What are the benefits of "playing" notr0n?

ulf_h · Post by **ulf_h** » 31-05-2007 16:07

Hi Shenmue!
Nice to chat with you again, fellow Swede!

And thanks for your answer! A lot of interesting remarks there, I think! Not fuzzy at all, I'm sure all notproners know what you're talking about.

Perhaps it's true what you say, that it's obvious that we learn computer skills from notpron, but for me it's not clear how we learn them. You certainly need computer skills to solve the puzzles, but how do we get them in the first place? (if we didn't have them before we started playing notpron, of course)
I mean there's no Photoshop lessons or something in notpron!

Post by **Kisa** » 31-05-2007 16:11

Trial, error and swearing

Plus: the web contains tutorials for most of the popular programs - all you need to learn is basically how to define your search on google

Taurah · Post by **Taurah** » 31-05-2007 16:53

ulf_h wrote: You certainly need computer skills to solve the puzzles, but how do we get them in the first place? (if we didn't have them before we started playing notpron, of course)
I mean there's no Photoshop lessons or something in notpron!

Wake roommate who's an engineer in the middle of the night and ask him to explain how this program works after explaining at length that I must have a defective version worked well until now (ok, only 52, but the motivation is still there)

Post by **Kisa** » 31-05-2007 16:56

ulf_h · Post by **ulf_h** » 31-05-2007 17:11

OK, so now I have:
1. trial and error
2. swearing
3. googling for tutorials
4. waking up roommates in the middle of the night
great!

anything else you wanna add to this list?

Post by **Kisa** » 31-05-2007 17:15

No, no, the swearing belongs to trial and error, it's coming right after the error part

Taurah · Post by **Taurah** » 31-05-2007 17:20

*Agrees with Kisa*

swearing comes with the trial and error, but we also sometimes find it during the googling part when we end up with a tutorial that's so much more complicated than any notpron riddle ever was!

ulf_h · Post by **ulf_h** » 31-05-2007 22:50

Kisa wrote: No, no, the swearing belongs to trial and error, it's coming right after the error part

Sorry Kisa, I was just trying to be funny...

/uLF

Nicky · Post by **Nicky** » 08-06-2007 10:49

Hi everybody

1) In the beginning I played notpron because I was bored lol and I just wanted something to do. But then it turned into something like: Tobacco, weed, alcohol, sex, etc. everything that I'm addicted to

and the amazing feeling when you manage to complete a particularly difficult level is almost unbeatable

:D

2) I learned quite a lot of things. Mostly how to use programs (I was part of the trial, error and swearing group). But I haven't used any of the things I learnt yet, not properly but if an opportunity comes up I'll take it

It's not related to the question but its something else I learned recently. When you have a broken leg and are on crutches its a bad idea to try to invent a type of breakdancing involving the crytches

trust me

ulf_h · Post by **ulf_h** » 10-06-2007 20:43

Thanks for contributing, Nicky!

That breakdance thing sounds a bit dangerous... I guess that was a kind of trial and error too?

(And maybe some swearing involved also maybe?

whistlesong · Post by **whistlesong** » 10-06-2007 20:54

I play notpr0n because it's fun, and time-consuming. That's really good when you're bored, which I am quite often (;
And I feel really smart if I solve a level entirely by myself.

I don't know if I've learned anything new yet.. I'm still on level 18 ;p

Nicky · Post by **Nicky** » 11-06-2007 10:31

It wasn't really trial and error because I only tried it once. I don't think I'm going to try it again to perfect it though

And there was a lot of swearing involved

ulf_h · Post by **ulf_h** » 11-06-2007 21:19

Well one trial... and one error... and a lot of swearing then!

And hi2u again whistlesong!

BunnyS · Post by **BunnyS** » 14-06-2007 15:47

1 ) I started to play notpron out of boredom and too much time spent at home ill. It was my attempt to do something constructive ? lol. I'm very much a person who feels I HAVE to finish something once I started to that's what kept me going on. With each level you feel you have 'beaten the system' and feel proud and like you have achieved something; be it finally a new level to look at to save you from complete insanity or learning a new skill. Never gave up when I was stuck because I knew the levels all had a fair and logical solution. I would refuse to accept that a little 'level' could beat me

which made me carry on even on the really hard levels !!

2) What I learnt was that the levels COULD NOT BEAT ME HAR. lol

also many other things such as just the practice of looking at one thing in several different ways. Sometimes the picture or sometimes the whole level. Too often I find people (myself included) only look at things from the most obvious point of view and miss the details. So it was a little lesson in that first and foremost. Also taught me more about various programs I was too intimated to work out previously. Such as Paint Shop, too many times before i had opened it and thought

so many buttons and menu's and just closed it again. Doing notpron forced me to try all the things out and see what they did. It was a good way of learning because you remember the mistakes and remember the solution from expreince rather then reading a tutorial. Although at times I did use them as well. Taught me about how to improve my google searches with tips like using "-notpron" to filter spoilers. Learnt more about websites, I had a little bit of knowledge on source codes and so on from attempt a few lame homepages myself in the past. Having done notpron taught me a few more things that have contributed to sites I have made since

Also from the community aspect of it, it reinstated the idea that teaching reinforces your own personally learning. A few times while helping others to pass levels I had already done, I discovered new ways to do some! it was interesting to see how other people came to the same solution in totally different ways ( in some cases).

that's about all I can think of for now

o/

dreamteam · Post by **dreamteam** » 14-06-2007 19:30

Hi, this is part one of the dreamteam speaking:
sorry if this is getting longer, but there's a bit of history you have to know

1. Well, I found notpron as a subforum to the deathball-forums. I always wondered why there are more people visiting those forums. I tried it, got to level 2, thought "wtf!" and canceled.
Maybe two years later - not playing deathball any more but being skilled in computer and internet - I found notpron again, rushed to level3 within seconds (I usually have JavaScript disabled - level2 gets very boring then) and thought "wtf!!1"

But at this time I had "beaten" the first "real" level and was infected with the notpron-virus. In a long train ride I have enough time to read thorugh the demonotpronbook, and since then, I'm just wanted to solve it!
The first, say, 20 levels were extremely annoying since I didn't know what the levels want me to do.
Around level 12 I told friends about notpron, and soon the dreamteam was formed.

There are now two reasons I play notpron:

if we can't meet, everyone of us tries to solve the levels at his own - and we don't tell the solutions until we meet again. So it's pretty nice to be the one who has solved most levels, because then you are the one who can instruct the others and see how their brains run hot. Maybe it's kind of sadistic, but it's definitely is a nice feeling to see other people despair of levels I already solved.
the longer I play notpron, the more exactly I know what I should do. I don't want to sound gay, but I suppose, I think in a similar way DavidM and the other riddle creators do, thus I don't have too much problems on most levels.

I don't give up - hmmm, I think it's just the team spirit. Without the others, I would have quit at lvl 21, or definitely at level 50.

2. To be honest, I didn't really need to learn new knowledge. I just learned that there are the most crucial programs on the net (did you know there is a program converting wav into midi - where from you can find out the notes? audacity's frequency analysis failed miserably)
But I learned, that my music skills are exactly as bad as I thought of!
And, that it doesn't help delaying the installation of some programs: I didn't want to use gimp because I use another graphics program. So, maybe you'd laugh hearing me finding the solution to level 31 (and later on) via a hex editor - just to use gimp some levels later for the photoshop documents.
And I saw that even DavidM isn't perfect. There is a major flaw in the notpron structure allowing you to skip some ten levels (most of the MINUS-levels!) without guessing or even cheating. Maybe I'll tell him after abusing this to death

But notpron had it's benefits, that's for sure. It provides us fun, fun and fun. And a delicate question wheter we should pay the the euro or not if we run the risk of David closing our account because of cheating due to abusing the flaw mentioned above.

And it really improved concentrating one's attention to tiny details. And to see words in senseless lists of characters.
How this works - I don't know. I'd guess it's practice.

I hope I could help you a bit.