ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: CONTRAPTION ZACK

Ross Scott

Ross Scott

Staff member
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New Game Dungeon, a week and a half late again! I'm honestly amazed with how long this one ended up being. I thought it would be about 10 minutes or less, but ended up a lot longer, though I think it was more tightly arranged than some other Game Dungeon episode. I'll have at least one more video for Halloween, hopefully more than one. I'm also considering doing something on twitch on the 30th if people are interested, though I'm still trying to figure out what (and only if I'll have free time). There definitely won't be as many Halloween videos as there were last year because I'll be busy with all kinds of things, but a lot more videos are coming in the future!

COMMENTS

 
About six minutes in I had to pause the video after your musically-induced freakout
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It took me a while to compose myself...

As always you've done a smashing job on the video Ross. Maybe the reason why everything feels a little off in the game's world is because some unspeakable disembodied evil created Plant #4 as a personal hell for Zack - but his apparent unflappable optimism and clinical disassociation made him immune to the psychologically torturous effects of it. It's like a saturday morning equivalent of Silent Hill.

 
The puzzle with the switch you have to press 8 times is binary. Every flip of the switch adds 1 to the counter.

0 = close, 1 = open.

000

001

010

011

100

101

110

111

It's a cool little puzzle if the game introduced the idea of using other numerical bases beforehand. Otherwise, it's just the programmers fucking with you because they know binary and most people think in decimal.

 
Another great video Ross. I remember my older siblings playing this game (I was a little too young) and remember it being very bizarre, completely forgot about it till now!

 
The unintuitive puzzles where you have to turn switches and connect pipes reminds me of a Half-Life 2 mod that came out a few years ago called "Steam, Tracks, Troubles, and Riddles." This was one of Ross's voice actor roles where he plays a steampunk-esque robot.

Here is the steam pipe puzzle.

When I played it I couldn't figure out how it worked for the life of me, I had to use the walkthru.

Later, there is a part where the robot removes a crowbar from a machine (37.07 in the video). When I played it, I was never able to get that to trigger so I would be stuck in that area. I haven't played it in a couple years but I heard that they fixed a lot of the bugs so I may try it again.

 
=== Halloween Idea for Ross ===

Why not just record an hour or two long video in advance of a Halloween or horror themed computer game, then play that video back while you talk about it on Twitch? Then you can showcase a game but not have to deal with the trouble of playing it live, yet you can still talk about it live and engage with the chat room.

 
The puzzle with the switch you have to press 8 times is binary. Every flip of the switch adds 1 to the counter.0 = close, 1 = open.

000

001

010

011

100

101

110

111

It's a cool little puzzle if the game introduced the idea of using other numerical bases beforehand. Otherwise, it's just the programmers fucking with you because they know binary and most people think in decimal.
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But see, a good puzzle would have THREE switches that I figure out is using binary (Rama has something like this). In Zack, I'm trapped and the ONLY thing I can do is hit a switch repeatedly. I literally have no other option of anything I can do.
 
I'm also considering doing something on twitch on the 30th if people are interested,
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I, for one, am definitely interested. I believe you said you wanted to try and beat The Cathedral from SS:TSE on Serious mode without dying. IMHO that would be a good way to unwind after making the Halloween episode.

 
If I just randomly stumbled upon it I don't think I would've ever figured out you that you are supposed to hit that switch multiple times when you get stuck. It would probably just come off as a bad puzzle to me otherwise, seeing as out of instinct because of how the whole game trained me so far, instead of flipping the thing I would've restarted the whole game, that's pretty bad design right there, I bet a lot of players just outright reset the game instead of flipping it once again.
I guess anyone who was persistent enough flipped it twice, but if I considered restarting right there, then it means that someone screwed themselves over at least once (like the weird pointless death elevator part, where Ross got confused.)

Something like this also happened in Syberia to me, where I honestly thought the game broke, seeing as I assumed that I had missed some item beforehand, I was stuck forever in some dream sequence, I can't even remember how I got out of that.
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I'm not saying that the puzzle/game was well designed, taking it from the RGD it really isn't. I'm just saying that it isn't total insanity - it just has you in the role of an 8 to 3 demux. That makes me wonder if this game was designed by programmers for aspiring programmers, like a more primitive and visual TIS-1000, as the logic seems like moon logic at first.

 
I loved the episode a lot, but you did such a good job editing the narration during the game intro sequence that it became kind of an uncanny valley thing for me. I think it was the combination of decent voice work and the unnatural pauses the game forced on you while waiting for the next dialogue balloon.

 
I, for one, am definitely interested. I believe you said you wanted to try and beat The Cathedral from SS:TSE on Serious mode without dying. IMHO that would be a good way to unwind after making the Halloween episode.
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I'm not sure I ever said Serious mode, but since people seem to be saying that, I should try and gauge just how doable that might be. Either way, I would have something spookier for Halloween. I'd love to have more Zombie Panic Source (especially in zps harvest), if anyone wanted to help set up a server for that.

If I just randomly stumbled upon it I don't think I would've ever figured out you that you are supposed to hit that switch multiple times when you get stuck. It would probably just come off as a bad puzzle to me otherwise, seeing as out of instinct because of how the whole game trained me so far, instead of flipping the thing I would've restarted the whole game, that's pretty bad design right there, I bet a lot of players just outright reset the game instead of flipping it once again.
I guess anyone who was persistent enough flipped it twice, but if I considered restarting right there, then it means that someone screwed themselves over at least once (like the weird pointless death elevator part, where Ross got confused.)

Something like this also happened in Syberia to me, where I honestly thought the game broke, seeing as I assumed that I had missed some item beforehand, I was stuck forever in some dream sequence, I can't even remember how I got out of that.
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I'm not saying that the puzzle/game was well designed, taking it from the RGD it really isn't. I'm just saying that it isn't total insanity - it just has you in the role of an 8 to 3 demux. That makes me wonder if this game was designed by programmers for aspiring programmers, like a more primitive and visual TIS-1000, as the logic seems like moon logic at first.
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I knew it was made for a specific group in mind, but these type of things often come off as kinda pretentious to me though.

"You don't know how to solve this? You are stupid, ha ha."

It reminded me of those impossibly difficult Portal 2 mods, which focus more on insane reaction times or hidden mechanics you are supposed to look up by yourself, instead of having some actually good puzzles.
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I almost left in a line where I said one thing I hate the most about a puzzle game is when you figure out how to solve it, but the mechanics are so frustrating that you can't pull it off.
 
Is that Craig (Voice of Dave in Civil Protection) as Zack?

Edit: Just read the credits. It certainly is. Good to hear him again.

 
I could see some evil modder remaking this game as a Portal mod or something. Really, any modern game engine would probably accommodate it without a lot of tweaking from the looks of things.

And I've always had a soft spot for AdLib music, for some reason. Even though the only game I've played at length that used it was Monkey Island 2 (I had the CD-ROM version where the music didn't work in the first game, and the rerelease just uses raw MIDI). I've spent a lot of time searching in vain for OPL3 soundfonts or MIDI editors that run inside DOSBox or something so I could try my hand at composing some of my own. With chiptunes of various kinds being so popular, it's kind of amazing it's not easier to find.

 
I could see some evil modder remaking this game as a Portal mod or something. Really, any modern game engine would probably accommodate it without a lot of tweaking from the looks of things.
And I've always had a soft spot for AdLib music, for some reason. Even though the only game I've played at length that used it was Monkey Island 2 (I had the CD-ROM version where the music didn't work in the first game, and the rerelease just uses raw MIDI). I've spent a lot of time searching in vain for OPL3 soundfonts or MIDI editors that run inside DOSBox or something so I could try my hand at composing some of my own. With chiptunes of various kinds being so popular, it's kind of amazing it's not easier to find.
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I don't know, for me Adlib was always just short of the kind of definition I wanted. MIDI is either pathetic or glorious, depending on how it's being rendered. I'm not against synth music by any means, I just feel like Ad-Lib never really had great tunes that would sound better with better defined instruments. I actually feel like Super Nintendo music had a lot of really excellent tracks where the rendition was good enough it didn't feel like it obviously needed better technology to throw at it.
 
This makes me think of the time you spoke of "hell jobs" in that murder mystery episode of GD and reminds me of my own current job in a way i am a combo welder now for some reason i have always worked in the oil industry but where i am currently employed is a total hell job and how i got into welding is beyond me its full of rednecks and other unsavory characters but the money is there so whatever i just hate the conditions at times the hilarity of this all is that i have a degree in computer science and quit out on programming because i hated the conditions.

 
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