Finding maximum points in Sierra games using script editor

[Tom]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the correct board to post this on, but I'll give it a go here anyway. There are two Sierra games which I am unsure of the maximum point total on: Pepper's Adventures in Time and Police Quest IV: Open Season. The highest score I've found for Pepper's Adventures in Time is 564 and the highest for Police Quest IV is 493. Is it possible to use a script editor to extract information on the exact actions that give points? I've used SCI editor on Police Quest IV to look at the script for a specific room (script 100 being the opening crime scene), and the word "point" is contained in that script a number of times, but I just can't seem to make sense of it. Does anyone know a way of extracting just the actions that give points in these games?

[Cloudee1]

Hey Tom, welcome, and yes, this is the perfect board to post this in.

while you might be able to decipher some of the decompiled code, it isn't going to be very easy. The source code is really what you would be wanting to look at, as it is far more readable. Unfortunately for the Sierra games the source code simpy is not available. What's worse is that doing a couple of searches, it doesn't seem that anyone else knows how many points are possible either.

I have gone ahead and opened up Pepper in SCI View and I have found one of those "points" references you were talking about.

Code: [Select]

pushi $57 ; 87, 'W', points

Unfortunately I saw the exact same line in 4 or 5 code blocks, so it makes me think that it is not the call to change the players score. I was looking in room 250  which appears to be the small alley with the clothes hanging on the line.

I did find this in script 995

Code: [Select]

pushi $16f ; 367, changeScore

But that didn't get me anywhere....
So let's try a different approach. In the first room, outside house. Script 120. There is a piece of gum on the ground. If you pick it up you get a point. and a set of messages is displayed. Looking in the Message resources for clues to track down the specific code block

Noun 9 Verb 7 Cond 15 Seq 1 Talker 49
Noun 9 Verb 7 Cond 15 Seq 2 Talker 48

Now this same set of messages is played whenever you walk over the gum, and when you pick it up. So let's go see if we can anything that seems to look like it might be triggering these specific messages.

uh, nevermind, that didn't really get me anywhere either. I am going to have to bow out, I don't know the best way to determine the scoring looking at a dissassembled script. Sorry

[Tom]

Thanks for your reply, Cloudee. It seems like I'll just have to use the messages tab in SCI viewer then to find out which actions might give points within a location.