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Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 12:37 pm
by Juan
Juan wrote:
OK, I tried the bear cave thing. Seems useless so far.

I could not find the other light source, though. I tried a bunch of 3 word combinations but I did not hit upon the right one.
I have just discovered that the bear breaking your lantern is what triggers the torch under the bed. If you do not do this the torch does not appear.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:53 pm
by Juan
OK, here is how you get out of the undergrowth maze:

E, S, W, SW, SW

I am now stuck at the gate to enter Tower Black. There's a demon guardian there and I have not been able to find out how to get rid of him yet.

In another place there is also a pool with a shiny object at the bottom, but you can't get it because a giant crab keeps nipping your fingers. This might be a red herring, though.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 3:52 am
by terri
Thanks for getting me through the maze, though I have no idea how to get to the black tower. While you cannot get the shiny object, if you dig around this area you will get another object which you need (it's the ring!). Plus there is another object there, which may help you get past the Lord.

Get yourself back to the path you came in. Then it's easy, go W, then S, and you're in the gap.

Mapping the way out wasn't easy. If I had a few more objects it would have helped.

So it looks like we will have to enter that maze again to get to the tower.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 1:45 pm
by Juan
terri wrote:Thanks for getting me through the maze, though I have no idea how to get to the black tower. While you cannot get the shiny object, if you dig around this area you will get another object which you need (it's the ring!). Plus there is another object there, which may help you get past the Lord.

Get yourself back to the path you came in. Then it's easy, go W, then S, and you're in the gap.

Mapping the way out wasn't easy. If I had a few more objects it would have helped.

So it looks like we will have to enter that maze again to get to the tower.
Yes, I did all that yesterday. But I am still stuck at Tower Black's entrance with the demon guard.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 5:49 pm
by Juan
I finally killed the demon guard. It's incredibly easy. All you have to do is kill it as soon as you reach the gates. Do not examine it or do anything else, just kill it. You catch it off guard.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:23 pm
by Juan
OK, game finished. I will write a walkthrough for it.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 12:47 am
by terri
Congratulations! I'm done too. So you managed the weeping willow too?

Thanks for getting me out of the maze. Out of curiosity how many objects did you have to map it? I had 8. Did you have more? Or are you just a better mapper?

If you wish, once you write the solution, I can proof it.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 6:40 pm
by Juan
terri wrote:Congratulations! I'm done too. So you managed the weeping willow too?

Thanks for getting me out of the maze. Out of curiosity how many objects did you have to map it? I had 8. Did you have more? Or are you just a better mapper?

If you wish, once you write the solution, I can proof it.
No, I had the same number of objects as you (that one object at the bottom of the rockpool can't be picked up, it's just a red herring; so are the snips.)

I am not a better mapper, just a better "cheater" :lol: I "mapped" the way through the undergrowth maze by taking a look inside the game itself. It was a bit tedious to locate the pertinent information, but certainly less tedious than the conventional method of having to drop objects.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 10:53 pm
by terri
No, I had the same number of objects as you (that one object at the bottom of the rockpool can't be picked up, it's just a red herring; so are the snips.)
I suppose the snips are unnecessary, given that there is nothing in the locations where you can cut the wire. If there are only two red herrings, that's a lot better than the last few games I've played. PS. Pretty bad ones, but I will send off solutions to Jacob eventually. If he wants reviews, he can always "cut-and-past" my comments at the beginning.
I am not a better mapper, just a better "cheater" I "mapped" the way through the undergrowth maze by taking a look inside the game itself. It was a bit tedious to locate the pertinent information, but certainly less tedious than the conventional method of having to drop objects.)
Don't be too quick to say that. I too, have access to a "cheating" method (maybe the same as yours) but I couldn't quite figure it out. Given that you may had the same number of objects as I, if we carried one or two more, the maze may have been mappable.

I do hope Amby is reading this. She HATES mazes, while I rather like them. Yes, they are often tedious, but if they are "doable" they, at least, make one feel one is making some progress.

Let me know if you want me to double check your solution for minor errors (and additions of some necessary descriptions). As I mentioned somewhere else, I try to emulate Dorothy M. who wrote excellent solutions (with the descriptions telling you where you are). Some of us, maybe because we are female, are good at such "tedious" details. Me, I could often use help to see the "big" picture.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 3:09 pm
by Juan
terri wrote:
No, I had the same number of objects as you (that one object at the bottom of the rockpool can't be picked up, it's just a red herring; so are the snips.)
I suppose the snips are unnecessary, given that there is nothing in the locations where you can cut the wire. If there are only two red herrings, that's a lot better than the last few games I've played. PS. Pretty bad ones, but I will send off solutions to Jacob eventually. If he wants reviews, he can always "cut-and-past" my comments at the beginning.
I am not a better mapper, just a better "cheater" I "mapped" the way through the undergrowth maze by taking a look inside the game itself. It was a bit tedious to locate the pertinent information, but certainly less tedious than the conventional method of having to drop objects.)
Don't be too quick to say that. I too, have access to a "cheating" method (maybe the same as yours) but I couldn't quite figure it out. Given that you may had the same number of objects as I, if we carried one or two more, the maze may have been mappable.

I do hope Amby is reading this. She HATES mazes, while I rather like them. Yes, they are often tedious, but if they are "doable" they, at least, make one feel one is making some progress.

Let me know if you want me to double check your solution for minor errors (and additions of some necessary descriptions). As I mentioned somewhere else, I try to emulate Dorothy M. who wrote excellent solutions (with the descriptions telling you where you are). Some of us, maybe because we are female, are good at such "tedious" details. Me, I could often use help to see the "big" picture.
I used a combo of two programs to take a look inside the game: Grackle and Ungac.

Besides the undergrowth maze, the toughest parts to figure out were: how to get rid of the demon guardian (it's so easy to do that it's actually tough to figure out!) and finding the box of tissues. Even taking a look at the game program does not give much help in figuring out how to accomplish these two things.

The walkthrough is simple and straightforward, as this game is not very complicated once you figure it out. I write walkthroughs as I replay the game from the start, that minimizes the chances for mistakes.

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:53 pm
by terri
OK

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 11:23 pm
by dave
Juan wrote:I used a combo of two programs to take a look inside the game: Grackle and Ungac.
Glad to know my program (grackle) is getting used :-) (I wrote it to allow the playing of games, but this is harder than dumping them.)

I haven't updated it for a couple of years, so if you want anything added or altered on the output I'm happy to do it (time dependent of course).

Re: Quest for the Power Rod

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 12:48 pm
by Juan
dave wrote:
Juan wrote:I used a combo of two programs to take a look inside the game: Grackle and Ungac.
Glad to know my program (grackle) is getting used :-) (I wrote it to allow the playing of games, but this is harder than dumping them.)

I haven't updated it for a couple of years, so if you want anything added or altered on the output I'm happy to do it (time dependent of course).
Yes: make it Windows compatible. It's so tedious to have to use DOS in this day and age. Also, make it compatible with other file formats other than .sna.

The following observation might be due to the fact that I am just getting familiar with your program, but the way Grackle "dumps" the games gives information in a manner quite different from Ungac. Some information was not there in the Grackle "dump" (for example, no list of all verbs, nouns, etc., room "exits" are missing, etc.) Grackle, however, gives other valuable information that Ungac does not seem to provide, like, for example, the "variables" for each room. Here follows an example of what I mean (from a game I recently grackled):

Room condition 25 for room 8: IF (((VERB (VERB 15:"BREAK") AND NOUN (NOUN 102:"
LOG")) AND RES? (26)) ) MESS (MESSAGE 114:"You haven't got anything to chop the logs with.") WAIT END

Room condition 20 for room 8: IF ((((VERB (VERB 15:"BREAK") AND NOUN (NOUN 102:
"LOG")) AND RES? (26)) AND AVAI (OBJECT 12:"an axe")) ) SET (26) OKAY END


So, supposing that you weren't able to figure out what to do in this part of the game, with your program you can easily deduce that you need the axe to deal with the logs.

This type of info seems to be missing with Ungac (or at least I am not able to interpret it from the data given by that program.) This is why I find that using both Grackle and Ungac gives the most amount of information regarding a GAC game. The ideal program for the job of "dissecting" GAC games, then, would combine both Grackle and Ungac.