|
Nidoking posted: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? And let's not forget King's Quest VI, where Alexander had to blindly guess which of six lamps a lamp seller had for trade was an exact replica of a genie's lamp! (Blindly from his perspective; we the player get to see the genie's lamp in Alhazred's office perfectly well. I think Peter Spears' novelization had to throw in a line that Alexander saw the lamp as he was being escorted out of the Castle of the Crown when he first met Alhazred.)
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 07:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 02:50 |
|
|
"Klatching" means gossiping.Nidoking posted: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.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 15:05
|
|
|
It's a bit of a weird rant to say that because a game company has a history of making puzzles that make no sense to its creators, therefore today's gamers are too stupid to figure them out. That last point directly undermines the entire post.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 15:06
|
|
|
Snorb posted:And let's not forget King's Quest VI, where Alexander had to blindly guess which of six lamps a lamp seller had for trade was an exact replica of a genie's lamp! (Blindly from his perspective; we the player get to see the genie's lamp in Alhazred's office perfectly well. I think Peter Spears' novelization had to throw in a line that Alexander saw the lamp as he was being escorted out of the Castle of the Crown when he first met Alhazred.) That, at least, is just something that doesn't make sense in-universe, but the logic of the puzzle is sound...ish. It's one of those weird cases where, when you see all of the parts, it's obvious - you see the image of the lamp you need in a cutscene, but if you were trying to figure out how to get that information, it's not apparent how to get it. I define adventure game logic thus: Having identified a problem, is it possible to reason your way to the solution using some combination of common sense, information gained within the game, and within reason, domain knowledge that can be determined by a layperson? This has to be defined in the context of the game - sure, no sensible person in the real world will try to use a tin can to make a gas mask, but improvising equipment has always been what adventure games have been about. The idea here seems to be that you've obtained a mint leaf, and you can give it to the blatantly obvious genie who loves mint, so you do that, and the result gives you information. The logic leading you to suspect that you might get that information through that action is tenuous at best. I'm thinking of situations where performing some action in some place leads to a completely unrelated result, like a merchant showing up only after you've lit a torch in a temple somewhere, because that's how the game gates progress. Another adventure game staple, and one that exists outside the realm of logic. By contrast: Tiggum posted:There is absolutely no logic behind poking holes in a tin can, shoving some charcoal in there, and then looping some leather strips through it to make a gas mask. That's loving bonkers. You can see, post hoc, where they were coming from, but it doesn't actually make sense and should not occur to any rational person to try it. You make a lot of complaints about a post that were addressed in the post I made, had you read it. A gas mask is a filter in a container, with a strap to hold it on the face. Given that you need each of those components, and given the collection of objects available to you, the items you've named are by far the most obvious equivalents for the needed parts. Have you seen the movie Apollo 13, or are you familiar with the real-life events it depicts? Adventure games are like that - you're trapped within the confines of a small space, and you have only a certain collection of objects available. With those, you need to solve the puzzle presented. If making holes in a can, putting coal in it, and attaching a leather strap is an operation you're unwilling to consider, then I say it again: You probably shouldn't play this type of game at all. You're still confusing "I didn't think of that" with "Nobody should be able to think of that", and that kind of thinking is just sour grapes. It doesn't make sense to you, so you think nobody should be allowed to have nice things that you personally can't understand. That's a personal problem. Tiggum posted:Which, by the way, is a refutation of your argument: people didn't work things out using reason and deduction, they just clicked on everything until something worked. And it's possible to solve a Rubik's cube by making random moves for a very long time until it happens to be solved. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as an algorithm to solve it logically. The point you're making is not a refutation of mine, but is in fact the same as mine. People are too lazy, or too impatient, to apply logic to problems, so they brute force things. That doesn't mean there's no logic to it. It just means those people didn't think about it enough, or didn't think about it the right way. You're claiming that it is impossible, under any circumstances, to arrive at an answer from the provided information, but instead of the book of paradoxes you should be pointing at when making that statement, it's first-year calculus homework. There are problems that can't be solved with logic. But you're not talking about those. Use properly relevant examples, and I'll agree with you. kw0134 posted:It's a bit of a weird rant to say that because a game company has a history of making puzzles that make no sense to its creators, therefore today's gamers are too stupid to figure them out. That last point directly undermines the entire post. The last point was that examples of puzzles that don't conform to logic do, indeed, exist in the history of adventure games, and if the dismissive posts here had been made in reference to one of those puzzles, they would have been perfectly fine and cogent. However, the specific example chosen was not one of those puzzles, but a puzzle that is quite logical in its context. I felt the need to distinguish the point I was making, which was "That puzzle is not an example of the illogic you're complaining about," from a point that I was not trying to make, "All adventure game puzzles are logical," because the latter is clearly not true, and I know well the reputation of people for failing to get all of the information and reading implications that are not there. Clearly, I didn't say enough. There's no "therefore" connecting the ideas you've quoted. It is the case that puzzles that make no sense exist. It is also the case, in my experience, that today's gamers don't demonstrate the patience for the puzzles of the past (logical or otherwise) that people had when those games were made. But to suggest that there is a causal relationship between those ideas is, frankly, an example of the logic the people I've quoted seem to be complaining about. What I'm saying is that people don't distinguish between the puzzles that make sense and the ones that don't. They just claim that nothing makes sense, and use that as a criticism of the genre as a whole. It's an uninformed opinion that I would like to see considerably less of.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 19:47
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:You make a lot of complaints about a post that were addressed in the post I made, had you read it. A gas mask is a filter in a container, with a strap to hold it on the face. Given that you need each of those components, and given the collection of objects available to you, the items you've named are by far the most obvious equivalents for the needed parts. Have you seen the movie Apollo 13, or are you familiar with the real-life events it depicts? Adventure games are like that - you're trapped within the confines of a small space, and you have only a certain collection of objects available. With those, you need to solve the puzzle presented. If making holes in a can, putting coal in it, and attaching a leather strap is an operation you're unwilling to consider, then I say it again: You probably shouldn't play this type of game at all. You're still confusing "I didn't think of that" with "Nobody should be able to think of that", and that kind of thinking is just sour grapes. It doesn't make sense to you, so you think nobody should be allowed to have nice things that you personally can't understand. That's a personal problem. There's a fine line between "I didn't think of that" and "you need to understand exactly what the creator was thinking." It's totally valid criticism that the gasmask puzzle is too obtuse. I don't think you need a leap to figure out that you should find a way to filter the air, but the steps required to do so should have been more lenient. Here's a couple of things that bugged me about it. 1. It should have been good enough to make the mask with 3/4 items. Why does Freddy need the bridle? He can simply hold the can up to face. Or why does the can need holes? It would work just as well with just charcoal in can. As an aside you have to use the ice pick on the can not vice versa maybe in the floppy version it gives you a hint but in the talkie version you just get an X. 2. Why can't you just put the charcoal in the paper bag and breathe through that? It's solid enough to hold horse farts, why isn't it solid enough to hold air? I think it would have been a better puzzle if it was a bit more lax about how to solve it. Since the game has points all they need to do is have the partial solution be valid and give you less points. TwoDayLife fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 29, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 22:02
|
|
|
I can sort of understand why they're keeping the paper bag and tin can as two separate entities for two separate puzzles. Is there a reason why we can't just sniff the coal directly? The talkie version does suffer with having to use objects on each other in a certain way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 22:18
|
|
|
One more minor nitpick about the gasmask. Freddy has a giant chemistry set in his house, which includes Sodium Bicarbonate which could have easily substituted for the charcoal.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 22:35
|
|
|
TwoDayLife posted:1. It should have been good enough to make the mask with 3/4 items. Why does Freddy need the bridle? He can simply hold the can up to face. This, I agree with, and I believe I said as much the first time around. Whoever designed the process of making the gas mask clearly wasn't communicating with whoever designed the mechanic of needing to use it periodically, or just never bothered to consider those two things in combination. However, I don't think the incongruity between the expected result and the actual result after the puzzle is solved should affect the thinking leading to the solution. I'll absolutely grant that "thinking the way the developers did" is a significant factor, but again, adventure games in their entirety have been about seeing square pegs and round holes and trying to put them together from the very beginning. I actually have an insider story about that, from the development of a fairly recent game where I happened to have a backstage pass. For one puzzle, the player needs a brain as an ingredient for a magic spell. They're told that it can be a few days old, which is the only clue that the brain needed is the one from a criminal who was beheaded at the start of the game, and whose head is on a pike near the town. It's been such a fixture that most people forget it's there, and every playtester, without exception, was confused as to why they couldn't just remove the brain from any random enemy they'd fought. The developers were pretty stubborn about the solution they had in mind, yet they were adamantly against adding a message like "their brain is too damaged to be of use" for interacting with corpses just during the period when you need one. It was a stalemate until I suggested that the spell should require the brain of someone who wasn't killed by the player character, which seemed to cover all of the bases. There's a finer line than you'd expect between rigidly adhering to a specific solution to every puzzle and allowing the player the flexibility to just do whatever. For games in that era, that would be a LOT of programming, and would require the developers to predict what players might attempt to do in much the same way people here are arguing that players shouldn't have to understand what the developers were thinking. You can't have it both ways. A game where the player character can jump is designed very differently from one where they can't jump, in terms of what sorts of obstacles they might encounter. Sure, if I were actually in the world of the game, I might do things that the controls don't allow me to do in the game, and perhaps they'd work better. But that's not the game I'm playing. Again, if you want infinite flexibility to do whatever the hell you want and have the story reform itself around your will, get a D&D crew together and put a human at the helm. A computer game with a finite amount of programming has a story it's designed to tell, and as much flexibility as the designers had the ability and motivation to incorporate. Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I can sort of understand why they're keeping the paper bag and tin can as two separate entities for two separate puzzles. Is there a reason why we can't just sniff the coal directly? This is a point - earlier Sierra games would have happily let you use the paper bag for the gas mask and left you without a way to capture the gas sample. And they wouldn't even have gone out of their way to suggest that you'd screwed up. If they were feeling really sadistic, they might even give you points for doing it, just so it wasn't obvious that you'd done the wrong thing. But yes, there's a reason you can't sniff coal. The point of the coal is not the scent of the coal, but the action of absorbing particles from the air that you don't want going into your lungs. The point of the container is to prevent air from getting to your face other than by passing through the filter. The point of the strap is to hold it firmly enough to make the seal airtight, again so you're not breathing outside air that hasn't been filtered. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Freddy poked holes in the bottom of the can as well as for the strap, and the game just didn't make that clear.
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 23:13
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:What I'm saying is that people don't distinguish between the puzzles that make sense and the ones that don't. They just claim that nothing makes sense, and use that as a criticism of the genre as a whole. It's an uninformed opinion that I would like to see considerably less of. The appetite for stuff like adventure games is still there; Return of the Obra Dinn is widely praised, and while it's often obscure, I've yet to read of anyone who says "oh, I couldn't figure out what the dev was thinking" instead being "I learned a lot about the nature of sailing in the Napoleonic Era."
|
|
#
?
Jan 29, 2023 23:27
|
|
|
kw0134 posted:But you're directly citing the fact that the genre was in fact packed with a ton of nonsensical puzzles. "Game company known for adventure games, also known for nonsense in said games with these examples" isn't helping you out in the way you think. I don't think anyone is really saying that literally everything in these games were full of gibberish logic from a Lewis Carroll novel, but that the genre was absolutely notorious for having utterly nonsensical puzzles is not some crazy viewpoint that was the result of lazy thinking. If it's unfair that people think of the King's Quest series and can only recall the parts that were incredibly frustrating...that's on the maker, not the audience, and too bad on the authors who admit that they can't even recall the logic sometimes. I agree with a lot of this
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 00:53
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:You make a lot of complaints about a post that were addressed in the post I made, had you read it. A gas mask is a filter in a container, with a strap to hold it on the face. Given that you need each of those components, and given the collection of objects available to you, the items you've named are by far the most obvious equivalents for the needed parts. Nidoking posted:Adventure games are like that - you're trapped within the confines of a small space, and you have only a certain collection of objects available. With those, you need to solve the puzzle presented. Nidoking posted:You're still confusing "I didn't think of that" with "Nobody should be able to think of that", and that kind of thinking is just sour grapes. It doesn't make sense to you, so you think nobody should be allowed to have nice things that you personally can't understand. That's a personal problem. Nidoking posted:The point you're making is not a refutation of mine, but is in fact the same as mine. People are too lazy, or too impatient, to apply logic to problems, so they brute force things. ... You're claiming that it is impossible, under any circumstances, to arrive at an answer from the provided information Nidoking posted:But yes, there's a reason you can't sniff coal. The point of the coal is not the scent of the coal, but the action of absorbing particles from the air that you don't want going into your lungs. The point of the container is to prevent air from getting to your face other than by passing through the filter. The point of the strap is to hold it firmly enough to make the seal airtight, again so you're not breathing outside air that hasn't been filtered.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 03:25
|
|
|
kw0134 posted:But you're directly citing the fact that the genre was in fact packed with a ton of nonsensical puzzles. "Game company known for adventure games, also known for nonsense in said games with these examples" isn't helping you out in the way you think. I don't think anyone is really saying that literally everything in these games were full of gibberish logic from a Lewis Carroll novel, but that the genre was absolutely notorious for having utterly nonsensical puzzles is not some crazy viewpoint that was the result of lazy thinking. If it's unfair that people think of the King's Quest series and can only recall the parts that were incredibly frustrating...that's on the maker, not the audience, and too bad on the authors who admit that they can't even recall the logic sometimes. I agree with everything you've said here, except for the implication that it has anything to do with anything I've said in this thread, which it hasn't. Are you trying to say that, because there are times when logic doesn't lead to a solution, logic is always worthless and refusing to use it in any situation is the correct approach? I sure hope not, but that's the most sense I can make of it. kw0134 posted:The appetite for stuff like adventure games is still there; Return of the Obra Dinn is widely praised, and while it's often obscure, I've yet to read of anyone who says "oh, I couldn't figure out what the dev was thinking" instead being "I learned a lot about the nature of sailing in the Napoleonic Era." Show me anyone, other than me, who completed Return of the Obra Dinn without putting in random information and waiting for confirmation at least once. Hell, both of the Cracking the Cryptic producers resorted to bifurcation by the end, and they literally make a living solving logical puzzles using only logic. Meanwhile, I have definitely heard from at least one person who didn't understand that they were supposed to be putting information into the book, because the few tutorials that the game offers only show up once you attempt to do what they're going to tell you about. And if you trigger one at the wrong time, half of it won't show because there aren't enough pages unlocked to demonstrate the important part of the functionality, and there's no indication that you've missed anything as a result. I answered all of the game's questions without guessing only because I had someone talking me through how to use the interface to supply those answers. I don't believe that was intentional. I don't think that figuring out how to use the interface was meant to be a challenge, but it is, and as far as I can tell, it gets in people's way so much that they skip a lot of the logic, guess, and eventually conclude that there was no other way they could have solved the puzzles. In other words, I've yet to read of anyone who hasn't, at least once, said "Oh, I couldn't figure out what the dev was thinking." So, while I still have no idea how the things you're saying are meant to relate to the things I'm saying, they support my point more than they do anything I can glean from your post. Tiggum posted:You will not convince me that you solved the puzzle that way. Well, okay. So you admit that you're arguing in bad faith, and you've stopped saying anything with more substance than "uh-uh". This is the last time I will interact with one of your posts, because it's a waste of everyone's time. Nidoking fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jan 30, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 03:34
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:I agree with everything you've said here, except for the implication that it has anything to do with anything I've said in this thread, which it hasn't. Are you trying to say that, because there are times when logic doesn't lead to a solution, logic is always worthless and refusing to use it in any situation is the correct approach? I sure hope not, but that's the most sense I can make of it. quote:Show me anyone, other than me, who completed Return of the Obra Dinn without putting in random information and waiting for confirmation at least once. Hell, both of the Cracking the Cryptic producers resorted to bifurcation by the end, and they literally make a living solving logical puzzles using only logic. Meanwhile, I have definitely heard from at least one person who didn't understand that they were supposed to be putting information into the book, because the few tutorials that the game offers only show up once you attempt to do what they're going to tell you about. And if you trigger one at the wrong time, half of it won't show because there aren't enough pages unlocked to demonstrate the important part of the functionality, and there's no indication that you've missed anything as a result. I answered all of the game's questions without guessing only because I had someone talking me through how to use the interface to supply those answers. I don't believe that was intentional. I don't think that figuring out how to use the interface was meant to be a challenge, but it is, and as far as I can tell, it gets in people's way so much that they skip a lot of the logic, guess, and eventually conclude that there was no other way they could have solved the puzzles. In other words, I've yet to read of anyone who hasn't, at least once, said "Oh, I couldn't figure out what the dev was thinking." So, while I still have no idea how the things you're saying are meant to relate to the things I'm saying, they support my point more than they do anything I can glean from your post. quote:Well, okay. So you admit that you're arguing in bad faith, and you've stopped saying anything with more substance than "uh-uh". This is the last time I will interact with one of your posts, because it's a waste of everyone's time.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 05:11
|
|
|
kw0134 posted:A good adventure game doesn't mean everyone solves it, no problem. Rather, it means that it presents all the clues or some way of collecting all the clues to solve it without doing some absurdity. That's... exactly what I said? Thank you for agreeing, despite the hostile tone. Although, again, for the record, I'm the one person who didn't miss those things. You've linked evidence of zero people who didn't. I counted several times just to make sure. kw0134 posted:I'm not Tiggum, but the puzzle here isn't "make a gas mask." It's "what can Freddy use to survive?" and there's absolutely no indication that the solution is a makeshift gas mask of dubious design. His point is that it's not at all a deductive and logical leap from a tin can, a chunk of charcoal, strap, and an icepick. "What can someone use to survive toxic air?" does not in any way suggest "gas mask" to you? Logic has steps. I protest the use of an Edgeworth avatar if you don't understand how logic works. Of course nobody thinks "Fart air is killing me, better poke holes in a tin can" in exactly that way. But "I can't breathe this air" should, to any competent thinker, lead to "I should find something to let me breathe, like a gas mask" which should lead to "there don't seem to be any pre-assembled gas masks in this game," then to "maybe I can make one," and thus to "which of the materials that I can find might serve to create a gas mask?" I don't care to repeat, yet again, where the thought process goes from there, except to repeat that the game's copy protection manual, without which you can't complete the game, tells you that carbon, such as coal, acts as an air filter. Half of the thread seems to be asserting that there is no logic to any of this, completely baselessly, because the problem of being unable to breathe is not directly linked to an ice pick without taking a few intermediate steps. And no, I didn't miss the "without doing some absurdity" you threw in there, but this is an Al Lowe game. Absurdity is par for the course, and using makeshift materials to accomplish things dates back to the earliest text adventures. "Without doing some absurdity" is only a meaningful requirement if you're playing games where the most taxing puzzle is "stick the sword in the bad guy". Maybe you're all too young to be familiar with McGuyver. But if so, I still consider that more in favor of my opinion than yours.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 06:23
|
|
|
One good adventure game is Return to Zork. Xaiter's LP goes through the game in an incredibly logical way and it's a good LP that many would consider to have relatively logical puzzles: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL09C4810C26CFE767
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 08:01
|
|
|
I really love the portrait designs in this game. Really reminds me of Dagger of Amon Ra in its more cartooney vibes, rather than some of the other Sierra contemporaries of the time. What other Sierra games adapted this art style?
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 08:07
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:(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.) The first is dumber on the face of it, while the second does an amazing job of deflating a genuinely well crafted character arc.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 21:05
|
|
|
Xander77 posted:Friend or sliding tile? I don't recognize either of those phrases as a reference to the process of getting twenty additional dollars, but that's the puzzle I'm talking about.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2023 23:32
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:I don't recognize either of those phrases as a reference to the process of getting twenty additional dollars, but that's the puzzle I'm talking about.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2023 00:02
|
|
|
Bonus Videos The first of the additional content videos. I'm dividing the first act into two videos as there is a lot of extra dialogue that can be found throughout. The first part is pretty lengthy and it includes dialogue up until Freddy walks behind the counter in the pharmacy. I haven't finished replaying the first act yet so I don't know just how much material will be in the second part, I just thought the counter would be a good place to divide things. As discussed in the thread and in the video, there are a ton of things that can be interacted with so despite the length I'm going to try to keep even the extra content down to a minimum. I've included in this video every inventory interaction that we can have with each character. If there is anything specific that you'd like me to include in later videos then please let me know. Additional Dialogue - Act I, Part I Timestamps are in the video, this video includes extra dialogue with each character that we met in the first act and in the order that we met them: Helen Back, Hop Singh, Sam Andreas, Doc Gillespie, P. H. Balance, Whittlin' Willie, Salvatore O'Hanrahan, Sheriff Shift & Penelope Primm. Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Feb 2, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2023 01:23
|
|
|
 Freddy deals with the stampede but the peace doesn't last for long as another problem arises for the people of Coarsgold, it's almost like someone is trying to make the place unliveable. Freddy also finds a new employee despite his business being shut down. I thought that I was going to make more progress in this video but I wasn't expecting a couple of random NPC events that I saw for the first time during the recording and another NPC with a lot to saw who I saw for the first time in this video too. This video is a little messy as there are a few misclicks here and there, I don't think it affects the playthrough too much but you do get to hear some extra dialogue because of it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 01:11
|
|
|
I'm surprised at how many little things from this game I've forgotten over the years, but I'll never forget Srini's "Okee the dokee!" I feel like this is another sequence that either doesn't have a time limit, or it's so long you'd never run out of time. Drinking the water is one of those SCORE! opportunities that seems counterintuitive, but my friends and I never shied away from looking for inventive ways to die in these games, and it sometimes worked out in our favor. One thing you might want to do, if you hadn't planned on it, is to fill another beer bottle before this chapter is over, just to have the tainted water on hand. It's such a silly thing, but down the road, it leads to one of those classic gags that I love to be the one to tell people about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 03:39
|
|
|
Nidoking posted:I'm surprised at how many little things from this game I've forgotten over the years, but I'll never forget Srini's "Okee the dokee!" I feel like this is another sequence that either doesn't have a time limit, or it's so long you'd never run out of time. Drinking the water is one of those SCORE! opportunities that seems counterintuitive, but my friends and I never shied away from looking for inventive ways to die in these games, and it sometimes worked out in our favor. One thing you might want to do, if you hadn't planned on it, is to fill another beer bottle before this chapter is over, just to have the tainted water on hand. It's such a silly thing, but down the road, it leads to one of those classic gags that I love to be the one to tell people about. I'll be heading back there in the next video so I can pick up some more. Where would I need to use it specifically?
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 09:11
|
|
|
I completely blanked out the entire snail thing from my memory I think, I can't remember any part of that even though the bits afterwards I can remember fine. Also I could have sworn there was a game over or something if you turned on the water tower faucet and left the screen/advanced the story/etc? I distinctly remember something like that but maybe it's a false memory.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 10:30
|
|
|
Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I'll be heading back there in the next video so I can pick up some more. Where would I need to use it specifically? That's the best part. You don't need to use it. The gag comes to you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 11:53
|
|
|
Red Mike posted:I completely blanked out the entire snail thing from my memory I think, I can't remember any part of that even though the bits afterwards I can remember fine. Also I could have sworn there was a game over or something if you turned on the water tower faucet and left the screen/advanced the story/etc? I distinctly remember something like that but maybe it's a false memory. I gave this a try, but when I re-entered the screen a short time later the faucet had been returned to the off position.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 11:59
|
|
|
I have another question regarding the logic behind another puzzle: Is there anything specific regarding the use of the bicarbonate soda with the fire? The only thing that I can garner so far is that we're just covering the fire with a lot of powder.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 13:03
|
|
|
Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I gave this a try, but when I re-entered the screen a short time later the faucet had been returned to the off position. It must be a false memory because it's not even in the game design document! Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I have another question regarding the logic behind another puzzle: When you heat up baking soda, it changes to sodium carbonate in an endothermic reaction which means it lowers the temperature, which can mean that you're not left with glowing hot embers that will reignite as soon as they can; the reaction also produces water and CO2 (that snuffs the fire out). In small-scale fires that's enough to put out the fire, and it's a safer alternative when the fire is grease/oil-based (because throwing water on it will splatter hot oil everywhere). But you have to be super wary really because any amount of powder over a fire is a very bad idea and can literally cause explosions. Important note too: it needs to be baking soda/bicarbonate of soda...not baking powder.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 14:54
|
|
|
Red Mike posted:I completely blanked out the entire snail thing from my memory I think, I can't remember any part of that even though the bits afterwards I can remember fine. Also I could have sworn there was a game over or something if you turned on the water tower faucet and left the screen/advanced the story/etc? I distinctly remember something like that but maybe it's a false memory. Never got to the snail part, but I appreciate the reference to the lemmings game which I DO remember playing and enjoying a lot. Now that's a game with good puzzles.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 16:45
|
|
|
You know, is it just me or is the character sprite rendering in this game really bad in a weird way that doesn't fit with other Sierra games released before and after it? Not that the art itself is bad, but that there's something wrong with the scene or the characters that causes them to be almost always scaled down by odd factors. The dialogue cut-outs and backgrounds all look fine, so it seems exclusively to do with anything that's a character sprite. But it even affects Srini when he's completely static early on, I wouldn't have been able to even tell you that was meant to be a person until prompted. Leisure Suit Larry 6, Space Quest 5, even Police Quest 4, all came out around the same time using the same interpreter, but none of them have this sort of issue. I wonder if it's something like the scene perspective being re-adjusted late in development, so they ended up having to make the sprites generally appear at an odd depth factor for rescaling. Because I do find it weird that they have it set up so even the small fixed-perspective rooms (the cafe, the bank) have the characters scaling up/down; you'd expect them to have the room graphics set up so they render the sprites at a fixed 'depth' and thus resize to a specific factor they know looks good. That's what every other SCI game does for rooms like this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 18:09
|
|
|
Red Mike posted:It must be a false memory because it's not even in the game design document! Thank you for the explanation. I have no idea how I'm going to explain how this works with the information that the game has given me. Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Feb 1, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2023 23:22
|
|
|
Bonus Videos Additional Dialogue - Act I, Part II I wasn't planning on getting this done tonight but once I started to record more I thought that I'd see it through to the end as I had the time to do so. This video includes dialogue with the customers returning after being given the wrong description, using every (non-lethal) inventory item on Freddy and using the items that we pick up post-counter with the other characters in the game. There was no methodical ordering of the characters this time, I simply walked out of the pharmacy and spoke to each character as I came to them as I walked eastwards. While recording these videos I found out that I've accidentally missed an item, it's not important just yet so I'll swing by and make the collection in the third act.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2023 00:57
|
|
|
Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I have another question regarding the logic behind another puzzle: I think the logic is you just got those giant bags of soda, you need something to put out fire why not use the new item that might work
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2023 02:40
|
|
|
I want to say that in the original, physical manual, there was an entry about sodium bicarbonate that mentioned its fire suppressant properties, but I have no idea where my copy is, and I also seem to remember having seen one of the entries refer to a nonexistent entry - that might be the one. In any case, it's one of those things that people call "common sense" when it's more like background knowledge that everyone's supposed to just know. The delivery method... well, I'd prefer not to bring up that discussion again.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2023 11:28
|
|
|
For better or worse, the next update has been recorded. I started to get frustrated as I kept making silly mistakes with one of the puzzles and it took several attempts to not cock it up. I will upload the video now but will have to post the update later tonight.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2023 12:03
|
|
|
 This video is the end of the first act. Freddy solves the problem with the town water only to find out that another catastrophe has struck Coarsegold. I was having numerous issues with the final sequence as mistakes can easily be made and I was making many, it doesn't help that you can easily kill off Freddy with just a slight misclick.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2023 23:46
|
|
|
That's the one! Helen Back's dialogue was the one I remember getting stuck on back when I was a kid. No idea if I got stuck there because I didn't have the book, or didn't know to use it and get the right formula because I was 8 and playing on the babysitter's Amiga or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2023 00:00
|
|
|
Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
Cedric the Owl is King Graham's useless companion in KQ5. He's pretty much globally hated for having an annoying voice, being a coward, and generally being of no use to Graham. If you were to leave and come back to the anthill after seeing him, you'd get a fun easter egg. TwoDayLife fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Feb 3, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2023 02:52
|
|
|
Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
TwoDayLife posted:Cedric the Owl is King Graham's useless companion in KQ5. It should also be mentioned that KQ5 has a really, really annoying maze in the first part of the game that masquerades as a desert. It's one of the first "puzzles' to get through and it's tedious, to say the least. Now that i think about it, KQ5 has a lot of mazes. The forest maze, the ocean maze, the dungeon maze, maybe others...
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2023 05:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 02:50 |
|
|
Also, in reference to "Sierraland", there was actually an online space that would probably serve a similar purpose - The Sierra Network, aka The ImagiNation Network (or INN). It's akin to a graphical BBS with games, message boards, e-mail, etc. https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-sierra-network-ii/ Weirdly enough, there are no good wikipedia pages on the subject but plenty of online resources.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2023 05:34
|
|