The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

Games for Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Apple ][ and the rest of the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. Pleas for help, puzzles, bug reports etc.

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Garry
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The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#1 Post by Garry » Sun Apr 10, 2016 6:16 am

I am stuck on 'The Castle of Cire-Nampahc' by Eric Chapman which was published for the Atari 400/800/XL/XE as a disk bonus with Page 6, issue 30, November/December 1987, instructions on p. 21.

I originally played the game many years ago, but wasn't able to achieve the full score of 1000 points. I revisited it recently in order to provide a map and solution for the archive, but wasn't able to get any further than when I first played it. As the game has a few bugs, I thought the bugs may be preventing me from getting any further. In desperation, I resorted to a disk editor to view the text for clues. From this I know that there are no messages that I have not encountered, but there are three items that I have not discovered. Let's look at these one at a time. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

1. Some potatoes

You can find a spade in the shed. I presumed this would be used to dig up the potatoes, but I have tried DIG in every room without success. So, how do you find the potatoes, if you can find them at all, and do they get you any points?

2. An open trunk

If you take the ladder from the timber store and drop it in the junk room, you can go up to the tiny attic. In here, you'll find a tarantula sitting on a trunk. If you try to open the trunk, the tarantula bites you and I can find no way to kill or scare off the tarantula. How do I get rid of the tarantula so that I can open the trunk?

3. A packet of snake poison

This is obviously needed so that you don't get bitten by the snakes when you try to get the jewelled sword in the room below the bend in the passage (one of three rooms with a corrupted room description). I presume the snake poison is in the trunk (in 2 above). Is this correct?

Any help would be much appreciated.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#2 Post by Alex » Sun Apr 10, 2016 9:41 pm

I don't have time to play the entire game, so I just hacked the game to see if I can help you. I put the tarantula in another location and was able to open the trunk. However I did not find a packet of snake poison but I found a platinum ring. You wrote you found all other objects. Did you find this ring somewhere else?

Do you only get points by finding treasures or also by solving certain puzzles?

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#3 Post by Alex » Sun Apr 10, 2016 9:54 pm

Garry wrote:3. A packet of snake poison

This is obviously needed so that you don't get bitten by the snakes when you try to get the jewelled sword in the room below the bend in the passage (one of three rooms with a corrupted room description).
Any help would be much appreciated.
I tested it and yes you can destroy the snakes with the poison. We just have to find where the poison is :)

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#4 Post by Alastair » Sun Apr 10, 2016 11:02 pm

For those who wish to join in, the instructions are available at page6.org, as is a download of the cover disk (click on the floppy image on the left hand side).

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#5 Post by Garry » Mon Apr 11, 2016 1:36 pm

Alex, you're right. I hadn't found the platinum ring. I must have missed it hidden amongst all the other items. Now we just have to find the potatoes and the snake poison. (Neat hack, incidentally. As it's a machine language game, I hadn't considered dabbling with the code in this way. I guess I wasn't desperate enough yet.)

Yes, you do get points for solving puzzles. In fact, this is where most of the points come from. You also get points for doing things that aren't necessary to solve the game. I can provide a list of actions that earn points if anyone's interested, but it may be a bit flaky just at the moment, because you have to be very careful to type SCORE after every significant action to see whether it earned you any points.

For anyone that's interested in joining in, I should warn you that this is quite a large game. There's over 100 rooms, a complicated (but logical) map, a lot of objects, a lot of red herrings and a lot of puzzles. Your inventory is limited to 4 items (not counting anything that you're wearing), so inventory management is quite important. You should find it a lot of fun, but don't expect to finish it in one sitting. I can provide hints if you need it. Just ask here. I can also provide a map (Trizbort file or image) if you need it. (I will upload it to the archive when the game is solved.)

Finally, I must add that I've been able to contact the author and he's promised to look for his old notes and boot it up in an emulator to refresh his memory. Hopefully, between the CASA members and the author, we'll be able to solve this one once and for all.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#6 Post by Alex » Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:07 pm

Garry wrote: but I have tried DIG in every room without success
Did you try just DIG or DIG HOLE ? DIG HOLE being the only combination of the verb DIG and a noun which gives a different response than "I don't understand".

If you type DIG HOLE in the kitchen garden you find the potatoes.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#7 Post by Alex » Mon Apr 11, 2016 11:05 pm

To get rid of the tarantula type SHOOT while holding the gun.

How much points do you have now?


Ok that's all for today :)

Now we just have to find the packet of poison.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#8 Post by Garry » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:45 pm

Bloody hell. I don't believe it. The kitchen garden is the obvious place to dig. I had tried DIG, DIG GARDEN, DIG VEGETABLES, DIG HERBS, DIG GROUND and DIG SOIL, but I never thought of DIG HOLE. That worked.

In the tiny attic, I had tried SHOOT TARANTULA, SHOOT SPIDER and SHOOT TRUNK, but I never thought to try SHOOT without an object. That also worked.

Don't you love consistency in adventures? The first one required a noun where you wouldn't expect to use one and the second didn't require a noun where you would expect to use one. Sheesh.

Thanks Alex. You're a champion. Now, to find the snake poison and we're done.

Incidentally, there's a bug in the tiny room where you press the switch to turn the power on. Pressing the switch gets you 10 points, but it doesn't check to see whether it's already been pressed, so you get 10 points every time you press it. As a consequence, I've currently got over 1000 points. Prior to pressing the switch a few times, I think I was about 940 points.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#9 Post by Garry » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:03 pm

I found it! The DIG HOLE trick also works in the rose garden. Hey presto! One packet of snake poison.

Now off to get rid of those snakes.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#10 Post by Garry » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:28 pm

That did the trick. I restarted from a saved game (so that I didn't have the excess score from pressing the switch multiple times), poisoned the snakes, got the jewelled sword and escaped from the castle with the maximum score.

Now that I've solved everything (thanks to Alex's help), I'll work out the optimum solution (along with the scoring) and upload it to the archive in the next day or two.

Thanks again.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#11 Post by Alex » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:48 pm

Congratulations :thumb: I'm glad I was able to help.

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Re: The Castle of Cire-Nampahc

#12 Post by Garry » Sat Apr 23, 2016 9:01 am

It took longer than expected, but I've eventually posted the map and solution for The Castle of Cire-Nampahc. It turned out that there were several insidious bugs that messed up the inventory count. These could cause the game to crash. It took me ages to work out exactly what the issues were and how to work around them. Here's what I've worked out:

1. When you THROW WATER at the dragon, your inventory count is decremented, even though you haven't actually dropped anything. (You are still carrying the empty bucket.) This means that you can now carry 5 items. However, when your inventory drops to 1 item, INVENTORY tells you that you're not carrying anything, even though you are. If you drop the last (invisible) item, the game crashes. I couldn't find a workaround for this.

2. You need the winch and the cut rope to open the portcullis, even though you never get any messages to give any indication that these are needed. When you open the portcullis, both items disappear. If you were carrying them, then they are removed from your inventory, but the inventory count is not adjusted. If INVENTORY indicates you are carrying 3 items, then you try to GET something else, you are told you cannot carry any more. The workaround is to drop the winch and cut rope before opening the portcullis.

3. By the time you get to the snakes, something else has caused your inventory count to be decremented, but I haven't worked out what it is. Possibly just visiting the snake room. Who knows. Anyway, by the time you get there, you'll probably only be carrying what you need (i.e. the lit lamp and the snake poison), but INVENTORY tells you you're carrying nothing. When you drop the snake poison to eliminate the snakes, the game crashes. The best workaround is to continue wearing the protective suit that you used much earlier in the game, as this does not add to your inventory. You can then REMOVE SUIT and your inventory suddenly jumps from 0 items to 3 items. You can now drop the poison without the game crashing.

I hope this helps someone else, as I spent way, way too much time trying to solve this game.

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