Issue #76: Traversing Tales
Tales of Monkey Island gets a serious deep-dive, which gives us an excuse to recycle our own content.
This week was largely Tales of Monkey Island-centric thanks to our very own Benzo and his recently updated Telltale Explorer. To quote the man:
I’ve just released a new version of Telltale Explorer that fixes a longstanding issue – lua scripts in the older games couldn’t be decompiled. This affected most the games released before Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. It’s now fixed and the scripts in every Telltale and Skunkape game can be decompiled and viewed.
Well then! And, as he is wont to do, Benny put together an extensive how-to article on how to enable and use debug mode: “Investigating Debug Mode in Telltale Games.“ (Note that Telltale Explorer isn’t Tales-specific. It just seemed like as good of an excuse as any to give this issue of The Adventurer some sort of theme. 🤷)
Now, in case you are someone who lives a healthy, fulfilled life, you might not know what a “debug mode” is. In essence, it’s a way for a developer to jump to a certain point in the game and also modify content on the fly. It’s particularly helpful for testing, since you don’t have to rely on save games to get to a location. The trivia section below has an example of content manipulation.
More often than not, debug modes are turned off in published games, but as is often the case, there are backdoors to enable them. Which, to circle back, is what the aforementioned article is all about.
Don’t take my word for any of this, though. Run over to Mojo to read Benzo’s sage words. Part two is “coming soon.”
If you think it’s impossible to collect DeCava’s 100,000 grubs, think again. He will even comment, “Only 50,000 to go!” halfway through. At 99,900, “We’re almost home!“
Granted, I’m sure few of us would actually take the time to collect them all (it’d take months). Nor did the creator of this video actually do that. Instead, the variable that held the number of slugs was manipulated on the fly through some (you guessed it) hacking.
How did they do this? Here’s the explanation on the old TTG forums:
There is an old program called CheatOMatic which allows one to do this very simply. (It's an *old* program, I've had a copy sitting around for *years* and I use it every once in a while. Written by some programmer at 3dRealms I believe - it was hard to find the last time I had to look.)
It lets you search for a value in memory, and by changing it a few times it'll figure out exactly where that value is stored and then let you change it. I started at about 3 grubs (just because there are too many '1's and a lot of '2''s floating around in memory.) By 7 it had found the memory location and locked on, and I went straight to 99,999 to see what happened when I delivered the last grub.
One note is that you need to know how many grubs you've already given DeCava when you start this - I started from a point where I knew I hadn't given him any yet so I was sure to get the count right! Otherwise one couldn't find the critical memory location.
For my money, Tales’ “Rise of the Pirate God” has some truly stellar music. True, the MIDI-heavy tracks are ripe for a live re-recording, but the melodies are still on point. To wit…
To quote the episode’s co-director (and recovering Mojoer), Jake Rodkin:
I was nervous to ask Michael Land if the music in the Crossroads could allude to the music in the underground tunnels in 2 because I’m a lifelong Monkey 2 fanboy and it felt like asking to touch a live wire. He was happy to, of course!
You can, of course, also download the MP3s.
Last week, we asked, “Should Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island be considered canon?” 44% said anything Monkey Island-related can be considered canon, which, for all intents and purposes, was the conclusion of Return. 38% felt that it should just be considered a DLC, while 13% thought it was junk. 6% tried to punk us, claiming it was vintage Monkey Island. (Thanks, Huz and Sushi!)
This week, we’ll keep it Tales-centric.
Again, apologies for the awkward wording – Substack allows only for a limited amount of characters.
Full News Roundup
11 Aug: “Investigating Debug Mode in Telltale Games” – We Show You How: Well, Benzo does, but the point remains.
09 Aug: Decompile Those Old TTG Games: Hacking commences.
08 Aug: Questing for Costumes with Double Fine 25: 25 years of Double Fine: This time Ashley Esqueda talks with Gabe Cinquepalmi about Costume Quest 1 & 2.
Last Week’s Mojole Redux Results
It’s the game that sweeps the nation! Can you beat Mojole, our fiendishly difficult daily puzzler? Only hardcore LucasArts aficionados need apply.
08 Aug: “scumm##” – I mean, we had to put it in here, right?
09 Aug: “remio##” – Considered a legend among his tribe. Handsome. Kind. A scholar. Also the author of Mojole.
10 Aug: “wonky##” – WONKY was the name of an adventure game Mojo was developing in the early 2000s. Instead you got Mojole.
11 Aug: “gabez##” – Former Mojo podcast host and current holder of a PhD in Anne Rice literature.
12 Aug: “scabb##” – Is an island. In the demo it was properly spelled “scab.” Also an avid Worms player.
13 Aug: “forum##” – Have you visited the Mojo Forums lately?
14 Aug: “dozer##” – Dozer was the name of Mojo's web server in the early 2000s. It was particularly famous for its downtime.
And for the competitive amongst you, the Mojole forum thread has gone strong for more than two years. The two juggernauts to beat: Sushi and Huz.
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