Lmst

Recreated adventure gaming memory: Trilby's Notes

This was one of the first AGS point-and-click adventures I ever played, many years ago. Unfortunately the Linux version of the AGS engine had a bug that caused the red and blue color components to be swapped in some games.

What's really embarrassing is how long it took me to realize something was wrong, because for the first few rooms I thought it was just the intended mood.

Some days I'm tempted to add a ScummVM option...

Four early screenshots of Trilby's notes with the wrong colors. Trilby's face is a sickly blue color, but for the first few rooms I thought it was supposed to show that the lights were out, or something. Only when I got to a scene that obviously took place in daylight did I realize my mistake.

Four early screenshots of Trilbly's Notes with the correct colors. Trilby's face now has the appropriate skin tone, even in darkened rooms.

@DavidBFox @grumpygamer @thatdave And we're already at the point where I had problems the last time I tried to run (not play, I just wanted to test something) Thimbleweed Park on Linux. Sometimes I worry about the half-life of games outside the Windows world. 😕

Fortunately I was able to work around that crash. Apparently there's a bug in old versions of libsteam_api.so that affects a bunch of games: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/8542

(If it breaks again I'll have to try ScummVM, I guess.)

That may come in handy later.

Road sign near Nuremberg, Pennsylvania, pointing to Hazleton and Nuremburg. (I don't know why it's spelled "Nuremburg" on the sign and "Nuremberg" on the map.)

@grumpygamer Sometimes I almost think they do it deliberately. Like the time a Swedish news site put an ad for free psychological counseling right next to an article about the aftermath of Finland beating Sweden in the World Cup of Hockey.

An article titled "Storbråk i Haparanda - efter Finlands guld" ("Big brawl in Haparanda efter Finland's gold medal") next to an ad for free psychological counseling showing a sign reading "Är den inre smärtan så stark att du inte står ut?" ("Is the inner pain so strong that you can't stand it?")

@Noortjevee @georgetakei Or this one.

Trump in a truck. Is he makinging "vroom, vroom" noises?

@yuki2501 @grumpygamer If only those 450 prophets of Baal had known of that one weird trick to avoid execution...

@legendofmi Funnily enough, that "Requires 3D Accelerator" blurb was also on the cover of The Dig and Full Throttle. A cut-and-paste error would be my guess.

@yuki2501 @grumpygamer Couldn't they just have re-enacted something like 1 Kings 18:16-45 to figure out who was the real deal?

@ThreeOhFour Congratulations! I need to check that one out soon. (Or at least I need to buy it. I still have some of the earlier Wadjet Eye games in my backlog of unplayed games, I'm afraid.)

Screenshot from Discworld II. At the end of the opening cutscene Rincewind, looking at the aftermath of an explosion, is telling the librarian that "Well, the animation budget's increased at least!"

He then goes on to say, "Well of course that's a good thing! It means they haven't spent as much on plot, doesn't it. They've probably halved the number of insane object puzzles, for a start. Ahem. Sorry. I mean 'clever lateral thinking exercises', of course."

@grumpygamer That was bound to happen once people started eating them, I guess.

@aaronsgiles And the one version still being sold isn't even on that list... 🥺

(One version on the list can be constructed from it, but...)

@grumpygamer @mixnmojo And of course, one of the reasons LucasArts adventure bugs fascinate me is because of how rare and hard to find they are. I doubt I would have noticed this one if I hadn't played the DOS and Sega versions side by side, and even then I almost missed it.

So I'm going to guess that LucasArts had some pretty great testers, and that their feedback was very much encouraged?

@grumpygamer @mixnmojo I was just trying to make a joke about the other line that was cut that you explained was deliberate, and what it would take to convince me that this was too.

Unlike that one, this affected one obscure version, and in much stranger ways: Things at the start of the game removed lines near the end. (Very ahead of its time!)

So almost certainly a bug, but one that it looks like ScummVM can fix. I didn't expect to replay it so soon, but so far it's behaving as predicted.

@mixnmojo These conversation options must have been cut deliberately from the Sega CD version though, because they're just plain missing from the script. The best guess I've heard is that the Sega version just couldn't deal with that many options at once, outside of the insult sword fighting.

That's all I have, but this is what came up during a regular playthrough. Who knows what a more in-depth comparison would unearth!

Talking to the troll in MI1, VGA floppy version:

* Some semi-rancid meat?
* A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle?
* Don't mess with me, troll, I'm a mighty pirate!
* 30 pieces of eight?
* 204 pieces of eight?
* Nothing of consequence?
* Never mind, I have to go now.

Talking to the troll in MI1, Sega CD version:

* Some semi-rancid meat?
* A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle?
* Nothing of consequence?
* Never mind, I have to go now.

@mixnmojo Another patch to restore more missing lines (again only from the Sega CD version) is in early testing, and this time the lines really are missing because of what looks like a scripting bug to me:

https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/pull/6557

In a way, I'm almost hoping for @grumpygamer to swoop in and tell me thay it was done deliberately. Because it would be such a wonderfully weird way of doing it.

@mixnmojo If you want to do some more bottom-of-the-barrel scraping, a few other missing MI1 lines were recently optionally restored by ScummVM. The catch? They were only missing from the Sega CD version. And they weren't really missing, they were just drawn off-screen. At least in ScummVM they could still be selected with the arrow keys.

Here are the before/after screenshots.

Talking to the Men of Low Moral Fiber in MI1, Sega CD version, telling them the governor has been kidnapped. There is one option:

* Why are you just standing around instead of doing something about it?

Talking to the Men of Low Moral Fiber in MI1, Sega CD version, telling them the governor has been kidnapped. There are three options, two of which used to be drawn off-screen.

* Why are you just standing around instead of doing something about it?
* I'm going after those authority-figure-nappers. Are you with me?
* How about a dream vacation to Monkey Island?

Talking to your crew in MI1, Sega CD version, There are three options:

* Is there anyway I can get your guys to help me?
* I hear the weather's nice over by Monkey Island.
* I'm going to give you mutineers five seconds to come to your senses!

Talking to your crew in MI1, Sega CD version, There are four options, one of which used to be drawn off-screen.

* Is there anyway I can get your guys to help me?
* I hear the weather's nice over by Monkey Island.
* I'm going to give you mutineers five seconds to come to your senses!
* I think I'll be getting back to tending the ship.

Torbjörn Andersson boosted:

Issue #67 of our newsletter, right in time for the new Sam & Max OST. https://www.theadventurer.news/p/issue-67-a-promise-fifteen-years

@atmcashpoint Yeah, but I assumed that was just one of the many cases where a line was shortened, presumably because of the wider font, so I stopped mentioning those.

@georgetakei Nuremberg, Pennsylvania, would be poetic.

@grumpygamer My gaming budget only covers semi-personalized narratives driven by human imagination.

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