Continuing from last time, I had missed a very reasonable puzzle followed by a very unreasonable one.
I can see the following:
Short Cable attached to a Power Unit
Long Cable attached to a Control Unit
Power Unit, which contains:
a Framastat
a Rocker Switch
Control Unit, which contains:
a Round Depression
a Knurled Knob
a Lever>look sphere
The glass sphere is made of pure neodium, an extremely fine industrial crystal found in abundance in Warpian territory. It is about four inches in diameter.
>look depression
The depression is about four inches in diameter and hemispherical in shape. It has been carefully machined into the control panel, just to the left of the knob and lever.
The sphere simply goes in the depression and the whole thing can activate when plugged in. Both the depression and sphere mention 4 inches specifically. I had simply forgotten I had left the glass sphere hanging out in the desert (it was a bit of a pain to get because it was easy to die of thirst — I had to fly the magic carpet in to have enough time to take it away).
However, activating the machine caused this to happen:
>push switch
Click.
>FFFFFT!<
An unexpected backsurge in voltage suddenly vaporizes the cables!
I assumed this meant I had some kind of setting wrong, and I valiantly tried to fiddle with the “knob” and “lever” of the control unit to get something to happen, but no verb seemed to have an effect.
They were apparently entirely red herrings; by complete random chance, usually turning on the switch causes the frying to happen, but sometimes it works:
Click.
There is a loud >SNAAAAP!< as the units come to life!
A large electric arc surges quickly down the two cables, striking the doorframe with a sizzling shower of sparks! An unstable image begins to form where once there was a wall. The snowy image slowly stabilizes to reveal a north wall portal into a rectangle of bleak whiteness.
This is even worse than many other instance where I’ve had to repeat an action hoping for random luck (like being told 13 times in a row a particular exit was sealed off before it worked) because the frying cables means the game is lost. The only reason I solved this was I was testing a save game where I didn’t remember the exact setup so I tested “pull switch” and lucked out into the portal opening.
As you cross the threshold, you feel momentarily disoriented.
Plain White Room.
You are in a plain, white room. It is of medium size, has four barren walls, four equally barren corners, a bland floor and a rather boring ceiling.I can see the following:
Square Peg
The disorientation means any items you are carrying vanish (except the Round Peg, an item from the very first room of the game; however, that will vanish when entering the next room, and seems to be yet another red herring). Not only that, but the score resets to a new special “endgame” score, just like mainframe Zork.
Your endgame score after 2 commands (2 hours and 47 minutes of playing) would be 0 out of a possible 100.
If you get any points, I won’t bother you with insults anymore.
After some fiddling around with the pegs and no progress, I thought maybe this game was going the Adventure 550 route by requiring some magic words. I tested all of them I had seen so far.
>SAY “LHASA LHASA LAMA”
You hear a pin drop.
Spinning around, you see the Oracle. He speaks:“Sorry I’m late. Tonight’s the Warpmaster’s bowling night. He wanted me to ask you a few questions, though, to see if you have reached true enlightenment, as have I. Heh heh. Now, uh, let’s see … I have some notes here …”
The Oracle figets around a bit, then continues:
“First question. Where was the dent in the Chevy made? You should respond by typing ANSWER “”.”
Again, just like mainframe Zork: the endgame there had a trivia quiz with the Dungeonmaster. I had a little trouble with the second question (“In what kind of tree does the koala bear make its home?”) simply because the tree is described as a Redwood Tree but somehow the room on top is a Eucalyptus View, so it’s a eucalyptus tree on top of a redwood tree, I guess?
After answering the last question:
“What is the airspeed of a coconut-laden … oops, wrong script. Snoitalutargnoc! Well done! You seem to have correctly answered everything! Before I leave, a hint of advice: To get here in the future, simply incant “fohmnqhmpc” and you will avoid the pitfalls of the mortal world!”
The Oracle waves his arms once, and a hole appears in the center of the floor. He quickly searches about for unregistered items, and then, with another wave, disappears.
The special incant command lets you just straight to the endgame from anywhere in the game, without a saved game file. This turns out to be a very bad idea (I’ll explain why shortly).
Jumping into the hole reveals yet another Zork tribute/ripoff:
This is the “Royal Puzzle” which also made its way into Zork III; if you move in the direction of a sandstone “block” you can push it around. This is essentially Sokoban rules where you can push a block but can’t pull it.
“H” is where you start and has a hole in the ceiling. The yellow “S” has a Card item (a credit card) under it. The orange “S” has a ladder attached to the east and the blue “S” has a ladder attached to the west. To get out you need to bring the blue “S” block all the way to the spot immediately to the east of the hole.
This results in a *very long* sequence of moves, and it was here that I discovered that saving is disabled in the endgame.
This is why the secret incantation word is a bad idea. It’s possible to mitigate the saving problem by creating macros (it’s been ages since I mentioned it, but this game lets you create macros). So I was able to enter a macro like
>DEFINE END6
=N.S.S.S.W.S.W.W.W.S.S.E.E.E.W.N.W.N.N.N.W.S.S.S.W.S.E.E.E.
and set things up to the point where I could type END1 through END10 to quickly zip all the way through the trivia section and the Sokoban. As long as I made these macros immediately before entering the endgame, I was able to save my game and keep the macros.
The section after the maze is quite deadly and I still don’t know how to get through it.
Globe Room.
You find yourself in a round, cup-shaped room. In the center of the room you see a man-sized hole in the floor, while to the east there is a cylindrical corridor leading slightly upward through the rock. On the floor, at roughly 45 degree intervals around the perimeter of the room, you note what appear to be small arrows chiseled into the rock, pointing outward from the center of the room.I can see the following:
Square Peg
The Square Peg for some reason vanishes after the Oracle’s trivia quiz but returns again here. There’s some extra rooms leading through a Corridor of Vines which all have a Tiny Hook I have not been able to apply any verb to; at the end there’s a section with tiles:
Corridor of Vines.
The corridor walls here are built of expertly cut stones, fitted together. Many jungle vines have twisted and twined their way along the length of the corridor and found their way into the cracks and crevices of the walls. A small hook is recessed into the ceiling, perhaps once a hanger for a trellis. The corridor here splits into five openings that lead between pillars cut from stone. The center opening is circular and the same size as the corridor you are in, it leads east. The other passages are to the north, northeast, southeast, and south.I can see the following:
Tiny Hook>NE
Hall of Idols.
You are in an expansive room with an elaborately tiled floor. The north and south walls are lined with hundreds of small, stone indian idols, their eyes menacingly turned toward the center of the room. The tiles are very carefully placed in five east-west rows, with each row containing six tiles. The east end of the room opens through six large pillars into yet another chamber. The west end opens through similar pillars into a forboding corridor.I can see the following:
Tiles
The tile below your feet reads II.
The text description is slightly clunky, but here’s a map.
Stepping on the wrong tile is absolutely deadly. There’s not really a great way to work out the pattern other than trial and error (and remember, no saving in the endgame!) Specifically, when going to the east only the even tiles are safe…
…and when going back west (after getting a scepter) only the prime number tiles are safe.
There’s a rolling ball that appears, Indiana Jones style, but since you can either move fast enough that it stays behind you or wait for it to pass I’m not worried about it; what I can’t figure out is that after making the trek mentioned above, there’s a newly-formed pit in the Corridor of Vines:
You move ahead and find that the floor has opened to reveal a gaping pit that devours the entire floor from wall to wall. As you fall you can’t help but wonder where the bottom is …
You sense yourself leaving your physical body —
If I still had the rope from the main game I might be able to set something up with the hook in that room, but the inventory from the main game really does seem to be closed off. I’ve tried various permutations of RUN and JUMP without luck. I’ve tried different tile-stepping routes in the hopes of avoiding a particular number or always stepping on all the numbers will work. I’ve tried all sorts of silly things with the scepter
The scepter is so strikingly awesome in its splender that it really defies description. Suffice it to say that it is key-shaped.
but I’m guessing it just doesn’t get used until later.
Oh, and I’m only at 20 out of 100 endgame points. This game is going for broke.
Renga in Blue 
Well, congratulations, not many people get that far! Remember what they told us about the endgame:
THE ENDGAME IS FINALLY COMPLETE! – And, hopefully, free of bugs. Send your complaints and tales of woe to the authors as you see fit. But be warned: clues in the endgame are next to non-existent, and the puzzles are designed to be at times misleading and extremely frustrating. Patience and perseverance are more necessities than virtues.
I did find some bugs when I first completed the endgame (some crashes), but was able to work around them.
Really not sure what causes your cables to get zapped. I just tried a few times, and it always seems to work fine. Maybe a bug, or maybe if you don’t follow the instructions exactly… but we have seen strange things like this elsewhere, e.g. starting the boat engine.
I can provide more hints if desired… but basically, pay careful attention to the Oracle…
Was there any indication that cutting the rope would let it pass through the portal, or is it just one of those nutty Warp things?
Also, I’ll take you up on a hint offer for the Montezuma maze. (Or “maze” I guess? Thinking I might just need to say the right thing or do a weird action.)
mainly a comment for Roger, eventually I will post with another update:
I poked in Russell Karlberg’s old walkthrough file, which doesn’t have any details about the endgame, but he had an offhand comment about a short rope that let me figure out the next parts.
Normally the rope goes poof if you bring it through the portal, but if you CUT ROPE (holding the scalpel) you get a long and a short piece, and the short piece *does* get through the portal OK for some crazy reason.
Additionally, you need to >REGISTER ROPE in order to keep it after the trivia quiz (the Oracle is mentioned “looking for unregistered objects” which is supposed to be the hint on that). You lose it during the Royal maze but get it back for the corridor of vines section.
Mmm…
“But be warned: clues in the endgame are next to non-existent, and the puzzles are designed to be at times misleading and extremely frustrating. Patience and perseverance are more necessities than virtues. ”
This triggers the discussion of when a game stops being interesting or entertaining or fun. Would Jason still be playing it if he had not the objective of completing them all?
Congrats, BTW, awesome work.
Interesting thought. I think I would have stopped at getting all the treasures if I didn’t have Roger playing along.
When you start to get to the really unreasonable stuff, you’re a bit reliant on someone hitting upon the right action somewhat arbitrarily, so a group helps. (The endgame of Adventure *is* pretty terrible, but if you run 10 people through it’s more likely one of them might try BLAST as a verb.) Having said all that, though, the short rope thing I mentioned in the comment above is the first bit of the Warp endgame I found to be very arbitrary. (The tiles were kind of random, but the evilness had to do more with no-saved-game than it did with actually figuring out the pattern.)
I have incidentally found you can put macro commands in macro commands, so while a particular macro has a limit to the number of commands I can put in, I can have macros-in-macros enough to zip to my current point of progress with one command.
On my map Jason I have the ladder in the se corner (blue) against the east wall and the ladder to the west (orange) against the west wall.
Interestingly enough, my incantation to go straight to the endgame is “iqexecfgbck.” Less interestingly, when I take the card and backtrack E the game crashes with “NOUN ENTRY UNKNOWN” when I try to push the Block West towards the hole.
Do you have a set of directions from the card to pushing the ladder to the east of the hole? Failing that I may have to restart from the Shoppe as I don’t seem to be able to move the Sandstone blocks after picking the card up without an error message appearing.
Here’s my full list of steps, after going DOWN into the hole from the trivia room.
E.N.N.W.N.N.W.W.W.GET CARD.E.S.E.E.E.E.E.N.E.E.S.S.S.W.N.N.W.N.E.S.W.W.W.S.S.S.
S.S.E.E.E.N.N.N.N.N.S.S.S.S.W.S.W.S.S.E.E.N.N.N.N.N.
N.S.S.S.W.S.W.W.W.S.S.E.E.E.W.N.W.N.N.N.W.S.S.S.W.S.E.E.E.
N.W.W.W.W.N.N.N.N.N.N.E.N.W.S.S.W.W.S.S.S.S.S.S.N.N.N.N.N.
N.E.E.S.S.S.S.S.W.E.N.N.N.N.N.W.W.S.S.S.S.S.E.E.N.N.N.N.N.
N.E.E.E.E.E.S.E.E.N.W.W.W.W.W.W.N.W.S.S.S.S.S.S.N.N.N.N.W.
W.S.S.S.S.S.E.E.E.E.S.E.N.N.N.W.N.
This puts you right under the hole with the ladder positioned for escape.
Hmmm….looks like I’ll have to restart the whole shebang and then reload a late saved game. I find that if I have not restarted for more than about 10 saves the game starts going screwy viz. my inability to pick up the carpet even though I am carrying and wearing nothing and the NOUN error messages. Thanks and I’ll give it a go.
I’m keeping a side text file of my “walkthrough” even though I have it saved to macros; I’ve already had to edit it once to add something in. So in a weird way you don’t have to worry about saved games being glitchy anymore soon, since you can’t use them anyway?
There is a limit to the number of commands that can go in a macro without the rest getting cut off (I think the first line of my maze steps hits the max).
OK after a console shutdown I have had my german bands on the sacred sceptre of Praw and unfortunately died thereafter. Your idea of a zipped macro containing multiple macros was an excellent one as I don’t think I could have countenanced retyping every time.
One odd thing I have discovered; if you travel eastwards a second time across the floor of tiles you can cross using the prime number format as opposed to the evn numvered ones necessary on your first trip. Returing from the west the second time also still uses the prime number sequence. If you do travel twice each way I have noticed that your score goes up to 30.
Incidentally I have made no sighting of the ball that you were describing. I wonder if you can somehow direct it into the hole next to the pedestal? It is clear that taking the scepter from the pedestal triggers the pit to appear in the Corridor of Vines.
I hope I am wrong Jason, but I have criss crossed the floor of tiles twenty times and now have a score of 100 points out of 100. The score increments by 5 points after each return journey. There must be more to it than this valedictory message:
SCORE
Your endgame score after 470 commands (20 hours and 21 minutes of playing)
would be 100 out of a possible 100.
>>>>> WON COMPLETELY! <<<<<
Russ have you come across this before?
HA, that’s amazing. I’m also guessing a bug, but I might go for it if I can’t get by the Montezuma maze.
I think it must be a bug. I now have 105 points out of 100! Even in the World of Warp that’s pretty surreal stuff. I wonder if the metal clip on the end of the rope is relevant? I still haven’t seen that ball yet anywhere.
Just to be clear on my sequence now, I:
tie the short rope to the hook where the pit appears (it’s in the corridor of vines just northwest of the room next to the tiles)
cross the tile room
drop the square peg in the hole
grab the scepter
cross the tile room west and go down the corridor of vines without stopping; putting the rope up beforehand lets me get over the pit
when you arrive at the Globe Room, new exits have opened, but taking any one of them gets to Montezuma’s Revenge If you stall a moment the rolling rock kills you.
If you try to use the round peg instead of the square peg in the hole next to the scepter, there’s no rolling rock, but the game crashes when attempting to enter Montezuma.
If you haven’t got the short rope yet,
orsber gur raqtnzr, phg gur ebcr jvgu n xavsr be fpnycry, vg jvyy orpbzr gjb cvrprf, bar bs gurz n “fubeg ebcr”
gur fubeg ebcr lbh pna gnxr vagb gur cbegny
znxr fher lbh ertvfgre vg fb gung vg jvyy fubj hc nsgre gur fnaqfgbar znmr
I have the short rope but no round peg. I gave it to the Oracle as the ebony cube some time ago.
Given my only result has been a new way of crashing the game, I don’t think it’s a concern.
Have you tried swapping the pegs around i.e. round peg in pedestal hole?
Just tested it — round peg in pedestal hole + square peg in round has regular effect
squrae peg in pedestal + round peg in round has the crash
also, you don’t have to do a complete criss cross to get the extra points, just the act of entering the scepter room does it.
Just SW.NE over and over from the scepter room will do the trick
It is interesting that your old belongings seem to reappear when entering Montezuma’s revenge. Just going down twice has reacquainted me with the package, shiny quarter and absolutely nothing
Also odd is that if you take and drop the Patagonian Vase in MR it shatters into worthless shards (“Could be the work of the Postal Service.”) It of course never did that above ground. I wonder if the idea is to collect all of the objects you come across? It certainly doesn’t seem to be a conventional maze as you never reach part of the periphery in any direction.
You don’t have the inventory capacity to get everything, although maybe with enough persistence you could get all the objects in one place. (You may have already notice objects move around randomly.)
I did try registering every single item, but nothing happened.
Yes that was my idea; a kind of Bonfire of the Vanities. I may try it tomorrow but I am not expecting some Deus Ex Machina result.
I don’t remember much about Montezuma’s Revenge… but playing in God mode it seems that moving in any direction keeps you in the same room, location 414. I also noticed you can find a list of counters in the warpdat file: Spider bite count, Montezuma’s Revenge, Stone ball position, Cannon hits on boat, Suffocation count, Time spent on mountain, Time spent in desert, Position in Rug Route, Bullets Remaining, Time since Mail Sent, Poisoned Time Lamp Usage, Tide, Times Dug, Time with Mugger, Time at Bus Stop, Shark Delay, Sphere Glow – so it’s keeping track of something there, maybe number of moves for those messages, which seems to indicate that indeed it’s not a maze to map. I’ll take another look and see if I can remember.
I never found extra points; finished the game with the 100 out of 100.
Good to confirm I don’t have to try some sadistic mapping exercise. (It does keep track of how you’ve clumped objects together, so I wasn’t 100% sure.)
A few useful things from god mode:
74 Add 14 Again 21 Alter 42 Altname 70 Always
40 Answer 16 Ask 26 B 26 Back 26 Backtrack
26 Backward 26 Backwards 22 Brief 33 Bugs 38 Call
66 Can’t 21 Ch 21 Change 32 Clear 33 Comment
59 Could 63 Couldn’t 77 Counter 17 Create 11 Dammit
11 Damn 7 Debug 75 Dec 17 Declare 17 Define
19 Delete 1 Diagnose 38 Dial 31 Dict 31 Dictionary
53 Did 58 Didn’t 3 Die 37 Dig 15 Disable
34 Disembark 13 Do 54 Does 56 Doesn’t 20 Echo
27 Enable 3 End 35 Esrever 13 Execute 3 Exit
28 Fee 28 Fie 28 Foe 28 Foo 21 Force
11 Fuck 28 Fum 29 Goto 33 Gripe 64 Have
65 Haven’t 1 Health 11 Hell 2 Help 69 Holidays
68 Hours 51 How 12 I 74 Inc 16 Incant
12 Inventory 67 Is 57 Isn’t 5 Keep 41 Keyword
9 L 34 Leave 18 List 78 Listen 76 Load
16 Mumble 71 Never 79 No 10 O 10 Oops
10 Opps 43 Pitroom 27 Plover 27 Plugh 4 Points
39 Pray 3 Quit 14 R 81 Redo 14 Repeat
40 Reply 8 Restart 6 Restore 6 Resume 26 Return
5 Save 16 Say 23 Sb 4 Score 21 Set
30 Setholiday 45 Sethours 11 Shit 18 Show 72 Status
73 Stop 75 Subtract 23 Super 23 Superb 23 Superbrief
44 Tell 27 Temple 3 Terminate 27 Ulysses 24 V
24 Vb 24 Verbose 36 Wait 25 Weight 61 Were
62 Weren’t 47 What 48 When 49 Where 52 Which
46 Who 50 Why 60 Will 55 Won’t 25 Wt
27 Xyzzy 27 Y2 80 Yes
18 Affix 18 Attach 10 Attack 32 Bite 29 Board
49 Break 14 Burn 21 Check 33 Chew 34 Chomp
5 Climb 7 Close 18 Connect 2 Cram 48 Crush
43 Cut 27 Depress 10 Destroy 37 Detach 36 Devour
37 Disconnect 42 Don 2 Dorp 13 Drink 2 Drop
31 Eat 11 Enter 10 Extinguish 18 Fasten 39 Fill
30 Find 27 Flip 22 Gaze 3 Get 4 Give
18 Glue 5 Go 3 Grab 50 Hit 1 Hoist
14 Ignite 21 Inspect 45 Jump 51 Kick 10 Kill
30 Kiss 45 Leap 54 Lick 14 Light 30 Locate
28 Lock 23 Look 20 Lower 35 Munch 10 Murder
6 Open 18 Paste 45 Peel 38 Pet 40 Play
29 Pour 27 Press 52 Punch 27 Push 2 Put
1 Raise 26 Read 47 Register 44 Remove 99 Report
46 Revolve 29 Ride 46 Rotate 38 Rub 5 Run
15 Save 58 Scribble 41 Shoot 24 Shut 13 Sit
25 Slam 43 Slice 30 Smooch 10 Snuff 29 Spill
46 Spin 45 Spring 10 Stab 44 Stand 23 Stare
3 Steal 16 Step 18 Stick 16 Stomp 15 Store
2 Stuff 55 Suck 17 Swim 3 Take 2 Throw
18 Tie 46 Turn 46 Twist 26 Unlock 37 Untie
5 Walk 5 Wander 53 Wave 42 Wear 57 Write
*STATUS
There are 138 specials
110 verbs
242 nouns
20 directions
107 adjectives
2 alls
4 buts
2 conjunctions
15 prepositions
4 articles
65 helps
28 plurals
15 words
40 synonyms
0 macros
51 debugs
2 terminators
for a total vocabulary of 845 words
*LIST LINKS
Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
N : Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
NE: Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
E : Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
SE: Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
S : Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
SW: Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
W : Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
NW: Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]
UP:
DN: Montazuma’s Revenge. [Room 414, locale 28]