HS IDE/Theory Thread(ness) Douze: Thread for Theories(+IDES)

[dragonpaul99]

Okay. So you know how the same Skaia is in the incipisphere and on those staff things? Well, what if that means it's also the same Skaia in every session? That means once Jack shows up, he's able to mess things up for everybody.

Or, alternate theory: The staffs hold a DIFFERENT Skaia inside them. The White Staff holds the current session, which black must get to start the reckoning. The Black Staff holds another instance of Skaia, which the players must retrieve to stop the reckoning. Unfortunately, it also starts a new session on a different planet. This planet is the troll's planet. Jade will fuck everything up by using some sort of gamebreaking cheat to get the staff before it's too late. Since they didn't have time to repair the staff that Jack broke, it messed up the troll's session somehow.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, or if it's the right place for it, but I noticed today that, logically, in the timeline in which John dies, none of the major characters should exist. If John had died, he never would have created the paradox clones that would later become all of the major characters. So...Time Paradox, I guess?

Yes, you have found the right place.
Anyway, IDE/Theory:The only true way to win the game to get killed before the player can create their past selves. The time paradox fixes itself by never starting the game on Earth, therefore, nobody dies. Sadly, John has already done this. Dammit John, you've killed us all!

[Lord Snagglepuss]

Hey guys, I had a small question.

During the end of "> [S] WV?: Rise up.", what exactly happens with the White King, the Black King, and Jackspers? The pacing of the video is a little confusing, and I don't really want to wait until another recap update for the sequence of events to be fully explained. o_o;

[Shadow of the Lotus]

1) Effects of kernelsprite prototyping on the design of the battlefield of Skaia
2) Pan of battlefield (includes castles)
3) Show of army for either side
4) Armies fighting
5) WV?'s house/farm before it was touched by war and burned down after it was touched by war
6) WV? showing resentment of royalty while looking over destruction caused by war
7) Reveal of Black King and the ring-equivalent for the King (Queens have rings, Kings have scepters). The scepters are a bit weird because they seemingly contain the very battlefield they're standing on? I'm not really sure, but it at least is used for a scene shift
8.) Jack Noir (Sovereign Slayer) flying over battlefield
9) WV? inspiring both armies to abandon fight and rebel against royalty
10) PM? arriving to acquire the White King's crown and scepter; she notices that she's lost the White Queen's ring.
11) Hearts Boxcars (I forget his correct name, but you get the idea) radios in likely to Jack Noir to say that PM? just got the scepter and crown of the White King
12) Jack Noir swoops in during the middle of WV?'s rebellion against the Black King to cut in half the Black King's scepter (thus removing the King's power)
13) Hearts Boxcars attacks PM?
14) Jack Noir kills the Black King and takes his crown
15) The White Scepter is dropped by PM? during the attack from Hearts Boxcars and lands somewhere else (apparently below a waterfall).

[KimikoMuffin]

HB? = Hegemonic Brute, I think.

[Lord Snagglepuss]

1) Effects of kernelsprite prototyping on the design of the battlefield of Skaia
2) Pan of battlefield (includes castles)
3) Show of army for either side
4) Armies fighting
5) WV?'s house/farm before it was touched by war and burned down after it was touched by war
6) WV? showing resentment of royalty while looking over destruction caused by war
7) Reveal of Black King and the ring-equivalent for the King (Queens have rings, Kings have scepters). The scepters are a bit weird because they seemingly contain the very battlefield they're standing on? I'm not really sure, but it at least is used for a scene shift
8.) Jack Noir (Sovereign Slayer) flying over battlefield
9) WV? inspiring both armies to abandon fight and rebel against royalty
10) PM? arriving to acquire the White King's crown and scepter; she notices that she's lost the White Queen's ring.
11) Hearts Boxcars (I forget his correct name, but you get the idea) radios in likely to Jack Noir to say that PM? just got the scepter and crown of the White King
12) Jack Noir swoops in during the middle of WV?'s rebellion against the Black King to cut in half the Black King's scepter (thus removing the King's power)
13) Hearts Boxcars attacks PM?
14) Jack Noir kills the Black King and takes his crown
15) The White Scepter is dropped by PM? during the attack from Hearts Boxcars and lands somewhere else (apparently below a waterfall).

Thanks, man! You rock six kinds of awesome.

[PaulPower]

shit.
lets be geometers



Assumptions:
The transitions from grey to black represent entering the medium.
The time graph is linear, not logarithmic or double-log or anything like that.
The current timeline position is marked by the centre of the circle.

While it looks initially like there's very little time until Jade's medium entry, it's most likely that John's current place in the timeline is marked by the centre of the circle rather than the edge of it. Having found the centre of the circle, a line (white, semitransparent) was extended across the graph to Jade's section of the graph, and then the time between John giving Baby Rose the bunny and Jade entering the medium measured (yellow line).

This is only a relative measure, but there is a point of comparision: we know that over four hours pass between Rose entering the medium and Dave entering the medium (orange line). Probably at least 4h 13m, plus any additional time before Jade opens the Cruxtruder. About four and a half hours, say. Duplicating the yellow line, we see that it fits into the orange line about four and a half times.

Conclusion (and IDE/theory): there's about an hour to go before Jade enters the medium, whatever way it's achieved.

[Majutsukai]

The fact that Dave's Felt suit requires uranium grist seems like it's foreshadowing that Jade may have a hand in the creation of the Felt.

Or maybe not, but it's possible. I'm really eager to see the intermission become tied into the main story more as things progress.

Grist type seems to often be determined by the color of the item more than anything else. Iodine for the Bronzed Vaccumbrella, Tar for the Bodacious Black Liquid Sorrow Gushers and Four Aces Suited, Garnet for the Red Plush Puppet Tux, Amethyst for the Velvet Squiddleknit Dress. Stuff like that.

[Arcana]

I wonder how much troll animals differ from humans'. Crabs seem to exist (see CG's sprite), and judging by the trolls' themes, so do cows (taurus), fish (pisces), goats (capricorn) and sheep (aries). Judging by the Midnight Crew, terriers also exist in their world. In fact, the only creatures stated to be in the trolls' world that arent in ours are, well, the trolls.

Well yeah, but with that you would have to mention they seem to have the same zodiac, which is based on constellations as seen from Earth. Why the trolls would have them is completely unknown, unless they are unreal levels of analogous. But I mean, where do you even get aliens thats that analogous

The midnight crew seem to have a lot of pictures that have to do
with humans (the grey ladies, the crosbytop, the furred upper lip) and I get the feeling that Slick being confused about Jeff Foxworthy doesn't mean that the rest of his crew hasn't found information regarding them. I mean,DD even fetishizes them. I feel like this is evidence that the trolls are more connected to humans than we think, and a lot of it isn't just analogy.

What this means about the troll worlds connection to the human's is not totally clear, but I'm not totally convinced that trolls are just aliens who happen to live on a crazy looking planet that just has the same animals on it. That would be pretty silly, I think. Maybe instead their civilization was studying humans? Or maybe the human and troll worlds will have been connected connected through some weird Skaia bullshit? I dunno.

I think the real reason is probably aestheics, rule if funny and well just Andrew being Andrew. But this might come into play when we least expect it due to the magic of retroactive foreshadowing.

GC implied in her conversation to Rose that the exiles will rebuild civilization only for that civilization to be destroyed by Sburb as a part of a cycle, this implies that it may have happened before, only that time the chess piece creatures were human and possibly also the troll's anscestors.

I wonder if the act of the mansion blocking the exile bunker has something to do with the role of the Felt. My idea is that the Felt are a menagerie of different beings such of former players, consorts, agents, gaurdians, etc who all hate Sburb and want to destroy or block all traces of it and may have even tried to kill the MC just on the fact that they are still bound to Sburb. Snowman of course has been taken from her game role and is now more of a rougeish figure than aurhoritarian.

If the Felt were Sburb players maybe Snowman went to their world and became a player herself?

[simon.clarkstone]

Also, Jades arrival and prototyping will take place before the white scepter is recovered, so its position will change completely before PM/HB/WK reach it

Nice idea here. I can just imagine HB's expression when he reaches for it.

Theory: the group of WV BK SS are nowhere near the group of PM BK HB. They could be thousands of miles apart (if the Battlefield is much bigger than the outside of Skaia), since they are not seen interacting except through radio.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, or if it's the right place for it, but I noticed today that, logically, in the timeline in which John dies, none of the major characters should exist. If John had died, he never would have created the paradox clones that would later become all of the major characters. So...Time Paradox, I guess?

No. The timeline splits at the point where future Dave appears. There is one line pastward of that point and two lines futureward, so everything gets "duplicated". Therefore, you only need one set of kids to be created, because they appear at a time where there is only one timeline.

[Summergale]

This is how I understood it, although people can correct me if I'm wrong...

Apologies for gogawful quality, made it quickly:

show spoiler

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[MrCheeze]

So yeah. It only worked because in the future that timeline would no longer exist.

[simon.clarkstone]

This is how I understood it, although people can correct me if I'm wrong...

Apologies for gogawful quality, made it quickly:

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Ok, I will explain the nature of time in this game as I understand it. Notice that each universe has a single fixed real timeline, making the physics quite elegant.



Non-branching time travel with a single fixed self-consistent timeline for each universe is the "real" time travel. In this diagram, we see the kids' universe (pq), the trolls' Incipisphere (rs), and the kids' Incipisphere (abcd). Each has its own arrow of time (t_pq, t_rs, and t_ad), so there is no particular correspondence between time in one universe and time in another.

If you are a low-tech civilisation, Sburb helpfully tunnels ordinary internet connections in and out of the Incipisphere (green lines) but restricts them to only being between the players' home universe and the players' Incipisphere, and timed according to an arbitrary definition of "in sync" (i.e. the green lines do not cross). The trolls' technology allows you to pick any time and universe to communicate with (grey lines).

Sburb builds a "rewriting" timeline system on top of the Incipisphere's natural time, because it is more fun to play in. The dotted line a'b'd' represents the "final timeline" version of the Incipisphere, and all communication in and out of the Incipisphere is "time aimed" in terms of it (dotted grey and green lines). ab maps to a'b', cd maps to b'd', and bc does not map to anything.

This means that things that transport/communicate in/out of the incipisphere cannot access the bits of time that the incipisphere does not consider to be "in the final timeline", which is why the trolls and Jade just vanished rather than being confirmed quitted/dead (times between b and c are not mapped to anywhere on the line a'b'd', so no dotted green/grey lines reach there).

The decks cause most of the contents of the Incipisphere to be deleted (red circle near c) and replaced with a copy of an earlier state (the copying is red arrow bc). Dave (operating the decks) and Rose (dream-self) are the only things that are not destroyed and replaced; Dave stays where he is and his earlier self is copied to alongside him, and Rose's dream self is merged with the copy of earlier Rose. It's like in the Dave: Accelerate fan-game, except the past-self is non-stupid because it is a copy of the whole of the player (lol @ Descartes), not just a simple automaton that repeats the actions.

So what happens to John? He is created at point 1 and sendificated back to point 2. He grows up, then plays Sburb and enters the medium at time 3, landing at point 4. He is tricked by GC just before point b, then dies at point 5. Dave gets fed up, uses his decks at point c, which deletes most of the contents of the Incipisphere and replaces it with a copy from the time b. That copy includes non-dead John, who Dave convinces not to kill himself just after point c. John creates himself and the others at point 1, then continues ininto the future. The act of copying (bc) is how both "timelines" can have a John, despite only one John ever having been created (1); they share a common past, like forked software does.

It's all quite simple really.

[tynic]

Now THAT is how you draw a diagram.

[PlumFinder]

I like that diagram.
Despite the insane amount of lines, it gives a very clear explanation of... stuff.

[simon.clarkstone]

I like that diagram.
Despite the insane amount of lines, it gives a very clear explanation of... stuff.

Thanks; I was worried that it wouldn't be very helpful.

If anyone wants the original SVG, you can get it from my git repository (raw SVG here).

[Summergale]

that is beautiful.

[Mme Sparklecakes XVII]

Most of that's pretty solid, but it seems more likely to me that the reason why Jade stopped communicating is, well, death. And if I recall, the trolls are preparing for something very soon, so whatever that is probably happened to them.

Basically if any pesterchum conversation happens between the trolls and Dave in a timeline that would be "lost" when he goes back in time, your theory will be debunked, until then, there's nothing to disprove it.

(It's good because it's theoretically falsifiable.)

[Shadow of the Lotus]

Makes me wonder how Jade's power could come into play. I guess 'space' is more location but it'd be cool if Jade could move along different time-lines and universes (visit the dead-John timeline, etc...)

[P_equals_NP]

she didn't die instantly though, but she still stopped communicating with all of them

[Tenebrais]

I would think timelines stop existing when they're edited out. More likely she'll be able to warp space around her like her guardian. Or just using him. Patch Of Bec's Fur && Something?

Hmm. Space-Bending Omniflute!

[P_equals_NP]

anyway though, my view on time travel is that basically dave keeps splintering off into alt dimensions every time he goes back in time and the dimension the trolls are allowed to view are the ones in which dave doesn't time travel back to later

[Altum]

I wonder how much troll animals differ from humans'. Crabs seem to exist (see CG's sprite), and judging by the trolls' themes, so do cows (taurus), fish (pisces), goats (capricorn) and sheep (aries). Judging by the Midnight Crew, terriers also exist in their world. In fact, the only creatures stated to be in the trolls' world that arent in ours are, well, the trolls.

Well yeah, but with that you would have to mention they seem to have the same zodiac, which is based on constellations as seen from Earth. Why the trolls would have them is completely unknown, unless they are unreal levels of analogous. But I mean, where do you even get aliens thats that analogous

My previously posted IDE/Theory: The trolls' usernames, personal symbols, appearances, personality quirks and sprites all arose naturally and independently out of their individual pasts and natures, with no reference to primitive Earth superstition. The Zodiac theme was a distac coincidence.

IN PARALLEL, the usernames, personal symbols, appearances, etc of the four chums coincidentally correspond to something in Trollworld culture, like the suits in their equivalent of Tarot or the Chinese Guardians of the Four Directions.

On the timeline subject--my personal theory is that there is exactly one (1) timeline. John died, four months passed, and then four months unpassed. Dave didn't travel through time; he rewound time, reversing everything that had happened. (As Darren Hanlon says, the record stands still, and the world turns around it.)

The ectobabies/Jade's package/Exile command do travel through time, and can only create stable time loops doing so. One timeline, which is secretly four months longer than the calendar would indicate. This has the collateral advantage that Dave doesn't create and doom timelines full of living things every time he uses his timepowers.

The only flaw in this is Future-Dream-Rose; the way the animation of her merging with Current-Dream-Rose is drawn seems to indicate that there was a separate timeline that died when Future Dave went back in time. But we know so little about how dreamselves work that I'm not convinced it kills my theory.

[PaulPower]

I would think timelines stop existing when they're edited out. More likely she'll be able to warp space around her like her guardian. Or just using him. Patch Of Bec's Fur && Something?

Hmm. Space-Bending Omniflute!

I'm still holding out for a Space Bass.

[Shadow of the Lotus]

IDE/theory: The VERY FIRST thing Jade will try and do once she gets space-warping powers is try and find her pumpkins. She will be unsuccessful (barely) every time.

[Alyss]

IDE/Theory: Dad, Mom, and Hass will get killed/injured while traveling through the Veil. It seems pretty likely to me (unfortunately), the trolls said that their Reckoning was starting faster than usual.

That also leads me to belive that the kid's shorter Reckoning has something to do with the Trolls not continuing on to Skaia.