Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Distribution: world
From: Ron_Hunsinger@bmug.org
Organization: BMUG, Inc.
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 17:59:12 PST
Subject: Re: PoP level 5 potion

You said:

>>I have just tried THREE TIMES to follow the instructions for getting this
>>baby recently posted (nail the guard on the bottom floor so that he lands
>>on the trigger plate).  Every single time he has been perfectly positioned,
>>and every single time, right before the final blow fell, the game SWITCHED
>>our POSITIONS so that he fell far too far to the left.  And it sure as hell
>>wasn't because we were too close, which the usual justification for a 
>>position switch... I think the game is deliberately preventing me from
getting
>>the guard to die on the plate.
>>
>>Wes

And I said:

>Only three times? {;-)
>
>Seriously, I think you must be getting too close to him.  [more]

Well, I see now what you mean.  It just happened to me.  It was
the wierdest thing -- I was in the starting room, and he was in
the doorway, to the right of me.  I delivered the fatal blow,
pushing him even further to the right, and in mid-air, he switched
places with me.  I mean, he was already dead, for crying out loud,
and I had just pushed him even further away, so he definitely
wasn't close enough to switch, even if he was alive.  But he did!

In the middle of the night, I woke up with the scenario replaying
itself in my head, and suddenly understood what had happened.  He
is standing in the doorway, and the gate is closing.  At some
point, the gate will be too low for him to remain where he is,
and he will have to move.  When this happens, the game doesn't
bother to animate the motion; it just moves him all at once.  You
can see this happen to yourself by trying to stand in a closing
gate.  At some point, you will be simply displaced horizontally.
(Definitely an oversight on the part of the designers.  They missed
an excellent opportunity to add even more blood and gore to the
game.)

In his case, it might be that he is not actually in the gateway
until you kill him.  Dead, he has a much wider profile than when
he was alive, so suddenly he is in a gate that is nearly closed,
so suddenly he has to be moved, and the sudden motion forces him
to suddenly switch with you.

What you have to do to prevent this is to crowd him even more, not
less, so that he occasionally steps on the pressure plate to keep
the gate open.


Perhaps part of the reason I hadn't seen this before is that I
most often kill him in the same room he starts in (assuming I'm
trying to make him die on the plate).  The exact sequence is:

1) Climb up to the floor he is on.  You will draw your sword.
2) Immediately step left, falling one floor.  You will put away
   your sword and face right.
3) Tap the left key, so you are facing left.  (There isn't quite
   time to step right before you turn.  Well, there is, but only
   barely, and you don't always make it in time. So settle for
   just turning around where you land.)
4) He will drop down to the left of you, between you and the gate,
   just where you want him, except that, unfortunately, he is a
   little too close, and you immediately switch places with him.
   So now you are where you want him to be.
5) You have to switch back, but don't do it too quickly.  He is
   right at the edge, and if you rush to switch, then you will be
   the one right at the edge, and he will be able to push you off
   even if you block.  You want to be sure he has a chance to move
   away from the edge before you switch.
6) Kill him.


Unfortunately, this is still all academic.  Killing him on the
plate doesn't seem to make a bit of difference.  The potion is
still unreachable, at least for me.

BTW, a "Get Info" on my copy of the game says it was created
Thur, Feb 20, 1992 at 9:41 am, and is version 1.0.  If anyone has
a different version, let me know.

I generally play in color, but just to see if it makes any difference,
I loaded the B/W graphics and tried it that way.  It didn't make any
difference, except aesthetically.  I didn't really expect it to, but
I just wanted to be thorough.  (My condolences to those of you who must
play in B/W.) 



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