Monday, March 27, 2017
Let's Read I/O now hosted on my blog
Due to a change in policy at Let's Play Sanctuary, I had to move my forum posts. I am now hosting them in blog pages.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Analyzing the transference phenomenon in Remember11
Now that fellow Let's Player Shook50 is finishing the second route of the visual novel Remember11: The Age of Infinity, I thought I would do an analysis of the main gimmick of this story, namely the transference phenomenon, to help with understanding it.
Spoiler warning: If you haven't read this story, and think you might want to, I advise you not to read this, as it is a major spoiler that assumes you have read up to at least the end of Satoru's route!
This is the normal state of affairs. The arrows in the inner loop represent the way in which the areas will be moved when a transfer happens. Note that there is no geographical significance here (the areas are in fact lined up along a single longitudinal meridian, though at different altitudes).
I have also noted the relation between the six entangled people and their bodies. Their bodies are shown inside the inner loop, because those are carried along in the transfer. However, their minds (written simply as their names) are between the inner and outer loops, even though their bodies are within the areas rather than the surrounding space; in fact, if anyone is outside the circle when a transfer occurs, the personality transfer is broken and any "partnered" minds are then carried along with the bodies they are in. I will explain my reason for writing them that way later on.
Now let us see what happens in a transfer:
The locations of the areas have been rotated. Now SPHIA is at Akakura, the shelter cabin in Hotarubi, and the Third Area on Aosagi. The six entangled minds stay at their locations and enter their partnered bodies.
Incidentally, looked at from the perspective inside one of these areas, it appears as though everything else outside the circle has changed, in an opposite sense to what one would observe from the outside. This is represented by the dashed arrows forming the outer loop.
And there's the situation after another transfer. A third transfer puts everything and everyone back where they were, assuming no one left the circles.
At this point, Yomogi Seiji, one of the refugees at the shelter cabin, has through some unfortunate misunderstandings wandered out of the circle and been left behind on the snowy mountain. At a parallel time, Satoru has left the Aosagi circle in order to attempt a rescue of those refugees. It's also worth noting that, for reasons I will explain shortly, α and β must have been moved out of the Third Area. Thus, all entanglements are broken.
In the above diagram, I have written the names of all of the characters where I believe they are at any given time. Yuni, of course, is present in two places and times; the older one I wrote as Yuni′ ("Yuni prime"), borrowing from mathematical practice. Those inside the inner loop are within their respective circle. Those outside the outer loop are outside their respective circle.
And now you may see why I put the minds between the loops before: because they were in a special "in-between" state, spatially inside the circle, but bound to the surrounding location.
One transfer has taken place. The Third Area is now at Aosagi. I glossed over it in the diagrams, but of course Satoru enters the Third Area for half an hour. At this point, choosing to open the door to the white room, or having failed to properly deduce the nature of the transfer, leads to Satoru getting stuck and then killed—a bad ending. But in the good ending, he leaves again before the next transfer.
This also demonstrates why one can deduce at this point that α and β have gone away between this transfer and the previous one. If they were still there, Satoru should have seen them when he entered the circle, but he didn't. On the other hand, if they had left sooner, they would have broken the personality transfer.
Unfortunately, in his haste to get out of SPHIA, Satoru got his ID card stuck in the reader at the gate and had to leave it behind, resulting in the gate being left open. For various reasons, everyone left in SPHIA discovers this and walks out, right into the blizzard on Mount Akakura.
Another transfer, and...
...the remaining refugees leave the circle and meet Satoru. After learning of Yomogi's predicament, Satoru tries to go to the cabin in order to reach him. However...
...it's not meant to be. Before he reaches the boundary, the cycle completes itself...
...and Kokoro follows him into SPHIA. Yuni keeps Mayuzumi on the beach. (I can just imagine how much "fun" he must have, with only her to keep him company for a while. And why did she cooperate, after being such a nuisance up to that point? Maybe it was exhaustion.)
Skip forward a while, and Satoru has brought Kokoro up to speed on events. They then decide to go outside, and...
...a transfer occurs at just that moment. Both are carried to Akakura, where they...
...immediately set out to find the others in order to guide them back to SPHIA.
Meanwhile, the cycle completes. As the party is on its way back...
...Yuni enters the circle...
...and is carried away by another transfer.
The rest go to SPHIA, which has appeared in front of them.
Finally, the last cycle finishes, with the party ending up on Aosagi island in 2012.
You see, Satoru was conveniently forgetting one of the basic rules of the personality transfer he had learned: each mind is bound to its respective location, e.g. Satoru on Aosagi, Kokoro on Akakura, and α in Hotarubi. They cannot leave those places unless the entanglement is broken.
Thus there are only two possibilities: either Hotori's body somehow survived at least through that last transfer before the rescue, in which case Keiko's mind must still be at Aosagi, or Hotori's body died earlier, in which case Keiko should have died as well (the same thing is seen to happen to Kokoro when Satoru dies). Since Keiko seems to be alive and well even on the 17th, we can eliminate the second possibility. As far-fetched as it seems, we must conclude that Hotori's body tenaciously clung to life for days. Besides, we saw it move, even if Kokoro and Satoru failed to notice.
Is it possible the two made one last personality transfer in the above sequence, contrary to what I diagrammed? No, because β was already out of the picture. The only conclusion I can make is that Keiko was in her own body in the end.
Spoiler warning: If you haven't read this story, and think you might want to, I advise you not to read this, as it is a major spoiler that assumes you have read up to at least the end of Satoru's route!
Background
Before getting into the analysis, let's review the basic facts:- There are three locations, each in a different time period: Mount Akakura, January 11–17, 2011; Hotarubi Mine in southwest Hokkaido (aka the Third Location), July 12–18, 2011; and Aosagi island several miles west of Rebun Island off the northwest coast of Hokkaido, January 11–17, 2012. (The first one actually exists; the other two are fictional, although the coordinates given for the second location are actually on Hokkaido.)
- Within each location, there is an "area", namely a sphere of radius 110 meters (also called "the circle"), which is involved in the transfer: an emergency shelter cabin on Akakura, a "Third Area" in Hotarubi Mine, and a mental facility called "SPHIA" on Aosagi island.
- At semi-random times, all of the matter comprising each of the three areas is transferred into the space occupied by one of the other areas, in such a way as to make seamless replacements within all of the locations. This happens at parallel points in time. For instance, the transfers in one location happen exactly one year after those of another, and a third location has transfers exactly between the other two in time. The areas are always permuted in the same way: whatever is at Akakura is moved into Hotarubi, whatever is in Hotarubi is moved into Aosagi, and whatever is in Aosagi is moved into Akakura.
- 33 minutes after each semi-random transfer, another transfer takes place, in the same "direction" as the first. And then another 33 minutes later, yet another transfer occurs, so as to return the areas to their proper locations/times.
- Normally, anyone within one of these areas is carried along with it during a transfer, so they end up in another time and location.
- However, there are two groups of three people who have a strange quantum-like entanglement with each other, such that their minds stay attached to their respective locations, and they trade bodies (the "personality transfer"). These groups are: Yukidoh Satoru on Aosagi Island, Fuyukawa Kokoro on Akakura, and α (aka the Third Personality) in Hotarubi Mine; Inubushi Keiko on Aosagi Island, Suzukage Hotori on Akakura, and another third personality that will be known as β in Hotarubi Mine.
Visualizing
With the above information, let's diagram what's happening:I have also noted the relation between the six entangled people and their bodies. Their bodies are shown inside the inner loop, because those are carried along in the transfer. However, their minds (written simply as their names) are between the inner and outer loops, even though their bodies are within the areas rather than the surrounding space; in fact, if anyone is outside the circle when a transfer occurs, the personality transfer is broken and any "partnered" minds are then carried along with the bodies they are in. I will explain my reason for writing them that way later on.
Now let us see what happens in a transfer:
Incidentally, looked at from the perspective inside one of these areas, it appears as though everything else outside the circle has changed, in an opposite sense to what one would observe from the outside. This is represented by the dashed arrows forming the outer loop.
A rescue across time and space
Of course, people do leave the circle at various points of the story. The first time is during a long gap between transfer cycles, but the people involved return before anything strange can happen. However, the next time it is specifically to take advantage of the transfers.At this point, Yomogi Seiji, one of the refugees at the shelter cabin, has through some unfortunate misunderstandings wandered out of the circle and been left behind on the snowy mountain. At a parallel time, Satoru has left the Aosagi circle in order to attempt a rescue of those refugees. It's also worth noting that, for reasons I will explain shortly, α and β must have been moved out of the Third Area. Thus, all entanglements are broken.
In the above diagram, I have written the names of all of the characters where I believe they are at any given time. Yuni, of course, is present in two places and times; the older one I wrote as Yuni′ ("Yuni prime"), borrowing from mathematical practice. Those inside the inner loop are within their respective circle. Those outside the outer loop are outside their respective circle.
And now you may see why I put the minds between the loops before: because they were in a special "in-between" state, spatially inside the circle, but bound to the surrounding location.
This also demonstrates why one can deduce at this point that α and β have gone away between this transfer and the previous one. If they were still there, Satoru should have seen them when he entered the circle, but he didn't. On the other hand, if they had left sooner, they would have broken the personality transfer.
Skip forward a while, and Satoru has brought Kokoro up to speed on events. They then decide to go outside, and...
...immediately set out to find the others in order to guide them back to SPHIA.
Keiko and Hotori
At the end of Satoru's route, he theorizes that, after switching bodies with her for several days, Keiko finally "settled" in Hotori's body, where she died of exposure on Mount Akakura. However, Kokoro feels that there is something wrong with this theory, and I have to agree.You see, Satoru was conveniently forgetting one of the basic rules of the personality transfer he had learned: each mind is bound to its respective location, e.g. Satoru on Aosagi, Kokoro on Akakura, and α in Hotarubi. They cannot leave those places unless the entanglement is broken.
Thus there are only two possibilities: either Hotori's body somehow survived at least through that last transfer before the rescue, in which case Keiko's mind must still be at Aosagi, or Hotori's body died earlier, in which case Keiko should have died as well (the same thing is seen to happen to Kokoro when Satoru dies). Since Keiko seems to be alive and well even on the 17th, we can eliminate the second possibility. As far-fetched as it seems, we must conclude that Hotori's body tenaciously clung to life for days. Besides, we saw it move, even if Kokoro and Satoru failed to notice.
Is it possible the two made one last personality transfer in the above sequence, contrary to what I diagrammed? No, because β was already out of the picture. The only conclusion I can make is that Keiko was in her own body in the end.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
YouTube comments have joined the 21st century!
Well, lookie what YouTube has thought up:
Let's see...
Okay, in all seriousness, though, maybe at least the discussion threads will have a halfway decent format. (But I can only hope for halfway.)
- "Smarter sorting". Heh, that's okay. Who cares about chronological order anyway? Right?
- "New threaded format". Whoa! What is this voodoo? My mind is blown! Suddenly, YouTube comments will have something which virtually every online discussion system has had since the beginning of time! (Including YouTube comments themselves, at one time.)
- "Comments appear from both YouTube and Google+." Greeeaat. Just what I've always wanted. I loved it when Google all but forced me to throw away the channel name I really liked in favor of my actual name, taken from Google+. I'll love it even more seeing out-of-context snippets of comments from somewhere I don't care about that much.
Okay, in all seriousness, though, maybe at least the discussion threads will have a halfway decent format. (But I can only hope for halfway.)
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Uh, yeah, this makes sense
Just a rather amusing thing I found in my YouTube Analytics.
Yeah, that scale makes total sense.
Yeah, that scale makes total sense.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Thoughts on Azrael's Tear
Well, it's been a while since I've posted on this blog, hasn't it? I'm coming back to post about the latest game I'm LPing, blind this time (in the unlikely event you're reading this without already knowing that fact).
It centers around the search for the Holy Grail. But in this story, it's the future (well, the date given at the start of the game is in 2012, so it's no longer the future at the time I write this). For some unexplained reason, tectonic activity has increased dramatically over the last few years and, conveniently for archeologists, has resulted in numerous previously-buried sites being uncovered.
Also, a new type of tomb robber with high-tech equipment has emerged, known as Raptors (which, we're told, is "thief" in Latin; well, actually "one who seizes" according to the etymology given, but "thief" works too). Chief among their equipment is the MS-2 HUD helmet that has a number of support features, including scanning, mapping, and "twelve gigabytes of library information". The helmet is able to identify the composition and structure of things you run across and makes remarkably good guesses about the operation and purpose of a lot of them. Raptors also carry the MS-7 Sniper gun. We play as one of these Raptors.
One day, we get a letter from another Raptor, something that doesn't happen very often as Raptors are not very friendly with each other to say the least. The writer, Colin Scott, says he has found the Holy Grail, but that he seems to have gotten in too deep (the letter was to be delivered in the event of his disappearance). He includes a "last testament" supposedly written by a Sir Guy of Bramley, a Templar knight and one of the twelve chosen to guard the Grail, who lived a whopping 600 years thanks to something called "Grailstone". Colin makes an offer of half the profit in exchange for assistance, and this is where the game begins (all of the above is summarized from documents enclosed with the CD).
Maybe I was just blind in those last three cases. Of course, the cursor does have a context-sensitive appearance, so if I'd happened to move it over those items, it would have become obvious without me having to spot them. Still, I don't feel that's the way things should go.
On a minor note, this game came out around the same time as Quake, which both looks better and, I think, ran better on contemporary hardware. I wonder what would have happened if Intelligent Games had talked to Id. Well, just an idle fantasy. :-)
The controls are not too bad, though they do take some getting used to. For moving around, one can use the keyboard — up and down to move forward and back, left and right to turn, < and > to move sideways, and Page Up and Page Down to look up and down — and/or the mouse. But the way the mouse is set up is strange: Just moving it moves a cursor, which can be clicked on buttons and objects in the world with the left button. If you want to turn, you have to hold down the right button and move the mouse. Up and down is also the opposite of what you'd expect — up looks down, and down looks up — and you have to press F10 to switch to the more intuitive mode. Walking forward is accomplished by pressing the left button while the right button is held; you can move forward this way but not backward, so it's a good idea to keep one's other hand near the arrow keys.
The music, composed by Kerry Minnear, is where this game really shines. Here are a couple of examples as heard from a Roland SC-55mkII Sound Canvas:
Even on the lowly Sound Blaster, it sounds pretty good:
Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to sound very good on an MT-32, one of the other premium sound modules of the early PC era. It might have something to do with this being a bit past the MT-32's heyday. Still, there are other games with music targeted for General MIDI where the MT-32 at least sounds decent. Not in this case, though. (Or is there just something wrong with my equipment or setup? FYI, this is an actual MT-32, not an emulation.)
And that's not the worst one I've heard so far. If you want more, here is a comparison playlist.
I seem to be quite stuck (see bottom for update). It probably didn't help that I didn't do very well talking to the two people I was so far able to talk to and probably messed up one of the rooms as well. So I'm posting my thoughts here in hopes that someone can help me out. WARNING: spoilers ahead! If you haven't played the game, read on at your own risk!
First of all, I've cobbled together a map of the area I can access so far, based on the MS-2 map screens. Please forgive the roughness; I didn't want to bother too much with cleaning them up, and things don't fit together very well, probably because the map sections are given at arbitrary scales. I drew extra white lines to connect things where necessary.
Going room-by-room, here are my current thoughts on puzzles and other stuff:
But anyway, there's a locked door on the east side and a large pipe that pumps water up, where a crank switches it between two more sections of pipe on the south side; you can also put it in a neutral position, not connected to either.
There's also a car on rails, with its own grabbing claw, facing giant double doors on the east side; it won't move unless the doors are open, and I haven't worked out how to open them yet, but it might just be from the other side.
Finally, there's a large chasm running north-south near the west side; a mutated man named Lurka was trapped on a ledge at the start, but I got him upset at me, and he seems to have escaped on his own (or maybe fallen to his death trying?).
Up on a platform on the north side of the south half is a platform with four panels. One panel contains a section of tapestry; the others are blank. Two of the missing sections are right there on the platform (but good luck spotting them, as noted before); the other is far away. The panel that already had a piece of tapestry can be flipped over to reveal a riddle: "The eyes of Baphomet / watch over all / Beyond the murk / of stagnancy / His face lies / crystal clear". (Watch my LP for a little about Baphomet; or read Wikipedia for more info.) This is a hint about the fonts and the prism, since the water in the fonts is extremely stagnant.
The south font has a stone carving of a bible with a slot in it. Put the prism in that slot, and the font rises up about a foot. Stand on a conspicuous spot on the south side (pressure-sensitive, as the HUD reveals) and look into the prism to see a stone head and hear the voice of a man warning about what lies ahead; a mostly-hidden door in the southwest corner then opens to reveal a shield with the words "The way forward lies in prayer. Follow the path of the cross" written on it. The only crosses I've seen so far in this allegedly Christian place are in the tapestry, so I haven't figured out what this means.
In another corner is a sort of control panel with sections of pipe that can be pulled out, turned, and moved up and down, connecting one of three ports on either side to two of five ports down the center. One arrangement drains the south basin in the chapel, while another fills it.
According to the mapping function, there is an exit to the south, but so far I haven't been able to get through, due to there being a wood panel in the way. The scanner says it and the one on the west are screens. What kind of screens? For projecting images? Although they seem too darkly colored for that.
Stepping on a particular part of the floor causes a door that was suspended over the north exit to fall, sealing off that exit. Escape is still possible, by falling down the hole in front of the east door, but getting back in is a problem I have yet to solve. Thus, I can't explore the room anymore for now, and I can't try the block key.
There's also the other piece of the tapestry and a locked chest, which the well key fits. Inside is an amulet with the name Oisin on it. Next to the chest are some human bones that show evidence of the person having been eaten (!) as well as an elephant gun.
Finally, there's an opening into the side of the chasm that divides the working area as well as a ramp leading up to the main level (which can only be lowered from below, oddly enough, with a rope). Near the ramp is a door leading to the floor on the west side of the working area, but there's only another stone block there, so it doesn't seem useful.
Closely related to these three is Lurka, who claims to have been one of the slaves that helped build the temple. He's been pretty severely mutated. Apparently, the lizard is severely mutated as well. This seems pretty bad.
Incidentally, if this Malik stole all the Grailstone, why are Lurka and that lizard still alive when Sir Guy died without it? Did they keep shares, or is something else going on?
I don't know what to do with any of them.
At this point, I seem to be stuck. I spent over an hour recording two sessions where I wandered around, trying different items and messing with puzzles, but made absolutely no progress other than discovering how to fill the basin in the chapel. Help?!
EDIT: Got unstuck with iqzulk's help. Thanks.
About the game
That game is an obscure 3D adventure game called Azrael's Tear.
It centers around the search for the Holy Grail. But in this story, it's the future (well, the date given at the start of the game is in 2012, so it's no longer the future at the time I write this). For some unexplained reason, tectonic activity has increased dramatically over the last few years and, conveniently for archeologists, has resulted in numerous previously-buried sites being uncovered.
Also, a new type of tomb robber with high-tech equipment has emerged, known as Raptors (which, we're told, is "thief" in Latin; well, actually "one who seizes" according to the etymology given, but "thief" works too). Chief among their equipment is the MS-2 HUD helmet that has a number of support features, including scanning, mapping, and "twelve gigabytes of library information". The helmet is able to identify the composition and structure of things you run across and makes remarkably good guesses about the operation and purpose of a lot of them. Raptors also carry the MS-7 Sniper gun. We play as one of these Raptors.
One day, we get a letter from another Raptor, something that doesn't happen very often as Raptors are not very friendly with each other to say the least. The writer, Colin Scott, says he has found the Holy Grail, but that he seems to have gotten in too deep (the letter was to be delivered in the event of his disappearance). He includes a "last testament" supposedly written by a Sir Guy of Bramley, a Templar knight and one of the twelve chosen to guard the Grail, who lived a whopping 600 years thanks to something called "Grailstone". Colin makes an offer of half the profit in exchange for assistance, and this is where the game begins (all of the above is summarized from documents enclosed with the CD).
A sort-of review
I don't think I've gotten very far in the game yet, so this isn't really intended as a review. But I'll say a few things based on my experience so far. First, I have mixed feelings about the graphics. On the one hand, it was no doubt revolutionary to have a game in full real-time 3D graphics. It does enhance things in a sense, and some puzzles seem to at least involve 3D thinking. On the other hand, it was still a bit primitive in 1996, and even sometimes looks weird or is just plain difficult to interpret. Some examples: |
| That's water?? |
 |
| Legibility problem! |
 |
| "Baphomst"?? |
 |
| Can you spot what's takeable here? |
 |
| What about here? |
 |
| And here? |
On a minor note, this game came out around the same time as Quake, which both looks better and, I think, ran better on contemporary hardware. I wonder what would have happened if Intelligent Games had talked to Id. Well, just an idle fantasy. :-)
The controls are not too bad, though they do take some getting used to. For moving around, one can use the keyboard — up and down to move forward and back, left and right to turn, < and > to move sideways, and Page Up and Page Down to look up and down — and/or the mouse. But the way the mouse is set up is strange: Just moving it moves a cursor, which can be clicked on buttons and objects in the world with the left button. If you want to turn, you have to hold down the right button and move the mouse. Up and down is also the opposite of what you'd expect — up looks down, and down looks up — and you have to press F10 to switch to the more intuitive mode. Walking forward is accomplished by pressing the left button while the right button is held; you can move forward this way but not backward, so it's a good idea to keep one's other hand near the arrow keys.
The music, composed by Kerry Minnear, is where this game really shines. Here are a couple of examples as heard from a Roland SC-55mkII Sound Canvas:
Even on the lowly Sound Blaster, it sounds pretty good:
Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to sound very good on an MT-32, one of the other premium sound modules of the early PC era. It might have something to do with this being a bit past the MT-32's heyday. Still, there are other games with music targeted for General MIDI where the MT-32 at least sounds decent. Not in this case, though. (Or is there just something wrong with my equipment or setup? FYI, this is an actual MT-32, not an emulation.)
And that's not the worst one I've heard so far. If you want more, here is a comparison playlist.
Puzzle thoughts (and speculations)
Well, as of session 4,First of all, I've cobbled together a map of the area I can access so far, based on the MS-2 map screens. Please forgive the roughness; I didn't want to bother too much with cleaning them up, and things don't fit together very well, probably because the map sections are given at arbitrary scales. I drew extra white lines to connect things where necessary.
Going room-by-room, here are my current thoughts on puzzles and other stuff:
"Spa"
Name given by the HUD. Well, I guess the "spa" is really just a water tank. It's certainly too hot for bathing, let alone swimming. Falling in is instant death.But anyway, there's a locked door on the east side and a large pipe that pumps water up, where a crank switches it between two more sections of pipe on the south side; you can also put it in a neutral position, not connected to either.
Working area
The water from the tank powers two machines in the working area, up on an inaccessible platform on the north side. One is a saw, and one is a crusher. There's also a crane with a large grabbing claw in the working area, which is used to pick up stone blocks from the floor and load them into the machines. One of the blocks (identifiable by large cracks) contains a key that can be extracted with the saw.There's also a car on rails, with its own grabbing claw, facing giant double doors on the east side; it won't move unless the doors are open, and I haven't worked out how to open them yet, but it might just be from the other side.
Finally, there's a large chasm running north-south near the west side; a mutated man named Lurka was trapped on a ledge at the start, but I got him upset at me, and he seems to have escaped on his own (or maybe fallen to his death trying?).
Chapel
That's my name for it, anyway. It does seem to be related to worship, as there are fonts and basins large enough for a person to submerge in (baptismals, according to the HUD). The room is divided into north and south halves by a wall with three large (very broken) mirrors or windows; I'm not sure which, because the two sides are almost mirror images, so it seems like it was intended as a trick of some kind. Now, though, one can simply walk through one of them. The basin in the south side can be drained (see below about the well) to reveal a glass prism.Up on a platform on the north side of the south half is a platform with four panels. One panel contains a section of tapestry; the others are blank. Two of the missing sections are right there on the platform (but good luck spotting them, as noted before); the other is far away. The panel that already had a piece of tapestry can be flipped over to reveal a riddle: "The eyes of Baphomet / watch over all / Beyond the murk / of stagnancy / His face lies / crystal clear". (Watch my LP for a little about Baphomet; or read Wikipedia for more info.) This is a hint about the fonts and the prism, since the water in the fonts is extremely stagnant.
The south font has a stone carving of a bible with a slot in it. Put the prism in that slot, and the font rises up about a foot. Stand on a conspicuous spot on the south side (pressure-sensitive, as the HUD reveals) and look into the prism to see a stone head and hear the voice of a man warning about what lies ahead; a mostly-hidden door in the southwest corner then opens to reveal a shield with the words "The way forward lies in prayer. Follow the path of the cross" written on it. The only crosses I've seen so far in this allegedly Christian place are in the tapestry, so I haven't figured out what this means.
Well
This room has a well with hot water and a 400-year-old corpse. (Remarkably well preserved, isn't it? There might be a reason for that, which I'll cover later.) Next to the corpse is another key. When one first approaches the well, a ghost appears, calling out for someone named Oisin (pronounced "oh-SHEEN"), which is apparently the aforementioned corpse. :-(In another corner is a sort of control panel with sections of pipe that can be pulled out, turned, and moved up and down, connecting one of three ports on either side to two of five ports down the center. One arrangement drains the south basin in the chapel, while another fills it.
Orrery
This is a mechanical model of the solar system. (Heliocentrism in the 15th century? Interesting.) It appears to be in disarray, and the MS-2 says it has collapsed, though I'm not so sure it's not supposed to be like this at first. On one of the eight sides of the room is a puzzle with nested rings where the object is to get a sun symbol into the center. The puzzle then forms a vertical lemniscate surrounded by two concentric rings, which might be an infinity symbol. The central axis of the orrery also rises, aligning with something high up on the ceiling, which I can't see very well because of the interface limitations. (Who thought it was a good idea to only be able to look up and down 60 degrees?)According to the mapping function, there is an exit to the south, but so far I haven't been able to get through, due to there being a wood panel in the way. The scanner says it and the one on the west are screens. What kind of screens? For projecting images? Although they seem too darkly colored for that.
Cage
There was initially a cage in the center, with some sort of mutant lizard thing living inside. The cage consists of bars, with a pillar on each of four sides. Penscan says there is metal machinery inside the pillars, and turning a lever on one side causes the bars to fall in, killing the lizard. Curiously, the scanner says there are faint life signs detected. (Again, see below for speculation on that.)?
This room is apparently unfinished. The floor is unstable, and indeed, stepping on the bit in front of the east door causes it to collapse. (This is the only way I know of to get into the tunnels, covered below.) Algae cover a plaque next to that door, rendering it unreadable. Turning the large mirror in the southwest corner causes light to shine on the algae, which kills them but also releases a poisonous gas temporarily. Once the plaque is readable, it turns out to bear an inscription of a cracked cube with a key in front of it, as well as a keyhole. This is probably where the key from the stone block fits. However...Stepping on a particular part of the floor causes a door that was suspended over the north exit to fall, sealing off that exit. Escape is still possible, by falling down the hole in front of the east door, but getting back in is a problem I have yet to solve. Thus, I can't explore the room anymore for now, and I can't try the block key.
Tunnels
Probably from mining. Another Raptor known as Lincoln (is that a first or last name?) is encountered here. As the HUD says, very violent. There's no talking to this guy; he'll just shoot if you get too close. I ended up killing him in self-defense, though I wonder if it's possible to get around him without a confrontation. But on the other hand, one can get extra bullets from his Sniper. As with the lizard, the scanner shows "faint life signs". Again, see below for speculation.There's also the other piece of the tapestry and a locked chest, which the well key fits. Inside is an amulet with the name Oisin on it. Next to the chest are some human bones that show evidence of the person having been eaten (!) as well as an elephant gun.
Finally, there's an opening into the side of the chasm that divides the working area as well as a ramp leading up to the main level (which can only be lowered from below, oddly enough, with a rope). Near the ramp is a door leading to the floor on the west side of the working area, but there's only another stone block there, so it doesn't seem useful.
Not quite dead?
What's going on with Oisin's corpse, the lizard, and Lincoln? Well, I'm just going to come out with my suspicion: Grailstone. I still don't know what it actually is, but it's explicitly stated to be what sustained the Templars' lives for 600 years until Malik stole it. Oisin appears to be really dead, but his corpse is remarkably well preserved for being 400 years old. Maybe he wasn't affected as much?Closely related to these three is Lurka, who claims to have been one of the slaves that helped build the temple. He's been pretty severely mutated. Apparently, the lizard is severely mutated as well. This seems pretty bad.
Incidentally, if this Malik stole all the Grailstone, why are Lurka and that lizard still alive when Sir Guy died without it? Did they keep shares, or is something else going on?
Mystery items
Among the items I'm carrying at this point in the LP are the block key (again, probably fits the lock in the unfinished room, but I have to get in there first), an elephant gun (I haven't found a beast I might need to shoot with it), the Oisin amulet (for warding or does it actually fit something?), and the shield (the fact that it's named "Shield I" suggests there will be other shields).EDIT: Got unstuck with iqzulk's help. Thanks.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
More fun with Qwest
So I had a problem with the phone line on Monday, which started during another storm. No dial tone. Strangely enough, DSL was working on the same line, albeit at abnormally low bitrates. So I could still get through to Qwest. I filed a repair ticket on their web site. A few minutes later, the problem got resolved (perhaps by itself, I'm not sure, as they didn't seem to know anything about what was happening when I contacted them as asked on the ticket status).
Along the way I ran into this interesting message on the web site. Anyone see what's wrong with this interface?
Along the way I ran into this interesting message on the web site. Anyone see what's wrong with this interface?
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Thank you, YouTube
Well, they've finally done it. YouTube has mostly eliminated time limits on user submissions. The qualification is that a user must have a history of complying with the Community Guidelines and copyright rules. I got a notice about this today.
This is great news; now I won't have to worry about staying within 15 minutes in my future episodes. Yes, I know I could always have recorded long sessions and broken them apart like some people do. But the large amount of data I deal with in creating my own videos (in order to maintain very high quality) would make that impractical, which is partly why you're not going to see 5-hour videos from me any time soon. That and the fact planning gets more involved for longer videos. But at least now I can relax and end the video when I'm ready to end it.
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