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Added a new section to collect all the information we know about Crystals.
Doc Hopper's Pathways Save Inspector.
Check out your saved game stats, warts and all.
| Mar 5, 2012 |
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Ron Hunsinger <listreply1@erstesoft.com> makes an interesting observation about The Labyrinth
and offers an important tip. He writes:
Every time you enter the Labyrinth, the game completely erases and rebuilds the level. It always starts with an empty cell right in the center, at (16,16), and grows the maze randomly from there. It then puts a Violet Crystal in that center cell, but only if you've never picked one up. It doesn't want you returning here to get more Violet Crystals.
Tip: if you want to dispose of garbage, like Nazi propaganda or overproduced ammo, Labyrinth is a good dumping ground. When you leave, anything you've left behind on the ground is gone forever.
The reason you may want to get rid of junk is to make more room for corpses. There's a hard limit of 500 items per level, including corpses, mushrooms, dropped items, living critters, bullets, et al. The +1 bonus per 250 kills means you want plenty of room for corpses.
What's in a string? A lot if you look closely. Hopper posts the Pathways string resources
in XML format. See what you can find hidden away in these:
Demo vA1 - Demo v2.0 -
PID v2.0
The mysterious seventh crystal is the Blue/Yellow Crystal  which can be found in the
Shapes file of the Pathways Demo vA1. It's not present in the release version of the game.
We know very little about its function.
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| Mar 4, 2012 |
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Crystals.
According to the Pathways manual crystals are objects with special powers.
Once used they automatically recharge but after each use "they recharge more slowly until they finally shatter."
The manual reiterates this point by stating:
Be warned: after each successive use, crystals (except the Yellow Crystal) recharge more slowly until they finally shatter and become useless.
So how many times will each crystal (other than the Yellow Crystal) recharge before shattering? Hopper in a Story forum post
writes:
The value stored with each crystal is the charge time. On each use of a crystal,
an amount is added to this time, so it takes longer to recharge. If the new recharge time
exceeds a set amount, the crystal shatters. Each crystal has a different increment and maximum:
Yellow: initial 300, up by 0 (infinite uses)
Blue: initial 60, up by 2, max 180 (60 uses)
Orange: initial 60, up by 7, max 410 (50 uses)
Violet: initial 60, up by 15, max 660 (40 uses)
Green: initial 360, up by 15, max 810 (30 uses)
Black: initial 10, up by 1, max 20 (10 uses)
These figures match MrM12LRV's in-game experiments with crystals. He wrote at the time:
I've tried moving levels, using crystals before others after they shatter or before they shatter,
killing enemies with crystals, using rings, and using a new saved game.
Great to have this mystery finally put to rest. :)
But what about the mysterious seventh crystal?
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| Mar 2, 2012 |
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Hopper has added the Demo vA1 and Demo v2.0
maps to his Annotated Maps page.
One of the first things you might notice is this room on the 1st level of the Demo vA1.
Is it accessible?
According to the Pathways manual doors
"will open when you walk up to them. Some doors require you to do something special before they will
open ("Open Saskatchewan?, Open Sasparilla?, Open Sarasota?"). Be careful, some doors will close behind you."
But once closed will they open again? Nexcraft <Nexcraft@gmail.com> writes pointing out that the Alien Gemstone will open
the exit door on Ground Floor but will it open the locked door
on Warning: Earthquake Zone and let you descend to the final level again?
Given that there is no trigger sector in front of this door (see Hopper's Annotated Maps)
probably not. Yet doors in Pathways don't always need player or item triggers to open. The exit
door in the Suffocation Room on I'd Rather Be Surfing being one example. So is it possible that there is
some external trigger in the game that will open this door?
Andrew Malcovsky (Earthtopus) points out that while the Walther P4 will fit in the Cedar Box
the Rusted Walther P4 doesn't. In his Read Me file for the PIDmaster Challenge
he writes:
explain to us why the P4 fits in the Cedar Box but the Rusted P4 doesn't
Apparently you can still get the ammo clip out of the rusted
gun but the gun itself won't fit into the box. Obviously a fussy box. ;)
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| Mar 1, 2012 |
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Hunsinger's treasure is real... but only in Pathways v1.1.
Andrew Malcovsky contacted Ron Hunsinger about the additional $162.0K in treasure he collected back in Feb '94.
Ron replied as follows:
As you guessed, I got the extra treasure points by getting 4 Alien Gemstones.
The first time I reached the end of OWEWS, I was pretty beat up and needed to rest.
The room was empty (except for me) so I tried to rest right there. Unluckily, I got
attacked in my sleep, and after dispatching the new foe saw another gemstone lying
on the ground. Now I *really* needed to rest, and tried again. Same thing. Another monster
attacked me in my sleep, I dispatched it, and there was a third gemstone. I suspected this
was more than mere bad luck, and tested that by trying yet again to rest. After that experiment,
I had four Alien Gemstones, but not enough health left to try again. I stepped through the
teleporter hoping that I would have a chance to rest in whatever horrible place it took me.
Even so, it was a hassle to get all four gemstones out, since the Lead Box will only hold one.
I've since gone back and tried it again. Apparently, it was a bug that was squashed in a
later update. The trick doesn't work any more. The game used to give you an Alien Gemstone
when you killed the last critter on the 12th round of OWEWS. They were assuming the last
critter would always be the Alien God, since he's invulnerable till then. But sleeping on
OWEW *always* generates a new monster. I've looked at the disassembled code, and see that
they now check that the critter you just killed was, in fact, the Alien God (which is really
of species "Stalker") before giving you a gemstone.
So there you have it. Mystery solved, which probably helps to explain this post also from Feb '94.
Alien Gemstones... They're Everywhere! :)
On the subject of glitches, ukimalefu game across this interesting pic in an article entitled
"Mayan Light Beam Photo: Message from Gods, or iPhone Glitch?" on the Life Little Mysteries website.
Blast from the past, Ron Hunsinger <listreply1@erstesoft.com> makes a visit to the Story forum
and offers this tip to avoid taking any damage from the
Greater Nightmare waiting for you at the start of Please Excuse Our Dust.
No Crystals needed. I've added this to the Please Excuse Our Dust section.
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