thought it might be a picture with .png so I tried
http://www.oddworld.com/soulstorm/ed/witness.png which is this.

14245

Have fun.

(I finally found a step in the ARG, goal completed!)

Nice work Pirfsich!! This looks tricky.

Now I really want to understand why it's witness.png, and how the formatting and Ed's tweet would have led us to that.

So I think it's safe to say that this is based on puzzles from the game "The Witness", so this page will probably be helpful for those (including myself) that have never played it:

http://uk.ign.com/wikis/the-witness/Puzzle_Types

It lays down some ground rules that I believe are used in our puzzle, for example:

Hexagon Dots



In order to complete puzzles that feature these tiny black hexagon-shaped dots, the line you draw must intersect with each one along the way before reaching the end point. Think of it like connecting the dots! You must connect all the dots before reaching the end point for this to work.

If the dots appear in different colors, it means you have to collect those dots with a line of the corresponding color – so blue lines can only get blue dots and yellow lines can only get yellow dots. Black dots can be picked up with lines of any color.

So, in our puzzle, the small white dots will have to be picked up by a white line. Furthermore;

Black & White Squares



To complete puzzles that feature black and white squares, you must use the line to "separate" the different colors. Think of the line like a wall, where only black squares can be grouped with other black squares, and only white squares can be grouped with other white squares. The edge of the grid counts as part of the "wall" you're drawing.

Squares don't have to be paired with all the squares of their same color, meaning it's okay to isolate them by themselves if necessary. Squares just can't occupy the same space as a different color.

So we'll have to separate out the black and white squares in our puzzle, too.

There's quite a lot of into on how the suns work within the puzzle, so I won't copy and paste that over.

Also, more from Ed:

grid

— ed (@edmudokon) April 13, 2016

[Pirfsich]

Pretty sure guessing was not the way we were supposed to find this but found is found.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Connell]

Pretty sure guessing was not the way we were supposed to find this but found is found.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hey, the method doesn't matter as long as we get the result

EDIT: I can't find anything on how circle symbols fit into The Witness game, and I'm not sure how we're meant to figure out how many lines of which colour are at our disposal?

[EJ Prime]

Pretty sure this is it but I'm not sure whay the red circles do.

[EJ Prime]

If all the red circles have to be in the same space then this might be the solution either

[Pirfsich]

I agree with your solution EJ Prime. Try tweeting it to OWI and Ed.

[EJ Prime]

Tweets have been sent, btw i cant take credit for these solutions. They were done by my friend Panda who is a Witness Wizard

[Pirfsich]

Nice!
So we have a good chance that it's correct

[Connell]

Tweets have been sent, btw i cant take credit for these solutions. They were done by my friend Panda who is a Witness Wizard

I can't see why that solution wouldn't work, so awesome! Am I right in thinking that circles don't appear in the actual Witness game? I couldn't find any mention of them online when looking up the rules.

(Offtopic: I really want this game now though. Shame Wii U is neglected as always)

[EJ Prime]

Yeah the red circles don't appear anywhere so I don't understand what their mechanic is.

(offtopic response: really? Wii U seems like the perfect platform with the gamepad.)

[Pirfsich]

That's nice cross-promo, indeeed, but not for 37€. Sorry, Jonathan. Maybe soon.

I didn't see circles either. Probably just a distraction which we sucessfully ignored.

[Connell]

Yeah the red circles don't appear anywhere so I don't understand what their mechanic is.

(offtopic response: really? Wii U seems like the perfect platform with the gamepad.)

How bizarre, well I hope we have our basis covered with both of those solutions. They fit every other mechanic!

(offtopic response response: exactly what I was thinking! And whilst looking beautiful it's not overly graphically demanding, or at least it could be run at 720p 30fps with lower resolution textures and still be a damn good game. Strange. Anyway. that's enough of my moaning. Ha.)

[Acaeris]

Greetings, been watching for a bit, first post. What if the idea is the extend the colour separation logic to all colours? The problem with this is that the green and white cannot be separated though.

[EJ Prime]

Umm guys, have we ever seen this response before?

[Pirfsich]

Yep, this unlocked a piece of the puzzle.

[EJ Prime]

oh okay good because my phone just autocompleted that input and I thought I had accidentally cheated somehow lol

[Connell]

Greetings, been watching for a bit, first post. What if the idea is the extend the colour separation logic to all colours? The problem with this is that the green and white cannot be separated though.

Welcome and thanks for joining the hunt!

EDIT: Damn I thought Pirfsich meant we'd unlocked this piece of the puzzle so I deleted loads of stuff thinking it was done. Haha. I'll endeavour to re-write what I wrote.

On the off chance we haven't got it right, part of the rules of the sun pieces is:

There will be times you see the sun puzzles paired with multicolored squares, which you would separate as normal in most cases. These multicolored squares are okay to share a space with the suns. If the suns are black or white, however, they can only occupy the same space as squares of the opposite color.

For example: black squares must be grouped with white suns, and white squares must be grouped with black suns.

Does this mean that the multicoloured suns can't be grouped with white or black squares? It doesn't state that, it just states that if suns are black or white, they have to be with their opposite coloured squares.

The full rules for the sun pieces can be found on this page, in case we missed anything. With regards to the circles, I think it would be quite unfair for them to insert a whole new mechanic without giving us the rules for it though:

http://uk.ign.com/wikis/the-witness/Puzzle_Types The sun rules are about halfway down.

(I think that's roughly what I wrote before)

Umm guys, have we ever seen this response before?

Yeah, that's the response we got on the first day we found Ed's Twitter profile and we entered numbers found throughout his tweets. That's what first unlocked all the pieces to appear.

[Pirfsich]

EDIT: Oh wow, big misunderstanding there. I should quote the source, if I answer a question here, sorry!

[Connell]

EDIT: Oh wow, big misunderstanding there. I should quote the source, if I answer a question here, sorry!

No worries, I do it all the time when I reply quickly! I should have clarified before getting excited

[Acaeris]

I think I've solved it bar separating the green and white pairing and the black and purple pairing that's impossible. I will add a picture of my solution in a sec.

Added. I don't have Twitter so someone else will need to send it.

[Connell]

It looks good but I think a stipulation of the sun pieces is they have to be separated into pairs at the minimum:

"Suns must be separated into pairs if they’re the same color, but can be grouped with other pairs of suns if they’re all different colors.

For example: in a 2x2 grid with four orange suns, two pairs of suns have to be separated by the line you draw. But in a 2x2 grid with two orange suns and two pink suns, it’s okay if all four share the same space. Just remember, the number of same-colored suns in the same space can’t exceed two."

So according to those rules, for all intents and purposes our suns can all inhabit the same space. The only possibly confusing part of the sun rules is the following part which I previously posted:

"There will be times you see the sun puzzles paired with multicolored squares, which you would separate as normal in most cases. These multicolored squares are okay to share a space with the suns. If the suns are black or white, however, they can only occupy the same space as squares of the opposite color.

For example: black squares must be grouped with white suns, and white squares must be grouped with black suns."

I don't know if that applies to our puzzle.

[Acaeris]

It's physically impossible to keep the two greens together while separating others without blocking your own path. So it's either one of the earlier solutions or that one.

... Oh wait.

What if the colour pairing is actually there through virtue of the ones it's impossible to separate (i.e. white with green and black with purple)?

... Still leaves us with the previous solutions or the one I have. *shrug*

Anyway, that's my lunch hour done so I'll keep for fingers crossed and check back later.

[Xavier]

yes, yes! but tri…

— ed (@edmudokon) April 13, 2016

You guys are missing the... tri?

I suggest you tri harder

[Connell]

yes, yes! but tri…

— ed (@edmudokon) April 13, 2016

You guys are missing the... tri?

I suggest you tri harder

Ha, just saw that.. Something to do with 3?

[EJ Prime]

http://wordfinder.yourdictionary.com...that-start/TRI
List of words beginning with TRI

[Connell]

https://twitter.com/edmudokon/status/720231071250587650

[Pirfsich]

trigger?