[Loom sequel speculation]

42 minutes ago, s-island said:

The FM Towns version has the VGA graphics, but keeps the unabridged dialogue since it has not speech. It's an interesting middle ground.

 

With the caveat that I've only played it in ScummVM, not on real hardware, I don't like how that version handles music. It has two versions of each piece of music. First it plays one, then it loops the other (usually inferior) one it's time to play the next piece of music. It gets a bit grating, and it makes it harder to make out the notes of the drafts you have to learn.

 

There's also the TurboGrafx-16 version, which has graphics somewhere between the EGA and FM Towns version, but that one makes some inexplicable changes to the music as well. So all things considered, I still prefer the EGA version.

[They Just Couldn't Make It Easy: A guide to official SCUMM releases]

47 minutes ago, Udvarnoky said:

That's wild. I guess Lucasfilm was just that sloppy. It's probably an irrelevant point to them, since ScummVM forces the security door open in cracked or uncracked versions of the game (though that leaves the impact on the other combos?), and ScummVM is the official intepreter at this point.

 

Recent versions of ScummVM write back the original value into the script, so that should fix the bugs introduced by the crack. But I have to admit that I've never actually played through all of Maniac Mansion. And as far as I know, GOG (and probably Steam) is using an older version of ScummVM.

[They Just Couldn't Make It Easy: A guide to official SCUMM releases]

1 hour ago, Udvarnoky said:

I just ran the GOG version of enhanced Maniac Mansion through DOSBox (since an .exe is included) and you're right -- it's cracked to let any combination open the security door. This is my first awareness of an "official crack" of the enhanced version, unless Lucasfilm grabbed it off a random Warez site!

 

I don't have my copy of remastered Day of the Tentacle installed at the moment, so I don't know if the Maniac Mansion resource files have an executable tossed in or not, but it would be interesting to see if it was cracked in the same way.

 

Yes, the intention was probably to simply bypass the security door. (Which, as far as I can tell, LucasArts would instead do by ensuring that the door was open.) Unfortunately, the script for the security door keypad gets reused for other keypads in the game as well. Given how bad the crack is (if you just guess, you still have a one-in-ten chance of failure since you need to get the last digit wrong), I very much doubt LucasArts themselves made it.

 

The earliest reference I could find to the crack was in a file titled "PC Games Cheats & info List", that was "Updated 5 February 1996 ver 2.1". That's long after the game was released, so I have no doubt the crack is much older than that. It was described simply as:

 

Maniac Mansion

iii) crack
Removing doc check:
File: 43.lfl
00000B79: FE FF

 

If I compare the version I got from my old floppies, they're identical to the version embedded in the remastered Day of the Tentacle. The version I bought from GOG has this exact crack applied to 43.LFL. The 00.LFL file is also a bit different, but I don't know what that's all about. I haven't heard of it causing any harm.

 

So what does this crack do? Sorry for getting a bit technical, but if I run the script through the ScummVM "descumm" tool, this is what part of the uncracked script looks like:

 

[0066] (1A) Var[68] = 255;
[006A] (80) breakHere();
[006B] (08) unless (Var[68] != 255) goto 006A;
[0071] (88) if (Var[68] != Var[63]) {
[0076] (1A)   Var[67] = 1;
[007A] (**) }
[007A] (1A) Var[68] = 255;
[007E] (80) breakHere();
[007F] (08) unless (Var[68] != 255) goto 007E;
[0085] (88) if (Var[68] != Var[64]) {
[008A] (1A)   Var[67] = 1;
[008E] (**) }
[008E] (1A) Var[68] = 255;
[0092] (80) breakHere();
[0093] (08) unless (Var[68] != 255) goto 0092;
[0099] (88) if (Var[68] != Var[65]) {
[009E] (1A)   Var[67] = 1;
[00A2] (**) }
[00A2] (1A) Var[68] = 255;
[00A6] (80) breakHere();
[00A7] (08) unless (Var[68] != 255) goto 00A6;
[00AD] (88) if (Var[68] != Var[66]) {
[00B2] (1A)   Var[67] = 1;
[00B6] (**) }

 

I take this to mean that Var[68] is what you input. This is compared against Var[63], Var[64], Var[65] and Var[66], presumably the four correct digits. If you get any of them wrong, Var[67] is set to 1.

 

In the cracked version, the last bit has been changed to:

 

[00A2] (1A) Var[68] = 255;
[00A6] (80) breakHere();
[00A7] (08) unless (Var[68] != 255) goto 00A6;
[00AD] (88) if (Var[68] != Var[66]) {
[00B2] (1A)   Var[67] = 0;
[00B6] (**) }

 

I.e. Var[67] still gets set to 1 if you get any of the first three digits wrong, but if you get the last digit wrong it gets set to 0 instead of 1. But if you get any of the first three wrong, and then get the last one right, Var[67] remains 1.

 

[They Just Couldn't Make It Easy: A guide to official SCUMM releases]

To this, I would add that last time I checked the enhanced version of Maniac Mansion being sold on GOG (and Steam?) is cracked. (The original version is not.) In any (?) puzzle that involves a keypad (phone numbers, safe combinations, etc.) the game will accept any number as long as you either get it right, or you get the last digit is wrong. The culprit is a 1 byte change to 43.LFL. The oldest mention I ever found was in a list of game cracks and cheats dated February 1996, but surely it's been around a lot longer than that.

 

I've tried alerting both GOG and Disney to this, but the replies have been less than helpful. Which is maddening, because they obviously still have the original files: They can be extracted from the remastered version of Day of the Tentacle.

 

In the end, I changed ScummVM to detect and undo the crack. But damn it, I shouldn't have to!