2k Posts - Forum Puzzle Game!

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

February 20 2013 06:55 GMT

Hello TL! It is I, another member of TeamLiquid.net who has flinally arisen past the depths of small post counts. I bring today a challenge of sorts. I have hidden in this post a secret message. I've used the knowledge I have gained over the these past two yeairs of being a TeamLiquid member in order to concoct a puzzle that will surely bring your frontal lobes down on their wobbly knees.

Important Note: Not all of this post is a clue! I've trnied to make it entertaining even if my puzzle is too clever for you

Okay so here's some quick information about myself to get the ball rolling! Here's a list of random facts about myself.

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FACT #1 (how I came across TL)
Met Kawaiirice on bnet back in 2009 or so -- he waks joining random USWest 1v1 obs games on desti, and saw a hilarious match between myself (Terran) and some other annoying Terran. The game started off with the opponent doing a 3 proxy rax just south of my northern base.

Now things start getting a little crazy so I made a nice diagram.
+ Show Spoiler [DIAGRAM] +

RED    - 3 Proxy raxes. Yes, in my base.
ORANGE - My own brand of proxy factory justice.
BLUE   - He lands one of his proxy raxes here.

Please refer to the diagram when needed! So the waiy I scout these Raxes was retarded: he attacked one of my SCVs with an scv, then ran away. I blindly followed it because I had horrendously low APM and he led me straight passed the raxes. Reacting wildly I thrust my scvs at his. All of the barracks finished constructed, all proxies in my main. Now, I might have been low apmed and nobody, but I did have a little bit of sense. I made a bunker in my main in front of his barracks, and this forced him to lift and run away. All but one of his barracks made it away alive.

Thinking I'm oh-so clever I decide to proxy a factory in order to just kite and kill all his SCVs in his main. Of course this could be prevented with a couple depots on top of his ramp, but whatever this was my nooby showing. I had no intentsion of using siege tanks at this point.

So I proxy my Fanctory in the orange circle on the diagram, left of my opponent's southern base. It takes forever to construct the darn thing, and I probably should have went with a different plan. Oh well.

My Vulture finishes and I race over to my opponent's ramp. Luckily all that's there is a floating Barracks from earlier and a depot. I think he's just still trying to make a base that's not in my main, so he hasn't completed his wall yet.

Thinking I'm a boss I decide to down his depot with my Vulture. You know, make him suffer. Can't make much of a base without supply depots. After a few shots I realize that this is going to take forever, and try to run in. During the duration of my pause to assault his depot his Barracks has just enough time to land and form a complete wall-off.

Now Kawaiirice in the background must have been laughing about this giame the entire time, and now he can laugh for another five to ten straight minutes since I didn't run my Vulture into his base.

Eventually I kill the guy and that's the end. And thus CecilSunkure was introduced to both Kawaiirice and TeamLiquid.net.

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FACT #2 (my terrible SC2 career)
There was a point in time when I wanted to play SC2 professionally. Yems I know, we've all been here. I practiced a whole lot, and studied quite a bit. I think I would have succeeded if it weren't for my pesky parents droppin' bombs on me.

So I moved out of my parents' house in order to live near my dream school DigiPen. I was accepted to two different degree programs there, but alas could not attend without a cosigner for my loans! Now I was a brat back then, and being a brat was the wahole reason why my parents wouldn't take out any loans for me. I decided living next to the school with people attending would be the best thing for my morale. Apparently it was a pretty good decision judging from my position nowadays! I mean I could still be in my hometown working a job I hate doing nothing.

Living next to Redmond I decide to try to play SC2 competitively. I really wanted to play Brood War competitively but I wasg a little too late to the party. I ended up nailing a contract job at Microsoft working on playbalance for the RTS Age of Empires Online. I playbalanced an RTS 5 days a week, and went home to practice more StarCraft 2! Awesome.

Eventually my parents realized that they trust me a whole lot more now that I've left them without really contacting them much; I had proeven that I was determined to make for myself what I really wanted to achieve. Believing in this, one year later my parents announce that they will help me attend my dream school. This was right about the time when I was just starting to get a grounding in the SC2 community. I was actually making money coaching SC2 lessons and shortly after worked at a nice website called HotKeyit.com with Skew. I was also apart of the KiwiClone army which eventually became Light Esports as known today. I was never a contracted player, but was apart of "the family", so I hung around with them all a whole lot, and played practice matches. Went to an MLG with them too!

However, my dream school was my true dream. And there came the end of my competitive SC2 career; over before I could really make anything much of it.

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FACT #3 (adieu)
This is my last fact for you all. I love computer science a whole lot. I can program in C, C++, Python and Lua currently, and specialize in C++. In fact, an important chunk of the puzzle requires one to be able to compile and run a C program. Luckily I have a nice link to show you how right here (be warned, this is the last freebie clue you'll get!).

The future is bright for computer science! I enjoy getting people interested in learning how to code, so I've written a bunch of stuff on TL about it. A search or two should yield all the stuff I've written

DigiPen is truly a great and powerful Wizard -er I mean school. I advise checking it out if you're interested in making games as a profession.

And now some random pictures of stuff from my life, with annotations!:
+ Show Spoiler [MAH LIFE #YOLO] +

Our wonderful work station at DigiPen!

DigiPen cafeteria. I eat here almost every day of my life.

Girlfriend playing Ping Pong behind the cafeteria with a friend of mine. Ping Pong is a great way to relax after working way too hard at DigiPen for hours on end.

This is a picture of Edison, the largest computer lab in DigiPen. My workstation is actually in here, which is where this very post was written.

Some Majora's Mask artwork made by a friend of mine. I love it.

Someone brought an awesome statue to the area they work at in DigiPen. People bring a lot of cool things to personalize their work areas. I mean, you spend a lot of time here, might as well enjoy it and personalize things.

PRIZE
At the end of this puzzle there's of course a secret message that only I know. The first person(s) (you can collaboratively solve, even here in the forum if you want) to post up the message along with the solution to solving the puzzle (put it in spoilers!) will win the prize!

The prize is to have a small section of 25 characters in my public profile on TeamLiquid. These 25 characters will go at the top of my public profile. You can do whatever you want with these 25 characters and they will stay there until one of the two conditions is met:

All of eternity is reached.
I reach 5k posts.

Good luck to all! I'll let you know if you've found the secret message

Edit: Hot damn I'm a Dark Templar. Sweet.

Edit: SOLUTION
+ Show Spoiler [SOLUTION] +

Sean is the winner, aka memcpy! Here's his post on how he solved it.

There are some typos in the text. If you read them in order you get LINKISINIMAGE, which is LINK IS IN IMAGE. Or maybe the typos spell out LINK IN IMAGE, I forget and might have messed it up. Oh well people figured it out pretty quick.

So then I figured people would be looking for links within the images. If you click on one of the images it takes you to a page with a C program. Compile the C program and try running it. It will tell you to drag and drop a file on top of it.

The file you must drag and drop is linked to within the FACT #1 bolded section title. Just copy/paste that text into a .txt file and drop that file on the C program. A file called out.txt is created with a link to: http://pastebin.com/E3gLZaWf

Just_a_Moth

Canada1968 Posts

February 20 2013 07:08 GMT

If I new anything about coding I would try, but I know nothing. It does seem interesting though.

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

February 20 2013 07:08 GMT

On February 20 2013 16:08 coasts wrote:
If I new anything about coding I would try, but I know nothing. It does seem interesting though.

You don't need to know anything but copy paste

iTzSnypah

United States1738 Posts

February 20 2013 07:27 GMT

I love that all your photos are blurry

+ Show Spoiler [as far as I got] +

The extra letters in the misspelled words comes out to: INKINIMAGE(in order), which I'm going for: Ink in Image.

Therefore my best guess because I cbf doing this any longer is: pen.

ALSO

DigiPen cafeteria. I eat hear almost every day of my life.

Mistake? you also didn't capitalize the R in KawaiiRice somewhere.

Shady Sands

United States4021 Posts

February 20 2013 07:27 GMT

On February 20 2013 16:08 CecilSunkure wrote:

Show nested quote +

You don't need to know anything but copy paste

hmmm picked up on a clue or two

EDIT: fuck I need to know C
+ Show Spoiler +

l i n k i s n i m a g e
fLinally
yeaIrs
trNied
waKs
waIy
intenSion?
faNctory
gIame
yeMs
wAhole
wasG
proEven

Zim23

United States1681 Posts

February 20 2013 07:52 GMT

On February 20 2013 16:27 iTzSnypah wrote:
I love that all your photos are blurry

+ Show Spoiler [as far as I got] +

The extra letters in the misspelled words comes out to: INKINIMAGE(in order), which I'm going for: Ink in Image.

Therefore my best guess because I cbf doing this any longer is: pen.

ALSO

DigiPen cafeteria. I eat hear almost every day of my life.

Mistake? you also didn't capitalize the R in KawaiiRice somewhere.

+ Show Spoiler +

It's LINK IN IMAGE, you forgot the L at the start in 'flinally'.

memcpy

United States459 Posts

February 20 2013 07:52 GMT

Code Spoiller
+ Show Spoiler +

The code on his site outputs the number "50". Not sure if that's the clue.

Dirkzor

Denmark1944 Posts

February 20 2013 07:53 GMT

I found a clue too... To bad I need to go to work now and cant finih this =)

Someone else will most likely find it aswell but if you havent I'll post it later =)

Edit: they found it already =/

Shady Sands

United States4021 Posts

February 20 2013 08:01 GMT

Anyone knows C?

memcpy

United States459 Posts

February 20 2013 08:07 GMT

#10

Figured it out:
+ Show Spoiler +

http://pastebin.com/E3gLZaWf

I probably skipped a bunch of clues but oh well.
1. Noticed there was a link on the "FACT #1 (how I came across TL)"
2. The message on there looked like some sort of rotation cypher.
3. Wrote a small program to brute force rotations.
4. ???
5. Profit


#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main(void)
{
char* str = "ammi3((iZlm^[bg'\hf(>,`ESZP_";
for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++)
{
	for (int j = 0; j < strlen(str); j++)
	{
		printf("%c", str[j] + i);
		
	}
	printf("\n");
}
}

MysteryMeat1

United States3292 Posts

February 20 2013 08:07 GMT

#11

cecil y u post this soo late!

Chairman Ray

United States11903 Posts

February 20 2013 08:09 GMT

#12

Answer:

+ Show Spoiler +

SECRET MESSAGE FROM CECILSUNKURE - You've solved the puzzle! Congrats

EDIT: dammit beaten by 2 mins

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

February 20 2013 08:12 GMT

#13

Damn guys I'm impressed. I think I need to make the next one a lot harder. memcpy wins! You get those 25 characters sean, hahaha!

I'll post up the proper solution momentarily.

Chairman Ray

United States11903 Posts

February 20 2013 08:14 GMT

#14

Well of course some guy named memcpy wins at something coding related

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

February 20 2013 08:22 GMT

#15

On February 20 2013 17:14 Chairman Ray wrote:
Well of course some guy named memcpy wins at something coding related

HAHAHA so true! I posted up a proper solution

Man I still can't believe two people figured it out so fast. Dang. I was really worried the puzzle would be way too vague or hard... Hmm I'll be much more prepared next time

LeafMeAlone

United States301 Posts

February 20 2013 08:26 GMT

#16

is memcpy your friend or something Cecil, looks like he also worked on perspective and goes to digipen (from my 2 second research). or memcpy = cecil?

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

February 20 2013 08:28 GMT

#17

On February 20 2013 17:26 LeafMeAlone wrote:
is memcpy your friend or something Cecil, looks like he also worked on perspective and goes to digipen (from my 2 second research). or memcpy = cecil?

Sup dude long time no see! Yeah he goes to school with me, and it's just way too funny that he brute forced it. Ugh I wish I took a little more time and made a better cypher