Let's Play Murders in Space.

[SCO]

Since so many were fascinated by KGB, the second most difficult adventure game that i played, i thought that people would like to know about the first.

I never did this, and this game is evil, so I'm fairly sure I'm going to give up eventually.

This was the game that came with my first Amiga, probably the first modern game i ever tried, before i understood written English fully. It came in a box filled with beautiful space age trinkets.

I played, got frustrated i was going nowhere (no internet cheating) and gave up.
Eventually the trinkets got lost, so even the possibility of winning the game went away (the trinkets are particularly devious method of copy protection - external puzzles)!
Eventually i used an hex editor to read the memory of the running program to get around that.

The game is divided into hours, each hour realtime. There is a function to pause time (almost necessary to win the game).

I am, quite frankly, not going to follow the game dialog too closely. Too boring, for me and for you since it's minimal. If you can't find it in your monomania to forgive me, i don't care.

Let's Play Murders In Space

June 30, 2000\5. 06:45 universal time, Base Kourou.

Intense activity is in the air at the Jupiter control hall, the rocket Ariane
5, chartered by the Pegasus space consortium, is ready for take off from
launch pad a3. At the top of the rocket, inside an European space shuttle along with a British astronomer, you mentally count the final seconds before
lift of...

Even though you aren't a specialist in the domain of space, at least you
have built up a reputation for yourself through prior investigative research.
The Pegasus consortium has called you rather than another due to the gravity
of the situation. In fact, a few days ago, the mission commander alerted
ground control of unusual incidents on board. The worst of which being the
assassination attempt on his life!

Officially, you are making a routine administrative check-up. Your
cover:

Dick Anderson.

For technical reasons you must return to earth the following day with the
astronaut who has finished his mission.

You have been advised to use the utmost discretion.

The crew:

Phillipe Amiot
mission commander

mission specialists:

Ronald Higgins
'flight engineer'

Dieter Schmidt
'doctor of biochemistry'

Omella Alvisi
'eva specialist'

Akira Kamakura
'electronic engineer'

Tania Boronova
'psychiatrist'

Jeremy Mahrubi
'agronomic engineer'

You are traveling with:

Andrew Connoly
'astronomer'

 

[Darth Roxor]

Interesting. If this doesn't die, I'll keep an eye on it for sure.

 

[asper]

Looks very interesting, please continue.

 

[SCO]

... 1, 0 Liftoff

As we blasted of the shuttle vibrated around us, the noise becoming habitual - a new kind of silence. my mind going back to every space age accident, as they euphemistically call them.

To the gossip i heard when training in those damn N.A.S.A. facilities...

They better check everything treble! I don't want to end like those Columbia guys almost did. Did you check the size of that debris?

Twice indeed.

The pressure steadily increased until it was all i could do to breathe. Minutes passed like hours and silence came abruptly.

When we could move again, i remembering my training and only moved enough to check that everything fundamental was ok, and called out to Connoly:

• "You all right?"

• "Fine!"

We unstrapped, floating gently, moving slowly, and went to the windows, to watch the stars up close.

• "Beautiful."

I could only nod. Connolly moved on to the instruments and started taking measurements. Casually, as if he did every day, he said:

• "Command, we have a damage to the exterior stern sensors, repeat damage to the exterior stern sensors, over".

Damage? Those little fuckers! Perfectly routine, yeah right?-

• "..*bztt* What is the stern airlock seal status Arianne 5? Over.*..bztt*"
  "It's green, command, but i won't be able to use the autopilot to approach the station. Request permission to make a manual approach instead of abort command. Over."

A minute passes.

• "Request granted Arianne."
  "Thank you command. Signoff."
  "Signoff Arianne."
  "The autopilot seems to be working all right, but it is blind on that -"
  
  "I heard. Hope they graded right, Mr Designated pilot."
  "No need to get snippy."

Snippy?

• 
  "I'm sorry, just nervous."
  "We will let the autopilot align us with the shuttle and only do the manual approach to be sure nothing happens. Double check the telemetry for me."

A few tense hours pass.

• 
  "Easy does it..."

The man had a light sheen on the forehead, but he was smiling.
I am locked in a tin with a maniac child.

...

• "Contact. Locks secure. Pressurizing the seal."
  "Command, station integration successful, over."

Bonus :

Spoiler

This is one of those games that will sodomize you if you let it. What would happen if the autopilot wasn't deactivated is that the shuttle would get to the station an hour later, causing a pure win to be impossible. The game like a true sadist would then offer a hint at the end to get you trying again, assuming you could get there.
"Ah, didn't you know you could turn off the auto pilot? But it was just there in page 4 of the manual?"
Some conversations are different because of this, but mostly a big part of the game is missed, for reasons that will become obvious.

 

[Insane Psychic]

Ooooohhh looks interesting. Please continue to talk about the evilness of this magnificent game.

 

[SCO]

• "You can unstrap now, I'm just going to do a few double checks."

He started talking to himself, a routine NASA trick to catch inconsistencies.

• - Umbilical connection ... Okay.
  - Lithium disconnect ... Okay.

Leaving Connoly to his work i floated to the airlock, that was even now turning from red to green. Pushing the open button i entered the storage module.
The mission commander waited me.

• "Welcome aboard."

• "It's good to have arrived in one piece."
  "Weren't expecting you before 3.00pm. Any trouble?"
  "We had to do a manual approach, the stern sensors failed."
  "I told them they needed more shielding. Still..."
  He moves closer
  "At least you will have more time for your investigation."
  He looks at the stern airlock.
  "We will talk later, first better get used to real floating, before meeting the gang."
  "Take this - if you need it.", looking in eyes - raised eyebrow.

How quaint. A vomit bag. Feel ten years old again.

"Thank you, but i don't think its necessary."

Fucking ex-air force asshole.

I leave the commander.

The central hub. They try to balance the modules. Even in geostationary orbit there is eventual decay.
I enter one at random. It's one of the two dormitories...

• "Who are you?"

Turn around quickly. But not startled.

Never show fear...

• "Konnichiwa, Kamakura san. My name is Anderson, Dick Anderson."
  "I am honored to make your acquaintance. Why are you here? We were expecting only a British Astronomer."
  "I am conducting an investigation for the mission."
  "Investigation?"
  "Yes. I am a administrator from down below. I am hoping for your collaboration."

....
He looks attentive.

• 
  "What's your occupation on board?"
  "I don't work for Pegasus. I've been sent by Kischo Cosmos Corp, since they financed my Post-graduate studies. We have experiments studying the aging of electronics in space."

Sounds like a particularly futile endeavor.
He reads my expression easily.

• "Kischo is a robotics firm. We are interested in eventually producing and selling robots to E.S.A. and N.A.S.A."
  "It's important work."

Too cocky. Man bred in a culture of abnegation will be sensitive.

• "I will take my leave of you now."
  "Before you leave, let me tell you this dormitory is full. You need to get the free bunk in the other".
  "Thank you."

The hub again.
This is going to get confusing ... better get a system.
Up should be the direction the text in the lock/unlock buttons are facing. That means i just exited upper right. Lets go upper left.

A red-skinned woman has their arms in a machine, and doesn't notice me at first. I approach and say:

• "Good afternoon."
  "You must be new," she says without turning.
  "Wait just a little bit."

The movement occurs in the window facing us, one Waldos gently placing a fantastically entangled plant, roots gently waving, into a compacted earth pot, one root at time, while the other hand carefully fills a small shovel of earth from a bag and carefully covers each root. It is exacting, meticulous, boring work, but it's almost over.

• "Myself, I think that traditional farming is a waste of time here. It's already known that hydroponics has a larger yield, and liquid nutrients are more concentrated, so this is just one more dead end."

Finally she fits a grid over the pot and removes her hands from the machine.
She dries their sweat in the coveralls.

• "My name is Dick Anderson."
  "Welcome aboard. Always nice to see a new face. I'm Tania. I'm sorry but I'm pretty busy now. Wait another hour and i will have time to talk.
  Please don't touch anything."

She offhandedly says, already leaving the room with a pen poised on a small notepad.
Finally. An opportunity to snoop.
That blue column seems to be the most prominent feature in this room.
I approach...
Wait. I heard about this... this is CLISS hibernation chamber... and it's occupied... the silhouette. It's a woman. Must be Alvisi. She is the only other.
I loose some time contemplating this technological wonder. Strangely, no matter how i look, i cannot see more than a silhouette.
It's is as if I'm seeing from a great distance, from another dimension even, and no amount of straining will ever get me closer. Bizarre.

 

[sqeecoo]

Wow, this looks great! For a moment there I thought this would be a The Orion Mystery (or whatever it's called) LP, but no such luck. I played that game when I was a kid, it had profanity, violence, mutilated homosexual sons of the PC and shapeshifting aliens. In an adventure game. In space. On a mining station next to a black hole.

Anyway, this game looks very nice. But could you explain the mechanics a bit? What do you do to play? How does the interface look exactly? Did you do the docking? Is all this text from the game?

EDIT: I mean this game: http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/aba ... y_the.html

 

[SCO]

The game is a complete unwieldy mess of an adventure. It has a hub like structure with various short plot forks.

branches:
___________________________
__________|
_____ | ___________________
| | | | | |
---------------------------------------- ....
timeline


Things like this.

Interface:
The clock is obvious. I stopped it by the way. Minimal sounds. That main screen had a little tune, an alarm, and a few other sound effects. There are no animations unless you count the shuttle and eva translating (i don't).
The objective of the game is:

Spoiler

Not much of a spoiler but:
1) Prevent the deaths of everyone on board.
2) Catch the murderer. (It's quite easy to know who is it, if you pay attention - but the objective is to make the stupid character realize it).
3) The fun part: Find out all the secrets of the crew. Each has one, and its usually quite nice.
4) Answer a few inane questions about the game plot if you want it.

The text:
I am embellishing/inventing where it makes sense it obviously. The game is quite spare in its dialogs, probably because the programmers couldn't handle dynamic arrays in assembly. Pussies - men after myself. Anyway, there are situations that don't make at all any sense. Who in their right mind would turn off the auto pilot in a station approach? So i inserted a situation. Whenever you see a person leaving, or some more elaborate dialog you'll know i am bullshitting you. But the bull is out there.

The gameplay:
To move around you click in your avatar and move the mouse. Left click on scenario releases the mouse. He floats around. Much bumping of heads ensues.
Right click orients the avatar in another direction. CTRL mirrors it, so you don't feel silly looking at some guy bottom to top.
You can both *think* about something, usually to use/do something or create new thoughts/dialogs or *speak*.
Thinking works on objects.
Those little buttons on the left side go to various rooms at the station automatically, if they are accessible.

 

[SCO]

Edit : Opps quote button. Reserved.

 

[Guillaume777]

Two questions...

Two questions about this game...


1. How do I save? It keeps asking me to "insert save disk".
2. Is there any walkthrough for this?

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Nice Let's Play thread. Nice job filling in the blanks. I always like watching these adventure game LPs, because it means I don't need to deal with Vista DOSBox and/or ancient copy protection that was/is often a pain in the ass.

 

[SCO]

I'm actually considering dropping the invented dialog. I'm not sure of my capability to preserve a consistent character thought the entire game. Also i suspect my prose blows.

To save, you have to install the game. It does something funky. At first i thought that you had to create a dir and mount it as a floppy in dosbox, but no, just install the game inside dosbox (into the emulated c: drive).

There is a walkthrought, but it very incomplete, since it doesn't have the manual and trinkets, and thus you wont get anywhere. The manual is on replacement manuals whatever website, but the trinkets are badly scanned or not at all (the soup container is not for instance). I had to use an memory editor (hex workshop works ok) to see certain passwords.

 

[hal900x]

Wow, this looks great! For a moment there I thought this would be a The Orion Mystery (or whatever it's called) LP, but no such luck. I played that game when I was a kid, it had profanity, violence, mutilated homosexual sons of the PC and shapeshifting aliens. In an adventure game. In space. On a mining station next to a black hole.

Anyway, this game looks very nice. But could you explain the mechanics a bit? What do you do to play? How does the interface look exactly? Did you do the docking? Is all this text from the game?

EDIT: I mean this game: http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/aba ... y_the.html

From your link: "...interesting puzzles and plot-- marred by a huge amount of gratuitous violence and prafanity that may turn many players off."

Well, I'm sold.

 

[UgaAga]

Hi,
i played this game a long time ago, but never solved it. Perhaps we can make it together. I write down what i got on my old papers

So i rescued:

Phillipe Amiot (with self made medicine, mix 3+4)

Ronald Higgins (same way, mix 3+5+6)

Dieter Schmidt (same way, mix 3+4+5)

Tania Boronova (same way, mix 1+3+4)

Andrew Connoly (with medi kit)

Akira Kamakura (something with a fuse)

got passwords for

Andrew Connoly (ALBIREO)

Akira Kamakura (TSUNAMI)

Control (System)

failed on:

Omella Alvisi

Jeremy Mahrubi (marked him, perhaps the murderer)

So good luck on the last two. Talk to everyone and get on board at 14 o'clock (fly manually)