Share your "Outsmarting the Video Game programmer" stories

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41

Actually, I guess I’ll give one I discovered too…

In Baldur’s Gate the final battle has you attacking Bhaal and a couple of his henchmen. You appear at one end of a large room (with an obstacle of some kind in the middle). Bhaal and company are on a raised platform on the other end of the room.

The catch was that the baddies wouldn’t move until they actually saw you and their sight distance was the same as yours. So, I would send one character with as many fireball type spells and effects as I could around the center obstacle until the edge of the platform that Bhaal and company just came into view. I then started launching all of my fireballs at the corner of that platform. The burst radius of the explosions would start damaging the baddies (and the combat display would show them taking damage) but they never moved or retaliated unless they could actually see you! I was usually able to take out everyone but Bhaal himself that way.

I would then let Bhaal see that one character. He charged towards where the character was, but before he got there I threw an animal summon on that point. He stopped to take out the animals and my entire party unloaded on him with missile weapons and other non-area attacks until he went down.

Net result was that I could finish off the entire final battle and none of my characters ever took a single point of damage.
Then there was the way to start Baldurs Gate II with all of your equipment from the previous game.

You can import your characters from the first game into the second, but the very first thing that happens to you is that you get captured, taken prisoner and all your equipment is taken from you. Then there is a cutscene where you are tortured for a while.

The catch here is that the cutscene was actually in the game engine with the interface toggled off. Which means you had access to all game functions, even if it wasn’t obvious.

So, you would start a new game and import your character from the first game. When the game starts the screen first turns black (and you hear yourself getting knocked out). If you immediately hit the pause button as soon as the screen went black, you could pause the game before you were knocked out. You couldn’t see anything but you didn’t need too.

If you toggled the interface back on at this point you could open your inventory and see that you still had all of your imported items. Simply remove them and drop them, then unpause the game and allow the cutscene to complete. Then, as your first action, pick up all of your equipment that is now lying on the floor of your cell.

Made the first few chapters of the game very easy…

42

Not exactly a video game, but I remember something from when I once played Electronic Battleship when I was about 10.
The way Electronic Battleship works is that in the instructions there are a whole bunch of different ship layouts, each with a code next to them, and when you start the game you enter the code for the layout you’ve chosen.
Anyway, as the game progressed, I had the instruction book with me and I figured out which of them was his based on where I had hit and missed him. After which I proceeded to crush his fleet while he wondered how I managed to hit him every turn. When I told him, he got really mad. :smiley:

43

Oh, another one I forgot: In Hexen, in the first level, you need to ring a bell in the top of a bell tower to open the door to the end of the level. To ring the bell, you hit it, and to get to the top of the tower, you need the Silver Key, which is inconveniently located past some smashy things. But if you’re playing as the Wizard, who starts off with a long-ranged weapon, and you stand in just the right place, you can ring the bell from the ground, and therefore avoid needing to get the key. It doesn’t really save you much, though… The Silver Key is the hardest part of that level, but it’s only the first level, and there are much harder, unavoidable, challanges soon.

And since tanstaafl mentions Baldur’s Gate, I’m reminded of the earlier D&D game Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. That game had its fair share of exploitable glitches. For starters, some character types started with a cheap sword, armor, or bow and arrows, but others just got a club. But you could use the character-creation and import system to bring a character into the party, transfer his equipment to another character, and then remove him from the party, before actually starting the game. So you could start with two swords, a cheap armor, a bow, and as many arrows as you liked for each character, a huge boost at the beginning of the game before you had any real source of supplies.

Also, the game had two modes: Regular mode and combat mode. In combat mode, it was turn-based, but in regular mode, no time elapsed on spell durations and the like, and you could act as quickly as you could right-click to pause the game. If you attacked an enemy, or they got close enough to you, it’d automatically enter combat mode, so ordinarily, you could usually get off one free attack, but no more.

Except that one of the “spells” (Ego Whip, a psionic ability which any of your characters could get without too much difficulty), which (if successful) prevented the target from being able to fight, didn’t actually trigger combat mode. So if you saw some enemies approaching, you could repeatedly ego-whip them until you had successfully whipped all of them, without them being able to retaliate until you chose. Enemy spellcasters could still use their spells, but it made most combats a heck of a lot easier.

44

Not -my- particular brilliance, but the exploit of a loophole none-the-less…

In World of Warcraft, the first ‘dungeon’ most characters go to is called Dreadmines, aka DM or VC (Van Cleef, the name of the ‘boss’, to separate it from another dungeon with the same initials).

Towards the end of the dungeon there’s some rather large fights with some rather tough guys. There’s also one spot… One… Where, should you go there, the enemies can neither follow nor shoot you. It’s not that far away. Most people who do this dungeon know about it, and it’s considered the ‘safe spot’- you’re getting killed? Get there, rest up, etcetera. I’ve often wondered- it’s widely known, and not fixed. I almost assume it’s due to it being the ‘first dungeon’, and the programmers and decision-makers for the game said, “Ah, they found it, let’s just leave it and give 'em a break.”

45

In Maniac Mansion (I played the NES version, if it matters), you’re supposed to fix some wiring in the attic, play an arcade game, and get the combination for Dr Fred’s Seckrit Lab from the game’s high score. I discovered that, if you don’t fix the wires or play the game, the combination is 0000.

46

This is one of my favorite Star Trek books. Although it’s probably considered general canon that Sulu will eventually have his own ship, (Excelsior), I thought the book explored some other neat ideas:

Besides Sulu, Chekov and Scotty also attended Starfleet Command School.

At Command School, Chekov idolized Kirk, perhaps a bit too much. You really see Chekov’s almost Machievellian approach to problem solving that is similar to the way Kirk keeps everyone (even his own crew) second guessing his actions. Kirk’s better at it, though.

Scotty’s Kobayashi Maru experience can be considered relevant to this thread. He pulled a hack that worked because the simulator was programmed with theoretical research that Scotty did when he was 16. That was when his superiors recognized his mad engineering skillz.

47

One word: Devastator.

48

This sort of hack is prevalent with almost ANY of the RPGs that involves a party of autonomous characters – it’s just taken as a given. You can easily duplicate unique items this way, or make sure all of your characters have the best armor, etc. Just save the character, then have him give all his gear away, then re-import the saved version. Instant “duplication” spell, we used to call it. This worked in the SSI D&D games, Baldur’s Gate, even the ages old Bard’s Tale games, and n oone has ever done anything to prevent it. It’s just assumed that if you want to cheat, you’re basically going to figure it out.

49

In GTA:VC, there is a mission for the porn studio where you have to switch on this searchlight. Sounds simple, right? Nope. You have to hit these checkpoints, and they are all on rooftops. So you ride your motorcycle jumping from roof to roof hoping not to fall off. There is a time limit as well. Whee.

So I was trying this mission and having a lot of trouble with it. One jump in particular was giving me trouble. I just couldn’t make it. So I told myself, “Self, we’re going to give this one more try, and if it doesn’t work, it’s bedtime.”

So I rev my cycle and go. I land on the roof. Yay!

I wipe out and my cycle goes over the edge, stranding me. Crap! Ecstasy to agony in two seconds.

What is that grinding noise? It sounds like. . . a garage door opening. I check my map. I am apparently standing on the garage portion of my hideout at Hyman Condos. Where I keep a helicopter.

So I jump off the garage (took a bit of damage) run up to the helipad, take off, hit all the checkpoints, and complete my mission with plenty of time to spare.

50

I hope this doesn’t date me…

Superman for the Atari 2600. You start out as Clark Kent, then very shortly afterwards, all the bad guys, including Lex Luthor go steal a bunch of stuff, so you have to change to superman, capture all the bad guys and put them in jail and rescue Lois Lane and Jimmy Oleson too. After all this you are supposed to turn back into Clark Kent and finish the game by arriving at the Daily Planet.

The thing with this game was that when you paused it, it would flash each place in the game at random at about 1 second intervals, all the while keeping your character (superman) on the screen. When you unpaused it, superman would be at that place in the game.

So, when we played it, we drastically shorten the game because we would pause it before all the bad guys had showed up. So we would have Clark Kent just sitting there as the scenes from each place in the game flashed by. When the Daily Planet flashed up, we would unpause it and make Clark go into the door of the Daily Planet, thus ending the game.

Man, now THAT brings back some memories.

51

Actually, I don’t think you could use this to dupe in Shattered Lands: When you imported a character, that character only had es starting equipment, not matter what e had when you exported. But that extra starting equipment could be awfully useful, for about the first 20% of the game.

52

I don’t know if this is an exploit in the spirit of the OP or if it would be considered an outright cheat. In the games Madden and NCAA Football on the PS2, audible plays are assigned to controller buttons, which limits your choice of audibles to only a few. But, there’s a way to call any play as an audible at any time. Simply pause the game and enter the setup menu where you assign your audibles and change one of them to the desired play, then un-pause the game and call your play.

I don’t have the latest versions of these games but it worked in the '03 & '05 versions and imagine it will still work in '07.

53

I’m pretty sure that was intentional. The Nintendo DS port/upgrade of the game has the same feature.

54

Tell me about it - I remember that game and that exploit, but a friend of mine showed it to me. I didn’t discover it myself.

On “Golden Age” arcade games you could take advantage of the processors mathematical limits: being 8-bit games, the number 255/256 came into play a number of times.

On Galaga, if you let one of the flies swoop down on you for about 10 minutes, he’ll shoot 255 missles and then can’t shoot any more. Once he’s gone through three times in a row without shooting at you, kill him. For the rest of the game, the enemy will never shoot at you. I always let one of the ones on the far-right or left be the one that I avoid - their patterns are easier to avoid.

In Robotron: 2084, the game rolled over to wave 1 once you cleared wave 255 (the wave counter only went up to 99, though). However, if you earned more than 255 extra men, it rolled over to “0” leaving you with the one you were playing. This one caught me a couple of times - good going, Eugene! :wink:

Computer-wise, I vaguely remember a very early Wizardry bug on the Apple II (or Atari 800 - I had one of those too) that somehow got you a lot of money - 32,000 gold or something like that. Had something to do with killing a rat somehow, somewhere IIRC.

Exodus: Ultima III had my favorite exploit of all time. Starting out, you tried to get both your cleric and wizard up in levels as soon as possible, getting to the “Rot” spell for your wizard (the Heal spell needed for the cleric comes pretty early in this game). Once this happened the game was over.

Once getting the spells, you can take your party (you need a ship - watch out for sea serpents!) to an island on the SE side of the main landmass. There’s a town embedded in the mountains there, and in this town, among a twisty maze through rocks, is a large room full of chests. The entrance way to the room was a N-S bottleneck that only allowed one party at a time through. You did not have to fight your way in here.

Start stealing the chests. You’ll get caught, but don’t worry about it: you have the rot spell. There’s about 25-30 chests and plenty of cash, weapons and armor will pour out of them. You’ll see the guards approach you, but they won’t be able to get to you - you have to go to them on your way out.

Being a grid-based game, enemy movement in Exodus was pretty simple: “It’s comin’ right for us!” If you headed south, it headed south. If you moved east, it moved east. If you moved east/west or north/south parallel to the bad guy, and he was blocked, he would not move at all.

The maze that you took to get in the room allowed you to lure a single group of guards (the worst of the standard monsters - always came in packs of 8 and had 250 hit points each) to you for you to take out back in the room.

When you went into combat mode, you had your wizard cast the Rot spell, which had the salutory effect of removing all but 1 HP from all opposing monsters. It also had the bad effect of draining all your MP from your wizard, but that was of little concern.

Anyway, a group of one-point guards is of little consequence to your level-23 Rangers and stuff.

Take out the guards, and, by walking E/W along the same gridline as the next group of guards, you increase HP and MP by one point per space of movement for all characters. Go back and forth 50 times, get everybody back to 100 points, lure the next set of guards, repeat.

Make your way out of the city using this technique and be sure to never go out in the open w/o your wizard having enough points to cast Rot. There are more treasure chests around, and you can steal from the armory and stuff to your hearts content.

But the beautiful thing… after you laid waste to this town, killing all vestige of authority and plundering it into another Great Depression… after you do all this, you leave the town, re-enter it…

And everything is back to normal, everybody acting like nothing ever happened, the chests back, waiting to be plundered, the guards cheerily waving you hello as you walk past them.

It was great.

55

I discovered and exploited these features of an old Amiga-based online MUD I used to play:

First, I discovered a way to acquire virtually limitless numbers of Staff of Sleep- if you could get to a certain magic shop, the owner would sell you new ones for the same price as he would buy used ones back from you. A fairly low level spell but it always had a certain non-zero chance of working no matter how powerful the npc.

Second, I could walk up to the richest character in the game and keep trying Staff of Sleep (because failed spells weren’t recognized as attacks), and eventually, even if it took 100 or more tries, I’d succeed in putting him to sleep.

Third, I discovered that anyone, not just Thieves, could use the Steal command. It was simply that ordinarily only Thieves could get into the Thieve’s Guild to practice their skill. Without practice, you chance of picking someone’s pockets without alerting them was zero. EXCEPT that if they were under a Sleep spell, only being actually attacked would wake them up again. One I had Moneybags under, I could rob him for huge sums of gold.

Fourth, I could take all that gold and go to the Pet Shop, where for a hefty fee you could buy trained attack wolves. I’d buy a pack of a hundred or so.

Fifth, I would then seek out the Silver Paladin, say “Sic 'em” to my pack, and then duck into the next room and wait while a huge bloody battle took place. When it was over, I’d walk into the room, pick up the now-dead Paladin’s armor and weapons, and now have equipment so good that I could defeat enemies a fighter of my level shouldn’t have had a chance against.

56

I have to confess that when playing Fallout 2, I almost always go down to San Francisco, get the Vertibird Plans quest, and then go back up to Navarro for some Advanced Power Armor. Sure, I still can’t hit anything well, but on the other hand, I’ll survive being hit. And, of course, I need the strength. I don’t know if this is an exploit or not, because during the Broken Hills Fix The Air Machine quest, I don’t take damage from bad air if I’m in that suit. Of course I have to wander south for a couple of days, save, rinse and repeat going to SF and Navarro, but I really enjoy not having to doctor myself every few minutes.

57

There was a Chameleon in the Battletech box set, the basic rules. It was listed as a ‘training mech’.

58

In Might & Magic VI you could use a combination of a fountain in Sweet Water and the Day of the Gods spell to give yourself excellent temporary boosts to stats. When the Circus was in town, you could put a Lloyd’s Beacon marker by the Circus and then visit Abdul’s Desert Resort in Dragonsand to set another one. (There was a secret teleporter in New Sorpigal to get you to Dragonsand.) Then you powered up, teleported to the Circus using one Beacon, won loads of prizes, teleported to the Resort to swap your circus prizes for extremely good magic items, and so back and forth until you were laden to the eyeballs with really fun toys. :slight_smile:

In Might & Magic IX a Banker NPC not only increases found gold by 10% but also increases gold withdrawn from the bank. So go to the bank, deposit all your money, withdraw it all, deposit it all, etc… a couple of million will probably last you as long as necessary.

In Master of Magic a wizard who had the Runemaster and Artificer skills could craft magic items at a 75% discount in mana, and then destroy them to get back half the mana they should have taken to make. In effect they had a “Multiply Mana” spell… and could later use their skills as intended to craft some vicious items. (But for all that, one of the most vicious game-busters was a halfling town near an adamantium deposit, under a white Warlord wizard. Champion-level Slingers with +2 weapons were frighteningly good.)

59

Nothing nearly so exciting, but on “NHL 94” on the SNES, there was a particular trick you could do (kind of a vertical s-curve like thing) that would ALWAYS fake out the goalie, and leave him out of position.

NHL 94 games between my brother and I were kind of weird- we would try to defend the starting spot for that trick, so that the other would have to shoot fairly.

60

I doubt they really thought it would be a deterrent, but I played the Leisure Suit Larry Games way before I was an adult (I don’t remember when it was, but with the earliest ones, I may not have even been a teenager) and was always able to answer the ‘prove you’re an adult’ questions. :smiley: