ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

If you e-mail me a guess, I will reply back within a day that I've received it. If you don't get an answer, try e-mailing me a second time. But I should see the first one, so don't worry too much. Note that your guess time is determined by the time the e-mail is received in my mail box, not when I see it.

-Erik

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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2388
Registered: 05-29-2003
IP: Logged

Okay, that's the end of the sign-up jackpot. Competition time!

After the 'Revelation' segment, I'll start the second phase of my devious machinations. Whee!

Matt

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What do you call an elephant at the North Pole?

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

Stickied this because no one will be responding, only e-mailing. Sorry it took so long to think of that!

Game on,

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

Dali,

ErikH2000 wrote:
During the period of Revelations, no participant shall be allowed to speak of the following matters in public or private:
* his progress in the contest--particularly, if he submitted a guess or made a discovery.
* any form of hints or clues.
* how hard or easy the participant judges the contest to be.

Please e-mail erikh@caravelgames.com (I think that is the address you should use) with your questions, we don't want you to be disqualified.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Hey oneiromancer, how did you get these 13 points in this small reply? sometimes i fight to get just one point, and others 13 in 1 reply!! It's crazy.

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

Schik and I were boggling over that the other night. I guess people were really happy to have it stickied!

It's likely some other mod (probably Erik) gave me most of the points, but since we can only see the last person to mod a post, and that last person wasn't a mod, obviously other people wanted to join in the fun. Us mods giving points to each other is mostly for fun...we already have infinite points anyway so we don't need the extra ones.

But I'll spread the love, so have some extra points.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

RoboBob3000
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1980
Registered: 10-23-2003
IP: Logged

SIGNUP JACKPOT GET!!

Ring a bell?

Also, has anybody else noticed the recent devaluation of mod points? They're just flying off the shelves now.

[Edited by RoboBob3000 at Local Time:04-21-2005 at 06:17 PM]

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http://beepsandbloops.wordpress.com/

wackhead_uk
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 352
Registered: 06-21-2004
IP: Logged

Rank point lucky for winner very!

[Edited by wackhead_uk at Local Time:04-21-2005 at 06:23 PM]

stigant
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1182
Registered: 08-19-2004
IP: Logged

Also, has anybody else noticed the recent devaluation of mod points? They're just flying off the shelves now

Well, since the mods have infinite mod points, the economic rank point system is open and hence must be subject to runaway inflation. Don't worry, the rank-point-market crash is coming soon. We'll be plunged into a 10-12 year period of rank-point depression followed by a rank-point boom when we declare war against Germ... I mean, uh, declare war against um, some other puzzle game community. After we win the war, we will experience a large baby-member boom (who will be refered to as DROD-boomers) followed by the innevitable cycle of free-rank-point-love experimentation, gimme-rank-point hording, and finally dot-rank-point revolution. And finally, we'll start the whole thing over again at the beginning of the next century.

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Progress Quest Progress

gamer_extreme_101
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1939
Registered: 03-07-2004
IP: Logged

I'll blame the fact that my socks are white.

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--That guy with a million different aliases since he doesn't like this name anymore.

Tim
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1979
Registered: 08-07-2004
IP: Logged

Yeah, and I blame the birthday boy.

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The best way to lose customers is to let little kids running loose on a forum with too many mod points.

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

No more guesses. The Reckoning has begun!

I had previously asked for everyone who had committed to the contest to give some account of their struggle. The purpose of this was really just so I had some objective way to determine participating in the contest. But I think with so many people committing, this could become boring and cumbersome.

Here are my new standards for participation. If you Committed and submitted a guess to me then that counts as participation. If you Committed but did not submit a guess, then you can describe here in public with your forum peers standing as witnesses, what exactly you did during the contest. If you didn't make some small effort to come up with a guess then we can't say you participated. But if you tried for at least a few minutes to come up with something and can describe the effort, then you get participation credit (8 participations earns an automatic prize).

Also, I think I'll wait a bit to say what the correct answer was. You guys can talk about whatever you like in the meantime, including the obvious topic: what was the correct answer.

I made a false statement earlier to keep the contest going and some people caught it. At least one person was disappointed, and I am sorry that it had that effect. I'll post again later with an explanation.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Chalks
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 267
Registered: 04-17-2005
IP: Logged

NOOOO! I've been waiting all day long to here the answer!!! I have a guess (and submitted it), but I don't like it...

grrr...

Phweengee
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 66
Registered: 03-02-2004
IP: Logged

I think I was to blame for forcing you to make the false statement. And if that's the case, you have my apologies

So, I got pretty much nothing. Had all the sounds worked out, and a few possible words, but in general, I couldn't figure out any trick to arrange them into a message or anything. Was quite frustrating.

____________________________
-Phweengee

silver
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 915
Registered: 01-18-2005
IP: Logged

check your weblogs if you still have them, but I was repeatedly studying the chalkboard and the wormspeaker before even the first clue was revealed because I "knew" the secret had to do with decoding the title screen.

it was just obvious to me, because you said "like Games magazine puzzles" and "can be done in the demo"...

but try as I might, I couldn't fill in the missing runes and read the stuff around the title screen. I translated the ones that were there, but couldn't think of words to fill them out.

I got:
top: . - Ih - O . - 0 - . -
left: - Ih - R - Th - S
right: St - K - S - R -
bottom: - M - N - Eh - . - Uh - .

the K on the righthand side may have a teeny extra line, but I could find no previous examples of that in any other Sihmpuhl Englihsh writings, and couldn't figure out what it would signify.

because of the language construction (compression of consonants and vowels) I know which -s are consonants (or groups) and which are vowels. I figured the longest words were my best shot, but couldn't fit anything.

I was hoping one of the clues would give some tidbit about the content of the puzzle to nudge me in the right direction, but they all just said what was obvious to me before it even started. lame.


[Edited by silver at Local Time:04-25-2005 at 04:09 AM]

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TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1377
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

Well, I had to wait until a few days ago to actually receive the CD, and playing the game took up more of my time than trying to decipher the code, so I didn't end up submitting a guess or trying too hard on it. I really didn't work out anything at all, but I'll just tell you my only thoughts on the matter.

I'll put stuff in secret just to save some space

Abbyzzmal
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 348
Registered: 07-03-2004
IP: Logged

I realized a few days after I sent in my guess that I mixed up the ways vowels work. Although they do work in the more logical way. I misread the post in the topic where Sihmpuhl English is explained, and I never got around to correcting my letter scramble, which is the only direction I knew to take the puzzle.

I wonder if that was the right direction. . .

I made a false statement earlier to keep the contest going and some people caught it. At least one person was disappointed, and I am sorry that it had that effect. I'll post again later with an explanation.

I remember that false statement, and without it, none of the clues would have been necessary, at least in my case. Where else would there have been a puzzle? I await your explanation.

Chalks
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 267
Registered: 04-17-2005
IP: Logged

so...is anyone going to post what guesses they made??? cause I'm verrrry curious.

silver wrote:
the K on the righthand side may have a teeny extra line, but I could find no previous examples of that in any other Sihmpuhl Englihsh writings, and couldn't figure out what it would signify.

I'm not sure though.

edit: response to silver (rather than make a whole new post).

[Edited by Chalks at Local Time:04-25-2005 at 04:26 AM]

bibelot
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 322
Registered: 07-11-2003
IP: Logged

It took me until clue three to remember that someone had asked about those characters on the border of the title screen, but after that it only took me about an hour to read up on Sihmpuhl English and decipher them. (I also noticed that one of the cities on the map is named Pickensass, but on the Master Map of the Eighth on drod.net it seems to be called Fickensass.)

Here's how I arrived at my guess.

silver
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 915
Registered: 01-18-2005
IP: Logged

I have, in fact, "K, (Kh?)" written on my notes from last week, yes. but all his other Hs curve more and inconsistency is hardly the sign of "simplification"


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schep
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 865
Registered: 03-01-2005
IP: Logged

I believe I got it.

I didn't even start with the border until the fifth clue, because I had already made an attempt at figuring it out, and decided the clumping of vowels and consonant clusters were too unfortunate to work out to anything. At that point, I assumed they were either meant to be legible with modest work (a la LoTR title pages) or just random. Then of course Erik posted his misdirection and the border slipped entirely out of my mind.

Since I know most of you want to work it out after a few hints like any good puzzle, my struggles with ordering the symbols appear as progressive hints.

After a bit more work, I submitted the most sensible thing I could come up with:

Chalks
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 267
Registered: 04-17-2005
IP: Logged

Bibelot...I think you've got it.

I came up with

schep
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 865
Registered: 03-01-2005
IP: Logged

Aha, bibelot beat me to both the contest and the posting. Use either set of hints as you like, I guess.

I also noticed the Fickensass/Pickensass thing, and actually submitted it as an earlier guess. I suspect it may have been changed to keep things sounding cleaner to our German-speaking friends. But since google revealed no old posts about the issue, it seemed potentially relevant.

silver
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 915
Registered: 01-18-2005
IP: Logged

well, foo. two people got that, it must be right, but I'm unhappy with that because in previous writings, "." ends a sentence and blanks appear between words

I would have never gotten it because that sentence sounds "wrong" grammatically to me no matter how many times I repeat it or compare it to similar sentences in the language.


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bibelot
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 322
Registered: 07-11-2003
IP: Logged

schep wrote:
I suspect it may have been changed to keep things sounding cleaner to our German-speaking friends.

Ah yes, now that you say that I remember that it actually came up during testing. I guess I forgot about it because I don't speak German.

Farren
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 26
Registered: 01-17-2005
IP: Logged

I ended up fixating on the the fact that "Roach" could be made out of the letters on the border, and ended up coming up with something like "The mess is Roast Roach Inn" ... conveniently forgetting that Beethro's restaurant was the Roasted Roach *Grill*.

On the plus side, I noticed the letters before the third clue had been released ... although I was debating until then whether or not the letters were the secret or the "Sekrit R." that appeared on the map as it scrolled around. For all the good it did me, as I seriously doubt that that's the answer.

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3303
Registered: 07-05-2004
IP: Logged

I tried to play with the border stones around after clue 3 but I didn't get any sense in the message. I also did some random things such as using the search feature to check suspicious words in the source code

I sent the Fickensass -> Pickensass thing as my final answer.

Stefan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2119
Registered: 05-25-2004
IP: Logged

My first guess was that the secret had to do with the border stones, but since Erik had said that they didn't mean anything, I discarded that possibility until the fifth clue was revealed. Before that, I was pretty sure that the secret was "Orthton" (three points goes to the first person to figure out why).

My final guess was "No roaches must read this.", although I can't remember where I got the D from...

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0.099³

Maurog
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1501
Registered: 09-16-2004
IP: Logged

I remember trying to figure out the pattern. I took a totally wrong approach though, discarding the "skip 3 letters" and "skip 4 letters" rules as impossible because the number of tiles was 20. My first and final guess was that the secret is a ship. You know, the one that is drawn on the map. It was before the last two clues I think.

____________________________
Slay the living! Raise the dead!
Paint the sky in crimson red!

jdyer
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 331
Registered: 03-19-2003
IP: Logged

I knew where the secret was after clue #3, but no luck whatsoever, grrrrr.

I guessed the "special" S might be the starting point, because it was sort of like a compass, although once I got stuck I tried rotating from every position.

I tried all the usual ROT and Vingere methods. I tried presuming the blank spots were spaces in words and they needed to be filled in. I tried mouthing out the letters phoentically. I tried making wild guesses as to what the message was and working backwards. I tried guessing the letters were "mutant" versions of normal letters and imagined what else they could be. I tried random throws of the I Ching. I tried asking my cat.

It kinda went down from there.