Time Bandit - Tar Pit password?

[marcelschoen]

HI there,

After 22 years, I wanna complete Time Bandit, and while doing so, I'm trying to compile a somewhat complete Walkthrough. Of course it ought to include all the riddles, as far as possible. Currently I'm stuck with the tar pit in "Ghost Town", 4D, where you have to walk over to the box and enter the 9-letter password. I could ignore that and finish the level, but that would not be good for my walkthrough (and I'll probably miss out on an artifact, I guess).

The letters available are:

AEECHRNTN

I wrote a little program to generate all possible combinations, and to my horror, there are more than 123'000. I created a text file with all the combinations, but only scrolling through them in a text editor takes ages.

Any ideas? If anyone wants the text file for doing anything with it (some kind of dictionary search comes to mind), I'll be happy to zip and mail it to you.

EDIT: Just found this post: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2317&p=42956&hilit=time+bandit#p42956
Where the solution seems to be "HEARTLESS". Only that this word has a different batch of letters! Are there more than one possible words? Guess I have to go back and check all the letters I found...

Thanks and regards,
Marcel

[Mug UK]

If it's a valid word you're after - how about ENCHANTER as that's the only anagram I could find?

[marcelschoen]

Yes, it's a valid word I'm after. I'll give ENCHANTER a try.

However, I just replayed the whole "Ghost Town" from scratch in a new game, and indeed, I got again another batch of letters:

RORIEZERT

So, apparently, there isn't just one solution. With every fresh game, a random word from some internal list seems to be selected (just as the combination to the vault is generated anew with every new game).

Therefore I'll just start collecting values and solutions. While you guys can torture your brains over RORIEZERT, I'll go and try out ENCHANTER. Thank god for emulators and their memory snapshot function...

[PaulB]

Maybe RORIEZERT = TERRORIZE (american spelling)

[Mug UK]

This is the site I used to get ENCHANTER out of the letters - http://www.puzzledepot.com/wordfinder2/scrabble.html

And it also seems to confirm that the US spelling of TERRORIZE is the other word.

Maybe use STEEM Debug to save off the first 1Meg of memory to a file and search for both words (the anagram and the correct spelling) - there could just be a table of entries stored in memory which contains all the possible words?

[marcelschoen]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for all your replys. First of all, "ENCHANTER" and "TERRORIZE" are correct. I wonder how many more words there are? And thanks for the hint to that website. The correct word leads to an artifact, an old golden watch.

I have now "Ghost Town" complete in my Walkthrough, and also completed the infamous "Excalibur" by blowing up the Klingon ship. However, there are still a few things left undone there, that I don't understand / know about:

- Some people wrote of "lightning bolts" they used somewhere. I didn't come across any... where are they? And what are they good for?
- What about the unhelpful computer on Starbase-4?
- What about the long-range transport coordinates for the teleporter or Starbase-4? Where can I get them?
- Fixing the firing pin: When one walks to the workbench at the back of the Excalibur and tries to fix the pin by entering "USE WIRE", a message appears that only a genius would know into which of the 999 holes to put the wire. Which one is it? And what happens then, since the pin can be aquired from the crate on Starbase-4 anyway?

BTW, for those who didn't realize it, the Klingon ship can only be destroyed on 4D. In previous levels, they "perform a spectacular evasive roll".

Regards,
Marcel

[marcelschoen]

Using an image snapshot of STeem and a hex editor, I looked up the words for the tar pit in "Ghost Town":

TERRORIZE
HEARTLESS
ENCHANTER
MISCREANT
GENTLEMEN

That's all that I could find. Cheers!

[Mug UK]

There's a home on the Atari Forum Wiki for your walkthrough when it's ready

[Kroah]

Hi all,

For whom who don't know me, I reverse engineered some games. Time Bandit is one of them.
I've made a Time Bandit editor based on the ST version. It's not released for public now, but will be in the futur of course.

If you need some helps for this game, i'll be glad to help you.

To give you an idea of my tool, you can see a preview here:
http://bringerp.free.fr/RE/Tb/utility.php5

Here are some screenshots:

- The map editor

Utility_1.png

- The script editor

Utility_3.png

- The dialog editor

Utility_5.png

Cheers,
Kroah

[Mug UK]

Glad to see you're still hacking away at Time Bandit Kroah.

[marcelschoen]

Hey Kroah,

Of course I know about your editor, and I'd LOVE to use it to unravel each and every last secret of Time Bandit, in order to make sure my Walkthrough Guide will be complete.

However, as you mentioned, there's no download yet... Any chance I can get my hand on it? I'd also be happy to give you feedback about it. I'm a software engineer for a living myself, so I more or less know what kind of feedback actually helps (I hope).

Anyway keep up the good work!

Regards,
Marcel

PS: Just completed the egyptian ones, and "Darkside Dare"... How the hell can anyone complete "Darkside Dare" without a cheat?? That map is pure masochism!

[marcelschoen]

There's a home on the Atari Forum Wiki for your walkthrough when it's ready

That's a good idea. I'll have a look at that Wiki. The question is, should I write a Wiki topic, or just post/attach a text file, which is easier to download and use offline? And the textfile could also be posted to gamefaqs.com, just for backup purposes.

What do you think?

Regards,
Marcel

[Mug UK]

Keep it as a text file for your 'master' copy and then you can embellish it for the Wiki version by adding bold/underline/italic ... and pictures

[Kroah]

Of course I know about your editor, and I'd LOVE to use it to unravel each and every last secret of Time Bandit, in order to make sure my Walkthrough Guide will be complete.

However, as you mentioned, there's no download yet... Any chance I can get my hand on it? I'd also be happy to give you feedback about it. I'm a software engineer for a living myself, so I more or less know what kind of feedback actually helps (I hope).

I PM you the tool. You'll need .NET Framework 3.0 (at least).

I don't work on it right now (finishing alpha-testing the Colonial Conquest remake), so some things may seem unfinished.

There isn't any documentation coming with it, but if you use it to browse the levels and scripts, it must be enough (but still a little difficult i think). However, if you have any questions, you can ask here or at my forum, as you want.

By the way, if you need some kind of features to help you writing your walkthrough (map snapshots, more infos, ...), i could implement it quickly.

Edit: Even if your feedbacks are welcome, i will not be able to implement your suggestions now. Concerning bugs, i'll look at them.

Have fun with it,
Kroah

[castorex]

It seems that many years later, download is still unavailable for this tool...

I'm a crazy french man who wants to adapt Time bandit to a strange french computer... and this editor could be a great help in this challenge.

I hope the author of this Time bandit editor is still connected to the forum.

[Dal]

Kroah still pops in from time to time - although hasn't been here since 26th Jan. I'll give him a nudge via PM for you.

[Kroah]

Hey there,

I'm still subscribed to some threads here and you can contact me through my forum too.
You will see i always answer to the posts on both forums.

I haven't put the tool online because of the lack of interest from the community, but i'm always willing to share it to anyone interested in Time Bandit.

I have PM'ed you the tool.
If you need the source too, just ask me.

and keep us informed from your project

[castorex]

Thanks a lot.

[bvario]

Kroah -- I'd love the tool as well. I'm a huge TB fan and actually started drooling looking at your editor screenshots! Let me know if you can PM it to me?

[GeoffG]

I'd be extremely interested in a copy, too. I played version 2.0 back in the 80s and early 90s, until my ST finally died. I've only just discovered emulation, and I played v 2.1 on my laptop last night (being able to save is very, very nice). Just like old times.

I checked out what you've done with your editor, and I have so many ideas. I'd love to be able to create some mini-worlds for my sons to explore.