The Absolutely Bizarre 🍆 Moves of Space Quest III
Вставка
- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- Space Quest III is surprisingly easy-going on the player. In fact, the only two really cruel moments we've been able to find in the game are so ludicrously improbable, I'll bet you anything you've never seen them before this video. (Offer not guaranteed.)
The Adventure Game Hotspot Network:
/ @oneshorteye adventure game speedruns
/ @conversationswithcurtis Let's Plays
/ @danielalbu Industry interviews
/ @adventuregamegeek adventure game reviews
The Classic Gamer's Guild Podcast (www.cggpodcast...)
/ @adventuregamehotspot the main hub
Join the SQH community on Discord: / discord
Support me via Patreon: / spacequesthistorian
>get pole_
“It’s all yours!”
I laughed so much at the absurd enthusiasm of that
Weird Idea: a Softlock Race. Two players go thru a selection of Sierra Games trying to softlock themselves as fast as possible one game after another.
Trying to think what the fastest Sierra game to softlock is. KQ1 takes something like 3 or 4 seconds (fall in the hole and face the rat with no cheese). Wouldn't be surprised if KQ2 is faster with TAS execution (get stranded on Dracula's island), but I doubt a human could do it as fast as KQ1 (unless going across the bridge an extra time is a true softlock? I want to say there's some glitchy way around it, but I might be wrong). Some games probably can be softlocked in less than 1 second by having a key timer either run out or run 99.9% out due to high computer speed, but that feels like cheating.
My theory for the timer thing is maybe they were originally gonna have a mechanic that Roger could run into random battles while traveling space, to add some flavor and sense of danger with traveling space.
But things changed, and they decided it would be easier to set the timer to a stupidly high value rather than remove the code.
Yup, would be my guess as well.
Given that the entire plot of the game feels like an afterthought hidden in a minigame, i wouldn't be surprised if the times wasn't just a remnant of previous abandoned ideas.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking as well. And, if that was the case, the "set value to max" strategy basically did work to bury the mechanic. Apparently it took over 30 years for anyone to discover this glitch.
Overall, I have sometimes wondered if SQ3 was originally intended to be a bigger game. It is awfully short, even by the standards of the time, without many locations to visit. Giving Roger his own ship almost feels like overkill, especially since there's usually no need to backtrack either.
That's a perfectly valid theory. It would make sense, too - rather than removing a half-implemented feature, they just decided to bury it under implausible conditions for fear that it would break something else in the game. I don't know for sure if that was the case, though.
As for the comments about the scope of the game: The Two Guys famously didn't bother with writing out design documents back in those days. They had a plot outline and then they'd just dive into making the game and, really, just make shit up as they went along. From that point of view, it's perfectly plausible that they implemented the timer as a half-baked "if we decide to use it later" mechanic and just forgot about it.
@@jasonblalock4429 The only issue is with burying the mechanic is that it's likely no more than 3-10 lines of code they could have easily commented out.
The ship timer kind of reminds me of how you can get a game over during the introduction in King’s Quest IV. As everyone one knows, KQ4 has a day/night cycle timer and you have to get the magic fruit & talisman before dawn of the second day. This timer is running even during the introduction.
To get the game over, you have to be running the later release of the game that came out in August 1989. In this version, the intro never self-terminates when it’s over and you have to press ENTER to start the game. If you never press ENTER and stay in the intro long enough, it will eventually change over into night. If you continue to wait, dawn will eventually come and the screen will turn black announcing that Genesta has died, followed by the Restore/Restart/Quit game over menu. This is a totally useless piece of trivia, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
That's amazing. Also, can I just say, I love your username. 😆
@@spacequesthistorian
Thanks! I thought it was an appropriate name for a soundtrack channel.
Similarly, the game will usually cut to night time after you've acquired both the scarab and the magic fruit. BUT, if you wait around for a long while (I don't know how long exactly, but the grandfather clock in the mansion will tell you what time it is), you can make night fall before you have those things. Not only is this the only way you can get killed by a zombie, but if you try to enter the mansion at night without the scarab, a zombie will ambush you at the door. (It is possible to slip into the mansion if you approach the far right side of the door, but... good luck digging up all those graves without getting caught by the other zombies.) This is also how to get the bad ending, besides eating the magic fruit yourself.
I definitely didn't have enough "relaxing tea" to expect that last one...
Ohh, that "relaxing *green* tea", sure - next time 😋 we're get keepn a craps of it somewhere in sake of such sweet moment...
Hahaha! 😆
That last one made me stop my cooking just to go “wait, what?” I almost burned my dinner.
I always thought that taking the wire to early and then get robbed by the rat was a soft-lock. But apparently you can not only get the generator back but also the wire from the rat's nest.
Yup. I have no idea why the rat mugging is even in there. Maybe it was part of a bigger puzzle that they scrapped; who knows. It's so weird that all you have to do is just go back and get it a second time.
I never knew you had to get the orat on a stick. I always used the pole. In fact, I thought it was an oversight that Fester was useless.
That's interesting! Most people never knew the pods were even an option; they just go for wrecking him in the statue's gears. You truly went the long way!
@@spacequesthistorian It's kind of cool that the obvious answer for killing the spider droid is the rock, but it's more fun to use ORAT. Then, in SQ3, I suppose because you are at Fester's when you run into the Arnoid, the obvious answer is the gears/hook, but it's more fun to use the pods, and then you needed ORAT again (or so I thought).
@@russdanner2856 That's actually quite profound. I never thought of that.
Sod tea and sod my beer to, no amount of beverage is gonna make me feel chill for that bonker's 18 hour fail state.
In fact it made me fucking burst out laughing and kudos to your friend for finding this because holy shit I would never in a million years find the most oddest way to get into a fail state, this must be some kind of guiness world record for this category.
Hahaha! Thank you for that comment. Made me bust out laughing. 😁
You missed a dead end in the junk freighter. If you leave the ladder on the ship and then use the conveyor belt you will not be able to escape the rat den. This also triggers a rare death animation.
That is indeed a death, but not a dead end in the sense that it lets you keep playing in an unwinnable state. So, in my book, it doesn't qualify as a dick move. It's also telegraphed real well that the rat lair is a potentially dangerous place (the shadows of the rats and the ominous music), and that's before you even acquire the ladder, so I didn't put it in the video for those reasons.
I remember the first time I saw that death, when I restored one of my brother's saves on the grabber. Apparently, he'd put in the reactor but not he motivator, and forgot to take the ladder with him, so I stood there in the rats' lair thinking, "Well, now what do I do?" only to then be startled by that animation and horrified by the gruesome death image. (Though its never made me cringe nearly as much as the sharp metal death does to this day.)
For some reason I thought fighting the ship after the 18 hours was just gonna be some like game breaking glitch where it assumes you DID fight the guys at the end of the game, but doesn't know what to do now because you don't have the Guys from Andromeda but...No. It's just like "Okay, you did that. Go about your business" and then later your shields are still damaged? That's nuts. I did NOT have enough relaxing tea to prepare my brain for that one.
I remember Space Quest 3 being the funniest of the franchise.
That's hard to quantify objectively, of course, but I'm liable to agree. Although I will say, as far as text humor, SQ2 has my favorite lines in the entire series ("the guard drops to the ground like a lead parakeet" - what a classic!).
This lack of soft lock possibilities has to be by design. Like the Two Guys decided that allowing soft lock was actually bad design and that they were going to go out of their way to avoid it.
And then... Space Quest IV happened. 😆
they did make the entire Pocket Computer bit optional however. could have been worse. way worse.
I’m staying tuned! I love these.
The timer issue reminds me when the Coles were live streaming Quest for Glory 2, and they managed to "die" from thirst on the title screen. Apparently there is a timer still running on that screen, even if the game hasn't been started, and if one waits long enough, the timer can run out which seems to indicate that the character has run out of water.
Ah, so that's what Richard Cobbett was referring to in my Twitter mentions. Thanks! 😆
*currently scraping my brain off the wall after it exploded*
Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but isn't it possible to run down the battery on the invisibility belt before making it into the Scumsoft base?
That's a good question. I don't remember specifically, but I do believe, if you stick around for too long while hiding in the bushes with the belt turned on, that it does indeed run out of power fairly quickly.
Bad news for those who are too afraid to sneak inside despite being invisible, aren't bored without a single other thing to do and perpetually save over their one save game - all them folks were really screwed.
@@spacequesthistorian 'tis true. I've seen it happen. And indeed, you can get blasted if you let it run out before you reach the door. One of the guards will even turn to shoot you, if you're standing between them when it runs out.
Bizarre eggplanting aside, gotta respect how fair SQ3 is compared to many of it's Sierra peers at the time of Kq4, KQ1SCI, Codename Iceman, Gold Rush and Leisure Suit Larry 2. Even Lucasfilm games could land you in more unwinnable states more easily in this era compared to Sq3, which needs a fairly unconventional player to land themselves in any of these states.
In fact, so long as your on board with sudden gruesome funny death, Space Quest in general has had a relatively better track record of fair play, until SQ4 at least - which I guess was a pretty bad year for our Andromedians - but I expect SQ5 and especially 6 to be even cleaner. Looking forward to what you dig up though.
this is the origin story of DOOMGUY
Something that has always sort of bothered me about Space Quest 4, since you mentioned it, is that most of it is really just running around doing in the end pointless stuff until a flag gets tripped that lets you finish the game. Because the only reason you can't just go to the end without time traveling is that there's a guard at the entrance to the computer center, who will mysteriously disappear after a certain point. And since all the other things you need to reach the end are either stuff you find on Xenon or information that doesn't change between playthroughs, it feels really arbitrary that you can't massively sequence break the game.
Was there ever a game with better EGA graphics?
Loom is a close contender, but you know where my vote goes. 😁
I think Laura Bow had some pretty fantastic backgrounds, honestly.
As a kid I had to cheat because I had an Amstrad CPC1512 that sucker had a modified CGA card, that can do EGA graphics but wasn't compatible with EGA. Luckily KQIV did have the Amstrad Driver which I copied over to the SQIII disk and got to play in 16 colors (minus some animations). That said the lower DPI monitor actually made the game look better then than now, as the pixels were not as blocky and the dithered sections felt more like an extra color than a checkerboard
Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow 1) is arguably the better looking one due to the dithering effects, but SQ3 holds up pretty closely.
I’ve always thought the 1990 remake of King’s Quest 1 had shockingly good graphics for EGA. Very atmospheric. I’ll also join the others citing Colonel’s Bequest as a top contender. Another one is Leisure Suit Larry 3, which had some of the most realistic looking close-up portraits of people’s faces in any EGA game I’ve ever seen.
I do remember that the robot in the freighter would kill you if you pissed him off
Yes, and the "look" message for him purposely misdirects you by describing him as friendly.
I wonder if the remake by Turbo Chimp still has the 18 hour Pirate attack timer
biglos here's the repost of what the space quest Historian answered to me asking that same question.
I would be very surprised if the 18 hour timer is even in the 3D remake version. Remember, that thing was built from scratch, and it's unlikely that they even knew about it.
The 18 hour timer was probably originally intended so you might need to engage in space combat at any point during the game (maybe practice for the end game battle as dropping space combat on the player at the end of the game is a dick move by itself especially after you just won nukem dukem robots, 2 unique arcade sequences need to be won at the end of the game... what were they thinking). They later decided to have the space combat only at the end of the game but didn't remove the anytime script but instead gave it an unreasonably large timeout (classic programmer thinking of not removing things that work but just making the trigger absurdly unlikely).
That seems to be the most popular assumption, yes.
One thing that seemed to happen to me a couple of times was the shield running out for no reason. Like it uses up energy when it’s on or something, and then it suddenly runs out half-way through the fight. If I turned it off after exiting the trash freighter, it lasts longer.
Please verify or refute, because this is one that has caused me no end to the issues in my game when I was as younger.
I've posed the question on my SQH Discord. There are some extremely competent code divers there that can give us an answer for certain. My understanding, though, was always that the shields only deplete when you take damage. Every time a Skull Fighter engages with you, you take damage before it gets into your crosshairs. If too many Skull Fighters get away before you can shoot them down, you take too much damage and die. I'll get back to you when I know for sure (or someone will just jump in here and answer - they know where I live).
Confirmed: It doesn't matter if you leave your shields on or off after escaping the freighter. They do not deplete during the game. The variable is only checked on the Weapons screen in the Mallard.
You have 12 "shield points," and every time a Skull Fighter attacks, you lose 2 points. You have to shoot down 5 of them before they retreat, meaning that you can afford to miss just one Fighter before you game over.
Shoutout to Brandon Blume for code diving this one.
It's an amazing thing that these games still bring so much joy. Games were different back then :)
Have you seen the Pokemon softlocking videos made by Pikasprey? This series is reminding me of that series. Its great. I love how obscure these weird bit's are.
I'm assuming the Skull Fighters sequence includes enough forced damage that there's no way to just play good enough to avoid issues? Awesome lol.
Yes, the Skull Fighters sequence does indeed involve forced damage. In fact, it can be fairly unforgiving if you don't know exactly what you're meant to do.
@@spacequesthistorian I know it can be unforgiving, but I just thought I was bad at video games lol. Good to know.
@@WannabeMarysue Nah, that thing kicks my ass every once in a while, too. And you'd think I'd know how to play this game by now!
For some reason, I thought the game hit a dead end if you say no deal to Fester 3 times. I was under the impression you could only try to sell the orium once
My guess on the timer: it's a sentinel value to indicate it's not supposed to run down until it's reset during the endgame. But they forgot an "if". Plenty other things in SCI use this exact value as a sentinel, so why not?
That's perfectly possible, but, as far as I understand it, the timer that controls their arrival during the endgame is separate from the 18 hour timer.
oh for sure. definately a force/override/interrupt at that point. the playthrus prove that they are always well under 18 hrs
@@spacequesthistorian I'm looking at the decomps right now and there seems to be only one.
There are two variables that are continually decremented in the Mallard "region" so long as a third is non-zero. Once one of them (global 175) reaches 15 it announces the skull fighters' approach. When it's 1 and you're not in the targeting screen (18), it'll reset the skull fighter timer to zero and run one of two attack scripts depending on if you're in the Mallard's interior screen (14). The *other* global, number 220, does not seem to affect the skull fighters, at least not nearly as directly as global 175 does.
Script 22 resets the skull fighter timer to 15 when the Guys mention you'd better get a move on. Script 14 sets it to 60 after the "milk run" comment.
That skull fighter timer thing is crazy!
Lovely video as always!
Thank you very much!
My brother and I played this as kids, we were being chased by Arnoid and went the gears route. After I don't remember how many attempts, we managed to slip past him and down the stairs. Imagine how upset we were to find the elevator was gone and we were trapped!
Haha, that's amazing.
For anyone playing along at home - if you are crazy enough to try this, lock in a course before starting the 18 hour wait. Going into battle without Attack Speed selected is fatal, and you can't select a speed without a course locked in. And the navigation computer is slow! Once that message appears, you've got all of 10 seconds to select Attack Speed and go into the weapons computer.
Apparently the Mallard has no manual steering, it's all computer except for weapons and shields - OK, the computer assists a little with locking on enemy but it's still weird. I'll just assume Roger wasn't smart enough to turn on manual steering. The pirates are free weave over you front and back - maybe they're not so smart either, if they were they'd see you're locked on a course and just wheel around to the front again and again where your weapons can't target.
It's strange though, I don't think you actually set a course when you're fleeing Pestulon, but it acts as if you are. LOL, it seemed like the perfect ship in 1989!
Regarding that 18-hour timer, could it possibly be part of an anti-piracy measure? Perhaps if the game detects something suspicious about your copy of the game, it sets the timer to something just low enough that you can't reasonably finish the game in time before triggering the ambush, rendering the game unwinnable.
If that were the case, everyone would know about it to the point, it'd be considered a regular game feature. Software piracy was part of PC etiquette back in those days
It's not a bad theory but, from my experience, Sierra usually weren't that clever with their anti-piracy measures. They usually just stuck to the "look in the manual for the answer to this question" flavor of copy protection.
SQH have you tried the Space Quest 3 3D remake?
Quick question Space Quest Historian do you know if waiting 18 hours for Short Range Fighters can come earlier in the 3D remake version ?
And any chance youre going to to a lets play the 3D remake version ?
I would be very surprised if the 18 hour timer is even in the 3D remake version. Remember, that thing was built from scratch, and it's unlikely that they even knew about it.
I should cover that 3D remake at some point. I mean, hell, I did the music for it (with my friend Jon Paul Sapsford)... 😁
Always glad to have another space quest video!
First of all, can I just say that the timing of the word "dick" being spoken--and emphasized--EXACTLY as Roger is dropped into the grinder is absolutely *chef kiss* impeccable. Hats off to you and your video editing skills, good sir.
Second, the whole thing about being able to lift off in the Aluminum Mallard, then put it back down and get out again and not be stuck on top of it, strikes me as a sign of good QA practices. Back when I worked in QA, that is exactly the kind of nonsense I would have tried to do, and would have logged it as a bug despite the extremely low chance that a player would actually do that--because yeah, that WOULD be a soft-lock. So I'm very impressed that the devs actually thought of that and addressed it, because no matter how unlikely, the ability of players to try stupid shit is not to be underestimated. :D
Thank you for the editing compliment! Yes, I did time that specifically. 😁
As for the QA theory, I would agree... except future games in the series (and concurrent games from Sierra, like King's Quest IV) were noticeably less forgiving in their approach to fail states. It just wasn't a big concern back then. Maybe The Two Guys were just having a really good day when they put that in?
@@spacequesthistorian Haha yeah, it's quite possible it was just a coincidence and they were just that thoughtful. How remarkably forgiving of them!
@@aliceg3184 Yeah. Don't worry; as I alluded to (and as you already know very well), SQ4 more than makes up for it. 😁
I am pretty sure when I was a kid, working my way through the game I softlocked myself by turning on the shields very early in the game and leaving them on, not thinking anything of it. When I got to the end of the game my shields didn't work any longer, and I couldn't win.
The intro level and going back, makes me think they thought about putting plot critical items in the area, but moved them later
Can't forget the dick move of them coming after you for using your coupon for a free whistle in the previous game ;)
Oh yeah, that's true. I've been sorta neglecting plot-centric dick moves in favor of game-mechanic dick moves in this series. It's worth noting, though, that the "free whistle" plot device was an oversight on the developer's part - Mark Crowe has admitted as much.
always saw that as another joke instead of an "eggplant" move. big difference