4127: The Waiting
I temporarily don't remember my password for minzoku and have too many accounts to dig through to verify the passwords I wrote down [I want to organize them in a list, but it's a mess and--somehow--regularly inaccurate], so I'll leave this here:Snooper Troops is touted as fantastic Edutainment prior to the advent of Edutainment. What I remembered--and am currently reliving, thanks to emulation--was a fantastic wait.
The problem with a game created with limited memory and processing power is there's no way to make the game user-friendly. I'm having a tough time finding all the clues NOW, and I have the power of time-skip [5x and Maximum speed]. The problem is almost every clue is time-sensitive, which means waiting for a certain day to get it. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was ANY sort of indicator of time passing other than it telling what day it is ONLY on the loading screen when I go to a new location [but one of the many limitations of the game] or even an option to skip days. Making the problem worse [perhaps the reason for the slowness] is the lack of a prompt, where the player can indicate, "I'm done reading this," instead of having to wait because the time is built in to let the player write down what was said. Time-skip is great for cutting down the wait, but when there's a wrist-radio[!] message that Mr. X can ONLY be reached at XXX-XXXX on a certain day, the number usually goes by almost too fast to note what it was. No, I don't have something in between 1x and 5x, either.
Furthermore, since the clues never change, it's possible to beat the game on the very first day. While this makes it easier to gather the "primary" clues from the suspects, it means the hardest clues to gather are the "Mr. X" calls and Special Messages, as those require waiting for the wrist-radio bulletins, and those clues are always given in the same order, regardless of when one is collected. So if I start over at Week 1, the next Special Message will always be that the pump at the aquarium is very noisy [useless]. "Ah, but just keep playing from where you left off!" you say. Well, the problem is the ROM's broken, at least on my end, and I can't save without crashing the whole thing. So I pretty much sit and wait for messages... which is... very... very... VERY... TEDIOUS.
Another annoying quirk is only being allowed to ask any suspect one question per day. Or, for that matter, having to go to a pay phone[!] to make calls. Okay, sure, I realize what year it was made [1982], but surely there's a phone at the office! Even a non-traceable one, if that's the issue! Or a car that doesn't take five car lengths to stop despite being able to turn 180 degrees with no turning radius [exaggerating a little on the brakes, but it's still a ridiculous car if it can get totalled from hitting the curb at 2 mph].
Not to mention new "licence" numbers being assigned every few days [whatever good THAT does], and suspects not wanting to answer you if you happen to tell them the wrong license number 'cause you accidentally skipped over a wrist-radio message. And waiting in the car for the next day to call Mr. X but not even being able to tell when a whole day passed w/o any warning because at 5x speed that's somewhere between five and ten minutes [I think]. And if you accidentally type in the wrong alibi clue for a character, it dumps you out of the database and makes you start over, as if you have not entered any alibis for any characters.
Anyway, here is an HTML version of the first case, which is significantly improved over the actual game in as far as removing the WAIT. Arguably it removes the challenge, too, but when most of the challenge is finding that last alibi, and that last alibi is a Mr. X clue, FUCK THAT SHIT. It's also, I verified after finding the ROM, just as gratifying forcing the confession as it is doing it the "hard" way. [The ending is, literally, the two-screen forced confession, with "Press ENTER to read the confession again" because IT AUTO-SCROLLS.]
...well, okay, it's mildly better playing the game for the ending, because the webpage doesn't actually "submit" the accusation results--must be broken/lazy coding--but all you really get for a correct alibi clue is a "Nice work! X more suspects to go." [including 0, yes] Then there's a "Type a word that describes how it was done" and "Type a word that describes the motive" before the confession.
Want to point out that, in Case 2, apparently "X was seen with a new muffler system on his truck the day after the crime" is a reasonable excuse, because X couldn't POSSIBLY have hired someone else to fix it while the crime was being committed. Also, ruling out SEVEN of the MANY other people in town, of which only eight are *likely* suspects, automatically forces the guilty party to confess. Wow, if only real life worked that way! =p "You're the only one out of these eight *most likely* suspects who doesn't have a good alibi. You did it!" "OH NOES! I am caught! D= Yes, yes, it was me..." Uh... yeah.
Score: 1/1 Ruined Childhoods
I would've given it 2/2, but I don't know if my brother was as distraught over the ages of WAIT involved. Although, to be fair, it made me a mildly more patient person than I think I might've been otherwise. Also to be fair, I'm sure it'd be a fantastic game if remade using today's technology, including some on-screen indicator of the passage of time [early Nancy Drew adventures use a reasonable method with a pocketwatch built into the interface], as well as PROMPTS to allow extra time for writing down information OR skipping it completely. They could even introduce random elements to make it a different person each time, if so desired, and avoid sequence-breaking the ENTIRE GAME.
What else... I haven't been doing much but goofing off 'cause, as little as I do during the day, I'm so UNstimulated that drawing is something I need a distraction from =(
This week's daily sketch theme is "phoning it in" =p 'cause I'll have to if I'm going to get any work done AND go to a real job... -_- Oh, investments, take off! *channels the parts of Mitt Romney that makes huge money but not the parts that are a douchebag*
[I mean, shit. If I had anywhere near a stable income above a million, I'd be donating most of it. Often in the form of buying from web comic artists ^_^ though also just friends, too. The spendthrift rich are awesome people, but the miserly rich are horrible scrooges [as DuckTales tries to show, lawl].]
The problem with a game created with limited memory and processing power is there's no way to make the game user-friendly. I'm having a tough time finding all the clues NOW, and I have the power of time-skip [5x and Maximum speed]. The problem is almost every clue is time-sensitive, which means waiting for a certain day to get it. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was ANY sort of indicator of time passing other than it telling what day it is ONLY on the loading screen when I go to a new location [but one of the many limitations of the game] or even an option to skip days. Making the problem worse [perhaps the reason for the slowness] is the lack of a prompt, where the player can indicate, "I'm done reading this," instead of having to wait because the time is built in to let the player write down what was said. Time-skip is great for cutting down the wait, but when there's a wrist-radio[!] message that Mr. X can ONLY be reached at XXX-XXXX on a certain day, the number usually goes by almost too fast to note what it was. No, I don't have something in between 1x and 5x, either.
Furthermore, since the clues never change, it's possible to beat the game on the very first day. While this makes it easier to gather the "primary" clues from the suspects, it means the hardest clues to gather are the "Mr. X" calls and Special Messages, as those require waiting for the wrist-radio bulletins, and those clues are always given in the same order, regardless of when one is collected. So if I start over at Week 1, the next Special Message will always be that the pump at the aquarium is very noisy [useless]. "Ah, but just keep playing from where you left off!" you say. Well, the problem is the ROM's broken, at least on my end, and I can't save without crashing the whole thing. So I pretty much sit and wait for messages... which is... very... very... VERY... TEDIOUS.
Another annoying quirk is only being allowed to ask any suspect one question per day. Or, for that matter, having to go to a pay phone[!] to make calls. Okay, sure, I realize what year it was made [1982], but surely there's a phone at the office! Even a non-traceable one, if that's the issue! Or a car that doesn't take five car lengths to stop despite being able to turn 180 degrees with no turning radius [exaggerating a little on the brakes, but it's still a ridiculous car if it can get totalled from hitting the curb at 2 mph].
Not to mention new "licence" numbers being assigned every few days [whatever good THAT does], and suspects not wanting to answer you if you happen to tell them the wrong license number 'cause you accidentally skipped over a wrist-radio message. And waiting in the car for the next day to call Mr. X but not even being able to tell when a whole day passed w/o any warning because at 5x speed that's somewhere between five and ten minutes [I think]. And if you accidentally type in the wrong alibi clue for a character, it dumps you out of the database and makes you start over, as if you have not entered any alibis for any characters.
Anyway, here is an HTML version of the first case, which is significantly improved over the actual game in as far as removing the WAIT. Arguably it removes the challenge, too, but when most of the challenge is finding that last alibi, and that last alibi is a Mr. X clue, FUCK THAT SHIT. It's also, I verified after finding the ROM, just as gratifying forcing the confession as it is doing it the "hard" way. [The ending is, literally, the two-screen forced confession, with "Press ENTER to read the confession again" because IT AUTO-SCROLLS.]
...well, okay, it's mildly better playing the game for the ending, because the webpage doesn't actually "submit" the accusation results--must be broken/lazy coding--but all you really get for a correct alibi clue is a "Nice work! X more suspects to go." [including 0, yes] Then there's a "Type a word that describes how it was done" and "Type a word that describes the motive" before the confession.
Want to point out that, in Case 2, apparently "X was seen with a new muffler system on his truck the day after the crime" is a reasonable excuse, because X couldn't POSSIBLY have hired someone else to fix it while the crime was being committed. Also, ruling out SEVEN of the MANY other people in town, of which only eight are *likely* suspects, automatically forces the guilty party to confess. Wow, if only real life worked that way! =p "You're the only one out of these eight *most likely* suspects who doesn't have a good alibi. You did it!" "OH NOES! I am caught! D= Yes, yes, it was me..." Uh... yeah.
Score: 1/1 Ruined Childhoods
I would've given it 2/2, but I don't know if my brother was as distraught over the ages of WAIT involved. Although, to be fair, it made me a mildly more patient person than I think I might've been otherwise. Also to be fair, I'm sure it'd be a fantastic game if remade using today's technology, including some on-screen indicator of the passage of time [early Nancy Drew adventures use a reasonable method with a pocketwatch built into the interface], as well as PROMPTS to allow extra time for writing down information OR skipping it completely. They could even introduce random elements to make it a different person each time, if so desired, and avoid sequence-breaking the ENTIRE GAME.
What else... I haven't been doing much but goofing off 'cause, as little as I do during the day, I'm so UNstimulated that drawing is something I need a distraction from =(
This week's daily sketch theme is "phoning it in" =p 'cause I'll have to if I'm going to get any work done AND go to a real job... -_- Oh, investments, take off! *channels the parts of Mitt Romney that makes huge money but not the parts that are a douchebag*
[I mean, shit. If I had anywhere near a stable income above a million, I'd be donating most of it. Often in the form of buying from web comic artists ^_^ though also just friends, too. The spendthrift rich are awesome people, but the miserly rich are horrible scrooges [as DuckTales tries to show, lawl].]