Made an app to read the coded letters — then realized I wasted my time!

[subtex]

I managed to figure out the cypher for all of the coded letters this weekend while playing. Took some time but I had a decent amount of the letters I thought.

So I built a janky iphone app that let me type in the symbols as I saw them and would show the proper text in a small textfield for easy reading.

It’s really jank though. I opened a book in game that had a two page spread of most of the symbols and took a photo of my TV. I then cut up that photo so I had images for each of the coded letters. I put those onto buttons that would output the letter I thought the symbol was when you tapped them.

Here’s a screenshot I uploaded to the community hub:

(don't click if you don't want the code solution spoiled for you!)
http://steamcommunity.com/id/subtex/images/?appid=244910

I was all proud of myself for making this janky-but-serviceable tool for myself. I went walking around deciphering the notes on the walls and reading some of the newspaper clippings.

Then, not too long after that, I discovered the wooden letter blocks and obviously that solved the cipher in-game. So my app was now sort of pointless.

Maybe "wasted my time" is a bit harsh. I just wish I hadn't found the in-game solution so soon after making this app! It was fun to make and use for a while though!

I googled some stuff just today and saw other images of people who had figured out the code on their own in notebooks too. That’s really cool. I wish more games were not afraid to be obscure for a while or to let the player do actual work to figure stuff out.

Makes me miss the days of keeping notebooks while playing Myst and Riven!

[Bright Moon]

it's not waste of time , it's amazing :) to make app for game to help you read = solve :)

[subtex]

Yeah, I guess "Waste of time" is the wrong way to put it.

I did find the in-game solution to the cypher pretty soon after I made the app though (i.e. within an hour or two) so it just seemed like awful timing.

[Bright Moon]

well next time don't rush xD

[luckypause]

Wow that's awesome! Yea you should be proud!

[Vi-El]

I say thats amazing. I mean sure, you found out that it was implemented already but you did this yourself and had to work for it. I wouldnt call it a waste of time. You got somewhere on your own accord by figuring out how to do it. I mean thats kinda what the game is about right? You find a clue and you have to go on from that clue. You just did it in a different way because you were extremly curious :D

[Raen]

Can your app tell between A and E? They're pretty much identical.

[subtex]

Originally posted by Raen:

Can your app tell between A and E? They're pretty much identical.

Yeah that was a headache. I can't say it was 100% correct, but it isn't hard to look at the decoded text and pinpoint a word where an A should be an E.

[robot797]

i as a tester had the same problem
the firsth time i played the blocks did nothing (as far as i could figer out and the jumpscare was scarry now its meh)
i had a translation sheet
i wrote all translations on a seperate sheet
and i have to tell the a and e are awfull
they are to similair

[Jed]

WTF? You just use the blocks to change the letters, DONE... You stupid humans and your technology... of course its a waste of time making a whole app... This is why you dont rush, you actually go slower then you think...

[robot797]

Originally posted by Flesrayne:

WTF? You just use the blocks to change the letters, DONE... You stupid humans and your technology... of course its a waste of time making a whole app... This is why you dont rush, you actually go slower then you think...

i played an early version that did not have the block funktion
in the version i played the player also was realy scarry
with a propper jump scare

[subtex]

Originally posted by Flesrayne:

WTF? You just use the blocks to change the letters, DONE

Yeah. I know that. And by playing further in the game, that mechanic becomes known to the player. I hadn't gotten to blocks yet and decided to then figure out the cipher on my own. It's not a hard concept to understand.

Originally posted by Flesrayne:

This is why you dont rush, you actually go slower then you think...

Not sure how taking my time and deciphering on my own translated to rushing in your eyes. It's pretty much the opposite of rushing.

[tmoltuae]

I've read through this discussion, so I do get that there will be blocks ... somewhere ... at some point in the game that I need to do ... something with. But, until I get to that point, I'll still need to decode the messages somehow. I've got the feeling I'm doing something horribly wrong, since using the key seems to get the first message to start as DEACTOSD , which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Is there any chance you could share your app here, even if it is supposedly janky? I mean, it can't be nearly as janky as my by-hand decoding so far.

[tmoltuae]

Apparently the game is shorter than I expected, but hey, I still like going back and roaming through the building. While I no longer have to try to decipher the code on my own, I'm still more than happy to keep looking in new nooks and crannies for whatever I may or may not have missed.

[MekaDovah]

I dunno, I thought actually figuring things out with what was provided in game was pretty fulfilling and fun.

I remember another game expected some of the players to actually recognize and decode morse code for real and the rest to go look up their findings online and I found that was a bit too much.

[tmoltuae]

I actually did try figuring things out on my own, but being able to read that first sign about the light switch makes all the difference, as prior to that there's nothing to give any indication that minor things like light switches might be important. And if you can't read the sign because you have no clues on how it should be decoded (and some symbols are still far too similar once you do figure it out) and it all looks like pure gibberish, you can't get past the first hallway. If you can't get past the first hallway, there's absolutely no way to decode it with the blocks.

It's a Catch-22 that in my case, required a bit of extra help figuring out the first sign. Until I was able to get that first message decoded, I kept wandering in the first room looking for secret passageways, keys, or heavy moveable objects to break down doors, and after that, I uninstalled and reinstalled about 8 times thinking it was a corrupt download.

At least with morse code in that other game, you had some sort of real world method for decoding. This game doesn't even have that. If morse code was a bit too much, then this is way too much. A few helpful hints from OP's app would have been greatly appreciated, but making due with a 'let's play' video on YouTube with far too many spoilers had to suffice.