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27 ratings

Town RGB puzzles illuminated

By jameslucas

Color-composite images of both puzzles from the RGB-filtered box in the town area. No solution paths given!

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jameslucas
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Category: Maps or Levels

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

13 Jul, 2016 @ 11:30am

9 Aug, 2017 @ 4:35am

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Guide Index

Overview

context

square puzzle

star puzzle

Comments

context

In the town area is a room that can be illuminated only with color-filtered light. The filter may be set to red, green, or blue (the three components of RGB color-space). Depending on the filter selected, certain colors in the two puzzles found there may be indistinguishable from each other. Only when all three illumination schemes are considered together can correct paths be found and the puzzles solved.

Innocentive has demonstrated in another guide that it possible to solve the puzzle through logic alone, independent of an understanding of light and color, but some players may wish to simply find solution paths using the tecnhiques common throughout The Witness and side-step the unique challenge created by this room's limitations. The composite images that follow allow for just such an approach.

The images below, while not showing the final solutions, do elimnate a difficult and potentially fun challenge.

[partial-spoliers follow]

square puzzle

a three-color composite of the square puzzle

star puzzle

a three-color composite of the star puzzle

19 Comments

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sselion 13 Mar, 2023 @ 1:31am

I have to share my 'IT' approach with pencil and paper solution. I considered the colors as an RGB channel and each time the star had color, I set channel 1, if not, I set channel 0 and ended with 101, 100, 000 or 111 for each star. Then I could 'see' what colour each star is and just name them for clarity.

jameslucas [author] 29 Jan, 2023 @ 8:06am

(And how is it that Valve hasn’t added a reaction feature to comments yet??)

Lebregid Mafwagon 28 Jan, 2023 @ 8:30am

Oh I completely read over the link to the other guide and didn't notice it my bad

jameslucas [author] 28 Jan, 2023 @ 5:32am

Bryce—if you have sufficient understanding of light and color (e.g. “an object that looks cyan under white light will look light under blue and green light but dark under red light”) you can deduce each color, but assigning specific colors is not necessary to finding a solution because colors are arbitrary in The Witness. Innocentive’s approach (link in the intro) is exactly how you are “meant” to approach the puzzle.

Lebregid Mafwagon 25 Jan, 2023 @ 6:51pm

How are you meant to figure out what colors they are normally? Like, switching between the theee colors, how can you use that to reason out what color everything is? (I’m asking this because I’m stuck on the RGB room in the expert randomizer)

jameslucas [author] 28 Apr, 2022 @ 1:16pm

I think you do it with just two zones, 8 starts in each zone, by creating a 5×6 C along the bottom, left, and top. Hopefully I’m still remembering correctly how stars work…

Minton 27 Apr, 2022 @ 11:27pm

I solved the first one on my own and figured out the colors of the second by comparing all 3 colors side by side and seeing which stars change together. However, I don't see how it's possible to group them properly with the end point in the top right. Every way I try, I end up having to cross the puzzle and block the outliers from each other.

Am I missing something?

Nitty 14 Feb, 2022 @ 3:42pm

Nice. I ended up using GIMP to solve these puzzles. Drew out the puzzle grid, duplicated the grid into three semi-transparent labels, one for each color, and colored the white blocks and stars in each layer as the layer color and black blocks and stars black.

Orchid Crescent 7 Jan, 2022 @ 3:20pm

you are a god

Ralcore 7 Oct, 2021 @ 6:29pm

i don't need this guide right now, but i always play games late at night with a blue light filter and got my ass kicked by this puzzle when i played it last year as a result, had to use a full online solution which sucked lol, thanks for the less spoiler-y image edits ^^

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