Now it's me needing a hint. :)

I'm past the gate to the chalkboard which contains the hint "Line up the 3 markers with your orientation". I have found 3 metal plates with footprints and I have started a generator to give them power. However, I have no idea what the hint is referring to. My inventory is empty and I don't see anything I can interact with. Which "markers" is the hint referring to, and what am I supposed to do?

Never mind, I found a lever that I had overlooked before. :)

Although I found the lever below the chalkboard and I think to know how to handle the metal plates (compasses) nothing happens, I'm stuck...
Some hint would be nice... THX

I had to fiddle a bit with that riddle as well. There are two possible problems, I think:

One, you need to rotate your own compass in your mind, to find out how to set the markers. Your own compass always shows "North" at the top, but on the stone pillars, North is (I think) indicated by the wooden bar right in front of you.

Second, it may be difficult to position the markers correctly if you're not directly in front of them and looking straight forward and down. If you're watching the mechanism from an angle, then you might end up setting it to a slightly wrong position.

Btw, I read the PM you sent me, but I can't answer you there. You have blocked PMs.

I had the same issue. Not sure when that lever is 'revealed', but it was the last place I checked!

anyone got the answer to this? i've got several ideas but i really don't want to spend the next ten hours SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWLY walking from one compass to the next...

Ive just finished testing my ideas and im out. Basicly the best idea went like this.

-When you stand on the pilar you are facing some direction X. So i took my compas and found out where i was looking (X) (taking into account that the ingame compas is weaird [ok its 2am and i might be halucinating but bear with me], it points not to direction that you look at, so first i found north then turned right to find east and so forth)
- So I know where I look and then i set this direction so the needle in the pillar points there.
This didnt work
Then I decided that needle in the pillar points at me, not where im looking, so i reversed the direction at the pillar
Didnt work.
Ive tryed coupple of other combinations (dont really remember)
Now im going to sleep and I hope someone helps us with this

BTW. What happens when you do this correctly? I think that the gate opens so i only checked that after every try. Might have missed something.

Here's a step-by-step solution for this puzzle in case your still stuck:

1. Walk to one of the three metal plates with footprints on them. Position yourself on the footprints, looking straight forward and down. There's a vertical wooden strut directly in front of you, you can use it to check your position - ideally you're looking straight at it so that you don't see its sides.

2. Press "Q" to determine your own orientation. As an example, let's say that the compass needle points exactly SE.

3. Turn the compass rose on the stone pillar until the direction determined in (2) rests directly below the pointer of the wooden strut described in (1). To stay in our example, the "SE" part of the compass rose should now rest directly under the pointer, and the "NW" part should be on top, i.e. on the side that's the farthest away from you.

4. Repeat steps (1) to (3) for all three stone pillars. As soon as all three compass roses are rotated correctly, the game will autosave and notify you that you reached a checkpoint. This will open the gate that you passed on the way down to this beach area. Leave the beach the way you came, pass the well, and turn left.

that worked, thanks Psyringe. +1

Now i'm wondering WTF that diagram on the blackboard is there for. I'm looking at three circles with a compass (so i assume it means those compasses) pointing towards a lightbulb (which i assume is the lighthouse). To me, this is trying to tell me to align the compasses with the lighthouse in some way, especially since none of what i did with your instructions actually lines up with the orientations in the diagram.

Memories of horrible adventure game logic are flooding back to me LOL

I think the drawing on the blackboard is just a generic hint for where you need to go. It shows you that there are three locations to address and that the whole installation needs electricity (I think that's what the lightbulb is supposed to indicate). I don't think the diagram conveys anything more specific - that's what the text on top of it is for.

Yeah, I think the problem is that I'm very visually minded, so I focus on the picture and it's meaning, only taking away "align" from the text. It would have been much easier without the diagram at all because i would have focused on the text then.

That said, now i'm stuck on the next problem too, but i have no wish to go forward since that note states that it should have written the numbers... but didn't, so apparently the writer felt like writing that they didn't but should have, which doesn't make me want to figure out the problem so much as punch whoever wrote it.

I have a major key conflict I hope the devs will address so nobody else gets stuck. I've already set my movement to the arrow keys so when I try to rotate the carving, I walk away from the plinth.

This could be resolved by:
-first clicking on the carving to "activate" it before the arrow keys will rotate it
or
-allowing me to change my key mappings without exiting to the main menu

Thoughts?

I had the exact same problem. It's a shame that there isn't even a possibility to rebind keys only for this short moment (if you leave to options menu the checkpoint is resetted to :(). Anyway since the achievements are buggy (not all achievements are stored even though they are unlocked - next game they are gone) I just wrote an e-mail to Matthew from polypusher and I also told him about the keybinding compass problem.