The Genesis Project Sburb beta walkthrough

1. Caveats and Condolences............................................. [0000]

2. Walkthrough (Incomplete).............................................. [A000]

2.1. An Examination of the Basics..................................... [A000]

2.2. So your cruxtruder is ticking. Do this to live................ [A100]

2.3. The Long and Short. The Medium too........................ [B100]

some stuff about captcha codes and punch card alchemy [Z001]

C. Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, pt. 1............................ [Z301]

?. Rose: Egress................................................................. [ZZZZ]

[0000] Caveats And Condolences

===========================================================================

I'd be inclined to dispense with the trite even under less pressing circumstances.

Needless to say I'll forego the inscrutable ASCII banner which typically heralds

the striking freefall of these documents. I'll also resist the urge to brandish any

the utterly mundane -- I'll allow other deranged prospectors to stake claims on

their worthless plots as the woods burn around them. My introduction will be

sparse. There will be no majestic prose blustering into the sails of a galleon as

we embark on this voyage together. Nor will there be any hamfisted prose whipping

its limbs under a bedsheet like a retarded ghost, for that matter. I won't set the

stage, or dim the lights. The mood, you will see, will be set soon enough.

Since you are reading this, chances are you have installed this game on your

computer already. If this is true, like many others, you have just participated in

bringing about the end of the world.

But don't beat yourself up about it. There was never anything you could have done

to prevent it. The end is happening right now, as I type, and as you read. I have

come to understand that we were always doomed through our collective ignorance, and

now further doomed by those few who know, and struggle to flee. If you're lucky,

you'll be among the smaller subset of the latter who are successful.

What I mean is, while that game you installed is just one more grinding slab of

rock sealing our planet's crypt, it is also your only hope to live. I'm presently

faced with the same conundrum as you, and though I speak with more experience, my

own outcome is far from assured. I will "play the game", as much of it as there is

to play, and record my findings here. If you want to live, you will do as I

instruct.

My condolences.

~TT

===========================================================================

[A000] An Examination Of The Basics

===========================================================================

Upon connecting with the client user, you, the server user, will be met with a

control panel allowing you to manipulate your co-player's environment. You will

find that you are allowed to deploy four items at no expense. Three of these are

rather large machines, and one is a punch card.

It's quite possible that you have already deployed some of these items before

reading this. If this is the case, and you have activated the machine called the

"cruxtruder" such that it displays a countdown, YOU MUST PROCEED TO SECTION [A100]

OF THIS WALKTHROUGH IMMEDIATELY. The life of the client user depends on it, and if

your co-player has activated this device in your environment too, then yours does

as well.

But if not, please refrain from doing anything with the cruxtruder, aside from

merely deploying it. This will buy us some time to think things through properly,

and to go over the basics of the game before you find your soft, easily-punctured

head in the jaws of the lion.

As mentioned, there are four items to consider, each playing a role in a process

which appears to have a singular purpose: to manufacture objects out of thin air.

The designers of the game, judging by the language used, regard this process as a

sort of alchemy. This may allude to complexities in the production process yet to

present themselves. But for now, the variety of objects you are able to create

remains quite limited.

The items in question are the CRUXTRUDER (again, tread lightly with this one), the

TOTEM LATHE, the ALCHEMITER, and the PRE-PUNCHED CARD. I will describe how these

devices work in conjunction with each other, and I will use the analogy of having a

key made at a hardware store to help you understand.

First, deploy all of these objects in convenient proximity to each other. Be sure

not to block doors or pathways with them. You can always "revise" the dimensions of

rooms to make space for them, but I'd advise against this, or even experimenting

with the function. Doing so comes at the expense of "build grist", a commodity

which appears to be at a premium at the onset, and one you'd best be advised to

save for later.

-- THE CRUXTRUDER --

Removing the lid signals the moment your life becomes a great whirling batsh*t

pandemonium, somewhat resembling the chaos of an especially ethnic wedding.

Somewhere, a soused uncle deliberately shatters china on the floor. Muddy livestock

is decorated, and then lost track of. The question "Who's mule is this?" at times

can be heard over the din. This is now your reality.

But aside from that, it marks the beginning of the process I am about to describe.

The countdown begins, yes. Also, an entity called the "Kernelsprite" is released.

But neither of these things are all that relevant to this process, to my knowledge.

[A100] So Your Cruxtruder Is Ticking. Do This To Live.

============================================================================

Your client has failed themselves and opened the cruxtruder unkowingly of the true nature of the game we're playing, i wish i could be more lyrical on this point, but this is a real emergency, your client's life is at impending danger.

Once someone decides to open their cruxtruder, a countdown starts, and that's the time left untill a drifting space rock impacts with their house, quickly follow the next set of steps so you assure their safety and be able to continue with the game and your lives safely.

First off, you'll want to deploy next to your client the following items from the phernalia registry deploy menu:

The pre-punched card like the likes from your sylladex and the Totem lathe, a sewing machine look-alike device, and the alchemiter, which is an egregious platform with a single robotic arm coming out of it.

After they can safely reach every single object and have the pre-punched card in their power, it'll be all up to the client to save themselves and their house, as the server can't properly interact with this portion of the process. The client has to introduce their card into one of the totem lathe bottom slots, and place a cruxite dowel on the one on top. The cruxite is a material that can be retrieved from the Cruxtruder in the form of dowels to be used in various form of creation that we will detail further into this guide.

When everything is in the place it should be, press the carve button so the totem lathe can carve the dowel in a specific pattern, thus creating your client's entry item. Tell them to place this on the alchemiter and the device will do the rest. A special item will be generated and the client will have to think on how to use it. My co-player's item was an apple, which he took a bit off and was transported to a mysterious dimension i assume the real game takes place in.

============================================================================

[B100] The Long And Short. The Medium Too.

============================================================================

I may have been a bit hasty in advising you not to bother with the prototyping

process. If I spared any detail, it was only to optimize your chances of survival.

And if you find yourself begrudging the absence of certain instructions, which if

followed would have resulted in your demise, then I guess that makes two of us.

Otherwise, you're welcome.

But the fact appears to be that prototyping the Kernelsprite before making your

getaway may offer the only opportunity to exercise control over your new

environment, a place known as The Medium. Also, if prototyped with one (or two)

sufficiently—albeit loosely—humanoid and/or sentient element/s (living or

otherwise), it offers the chance to have all this explained to you by an

apparitional guide through whatever sort of cryptic, sketchy doublespeak your

choice of prototyping element/s engender/s. In lieu of this, you may be forced to

settle for my clear, thorough explanations and assiduous dissection of raw data.

Again, don't mention it.

If you have made it to The Medium with an unmolested Vanillasprite, well, I've

already covered the bad news about this "missed opportunity", and I will go into

this further soon. Though to what extent this actually is bad news, I'm not sure. I

know only the result of my co-player's current configuration, wherein the sprite

was prototyped once before the departure, and once after. Which brings us to the

good news, which is that you can still prototype after your departure, and salvage

the massively rewarding experience of haggling with an exposition-slinging phantom

guide, so long as you avoid prototyping with terribly inert items, such as a brass

doorknocker and your father's pornography collection.

Actually, that might be interesting. If you are struck by the spirit of such

experimentation, please don't hesitate to contact me about it.

So, yes, you can enhance your sprite in this way, but doing so after your departure

will no longer induce this "effect" on The Medium I alluded to. That can only be

accomplished with one or more pre-departure prototypings. In fact, we can

extrapolate there are only so many ways to prototype a sprite.

Tiers of prototyping in relation to departure:

- Both before

- One before, one after

- Both after

- Only one, either before or after

- None

Those occurring before will affect the Medium through the kernel's "hatching"

process, and your guide, i.e. the sprite. Those occurring after will only affect

the sprite.

The effects this process has on The Medium, or more globally, The Incipisphere, are

still vague to me. They have to do with flavoring the forces you will struggle

against, and generally, all forces at odds with each other in this realm. It has

given me some insight into the nature of the game, which again I derive through

extrapolation. We appear to be engaging an instance of a dimension with a highly

flexible set parameters, and a series of objectives surrounding an equally flexible

mythological framework. This framework seems to begin as a sort of blank template,

and evolves with the players' actions, and likely further evolves with the addition

of more host/client connections, and thus more prototyped kernels.

I regret to say I can't be much more specific than that, without loosely

extrapolating further. There are plenty of questions that have occurred to me,

however. Questions concerning the Kernelsprite, which I've raised implicitly

already, such as what is the effect of an un-prototyped kernel on The Medium? Or a

doubly-prototyped kernel, for that matter? And even more salient are questions

about this dimension itself. Do all players world-wide make it to this dimension if

they successfully complete their departure? Or is a unique "blank" instance of the

dimension created for each new player? I have no evidence, but instinct tells me it

is closer to the latter situation. There is no indication of any other players

present in this realm. Alterations in the realm seem singularly centered on the

actions of my co-player and myself. If I had to stake anything on it, I would guess

every separate client/server pair activates its own fresh copy of an Incipisphere,

or a unique "session", if you will.

But the quantity of players is a further complication which invites more questions.

It seems the game was designed to suit two players most naturally, the server and

the client. But through a mishap, my co-player and I have slipped out of the

obvious tandem arrangement, and the only logical course of action to continue

playing is to string a daisy-chain of server/client connections together, until

presumably the chain is complete. Theoretically, we could complete this chain with

only one other player, functioning as a server to my client, and the client to my

current co-player's server (assuming he can recover it).

The strange thing is though, in our instance of this dimension, there are four

receptacles for divided kernels, not three. Does this mean we are "destined" to

have a four player chain? How could the game "know" such a thing?

Perhaps it does, and if this proves to be the case, I trust I will be sufficiently

numbed to the realization. I can consider nothing about this game surprising at

this point, and in fact from the first moments of play, it managed to deviate so

far from my expectations that I completely forgot what my original purpose with it

was. I had chances to test some information I obtained on good authority during the

prototyping phases, but it completely slipped my mind. Instead, the game's

catacombs securing the dark twisting paths to necromancy were blundered into rather

on accident.

But perhaps you don't need to know any of this.

[rethink organization? lead may be waist deep logorrheic sludge. trim down. bleh]

============================================================================

[Z001] Some Stuff About Tags And Punch Card Alchemy

===========================================================================

is anyone actually reading any of this?? or are they all dead. i don't know if

anyone besides us is even alive and playing the game or if anybody even really

cares what we have to say!

rose said i should add some stuff to this faq if anything occurred to me, so i

guess i'm doing that. i figure at the very least it will be a good reference for

just us to use. but dave probably won't read any of this because he's sort of this

whopping stupid horse butt. whatever.

i finally figured out what those weird words at the start of captchalogue cards are

for. well maybe not what they're ALWAYS for, but a way that sburb has exploited

them for an in-game purpose. every captcha'd item stamps the card with unique

qualities, and a gizmo in sburb called the punch designix will punch a unique

pattern of holes from one card to another which is derived from those said

elements. the punched card can then be used with other gizmos to duplicate the

item and/or combine it with another thing.

i got to thinking about this and with my amazing hacker skillz i noticed a trend.

first off you'll need to punch the item on itself, to keep its information on the

holes and not losing it by punching another thing on top of it, it will look

something like this:

and then, you can punch another thing on that prepunched card, like this:

wow ok that pretty much looks like sh*t, but you get the idea.

if you put a card that's been punched once with itself and then with some other

stuff in the punch designix in your totem lathe you'll be able to carve that item

in a cruxite dowel and then generate that thing in the alchemiter machine .

so to combine two items you just overlap two punched cards in the totem lathe.

only the places where both cards have a hole will show through, so it's sort of

like a bitwise AND operation on both cards. this pattern can create a new item

that will extract common holes between the two cards and put that info on a

cruxite dowel with the elements both items share.

for instance combining holes from a hammer (nothing special about it) and a

pogo ride (that has a big bouncy spring on its base) gives a new pattern with

less holes obviously, which translates to a bouncy item. that hole pattern went on

to make the bouncy pogo hammer, which is so rad you have no idea. i've also

wondered if you can combine items in other ways, like a bitwise OR. that means

combining the cards to get MORE holes, not less, i.e. the new pattern has a hole

for every hole on either card. this pattern would be accomplished by DOUBLE

PUNCHING A CARD!! like, two codes, one card. i've got to try that some time.

but there are some mysterious things about all this. first of all, with all the

hole slots, there are 48 bits in total, which means there are almost 300 trillion

possible codes. and 300 trillion sounds huge! but when you consider it is supposed

to account for ALL CONCEIVABLE ITEMS, including all the wacky combinations of

stuff, it suddenly doesn't seem that big!

this leads me to believe that not every combination of item has a viable duplicate.

but this is kinda obvious anyway, since there are many combinations of punch cards

that will produce either a blank card (with AND) or a totally punched card (with

OR). so there are lots of dud combinations out there, and many that will just lead

to the same pattern. like for instance a gun and an atom bomb could make some sort

of ULTIMATE DEATH RAY, but for that matter a shoe horn and a potted plant could

lead to exactly the same pattern!!!!! so weird.

also it seems like combined items will always have patterns with either much fewer

holes or much more holes than more "ordinary" items, which will occupy the vast

meaty middle of all possible patterns. it is strange and counter intuitive that

more complex objects have simpler patterns but hey, there you have it.

but all this sorta makes me guess this system can be cracked in some way. like if

you have a complicated item and you want to "extract" simpler item components from

it, there might be some algorithm for deriving the pattern you want, or at least

narrowing down the possibilities. there might also be ways of charting through the

simpler patterns on both ends of the bit spectrum, and pinning down the ones that

will make cooler stuff. who knows.

i want to ask jade about this because she's really good at this sort of thing

somehow even though she doesn't have my leet haxxor cred. too bad she makes herself

so scarce all the time. jade if you ever read this let me know what you think!

===========================================================================

[Z301] Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, Pt. 1

============================================================================

I can't take as many as I'd like to for comprehensive documentation. For what it's

worth, here's what I've managed to collect so far. More captures forthcoming.

http://tinyurl.com/0413sprite

http://tinyurl.com/0413power

http://tinyurl.com/0413internet

http://tinyurl.com/0413build

http://tinyurl.com/0413prototype

http://tinyurl.com/0413disconnect

http://tinyurl.com/0413nanna

http://tinyurl.com/0413weirdo

http://tinyurl.com/0413designix

http://tinyurl.com/0413grist

http://tinyurl.com/0413up

http://tinyurl.com/0413steed

http://tinyurl.com/0413barbasolbandit

http://tinyurl.com/0413really

http://tinyurl.com/0413hmm

============================================================================

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress.

This is my final entry.

My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to

play this game the right way. I have been meticulous in documenting the process to

help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I

believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint

supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our

inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I

believe them now.

I just blew up my first gate. I'm not sure why I did it, really.

I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and

comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can't be

repaired. We've come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning f*cking tree,

for God's sake.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth's decaying networks, and

sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may

disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use

to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia's malevolent

tendrils.

In case it wasn't clear, magic is real.

Pardon my egress. You're on your own now.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2675840174

Sburb beta walkthrough

Table Of Contents

[0000] Caveats And Condolences

[A000] An Examination Of The Basics

[A100] So Your Cruxtruder Is Ticking. Do This To Live.

[B100] The Long And Short. The Medium Too.

[Z001] Some Stuff About Tags And Punch Card Alchemy

[Z301] Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, Pt. 1

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress.

More The Genesis Project guilds