HHN 21 | Take A Chance Clues & Answers

[emily.on.elm.street]

Today I won the tv game two times without even clicking on one technical difficulty. Also another thing that is guaranteed is that there won't be 3 technical difficulties in a row, but there might be two beside/on top of each other so the 3rd one in a row will be normal.

I found JWFearman's key theory to be extremely useful and I won every time using it.

[Jumboshrmp]

I've gotten pretty good (or lucky) at the TV game. I don't understand how anyone gets the crypt game though. Sure, your chances improve once you get the first one correct, but how can you do that if you have a 1 in 15 chance of getting it? (5 keys x 3 doors) Are you really just supposed to keep clicking "Pick a Card" if you don't get the first door right?

[Fallow]

I've gotten pretty good (or lucky) at the TV game. I don't understand how anyone gets the crypt game though. Sure, your chances improve once you get the first one correct, but how can you do that if you have a 1 in 15 chance of getting it? (5 keys x 3 doors) Are you really just supposed to keep clicking "Pick a Card" if you don't get the first door right?

Yep. Got 1700 tokens out of it. Though I've switched to Channel Surfing out of sheer boredom...

[Legacy]

Today I won the tv game two times without even clicking on one technical difficulty. Also another thing that is guaranteed is that there won't be 3 technical difficulties in a row, but there might be two beside/on top of each other so the 3rd one in a row will be normal.

I found JWFearman's key theory to be extremely useful and I won every time using it.

Not true. I've seen the technical difficulties form rows four or five times.

[Fallow]

I managed to hit "21"00 tokens - though I'm going to keep going so I don't lose my top position.

[Cramer]

Yeah, I've had a few wins when it was down to 50/50, but it feels more like 20/80. You can get guaranteed wins out of either game, the TV game is actually easier imo..I've done several in which I hit one technical difficulty, or I had absolutely none.

[DannyR]

Hello! I'm a long time forum stalker that never registered before I saw this thread, and I thought I'd take some time to help shed some light on this game.

First of all, I apologize of this destroys the 'fun' in the game for some of you, there are quite a few spoilers. Please stop reading if this is the case. :-)

At some point in the future the game will present the user with up to 9 cards, the template is shown here:

These cards will lead the user to one of seven 'houses', of which three are currently available (house00-house02). The layout of the cards on the screen is random (client side), and the color of the cards assigned to each house is determined by the server on each render.

As you've certainly experienced, some cards have the potential to immediately cost tokens. Other's will lead directly to a game or to a 'pre-game' (as illustrated well by the graves before the key game).

There will be six total games, of which two are currently enabled. They are:

'Thekey'

'Channelsurfing'

'Loosecannon'

'Certainrune'

'Themachine'

'Tankyou'

The games are enabled or disabled by the server, and this is returned to the client along with a list that determines the 'risk' associated with each game. If the game isn't mentioned in the list of available games it is presumed disabled by the client (as is currently the case with all but two of the games).

Regarding 'Thekey', as you've almost certainly noticed there are two tombs hard-coded to lead to failure. This is what is called the 'pre-game', but it's not much of a game. This leads to the real game, which involves 5 keys and 3 doors. I've seen some of you speculate about patterns, sequences, etc, but unfortunately this isn't the case either. It is entirely based on a PRNG.

To illustrate the point, the code responsible for mapping keys to doors when the game is started is shown below:

        private function _SetKeyDoorCombo() : void

        {

			_as3_getlocal <0> 

			_as3_pushscope 

			_as3_pushnan 

			_as3_setlocal <1> 

			_as3_pushnull 

			_as3_coerce_s 

			_as3_setlocal <3> 

			_as3_pushundefined 

			_as3_coerce_a 

			_as3_setlocal <4>

			_as3_pushbyte 1

			_as3_convert_u 

			_as3_setlocal <2> 

			_as3_jump offset: 99[#62]

#15			_as3_label 

			_as3_getlex Math

			_as3_callproperty random(param count:0)

			_as3_getlex mKeyList

			_as3_getproperty length

			_as3_multiply 

			_as3_pushbyte 0

			_as3_rshift 

			_as3_convert_d 

			_as3_setlocal <1> 

			_as3_getlex mKeyList

			_as3_getlocal <1> 

			_as3_pushbyte 1

			_as3_callproperty http://adobe.com/AS3/2006/builtin::splice(param count:2)

			_as3_pushbyte 0

			_as3_getproperty {}

			_as3_coerce_s 

			_as3_setlocal <3> 

			_as3_getlex mcContainer

			_as3_getlocal <3> 

			_as3_callproperty getChildByName(param count:1)

			_as3_coerce_a 

			_as3_setlocal <4>

			_as3_getlex myPath

			_as3_pushstring "mDoor"

			_as3_getlocal <2> 

			_as3_add 

			_as3_pushstring "CorrectKey"

			_as3_add 

			_as3_findpropstrict flash.display::MovieClip

			_as3_getlocal <4>

			_as3_callproperty flash.display::MovieClip(param count:1)

			_as3_setproperty {}

			_as3_findpropstrict trace

			_as3_getlex myPath

			_as3_pushstring "mDoor"

			_as3_getlocal <2> 

			_as3_add 

			_as3_pushstring "CorrectKey"

			_as3_add 

			_as3_getproperty {}

			_as3_getproperty name

			_as3_callpropvoid trace(param count:1)

			_as3_getlocal <2> 

			_as3_increment 

			_as3_convert_u 

			_as3_setlocal <2> 

#62			_as3_getlocal <2> 

			_as3_pushbyte 3

			_as3_ifle offset: -106[#15]

			_as3_returnvoid 

        }// end function

This can be represented as:

        private function _SetKeyDoorCombo() : void

        {

            var random_index:Number = NaN;

            var child_index:String = null;

            var child_object:* = undefined;

            var door_number:uint = 1;

            while (door_number <= 3)

            {


                random_index = Math.random() * mKeyList.length >> 0; // Equiv to Math.floor(Math.random...)

                child_index = mKeyList.splice(random_index, 1)[0]; // pops a key off the keylist

                child_object = mcContainer.getChildByName(child_index);

                myPath["mDoor" + door_number + "CorrectKey"] = MovieClip(child_object); // links door number to a key

                door_number = door_number + 1;

            }

            return;

        }

Or to put it simply, it's random. There are some strategies that can be used to be efficient about discovering the map between keys and doors, but in general your odds of succeeding with less than 3 errors are pretty low (something like 15-20% according to my horrible math skillz). The 'Channelsurfing' pre-game involves another simple choice between two buttons, one fails one moves you on to the actual game. The actual game is nine screens, three of which are 'bad'. The bad ones are positioned entirely randomly, as seen with the key/door combos. They instantiate all 9 elements of the screen list with 'good', and then mark 3 screens as 'bad', pseudocode below.

            while (screen_count <= 9)

            {


                mScreenList.push(new Screen(this, this.mcContainer["s" + screen_count]));

                MovieClip(this.mcContainer["s" + screen_count]).gotoAndStop(2);

                screen_count = screen_count + 1;

            }

            while (bad_screen_list.length < 3)

            {


                random_selected_screen = mScreenList[uint(Math.random() * mScreenList.length)];

                if (bad_screen_list.indexOf(random_selected_screen) == -1)

                {

                    random_selected_screen.isBad = true;

                    bad_screen_list.push(random_selected_screen);

                }

            }

The odds of winning the channel surfing game > the key game.

In any event, shortly after hitting a failure or a success in any game your score is immediately pushed to the server along with a checksum. At this point in the game no score seems to unlock any additional content. Even if it somehow did unlock additional content, the swf files for the other houses and games are not yet present on the server so they would quite literally do nothing.

Regards,

Danny

[JDW]

Yes welcome to the board.

However, there are reasons why those of us who code don't post everything we find... It kills the suspense and speculation.

[madmonk]

Very interesting, thanks for the post!

The two coded house names that intrigue me the most are Tankyou and TheMachine. The others are pretty obvious considering the clues we have already gotten (although Sprung 1 with the Rune Room still has me stumped on an overall theme; all I know is there will most likely be demons and runes in there).

I can only assume "TheMachine" is related to Saws n Steam (which will hopefully make for a badass game).

Tankyou must relate to the proposed WWI house but I am honestly not completely sold on that spec yet (although I could very well end up eating crow).

Sorry to get sidetracked with speculation in this thread but these coded house names actually got me excited to speculate for the first time this year :-)

Edited August 9, 2011 by madmonk

[Dr. Jimmy]

they are reading threads like this and making adjustments to the games to make them more random and luck driven.

[Grimp0nd]

Yes welcome to the board.

However, there are reasons why those of us who code don't post everything we find... It kills the suspense and speculation.

To be fair he did say if you don't want any spoilers not to read any further. Personally after reading through his explanation it's not exactly game breaking but it's still like reading Klingon to me lol. Maybe people should make their own mind up whether they need help or not but personally I like to solve challenges like this on my own. Regardless of whether people think it's right or wrong welcome to the forum Danny.

[Sinister]

That is some really beautiful action script! If I do say so myself.

[DannyR]

they are reading threads like this and making adjustments to the games to make them more random and luck driven.

What changes have been made so far? I was out of town for a week. I'm not sure what they were before, but I don't think they can make them any more random than they are right now.

[Cramer]

Hmm. Looks like token risk is 60 now (sorry if this has been mentioned) and I know that I'll be burned at the stake here, and that Universal will inevitably fix it just because I'm saying it, but refreshing before a game is over will still let you retain your tokens without risking losing them.

I for one love the feature because it lets me play around with the games without having to stop. If any of the higher ups at Universal are reading this, and considering how to fix this loophole, please at least consider a way for us to continue to play the games, maybe without the opportunity to gain tokens for a while. Otherwise, we can just register new accounts endlessly using fake email addresses. Either way we get to play around with the games .

EDIT: Token risk of 60 seems to be for crypts only...getting a token risk of 30 with the TV game.

Edit to my edit: Played the TV game again....and it had a risk of 60. Maybe it ramps up or something now?

Edit to my edited edit: Yup, it ramps up now. Just got a 120 token risk. Seems like refreshing before losing will continue to build up the risk, thus making it so when you do win, you get a ton of tokens. . No wonder the top people in the leaderboard have 5000+ tokens. Incoming fix? Lol.

Edited August 9, 2011 by Cramer

[King_K.]

The Horizons game is simple enough. The Rune game has me waaaaay confused.

[BabyFirefly]

The Horizons game is simple enough. The Rune game has me waaaaay confused.

Agreed. The Horizons game was my life saver! It finally allowed me to see the rotating house of cards for longer than 10 minutes. Still can't get the idea of the Rune game or the Key game. For those reading who are involved in the making process....well done! This has me hooked!

[King_K.]

Is the Rune game just an "at random" game or have you seen a system or way of doing it easily?

[JDW]

For me first one on right. second on left, third top, fourth bottom. I haven't taken it apart yet to see if it randomizes or not.

[Terra Guard]

Beat the Horizons game on my second try. Very fun but not too challenging. But I have not won the Rune game yet. I find it very similar yet more difficult than the Blue Light game because if you screw up twice, you lose tokens. I'm banned from the site now, because I lost the Rune game on first try.

[Liam W]

So it appears The Machine game is Saw&Steam based and to do with the horizon project which has been rumored to be seen around jaws and the other is to do with runes and demons which is in one of the sprung tents

i find the machine game very easy, and very simular to the havoc game last year

Not a clue about the rune game yet....

[King_K.]

1st - Left

2nd - Down

3rd - Up

4th -Right.

This worked for me on the Horizons puzzle three times in a row (But it didn't work after those tries anymore)

[Legacy]

The answer is on the black box you click to start the game.

[Terra Guard]

BTW, when you pick the green card and it takes you to the screen where it says "Cheat for Grades.... or play for keeps?", what does the note on the wall, right of the screen, say?

[King_K.]

The answer is on the black box you click to start the game.

Tried that same combination and it didn't work for me.

[Legacy]

Tried that same combination and it didn't work for me.

Hmm... did for me.

EDIT - It rotates, though. The trick is getting the first one right. Once you get the first one, follow the order on the box.

Edited August 10, 2011 by Legacy