• Log In | Sign Up

  • News
  • Reviews
  • Top Games
  • Search
  • New Releases
  • Daily Deals
  • Forums

Adventure Gamers - Forums

Welcome to Adventure Gamers. Please Sign In or Join Now to post.

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Post Marker Legend:

  • New Topic New posts
  • Old Topic No new posts

Currently online

Support us, by purchasing through these affiliate links

   

Hidden Easter egg in Discworld!

Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

Hey guys! For those that are familiar with the old thread - I’ve decided to move the discussion and the collected information regarding the hidden Easter egg from the old forum to the new one so people can, you know, actually discuss things again. By the way, I “do” have some new info to bring! Tongue

Firstly to get people up-to-date (the original thread by the way - http://archive.adventuregamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28216&):

Back in 2005, forum member Akril found some unusual lines in DW1’s and DW2’s English.TXT files (a file that has all dialogue from the game listed in it). These lines being, for DW1, ”“I want to be the first person in a game to say #$%&*.”“ and for DW2, “I want to be the first person in a game to say f**k! What do you mean I’ve already said it? Alright then, I want to be the first person in a sequel to say f**k! Anyway, nobody wrote in and said they’d heard it in the first game, it must have been too well hidden!”

Akril then posted about this on a Discworld forum where none other but lead programmer Dave Johnston replied. This is what he had to say:

Yes the cheats are very well hidden Smile

Hi all,

To-date no-one (that I know of) has ever found either of the “Eric Idle says F*ck” cheats that I put into Discworld I & II.

There are matching sound-bytes for the text in both games (which would make great Windows sounds if extracted).

The speech file in Discworld 1 was not “bleeped” (and see what happened below). The F-word in Discworld 2 was bleeped out (to keep the publisher happy… see why below).

Here is the story I was told…

Someone’s PC crashed while running Discworld I and it started playing all the sound bytes end-to-end.
They listened to the lot and were amazed when Eric Idle spoke the infamous phrase:
“I want to be the first person in a game to say f*ck!... f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck!”

Result: one unhappy publisher… one embarassed lead programmer Smile

I have to wonder if anyone ever will find my cheats, as exact sequences of actions are required (more so in DWI than DWII).

Happy hunting!

They then emailed Dave asking about them some more and he replied with some hints! Here they are:

DW1
Hint: “In a large group, the ayes have it”

DWII is easier (but still unlikely to have ever happened). Just need to use 2 specific items together, 10 times. The verbal response will change on the 10th time. During the next few laps through the magic circle, there will be an extra visit to the DW1 Rincewind.

Hint: “2 items, you must be joking”

Many years later, I read about them and was instantly fascinated - being both games I grew up with and the coolest secrets out of any video game, I started digging. I found a website by Dave Johnstone and inside it was solutions to the Easter eggs (at least supposedly). Here is what he said!

Discworld 1

Background information:

I was bored (for 5 minutes) near the end of developing Discworld II.

Eric Idle had recorded a parody of the famous line by John Cleese “I want to be the first person at a British Memorial service to say F%#k!”.

I had to put it somewhere in the game it would never be found, as that would be “bad”...
I made it virtually impossible to find by accident…
There is no visual or other feedback to indicate where the triggers were placed…

So what happened.. what always happens… fate steps in…

The way I was told, a customer’s copy of Discworld I had crashed while they were playing it and it started playing every single piece of sound and speech in the game… one after the other… until it played “I want to be the first person in a game to say f%#k” line.

That was reported back to the publisher… who were not happy…. which was reported back to my boss… who was officially not happy (but amused too).

How to trigger the Easter egg:

Near the end of the game, there is a scene where the entire cast turn out to watch Rincewind battle the dragon.

Amongst the crowd are a young pickpocket (street starfish/urchin) you met at the start of the game and an Amazon maiden.
(The Amazon is wearing a metal bikini top if that helps your object recognition skills!)

In sequence (like a combination lock), you must click on the following objects:

- The pickpocket’s left eye
- The Amazon maiden’s left nipple
- The pickpocket’s right eye
- The Amazon maiden’s right nipple

Rincewind should then start his infamous soliloquy!

*Continued*

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

Discworld II

Background information:

After the mishap of the hidden sample in Discworld I I was instructed that I might add a similar Easter Egg to Discworld II, but the sound sample had to be bleeped over any offensive words.

For the second game, Eric Idle recorded a discussion with the low-resolution version of Rincewind where he states:
“I want to be the first person in a game to say F%#K!”
“What do you mean I’ve already said it?”
“Ok. I want to be the first person in a sequel to say F%#K!”

Game information you may already know, but definitely need to know:

During the game, every few times you pass through the magic stone circle, you are transported to the bedroom of Rincewind from Discworld I where he proceeds to chat with his lo-rez self.

There are 4 different conversions in that room. They are played in order each time you visit that room…

BUT WAIT…

THERE ARE ACTUALLY 5 CONVERSATIONS…

THE 5TH CONVERSATION IS THE REAL EASTER EGG!

How to trigger the Easter egg:

During the game you will collect both a Suffrajester (fighting for female Jester’s rights) and a Chuckie doll (who does not really care about anyone but himself).

You need to place both items in the inventory then:

- Select the Chuckie doll… (Ooooh chuckie chuckie chuckie!)
- Use the Chuckie doll on the Suffrajester in the inventory 10 times in succession
- On the 10th time the voice response from Rincewind will change
- That means you have opened the 5th conversation

Travel trough the magic stone circle until you play all 4 conversations…
On the next visit to Rincewind’s old bedroom Rincewind II will have some serious words with himself!

I also found on his website (by the way the website is now inaccessible without using Wayback Machine”) a link to his eBay listings where he was selling a program that played all of the lines of dialogue from the games INCLUDING the hidden lines.

So! It was time to boot up the games and try and trigger them! I tested DW2 and… “that doesn’t work”. I tried tons of other solutions… and nothi… AND eventually I managed to find the solution! What you ACTUALLY needed to do is use the Suffrajester with Rincewind twelve times. On the twelfth time Rincewind will say something different as he will say “Not a bad idea, but the legs seem to get in the way”. Then, when you go through the stone circle for the twenty fifth time, you will see the Easter egg!

I tested it a bit and found out some details.

The two Rincewinds scene is cause by going through the circle five times without skipping the animation shown whilst Rincewind is travelling through it. However these five times do not have to be in order so you could press the skip button on the fifth time, have that time not counted, and then go through the circle again without pressing the skip button and get the scene.

The hidden two Rincewinds scene is shown by viewing the four normal scenes at least once without pressing the skip button whilst viewing the scenes (you can however skip lines of dialogue individually) between the two Rincewinds, using the Suffrajester on Rincewind at least twelve times (these twelve times do not have to be one after another) and then going through the circle the required amount of times/way for seeing a two Rincewind scene.

Overjoyed, I then tested DW1. Like its sequel the solution turned out to be false however and I unfortunately could not figure it out.

I did some more digging on the internet and found this post by Dave on the Scumm forums from 2008:

Back to a previous Discworld related comment, the Discworld 1 Easter Egg solution on http://www.trueblueaussie.com is wrong. A corrected solution will be posted as soon as I remember the actual sequence (it was 10 years ago after all). I have been sent save games and specific engine versions to test it.

The Discworld 2 cheat is correct and should already work on all versions. Psygnosis allowed the insertion of the cheat into the second game, but insisted that that key words in the Eric Idle “sequel” phrase be beeped over to avoid offence.

These cheats will work with any ScummVM versions of the game that appear. Is there a time-frame for it’s release?

This is wear the trail dried up. Frown

NEW INFO TIME

Unable to find the line in the game I decided to try something else. I decided to try and access the line from the game’s files directly. Tongue And, I succeeded!

Here’s how you do it:

Download the program GoldWave (http://www.goldwave.com/release.php). Open the English.SMP file with it. Set the file type to “Raw (snd, raw)”, the Attributes to “PCM unsigned 8bit, mono” and the Rate (Hz) to “22050”. The line plays around the 3.56.54 mark

Come on guys! Let’s find this Easter egg once and for all! Smile

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

Doesn’t anybody care about this anymore? Gasp ...I’m thinking about our options for figuring this out.

1) Tweeting Eric Idle - if he was to mention it to his quarter of a million followers maybe it’ll be found! He made this line to try and one up John Cleese and he’d probably be pretty peeved when he remembers about all of this and realise he’s being robbed of that satisfaction by it being so hidden!

2) When it’s time for a new community playthrough - PLAY DISCWORLD. Smile

3) Speaking to the people from Scumm that ported the game - they might be able to help as they will know all about the game’s code. If I can’t get into contact with them then finding a forum or something with the know-how and interest to do some… digging… into the game’s code. Idk if this can achieve anything though… I don’t understand these things. o.O I’m surprised I even managed to access the sound data.

4) Emailing Dave again - maybe he remembers something new!


Something this cool and iconic (it actually was the first game to “intentionally” say the word - my video goes into more detail) can’t remain hidden for ever! I won’t shut up about this until it’s found! lol

     

Total Posts: 1891

Joined 2010-11-16

PM

... its just a swear word, not the ark of covenant Tongue
it is a neat trivia fact though.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

PM

zane - 01 September 2014 10:42 PM

... its just a swear word, not the ark of covenant Tongue

Good thing too, or it could destroy us all!

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

Noooo it’s not just a swear word!!  Pan

Imagine if this was contained in one of Lucas’ games instead for a sec - for some people, they hold the DW series in a similar regard. These are very old games which have produced lots of fond memories and then to discover that all that time there was this hidden away is frickin’ epic! The fact that it’s still hidden too after nearly two decades AND the fact that it was actually the first game to intentionally say this controversial (for the time) word doesn’t only make it much cooler but is doing it a huge injustice! Then you have the ties to the Pythons and how it was in honour of the death of Graham Chapman and it’s even cooler and even more of an injustice that it remains hidden!

The ark? No. The holy grail? Yes! At least in terms of hidden secrets in games!

     

Total Posts: 1891

Joined 2010-11-16

PM

i love discworld, its one of my favorite adventures. But an f-word is still just an f-word Tongue

     

Total Posts: 3

Joined 2015-07-12

PM

In the wake of Discworld 1 20th birthday and the recent disappeareance of Terry Pratchett, i gave a shoot at finding the elusive “I want to be the first person in a game to say #$%&*.” easter egg from it.

Given the amount of time spent by dedicated people searching for the easter egg without succeeding, i choose to dwelve into the game code instead of losing myself in trying everything possible (call that cheating if you want Wink)

Well it’s been quite a ride (thanks to the wonderful open-source project that ScummVM is. I’ll post how i proceeded if anyone express interest), but i found the way to trigger it.

The two main difficulties, explaining why it took so look to find the easter egg were :

The code to trigger it is only present in the PSX version of the game

I should rather say that no other version (PC Floppy, PC CD_V1, PC CD_V2) i found contained the code to trigger the easter egg.
Maybe it was patched or there’s versions i didn’t find (testing if the triggering code is present in a given version takes approximatively 3 seconds, so don’t hesitate to mention any esoteric version of the game i may have missed).

Pixel-perfect (!) different clicks (!!) are required on hotspots that are (almost) not identified.

A true testimony of what could (and would) go wrong in game-design during the “golden” age of adventure games.

Anyway, here’s the way to trigger the easter egg (remember, only PSX version of the game):

The easter egg is located in the scene where the crowd is gathered to witness the battle between Rincewind and the dragon (in which Lady Ramkin is attached to the large rock).

1) Action (i.e doubleclick on PC) the first character left eye (relative to us), then action his right eye.

The clickable areas are… one pixel width and height. The only way to tell you’re on it, is when the “Crowd” tag disappears (tag that is on the extreme border of the screen, thanks to the non-linear scrolling).

2) Action the second character left eye (relative to us), then Action her right eye.

3) Search for a pixel on the Amazon left breast that is now tagged “Fascinating…” and Look at it (i.e Right-click on PC).

Note that you have to Action the characters eyes, but Look the Amazon breast (i suppose it was not cryptic enough).

Here’s a (mandatory) video of the easter egg :

or https://vid.me/jji8.

There you go: an obscure and (too) well hidden easter egg from a long forgotten game for some, an hommage to Terry Pratchett, the Monty Python and the “golden” age of adventure games for me (and others i’m sure Wink).

Let me be the first person to let Eric Idle be the first person in a game to say #$%&*.
Menshin

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

PM

Well, this one’s finally solved then. None of us found it when we had a community playthrough.
If it only works on the PSX version, then that explains it too. Plus, the method is different than what I read on the internet when I was looking for this, so that didn’t help either… Tongue

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

Avatar

Total Posts: 8998

Joined 2004-01-05

PM

What the hell? Great find, that is beyond obscure.

Time to ESRB to re-rate the PS game, this is another Hot Coffee situation…

     

Total Posts: 1891

Joined 2010-11-16

PM

wilco - 12 July 2015 07:20 PM

Time to ESRB to re-rate the PS game, this is another Hot Coffee situation…

lol. The major difference: kids arent lining up to play discworld (they should be!) so nobody will care Wink
(now, if we could time travel back to 1995 and release this information it would make for some controversy and articles… in magazines made of paper Tongue)

And also, its a crime that its still impossible to purchase this digitally anywhere!

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

Oh wow, fantastic job Menshin! I don’t care if you had to look at the game’s code - that’s exactly what we needed with how complicated the requirements are! I love how the text changes to “fascinating” hehe.

Thing is though, I checked a DOS version of the game when extracting the sound clip from the files via this method:

Download the program GoldWave (http://www.goldwave.com/release.php). Open the English.SMP file with it. Set the file type to “Raw (snd, raw)”, the Attributes to “PCM unsigned 8bit, mono” and the Rate (Hz) to “22050”. The line plays around the 3.56.54 mark

So it’s interesting that it’s still contained in the files but with the script for it cut out. Hmm.. really is strange that it was only in the PS1 releases. Maybe they thought it was more likely that someone would mess around with the files via PC… but, of course, this didn’t happen until TWENTY years later!!

Really pleased to get to see this at last. I’m sure there will be many articles and the like written about this in the coming years at last!

I would be interested in hearing what exactly you did, even if it may be too technical for me, in hope that I learn at least something. Smile

     

Total Posts: 3

Joined 2015-07-12

PM

So it’s interesting that it’s still contained in the files but with the script for it cut out. Hmm.. really is strange that it was only in the PS1 releases.

It’s really weird indeed, considering that everything (the line and the sound file) needed for the easter egg is present (in fact, it suffices to modify two bytes in any version to make Rincewind speak the Eric Idle line).

I haven’t been able to get a working Mac version of Discworld but looking from the code, the easter egg wasn’t present either.
The same with the Saturn version, so it seems to be PSX exclusive.

I would be interested in hearing what exactly you did, even if it may be too technical for me, in hope that I learn at least something.

Like i said, trying to trigger the easter egg from the game was out of question (after all, lots of adventure gamers, probably better than I at it, tried without success), so i choose to look for code related to the easter egg in the game files.

The first thing to do was understanding the game data structure (how it stores sound, scripts, images, the structure of the game scenes, how was represented an object in-game and so on).
This huge amount of work was made pretty easy by using the (great) open source project ScummVM : iirc they had some developer to give them a version of the (Tinsel) engine, so they implemented it.
Fortunately, despite ScummVM codebase being huge, it is also very readable (big kudos to them !) and the game data structure was quite understood pretty quickly (not that it’s really elaborate tbh).

The second thing was understanding the game script engine (how “clicks”, dialogs, actions in general, are handled). Once again ScummVM code made this a lot easier.

My first attempt was to try to follow the steps on http://www.trueblueaussie.com/Discworld1EasterEgg.htm, so i wrote some custom debug functions to output polygons info (coordinnates, associated scripts, etc) and such in a given scene (~ a given “game screen”) and applied them to the FINALE.SCN scene.

That proves futile (since the easter egg wasn’t here), so i decided to look for something that had to be in the code if the easter egg was present.
The simpliest way was to look for the line itself.

Whenever a dialog is drawn on the screen in the Tinsel Engine (V1) the game script has:
    1) to push the string id on the game stack (a common data structure which behaves like it names implies : you can only access the top of the stack)
    2) to call a library function which would use the previously pushed value

The first part is coded into the game files by 81 2b 17 (in hexadecimal), the second part by 4e 4d (the windows files are in little endian if anyone wonders).

I then searched all game files i had (floppy/CD_V1/CD_V2) for the 81 2b 17 pattern… only to notice it was nowhere to be found.
Disappointed after these several days of work, I was on the brink of dismissing the easter egg as something that was never implemented, when i found a copy of the PSX files.

I checked the FINALE.SCN file for the familiar pattern and found : 81 2b 17 4e 4d, which reads : loads the string 5931 and make Rincewind speaks it.
The Easter Egg was found !

So it was there after all… Now i had to understand how to trigger it. I reused my debug functions to output all polygons in the scene and noticed those highly suspect 1-pixel polygons.
After some (failed) attempt to trigger the line “by hand”, i located the scripts related to these polygons in the scene file and decoded the triggering sequence for the easter egg.

Here’s what i (almost) exactly did (i’ve tried to stay “soft” on the technical side) Smile

Not sure about the articles in the future, but I’m glad that has been finally found (20 years are quite some time !) : it was like paying hommage to Terry Pratchett, Monty Python and the adventure genre in general Wink

tl;dr : it was quite a ride, but an enjoyable one.

     
Avatar

Total Posts: 19

Joined 2010-12-17

PM

I know exactly how you must have felt before trying the PS1 version! But, as so often these situations proves, obsessive determination pays off in the end. lol Sounds like it was a bit more work than I first thought anyway - way too technical for me. heh

Cheers dude and glad you had a good time with it. Was a proper Easter egg hunt!

     

Total Posts: 3

Joined 2015-07-12

PM

Apparently Paul Carpenter, who was the Conversion Programmer for Discworld 1 on PSX, commented on the YT easter egg video.
I thought i would share it with you.

Paul Carpenter

You have to thank Eric [Idle] for the line as it was an out take during the recording session that actually went “I want to be the first person in a game to say fuck! What Arnold Schwarzenegger already said it? Well fuck off Arnold, fuck off Arnold, fuck you, fuck fuck fuck.

The PS1 version of the game was the last to be developed. We were pulling all nighters on a regular basis and this got slipped in to alleviate the 4am boredom.

That was all there was in DW1, but DW2 had several. Every 5th time through the portal to the Fairy Castle it takes you to Rincewind’s room from DW1. If you use the Suffrajester on Rincewind a number of times, the response changes from “That doesn’t work” to “It’s a nice idea, but the legs would get in the way”. If you enter Rincewind’s Room after that you get a “I want to be the first person in a game to say fuck” skit.

DW2 also had a DOS renderer in the DOS version. There was a command line switch to run the game in 80x40, but what it was eludes me.

FYI, the two characters that you click on the eyes of aren’t from the Discworld Universe. It’s actually Angela Sutherland and Gregg Barnet, the MDs of Perfect Entertainment.

Fun days!

     

You are here: HomeForum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread

Welcome to the Adventure Gamers forums!

Back to the top