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Nidoking posted:I don't think there was an overall timer in the first King's Quest, and I think the time in the second one was entirely driven by your progress. It wasn't until III that they introduced a timer that covered the whole game, and it was shown on screen. Most of the early parts of Space Quest I would punish you for being too slow, the first Police Quest had timers for various events, and every Quest for Glory had at least the survival element of needing to pay for food and (usually) lodging, if nothing else. KQ2 had the bullshit bridge to impede you from exploring. FP:FP actually makes fun of it at some point. TwoDayLife fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jan 20, 2023 |
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Jan 20, 2023 00:37
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My experience with Sierra adventures is somewhat limited. When I was a kid I had an Atari ST and I had copies of the first couple of games in each of the Police Quest, Kings Quests and Leisure Suit Larry series. I played around with the Kings Quest games but as an idiot child I found them extremely unforgiving, LSL went way over my head and I had no access to walkthroughs in the late 80s\early 90s for any of these games. Police Quest was another matter, I was absolutely obsessed with the first game as a kid. I never reslly got any further than failing at the traffic stop objectives, but I still put dozens of hours into it over the years. I didn't actually complete the game until I was in my late teens and I've played through the game several times since. My memory is a little hazy with this one but didn't you get a game over if you missed the meeting right at the start of the game? I have played other Sierra adventures over the years. I eventually became enamoured with the Space Quest series. I've played through the later King's Quest games, Torins Passage and the first couple of Gabriel Knight games. It's just that as a kid I eventually found the LucasArts adventures and never really looked backwards until I was a lot older.
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Jan 20, 2023 01:00
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TwoDayLife posted:KQ2 had the bullshit bridge to impede you from exploring. That's just a jape? I left out that part of town because of it!
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Jan 20, 2023 01:02
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:That's just a jape? I left out that part of town because of it!
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Jan 20, 2023 01:08
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:That's just a jape? I left out that part of town because of it! Game has some mean ways of killing you, but that aint one of them Plus you'd miss the KQ5 easter egg
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Jan 20, 2023 03:43
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
You absolutely get a game over for missing the briefing at the start of the game (because you missed your shift assignment), and you get a game over for walking around the briefing room long enough for your sergeant to yell at you (I think the death message was "Dooley cans your butt on the spot!") The first game killed you a lot for missing procedural work; there is a very long-standing rumor that you get a bad ending in Police Quest II if you shoot first during the final shootout against Bains in the sewer, but I dove into the game with an SCI editor. There is no bad ending, and even if there were, the window for shooting first and having enough ammo to survive the shootout would have been too narrow to make coding a bad ending worth the effort.
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Jan 20, 2023 03:59
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As far as I know, the QfG games are mostly time gated by your ability to not starve/die of exposure, and past a certain point in all the games you can gently caress around all you like because you've got the resources to play the string out indefinitely. There are some obvious Points of No Return when you are on a clock or certain set pieces that you can't faff about, but generally you're at the start you're booted to a new locale with little to no handholding and are expected to thrash about for a bit to get your bearings. It's even a plot point in the second game because Shapeir is deliberately laid out like a maze so a bunch of stumbling about is expected.
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Jan 20, 2023 05:03
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:My experience with Sierra adventures is somewhat limited. The only reason why I ever got anywhere in King's Quest 5 was because I had a walkthrough. I think I got through Police Quest 3 by downloading a walkthrough on a BBS. Space Quest 5 was the most forgiving Sierra adventure game I played, and thus the most fun. I played Quest for Glory 1 (remake), 3, and 4 as a kid and QFG would have been more fun if the combat wasn't dumb as heck (the only way I could win was to stay out of combat, wear them down, then move in for the kill). I get the feeling that the only Sierra studio that ever got real-time combat right was Dynamix - the little side scrolling sections in Rise of the Dragon were actually pretty fun if a bit simple, and Hunter Hunted is the best couch 2-player multiplayer game for Windows (Star Control 2 melee takes that crown for DOS).
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Jan 20, 2023 06:48
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Police Quest was another matter, I was absolutely obsessed with the first game as a kid. I never reslly got any further than failing at the traffic stop objectives, but I still put dozens of hours into it over the years. I didn't actually complete the game until I was in my late teens and I've played through the game several times since. My memory is a little hazy with this one but didn't you get a game over if you missed the meeting right at the start of the game? That's par for the course for pretty much all the police quest games. I'd recommend watching these videos of PQ3 deaths, because it's hilarious how dumb they are. These will pretty much spoil the game, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAD1sYk2AZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQvbX6tbigY
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Jan 20, 2023 07:46
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sb hermit posted:In Colonel's Bequest and (I think) its successor, Dagger of Amon Ra, time would only advance if you showed up in key areas. So if you ignored those areas, you could poke and prod to your heart's content. Colonel's Bequest definitely has an actual timer, with rare exceptions when it's not running. Bacter's LP has a video I love to reference where he goes through the game triggering as few events as possible, just to show off how little information it's possible to have at the end. TwoDayLife posted:KQ2 had the bullshit bridge to impede you from exploring. That's an extremely misleading statement, as literally the only thing on the far side of that bridge is the door, and what little notion of time there is in the game depends 100% on you reading the inscription on that door.
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Jan 20, 2023 11:27
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 There wasn't a whole lot to explore on the East side of town so I was able to spend a significant amount of time inside the pharmacy in this video. Granted, 99% of the time in the pharmacy is spent poking around, but I managed to complete a couple of objectives to advance the game further. We're now past the halfway point of the game! 
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Jan 20, 2023 15:04
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Nidoking posted:That's an extremely misleading statement, as literally the only thing on the far side of that bridge is the door, and what little notion of time there is in the game depends 100% on you reading the inscription on that door. Kinda disagree, especially without a guide you can easily put yourself into a walking dead situation at any point in the game. The bridge mechanic actively discourages you from exploring and introduces paranoia when accessing new screens. If the bridge mechanics are in the game, how else can I screw myself over by simply walking to a new screen? As for Colonel's Bequest there's an excellent video that came out recently talking about how to reach super sleuth and all the hidden events. Kinda expands on the stuff Bacter was showing off. Def worth a watch (full of spoilers for the game): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2budy3S3MA TwoDayLife fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jan 20, 2023 |
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Jan 20, 2023 18:07
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TwoDayLife posted:Kinda disagree, especially without a guide you can easily put yourself into a walking dead situation at any point in the game. If your intention was to point out walking dead scenarios, then the bridge is about the worst example you could have chosen by far. It tells you that your crossings are limited. It discourages you from specifically crossing specifically that specific bridge, specifically. If you see a message that says "this bridge will only support your weight so many times, make sure you plan carefully before crossing it" and that leads you to think "the game will not tell me when I do something wrong, because it just did exactly that, so I can't expect it ever to do that," then I think that's a problem with your way of thinking, not the game. Every puzzle in the game offers a way to screw yourself over without realizing it, except that one. No, the thing about the bridge that induces paranoia when moving from screen to screen is not what happens when you cross it, but what happens when you miss it by a few pixels, or by one screen, and fall into the chasm instead of crossing safely. And that's the kind of paranoia they wanted you to have. The "save early, save often" motto they parodied in Freddy Pharkas was the approach they wanted people to have to take.
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Jan 21, 2023 01:25
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Nidoking posted:If your intention was to point out walking dead scenarios, then the bridge is about the worst example you could have chosen by far. It tells you that your crossings are limited. It discourages you from specifically crossing specifically that specific bridge, specifically. If you see a message that says "this bridge will only support your weight so many times, make sure you plan carefully before crossing it" and that leads you to think "the game will not tell me when I do something wrong, because it just did exactly that, so I can't expect it ever to do that," then I think that's a problem with your way of thinking, not the game. Every puzzle in the game offers a way to screw yourself over without realizing it, except that one. No, the thing about the bridge that induces paranoia when moving from screen to screen is not what happens when you cross it, but what happens when you miss it by a few pixels, or by one screen, and fall into the chasm instead of crossing safely. And that's the kind of paranoia they wanted you to have. The "save early, save often" motto they parodied in Freddy Pharkas was the approach they wanted people to have to take. I just went and played KQ2 EGA and the game gives you no warning that bridge crossings are limited. If you look at the bridge the game says it's old and rickety but when you cross it nothing happens until the 8th time. Saving early and often does nothing because they're all tainted by potentially used up bridge crossings. You're likely to run into it very early in the game, so saving before the bridge pretty much equals restarting the game.
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Jan 21, 2023 02:09
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Out of all the dos adventure games, Monkey Island 1 and 2 are probably the stand-out bunch. I watched someone play Legend of Kyrandia and I would not have completed even half of it as a kid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtdTvIPQSVA
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Jan 21, 2023 05:19
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TwoDayLife posted:Kinda disagree, especially without a guide you can easily put yourself into a walking dead situation at any point in the game. It's neat how we're in an age where people can just decompile games to figure out how they run, and then make videos to explain all of it to any and all interested folks.
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Jan 21, 2023 05:22
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
 There are a lot of callbacks to other games and it really feels like a love letter to Sierra's fans.It's too bad that there's very little to pick up from the pharmacy itself, and that the resolution is so low that it's hard to make anything out. The clutter is pretty egregious, especially in the pharmacy and the general store. Does anything happen when you poke the cracked floor near the piano?
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Jan 21, 2023 05:27
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sb hermit posted:Out of all the dos adventure games, Monkey Island 1 and 2 are probably the stand-out bunch. I forgot about the Kyrandia series. I was fascinated by the first game when I was younger, but I kept hitting a brick wall and wasn't able to complete it until I was older and had a guide handy. sb hermit posted:
I did try during my test recording but it's just part of the background scenery. I think I'd they were to do anything with the game again they'd need to do remake it completely.
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Jan 21, 2023 08:42
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I've spent four videos dicking around in the game world and it turns out that you can complete the first act within ten minutes.
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Jan 21, 2023 13:15
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I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with the demo yet. From what I read it was a prequel of sorts, is any of it linked to the plot of the main game?
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Jan 21, 2023 23:23
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 This video is the end of the first act. There's still some poking about as Freddy has a couple of rooms out back to poke around in but most of this video is spent advancing the plot. I apologise in advance for my pronounciations.
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Jan 23, 2023 23:25
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
The real Freddy Pharkas starts here (after the end of this video). As for your demo question. Im honestly not sure about the callbacks. Stuff in the mine area has some minor nods to the demo but I can't think of much else. Maybe others can chime in.
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Jan 24, 2023 01:50
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Since most of the chemicals on your bench are either a fictitious mashing together of IUPAC systemic names or deliberate butcherings of the real-world analog, mispronouncing that nonsense is completely understandable. There's no such thing as "bismuth enterosalicyline" but bismuth subsalicylate is the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol.
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Jan 24, 2023 02:08
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Like any proper Sierra game, FPFP features a full complement of amusing deaths, and as you might expect, consuming any medication you've produced leads to one of them. You can eat the ones you make for customers, but you can also just mess around with the pharmaceutical equipment and put anything you make into a container to take it with you. Personally, I always found it baffling that you can bottle 5 mL of water and die from drinking it. (I think there is some minimum amount of preparation you have to do, like not being able to make empty pills, but I'm pretty sure pure water satisfies it.)
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Jan 24, 2023 02:43
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"pure" water
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Jan 24, 2023 04:12
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Act II definitely starts out a little left field compared to the ending of the first act. I will attempt to do a death reel and will welcome any suggestions. I managed to die because I was reading a guide and left Freddy standing around. I have another question: Is there anything or anyone in the game that instructs you on how to make a gas mask? I know how to make the gas mask but I haven't found anything in the game that tells you how. I've checked the manual and unless I'm missing something I haven't seen anything in there either.
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Jan 25, 2023 10:49
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Isn't the medicine mixing bit basically copy protection? I thought you had to do it properly or you'd get a game over. I definitely remember the gas mask thing being described somewhere ahead of time in the game itself, but can't remember where it was. At a guess it was something described in the general store or via conversation, but it wasn't 100% clear. Also, it feels like this entire game is a series of left fields, from the intro to the first act, and onwards.
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Jan 25, 2023 11:01
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Red Mike posted:Isn't the medicine mixing bit basically copy protection? I thought you had to do it properly or you'd get a game over. I accidentally mixer Helen Back's prescription incorrectly during my test run and she just came back inside and told me to mix it correctly. I haven't tried mixing things incorrectly for the others yet. If I have some free time tomorrow I may start recording some extra content.
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Jan 25, 2023 11:15
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I have another question: Is there anything or anyone in the game that instructs you on how to make a gas mask? Check the entry for "Carbon". There's a lot of stuff in there that isn't obviously related to the copy protection but is still either helpful or humorous. Red Mike posted:Isn't the medicine mixing bit basically copy protection? I thought you had to do it properly or you'd get a game over. Not a game over, but you'll enter an infinite loop of being asked to remake it until you get it right.
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Jan 25, 2023 14:39
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Nidoking posted:"Carbon"  Of course! Thank you!
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Jan 25, 2023 17:01
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I'm not sure if you can trigger it, but way way back when I played this on a babysitter's computer (dating myself here) I got stuck when mixing a prescription and the recipient came back and said that they accidentally fed it to their dog, killing the dog, and wanted me to re-do the medicine. But I can't remember which character that was, or what circumstances did that. Whatever it was it kept me from progressing and now that I think about it, it might have been the copy protection putting an infinite loop barrier there where I couldn't get it right.
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Jan 25, 2023 18:36
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That could be the result of faithfully filling Madame Ovaree's original prescription for Testosterate. As I remember it, there's no special message for doing that compared to just making a mistake with the prescription, and the game offers no hint that the prescription itself might be incorrect, particularly after you have to go to the trouble of getting the shot glass (from right next to the doctor himself, no less) in order to read it in the first place. It's a rather cruel compound puzzle. I think a simple "Are you sure you gave me the right medicine?" "How strange! I'm sure I filled it correctly," exchange might have made it more apparent what you need to do without giving too much away.
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Jan 25, 2023 23:53
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 Welcome to Act II! Freddy has lost his business but he still has his home, for now. We start out this Act with some noisy new neighbours, but we managed to resolve matters without too much foaling around. This recording felt like it was a little messy but this morning's attempt was even messier, the test run wasn't much better either. If you want to check out the medical guide for yourself it's available to read on Al Lowe's website here: https://allowe.com/images/fpfp/manual.htm
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Jan 28, 2023 01:07
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And this is the point when you start to understand why you can't just go straight from one objective to the next. Not only is it inconvenient having to duck into buildings constantly until you've assembled the gas mask (which, of course, requires hiking all the way across town - you can't steal any of the stuff you need from Smithie until he's left town, and that's the very thing that triggers the start of this act! Well, maybe you can run out while he's in your pharmacy instead of giving him the Preparation G immediately, but I have a feeling Freddy will refuse to take anything at that point, and given that Smithie says the horses have already started when he comes in, I assume something would stop you if you tried to leave the pharmacy anyway), but there's an absolute time limit before the town is completely doomed, so if you haven't at least started gathering the materials in advance, things will get pretty tight. And that won't improve as the game progresses, because if you don't have time to spare now, you probably won't be able to do the advance preparation for the following timed events during the one you're running behind on. I never did find out whether the snail stampede is timed or not - if it is, it's a very, very long timer compared to the rest.
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Jan 28, 2023 04:54
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Nidoking posted:And this is the point when you start to understand why you can't just go straight from one objective to the next. Not only is it inconvenient having to duck into buildings constantly until you've assembled the gas mask (which, of course, requires hiking all the way across town - you can't steal any of the stuff you need from Smithie until he's left town, and that's the very thing that triggers the start of this act! Well, maybe you can run out while he's in your pharmacy instead of giving him the Preparation G immediately, but I have a feeling Freddy will refuse to take anything at that point, and given that Smithie says the horses have already started when he comes in, I assume something would stop you if you tried to leave the pharmacy anyway), but there's an absolute time limit before the town is completely doomed, so if you haven't at least started gathering the materials in advance, things will get pretty tight. And that won't improve as the game progresses, because if you don't have time to spare now, you probably won't be able to do the advance preparation for the following timed events during the one you're running behind on. I never did find out whether the snail stampede is timed or not - if it is, it's a very, very long timer compared to the rest. Surprise! It's timed. Just like the majority of the rest of the game. Even the poker stuff is timed
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Jan 28, 2023 07:54
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During my test playthrough I decided to test the bridge out by walking from the left screen to the right screen. The snails only seemed to move each time that I re-entered the screen.
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Jan 28, 2023 11:41
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In classic sierra fashion there is no hint or logical connection that you use and old can, a chunk of coal, and a leather strap to make a gas mask. Oh yeah and make sure to prep the can with an ice pick first.
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Jan 28, 2023 20:58
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El Spamo posted:In classic sierra fashion there is no hint or logical connection that you use and old can, a chunk of coal, and a leather strap to make a gas mask. Oh yeah and make sure to prep the can with an ice pick first. What is a gas mask to you, if not a filter in a container with a strap to hold it over the face? And I would like to see you attach a strap to a can that doesn't have holes in it. The thing that doesn't make sense about it is why it needs a strap if Freddy can only hold it over his face for a few seconds anyway. I think the implication is supposed to be that he intended it to be a wearable mask, but somehow assembled it so that the still-attached lid of the can blocks his view, and neither removing the lid nor just turning the dang thing over seems to be possible. This does reek of one of those puzzles where the solution didn't mesh with the intended mechanics of some other part of the game, but I don't even think this is the least sensible adventure game puzzle I've seen among those involving the creation of a gas mask. This isn't the only place where I've seen a lot of negativity about classic adventure game puzzles recently, and I can only conclude that as a species, we've spent the last twenty years micro-evolving away any traces of logical reasoning, perhaps because we've become too accustomed to games intrusively telling us what to do even when we've already figured it out. There is a 76% probability that, by now, you have a specific game in mind, but it's been creeping up on us gradually, probably since the era of CD games, when it became possible to include the instructions in the game itself rather than requiring a printed manual. (Possibly another contributor to the decline of physical copy protection.) Even then, I see too many people dismiss a message without reading it, then immediately ask a question that would have been answered if they'd read the message. Or, equally likely, they'll read the message, then dismiss it, then utterly fail to apply the new knowledge to their current situation, while wondering aloud why the game hasn't told them exactly what to do, before wandering off to watch the end result of some other person having gone through the same process, and ending with one final fleeting "Well, it would have been nice if the game had told me what was in that message it showed me half an hour ago. What a waste of my time!" People have stopped thinking, and the games have changed to keep up with them... or rather, down with them. Adventure games went from being created with the intention of selling hint books, to being intended to be completed with a bit of extra thought, to building in the hint system so you wouldn't even have to search for answers, to having a character follow you around, reminding you of what your current objective is every few minutes between picking their nose and armpit farting. (This is not as much of an exaggeration as you may think.) And now, "Oh my god, how was I supposed to know to talk to a character to learn information?" has become something of a common complaint among people who, in my opinion, don't actually want to play these games at all, but believe they can interact with them in some superficial way, let the information flow directly to the audience, and have the game effectively play itself while they keep up a stream of unrelated chatter. "I didn't think of that" is a very distinct idea from "There is no sense to be found in this," and the cynic in me can only label the conflation of those two thoughts in modern online society as a sign of the failure of human culture to cope with human culture, due to the complications of human culture. It's not the players; it's the games that don't make sense. There are absolutely plenty of puzzles in the Sierra catalogue that make no sense whatsoever, even to the people who wrote them. The novelizations often break character just to classify their actions as fortunate accidents in the attempt to do something considerably more sensible. King Graham's hand slips and he throws a bridle instead of a sword (with a snake imprint) at a snake. Gabriel Knight can't think of a way to distract a desk sergeant, so he just breaks in through a window. (A puzzle that even the remake changed to match the novel, while at the same time adding literally the worst puzzle I've ever encountered in any game for no reason.) Coktel games, as a whole, exist. So, before complaining that everything in a game makes no sense because it isn't obvious within a few seconds, can we all take the time to think and maybe appreciate that there may be logic behind it after all?
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Jan 28, 2023 22:14
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I had some free tonight so I decided to do a test run for the next update. I've also started to record footage for bonus videos that I will be compiling over the course of the LP. I've collected all of the items that are available to us before Freddy opens for business in his pharmacy and decided to have another jaunt around town. I ended up scrapping the first twenty minutes of recordings as I had forgotten to pick up the ladder and the Preparation G originally. I also neglected to ask about one item because I was getting the same response to a similar item, then found out by a lucky accident that a couple of characters had some unique dialogue for both items. I've recorded the interactions with every character that I can about the inventory items available to us before we go behind the counter. For some reason, I can't use items on Smithie so I've been unable to get any additional dialogue from him regarding them. I've also recorded the reactions that we get from giving the wrong prescriptions to each person who enters the pharmacy. I've yet to record inventory reactions with any inventory that we pick up after we go behind the counter. I haven't yet recorded any inventory reactions with Freddy at all apart from a couple of death scenes. The additional dialogue video for the first act may come in two parts as I have thirty-three minutes of unedited footage so far and there isn't a whole lot to edit apart from Penelope's dialogue. I'll work on recording more footage when I have more free time. I've found three deaths that we can trigger during the first act: Consuming a prescription, drinking the elixir and walking over the edge of the ravine.
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Jan 29, 2023 01:24
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I think you can walk into the swamp as well. Should be one of those deaths you can access more or less at any time.
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Jan 29, 2023 02:22
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