ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: THE CAVE WORLD

[Ross Scott]

The Game Dungeon returns again!  I never meant for there to be this large a gap between episodes, but here it is regardless.  I have mixed feelings about this episode since I feel as though I should have edited more out of it, but there are special circumstances surrounding this one, as you'll find out.

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[Watterson]

I never doubted you

[ekket]

Good episode, glad to see some more game archaeology!

[xeres]

You should have said something Ross! Of course you don't get far if you haven't the book of Veldoor with you.

I'm kidding of course, the damn thing mentions how to greet people, goes over animals and plants but is more world building than anything else.

If the text isn't on the internet already, I guess scanning maybe OCRing wouldn't be much trouble.

 

I'm glad I didn't miss much when getting stuck there with no clue what or when to buy something...

[BTGBullseye]

Very interesting episode Ross! I'll keep an eye out for unusual and unheard of games... (I think I may still have some somewhere from back in my DOS days)

[JudasPhysicist]

13 hours ago, xeres said:

You should have said something Ross! Of course you don't get far if you haven't the book of Veldoor with you.

I'm kidding of course, the damn thing mentions how to greet people, goes over animals and plants but is more world building than anything else.

If the text isn't on the internet already, I guess scanning maybe OCRing wouldn't be much trouble.

 

I'm glad I didn't miss much when getting stuck there with no clue what or when to buy something...

 

Wow you really should upload it, that's proper archeology right there. Someone might even translate it if they have the time.

[Icebox]

The things you have to do to play old games anymore.

[AP_Pastor]

Jesus, that was one cold bitch, and one...interesting game. 

[daniraldo]

AAAAAAAAHH
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

I PLAYED THIS GAME!

 

Jesus Christ, I really didn't think I'd see this game on the Game Dungeon. I heard about it exactly from the first follow-up episode, when he talks about Nyet III. Since I was brushing up on my German at the time, I thought it'd be perfect.

 

I really enjoyed it, specially because it was my first stab at adventure games, and it mostly left a good impression in me. I did get stuck in some parts (the buggy car was the first one, and the jail cell, oh my god, it took me forever to figure that out, and let's not even talk about that maze), but I got pretty far before being hopelessly lost and quitting. It was when I got to Wahringen; I went as far as ratting out the rebels and getting the reward, but, after that, I just had no idea what was the next step. It didn't help that I wasn't yet fluent in German (and still ain't).

 

Anyway, I got the game from this website: http://monkeygames.uz/game/die-hoehlenwelt-saga-der-leuchtende-kristall. You can find a ton more games in German, either translated or original. Also with the game files came the manual, the aforemented "Buch von Veldoor", both in .doc and in .txt. I'm uploading it to you guys, so you can put it on Google translate or something. I thought about translating it to English myself, but, besides being... busy... *ahem* TF2 *ahem*, my German wasn't that great back then, and it's only gotten worse with time, so I doubt I would do a good job.

 

But yeah, thanks a bunch, Ross! It feels like a birthday present!

 

(I converted the .doc one into pdf, so I could upload it)

Das Buch von Veldoor.pdf

BUCH.TXT

[Zabeus]

@daniraldo How did you get out of the jail cell? Do you have to get closer to the door or do you just keep clicking it until something happens?

 

What did you think of the second jail visit, where you have to grab a pin from the door hinge?  Is there a hint anywhere in the game text that you have to click it nine times?

[hypodroid]

Good video! I know you've changed up your style some due to time/technology constraints, but I did enjoy it when you used to talk more about the games, rather than just sort of a lets play. Or maybe just when you have a little more commentary, rather than pure narration. Its your series and I'll never stop watching, thank you for creating content!

[Steve the Pocket]

Oh wow, this game. I remember when it came up in the followup episode and then completely lost track of what was going on with it. But I do recall one of your German viewers saying that they'd played it and that it wasn't very good; they weren't wrong.

 

The fact that there's a clear, steady progression from LucasArts to lowkey-Sierra to hard-Sierra to complete batshit is very interesting, though. One might even say it has a genuine difficulty curve, something I've not seen in an adventure game before. I can't help but admire the ambition involved there.

[daniraldo]

2 hours ago, Zabeus said:

@daniraldo How did you get out of the jail cell? Do you have to get closer to the door or do you just keep clicking it until something happens?

 

What did you think of the second jail visit, where you have to grab a pin from the door hinge?  Is there a hint anywhere in the game text that you have to click it nine times?

On the first jail cell, I did the same thing as Ross in the video to get the key. Once I had it, I don't remember having any trouble opening the door, but it was a while ago. I guess I just kept clicking; the part with the button on the moon buggy taught me to expect a lot of pixel hunting in this game.

 

I didn't make it as far as the second jail visit. I think I'd be totally stumped, though; I remember the game never specifies too well that something will only work if you click on it repeatedly.

Edited July 1, 2019 by daniraldo (see edit history)

[Schneider]

Man, when I saw that ZTranslate was a thing, and that this game was the first target, I didn't know you were going to play it so soon. I actually spent a quite a bit of time making my own translation, working with the game files instead of OCR, but I got heavily sidetracked along the way. I do still intend to complete it.

 

About that issue throwing the pie at Qualbert: That's strange, I never encountered it in the couple of playthroughs I did.

 

I do have a bit of nitpicking to do:

•  Collie is short for "collaborator". Hellami (the woman with the green shirt) explains this in the first conversation you have with her. (I honestly don't know if that was a joke on your part and I just didn't get it, or if it was an oversight.)
•  The origin of the light is explained in the companion booklet "The Book of Veldoor" already mentioned in this thread. Tl;dr: it's coming through crystals in the cave ceiling. If you inspect the book in-game, the game will actually make a snarky remark:

  Quote

  As an honest owner of this game, I'll find it in the box. As a less honest owner however... Many an interesting aspect of this world will be lost on me.

  I've made a rough translation, which I was gonna finish later, but I guess I can put it up here now. I'll try to polish it up in the next few days.
• "Ginbart is fine, and he knows a lot more than you do." - That's a translation error. The original line went more like "Ginbart is all right, and he knows a lot more than you'd think."
• If the guys at the inn in Wahringen walk out or refuse to talk to you, the game isn't softlocked. For the low price of 3 folints you can go back to Berg-Wolkenheim and talk to Ginbart. He's got some connections and can pass a message, which will make them return.
• The place with the static waterfall and the big dragon statue is called "Mindhoor". The dark side of the cave world is called "Maldoor".
• "Are you healthy and fit?" - I would also consider that somewhat of a mistranslation. I would have gone with "Did you come back in one piece?", or simply "Are you all right?", or something like that.

But most importantly, of course: Maomi doesn't have to dump you at the end! The game has a, sort of, relationship status variable for Maomi, which increases, when you pick choices the game considers proper, and decreases when you pick the wrong choices. One wrong choice, for instance, is asking "How's Gusmar?" instead of asking "How are you?" when taking the three mirrors back to Sekamidoor. Another one is suggesting for her to leave the Cave World with you, instead of staying and finding the gleaming crystal. I don't know all the relevant conversation options, so I've not gotten it legitimately, but editing the byte at 0x465B to 0x0A and the one right after that to 0x00 in the save file should get you the good ending. (I've attached a save file where this has been done.)

 

About the card game: Yeah, that was weird. I've played that as well and it didn't have any multiplayer option, just a big singleplayer map with a lot of AI opponents to battle. And it's grindy as hell, unless you found the glitch, which allowed you to sell the same card infinitely many times. (That made the game a lot more fun.) It also has a strange campaign mode, which plays a bit like a text adventure, except with battles, which are fought using the card game. There is also an editor, which can use to create your own campaigns, but I haven't come across any fan creations.

 

The card game is based on the Höhlenwelt-Novels written by the game's writer, Harald Evers. (If you watch the credits again, you'll see his name more than one time.) My impression was that while they started out with some interesting concepts, they got pretty boring by the second book. There were going to be 3 "cycles" with 4 novels each, but Evers was only able to complete eight novels, as he died of a heart attack in 2006, at only 49.

 

One last thing: The game didn't just use CD audio, it also came with some MIDI tracks. So in case anyone feels like giving some new life to this music,

I've attached the sound files I was able to extract.

 

Edit:

Oh, yeah, I forgot. The episode was great. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. I guess part of the reason was that I spent so much time with the game myself. I especially liked your comment about the "semi-insane infinite looping conversations".

SAVE.zip

cave_sounds.zip

The Book of Veldoor.zip

Edited July 1, 2019 by Schneider (see edit history)

[Beaker]

I agree with everything you mentioned Schneider.  I read your comments about the translation on the forums from 2016, but the fact that the cutscene texts were in image format made me think of going the OCR route.  Only after that did I realize that the intro didn't have subtitles for the voice over either.

 

The points where ZTranslate broke down were from me not sourcing the screen caps of them beforehand.  I tried my best, but I straight up missed talking to the Mindoor guy the second time.  As well, the second point where the translation broke was because of that relationship variable that changes as you play.  I never saw that dialog, so I couldn't translate it.  Even at that though, I was able to get Maomi to love me, leave me, or just be like "meh, I'll stick with you I guess," all by just changing the dialog choices at the end.  Incidentally, anyone who thinks "semi-insane infinite looping conversations" are bad, try mapping one out to make sure you got all the possibilities.

 

Though there was one thing he didn't quite get to in the video, which I hope he'll cover in the follow-up episode.  I guess he ran out of time and couldn't add it in.  It was pretty good, so I'm looking forward to it. 

 

Also, Schneider, if you're interested in translating other adventure games, maybe I could help out.  As Ross mentioned, there a lot of them out there that were never translated.

 

[Schneider]

I like the idea of translating other stuff, but I think I'll stick to this game for now. I think there is a lot of value in being able to interact with the text, rather than reading it on a separate screen. Right now I'm working on a little app which is purpose-built for editing the .003 file. Kind of overkill maybe, but having an instant preview, for instance, would help a lot with judging the impact of certain lines: The .003 file has the neat feature that you can decide to put different lines on different screens. This can be used to vary emphasis.

 

I actually had a basic working version ready, but that turned out to have a bug, which caused certain event triggers to disappear. I scrapped that and worked on this newer one, which turned out to take an unreasonable amount of time. Still, it was a fun learning experience for me.

 

I think I'll put it on github, in case anyone is interested, but I've got some cleaning up (and translating the Book of Veldoor) to do beforehand.

[xeres]

Das Buch von Veldoor (imgur)

...with all the art that seems to be missing from pdf/doc.

[rep ad ujux]

Does someone know how to extract the background bitmaps from the game files? The ones depicting nature looked very pretty, like a low-poly painterly render.

[Schneider]

Oh, those drawings look great! I'll be sure to paste them in when I finish the translation. I especially like how the collaborators are basically portrayed as subhuman goblins. I'm a bit disappointed by the ogas though. Giving how they're described, I thought they would look like something totally from out of this world.

 

I've not been able to extract any bitmaps, but I also haven't looked that hard, so I think it's likely to be possible.

Edited July 2, 2019 by Schneider (see edit history)

[ekket]

It seems like there's enough material for a follow-up episode already (the next episode is also a follow-up, pretty good coincidence there).