Mystic Tips: Dealing with Duplicates
One thing that happens frequently with Mystic cells is duplication. In this tutorial post we’ll show you how to deal with two different types of common duplicates you’ll run into while playing Mystic cells.
Type 1: Whole Cell Duplicates
Whole cell duplicates are the most common duplicate type you will come across in Mystic cells.
Part of the goal of tracing the zebrafish cells that make up our current Mystic dataset is to find synapses. Because of this, cells are often seeded from a found synapse, rather than from a cell body.
Since cells are seeded from branches rather than CBs, often two different seeded branches end up being part of the same cell. Once the branches grow to a point where they converge, a duplicate cube will be created.
You can tell that you have stumbled upon a full cell duplicate when all or most of the segments appear to be orange in one of the duplicating cubes.
When you come across this issue please complete the following procedure:
- Decide which of the duplicates you want to get rid of. The one you want to discard should be whichever one has less work done on it. If both cells have an equal amount of cubes traced (or no cubes traced) you can make your own decision about which one to freeze.
- Make an entry for the duplicate cube on the cell you want to discard. The entry should say something like “duplicates with (cube ID) in (cell name)” and should be set to “+Admin” status.
- Freeze every cube in the cell you are discarding. To do this most efficiently, find the root cube (you can use highlight to help you), and select it. Then click the “Freeze Children” button to freeze all cubes.
- If the cell is yours or if it is unclaimed please push it through to “Need Admin” status by clicking the “Move to Admin” button.
- If the cell is already claimed by another player, or if it has not yet been launched for gameplay (aka it does not appear in SL and has a name that is a series of numbers rather than words), you do not need to do step 4. The other player or an admin will take care of it when they see it.
- That’s it! Select a new cell and continue playing as usual.
**PLEASE NOTE we are no longer using cube emptying as a means to get rid of duplicates. Although this hack was helpful in the past, Player Freeze is now standard for all players and is a better way to take care of duplicate cubes.
Please see the video below for a walkthough for dealing with whole cell duplicate cubes. Turn on Closed Captioning for instructions.
Type 2: Merger Duplicates
A less common type of duplicate that you may run across in Mystic cells is the merger duplicate.
You’ve probably seen these kinds of duplicates before in regular Eyewire cells, and you will deal with them very similarly as a Mystic player.
These duplicates are created by either an AI or human error merger. These duplicates occur because a segment (sometimes multiple segments) has been added in two different cells. Unlike with full cell duplicates, these segments belong to one cell, and have been added erroneously in the other one.
To fix these types of duplicates, you must identify the cube with the erroneous segment(s), and eliminate the mistake. If the segment contains an AI merger, you will just have to use your best judgement to eliminate the bad segment.
As a Mystic player you have permission to fix merger duplicates in other Mystic cells and in Princeton cells. You do not need to log these unless a cube has been reaped by an admin already and you are not able to reap it, in which case you should log it as “Need Admin/Duplicate.”
Please see the video below for a walkthough for dealing with merger duplicate cubes. Turn on Closed Captioning for instructions.
Happy tracing!