| 26 MAR 2010 at 3:33pm |
LadyLindaIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 91
Joined: 10 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | I decided to try it after reading your thread, and you are correct.
It works too if you use less than the number listed.
It is definately a minor glitch.
LadyLinda
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| 26 MAR 2010 at 5:17pm |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | Thanks for the confirmation, LadyL!
I wrote to Her Interactive about it but received no reply. In all fairness, though, I did tell them no reply was necessary.
I just wanted them to know about it, as it's the first such glitch I've encountered in the 19 Nancy games I've played -- although I figure they've likely known for quite some time. However, I do think it's odd that I could find no mention of it in the Her Interactive forums. :-? I couldn't be the only person to have discovered it.
It must be just another Nancy Drew mystery...
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| 26 MAR 2010 at 9:12pm |
LadyLindaIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 91
Joined: 10 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | I posted the glitch on the HeR HAU board, so let's see if others have come across it.
LadyLinda
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| 29 MAY 2010 at 9:48pm |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | I've discovered a second glitch in HAU. I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else encounters it.
It's a little more serious than the first one I posted about, although it doesn't seem to happen consistently. It concerns the completion of the seating chart.
After I had all of the names in the correct places, I was told "the people at the top of the table don't look right." I was certain they were right, as I've done this puzzle before with no problems.
Just to be sure my notes were accurate, I looked at three different walkthroughs. All of them confirmed that the way I had done things was correct.
I finally ended up removing all of the names from the chart and putting them back on in the exact same places. This time, I was told the chart was correct.
I consider this glitch to be a potential show-stopper for anyone taking the pronouncement that things "don't look right" at face value. I must say that I'm surprised (and disappointed) that HER Interactive is apparently getting a little sloppy. I just hope this doesn't mark the beginning of a technical decline in their Nancy Drew games.
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| 23 JUN 2010 at 8:50am |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | **POTENTIAL SPOILERS**
I've encountered six more bugs in HAU for a total of eight altogether. I'm posting them for whoever might be interested. They haven't happened to everyone, so maybe they won't happen to you, either.
I'm not looking for help. Through stubborn perseverance I was able to finish the game despite all of its flaws, so I thought I'd offer my own tongue-in-cheek solutions.
(1) When I tried to call Ned, the phone would ring twice and hang up. Then the gameplay area would become unresponsive.
The first time this happened, I saved the game and quit (everything outside the gameplay area still worked). When I tried to restart it, I received a message that the game was already running (Task Mgr showed that nothing was running) and I'd have to close that one before I could open a new one. Then the new one loaded without my having done anything.
Going back to the save I'd just made, I ended up on the same unresponsive screen and my phone card was no longer in inventory. Maybe the phone ate it.
In order to get the phone card back I had to load my second most recent save. Unfortunately, I hadn't saved for awhile so I had to do a lot of stuff over.
After I'd caught up to where I'd been, I saved the game and tried to call Ned. The same thing happened.
I then loaded the save and tried calling Bess & George and Alan Paine. Those calls went through. Another attempt call to Ned went into the crapper.
Later on in the game, phone calls to Ned finally started working.
My solution: Save the game before you call Ned, stock up on frustration tolerance and learn to love reloading.
(2) When I took Nancy outside the castle and left her standing on the path while I saved the game, she immediately walked into lamp post and got stuck, walking in place against it. Also, my pointer disappeared. The only way to get her unstuck was to leave the game and load my last save.
My solution: Don't save the game when Nancy is standing on the path outside the castle.
(3) While rounding up sheep, there were times I was unable to get Nancy to stop walking. I was only able to stop her forward momentum by having her collide with a solid object -- I used the side of the barn the first time it happened -- where she simply walked in place.
But she was able to get unstuck all by herself rather abruptly and, before I realized what was happening, she'd made a beeline for the cliff in back of the barn and stepped off. This kind of thing continued to plague my efforts to round up the sheep.
To make matters worse, if Nancy didn't get the sheep in the barn fast enough, the ones she'd succeeded in capturing would start escaping. [smiley=hair_pull.gif]
My solution: Keep trying and hope that you'll eventually be able to get all of the sheep into the barn through sheer luck.
(4) When playing the dart game at the pub, I'd achieve a zero score using all darts which meant I'd won. But the game would tell me I'd lost. This happened a bunch of times.
My solution: Gather some fortitude and keep playing until the game acknowledges that you've won.
(5) After I'd done everything correctly regarding the jet pack, it kept blowing up. I know the instructions that I'd printed in-game were accurate because I checked them against a walkthrough, UHS Hints and instructions I found in several locations on the HI Forums.
I made about a dozen attempts with the same result. Boom.
I later discovered that unless a certain lever is moved at precisely the right speed to precisely the right setting, Nancy will get blown up. To make matters worse, it appears from what I've read that the lever-moving requirements can vary from one player to the next (how this is possible, I don't know), so trying what others have done may or may not work. In all my years of gaming, I've never encountered such a thing.
My solution: Consult several walkthroughs along with UHS Hints and try different suggestions until something works. If nothing works, blow yourself up.
(6) Toward the end of the game, Nancy has to move some very volatile chemicals into storage bins using an extendable metal clamp. I lost count of the number of times I blew her up. Even when I followed directions provided by others to an exacting degree, it was bye-bye Nancy.
I started saving the game after each chemical maneuver I I was finally able to do successfully (this amounts to 28 separate saves). After each save, however, the left-hand arrow of the four directional arrows used to manipulate the clamp would activate automatically and stay that way.
The clamp would either travel all the way over to the left side of the gameplay area and get stuck there (the other directional buttons were rendered useless), or it would hit a chemical that happened to be in its path and blow up Nancy. Saving the game while the clamp was still inside the bin sometimes worked. Other times Nancy went kaboom.
I found a video walkthrough on YouTube that I thought might help. However, all I could find pertaining to this puzzle was Nancy getting blown up repeatedly. After some additional searches, I found another video walkthrough. The guy who made this one blew Nancy up quite a few times, too. The times he was successful, he did the same things I'd been doing.
My solution: Start praying.
I could have looked for a save game in order to bypass these anomalies, but that's not really the point. The point is that from where I sit, HAU is the most slipshod Nancy Drew game in history.
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| 23 JUN 2010 at 8:06pm |
Jenny100Guild Master
Posts : 3510
Joined: 12 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | Wow! You found a lot more bugs than I did. You should beta test for them. I had Nancy walking without stopping once or twice, but that worked itself out. The mini-game with the clamp was a nuisance, but I don't think it malfunctioned other than the size and shape of the clamp not being quite what was displayed onscreen. I didn't have all those other problems other than not being fast enough at herding the sheep.
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| 23 JUN 2010 at 8:53pm |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | Thanks, Jenny.
Yeah, I should beta test Nancy games. I'm great at testing, if I do say so myself. I tend to find stuff that a lot of folks miss. This springs from my irritating, compulsive and havoc-wreaking obsession with detail. :
There is some good news, though. I took a break from HAU's glitchiness to play Warnings at Waverly Academy. I really and truly enjoyed it. At last! A new Nancy game that's actually good!!! [smiley=thumbs.gif]
I encountered only one minor bug in WAC: sometimes the air hockey puck would get stuck between the side of the gameplay area and Leela's mallet. The only way to proceed would be to back out of the hockey game and start a new one. For me, this kind of thing is definitely no biggie. I actually think it's rather funny.
WAC was released after HAU, so maybe there's hope for Nancy yet. Except...
Have you played the demo for Trail of the Twister? Is it me, or does TOT -- at least as far as the demo goes -- seem to be lifted right out of the movie Twister?
Here are some similarities between demo and film:
Demo: the storm chasing project is headed by a guy whose home was destroyed by a tornado when he was a kid.
Film: the storm chasing project is headed by a girl whose home was destroyed by a tornado when she was a kid.
Demo: the guy is also the head of a college's meteorology dept.
Film: the girl is also the head of a college's meteorology dept.
Demo: the guy takes a storm-chasing team out every year.
Film: the girl takes a storm-chasing team out every year.
Demo: this particular year, a record-breaking string of tornadoes is expected.
Film: this particular year, a record-breaking string of tornadoes is expected.
Demo: discovering what causes tornadoes will enable increased warning times.
Film: discovering what goes on inside a tornado's funnel will enable increased warning times.
Whether or not the similarities will continue throughout the game remains to be seen, but all we need now is an aunt who lives in Wakita, rival storm chasers who all drive black vehicles, a few Dorothys, and Helen Hunt.
One last thing: in the demo, Nancy encounters a mouse and gets a little freaked out. Well hmmmm...I thought Nancy Drew games were for girls who aren't afraid of mice.
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| 24 JUN 2010 at 1:06am |
Jenny100Guild Master
Posts : 3510
Joined: 12 OCT 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By karla (23 JUN 2010 8:53pm)
Whether or not the similarities will continue throughout the game remains to be seen, but all we need now is an aunt who lives in Wakita...
Considering the gender changing with the storm-chaser, it might be an uncle instead.
One last thing: in the demo, Nancy encounters a mouse and gets a little freaked out. Well hmmmm...I thought Nancy Drew games were for girls who aren't afraid of mice.
Nancy is deteriorating.
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| 24 JUN 2010 at 1:19am |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | Good points, Jenny! I suppose I should cut Nancy some slack about the mouse. She is, after all, 80 years old.
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| 25 JUN 2010 at 8:30am |
CrisGerSchattenjger
Posts : 2538
Joined: 28 APR 2007
Location: US
Status : Offline | wow lotsa bugs. Poor Nancy.
and those sheep, did you ever get them in the barn?
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| 25 JUN 2010 at 9:27pm |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | Yep, I did get all of the sheep into the barn. But it involved no skill; just the sheer luck I mentioned. I had to focus my attention on keeping Nancy away from the cliff and any other potential hazards she might have walked into.
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| 2 SEP 2010 at 11:04am |
ukpetdSpace Cadet
Posts : 176
Joined: 27 JUL 2007
Status : Online | I thought this game was one of the worst of the ND series. Castle consisted of main hall (open to the elements), library, nursery, secret chamber and unreachable (without jet pack) top room. Characters were very limited - bride, bestman, mad lady and later, groom. Other venues - garden, bog, cottage, barn, pub. Liked the drum music.
Encountered no bugs. Mini game to spot the details was hard. Darts OK once the rules were understood. drink mixing just about achievable (unbelievable in an Irish pub!).
A word of warning - TOT requires lots of driving through roads full of suicidal vehicles which gang up to crash into you. One Easter egg requires playing and winning a mini game at least 30 times to amass the cost price. Sheesh! :
Waverly is the last reasonable offering.
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| 2 SEP 2010 at 12:52pm |
karlaAdministrator
Posts : 2588
Joined: 27 JUL 2003
Location: US, Close to the Edge
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By ukpetd (2 SEP 2010 11:04am)
A word of warning - TOT requires lots of driving through roads full of suicidal vehicles which gang up to crash into you. One Easter egg requires playing and winning a mini game at least 30 times to amass the cost price. Sheesh! :
Crashing? Do you mean like this? (I couldn't resist...)
[img]http://home1.gte.net/res0b8zk/NDCrashesSm.jpg[/img]
I also think TOT should be renamed Trail of the Chore List. :
Originally Posted By ukpetd (2 SEP 2010 11:04am)
Waverly is the last reasonable offering.
I completely agree.
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| 2 SEP 2010 at 4:31pm |
ukpetdSpace Cadet
Posts : 176
Joined: 27 JUL 2007
Status : Online | Karla - Crashing? Do you mean like this?
Bravo, I could not have put it better! I note the orange coloured truck totally hemmed in is the players vehicle.
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