Adventure Gamers - Forums

Karlok - 25 September 2021 09:04 AM

True. We should try to raise our blood pressure to the point of apoplexy. Just for fun.

Didn’t we do that already? I thought we did. Could have been just me, of course.

>w
Persecution Complex

You are in the Persecution Complex. It is a long brightly lit hall running east and west, with 3 TV screens on each side of the hall. The screens resemble the security monitors one might find at a guard’s station. There are TV screens to your right and left.

>x left screen
You look at this screen and see an image of the bank teller moving “NEXT WINDOW PLEASE” signs from window to window in the bank.

>x right screen
You look at this screen and see an image of the llama-food salesman walking around your neighbourhood practising making deliveries to the wrong address.

>

>w
Persecution Complex

You are in the Persecution Complex. It is a long brightly lit hall running east and west, with 3 TV screens on each side of the hall. The screens resemble the security monitors one might find at a guard’s station. There are TV screens to your right and left.

>x screen
Which screen do you mean, the left observation screen, the right observation screen, or your Boysenberry computer?

>left
You look at this screen and see a split-screen display. On the left side, there’s a very confused Russian gentleman standing next to his aeroplane in what looks to be a town near Baffin Bay; on the right, an American is wondering why he’s in Jakarta. They’re both supposed to be in Geneva, which is where their pilots’ computers claim they are.

>x right screen
You look at this screen and see an image of the waiter and waitress practising making customers go through complicated orders multiple times.

>w
Persecution Complex

You are in the Persecution Complex. It is a long brightly lit hall running east and west, with 3 TV screens on each side of the hall. The screens resemble the security monitors one might find at a guard’s station. There are TV screens to your right and left.

>x left screen
You look at this screen and see an image of a computer room with a dirty great mainframe and banks of those flashing lights they put in computer rooms so that people think “Gosh, how complicated computers are, and how amazingly clever the people who work them must be.”

The nerd is sitting at a terminal, hacking away. He looks about as happy as someone who has clearly never been out with girls can look. Above his head is a monitor screen, showing a really rather attractive individual looking at a monitor screen which shows a computer room with a dirty great mainframe…

>x right screen
You look at this screen and see an image of a stockbroker staring dumbfounded at his computer screen, on which you can just make out an order to sell Frobozzco as soon as its price drops five more points.

>w
Persecution Complex

You are in the Persecution Complex. It is a long brightly lit hall running east, with 3 TV screens on each side of the hall. The screens resemble the security monitors one might find at a guard’s station. There is an exit to the west.

There’s a modular plug here.

lakerz - 25 September 2021 01:25 AM

Does game specify how high blood pressure goes before you stroke out?  Sorry if I missed that detail.  Seems a tad bit unfair to have a puzzle that purposely ups said BP again and again without much reward until all of sudden it works.  That made me nervous

The manual only says that “An extremely high blood pressure can be fatal. If you think your blood pressure is getting dangerously high, you should probably do only “safe,” non-annoying activities until your blood pressure is normal again.”

The actual limit seems to be 230/130 though both values have to exceed their limits to be fatal. Funnily enough, the game also keeps track of if your blood pressure gets too low (you fall asleep, but no actual game time seems to pass?). I have no idea if that can even happen. There seems to be some condition for hanging up the phone when you’re calling the bank that will lower your blood pressure slightly, but I couldn’t reproduce it at a quick try, and I can’t see if that could actually lower your pressure below safe limits.

To open the door, apparently your systolic pressure (the higher of the two values, and yes, I had too look that up) has to be at least 140 to open the door so you’re not close to the lethal limit. By the way, the “score” command tells you what your status is based on the systolic pressure, but I don’t know if we’ve seen that during the playthrough. Other than “Defunct”, when you’re dead.

Karlok - 25 September 2021 09:41 PM

What happens if we exit west, is there more or does it take us back to the Airlock.

>w

>w
Air Shaft

This is a room where hot air is discharged, even barer than the airlock. It’s like being inside the President’s mind, except for the scrawled graffiti on the walls, one of which says, “This is the werst departure luonge what I ever seen”. The others are unreadable.

An exit leads up.

Karlok - 25 September 2021 09:41 PM

>x modular plug

Do we have anything in our inventory we can plug in? The computer does have a modular jack, I checked. And the swiss knife maybe?

>x modular plug
You can’t see anything interesting about the modular plug.

>plug knife into plug
You can’t plug the modular plug into the Swiss army knife.

>plug computer into plug
With an irritating little click (it used to be thrilling, but, quite frankly, you have really had enough of the damned Boysenberry by now) your portable computer lurches into action.

Boysenberry Terminal Emulator 5.21
All diagnostics completed
Press any key to boot…
[CONNECTION IN PROGRESS….]
[CONNECTED TO DVH2 NODE 0106. WAITING.]

(The input field says “ID:” and won’t let us continue until we input something.)

Luhr28 - 25 September 2021 10:06 PM

[CONNECTION IN PROGRESS….]
[CONNECTED TO DVH2 NODE 0106. WAITING.]

This is the part I mentioned early in the thread, where the game uses an empty loop to cause delays. That doesn’t work as the author expected if you use a modern Z-Machine interpreter, because today’s computers are just too darn fast.

For the original effect, imagine a one-second delay after each of these two lines.