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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Art of the Heist » The Art of the Heist: Puzzles
[ Please - Do We Have It Now? ] The Evil Cube
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Muskie
Boot


Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 55
Location: Australia

 		If anyone would care to actually texture the hypercube with the applicable letters (a daunting task, I know)

get Gmax http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax

(You'll need to register your copy, it's like a crippled version of 3ds MAX 4)

And then Get the attatched file. Be warned, this thing's 40K polgons, so you'll need some high end 3d card-ness to view it.

Muskie
hypercube.rar
Description  The Untextured Hypercube.
 rar

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Filename  hypercube.rar 
Filesize  198.41KB 
Downloaded  167 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:40 am
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Muskie
Boot


Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 55
Location: Australia

 		Better yet, instead of Texturing each cube, why not make it easier on low-end systems and quite possibly easier to navigate by making them all single polygon textured objects that always face the camera? I'm not sure that gmax itself can do it, but someone with knowledge of Full 3ds max or perhaps a AutoCAD might be able to pull it off?

Muskie

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:53 am
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992
Muskie wrote:
Better yet, instead of Texturing each cube, why not make it easier on low-end systems and quite possibly easier to navigat by making them all single polygon extured objects that always fact the camera? I'm not sure that gmax itself can do it, but someone with knowledge of Full 3ds max or perhaps a AutoCAD might be able to pull it off?

Muskie


What you proposed still requires manual work (i.e. someone to sift through each side of the cube and look for words layer by layer)

How about this, create a 3D array of all the letters (char evilcube[20][20][20]) and then write a function to decode all the text horizontally and vertically for each layer (let's ignore diagonal for now)

You then have another function to transpose your array, basically turning it so another side is facing you. You repeat the transcrption process, and move to the another side.

Repeat for the 6 sides of the cube, and you'll have a 2,400 lines of 20 letters each. We can now easily read these and do our eyes a huge favor instead of navigating in 3D space.

so
evilcube[20][20][20]
for i = 1 to 6
{ transpose_side(i)
readletters(evilcube) }

I gotta go to work but if you think this will work I can program it later today.. My logic might be flawed since I haven't had my coffee yet Wink

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:06 am
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xnbomb
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Right light, make a right (the diagonal rule)
I've made less progress on this puzzle this evening. Rather than building a 3D view of the data (which is of very limited utility since it is almost impossible to get a good look at more than one plane of letters at a time anyhow), tonight I constructed planes along the diagonals and had a look for words in those.

I didn't find anything in the diagonals that was as interesting as the 20-character strings that were in the planes orthogonal to the original word search planes. I did find a few longish words here and there, the sort of things that seem to fit with the words drawn from Virgil's game descriptions, development jargon, and art terms that can be seen in the other planes (DEMONS, TORMENT, ALPHATEST, MASKED, CESSATION, SURREALISM, REGION, CONSUMMATION, DEATHBLOW, SAVEGAME, PATCH, BURROW, GAMEOFTHEYEAR). I am impressed that there are words in the diagonals too ... I'd love to see the code that was used to construct this cube of letters.

I'm not really sure where to go next here. I think constructing a long list of 20-character strings from all the planes and identifying all the words (at least the longish ones ... there are plenty of three-letter words by chance and maybe even some four-letter words) as Ehsan suggests seems like one way to go, but I do wonder how that leads to a solution. I'm inclined to think that AFTER SIX THE BEGINNING, SIDEWAYS START AT THREE, and OTHER DIRECTIONS EXIST are telling us what to do, but I can't figure out just what they are telling us to do ...

EDIT: Found another word, and SUMMATION was really part of CONSUMMATION
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My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:53 am
Last edited by xnbomb on Mon May 23, 2005 9:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		Well thinking about what xnbomb said, the brute force method will probably give us a lot more words with no idea what to do with them.

Looking back at rose's comments, we probably need to follow the direction which are leading us to a new plane. We got the directions from the side plane right? So now we conceptualize another plane by moving six steps somewhere, and 3 steps somewhere else. That should lead us to the word we need to focus on, let's say it's DEMONS, then we just go to demons.html

Sound better?

P.S. Does anyone else feel like it's been AGES since we got a real hardcore puzzle in an ARG? I was seriously getting sick of ROTing text over and over again.. hey we're newbie friendly and everything, but give the puzzle freaks something to do!

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:51 am
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hamatoyoshi
Veteran

Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 127
Muskie wrote:
Let's conceptualise here. What xnbomb and I are thinking (for those that are confused) is a wordsearch using what is commonly known as a Hypercube, or a Multidimensional cube. it's kinda high end physichs, but it's actually quite simple to understand...

And there you have it, that's what we're going to have to look at to be able to solve this thing. Virgil is a genius. Razz


I've just got a gut feeling that this is unlikely, though possible.

I had considered coming up with a puzzle of this sort once, there are 4-dimensional and 5-dimensional crossword puzzles, but note the depth of the arrays for each increasing dimension: 5 and 2.

In fact, those are the only more-than-3-dimensional crosswords I've ever seen.

Granted, a wordfind would be much easier to make since not every letter would necessarily run into another word and have to make sense.

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 11:16 am
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ShadowRuleZ
Boot

Joined: 17 May 2005
Posts: 47

 		I'll see if I can do something in code today and what the end result is. I'll just get the other 20 word searchs in the other two planes and get them into a text file, I assume that's what you're asking for.

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 11:44 am
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117
Quote:
P.S. Does anyone else feel like it's been AGES since we got a real hardcore puzzle in an ARG? I was seriously getting sick of ROTing text over and over again.. hey we're newbie friendly and everything, but give the puzzle freaks something to do!


I agree with the ROT comment. I also am tired of trial and error puzzles. I think the puzzles in this game have avoided some of that - as we haven't been able to figure out a bunch of them.

So Ehsan, do you think this wordsearch is a hardcore puzzle? (As an aside,I think that the puzzle card from PPC are going to be various levels and some of them will be hardcore.)
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PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:20 pm
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		Results are in:

I programmed the procedure outlined above, thankfully xnbomb already posted all the text so I didn't have to transcribe it by hand! Plugged the letters into the program. Results attached.

Each result will be preceeded by this:
P:TOP L:1 (L-R)

This means Perspective: TOP , Layer 1 , reading Left to Right.

Perspective means which direction we are looking at the cube. There are only three perspectives: TOP, RIGHT, and FRONT. The reason being, you don't need to look at the cube from the other side because you'll get the same results. (From the top, the first layer Left to Right is the last layer from the bottom Right to Left)


The very first result is the first image we see in the flash. So the TOP perspective is what we've already been looking at.

Each Layer will have 4 reading directions. Left to Right, followed by R-L, U-D, and D-U.. Basically the same result repeated 4 times, but rotated and flipped for easier reading (You don't have to read anything in unusual directions)


So in total 3 perspectives x 20 layers x 4 directions = 240 results tables..


What now?

I have two specs:

1- Try to follow the directions we already found, and see which word they lead to.. these results should make that easier for anyone who can't think in 3D Wink

2- Find as many words as we can in all layers, and cross them out... maybe the letters left over will form the answer (just like you answer a normal word search) - Note that for this to work,because every letter exists in different layers from different perspectives, you have to remove the letters from the source I used to generate the results, and then REGENERATE the results..


rose wrote:
So Ehsan, do you think this wordsearch is a hardcore puzzle? (As an aside,I think that the puzzle card from PPC are going to be various levels and some of them will be hardcore.)


Well I think we are solving it as if it's a hardcore puzzle. The answer might have been something stupid like "Cubesearch" but I just spent 2 hours on a C++ compiler (and enjoyed it! nerd) so I say it qualifies..

PCX cards don't cut it for me.. They don't feel integrated into the game, and are equivelant to me going out and buying a puzzle book.. The cube search on the other hand is a direct challenge from Virgil, and his personality comes into play when we approach it..
evilcube_results.txt
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txt

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Filename  evilcube_results.txt 
Filesize  108.56KB 
Downloaded  446 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:02 pm
Last edited by Ehsan on Mon May 23, 2005 1:04 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ShadowRuleZ
Boot

Joined: 17 May 2005
Posts: 47
Ehsan wrote:
I just spent 2 hours on a C++ compiler (and enjoyed it! nerd) so I say it qualifies..


Dern it, there's goes the morning I already wasted doing my own version Razz I just got it done and was going to post but you already posted. I didn't do the different reading directions though. Oh well, back to work!

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:04 pm
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nhansard
Decorated

Joined: 07 Apr 2005
Posts: 159

 		It's possible that these are hints at reordering the cube.

AFTERSIXTHEBEGINNING

This seems like it might be restacking the cube so rather than it being pages 1 to 20 it would be reordered starting with 7 going up to 20 and then 1 to 6. This wouldn't change anything from the TOP perspective but would reorder the letters in each plane from the RIGHT and FRONT perspectives.


SIDEWAYSSTARTATTHREE

To go with the same logic, this would be taking the first 3 panes from the RIGHT (or possibly LEFT) perspective and slapping them onto the other end of the array. This would change the views from the TOP and FRONT perspectives.

and while it's a bit difficult to conceptualize, there are 6 diagonal planes that can be cut from the cube. Assuming the cube as a set of points (x,y,z) the planes with corners are:

(1,1,1)(20,20,1)(20,20,20)(1,1,20)
(1,20,1)(20,1,1)(20,1,20)(1,20,20)
(1,1,1)(20,1,1)(20,20,20)(1,20,20)
(1,20,1)(20,20,1)(1,20,20)(1,1,20)
(1,1,1)(1,20,1)(20,20,20)(1,20,20)
(1,20,1)(20,20,1)(20,1,20)(1,1,20)

Generating those planes shouldn't be too tough given the existing code you guys have generated.

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 1:43 pm
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xnbomb
Unfettered


Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		In Plane View
nhansard wrote:
It's possible that these are hints at reordering the cube.

Yep, it makes sense as you've described it ... I'll try it and look through what it makes to see if anything jumps out at me.

nhansard wrote:
and while it's a bit difficult to conceptualize, there are 6 diagonal planes that can be cut from the cube.

Generating those planes shouldn't be too tough given the existing code you guys have generated.

True enough ... in fact, if you don't mind 'wrapping back around', then there are 20 planes that can be generated in each of those six diagonal directions, and I have found some words in those (see a previous post). I do have the code to view the diagonal planes, and it wouldn't be hard to write them out in a text file as Ehsan has done with the orthogonal planes, although the nomenclature for describing the diagonal planes is headache-inducing.

EDIT: Alright, attached now are all the diagonals that are fit to print. I won't bother trying to explain which diagonal is which ... if that looks like it is important later, we can tackle that. All the words I found (that are not from a direction that can be seen in the orthogonal planes) are in the DIAG3 and DIAG4 directions.
diags.txt
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_________________
My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 3:48 pm
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xnbomb
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
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Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Nearly there
I've made some progress, and think this is on the verge of a solution. First, I'll get straight to the point with the partial solve: There were 4 more ways to make strings out of the letter cube, along the 'long' diagonals (explained more fully below). I only found one word in the 'long' diagonals, which was noteworthy ... I'd expect to find many or none, but not just one. This word obviously was special ... moving towards a solution perhaps? Forming an URL using this word points to a new passworded domain on Virgil's site (spoilered):

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The word was FORTHCOMING. By entering the url http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/forthcoming, you automatically get forwarded to http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/the_future, which seems to reside in a domain entitled "Finish It!", and requires a username and password.

To see this word for yourself, proceed to the eighth sheet in the word puzzle Flash (I'd much prefer if it was the seventh sheet, since this would make the hint AFTER SIX THE BEGINNING make more sense, but nonetheless ... the sheet you are looking for begins with MICB in the upper-left corner. Now, focus your attention on that C in the first row, third column (this may be what SIDEWAYS START AT THREE is referring to). This letter, using a coordinate system of layers, rows, columns is (8,1,3). Now, move in the positive direction in each of the three axes, which means you move one layer deeper, one letter right, and one letter down, i.e. look at (9,2,4) next. FORTHCOMING starts at (9,2,4) and ends at (19,12,14). Alternatively, have a look at this linked image.


How did I find this? What I wrote in my last post was only partially correct (there are more diagonals). Nick mentioned 6 sorts of diagonal planes, which I wrote out and attached to the previous post. But, there are in fact 4 more directions in which you can make strings from a letter cube, the 'long' diagonals.

To wrap your head around this, consider a 3x3x3 set of cubes from the point of view of the middle cube at position (2,2,2). This cube has 26 neighbors, so there are 26 directions in which to move or create strings. To put this another way, you can move through a 3-dimensional space made up of cubes packed together along 13 vectors. There are the 3 'normal' directions {up-down, forward-backward, and left-right}, and there are 6 'short' diagonals {upper front-lower back, lower front-upper back, left front-right back, right front-left back, upper left-lower right, lower left-upper right}. However, there are also 4 'long' diagonals {upper left front-lower right back, upper right front-lower left back, upper left back-lower right front, upper right back-lower left front).

Earlier, Ehsan posted the strings that result from moves in the 'normal' directions. In my previous post, I added the strings that result from moves in the 'short' diagonal directions. This left the 'long' diagonals. The easiest way to imagine these is to think of a line that connects the opposite corners of a cube. I put together the 'long diagonals' (attached below), sifted through them, found the one and only word that I can see in them, used it to form an URL ... and here we are, in need of a username and password to "finish it!"
longdiags.txt
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_________________
My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:23 am
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enaxor
I Have No Life

Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 2395

 		Wow! Nice solve xnbomb.
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PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2005 3:36 am
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SMG3er
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Joined: 20 Apr 2005
Posts: 134

 		Re: Nearly there
To quote Vader... "Impressive."

I totally bow to you and your code breaking kung-fu. Shocked

PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2005 4:35 am
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