A man walks into The Space Bar and says to the insectoid bartender...

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > A man walks into The Space Bar and says to the insectoid bartender...

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Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

What is this?

The Space Bar is a sci-fi adventure game that was released in 1997. It follows detective Alias Node as he searches for a shapeshifting killer inside The Thirsty Tentacle, a fantastical bar on the planet Armpit VI before the escape on the next shuttle out of there. The gameplay is non-linear but it does have a time limit, so we can solve the puzzles in any order that we want to but if we don't find the killer in time we automatically lose the game. Alias is trained in "Empathy Telepathy" (the manual also calls this "emp-tel"), which means if we talk to a character long enough and engage them on an emotional level, we can trigger a flashback and relive those memories through the character's eyes.

To give you more of a background about this game:

quote:

The Space Bar was conceived and directed by Steve Meretzky, a former Infocom employee who had previously created titles such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Meretzky hoped to design a graphic adventure in the spirit of text-based interactive fiction games, and to recapture that genre's breadth and level of interactivity. The Space Bar began development at Boffo Games in May 1995 under publisher Rocket Science Games, whose co-founder Ron Cobb�designer of the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars�served as the game's art director and concept artist. Its 18-month production was troubled, and Rocket Science went bankrupt before the game's release. The Space Bar was ultimately launched by publisher SegaSoft in July 1997, several months after its completion.

quote:

The game had initially been pursued by other publishers, including Microsoft and Viacom New Media; the latter had offered to implement it with the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine license.

This is a game that I played a lot when I was younger but never completed as this game is notoriously hard. I have no idea how it's going to hold up nowadays but I guess that's something that we will find out together.

LP details

This is a game from my youth that I absolutely loved dicking around in but was never able to complete. I'm not even sure that I'm going to be able to complete it now as there isn't a definitive guide anywhere for this game so I'm going to have to rely on what help there is available as well as trying to think for myself. I'm playing the game and writing my own walkthrough at the same time. This is going to be a VLP and I will be recording commentary during the recording. I aim to upload at least one video a week, but there may be more depending on how busy real life is.

Let's Play: The Space Bar

Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Sep 27, 2022

# ? Aug 19, 2022 00:30

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# ? May 2, 2024 00:40

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

While we're all contemplating The Space Bar, I'd like to reminisce about another vital key on the keyboard. I'm talking about the Scroll Lock key. This vestigial appendage was added to the standard PC keyboard in 1961, an invention of Sir Edmund Scroll Lock XVI, to occupy the gap between the Pause and Shutdown Without Saving buttons so that junior programmers wouldn't keep filling it with stick-on novelty "uck" function keys while his back was turned. It was subsequently removed when the standard datacart format increased to 600 TB, as the major keyboard manufacturers needed to make room for a Bitcoin Mining button and, while Scroll Lock was judged to be more useful than the tilde, it was in a less conspicuous location. While its main function was to verify that the keyboard was attached to a functioning computer WITHOUT PRESSING A KEY THAT MIGHT HAVE ANY ACTUAL IMPACT ON THE COMPUTER, the Scroll Lock key in its prime did serve two very specific functions:

In Microsoft Excel, it would allow the arrow keys to scroll the spreadsheet without moving the selection cursor, in case the mouse was too inconveniently placed.
In The Space Bar, it renders a vital part of the game considerably more playable.

In short, I hope you have one of those.

I'm surprised to hear that there are no walkthroughs, since I relied extensively on hints to get through most of the game. It's definitely impossible to search for, given the title. But I know the game enough to be a useful source of information if you need it. If nothing else, I can probably rattle off the various time-critical events, approximate times when they happen, and what you need to have prepared before then. When I wanted to LP this game, my plan was to save at the end of the "canon" portion of each video and then spend some time exploring the parts of the bar that don't have anything useful, because there's a lot of great stuff hidden in places I'd never bother to go otherwise, and at least one of them is voiced by the late, great Alan Rickman. I love and hate everything about this game, at the same time, and without contradiction. It's so great.

Also, this is the only sci-fi story I can remember that actually put some thought into how alien toilets would work.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 02:58

Jawnycat: Jul 9, 2015

Holy poo poo this game is real.

I remembered playing it as a kid but could never remember what it was called, and it faded into 'was that even an actual game?' territory. All I remember is dying a hell of a lot in the bar due to what I think was some kinda invisible time-limit? And having no idea what to do half the time, but still being utterly engrossed in the weird world.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 03:56

EricFate: Aug 31, 2001; Crumpets. Glorious Crumpets.

Every time I try to recall this game, I get most of it mixed up with 'Callahan's Crosstime Saloon'. It will be nice to watch this playthrough and finally separate the two in my mind.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 06:01

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Nidoking posted:

While we're all contemplating The Space Bar, I'd like to reminisce about another vital key on the keyboard. I'm talking about the Scroll Lock key. This vestigial appendage was added to the standard PC keyboard in 1961, an invention of Sir Edmund Scroll Lock XVI, to occupy the gap between the Pause and Shutdown Without Saving buttons so that junior programmers wouldn't keep filling it with stick-on novelty "uck" function keys while his back was turned. It was subsequently removed when the standard datacart format increased to 600 TB, as the major keyboard manufacturers needed to make room for a Bitcoin Mining button and, while Scroll Lock was judged to be more useful than the tilde, it was in a less conspicuous location. While its main function was to verify that the keyboard was attached to a functioning computer WITHOUT PRESSING A KEY THAT MIGHT HAVE ANY ACTUAL IMPACT ON THE COMPUTER, the Scroll Lock key in its prime did serve two very specific functions:

In Microsoft Excel, it would allow the arrow keys to scroll the spreadsheet without moving the selection cursor, in case the mouse was too inconveniently placed.

In The Space Bar, it renders a vital part of the game considerably more playable.

In short, I hope you have one of those.

I'm surprised to hear that there are no walkthroughs, since I relied extensively on hints to get through most of the game. It's definitely impossible to search for, given the title. But I know the game enough to be a useful source of information if you need it. If nothing else, I can probably rattle off the various time-critical events, approximate times when they happen, and what you need to have prepared before then. When I wanted to LP this game, my plan was to save at the end of the "canon" portion of each video and then spend some time exploring the parts of the bar that don't have anything useful, because there's a lot of great stuff hidden in places I'd never bother to go otherwise, and at least one of them is voiced by the late, great Alan Rickman. I love and hate everything about this game, at the same time, and without contradiction. It's so great.

Also, this is the only sci-fi story I can remember that actually put some thought into how alien toilets would work.

Thank you for the history lesson. The manual gives special mention to the scroll lock key as well.

Thank you for the offer of help, something that I'll never turn down. Before starting this I managed to find a partial walkthrough and an extensive entry on UHS. I also managed to find another guide by chance that someone linked on another forum.

Jawnycat posted:

Holy poo poo this game is real.

I remembered playing it as a kid but could never remember what it was called, and it faded into 'was that even an actual game?' territory. All I remember is dying a hell of a lot in the bar due to what I think was some kinda invisible time-limit? And having no idea what to do half the time, but still being utterly engrossed in the weird world.

There is a time limit and its not quite invisible. But that was what got me most of the time when I tried to play this when I was younger. The game gives you 400 turns to complete it and not a lot of room to make sense, which is incredibly counterintuitive for an adventure game where you are a detective trying to solve a crime.

EricFate posted:

Every time I try to recall this game, I get most of it mixed up with 'Callahan's Crosstime Saloon'. It will be nice to watch this playthrough and finally separate the two in my mind.

There's another game that I haven't played in a while. I have thought about doing Callahan somewhere down the road. From what I've read though, the game is fairly reliant on you having read the books beforehand though.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 09:16

inscrutable horse: May 20, 2010; Parsing sage, rotating time

I wanted this game so bad when I was a young'un :allears:

Unfortunately, apart from being featured on a demo disc, I was never able to find a copy in my weekly browse through all the shops that sold games. I kept a "for Space Bar" fund around for several years, trying in vain to scrounge up a copy; I finally traded it in for a bottle of Chival Regal 18 on my 20th birthday

# ? Aug 19, 2022 10:47

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

inscrutable horse posted:

I wanted this game so bad when I was a young'un Unfortunately, apart from being featured on a demo disc, I was never able to find a copy in my weekly browse through all the shops that sold games. I kept a "for Space Bar" fund around for several years, trying in vain to scrounge up a copy; I finally traded it in for a bottle of Chival Regal 18 on my 20th birthday

I remember seeing a preview in a gaming magazine and it going straight to the top of my wishlist. But like you, I could never find a copy. I thought that I found a copy during a family holiday to New Zealand back in '99, but the guy at the market stall fleeced me with a copy of the demo.

I saw a copy on ebay a few years ago and decided to just buy it. It was unboxed and without the manual but it was also ridiculously cheap.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 12:19

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

The time limits in this game aren't so much invisible as not well advertised, which makes sense. You've got to remember that the reason you're in this bar to begin with is that there's a thief and a cop-killer here, and they're probably not going to wait around for 400 ticks to see whether you can find them. This is the sort of game where I think you're expected to explore, learn some things, take notes, and then restart to take advantage of your knowledge before it's too late. (Heck, one flashback literally doesn't give you enough time to gather all of the information you need, so you have to play it multiple times.) Anything with a listed time is important and means something will happen that you need to deal with. Other than that, there are plenty of things you can just do whenever you have the time, and once you know what you're doing, the optimal path has a LOT of waiting. But like I said, there's tons to do that doesn't necessarily help you progress.

You also want to look at everyone's PDA. Thud's is the least useful, since his entire mission is "Take the cup and walk outside," but it's probably for that reason that his is one of the most amusing to poke around in. Most of the others will have vital information, and one of the best gags in the game takes some digging to find, but is totally worth it.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 12:35

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Bloody hell. I think I played a demo of this as a kid and managed to convince myself that it was a fever dream afterwards.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 14:25

Jawnycat: Jul 9, 2015

Please explore as much content as possible, from side poo poo to failstates. This game is some half remembered dream, I'd love to be able to see all I've forgotten or never could see.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 15:41

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I'll ease of with being too optimal and I'll start to poke around more and see what fun things I can uncover along the way. Maybe I'm focusing too much on that time limit.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 15:43

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Jawnycat posted:

Please explore as much content as possible, from side poo poo to failstates. This game is some half remembered dream, I'd love to be able to see all I've forgotten or never could see.

I'm still working a lot of things out but I definitely intend to record additional footage.

Especially the fail states. Who doesn't want to see Thud lobbing a chair at Alias' face?

# ? Aug 19, 2022 15:49

Zaroff: Nov 10, 2009; Nothing in the world can stop me now!

I wonder whether the better option might to have two save games running - one behind the scenes one where you get from A to B the optimal way, and one you use in the LP where you get from A to B the exploring way, but ignoring the time.

Then when you start the next video, you start with the �optimal� save, then create a new optimal save from B to C, and make the video exploring everything in between.

It�s not really how the game was intended to be played, but it makes more sense for an LP where there�s no fun in watching you play it and have your clock run out.

# ? Aug 19, 2022 16:30

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Zaroff posted:

I wonder whether the better option might to have two save games running - one behind the scenes one where you get from A to B the optimal way, and one you use in the LP where you get from A to B the exploring way, but ignoring the time.

Then when you start the next video, you start with the �optimal� save, then create a new optimal save from B to C, and make the video exploring everything in between.

It�s not really how the game was intended to be played, but it makes more sense for an LP where there�s no fun in watching you play it and have your clock run out.

That sounds like a good idea, I did something similar in another LP a while back. It was less of a separate LP and more just alternate choices and dialogues that couldn't make the actual update, but there was enough content for their own side videos.

A number of the interactions are text only so I may implement a five-second rule or pause for reading. I'll work on something this weekend.

Edit: I'll try to record videos of all the interactions, at least of note, that was absent from the main LP.

Edit 2: Grammar\spelling

Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Aug 19, 2022

# ? Aug 19, 2022 18:03

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I'm going to wait until the next update before recording and compiling the first exploration video. There were a few interactions with Thud that I avoided in the first update that will still be available after the flashback so I may as well explore those options. I'll save "Play with" for the exploration video as I've already stated that this option ends in a fail state and I'll include a few lines of dialogue with Thud that are dependent on your dialogue choices.

There really isn't much more to see in the opening area apart from the grate\shower heads but they only point towards the area but they aren't integral to the storyline:

There isn't a whole lot that we missed out on Thud's flashback apart from some environment descriptions, but we were able to have limited dialogue with his companion.

# ? Aug 20, 2022 00:45

Item Getter: Dec 14, 2015

Rocket Baby Dolls posted:

I'm still working a lot of things out but I definitely intend to record additional footage.

Especially the fail states. Who doesn't want to see Thud lobbing a chair at Alias' face?

Need to do a run where you kiss everyone.

# ? Aug 21, 2022 05:50

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I'm trying to do a test run for the next update but I've spent twenty minutes trying to do one action for an extremely glitchy puzzle. It worked the first time around several days ago and now I'm going around in circles and I'm ready to tear my hair out!

# ? Aug 22, 2022 23:21

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

After around fourty-five minutes of trying to figure things out I may have worked it out. I'm taking a break tonight as this is a seriously obtuse puzzle with a specific set of actions and it's been bloody annoying trying to figure it out. I'm even more annoyed now that I think that I've worked out what the solution actually is. You will see all of this unfold within the first five minutes of the next update when it happens.

I was hoping to record tomorrow night but that's not going to happen now. I'll do some more testing tomorrow and hopefully have the rest of the update figured out. I'm hoping to have another video recorded and uploaded before the week is over. Right now I'm frazzled and need some sleep.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 00:04

EricFate: Aug 31, 2001; Crumpets. Glorious Crumpets.

Rocket Baby Dolls posted:

I'm taking a break tonight as this is a seriously obtuse puzzle with a specific set of actions and it's been bloody annoying trying to figure it out.

In other words, it is a Steve Meretzky game.

# ? Aug 23, 2022 00:50

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I took a break and slept on it. Well, I didn't really sleep a whole lot at first as I figured out the problem while I was in bed and then it was all I could think about until I finally fell asleep in the early hours.

I've just tested it out and it worked on my first attempt. But the only reason why I got it working is that I remembered what comes next. Anyway, I'm going back into the game to plan out the rest of the next update. I'll try to record something within the next two or three nights.

Item Getter posted:

Need to do a run where you kiss everyone.

I'll do my best to make that happen in this run. All the options for Thud will still be there when we return. As Nidoking pointed out, the optimal run involves a lot of waiting so I'll need to fill in the time somehow.

EricFate posted:

In other words, it is a Steve Meretzky game.

Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Aug 23, 2022

# ? Aug 23, 2022 22:05

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I managed to record the next segment which ended up being a fifty-two-minute video. On the whole, it went alright and I even tried out a couple of extra things within the time constraints which paid off. I also found out that the sequence that I had issues with was my own fault as I was adding in an extra step needlessly, during the recording it went extremely smoothly.

The bad news is that due to a technical fault I've had to scrap the whole recording and have lost an hour of my time. I was hoping to split the video in two and post one of them tonight. I decided to record the segment again and ended up with a forty-six-minute video which I've decided to upload in full and will post the whole thing tomorrow as one long update.

There is some more bad news. The segment that I've been complaining about had some major issues during the re-recording as the whole sequence became glitched, which may have been my fault as I poked it. I was ready to abandon the recording but things suddenly kicked into action and the game continued. There will be an update tomorrow night as I don't have the time to do one tonight due to the re-recording, it's later than intended and my youngest is staying over and likes to be up early. I can and will record the segment again after work tomorrow as it's only going to take five minutes. I just don't know whether to just include the chaos in this update and record a separate video of how things should have gone, or just re-record the segment and edit it into this update.

Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Aug 25, 2022

# ? Aug 24, 2022 23:57

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

I make it a habit to include as much chaos as I feel has entertainment value. Sometimes, that includes creative editing or gimmicks.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 00:36

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

We give a fond farewell to Thud in this video then and spend some time with his companion, Fleebix. This flashback is lengthy and there isn't a lot of room to manoeuvre with making mistakes. Not only is there a lot of mistakes that can be made they usually involving restarting the process all over again.

One of the issues that I had with re-recording is trying to remember whether I had done some of the optional things already. For example: looking at the map, something I did in the original recording but couldn't remember if I had or not throughout the re-recording and it turns out that I hadn't. I'm going to work on recording a video of missed content before the next update to try and rectify what I've missed out on so far.

I'll try to record the bus segment in a more logical sense after work tonight.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 15:55

By popular demand: Jul 17, 2007; IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!

You are a saint for sitting through all this high pitched screaming again and again to play this thing for us.
I wonder why the devs thought this 'guy berating a moron' dynamic would not get old quick.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 19:10

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

By popular demand posted:

You are a saint for sitting through all this high pitched screaming again and again to play this thing for us.
I wonder why the devs thought this 'guy berating a moron' dynamic would not get old quick.

This was the 90s and there was a lot of berating in comedies throughout the decade.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 19:39

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

The game seems to have a problem overall with tracking whether time passes when you examine things using the magnifying glass icon. It seems to pass for some events, but not for others, which gets the bus's presence out of sync with its schedule. Waiting always seemed to resolve the issue for me eventually. This is actually one of maybe two flashbacks in the game that I managed to complete without leaning heavily on a hint guide, and I think it's one of the high points of the entire game, technical issues notwithstanding. There's a nice, iterative loop of failing, figuring out why you failed, and doing things correctly the next time. Saving is, of course, preferable to restarting, although I recommend that anyone looking to play the game from CDs today copy the contents of discs 1 and 3 into the install directory so you don't have to switch discs. I don't think you need to switch if you just get kicked back to the chat interface and go right back in, but it's been a long time since I played without having everything local.

Probably the biggest jerk move in this part is the nav-dial setting. When I played, I was convinced that I needed Thud to set the nav-dial to the correct number, and calculated what number I needed to give him to make that happen. Then it turns out that the driver follows the nav-dial incorrectly, and Thud's mistake compensates perfectly for that. There are some things you just can't possibly predict.

No idea what's up with that plane, even after all this time. It flies by after a certain amount of time and shoots at you, apparently just as a reference.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 21:01

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Bonus Video

Here is how things could have gone better: The Bus Puzzle Reprise

Nidoking posted:

The game seems to have a problem overall with tracking whether time passes when you examine things using the magnifying glass icon. It seems to pass for some events, but not for others, which gets the bus's presence out of sync with its schedule. Waiting always seemed to resolve the issue for me eventually. This is actually one of maybe two flashbacks in the game that I managed to complete without leaning heavily on a hint guide, and I think it's one of the high points of the entire game, technical issues notwithstanding. There's a nice, iterative loop of failing, figuring out why you failed, and doing things correctly the next time. Saving is, of course, preferable to restarting, although I recommend that anyone looking to play the game from CDs today copy the contents of discs 1 and 3 into the install directory so you don't have to switch discs. I don't think you need to switch if you just get kicked back to the chat interface and go right back in, but it's been a long time since I played without having everything local.

Probably the biggest jerk move in this part is the nav-dial setting. When I played, I was convinced that I needed Thud to set the nav-dial to the correct number, and calculated what number I needed to give him to make that happen. Then it turns out that the driver follows the nav-dial incorrectly, and Thud's mistake compensates perfectly for that. There are some things you just can't possibly predict.

No idea what's up with that plane, even after all this time. It flies by after a certain amount of time and shoots at you, apparently just as a reference.

This segment was a lot of fun! I learnt the hard way about saving often, the worst moment was at the end of the segment and I forgot to save before entering the lodge and pressed quit thinking it would just take me back outside. I definitely got the trying and failing aspect to each section, the main issue was trying to work out exactly how much time we had to do in each section. I'm pretty sure that I hit every fail state on the way through, including both sides of the nav dial puzzle. I made the mistake of putting the nav dial straight in the first couple of times and had to consult a guide to work out what I was doing wrong.

I would copy the game files into the install folder but I'm using PCem to play this and I didn't think I'd need a bigger hard drive than 2 gigabytes when I originally set it up.

# ? Aug 25, 2022 23:23

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Bonus Videos

Additional Dialogue - Thud

I thought I'd separate each character's interactions even though Fleebix and Thud's flashbacks are intertwined. There were a few dialogue options that I missed out on before the flashback and I completely missed out on the conversations with Fleebix during the flashback. I was going to end the video by playing a game with Thud but there is an extra line of dialogue from Zelda when we exit from the close-up.

MISTER DRINKVENDOR 2000

I also decided to take a closer look at MISTER DRINKVENDOR 2000 and order a couple of drinks.

I have started recording some extra footage of Fleebix but I will have to stop for the moment. I have a busy weekend but have a few days free from responsibilities and work next week, so I'll be resuming things on Monday.

# ? Aug 27, 2022 10:56

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Bonus Videos

Additional Dialogue - Fleebix

This video contains a couple of lines of dialogue from when we first met Fleebix, various interactions with Thud and the fail states that we can encounter from the mail van to the Quantelope Centre.

# ? Aug 29, 2022 09:54

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

I recorded this segment and the flashback in one session but have decided to split them into two parts. In this video, Alias speaks to a helpful character who doesn't hang around for long, conducts business with Fleebix and then speaks to the bartender. The next update will contain the next flashback sequence in its entirety and will be uploaded within the next few days. I'll work on the additional dialogue and scenes in the meantime. I may have to work on a separate video containing missed miscellaneous dialogue as well as I forgot to include a couple of lines for Fleebix.

# ? Aug 29, 2022 18:31

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Galleries

Races

This is the first of the entries in the terminal. I've uploaded the screenshots to Imgur as there are 97 pages for the various races in The Space Bar. I didn't examine all of the entries for the Kur'pupu in the main playthrough so I'll include the images here in the thread as they contain important information:

# ? Aug 30, 2022 14:09

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

This video contains all of SOLDIER 714-Z-367's flashback. I was hoping to do this in one run but I lost track of where I was in my notes and went in the wrong direction. It worked out for the better as I managed to record a parody cutscene that was absent in my first attempt.

Bonus Videos

There wasn't a whole lot of extra content to record apart from a couple of lines of dialogue leading up to the flashback and a couple of cutscenes during it.

Additional Dialogue - Soldier 714-Z-367

I recorded the next segment last night and it was a little messy. I was expecting it to be a little messy but the curse of the record button made things worse.

# ? Aug 31, 2022 11:01

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

I don't think any video can properly capture how painful this particular flashback is. It's not just a matter of doing everything correctly, but a matter of timing. As far as I've ever been able to tell, when the egg is in motion, it moves in some semblance of real time, jumping to predetermined checkpoints each tick. If you stand still long enough and don't do anything, it will reach the next checkpoint on its own and you won't have enough time to do what you need to do. This is at its worst in the mine tunnel, where you need to get in front of it. Fail to find your orientation quickly enough, and you'll get that cutscene without the last-second dive out of the way. I believe that cutscene will play if you just get to the door in time, and when I played this, watching the cutscene rather than clicking to skip it often made the difference between getting to the bottom of the shaft in time or getting there just to watch the egg disappear down the flooded shaft. Any kind of real-time interaction in a turn-based game like this is really jarring to me, and this isn't the only place where it happens, but I think it's the most difficult to deal with. Add to that the constant background chatter (which repeats far too often, and yet contains just enough clues to be Too Important To Turn Off) and the default Zzazzl-vision, and you get a perfectly fine set of puzzles that are a bit painful to play through. And I don't think anyone actually enjoys mazes of twisty passages, all alike. Maybe there would be some interest if you needed to switch which doors were open at different times to get to places you need to go, but no. Just open the correct doors, and you're done.

# ? Aug 31, 2022 17:28

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Nidoking posted:

I don't think any video can properly capture how painful this particular flashback is. It's not just a matter of doing everything correctly, but a matter of timing. As far as I've ever been able to tell, when the egg is in motion, it moves in some semblance of real time, jumping to predetermined checkpoints each tick. If you stand still long enough and don't do anything, it will reach the next checkpoint on its own and you won't have enough time to do what you need to do. This is at its worst in the mine tunnel, where you need to get in front of it. Fail to find your orientation quickly enough, and you'll get that cutscene without the last-second dive out of the way. I believe that cutscene will play if you just get to the door in time, and when I played this, watching the cutscene rather than clicking to skip it often made the difference between getting to the bottom of the shaft in time or getting there just to watch the egg disappear down the flooded shaft. Any kind of real-time interaction in a turn-based game like this is really jarring to me, and this isn't the only place where it happens, but I think it's the most difficult to deal with. Add to that the constant background chatter (which repeats far too often, and yet contains just enough clues to be Too Important To Turn Off) and the default Zzazzl-vision, and you get a perfectly fine set of puzzles that are a bit painful to play through. And I don't think anyone actually enjoys mazes of twisty passages, all alike. Maybe there would be some interest if you needed to switch which doors were open at different times to get to places you need to go, but no. Just open the correct doors, and you're done.

I thought that my mind was playing tricks with me or that there was some kind of delay. A couple of times I thought that I was ahead if the egg but ended up getting crushed. Having the egg going in real time is an absolute dick move!

I generally hate mazes in adventure games, it would have made it a whole lot worse for me if you had to keep pushing buttons to open up other routes to me. The route that I did open got me going in circles a couple of times when I was trying to figure out the route through.

I've already recorded the next flashback which involves a lot less moving around.

# ? Aug 31, 2022 18:02

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Be warned, this video contains material that is suited for older viewers of a certain alien species! :siren:

This segment was recorded in one session but split into two videos. This video went relatively smoothly and is split between speaking to several new characters and visiting a new area in the bar. The second half of this video is exploring the flashback and doing our usual greetings. The next video is where the wheels fell off and things ended up being around fifteen minutes longer than I intended due to reasons. I really enjoyed this flashback!

# ? Sep 2, 2022 21:39

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

I knew this was coming when you said you wouldn't be moving in this flashback. It's uncanny how featuring only one location doesn't stop this flashback from having the absolute biggest dick move in the entire game. And I'm including the fact that, by my reckoning, you may already be behind schedule for one of the critical path things you need to do. I think, if you'd been at the bar when the H'Poctyl shuttle arrived, you would have seen an actual movie of the passengers entering the bar. There are a couple of places you can be standing to see them - Seedrot's table doesn't happen to be one of them. Also, let us not raise our mugs in tribute to at least one Fruufnid voiced by Alan Rickman. I suspect he did both of them.

# ? Sep 3, 2022 02:53

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

This is the second half of Seedrot's flashback and it's going to be a mixed bag. There are four phone numbers hidden within the four television channels, two are within adverts and two of them are part of shows. What makes things even worse is that two of these adverts are on at exactly the same time on two different channels and the phone number for the show can only be called while it's currently on the air. The numbers never change so even if you know them beforehand they won't actually work until you hear them on air for yourself. The television segment is over twenty-six minutes, I've tried to intersperse things with phone calls and a little bit of actual gameplay but it can sound quite repetitive. I've added timestamps to the video which I will also include here without trying to spoil anything, just in case you want to skip ahead to the important parts. In between some actual gameplay and the final number I just start dicking around with some phone numbers and completely forget most of them as soon as I stop looking at them.

03:53 First and second phone numbers, first phone call.
12:16 Third phone number, Second and third phone call.
17:40 Actual Gameplay.
25:43 Final number and phone call.

After we have finished making calls we begin our mission to get pollinated in and raise a little fruit of our own.

Bonus Videos

Additional Dialogue - Seedrot

There isn't a whole lot of extra dialogue. I've included a few lines of dialogue before the flashback, the listed phone numbers without background noise and the other lines of dialogue with Lowpollencount.

Vedj Television

I decided to record each channel in full. They are on a constant loop and they're all pretty lengthy. There are timestamps in the video, I'll include them here too:

00:00 Channel 1 - Talk.
07:12 Channel 2 - Entertainment.
14:17 Channel 3 - News.
21:54 Channel 4 - Home Shopping.

The next segment has already been recorded and I'll be working on extra content as I have a free hour or two. I'm back to work tomorrow so my updates will come at a slower pace. I know that there have been a lot of updates in a very short amount of time but I'm really enjoying this game and want to keep playing more of it.

Nidoking posted:

I knew this was coming when you said you wouldn't be moving in this flashback. It's uncanny how featuring only one location doesn't stop this flashback from having the absolute biggest dick move in the entire game. And I'm including the fact that, by my reckoning, you may already be behind schedule for one of the critical path things you need to do. I think, if you'd been at the bar when the H'Poctyl shuttle arrived, you would have seen an actual movie of the passengers entering the bar. There are a couple of places you can be standing to see them - Seedrot's table doesn't happen to be one of them. Also, let us not raise our mugs in tribute to at least one Fruufnid voiced by Alan Rickman. I suspect he did both of them.

I'm intrigued by what you think is the biggest dick move in the game. I am aware that we need to be time critical at this point but I have already recorded another flashback with Cilia[/spoiler. I know about the [spoiler]poison and the jamming frequency. What might I have missed? I've skipped ahead about 70 turns and I've only received a couple of messages.

Edit: Should I abandon the next flashback and go straight to Click instead?

Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Sep 4, 2022

# ? Sep 4, 2022 13:19

Nidoking: Jan 27, 2009; I fought the lava, and the lava won.

The biggest dick move, as I remember it, is that in fact THREE of those four numbers are on at the same time on three different channels, and all four channels loop over the same interval. So it will take at least three full loops to get all of the numbers, and if you try to get them all without breaks, Curvystem will interrupt you and tell you to stop watching so much TV at exactly the tick when those numbers come around the second time. The TV won't play during that tick, so you need to wait another full loop to get the number you were after.

As for the critical path, I could be completely wrong. We'll see. I remember being in a situation when I didn't have enough time to do everything I needed to do, and it started about when the H'poctyl shuttle arrived, but it's very possible there's something I didn't know, or some random element I'm not accounting for.

# ? Sep 4, 2022 15:00

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

Nidoking posted:

The biggest dick move, as I remember it, is that in fact THREE of those four numbers are on at the same time on three different channels, and all four channels loop over the same interval. So it will take at least three full loops to get all of the numbers, and if you try to get them all without breaks, Curvystem will interrupt you and tell you to stop watching so much TV at exactly the tick when those numbers come around the second time. The TV won't play during that tick, so you need to wait another full loop to get the number you were after.

As for the critical path, I could be completely wrong. We'll see. I remember being in a situation when I didn't have enough time to do everything I needed to do, and it started about when the H'poctyl shuttle arrived, but it's very possible there's something I didn't know, or some random element I'm not accounting for.

I didn't realise that three of them were on at exactly the same time. The first two channels have over seven minutes of audio each and the fourth channel is over five minutes, that's a lot of wasted time.

I've just sent you another message with further information about the critical path. I wonder if it's randomised or whether there is some kind of trigger. I'll continue on with the next flashback as intended and then I'll speed things up afterwards.

# ? Sep 4, 2022 15:09

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# ? May 2, 2024 00:40

Rocket Baby Dolls: Mar 3, 2006; Normally I don't make aesthetic criticisms in other peoples' homes, but that rug looks like a beaver exploded. If meat is murder, then that rug is at least a severe beating.

In this video, we make another new friend and experience another flashback. This one was pretty straightforward and not too hard to work out with trial and error. I've divided the recording in two as it is fairly lengthy even on a straight run. There are thirteen pages dedicated to the Trisecks in the terminal as their society is slightly more complex than ours. I may need to tweak the sound levels some more, especially with the next update as there is only one slider for sounds and the background effects can overshadow pretty much everything else.

I believe that I have everything worked out for the next section and I will attempt to record it either tonight or tomorrow.

# ? Sep 7, 2022 10:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > A man walks into The Space Bar and says to the insectoid bartender...

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