I have reached a point where I started to think I was hitting at least one of the “broken moments”, and after doing some more research I ended up reading all the way through this thread discussing the issue.
There’s enough “open threads” to the game that it is a mystery what might be caused by broken source code and what might be caused by our inability to solve the last lingering puzzles. From that thread, someone hacked the game in order to get a “dark hooded figure on horseback” to appear (which seems to be bugged to never appear).
>EXAMINE FIGURE
You have looked upon the Dark Angel. This is the angel of death: to be more specific, your death. It has cost you your life to look upon it.
If you avoid the death, the horse will drop some manure that will be useful later. Without that item it drops a whole chain of puzzles from being solvable, and there’s one moment after (testing with hacking in the manure in one of the rooms) where the game just outright crashes.
I’ll try to report what remains in the game that I needed to and was able to solve (less than I thought!) followed by what maybe is happening with the broken parts.
Returning to parts that did work — I had quite thoroughly checked all cardinal directions on my map, but I hadn’t tried all permutations of GO or ENTER or the like that seemed logical, and I realized at a lake, I had neglected to SWIM.
Instead of going east into the purple mist (which teleports you to the castle, as shown) you can dive and find a “plug” at the bottom of the lake, but let’s save the plug for later and explore the castle:
On the outside portion there’s a garden that will be important later.
Soon after I hit one of the gnarliest, most extreme examples ever of the Parallel Universe Problem. (Condensed: imagine you go from A to C in an adventure, with no issues. You restore a saved game. You try going from A to C but you get stuck at B, which you didn’t get stuck at before. What was different? You’re in a parallel universe but it is non-obvious what changed. That’s the Parallel Universe Problem.) I cheerfully explored around castle Gargantuan, including visiting a portcullis…
To either side of the portcullis stand two huge and imposing statues, their arms raised and holding huge swords.
…and went in what I thought in was another direction, to explore even more of the map.
Lots of juicy things over here: an emerald in a fireplace…
…a zombie nearby a weird room with a purple sphere…
…a flamethrower which explodes when you try to use it…
…and a decently clever way out, where you spot the same purple mist that teleported you to the castle, and jump on down to what otherwise seems like doom.
Mid-exploration I was wanting to try bringing in a different object, so restored a saved game and went through the swimming process again and…
…got stopped by the statues. First of all, I didn’t even know by going south I was entering the portcullis, I somehow had assumed it was to the north (given there is no description of opening and the like, it was a puzzle I had earmarked to check out fairly soon). Second, I was utterly baffled why I got stopped on one run-through but not the other.
Fortunately, there’s not that many items in the game, and some more experimentation revealed I had the cloak with me and worn on my first trip through, which makes the statues let you through. So I had solved a puzzle without realizing I had solved a puzzle!
Returning to thwacking at various puzzles throughout the game, I found that back at the church where there’s a rope at the bell, you can CUT ROPE rather than ring the bell. The rope then works at a railing up higher, allowing you to steal a minute hand off the church clock (which is a treasure).
Not really stealing, remember. This all goes to the altar.
I was now truly stuck — including puzzles from last time — on the spider, the creature, and the geyser. I also now had a flamethrower, zombie, garden, and purple sphere all puzzling me. I also found if I dived into the lake I could find a plug which the game suggests you can pull but I had no way of doing so.
Roger Durrant suggested in comments I check out the “Crystal Grotto” some more. I ran across a completely undescribed “wall” while poking around:
There doesn’t seem to be any way to reveal by normal means there’s a special “wall” object; I just was prodding for secret passages and gave the noun a try, despite it being unmentioned.
The tap will cause boiling water to start flowing. This affects the geyser out past the Charon area, and lets you go on through to a sewer and a train line:
If you avoid reading the warning sign (which only applies if you’ve read it, like Wile E. Coyote) then you can find a platinum cup, which was visible earlier as being on top of the geyser, then escape entirely through the geyser hole itself.
So all that was handy, but I was still horribly stuck, and I finally got around to reading that entire thread I mentioned at the top of this post. There I found I was stuck exactly where everyone else was, namely:
a.) the flamethrower doesn’t seem to do anything useful; it seems like it ought to fry the spider but it doesn’t work (the thread indicates some way to fix it with the pen so at least it doesn’t blow up, but I never could find the right verb combo for that; since it doesn’t work anyway, I didn’t try too hard)
b.) there seems to be no purpose to picking up the critter (that prevents you from picking up the harp, sticks to you when you try to set it down, etc.)
c.) there seems to be no purpose to killing the vampire (the stake does nothing)
d.) there seems to be no way of pulling up the plug
From game hacking, we know pulling up the plug lets you enter Neptune’s realm, which has a trident which is a treasure, but also, importantly, lets you enter Elysian and bypass Charon. This lets you also keep the coin (assuming the route can even be taken).
The missing and buggy-to-obtain manure can be dropped at the garden, to then obtain a purple cube which the gardener gives you, which can be taken to the purple sphere to get the purple sphere, and then have the game crash when the zombie tries to follow you.
Some or all of this might eventually be fixable by hacking the game to its intended form, so I will leave this game off on an open question mark for now. I’ve touched all the treasures but I don’t feel like optimizing a “run” when the run is obviously incomplete. I will keep an eye out for updates (or the PET version of Catacombs miraculously being found, although that one has been sought after now for a long, long, time).
Let’s return back to 1982 for now, shall we? I’ve got a trio of short games up next in the hopper (one where we need to pull off an assassination in a hospital) followed by an investigation game for Apple II which starts with a dead hitman in a hotel room.
Renga in Blue 
If this game is fixed, will be more a forensic debug than a bug fixing, giving its age! It is very interesting that your post triggered an interest in this game to that point, congrats!
A pity that this isn’t an Apple ][ game. 4AM could probably debug and fix it before breakfast if he were interested.
A later game by Brian Cotton from Supersoft, namely Cornucopia does have a fixed version. It makes you wonder how the original commercial releases played. I believe there was also a bug in Witch Hunt involving the cauldron that made it unwinnable.
Most likely not at all. The game Asterix and the Magic Cauldron for the C64, for example, also had a game breaking bug. You need to collect seven cauldron pieces, but one is hidden under a wall. You either need a poke before starting the game or the cracked version, where the bug has been fixed. Since good crackers reverse engineered the code there was also a decent chance that such things would be fixed luckily, but this game might be too obscure.
So who is ready to finish Catacombs??? Since Jason is no stranger to hex editing, I will supply the fixes necessary here and he can share with those who want it. I only ask that this makes it over to the people at CASA. There is a total of 2 bytes that need to be changed to allow the game to work. My changes alter the code and data that is not stored in save files. So you should be able to continue with previous saves. However, if you are using save states, you will most likely need to alter those.
I have dug in and figured out where the problems lie. (well at least according to me!!) It turns out that this game uses a bit of randomness to allow certain things to happen or to get certain messages. Even though it isn’t true RNG, I am going to refer to it as such for simplicity. There is a counter that is always counting even when you are not giving it commands. It counts from 00-FF and starts over. The moment you hit [Enter] it uses this counter at that moment as it’s starting point. It does a bit of math with the RNG and then compares it to the desired value. The problem? The comparison it is using to evaluate the result is mathematically impossible to ever achieve. So I altered this compare to what I thought was intended.
What does this affect? These:
1. You can now pull the plug, but you can still fail as well.
2. The Angel of Death can now appear.
3. The horse can drop the manure. You may have to meet the horse more than once to get him to do his business.
Keep in mind none of those are guaranteed to happen on any one attempt, but they are all possible to achieve now. I have gotten all of them to happen. I found this while trying to understand how you can get different messages while pulling the plug. (the RNG number)
It stores data for each room in block that contains all messages/actions specific to that room. I went looking for the Angel of Death in the Catacombs rooms since Dorothy indicated that is where he should be. There were no messages for that in those rooms. Well it turns out that the RNG is at play here again and that Death can show up in several rooms in the Catacombs area. Therefore that is why Death was not tied to a certain room.
Hex edit to fix the RNG, change this:
F6 26 40 49 3A E3
to this:
F6 26 40 49 3A C3
The only issue left with is with the remove of the Web. In the message block, I could see where “Clear Web with Sword” gets the sword dissolved. The problem? The successful removal of the web is also “Clear Web with Sword”. This I consider impossible unless somehow the sword can be “altered”. I didn’t think that was likely. (especially after trying many things with water and the red substance) In looking at the various other objects in the game I thought that using the sword in the “success” message was most likely incorrect. So I altered it to be what I think is a fair and more appropriate substitute. I am not going to spoil it and tell you what it is. I have tested it, it works.
Hex edit to fix the Web problem, change this:
12 FF 01 40 57 F0 24 18
to this:
12 FF 01 40 57 F0 24 1C
Best of luck now that it can actually be completed!! You can respond here if you find that isn’t the case.
If you were wondering if Cornucopia suffers from the same RNG issue, it does. I confirmed it. I will supply the fix for that on one of Jason’s Cornucopia posts. I have not tested it, but I am guessing that with this change then Alex’s data alteration may not be needed. And I would also like to thank Alex and the others over at CASA for their efforts as that made this a lot easier to understand and accomplish.
Wow, awesome work! I’d definitely like a copy, as I stayed away from this one entirely due to hearing about it being unwinnable, so it will all be new to me. Will kind of make up for me spoiling Cornucopia for myself by trying to figure out what was going on there.
By the way, relevant to the game we just played through, is it possible you could take a look at the Apple II version of Zodiac Castle? I think there’s just one specific problem there, which Alex over at CASA made some small manual edit to get past, but having a properly fixed version would be much nicer. The North Star stuff is a real grind to play through…
One other thing I just thought of: There’s a previously lost game which I supplied to Jason and he’ll be covering eventually when he gets to his loop-back list. Unfortunately, this and another related one I sent him can’t be distributed publicly at this time for various reasons, but I’d be happy to send them along to you privately. The main reason being that, while I was able to eventually work my way through it and win the game, there’s what I believe to be a bug preventing one specific thing from happening that creates a puzzle necessary to achieving the maximum score, which is kind of the main goal of the game to begin with. I can give full details when I send them along, if you have the time and are interested.
@Rob I don’t mind helping trying to find a bug. I just don’t want to have to play from the beginning if it is going to take me a while to get to the place with the issue. The Apple version being in WOZ format may create additional challenges in creating a fixed version. I haven’t altered a WOZ before. It could work, but if it is doing a checksum or something similar for disk protection, things become more challenging.
Ah, just saw your reply here. Well, you can take a look at the Zodiac Castle page on CASA and see what you think,if you’re interested. Alex mentions the exact issue and workaround he used in the comments section, and he has a full walkthrough as well (didn’t look at it to avoid spoilers, but it probably mentions the manual edit he did as well.) He may have posted more about it on the forums as well like he did with Cornucopia, so there may be enough information out there to work with. I see what you’re saying about the WOZ format, though.
As far as the lost game I mentioned, I could provide a full walkthrough (and the game is winnable anyway despite this one issue), but the problem there is more unusual. There’s a timer running through the whole game, and after a certain amount of turns it changes conditions to create a new puzzle. I have good evidence this is supposed to happen twice, but the second one doesn’t ever trigger, no matter how many turns you take. This makes getting the full score impossible as it eliminates an optional puzzle. I believe this is an issue with it being a relatively early version of the game that was preserved.
Anyway, no worries here. I just mentioned this stuff in case you’re interested. I know some guys (like Alex, I would take it) are more interested in puzzling out how to decrypt these things than in playing through them “straight”, taking it as sort of a form of puzzle-solving via coding.
Awesome! Have used a decompiler like Gidra? Or have you just studied the assembler code? :-O
While I understand assembler, I would never just study the code unless there was no other choice. I would have been looking at it for months in this case as it is modularized for reuse and makes dynamic address calls. While I know what Ghidra is, I have never used it. But I was using something very similar: MAME in debug mode.
I guess that answers my question about the other games I mentioned. It would be far too time consuming, I guess. Thanks again for your great work here, in any case! I look forward to taking a crack at Catacombs.
Ok, I went ahead and did the edits via HxD (quite easy to use!), and both seem to run fine on initial inspection via Dosbox-X. Here’s a link with both of the fixed games included:
https://limewire.com/?referrer=pq7i8xx7p2
I’ll be starting Catacombs fresh at some point and don’t want spoilers, so it will probably be up to Roger or Jason to test the fixes. Cornucopia however I can do a run-through on at some point to see if it resolved the issue. Thanks again, Lanhawk!
Well, I did a run-through of the newly fixed version of Cornucopia, and here’s the report:
If you’ll recall, there’s a room with a snake and the sapphire rod. Before, the snake’s strike always missed and you could just kill it with the rune sword and take the rod. Now, after the fix, the snake’s strike always seems to to hit, and you die before you can do anything. The upshot of this is that you now can’t get the rod. I’m not sure if this was as originally intended and there’s some puzzle to solve in order to be able to enter this room, or if messing with the RNG has ended up breaking this section somehow.
Avoiding that room and continuing onward, you eventually end up manipulating things from afar to open the portcullis that should allow you to enter the room with the safe in it. This is where the original movement bug struck, as the game then wouldn’t allow you to move South as required. After following all the usual steps and making it to the designated room, I can unfortunately report that the bug still exists, and the necessary movement to the South remains impossible. So, the source of this problem must be unique and unrelated to the RNG issue.
Hopefully the Catacombs fixes will prove more effective, as it sounds like Lanhawk was able to personally test and confirm those.
In the original version of Catacombs, as far as I can remember you could definitely destroy the spider’s web with the flamethrower, the plug in the sea worked and the chaining puzzle with the horse sh1t worked as well. The bugs in the the later DOS version are mostly (if not all) absent in Cotton’s original game. Why these things aren’t play tested before they are released is a broad question.
I try to be careful judging too much on bugs where it could easily be generated in just disk transfer or other things having nothing to do with the original author (like Sato adventure clearly just had bad bytes, or The Desecration likely having issues from the copy protection crack) but because this is the same error across both games I can’t imagine it anything other than being sloppy in the port.
Yes I wouldn’t blame Brian Cotton for the DOS sins of his converted games.
Oops, that download link didn’t work for some reason. This one should:
https://easyupload.io/47xbaf
I couldn’t resist starting this one, despite juggling multiple games right now, and although I’ve thankfully avoided any spoilers so far, I obviously knew what these specific issues were due to Lanhawk’s comment. Anyway, through the natural course of gameplay, I’m happy to confirm that I’ve been able to get the manure and pull the plug in the lake, sending me down into Neptune’s Lair and back out again. I’ll report back again when I reach the spot of the other issue, and if I’m able to complete the game, although my available play time is limited, so it might take a while.
Interesting to note that this game also includes the odd TAKE ALL command that we discussed a bit when going through Cornucopia. That would seem to strongly indicate that it was indeed just a “quality of life” upgrade which was most likely included in all of these Classic Quests ports, rather than ever being intended as some integral part of the original games. The potential spolier issues it can cause were thus a bug, not a feature, as one could say about several things in these versions…
Just double checking–do you mean EXAMINE ALL rather than TAKE ALL? I think that was the unusual one.
Yeah sorry, I meant EXAMINE ALL. It’s especially weird to have shoehorned it into Catacombs, as the original was a 16k game written near the very dawn of British home computer adventures, and clearly had no greater ambition than to be a cryptic old-school treasure hunt. In all honesty, TAKE ALL is nearly as bad at revealing too much in this context, though. Brute-forcing some of these mid ’80s Infocom-inspired upgrades into a bunch of old PET games without thinking through the larger gameplay implications probably wasn’t the greatest idea, in hindsight.
As long as I’m here, I’ll just mention that I’ve made it to the web that seems to be the other problem area. If I can get through that, I’ll assume it will be smooth sailing to the end, at least from a bug standpoint. I’ll report back when I have more time to play.
Oh, great – thanks! It is so nice to see this game finally being solveable :)
I have found it a few years ago – and asked experts at CASA for help after I got stuck.
Well, it seems there may still be some problems here, or perhaps some new ones have been created. This is all in Castle Gargantuan:
1 – In the Northwest tower, it describes a small, dark passage leading North, but it won’t allow me to go that way, or any other way, except to exit the room where I came from.
2 – Even after being cleaned, the flamethrower always explodes. Perhaps there’s just some additional puzzle to solve here, but this strikes me as odd.
3 – Most seriously of all, when I get the zombie to follow me, and try to exit the sloping passage, I get this message, and then am forced to hit space to quit the game: Internal Error # 50 08
Maybe the first two problems are a regular part of the game, or were already outstanding issues, but this last one seems like something new that might have been broken somehow by the fix. I’m basically in the dark here, as I’ve assiduously avoided spoilers, so if someone in the know (Jason, Roger, Lanhawk) could chime in, it would be helpful. I’m not sure if I can even test out the apparent bug with the web with these other issues cropping up.
yes, something seems to be majorly bugged out with the zombie, it happens in the original build too
Based on what people said in the thread there’s a way to fix the flamethrower for real but I never figured it out (I had the same issue as you), maybe Roger knows?
Ha, I was writing my second comment when you posted this. Thanks for confirming those things. I’m still majorly confused as to how you can get the full 250 with the whole zombie puzzle ruined, as it seems it must have led to something. Even if something else was changed in order to make the web passable, that just doesn’t seem to make sense, scoring-wise…
And of course, just after I wrote this, I happened to check over at CASA, and while still squinting my eyes and trying to avoid spoilers, I see that Alistair (who apparently was part of the initial effort to fix the game with Alex, and had decrypted all the game text) just posted this a few days ago:
“With the second change I have managed to score 250 out of 250, my thanks to LanHawk. However the mystery of the purple sphere remains, having gone to all the trouble in getting the sphere there appears to be no use for the thing. Also the zombie bug remains, the zombie can be dealt with before the bug appears but what if the reason for collecting the sphere is to get the zombie to follow you and have the zombie deal with the web or some other problem? Many questions remain and unless a bug free version appears the answers may remain elusive.”
So apparently the zombie bug was already there. I’m not sure what he means by it being dealt with beforehand, or the sphere being useless. It seems apparent that the chaining puzzle here is ultimately to have it follow you and deal with another problem, so I’m not sure how this can all work out with you still being able to get the max score, even if something else was changed in the fix to deal with the web issue. Very confusing….
In any case, I’d like to keep playing, since apparently it can be completed now in some fashion, so if anyone can answer this, spoiler-free, I would appreciate it: Should I just ignore the three issues I mentioned above and go along on my merry way, or do any of them still involve some puzzle(s) that need to be solved?
Rob, Alastair here, you can do something to the zombie that will stop it from following you and thus the game ending bug does not occur. You have to take this action after you have collected the sphere but before trying to move past the zombie. As for my comment on having the zombie following you, I don’t know if it is supposed to follow you, I’m just trying to think of a reason why there is such a convoluted puzzle to get the sphere when there doesn’t seem to be any use for the thing.
Re. the Northwest tower room description stating a passage to the north, I think that is just a typo (it has nothing to do with the bug fixes).
@Alastair, thanks for providing the text messages from the game!! Those were very helpful.
@Rob, the short answer: go on your merry way and ignore the 3 issues.
If you want more details and slightly spoilery info about the items and the intent. Keep reading….
To address the questions/points you made above and to give my 2 cents as to what I think is supposed to happen.
Alastair gave you #1. (I don’t recall anything myself about this as I wasn’t really “playing”.) #2 There is at least one case where it doesn’t explode. I don’t know if there should be more or not for sure. But I don’t think so given what resides in the game currently. #3 You now know that this is the one program breaking bug in the game. I had forgot about this and didn’t try to see if there was anything I can do to fix it, but I may take a look to see.
What is supposed to be done with the purple sphere? Absolutely nothing that I can tell and as Alastair alluded to. It isn’t worth any points and is not used to solve anything I am aware of currently. What does it get you? A buddy. In particular the Zombie. He considers it his and is supposed to follow you when you leave with it. (program bomb) He will also take it back if the opportunity presents itself. Sadly, this part is broke for now.
This game is broke/incomplete to the original and can’t be made completely whole. We only have Roger’s recollection of the game to go on at this point. Roger recalled that the flamethrower was used to destroy the web. (I knew this after I put in my substitution, otherwise I would have chosen differently.) But want we don’t know currently is how it was used to remove the web. If you are supposed to activate the flamethrower and use the flames, this part was definitely not accounted for in the game code. (I tried.)
@Roger do you recall if you activated the flamethrower with the button to destroy the web in the original?? Or any other specifics around this?
Thanks for all the additional info, guys. I’ll avoid reading it in full until I’ve finished the game.
It took longer than it should, but I have the Catacombs patch needed to fix the Zombie attempting to follow you which crashes with: Internal Error # 50 08
Hex edit to fix the Zombie crash, change this:
08 05 35 50
to this:
08 05 35 4A
You may or may not be thankful it is fixed. Good luck!!
I forgot to add that this is another “code” change, not save game data. So you should be able to patch and continue with previous saves if desired.
Nice! Given these have been single hex tweaks this feels like a file corruption rather than an original bug.
Thanks LanHawk. I now have the zombie following me, though for what use eludes me. The question still remains, is the sphere meant to solve another puzzle and the zombie hinders your use of the sphere or does the zombie solve a problem and you have to lead him there?
(I will point out that so far the only place where I have managed to stop the zombie from following me is in the place I alluded to above. Carrying out the same action in a different location does not work. This may mean that the sphere is meant to solve another puzzle somewhere ‘beyond the zombie’ and either the puzzle was never implemented or yet another bug stops the puzzle appearing.)
Yes, there are some pieces of this game that may never make complete sense. Alex did a good job of analyzing every room. From what I have seen, I do not think there are additional puzzles left to “activate”. If there were, I do not know what purpose they would serve. What is left are questions about which puzzles/items are red herrings and unnecessary or unused to complete the game.
I will put the rest below in ROT13 so as to not spoil anything for others who are working on completing the game. But the summary of it boils down to not having another working version of the game. Without that, we are left to take what we know and make educated guesses on what was intended.
Gur znva dhrfgvba gung qevirf jung vf n erq ureevat naq jung vf abg vf gur erzbiny bs gur jro. Jura hfvat gur fjbeq gb pyrne gur jro, gur zrffntr vaqvpngrf gung gur jro vf npvqvp naq qvffbyirf gur fjbeq. Sbyybjvat guvf pyhr, V qba’g guvax gur fbyhgvba bowrpg pna or znqr bs zrgny. Guvf jbhyq rkpyhqr gur synzrguebjre va zl bcvavba nf vg vf fheryl znqr bs zrgny. Pyrnevat gur jro fhpprffshyyl tvirf gur zrffntr gung gur jro fgvpxf gb gur {bowrpg} naq vf erzbirq. Guvf vf jul V pubfr gur jbbqra fgnxr nf gur ercynprzrag bowrpg. Vg vaibyirq fbyivat n chmmyr gb trg vg naq vg jnf abg znqr bs zrgny.
Nf lbh unir abgrq, gur synzrguebjre bayl jbexf va gur ebbz jurer lbh zrrg gur Mbzovr. V oryvrir guvf vf gur bayl vagraqrq checbfr bs gur synzrguebjre va guvf irefvba bs gur tnzr. Juvyr vf qbrf frrz yvxr gur synzrguebjre vf gur zber nccebcevngr vgrz gb erzbir gur jro, gur fbyhgvba zrffntr fheryl jbhyqa’g or gung gur jro fgvpxf gb gur synzrguebjre naq vf erzbirq. Juvpu vf jung vg jbhyq fnl vs lbh fhofgvghgr gur synzrguebjre bowrpg ahzore vafgrnq bs gur jbbqra fgnxr.
Juvpu oevat hf gb gur checyr fcurer naq vgf hfr. Pbhyq vg or gur vagraqrq bowrpg gb erzbir gur jro? Cbffvoyl. Vs fb, gura gur jbbqra fgnxr chmmyr vf gur erq ureevat naq cbvagyrff. Fb lbh ner yrsg jvgu n pubvpr. Rvgure gur checyr fcurer vf hfryrff, be gur jbbqra fgnxr vf hfryrff. Guvf vf bs pbhefr nffhzvat gung ab nqqvgvbany hfr vf qvfpbirerq sbe rvgure vgrz.
Yes, it may feel like that but I am fairly certain these were porting issues caused by human error. If it was file corruption, we would have gotten more “off the mark” values. These are just minor adjustments.
Take the RNG issue, here is the original assembler code (with hex values following) and the fix:
Original: cmp ah,bl [ F6 26 40 49 3A E3 ]
Fixed: cmp al,bl [ F6 26 40 49 3A C3 ]
The switch from “ah” to “al” is swapping the high byte of the register to the low byte.
With the “Internal Error” issue, I think that was someone doing decimal math and forgetting it needed to be hexadecimal.
Original: 08 05 35 50
Fixed: 08 05 35 4A
These are offsets that point to code to be executed. The Zombie action blocks also used offsets of 48 and 49. I think someone thought, oh yes, the next one to be used is one bigger than “49”. Which in decimal is “50” but in hexadecimal is “4A”.
The last one with fixing the “Web” I think was a something along the lines of cut and paste and forgetting to change the object. As the two lines with the sword and object xxx are very similar.
No matter how you slice it, it definitely wasn’t play tested fully.
It was back before I started having to shave when I played this through originally but I am fairly sure that you had to push the button on the flamethrower. This would have been the pre-DOS conversion of course but well done for having spent so much time on contriving a workable version. It’s a shame that the person behind the DOS conversion didn’t show the same level of assiduity.
I seem to recall that the DOS conversion of Witch Hunt used to be unwinnable as well; you couldn’t put all the recipe items into the cauldron at the end but this has now been fixed.