Aug 3, 2013

Happy 20th Anniversary. This day 20 years ago Bungie released Pathways Into Darkness at Boston Macworld. They sold 350 copies. This day also marks the 20th anniversary of Bungie's entry into the First Person Shooter genre. A genre that would lead them to Marathon, and eventually Halo and world-wide fame. Enjoy the day... and remember... from small beginnings come great things. To mark the occasion PerseusSpartacus <perseusspartacus@gmail.com> created five 20th Anniversary Posters. You can see them here. 1,   2,   3,   4,   5. June 22, 2013 poena.dare in a Story forum post points us to a Reuters news article and writes: Archaeologists discover lost Maya city in Mexican jungle "...the site - which covers 22 hectares (54 acres) and lies 75 miles due west of Chetumal - is one of the largest found in the Yucatan's central lowlands. ..." "... While the site was unknown to the academic community, Sprajc found evidence that other people had been to the site as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, but not since. ..." The tru7h is sometimes stranger than fiction. June 12, 2013 Want to know where your PID OS X saved games are located on your Mac? Well treellama <wolfy@treellama.org> has the answer. He writes in a Story forum post: Pathways into Darkness is a Mac App Store app, so it is forced to use the sandbox: ~/Library/Containers/com.manuptimestudios.pathwaysintodarkness/Data/Library/Application Support/Pathways into Darkness/Saved Games.pathways May 7, 2013 Pathways Into Darkness for OS X has been updated to version 1.2 with bug fixes and game tweaks to make it even more like the original game. Mark Levin outlines the changes in this post. Apr 19, 2013 You're playing Pathways and want to know if you missed anything? Well you can easily find out thanks to Hopper. In a Story forum post he writes: ...upload your save file, and click on the level name for a completely custom set of maps. You'll be able to see exactly what items you missed, and what's hanging around to guard them. So upload those Saved Game files and check out your progress to date. :) Mark Levin <haveblue@mac.com> makes some corrections to Ron Hunsinger's post, mentioned yesterday (see below). Apr 18, 2013 So you've reached Ascension, got the Alien Pipes, and now you are on the way down. But you're out of ammo. Who you gonna call? Ron Hunsinger <listreply1@erstesoft.com> in a Story forum post offers some useful advice on how to proceed. He writes: ...you're not in trouble yet. You can use the knife on Ghouls, and there's still enough ammo left on the coming levels to take out the occasional Nightmares. Two tips on dealing with Ghouls with the knife: 1) They're left-handed, so if you meet several in close quarters you want to be standing to your left of the one in front. The ones in back can throw around their left (your right) of the one in front, but not the other way around. (Don't worry about them shooting "under the arm" of the one in front. Enemy bullets, including rocks, treat other enemies as pillars reaching from ground to ceiling. The size of the pillar need not match the size of the sprite the enemy is drawn with; in particular, you might see arms and legs sticking outside the pillar, if you could see the pillar. All monsters are the same size pillar.) 2) Don't just hold down the fire button and let the knife automatically stab again. Its auto-fire rate is too slow. You need to make explicit individual stabs. There's a rhythm to it. Listen to their grunts, and stab in in time with them. You may see a rock materialize in their hand during a knife fight, but if you have the timing right the rock will disappear before they can throw it. And a special tip for starting your descent: Turning off your flashlight lets you get closer to them before they notice you. In particular, on Wrong Way (first level below Ground Floor, but not the one crawling with Oozes), there are two ghouls in each of the four corners. If your flashlight is off when you enter, and you're careful, you can wake them up two at a time. Run back upstairs and save after killing each pair. Get to the ladder by backing away from the corner you just cleared, so you don't face corners that still have Ghouls in them. (Seeing any part of a cell next to a monster wakes it up. Waking up a monster wakes up monsters around him.) Fighting two ghouls at a time with a knife is doable. Trying to take on all eight at once in an open area like that is suicide. Once you clear out that room, there's a dead Nazi in there who will give you more ammo. Save the ammo for Nightmares and maybe Zombies. Don't waste ammo on Ghouls. There's a lot of ammo on the next level down (Welcome Tasty Primate), but still not enough to waste. And don't forget... Hopper's Annotated PID Maps will show you the location of every single round of ammo on a level. Apr 10, 2013 Bruce Morrison <bruce@manuptimestudios.com> of Man Up Time Studios,   the people who brought you PID for OS X,  has pulled out all the development comments from the PID source code and compiled them into one document. He writes: They are interesting, as it's pretty much all Jason Jones's thoughts on the game, and it's cute to see the references to what will become Marathon, and the MacWorld expos and what not. You can read them here. Some interesting tidbits in there, including reference to Minotaur 3D and the infamous Greek Flag. If you know where the first reference to the Greek flag appears then post your answer to the Story forum. :) Apr 9, 2013 Yes folks... it's finally here. Pathways Into Darkness for OS X at the Mac App Store Brought to you by Mark Levin and Bruce Morrison. Now a whole new generation of fans can play Bungie's hardest game. Take a bow guys. :) Apr 8, 2013 Prompted by a post on the Story forum, Mr. Bleach writes: Did some testing regarding this, and 'parents' does seem like the actual trigger word. I tried asking a variety of shortened forms of the word 'parents' (i.e., taking various letters out of the word) to see what would trigger the response, and what would not--kind of trying to figure out the keyword AI in the game. The following triggered the "I think my mother was dead. My father was in the party." response: parents pants paents paets family familv famiy faily The following did not trigger the response: pant pantalones pnts paes faiy faly shirt shoes uniform socks shorts So, it looks like the game was just thinking we were trying to say 'parents'. I went up to another German body two levels up (the one in the center square), and asked about parents, pants, shirts, shoes, etc. with no response. Just wanted to make sure the German's weren't secretly assembling a fashionable outfit or something. Apr 7, 2013 If you thought we knew all the word triggers in PID you'd be wrong... very wrong. Mr. Bleach writes: One extra note for the conversations with the dead with the Anonymous German soldier on We Can See in the Dark . . . Can You? In addition to asking him "family" and getting the response "I think my mother was dead. My father was in the party.", you can also say "Poopy Pants" to the solider and get the same response. "Poopy Pants" ?!!! President People on the Story forum was able to replicate this. He went on to point out that: "Pants" alone gets the same response as the full phrase, though (whereas "poopy" does not)! So 'pants' is the actual word trigger. But why on earth would anyone think to use the phrase "Poopy Pants" in a conversation with a dead German soldier? Mr. Bleach explains: My kids are watching me play, and they've been loving to throw out ridiculous things to say to the dead folks to see if anything works. Nothing ever has, of course, until one of them threw out "Poopy Pants" (uggghh, really?!?) but surprisingly the German responded! We couldn't believe it, so we left the level, came back, and tried it again and it still worked. So credit to this find goes to Connor and Isabelle. Nice one. :) From now on the Anonymous German soldier on We Can See in the Dark . . . Can You? will be known as 'Mr Poopy Pants'. ;) Mar 8, 2013 It's coming... are you ready? :) Feb 13, 2013 The 13th... unlucky for some but not Earthtopus <andrew.malcovsky@gmail.com>. He joins the few who have discovered the secret to The Labyrinth... and lived to tell the tale. And of course he gets his overcoat. Feb 12, 2013 Clues... They're Everywhere! ;) Feb 11, 2013 Naw Man He's Close. Kept secret since 1999... to protect the innocent. ;) Feb 1, 2013 Hey... some interesting links. Jan 1, 2013 Happy New Year to all PID'ers.. everywhere!