Anyway, yesterday, our beloved Sophira happened to be discussing a number of fascinating behind-the-scenes stuff that never got discussed in the post-mortem. Since this conversation happened in the chat, and not everyone was there (case in point: I wasn't), and not everyone logreads, and anyway it's awesome stuff that's worth having for posterity, I, being obsessive, copied most of what she was saying, and... HERE IT IS!
Sophira wrote:Sophira
Well, an example: in Holmes' blog, before he outed himself, he was directed to an opium den by Moriarty under the name "jmartysknight2e4" using a Pastebin link. Which you all knew already, but what you didn't know was that the original comment didn't use a Pastebin link but actual directions. We changed it to be an expired Pastebin link (I happened to have one handy) only hours before Holmes' blog was found.
Sophira
The thing is, the comment had already been left, on time, on the day it was supposed to have been left. Posting a new comment would have used the wrong date for the comment. So what we did is deleted the original comment, posted the new one, and then changed the database so that the date/time on the comment was the same as before.
Sophira
I just realised I never talked about the locator puzzle in the post-mortem. *That* was fun.
Sophira
Yeah. I still remember how Dryu asked "Can we burn the one who came up with the locator puzzle to ashes".
Sophira
But the biggest issue was the globe-curvature thing.
Sophira
Oh, I was fully aware he wasn't serious.
Sophira
I resolved to myself to answer that one after the ARG was over, heh.
Sophira
I didn't come up with the complete idea, but most of it was me.
Sophira
Including all the coding necessary.
Sophira
Yes, and there was a reason for that.
Sophira
Remember how in the end it was solved by spoofing locations to get closer and closer?
Sophira
We knew that might happen. It was a legitimate way to solve it at the time it was done, but we didn't really want that to be tried at first.
Sophira
So we put in some protection against spoofing at first. It would come up with false positives sometimes, but it was good enough that it was good to roll with it at first.
Sophira
That's why some people got "Could not determine your location" errors.
Sophira
The way it worked was that it would actually try locating you from *two* sources at first. It would ask for the location reported by the browser, which tends to be *very* accurate (scarily so - we realised we had to restrict the accuracy later), but at first, it also tried to match it with an estimated location based on your IP address, which is not really that accurate.
Sophira
If the two locations were within... I think it was 50km of each other, then it would let you through.
Sophira
The figure was high enough that it would let the majority of people through (something I tested quite heavily before allowing it), but low enough that spoofing wouldn't be able to get you very far.
Sophira
(Since while you can control the location reported by your browser, it's much harder to control your IP address.)
Sophira
Yes. For most people in testing (and in the game, as it turned out) that was true.
Sophira
In the end, we decided to remove the anti-spoofing check, because at that point it was becoming a legitimate way to solve the puzzle since it had been pretty difficult, which also had the side-effect of allowing everybody to see their compasses.
Sophira
Which isn't to say that you weren't good at solving the puzzle! It's mostly my fault, actually, for making it so difficult.
Sophira
Actually, I made some drawings later, as accurate as I could. The way it was designed at first, it was actually a *lot* harder than I had expected it to be.
Sophira
There were still a few tricks you guys missed, though.
Sophira
Well, the first one was actually a trick that even *we* missed until after the ARG was over.
Sophira
If you go to Google Maps, and click on the "Maps Labs" link in tiny text in the left column at the bottom, one of the labs you can enable is called "Distance Measurement Tool".
Sophira
As it happens, that tool compensates for the curvature of the Earth when measuring. Try zooming out of the map to see the whole world and then using the tool.
Sophira
(and if you want to see a real mind screw, try measuring the path between Ohio and Mongolia)
Sophira
Yeah. Like I say, we only discovered that it compensated for the curvature of the Earth after the ARG. If I had discovered it during the actual puzzle, I'd have suggested to the other GMs that we should try nudging towards that.
Sophira
Honestly, the whole idea of having to remember that the Earth is a globe is mind screwy when it comes to things like this. We're so used to the idea of the shortest path being a straight line that it's easy to not realise that that won't be true on any projection of the Earth *other* than a globe.
Sophira
The second trick that was missed, which I *completely* don't blame anyone for not knowing, was that after the distances were revealed, you could actually solve it by just using the distances and ignoring the compass directions.
Sophira
There are tools out there that can plot circles of various radiuses from a point on the Earth.
Sophira
Oh, did you? I missed that.
Sophira
My mistake.
Sophira
Dryu, and he did an *awesome* job with it.
Sophira
All of you did.
Sophira
But yeah. After it was solved, I was reminded of a puzzle in another ARG that was also classified as That One Puzzle by the players of that particular ARG.
Sophira
It was an ARG called Jawbreakers, or Lockjaw. The players made a writeup of the puzzle afterwards: http://www.unfiction.com/compendium/200 ... /wheregif/
Sophira
Take a read of that link. You guys will love it
Sophira
(there's swearing in the link, I should add)
Sophira
And be sure to click to the second page.
Sophira
Hee!
Sophira
I mixed that recording.