SCI: QFG2: Keapon Laffin Does Not Give Particular Messages

[ArthurWalden]

I am using ScummVM version 2.9.1.

In Quest for Glory 2, some dialogue various characters are supposed to give you is never triggered. The examples that most stands out for me are various things Keapon Laffin is supposed to say about the elementals when you enter and leave. In particular, he is supposed to greet you with a message about the fire elemental when you enter around Day 4 or 5 and then give you a message about the air elemental when you are leaving on the same visit. (At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to work.) The leaving air elemental message is intended to be particularly important because it is the first game hint you get about the needed container for the air elemental, the bellows. (It seems to me there should also be dialogue from the katta merchants about the fire elemental which is never triggered.)

I am wondering if this is related to the fact that Aziza's dialogue about dispelling the caged beast is never triggered during the ending ceremony when it should be.

I am playing the GOG PC version of the game.

I am using Windows 11 Home, x64.

[i30817]

What happens if you "say hello" or "say goodbye" in the right days? Could it be a version difference?

[ArthurWalden]

Um...the first things you are probably confused about (and I admit I didn't say) is that I'm playing the EGA version, not AGDI's VGA one. In most cases in QfG2 EGA, you don't say hello and goodbye to the characters you meet per se. In the case of Keapon Laffin, he greets you when you enter his shop with one set of dialogue (usually generic but sometimes using a particular set of dialogue based on an event in the game such as an elemental appearing the city) and then says goodbye with another set when you leave the shop.

EGA version is text parser. You type in commands and will find movement easiest with the keypad. The mouse point-and-click was introduced in the VGA version. Sierra's version was the EGA one. The much later VGA one was a fan remake.

The only way I think version could play a role here is if Sierra, when patching the game for the last time, introduced a bug so that Keapon doesn't say some of the lines he should.

[i30817]

I'm aware of the game difference and what game this report is about.

Just wondering if you could trigger the dialogs in the right days by using the parser.

It does not sound possible that a new bug will break such a generic trigger like 'what day it is in the game world' in the sci\agi script engine so that's why I was wondering about sierra bugs in different sierra game versions.

There exist bugs where epoch time fail over time (year 2k, year 2022 bugs for instance) for various reasons, but I don't believe time in this game was implemented with anything like a real epoch, because it doesn't make sense and also the game rate of time doesn't match a real day.

I saw a article about bugs in scummvm in Colonel Bequest because a crack altered the random number generator to always return 0, but that doesn't fit here either, both because altering the rng in this game wouldn't affect the copy protection, which is fixed and optional anyway (the external map is optional because you can ask the vendor outside the inn for confusing, but viable directions to the money changer, then reverse them to buy the ingame map), and because it doesn't make sense for these plot relevant dialogs to be rng.

[ArthurWalden]

All I know is that I am not aware of any way to deliberately trigger the missing dialogues.