THE SPECTATOR is a clone of The Witness, a 2016 puzzle game developed by Thekla Inc. The main features in this mod are Puzzles, which consist of STARTING POINTS, PATH BLOCKS, and END POINTS:
Our hero, the PLAYER, solves puzzles by walking on them. Stepping on the Start, traversing one or more Path blocks (and possibly End points), and eventually reaching and settling on an End point. The Path blocks beneath the Player will light up as they traverse the puzzle.
When the Player reaches an End point and they believe that the Path they have created solves the puzzle, they simply right click the End point to attempt to solve the puzzle. If the puzzle is solved correctly, the Path blocks stay lit and the End block emits redstone power. Otherwise all the Path blocks deactivate and the puzzle no longer responds to the Player until they re-step on a Start block.
Puzzles can be RESET by crafting a special item using redstone dust surrounding a piece of nether quartz. Right clicking with this RESET item on a Start block will deactivate the puzzle the Start block is attached to.
Puzzles are denoted by a contiguous region of Path, Start, and End blocks, and their smallest axis-aligned bounding box. Path blocks must be connected horizontally in the four cardinal directions, but can go up or down vertically one block per horizontal block. However, just like the Doom Engine, you cannot place Path blocks directly over other Path blocks. (The game allows players to be a few blocks above the path with no issue.)
Puzzles can have multiple Start and End points, and can come in nine different colors. The Path (Solution) that a Player creates can also travel through Start and End points. All that matters is that the Path begins at a Start point and ends at an End point. (In the below example the path begins at the RED Start block and goes counterclockwise to the End block in the bottom right. Only that End block emits power.)
There are also a variety of different SYMBOLS that also come in different colors. The Symbols behave largely identically to the way they behave in The Witness, and can influence the validity of a Solution created by the Player.
For example, the Solution shown below is the only valid Solution for that Puzzle. When a Solution is validated, all Symbols inside the bounding box are used to check the Solution.
But be aware that for a Puzzle to use the Symbols in checking the Solution, the Puzzle itself must be, in terms of X and Z coordinates, be arranged in a grid with evenly spaced rows and columns (both dimensions must be spaced the same way, and the spacing must be nonzero). Otherwise any Solution that connects a Start and an End is considered valid.
However this grid does not necessarily have to be explicitly stated in the Puzzle itself: as long as the Path blocks can be expressed in terms of a grid with nontrivial spacing, the Puzzle is considered a valid Grid.
However, if there are Symbols (excluding Path Dots) on the rows and columns reserved for Paths, then the Grid is no longer valid and all Symbols will be ignored. But other than that, the game does not care where the symbols are in each of the grid cells. There should not be more than one distinct Symbol type per cell.
Duplication system inspired by the duplicator trees from Orespawn. Duplicate responsibly.
Duplication system inspired by the duplicator trees from Orespawn. Duplicate responsibly.
