The Genesis Project: Sburb Beta FAQ/Walkthrough by tentacleTherapist

I’d be inclined to dispense with the trite even under less pressing
circumstances. Needless to say I’ll forego the inscrutable ASCII banner
which typically heralds the striking freefall of these documents. I’ll
also resist the urge to brandish any copyright marks, or the particular
neurosis that concerns itself with the theft of the utterly mundane —
I’ll allow other deranged prospectors to stake claims on their worthless
plots as the woods burn around them. My introduction will be sparse. There
will be no majestic prose blustering into the sails of a galleon as we
embark on this voyage together. Nor will there be any hamfisted prose
whipping its limbs under a bedsheet like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ghost, for that matter.
I won’t set the stage, or dim the lights. The mood, you will see, will
be set soon enough.

Since you are reading this, chances are you have installed this game on
your computer already. If this is true, like many others, you have just
participated in bringing about the end of the world.

But don’t beat yourself up about it. There was never anything you could
have done to prevent it. The end is happening right now, as I type, and
as you read. I have come to understand that we were always doomed through
our collective ignorance, and now further doomed by those few who know,
and struggle to flee. If you’re lucky, you’ll be among the smaller subset
of the latter who are successful.

What I mean is, while that game you installed is just one more grinding
slab of rock sealing our planet’s crypt, it is also your only hope to live.
I’m presently faced with the same conundrum as you, and though I speak
with more experience, my own outcome is far from assured. I will “play
the game”, as much of it as there is to play, and record my findings here.
If you want to live, you will do as I instruct.

My condolences.

~TT

Upon connecting with the client user, you, the server user, will be met
with a control panel allowing you to manipulate your co-player’s
environment. You will find that you are allowed to deploy four items at
no expense. Three of these are rather large machines, and one is a punch
card.

It’s quite possible that you have already deployed some of these items
before reading this. If this is the case, and you have activated the machine
called the “cruxtruder” such that it displays a countdown, YOU MUST PROCEED
TO SECTION [A100] OF THIS WALKTHROUGH IMMEDIATELY. The life of the client
user depends on it, and if your co-player has activated this device in
your environment too, then yours does as well.

But if not, please refrain from doing anything with the cruxtruder, aside
from merely deploying it. This will buy us some time to think things through
properly, and to go over the basics of the game before you find your soft,
easily-punctured head in the jaws of the lion.

As mentioned, there are four items to consider, each playing a role in
a process which appears to have a singular purpose: to manufacture objects
out of thin air. The designers of the game, judging by the language used,
regard this process as a sort of alchemy. This may allude to complexities
in the production process yet to present themselves. But for now, the
variety of objects you are able to create remains quite limited.

The items in question are the CRUXTRUDER (again, tread lightly with this
one), the TOTEM LATHE, the ALCHEMITER, and the PRE-PUNCHED CARD. I will
describe how these devices work in conjunction with each other, and I will
use the analogy of having a key made at a hardware store to help you
understand.

First, deploy all of these objects in convenient proximity to each other.
Be sure not to block doors or pathways with them. You can always “revise”
the dimensions of rooms to make space for them, but I’d advise against
this, or even experimenting with the function. Doing so comes at the expense
of “build grist”, a commodity which appears to be at a premium at the onset,
and one you’d best be advised to save for later.

— THE CRUXTRUDER —

Removing the lid signals the moment your life becomes a great whirling
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pandemonium, somewhat resembling the chaos of an especially ethnic
wedding. Somewhere, a soused uncle deliberately shatters china on the
floor. Muddy livestock is decorated, and then lost track of. The question
“Who’s mule is this?” at times can be heard over the din. This is now your
reality.

But aside from that, it marks the beginning of the process I am about to
describe. The countdown begins, yes. Also, an entity called the
“Kernelsprite” is released. But neither of these things are all that
relevant to this process, to my knowledge. More on these things later.

What is relevant is the un-lidded cruxtruder’s ability to dispense
“cruxite dowels”. It will dispense at least one, though I suspect it is
capable of producing more, given parameters I’m not yet familiar with.
In my key-making analogy, these dowels represent the uncarved pieces of
metal which the hardware store employee retrieves from a drawer or a rack,
and sets about carving into a key. The two following items are needed to
do the carving.

— THE PRE-PUNCHED CARD —

It is a simple sylladex card containing an item. There is evidence to
suggest the specific item it contains is variable from session-to-session.
The card I deployed contained a blue apple. Yours may be different. It
shouldn’t matter, hopefully.

Additionally, the card as you may guess is “punched”, like one used with
antique computing systems. The pattern of holes comprises data, which I
believe corresponds to the instructions for creating the item the card
contains. That it is “pre-punched” suggests there is a way to punch an
un-punched card, possibly imprinting it with the data for the item it
contains, though no mechanism for this has presented itself yet.

But the data on the card cannot be used to create the item directly. There
is a middleman. That middleman is the totem lathe.

— THE TOTEM LATHE —

This is essentially the key carving machine. It will carve into your cruxite
dowel a pattern of grooves and contours, the sort which makes a key unique.
The instructions for this pattern are supplied by the punch card, which
is inserted into the lathe pre-activation to configure its chisels.

Once the dowel is carved, you have a totem serving as your “key”, which
can then be used to “unlock” the card item through the alchemiter. But
at this point, I will diverge from my key-making analogy and switch to
a bar code analogy. Which is not a terribly strenuous leap to make, since
the concepts of a key and a bar code are essentially the same—one being
a unique pattern of grooves; the other, of varying black lines.

— THE ALCHEMITER —

If you place a cruxite dowel, carved or uncarved, on the alchemiter’s small
pedestal, its robotic arm will scan the contours with a laser. Hence the
bar code analogy. This is the machine’s way of reading the data originally
imprinted from the card, and transforming that data into a physical object.

Though typically, this is not done without expense, I believe. An uncarved
dowel results in the creation of a “perfectly generic object”, which is
a seemingly useless green cube. It costs two units of build grist to make,
and I do not advise you to waste resources on it. There appears to be many
other varieties of grist, ostensibly used in combinations to create
different sorts of items, which possibly offers some insight into the
game’s use of the term “alchemy”.

But quite conveniently, there is an exception to this. Creating the item
on the pre-punched card costs nothing. This is good, because creating this
item turns out to be essential.

Now that you know this, you can in your own time begin the process. Once
you initiate it, naturally there is no going back, so best to be prepared.
But you probably shouldn’t drag your feet too long. As I mentioned earlier,
this is your only means of escape.

When you’re ready, be prepared to follow the steps in the next section
swiftly.

[MISSING]

I may have been a bit hasty in advising you not to bother with the prototyping
process. If I spared any detail, it was only to optimize your chances of survival.
And if you find yourself begrudging the absence of certain instructions, which if
followed would have resulted in your demise, then I guess that makes two of us.

Otherwise, you’re welcome.

But the fact appears to be that prototyping the Kernelsprite before making your
getaway may offer the only opportunity to exercise control over your new
environment, a place known as The Medium. Also, if prototyped with one (or two)
sufficiently—albeit loosely—humanoid and/or sentient element/s (living or
otherwise), it offers the chance to have all this explained to you by an
apparitional guide through whatever sort of cryptic, sketchy doublespeak your
choice of prototyping element/s engender/s. In lieu of this, you may be forced to
settle for my clear, thorough explanations and assiduous dissection of raw data.

Again, don’t mention it.

If you have made it to The Medium with an unmolested Vanillasprite, well, I’ve
already covered the bad news about this “missed opportunity”, and I will go into
this further soon. Though to what extent this actually is bad news, I’m not sure. I
know only the result of my co-player’s current configuration, wherein the sprite
was prototyped once before the departure, and once after. Which brings us to the
good news, which is that you can still prototype after your departure, and salvage
the massively rewarding experience of haggling with an exposition-slinging phantom
guide, so long as you avoid prototyping with terribly inert items, such as a brass
doorknocker and your father’s pornography collection.

Actually, that might be interesting. If you are struck by the spirit of such
experimentation, please don’t hesitate to contact me about it.

So, yes, you can enhance your sprite in this way, but doing so after your departure
will no longer induce this “effect” on The Medium I alluded to. That can only be
accomplished with one or more pre-departure prototypings. In fact, we can
extrapolate there are only so many ways to prototype a sprite.

Tiers of prototyping in relation to departure:
– Both before
– One before, one after
– Both after
– Only one, either before or after
– None

Those occurring before will affect the Medium through the kernel’s “hatching”
process, and your guide, i.e. the sprite. Those occurring after will only affect
the sprite.

The effects this process has on The Medium, or more globally, The Incipisphere, are
still vague to me. They have to do with flavoring the forces you will struggle
against, and generally, all forces at odds with each other in this realm. It has
given me some insight into the nature of the game, which again I derive through
extrapolation. We appear to be engaging an instance of a dimension with a highly
flexible set parameters, and a series of objectives surrounding an equally flexible
mythological framework. This framework seems to begin as a sort of blank template,
and evolves with the players’ actions, and likely further evolves with the addition
of more host/client connections, and thus more prototyped kernels.

I regret to say I can’t be much more specific than that, without loosely
extrapolating further. There are plenty of questions that have occurred to me,
however. Questions concerning the Kernelsprite, which I’ve raised implicitly
already, such as what is the effect of an un-prototyped kernel on The Medium? Or a
doubly-prototyped kernel, for that matter? And even more salient are questions
about this dimension itself. Do all players world-wide make it to this dimension if
they successfully complete their departure? Or is a unique “blank” instance of the
dimension created for each new player? I have no evidence, but instinct tells me it
is closer to the latter situation. There is no indication of any other players
present in this realm. Alterations in the realm seem singularly centered on the
actions of my co-player and myself. If I had to stake anything on it, I would guess
every separate client/server pair activates its own fresh copy of an Incipisphere,
or a unique “session”, if you will.

But the quantity of players is a further complication which invites more questions.
It seems the game was designed to suit two players most naturally, the server and
the client. But through a mishap, my co-player and I have slipped out of the
obvious tandem arrangement, and the only logical course of action to continue
playing is to string a daisy-chain of server/client connections together, until
presumably the chain is complete. Theoretically, we could complete this chain with
only one other player, functioning as a server to my client, and the client to my
current co-player’s server (assuming he can recover it).

The strange thing is though, in our instance of this dimension, there are four
receptacles for divided kernels, not three. Does this mean we are “destined” to
have a four player chain? How could the game “know” such a thing?

Perhaps it does, and if this proves to be the case, I trust I will be sufficiently
numbed to the realization. I can consider nothing about this game surprising at
this point, and in fact from the first moments of play, it managed to deviate so
far from my expectations that I completely forgot what my original purpose with it
was. I had chances to test some information I obtained on good authority during the
prototyping phases, but it completely slipped my mind. Instead, the game’s
catacombs securing the dark twisting paths to necromancy were blundered into rather
on accident.

But perhaps you don’t need to know any of this.

[rethink organization? lead may be waist deep logorrheic sludge. trim down. bleh]

is anyone actually reading any of this?? or are they all dead. i don’t know if
anyone besides us is even alive and playing the game or if anybody even really
cares what we have to say!

rose said i should add some stuff to this faq if anything occurred to me, so i
guess i’m doing that. i figure at the very least it will be a good reference for
just us to use. but dave probably won’t read any of this because he’s sort of this
whopping stupid horse butt. whatever.

i finally figured out what those weird codes on the back of captchalogue cards are
for. well maybe not what they’re ALWAYS for, but a way that sburb has exploited
them for an in-game purpose. every captcha’d item stamps the card with a unique
code, and a gizmo in sburb called the punch designix will punch a unique pattern of
holes in a card which is derived from that code. the punched card can then be used
with other gizmos to duplicate the item and/or combine it with another item.

i got to thinking about this and with my amazing hacker skillz i noticed a trend.
the hole pattern is based on a fairly simple cipher, converting the captcha code to
binary and then the binary pattern is punched, where 1 is a punched hole, and 0 is
an unpunched slot.

so, umm… here’s the table just to be clear.

0->0, 1->1, 2->2, 3->3, 4->4, 5->5, 6->6, 7->7, 8->8, 9->9

A->10, B->11, C->12, D->13, E->14, F->15, G->16, H->17, I->18, J->19,
K->20, L->21, M->22, N->23, O->24, P->25, Q->26, R->27, S->28, T->29,
U->30, V->31, W->32, X->33, Y->34, Z->35

a->36, b->37, c->38, d->39, e->40, f->41, g->42, h->43, i->44, j->45,
k->46, l->47, m->48, n->49, o->50, p->51, q->52, r->53, s->54, t->55,
u->56, v->57, w->58, x->59, y->60, z->61

?->62, !->63

there are a couple oddball characters ! and ? at the end to bring it up to 63 (0
thru 63 = 64 total, i.e. 6 bits). cause the binary representation of the captcha
code chars are 6 bits each, which have a range of 0-63.

so for instance the captcha code for the hammer is “nZ7Un6BI”. look up the index
for ‘n’ first, which is 49. The binary of 49 is 110001. keep doing that for all the
chars and you get:

n=110001 Z=100011 7=000111 U=011110
n=110001 6=000110 B=001011 I=010010

OK… that’s the pattern that will be punched on the card, BUT…

the bits are arranged top to bottom, left to right, in four columns, like this:

1 0 1 0
1 0 1 0
0 0 0 1
0 1 0 0
0 1 0 1
1 1 1 1
1 0 0 0
0 1 0 1
0 1 0 0
0 1 1 0
1 1 1 1
1 0 0 0

or punched on a card, like this:

r#A&G&AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&&GGGGGGGh@@
;H9XXh&AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh3XXXXXXX2@@
;H3XX AhXXXXXX22@M,:;;;,
;H33h @@GG&&&Gh9hA#@@@@@@
;H39A ;:,,,,,,,,XA&AAA&@@
;H3hH 5#333X2@@
;H3hH r;;;;s, ;r;::;, 2@X2X25@@
;H3hH ;;:::r, :r:::;: X#X2X253AH####@B
;H3hH ;:,,,r. :;,,,;: X#XXX22XGHBMMM#@r
;H3hH ;;:::r, :;:::;; h@&hhXXX39hh99&@;
;H3hH :i;;;rr r9ss5hXXX999329@:
;H3hH :r:::;; .@3X3;.:SX3@:
;H3hH rr;;;s; :@hX9r.;3X3@:
;H3hH :;:::;, :@9X9rs.533@:
;H3hH ;;,,,;: ;i;;;rs :@9XG::r9X3@:
;H3hH ,:,,,;, ,;:::;: :@99&i:r9X3@:
;H3hH ir;;;i.,;,,,r,:i;;;s:.r,,,;; :@9XG3,i3X3@:
;H3hH :::::; .:,,,;..;:::;. ;,,,:: :@99&i:r9X3@:
;H3hH r;:,,r, :@Gr;srs3X3@:
;H3hH :,,,,;. :@A.,XS5923@:
;H3hH ss;;;i; ;5;;;si :@G&Ar, 2X3@:
;H3hH ,;:::;. ,;,,,:: :@Gh&i; XX3@:
;H3hH ;;,,,r: :@Gii;.;3X3@:
;H3hH ,:,,,:. :@hir,X;2X3@:
;H3hH ;;,,,r,;i;;rs: :@hhAsi;2X3@:
;H3hH .:,,,: :::::. :@h9XrisXX3@:
;H3hH 5r;;;5,:;:::r,,r:::r::2rrriS :@h3i ;5923@:
;H3hH ,::::; ,…, ,…,. :,,,,, :@93&srrXX3@:
;H3hH s;:::s, :@93G,;.;39@:
;H3hH ….., :@9XGs. X33@:
;H3hH :@9Xh;9,XX3@:
;H3hH :@93G,5:SX3@:
;H3hH9AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHA3hM93hhs2923@:
;H99&BH@@@@@@###########################B&XXX3hGhX23@:
;H939hSsS&:s&h99999999999999999999999993XX2XXXXXX22X@:
;H3X23r ;G. hX22222222222222222222222222222222222252@:
:@#MM#AAG#AhMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBMMMMMMMMBHM@;
;MHHB###M##HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAA#,

wow ok that pretty much looks like ♥♥♥♥, but you get the idea.

so to combine two items you just overlap two punched cards. only the places where
both cards have a hole will show through, so it’s sort of like a bitwise AND
operation on both cards. the new pattern gives you the code for the new item.

for instance combining the code for a hammer (nZ7Un6BI) and a pogo ride (DQMmJLeK)
gives a new code with less holes obviously, which translates to 126GH48G. that hole
pattern went on to make the pogo hammer, which is so rad you have no idea. i’ve
also wondered if you can combine items in other ways, like a bitwise OR. that means
combining the cards to get MORE holes, not less, i.e. the new pattern has a hole
for every hole on either card. this pattern would be accomplished by DOUBLE
PUNCHING A CARD!! like, two codes, one card. i’ve got to try that some time.

but there are some mysterious things about all this. first of all, with all the
hole slots, there are 48 bits in total, which means there are almost 300 trillion
possible codes. and 300 trillion sounds huge! but when you consider it is supposed
to account for ALL CONCEIVABLE ITEMS, including all the wacky combinations of
stuff, it suddenly doesn’t seem that big!

this leads me to believe that not every combination of item has a viable duplicate.
but this is kinda obvious anyway, since there are many combinations of punch cards
that will produce either a blank card (with AND) or a totally punched card (with
OR). so there are lots of dud combinations out there, and many that will just lead
to the same pattern. like for instance a gun and an atom bomb could make some sort
of ULTIMATE DEATH RAY, but for that matter a shoe horn and a potted plant could
lead to exactly the same pattern!!!!! so weird.

also it seems like combined items will always have patterns with either much fewer
holes or much more holes than more “ordinary” items, which will occupy the vast
meaty middle of all possible patterns. it is strange and counter intuitive that
more complex objects have simpler patterns but hey, there you have it.

but all this sorta makes me guess this system can be cracked in some way. like if
you have a complicated item and you want to “extract” simpler item components from
it, there might be some algorithm for deriving the pattern you want, or at least
narrowing down the possibilities. there might also be ways of charting through the
simpler patterns on both ends of the bit spectrum, and pinning down the ones that
will make cooler stuff. who knows.

i want to ask jade about this because she’s really good at this sort of thing
somehow even though she doesn’t have my leet haxxor cred. too bad she makes herself
so scarce all the time. jade if you ever read this let me know what you think!

;AHHHHHHHHHHBr
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
h@&5s.,,,,,,,,,,r#@3
@@@…::::::::::::,@@@
;@ .,,:;;;;;;;::,:::@@@
i@@#r,BBA;;;;;;;AMM;:, 9@
:H@@2 .;@@M:;;;;;:B@@;::.r#A:
@@@2:.::,..,::::::,…,;::,,@@#
@@: .:;:;@@@@@@@@@@@@@;:;;::r@@
@G ,;;:#@ i@r,;;;:.&@
@#.:;;,@@ ,@r,;;;:.9@
&Ah,,;,@@; ,@r:;;;;5@@
X@@i,,s#@s XA&;:;;:,@@@&:
.i@M.,.:@@9 h##@2.:;;;X@XS&@A
@B.,,:i@@@@@@@@h,,:;;;:rX .5@@
@@@;,..:s2X25r:.,,:::;:,,,::,@@
s@@#;…… ..,s5XXi:;;;;;:::2@&;;:.
B@@hhGGGGG

I can’t take as many as I’d like to for comprehensive documentation. For what it’s
worth, here’s what I’ve managed to collect so far. More captures forthcoming.

http://tiny​url.com/0413sprite
http://tiny​url.com/0413power
http://tiny​url.com/0413internet
http://tiny​url.com/0413build
http://tiny​url.com/0413prototype
http://tiny​url.com/0413disconnect
http://tiny​url.com/0413nanna
http://tiny​url.com/0413weirdo
http://tiny​url.com/0413designix
http://tiny​url.com/0413grist
http://tiny​url.com/0413up
http://tiny​url.com/0413steed
http://tiny​url.com/0413barbasolbandit
http://tiny​url.com/0413really
http://tiny​url.com/0413hmm

This is my final entry.

My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to
play this game the right way. I have been meticulous in documenting the process to
help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I
believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint
supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our
inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I
believe them now.

I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really.

I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and
comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be
repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tree,
for God’s sake.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying networks, and
sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may
disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use
to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent
tendrils.

In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real.

Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.