Metal key bug and save feature

fosforo

Hi, a couple of bag:

1) in order to open the door of the shed, I have to use the METAL key in my pocket, that is a lot strange because under the mat there is the WOODEN key. Therefore, with the WOOODEN key I can't open the above mentioned door of the shed,only with the METAL one.

2) if I type the "SAVE" command directly in the prompt, the game doesn't save or I can't see the new save file among the save files created by the SAVE button in the option menu. Anyway, in which directory are those save files stored?

Thanks,
fosforo

hugh

Hi Fosforo,

Metal & Wooden keys

Ah the weird sense of humour of The Pawn. Yes, the wooden key does not open the shed but the metal key does!!

Save & Load

Unfortunately, for The Pawn, games saved from the command using "save" are not the same as those created by the GUI;

You can save and load from the GUI and those saves are listed in the dialog box. If you save from the command line, it will not show those saves in the dialog box because they cannot be loaded by the GUI.

Why this is?

The Pawn remaster was released before we were able to recover the original source code and as such you are running the original binary. The original games used to encrypt the save games to prevent tampering.

The GUI saves work by extracting and saving the memory image of the game, which makes them different and not compatible (unless we figured out how to encrypt them in just the same way as the original code and make them exactly the same content).

So, when you type "save" in the game, you're running the original save game code in the game, but when you save from the GUI, you're extracting and saving the game memory image.

"save" does work from inside the game, you have to give the filename as prompted and answer the "are you sure?", but this file is only valid for the corresponding game "load" command (whereby you have to supply the previously given filename).

It's much easier to use the GUI save feature.

When we remade The Guild, we did it by rebuilding the original source code, but we took out the encryption feature so that the games saved by the GUI are compatible with those saved by the game. So the difference above is only there in The Pawn.

In theory, we could now make another release of The Pawn from its source code and change it to be compatible.

On Windows, the games are saved in;

c:\users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Brahman\pawn

fosforo

First of all,
about metal key you're absolute right, it's not a bug

In my defense, before starting my discussione in bug section, I consulted this walktrough that says that to open the door is needed the wooden key:

lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1198

So I and this walktrough are wrong (or victim of the weird sense of humour of The Pawn authors), there is any bug, I'm sorry.

About the saving behaviour explanation, now it's all clear, thank you, I'll use only the gui mode.

Due to the fact that there is no bug, can I change the topic's title to adjust a little?

Thanks