Need Feedback on Puzzle type

[LilBlueSmurf]

Okay, below is a test puzzle.Ã,  Basically, things like this will appear throughout my game (not just this type, but a bunch of them).Ã,  So I was just wanting to see what you guys thought about it.Ã,  BTW, the main guys job is to control colors, so thats why I would like to make sure I have a good basis for these type of puzzels.

Here are two things you will have gotten by the time you try this example puzzle:


And here is the example puzzle.Ã,  You have to place each color on the left into the blank boxes on the diagram so that it all works out. (BTW this would be like 1/3 to 1/2 through the game, with easier and harder before and after)

(Try it without cheating using a eye dropper if you try to solve please)

[Venus]

I like the idea of a puzzle based on colours but this one plainly scared me away.
I have both charts and the puzzle itself in front of me. I just had a very quick look at the first one and quickly saw that it would take me (don't know if this is true for everyone) ages to figure out what this even means. There are lots of colours that look very much alike and I really don't get what the first chart means. Maybe I'm just stupid, maybe I just don't know enough about colour mixing (actually I don't know much more than if I mix blue and yellow, I'll get green and stuff like that). The knowledge I have doesn't seem to help me at all. The second chart seems to be clearer, but doesn't really help me solve the puzzle.

The thing is, if this was supposed to be a puzzle for an adventure game, I would simply stop playing it as soon as this puzzle came up. In my opinion it is far too difficult as there are far too many informations you need to know to solve this puzzle. There might be some people out there who enjoy spending hours to try and solve a puzzle like that which is imo basically looking at the charts trying to figure out which combination of colours is right and then simply try all the colours that could match. At least for me, it is not possible to recognize the exact colour with my bare eyes, especially with those two charts you have to switch between to get the right colour. I'd just know, if I managed to figure out how this works, that it is something for example light-blue or cyan (especially all the dark-grey ones look the same to me which I'm quite sure they aren't).
I really don't want to discourage you, but this is just way too much for me. Like I said, I like the idea about having colour based puzzles in a game.
Maybe it helps if you don't start with something as difficult as this one here (this is supposed to be kind of difficult, isn't it? Because if this is simple, I'm gonna kill myself right now... ) to get used to the different mixing patterns slowly.

I gave this one up after just twenty minutes, because at that point I couldn't even differentiate between black and white anymore. I probably would have figured it out, if I had spent some more time on solving it, but as it just isn't really entertaining for me, I don't think I will. That's just my opinion though and I'm quite sure that there will be people out there who love this sort of thing. I just don't.

Maybe you could make an idiot edition for people like me (if these exist... ) with only blue, yellow and green in it  .

Anyway, good luck with your game. I'll surely give it a try once it's released...

[LilBlueSmurf]

I guess I have just been messing with stuff for too long, and made some assumptions, I have a feeling you are NOT in the minority, I just didn't realize it till now. So...

A couple quick things you'll learn before getting here:
1.Ã,  RGB or RBY are NOT the primary colors.Ã,  Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are, RBG are Secondary, but to make things a bit easier, they are pretty much the same thing as primary colors in this game.

2. An arrow means that color is carried over to the one it is pointing to: ie: cyan > and magenta > at same box you'd put Blue in there.Ã,  Same with the + and = only they mix in line (like a math equation) instead of with arrows pointing to where they mix.

3.Ã,  Just a hint, the only color on the unfinished chart (the one with 3 color mixes instead of 2 color) is the one with 3 arrows pointing to it....

4.Ã,  The greys ARE the same.

If people still find this extremely difficult or hard to understand please tell me.Ã,  The last post was great! just the kind of feedback I'm looking for.

[Pod]

A couple quick things you'll learn before getting here:
1.  RGB or RBY are NOT the primary colors.  Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are, RBG are Secondary, but to make things a bit easier, they are pretty much the same thing as primary colors in this game.

RGB are the primary colours of light. CMY are the primary colours of a paint scheme known as CMYK.

Also, during the game, it'd be good if you could see all 3 things at once somehow.



[spolier]
On the 'blank' one,  Ican understand that you put orange and blue in. However, I don't see how A + B = blue or orange, when the sheet tells me it's A + B + C = blue or orange.

Also, I can't decipher that first sheet with all the L shapes things on at all. then again it is 2am. But still, the difference between a lot of the shades isn't that much really.
[/spolier]

[LilBlueSmurf]

I know RBG is the spectrum ours eyes see... this is concerning painting in which primary colors are CMY and black (Not RBY), despite what is taught in grade school.  Look up CMY and RGB on google if others would like to know more, there are some good sites, but I am trying to avoid people needing to know that...  on that note...

Cyan + Magenta = Blue  (A+B=Blue)

Cyan + Magenta + Blue = Blue (A+B+C=Blue)

Same with CY=G and MY=R, not sure where you got orange, unless that was how the red looked to you.

So yes, it is possible... I am trying to figure out a way to easyily show identical colors, since the same thing popped up with greys mentioned before.  I may just have to get rid of using RGB as quasi primaries and stick with CMY, it just seemed so limited when I started.  It's a good thing I put this up for crits

[LilBlueSmurf]

(Sorry for double post, this is unrelated to that last post and I would like it to update)

Okay,  I just had an artist friend and my brother (really good with math) give this a shot.... they both gave up.  So... I am going to conclude that this is too hard for the average player and I just made a gigantic error.  So, feel free to try solving it for a pat on the back, otherwise I will redo the whole idea (after all it's only like the basis of the game) and then repost with a new example to get more feedback (and the answer to the above with steps just for the curios).  Thanks guys.

[Snarky]

Do you need more feedback?

Looking at the images, I at least understand the nature of the puzzle: Put the colors on the left in the white boxes on the chart so that all the color-mixing equations come out correctly. The notations you're using are clear, both the arrows one and the sums one (though having both together made me wonder if they in fact meant two different things).

I can see what the first chart shows (the key is helpful here), but I can't work out how it's actually helpful for the puzzle. The second chart IS helpful, but also a bit discouraging, because the different colors look so alike.

To start attempting to solve the puzzle, I consider which three colors I need to get the purplish brown. I know yellow is one of them. Looking at the second chart, the outcomes of equation 5, 12, 14, and 18 look like possible matches, but only 12 and 14 use yellow. So I know I have to use the blue and either the red or the pink (sorry, magenta).

OK, now let's see what we need to mix in order to get the black (or possibly some other dark color) in the puzzle. The sums in chart two have three elements, while there are only two colors that mix to create the black. However, the second color is itself a mix of two colors, so if we look at those two along with the other color that's mixed with it, we have three sources.

... It looks like blue, red, and green would mix to form black... or cyan, magenta, yellow. I guess we're basically working with subtractive color theory, so as long as you have all the primaries involved it will come out as black. Since our primaries are CMY, those cannot be the result of any mixes, but have to be in "primary" boxes. Since there are only four boxes in the puzzle that aren't the result of mixing other colors, including the three that mix to form black, CMY have to go there.

OK, that should be enough restrictions to attempt a solution. I'm gonna stick the cyan, magenta and yellow in the boxes that eventually mix to form black. Cyan and magenta form blue (as you point out), which we need for the brown, so I'll put those inÃ,  column with the blue after the equation sign. That leaves red as the other source for the brown, and the remaining color, which is formed by mixing yellow with either cyan or magenta, is green. Yellow + cyan = green, so that gives us our solution.

In reading order, the colors are: magenta, red, cyan, green, yellow, blue.

Would you look at that! I think I solved it.

Honestly, I doubt I would have been able to without the hints in your posts (specifically the "cyan + magenta + blue = blue" helped me out a lot). Using them, I was able to decipher the meaning of the first chart half-way through solving the puzzle (you use it to do two-color mixing by following the lines horizontally/vertically from your source colors until they cross), and also get a firmer grip of the color theory you are using.

I personally don't think this puzzle is too hard for an adventure game, especially if you've introduced the concepts in simpler puzzles beforehand. I've seen many that were much trickier to figure out. That is, assuming I got the correct solution to this one, of course.Ã, 

[Nikolas]

I just took a small time looking at it, and guess what: I didn't solve it.

But I have a very good reason for that.
I'm not able to view all three images in the same screen, and I don't have a colour printer. This could be a problem in your game. Will the two hint pages + the puzzle be visible when you try to solve the puzzle itself? Because I don't think it's a good idea to ask people to print the pages in order to finish the game. And of course since it won't be in windows enviroment there are no multiple windows solution.

[Pod]

The second sheet would be easier to read if you ordered it by the resultant colour, not the first colour. [ie you list all the equations with blue in it first, instead of all the equations that PRODUCE blue, then produce red etc etc]

I've just realised "Inv" means INVERSE. Use "CC" [complimentary colour] or "opp" [oppsite] or something else. I thought INV meant inventory! I couldn't see how that figured into the equation.

and now that I know that the chart is CMYK, I know what those L shapes are. I already know about CMYK and RGB, and I know that CMYK is subtractive. Lots of other people don't. and that when arrayed like this:

A
B
CDE        C is the base colour with 50% K, and A is full Key and E is no Key.

What I don't get is why some L's have 3 components and some 5.

Also, the Cyan + Magenta = Blue  (A+B=Blue) needs to be told to the player. None of your charts specify this, and I was only using the information given when I attempted it last night - in other words, none of your charts told me this fact

It's a good puzzle though, I commend you on the idea.

[Snarky]

The second sheet would be easier to read if you ordered it by the resultant colour, not the first colour. [ie you list all the equations with blue in it first, instead of all the equations that PRODUCE blue, then produce red etc etc]

Yes, that would definitely make it easier. In what way is it incomplete, by the way?

I've just realised "Inv" means INVERSE. Use "CC" [complimentary colour] or "opp" [oppsite] or something else. I thought INV meant inventory! I couldn't see how that figured into the equation.

No, I don't agree with that at all. "Inv" was immediately obvious to me, and I doubt I would have been able to decode either CC or OPP. "Compl" (or at a stretch "comp") might work, if it's not too long to fit in.

and now that I know that the chart is CMYK, I know what those L shapes are. I already know about CMYK and RGB, and I know that CMYK is subtractive. Lots of other people don't.

That's certainly required understanding for playing the game. Though actually I was initially a bit confused and thought you were mixing pigments, not subtracting light (try mixing cyan and red both ways to see the difference), and I still managed to work it out in the end.

and that when arrayed like this:

A
B
CDEÃ,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  C is the base colour with 50% K, and A is full Key and E is no Key.

I did not know that in advance, but the key on the first chart explained it to me.

What I don't get is why some L's have 3 components and some 5.

Well, the only essential piece of information about each color (for this puzzle) is what you call the C, as well as the INV. A and B are just darker versions, and D and E just lighter versions. In the chart, the primary colors CMY and their complements RGB (as well as black/white) are given with five shades, while the ones further down the chart are given with just three.

Also, the Cyan + Magenta = BlueÃ,  (A+B=Blue) needs to be told to the player. None of your charts specify this, and I was only using the information given when I attempted it last night - in other words, none of your charts told me this fact

I agree that it's not obvious until you're told, but you can actually read it from the first chart. Follow the line down from cyan, and the line left from magenta. Where they cross is blue. Therefore, mix cyan and magenta and you get blue.

[LilBlueSmurf]

Well, it is nice to see that some people are getting it, but I think that in the end it is just to hard to understand and too complex for the average player, so I will continue with trying to simplify things.  For other people I said I'd post this, so here it is:

Solution:


1.  Look on 2nd mix table.  Yellow mixed with two other colors to get a color even close to that can only be either R+B+Y or M+B+Y, look closer and you see it is R+B+Y

2. Since Red and Blue MUST be used for 6 and 7 somehow, Green is the only other color you have to place that is mixed. (CMY can't be gotten from a mix)

3. The only color that mixes with green to make grey, or black, is it's inverse, or magenta if you don't pay attention to inverses.

4. It can go two ways here, you have Yellow Cyan Blue and Red left, since B and R are used, pick one of the others. I use Cyan in this pic, but yellow works too, just turns out a bit different.

5. Place the last color you have "free": Yellow

6. "Do the math" Magenta + Cyan = Blue

7. Last color you have

[Pod]

In what way is it incomplete, by the way?

I didn't say it was!

No, I don't agree with that at all. "Inv" was immediately obvious to me, and I doubt I would have been able to decode either CC or OPP. "Compl" (or at a stretch "comp") might work, if it's not too long to fit in.

Why not expand it to more than a few cryptic letters?

I agree that it's not obvious until you're told, but you can actually read it from the first chart. Follow the line down from cyan, and the line left from magenta. Where they cross is blue. Therefore, mix cyan and magenta and you get blue.

Hehe, I didn't realise the chart worked in that way. I just though it was an array of colours and their shades.

[Snarky]

In what way is it incomplete, by the way?

I didn't say it was!

The chart says "unfinished". I was just wondering what that means.

[LilBlueSmurf]

The second was just imcomplete because it didn't include mixes like Cyan+Cyan+Magenta (mixes that included 2 of the same color), plus it wasn't all fanicified like the other one

[Erenan]

My brother would hate you if he played your game, because he's colorblind and would be hopelessly lost with this type of puzzle. He wouldn't be able to tell many of the colors apart.

Another thing, which someone mentioned already, but I think it's worth repeating because I think it's a good point, is that although this particular puzzle is hard to solve when simply thrown into it like this, if the player is introduced to the concepts with easier puzzles earlier on in the game, the harder puzzles would not seem so daunting. It's not necessarily too hard. It's just too hard for a first go at it.