Reflections

This article hasn’t been prepped for public viewing, please excuse any typos. Thank you for your understanding. - xXuanadu01, Lead Developer

Omi cannot tell the difference between the ‘real’ thing and its reflections, or other representations of it. This causes correct answers to puzzles to be incorrectly marked. This page outlines the nature of this bug and possible fixes or workarounds.

For a quick fix when playing the game, see the “Temporary Work-Arounds” section.

The Nature of the Bug

This bug occurs because of the way the Omi AI generates puzzles. It is provided with a variety of material, such as images or words, which it maps internally. This involves tagging any items that Omi recognises (e.g. dogs, animals, letters, numbers). Omi then creates a puzzle for the player where they need to find all items in the picture that match the prompt, which is based on Omi’s tags. The trouble is that when Omi encounters a reflection, such as from a mirror or a body of water, it tags them no differently than a ‘real’ item. Players who don’t correctly select or interpret the reflection will be marked wrong.

Images

Omi cannot distinguish between real and reflected objects in images. For example, a dog reflected in the water below. Omi will tag every part of the image where the object or its reflection can be seen. This can be confusing as the reflections can be very distorted.

Text

Text is originally presented to Omi as an image, and so it encodes the words in the same way it tags images. This means that text might be reflected or distorted in other ways. Type in what the distorted letters look most like, even if they are reflections. For example, a “W” becomes “M” when reflected. Like with text, numbers can become distorted and become new numbers according to Omi’s tags. For example, “2” can look like a “5” if reflected.

Maths

In maths puzzles, a picture is shown and the player is asked to count the number of a certain type of object. Omi will count according to the rules outlined in 1.1 and 1.2, so make sure to look for reflections and to interpret reflected figures as what they most resemble.

How to Replicate

This bug happens with any image with a reflection (or other non-real representation) of an object. If you continue doing puzzles then you’re bound to get one of these, they’re not uncommon. Unfortunately there’s no way to influence the puzzle order, or predict when this type of puzzle will show.

Bug Status

Unresolved

ADDENDUM: I’ve tried to remove all images containing reflections from the library, but they keep getting replaced. I assume this is because it has backups I’m not aware of?

ADDENDUM: Omi tends to use the same ones at the start of the game, regardless of whether we remove them or not. I’ve had a talk to Donna and she thinks that, based on this, we should be able to set up an alert. It will trigger on hopefully the first occurrence of this puzzle and warn the player of the problem. I’ll do a write up soon but for now the playtesters will have to live with a link to the wiki.

Temporary Work-Arounds

After researching, this seems to be a pretty common problem for AI. As a result, I’m not confident any permanent solution on our end will be found. Donna feels the same way. For a temporary work-around the player should treat any reflections or representations of content as though they were real.

Images

If you are having trouble in image puzzles, look for any water, mirrors or glass in the image with reflections in them. Select all areas of the image with reflections of objects fitting the puzzle - for example, reflections of a dog’s snout in the water must be selected.

Text

In text puzzles any letters or numbers must be interpreted as the letters they resemble most, rather than what is being reflected.

Maths

In maths puzzles, make sure to interpret to count partial, distorted and reflected objects.