User:Noxedwin

Me

I can be reached on https://twitter.com/Nox13last. My Discord ID is Noxedwin#5991. I pick fights on the Internet but I am very easy to defeat.
I created the The Protagonist page and I am very proud of it. I apparently have contributed enough to have a Pro account, whatever that means. I'm credited on one or two things on The Cutting Room Floor (The Blackout Club and some parts of Undertale (as /u/Nox13last)), and this is the closest I will ever get to celebrity status. In my free time, I break Warframe and document it when I can be bothered to.

Research notes

I don't know if there's any place for the cataloguing of miscellaneous junk in this game on this Wiki, so I'm using my page to catalogue anything interesting that I find. Some of this information may be found elsewhere on their respective page or talk-page. If you use any information I find anywhere else, I would appreciate credit.

Uncategorised

• The ship in the waters of Giant's Deep has no internal geometry. No wonder it crashed - it's a solid lump of balsa wood and aluminium.
• When using the 'Unlock All Signalscope Frequencies' cheat, an unused frequency is provided. White Hole (Dropbox image). It does not react to anything matching this description (as seen in the picture). Ludicrous Speeding out of the solar system and turning the Signalscope retrograde (similar to the Harmonic Convergence achievement) shows that there is no source in the system that will output a White Hole signal. Bringing this frequency to the Eye of the Universe is impossible for reasons explained further down the list.
• When not in their EVA suit, the player assumes the same model as a typical Hearthian. However, the viewmodel for their helmet remains above them (to animate pulling it down and up when they get dressed or undressed) and the Scout Launcher remains off to the side. (Dropbox image). If the camera is not decoupled from the player, the model is decapitated (so as not to have the camera be blocked by the model geometry). Occasionally, while EVA is equipped, the FreeCam becomes covered by some obnoxious rainbow texture. I don't know why this is.
• While using Hornfels's orrery (the planetary model in the Observatory), the camera zooms away from the building. This is not a setpiece. The game lowers the poly-count and moves the camera. It is possible to manipulate the camera to be closer using FreeCam. The player can be seen somewhat this way. (Dropbox image, Observatory exterior.) (Dropbox image, Observatory interior.)

Main Menu

• The Main Menu is a diorama. The title slate exists diegetically (it is in geosynchronous orbit with the camera) (Dropbox image).
  • The cosmonaut depicted is Riebeck, not The Protagonist. There is nothing underneath their helmet or clothes. No face reveal, sorry.
  • The ship is modelled internally. It is missing much of the furniture that the player's ship has, despite being the same model. It is missing the cockpit, the computer, the signage, and the hatch. (Dropbox image - Ship aft) (Dropbox image - Ship fore). These screenshots are not corrupted or compressed to hell - the inside of the ship really does look like the Obra Dinn.
  • The planet is a hemisphere that loses detail the further away from the campfire the camera is moved. A starfield can be seen inside. (Dropbox image).
    • The starfield is the menu's skybox. In this image (Dropbox image), two asterisms can be seen both "close" and projected against the backdrop. The lines show the close asterism, and the rings show its distant projection. It's easiest to see when moving the camera (which moves the "close" starfield but not the distant projection).
      • The starfield contains the scrawls for Anapurna Studios and Mobius Digital. They're rendered as physical objects.

Map oddities that don't fit anywhere else on this page

• There is a Ghost Matter cloud on The Interloper above the chamber housing Poke's corpse ("above" assumes the hole leading to the core chamber is "down"), despite there being no legitimate way to get close enough to this cloud to be injured by it. That's solid ice and rock. (Dropbox image.)
• When inside Dark Bramble, a section of the space outside is converted into it (much like the Bramble's proliferation). I wrote about it here and don't want to repeat myself.
  • Also when inside the Dark Bramble, the Easter Egg is loaded just outside of the zone. I took some nice pictures of it (Dropbox album) and am soliciting methods to approach it more physically.
• The black/white hole pair experiment in the High Energy Lab only transmits the Scout. They are intangible to the player, and also do not exhibit gravitational influence - the player is not warped by the Black Hole and is not pushed away from the White Hole.

Velocity and dealing with very large numbers (and how the game doesn't do this very well).

• Moving far away enough from the solar system causes rendering errors (Dropbox image) with UI graphics (Dropbox image), where the UI graphics distort and wobble wildly. In the second example, for instance, the text at the lowermost celestial body is supposed to say "DARK BRAMBLE". This is probably a Unity error dealing with very large numbers that lose accuracy as they increase.
  • The distance and velocity indicators when targeting a celestial body can handle exponents. By the time it gets this far or fast, the game probably has worse problems to deal with, similar to the above. (Dropbox image).
• The Little Scout's velocity upon leaving the ship seems to be the ship's forward vector + 160m/s. That is to say, by targeting the Sun, moving away from it at a constant rate of 160m/s, firing the Scout at it, and then matching velocity with the Sun, the Scout can be rendezvoused with, where it is almost motionless (save for some orbital drift that cannot be compensated for).
  • The Little Scout imparts 4m/s of recoil force on the player upon launching.
• The maximum distance the Little Scout can be tracked is just over 100km (100km < x < 101km) . Beyond this, the screen marker simply says "SCOUT ERROR". Despite this, images come through fine and rotating the Scout with the D-Pad or number keys still works. Moving back under 100km returns proper tracking.
  • The ship presumably has the same range.

Diegesis and things not being where they should be

• When using a Projection Pool, the player enters superposition. They are both in the "source" pool (appearing normal) and in the "destination" pool (covered in the projection fluid). This is probably how a Nomai might be seen using it. However, it's important to note that the player is actually projected to the destination. Logan Ver Hoef and the other programmers deserves free beers for their work on spotloading stuff on the far side of the solar system so seamlessly. (Dropbox image - EVA suit.) (Dropbox image - no EVA suit.)
• The Signalscope's interface is diegetic - it appears in front of the player and moves to always be in front of them. Pictured is the reticule and the waveform (Dropbox image).
• When using Freecam, only one Little Scout drone exists in situations when there should be two. The iteration approaching the Black Hole is considered to be the "true" one. And the one exiting the White Hole is only manifested when the Black Hole one is deleted. Despite this, there is light emitted vaguely where the White Hole Scout would be (Dropbox image).
  • In the event of a spacetime-destructive paradox, the White Hole-Scout never appears (as the Black Hole-Scout was never deleted by its transit. Despite this, it is still the epicenter of the destruction (Dropbox image).
  • The destruction of spacetime radiates out from the instigating object and moves with it. This is a diegetic feature (Dropbox image).
  • The destruction of the player's view is not a diegetic feature. It cannot be seen from FreeCam. The above image was taken 1.5s from the game stopping due to the destruction of spacetime. By this point, the individual shards of the player's view have started to "fly away" to make way for the black screen and game-over text.

Death

• The Protagonist has no animation for dying. They rotate to the side a little (like dying in Minecraft). (Dropbox image.)
• Apart from the destruction of the Ash Twin Project, death by Supernova ("death" referring to any detrimental state that forces the session to end) is the only death that happens regardless of invulnerability. This also includes the Big Bang (which will also kill the player regardless of their invulnerability, cheating or otherwise). Falling into the sun before it explodes is fine, and it is possible to slingshot back out again.
• The surface of the Eye of the Universe is anoxic. Being without the EVA suit is fatal, despite there being no legitimate means of removing it once initiating Vessel Warp.

Eye of the Universe

• The Vessel's approach to the Eye of the Universe is in a different map to the solar system. Despite being able to see the Sun closer than other stars (and its death coinciding with the terminus of the loop), they are not physically connected. The sun is just a texture (Dropbox image), and will disappear if flown towards.
  • The Quantum Moon has a physical presence when orbiting the Eye. While it can be flown at (and noticed using the Signalscope set to "Quantum Fluctuations"), doing so will not move the player to its surface or even fog their vision - they will simply enter it and probably pop out the other side.
• The fractal area the player falls into while falling into the Eye (shortly before ending up in the Quantum-iterative Observatory) is not done with refractions or any camera trickery. It can be explored with FreeCam, although what you see is sort of what you get.
• Upon falling into the Eye, the player is granted immortality. The console remarks if the player hits anything with great (sufficiently lethal) velocity, and will continue to do so if they crash into the ground in the Ancient Glade. However, the player does not die. Even holding TaiCheat's Suicide button (MINUS) does not finish them off.
• Upon falling into the Quantum-iterative Observatory, the player will forget all Signalscope frequencies that they have learned, with the exception being the Outer Wilds Ventures frequency. They cannot be relearned, even through cheats. This unfortunately quashes a hypothesis I had regarding the White Hole frequency mentioned earlier.
• Most of the text in the Quantum-iterative Observatory is different to reflect the postmortem nature of the player's current situation. Many notes and their associated objects are removed (such as the diorama with the balls being influenced by The Attlerock's gravity). The notes up by the telescope written by Hornfels are not changed. These notes probably ought to be referring to the death of the universe by Big Rip, or remarking that the cosmos is now devoid of all celestia. If anything, the notes' ignorance of the current state is more depressing.
• The Quantum-iterative Observatory the player zoom away from when examining the orrery in the Quantum "afterlife" is not the same Observatory they were just in. Quickly taking the camera back there shows a version similar in quality to the Ship on the title screen. The actual Observatory is off in the void somewhere. Both of these are unloaded shortly after the player is thrown backwards through a galaxy they are expected to touch (and observe breaking).
• The game has a console that displays information about the session.
  • It explains when the Probe is lost due to being shot into the Eye. ("PROBE DESTROYED (ENTERED THE EYE)") or into the Quantum campfire (same message) or left behind before examining the galaxy in the Quantum-iterative observatory ("PROBE DESTROYED (LEFT BEHIND)") or during any transition.
  • The player being consumed by the Big Bang is a unique death. Its cause is "BigBang".
  • The player travelling into the Ash Twin Project's Black Hole is also a unique death. Its cause is "BlackHole".
  • The player dying to some unexplained reason (such as holding the Suicide button in TaiCheat) is listed as "Default", despite the HUD indicating that the player suffocated due to wasting their oxygen reserves as jetpack propellant.
  • While waiting for the stars to fizzle out in the Ancient Glade, three trees are marked. Whenever the player visits a tree, the console will remark on this ("TREE 1 VISITED", "TREE 2 VISITED", "TREE 3 VISITED".). At some point, these trees become Quantum Rocks. The console remarks "HIDE PETRIFIED TREES" at some point. If the player is unable to visit all trees quick enough, the console remarks "OUT OF TIME". I have no idea what the significance of any of this is.
• The Ancient Glade is known internally as "Forest of Galaxies". This can be seen when using the Object Spawner mod, opening Edit Mode (KEYPAD-DIVIDE) and selecting the ground beneath the player's feet (KEYPAD-MULTIPLY) (epilepsy warning: the ground shimmers very obnoxiously when doing this). Be careful to not press KEYPAD-MINUS as that will delete the currently selected object (including map collision geometry).
  • With this method, it can be seen that the trees in this area are Redwoods and Sequoias.
• Esker is the only individual around the Quantum campfire who will flinch if the player fires their Little Scout anywhere nearby. They will also do this (as well as be the only one who will) while playing music.
• The Big Bang engages the Little Scout's Emergency Recall protocol.
• The art at the end of the game is represented in 3D space and can be navigated (crudely) with FreeCam, though the camera cannot be rotated. This is probably just for parallaxing.