The alternate ending for Twilight.
I’ve been corresponding with Bob Sorem, authors of one of the ports of Mystery Mansion. It’s easy to to forget the context of these games: this was a mainframe game in the time many did not own personal computers, and so for some this was the only computer game they had access to for years. Hence: obsessive playing and perfection. Bob writes that he was disappointed if he got anything less than 999 out of 999 points.
(Bob answered all of my questions and also sent a complete map set which he has given permission to post here, so I am very grateful to his help.)
One of the peculiar things I learned from him which doesn’t seem clued at all in the game, is that the odd messages I’ve mentioned
YOU HEARD A WOMAN SCREAM
YOU HEARD A WOLF HOWL
YOU HEARD A CROW CAW AS IT FLEW BY
YOU HEARD SOME ROCKS FALLING NEARBY
which occur every hour (on the half hour — there are traditional clock bells on the hour) are also scoring opportunities. Immediately after one of those messages occurs you can SCORE POINTS to get a bonus 2 points. This can be awkward timing if you’re about to stake a vampire or fight a wolf so does cause a little extra caution, like one of random Achievement challenges in a modern game (shooting all the cameras in Portal, say).
I approached things with lower standards than 999 out of 999 points. I consider a winning run to:
a.) Kill the threats: vampire, werewolf, wolf, and warrior.
b.) Expose the murderer and hand him or her to the police.
c.) Raid the treasure in the “treasure trek” maze.
Still, this was rather a challenge to wrangle everything.
- The characters will sometimes pick up items and wander off with them. Relatedly, the murder weapon (needed to accuse the murderer) can be tricky to locate. Fortunately there’s a parrot that can be used to FIND items (it says so in the description, so you don’t have to guess at that at least).
- Part of a successful run requires a trip to a “mole maze” where the mole sometimes changes the exits. Should I marvel at the innovation (dynamic map changes!), or just be really annoyed? My method of coping was to tackle the maze first thing after getting the compass, but even then multiple attempts were required.
>GET WEDGE
THE WOOD IS STACKED TOO HIGH.
then for no reason I am quite sure of, later attempting a staking sometimes result in
> kill vampire
YOU HAVE NOT FIGURED OUT HOW NOT DO THAT YET.
Fortunately there’s an alternate (brilliant) way of killing the vampire which I will discuss in the comments.
One bit that helped was an extra dollop of science fiction onto the genre pile
IT IS THE LABORATORY OF THE MAD SCIENTIST. THERE ARE SEVERAL PIECES OF EQUIPMENT HERE WHICH ARE ALL HUMMING READY TO WORK. IT SORT OF LOOKS LIKE THE TRANSPORTER ROOM OUT OF A STAR TREK MOVIE. LARGE WINDOWS OVERLOOK THE GROUNDS. THERE IS A DOOR TO THE SOUTH AND A SMALL DOOR ON THE FLOOR.
There’s a MATTER XMITTER and a MATTER RECEIVER that let you BEAM UP and BEAM DOWN to teleport to the laboratory and from the laboratory to where the matter receiver is. I placed the matter receiver at the exit so I could teleport at the very end.
In any case, after midnight the Mansion explodes, so I made my exit to triumph:
YOU HAVE BEATEN THE ODDS AND HAVE DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE. YOU HAVE SURVIVED MYSTERY MANSION AND YOU CAN NOW SEE IT GOING UP IN SMOKE BEFORE YOU.
YOUR SCORE INCLUDES 84 POINTS FOR THE ITEMS YOU HAVE WITH YOU.
NOW YOU HAVE TO WALK TO THE BIG CITY.
YOU SCORED 804 POINTS WHICH RATES YOU AS A SLEUTH.
YOU PLAYED 70 MINUTES REAL TIME AND 18.0 HOURS GAME TIME OR 31 % UTILIZATION.
There are three parts I missed, according to the nebulous and nearly incomprehensible source code. First, there’s gold coins found by doing … something … somewhere. Also, SLEEP is not just an intransitive word (see the image clip on top of this post) and there’s even a way to succeed (ranking Mystery Mansion as the first computer game of any type to include sexuality) but I have no idea how. Finally, there’s a way to call a taxi (you don’t have to walk back to town as per the ending text) but the phone always gives me a busy signal; I don’t know if I need perfect timing or what exactly.
Still, I think I’ve got the full experience. I can start to see — at the end of my journey, mind you — why HP mainframe users were addicted; once the game is “figured out” it becomes more of a re-playable strategy game with multiple endings. Getting a perfect score would require reckoning with the random aspect to the mystery, the strange SCORE POINTS mechanism, and the fact visiting every new room is worth points.
Renga in Blue 
Vampire alternate solve: There are many rooms with curtains. Opening the curtain lets in the sunlight. If the vampire is chasing you when you open a curtain the vampire will run away (but unfortunately won’t die since he was near a safe exit). The way to kill the vampire outright is to go with him into the secret passage, travel from there to a curtained room, and then open the curtain. Not close enough to an exit to escape, the vampire shrivels up and dies. (There’s a mechanism to get back in the passage but the vampire can’t reach it.)
You can replay a mystery over and over by typing as the first command given when starting: mystery XXX where xxx is the number of the mystery you want to play. This allows you to learn at least initially where things are, who the murderer was, the weapon and use the fewest commands to get that part resolved.
Fortran IV came with the HP3000 system as part of the standard package. Fortran 77 was a $10k add on (in 1980 dollars) so it makes sense that the programmer had access to IV and not 77. We used IV up until the late 1980’s in our laser printing service environment.
I first played Mystery Mansion on an HP3000 in around 1978/9. Eventually, after using the save option and thus playing the same version each time, I amassed around 950 points. Some points-scoring actions (like confronting and turning in the murderer) gain points whereas some other things that can be difficult to do (such as sleeping with the maid) gain no points at all!. Key things apart from solving the murder include disposing of the vampire (easy) and the wolf (not so easy), collecting all the treasure, avoiding it being stolen or moved and placed somewhere awkward (for example, the woodsman might drop your matter receiver down the deep well) and finally making your way back to the big city. But, beware darkness – when it gets dark, the rules change for the worse.
I rediscovered this excellent game recently and although it runs on WIndows XP, I can’t get it to run on Wndows 7 even in compatibility mode.
In summary – an excellent game, ahead of its time that makes you think and reason what needs to be done whilst holding a picture in your mind. Better I think than purely visual games.
Not sure if it’s a version difference… but 950pts is definitely not easy to reach at all! I played the Sorem port (for its Save Game feature)… and after many attempts finally scored 979 pts. In his version you have to walk into a room with lights on to score the points, the lantern is quite limited, and you can’t even carry out all the booty you amassed during the adventure. Did you ever find where the COINS were hidden/buried? I finally moved enough boulders to discover the PEARLS… but never found the COINS. I also suspect the Jewelry and Crown are source code mcguffins. Any ideas?
For the COINS, MOVE ROCKS in TREASURE TREK (rooms 43-46). It has a 33% probability.
YOU ARE IN THE TREASURE TREK
THERE IS A WAY TO GO SOUTH
> move rocks
YOU JUST UNCOVERED SOME GOLD COINS.
Further notes on a good ending to score points. Leave the matter receiver somewhere that no one else can move it or you might get a nasty surprise – for example beaming down into a deep well (I sometimes leave in in the maid’s room and lock the door). Be sure to have the silver bullet when one of the inmates turns into a werewolf. Just in time, drop everything you don’t need, leaving lantern (with new battery), compass, use your extra strength device to pick up all the booty you have stashed in your chosen safe place (ring, pearls, emerald, coins, goblet, diamonds, jewelery, necklace, crown and anything else of value) and make your way out of the exploding mansion be means of the fire escape (you will need to oil the rusty hinge before it will open) back to the main gate where of course the taxi is waiting to take you to the city (you did have time to telephone for a taxi didn’t you?). Having done that and previously survived all hazards, confronted the murderer and turned him/her over to the police and still had time to take a shower and a restful sleep on the maids bed (I have been able to get all the available treasure quickly enough to need to sleep for a couple of hours before the game ends), you should score well over 900 points.
PS, The maid is particular about the circumstances under which she will “come across” – BUT, having managed to have you way with here, it seems to score NO points at all!!!!
I could not successfully phone a taxi. Is there some special timing?
Yes, I think so. Even after solving the crime, the ability to “CALL TAXI” seems only available late in the game. Maybe after 10pm or something… but certainly after the explosion. I almost feel like he wants you in grave danger before you call your taxi… at least, this is in the Sorem port.
Much belated, but this page let me track down that Mystery Mansion was the text adventure I had very vague childhood memories of. I knew it was a house treasure crawl, and I remembed the description of a room looking like the star trek transporter room, and one or two other details that were very generic to house crawl games. Every google either turned up star trek games or The Count, which I knew wasn’t right; this is it. Thanks!
To sleep with the maid: you need to have showered first (a nice touch!). You and the maid must be in the maid’s room, it must be dark, and you must be carrying nothing. Then DROP CLOTHES and SLEEP WITH MAID.
THE TOWER BELL RANG 4 TIMES
YOU HAVE BEATEN THE ODDS AND HAVE DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE. YOU HAVE SURVIVED
MYSTERY MANSION AND YOU CAN NOW SEE IT GOING UP IN SMOKE BEFORE YOU.
YOUR SCORE INCLUDES 82 POINTS FOR THE ITEMS YOU HAVE WITH YOU.
YOUR SCORE ALSO INCLUDES 10 POINTS BECAUSE THE TAXI IS WAITING.
YOU SCORED 999 POINTS WHICH RATES YOU AS A SUPER
SLEUTH.
This is using the original FORTRAN code compiled with gfortran (of course I had to add some glue code replacing the HP specific functions)
There is a cap on the score. After removing that, the actual score was:
YOU SCORED1006 POINTS WHICH RATES YOU AS A SUPER
SLEUTH
The score could be higher than that: I didn’t visit two rooms (that is 2*15 points) and I collected only a few treasures, so those 82 points could be more.
YOUR BOOTY CONTAINS:
A SET OF KEYS
A BATTERY LANTERN
A POCKET COMPASS
A PIRATE TREASURE
AN UNEVEN AMULET
A SMALL OILCAN
A BAG OF PEARLS
AN LARGE EMERALD
A SILVER GOBLET
SEVERAL DIAMONDS
A RUBY NECKLACE
AN OLD BATTERY
A GAUDY GAUNTLET
Congrats! That’s interesting about the point cap.
Thanks !
I reached 1048 points:
YOUR SCORE INCLUDES 92 POINTS FOR THE ITEMS YOU HAVE WITH YOU.
YOU SCORED1048 POINTS WHICH RATES YOU AS A Û>
SLEUTH.
As you can see, that breaks the code printing the level: that happens at 1020 points.
I’m wondering if something is wrong in the C port(s), since it looks like nobody scored more than 979 points.
This is how points are scored in the FORTRAN code:
45 initial score
75 kill vampire
75 kill werewolf
50 arrest murderer
200 mystery solved
10 taxi waiting at the end
465 visiting rooms
36 saying “score points”
============
956 total
+ points for items carried at the end of the game.
In my case: 956+92=1048.
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Hello All,
I realize I’m very much flogging a nearly dead horse (but doesn’t that speak to the sheer tenacity of this game, eh?), but I’d like to know who owns the copyright to Mystery Mansion. I (think I) know it’s the original author, Bill Wolpert, but in case he’s passed away, how would that go? I’m asking because I’d like to try my hand at a derivative work with heavy overtones of Mystery Mansion, so I’m sure I’d be stepping on someone’s copyrighted toes, and I’d like to do things properly legal. Perhaps James Garnett, who mentioned having communicated with Wolpert, might be willing to help.
Much appreciated, play on, IF forever,
Patrick
You might have luck with Bob Sorem, who I believe is still active and responding to email (last update on his Mystery Mansion page is 2018).
http://www.bobsoremweb.com/mm.html
the stake can only be taken out of the fireplace before the servant stacks up the wood, and in order to kill the vampire with it, you also need to have something to hammer it with (like the axe), otherwise it gives the error of not knowing how to do that – or so I remember from the Czech version
ah! I admit the bit with the stake has been mystifying me for 10 years, so that’s good to know
By the way, out of the list I’m using, the first Czech game is in 1982. Hoping to get to that year by … October maybe based on my current rate? Maybe a little sooner.