Zork II bank puzzle bug?
John R Chang
We are playing Zork II (48/840904) and we found a weird loophole in
the bank puzzle which seems like a bug.
If you get the painting, drop it in the Depository, go east twice back
to the Depository, and get the painting, you will end up in a Viewing
Room with the painting. This completely bypasses both the Small Room
and the alarm system. It doesn't make any sense to us, so it seems
like a bug, but I haven't found it documented anywhere. Any comments?
This solution doesn't allow you to enter the Vault, but it was the
initial solution we stumbled upon accidentally. (We would have never
figured out the real solution without InvisiClues. "enter south wall"
is hardly obvious, especially since "south", "look at south wall",
"touch south wall", "look at curtain" all don't work - gripe gripe...)
Transcript:
Bank Entrance
>ne
East Teller's Room
>e
Safety Depository
>s
Chairman's Office
>get painting
Taken.
>n
Safety Depository
>drop painting
Dropped.
>e
East Teller's Room
>e
Safety Depository
>get painting
Taken.
>enter curtain
You feel somewhat disoriented as you pass through...
East Viewing Room
>s
Bank Entrance
- John
Andrew Plotkin
> Hi,
> We are playing Zork II (48/840904) and we found a weird loophole in
> the bank puzzle which seems like a bug.
> If you get the painting, drop it in the Depository, go east twice back
> to the Depository, and get the painting, you will end up in a Viewing
> Room with the painting. This completely bypasses both the Small Room
> and the alarm system. It doesn't make any sense to us, so it seems
> like a bug, but I haven't found it documented anywhere. Any comments?
I believe that is the intended solution. It's not a complete solution
to the entire Bank area (since you don't get into the vault), but it
does follow the demonstrated Rule of the Depository: the curtain
takes you in which ever direction you *entered* the depository from.
The intent, if I may guess at the motivations of some MIT geeks twenty
years ago, was that you might get the painting out through random
fumbling; but you wouldn't get the zorkmids out unless you actually
understood the Rule. The painting is a consolation prize, more or
less.
> This solution doesn't allow you to enter the Vault, but it was the
> initial solution we stumbled upon accidentally. (We would have never
> figured out the real solution without InvisiClues. "enter south wall"
> is hardly obvious, especially since "south", "look at south wall",
> "touch south wall", "look at curtain" all don't work - gripe gripe...)
Zork 2 is an early game (and that puzzle is from the original
pre-Infocom "Dungeon" edition). The genre conventions weren't very
stable back then. It was (almost) reasonable for all those alternate
commands to produce no interesting results; if you didn't understand
that you *could* walk through walls, the game wouldn't give you any
hints. Figuring out a possible form of action was a (more) legitimate
puzzle.
If I were implementing that puzzle today, I would certainly handle the
command set differently.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Anne
cyclops lair. If you 'examined/looked at' the silver chalice, the game
automatically added it to your inventory.
It was much simpler that take the chalice which got the cyclops right pissed
off.
Anne
Andrew Plotkin
> The only 'bug' I ever found in a Zork game was in Zork I when you were in the
> cyclops lair. If you 'examined/looked at' the silver chalice, the game
> automatically added it to your inventory.
Oh, there were many bugs. (The nature of IF programming is such that
you never fix all the bugs, you just fix enough so that you can ship. :)
Someone had a list... <http://members.aol.com/graemecree/infobugs/>
Amusing reading. The one you mentioned isn't listed... wasn't the
chalice in the *thief's* lair, though?
The one that sticks in my mind was in Zork 2:
> tell aquarium "go east"
The aquarium has left the room.
Many of these bugs were fixed in later releases. I had a very early
edition of Zork 2.
Anne
>chalice in the *thief's* lair, though?
>
You could be right, it's been almost 20 years since I played Zork I
Anne