I have a physics problem that says this:

> Case 3: The dart passes through the cart.

What does that mean?

Does the dart touch the cart while passing though?

Does it phase through the cart?

(unlikely)

Does the dart go through the center of the cart or the top or bottom or side or what?

(for reference, cases 1 and 2 are "embed in cart" and "bounce off cart")

@msh210 What do mean "you're not familiar with citizenship?"

ohhh

He's not familiar with the term "digital citizenship"

yes

Oh my there's been a lot of chat while I was gone :p

first: bobblie update

please?

I've been working all day man, it's been a crunchy week. Give me some time

It'll get done promise :)

you bobble promised, don't forget

It shall be done

Go catch up now :)

Oh hey Voldy wants to be in the Boss Rush! Ooh I gotta think

@Voldemort'sWrath, Sciborg is placing you in the PSE Boss Rush now

Oh dear

Gareth should be his own boss right?

@Voldemort'sWrath You're a secret surprise miniboss that unlocks after you beat the main Deus boss fight, Voldemort, Vizier of Suffering. Your special ability is "Crucio" which paralyzes the player for 10 seconds, and they have to quickly shake the controller to regain the courage to move before you hit them with your "Avada Kedavra" instakill attack. But there's an exploit where if they give you a cool enough word puzzle you'll let them go.

But no one ever gets to them then, since Deus is impossible to beat!

Ah, but Deus has one weakness... The Honeypot

so you have to explore the game to find the legendary Honeypot item?

Hmm...

Or do you get it by completing a quest or defeating a boss or what?

Maybe the Honeypot Puzzle is like a compound puzzle item that you gather along the way. As you solve puzzles and do miniquests, NPCs give you pieces of it

ahaha

And you still have to get Deus down to 1% health before you use it

So it's super hard to beat the game

Who's the main character?

Matt is one of the playable characters, there are probably a couple to choose from and some DLC characters

And I should do Gareth and Jeremy too, hmm...

What's in the initial cutscenes? Or, (phrased another way), what's the background story of the game world?

Ooh I've been thinking about this :)

Okay, so picture this:

picturing the word "this" floating in midair

Game opens on a slow pan over a ruined Dark Souls landscape, with puzzles scattered everywhere. The world has been ravaged by Deusian conquest, the pieces of the Honeypot have been scattered to the winds, and it's up to you to save it.

The old man Jeremy Dover appears to narrate and guide you through the opening section.

@Sciborg I love it

He helps you solve the introductory puzzles to teach you the mechanics, and gives you a bunch of life lessons

Gareth is a boss too I think

Does Jeremy have some sort of secret backstory?

@bobble Bahahahahaha you wouldn't believe it

Jeremy's secret backstory is that he was once a powerful mathematician wizard puzzler, but lost his powers and is now seeking to overthrow Deus so he can have his math powers back.

How did he lose his powers?

The bobblies

Ah, of course.

So the player character is his pawn to overthrow Deus?

I wonder: do the bobblies store the PP, or do they just drain it and discard it?

Basically, yeah, you are his pawn to overthrow the mighty Deus, but you don't realize it.

Like, can I get it back?

PP recharges over time, but you can always get an insta-recharge if you cough up money

As you're doing the second round of puzzles, Gareth appears and taunts you saying that he already solved all the puzzles and "it's no use"

Haha

Wow, this is actually really awesome

I hope you're writing these down mick

@Sciborg ooh, did Gareth try to overthrow Deus too?

Throughout the game Gareth appears having already solved some of the puzzles and he slowly grows from your enemy into your friend.

Like at first he's just being a troll but then he becomes your companion and starts helping you.

So you can get hints from Gareth if you get stuck?

Gareth as friend = OP

There's a twist with Gareth.

Once you get to the end Deus boss fight, Deus reveals that Gareth was on his team all along.

oh?

He was one of the Mods the whole time.

oh my

Plot twist

WHAAAAT

hi north

NO waaay

Hi

He was just playing you so Deus could keep an eye on you.

As a certain puzzler would say, "HOLY SH*T!"

"Is this true??" your character asks Gareth and he whispers "I was always one of the Moderators..."

hmmm... i'm sure multiple puzzlers would say that, bobble :):)

I like the suspense

@Sciborg What am I?

Yessss

The tree you have to visit to get upgrades!

@PrinceNorthLæraðr You can be a second playable character along with Matt, you're a really adorable one-armed swordsman who has a talking tree companion pet.

Or not

@Sciborg Oh okay lol

Or the tree that you visit to get upgrades! Either one.

Wait but I am a tree

Or BOTH

I could be a teleporting tree

!!!

The human form is your tree manifesting itself as a human

Using puzzling magic

Yeah and when you face bobblies, your PP runs out

Wait I want to be that crazy guy that breaks the fourth wall

so your human form dissolves

You're a tree if the player chose a different character, and a human-tree transformer if not

Ah okay

Yup, so when you face Bobblie enemies, they can drain your PP which is your life force/mana

Yeah i like pp being mana

If you run out of PP, you lose the will to keep going and can't solve puzzles until it recharges.

Yeah and you have to do like side quests to get it back

or you can pay $0.99 to get 1 PP back

:):)

You can either do side quests and help out NPCs to get your confidence back, or you can wait for the super slow recharge time :p

Or you can just break out the wallet

Yeah that too

yeah its like energy

literally all my messages are starting with "yeah"

Before the Gareth plot twist, you get some hints that he was a Moderator all along because the minor NPCs all listen to him for fear of being banned.

Is there a multiplayer mode?

Ooh, yes, there can be multiplayer

You have to cooperatively solve two-person puzzles

Get the whole squad together

And in the normal game, when a Bobblie latches on, you have to shake the controller to get it off. But in multiplayer, your friend can press A to grab it off you

Wait... so is this a game where you solve puzzles or is it like a... boss fight game?

or... both

It's a Puzzling game that has big Boss Fights at the end

nice

who am i after

like whats the order of the bosses

and

villains

You can either be a secret boss before/after Deus, or maybe you can be a chapter end boss fight

i like it

Like maybe at the end of each puzzle area you fight a boss, so you can be like the first or second one

cooool

crucio

just practicing

And when you use your Crucio attack it uses the exact sound bite from the Harry Potter movies :p

haha lol

Is there any way to actually die/kill enemies, or do you just have to drain them of PP?

You can kill them, PP is mana and HP is health.

ahh makes sense

@Sciborg Remember:

There should be a way to make a bobblie your friend

There's a DLC where you can buy a little friend bobblie

nice

Where does Bobble come in the plot arc

then suck the pp out of the bosses

So, Bobble is an interesting character.

yea is bobble actually in the game or is it just the bobblies?

Bobble is the one who granted Deus control over the Bobblies that he uses in his special summon during his boss fight, but now Bobble regrets doing that and wants you to go find all her bobblie friends in the overworld. So there are secret collectible bobblies that you can find and bring back to her - after fighting them down from sucking out your PP - and if you bring them all back, she will join you in the final boss fight against Deus.

In the opening bit with Jeremy, he asks you for your pronouns (there are multiple-choice and enter-your-own options), and then all the dialog/narration respects them.

@bobble That too

nice

but when would pronouns be used?

i thought it would be all like people talking to you

so they would use second person

NPCs talking to each other, for one

ahh ok

Yup NPCs will gossip about you as you go through

haha

If you are really good at the puzzles, they whisper how awesome you are, but if you take forever solving puzzles, they say you better go back to Puzzling Academy :p

Also, Deus is afraid that I'll get my bobblies back so he locked me up in a dungeon.

(can you free me, or do I stay stuck for the length of the game?)

you can free bobble with the help of her bobblies

@bobble Plot twist: Bobble regrets only because she wants to take over the world (DLC Pack TM)

@bobble Yup, so you have to fight your way through Deus's dungeon to get to her. And after you bring enough bobblies, Bobble frees herself with their puzzling powers

The Dungeon of Banned Users

yes the bobblies store the pp of their victims and bring that to their mistress, bobble

and then she uses that to make everything go boom

Throughout the dungeon you have to deal with spamming users who Deus has blocked over the years.

Hahaha

Mini bosses

Mini bosses you fight will just spam the chat log as you fight them

The people he pointed to as an example of why his absolute rule is a good thing

lol

How does the bobblie crown on my head work

@bobble But is it a bad thing? :P

and there's no height limit to the chat so it fills up your screen

also north the bobble crown looks great :):)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Special side quest. If player brings your tree the Bobblecrown item and places it on your branches, you become Prince

and gives you special powers

Oooh

Prince of Trees. Fun

this game is reminding me of bamboozled from friends

Literally tempted to just make a prototype for this after I finish up work stuff. Lol

you really should

You could make a wiki :)

it would be so cool

and you would give us each like 5% of the profits

cuz we're storywriters

LOL Venmo me XD jkjk

It would have to be free because I'm using your likenesses, so I can't sell it :p

Legal trouble and all

not our actual likeness tho

only our puzzling profiles'

Fair

Do you know how to put multiple lined code format into spoiler tags?

sell it for like 9.99

@AnnZen just saw your question on that btw

Yup, was about to link to that

thanks!

I really like the idea of gruff old Jeremy as the mentor, by the way

Montana State University: "Sick of hearing about colleges?" And then proceeds to list why I should go to heaven-forsaken Montanna (no offense to people in montanna)

i get those kinds of emails all the time

I thought it was fitting for Jeremy

and letters

@Sciborg agreed

@Voldemort'sWrath Same. Except the letters are a bit more impressive just because it takes money to ship it and provide a way to send it back

Also, they use some high-quality paper for that stuff

Still super annoying, but I respect it

I keep getting mailers for tiny little religious schools in the middle of Nowhere. Um, no thanks

LOL

When I was accepted to college, my friends and I did a big marshmallow roast where we burned all the stupid crap colleges had sent us. One friend brought just a massive pile

@bobble How did you even end up with small religious schools?

shrug No idea. I wish they'd stop.

I kept getting emails from Notre Dame for such as long time and I got so annoyed I just unsubscribed

You could just hit the "don't bother me" button

@Sciborg I've kept exactly one mailer, which is from a school I'm applying to. Going to use it to tell them that "yes, I really do love you!".

Ooh, imagine getting a letter from a school you actually want to go to :(....

Some college in AZ was trying to bribe me by sending me "three small gifts" except I still haven't gotten anything yet D:

Scam

They also wouldn't say what the "gifts" were

Yeah, I got tons of random nonsense from random colleges. They just blast it out to everyone

@Sciborg "[Insert name] You're special!!!! Come join our private college where we can help you accumulate debt!!!!"

Basically :p

One school sent me an application which was basically "apply now and we'll give you a free ride". Except they're a terrible school in a terrible place, and the small print says that you can't go anywhere else once they accept you.

(and the free ride was only the first year)

LMAO

I got a thing from a college which was like "Your passion for the performing arts is obvious" and I'm like a) My degree I'm hoping to purse is composition b) your school only does drama/acting

@bobble This is the worst deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever

Also it's apparently not an actual college

@Sciborg It's formally known as "a scam"

Yup, that sounds pretty scammy to me

I have about 10 pages of gov textbook to take notes on right now, and will be leaving so that you folks don't distract me :)

Good luck :)

Have fun :))

To be fair we are pretty distracting, as evidenced by the work presentation I've had open untouched for like an hour

University of Alaska? Why would I want to go to Alaska?

what does alaska have to do with anything

Colleges sending stuff

Hey matt :)

sending stuff scamming innocent people

@Sciborg hello gentleperson

sadly i must leave

Aww

Have a good morning/afternoon/evening/night

afternoon - it is 4pm over here

you too :)

<3

should be back tomorrow ~4pm pacific

4 pm

oof

its 7:15 rn

pm

@Voldemort'sWrath same!

yep we're both eastern :):)

least it's cooling off here in vegas

Time zone buddies :)

aight, bye :)

yes, time zone buddies :):) that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside... wait, that's just the bobblies

<3

<3

byeee

I have some work to do too

yea same

I'll drop by later sometime tonight

If we're all heading out I probably should get back to my presentation lmao, gotta have it done by Friday :)

yes, lets take some time to work for once

bye

Wow, I step out for a few hours, and next thing I know I'm an evil schemer seeking to drain all of Deusovi's powers. Cool.

True story, during writing of that comment, I had to go kill a cockroach.

just came back to my computer and apparently I'm now a final boss?

<pirate>Not for long, matey!</pirate> Apparently.

PSE Boss Fight. Who else would be the final boss?

bobbel

actually you'd probably be like the persistent antagonist rather than a final boss

the antagonist that sends minions after the MC

to be fair that's a good backstory too

what if the final boss wasn't a puzzler, but a puzzle?

You have to solve mini-puzzles and do quests to collect parts of the Honeypot, which you can then use to defeat Deus

I've seen a final boss in an indie game, where the fight is turn-based, you're given an ability to see the boss's next move, and you need to deduce your own "correct" move to deflect boss's attack and deal damage

That was a cool puzzle on its own

Do you want Sciborg to add you to PSE Boss Rush?