[Jan-Poo]

@Renall

It's a real pity that the Redaction project is stalled. It was an interesting story, but maybe the problem is that it was a bit too ambitious. This is why with Witches & Woodlands I tried to stay as much as possible far away from the "mystery" element of Umineko. I didn't want to create something that could affect or be affected by speculations on the nature of the story. I'm sure you well understand the problems with that. It was kind of amusing how in the first chapters of redaction there were so many subliminal disclaimers like "this game might not be exactly (or at all) like the ones in the canon story." and so on.

The new project looks very interesting and intriguing. You already know how much I loved the fictional IRC chat session you recreated in redaction, and this seems to be somethig on that lines extended to a whole story.
The only question I have is: do you already know where this will be going?
Different writers have different methods, but when I devise a story the first things I think about are the "beginning" the "climax" and the "end". Then I proceed to the general structure, if there's some important key scene I try to define that as well. And then for the most part is all stuff that I come up with while I write, but having a clear finality in mind is important, I believe. Even if you change your mind in the middle of the story.


@those who try and solve the riddle

Reading your reasonings and looking at your progress is really a lot of fun!
You see, when I made this riddle I tried to imagine myself in your place and tried to think what would you notice, what would you do and what kind of connections would you make.
And a lot of the steps you made are exactly as I imagined! And at the same time there's a lot of reasonings that I didn't really foresee. Those are fun to read too!

Now I'd want to comment them all and tell you "this is a very good reasoning", "you're going out of track here", but I must resist the urge.

I can only say for now that I don't think it will take that much before you'll finally open the chest. As long as you try different paths and do not focus on a single approach.

I think the main problem with the "messaggio" was that you thought it was meant to give you the password directly.


Regarding the *rem0 Anon-kun mentioned. I knew someone would try to look inside the code! Which is why I needed to take some necessary preemptive measures.
It's all right. While it doesn't really reflect my own view, in the "when they cry" universe anything goes for reaching the victory, even cheating! If you played Higurashi you know what I mean. But given that, then it's my duty to foresee whatever shortcut you might take and block it. And if you manage to still take an easy way, well then that's my fault for failing to cover that. That's the true spirit of Mion's club!

Spoiler for w&w riddle:

So I could have simply created an image like the one you see in Mr Q. screenshot and place it among the many other png. No way! I couldn't risk for someone to use nsaout and stumble upon it without even reasoning about the riddle. There isn't such an image! You'll never find anything that even mentions a "key" and tells you to find it!
Of course the same goes for the script. I could have written "find the key" in the script so it would be displayed at the right moment, but no, even if you try that, you won't find it!
As for the numbers, you can only find a single string of random numbers among the images, but it is completely different from the lines you see in the right screen.
And if you try and jump directly to the part of the script that shows the riddle? That won't work either! You'll get a blank a page!

The only way to see the right thing is to win the minigame by making zero error, or by understanding the complex algoritm I created and setting up all the right variables, but good luck with that. I guess it's possible, but it should be practically as difficult as to do the right thing. So even if you try and manage that, it's fine.