[Announce] Moments out of Time: Adventure Type
L. Ross Raszewski
this time. I've written a sequel to Moments Out of Time, and now it's out.
At 865741.3 UDC, StreamDiver Alpha Tango-678 performed a routine
StreamDive to the middle of the twenty-first century.
He did not travel alone...
An agent of the Temporal Sciences Commission has gone rogue.
Now you, Captain Remington of the Streamdive Investigation
Division, must follow him back into the past to set right
what he has set wrong before all of history is unravelled in
his wake.
Explore six detailed environments for the clues you'll need
to unlock a mystery woven into humanity's past -- a secret so
powerful that it drove one of your own to commit the ultimate
crime against history.
Fully illustrated and with a complete musical score, Moments Out
of Time (Adventure Type) explodes the story begun 2001's
Interactive Fiction Competition second place winner.
Available now at http://streamdive.trenchcoatsoft.com, Download.com,
and shortly at the if-archive.
(Players are advised to turn off visible window boundaries. Users of
Gargoyle may experience difficulties with the user interface and
should enable scrollbars)
Greg Boettcher
> Well, it's bad form to pull the same gag twice running, so I'll be forthright
> this time. I've written a sequel to Moments Out of Time, and now it's out.
For those of us who haven't played the original Moments Out of Time, do
you recommend we play that first, or is it okay to start with the
sequel?
Greg
Robin Johnson
> Fully illustrated and with a complete musical score, Moments Out
> of Time (Adventure Type) explodes the story begun 2001's
> Interactive Fiction Competition second place winner.
Explodes it?
--
Robin Johnson
rj at robinjohnson dot f9 dot co dot uk
http://rdouglasjohnson.blogspot.com - http://www.versificator.co.uk
L. Ross Raszewski
Damn. I'd meant to mention that. Having played either of the previous
releases will give you a small advantage in th first part of the game,
but is in no way necessary.
Stephen Bond
> L. Ross Raszewski wrote:
> > Fully illustrated and with a complete musical score, Moments Out
> > of Time (Adventure Type) explodes the story begun 2001's
> > Interactive Fiction Competition second place winner.
>
> Explodes it?
I imagine this is the transitive use of "explode", i.e. to cause to
explode, which is frequently (as here) used in the transferred sense
of "to cause a dramatic increase in the excitement, tension,
importance, or scope (or some other factor) of the story".
Or were you asking something else?
Stephen.
Robin Johnson
I thought it might be a typo for 'explores'.
Exploding a story means exposing it to have been false all along.
Stephen Bond
> > I imagine this is the transitive use of "explode", i.e. to cause to
> > explode, which is frequently (as here) used in the transferred sense
> > of "to cause a dramatic increase in the excitement, tension,
> > importance, or scope (or some other factor) of the story".
>
> I thought it might be a typo for 'explores'.
>
> Exploding a story means exposing it to have been false all along.
That's one sense of the word (which actually predates the
intransitive sense we associate with explosive devices). But
the "explosive" sense is often transferred beyond explosive
devices, as in the blurb above. It's not hard to find similar
examples online and elsewhere -- and I think few people
would be in any doubt as to what meaning is intended.
Stephen.
TheR...@gmail.com
The Da Vinci Code. Haven't you seen the trailer where Ian McKellen says
"you must explode this story upon the world"?
***SPOILERS***
So anyways, on a more practical note. Love the game thus far, but I'm
stuck in the second area: how am I supposed to figure out how to get
rid of a temporal distortion? Or recharge my StreamDive console once
I've encountered the one in the lab? I've explored all the floors,
taken particular note of how there's a circuit breaker tripped for an
apparently-nonexistent 13th floor...I've gotten an ID card, found notes
on the properties of singularities, killed a few robots, encountered a
nasty cloaked robot, discovered I can make a smoke bomb with a
combination of three chemicals (which the game rather opaquely tells me
I don't want to combine for fear of "an unexpected chemical reaction",
even though I know exactly what it will produce; since the player has
already presumably read the notes if they know to get the glycerin and
Ketron, perhaps "you don't have any chemicals to store" and "you should
probably save that combination until you need it"-type messages would
be more appropriate?), figured out how to cut power to the eighth floor
with a well-administered sheet of insulation (though God knows why I
would want to do that at this point), found the power conditioner and
induction bridge...oh, and three small bugs I'd like to point out:
1. "Take 171" when the tube is not present will initiate a spurious
action to remove all your chips (replete with a few error messages).
2. The north exit of the east office on the seventh floor leads to the
west side of the hall, not the middle (confused the hell out of me
until I noticed).
3. Not a bug, but a typo: I remember a reference to a "security breech"
somewhere. >_>
TheR...@gmail.com
great antiquity*
TheR...@gmail.com
asdf
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What, if anything, can be done about the cloaked robot?
TheR...@gmail.com
First of all, if you don't have Arthur - I mean, Julia - and have
already had your console's batteries drained, restart. Julia is an
*immense* help; make sure you keep her set on "chatty" and get her aid
whenever possible.
If you don't feel like restarting, here's the solution.
Read the lab notes. Opaque smoke? Sounds good. Grab a test tube, go
into storage (south of the emergency shower) and get the other two
ingredients. Now things go into unfair territory, as the game will give
you a fairly opaque warning message if you try doing what the lab note
suggests. Go to the environmental room (northeast corner, west door),
turn off the valve, open the filters, mix the first ingredient with the
test tube, put the contents in the duct, then put the second ingredient
in the duct. Now you've made the robot visible, but you still can't
kill him with your photon disrupter. Thankfully, the disrupter also
doubles as a handy photon grenade. Go to the emergency shower, set the
disrupter to overload, drop it and run. (It has to be in the emergency
shower, BTW. The mirrors will keep the robot's cloaking device from
dispersing the energy, and it'll explode.) Go back, pull the chain to
cool off the wreckage, and claim your prize: a gravitational lens. No
clue what it's good for, but at least you've got it.
asdf
Thank you for the hint.
Now I'm stuck again, though, in the same place as you were...
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What's up with the 13th floor? Is there one, and if so, how can I get
there?
And how can I get the temporal coil?
TheR...@gmail.com
No clue what the coil does, apart from zapping your batteries dry, but
you can INTERFACE WITH PANEL to reach the 13th floor. (You can also
interface with the video screen in the south office on the 20th floor.
You can check out the emails and get a bit of backstory on the hectic
days just prior to the infamous Seventy. The use of an H2G2 quote was
all too appropriate for this chapter...)
The 13th floor is one big puzzle that will require a bit of
back-and-forth. You'll need the induction bridge, the power
conditioner, the blue folder, the note (besides the lab note) and the
identification card (search the body) to get everything done. You'll
need to turn the breaker on, which involves turning all the breakers
(except the Aux) off first; this involves sabotaging the meter on the
7th floor (necessitating you get zapped in order to reach the room with
the Duralon insulator) so you can turn the breaker off for that pesky
8th.
TheR...@gmail.com
proper grammar for working with the bridge and conditioner is "attach".
ATTACH BRIDGE TO AUX. ATTACH BRIDGE TO ARMORED. ATTACH CONDITIONER TO
ARMORED. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. (Don't those robots give you a Dalek
vibe?)
asdf
After implementing that hint, I immediately found a bug. After the maps
of the Amalgamated Industries Research Facility get downloaded to the
map chip, when I try to view those maps, I get a "Glulxe fatal error:
division by zero" and my interpreter crashes.
TheR...@gmail.com
On a side note, at first I was confused as to why the left column was
empty. Then I realized: our "friend" got there first. So the base
settings are a hint. I foolishly fiddled with the dials before I
realized this, so I had to work out the phase myself. Since the
frequency for the third singularity is "off the charts", you have to
work with the second one. Some of this will have to be done by
trial-and-error, and note that the fountain's malfunction is affecting
the singularities, so the calculations you have (assumedly apart from
the phase) will be slightly off. The singularity will react depending
on how close you are (there's a minor formatting bug in one possible
combination; can't remember the details, though), so pay attention: the
flashy stuff is *bad*, so you want to cancel it out.
And if you figure out just what the hell to do with the singularity
once you've got it, please tell me.
asdf
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I'm guessing that with a singularity and a gravity lens, it should be
possible to repair the converter, since the gravity lens lets you
harness the power from the singularity.
However, I'm clearly missing something. I assume the blue, yellow and
white dials represent amplitude, frequency and phase respectively. But
when I enter what appear to be the correct values on the dials (195,
70-90 and 43 [223-180]), or when I change those values slightly,
nothing happens. I can't produce any effects other than getting the
singularity to shine either brighter or dimmer. I notice that the dials
are all measured in degrees, so do I have to convert the values for
amplitude and frequency into degrees?
*sigh* I wish this game's hint system worked.
TheR...@gmail.com
The correct answers are 190, 88 and 43, respectively. A bit of annoying
trial-and-error, but nothing serious.
What is serious is that the game still tells me "I need a power source"
to fix the console when I have the ingredients in hand. I found the
records room, squirreled away northwest of the fork leading to the
observation room and the lavatory, and there I discovered what the hell
that gravity lens trinket was for. Strong recommendation for next
release: have either the parser or Julia inform me that I have all I
need to fix the console, or make the half-cardinal directions more
visible on the compass, preferably big golden arrows like the rest. I
must stress that *this is the only place thus far in the game besides
the beginning that uses a half-cardinal,* and it manages to be
virtually invisible.
(As for fixing the console, put the lens and singularity on the
workbench on floor 15 - God knows why - and REPAIR CONSOLE. Simple as
that. Can't believe I didn't think to do it...oh, wait. -_-;)
And some disambiguation follies. "Which do you mean, the point of
light/DeKuyper Singularity or the point of light/DeKuyper Singularity?"
would be pure hell on Z-Code. It would only be a minor issue to have it
refer to the "center..." and "right..." singularities. And why the hell
does the game ask me if I want to meddle with the blue file folder when
I say "take singularity"? Thank God "take marble" works.
One final issue: Julia's potty mouth grates on my nerves. Could you
decrease the f-bomb fire rate just a bit? I mean, are you trying to
make her "realistic" (ha) or a mimesis-breaking bit of comic relief? Is
she supposed to make me laugh or cringe? You can't really have her both
ways. (Even Arthur only broke mimesis *once* to my recollection. "Gage,
have you been reading the strategy guide again?")
Not to rag on the game: this is clearly something you've spent a lot of
time on, and it was time well-spent. Just a few nagging issues that
manage to confound my enjoyment of an otherwise excellent work of IF.
(And I do like Julia; been a long time since I had an Arthur in my
helmet...just a few quibbles with her presentation.)
TheR...@gmail.com
Hint #1: Look at the statues.
Hint #2: You got this from the DM4, didn't you? Well, if Moon-Shaped
can feature the toadstool ("and a poisoned one at that!") from the
original Ruins...
L. Ross Raszewski
I had hoped the compass would be easier to read. I made a few attempts
at drawing compasses with visible arrows in the secondary directions,
but none of them came out very well.
>
>(As for fixing the console, put the lens and singularity on the
>workbench on floor 15 - God knows why - and REPAIR CONSOLE. Simple as
>that. Can't believe I didn't think to do it...oh, wait. -_-;)
>
If you attempt to fix the console anywhere other than the electronics
lab, you'll be told that you lack the necessary tools. Examining the
tools in the lab will tell you how to perform the repair. I thought
this was as reasonable a way to convey this information as I could
come up with without posting big neon signs.
>And some disambiguation follies. "Which do you mean, the point of
>light/DeKuyper Singularity or the point of light/DeKuyper Singularity?"
>would be pure hell on Z-Code. It would only be a minor issue to have it
>refer to the "center..." and "right..." singularities. And why the hell
>does the game ask me if I want to meddle with the blue file folder when
>I say "take singularity"? Thank God "take marble" works.
>
I will admit that there are several places where I used the
click-to-disambiguate system as an excuse to not solve the difficult
disambiguation problems.
TheR...@gmail.com
error message "Torpedo Tube 3 has no property w_to to write to"...this
doesn't break the game, does it?
TheR...@gmail.com
Never mind, it doesn't break the game...just be warned, everybody else,
that you have to set the torpedo off in tube 2 to get anywhere.
So I'm stuck again. I've found both the sonar readings in the sub, the
sensor readings on the colony...no clue what to do next. Can't figure
out the password for VGLE3...this isn't supposed to be full-blown
trial-and-error, is it? Because all I could figure out was some
combination of "(0)5", "24" and "2076" (Ophelia's birthdate); nothing
seems to work. Another nitpick: mention how many digits the passcode is
supposed to be. I also can't figure out what to do with the device in
the storage pod. I know how to manipulate power - you know, you've got
three of these things in the game - and get different systems running,
but I can't figure out what my grand objective in these scenarios is. I
know I can fire the sub's nukes, but I don't know what I'm supposed to
be firing them at, or why, or which of the numerous codes I'm supposed
to use (side note: I also know how to get information on which ones are
working, but I can't work out how to get to the control area for them).
I also can't figure out how to offer anything to the statues (bug: the
entry for Agatha is not recorded in the Library chip, though a
completely blank one for "anemometer" is; another bug, the autokey
allows me to go through the door behind the water guy). I'm told that
"putting things on the statues would accomplish nothing" when I try to
put things in the dishes. The game doesn't recognize "pour water",
either, and the plaid - what else can I offer to a half-naked woman? -
is similarly ineffective.
asdf
this game so far.
TheR...@gmail.com
> Sorry for the snide comment about the hint system. I am really enjoying
> this game so far.
Ditto here. It just seems that vast stretches of the game are
underclued, and there's not a lot of balance between "slap yourself on
the forehead easy" and "throw your keyboard against the wall
hard/obscure", except when an "easy" puzzle tells me I can't do
something I should be able to (cf. mixing the tube and ketrol warning
me that I don't want to risk a chemical reaction rather than a more
helpful "You don't want that going off in your hands" or some such, or
trying to fix the console outside of the workbench always telling me I
need a power source even if I have the singularity and lens in hand; I
know Remington is supposed to be technologically inept, but if he knows
what a gravity lens is, the least he could do is know what it's good
for).
On a side note, the part about wave functions should be a COMMENT, and
the actual HELP should point out how the singularity is being affected
by the temporal distortion. I didn't mind it myself, but
trial-and-error puzzles are something that should be avoided. (And by
the end of the game, I will probably be quite proficient at powering a
derelict building/submarine/space station with minimal generator
capacity. Not that I mind these puzzles, but I'm honestly expecting to
find one in France...or did the underimplemented water channel puzzle
that I'm guessing I'm not supposed to be able to access yet count?)
And I'm still not sure what anachronisms I'm supposed to be hunting
down here. I've found the signal being transmitted from VGLE 3 - too
bad, it's total vaccuum and I can't reach it. Don't know what to do
with the funky device (tried putting the platinum pyramid from the
water puzzle on top of it; no dice), either. Don't know what I'm
looking for aboard the sub; can't get to the top of the weapons
chamber, don't know how to get past the other three saints (and I'm
pretty sure I shouldn't have been able to get past the first one)...
I'm only reaming this game because I think it's awesome. It just feels
at times like the "Public Beta" attributed to the Glulx libraries used
to compile it should have been applied to the game itself. In a
revision or two, this *will* be one of the greats.
JDC
crash; in particular if you try to "take polarizer" as your first move.
Zoom crashes with the following console output:
Client warning: Warning: window with delusions of grandeur
Client warning: gidispatch_get_objrock called with an invalid winid
Client warning: Warning: window with delusions of grandeur
Client warning: gidispatch_get_objrock called with an invalid winid
Client warning: Warning: window with delusions of grandeur
Client warning: gidispatch_get_objrock called with an invalid winid
Glk client has terminated
Client crashed with code 10
If I don't do that, I can get Spatterlight to get to the about menu,
but it seems to hang after exiting the menu.
-JDC
JDC
JDC wrote:
> Has anyone gotten this to run on OS X? Both Spatterlight and Zoom 1.1.0
> crash; in particular if you try to "take polarizer" as your first move.
> Zoom crashes with the following console output:
Fiddling a bit more, I can get it to run by setting the display mode to
traditional (although it can hang at various points in the prologue
before the setup menu is available, and I haven't gotten very far
beyond yet).
-JDC
TheR...@gmail.com
I repeat: what the hell is the password? There's so much hinting
surrounding Ophelia's birthdate, which would be perfectly natural, but
nothing works. I've tried 2076, 524, 0524, 05242076, 052476...I've
tried all sorts of combinations and *nothing works.* I don't even know
how many digits the password is supposed to be, which is inexcusable
for this kind of puzzle.
So what the heck is the combination of the numbers in her birthdate
(05/24/2076) that's supposed to work here? (On a side note, according
to the Library, she was named Director of Space Sciences before she was
even born. Typo, or StreamDive gone wrong? I'm betting on the former.)
JDC
Note: I haven't gotten to this point yet, but have you tried variants
of 24-05-2076, i.e. ddmmyyyy?
-JDC
TheR...@gmail.com
If the date is any non m-d-y format, I'm going to personally throttle
the author. Furthermore, I just realized that VGLE3, the object of my
grand escapade here, is no longer actually part of the station. So I
can't reach it even if I *do* figure out the password. >_<#
TheR...@gmail.com
the anachronism...still can't reach the detonators, though. Managed to
find the lava room in France; still no clue what to do with the bronze
horse, the arrow room or the statue of St. Piran, or how to solve the
lava room puzzle (I know I have to pull the levers and visit the
platforms in a specific order, but the north platform melts too fast
for me to do anything worthwhile). And stuck as ever on the freakin'
station. (Why is there a locked door but no key to be found in the
habitat ring? I tried the keycard, but it only works in the reader on
the solar array...)
Look, Mr. Raszewski, I know it's uncomfortable having your work picked
apart, but please provide some assistance here. It seems that asdf and
I are the only ones who are giving feedback, and even we can only
figure out so much on our own. Julia doesn't exactly have all the
answers.
TheR...@gmail.com
Password for the station, solution to the Lava Room, some hint as to
what to do with Heribert, and how to get myself a nuclear detonator.
That's all I ask. *Please.*
L. Ross Raszewski
There appears to be a bug in the station; VGLE3 has broken away from
the station. It's actually VGLE 1 you should be trying to enter.
And for what it's worth, I really wish you'd been one of my beta
testers. A year of beta testing did not turn up *any* of the points
you took issue with.
TheR...@gmail.com
I've never tried to be a beta tester because I'm not particularly the
"beat the game senseless until its brains leak out"-type. But then
again, I suppose it works better in IF because everybody's brain works
differently; that is, I'd discover things that no one else would
because I probably wouldn't try the same things. So it goes.
So the display is bugged and it's VGLE1 that I need to get into. That's
fine. But I still can't get into VGLE1 because I don't have a password.
Ophelia's birthdate is the only thing resembling a clue to the
password, and I've tried all the combinations of the digits I can think
of. In addition, I have launch codes for nukes I can't actually use:
it's fairly obvious, unless I'm fairly mistaken, that resolving the
anachronism aboard the Lansing is going to require me to set off a
detonator inside the sonar sphere, but I can't get to the upper part of
the weapons chamber, where I can only assume the detonators are
accessible from. All it tells me is that the mechanism to the
(nonexistent) hatch is jammed or the emergency systems have sealed it
off, which is about as helpful as all the other places aboard the sub
where the compass tells me I can go somewhere that's "sealed off due to
flooding". And speaking of the Lansing and space station, I'm assuming
there's some connection between the alien vessel picked up on sonar and
the device welded to the floor of the storage pod? Snub pyramid and
all? (Not that I can figure out what to do with the device *or* the
storage pod; best I can tell I'll need to detach the pod to get rid of
the device or some such, but "now is not the time," to quote "Spider
and Web").
L. Ross Raszewski
I noticed during testing that a few interpreters have trouble with
zero-height windows. I sent off emails to the maintainers of a couple
of the Glk ports about this a few months back and was told they'd be
fixed soon.
L. Ross Raszewski
>
>L. Ross Raszewski wrote:
>> On 3 Dec 2006 16:32:17 -0800, TheR...@gmail.com
<TheR...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >I can't be the only one who's made it to this point, can I?
>> >
>> >Password for the station, solution to the Lava Room, some hint as to
>> >what to do with Heribert, and how to get myself a nuclear detonator.
>> >That's all I ask. *Please.*
>> >
>>
>> There appears to be a bug in the station; VGLE3 has broken away from
>> the station. It's actually VGLE 1 you should be trying to enter.
>>
>>
>> And for what it's worth, I really wish you'd been one of my beta
>> testers. A year of beta testing did not turn up *any* of the points
>> you took issue with.
>
>I've never tried to be a beta tester because I'm not particularly the
>"beat the game senseless until its brains leak out"-type. But then
>again, I suppose it works better in IF because everybody's brain works
>differently; that is, I'd discover things that no one else would
>because I probably wouldn't try the same things. So it goes.
>
>So the display is bugged and it's VGLE1 that I need to get into. That's
>fine. But I still can't get into VGLE1 because I don't have a password.
>Ophelia's birthdate is the only thing resembling a clue to the
>password, and I've tried all the combinations of the digits I can think
Are you entirely certain that you're at the right lab? You've
mentioned the correct password before -- there are several laboritories.
>of. In addition, I have launch codes for nukes I can't actually use:
>it's fairly obvious, unless I'm fairly mistaken, that resolving the
>anachronism aboard the Lansing is going to require me to set off a
>detonator inside the sonar sphere, but I can't get to the upper part of
>the weapons chamber, where I can only assume the detonators are
>accessible from. All it tells me is that the mechanism to the
>(nonexistent) hatch is jammed or the emergency systems have sealed it
>off, which is about as helpful as all the other places aboard the sub
>where the compass tells me I can go somewhere that's "sealed off due to
>flooding".
Do not worry about this yet.
>And speaking of the Lansing and space station, I'm assuming
>there's some connection between the alien vessel picked up on sonar and
>the device welded to the floor of the storage pod? Snub pyramid and
>all? (Not that I can figure out what to do with the device *or* the
>storage pod; best I can tell I'll need to detach the pod to get rid of
>the device or some such, but "now is not the time," to quote "Spider
>and Web").
>
You may find it useful to make heavier use of your scanner chip.
TheR...@gmail.com
I thought I had that right. For those of you who are still confused,
and as spoiler-free as possible: the password is Ophelia's birthdate,
formatted exactly the same way as the dates are in the outgoing
messages. And it works only on the north laboratory.
On a side note: it's not obvious you can LOOK IN the power conditioner.
Other than that, nice work. I love a good MacGyverism, especially a
pair of them in close sequence.
So I've killed both transmitters now, but the Timescan says I've still
got unlogged anachronisms. I'm pretty sure I'm done here, but there's
still that locked door in the Habitat Ring, not to mention VGLE2, but
I'm guessing the latter is irrelevant.
So what do I do aboard the Lansing now? I've explored the whole ship,
the upper deck of the Weapons Chamber aside, found the anachronistic
shield surrounding the sonar device...
TheR...@gmail.com
Tag Chip would ever come in handy. That gets the prestigious Plugh
Award for Best Abuse of Time Travel. ^_^
But Now That I've Got It, What Do I Do With It? All my scans tell me is
that there's something metallic inside, and I can't break it to get at
it. (Apologies for confusing Piran and Heribert.) And what do I do
about Saint Elmo's Leaky Bucket?
TheR...@gmail.com
***FRANCE***
1. How do I solve the bucket puzzle beyond the statue of St. Erasmus? I
have the tapestry and the plaid and know I can use them as sails, but I
can't make the left bucket rise to make the wind blow the gondola
across.
2. What do I do with the statue of St. Agatha? All I know is that the
statue is supposed to respond to heat.
3. What do I do with the pyramid I found beyond the water channel
puzzle?
4. What do I do with the statue I tagged and retrieved in the future?
5. *OPTIONAL* The Autokey allowed me to unlock the door beyond St.
Heribert, and I opened the door beyond St. Piran by reaching the lava
room through the pitfall. Was I supposed to be able to do this? Or is
there an alternate way to open the doors?
***SSN LANSING***
1. How do I get to the detonators so I can blow up the sonar sphere?
2. Is this even the correct solution? (I'm guessing "yes", but it pays
to be careful.)
***TITAN 7***
1. How do I get into the locked room on the Habitat Ring, if possible?
2. How do I get into VGLE2, if possible?
3. I logged the recorder and the windmill. What other anachronisms are
there?
JDC
L. Ross Raszewski wrote:
> I noticed during testing that a few interpreters have trouble with
> zero-height windows. I sent off emails to the maintainers of a couple
> of the Glk ports about this a few months back and was told they'd be
> fixed soon.
Okay, thanks. It does seem to be working in traditional mode so far
(although I haven't gotten very far yet...).
-JDC
asdf
matter how many valves are open or closed.
asdf
Also, where do I find the tapestry and the plaid?
TheR...@gmail.com
asdf wrote:
> What's up with the water puzzle? The crank doesn't seem to turn no
> matter how many valves are open or closed.
You need the lubricant from the space station. Turn Map Mode on; it's
in a room near the northwest corner of the Habitat Ring.
asdf
Okay, one more and I'm done for now... why does nothing happen when I
pull the levers in the lava room?
TheR...@gmail.com
The plaid is in the habitat ring aboard Titan 7. The tapestry - and
something else - is past the Lava Room.
You sure you pulled both levers? They should be working. Maybe you have
to solve the puzzle past the statue of St. Heribert first.
Anyways, here's the solution I found for the lava room:
>PULL LEFT LEVER
>PULL RIGHT LEVER
>NW
>PULL LEVER
>SE
>SW
>PULL RIGHT LEVER
>NW
>W
>W
And that should get you across. Getting back is immaterial; either DIVE
back to France, or pull the left lever and keep pulling levers until
you make it across the south path.
This is where you find the tapestry, as well as a clay statue. Hmm. You
can't take it, since it was found in the future, but you can TAG it.
There's a display case in one of the rooms in Titan 7's Habitat Ring
(northernmost room); in addition to logging the anachronism (Agent 3,
for lack of a better name, apparently tore the windmill off the model
for the sake of historical accuracy; it wasn't known until StreamDivers
saw for themselves that there was no windmill near the site of the
Battle of Crecy), you can open the case with the depolymerizing
compound from the Lansing and get the tagged statue. God knows what
you're supposed to do with it, though.
TheR...@gmail.com
anyone else here in this game, but I'd gladly trade that status in
favor of some answers.
Mr. Raszewski, you didn't by any chance provide your beta testers with
walkthroughs, did you? Because I honestly don't see how *anyone* could
have solved this game as it is without assistance. The "transmission
coming from VGLE3" issue is enough to render the game seemingly
unsolvable, and the fact that the two surviving laboratories have
nothing to indicate which is VGLE1 and which is VGLE2 turns finding the
password into a matter of pure trial-and-error: the reason I missed the
answer when I had all the pieces of the puzzle (the date and the format
together) is because I had no idea which lab I was trying to access.
Another friendly suggestion:
>>EXAMINE PANEL
>Attached to the wall near the hatch is a numeric pad with a five-digit display. It looks like
>an access control device for the nearby hatch.
>
>"Well, a five-digit password gives us only a hundred thousand different combinations to
>try. Hope you don't mind waiting. Or better yet, put that energy to better use finding out
>what that password might be."
(Really, Julia doesn't have nearly enough help or comments. I dare say
I've seen 95% of everything she has to say and, according to the score,
I'm only 66% of the way through the game.)
I'd also like to take this opportunity to rail against the statues of
the saints yet again. (I have already, haven't I?) Failing putting
things on the dishes (or the statues themselves, as the game
understands), an act I'm told would "achieve nothing", I've tried
"give" and "offer" with similarly opaque dismissals that I can only do
such a thing to something animate. Compare with the gondola (a puzzle I
still can't figure out, since I can't raise the left bucket or do
anything to pour the water out of it), where an attempt to put an
invalid object on the mast will properly inform me that I can't hook
said item to it. And seeing as how only two of the four statues even do
anything (once I get to the Long Chamber through the pike room, I can
go freely through the door behind Piran, and the one behind Heribert
can be unlocked with the Autokey), I'm wondering if you intended them
as anything but red herrings. Still no clue what to do with Agatha;
Erasmus (who I can't scan; the game recognizes "Elmo" but the "statue
of Saint Erasmus" given in the Scan Menu gives an error message) was
incomprehensibly easy for the puzzle that lies behind him, but I'm
thinking I have to strike a flame with the dead grass, the piece of
steel and a flint stone from somewhere. But then again, I can't do
anything with the statue except wonder why she's holding up her breasts
on a plate (I sure as hell can't review the entry on her!), so I'm
guessing there's something incredibly obscure I'm missing here. (I even
tried "kiss Agatha". No dice, of course.)
This is starting to make me crazy. I'm starting to have visions of the
DM4, and I don't mean the "pride before a fall" joke; I'm thinking of
something that ended with "as if the last hundred pages of the book had
been glued together". I'm stuck in two areas, finished (albeit
apparently not 100%) in another, and Julia is absolutely no use. If
anyone else has proceeded past me, feel free to answer my pleas for
assistance. Post, email me, anything.
I swear: the first thing I do after I finish this game will be to
compile a full walkthrough. And maybe some InvisiClues while I'm at it.
L. Ross Raszewski
>I take some measure of pride in having apparently made it further than
>anyone else here in this game, but I'd gladly trade that status in
>favor of some answers.
>
>Mr. Raszewski, you didn't by any chance provide your beta testers with
>walkthroughs, did you? Because I honestly don't see how *anyone* could
>have solved this game as it is without assistance. The "transmission
>coming from VGLE3" issue is enough to render the game seemingly
>unsolvable, and the fact that the two surviving laboratories have
>nothing to indicate which is VGLE1 and which is VGLE2 turns finding the
>password into a matter of pure trial-and-error: the reason I missed the
>answer when I had all the pieces of the puzzle (the date and the format
>together) is because I had no idea which lab I was trying to access.
I did not. But I will say no more on the matter because I would not
dare speak ill of my beta testers. Sufficed to say, I finished this
game on August 6, 2005, and released it when it became clear to me
that it was unlikely any more bugs would be found.
>I'd also like to take this opportunity to rail against the statues of
>the saints yet again. (I have already, haven't I?) Failing putting
>things on the dishes (or the statues themselves, as the game
>understands), an act I'm told would "achieve nothing", I've tried
>"give" and "offer" with similarly opaque dismissals that I can only do
>such a thing to something animate. Compare with the gondola (a puzzle I
>still can't figure out, since I can't raise the left bucket or do
>anything to pour the water out of it), where an attempt to put an
>invalid object on the mast will properly inform me that I can't hook
>said item to it. And seeing as how only two of the four statues even do
>anything (once I get to the Long Chamber through the pike room, I can
>go freely through the door behind Piran, and the one behind Heribert
>can be unlocked with the Autokey), I'm wondering if you intended them
>as anything but red herrings. Still no clue what to do with Agatha;
>Erasmus (who I can't scan; the game recognizes "Elmo" but the "statue
>of Saint Erasmus" given in the Scan Menu gives an error message) was
>incomprehensibly easy for the puzzle that lies behind him, but I'm
>thinking I have to strike a flame with the dead grass, the piece of
>steel and a flint stone from somewhere. But then again, I can't do
>anything with the statue except wonder why she's holding up her breasts
>on a plate (I sure as hell can't review the entry on her!), so I'm
>guessing there's something incredibly obscure I'm missing here. (I even
>tried "kiss Agatha". No dice, of course.)
>
Okay. I suppose this may be unfair enough to merit my telling you:
there are some things in this game you will need to search more than
once. Particularly, dead bodies.
Bizarre as it may be, the research I did for this game told me that
St. Agatha is traditionally depicted as carrying her breasts on a
plate. This has no signifigance beyond the fact that it's what allows
the scanner to identify her, just like the crest carried by Piran or
the hooks in St. Elmo's abdomen. (She is, in addition to the patron
saint of firemakers, the patron saint of sexual assault victims,
though this attribution was made after the time of this zone)
>This is starting to make me crazy. I'm starting to have visions of the
>DM4, and I don't mean the "pride before a fall" joke; I'm thinking of
>something that ended with "as if the last hundred pages of the book had
>been glued together". I'm stuck in two areas, finished (albeit
>apparently not 100%) in another, and Julia is absolutely no use. If
>anyone else has proceeded past me, feel free to answer my pleas for
>assistance. Post, email me, anything.
At the risk of being dismissive of your feedback, I will note that
almost every time you have posted in anguish, you've made measurable
progress.
Also, I don't feel bad about hte 'Pride before a fall' joke because
*every* doorway in that hallway leads to a deathtrap.
Also, just to set your mind at rest, the horse statue was just where
the ivory key had been hidden before it was moved.
L. Ross Raszewski
One last thing: The water spout turns toward a bucket when it
raises. If a bucket were to empty sooner than expected, you may find
this breaks its usual pattern of motion.
TheR...@gmail.com
hint a bit more strongly that something was taken out of the horse
statue. ("There is a compartment inside the horse containing residual
flakes of ivory...")
Okay, I have everything I need to make a fire. 'Cept I can't. All I can
do is get "a few sparks to fly upwards" or "downwards" depending on
which order I strike the flint and steel in. I hold the grass, I drop
the grass, I strike flint on steel (piece), I strike steel (piece) on
flint, but no fire. I can do anything that doesn't directly involve the
statue (I wasn't taking offense at the depiction, BTW, I was just
emphasizing that there is no way to interact with the statue except for
examining and scanning), but I can't seem to make fire.
This is what irritates me, and this is the third time I've run into
this problem: to have all the pieces of the puzzle only to be
confounded at the final step.
TheR...@gmail.com
notice you mentioned yourself that the flint's location was unfair.
Apologies.
Well, I'm looking at the buckets, but they're as interactive as the
saints: i.e., not at all, apart from the fact that I'm told I can't put
anything in them due to the mesh. I can't "empty the bucket sooner than
expected", because I can't empty the buckets at all, not as far as I
can tell. I know the right bucket has a leak, but that seems to be the
problem in this scenario to begin with: the buckets are supposed to
alternate, aren't they?
TheR...@gmail.com
asdf
On Dec 5, 12:53 am, TheRyu...@gmail.com wrote:
> Dear God. In. *In* the dish. Oh my god. *In the freakin' dish.*
Thanks for the hint. In return, if you haven't figured it out yet...
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
After the grass starts smoldering, blow on it.
TheR...@gmail.com
Yeah, I got that. And it's three left, two right. I was wondering why
it seemed like I could get an infinite supply of grass...
So. With the sonar finally dead, that's two locations completed
(although the timescan tells me there are still unresolved anachronisms
in both). That leaves St. Elmo's Leaky Bucket and the clay statue...
You know, the premise initially smacks of "Buried in Time", but this is
also starting to remind me of the opening of "Legacy of Time" as well.
The moment I *finally* found the nuke, I realized I'm being dragged by
the nose through these places to see for myself that We Are Not Alone...
TheR...@gmail.com
TheR...@gmail.com
center part of the gondola track, but I can't seem to make it visible.
I can find the fake entrance on the east side, but I can't find the
real one...
TheR...@gmail.com
was that too obvious?)
Right. So I have three metal doodads on a pedestal and a fourth encased
in clay. No idea how to get it out; the game disregards any attempt to
break it (oh, and the "blocks of text" in the pedestal room can't be
examined). What do I do now?
TheR...@gmail.com
I can put the statue back in the case. 'Cept this only resets the case;
the statue is still in my inventory. So I can scan the case again and
get the statue, put it back, scan the case again and get the statue,
put it back, and I can accumulate statues (though only one can be taken
and dropped freely; the others trigger warning signals same as the one
in the past).
Curiously, only when I tried this did Julia pipe up and say anything
about the statues. Hmm.
So anyways. Is there any way at all to get the metal object out of the
clay statue? And if it involves breaking it in some way I could just as
easily do with my hands...
BTW, I finally noticed that the setup screen features a progress bar.
Just answer me one thing: are there two chapters left, one chapter plus
an ending cutscene, or one chapter plus a "master game"?
TheR...@gmail.com
Pays to hunt a guy down on ifMUD.
Right, so here are some respectfully spoiler-free answers:
1. The locked door in the habitat ring can't be opened. ("Well,
that's...overt...")
2. VGLE2, however, can. As the boss says, "make heavier use of the
scanner". Once you have the numbers, just P13C3 7H3M 70G37H3R.
3. The clay statue needs to train. Like Goku did en route to Planet
Namek. (Heh, heh.)
Adam Thornton
Stephen Bond <steph...@ireland.com> wrote:
>Robin Johnson wrote:
>> L. Ross Raszewski wrote:
>> > of Time (Adventure Type) explodes the story begun 2001's
>> > Interactive Fiction Competition second place winner.
>> Explodes it?
>I imagine this is the transitive use of "explode", i.e. to cause to
>explode, which is frequently (as here) used in the transferred sense
>of "to cause a dramatic increase in the excitement, tension,
>importance, or scope (or some other factor) of the story".
I always thought it was like "deconstruct" only faster and usually more
fun.
Adam
Andrew Hunter
> Has anyone gotten this to run on OS X? Both Spatterlight and Zoom 1.1.0
> crash; in particular if you try to "take polarizer" as your first move.
> Zoom crashes with the following console output:
>
> Client warning: Warning: window with delusions of grandeur
Whoops, that's supposed to be an internal error. Somehow this game has
managed to create a second window that looks like a root window (which
is not supposed to be possible in glk as windows without a parent are
supposed to get destroyed).
It seems harmless in this case, though.
> Client warning: gidispatch_get_objrock called with an invalid winid
This is definitely a bug somewhere in the way the game handles windows
though. The behaviour of a glk library if something is passed to this
function which is not a valid window ID is completely undefined.
CocoaGlk handles this condition fairly gracefully, but I suspect this
could crash other interpreters.
> Glk client has terminated
> Client crashed with code 10
... and this looks like the PPC-only bug I fixed in beta2 of Zoom.
Hmph, this also appears to be the first game ever to actually request
line input in a text grid view. CocoaGlk doesn't support that yet
(because an earlier version of the glk spec didn't require it and it is
something that's going to be really annoying to implement). You'll need
to use the menus to set the game to traditional mode in order to
actually input commands, until I can get this addressed in the next
revision of Zoom
I's a good idea anyway, as I see the way CocoaGlk currently handles
More prompts is not good when they show up in windows other than the
one you entered your last command into, so it would still be annoying
even without this bug. I'll address this problem in the next version,
too.
Andrew.
L. Ross Raszewski
<and...@logicalshift.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On 2006-12-03 01:07:44 +0000, "JDC" <jd...@psu.edu> said:
>
>> Has anyone gotten this to run on OS X? Both Spatterlight and Zoom 1.1.0
>> crash; in particular if you try to "take polarizer" as your first move.
>> Zoom crashes with the following console output:
>>
>
>> Client warning: Warning: window with delusions of grandeur
>
>Whoops, that's supposed to be an internal error. Somehow this game has
>managed to create a second window that looks like a root window (which
>is not supposed to be possible in glk as windows without a parent are
>supposed to get destroyed).
>
>It seems harmless in this case, though.
>
>> Client warning: gidispatch_get_objrock called with an invalid winid
>
>This is definitely a bug somewhere in the way the game handles windows
>though. The behaviour of a glk library if something is passed to this
>function which is not a valid window ID is completely undefined.
While I can't entirely rule this out, I did some extensive checking to
prevent this from happening. Are you sure that your glk
implementation isn't failing to open a window without properly
reporting it to the game?
Another Glk library I looked at turned out to be silently and
unexpectedly closing windows when their size was reduced to zero.
Andrew Hunter
CocoaGlk definitely seems to be doing the right thing here: I've
investigated some more, and it's possible this is a problem with the
glulxe runner itself. This warning is being generated after CocoaGlk
has notified it that a window is being unregistered.
CocoaGlk does this just before a window tree is destroyed, so at this
point this particular window and any windows it contains are still
intact; the problem seems to be that glulxe is requesting information
about a window that is elsewhere in the tree, and which no longer at
exists at this point (hence the error). Actually, it's possible it's
passing in a completely random pointer here: I haven't checked to see
if the value was ever actually a valid window.
It's possible that I can address this by changing the order in which
CocoaGlk reports window destruction (windows are reported as being
unregistered from root to leaves, but are destroyed from leaves to
root). However, this would seem to be either a bug in glulxe or an
omission in the glk specification, which doesn't specify any particular
details about what the window tree should look like while
unregistration is taking place (and seems to imply that a library
should never refer to a window again after it has been reported as
unregistered).
Andrew.
L. Ross Raszewski
I took some care to request destruction only of single windows -- not
of entire trees -- almost all of the time. How would that affect
CocoaGlk's order of operations?
This is the code which GWindows uses to close windows:
o = glk_window_iterate(0,gg_arguments);
while(o)
{
io=gg_arguments-->0;
oo=glk_window_iterate(o,gg_arguments);
if (io ~= 0 && o~=GConsole.winid && o~= hold) {
glk_window_close(o);
oo = glk_window_iterate(0,gg_arguments);
}
o=oo;
}
(GConsole.winid is a debugging object)
Which should, if my understanding is correct, destroy, one at a time,
all windows except for pair windows and the window which has been
squirreled away in 'hold'.
At a guess (not knowing exactly where in the code corresponds to the
error message), I'd assume that for some reason, 'hold' is being
implicitly destroyed. Since 'hold' is the main window, this is, well,
really really bad for the game.
Has anyone reported similar errors in any GWindows-based games which
use multiple screen UIs (or following a restore/undo)?
Andrew Plotkin
I tentatively agree with you. I wrote my Glk library code to
unregister windows just before they're destroyed. That is, if you
delete a pair window, you get [unreg child 1, destroy child 1, unreg
child 2, destroy child 2, unreg pair, destroy pair]. It is possible
that I wrote the Glulx code to depend on this behavior.
(The game code really can't be at fault here, because the game code
doesn't execute during window destruction.)
I'm looking at the glulxe unregister callback, which is
glulxe_classtable_unregister(), which calls classes_remove(), which
calls gidispatch_get_objrock(). Now that doesn't seem to depend on the
tree ordering; it just requires that the window is unregistered before
it's destroyed. I don't suppose CocoaGlk is doing *that* weirdly?
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't shipped you to Syria for interrogation,
it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're patriotic.
Andrew Hunter
Aha, as it turns out, it was. Not so much in terms of calling it at the
wrong time, but in terms of the state of the window tree at the time it
was called (half-destroyed). The first warning was the cause of the
second: changing my sanity checking code to allow parentless windows
that also happen to be closing fixes both problems.
Andrew.