Adventure Gamers - Forums

Don’t rush to judgement. I haven’t even started yet! I am hoping I’ll find two hours to play tomorrow and will catch up.

Please everyone don’t use the waltkrough! I don’t know if you should do this in a CPT, so I think it is better to ask for help (else, what’s the point of playing together?), thus there is still time until the 26th. There is no shame for being stuck, some people stayed for a very long time in the first room without being able to open the door, and as soon as they were able to go through it, they succeeded to finish the game quite easily. So you can be “weak” on one puzzle and surprise all of us on another puzzle. If you’re stuck, leave a comment and we will try to give a tip!

@desiderio59

I thought the environmental controls were kind of confusing for a few reasons:
In the cutscenes that show what changes you made, there’s no indication that we’re looking at a different rooms. Also it’s kind of weird that the on/off switch works differently for heat and water.

The cutscenes don’t show anything on purpose: you are standing in front of the device and should not be able to see what happens in the other rooms. If you desactivate the heat in one room, you can’t possibly know where, until you walk there and realise that it worked. There is one clue in the cutscenes yet: the main color changes depending on the room it happens. In the seeds room, it’s more reddish, while in the birds room it’s more green.
I am not sure I understand what’s weird about the on/off switch. It simply validates the options you entered with the 3 other buttons.
The best way proceed might be to try all possibilities of the heat function, then try all the possibilities of the water function… and see what happens?
There will be other puzzles with more confusing controls… 

On another point:

I would like to come back on the very first puzzle of the game (opening the door of the teleport room). I assume that most of you have finished it, and was wondering if it was easy? The reason I’m asking is that in the Original Edition of ASA, a lot of people were stuck by this puzzle. It was not really because of the translation from our numbers to Anterran numbers. No, the problem was to be able to convert the code behind the poster (written in “crossed-squared”) into numbers. When I created the puzzle, I didn’t even think that counting with crossed-squares could be a challenge in itself. I believe that in France we almost all learn at school to count from 5 to 5 with this method, and I thought it was something obvious everywhere in the world. [spoiler]It would seem that most people prefer this other method which is very close to the one I used, but many failed to make the link.[/spoiler] So I was really surprised when confirmed adventurers failed to open the door during the Beta-tests in the end of 2012. I had to add a clue on a wall, where Forte counts the days with crossed-squares (“counting the days since I arrived on the Ark…”). This was not supposed to be in the game originally. Do you think you would have been able to open the door without this clue?

Also you might be curious to know how the puzzles were created/thought? I think that the most difficult is not to create one puzzle (even if it can take time to find the good ideas), but more to make all the puzzles logical as a whole. Indeed, when I started working on the game and that nothing existed at all, it was very difficult to imagine how the inside of the Ark could be organized. I knew it was kind of a flying saucer with several rooms and corridors and a central room, but how were they supposed to be related, and where should I place the puzzles? What if the final room is not integrated in a good way inside of the spaceship?
These are very difficult questions when you begin the project and still have to create everything. A method I always found useful is to work with “post-its” (you know, the small flashy papers for quick notes). When I have an idea of puzzle, I just write it on one post-it, and each idea is written on a different one. Then as soon as possible, I start to organize all of these papers on a wall and place them logically to create several paths, rooms, etc. That was fun to see the Ark become true under the form of colored papers (too bad I didn’t take a photo at that time). However that was very useful and ASA would be quite different if I had had to think of the puzzles mentally while creating the 3D…

To illustrate the method, these are my post-its for the first region of Catyph:

Simon_ASA - 19 October 2015 05:26 AM

I had to add a clue on a wall, where Forte counts the days with crossed-squares (“counting the days since I arrived on the Ark…”). This was not supposed to be in the game originally. Do you think you would have been able to open the door without this clue?

even if the puzzle could be solved without this clue i think it would have been called unfair, due to the fact that there are other numerals through this puzzles, and also i dont like to think outside the game.

Simon_ASA - 19 October 2015 05:26 AM

The best way proceed might be to try all possibilities of the heat function, then try all the possibilities of the water function… and see what happens?
There will be other puzzles with more confusing controls… 

That’s what I did: fiddle around with the controls to see what they did. When I suddenly ended up with lots of green specks flying up, I thought I’d “solved” it. Then I noticed one of the rooms now had a batch of green fireflies near a bush, and I could zoom in on one, which indicated that the environmental controls had nothing to do with opening the safe.
Am I wrong with this and did I accidentally “solve” a portion of the safe puzzle without realizing?

No, the problem was to be able to convert the code behind the poster (written in “crossed-squared”) into numbers. When I created the puzzle, I didn’t even think that counting with crossed-squares could be a challenge in itself. I believe that in France we almost all learn at school to count from 5 to 5 with this method, and I thought it was something obvious everywhere in the world. [spoiler]It would seem that most people prefer this other method which is very close to the one I used, but many failed to make the link.[/spoiler]

Interesting. I learned something about tally marking today.
I had no idea France used another method (and I live right next to the French border!)...

Do you think you would have been able to open the door without this clue?

The thing is, I noticed the clue on the wall first, so I can’t say now whether or not I would have solved it. Maybe I would have, maybe not. I’d like to think I would have solved it anyway, but I’m arrogant/boastful that way.

I did however solve it without finding the Anterran numbering clue. I basically solved it entirely with just the 1-2-3 numbers that were directly behind us when we woke up. That revealed the numpad pattern, which made this straightforward…

Finding that clue later on was kind of funny since I had already written down the exact same thing based on the numpad…

It is interesting how different brains work: (1) I thought the misty effect was caused by rain, not sun. (2)  I thought the birdy under the sun was dead, not asleep. (3) I thought the green particles were pollen. I guess I am not good at nature science! But I thought the “crossed numbers” were obvious because you just count the lines.

I would like to come back on the very first puzzle of the game (opening the door of the teleport room). I assume that most of you have finished it, and was wondering if it was easy?

Not for me. I deciphered the code. But while having scoured the corridor top to bottom and end to end, I haven’t found the actual combination. I think there is supposed to be a hotspot reveal, but I also don’t have the key code to activate that.

rtrooney - 19 October 2015 06:46 PM

I would like to come back on the very first puzzle of the game (opening the door of the teleport room). I assume that most of you have finished it, and was wondering if it was easy?

Not for me. I deciphered the code. But while having scoured the corridor top to bottom and end to end, I haven’t found the actual combination. I think there is supposed to be a hotspot reveal, but I also don’t have the key code to activate that.

There no actual hotspot key as the common Tim, but at the remastered version they are always showing without pressing any (key).
its the blue circle around objects or the red arrows for direction, those weren’t available at the original version .

hope its legible

as for the code, you need three clues from the corridor: (no direct solution)
1. you need to know for a start what is equivalent to 1,2,3 on that keypad (the puzzle).
2. you need to know from another place what equivalent (as numbers also) to those box shapes behind the poster near the keypad.
3. and last you will need to get a grip of how the order of the numerals on the keypad are going, as they seem to be in bit obscure order.

Well I did find the etching on the wall that tells you how the lines convert to numerals. And I did find the paper in the defective transporter pod that tells you what figures convert to lines and thus convert to numbers. Your last hint about the grip is eluding me.

rtrooney - 19 October 2015 10:15 PM

Well I did find the etching on the wall that tells you how the lines convert to numerals. And I did find the paper in the defective transporter pod that tells you what figures convert to lines and thus convert to numbers. Your last hint about the grip is eluding me.

(they are not in straight line and that what i meant at the 3rd hint)
did you take a good look at the walls behind the transporters? 
and did you notice the drawings next to the keypad (where the door you need to open) which are connected to the etching on the wall?

The intro was great—very mysterious. I’m still messing around with the color puzzle and I’m puttering about in the greenhouse. I like the computer voice

I have to agree, I love the introduction - drew me in with it’s mystery. The greenhouse I find amazing - I didn’t expect to find something like this here at all - a welcome surprise.

The voice acting is very solid, which is another surprise - the voice acting is very high quality for an indie game.

Now, I actually do find the puzzles to be very difficult, but I have the remastered version so I’m making it through puzzles OK so far.

Well the first puzzle to open the door can be difficult and discouraging. It happened several times that people who are good with puzzle-games stay stuck here for some reason (and the rest of the game was easier for them).

@rtrooney
You might have missed the code behind the poster near the digipad. One of the corners of this poster is unstuck and allows you to look at the back.

@Mikekelly
I think you’re doing well, you don’t seem to have that much troubles with the difficulty of the game. It is probably normal in a Myst-like game to be stuck sometimes, then make a break and think a few hours/days, and then suddenly realise what’s the right thing to do.

I’m glad you like the voice acting. I know that several people were not happy with it and thought it would have been better with an option to disable it. The AG reviewer was not a big fan either if I remember well. So it’s more a matter of tastes, but I was quite happy with the result so I don’t really care anymore.
Steven Tidwell, the voice actor, might not be a pro but he really did a great job. I’m glad it was possible to get in touch with him, I’ve been lucky. There could have been no voice at all, in fact… It came much later in the development, but originally I wanted it to be text only, a simple document written quickly by Forté.

When I needed external resources for the game, I had no miraculous way to obtain them: the game being self-funded, I was making it at home, so it was difficult to find a good voice actor for free (even if I accepted to give some money as soon as the game would sell). I have asked on the forums of Adventure Maker (that I used to create ASA at the time) if someone would be interested to work on the voice for the diary. There were several people who were interested because the AM community is quite enthusiastic, but they had strong foreign accents from Macedonia or Spain for example. I could have recorded the voice myself (I made a few tests) but it was horrible, and my Friends were not really interested in recording themselves.
Finally someone told me that he had been playing online through Steam with a microphone to a multiplayer game (which I don’t remember the name), with someone who had a calm and deep voice, very interesting. We got in touch, it was Steven, and he accepted to get involved. That was quite an adventure in itself! If you read this Steven, thanks again

@rtrooney You might have missed the code behind the poster near the digipad. One of the corners of this poster is unstuck and allows you to look at the back.

Nope! That was the second clue I found. The paper was the second and the etching was the third. I’ll figure it out sometime today if I get the time. First thing is to get the other playthrough up and running.