A Question Of Time

[Kafuuka]

[center]Kafuuka Milling Inc presents:

[size="5"]A Question Of Time[/size]


Featuring:

[size="5"]I Ark Mattarox[/size]
[/center]



Rules:
1. No cheating. If caught you'll be banned from all Kafuuka Milling Inc quest until you redeem yourself, without any comments on how such is even possible.
2. Doing silly or thoughtless things will cost you karma points. eg. using the wrong label when pm'ing.
3. People with negative karma points are ineligible for prices.
4. No spoilers. (See rule 1)

Rewards - IRS - Incremental Reward System:
There will be WPs, however, the number of WPs will depend on the number of people making a decent effort and capped to what I have available (5). More in detail, I require 5 people to 'loose' per 'winner'.
The winners are not necessarily the first ones to complete the quest.
In case of ties, the winners will be the ones with the most karma points.

Instructions:
Find I Ark Mattarox, use the clickies from left to right. Sometimes pwd's will be between brackets [].

Notes:
First new quest in a long time, now using clickies.
Be prepared to face numbers (and maths muhahaha).
Remember that it is a Question of Time.
If possible, I'd like people to remove their silly comments from Arky... (eg. "Empty Aramor 75"... not quite...) (note: not adressed at Junior who made an entry after talking to Arky)
There is no need to sign up or anything, just follow the instructions and your (lack of) progress will be monitored.
Karma points: you had about two years to get some... below is a list of people who did:
Intrigue, Emerald Arcanix, Zleiphneir, Gargant, Czez, Alwin, Kriskah Arcanu, brys, phantasm, dst, ribidian, Eman Emaul, Rendril Revant, ShadowSeeker, Grido, Indyra Sirenias, Nimrodel, Frederick Georges, Castin, Chanda, Totenkopf, nadrolski, SilentShade1, Raygon Vandark, Pazur, Darkest Mage, samon, Lord Beta Wolfeyes

[Kafuuka]

Some clarifications:
There are currently no people with negative (below zero) karma points.
There is no need to interact with Arky or anyone else. I can't be bothered to be online 24/7. However I think it is a nice opportunity since Arky isn't out of Necrovion much, thanks to the bungee effect.
If you encounter large lists of seemingly arbitrary numbers, that's good. If you encounter blank pages, something must have gone wrong. PM me asap (forum or in game). Fixed 1 error earlier today, hoping there won't be more.

[Sasha Lilias]

How do we start? Oo

[Kafuuka]

[quote name='Kafuuka' date='09 July 2010 - 08:38 PM' timestamp='1278700735' post='63716']
Instructions:
Find I Ark Mattarox, use the clickies from left to right. Sometimes pwd's will be between brackets [].
[/quote]
Getting started was supposed to be the easy part; maybe my perception is a bit off.

[Kafuuka]

It's over... only one person managed to read the book of time, Totenkopf.


As for the rest of you, here's an explanation of how it worked:

1. Anyone reading Ark's papers or the quest page should've been able to see that the pwd was 'the book of time'.
2. Being a question of time, the numbers in it changed every hour, on the hour. With a period of 20 hous, so that people checking back a few days later would see new numbers.
3. The [ and ] are always fixed. This should be a hint that all numbers in the same position always represent the same thing, a letter. In fact the numbers are generated by a modulated wave function f(x,t) = A(x) * sin ( omega * t + x / lambda ). This may seem very complicated, but what it means is simple. Each letter was converted into a number, with 'a' being '1'. Then for each hour of the twenty hour period, the number is multiplied by the sinus. To decode, if you realize it's a wave, is even simpler: for each position, wait for the number to be a natural number different from zero, this one will be the amplitude.
4. The second part was roughly the same, but in a two dimensional grid with diminishing amplitude to simulate entropy, ie f(t,x,r) = f(t,x)/r

There you have it, hiding things in time. Next quest will be completely different and frankly I don't think anything like this one can be done again now that i've explained it. I hope you all enjoyed your headaches and are facepalming right now.

[Totenkopf]

Thanks Kafuuka, I really enjoyed the quest, although it was a bit frustrating at first